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The Gearbox Podcast brings on industry professionals to explore the day-to-day operations of owning and operating a shop. From common frustrations to industry-wide shifts, this podcast covers it with fun and insightful conversations.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:13]:
My name is Jimmy Purdy, shop owner, master tech, transmission builder, and the host of the Gearbox podcast. Here I talk with new and seasoned shop owners, as well as industry professionals about day to day operations within their own shops and all the failures and successes that come along the way, from what grinds your gears to having to shift gears in the automotive industry. This is the Gearbox podcast. So, speaking of your racing career, let's go back to the beginning. What was the passion that got you involved in that? Was it something that you kind of fell into, or just something that you always strived to start with?
Ron [00:00:51]:
Well, my brother and I, we grown up in San Luis Obispo. I was actually, up until 7th grade, I lived in Santa Maria. My dad worked for a Chevy dealership, home motors, 30 something years, mainly in a service department, but, I mean, either service rider mechanic most of the time, but he was always the guy. There used to be a drag strip in Santa Maria when we were growing up.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:20]:
Yeah, a long time ago.
Ron [00:01:22]:
Yeah. And he was kind of the guy that racers around that area would either come to. To get their stuff fixed or to go faster, or our garage was always full of somebody's car or engine that they brought over to my dad. If my dad wasn't running his drag, his race car, and to that point, then he did a lot of engine building and things, dirt cars in the area. So, back in the day, way back in the day, there was a dirt track and a Tascadero, and, of course, the one at Santa Maria. And I'm not sure if it's still open, so I got to go to a lot of other cool racing kinds of racing because of hanging out with my dad. And so you fast forward. Santa Maria track got closed.
Ron [00:02:09]:
Then. The closest probably was either Fremont or Bakersfield, that everybody went to as far as drag strip, but I was always getting to go to the dirt track and hang out and work on these cars. We had a good friend, Doug Brown was his name, and he lived in Darrow, and he was pretty good at super modifieds, and we would go to this track. And so my childhood was pretty cool because I got to go to all these different types of racing. So, as it fast forwarded, my dad sold his race car to a guy named Jim Rozoli. The people there know Rozzoli's automotive down in San Luis, and Jim was an aspiring racer. He had a streetcar growing up, and he had the bug, and he wanted to go faster, so he bought my dad's altered, which was a drag dad. And then he ended up selling it, and he wanted to go even faster, and he wanted to build a dragster, so he bought a dragster.
Ron [00:02:59]:
And my dad was sort of. He was under my dad's wing. He had my dad help him build the dragster, build the engine. I would tag along, and so I got to learn how to build this dragster and work on it with Jim Rozoli's car. Then he wanted to go faster, and he built a top alcohol dragster that he bought from Blaine and who everybody knows down to. So it just. I was just sort of tagging along and just learning and listening and growing up with a dad that was in the service department that long and around cars, I obviously grew up working on my own car. My first real street car was a 68 Chevell, and learning how to put a new motor in it, put a cam, and just all that stuff growing up.
Ron [00:03:48]:
And then I had a cousin, Gary via, who ran the auto shop there at San Luis High School. I graduated 83 of San Luis High, and they had just built this killer automotive department. Gary via was my cousin, and so I was always around something to do with cars, and that's just sort of my background. And then as a crew guy, I was one of the kind of the rare. A lot of guys now, or a lot of drivers you see out there either have money or have parents that have money or bring somebody they know as a sponsor and bring a million bucks to get a ride to drive a car. It's been going on for years in IndyCar and NASCAR and, of course, drag racing. But I grew up as a crew guy, so I was working on these cars before I got a shot at driving, and I didn't have the million dollars to bring. So I knew if I ever wanted to drive a dragster, somehow somebody had to trust me in it, and I had to learn how to work on it.
Ron [00:04:48]:
And I noticed there were a lot of successful drivers growing up that worked on their own cars, and I think that helped their success driving also. But it was just a rare breed to see a driver tuner type of person, like, back in the day when we were growing up.
Jimmy Purdy [00:05:05]:
Right? Yeah.
Ron [00:05:06]:
I just luckily had this guy from Montana that took a liking to me and offered me to get my license in his dragster. And I did that, and he ended up putting me in his dragster as his full time driver. And then, boom, boom, boom. Next thing I know, I was working my way up other higher, quicker categories. Had an owner that saw me in the other dragster and hired me for that dragster. And next thing you know, I got Don the snake perdome called me up, said he'd been watching me and the way I carried myself and the way I drove and I went to work for Don Perdome, who was, like my hero, growing. So, yeah, that's so cool. In a know, there's a lot going on in between there, but that's pretty much my background.
Jimmy Purdy [00:05:45]:
Yeah, that kind of the highlights, I guess.
Ron [00:05:47]:
And then all of a sudden, I got all these.
Jimmy Purdy [00:05:49]:
I see that in the.
Ron [00:05:53]:
Easier. So hard to get one, to win a race professionally in NHRa, and to get one. They call them wallies, but just to get one is, like something. People go their whole lives drag racing and never, ever get a shot at getting one. And I think I'm at 70 something now. I think, yeah, 70. It's crazy. I never imagined I'd be this far.
Jimmy Purdy [00:06:18]:
So do you think your mechanical aptitude helped you be more in tune with the car, or I mean, go with, like, without a doubt how to drive? Because anybody can say, oh, I can, until you're in that car. Right. And it's like you're taking off down the road, down the track at 300 miles an hour. It's something that most of us will probably never experience in our entire lives, but it's obviously a lot harder than it looks.
Ron [00:06:45]:
Yeah, it's such a. I get asked all the time, what's it like when you get in your car at the end of the day or you leave to go to the hotel? Do you feel weird?
Jimmy Purdy [00:06:57]:
Super slow.
Ron [00:06:58]:
Yeah. But our cars are like fighter jets. You sit in the center of them. There's not much there. You're strapped in by, like, 13 straps holding my head and my arms and my legs. And you have this little butterfly wheel. I mean, it literally is like a fighter jet. It's not like a normal car.
Ron [00:07:20]:
Like, when I've gone and I've raced NASCAR stuff or I did dirt racing, and you're in a conventional race car sitting on the left side, like a normal car, then you get in your rental car to leave or whatever car, and then it's weird. You've been driving this race car, and then you get in a normal car, and it feels closer, and you get that correlation between the two. My car, I can't even compare them because it's 13,000 hp. It's a land rocket, basically. And so it's such a one off thing. So, yeah, I get that question a lot. Like, what's it like to drive normal, but been lucky, been lucky to be able to drive cool stuff like that. Know, midgets and sprint cars and dirt cars and NASCAR and things like that.
Ron [00:08:09]:
And the mechanical side of growing up around that definitely helped my.
Jimmy Purdy [00:08:14]:
Do you think you learned a better respect for the car so you're able to. I don't know. You see a lot of drivers come and go. There's a lot. I mean, if you watch the circuits, you see a lot of drivers coming and going, and they just don't understand it. And obviously, it's beyond me. I'm not a racer by any means, but it's just interesting because it's even in the field, like in the auto industry, and some guys really want to be a really good mechanic, a really big technician. And not to say the correlation is the same, but it's like that mental aspect of, like, you either get it or you kind of don't.
Jimmy Purdy [00:08:46]:
There are certain aspects of it you just can't train. It's just one of those things. You either got it or you don't. Do you think that's kind of like part of that deal, too?
Ron [00:08:55]:
Yeah. Like we talked about before, about people bringing money and buying a seat in a car, there's some of those that just have it. You watch Formula one and you see some of those drivers that probably have never worked on their cars or go carts growing up that are in Formula one and still have it, whatever it might be. Maybe their dad was a Formula one racer. But if you go into really reality, away from Formula one, you get in the States and you get an Indy car, NASCAR and drag racing, the successful ones are usually the ones from the beginning that mechanically worked on their cars and know how things work, and you take it a step further. And the biggest thing for me probably was working on them like I did growing up. And then when something goes wrong and that driver wrecks it, whether it's a dirt car or sprint car or like go cart, when I was growing up, somebody's got to fix it. So you keep that in the back of your head.
Ron [00:09:59]:
If in the dragster. When I was early on in my career, and I was getting my license and then first couple dragsters I drove, I was real careful. When something didn't sound right in the engine or feel right or smell right, I would lift off the throttle where a lot of those drivers wouldn't understand why it was doing that and just leg it to the finish line. End up hurting a lot of parts, which costs a lot of money, the owner. And then all of a sudden, you got an owner going, man, I can't afford to go to the next race. So I had that kind of mentality. And then I get hired by one of the biggest legends in the sport with unlimited, pretty much sponsored money early on with Don Perdome, it was Copenhagen was our sponsor, and then it was skull. So the tobacco money, there's a lot of money there, and the budget was not lacking anywhere.
Ron [00:10:54]:
So then all of a sudden. But I still drove that way. So I think that helped my career from that point on. You could still go out there with unlimited budget. But if I'm blowing parts up, and the crew chief loves that one supercharger he has, and you went out and blew it up, and it's not as good anymore, and it doesn't produce as good air going in the engine. He's got to go back and put a new one on. He doesn't know what kind of boost it's going to make. And then the tune ups off, and then the car doesn't run good, and it's all because you did something that you could have kept from doing.
Jimmy Purdy [00:11:27]:
That's an aspect of driving I don't think a lot of people think about. I mean, I know exactly what that mindset is because you get on the, I don't know, just driving a normal daily car, you're always paying attention. You don't want to go all the way to the floorboard or the racing in quotes that we would do back when we're kids. Always kind of, like, kept a little bit out of it. It's like, I can't really afford to fix this if I end up breaking it, but I still want to have a good time. Or even when you're out on your dirt bike, you just kind of, like, leave a little bit at the end of the throttle because I don't want to blow anything up. Yeah, but that's an interesting aspect of being a good driver that I don't think maybe a lot think about is being able to take care of your machine and realize these things that are going on instead of just being like, no, as long as I get down to the end of the line, that's all that matters. It's like, well, what about tomorrow? Especially if you're qualifying or something.
Jimmy Purdy [00:12:21]:
It's not just about today. So that's interesting aspect that you bring up about it, that you're able to stay in tune with the machine and keep it alive. Yeah. I can only imagine when you're talking about doing changes like that with the tune and changing your supercharger. It's a great point because even though it's a piece of machinery and it's mechanical, not everything's the same.
Ron [00:12:42]:
No. And my brother and I put another.
Jimmy Purdy [00:12:44]:
Part on and expect the same results.
Ron [00:12:46]:
Yeah. That goes to winning and losing certain races and all these trophies behind me. I could point out, going back 15 years, certain races that we probably lost because I didn't get off the throttle when I should have, maybe in a qualifying run. And we heard a part that the crew chief really liked for his tune up. So, yeah, there's been a lot of that and vice versa. Races we've won, where I lifted off the throttle in one qualifying run, it might have cost us a position, but in the long run, on race day, we ended up winning because we saved those parts. And it goes back because my brother and I early a. Back when I talked about Santa Maria drag strip, there was a go kart track out there.
Ron [00:13:36]:
It was an old airstrip, is what the drag strip was in Santa Maria. And the go kart track stayed open even though the drag strip closed. And my brother and I were into go karts early on. And so we would run Santa Maria, and then we'd go to Fresno, and they had a track there. And then we would go to Bakersfield, and they'd have this tri valley and a lot of good go kart racers and engine builders over in the valley. And we were, like, one of a few in Santa Maria that represented the, you know, and Central coast. And we had to work on our own go karts. We had to build them.
Ron [00:14:10]:
My brother worked for the Yamaha shop that was in San Luis. And so that guy was in the car and he built engines, but we had to really take care of them because we couldn't afford anything. We had a old landscape trailer somebody had that was a gardener. And we bought it from this guy. And it was just an open trailer. And we ended up putting two x fours across it. And we'd put one go cart under it, and we'd strap one to the top and pull it from, like, an old beat up van that we had, that actually my brother had. And that's how we went to the races.
Ron [00:14:42]:
And we'd roll in and we'd beat these cars and these guys with these huge trailers, and we'd roll out of there with a trophy. And for us, it was cooler because our dad taught us how to race that way and not necessarily race and win because we had more money or a bigger trailer or better tools or whatever it might be all the fancy.
Jimmy Purdy [00:15:05]:
Sponsors and all the fancy parts and all that kind of. If it works, it works.
Ron [00:15:09]:
Yeah. So that was fun growing up. But that mentality started with me back then. And then even today, now that I own the team, I'm back to sort of even more so, thinking about parts and the budget and money and driving smartly, because now I'm not only the driver, I still have a crew chief that I want to make sure I make proud and I don't ruin his parts for his tune up. But now I'm paying the bills. So, yeah, it's different mentality.
Jimmy Purdy [00:15:43]:
A lot of thinking going on in the front seat of that car right now.
Ron [00:15:47]:
Too much, and you don't want to be in our cars. You don't want to be thinking. And it's cost me races. I lost John force on a whole shot, I think, last year, and I was in the car, we were getting ready to run. There was an oil down. We're sitting there, and I'm starting to think about business stuff and invoices and things like that. And then they start the car up and we get up there and stage the car, and he ended up beating me. And it's because my brain had too much going on.
Ron [00:16:12]:
And in our race cars, you can't have that. That's a no no.
Jimmy Purdy [00:16:16]:
Oh, yeah. You talk a 10th, two tenths. I mean, unfathomable how much I think.
Ron [00:16:22]:
I lost to him by, like, four thousandths of a second. And that was the difference.
Jimmy Purdy [00:16:27]:
Yeah, it's crazy thinking about that stuff. It's mind blowing to me that your body can't, like, the signals going through your body don't travel as fast as the car is going to. The reaction times, it's like your brain literally can't send the signals to your hands and your feet and the time you have to anticipate. So that stuff blows my mind looking into that science side of it. Geek out on how fast your electrical circuits move within your nervous system. It's like, that is just unbelievable. Yeah, next level stuff.
Ron [00:17:02]:
A lot happens in a little amount of time. If you go back, like on my Facebook fan page and some of my social media, if you go back and just look up videos, I would wear these glasses that had a high def camera right between my eyes, and I'd obviously wear them so they're in my helmet so you can get this view. And I love going back and watching it because when I'm racing, I'm just thinking about what trying to keep this car straight and do the best I can, but it's fun to go back and watch that view because it's actually in my head and in my helmet and I can look at stuff, re watching it, and it's pretty cool. I'm like, holy cow, the flames are out the window. When I hit the throttle and this car's nose popped out, I didn't even see that. And then just craziness. But I always tell fans are like, man, what's it like? I'm like, go watch those videos I did because there's no closer feeling that somebody that can't do it can feel other than that view when I wear those glasses, because you hear the sound, and even when I shut my visor, the sound gets a little quieter. But it's still crazy and just how quick everything goes.
Ron [00:18:09]:
So there's a bunch of my last year and year before I've got posted on there, and I still love going back and watching them, but it'll give you an idea of how quick we move and how quick our car gets to where. And so the point I'm bringing up is it's easy for a driver to get behind the car and what we do. So easy. And I still as many runs as I've made, John Forrest, who's made thousands more than me, still, that happens to a lot, and it's crazy. We're zero to 100 in less than 1 second from a standing stop. And that just gets even more crazier as the run goes on. So there's a lot going on.
Jimmy Purdy [00:18:48]:
Well, I'm sure, like you said, you see stuff in that playback that your brain didn't even comprehend at the time.
Ron [00:18:55]:
It's fun. Yeah, I watch it and I'll have a big smile on my face going, wow, I didn't even see that.
Jimmy Purdy [00:19:02]:
What a thrill. That'd be so cool. Talking about on the business side of it. So you brought that up a little bit. So have you ever thought about putting a driver in now that you're the owner? You like keeping that concept of you being the front runner and kind of keeping the business stuff, or how does that future look?
Ron [00:19:20]:
Yeah, eventually I'm going to retire from driving way down the road. I don't even feel like I'm close yet, but I've been approached. But it's our third year as a team owner, and what's crazy is we won the world championship my first year as a team owner, which just doesn't happen. You couldn't script that, right? And we went out and did it and so we've been approached several times and I've kept my eye on a lot know, actually from your area, Doug Gordon, the Gordon family that live up there, he's got two daughters that drive and they've worked their way up and I've watched, kept an eye on them. In fact, I signed one of their licenses off this year. That's actually his daughter is replacing Doug in the seat. But I love to watch how I grew up in the categories that I grew up in. I love to watch these drivers and keep an eye because I think I would love to bring somebody up that may never get a shot to be professional like I've done, because they could never find the money or the budget to bring to get a ride, much like I did.
Ron [00:20:27]:
Right. And so I'm always keeping an eye open. And we've had people, they saw the success we've had as a team in our organization and had questions like, hey, would you add a dragster your team? So it's coming. We want to do it. But I don't want to overstep where I'm going right now because my wife and I are running most of the business part right now, and we have the team in Indy and I just feel like we're doing okay and I don't want to throw too much, but if it's done right and my crew chief is in control and he brings another crew chief in to run that second car, it's the same thing. What's great about I'm sponsored by Nap auto parts, right? And I've been sponsored by them since 2008. And I've really had this fun evolution of most of the stuff I do sponsor wise and appearances and get togethers and dinners and all these things that I do for napa auto parts is mostly with auto care centers. And, you know, but most, if your listeners don't know, napa auto care centers are any shop, tire store, garage that you see the napa logo when you drive by and you're thinking about getting your oil change or something worked on your car and you see the napa logo, they got to earn that right to have it on their shop.
Ron [00:21:43]:
So I've always dealt with and been around these auto care centers throughout, since 2008. So it's 16 years I've been with Napa. I've watched and gotten to know a lot of these people behind the scenes and become friends with them. But it's fun when we have these get togethers. When I fly into a race and we have these get togethers that Napa brings all these shop owners from, let's say, Charlotte when we get ready to race. And I've gotten to know them over the years, and from one year to the next, I'll know somebody and how their business is doing. They got a shop, and they seem to do pretty well. And the next time I come into town, they opened a new one, and they're like, whoa, man, this is crazy.
Ron [00:22:23]:
Or, take it a step further. There's several of them that have 4567 locations, and I've watched them grow throughout year to year. And so becoming a team owner, it threw me right into all these conversations I'd had all these years with these Napa auto care and shop owners. And so I've been able to feed off that. And it's fun now having conversations because they asked me the same thing you just did. Like, you ever thought about having a second car? And it's like, you ever thought about having another shop? And they're like, no way. Or, yeah, it's going pretty.
Jimmy Purdy [00:22:55]:
That correlation. Yeah, that's where I was going with it.
Ron [00:22:57]:
Yeah, we opened one across town, and, oh, my God, I never thought we'd have so many more headaches and this and that with employees. And just. It's funny how close it is to what I'm going through being a team owner. And it's been fun. It really has. And so now we can relate and have these conversations, and they're brought out to the races as my guests, as well as Napa's. And so we give them something to come out and hang out. Napa rewards them for being a Napa auto care center, and they get to come hang out at the races, be right next to the pit area, watch the team tear it apart, and I get to go sit down and have lunch with them and just kind of talk.
Ron [00:23:35]:
So it's a lot of fun.
Jimmy Purdy [00:23:36]:
Yeah. A lot of good learning. And you're the technician turned shop owner. Right. And most of us that own auto shops have kind of done that. I mean, there's guys that, there's the racers that come in with money, and they just get put in the driver's seat. And not to say that in a negative connotation, there's, like, nothing wrong with that in our view. The way I was brought up, obviously, the way you've been talking, you were raised as well, is like you started at the bottom and just worked and ground and learned the concept from the inside out.
Jimmy Purdy [00:24:07]:
But a lot of us as technicians, don't know anything about the business side. Of it. And so when we turn into a shop owner, it's like, all I got to do is fix cars. And if I fix them really well, then I'll be really busy and I'll be really successful. And it's like, that doesn't work. That's usually the first step in failing, is like, oh, well, I'm fixing cars good, and I don't care if anybody thinks anything else, because as long as the car is fixed, that's all that matters, is like, no. And I wonder if that's the same from owning a race team. As long as I'm winning races, is that all that matters? I don't know.
Jimmy Purdy [00:24:41]:
I feel like there's so much behind the know.
Ron [00:24:44]:
Yeah, I've been told by Napa I could literally not win, probably. I mean, I could win sometimes and still be good because I built these relationships. And what we do with our race team and with Napa throughout the whole country, we've really gotten to the store owners because also a lot of your listeners might not know Napa auto parts isn't like these other big auto parts stores that are franchises, right? Every napa store is owned by somebody in your neighborhood, much like a shop like you. I mean, it's run by somebody and usually owned by somebody that's in your community, help sponsor little league and everywhere I go. So it's not this big franchise type of thing. To your point. You learn quickly and you see quickly why people are successful and why some of them have four and five stores, some of them have 20 stores. And you understand and you see how they run their business.
Ron [00:25:50]:
And the successful race car teams are the same way. You look at John Forrest or you look at these teams over the years and you understand why they're good and why they've been successful a lot of times. The ones with the long sponsors, Kenny Bernstein comes to mind. He had Budweiser for sponsor for years, and he was like that sort of bar that you wanted to as a team owner. Everybody wanted to be like, you know, he didn't always win. Yeah, he ran good, but what he did away from the track with his sponsor kept that sponsor all those years. So I've tried to emulate that in a way, and I'm lucky because we do win and we win a lot. But we can go through a slump, and I don't have to worry about Napa being one of those sponsors that says, hey, man, if you're not winning, we got to drop you or something.
Ron [00:26:41]:
Like, you see sometimes in different forms of racing. So, yeah, it's just as hard off the track as it is on the track. And it's a constant. And so I always wake up in the morning and I act like I'm a napa employee or I'm working for a Napa auto care shop. And that's how my mentality is. How can I make today better than yesterday for a shop owner or an Apple store owner or whatever?
Jimmy Purdy [00:27:08]:
Yeah. Staying humble and asking how instead of. Yeah, in a sense. Right?
Ron [00:27:14]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:27:15]:
But it's interesting to say, too, because that's the product that you're delivering is a win. Right? I mean, if anybody thinks of racing, it's like you're there to win. It's like the Ricky Bobby thing. You're the first or you're know you're there to win. But it's interesting to say in seeing it from the business standpoint, it sounds like that's not really what it all is. It's not really what it's about. It's about being there all the time and having these relationships and just running a business and the product that we deliver. I'm not always right with my diagnostics.
Jimmy Purdy [00:27:54]:
Every repair doesn't always go perfect. And I think a lot of other shop owners can probably say the same thing. Unless they're naive and they want to be lying to themselves, it's never going to go perfect. But there's so many other aspects that are under the surface. Like you said, interesting concept to think of that on something like a race team that you don't even think about being the owner and the driver. And then how do I release the reins a little bit and have someone drive my car like I would drive it? And it's the same thing I think about when I first hired my first technician. How do I hire a guy that's going to fix the cars the way I fix it? You're not going to find it. It's not going to happen.
Jimmy Purdy [00:28:32]:
I'm never going to find that guy. There's nobody like me. Not to say I'm special, but.
Ron [00:28:37]:
Yeah, exactly the same thing.
Jimmy Purdy [00:28:41]:
I can only imagine what your mindset is going through to trying to put all those pieces together because obviously you're always thinking about tomorrow. You got to go day by day, but you got a lot of stuff you're thinking about. How's this evolution work? How's the next day work? How's the next week work? Because that's part of being successful in any sort of business. You have to look six months ahead and it's a lot.
Ron [00:29:05]:
To that point right away, and I knew I was going to be a team owner. I hired people that I knew were smarter than me in that position that were going to be successful. And I'm not afraid to say, hey, man, I don't know much about this, but let me hire you because I know you know more about it. So I got a great crew chief, great crew guys hired, great social media girl that I knew that I'd worked with before. I hired a great publicist that I already worked. I knew every area that had to be good in today's world, and then let them do their job, and it's worked out good so far.
Jimmy Purdy [00:29:44]:
What an awesome piece of advice. That's like, hire smarter than you. I think a lot of people have a hard time with that.
Ron [00:29:50]:
Yeah. I don't mind being the dumbest guy in the room when I'm standing there with my team and people around me. That's okay. They can't drive as good as I can, and that's okay.
Jimmy Purdy [00:30:01]:
Not letting that one go.
Ron [00:30:02]:
Yeah. It doesn't bother me that my crew chief couldn't jump in the car and drive as good as I can. I don't want him to be a good driver. I want him to be a good crew chief. It's worked out.
Jimmy Purdy [00:30:13]:
So, talking about the crew chief, do you still do the mechanical side? Are you still involved with any sort of the tuning aspect or being on that, or are you hands on at all with that stuff?
Ron [00:30:24]:
There's a lot of team owners that do, and those, you don't see them as successful, I don't think you start meddling around in areas you don't know much about. I could still jump in and work on the car, but today's world, especially top fuel and funny car, you have to have people so good at that job. We have cylinder. We've got, I think, nine people that work on the car, and they all have a special job. We've got a bottom end guy that's the engine builder, but he also, when a run comes back, these team members have to tear it apart. And I say tear it apart. It comes back hot from a run into the pit area, and then up on the jacks it goes. And then they have to tear this engine down to the bare block clutch out of the back of all the flywheel, pressure plate, everything completely apart, put it back together and have me back at the starting line, sometimes in less than an hour.
Ron [00:31:20]:
And so that's the cool thing in our sport, that when I talked about having our guests out. Our hospitality area is right next to the pit area. So these guests, which are napa people, a lot of them are shop owners. They get to sit there and have a meal in this VIP tent. And literally less than 10ft away, they watch these special mechanics tear it apart and put it back together. And it's cool. It's probably the coolest part. I think it's cooler than watching the car.
Ron [00:31:48]:
But I grew up working on them. I still could, but I don't even try. I pack my parachute and I check certain parts of the car that have something to do with my area, which is driving, parachutes coming out, slowing down, things like that. But we have a bottom end guy. We've got two special cylinder head people. We've got. Somebody specializes in the supercharger and everything above the engine. And when they come back, it's like poetry.
Ron [00:32:13]:
We've got two clutch guys that tear the back off and it comes apart. If you time lapse it, which we have done, and I think I've got videos up on our social media that will time lapse with a camera above and watch these guys tear it apart and put it back together. And so everything comes out. Pistons come out, clutch off, bear engine, bear block with the crankshaft. And that's all that's sitting there. New pistons and rods go in, a new clutch pack goes on, new flywheel and new pressure plate. New cylinder heads go on it. And then they go through the heads that just came off of it and check everything and put new valves, if they have to, in it, new springs and all that, and get them ready for another run.
Ron [00:32:57]:
But we have everything ready to go, and everything goes back together once the heads are on it. The supercharger and injector person has gone through that. They come over, they put that on it, and before you know it, the engine is back together, the clutch is on it. They made adjustments, we fired up, warm it up, check everything, and then it gets taken to the starting line.
Jimmy Purdy [00:33:17]:
And it's mesmerizing to watch them do that. I was at the Zmax dragway in Charlotte. I don't know, maybe it was a while ago, five or six years now. Time goes by, but I remember being there and I was in the hospitality tent and watching those. It's fantastic. Until they start it. Just make sure you're not eating when they start it. Right.
Ron [00:33:39]:
I disagree.
Jimmy Purdy [00:33:40]:
Oh, my God.
Ron [00:33:42]:
I should have eaten faster. That's your dessert. It's like going to AJ spurs and then you get done with your steak. And then you get this dose of nitro. It's like the best dessert you could have.
Jimmy Purdy [00:33:54]:
As long as you're done eating. I guess maybe as you're watching, you're like, oh, I'm not even hungry. And I'm watching these guys. And then all of a sudden, half the meal is still up on your plate. And then they fire it up, like, oh, I guess I'm not eating anymore. Yeah, because it is like 10ft away. And you're like, holy moly, I got to get out of this tent right now. Looking around, everyone's just streaming tears.
Ron [00:34:16]:
The wind's blowing that way. It's not good.
Jimmy Purdy [00:34:18]:
It's always fun to bring someone's never been there before with a top fuel car. Hey, stand right. And you're just kind of pushing them a little closer, like, it's really loud. Why do you want me to be. And they think you're messing with them because it's so loud. It's like, no, just give it a second, Harold. And you see their eyes swell up.
Ron [00:34:31]:
Yeah, I've seen it all. I've seen people couldn't breathe. Their nose is running. And you look at them and you think they're going through hell. And then it's all over. And five minutes later, like, that was awesome.
Jimmy Purdy [00:34:47]:
I've seen some guys sit there, too, and they just. No problem at all, standing right in front, right over the headers, like, really nothing. You've been doing that for a long time.
Ron [00:34:58]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:35:01]:
I guess with the mechanical, you kind of stayed away from the repair aspect of it. Do you stay in tune, though? I mean, you have to stay in tune to a certain point as far as the new parts, new tools, new processes. Obviously, with everybody in your team, you got to, as the leader, make sure everyone's kind of on top of their game. And so that's a lot of aspects to think about, too, and to bring the correlation over. As a shop owner, I'm always like, what's the new technology? What's the new cars coming out? Whatever the problem with parts are coming out now. It's a lot of aspects. So you obviously stay up to date with that kind of stuff, too, though, right?
Ron [00:35:40]:
Oh, yeah. No, I'm very in tune with what's mechanically and that's what's great, is I'll hang out in the crew chief lounge. I've got shoot four or five computer screens. They're watching weather on two of them. They're looking at data from the run. On a couple we have, Toyota is one of our sponsors. So we get this incredible data from the racetrack and what's going on up at the track, temperature wise, and changes and things here and there. So I see all that, and I know what's going on enough that mechanically I can see.
Ron [00:36:14]:
And then I either have a conversation with the crew chief on his approach and what he's thinking about doing or what the car did, and he'll show me on all the graphs and what it did the last run and what he wants to do different, this run. So I'm very much still there. We come back from a run and I still, even though there's onboard computer that gives him everything that happened on a run. And there's so many sensors, there's so many things that he has to look at that a lot of times I come back and it's funny because I'll tell him what I felt during the run, and he'll go, well, this is what happened. It's not even the same, right? And then other times I'll tell him something, he'll go, oh, shoot, I didn't even see that. I'm glad you told me. So we still come down after a run, we still talk about, and I tell him what happened on the run and a 3.8 2nd run at 330 plus miles an hour. It'll take sometimes ten minutes for me to tell him because my brain starts to unload what happened because it happens so fast and the adrenaline and all that.
Ron [00:37:17]:
There'll be times I'll be sleeping and I'll wake up at the hotel room and I'll remember something happened on the run. And I'll text him in the morning and he'll pull the computer. I'm going, man, I didn't even see that. I'm glad you told me. So we still come back and we have a discussion about it. And then he goes to work looking at what happened. So he takes what I tell him, much like old school, before computers, and he takes that into effect. But really he concentrates on the data.
Jimmy Purdy [00:37:47]:
Yeah, you got to have the human element a little bit. It's like the advent of AI, right? And it's like you have all the sensors and all this stuff in the world, but you still got to have someone.
Ron [00:37:59]:
Sometimes he doesn't know why something happened. It could have shook the tires. And he's like, man, I don't know if it's too much clutch or not enough there. Ultimately it is. Whatever happened, happened. But at that point, he's like, I don't know. And we almost have to go make another run and go one way or the other to find out what it was. And you either make the right choice or you don't.
Ron [00:38:18]:
And sometimes it'll take what I told him, and he'll think about what I told him I felt in the car. And even though he sees the daddy, he's like, man, that kind of tells me what you told me, what I should do. And most of the time, it works out good. Sometimes it's complete opposite, and that's just part of it. But it's fun for me mechanically, because I can sit and understand what he's talking about, and he'll tell me what he's planning on it doing with the clutch of the engine on the next run. And when I'm in the car, I know that during the run, and then I'll feel the clutch at a certain point, I go, oh, this is what he wanted to do. And sure enough, it's working, and I can feel the car running better. So it's a good synergy between him and I in that respect.
Jimmy Purdy [00:39:01]:
Yeah, it's an awesome perspective. It's, like, an important thing you brought up about being mechanically inclined and being a good driver, because that relationship between him and you, obviously, is what makes the whole process work. And if you have someone in that car, again, not to say something bad about someone that's not mechanically inclined, that's driving, but on that same point, you're not putting everything on his shoulders. Hey, it didn't run right. Fix it. Yeah, that's not going to work. And that translates over to anything. Like, I can't just like, hey, you guys aren't doing your job right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:39:34]:
Do it better. It's like, got to be a leader, and so to be a leader, you got to know what be in tune with what they're doing. And so that's an awesome thing that you guys can collaborate on that. And you talking about this process is just, like, blowing my mind, because I've never really thought about that detailed part of racing when it comes to that stuff, obviously, I know there's a lot to it, but hearing that, that's so cool, because it's a diagnostic process. That's what my brain likes to do. Let's put these pieces together. Let's figure out what's going on. Let's try this.
Jimmy Purdy [00:40:05]:
Let's try that. And to have that relationship and have two guys on the same page figuring that stuff out, that's so cool. I don't know. Obviously, I've never taken a car down a track like that. But that sounds like the cooler part of the racing than actual going down to the finish line.
Ron [00:40:25]:
Yeah, I love that whole. There's hours and hours of it reminds me like, I've gotten to do acting and commercials and stuff in the past. And it's funny, when you go to a movie set or a commercial set, and for one little 1 minute scene that you see or a commercial is 30 seconds, it's like 12 hours sometimes of standing around and waiting, and it just reminds me of that there's all this work of all this preparation of them getting the car ready and him making a decision right up to the last minute. And then they give me the car, and it's like, don't screw this up, because I could go out and turn right and get out of the groove, and it smokes the tires, and if I'd kept it in the center of the rubber, it may not have smoking the tires, and it might have done exactly what he wanted, but it's not easy to drive them, so it's not something easy. But it's like, here's a perfectly prepped car that we worked all these hours on, and you can either screw it up or do it right, and it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:41:23]:
All works out in 3 seconds.
Ron [00:41:25]:
In 3 seconds.
Jimmy Purdy [00:41:26]:
All that for 3 seconds?
Ron [00:41:27]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:41:30]:
That's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy to think about that. All that comes down, all that preparation and everybody.
Ron [00:41:36]:
Yeah, but the downside is, and it happens a lot, is we'll make a run and I make a little mistake, or I don't catch the tire shake or it does something, and I can't keep the car in the groove and it floats out and it smokes the tires, and then I'm just hating myself because I let everybody down. I feel like myself included. But it's like I knew the reason we didn't run good on that run is because I did whatever I did. And luckily, sometimes it happens during the qualifying and we have another run coming up in a couple of hours. Then I get right back in there and either redeem myself right. Or sometimes there's two weeks off and you did it during race day, and you got to wait two weeks and watch it on TV and see other people talk about it and the announcers talk about it, and then articles written about there's an upside of being a race car driver and going through the good stuff, and then there's those points where you feel like you let everybody down as a driver, and then you got to live with it. And that's the part that sucks sometimes when that happens.
Jimmy Purdy [00:42:39]:
So it goes the high highs and the low lows.
Ron [00:42:43]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:42:43]:
And everybody talking about all the things that you already know, you did wrong. I know I made a mistake. Sorry, I made a freaking mistake.
Ron [00:42:52]:
Yeah. And a lot of teams are torn down that way. When the crew rips on the driver and he feels bad already and then it just starts, that kind of stuff. So good teams last. If we smoke the tires, I go pat my crew chief on the butt and I'd say, hey, man, don't worry about it. We'll get him next time. I know he's pissed off already at himself because he didn't make the right choice or whatever happened, happened, but I'm not going to give him crap about it and vice versa. When I go out and I get beat on a whole shot or I don't drive as well or I don't cut a good light, my team, anyway, and the teams I've been associated over the years are always good about, hey, man, we got your back.
Ron [00:43:33]:
Don't worry about it. We're going to go better than ever next race and we'll get them. So it helps.
Jimmy Purdy [00:43:41]:
That's the culture you're breeding. And I think culture is when you're talking about bringing new technicians or new drivers or new pit crew or anything into either one of our industries or one and the same, it's like the culture. And so you can't have a team with a bad culture. I can't have a shop with a bad culture. Nobody can. It doesn't breed excellence and it's like the difference between a leader and a dictatorship. And you get a lot of money and you can say, oh, I got enough money to pay you whatever you need, but that doesn't give you the okay to treat them however you want to treat them. And I think in the industry right now, that's the biggest pivoting point because things have changed so much in the last 2030 years and now we have a technician shortage.
Jimmy Purdy [00:44:25]:
And so trying to find mechanics, trying to find technicians into our field, it's like they don't want that dealership culture where you're just a number and you just show up and you just flag your hours and you go home. They want to come to a shop where there's camaraderie and we hang out, we have a good time and we get a pat on the butt every once in a while. Maybe not everybody, but, yeah, you know what I mean? It's just like breathing that good culture of like it's okay to make a mistake. Let's figure it out tomorrow. And it's so hard. And when you have all that stress and all that stuff you're thinking about, and then you lose a race, and it's like to be able to say, you know what? That's okay. That's true leadership. Yeah, I think in its rawest form.
Ron [00:45:08]:
Like I said, it's worked out so far so good. But I've met good people, I've tried to emulate and been around, and I'm like, okay, if I ever get the shot or a chance, I want to do things like that. And so, yeah, it's been fun.
Jimmy Purdy [00:45:20]:
Yeah, that's awesome. Well, this has been really fun, man. I really appreciate you taking the time and hanging out.
Ron [00:45:28]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:45:29]:
And for those not know, I guess I should have started with the introduction, but if you want to give yourself a quick introduction, for those that don't.
Ron [00:45:36]:
Know, you've been listening to Ron caps there.
Jimmy Purdy [00:45:40]:
We.
Ron [00:45:42]:
Yeah, I growing up the central coast, like I said, san Luis mainly grew up, spend a lot of time in north county and have a lot of friends I still see up there. Like I said, I'm going up in a few days for a day, and I love getting back up there. But, yeah, just a lot of good memories. And it's always fun to have people when it pops up on TV that my hometown of San Luis Obispo, and I get all these messages from guys I grew up with and people that are from the area that I knew growing up. It's always fun. So, yeah, I appreciate you having me.
Jimmy Purdy [00:46:18]:
Know that one commercial I'll never forget when I seen you. I know you usually don't work this long, so I'm sorry for keeping you.
Ron [00:46:25]:
So, yeah, my attention span. Yeah, that was with a NASCAr driver. And he's like. I'm like, are we done yet?
Jimmy Purdy [00:46:36]:
I think you did a yawn, too. I don't think I've ever had to work this long before.
Ron [00:46:39]:
Yeah, yeah, it was funny.
Jimmy Purdy [00:46:41]:
Fantastic. Cool, man.