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A conversation about cars, trucks, tugs and other machines of transport that flows like an ADHD fever dream, hosted by Hoonigan co-founder and 321 Action Action director Brian Scotto. Enjoy, it’s gonna be a bizarre ride.
Speaker 1 00:00
And we're back with another episode of Very Vehicular. As always, I'm your host Brian Scotto, and today's conversation was really fun for me because this is a person who I actually used to spend a lot of time with, especially in the early days of Hoonigan. He was a really important part of sort of those first couple of years, none other than mr. Ryan Turk, and if you pay attention to Formula Drift, you know that he retired this year, and the the weekend that just passed was his last weekend in FD. So we talk about all that the 20 plus years that he was in the sport, how it changed all these different things. But the part I get most excited about is that rally racing has entered Ryan Turk's life, and he loves it. When we get into all of that, and what the future of all of that might be for Turk. So, anyway, without further ado, a wonderful conversation with a man who I enjoy calling friend, mr. Ryan
Speaker 2 00:57
Turk.
Speaker 1 01:22
Ryan Turk, welcome to the show. I'm gonna start by just saying I drove to LAX to pick you up, and for like people in Los Angeles, like you just don't do that. I jokingly told you I wouldn't do that for my parents, but then what'd you do? What did you say to me?
Speaker 3 01:34
I called you out.
Speaker 1 01:35
What'd you say?
Speaker 3 01:36
I said just like old times, dude.
Speaker 1 01:38
Right? He hit me with the nostalgia vibes and was like remember back in the day when you used to come and pick me up because we have a lot of back in the day together. I forgot then I lived in Venice. It was only like maybe 10 or 15 minutes away, not Long Beach. But and also the airport was like way less messy than it is now. But anyway, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for picking me up here. Yeah, you're welcome. That's I will never do it again. You get well. I guess you got more than one in your life, but at this point in my life, you got you got the back half of it. Yeah, it's also
Speaker 3 02:05
my first ride on an RS two, which was cool. Oh, nice, nice,
Speaker 1 02:07
nice. Yeah, and then you immediately complained about it's European quirks, so that's cool. I was like, the air conditioning doesn't work. You're like, yeah, of course, it's an RS two. Yes,
Speaker 3 02:18
yes, German.
Speaker 1 02:19
Yeah, why did you never get into German cars?
Speaker 3 02:21
Expensive, and they always had issues.
Speaker 1 02:24
Yeah,
Speaker 3 02:25
parts were expensive.
Speaker 1 02:26
Did you? And they're
Speaker 3 02:27
hard to work on.
Speaker 1 02:28
They are hard to work on.
Speaker 3 02:29
And like, I didn't. I still probably they're they're still hard for me if I tried to work on them.
Speaker 1 02:33
I didn't realize how much more difficult like a Volkswagen, Audi, or a BMW or Porsche was to work on. I knew people made jokes about it, and then we we did a motor swap for Nads and a Civic, and like got it done in a day, and it was really easy, and it just worked. Yeah, and I realized like I had been playing cars on hard mode my whole life, yeah, because I was like, wait, that's it, like that's all it takes. We swapped another engine into this car that didn't come in it like, and it just worked, and like it was like for every for every three bolts that Honda uses, Audi uses seven, and they're a triple square, and it requires a special tool to get to it. Oh, and by the way, you have to remove the whole front end of the car. Yeah, like it's just such a different way of doing just hours. Yeah,
Speaker 3 03:17
even though it's like a lot of them are still inline engines, they're still difficult.
Speaker 1 03:20
Yeah, yeah, it's it's just it's just way it's way more difficult. So, anyway, by the time this thing airs, which is a few days from now, you will have officially like retired from FD. I think at this point you're probably sick of talking about it. So we could just punt it and talk about it the night of the show. I'm cool with it. It's up to you. This is your show. Well, at this point, everyone's already talked about it. But having what are you? What's like your gut feelings? Is like you go into this weekend.
Speaker 3 03:41
It's it's just a weird feeling because of something that you've I've built my whole. I mean, I grew up in Formula D.
Speaker 1 03:47
Yeah,
Speaker 3 03:48
became a man, a husband, father, like the whole thing, like all my through my 20s and my all of my 30s and into my 40s. Like it's uh, it's been a crazy ride, and it's pretty much all I know at this point, as far as career and job, yeah, it's just weird to even call it that. But it has been, yeah, turned into one, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 04:09
And you've grinded through the era. I mean, this morning, our friend Liora posted some photos of you back in the day, like early Hoonigan retax era, and like I think so much about that moment because, like, you were. It was like that was a grinding moment, right? Was like that 2012
Speaker 3 04:27
year was a huge grind. 2012, I left a sweet suit and helmet deal with Gardella.
Speaker 1 04:32
Yep,
Speaker 3 04:32
and it was just tough. I was I was young, and he was team owner, and and I know he was pulling a lot of money out of pocket, so like stress, there was a lot of stress there, and I was just young, and there was just a lot of talk amongst the team and crew and everybody, and we just didn't see it eye to eye in the end, and I moved on, and and he did too.
Speaker 1 04:56
Yeah, and a background for those who are listening: Gary Gardello was. Like a famous East Coast drag racer, yeah. And you, you know, if you listen to the Papadakis conversation, he was similar to Papadakis, which was like front wheel drive drag racing was everything. There was a ton of money in it, and then we woke up one day and it was over. And there was this thing called drifting. So there was a bunch of guys who moved into that space because it was like where all the money was going. That didn't mean, and no knock on on Gary, but it was like he was a drag racer who was trying to continue his business and saw drifting for sure. I mean, just like Steph, yeah, and just like yeah, it was like similar. A lot of people all of a sudden were like, "I guess we're doing drifting now." Yeah, sort of the Gary story. Yeah, and it
Speaker 3 05:34
was it was crazy because Steph was still building his program at the time, and Gary pretty much just used crossed over all his drag racing stuff into drifting, so it was like a top tier program, like instantly. So it was pretty wild to see that even that early on in drifting.
Speaker 1 05:48
Gary stood out to me when I was younger only because he had an Echo Unlimited sponsorship on his drag car, which seemed so cool because like it was this weird crossover of like streetwear brands and like on a race car, and he had like on a Civic. But anyway,
Speaker 3 06:01
but yeah, that was so. I left Gardella, and then 2012 was like a rebuilding year. Drove the Retax S13, and that's when Hooni and I, you know, you reached out to me. I think a little bit before then.
Speaker 1 06:11
Yep.
Speaker 3 06:11
And then you guys did delivery and a lot of other design work and T-shirts, the Turk era, and all that. Yeah. Yeah. It was cool.
Speaker 1 06:19
It was. It was really cool. It's funny because I probably have never told you this story, but you know, rewind to the beginning of Hoonigan, and like we're looking at the roster, and like you know, Vaughn was friends with Ken, obviously myself as well, but he was friends with Ken because of the monster and Ford relationship, right? And then there was a conversation about bringing on BJ Baldwin, also a monster driver, and I said to Ken, "I'm like, man, I'm like this feels like a monster extension brand." I'm like, I really think we need to bring in a driver who is like not on monster and maybe on an opposing team. And he was like, "Do you have any thoughts?" And I was like, "You know, I don't like I don't know Ryan Turk that well, but he's on Red Bull." And you came into the and I wasn't on Red Bull, and you literally you found out like the day before you and I sat down in that office up in uh in off of Wilshire and you came in and you're like hey I just want to let you know I'm not on Red Bull anymore and like literally the whole reason why we were coming to you was that but at that point I was just like we had spent a little bit of time talking I was like fuck it we'll just figure out how to make this work with you and it was like, I mean, you got so much extra effort from us because you were running your own team. Like Vaughn had a crew. You were like driving truck and trailer. You were like starting over. Like I mean, you basically were driving a missile car with a livery on it. Like that retax car was like it was it was a hand me down car. But then you killed in it. It was like, and it it ended up being like this amazing Cinderella story for us because like you actually matched the Hoonigan brand more than the other drivers did because like we wanted to be scrappy, we didn't want the brand to feel polished. Like we already had Ken, we didn't need that, you know. And then I remember like you and I were on, I don't know, text message or whatever it was, talking like you like posted a video about like the driveway. You you know you were just bored, and I was like, dude, this is a thing. Like, let's like you should just keep making these. Yeah, and that like just kind of exploded into like the whole driveway series because you were like bored at home and like we were trying to do stuff. And I don't know, man. I look back at that era, and obviously, you know, you did you know like all the stuff that you did with Andy in the early days, like it was just such a different era in drifting. I felt like we were so much more like DIY, like skate style. We just went and did it. It 100
Speaker 3 08:29
was, and you know, I mean, there was opportunities. It's easier or was easier on the East Coast just because we have had access to English Town and Raceway Park, and you know, the naps are always so good to us, and Club Loose already being there for having such a foothold, so I feel like for us it was just such an easy place to go to our stomping grounds and just go create some cool content, yeah, and just have fun, you know.
Speaker 1 08:51
What what was the thing that sort of like inspired you to first start doing some content stuff? Because like you really were like the first drifter to have a breakout moment in that.
Speaker 3 09:02
Yeah, I mean, it was just the. I don't really truly know. Like, I just always have had. Once it was like once I realized. I realized in like 2009 when I lost the championship in FD to Chris by like two or three points or whatever. I was like, you know what I don't want my career decided by three judges anymore, and obviously Ken was instantly like the the halo,
Speaker 1 09:29
right? With the first Jim Kana film, yeah,
Speaker 3 09:31
like
Speaker 1 09:31
that was 2008.
Speaker 3 09:32
Yeah, yeah. So I knew at that point, I'm like creating content is going to kind of fill this void of you know the results matter, the results matter type of thing, and if you create content, you can kind of not bypass that, but it it will help make yourself more valuable to your sponsors outside of just getting some, you know, marketing assets out of your results and being on the podium. So for me, that kind of instantly changed my train of thought and put a lot of more effort in. My brain switched to more of like trying an idea thing than it was just strictly driving and for a competition.
Speaker 1 10:07
Yeah, I mean that's what attracted us to you. Like I had met you like in Brooklyn. I think you were like riding motorcycles with Tony Angelo, and I knew Tony, and like we I think we ran into each other. If you remember
Speaker 3 10:17
that, I don't remember. Yeah,
Speaker 1 10:18
like I think that was the first time I'd ever met you and like you were
Speaker 3 10:21
22,009 or 2010?
Speaker 1 10:24
Yeah, and like you guys were living in Brooklyn, and like Tony came by to like say hello, and like I think I was like I think it was when I had my 911 like pre RWB, and you guys just like pulled off the side of the road. We like said hello, and that was it. But I had known you from you know from off seasons, right, and like that, and that was like the first. That was the attraction for Ken and I because we sat there and we're like, this kid gets it, right? Like guys like you, Mad Mike. Like there were certain people who were sitting there being like, I have to tell a different story. Like I have to be different out there. And really, for me, like when I when I do the history of like those style of videos, whatever you want to call them, right? Like the Gymkana video and all the like kind of high action videos for me it was like like obviously Ken's first and then it was off seasons like that was the one that was like oh shit this is something very different and I I loved it because it felt like something I could go do
Speaker 3 11:13
yeah
Speaker 1 11:14
like it felt like you broke into a spot which we literally did I was just gonna ask like I don't think we ever talked like how did that come about how how was was the whole concept there?
Speaker 3 11:22
So my my my good friend Dave Shoemaker also did 95% of the tattoos on me as tattoo artists, a great talent, and he helped basically get me started in drifting as far as the form of the drift is concerned. He he was crewing for Tony Angelo at the time, and he would always help me when he wasn't helping on Tony's car, and we both have New Hampshire in common, both New Hampshire boys, and so he helped Tony and I all the way through 2007. So that's our relationship there. And when he moved back east, he tattoos a lot of guys, and somebody came through the door and told him about the spot, and I think it was like a freestyle street bike guy.
Speaker 1 12:04
Okay, and
Speaker 3 12:06
yeah, yeah, they would ride up there and just do wheelies and stuff because they could bypass or you know put their bikes underneath the the gate. And then I cruised up there and I saw it. I was like, dude, this is insane. You know, it was it was originally a college campus.
Speaker 1 12:19
Yep.
Speaker 3 12:19
So they built all the roads and parking lots and stuff, but never any buildings. I don't, I don't know the history beyond that. Yeah,
Speaker 1 12:25
like an unfinished development. Yeah,
Speaker 3 12:26
so it was just ripe for anything to happen with a car. And I pressure washed garbage trucks and did a lot of work for different towns as far as cleaning for my dad's company. And we had this ring of keys, like probably like 50 keys, all master lock keys. So I just went up there one night, and I just went through every single key until one of them opened up the lock. I was like, "There it is, all right." And then I called Andy Laputa, who did at the time. He was filming all the the Stay Hungry Drift Alliance. Yep,
Speaker 1 13:00
and was doing a lot of stuff with with Vaughn as well. Yeah, Vaughn's. He was
Speaker 3 13:03
running Vaughn's media at the time. We did some stuff, Drift the Line stuff for what the heck was? I'm gonna forget heavy. Think there was heavy something was a channel at the time way back in the day. We did some some stuff with that. Anyway, so I told him, you know, end of the year when the leaves start falling, like or start coloring. Let's let's get up there and film something. And such an East
Speaker 1 13:24
Coast thing to say. Wait for the fall foliage. Best time to shoot. It was end of the
Speaker 3 13:30
season, right? It was right after.
Speaker 1 13:31
We'll get apple cider. It'll be delicious.
Speaker 3 13:33
So we we plan it out. We we shoot up there like 3am. or 330, right? You know, before sunrise, and then we wait for the sun to come up, and had we just did everything right during that time. Like, all right, Andy's like got the plan together. We're gonna film this shot, this shot, this shot, and keep moving on. And everything was going well. My first time really doing that type of shoot as well, as far as like shot the shot, more like Jim Kona style, like you guys filmed, and we just it was sketch, dude. I felt it just felt off the whole time for me.
Speaker 1 14:06
From a driving point of view, or from a like we're breaking the law. Yeah,
Speaker 3 14:09
that point of view. I was like, are people gonna find us up here? I like I, you know what I mean. I've already been in trouble multiple times. Nothing crazy, but like I just didn't want to do that. I was like, I'm kind of getting established in FD and don't want this to be a thing, you know. And then towards the end of the video, we had like one shot left, and then the Coast Guard helicopter starts circling up top. I'm like, dude, we got to get out of here now. Checking out. Yeah, they were like, oh,
Speaker 1 14:35
that's cool. Yeah, looks like 20 year old dudes flying the bird. Yeah,
Speaker 3 14:39
exactly. So that happened, and then we got the shot. I'm like, Andy, I'm out of here. He's like, All right, I'm staying to get establishing shots and whatnot. All right, I'll see you back at the
Speaker 1 14:48
house. There's one shot there that like I can still recall. Like there's a like this moment, and it actually was like a non-action shot. So I guess Andy gets the credit for it, but it was just like looking long down the road. And like you're like resetting, and you just go past. And I don't know what it was, but it was like something about that like reminded me of like you know filming like dirt jumps with my friends on BMX bikes or skate spots or snowboarding stuff. Like there was just something so casual about it, but it also it was that video that made me think like I could go do this, and I and I also think that's why Ken's first video was like so impactful because it felt raw. It didn't was yeah, it was just it was just an abandoned airfield, you know, and like it didn't feel like it felt like a place you could go break into.
Speaker 3 15:34
Yeah,
Speaker 1 15:34
you know where it eventually became you know closing down highways and bridges. Yeah, the ultimates.
Speaker 3 15:39
Yeah, yeah, but like massive parallel.
Speaker 1 15:42
Yeah, but I, but I, but I really always enjoyed that. So it was definitely a good one. But like, yeah, no, I mean, I, I ask you that because I think like there's so many different paths that I think everyone took in drifting, and and you know some of
Speaker 3 15:57
them aren't. You don't decide all of them sometimes. Right, like you go down, you choose a path, and you don't know how that's going to unfold. But yeah, there's there's been a lot for sure.
Speaker 1 16:04
But you took the like, okay, I'm going to become a personality. I'm like, I'm going to go do content, and you kind of did that before. That was like a proven recipe. Like we weren't, we didn't have the word creator, the word influencer didn't exist yet. Yeah. But you had leaned into like first that, and then obviously the network A like Turked opportunity like Ternity was like a whole other thing that like brought you into like a whole other space. Yeah,
Speaker 3 16:26
but the video thing for me, being a '90s dirt bike kid,
Speaker 1 16:30
right,
Speaker 3 16:31
was we you know we lived and lived on Krusty Dem as a dirt, all the Fox videos, TerraFirma, all of them. You know what I mean? Like that was it, and then you get the BMX videos, even skate videos, which we didn't skate a ton, but like that was it. So do you remember the first time you
Speaker 1 16:48
saw Krusty?
Speaker 3 16:49
Yeah. Do you remember? No, I don't. Yes, but it was like in somebody else's mobile home, like when I was super young. Okay. Yeah, because you're a bit, you're a bit, you're a
Speaker 1 16:56
bit younger than me. Yeah. I remember the first time watching Krusty and just like not understanding how it was real, because growing up on the East Coast, like one, I I wasn't especially in New York City. I wasn't really around dirt bikes, and if I was, it was like kids doing wheelies and shit. Like, um, watching some of those like the dune jumps, I was like, that's not real. That's insane. Like I remember just thinking, this is crazy, and now it's like that's easy shit compared. Everyone can do that now. Yeah, everything's
Speaker 3 17:23
so exposed now.
Speaker 1 17:24
Let me ask you a question because I don't think you and I have ever talked about this, but I've heard I heard it from a lot of other people. You had like a pretty promising career in motocross, right? Yeah, my kind of walked away from
Speaker 3 17:35
my brothers and I were fast. Like locally, we were really fast. Even regionally, we were fast, but we needed we needed like the next step. We probably needed like a a coach or a training facility to really extract everything out of us because we were just tapped out on what we could do with our natural ability. And then at that point, we needed something to like break, not break, but you know what I mean. Something to come together for us to reach that next level. Because in motocross, even back then, it was easier to break into maybe top 10s, but we were nowhere near that. And then you have all the phenoms behind you, all the young kids who are coming out of Loretta's, and it's like the the list just kept getting longer and longer of these naturally talented or just gifted kids that have come up and they're just waiting for either factory rides or just satellite rides or whatever. So for us, we were we were quick, but we weren't quick enough to really reach that level, both from my dad's financial standpoint and from us mentally as well. Because we were just tapped out when we were 19 and got into cars. That year was a weird year because we were we were we ended as professionals. We had qualified for a few AMA nationals. We ran the whole Canadian Championship up in. We did all the way from Vancouver Island all the way all the way to Montreal, not Montreal, but Quebec. And you know, racing was our life, and we finished that year, and we're just like we're like we just don't have the passion for it anymore, and that was it. It was just like we had already kind of stepped over our mindset to to cars, and we had already gone for a hell ride in a Mustang. And my brother and I were like, "This is it. This is like the next thing we want to do." You know, we didn't even know what drifting was, but that was
Speaker 1 19:20
it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 19:20
But yeah, so we were fast on bikes and just it just didn't pan out for multiple reasons.
Speaker 1 19:26
I mean, it worked out for you in the end.
Speaker 3 19:27
In the end, yeah, yeah, but it's I mean, motocross still my first true love, you know, from from motorsports. So I'll never.
Speaker 1 19:35
And was BMX always just a hobby for you? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3 19:37
because BMX was like what we could do when we weren't practicing or weren't racing on the weekend, so it was like let's go ride bikes and hit some dirt jumps.
Speaker 1 19:44
Yeah,
Speaker 3 19:44
yeah,
Speaker 1 19:45
it was like
Speaker 3 19:46
the dirt jumps were a thing. Street riding we would do just because you could hang out and bullshit with your friends downtown. But like we weren't any good at street riding. It was all about dirt jumps for us.
Speaker 1 19:54
It's funny because even me growing up in New York City, like the era in the late '90s, which is. Really heavy dirt. You had like Taj Mahal and all these like rippers, and like out of Long Island, like we had like you know like Rod Morales and like all these dudes. You guys had a way bigger, and we had a big yeah. But like even though I lived in a city, we would find dirt anywhere and build jumps. Like one of the biggest places we rode was when I was younger. There was two. Greengrass was like the most famous, but that was like in a proper park. But we ran this one place called Woodchuck. I don't know why we named it that, but it was like between the highway and like an off ramp.
Speaker 4 20:31
Yeah, like we were
Speaker 1 20:32
literally just ripping, and like right next to us is the Jackie Robinson. Like, well, now the was the Interborough, but was now is the Jackie Robinson. Cars just blowing by on that, and like we we got like our little like little section in there, and the other spot we did was called Third Rail Trails, and it was a old abandoned railroad track that like all the graffiti artists used to go hit. So I used to write graph, and I would hang out there with my boys like drinking 40s, but I was the only one who rode BMX bikes. So I just started building like I just started building jumps for myself to just ride while we were like you know you were in you're like 15 you just spend your whole day like in the woods even though it's Queens but to us it was the woods right and like building and like so for me it was always dirt when we rode Street because we were in New York well you're in New York you got so many icons but so many guys were like riding Street with like dirt set up bikes yeah like we were all like in like you know running like I had like an STA and like you know like that well all those were on those bikes no pegs
Speaker 3 21:25
yeah
Speaker 1 21:26
riding street and now like that's the cool thing now no brakes no pegs no
Speaker 5 21:29
nothing
Speaker 3 21:30
I know the no brakes thing is crazy to me I'm I can't get down with that it's I
Speaker 1 21:33
don't understand it it just makes everything more difficult way harder I get it I
Speaker 3 21:37
mean like that's like the tipping
Speaker 1 21:39
point where in BMX you just become an old dude like you're an old head if you're like, yeah, I need brakes for sure. If you're like, I got my my brakes have to be dialed. It's like, I
Speaker 3 21:49
mean, you had those days like, oh, my cable snapped, whatever. Yeah, you ride the rest of the day.
Speaker 1 21:52
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I remember like eras where like no one ran gyros. We just run like I hated gyros because they never worked well.
Speaker 3 22:00
Hated those things. They
Speaker 1 22:01
never worked well.
Speaker 3 22:01
Yeah, they always clanked around when you when you bunny hopped and everything. But
Speaker 1 22:04
when bar spins were cool, everyone would just run the super long cable and it would like drag on your front tire because you needed to do double. That was also annoying. Yeah, it was also annoying. It's like I get why kids remove the brakes. So, by the way, there's a particular group of people who listen to this pod who are gonna be like, "Thank God they finally talked about BMX." Because I'll like I will like you know do like on Patreon or like in the live chat we have on the show when it launches we will just like you know ask questions like what do you guys want more of and everyone's like BMX
Speaker 3 22:31
nice
Speaker 1 22:32
and it's like I think there's something funny there because and that's good question like because you have a bunch of people you have a couple of people around you who come from BMX what is it about it that like BMX was the like with age comes a cage sport because I think there's more BMXers in drifting than there are skateboarders.
Speaker 3 22:47
Oh, probably right. Why
Speaker 1 22:48
did that happen?
Speaker 3 22:49
I don't know. That's a good question, man. I don't even know how to answer that.
Speaker 1 22:53
Like Dom BMX ride. I
Speaker 3 22:54
think
Speaker 1 22:55
like a bunch of guys who end up in our. Is it because
Speaker 3 22:57
because there's a ton of skateboarders that are into cars, yeah, and into cool stuff, but maybe not drifting specifically.
Speaker 1 23:03
I don't know what the connection is there, but it feels like there's. But a lot
Speaker 3 23:06
of BMX kids have gone into gotten into drifting. Yeah, I mean, my my our partner John at 411 Works and longtime friend. He's my spotter this year on the team. Like he's a really good BMX rider.
Speaker 1 23:17
Yep,
Speaker 3 23:18
and he he still shreds today. Yeah,
Speaker 1 23:20
me, Vinny, Ron, we all grew up on BMX. Like, I was never screaming. He's a Jeff
Speaker 3 23:25
guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1 23:26
yeah. It's like I think there might be a part of it because there's so many moving parts on a BMX bike that there's like a lot more mechanical skill that's required to like keep a bike running. So I think maybe that's a little attraction to cars. All my friends who grew up in skateboarding, they all ride bobbers and like choppers, like they all got into motorcycles, which is like you went from four wheels to two, and we went from two wheels to four. Yeah, which is sort of like a weird thing. Well,
Speaker 3 23:47
everybody else did the same thing. Remember that era of you, yeah, of whatever it was. I forget earlier 2000s. Everybody, everybody had a bike. Bikes, yeah. You guys bikes for a bit. I already didn't care that much. I got a, I got a Harley. I had a Harley.
Speaker 1 24:00
Yeah,
Speaker 3 24:01
that was fun for a little while. Is that
Speaker 1 24:02
what you had when you were in Brooklyn? No, I had a
Speaker 3 24:04
I had a Triumph Speed Trip
Speaker 1 24:06
one. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3 24:07
which was ridiculous. It's dumb
Speaker 1 24:08
to own. I had a fixer in New York City. But we were 750.
Speaker 3 24:11
We all had a death wish back then. Like it, it was ridiculous. I even had a bike out here for a while back then. I rent, I bought some like Honda CB 900 and some old bike.
Speaker 1 24:20
Yeah,
Speaker 3 24:21
and we would drive right out here. I'm like, nowadays, I just, I'm like, what, you know? The train of thought was, you're just an idiot.
Speaker 1 24:28
When I first moved here, I I bought a like old Yamaha XS 1100, like you know, slow bike, even though it's got a big engine, but it, and you know, I bobbed it, and I would ride around Venice, and like one day, like I was like, I'll just take it like two two exits down on the 405, and I was like, No, I'm good. Like people just drive like absolute idiots on the 405. Like you're just gonna die. I
Speaker 3 24:54
don't I don't know. Here's the time to tell this story, but I have an epic motorcycle story with Drift Alliance.
Speaker 5 24:59
When
Speaker 3 25:00
I like first came out here, ever my first time in California, we like Chris is like, I think it was was it '06 for the last round? I can't remember, or was Long Beach or something? Was this whenever? No, it was for Sonoma. Okay, Chris is like, or Tony and Chris were like, dude, come out early. We're gonna ride motorcycles up to Sonoma. I'm like, all right, sweet. And Chris was like, fixing one up, fix fix. He got a new bike and he was fixing up his old bike for me.
Speaker 1 25:23
Yeah,
Speaker 3 25:24
I get out there and it's like an '88 Honda Hurricane. I think it had no rear brake, no plate on it, no brake lights on the thing. And I'm like, I can ride it, but like, damn, dude, this is this is gonna be rough. I really didn't know what I was in for. So we get on the highway. I didn't even make it out of LA, and I got pulled over by the cops. Bike got impounded, and we rode nuts to butts all the way. That's
Speaker 1 25:51
a bummer.
Speaker 3 25:53
We all we traded. Everybody traded off, so we didn't have to all do it. But yeah, it was it was that was. Did you ever
Speaker 1 26:00
live out here in the house? What was it again? Snake.
Speaker 3 26:03
I lived at Camp Snake Bite at '07 when Tony and I ran Team Snake Bite was our was our drift team. Give the background
Speaker 1 26:10
on that for those who don't know. So
Speaker 3 26:11
Camp Snake Bite was like an incubator for pro drifters back in the day. So I I don't know exactly everybody that went through there, but you know Lindsay Ross, Forsberg, Tony, Vaughn was there often just to when he was out west. I'm gonna I'm gonna forget names, but I was out there for that one year. But explain
Speaker 1 26:37
what it was because so it was just house. But
Speaker 3 26:39
was it in Glendale? I think was it Glendale or right? It was like it was
Speaker 1 26:42
like Valley esque. Yeah,
Speaker 3 26:44
yeah. So it was up up in Glendale off the two, I believe, and it was just this cool house that had this long driveway up to the top of this hill, and you were pretty secluded, even though you had neighbors right there. But it was just a basic house that had like four or five bedrooms in it and a garage, a two bay garage, and I think at the time before I was there, Chris, Tony, and Pete Varley, who filmed Baddest the first Drift Alliance Bad as Hell DVD, they all lived in a garage, so it was just that type of deal. Yeah, it
Speaker 1 27:15
was like a squat for like young drifter, and almost all you guys were East Coasters.
Speaker 3 27:19
Yeah,
Speaker 1 27:20
yeah, it was like
Speaker 3 27:20
well, no, I was I'd say 5050, but the the pro drivers were mostly from the East Coast. I went through there,
Speaker 1 27:26
yeah,
Speaker 3 27:26
and yeah, so I'm I'm happy to have spent some time there for a year and got to experience that. It was cool. I built my o7 car out of the garage with Tony that year. Actually, he bought. Did he buy the our? eight, yeah, he did. He bought the RX eight that Rod Millen drove that previous year. He bought it off of Reese, and then he campaigned that in '07. We started Team Snake Bite. Tony convinced me to move out. That's the
Speaker 1 27:54
one he later did the the the 787 Blu-ray on. Yeah,
Speaker 3 27:59
yeah, look killer.
Speaker 1 28:00
Yeah, yeah, super cool.
Speaker 3 28:01
Yeah, that was a
Speaker 1 28:03
Lindsay Lindsayster
Speaker 4 28:04
year.
Speaker 1 28:04
Like Lindsay has such fond memories of that place. Like I mean, I haven't spoken about in years, but when he first joined Hunigan, is you know one of our he really was our first graphic designer, um, our art director at the brand. Um, you know he was like he would just talk about that all the time. He was like he's like it literally was like the best moments of us. It sounded like it felt like a like a you know it was like the college dorm experience. It was a frat house. It was like a frat house for drift kids. Yeah, for sure. Just like wild parties, like just like everybody working on stuff all the time. But like it's so I think it's one of those stories. And the reason I want to bring it up is that I think the story went away. Like I don't. You don't hear people talking about like it was an era, but like you think how many pros went through that house is kind of interesting. But
Speaker 3 28:45
yeah, and it was such a it was it was such an early thing that happened in like the earlier sport of drifting as an earlier beginning sport of FD, and then everybody kind of quickly not quickly, but like things happened quite fast. Like I got a ride and drive a Gardella. I was move. I was moving back home in '07 without a plan, anyways, because we just it was a tough year. Tony and I finished in debt, and cars were broken all the time. Well, mine was, and yeah, it was just a tough season. So I was like, I'm going home no matter what because I need to go make some money with my dad, and and then a guardella thing popped up, and that kind of saved my my mental
Speaker 1 29:27
yeah
Speaker 3 29:28
strength.
Speaker 1 29:29
Were you guys mostly driving like balcony at Willow with like what was like what was sort of the stomping grounds at that era?
Speaker 3 29:36
There really, I mean, I don't even remember, dude. I don't even think we even drove. We drove Willow for just drift. Yeah, I think I think we did All Star Bash. All Star Bash was that first year, which we did both balcony and street. Um, not street. Sorry, why my horse Steve Mile? Horse Steve
Speaker 1 29:54
Mile. Yeah, great. Such still such a great road. Still an insane. So much undulation. It's wild. Yeah,
Speaker 3 29:59
yeah. That's a super cool track. Such a fun drift track too. I mean, yeah, I
Speaker 1 30:02
got to film there with the Drifter movie. Yeah, and was fun because we got to do like five car stacks with the animal style boys. It was like, yeah, and you know, of course, Julian's like throwing it in backwards, like down the hill. So so much fun.
Speaker 3 30:15
So yeah, yeah. So that that was, I guess, yeah. Willow was kind of our stomping grounds. It wasn't really anywhere else to go that I can remember, but we barely
Speaker 1 30:22
did. You guys go to Adams because I know like the like Di and Can Gucci like those dudes all used to kind of live at Adams back in the day.
Speaker 3 30:28
We were working out of this space in Glendale, not sorry, not Glendale Gardena, and that
Speaker 1 30:36
was the paint shop, right? There was
Speaker 3 30:37
there was a it was a whole corridor of like motors,
Speaker 1 30:39
yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 30:40
Car related stuff. Because you guys
Speaker 1 30:41
all were sponsored by the same paint shop. We're sponsored
Speaker 3 30:44
by Sam's Auto. Sam's Auto Land. That was it. Our manager Jacob Agajanian.
Speaker 1 30:48
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 30:49
And so we he hooked us up with paint, which was sick. And Jim, who ran the paint shop, was super cool guy and got us. I was like, "What color do you want?" I'm like, "Candy apple red." Like, is that is can I do that? And they're like, yeah, any color you want. I was like, what? You know what I mean? Crazy moment, especially back in those days. Like a free paint job was insane. But then, but yeah, those guys
Speaker 1 31:13
put your cars back together a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 3 31:14
they did. They helped us out. Like I smashed in Irwindale at the end of '07 year, and then I drove the car to the frame to the body shop, and they pulled the frame on it. And I was out back out there the next day for qualifying. I missed it by I think one spot, but yeah, I was like the car was twisted. But yeah, I hear you are
Speaker 1 31:34
now like 20 years later. Is it weird to look back at how raw it all was then, and like what the sport is now?
Speaker 3 31:40
Yeah, it definitely. Yeah, I. There's a part of me that feels like it never changed type of thing, but I think that's really just thinking about the past because it really has changed quite a bit. The cars are a lot stronger. The teams are a lot more capable. The spares packages, like the the level, is obviously at like a really really high level now from both driving and team standpoints.
Speaker 4 32:03
Yeah, so you got a
Speaker 1 32:04
lot of kids entering really young.
Speaker 4 32:06
Yeah,
Speaker 1 32:07
which is like interesting. And you know, you and I on the car right here, we brought up, and I told you stop, we'll save it for the pod. But like you mentioned, like there's drift schools now. Like there's a pathway in where like there wasn't a pathway when you were there. Yeah, it
Speaker 3 32:19
was just figure out, figure it out, type of thing.
Speaker 1 32:21
You think that's good or bad for the sport?
Speaker 3 32:22
I think, I mean, for the sport to grow and maybe become even bigger than it is now, and have more money and funding put into it, I think it's the right. I mean, it's just an inevitable situation, and I say that in a good way because I want to see the sport continue. I want to see other people have the same success that I have in these these these years and and all of that. So I like I want to see the sport continue to grow and become like what motocross became and supercross became for the motocross world. Like they the guy motocross guys are scraping for like 20 or 30 years before any money really entered into the sport. I mean,
Speaker 1 32:59
supercross changed motocross. Supercross
Speaker 3 33:01
did,
Speaker 1 33:01
yeah,
Speaker 3 33:02
yeah. And supercross is really where money is still, but like McGrath is kind of what changed that. And honestly, the money didn't even start pouring into that sport until really Carmichael, and that wasn't even that long ago.
Speaker 1 33:14
No,
Speaker 3 33:15
that was 20 years ago. That's a long time ago. When you say that out loud, that's
Speaker 1 33:19
crazy. That is because like I was like referencing something the other day, and I was I was like talking about Bubba, and I'm like, that's even a long time ago to like young kids. Yeah, yeah. But like he feels like a he still will feel like a new rider to me always. Yeah, I
Speaker 3 33:32
know. Because he was he was such and even guys like Ken
Speaker 1 33:34
Roxon have been around for a while now. It's like there's no like anyone I know, anyone who I know of in motocross is probably old already. Yes, for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 3 33:43
but that's. I mean, I just. I hope the sport can. The sport's still young in that sense. You know, it's still under 30 years old and still has a lot to do and grow. And I think it's done. I think it's done great so far in the sense of like what people have been able to do with the budgets and the funding and the money that is in the sport already, you know, just want to see it continue to go. And I think there's quite a few things that'll money would do to make elevate everything, you know. But just see where everybody takes it.
Speaker 1 34:16
If it was your job to elevate it, what would you
Speaker 3 34:18
do? Oh God, dude, I don't even want to touch that.
Speaker 1 34:21
We're 20. minutes in. Everyone from FD, stop listening. Yeah,
Speaker 3 34:26
I don't know. Honestly, I haven't thought about that part. I don't think about that really.
Speaker 1 34:31
Yeah.
Speaker 3 34:31
There's so much that you could do, and like, how do you know what's right and what's wrong? Like, what direction? If you're going to take it in a very different way, or introduce simple things, maybe like I really don't know. Everything adds complexity.
Speaker 1 34:44
Yeah,
Speaker 3 34:44
everything you add, and it's already complex.
Speaker 1 34:47
I I have a lot of I end up finding myself in a lot of like academic conversations around drifting because like I will always feel like the outlier in drifting because it wasn't my sport, but I was like very heavily. Share with you guys for a lot of it, and help to try to push and take the things that I knew from another sport that was like that really struggled to take off, which was rally right in America. So, you know, I think that there was a there was this weird sort of kinship between those two sports, and
Speaker 3 35:16
really, you guys brought that
Speaker 1 35:18
the kinship.
Speaker 3 35:19
Yeah.
Speaker 1 35:19
Well, I think Ken brought it by becoming by going and sliding a rally car out, and then everyone calling him the Drift King, and him being like, "I don't drift." I know, and then drifters and then drifters being mad at him for being like called a drifter, and he's like, "I'm I'm not a drifter. I I I'm a rally car driver, you know." But and you know, but anyway, I think that like we saw this opportunity, you know, at Hoonigan as like we we obviously knew what drifting was and knew what where it was going, and it was still it wasn't early early. I mean, I wrote one of the first you know magazine articles in like 2004 about drifting. I was at d1, you know, I was at the the JGTC d1 event. Like I was there in the early days in oh 40506, as a journalist, right? Because it was new and it was something exciting, and that's like when I first met Tony. I don't know why I only really met Tony in the group. It was either someone introduced me or Tony was just like enough of an asshole for my
Speaker 3 36:14
previously.
Speaker 1 36:15
I knew Jared, so I knew I knew Jared. Usually the
Speaker 3 36:17
tie. He's a lot of times he's the tie because he might have
Speaker 1 36:20
he might have been who connected me because he did a lot of that early connection. He might have been who connected me to Tony, but I think there was this with Tony being this like Philly kid, and I was still very much like
Speaker 3 36:28
I think that I was a
Speaker 1 36:29
raw New York kid at the time. Like I'm now very I'm like very sort of I don't know. You said this. You said
Speaker 3 36:36
what's this
Speaker 1 36:36
word? I I said something before, but like I've been. You didn't
Speaker 3 36:39
say detox, but maybe you said yeah.
Speaker 1 36:41
Like like I like yeah, like California has definitely yeah I can't think of the right word at the moment, but it's taken a bit of the New York edge out of me. But at the time, like me and him just kind of
Speaker 3 36:54
pussy now, dude. Yeah, I know it just so fucking
Speaker 1 36:56
happens. You get soft, bro. I'm like an avocado farmer, dude. That's that's me. Like you know, like I drive a douchebag car now. I got a Ferrari. What the fuck happened to me? You don't drive that. I don't drive it. That's the point. So anyway, but like you know, was there? But I getting back to this real quickly. It's like, but I couldn't help but watch things and just be like, oh, why is this going this way? Why is that going the way? And I can be very opinionated, as you know. So I constantly in these like academic conversations with guys like Andy Sapp and Will Roge, who I spend a lot of time with, and we're always like, it's it's an interesting it's interesting because I don't everyone now knows what drifting is, like moms know what drifting, like kids know what drifting is, like my you know obviously my kid does because he lives in it, but like his friends know what drifting is, like it is a very well known sport. It is ubiquitous, but the actual Formula Drift is not on the scale of like everything else that's out there. And it's interesting because I think similar to skateboarding and similar to BMX, like there's like the competition side. There's like the boys who just want to hang out and go do this. There's like the people who just do like video parts, right? Which nowadays just Instagram and stuff. But drifting is this huge thing, but there's like no one thing that defines it. Which is either it's either good or bad. I don't know, and I can get into that. We can get into that conversation, but like it's probably not good for FD that they don't have that whole swell. But it's also probably good for the greater sport of drifting. That no one group controls the whole thing, right? Like there aren't, there's no like guys just doing Formula One shit on the weekend with their friends making videos about it. It's like it all lives in the FIA, right? Like I think that drifting is this thing that's like way broader in more of like how an action sport is, but at the same time, it's growing. It is growing too. Like, and motocross is probably a very similar one too, right? We had FMX, we had motocross, we had supercross, and then we had guys who just did like other weird shit, like fucking you know hill climbs, like you know, and you know, it's just the you know or like like step up contests, and like like that's like all they do, right? So, and then there was just people who drove motocross bikes on the weekend with their family, right? Like you know, didn't go too hard, but it was just that. So drifting is, I think, in this weird place right now because like rappers talk about it. Like all the things we so wanted in 2010 has actually happened now. Yeah, you know, yeah,
Speaker 3 39:14
it's it's definitely a more everybody knows what it is, like you said, and I just don't know where they can take it from here is is is the biggest thing. Like, what is the next step for the sport in general? Like, what is it missing right now that people maybe don't even know what they are looking for yet? Right. Like, what what is it? I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1 39:36
Have you been to the the the Appalachia? Yeah, Appalachia. I never. I feel like
Speaker 3 39:42
the technical. I think the correct term is Appalachia.
Speaker 1 39:45
Appalachia, right?
Speaker 3 39:46
Hopefully, nobody crucifies. Someone's gonna check you on. When I was there, technically, you
Speaker 1 39:50
live off the Appalachian Trail at some point, right, in New Hampshire? No, I don't. I don't know. Oh, I know,
Speaker 3 39:55
I do. It like goes past Mount Washington. Further north. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you get on the. Presidentials,
Speaker 1 40:00
yeah, yeah. But have you been to any of those events?
Speaker 3 40:04
Yeah, I did the one three or four years ago. Now the first year that they started that, I did the second one at the end of the year down in West Virginia. What was your
Speaker 1 40:13
thought?
Speaker 3 40:14
It was epic.
Speaker 1 40:15
Yeah,
Speaker 3 40:15
absolutely epic. But I, to me, I was like, this is so special.
Speaker 1 40:18
Yeah,
Speaker 3 40:19
to me that I was like, I don't want to overdo it. I don't want to do all of these events because I'm like, it's going to kill it for me. And I haven't been back since, and it's not because I haven't wanted to go. It's just because of schedules and just timing and life and kids and everything. So I will be going back next year for sure.
Speaker 1 40:36
So the the academic conversation that I got in with Andy Sapp, and obviously you know Andy, we spent two or three days in the car together for this Trefunks event I did, and we were just chatting. And I just said, "What if that actually was the first thing that happened here? Like, what if the Appalachia thing was like if that was like the first our first experience to drifting as an event versus like FD, which was sort of a you know sort of a mimic of d1, right? If like if that was it, like how different would it be? And like it's an academic conversation, but I think it's one of those things where you look at it, you are like one of the things that's so interesting about drifting is there is so many paths that it could have taken, and there is so many paths it could still take forward for sure.
Speaker 3 41:17
I don't if it started that way, I don't think you would see the sport at the level that it is now, just because you don't have, there's nobody that can go there watch. You can't watch the Appalachia stuff.
Speaker 1 41:27
Yeah,
Speaker 3 41:27
I mean you can, but it works
Speaker 1 41:28
now because it's a very made for media opportunity. Right, they're they're getting better. They're
Speaker 3 41:33
starting to have spots to go to and stuff. But you're not you're not going to have 20,000 people.
Speaker 1 41:37
Yeah,
Speaker 3 41:38
you know, like we. I mean that's
Speaker 1 41:39
rally's problem. Exactly. That's basically the same thing. I know.
Speaker 3 41:42
So that's. I mean, that's the deal. It would be the same thing as Rally if that was the case. So we just have less money than Rally, since you know
Speaker 1 41:50
that's a problem. Yeah.
Speaker 3 41:52
Yeah.
Speaker 1 41:53
All right. Let's let's take a quick break, and we'll come back and talk about Rally because I'm like really excited about your next chapter in life. Since you finally, I hope that's the chapter have jumped the side. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll see. Let's take a quick little break. Hey, Troy, are you the kind of person who works on their own car, brings it to a shop?
Speaker 3 42:07
I try to work on it as much as I can when I can.
Speaker 1 42:09
I unfortunately am the same person. I think it started when I was younger. I didn't have the money to pay other people, and then I just got stubborn trying to break that habit because, like, honestly, it's nice to have people work on your car and help you get things done. I just recently got a phone call from a friend. She was driving home from vacation with her kid, and her mini clubman broke down. Right, and it ended up being that she had burned through the clutch. She told me the price that the mechanic shop wanted to change the clutch. They wanted like well over 4000 bucks to do it. And the first thing I asked her was, "Well, what are they charging you for parts?" She sent me the parts list and sort of what their pricing was, and I went to fcpeuro.com to sort of just price match and be like, "Hey, is this within reason?" They were trying to charge her like over $1,000 for just the flywheel because the flywheel was actually cracked and they needed to replace it. And I found one for 400 and like 50 bucks, so like less than half what they were trying to do, and in the end, with all of those pieces, you know, probably ended up saving her like 1000 bucks. And one of the things with like FCP Euro is like you know you're getting like a factory OEM replacement for all of those who are not wrenching on your own cars, but whether because you don't have the time or you don't have the know-how, maybe next time consider if the shop allows you to supply your own parts. Go check out fcpeuro.com to keep your crappy old European car on the road, whether or not you're wrenching on it or not. You now get to choose what's going in your car, which is like the least you should do, and you might save a few bucks along the way doing it. So yeah, fcpeuro.com. All right, so I literally just wanted to start with this conversation because this is the most my most exciting part of your next chapter is that you're doing my two favorite sports, which is hill climb and rally. How's it been so far?
Speaker 3 43:49
Life changing, for sure.
Speaker 1 43:53
Yeah, yeah. I like hearing that.
Speaker 3 43:55
It's just so different. It's just such a departure. I mean, it's obviously still within motorsports. You're driving fast cars and the whole thing, but it's just such a departure to what drifting is. Drifting, you have a 32nd lap time. You're, you know, you have a set of three to six turns, maybe, and then you know, hill climb and rally. Ralli's are so many turns, and then hill climb. You're, you're depends on how long the course is, but yeah, there's a lot, lot more turns. So,
Speaker 1 44:24
and you've been running the New England Hill Climb Championship, the
Speaker 3 44:27
New England Hill Climb Association stuff. Yeah, and have you
Speaker 1 44:30
done any of the Pennsylvania stuff? I have
Speaker 3 44:32
not. So there's, I know, and
Speaker 1 44:34
things like that. I think I'll
Speaker 3 44:35
be able to expand next year to do some other, some other ones in different areas. So Duria, am I saying that right?
Speaker 1 44:42
That's how I say it. That's how Duria. Yeah, so I'd love to do
Speaker 3 44:47
that road. Is that the name of the road, or is that Duria? I thought was like an event. It's like once a year was like this bigger event that they have. I just
Speaker 1 44:54
know that's what that right. Yeah, that's what I know.
Speaker 3 44:56
That's how I know it as well. Anyway, I'd love to do that next year. And then my friend Greg Wilcox, who does a lot of the organizing for New England Hill Climb, he he wants to go down to Kentucky and do some of their their events down there, which look like some really fun roads. What
Speaker 1 45:11
we were just talking about with all like all the like Appalachia drift stuff all actually came out of back roads of Appalachia, which are guys who run hill climbs in that area. Eric
Speaker 3 45:20
down there is doing some really cool stuff. Yeah, yeah. So he's the one making a lot of really neat stuff. Even the rally, helping with the rally stuff, the road closures, the drift Appalachia stuff. I think is all him.
Speaker 6 45:30
Yeah.
Speaker 3 45:31
On the on the back end.
Speaker 1 45:33
Yeah, I had before I moved to California, and when I was still sort of zero to 60, I had completely planned to run both of the seasons because, like, you could have a really strong year by doing both New England and the Pennsylvania season. For sure, obviously living in New York, I was like equidistant to both.
Speaker 3 45:50
Yeah,
Speaker 1 45:51
so you know, looking at that, it was like, okay, this is a really cool opportunity to kind of do all of that. And I just feel like the Hillcom community feels like drag racing with corners, like it's run with your brong. It's such a different group of people. Like some guys are showing up on like two frames with Hoosiers, with like you know with composite like blazer bodies on top, and then you have other guys showing up in Miatas or like people showing up in like classics. All over the place, all over the place, and it just felt like a run with your brong like drift, like a run with your brung drag event. But
Speaker 3 46:20
as long as you pass tech, you can run what you brought.
Speaker 1 46:23
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is tech is is
Speaker 3 46:25
really critical there, though. Like, it's you're putting yourself in a much more dangerous environment than you are doing your fences.
Speaker 1 46:30
You're just like catching a tree. I used to always say this to people when people talk about crashes on a road course. I'm like, yeah, do they need to use a chainsaw to get your car out? Exactly. I've been in that situation before. Like, that's wild when a tree goes through the back window of your car and you're stuck. Sketchy,
Speaker 3 46:45
yeah. So,
Speaker 1 46:45
yeah, man. Look, I I am stoked you finally made your way here. You probably only know parts of this, but in the past when you first were on Hoon again after like the first year, Ken and I had a sit down conversation about like we need younger talent coming to rally, yeah. I was like, I was like, Ryan's our guy, so he was like, cool. Let's have him come out to Tim O'Neill's, and I'll get him in a rally car. And which he did, and I think he rolled on like not didn't didn't roll. What did he do? There was an off, just an off, and he hit it, and he hit a
Speaker 3 47:15
tree on my side, and it was just in the worst possible spot. Like it was where all the tubes came together in the front, so it was like that main that main point of of strength, and it bent it in. It like it didn't really hurt me. I just like I like a bruised bone bruise for a second, but it wasn't anything serious. And it and it was a disaster for the team because they had
Speaker 1 47:37
New England Forest
Speaker 3 47:38
rally the following weekend.
Speaker 6 47:39
Yeah,
Speaker 3 47:39
so I think Forrest Duplessis shot all the way to Utah to grab this spare chassis or something. They
Speaker 1 47:44
rebuilt the car that week.
Speaker 3 47:45
It was a crazy scenario.
Speaker 1 47:47
Yeah, which is like only things rally car guys are like, dude. Oh, we'll just rebuild the whole car in two nights. I know,
Speaker 3 47:52
and I felt so bad. I'm like, I'm the freaking guy who's riding with Ken, and like this happens. I'm like, Jesus, dude. But the
Speaker 1 47:57
background of it was like, hey, let's get him excited about rally because it was just especially at the time it felt like it was a hard sport to get people in, and I just had
Speaker 3 48:08
it's a hard is a barrier of entry there for sure because your car is a consumable
Speaker 3 48:12
harder than drifting, dude. It is. It's way harder. It's way more expensive. The consumables, the the I don't know what the word is, but the write-off of the car, the damage that you can get, the the risk is so much higher. Chassis is
Speaker 1 48:29
a consumable. Yes, you are going to destroy it, even if you don't go off. Like it's not gravel machine gun. You just eat the car up. It's
Speaker 3 48:36
not if
Speaker 1 48:36
it's when. Yeah, it always is. And like it, you will go off and then bang the car back together and just go race the next day. It's such a sport of attrition, but you you like it, huh? When I did it
Speaker 3 48:47
this year for my first one, I was blown away. Not just by the driving, but just like just the mentality and just how different the sport actually is and the people involved and like what it takes. And
Speaker 1 48:57
Tennessee was your first event, yeah, yeah. Over Mountain. I
Speaker 3 49:00
remember I I saw because I went I flew in early to do the the shakedown test yeah and I remember I got into line it was pretty long so we all hopped out of the car and I saw Leah and I go over I went over to say hi real quick and she's like you really picked the one of the hardest rallies a start because it's really technical
Speaker 1 49:17
it's really that's a really tight run yeah just the
Speaker 3 49:20
amount of corners it's just it's
Speaker 1 49:21
really tight.
Speaker 3 49:22
Back to back to back to back to back. There's like there's not a lot of fours and fives and pretty much no sixes. It's all like twos and threes. So
Speaker 1 49:30
who co drove for you?
Speaker 3 49:31
So I'm so everything got worked out and I end up driving one of Hooper's cars, a River River City Rally IS 250, in the perfect class for me. It was just a limited two-wheel drive, like the car is a tank, and
Speaker 1 49:42
it sounds good.
Speaker 3 49:43
It's slow enough to like not get yourself in a super big trouble. Talk about that other part later. And so it was like a great scenario. And then Chris Seer at Team O'Neill, he he told me to come up do the two-day pace note school. So I did that, and I did. That with Jamie Bellevue, who was phenomenal teacher and really got me up to speed, and then it was kind of on me to figure it out from there because I we did that like two months before the rally started, and then I just I just watched as much rally video that I could that had pace notes that I could listen to, and that's pretty much the only training I was able to do leading into my first rally.
Speaker 1 50:20
Did you do recce and actually run and write notes at Pace? Okay, cool. At
Speaker 3 50:25
Team O'Neill, I did the two days. Did you do
Speaker 1 50:27
it for Overmountain? I did. Okay, good. Oh yeah, my
Speaker 3 50:29
brain was fried, dude. It's like 14 hours in a rental car.
Speaker 1 50:33
It's the part that no one talks about, dude. Yeah,
Speaker 3 50:35
absolutely. I mean, it's so worth it in the end, but it is. And it's it is the part
Speaker 1 50:40
that the better you are at that, the faster you are. Yeah, it's where most Americans who go to Europe find that like that's our biggest. That's what I. That's what I noticed. We're not on the level of the Europeans with a lot of people
Speaker 3 50:53
use jumbo notes and just rely on those, and then just maybe take stuff out or add stuff in, type of thing. And get to my co-driver, and and that's how he's like, we're gonna do it the right way, pretty much. Which is good, yeah. Because that's not right or wrong way, whatever. He's like, if you go to Europe, this is the way you have to. It's the right way, yeah. So, so I do the pace on school, and that's most I could do. And then Chris was kind of tasked with helping me find a co-driver, and all the people that he wanted me to sit, that wanted he wanted to sit with me were already taken and then Jamie could have done it but we just didn't work that out in the time that we had and then when I was at the Mount Washington hill climb I met a co-driver that was co-driving for Tim O'Neill that he was going to co-drive in his Volkswagen. I think it was the Gulf. Anyway, the Gulf had mechanicals. Tim didn't get to drive, and and Mika, he's from Finland, and he did not get to to run. So he was kind of sitting around and kind of bored. So Tim brought him over to meet me, and Chris Chris here did as well. And so we, in between some of the running time, we drove up Mount Washington, and he had already they had already did all the recce and notes. So he was reading notes as I was going up, and I was like, I really liked his demeanor, and I guess you know, like the the Finnish people, they don't really have like a
Speaker 1 52:16
volume up or down. It's
Speaker 3 52:18
just pretty medium the whole time,
Speaker 4 52:19
yeah,
Speaker 3 52:20
and that really keeps me in check and calm, and so I really like that. And we got on really well just in that short period of time. So I was like, "Do you want to, you know, sit with me at this rally? That my first rally." And this is a this a rally driver that's from Finland, and he's done over 100 rallies. Yeah, and has sat with some really really fast people, and I'm like, and he said yes. I was like, okay, like cool. The
Speaker 1 52:46
co-driver, I think, has the worst job in the car because when you fuck up, it's always the co-driver's fault, and when you win, like the co-driver stands. I made it clear
Speaker 3 52:54
it was my fault when I go. Good, good, good, good.
Speaker 1 52:57
I feel like you always the co-driver is always like, oh, it was a slow note, or was this, or was that? Yeah, the co-driver. The co-driver always takes the blame and never gets the win. I feel like in the sport, but they are like such a hero in the car. And the amount of stuff that you have to do in rally, the math, the timing. Like I don't think people realize. Like no one tells you when to pull up to control. It's not like FD where someone's like flagging you in. It's like no, you pull up, and if you don't, guess what? You just lost time.
Speaker 3 53:23
If you do, if you do a rally and then you do anything else in motorsport, everything else is a cowboy shit compared to a rally. It's like it's just so on the minute, second. It's just it's crazy how they run it, and I understand why they have to. But the organization for a rally is so extreme and so intense. Like I'm like, thank God for all the volunteers that come out and help it because it's it's a crazy situation. Especially
Speaker 1 53:48
in America, the volunteers make it happen. Yeah, like they are the people who are. I mean, they're the people who one run the event, but they're also going to be the person who pulls you out of a car if it's on fire because they're maybe the ones who's closest to you. You know, like it's that or the media. I mean, that's a crazy thing about rallies. Like, as media, I used to carry like a rescue knife for cutting seatbelts, like with me, because there have been times where we were the first people on scene. Yeah, because we hear it go off, and then we're like, "Oh shit, let's run over there and see." And there's like a car down a hill. Like, I don't think people realize how wild, wild west rally can be. You know, it can be, but it
Speaker 3 54:19
is on the driving side of things, and like you're driving on these dirt roads or or whatever it is for that those stages. But yeah, it's it's crazy. But the organization is insane because you're down to the minute of all these control situations and the time card, and when you're allowed to enter timing, it has to be within that minute that you come up the control, you hand your card over, they sign it, and then you have your what, maybe a minute up to two minutes between cars to to go and start your stage, and then you're you have X amount of time to transit to the next stage, and then you have to do timing all over again to make sure you're within that minute. So when I was told all this stuff, and I learned it at Team O'Neill, it basically went over my head. Because there's just so much information, and all I wanted to do was paste notes, but I got a basic understanding of how control works and all that. And then my manager Jen Horsey, who is a veteran rally
Speaker 1 55:12
co-driver, co-driver, yeah,
Speaker 3 55:13
and did also some driving herself. But she's like, just get a good co-driver. He's gonna take care of everything for you, especially for your first event. Yeah, you just need an experienced co-driver. It's gonna relieve you of all these extra things that you might be worried about. Yeah, and I was like, okay. And Mika was the guy, of course. So he came over and sat with me, and he had a horrible travel. Oh my god, I felt so bad. He like typical flying from Europe all the way here. Missed his connection. Gets a connection. Gets lands at like 2am. Had an Uber set up. The Uber canceled. Finds an Uber. He downloads the app. Gets an Uber. Gets the Airbnb at like 4am. And we leave at six. Pretty standard operation rally. It's just
Speaker 1 55:58
it's just how it is because you're never small. You're never flying into a major airport. You're always flying into some small little airport. It's interesting because you already taught like there's a real nuanced thing about the tone of a rally car co-driver that I think like you're already realizing that, which is super important because some drivers like a different style. So, for example, like the like Italian and like Spanish co-drivers are like sing songy, right? Like you listen to like
Speaker 3 56:25
I haven't realized that, but
Speaker 1 56:26
you listen to like Alessandro, you know Gelsimino, right? Alex, like now Leah's co-driver, previously Ken's. He has like a you know like because he has an Italian accent, like the it flows differently, right? Like he rolls everything into it, so it's like, you know, it's like right three care over crest, and it's like everything kind of flows, right? And then other people have like a dead flat, right? And they don't really have like an up and down. And some drivers like one and don't like the other, and it's so important to figure out where that fits because you have to trust this voice in your head,
Speaker 3 56:57
right?
Speaker 1 56:57
Like this voice is telling you you are fully committed. You're gonna cut through that corner, and there's no boulder there. And like, we're not gonna flip. When you're
Speaker 3 57:04
experienced, that's for sure. When you're like me, and you're coming in, you're learning to do that. It's different. But so,
Speaker 1 57:11
what was it like after your first stage? I mean, you've done 20 years of drifting. I know you've done a bunch of other stuff, little stuff here and there. But like your first real stage and rally, what did it feel like?
Speaker 3 57:20
It didn't hit me until the second stage that we did. So the first stage was just like a warm up. It was only like I think it was like 3.8 miles or something. It was pretty short but treacherous and a lot of twos.
Speaker 1 57:31
Yep.
Speaker 3 57:32
I'm doing the system. I was one through six. There's one through nine as well. But we just worked on
Speaker 1 57:37
the. There's also angles in Europe. Yeah, yeah. I'm not one through six is what most Americans do.
Speaker 3 57:42
Yeah, it's like the older.
Speaker 1 57:44
It's simple. Older. It makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 3 57:46
So that's one through
Speaker 1 57:47
six is open.
Speaker 3 57:48
Yeah, that's what I work off worked off of, and that's what Mika I think mostly knew, anyways. Although he was down to do whatever because he's the co-driver and he'll adapt. So the first stage we get through it, and it just it was incredible feeling. But we had to transit straight to the next stage, so it wasn't like I got to get out of the car and like think about a thing. And the next stage was the longest stage of the entire rally, which was like shoot, I think 16 miles or something. Good one, yeah. And so many freaking turns. I was. You can hear me in a video that that Zach released a couple weeks ago on my YouTube. It's just like heavy breathing because you're doing so much wheel work and like I'm not smoothing a car yet, so I'm grabbing handbrake and shifting an H pattern, five speed, and like oh my god, I was like a friggin' flying, swatting at bees like I was first drifting.
Speaker 1 58:38
There there was an old like sort of data point that was around in like the mid 2000s. I want to say I saw it on like Speed Vision or something, and they said that a rally car driver is take is getting more like inputs and having to provide more outputs than between the notes, what they're seeing, what they're feeling from the car, like what they're you know all these different things that are coming at them, and then having to do handbrake, multiple pedal work because you're all over the pedals, right? It's like your left foot breaking almost all the time, right? And you're kind of moving back and through it, and that they actually have more to process than a fighter pilot during a dog fight.
Speaker 3 59:19
It's crazy
Speaker 1 59:20
because like that's
Speaker 3 59:20
insane.
Speaker 1 59:21
Yeah, because like during a dog fight, you don't have someone yelling in your ear. You're you're you're kind of in control, and you do have a little bit of feedback from whatever, like you know, you're getting from other you know other planes or whatever. But there's just so much to process. And Ken used to do these like crazy training exercises. So he would do he'd be like standing on a balance ball, and he'd be juggling and doing math problems. Really? So I'd be, you know, I'd be like, you sitting there, and you're like square root of 49. You know, okay, now add 10 to that. Okay, now minus seven. Like, and you would just like, okay, and then you would be like, okay, now spell that because it's all about like forcing both sides. Of your brain to work and operate separately and do all these kind of things, so it's like it's not just eye-hand coordination. It's like your brain has to do something different while you're doing. That's pretty neat. I actually didn't think about that. Really interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 3 1:00:12
So my during that first stage, I started to be able to pick up on some of the notes. A lot of it I could see. Some of the corners were blind. A lot of them were, but a lot of them weren't. So it was kind of an ease into it. 3.8 mile loop, roughly, and we finish it. And I was like, I was like, this is insane! Like, holy shit! I just did my first stage, you know. And then I was more hyped, and then and then we we we go straight to the next stage. You know, you get out right before, take a piss, and then you get back in and go up to control. And then I was that next stage. I was like, knew it was the longest. We had already recceed it, ran through it twice. We we watched video and fixed some notes from the night before. Like we were ready to rock. And I was like, this is like the real, not the real deal. The other one was, but like this is the long one. Yeah. So we hit it and kind of warmed up into it, and then pace notes just started clicking, and I started to be able to just drive off the notes, and it was just like the most amazing feeling I've ever had in my entire career in motorsports. Like insane. I finished finished that rally or that stage. It was like 24 minutes long of just insanity, and I just got out of the car and like just like kneeled down.
Speaker 1 1:01:26
Religious experience, yeah,
Speaker 3 1:01:28
for real.
Speaker 1 1:01:30
Wow, I mean, what's your thought there? Because you're like, you've done so much. You've done motocross. You obviously have had an extremely successful career in drifting, and this was this thing that like was in the background, and it took you. How old are you now? You're 40, right? 42. And now you're 42, and you're like, "Fuck! I'm just discovering
Speaker 3 1:01:45
it." Yeah, yeah. But I had I had a similar experience earlier this year when I did my first hill climb, which is a crazy fairy tale weekend that we had. Debuted the Celica, my first hill climb. We end up breaking the freaking record of like 23 years in the whole thing, and I still wasn't great on the hill. But the car is more capable than I was. But still, it was like it was just insane. And I had this I had this feeling that I hadn't had in motorsports since I started drifting. It was just this incredible feeling of like passion and just like joy of cars all over again because I've been doing drifting for so long. It's like not much I haven't experienced in the sport,
Speaker 1 1:02:26
and it starts to become a business.
Speaker 3 1:02:27
Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:02:28
you know, like you do it a lot and it becomes repetitive. Yeah, yeah. And then stay at the same hotel at the same place. It's just another year. Right.
Speaker 3 1:02:34
And this this was just insane. It was insane to me. And that hill climb weekend was just like the new spark of like something for me in motorsports, and and then it just it's so crazy how things like kind of just pop up, and then I got the call from David Overmountain about doing my first rally, and then doing that rally. I'm just like, this is even the most extreme I've ever thing I've ever done. Yeah, and I think I was more emotional just because like I got through the stage, like I driving off the pace notes, and this is something that I've wanted to do for pretty much my entire drifting career. I've wanted to get into a rally car and do stages, you know. So it's just like all of that kind of came into
Speaker 1 1:03:13
it. Well, I'm stoked that you finally got there, man, because like you know, I've always been pushing you to do it. I mean, I saw you at I saw you at Fat Ice Race, and I was like, well, now you got a rally car. Like, go do some rally stuff. I was like, I was like, f you, dude. This
Speaker 3 1:03:24
is an asphalt car. This isn't a dirt car. The sour candy.
Speaker 1 1:03:27
But I think that's actually what Hill Climb is great for. I think Hill Crime is probably. It's a shame that we don't have more of it on the West Coast, but on the East Coast and and now a lot more in the South. It is a great feeder series for rally because like it
Speaker 3 1:03:40
was the perfect entry into like a then getting into a rally. Right,
Speaker 1 1:03:44
you can go get comfortable with the driving. You don't really need notes. You're still sort of in a memorizing world, but your approach and attack is very similar. But it's tarmac, so like you're not destroying the car yet. Like you can kind of you know yeah, it's not as it's not as abusive. And obviously there's there's dirt hill climbs too. Like Colorado has an amazing dirt hill climb. Yeah, I was talking to Swart about
Speaker 3 1:04:05
those. They sound like so much fun, but I'm still not taking the Celtic on dirt yet.
Speaker 1 1:04:08
That's fair. That's fair. That's fair. So so how'd the rest of the rally go?
Speaker 3 1:04:12
So it went it went well. We finished the day in first by like almost two minutes on in sorry limited two wheel drive.
Speaker 1 1:04:20
Yep,
Speaker 3 1:04:21
and just did did did good. Was driving well, and then and then the second day, I was looking forward to it because I had I think three different stage roads that we're going to go through, and one of them had some asphalt, which I was excited for. And the first stage had that we were doing, I forget what it was called. I think WASP maybe, and it had these really smooth, like almost banked switchbacks, and I was so freaking pumped to do that, to do that road. And I got five miles in. I center punched a rock; it dragged itself all the way underneath the car, sliced a massive hole in the exhaust, and me being an. Asphalt guy, like something like that happens. You're like devastated. The car is probably devastated or something. So I'm like thinking about the car. I'm like, is this thing okay? Like, what's the feeling? And I miss a left two pace note, and I come in there thinking, or you're coming
Speaker 1 1:05:14
in off three. Okay,
Speaker 3 1:05:15
I came in off of a three.
Speaker 1 1:05:16
Yeah,
Speaker 3 1:05:17
yeah. So I thought it, and I thought it was going to have some a lot of those turns, and it just kept
Speaker 1 1:05:21
tightening, and you're like,
Speaker 3 1:05:22
and I was like, it was greasy too because it had rain the night before, so it just there was no chance. And thankfully, I did go off where I did because a few feet up would have been way worse, and a few feet back would have been a lot worse. So it was what it was. You know, I slid. We slid off the road about 10 foot drop. There was no
Speaker 1 1:05:40
getting the car back out. Yeah, they
Speaker 3 1:05:42
got it out, but I was done for the weekend. Yeah, yeah, which sucks. Five miles in, I got to tell you, I always think drifting is heartbreaking, but Rally takes the cake because then five miles in on the first stage of the morning on day two, and we go off. Thank God we didn't. We could get out of the car because if we hit SOS, then you screw everybody else behind you. Like they shut the stage down, and then nobody gets nobody gets a time. So we were able to get out and not have to do that, thankfully, and put our
Speaker 1 1:06:12
put your triangle out. Put our triangle
Speaker 3 1:06:13
out, and we sat there with our OK sign for every single car that passed, which is like probably 50 cars behind us, get just freaking embarrassing. That's rally, though. I know it is. It's just like get
Speaker 1 1:06:26
used to it, dude. It was
Speaker 3 1:06:28
so heartbreaking for me. Like you know, coming off of a great day, like you're so yeah. I got the highs and the lows that weekend. Yeah, it was such a cool experience though.
Speaker 1 1:06:38
Well, I love. I can feel the energy from you, how excited you were, and like that's that's awesome, man. I um I I absolutely love the sport. It's so much fun. I mean I I still need to go do a rally myself. I've done a bunch of rally driving, went to O'Neill's, things like that. Obviously, you know, being on stuff with with Ken for years meant that we were always just doing shit and it was fun. But it was always I've always been on the business side of it, and like I look at it, I'm like, man, I like eventually have to like put together a system to go do it. You're old enough now. I know you're on the other side. I know, I know. Like it's it's it's it's it's the time now. You can make it happen for yourself. But at the same time, I also care so much about the sport, and obviously WRC is coming here now, right? It was announced two weeks ago, and you know, in Tennessee, Knoxville, and like this, I think, is a real opportunity for America, like, and to really take and seize this to be like, okay, here's the moment where we can get a lot of the local sort of partnerships to sit there and go, oh, this could be real, because I think one of the problems always was like there was never enough money in rally. It's a very expensive sport to do, and it's really hard to do it. So like most people who are in it, especially in ARA, it's like everyone's losing money.
Speaker 3 1:07:51
Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:07:51
right. Like there, it's a hobby to go do, right? And then there's obviously like the top level guys who are there, but even then, it's hard. I mean, Ken had to go do Gymkhana to pay for Rally, right? I mean, I say this all the time on this pod, but it's like the joke is like Hoonigan was a really profitable business. Unfortunately, Ken spent all the profit on Rally Racing because like we didn't make our money Rally Racing; we made our money everywhere else. Yeah. So, and that's just a reality of that. But I think we're like, I'm. You look at the list of the cars that are out there now, and it's like it's all like you know RC twos and RC threes. We look more like Europe. Like it used to be that we were just doing our own thing, and it was so separate from what was happening elsewhere that there's like a real opportunity now for for drivers to come up. And there's young drivers in the series, which like you know Leah jokingly in the last in the last pod I did with her, called it the Masters series for rally, like back in the day, because it was like it was like her dad and like David Higgins and like even Travis is getting up there. I forget his
Speaker 3 1:08:51
name. I'm just brain farting the gentleman from Quebec that was really fast as well.
Speaker 1 1:08:55
Recently or
Speaker 3 1:08:58
in the past, he competed with Ken and Travis and everybody.
Speaker 1 1:09:01
Antoine Lestache. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Antoine Lestaj. Another. Like I mean, he was a monster. You know, back in the day, like you know, ACP was was obviously. You know, Jen Horsey was was his co-driver for a period. Like there was a lot of, but like they were all already up there a bit. Like there wasn't like a growing 20-year-old audience. Yeah. Which I think Nate makes a sport good. Now you're the Masters. You're now joining on that. Get my toe in, dude. I didn't even finish a rally yet. So, do you have another one planned?
Speaker 3 1:09:31
I'm making plans to try to do some next year. It's just you know it's tough, and I I wanted to touch on this. It's like something that I want to do pretty much my whole life, even through motocross, watching Rally, whatever you know, whatever channel you'd randomly catch WRC on way back in the day as kids, yeah,
Speaker 1 1:09:49
yeah.
Speaker 3 1:09:50
And it's just tough when you get going in a motorsport and things start rolling. Like the second you start looking at something. Else is like this. It's you're not going to move forward in that sport that you're in unless you have a completely separate situation that's set up for you, type of deal. Like so, in drifting, it was always like you don't look back; you only look forward. Like, hey, what's the next step? I got to get to this next step, this next level, whatever it is. And if you take your eyes off the prize, it's like, you know, is that even gonna? If is this what you're building even gonna be here for you? So I think it was like the you're almost scared to stay in in it, yep, and not go outside of that unless you have like a mapped out opportunity, like a ride and drive, just come and try this type of thing. Yeah. So for me, it was like that because drifting was my discipline and was my profession what I was good at and what I was building for myself, and so I never, you know, I I got those cool opportunities with you and Ken a couple times to to do either get in the car.
Speaker 1 1:10:56
Yeah, you did. You drove some Jumkana stuff or drive the escort at Jumkana,
Speaker 4 1:10:59
which was
Speaker 3 1:11:00
phenomenal. But it's like unless you have those situations, it's really tough to take your eyes off the prize of what you've been putting so much effort into. So like now, I'm I'm just pumped that all this stuff has happened in my last year of FD because I've been able to actually invest more time in making it the best I can make it, even though I'm a rookie at both hill climb and
Speaker 1 1:11:20
right
Speaker 3 1:11:20
and rally,
Speaker 1 1:11:21
yeah. You know it's interesting because originally you were supposed to do the show right before FD Long Beach, the start of the season. And I think you had mentioned. I think you mentioned before you announced like, "Hey, by the way, like I'm retiring this season." So I was like, "Oh, cool. We can talk about that then." I'm actually happy that we waited till the end of the year because you didn't have all this other stuff, right? Like I have so many crazy experiences now. You didn't have the hill climb. You didn't have the rally. How much did that sort of change? Because I got to imagine walking away from FD is like really difficult, right? I mean,
Speaker 3 1:11:52
it's it was a part of your
Speaker 1 1:11:53
life. And I mean, right now I'm coming
Speaker 3 1:11:54
in my last two days of of 20 over 20 years of and giving this sport everything that I've had, you know.
Speaker 1 1:12:02
Yeah.
Speaker 3 1:12:02
So it's definitely going to be hard no matter what. But I think what has helped is just knowing, like, the having these experiences outside of drifting and and finding out that I'm actually pretty fast. Like, obviously, a lot
Speaker 1 1:12:15
to
Speaker 3 1:12:15
learn. But like the the the rawness is there. Like the speed is there. It's just about fine tuning and getting experience. So, like knowing that was like really confidence building for me. Like, not to say I'm going to go out there and win a championship in in any of this any of these new sports, but like just to be able to go out there and drive to a certain level and be able to build off that. Like, I didn't expect my level to already be kind of where it kind of is now, you know.
Speaker 1 1:12:43
Well, it's interesting, you know. Obviously, we would always look at like who's a good cross, like what's what are good crossover sports to come into rally, right? And a lot of times, like guys from track racing, like they just it doesn't connect the same way because the car is moving so much. Your braking zones are very different. Yeah, I mean, I remember the first time ever doing a ride along in a rally car was actually with Ken in like 2005 or 2006 or something, and I had been on a ton of track cars. I had done at that point. I'd done a bunch of track racing myself, and I remember coming into the first corner and I'm like, "Are the brakes out?" Like I just didn't understand why we weren't braking yet, and it's because well, he's going to throw the car sideways, and that's going to scrub enough speed into the corner, right? So it was like setting the car was more important than like braking, driving through it, and then driving out, right? But so like we did, you know, we've done a bunch of seat swaps things in different spaces in Rally, and I the two places that always connected was like motocross riders and drifters. Like they are the ones who could get in the car and understand how the car moved. And Ken used to always say that, like without motocross, he doesn't think he would have done well getting in a rally car for the first time, right? Because Ken's story was, you know, very quickly, you know, he loved rally because he saw it on TV. Wide World of Sports because he was a bit older than us, and you know, eventually things like Speed Vision and thought it was really cool, and but didn't think it existed in America. And then you know Travis Pastrana went and did it, and he like you know Travis was on DC, and he was like, oh shit, that's cool. I want to go try it. He showed up, and he was like better than an average gentleman driver. Yeah. And he said so much of that was because it just felt like motocross. One memorizing a track and like understanding a corner and understanding where I need to be in a corner was like something that came from that, and then second, the other part of it for him was like it felt normal for the ground to move underneath,
Speaker 3 1:14:27
right? To for being on dirt and understanding like what physics on a motorcycle work like. Yep, riding a bike is it's pretty. There's a lot to take away from that into a rally car for sure. And I
Speaker 1 1:14:38
think like what we saw in a lot of like you know the crossovers. I mean, one of the first crossovers ever was we took Vaughn and we did it for Story and Zero 60 magazine. You know, before I was even on Ken's team, we did like Ken in a drift car and Vaughn in a rally car, and like it's just that you have this immediate sort of understanding of like, yeah, my brain's already wired. Like I have that that hand. And butt muscle of like okay counter stenoer push like like like those things are already wired where it's not always wired for a track driver or something for sure because they're
Speaker 3 1:15:09
not you know you're in trouble if you're doing any of that yeah
Speaker 1 1:15:12
yeah yeah yeah like you're already unsettled at that especially if you're in like and it's funny because I actually had a conversation with with Leah about like did F1 Academy help you all with rally? And she was like, not really the driving stuff because it was so different.
Speaker 3 1:15:26
Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:15:26
and I don't. I think that the line stuff is probably stuff that she really learned, and she's probably not seeing it yet. But but like I think like the sport felt felt so different. Like it's just two different sports for her to be in an open wheel car versus like you know being in a rally car.
Speaker 3 1:15:42
Yeah.
Speaker 1 1:15:43
Well, dude, I mean, I I I really would love to see you push on with this because I think that I actually think it's a great place for a lot of people for from drifting to go when like they've either hit a ceiling with drifting or maybe it's just not serving them the same way. Because like, look, you and I we know a lot of people who left drifting because I just to your what you said about an hour ago was I didn't want to rely on just three judges deciding my feet moving forward, right? And I think that there are certain drivers who would be phenomenal in rally who like it's like okay now it's against the clock. It's like a different story. Yeah, it is
Speaker 3 1:16:16
for sure. I think I think anybody that has drifting experience and even competes at a professional levels would cross over into rally, especially a rear wheel drive rally car like like I got into. It's just the pace notes are your biggest. You know how to drive the crap out of the car. Yep, it's just the pace notes are going to be your biggest hurdle.
Speaker 1 1:16:34
Do you think you'd stay in rear wheel drive or do you think you want to move to all wheel drive?
Speaker 3 1:16:38
I right now like I haven't even completed one rally. I want to do another limited rear wheel drive car and and finish a couple rallies before I even think about stepping up. So we'll see how that goes. Like I I obviously want to do a lot more of that. It's just just expensive. Yeah, it's tough to do a new discipline, especially something that you're not proven in, and and whatnot, you know. So yeah, and
Speaker 1 1:17:05
it's interesting because like you go to your partners, you're like, I want to go do this now, and they're like, Yeah, but like your money comes from this bucket, right?
Speaker 3 1:17:12
Yeah, you know the deal.
Speaker 1 1:17:14
Yeah,
Speaker 3 1:17:14
it's tough. Yeah, it's tough, but I want to do it. So I think I'll at least do probably two next year at least.
Speaker 1 1:17:21
Yeah,
Speaker 3 1:17:21
and we'll just see if like I can do more than than gravy. But so
Speaker 1 1:17:24
let's rewind back to April. You're like, hey, I'm going to announce that I'm retiring. Like, what was the plan? Because what was the plan in retirement?
Speaker 3 1:17:32
Retirement was to
Speaker 1 1:17:34
do this.
Speaker 3 1:17:35
Do do just do more. Well, so I didn't do rally yet, so I didn't know if that's something I wanted to do, but I knew probably it was something I was going to want to do more. But I knew hill climb was going to be something I did more of, probably no matter what, because of the Celica and just not wanting to drive it on dirt. So I was like, it's an asphalt car. So I knew that was going to be a thing, and then just doing some of the Appalachia stuff, some more grid life stuff, the Supra for some time attack stuff, of course. So I've pretty much been planning my event schedule next year around around the cars that I have and the disciplines that they're built for, and just kind of see how that all shakes out. Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:18:18
so really building a schedule around more like I don't want to say a content schedule, but like storytelling, like a year instead. Yeah, yeah. A
Speaker 3 1:18:25
lot of what we did this year was that, anyways. And it was more this year. I've done more events than I ever have in my entire career in one year. I think Zach and I were talking about. I think we did 30 something events this year, 31 events, and I and I packed this year in knowing, not knowing, but I'm like, all right. If we're gonna, our best chances of retaining sponsorship is proving a concept that can live in the future outside of FD. So that's why we did a lot of the Hill Clients did the stories on those and videos, and then the rally was a perfect opportunity to do that again because I think it's just they're just cool experiences, and I think showing the rawness of it. And even though it's not like we're sitting on the podium for a lot of the events, so it's just the experience in general, you know.
Speaker 1 1:19:13
I mean, in some ways, I actually think your story is really interesting, and like this is how I would pitch it to your partners: is like the story of someone who is accomplished in one sport does basically the one of the longest runs in the space, right? I mean, I think Forsberg has probably the longest, right? You're probably
Speaker 3 1:19:34
himing. Well, Ken, Ken and Chris have the longest ones, right? Sugushie,
Speaker 1 1:19:38
him, yeah, and then like, and then after that, it's like you're probably pretty closely running a year behind
Speaker 3 1:19:44
them. Oh yeah, so you're right there. But if they're they're both going to continue next year, I know, I know, I know. But but my point
Speaker 1 1:19:48
is, is you're one of the longest people running in it. You had a successful run at it. A story of you now showing up somewhere where you are the fucking noob, and you're going to get smoked by like guys in Volkswagen. Who like have never had a following on Instagram, have never stood on a podium, like that's actually a really good story. It's going to be humbling for you, and I and I and I think you're the right person because I think you'll take that humbling. Like I think you'll enjoy it.
Speaker 3 1:20:14
I I enjoy starting over almost not really from scratch, but you're starting over in a new discipline. I mean, you
Speaker 1 1:20:20
did it with motocross. You went from motocross to drifting, and
Speaker 3 1:20:22
but drifting wasn't even a sport.
Speaker 1 1:20:24
Yeah, yeah. So
Speaker 3 1:20:25
I I grew with the sport as it became what it is today. Yeah, yeah. Like every step of the way.
Speaker 1 1:20:31
So the other week we held Trefunks. For those of you listening to the pod, you know that that is the Volkswagen Audi nerd event that I host with my good friend Jason Whipple, what does that mean? Well, that means that this RS two behind me got washed and cleaned and detailed twice in one week. Yeah, you can thank G Technic for that. So we've done a partnership with G Technic, and part of that partnership, because Vinny set it up, was that I had to actually promise to do a better job at keeping my cars clean, since this car had already been ceramic coated by G Technic, it made it a lot easier to get it ready for the event. Quick wash, boom, we were ready to go. But after 1000 miles of road grime and two absolute animals inside of it just living off of gas station, convenience store snacks, it needed a full inside and out kind of big wash. And unfortunately, it's been a really busy week for me. But my detailer came by and took care of it with a bevy of G Technic products. Actually, left a really nice smell in the leather. This product, especially like the Dash Shine and the leather vinyl cleaner that they use, it just has like an OEM smell to it, which I really enjoy because I got in my car and it smelled OEM plus. You should go check out G Tech at G tech.com. That's G Technic with a Q. Be less like me, and you know, take care of your car. Keep it running. Keep it detailed, and have G Technic help you along the way. He Wave makes some great shades: the Skynet, the Wraith, and my personal favorite, the Vice. But did you know they also make goggles? The MXG 250 is for you motocross, UTV, and Dirt Sport folks. It features an anti-fog coated, impact resistant lens and patented Ram Jet tech to keep the moisture under control for all of you brow sweaters. Plus, it's got a triple post tariff system now. If you're thinking I only enjoy paved motoring, that's okay. Go full goon style. Rock a set with an open face so that you can cosplay that you're a 70s badass. Works for Travis Pastrana and Matt Field. Find yours at HeatwaveVisual.com. If you haven't noticed, Quiet Wealth is in, Flash is out, and the folks at KW understand they now offer the classic line. Think the KW suspension you've learned to love and trust, but now in all black, the perfect subtle flex. Plus, if you're trying to fly under the radar with say your future in-laws, you could pass these off as OEM because after all, you are an adult, right? Anyway, find them and plenty other applications at kwsuspensions.com. Face it, there's only three kinds of us: those that torque nothing, those that torque everything, and there's those that use torque wrenches as breaker bars. Whereas new tool has two out of three covered. Their new torque lock feature is a switch that disengages the mechanism on their torque wrenches, so you can kind of use it as it was intended, as a breaker bar. Okay, I don't exactly belong to the third camp, but I've dabbled. I've committed the ultimate no-no. Cracked a lug free with a torque wrench, but I swear that life is behind me now that I've got a torque lock torque wrench from Wera. Go get yourself one. maratools.com. Do you see you sort of moving into like an elder position in drifting? Meaning, like, would you like ever be like a judge, like, or you're like, nope, definitely
Speaker 3 1:23:52
not a judge, but run a
Speaker 1 1:23:53
team?
Speaker 3 1:23:54
Yeah, maybe. I don't know.
Speaker 3 1:23:56
I think it depends on what my kids want to do as they get older and what my pat, where my passion lies. I've always been someone who has to have passion for the thing that I'm going to invest my time into, and drifting has been that for the last 2020 years. And that's really why I decided to call it quits because I just don't have the same passion for the sport. I'm not, I'm not now willing to continue to try to elevate my driving to stay on top of where the sport has been escalating to, with where the Shanahans and James Dean and all these top guys, Matt Field, Odie, like Forsberg, everybody that's still in it is just continuing to drive the sport even even deeper as far as talent and performance, and I'm just like I'm I'm good. Like I've done my time here. I don't have the same passion to continue that. So I I know that's how I knew it was time for me to like. Okay, we're good.
Speaker 1 1:24:51
Yeah, it's a good moment.
Speaker 3 1:24:52
Yeah.
Speaker 1 1:24:52
Why do you think that is
Speaker 3 1:24:55
passion?
Speaker 1 1:24:56
Yeah.
Speaker 3 1:24:56
What the lack of
Speaker 1 1:24:58
yeah
Speaker 3 1:24:58
for it? I just lost the love. Of the sport after doing something for so long, and you know, I start thinking about age a little bit, especially having having my two kids. And I'm like, there's other things I want to do in motorsport, and I don't want to do them in my 50s. You know, I don't want to get to that point where my brain starts slowing down. And not to say it'd be decrepit or anything, but you know, like you get to a point, it
Speaker 1 1:25:21
happens. Yeah,
Speaker 3 1:25:21
yeah. It's just the natural thing. So I still want to experience and maybe have the opportunity to go fast as I
Speaker 4 1:25:28
can. Yeah, in these other sports, one other chapter here. Yeah.
Speaker 1 1:25:32
Um, you know, in talking about that and sort of the passion and your your time in drifting, what was like your favorite era of it? Like, what was that moment where you're like, "Fuck!" When I look back, if I could go relive one era, what was the error for you?
Speaker 3 1:25:46
That's a. I'll I'll say one thing. It might not be my favorite, but I always say like the best part of drifting was before Instagram and YouTube. Yeah, you could just show up to a racetrack, you'd perform how you performed. You leave the racetrack, and that was it.
Speaker 1 1:26:04
Yeah, I can see that.
Speaker 3 1:26:06
And then you came back and you did the same thing. And I'm not saying that because of how much harder you have to work now to kind of try to stay within the sport and with the times. It was just a unique time because it was before all of this other stuff took off,
Speaker 1 1:26:22
yeah.
Speaker 3 1:26:22
But all this other stuff has paved the way for so much growth for the sport and the drivers, and you know, sounding you know, just a stepping a step off point, and it can, yeah, it just makes things harder but easier at the same time.
Speaker 1 1:26:39
Yeah, I find that actually really interesting coming from you because you were one of the early drivers in drifting to like adopt the social media being to your favor, right? And like you were one of those early guys. I mean, I remember having conversations, and maybe Forsberg doesn't want me to say this publicly, but I remember Forsberg just being like not understanding it early on because he was the guy who had the big trailer and like the full motorsport presentation, and all of a sudden, you know, you were running a scrappy team, but like there was a lot of inbound interest in you because you were making noise on the content side. And I, like, I think when you say that now, if you're listening to this and you hear that, you're like, "Well, of course," but like, we didn't know the of course back then. I mean, we were coming with the of course. Like, I mean, we approached all of you guys with like, "Hey, this is the future. Like, let us help tell you stories. Like, that's what we're doing with Hoonigan. Let us let us be a part of the content machine to go do this." And like, and I think for a lot of people, it was like, "I just want to be a race car driver, right?" Or I just want to be like a perform. Like, yes, like they didn't think it had to be both
Speaker 3 1:27:41
because you didn't have to think the other way until you had to think the other way too, which
Speaker 1 1:27:45
really has changed things. I mean, all the way into f1. I mean, you think about like you know these guys are constantly doing things like like Lewis Hamilton is constantly involved in some type of social thing. Max Verstappen just did that like you know that that go kart race. Like I've met Max. I know, and I said this before. Like, I doubt he wanted to do that. You know, it's like, like, but they have to do these things. Like, these are the things. You paid $100
Speaker 3 1:28:08
million. You get you show up for it. You show
Speaker 1 1:28:11
up. You got to do some stuff. I get it. But like, but back in the day, you just had to be a race car driver, right? Like, you just had to do the one thing, and it actually, I think, creates a sort of a bad world for people who don't know how to be a personality, right? Like you were lucky because you were able to go kind of create the the turtle personality. I got
Speaker 7 1:28:30
do all the
Speaker 3 1:28:30
stuff. I got lucky because I had a you know I I've been thinking about this because I reflect a lot. I've been reflecting a lot this year just on drifting, and I just think about the people that I've been surrounded by throughout the course of my career, dude. I've had I've been so lucky with the people that I've had to be had the chance to work with, and I can call friends lifelong friends, and like how creative everybody's been, and people like yourself. You know what I mean? It's just like the and Zach even to this day, like it's um it's been incredible, and I've always been surrounded by really good people. Yeah, and everybody was just trying to elevate each other. Yeah, at the same time, and I think that was a huge part of it, and and why like I've had the success I've had on and off the track.
Speaker 1 1:29:15
Yeah, I mean, I ask you that question. I get asked that question a lot. People are like, "Oh, what was your favorite era of Hoonigan?" You know, and like it's there's always these like weird moments where you're like, and I think a lot of it has to be when like before it got too serious. Like I think everyone's answer is like before it got too serious. Yeah, like corporate, like yeah, or whatever it was, you know, and like you know, I mean, when you because you hit me with that nostalgia of like come pick me up, like man, like you look back at it, like it was so scrappy. Everything was scrappy, and I think like Hoonigan had this mentality because Ken had the mentality of like you know perception is reality. But like you knew the reality of Hoonigan. Like you, you guys would come and stay at my house, and I would put up like half your team, part of Tony Angelo's team. Like there wasn't money really to go around in the early days, and was like we're just trying to figure it out and doing the thing, and and like yeah, I was picking up from the airport because like we couldn't afford to send a car, you know, like because even though Ken had money, his whole thing was like if you can't make this work without money, it won't work for real. Yeah. So like, well, I'll make sure that like the employees are paid, but like everything else, you got to figure out. Yeah, you know, and like that was sort of this like, all right, let's just figure it out. Like, let me, Lindsay, hurt, you know. And then obviously, like you guys all were like such a part of that. And like I actually say now, and I was looking when I was looking at Liora's photos, I got like a little. It was between Liora's post and you being like back in the day. I was like, "All right, let's go with fucking Ali Action," because I got like a little emotional. I was like, "Man, what if I remember that?" Like we were all so fucking whatever the expression is, like bushy-tailed, whatever. Like we all were just like taking it. We're like, "We're fucking do it. We're gonna build figure it all. We're
Speaker 3 1:30:56
all building a thing. We're all building each other." Yeah, it was a fun time. It was sure. It was really cool to all be a part of that.
Speaker 1 1:31:01
Yeah, I. It was definitely like an interesting thing, and I always try to like give you guys a you know a huge piece of credit because when Hoonigan first started, obviously we shifted from more of like an athlete focused business to like a creator focused businesses. Like the YouTube stuff exploded, but it's like you guys were such a big part of that energy, like in those early days, and like kind of figuring all that. And you, especially, like you were like that dude. We had good times, we had bad times. We're all still friends in
Speaker 3 1:31:30
the end. But like, it's all, but but I nothing big enough to deter any of the friendship. Yeah, no.
Speaker 1 1:31:34
I also think it was like I think that the windows were like this close to aligning. Like I think if I think if I think we just missed this window because like when you left Tune again, we did we it took I think about a year and a half for like us to kind of get our shit together, and then all of a sudden the company exploded through YouTube. And it's like if that would have happened, like you know there would things would have just worked differently. But I understood your needs at the time, and it was like, hey, different things were going, but like I've had those conversations with her and people like that. Like, man, think of how different it would have been if all those guys were there when the YouTube thing took off. And it wasn't just us; it was all of YouTube took off at once. But the way, but the
Speaker 3 1:32:12
way it took off too was so was such a departure of like what we would have been able to do together anyways. Yeah, yeah. Like it kind of everything just kind of worked out the way it was supposed to, regardless. Your
Speaker 1 1:32:22
parking lot show. You know what I mean? No, I agree. I agree. It was it was it was it was definitely definitely fun times. Yeah. Um. Back back to sort of like kind of the what's next thing, and I take a complete left turn here. You learned to work on cars because you had to, but like now building cars is actually seems like a thing you really like. It's a part of your, it's part of your career, I guess. Actually, I guess you went from being like, I work on my own cars because I can't afford other people to do it, and it was like you know your brothers and friends were all there helping you do this in the early days, and then you sort of became like you know, like it started with like was the Ferrari engined car sort of your first big build? Yeah, that was it. Yeah, because
Speaker 3 1:33:07
Dominic and I had built the street car that I had the the GT 86. What was FRS back
Speaker 1 1:33:15
then?
Speaker 3 1:33:15
And put the 2j in it, and so I had like a proper nicely built demo car.
Speaker 1 1:33:22
Yep,
Speaker 3 1:33:22
and that was kind of the first build beyond my S 13. So like that was a huge stepping stone for me, where it could have been almost an FD car if I had a few more bucks to throw at it, type of deal.
Speaker 1 1:33:33
Because you had the comp car, and then you had the you had like your original nice 1j the S
Speaker 3 1:33:40
13 S 13. But I mean that was. But it was
Speaker 1 1:33:42
just it was like a mid street car track car. Like it was like your nicer. It was your nicer S chess. Dude,
Speaker 3 1:33:47
it was like an oh 506 style of like drift build, and it's still like that to this day. Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:33:52
I always like that car though.
Speaker 3 1:33:53
Yeah, I love that car. Even though I smashed it up on that guardrail and to a truck and whatever else, but whatever. And then so after the demo car, it was when I got the gum out sponsorship, and they wanted to do a build project, and it was something that kind of already had been done before. And I was like, "Well, what if we did this scenario?" And then I was like, "We need to double or triple the budget." And they said, "Let's go for it." And it was the 458 engine in the in the 86, so that kind of
Speaker 1 1:34:23
like made you a like all of a sudden you became a builder. Yeah, every year you are doing another project like that.
Speaker 3 1:34:28
I it was it was insane because I just yeah I didn't had no idea it was going to take off like it did as far as like what the idea the idea was and the execution was great from the outside looking in and a car worked, so and then it it went off to do a ton of stuff, ton of stuff. So it was a crazy four years of like campaigning that car and doing a lot of fun stuff with it. And then I think at the end of the four years was, I think I finally had like a year off to not focus on like building. A car, and I so I finally had some other ideas kicking around, and the next one was the Supra, the Formula Supra with the V10 and the Judd. I always had inspiration from Plaza and his and his BMW, the E36, and then a 40. I think he had, or was it the M1? I forget, but the thing sounded incredible. Hill climb car.
Speaker 1 1:35:21
Yep.
Speaker 3 1:35:22
So I was my inspiration for a hill climb back even back then. But the Judd was like it. I was like one of these days I'm going to own one of those engines. You know.
Speaker 1 1:35:29
I mean, before there were things like YouTube, I would download torrents of like just the sound of a Judd engine because it was that cool. Whether it was the V8 V10 or yeah, yeah, they both they just sound amazing sounding motors, yeah.
Speaker 3 1:35:41
So in 19, at the end of 2019, I knew coming in Irwindale, or maybe right before that, that I was going to get the drive with Papadakis, and so my pro car that I was driving at the time, I was like, well, I can. At that same time, I had been looking at this Judd V 10 that was for sale on consignment on indie competition,
Speaker 1 1:36:02
right?
Speaker 3 1:36:03
And I was it was like 80 grand or something, and I was like, Jesus Christ, that's a lot of money. I was like, I gotta, I gotta figure this out. So once I figured out that I was getting the drive with Steph, I was like, all right, I'm gonna sell my pro car, and I'm gonna use that money to buy this engine. So I did that. Think I got the money. I think I got the engine for 75, but it was a zero-mile refresh. A guy in Houston, Texas, was parting out his late model f1 program. He had one of those Benetton, I think b1 90-eights, maybe that had been converted to Judd engine for the, I think it's called the Boss GP, like the historic Formula One racing. And so I end up getting the engine, and I was like, I don't care what chassis this is going in at the moment. Like I have the engine now, and then I started trying to just sell the project to partners. And Toyota was down. They gave me the the GR Supra to use as a base, and that's where Dominic finally broke me as a builder of like cars. And like, all right, because this is my ultimate passion project, right? Was this engine going into a car? And Dominic's like, this is the way we have to do this. Like, there's just no corners we're gonna cut here. And I was like, okay, I understand. And it finally like broke me. I'm like, so at that point, it was just you know a lot of money out of my own savings to to get that car built, but a lot of a lot of money from sponsors and partners to come on board and and help out, but that's why now I I've gone down this path of like kind of trying not one upping myself maybe from an idea standpoint, but one upping myself as far as build quality and trying to learn something new, and that's what kind of set me on the path I am today with starting 411 Works with my brothers and our buddy John, and well,
Speaker 1 1:37:44
you got a full shop now.
Speaker 3 1:37:45
Learning how to draw on CAD and progressing my skill set and machining and all of that.
Speaker 1 1:37:50
Yeah,
Speaker 3 1:37:51
yeah.
Speaker 1 1:37:51
Do you still work with Dom? Is he still
Speaker 3 1:37:54
not? No, we haven't worked together on a project in a few years. But yeah, I see him every time I come out here.
Speaker 1 1:38:00
I think he's you know one of probably the greatest fabricators that not enough people talk about.
Speaker 3 1:38:05
Yeah, and that's what I mean by like I've been surrounded by such great people all these years. Like Dominic is one of those. He's I met him. Didn't
Speaker 1 1:38:13
he start by like making like split wheels? Like he was one of the early guys who started cutting wheels down on a lane and making three pieces, and that was kind of like how I first saw his stuff. Then he made that crazy drift trailer for bringing tires to the track. That was like way overcomplicated. I mean, he
Speaker 3 1:38:28
was the first to do all that kind of stuff, but but I've known him since the Gardella days. So I met him back in like 2008. I was going
Speaker 1 1:38:35
to ask how, yeah, because he's a
Speaker 3 1:38:36
Jersey kid. Yeah, and Gardella's a Jersey guy. Yeah, and so they had he was Dominic was working for a guy that I think built one of Gary's front wheel drive drag cars. Okay, so he knew Dominic from then, and he was super young, and he had like a he had like a small machine. Yeah, he has a he had a small machine shop in a basement of his parents' house. Yeah, but he built crazy shit.
Speaker 1 1:39:00
Yeah,
Speaker 3 1:39:01
just at his parents' house in the shop.
Speaker 1 1:39:02
I think I met him initially at E Town. He was like just showing me a bunch of like he did like some seven series wheels or something like that as splits, and was showing me that on his phone. I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. And then obviously, you know, and then I found out he wrote BMX and was a ripper, and we connected more. And now he's got like some he has that like crazy Volvo project that's just like forever getting better.
Speaker 3 1:39:22
Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:39:22
like he's just for an
Speaker 3 1:39:23
8HP in it. I think as of recently.
Speaker 1 1:39:26
Yeah. What do you think about the whole 8HP sort of movement?
Speaker 3 1:39:29
I I don't know. I haven't I haven't tried one yet. I don't want to even talk shit about it because I have never experienced it. I think the the idea of it and and what I've been told it sounds incredible.
Speaker 1 1:39:40
Yeah.
Speaker 3 1:39:40
I just don't know. I've been like
Speaker 1 1:39:42
researching it because, as someone who lives in Los Angeles, having a car that like is can also by a switch be like an auto to like just get out of LA. Like the worst thing about driving from here in Long Beach up to like the canyons is getting to the canyons. It's like an hour and a half in traffic, which is miserable. I was like, that's actually a pretty cool thing. And a lot of guys I know have driven. I'm like, yeah, man, like you don't really feel the difference, right? So much the tech with the clutch, like way the way they actually have like you know, you know, hydraulic clutches that are just moving fluid, so it feels the same. And then there's like a potentiometer to control it. It's all crazy.
Speaker 3 1:40:19
I'll be the real test because I've been driving a lot of mechanical sequentials, not in eight HP styles. I'm sure it
Speaker 1 1:40:25
doesn't have the same. There's no clunkiness. You don't get that engagement feel. But if
Speaker 3 1:40:30
it's close enough, then like it's pretty pretty. A lot of it they could probably
Speaker 1 1:40:33
continue to simulate, right? So it's kind of wild to think. Yeah, I never thought someone would have really figured that out, but you know, and now you're even seeing it on the like, you're like the actual OEMs are creating things like that, or like Ferrari's got a concept, and then whatever. I haven't, I don't really know enough about new cars to talk on it because I don't care. But and like I think I think it was like Koenigsegg built something like that too. I was like, yeah, it's a interesting thing, yeah. But this is that like when you start to feel old, because you're like, I don't know, these young kids, you know, like they got, they got, they got EFI, got carburetor here. That's kind of how I feel like when I talk about stuff like this. I'm like, wait, so what is that? How does that work? So like, okay, so like, how does like compare that to like a straight cut gear? Like what? You're like wait, so it still has a torque. I'm so confused. So yeah, no, it's crazy. So what other stuff are you guys doing with the shop? Like, is it just sort of big Halo brand projects? Are you taking on customers? Or no,
Speaker 3 1:41:34
I don't ever want to do customer work. It's just one of yeah. I mean, I have plenty of friends that have shops, and it's just not something that I ever want to put my time into is yeah, and I don't mean that selfishly. I have
Speaker 1 1:41:45
no, it's because you're smart. Customers are the worst thing ever. Let me give you two tips, two things I've learned in life. Customers suck and employees suck. Those two things suck. Without those, everything's great. The minute you have customers and employees, and I have a lot of employees who I consider like really good friends who were once my employee, they sucked when they were employees. They're so much better now. I love Hurt now.
Speaker 3 1:42:05
You're telling Zach he sucks right now. Sorry, Zach. Sorry, Zach.
Speaker 1 1:42:09
You know which more I like Hurt as a friend than an employee. Oh, it's fantastic.
Speaker 3 1:42:14
No, yeah. So it's the the front shop is mainly to just service and maintain all the vehicles that I currently have on track. Yep. And then I have like a small, more of a manual manual machine shop in the back there. And then you've been collecting
Speaker 1 1:42:29
a lot of nice toys. I get a bunch of good old school shit. Because that's like for some reason Instagram knows that's when I want to see your shit when it's like either rally or like oh we got a new bridge. Yeah.
Speaker 3 1:42:43
So I just got the back. There's there's two buildings for the cars on the property. The front building's main the main auto shop part where the cars are parked and get serviced, and then the back building is where all the 411 works product is and where we ship everything. And then I just bought my first CNC. It's an older Haas VF one that I'll start learning on this this winter, and then our buddy John, partner in 411 Works, he has his own machine shop outside of his house, and that's where our CNC lathe and his his Haas VF two is. That makes the majority of the parts for for 411 works. So that's kind of the the deal. And I just want to continue to get better at machining and CAD drawing, and being able to make more shit that I can think up in my head for my own cars as well as other people's as well. Yeah, that's where kind of my a lot of gratification is coming from. Maybe besides just being behind the wheel,
Speaker 1 1:43:41
all of your cars have like that you've built have all then gone on to sort of do something right and like is that very much like how you think about them like I want to put this in this and then I want to go do this with it
Speaker 3 1:43:52
on kind of I mean for the most part yes like the Supra when we were building it I was like this is gonna be well the Ferrari car was strictly going to be a drift car. He knew that the Supra was going to be time attack slash drift car. And then when I drove it and tried to and did drift it, I was like, "This is not a drift car." And then just was like, "This is just a dedicated grip car now."
Speaker 8 1:44:14
Yeah.
Speaker 3 1:44:15
And then the was that just because
Speaker 1 1:44:17
of how the clutch setup was on it? Just
Speaker 3 1:44:18
the way the engine drove and the lack of torque and how much you really had to hammer it to to really get the tires to break loose and all that, I was just like, this is just not. And then like the throttle control, like blipping the throttle was like screaming top of hurting your ears, and then like silence, and then that again. I was like, this is just kind of odd, you know.
Speaker 1 1:44:37
Yeah.
Speaker 3 1:44:38
And then a Stout, I knew it was just going to be a dedicated drift car, and then the Celica. I honestly didn't even know what I was going to do with that. Besides, just try to have fun with an all-wheel drive platform.
Speaker 1 1:44:48
Yeah.
Speaker 3 1:44:49
And then when we got further into the project, I was like, "That was the
Speaker 1 1:44:52
Gateway Drug to Rally." First shot when you got it was,
Speaker 9 1:44:55
but I was. I think I texted
Speaker 1 1:44:56
you, and you're like, "I don't even know why I bought this, but it does cool donuts.".
Speaker 3 1:45:00
But it was like it came out so nice, and Victor absolutely just he put everything into that car. It came out so freaking nice. I was like, "Well, it's not a dirt car, so what am I going to do with this thing?" And then I was like, "Well, hill climb is like the next best option for asphalt," you know. Yeah. And then that became that.
Speaker 1 1:45:18
But I like that because I think so many other like big builds like get built and then they don't ever show up. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm responsible for it. I've built cars that like you just don't ever have a plan to where they go next, or you run out of money. You're like, fuck, what am I gonna go do with this thing? Yeah, or you scope creep it and you build it into something that doesn't actually fit anywhere. Like I think you learn that you build the car and you're, oh, I can't even drip this. It doesn't work the way it does because it sounds better on paper than it is in reality. Exactly.
Speaker 3 1:45:42
I mean, yes, that's just how some some of those things work out. And I just always wanted to have an all-wheel drive platform. Ever since I got a ride with Ken in his in his car, I was just like, "This is incredible!" Like one day I'm going to have a really like sick
Speaker 1 1:45:56
yeah
Speaker 3 1:45:57
higher. I say higher horsepower all-wheel drive car, but my car makes like 450. So, but all-wheel drive 450 is freaking insane, dude.
Speaker 1 1:46:05
I remember like when we first you talking about like daily transmission. We had done I don't know like 30 or 40 episodes at that point. We had a bunch of drift cars on, and we just like you know the timing didn't work for Ken to come to the shop, and he finally shows up, and like watching an all-wheel drive car move in the same place that we had gotten used to. We're like, yo, the speed is 3x. Yeah, like his ability to get from heat. It's it was frightening. Like all of us were like getting up onto the like you know up onto the. You're seeing
Speaker 3 1:46:34
a rear wheel drive car. Yeah, because it's like it's floating around and their left
Speaker 1 1:46:37
foot breaking it and they're slowing and like all of a sudden Ken came there and everyone was like, "Holy fuck, we're gonna die!" Like, and you're like the realization. It's actually one of the things. Like, I've had this conversation. I've had the conversation with you. I've had the conversation with other people. Why, like, it's so hard to make a rear wheel drive gymkhana because rear wheel drive cars just don't get out the same way. So if you slow them really far down to do like a donut around a you know a garbage can, getting back out from there is not slow. It's slow. Where like with we're like zero to 60 in 1.8 seconds. Like boom, we're fast again. Like we're right out the box again. It almost
Speaker 3 1:47:12
looks fake on camera sometimes. Where
Speaker 1 1:47:14
like I think like you did a really good job with all of the sort of like you know Toge Road style drift stuff that you guys did like in the later off seasons because like that was more fitting for the you know for the format of the call
Speaker 3 1:47:26
absolutely right
Speaker 1 1:47:26
like yeah going getting to a slow point getting into like a box having to do a donut and get out of it is ridiculous unfortunately the one time we tried to do that together we did it in an abandoned mall and it was like glass and it was like one of the worst experiences it was such a cool location. It was such a cool location, but it was like the worst surface ever. Yeah, I remember we got there in the first slide. I was like, "Well, this we should just go home."
Speaker 3 1:47:51
But it was so tight. Like the video came out great.
Speaker 1 1:47:54
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that was in the magic of of editing. And shout out to Andy Lapuka because he did the heavy lifting there. I just sat in the back and made notes, but yeah, it was it was definitely it's one of those ones like I wanted it I wanted it to work more than anything, but like once it started, I was like, this is not the right.
Speaker 3 1:48:13
I mean, you had a hard time with that old drive car there too. The surface, both yeah, it just wasn't brutal.
Speaker 1 1:48:17
There was just nothing there. Yeah, it was it was it was like driving on ice.
Speaker 3 1:48:21
Yes, it was
Speaker 1 1:48:22
with poles everywhere. Yeah, fun times. Fun
Speaker 3 1:48:26
and a two-drop.
Speaker 1 1:48:27
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I forgot about that. Yeah, there was that. There was that too. So yeah, but I mean, you only had to drive a part of it. That was like Chris had. Chris had to drive the
Speaker 3 1:48:36
pumped. I only had to do the easy part.
Speaker 1 1:48:39
You came in for a few moments, and then and then left.
Speaker 3 1:48:42
Yeah. Do
Speaker 1 1:48:43
you have um like do you have aspirations to still make that kind of content? Because like you did it for a while, and you just yeah
Speaker 1 1:48:49
just not been. I I thought I would see more of it from you when you started building cars that like really suited themselves to that.
Speaker 3 1:48:56
Yeah. It's just the I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say the budgets kind of dried up to do that type of stuff. It was like the the it wasn't the best use of money.
Speaker 1 1:49:06
Yeah, it was like
Speaker 3 1:49:07
the build projects and and developing and putting together build content over an episodic series was a lot more rewarding to a partners than in than doing these one off videos.
Speaker 1 1:49:19
And it's it's a huge risk. They might not hit. Yeah, you might put them up on the same day as some crazy thing happens in politics. Exactly, no one's watching it or whatever. Or it may just. It's also not. I always say this to people. Like, I feel like the the Jim Kana series is like weirdly grandfathered in YouTube algorithm, but like that's not what the current algorithm wants. The current algorithm wants you to do the same thing every
Speaker 3 1:49:41
week. But here's my other my other take on it is, you guys. I'm not saying you beat the dead horse, but you guys did it so we beat the dead horse for so many years. No, no, it was like that was is there to do. You guys left nothing on the table. We beat
Speaker 1 1:49:54
it long enough that it actually came back to life. We're like, holy shit, this thing woke up. Oh, sick. Go get trapped. Like yeah, everything
Speaker 3 1:50:02
that you guys have have done with Travis has been phenomenal.
Speaker 1 1:50:06
Yeah, it's a different beast with Travis, and it's been fun because he is. I mean, Ken would. I would have to push Ken to take risk. I have to talk Travis down. Yeah, I have to be like, bro, you like not good. Yeah, we're no, like we no, you like stop. Like you can go slower. Yeah. Like because everything for him is like this would look even better with 40 miles an hour more. I'm like we are we're already in the fucking like we're already in three digits. Like no stop. You know.
Speaker 3 1:50:33
But you guys, that's what I mean. You guys have done so much with Jim Khan on on so many different platforms and cars and between Ken and and Travis, it's he killed it for
Speaker 1 1:50:43
everybody. That's what I mean. Like the
Speaker 3 1:50:45
mountain videos that we did were great, and the different roads we all we chose were phenomenal, and like the cars were great. But I just feel like I was past that point, and just haven't had an idea,
Speaker 1 1:50:57
yeah,
Speaker 3 1:50:58
to really cook up that would be something worthy.
Speaker 1 1:51:02
When we made Jim Connor Five, Ken and I were like, "No more." We're like, "We like we reached the limit, right?" That's San Francisco. Yeah, and we're like, and it is the best one, right? Like, it really is the best film
Speaker 3 1:51:13
besides the first one. That's probably my next favorite. Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:51:16
like that one was the one, and then but like the partner still wanted it, so like we kept making them, and then we had some like hits. I I love Cal. I love the Los Angeles one because car change was because Unicorn was amazing. Yeah, the car
Speaker 10 1:51:29
was insane. And
Speaker 1 1:51:29
then I really enjoyed the one we did in Buffalo, which was actually like, how do we recreate the first film? Yeah. So like it was just a abandoned.
Speaker 3 1:51:37
That was a little bit of a sleeper, to be honest. I think it was better than.
Speaker 1 1:51:40
Yeah. Well, there was two parts to it. One was that it was like we didn't try to get like crazy access location. That wasn't the concept. It was like it was a return to that first film. Like, can we go create the rawness? But then it was like, can we add some danger? So like jumping in front of the train, sliding toward the water edge, like these kind of crazier moments, but the other part of it was was Ken fucking hated that car, and he was trying to fucking break it and crash it the whole time. Oh, he hated that car, and it was like right when it was right before we left Ford.
Speaker 3 1:52:11
Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:52:12
and obviously we still did one more film, but that car he felt cost him the Rallycross Championship. So he just he he like he he you know it's like
Speaker 3 1:52:22
just I get it it
Speaker 1 1:52:23
was like anger fucking like he just hated it and was like so every time I'm like yeah can you get close to that wall yeah sure let's fucking crash it like he was in a different state and it was like it was like the it was the year of violence and it looked great on camera because he just was like you could tell that he was didn't give a fuck because he gave no fucks with the unicorn, he was like, "I don't want to crash this thing. I love this thing." It was like a different relationship in the way he drove that thing. But no, I get it. And honestly, when they asked me to come back to do the Travis film, you know, I'd already left him again. I was gone. You know, like was rather separated from the brand. wasn't wearing the clothing anymore. Like was kind of like cool. That was in that that that changed. Travis obviously was a big leverage for me, but it was actually Will Rogey who said to me, "He's like, I don't think you realize, but like, this may be the last time you ever get to do this because like people ain't spending money for these kind of things anymore."
Speaker 3 1:53:14
Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:53:14
he's like, "This lives uniquely in this world of Junkana, and like there aren't a bunch of other people who are getting handed a ton of money to go do whatever the hell they want in Australia. He's like, so if you enjoy making these, like you should put your differences aside and go do it. And I'm happy you did because I think it's one of my favorite films from a filmmaker side because we got to do everything the way we wanted to do it. Like we got like the lighting was right, the cameras were right, like everything just came together the way I wanted it to be, and it was because I put the time in to do that. But this isn't about that. But my point is, is like, yeah, there's just a window that I think all that shit closed on years ago, and like somehow that thing was able to keep going. Yeah.
Speaker 3 1:53:54
Well, because it was unique, and you guys had the budget to just keep creating these insane. That was the part, and the budget just kept
Speaker 1 1:54:00
rising. I mean, it it was always it was a horrible business model because it was like constantly increasing the budget to get the same view. Right, like it's a diminishing. I mean, but
Speaker 3 1:54:10
that's the way it goes. That's why Turk basically stopped because we were like, we we can't do any more $10,000 ideas because half this money is going to production, and then the other half is trying to like plead and beg to be able to do these ideas for free. What was your
Speaker 1 1:54:26
favorite Turked idea? Because you guys had some great stuff that I feel like was just a few years early. Like I think, like I look at YouTube now and I'm like, man, those were like such better ideas.
Speaker 3 1:54:37
I wish. I think the one that didn't work that I really wanted to have work was the guardrail car.
Speaker 1 1:54:44
Yeah, guardrail car was great.
Speaker 3 1:54:45
That thing was a killer, though. Yeah, we
Speaker 1 1:54:47
ran out. I was there that day. We ran out of time, and we were rushing it.
Speaker 3 1:54:51
I smashed the one jay on. You smashed the
Speaker 1 1:54:52
one jay on it. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 1:54:54
And I smashed my missile car. Not that that mattered, but I also did it to that too. Like that thing. It was a great idea. Just. The execute it needed more work.
Speaker 4 1:55:01
Yeah,
Speaker 3 1:55:02
need a little bit more effort put into the actual build of it.
Speaker 1 1:55:05
Yeah, because I think we discussed like I think afterwards like oh would it be good to have like some shock absorbers on the rail so that there was like a little bit of give when you do tap it because it's you just like hit it it was like demolish the car like
Speaker 3 1:55:17
making a wall move as you're trying to hit it was a lot harder than we thought and for
Speaker 1 1:55:21
those for those listening, you want to explain what the concept was, and and so they can understand it visually. For those who don't get to see the little photo that pops up right now, the concept was just based on trying to drift close to a wall, right? Because at this moment, the key what was the buzzword? It was like the Pee Wee Playhouse word, proximity. Everything in drifting was proximity. It was like, but this was the initial buzz for it, right? We were past gangster entry. We were now into the proximity era of drifting, where it was like about being, you know, inches off of the wall. So,
Speaker 3 1:55:54
so I built. I had this. What the heck was the car? Is it old? It was a. It was a Crown Vic. Yeah, Crown Vic, and my buddy Jeff and Jay at CIP Motorsports, they actually fabbed it up. They put these two by four tubes, metal tubes, and they just built a frame around it. And I ordered guardrail from I forget what
Speaker 1 1:56:15
you like bought it. I think you bought it brand
Speaker 3 1:56:17
new. I bought it brand new. Really expensive.
Speaker 1 1:56:21
We're being like it was like six grand in guardrails. It was ridiculous, but
Speaker 3 1:56:24
I invested all this network A money into this one thing to do because I thought it was going to be sick. And the guardrails are mounted on there, rigid. And the idea, obviously, was to like drive around Englishtown and pick spots to where you could ride the guardrail on the car, and then a car moves to another location. You come back around, then bang, you hit another side, and you kind of continue hitting this like moving wall. Now, it was a great idea in theory, but actually trying it was super difficult because just the fact of the wall moving, your trajectory that you kind of choose to head into it was it was just really tough to line it up, so I overshot every single time and and basically just slapped the ass into it really hard. Yeah, but we and then we ran out of time and we just never used it again.
Speaker 1 1:57:12
Yeah, and then it just sat at English Town forever. It might still. I looked for it the other time when we were filming Drifter. I was looking for it and I couldn't find it. Somebody got some scrap. Yeah, got scrapped by someone. I think my favorite Turkish idea thing that you guys did was opposite controls. That was super fun. Yeah, I mean, talk about like a low budget idea that worked way better than I expected it to. That was an absolute. What was the? Where did you get the idea for that
Speaker 3 1:57:38
one? The school cars.
Speaker 1 1:57:42
Oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 1:57:43
That you yeah they had the yeah like the driver old school drivers' cars right where you
Speaker 1 1:57:49
had like the separate brake yeah yeah
Speaker 3 1:57:50
and I was like well I'm not putting a second steering wheel in but like let's
Speaker 1 1:57:53
yeah so the for those listening the concept was the driver had a steering wheel but the passenger had the pedals.
Speaker 3 1:58:01
Yeah, the driver had the steering wheel and a shifter.
Speaker 1 1:58:04
Right,
Speaker 3 1:58:04
and the passenger had the handbrake
Speaker 1 1:58:07
and the pedals
Speaker 3 1:58:08
and the pedals.
Speaker 1 1:58:08
Yeah, so it was like right hand drive kit for the pedals only, and you had to
Speaker 3 1:58:13
call it out. It was like so they were yelling shifts, and it's like two
Speaker 1 1:58:16
drivers who were trying to do their own thing and do it their own way, and you're like yelling at each other. It was just comedy. Yeah, it was
Speaker 3 1:58:21
super fun. We did two. We did two episodes of that. The first year, I think, was it just my car, or was the first year because Vaughn had the controls done on his Fox Buddy Mustang too? I think it was
Speaker 1 1:58:32
for sure. But we did
Speaker 3 1:58:33
we did two two episodes of that
Speaker 1 1:58:35
blast. Yeah, I mean we were just doing dumb shit in that era. I this wasn't Turk. It was like something we were doing. What you guys were there filming Turk, and you were doing like an eight, like an Alpine Iron Star episode. So that was
Speaker 3 1:58:47
Game of Drift.
Speaker 1 1:58:48
That was Game of Drift. Yeah, and we were doing another thing, and we did. We were like tasing Chris Forsberg. Do you remember that? Like while he was driving. Like I look back at that, I'm like, this was a bad idea. Like we like and like Tony Angelo had the taser and he's a fucking asshole and he's like putting it in his neck, like like full going for the jugular. I was like, I don't think that would pass like any like HR team nowadays. Like, hey, we're gonna tase the shit out of a driver on a course while he's while he's driving. What's the
Speaker 3 1:59:18
insurance policy? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 1 1:59:20
it was a fun era. Do you do you miss the like sort of that missile car era? I feel like even that is something that feels ancient now. Like the concept of the missile car and like, but also
Speaker 3 1:59:33
I don't E
Speaker 1 1:59:33
Town missile car era was like its own kind of thing. I
Speaker 3 1:59:36
feel like it did its time.
Speaker 6 1:59:37
Yeah, it
Speaker 3 1:59:37
was absolutely perfect for the time that we had doing that. And then I'm I'm kind of glad it because it was getting kind of crazy. And what part
Speaker 1 1:59:46
of it was crazy?
Speaker 3 1:59:47
Just the driving and the recklessness of it. It was like you truly did not. I well, speaking for myself, I truly did not care about this car. Right. So I would be driving hard, like really hard into people.
Speaker 1 1:59:58
Yeah. It was like like. Purposely trying to
Speaker 3 2:00:00
crash, but like purposely coming drifting into them, like yeah, because that
Speaker 1 2:00:04
was part of what banging doors
Speaker 3 2:00:05
like hard as hell. Yeah, and I was just you know like how much how much of that can you do before you're just like
Speaker 1 2:00:12
yeah
Speaker 3 2:00:13
yeah you know because it's a lot. It was just really aggressive and it served a purpose. It was fun.
Speaker 1 2:00:18
It's funny like I'll talk to younger kids in drifting, and they'll be they'll be like, "Have you ever seen Blood Masters?" It's like, dude, I just showed
Speaker 3 2:00:25
my son that the other day. Oh, really? I'm like, after I, because I haven't watched it in quite some time, and after I watched it, I was like, "Damn, this is one of the best pieces of drifting content."
Speaker 1 2:00:35
It's fantastic ever.
Speaker 1 2:00:36
It's fantastic. The the like, there's like the scene where like Andy's like hung upside down. Like I don't even remember. I don't even know why it was there. But it he well,
Speaker 3 2:00:46
he was dressed up as oh, because they had E Town at the time. They had the Tough Mudder Core set. So they had that net. They had that net and all the containers around the property and all that. Yeah. And I remember Chris said, I forget how the whole thing even started, to be honest. But Chris will probably have more, more on that. But Forsberg, I remember, got access. He hit up Mike Knapp, and Mike's like, "Have fun." The off-season track was closed, and we just all what 1314 of us went there like a bunch of maniacs, yeah,
Speaker 3 2:01:14
and had the place to ourselves.
Speaker 1 2:01:16
Man, the Knapp family has so much to do with drifting, and I don't even know if they realize it.
Speaker 3 2:01:22
They do,
Speaker 1 2:01:23
yeah.
Speaker 3 2:01:23
They know. I mean, yeah.
Speaker 1 2:01:25
I know Chris gets it because he's there and he's seeing. Chris gets it, but
Speaker 3 2:01:28
Mike, Mike also gets it because he now he's been driving for years at this. Oh, I know, but
Speaker 1 2:01:32
I'm saying like they're involved, like the the access. They started drifting. They guys created Chris,
Speaker 3 2:01:37
Tony, Matt Petty. Like they started drifting. All of them for everybody on the East Coast. That was such
Speaker 1 2:01:45
a trip,
Speaker 3 2:01:45
yeah,
Speaker 1 2:01:46
for like a bunch of a drag strip that just saw an opportunity. Yeah, I actually like I I won't bring it up now because we'll save it for a different project that you and I are talking about in the background. But I had a great conversation with with Mike Knapp and his story of the Tony Angelo story that I only know from Tony is so different because Tony's story is like we were looking for a place to go slide cars and no tracks would let us go and we went there and we're like hey can we go you know skid around in your you know in your parking lot basically right yeah and it's actually crazy when you hear Mike story and realizing that like he already knew and he was already like initiating I heard part of that story actually. What was going on in drifting because of another friend, right? Who was like in Japan, and it's like it's like what are the chances, right, that those two things happen to combine, dude? You get Mike on the show, dude. I would love to get. He has stories
Speaker 3 2:02:34
for days.
Speaker 1 2:02:35
I would actually beyond drifting. I have a plan. Well, realize my history with nap goes way earlier than drifting because I used to race front wheel drive drag cars and we were out there all the time. So and like that was the spot. So like I knew him before all of this, and also when he built the road course, like zero to 60 used to do like you know car reviews at the road course there. So and that's actually how I met Matt Petty was we needed someone to slide a Viper, and I he showed up and was like, I'll slide the Viper for you, like, cool. And then like smoked a set of tires in like three runs. And he's like, Did you guys bring more tires? We're like, Nah, because like you know, it was like I don't know, like it just hadn't occurred to me that like we were gonna ruin them in three passes, you know. And also that course was like absolute sandpaper back then, but it still is. But
Speaker 3 2:03:20
it's but it's the best course. Yeah,
Speaker 1 2:03:21
yeah, greatest place on earth. But um, yeah, no, it uh, like I think that that's a whole one. I actually at some point I wanted to go just do a bring the whole pod to New York because like Tony Angelo, him. There's just a bunch and a bunch of people I came up with. I think there's just such a good group out there that like they don't. No one. It's weird. People don't come to L. A. as much back in the day. I think like I think the industry has just changed.
Speaker 3 2:03:43
Well, for everybody on the East Coast, why would they? You don't need to come that way.
Speaker 1 2:03:46
Yeah, but like back in the day, you guys were here all the time.
Speaker 3 2:03:50
We were.
Speaker 1 2:03:51
I felt like there was. I felt like there was this weird sort of moment, and a moment that I'm nostalgic for of like the like Venice years, where it was like,
Speaker 3 2:04:01
well, because Jacob got a place there, so it was easy to just come out because you had a place. There
Speaker 1 2:04:06
was always a place. Your place, Jacob's place. Like, and I had like a fucking, I had a three bedroom and like there was all these open rooms.
Speaker 3 2:04:12
X Games was out there, so we'd always come out to hang out with that. Yeah, and there was just like
Speaker 1 2:04:17
a bunch of different stuff. But like, I just feel like nowadays, like, I just don't feel like as many people move through anymore. Yeah, it was like, and even I mean, during the Hoonigan era, it was like it was always people who were like out going through and doing stuff like that.
Speaker 3 2:04:28
And it always felt like everything was happening out here during that time. Yeah, like there really was a lot of stuff that was happening. Yeah, where do you feel like
Speaker 1 2:04:34
it's all happening now? Florida?
Speaker 3 2:04:36
I think it's just spread out.
Speaker 1 2:04:37
Yeah, just everywhere.
Speaker 3 2:04:38
I think it's yeah. I don't think there's like any one location
Speaker 1 2:04:41
that
Speaker 3 2:04:41
you can really pinpoint. I guess it depends on what you're into.
Speaker 1 2:04:45
Yeah, yeah. No, it's true. I mean, that's the one thing that the internet has given us is like you just kind of feel connection everywhere. Connection everywhere, whether that's good or bad is a whole other podcast. But yeah, it just makes you feel like I'm seeing everything. Yeah, you know, it's why we put Ferrari in. And fucking cars now. You used to just compete with the guys in your neighborhood. Now you got to compete with the entire world. You know, so you're like, got to be on another level. So, yeah, man, it's crazy. Well, I'm, I'm, I'm excited for you to get your final weekend in. But is it? I imagine it must be bittersweet in a way. Yeah.
Speaker 3 2:05:19
I don't know how I'm gonna feel on Saturday mostly. It's gonna be mixed emotions for sure. Probably gonna cry a lot.
Speaker 1 2:05:26
Yeah,
Speaker 3 2:05:27
yeah, yeah. That's all right. It's good to try. It's good to have those
Speaker 1 2:05:30
emotions.
Speaker 11 2:05:30
Yeah.
Speaker 1 2:05:31
I'm gonna ask a total side question. Do you feel like you become? Are you more emotional after you had kids?
Speaker 3 2:05:39
Yeah.
Speaker 1 2:05:39
Yeah. It's crazy, right? Yeah, like my empathy, like volume got turned up to like like way higher. Like I don't know if I had a ton of empathy when I was younger, or just a New York state of mind. You just kind of were like, life sucks, deal with it, you know. And now I'm like so different. Now I'm like, oh man, like I just feel for other people in a different way, and it was totally from having a child. Like changes. Well, I don't
Speaker 3 2:06:03
think any. You don't. You don't really know what it's like until you know what it's like, dude. You don't know that you're gonna love this thing more than anything else in the entire world. You know. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1 2:06:14
almost an emotion that like you weren't ready for. I
Speaker 3 2:06:17
said thing, but yeah, no, no, I know what you mean.
Speaker 1 2:06:18
I know you mean. And it's also an emotion that like you never were ready for,
Speaker 3 2:06:24
right?
Speaker 1 2:06:24
And like people can explain it, but it doesn't make sense until it happens. And like you hear it all, and you're like, yeah, yeah, no, I get it, I understand it, and then it happens, and you're like, holy shit, this is completely different than what I thought it was going to be. And yeah, for sure, I one I think was the empathy thing was was like that first piece, but I think it's like I like like it brings like, and I don't want to get like too fucking whatever. Like I'm not really religious anymore, and like I'm not spiritual, but it's like it has this like meaning of life thing to it where you're like I get it now, but at the same time, I tell this to all my friends who decide not to have children, which a lot of my friends decide not to have children. Like I have more friends without kids who are, you know, past sort of kid bearing era, and I was like, you know what, it's fine, man, because you don't know,
Speaker 3 2:07:14
right? Well, you don't know. Like I didn't
Speaker 1 2:07:16
know. I didn't know until I had my kids. So like, you will be fine. Like now that I have one, not having one would would be like would not be something I would want to do. But now that I have one, it's like cool. But before that, I was like completely happy, just enjoying. I mean, I wasn't. I had when I was 40. I had 40 years of my life. Not gonna lie, I think I
Speaker 3 2:07:34
think quite about the times that Shannon and I could just go travel and pick up and do whatever the hell we wanted. Ashley
Speaker 1 2:07:40
and I traveled the fucking world. We were fucking everywhere together. It was fucking amazing, and then we have a kid, and like it's not the same thing, but it's still amazing. It's just a different. It's just it's just a different one. Yeah. Was that at all a part of sort of your retirement?
Speaker 3 2:07:54
Um, I'd say so.
Speaker 1 2:07:57
Yeah,
Speaker 3 2:07:57
it definitely played a role.
Speaker 1 2:07:58
Yeah,
Speaker 3 2:07:59
I I think yeah, because when you have when you have a kid, it changed for me. It was the change was so much more than I ever anticipated. It like changed every detail of my life, every single one. And working through that as a new parent or in a new family, and with with my wife Shannon, it was it's a lot, dude. It's a lot, and for for me who travels quite a bit and and has been since you know my son's four and a half and traveling all those years, it's just a lot, man. It's just a lot. Yep. And you come home, and your kid misses you and you leave, and you know there's a lot of emotion there. So yeah, it weighs on you.
Speaker 1 2:08:46
I, as having someone who has an almost seven year old now, which is just crazy to think about, because he still feels like three or four to me. It gets harder when they get smarter.
Speaker 3 2:08:56
Yeah,
Speaker 1 2:08:57
when they say things to you like heartbreaking things, like I wish you were more. I why I wish our family was more like a regular family. You're like, what's that mean? Well, my friend's daddy doesn't like have to leave to go to work, meaning like he doesn't have to leave the country because I was like in fucking Australia for a month or Japan. You're like, oh, and it makes you just be like, why do I do? Why do I fuck all of this? Turn it all off. Like I'll go fucking do something else. Yeah, you know. And it's like where in the past, I mean, you knew me. Like I was like I put the I put work in front of everything. I was like I fucking let the rest of my life fall apart for work. And then all of a sudden I was like, oh, I got this thing that's like, and it makes you think different. It's it was one of the major reasons I left you again because I was just like I don't want to do like I don't have the energy for this anymore.
Speaker 3 2:09:44
I I feel like you did it right though, and I feel like I wish I did it sooner, but it never would have been the right time.
Speaker 1 2:09:51
Yeah,
Speaker 3 2:09:51
like the amount of traveling that we we have all done throughout our careers in this sport. Like if we did it any earlier, just it would. Really fallen back, and like we wouldn't have been
Speaker 1 2:10:02
yeah
Speaker 3 2:10:03
great parents. Only not because we didn't want to be. Well, theoretically it was. Yeah, and you don't
Speaker 1 2:10:08
know it either. You don't know it when you're missing it. I think I was absolutely forced into it because I had a child, and then the pandemic hit.
Speaker 3 2:10:16
Yeah,
Speaker 1 2:10:17
so I had this like forced. You can't travel. You can't. I mean, I still did. I still went and made a gymkhana during the pandemic, and was like, I literally got on a plane once to go to Maryland. I was the only person on the plane. I was like, what the fuck? Like early pandemic, but you know. And then I came home and lived in a different room in the house for four days because we had no idea what the fuck COVID was yet, and I had an infant in the house. It was like a wild time, but it made me under. It made me realize how much more value I was taking out of being home with my son than like making another Jim Kana film.
Speaker 3 2:10:49
Yeah,
Speaker 1 2:10:50
like you said, the horse was dead. Why am I going to keep beating it and not spend time with my kid? You know, although he wants me to go make him because now I get now he wants to watch him. I watch him with him, and it's like a totally different perspective. He likes my like my least favorite ones are his favorite ones. Nice. Which I'm like, huh, that's weird. Yeah, because he just takes something different out of it. You know. So, but yeah, it's it's it's no man. Kids are kids are great. They're they are. They definitely shift your mindset, and you're coming to an amazing moment because it gets harder, but it also gets better in that you will, and you may already start to see this already. But like, I think there's this natural shift where like little young boys start being like, "Oh, daddy's actually really fun."
Speaker 3 2:11:32
Yeah. Where
Speaker 1 2:11:33
like in the beginning, it's like mom provides me security, safety, and all these things, and now all of a sudden it's like daddy's gonna show me how to do wheelies on my quad, and like that's where like you start to get this different. Daddy's gonna play with RC cars with me or whatever it is, and that starts to bond. And all of a sudden, like you get this weird moment where you're like, I don't even really need friends anymore. Like I got this little dude; he's sick. I taught my kid how to. Well, now that they don't sponsor me anymore, I guess I could say I taught my kid how to use my my backhoe, and it's like, yeah, it was like he's he's sitting there like just digging holes, like big holes, like holes you could bury like a like a lot of people in my just for fun, just for fun, like why not, why not? And you are like, man, this is sick. It's sick being able to like just control somebody's world. Yeah, yeah. I would imagine you're going through through the same thing right now. Yeah, you get to see all that. Yeah,
Speaker 3 2:12:25
it's just starting to kick on with my my older son.
Speaker 1 2:12:28
Yeah,
Speaker 3 2:12:28
because now he wants to do cool stuff. Not that he didn't. You know what I mean? Now he's doing things that I also like to do.
Speaker 1 2:12:35
Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3 2:12:36
yeah,
Speaker 1 2:12:37
yeah. No, that's it's it's it's definitely a fun moment. I remember when you and I don't think you and I had spoken in a little bit, and you meant you posted that you guys were expecting, and then you post your kid, and I think I wrote you this like I was still like a I was like a year and a half out, and you're still in this glow of like you still feel like a new dad, and I was just like, dude, this is literally I'm like so happy for you, this is fucking great, like it's it is the best, and you probably were like the fuck, Scott? No, not at all. So, but no, because you already had the you already had the dad experience, and it took me by surprise. You know, I it does it changed the entire priority in my life of what was well. You can
Speaker 3 2:13:13
yeah, and you can set priorities and and try to
Speaker 1 2:13:17
yeah
Speaker 3 2:13:17
get as much experience, but until it happens, you just you truly don't know.
Speaker 1 2:13:21
Yeah. So let me ask you a question: Has it slowed you down in the car?
Speaker 3 2:13:24
No.
Speaker 1 2:13:25
No. You shut that off.
Speaker 3 2:13:27
Yeah.
Speaker 1 2:13:27
Yeah. I think for I mean clearly there's plenty of dads out there who've gone there and drove really fast. There's obviously, but I know other guys who've slowed down. There's like that famous like Alonzo quote, right? Which was like, you know, it was it Max who said about Alonso. I forget. He was something of like, you know, how did you know he wasn't gonna push the corner? He's like, because he's got a wife and kids to go home to, and I don't. And I was like, that is just such a like hair raising moment where you're like, yep, like no matter what, it's there. There's a kernel there somewhere, you know. So yeah, but but you you don't. It's you can separate those. Yeah,
Speaker 3 2:14:01
I have so far, yeah,
Speaker 1 2:14:02
yeah,
Speaker 3 2:14:03
yeah. Not to say that won't happen in the future, yeah. You know,
Speaker 1 2:14:06
yeah. Have you, as you've gotten older and like you've been doing this for so long, like, do you find that your approach to the sport has like, I mean, obviously it's changed from when you were younger, but like, are you? I know you started training midway through, you were doing like taking that stuff more seriously. Like, are you into the like, like the meditating and clearing your mind? Like, are you fully there in drifting, or what? Like, I realize this was your last weekend, or is it sort of more just a?
Speaker 3 2:14:34
This year has definitely been less preparation for me, and I put more preparation into like the hill climbs in the rally event. Like for me, the the hill climbs are such a breath of fresh air. I feel like it almost helped a little bit with drifting, just because I was so passionate about a new thing. It still brought more energy over to over to the drift car as well.
Speaker 1 2:14:55
Yeah,
Speaker 3 2:14:56
you know. I mean, I haven't had the best results this year, but
Speaker 1 2:14:59
that makes it even. Better think of how good it'll be to actually finish a rally. Yeah,
Speaker 3 2:15:03
I mean, there's multiple things, and you know, we had team restructure that was tough for me this seat coming into this season with with on a performance size and car setup side. So this this year was my send off year, and I wanted to drive without applying all that pressure that I have the last 19 years of my career, and I've been able to do that. And for better or for worse, it's been a weird feeling. I think the pressure, and since I've always applied that pressure on myself, probably ended up helping me in the end.
Speaker 1 2:15:36
Yeah,
Speaker 3 2:15:36
results-wise and driving performance.
Speaker 1 2:15:38
What do you think was your favorite year?
Speaker 3 2:15:41
Oh man!
Speaker 1 2:15:43
Top three favorite years.
Speaker 3 2:15:45
I hate to say because it was such a bad time for everybody, but the COVID year was one of my better years. Yeah, and my it was my first year in the in the GR Corolla on the Papadakis team, and it just felt like podiums were effortless and like things were just rocking and rolling, and I was super excited to drive that car and
Speaker 3 2:16:05
loved the package, loved the setup on the car. Do
Speaker 1 2:16:09
you like working with Steph?
Speaker 3 2:16:10
Yeah,
Speaker 1 2:16:11
I mean, and he's like a, I mean, full engineering brain in there that like it's all he thinks about. Yeah, we had him on the show, and it it's you know you talk to him for an extended period of time and you just realize like he's just so in it. Any other top years?
Speaker 3 2:16:30
So 2020 was a good year, and then there's just like bits and pieces of other years. 2015 was a really good year for me with that TRD schemed 86. We had some really good drives and podiums that year. 2009 was my breakout year.
Speaker 1 2:16:49
Yeah,
Speaker 3 2:16:49
almost won the championship. And then, yeah, and then what was the other? I had another really good year with Steph. Was that 21? Was it back to back? I had two good years, or was it 23 or 22? I can't remember.
Speaker 1 2:17:04
It was a blur that whole yeah, but
Speaker 3 2:17:05
I've I've had I've had quite a few good years with Steph, which has been awesome, and yeah,
Speaker 1 2:17:10
yeah.
Speaker 3 2:17:11
So I've had my periods of time.
Speaker 1 2:17:13
Yeah, and again, like we said this earlier, like I know the retax year was a difficult. Oh, so I it was a tough year. I do think like you were ripping that year and making a lot of noise and like and like upsetting cars that were worth four times as much. Yeah,
Speaker 3 2:17:26
I think I got three, three or four podiums that year.
Speaker 1 2:17:30
Yeah,
Speaker 3 2:17:30
yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 2:17:32
And it was like a ragtag car. Yeah,
Speaker 3 2:17:34
I put a lot of effort into that car, a lot.
Speaker 12 2:17:38
Yeah,
Speaker 3 2:17:38
and it did pretty well.
Speaker 1 2:17:40
Yeah, it was wild, and you had like those like the 1550 2s were on there that year. I think knew they were like 24 pounds. Everything was just probably more than that. Looked cool at 20. It was like they were they
Speaker 3 2:17:50
were they did they were stout. Yeah,
Speaker 1 2:17:51
they looked good though. I remember like every like like the livery was cool, but the wrap was like like because the car was so mangled underneath that it was just dude all
Speaker 3 2:18:00
these years blur sometimes. Like I forgot that year I had my buddy, my buddy Bobby, who's still working with me to this day. He was crewing a car. My my brother, twin brother Justin, was spotting for me.
Speaker 1 2:18:10
Yep, like that
Speaker 3 2:18:11
was that was a good year. Really felt like we're all like in it together. Even Evan was out even helping me at some events. Like it was it was good year.
Speaker 1 2:18:19
No, it was definitely that. Like like I said, it was the year where it was like we were like, all right, we're just gonna make this work. Yeah, you know, totally figure figure it out and kind of fun. And it was a fun year for me because it was really my first year of being in it with everybody, with not just like sort of showing up at one event or another, but like being there and kind of like going, yeah, I was invested, and there was a bunch of different drivers we're all involved with, but like you were the one that was like you had this amazing underdog story, and it ended up being like this kind of like perfect piece. I think worked out really well. So yeah, it was fun times. Well, sir, I do I do know you need to get to the track. I know we've been chatting
Speaker 3 2:18:56
for a while. Yeah, that's what that's how this show
Speaker 1 2:18:58
is. It's like we're past two hours, which means that the comment well won't complain. Like two hours is the bare minimum, three hours is the new expectation. So like if if Zach posts this, there will be a comment. Like hope you win three hours, but you know maybe next time after you go and do a couple rallies, come back we'll have something to talk to. Oh for sure. Yeah, I'm hoping
Speaker 3 2:19:20
I can do that because that means I was able to do more rallies. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1 2:19:23
it'd be cool. And we definitely should do some stuff in the future with Lee. Obviously, you guys are both on Rockstar now, and there's like obviously a bunch more rally kind of fun stuff to go do. And yeah, so you should go do some rally sprints at Rally Ready if you haven't.
Speaker 3 2:19:36
Could do that. Team O'Neill has some rallies. Yeah, the rally kid's
Speaker 1 2:19:38
nice because it's just a simple, easy to go in. They got cars you can rent if you just want to show up and try all the drive for a little bit.
Speaker 3 2:19:44
They have 80 sixes too, which is perfect for yeah.
Speaker 1 2:19:46
All of them kind of have that. Even like the Dirt Fish group is doing this thing at Willow now, so like the sport is finally like having pathways in, which is which is rad to see. But yeah, I don't know, man. I could ask you questions for another hour. It's been really nice. Catch up with you. I feel like it's been years since we've had to the chance to chat and talk all that. I enjoy I enjoy rally turk dad turk. This is a good chapter. I also really enjoy fabricator turk. Like this is like plenty
Speaker 3 2:20:13
of machining videos coming soon for sure. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1 2:20:15
yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that. I like that. Yeah, it's it's an elevation from like drifter turk. I turk the thing you let me borrow Turk. I showed up with my whole team to sleep on your floor Turk. Like this is a this is a good Turk. I like this. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, dude, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate your time, and I hope you have an amazing last weekend. And FD make a good story out of it. And if you don't, it doesn't matter because you had a great fucking 20 plus years. So, and I look forward to seeing you on the election alley stage.
Speaker 3 2:20:46
Thanks, brother. Well, yeah, fun, fun to reflect.
Speaker 1 2:20:49
Yeah, it always is on the year that I've
Speaker 3 2:20:50
been reflecting a lot. So it's perfect.
Speaker 1 2:20:53
Which is the year you've been reflecting a lot? This this year's been a reflection year. Yeah, I mean, look, you've got 20 years of this, and a lot of people who listen to this have been here the whole time, and they'll enjoy the moments they remember. There's also a lot of people who listen to the show who don't know about off seasons. They probably didn't even know that you were on Hoonigan at some point. They don't know any of that, so it becomes a place where get to people get to dive in a little deeper and go research other pieces of your story. And we'll throw some links in if you haven't seen off seasons because it was a monumental thing when it came out. Because at the time there was only like two videos out, so it was a it was a real drought on YouTube at the time. It was like that that it was
Speaker 3 2:21:28
a slow build. Yeah, it was like that
Speaker 1 2:21:29
that and a guy trying to jump a yellow Lincoln with wings over the fucking St. Lawrence River. Remember that? Yes, and it was always getting players. Yeah, whole other story though. But that's all I'm talking about. But anyway, thanks again, sir.
Speaker 3 2:21:39
All right, brother.
Speaker 1 2:21:40
Appreciate
Speaker 3 2:21:40
you. Yep.
Speaker 1 2:21:59
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai