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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
Welcome back, everyone! It is another episode of Very Vehicular. Guess what? I'm still your host. That's right, Brian Scotto. Today we get into a very kind of academic and deep conversation around the universe of drifting. When I say that, I mean like not just Formula Drift, like the whole thing, especially what it needs, what it doesn't need, how it continues to sort of grow in America. It's a great conversation, and to do that, we have Greg Bussell. And if you don't know Greg, it's probably because you're not that deep into drifting. If but if you do, you know Cora Works, you know his show Gridwalk on Racer, and you know that this man absolutely loves this sport with all of his heart. This man puts his full chest in when he talks about drifting. He's got some really interesting ideas on things, and he's just actually just a wonderful human being. I don't say that about a lot of people, but we've only recently met. But we have a mutual friend, Andy Sepp, who's another wonderful human being, so I said, you know what, bring him on the show. Let's have a great conversation. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did. It's a long one, three hours plus, and at the end, it gets it gets really heavy. I'm just going to admit because unfortunately, something the two of us share is losing a good friend that we worked with, and we get into that, and it gets real. So enjoy it. All right, Greg. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 01:51
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 01:52
You just got off the final event of the year of FD. I think before we get into that, I do want you to do like a very quick primer for our audience. Like, what do you do right now? What is your what is your job?
Speaker 2 02:03
My job. It's funny. So going into this year, I've been running a shop out of Atlanta, Georgia, for many many years.
Speaker 1 02:11
We'll get into Troy Works. That's like its own chapter. It's its own little
Speaker 2 02:14
chapter. But that that ended January one. Yeah. And going January one, I didn't. I had really no plan. I didn't know what I was doing. I knew that I didn't want to lose the community that I was in. I didn't want to get away from this automotive scene that I love and share so much. And luckily, I was able to get planted in four mil drift this year. So they gave me a little segment called Grid Walk. So each event, I get to go through the grid, talk to the drivers right as they're coming off of the last practice session, so these drivers are practicing, get them ready for their actual competition. They have like a 30-minute break, okay, until they go straight into top 32. They want to get to their mind, you know, the headset of "I'm about to go, listen to the music, lay down, whatever it is." It's a ritual, and you need to go screw theirs. I just mess it all up. It's not the amount of drivers that it's not like I ask improper questions or kind of like jab them or anything that gets them upset is that I break their zone.
Speaker 1 03:07
Who's the driver who's most difficult to interrupt?
Speaker 2 03:11
Connor Shanahan.
Speaker 1 03:11
Oh really? Connor Shannon. I don't know Connor, so okay, I don't
Speaker 2 03:14
either. Which makes it even worse. I don't know. I mean, I can barely understand him, but he's over there with his headsets in. He's like he's gunning for a championship all season he's promised championships to Jerry Yang the guy who built his car GT radial his tires
Speaker 3 03:27
yeah
Speaker 2 03:27
I mean from what I understand GT radial wasn't even going to pick him up again this year and he said I'm going to guarantee you a championship
Speaker 1 03:33
how do you how do you guarantee a championship
Speaker 2 03:35
you're that good you just you just I mean the confidence I I don't know I don't have that I can't tell you it's a lot
Speaker 1 03:41
of confidence in a judge sport too. It's all subjective,
Speaker 2 03:43
yeah, because
Speaker 1 03:44
it could just not sway your way that year. Absolutely, seen that in FD for years, right? One drive, one style of driving crushes that year, and then the next year the judge is looking for something different. You're absolutely right. One driver shows up and completely changes the way that people look at things. Like I always remember, this is like more me dating my age, but like when Dago Saido showed up to FD for the first time, it changed how what everyone was looking for in driving.
Speaker 2 04:07
You're absolutely right, and and this year was Wally System, that little box, the clanker that they mounted on top of the cars and put up that digitals, and so people are driving completely different now as well to satisfy that.
Speaker 1 04:18
Yep.
Speaker 2 04:18
So that's kind of like this year's Daigo, I guess you would say this. This is your special. Like
Speaker 1 04:24
everything else, you've been replaced by a robot. Sorry, buddy. Who knew AI was coming for drifters' jobs too?
Speaker 2 04:30
What's kind of cool about this this Wally system is like pre-adolescent? I was the I was a hater of it. I disliked it all the way through. Through they're taking our jobs. They're coming through. I was like, AI will never replace you know what I do because it's. I mean, I was like, oh crap, uh oh, you know this is this. And after round one, I was like, this can work. After round two, I go, this is a superior system. This is how it should been all along. Never needs to go away. It erases most questions that we have. With you know, trying to remember our own eyeballs, look back on replays, try to figure out what actually is going on kills all that now.
Speaker 1 05:06
So let's let's rewind a little bit. When did you first get into drifting? When like because because I'll tell you what I know you from. I know you from basically your own Instagram videos of like you just doing like reports on the weekend, right? Like you would do like the weekend in 60 seconds and stuff like that. What I liked about it was that you were very honest and you were like taking hits on things I think that needed to be spoken about, which like a lot of other people weren't doing. And but you also did it all with like a lot of fun, right? And it's and and I'll tell you this, you know, I first, you know, I first really got heavily involved in drifting in around 2000 2011, really, mostly because of Hoonigan at the time. And I think there was, I think that was like the end of like drifting not taking itself too seriously. I think we had a couple more years before it was like, oh, drifting is taking itself way, way, way too seriously, right? Like, and and I what I liked about when I first saw some of your stuff, and and for everyone who is who's listening here, Greg and I met for the first time a month ago at Grid Life. We had a chat, and I was like, oh, you definitely need to, you definitely need to come on the pod because I just like your perspective on the sport, and I will always say this: like I see myself as I don't know if I would say I'm a outsider, but like drifting was never my sport per se. I ran a company that was heavily involved in it. A lot of my friends were heavily involved in it. I had a bunch of athletes that were heavily involved in it. So because of that, I've always looked at it. I think with a bit more of like a a I want to say business, but business like business has a negative connotation. It's like I looked at it the same way that I look at other motorsports, but also the way that like I looked at skateboarding, riding BMX. Like, like how does this grow in a way that it doesn't lose what makes it great? Because it's so easy for things to grow and then just change, right? And I remember when Drifting first started in you know in early 2000s, where all of a sudden every magazine, because I was from the magazine world, car magazine or not, was writing about it. Maxim, FHM, like it was like drifting. It's this new sport. It's so cool. It's like action sports, but for cars. And like, of course, like we were all rooting for it because we wanted something new to win. We'll get to that of whether or not it won or not. But what I liked about and the reason why I wanted you on the show today to talk about this is that you are like a modern fixture right now in drifting, but you have to me the energy that I think we lost in like 2013, 2014, 2015. I I don't know what year it was because it slowly faded. But and I just had you know a couple of the guys on Ryan and Vaughn, and and they mentioned too that there was this moment that things changed for them, right? And either it was like the opportunity became so real that they had to take it serious, or that the other thing was this need to become a personality plus a driver like shifted the whole dynamic of the sport. That they also had to be really good on social media. So anyway, I bring all of that in because I kind of want to just set that stage for you that like I really enjoyed your commentary on the sport. So tell me, like, how did this all start for you?
Speaker 2 08:24
That's you just laid me up for like every topic I've ever wanted to talk about. Let's just go. And I'll
Speaker 1 08:30
interrupt because that's what I do. You don't need to
Speaker 2 08:31
ask another question the entire show because we can go on for this. So how I got around into drifting is actually one of our mutual friends, Andy Sapp. Andy Sapp was a roommate with absolute legend. You'll never find him on social media. He's one of
Speaker 1 08:46
the best human beings, and I think it's because he doesn't have an Instagram.
Speaker 2 08:49
It's that. I mean, okay, I have a Andy. I
Speaker 1 08:53
have to communicate to him on Instagram through messages through his girlfriend.
Speaker 2 08:57
Oh, exact same. I do the same. Yeah, she told me like
Speaker 1 09:00
share something to her or whatever. I'll send it to her. I'll be like, show Andy. And I've never met her, which is also makes it even weirder. She's so rad. That's what I've heard. She's so rad.
Speaker 2 09:08
She runs like social media for NASCAR. I know. I know. Like super cool. She has like her own NASCAR pod. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she has all the vintage merch. Every time she comes out, she's just fully dripped. Like, and she wears the boots and everything. Like fully fits it, and it's her. But Andy and the Team Rowdy guys, that's really because originally when I was into cars, I was in the Hondas. I think a lot of us were. You know, that's kind of how in the import age, Honda. What was your era?
Speaker 1 09:34
Like, when did you get into cars?
Speaker 2 09:35
Like NWP for Life, Honda Tech. So like 2006. Got it. Got it. Yeah, yeah. So even late, I'm not an OG in the Honda scene at all, but definitely in the earlier age. I
Speaker 1 09:45
mean, I was 10 years earlier than you as a Volkswagen kid who would wear shirts that said "Friends don't let friends drive Hondas." Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's funny how they were
Speaker 2 09:53
just two of the same. We just we were like the same thing. One was more
Speaker 1 09:56
complicated than the other. One was harder to work on. That was it. Otherwise. Honda's or Legos?
Speaker 2 10:00
Yeah, it's so easy as a 16-year-old to own a Honda and modify it. Yeah, and but it's funny because like Andy Sapp and Tyler Clayton, the original founder, as well as as CoreWorks, they were roommates. And then Team Rowdy guys, and even though I drove a Honda, they invited me in, let me be part of their group, and it didn't really matter at that time until I bought a 240. It's actually a daily driver, but I went to. I remember first Formula G Formula D coming to Atlanta. I was still in school, skipped school, and and went to Formula D in a car's RB 20. It's so funny. You'll love this. It's a it's a 240 SX, and we used to import front clips on cars, right? So instead of just putting the RB 20 in the car, he put the whole R 32 front end onto a 180, and like the fenders kind of matched up. It's it it was just easier just to weld on a front clip to the car. Anyways, overheated 10 times on the way to Formula Drift. Got there and instantly fell in love.
Speaker 4 10:53
Yeah,
Speaker 2 10:53
because back in the day we had lime wire. We could kind of see what drifting was, but until you experienced it in person, you didn't know really what it was. I saw it. I said, "This is what I want to be." I saw Drift Alliance out there in a kiddie pool drinking beer before they go out to do a competition. I saw people selling merch with boom boxes so loud you could barely even talk to the person to buy a T-shirt. Yeah, you know, it was it was a bunch of kids, 100 plus cars trying to qualify, and they're driving their cars there. There's a guy Tony Schultz, an Atlanta legend. His daily driver was his FD car for many years, and so it's not like we have trucks and trailers. They're driving their cars with whatever tires they can fit in the back, ship the rest of the tires or whatever deal they had. Get the car there, do Formula Drift, bring it back home. I was like, this is accessible. This is truly, truly an accessible form of motorsports, and still is to a degree. And you're right. There's Formula Drift is still very very cool, but it's a different type of cool. It's a different. It's it's much more stimulating. There's more wheel smoke. There's more horsepower than ever. But we're losing a bit of personality, I guess you would say, from the drivers. We're losing that bit of the the whole Drift Alliance. You know, keep keep drifting fun. All of that, what we kind of grew up on, is almost pulled away. I it still blows my mind that there hasn't been another group of five drivers in Formula Drift that came together to form some type of their alliance. You know why? It did so much for you know the founders Chris Forsberg, Von Gitten, Brian Turk. You know all those guys, Von Gittin, Tony Angelo, of course, can't forget. It did so much for them and helping them succeed, and they helped each other out. Also, if there was a demo on there, they would say, "Hey, bring over the other guy." You know, "Hey, got a good sponsor, put him on this." There was a time where all Falcon Tire was just doing the Drift Alliance guys.
Speaker 1 12:32
I mean, in the early days, all of the Drift Alliance guys were on Hunigan. I mean, that was also like they were they were sort of the first group of drivers, plus Nate Hamilton and Corey Hosberg and Pat Gooden and a few others, yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 2 12:45
and Hoonigan did play a major role in drifting. It really, really did, and it legitimized. Everybody wanted to become. I remember Corey Hoffford. He made the whole video of like, I want to be a Hoonigan.
Speaker 1 12:52
Yeah.
Speaker 2 12:53
And I don't know if that's where it came from. It's
Speaker 1 12:55
interesting because when I go back and I look at like that 2011 spirit, like I think Corey Hosford and Dustin, like those guys, were like they were like characters, right? They reminded me of like things you saw in snowboard culture or skateboard culture, right? Like there was this guy Renee Renee who used to hang out with like the DC group, and he was just I I think he was a musician, but he was a character, and like he would he would play a character. He would show up to events. He would be this guy, and he would dress like this old school ski guy, and and and it was funny, and it was ridiculous, and like that felt alive and well in drifting back then. But I I'm not there. I mean, I didn't. I'll admit, like I didn't go this weekend, right? Um, I lived down the block. I should have gone, but I'm like a dad. I got dad stuff to do. It's 10 minutes
Speaker 2 13:46
down the road, by the way, guys. Yeah, literally 10. You can hear the cars at his house. Yeah,
Speaker 1 13:49
I go to the I go to the the opening event, but um, and and not because I don't I don't still enjoy the sport, but I do. I'm curious from your opinion. You know, how do you think the sport has changed since then, and do you think it's changed? And do you think it's changed for the better, the worse, or is it a more complicated answer?
Speaker 2 14:12
Well, there's there's definitely that gap between grassroots people getting into it, people wanting to drive even competitively to Formula Drift. Now that gap has gotten bigger than ever. You had these cars that could do 10, 1216 laps on the same pair of tires. Now they get two laps for pair of tires. Back in the day, tire manufacturers were just kind of giving away tires. There was big name sponsors, and to travel a whole season, it may have only cost you 30, $40,000. You know, depending on how you treat your year, and sponsors were actually giving cash. You know, if you look at import motorsports back in the day in the early 2000s, especially, or I would say late 2000s, early 2010s. There was still a lot of money being given out to motorsports. Now it's a lot harder. There's a lot of different types of motorsports out there right now, and with social media, you know these sponsors are looking for something different except for trophies. They don't really care about the sticker on the. The car now, so you have a field of let's say 32 drivers, and out of that field, maybe seven drivers are coming out at the end of the season with a little bit extra money in their pocket than what they spent. So I think that also shows that they want to be more professional. They want to get these motorsport sponsorships. They want to get out to the next echelon. They want to make a career, a sustainable career, so they're not jumping in kiddie pools drink beers anymore. You know, when back in the day they could do whatever they wanted to realistically, and even if they just put it on their credit card, they'll get through the year. Andy Sapp, the guy who got me into drifting, did Formula Drift in a BMW that he was still making payments on. Bone stock engine, by the way.
Speaker 1 15:37
Joe didn't he drive Irwindale on that car? Yep, just wild,
Speaker 2 15:40
wild.
Speaker 1 15:41
Yeah,
Speaker 2 15:41
and you, but you can't do that anymore. You can't. If you show up with a car with 700 horsepower to pro Formula Drift right now, you're going to get smoked. You're going to get smoked. So, what does it cost to build a 700 horsepower engine? And then you have to look at the transmission. Then you have to look at the rear end and the axles to handle all that horsepower. And then you're going to need 20 wheels and tires. And then you have to think about weight and what. So now you have $150,000 car. So a lot of churchers really can't relate to that, but they can afford a $20,000, you know, G 35 or you know whatever it is that they're buying to import a 180 S X. So now that gap is huge. And I'm I'm here to tell you, like I went to Super D this weekend as well with me and Robbie and Ishida wearing a shirt. I was like, you know, I'm out here traveling. I'm running out T-shirts. Big love
Speaker 1 16:22
for the Super G guys, yeah.
Speaker 2 16:24
Julian and all those dudes. I I need. I really wanted to cover this, and it's not a question that you asked me, but it was my first time ever going to Grange. I've always wanted to go to Apple Valley Speedway, and I
Speaker 1 16:34
appreciate it use its OG name. Yeah. Oh, cool.
Speaker 2 16:38
I've always wanted to because I'll still
Speaker 1 16:39
call it Grange. I'm like Apple Valley. Yeah, Grange.
Speaker 2 16:42
What a stupid name for a racetrack. Apple Valley. There's not a single tree out there, let alone apple tree. There's, I mean, there's not even a valley. It's just desert.
Speaker 1 16:50
Yeah, yeah, high desert too.
Speaker 2 16:51
Just getting there blew my mind. That cars drive on this road to get to the racetrack.
Speaker 1 16:56
For those who don't know, so this has become sort of the go-to track for Southern California for drifting. Previous to that, there was Balcony, which is basically just a big open skid pad at Willow Springs, and then there was another go-kart track in Riverside called Adams. Guys like Kenguchi, Daiushihara spent a ton of time driving there back in the day, and then there were like other sort of kind of like parking lot events that like popped up and whatever. This was a go kart track called Grange that eventually got brought out by new owners Apple Valley, and it is a very very cool track. It's probably like I think one of the cooler drift tracks on the West Coast other than maybe Park, but Park's closed now too, but it is insane to get to, and people street drive their drift cars there, which is nuts.
Speaker 2 17:48
It's it is an overland experience to get to the racetrack, and there's two ways to get to it, and one way is fully inaccessible with the railroad tracks. Yeah, you can't get there in a car; you have to have a truck, and then the other side, you might as well just say you have to have a truck too, but no, there's cars losing bumpers on their drive just to the track.
Speaker 1 18:05
I've been there with a freak rainstorm, and everyone got stuck in because it just it basically was like full washouts, and you had these like washes just like blow all the dirt out, and just was like three feet of water to cross. Just
Speaker 2 18:20
full on Burning Man got stuck. Oh, hilarious!
Speaker 1 18:23
So it is not an ideal place to go. At one point, and we're tantruming a bit, but at one point, I offered, I reached out to to Grange, or by that point it was recalled Apple Valley, and I offered for Hoonigan to pave a part of the road. I was like, but we had to call it Hoonigan Hoonigan Way.
Speaker 2 18:40
Oh, that's kind of cool. We were like, like, because I was like, there's a little sign right there. Yeah,
Speaker 1 18:43
yeah. I was like, what can we pave a piece of this? And we were trying to work on it. I don't remember in the end why it didn't happen, but like, we were like, hey, we'll we'll sponsor the track by actually paving the road to get there because if you don't have a trailer, it's like so difficult to get to. And what made Adams and balcony so great was like you know you drove the car there, pull in and go home. Yeah, no, you absolutely guys still do it. I don't know if you know Chris Miller, but he used to go out there in his crescendo that was slammed on its nuts, and he would just drag bumper all the way in. NRG Chris Miller, yeah, yeah, good guy, great guy,
Speaker 2 19:15
yeah. No, it's so going out to Grange. I've always I knew the track. I've played on FR Legends on the toilet for you know years, and so I finally get there, and I've I've driven with Animal Style. I've been with Animal, you know, I've been around them for quite some time, but I got to see what their home track and what they're so good at. And Grange, for those people again who don't know, it's basically a one turn track. It's got multiple turns on it, but everybody focuses on this one right hander, this initiation, and so I get to go out there. I go with Robbie Nishida, probably the best person to go to a drift event in the entire world. With we wake up, we just finished Formula Drift. We're exhausted. We basically do an all nighter to make sure that we leave here early in the morning to get out to there to see it and get back to do the banquet last night, and I couldn't. Not be more hyped on going to Grange, and the first car I see out there, there's this kid, child, child. What is it with these children? Child, his name's JMO. He drives for JMO. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1 20:09
yeah. He newest member on the gang. He's insane, is he
Speaker 2 20:12
not?
Speaker 1 20:13
Yeah, he's great. He's great. I
Speaker 2 20:14
walk up to the track between the tires, just, just, and I pull out my phone, and the first clip I get is probably one of the gnarliest entries I've seen in person in a very long time. Now, in Formula Drifting, you need to know like they won't judge backies. If you throw a backwards entry, it's like a disqualification. It's not what they're looking for. I didn't know
Speaker 1 20:31
that. Is that true?
Speaker 2 20:32
Fully true.
Speaker 1 20:32
It's a. Celsius and Nova
Speaker 2 20:34
did a backwards entry in St. Louis, his second qualifying lap, and they gave him a zero because it's non-chasable.
Speaker 1 20:42
Got it. Isn't
Speaker 2 20:42
that insane?
Speaker 1 20:43
That's crazy.
Speaker 2 20:44
It's crazy. Now I also wear perform the drift, so I'm gonna say it's very smart as well, Brian. Very, very smart.
Speaker 1 20:49
I understand. I understand it from the unchasable side because basically, like, let's let's talk how that that what that ends up becoming. If everyone realizes that's unchasable and it's an instant win. Then everyone just learns those and just throws those. Those massive backies and the chase
Speaker 2 21:06
driver can't anticipate right.
Speaker 1 21:07
And like it becomes the only thing you see in the sport because that is the problem when you make a sport very competitive, where winning is everything. Is people take advantage of the loopholes and then all of a sudden that's all they do. So I guess I get that, but then I think there's sometimes where you have to go back and say maybe the problem is that we've made a sport require that people would do that. Yeah, sometimes, but that's a whole other story. We're gonna get to it.
Speaker 2 21:32
It really is, and and so this is where it makes a bigger gap where you have street invert. You know, you have stuff that you can just you can do it over here, but you can't do it over here,
Speaker 1 21:40
right?
Speaker 2 21:41
And which I I kind of love, and so I went out there and I saw. Let's say we take their top five guys out there, and we brought them out to the East Coast. I would almost guarantee they would smoke a lot of us on the East Coast just seeing them drift this one turn because they're doing stuff in this one turn that I don't see any of us doing on the East Coast. Yeah, whether it's because we drive like bold tracks or bigger tracks, or we we never really set ourselves up for one turn or whatever it is. And that
Speaker 1 22:04
turn kind of has like a Mahon vibe to it. It's 1% Mahon. It's it's it's that one big corner that you lay everything out for, and has a pretty doesn't have the same sort of consequences as Mahon. But man, people have figured out how to flip that tire wall pretty hard. Wild.
Speaker 2 22:20
So it's it's got a ton of read off, and and where this comes back to is as well is it's the closest thing that we have into Japan. So in Japan, most drivers have like their local track that they go to, and they just run that track over and over and over for years until they perfect that track. And there's really only one way to do a turn, is what you know they say is like this is how you set yourself up, this hill, you get through the turn, and so these guys, the SoCal guys, have been drifting this track now for so long. They have perfected that turn, and it's so impressive to see. And there's no boxes to be filled. There's no inner clipped at reach or anything. It's how fast can you go? How much angle? How much style? How soon are you getting back on the throttle? And just total wow factor. Again, you get rid of formula. You don't have formula drift boxes. You don't have a line, and you you know it's just you don't have anything other except for style. That's it. I mean, you have angle and style, and and and so just focusing on those two aspects, it's it was so much fun to watch, Brian. I'm telling you, and I I do admire both. Formula drift is without a doubt one of my favorite things in the entire world. I could sit there. I I've lost my voice because I'm screaming. I was sitting with Denofa and hurt watching Formula Drift this weekend, and we're screaming. We're up and down in the seats, yelling and banging. Even Danofa, a person who's watched so much drifting, been out drifting all the time, he's out there standing up and down, screaming at people, watching upsets. We're drifting fans, and so it doesn't matter if it's Formula Drift or if it's you know Grange. It really doesn't matter. We're hyped on all of it. But I I love. It's weird because the separation is actually almost good for the sport. That that inaccessibility and having them over here in Formula Drifting, the guys that can commit to a full season, and having the guys that are just like, I'm gonna bust my button. I'm gonna stay in my lane because even the animal style guys, if they really, really want to, the amount of money that they spend to go to Japan, the amount of money they travel around and do all this stuff, they probably could do an FTE season prospect. They could probably put a four speed in dog box and try Formula Drift, but they stay in their lane.
Speaker 1 24:15
Yeah, I mean, look, I know Julian's had thoughts of it in the past, right? He's
Speaker 2 24:19
sitting Matt Fields like old pro car.
Speaker 1 24:20
Yeah, yeah. So I know that there's definitely a hey, this this could be something, but yeah, I think it's an. I mean, here's an interesting one for you. You you just sat through the last event of the season for FD, but you clearly were more excited to come here and talk about Super D. Oh shucks. Why do you think that is for for you right now?
Speaker 2 24:44
Because me personally, I built more of a Super D style car. I built more of a you know style car. It's a 240 coupe, SR 20 D tuned to 300 horsepower, TE 30 7s. You know, just I built that style car that I love, knowing that I'll never be in Formula One. Drift as a driver. At the same time, I've been a team manager, a spotter. We've built Formula Drift cars, maintained them. In 16 years, we've done programs for over 20 drivers in Formula Drift, and and so I have that insane passion as well for Formula Drift because it's that upper echelon. It's the top top tier. It's the best of the best. And when you go out there. It's it's it's a totally different game than what I do. You know, if I'm in third gear entry and I'm like I'm going fast, these guys are doing over 100 miles per hour going to turn. So everything, every single lap is impressive when you go to Formula Drift.
Speaker 1 25:31
Yeah,
Speaker 4 25:31
yeah,
Speaker 1 25:32
yeah. I I think one of the things a lot of people don't understand is the gap between pro level drivers and everything else. Right. It seems like the gap with Pro Spec has become a bit less now. But I remember before there was Pro Spec, when it was still just sort of other series feeding into FD, the year one for some of these guys was a major wake up call, right? I mean, I remember watching drivers who were top of their game had were winning every event they went to, and then they show up and they can't even qualify for pro. Yeah, right. And I think, and I think that was one of the reasons why prospect, you know, pro two, and then eventually prospect like came around because people were like, we're having a hard time understanding like what the feeder series looks like if we're feeding from all these other sort of different drift series that aren't connected to FD, and guys get on the podium, and then they're like so far off, right? And part of it was I think the cars were off, right? Your your guys are showing up with cars that had half the power, right? And they're trying to go after it. But two, I just think that I don't think people understood the level at which FD was at it.
Speaker 2 26:39
No, you have these guys like Von Gitten, Ryan Turk, and all these other guys coming through, and actually, I mean, their their driving skill. If you brought any of them out to Grange yesterday, and we've seen it, we've seen OD go out there, we've seen Ken Gucci go out there, and they say, "Look what I can do." And even though I'm shocked and stoked on JMO and and Julian and all those guys, you bring any of them out there, they could do just as impressive. They're that good of drivers, absolutely, if not better. It's, it's. I would say this is the same thing. Why I don't like watching like sci-fi movies much because it's not believable.
Speaker 1 27:13
Okay,
Speaker 2 27:14
you know, is that kind of a weird like the unobtainable, the far-fetched? I get what you are saying. You know, like you like
Speaker 1 27:17
living in reality.
Speaker 2 27:18
Love living in reality, and so in my prefer
Speaker 1 27:21
nonfiction to fiction books?
Speaker 2 27:23
Kinda.
Speaker 1 27:23
Yeah. No, I I went through a whole period where I only read nonfiction.
Speaker 4 27:27
Yeah.
Speaker 1 27:27
Because I just wanted like reality. I didn't want the escapism. I love
Speaker 2 27:32
documentaries. Yeah, me too. Do you see the the Pill documentary? The
Speaker 1 27:35
no. Oh
Speaker 2 27:36
my god. Is it good? Oh my god. You know, it's based off that girl, the Holmes. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1 27:41
yeah, yeah, yeah. After this, go take the family. Actually,
Speaker 2 27:43
don't take family. But what's
Speaker 1 27:44
the name of it again?
Speaker 2 27:45
I don't know. It's so good. My whole social media is just nothing but memes of her and him now.
Speaker 1 27:50
Yeah, it's got like a weird name. Troy's gonna drop it and give it to us.
Speaker 2 27:54
You can see everything. You can see everything. That's it.
Speaker 1 27:56
That's it. Oh my god, it's crazy. My my buddy was here yesterday, and he said, "Like you absolutely got to, you have to go see it." Yeah, and
Speaker 2 28:03
it's just, it's. I didn't know. I didn't. There was. I didn't watch the trailer. It's one of those things where I like. I heard it so good. You have to go see it. So tried to get tickets Friday. Couldn't Saturday. Couldn't. Sunday couldn't. You know, just couldn't get tickets. Got them on Wednesday. Go on Wednesday, and I didn't know it was three hours long, and I was hooked for three hours.
Speaker 1 28:20
I've only seen like the one clip where it looks like she's just like just railed like 10 lines of coke and her eyeballs are popping out of her head and she just looks like a space alien. I was like, okay, I gotta go see this. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2 28:33
fantastic. It's a fantastic story, but it's also a fantastic producer that put it on director everything. Yeah, Nathan. I mean,
Speaker 1 28:38
his he's known for that kind of work, and it's very phenomenal, phenomenal.
Speaker 2 28:42
But that's so going back. That's the type of movie that I love to watch, and I've never seen a Star Wars, not one.
Speaker 1 28:48
Never seen not a
Speaker 2 28:50
single Star Wars.
Speaker 1 28:51
My goodness, right, right. But
Speaker 2 28:53
it's that.
Speaker 1 28:53
So like you and Forsberg have nothing to talk about.
Speaker 2 28:56
Me and Forsberg nothing to talk about. I look at Forsberg. I'm like hi, and he says, "Hey, bud." And then we, you're not, you're not into Star Wars. Not into Star Wars. I mean, I like a good Harry Potter. You know, I do like a good Harry Potter, but that's also, you know, I like, you know, that's fine.
Speaker 1 29:10
Got it. So anyway, back into the element of reality. Yeah. Yeah. Um. So let me ask you a question because I, you know, on the outside, sort of looking in with drifting, I think that it's a very it's a very interesting sport, and this topic has come up a lot recently because I've had a couple different drivers on. Which is, I don't know if drifting could be more of a household name right now than than ever, like you know, than definitely than ever was before, but it feels very peak, right? In that everyone sort of knows what drifting is now. Like you don't have to explain it anymore. It's not
Speaker 2 29:48
like you have to be like, "Have you ever seen Formula Drift?" Right? Have you ever seen Fast and Furious? You don't have to
Speaker 1 29:52
explain it anymore. Like everyone knows what it is. You're seeing it well beyond where I think we used to see it, right? Like you're seeing it in, you know, you're seeing it in hip hop culture. You're seeing it, you know, you're seeing Formula One guys talking about it. Like you go to a
Speaker 2 30:08
gas station and see Vaughn as a Monster Energy guy in the windows. Like it's
Speaker 1 30:12
it's it's kind of everywhere now, right? And differently than it was back in the early 2000s when it first popped up. When it first popped up, it was like, "Wow, look at this new thing!" And there was always these new sports that would pop up. I mean, also everybody was talking about downhill skateboarding. It, you know, in an era, I forget what that guy, that one guy's name was. Points to anyone who can remember his name. There was this like Sherlock or something. I want to say his name was something Sherlock or something whatever, but he was like the downhill speed skate champion, just hitting like San
Speaker 2 30:46
Francisco and just busting hills. Yeah, and like
Speaker 1 30:48
for like a period of time, everybody was talking about it because it was like the new fad. Drifting's past the fad phase, right? Like it's here, it's here, it's here, it's here to stay. But at the same time, I think drifting is dealing with a lot of the growing pains that we saw in action sports, which is like it's a very fractured space. So even though it's a household name, no one knows how to make money in it because it's so fractured. Do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 2 31:14
I accept right. Like
Speaker 1 31:16
like we most sports have like that one thing that everyone goes to. Right. I jokingly said this in the pot. It's like no one's out there just doing Formula One on the weekends. Not part of the FIA, right? Like you don't have this huge like open wheel community that's just renting Grange. I mean, there are elements of it, but not really, right? Where I would say there's probably more drifting happening on the weekends that's not FD than FD.
Speaker 2 31:41
Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1 31:42
There's way more cars, way more because it has a, it has like a really, really, really good spectator side of it.
Speaker 2 31:48
It does,
Speaker 1 31:48
right? And I'm sorry, I meant to say it has a really, really good participant side of it, right? I
Speaker 2 31:52
would say both sides, yeah.
Speaker 1 31:53
But it's both. Where a lot of motorsports are very much a spectator sport, right? That you don't actually participate in it, right? Like most people, when they leave a NASCAR race, they go get in their trucks and then they drive home.
Speaker 5 32:06
Yep.
Speaker 1 32:07
And they don't have stock cars sitting in their garages. Where there's a lot of people who leave FD and they're either driving their drift car home, or they're driving home to their project car, or they're driving home to their hopes and dreams of a one-day drift car, right? Like, and I think that that was something that I knew a lot in action sports. And I'll try to land this plane. Where do you think we go from here? Like, where, like, where does this go? Where we've got the we've got the Formula Drift, which is to for a lot of people who are listening to this podcast or not into drifting. That's probably a lot of what they know, right? Like that is what gives them the image of drifting, right? And then we have you know the super D's and final bouts, and and then we have the grid life, and then we have like the Appall like the Appalachia drift side, which is like a whole other thing that kind of feels new to all of us. It's been around for like five years, but it still feels new and exciting. So exciting, yeah. And I, you know, and I, I had a chance to, you know, talk to Andy Sapp about it, and he was like, "Dude, it felt like a religious experience." He said that
Speaker 2 33:12
standing on the mountain, he's like, "I just," he's like, he's
Speaker 1 33:14
like, after doing the first run he did at night, he said like it felt to him like a religious experience. Like he'd been doing drifting, he'd been around drifting since early, early days, right? Since the early 2000s, and then he went and did this thing that to him felt more like what everyone was trying to emulate, you know, that was coming out of Japan, you know, 30 years ago, 3040 years ago. So, anyway, I I ask you that because like, where do you like where do you want this thing to go? Like, does it just keep growing on all the aspects? Is there something that makes sense? Because were you into skateboarding or BMX? Okay,
Speaker 2 33:49
BMX stuff. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Yeah.
Speaker 1 33:50
So, so like, you saw that as well. Like, we had a progression of like we went through like the local events, and then there became the contest, and then there became X Games, and then X Games kind of got too big, and everyone became anti X Games, and then they became, you know, sort of like a whole other version, and then the video parts. And honestly, if I'm being honest, I think, I think, I think right now B M X is in a weird place right now. It's in a
Speaker 2 34:14
very vulnerable space because it's like
Speaker 1 34:16
there isn't really X Games that matters anymore. I know it still exists, but it's not on the level it once was, and all of a sudden you've got things like Red Bull Rampage being the more interesting thing in cycling. So like BMX guys used to be the wildest. Well, how many kids
Speaker 2 34:30
have BMX bikes compared to electric bikes right now?
Speaker 1 34:32
Right, and you have also all these mountain bike, BMX guys who went into mountain bikes, and I didn't want us to jump into bikes. You don't have to go to bikes. Not yet. I mean, we're getting there. We're getting
Speaker 2 34:41
there.
Speaker 1 34:42
We talked about bikes. Like the reason we it took us like 15 minutes to get the podcast started because we were talking bikes because I have bikes on the back wall and people ask questions about bikes all the time. So we get to answer some of that today in a minute. But I want to get back to like the drifting thing. I can't help but feel like this is a major tipping point for the sport that. Maybe the sport doesn't even realize it's happening.
Speaker 2 35:02
It's a very vulnerable spot to be in right now. I would say mostly for Formula Drift, and Formula Drift is fully aware of it. Ryan Sage, the guys Jared, they all they all very much see this, and it's very difficult to add a whole nother moving element. I guess you would say to a lot of these events, but I I have been crying to Ryan Sage for eons, it feels like of in our halftime shows. Let's get the local town legends out there. Let's you know we we move to regions. Let's almost just focus on that region. So say it's Florida, we bring out your Pat Goodins, your your dudes that are absolute rippers down Florida. All the Juku boys, you know, and we highlight them on the halftime show and let them put on their thing.
Speaker 1 35:39
Spring break,
Speaker 2 35:40
Patty. Love you, Bubba. Pat, Pat's an amazing friend, an amazing human being. I did have to give him a shout out, but no, it's it's. And then you go up to you know Connecticut. We're up there. We have Jimmy. We have all the guys over there. Front Street guys: Josh, Tom, Jeff Stoneback, legends. Bring them out. Put them on the same track. Let them do a halftime show. We got to see it a little bit. Grid Life did Road Atlanta this year, and they overlap. So a halftime show, we got to go out and rip, and it was great for multiple reasons. Usually at the halftime show, you see the whole crowds leave and they go and they go concessions or whatever it is. No, they stayed put. They put in the seat and put on the show.
Speaker 1 36:16
Which by the way, I just want to I want to like this. This show is very transparent. I want to pull the transparency off of that. There's a business reason for why events do that because you all the all the concessions and all the vendors who all pay to be there, right? Like you knew this because you were once a vendor sitting in those areas. You need people to come. We need that halftime pop. So pop, right? So you need that pop. Like Unigine used to sell merch, and it's like you would sell your merch through the breaks. Yeah, unfortunately, there's this gap of like servicing the audience versus servicing sort of the people who are paying for it all to happen. So I add that because like there's a need for that. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2 36:57
however, something needs to be done to bring these other guys and and really put them on a pedestal as well as the Formula Drift drivers to help the whole sport grow, and that's my personal opinion. I truly think putting like these local town heroes out there and put them in front of 10, 20,000 people, it it just it does so much for them. It does so much for the sport, and let alone what hurts me the most, what pains me the most is seeing guys in drifting talking down about Formula Drift. It's so let's talk about
Speaker 1 37:25
that because I was just about that. I was just about to ask. Blows
Speaker 2 37:27
my mind that that even happens because tires are being made for Formula Drift. That money's being put into Drifting. I I got to see somebody from Ford speak at the banquet last night. Somebody from Ford and being like, we're hyped on this. Do you know what an OEM can do for a sport? Insane. Why are we hating on Formula Drift? Like, if it's just it blows my mind.
Speaker 1 37:50
Why do you think
Speaker 2 37:52
it is? I think it's like a cool thing. It kind of it kind of like a cool thing to do. The same reason we
Speaker 1 37:57
hated on X Games.
Speaker 2 37:58
Tony Hawk. Like there was a time where people just hating on Tony Hawk. And now he's
Speaker 1 38:01
and now like who can hate Tony Hawk?
Speaker 2 38:03
Why would you hate Tony Hawk?
Speaker 1 38:04
How do you hate Tony Hawk?
Speaker 2 38:06
But by the way, if
Speaker 1 38:07
you haven't seen the Vic Mensa podcast with Tony Hawk, definitely it's it's an amazing watch. So
Speaker 2 38:15
it's a shame though; it's an absolute shame because that's true.
Speaker 4 38:18
Yeah,
Speaker 2 38:19
and I think Tony Hawk was one of the best examples, at least that we could all relate with. Yeah, yeah. And you, you just look at it and you're like, he did nothing but live to grow the sport, and without a doubt, was one of the best, if not the best, legendary skateboard of all time. So, for just somebody hate on it, I think there's just a person. I hear you hate on everything.
Speaker 1 38:36
I hated on Tony Hawk at some point. I did too. I did because like,
Speaker 2 38:38
did you buy Hawk shoes? No, no. Did you skate hawk boards? No, but I
Speaker 1 38:42
did. I did it early on because remember I'm 46, so I'm a bit older than you.
Speaker 6 38:45
Okay.
Speaker 1 38:46
Um, my first skateboard. My first skateboard was a Jason Lee blind, the one that like one I purchased, right? But the first deck I ever skated was my friend's pal Baralta, Tony Hawk, with the classic Hawk Skull on the bottom. It was fluorescent green. It was like the same colors as my rabbit. And my friend Tim, he just didn't skate as much as the rest of us did, so he just kind of like let me ride, like skate his board, right? So like it was really my introduction to skateboarding. So like I will all, and I had Tony Hawk's haircut. It's fucking sick with the shave underneath. And like you know, so there was like I we definitely idolized him then, but then I think he was he was too clean cut when skateboarding became really really punk rock.
Speaker 2 39:27
He wasn't one of us.
Speaker 1 39:28
He was. He felt like he wasn't one of us. And he put out the image, and he was a kid. And in the end, I look at him now, and I'm like, I don't know, man. That dude is oddly like one of the more punk
Speaker 7 39:36
rock
Speaker 1 39:37
people I know, and I've had the pleasure to meet him in my life. And he was one of those meet. He was one of those meet your heroes. Real quickly, I like you know I went through a period of like ah fuck Tony Hawk just like other people, right? But you know later on you are like he's Tony Hawk right, and he came to Ken's house, and Ken's house used to always be like no one ever knocked. At the door, like it was just like everyone who was there, they just walked in. the The top floor of Ken's house was like always a party, and he and there was a knock on the door. Ken was like, "Hey, you should go. Can you go answer it?" I was like, "Who the fuck's Sam knocking at the door?" I mean, like honestly, I think all of us thought it was like a neighbor or like you know somebody, whatever, like selling vacuums. I don't know why people knock on doors anymore. But I open the door and it's like Tony Hawk standing there, and I look at him. He's like, "Hi, I'm Tony," and I'm like, "Hi, I'm Brian." Yeah, done. And then like later in the night, he was like explaining to me what he did for a living. I was like, the humbleness of this is amazing because I guess he looked at me being like, "Oh, he's from motorsport. He probably doesn't know who I am, and I just really appreciate that because I've been around other celebrities who just assume you know who they are, and I fucking love that. And I won't name this celebrity, but one this one celebrity introduced themselves to Vinny, and Vinny knew who this person was, and she said, and he said, "I'm sorry, I didn't get your name." She's like, you know who I am. He's like, no, I don't. And he knew who she was. But I just like Vinny. Just that New Yorker was just like, fuck you, thinking I know who you are. But anyway, I say that because. But let's get back to it. So right. So there's a there's I think the element of we're just gonna hate on this because it's cool to hate on the thing that's that's it,
Speaker 2 41:21
that's it, that's and I don't think that's the
Speaker 1 41:23
only reason though.
Speaker 2 41:25
I think a lot of people hate because of the unobtainability, which we've covered. You know how expensive it is, what you have to do to actually get there, and if they just come into this mindset of like I'll never be able to get up there, might as well just hate it. It's easier for me to hate it than actually just like stay in my lane and endure and help out. You know, Formula drift tickets aren't like $10 either. So to actually go to an FD weekend, the whole weekend you're going to buy a T-shirt and stuff. You're going to spend a few 100 bucks sometimes. Yep. And some kids would rather just hate on it than do that. And whatever, whatever.
Speaker 1 41:55
Do you think? And I'm just going to bring up some points that I've heard through through the. Let's do that. Yeah, I'll bring up some points, and you can kind of address them. I think one is that you know FDs lost the the soul of what drifting is, right? That the sport. Yeah, go ahead. I'm not saying this is Brian Scotto. I'm saying this is someone who who reads comments. Okay.
Speaker 2 42:17
Okay. Yeah. My
Speaker 1 42:18
nickname at Hoonigan was Chief comment officer instead of chief creative officer because like I would always read comments and I was always would always reply to people. I want to
Speaker 2 42:26
stay liking you, so when you say stuff like that, use this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I
Speaker 1 42:29
think that there's a thought of you know the sport took drifting to a place that like isn't drifting, right? Big power, all about the smoke, and I and I know friends of yours who will who are on this argument line. So it's not like this is something you haven't heard, right? Because I've had these I've had these conversations and you know in car rides with people who have been in the sport for 20 plus years. That at some point the requirement for the competition and the rule book has sort of dictated what drifting has become.
Speaker 2 43:02
You're right. So Formula Drift is also okay. This is my argument to it. How about this? We
Speaker 1 43:08
just said no, no, no backies because
Speaker 8 43:10
we're going to do a debate right now. Now this is time to do a debate, but with the
Speaker 2 43:13
comments, not you. We're going to argue. Look,
Speaker 1 43:15
I I am the ultimate devil's advocate. I can always fight for the other side. Absolutely, choose a side. I'll debate. Oh, fantastic,
Speaker 2 43:21
fantastic. So, drifting allowed us to get where it is because you we have unlimited chassis restrictions. You can pick out any car you want to, and we have no horsepower gap. You can have if you can invent 2500 horsepower reliable. Now you have a 2500 horsepower Corolla out on track, and guess what? That's available in the rule book doesn't really matter. It's all tire size, weight ratio, stuff like that. Like that, the chassis has to be pretty much. We can't move the shock tower point. So where the shocks are mounted in the chassis, in between the two shocks, we can't really mess around too much with that.
Speaker 1 43:53
Unless you make a front wheel drive car, rear wheel drive, and then I don't know. There's a little bit of flexibility. Know
Speaker 2 43:57
how that happens? I have I have so many questions for Kevin Wells, who's like the the race director, like he does. He's in charge. He runs all
Speaker 1 44:05
the tech and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 2 44:06
and Steph Papadakis, which I I never Steph intimidates me so much. You know what?
Speaker 1 44:11
Steph definitely got photos of Kevin doing something, something, something.
Speaker 2 44:14
So Steph is okay. If for people who don't know who Steph Papadakis is, he's been on this
Speaker 1 44:18
podcast. Oh my
Speaker 2 44:19
God, he is the legend of Legends, like legendary, coming from a Honda community as well. Like I think your title to it was like eight second Civic or whatever. He's like the first in the 10s, nines, eights, whatever. And his level of of attention to detail, and he has groomed, trained, built cars, spotted drivers for championships in four wheel drive for many many times, including Osbo. He drove
Speaker 1 44:40
he drove an FD.
Speaker 2 44:41
Horribly, he was a horrible. His car. You know what's funny? So there was Atlanta, and it's Steph Papadopoulos in s2 1000, and it's spewing white smoke out the back. And I'm like, your car spewing white smoke out of everybody here. Your car's got a blown head gasket. Like, and he's just driving it. Just keeps on doing it. You know. Doesn't matter. There, there's drifting. We are so privileged to be able to like actually build a car. There's no restrictions on body kits. What delivery needs to look like? What your sponsor is? We have a fleshlight sponsor in Formula Drift. They, it is such an open book on what you can bring to the track. That like, how is that? How is the spirit of drifting killed? Like, how? Yeah, it's just gotten better. We have more technology. The ECUs in the cars can do more things now. You know, sensors everywhere, shock sensors, things of that nature. We have suspension engineers now. If you could afford on the the budget, there's a new suspension engineer in RTR. That's like a genius. You used to only
Speaker 1 45:39
have one.
Speaker 2 45:40
You used to only have one. Now they have like Mike. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 45:42
Like he was basically everyone's suspension engineer, even if he didn't work on their team. And
Speaker 2 45:48
Kojima, correct? Yeah. So and now he's on the Sorensens, and guess where Sorensen's hit? Fourth in the season, and content they were in contention for a championship as well all season. So yeah, now we're we're actually bringing in people who know what the hell they're doing now. I thought coilovers only went up to like two way for a long time, and then three way. Now I'm like, wait, four way coilovers are going out there, like, and they know how to utilize them and what they do and putting sensors on these cars. So no, the spirit of drifting hasn't gone away. The cars have gotten more advanced in what they're capable of doing. So now they can actually dial in. It's funny because I'm sitting with Denofa. Denofa is a nerd, by the way, absolute nerd. But he's telling me how TLO has his car set up against Matt Field. Two Corvettes. They're two Corvette CO sixes. Another
Speaker 1 46:29
suspension guy.
Speaker 2 46:30
Another suspension guy. Full out suspension guy.
Speaker 1 46:32
Yeah, I mean, I don't think people realize how much of a suspension guy Chelsea is and how much he he used that to win through the
Speaker 2 46:39
years. He is a nerd. He is as much as he plays cool guy, BMX, whatever. He will sit at night and just like read articles on suspension and BMW this and and whatever that. And so, and I'm sitting with Hurt, who knows nothing about
Speaker 1 46:55
Hurt. Is the exact opposite of a nerd. He is the cool. He just oozes cool with no work whatsoever. That's it. That's
Speaker 2 47:03
it. And so he's a
Speaker 1 47:04
nerd about things, but he won't let you know them.
Speaker 2 47:06
Exactly. So I hear Chelsea explaining things to her, and and me just kind of being now that her got
Speaker 1 47:13
a big boy car.
Speaker 2 47:13
Oh, he's walking. You can see him with FTE too. He's just he's just walking. He's great. I love that guy. But he's just like, yeah, you know what? I'm following Vaughn. I don't like how Vaughn does this. Oh
Speaker 1 47:27
my goodness! Yeah,
Speaker 2 47:28
and he's like, yeah, Vaughn's car's not as advanced as mine, so you know, I just he didn't want to chase me because he couldn't keep up. Quote unquote. That's a quote, and I love her for that. I love him for that. Man,
Speaker 1 47:41
how does he fit those boots on these days? Oh, size 22 boots. I don't know
Speaker 2 47:45
what to tell you, man. Yeah, he's killed them. Yeah, no, but Hurt also deserves everything that he's got. I
Speaker 1 47:53
love Hurt.
Speaker 2 47:53
Hurt is one of my how he
Speaker 1 47:55
has gotten everything in life is is still a mystery to me. But the dude
Speaker 2 47:59
worked at Universal Studios emptying trash cans, working concessions. I know. Yeah, and he has busted his ass. Realize when
Speaker 1 48:05
I met him, he was traveling FD shooting videos for basically free because he was making them for Beard Life and kind of in Juku, but mostly for Beard. But he was just doing because he wanted to do it.
Speaker 2 48:16
I get to tell you a funny story real quick, and it's completely off topic. It's so great. This is we're really this is a gym. You're like we met each other a month ago. Nay, nay, a beautiful story. Actually, you know what? I
Speaker 1 48:25
actually do realize we have met each other in the past, but I think a month ago was the first time where it was ever like it was other than hey, like doing hellos with a group of people. It's a
Speaker 2 48:33
small community. Yeah, let's just say that. So I actually worked out in Juku Racing, and so when Hurt was out, I came in. But before that, her and I have always been friends. We had this team rowdy drifting small, yada yada. We're sitting on a curb right at SEMA. We're just sitting there right outside the food court, and we're eating pieces together or whatever. And he's not even halfway done through his pizza. And you start walking across the parking lot, and he goes, "Here, take this. I got to talk to that." He's like, "That Scotto." He's. I was like, "Who's Brian Scott? You know he's like he's like you know Brian. He's got this thing. He's it's a big thing. He's going out. I gotta go and like puts his pizza on my lap.
Speaker 1 49:06
Man, Hurt gave up pizza to come back to me. So here I am
Speaker 2 49:10
sitting with two perfectly pizzas, which I ate both. Good man, great guy. And I I just saw Hurt go like opportunity, opportunity. I'm sure you guys were talking before then, but he was definitely not at Hoonigan yet, and he just like he just stood up, put pizza down.
Speaker 1 49:27
Yeah, no, no, that's a lot for that man. That's a lot for that for you. And I was just like, and
Speaker 2 49:30
so like just I was hey Brian, and then you guys walked off and did your thing, and maybe my time frame's off, but I believe a couple months later he went over to Hoonigan.
Speaker 1 49:38
Yeah, so the quick story there is, and I'll I'll tell it real fast. I had moved to California, and you know I knew all the DA guys, right? So because they were all East Coasters, so Forsberg hit me up and was like, "Hey man, we're like having a party at my house. If you want to come by, like you know whatever." And I had like I'd been living here for like a month. Too, so swung down to his house. He was living like Huntington Beach or something at the time, and I was in Venice. So went down for the night. Hurt was there. I never met Hurt before, and like Hurt was sort of this was like early era for Hurt, like getting to be friends with these guys. And like I later found out, like Hurt was at that party that night, like doing the. I can't believe I'm hanging out with the Drift Alliance guys, right? But he was like so tight with all these dudes already. It seemed that I just thought he was like long term friends with all of them. And it's kind of funny because it also was the first night that like I really spoke to Ashley, who's now my wife, because she was at that party as well. Like we had met once before, but I like tried I tried throwing game at her, and she shut me down, and I was like, "Whatever," moved on. But that was like years before it seemed. But anyway, that's a whole other story. People keep being like, "Yo, you got to have your wife on the podcast." I'm like, "She's a
Speaker 2 50:48
lovely lady, by the way." Thank
Speaker 1 50:49
you. She showed me right now. Do you know she has like a big background in drifting? Like she was there in the early days, so she worked for she like worked a bit a lot with Vaughn. She worked with Ryan. Like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No,
Speaker 2 51:00
I don't. All I know is she has she has style. She's got steams. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a
Speaker 1 51:04
whole other side of my life that like I don't really talk about as much, but like people on the pod do know. Like we have a pretty sort of kind of crazy mid-century modern house that we. If
Speaker 2 51:12
you're into mid mod, they made a they made a museum and it's beautiful. Yeah, it's tasteful.
Speaker 1 51:17
Um, it's just the part that like I try to keep private because like I had the whole rest of my life, at least when I was at Hoonigan, was so on Front Street that like it was nice to have something to go home to. Keep yourself, keep yourself. But anyway, that was the first time I met her, and like we we kicked it off. But it was one of those like you know it was it was like I think he was mostly focused on like I'm hanging out with my heroes, right? I mean, he'll later tell a story of like he gave Chris Forsberg a Beard Life sticker, and Chris Forsberg put that on the back window of his car, and like that meant so much to her because Hert couldn't believe that this guy who he idolized as a driver like threw his like random sticker on the car, and like Beard Life really became like this brand thing that everyone in sort of the drift padding was talking about because it was also a beard era. Like everybody was trying to grow a big beard. I had a big beard. Everyone kind of was like going big beard at that moment. And anyway, I then ran into her. So I ran into her again, and we were launching Hoonigan, and we were at SEMA, and he was like, "Yo, it's my oh me." I think me and him were like, "Yeah." He was like, "Oh, it's my birthday."
Speaker 9 52:25
It is so november 1, november 1,
Speaker 1 52:27
and that was the day we were launching SEMA. So I was like, "Well, come on through." He's like, "Oh, I heard you were throwing like a birthday party." I think maybe we were talking on Facebook, like back and forth a little bit, right? And I think he was building the LS FC at the time, so like it was not running yet. It wasn't done yet, and um, I he came to the party. We like had a ton of fun, like hanging out, and then the next night we went to a Falcon party, which is funny because like he's now on Falcon. We went to a Falcon party the next night, and I remember he had like a beard life hat on, and he had a hoonigan sticker like on the under rim, right on underneath. And we went, and I had a hat on too. And like Falcon had this like fancy party on like some rooftop in Vegas. I don't know where it was. And the security kept coming over and telling us to take our hats off. But there were like other people who had their hats on; they wouldn't take their hats off. So like I kind of got a little loud with security and was like, "Yo, if I gotta take my hat off, like so does that dude."
Speaker 10 53:26
Yeah,
Speaker 1 53:26
and he was like, "Don't worry about what that dude has to do." Blah blah blah. I'm worried about it. So he walked away. I put my hat back on. They came over and they're like, "You guys are fucking leaving. Get the fuck out." So they walk like me hurt and like four other people out. And like as soon they were bringing up everyone to the elevators, and as soon as we got to the elevator, like all these people came out. It was like Nate Hamilton, like Corey, like just like all the crew. I think Jared, like everyone's coming out. And we looked at all, and we're like, "Yo, party's dead. We're all fucking leaving." And we literally like turned around like 40 people to leave with us as we were getting kicked out. So like now security's mad because like we're we're taking people away, right? And we're all like, we're going to double down. We're going to double down, and like we like, and as we're leaving everyone we see online, we're like, yo, fuck this place, fuck this place. We're going to fucking double down. And the one security dude, like, gets loud. He's like, he's like, he's like, oh, you you motherfuckers, blah blah blah. You, I get off at fucking 3o'clock, you know. Yeah. And I just remember, like, and I got loud, and like, Hurt did the like, I got this, right? Like, and I did the like, I was like, I was like, you, you fucking want some of this? Like, remember, I grew up in New York City, fighting was like something I was like an enjoyable sport. You're a big guy, but
Speaker 2 54:33
Hurt is intimidating, and Hurt did the
Speaker 1 54:35
like, and Hurt was like, just like arms out, and Hurt had been drinking a bit, and like, and I looked over at him, and I was like, "Oh man, I like this guy. Like I've only known him. I've only known him for 48 hours, and me and him are squaring off against like nine security guards, and he's not backing down." And I was like, "All right, like I was ready to go, but I was like, I was like, I was hoping when I turned around, someone was still standing there, and it wasn't like just.". Me and Nate Hamilton, and I'm like, I love you, Nate, but am I supposed to hit them with you? I usually use a baseball bat. Swing
Speaker 2 55:06
Nate Hamilton around, but
Speaker 1 55:08
but it was just one of those moments. And then after that, we kind of bonded, and then I had him film something for us, so we stayed in touch that whole year, and then I had him film something for for Ken. Ken's car caught on fire during. They used to do rallycross at SEMA. I don't know if you remember that. GRC did one round in the Gold Lot. Yeah, and on that event, we had him film something for us and make the edit. And he like thrashed, got the edit done in like two days, and that was basically his interview process. And after that, we offered him a job. So, so you probably fell. You were probably there, I think, for the second event of that, where like he was kind of in because he did that. And then, like I think we offered him a job, and he moved to California like two months later. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 55:56
I remember that. It was. It's funny because like Hurt was such an influence in drifting community being on Juku because we would all call in Juku and be like put Hurt on, put Hurt on, put on. Yeah, to the point where like when I got the job at Njuku, they told me flat out they're like, yeah, Hurt's numbers were like double triple everybody else's.
Speaker 4 56:11
Yeah,
Speaker 2 56:12
like he was just he was just that guy. And there's something about him. It's not like he did. It's not like he hustled more than anybody else. It's not like he was putting flyers out on cars or anything. Hurt is one of those people where when he talks, people listen. People are attracted to him. They want to be around him. I told him this weekend. I'm like, he he's looking at going to see him again. He's like, you know, what should I look for? Just just talking, you know. I'm like, Hurt. All you have to do is be you because people absolutely love you, even if they don't know you.
Speaker 1 56:36
Yeah,
Speaker 2 56:36
like it's hard to explain. There's those few people that walk around with this like golden bubble around him, and you just can't even see it until you're like in it, and you're like, "Oh my god, yeah." What are you doing later? You want to hang out? You know, like hurts one of those.
Speaker 1 56:47
Yeah, look, I mean, keep giving hurt flowers. Hope he doesn't listen to the show, you know, so it'll be fine. But I think that one of the interesting things about him is there's something about him that people just want to root for,
Speaker 3 57:01
yeah,
Speaker 1 57:02
right. I don't know what it is. I mean, I have feelings of what it is, but there's different pieces of it, and like he just became that. And he, you know, when we first started doing content with Hoonigan, you know, there was within a week it was like, oh no, like this is like the hurt show. Like everybody wants to like sign on for her, right? And they want to be that. I you know, as time went on, obviously other people sort of developed other followings, and that really ended up being sort of the strength of Hoonigan was like everyone had their own group. But like right off the bat, there was like this thing that everyone just sort of loved that, right? And they loved, they actually loved his weaknesses is what made him strong, and I think that's a really hard thing to understand. Because like Hurt always wanted to have that perfect car that ran. Like, let's be honest, if he didn't blow up the new twerk horse, yep, it wouldn't have been as good of a story. Because unfortunately, he blows everything up. That's what he does. That's what he does, and it's like he has this like he like he sort of has this bad luck cloud that follows him for certain things, but what he doesn't see is that there is a rain cloud, right? That's over him with all of this, but he doesn't realize that like the rainbow is actually hitting the top of the cloud. Like he has the pot of gold, but he doesn't see it because he's always living in some weird rain cloud. By the way, of his own self-inflicted harm, right? Like none of this happens randomly. It happens. Although Vaughn did say that it was it wasn't his fault.
Speaker 2 58:29
It wasn't his fault. But in the past,
Speaker 1 58:30
it always was. It was bad maintenance. It was cutting corners. It was like whatever. Car's too low.
Speaker 2 58:35
You fly off track. Hood's not latched down. Whatever. Although the
Speaker 1 58:38
car too low was a commitment to the bit. Like you have to appreciate him being like style first over everything, even building a car that barely would drive well. So, but no, I think that yeah, he was. It's it's it's really fun to watch him sort of now have like employees and like have to deal with the bullshit I had to deal with with him, and he'll see me and he'll be like, "Oh, I get it now," and I'm like, "You have no, you have no idea how much I enjoy this. Yeah, no idea. Because look, you don't work with someone for 10 years. What happens to moments where you are like, "Fuck you, I hate you, I
Speaker 2 59:09
hate you,
Speaker 1 59:10
fuck you."
Speaker 2 59:10
What happened to the guy that was going to swing on a bartender for me or a bouncer? Like, what happened to that guy? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 59:16
Like you go through that, but at the same time, like I, I absolutely love him. I'm excited for for all of his wins, and I'm stoked that we don't have to work together anymore. Fantastic! Should listen to the show, honestly. That's not actually entirely true. I would love to work with him in a different setting. I think I think we could make some fun stuff together. But it absolutely terrifies him that I have a direct line to T Pain now, though. Oh, because I can just like one, I have like bad ideas that like T Pain also has similar bad ideas to, and like Hurt doesn't want to do that kind of stuff because
Speaker 2 59:46
now it's like more work for Hurt because T Pain is gonna be like, hey Hurt, talk to Scotto, we're gonna do this now. Hurt's like, oh well, there goes two more months now. I gotta put something together.
Speaker 1 59:53
Yeah, yeah. So, but anyway, um, I want to kind of bring this back around to like. You know, and I think Hurt's a good example, right? Hurt's an interesting one because, like, I don't know. Vaughn said that he thought that Hurt should make a run at FD, right? I don't know if Hurt really has that desire, but I also think that Hurt lives, and I don't want to speak for him, but Hurt lives in a world where he's very he's very in tune with like what's cool, and he's always going to be doing the thing he thinks is coolest, which is why you'll see him at things like Final Bout and Super D because he sees that as being the echelon of cool. So, and before, and I'm I'm landing this plane right here. We ended on like some people just don't think that FD
Speaker 3 1:00:38
right
Speaker 1 1:00:38
is cool, right? To which you said, "That's crazy. We have all these cool things." And I actually think, as a sort of like, you know, as the guy who always was sort of standing right outside looking at at everything in drifting, the coolest part of drifting to me is the run what you brung vibe of it, right? Which is like, what other sport can have you know an eight six basically running stock and then like a 3000 horsepower whatever like rocket ship is available right and a sport that started with you know really in the U s2 40s and then now like you see c5 and c6 vets have kind of become like the new easy button for drifting, and then the style has actually found them too, right? Like these, they look cool. Like they look like wide FDs. Like they, they, they're pretty rad. And like that was something that I don't think I saw coming, right? And I think that this is really interesting to me because I've been involved in motorsports for years, and I've been on. I've worked on the highest level. I worked at the FIA with you know with WRC, and I've been involved in you know Formula One things. Although I don't really love Formula One, but you know, and I've paid attention to motorsport forever. Motorsport has a really hard time, especially now, of of even making themselves cool, let alone making other things cool.
Speaker 9 1:02:09
Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:02:10
drifting as a sport has been able to take cars that we did not think were cool as a culture. c5 vet is a really good example. c6 got the pass. c5 vet was always like the New Balance wearing old dude with the leather Corvette jacket.
Speaker 2 1:02:24
We made fun of him,
Speaker 1 1:02:25
and now like one slammed on some like Tes or works or like I don't even like KFs, but like you look at that car and you're like, oh, we could get into the KF debate. Oh, you don't know I hate KFs?
Speaker 2 1:02:38
Oh God, dude, Jesus Christ! Are you not ready for that? You want to take a break? We can take a quick break. You want
Speaker 1 1:02:44
to take a quick break? We'll come back and talk about KFs.
Speaker 2 1:02:46
Felt like indigestion, and I think it's just hate. Yeah, no, yeah, hate. Hate
Speaker 1 1:02:50
tastes like that. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 1:02:52
I mean, KF is the best. If
Speaker 1 1:02:53
you want to have that fight, you can also you can taste what losing feels like in a second. This
Speaker 2 1:02:58
is wild. This is wild. Okay, can we agree? TE37's best wheel ever.
Speaker 1 1:03:01
Yeah, I don't know best wheel ever, but it's definitely in the top five.
Speaker 2 1:03:04
Definitely top five. Okay, so we could go there.
Speaker 1 1:03:05
We can go there.
Speaker 2 1:03:06
Coolest wheel is KF.
Speaker 1 1:03:08
No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. There's so many wheels that come in front.
Speaker 2 1:03:15
What RPF one? You're RPF one ever? Yeah. Okay. Not an
Speaker 1 1:03:18
RP one. That like to me, that's the like. Hey, you don't have a lot of money, and like, and you don't want to buy reps. Great wheel to buy. Great wheel. Great wheel to buy.
Speaker 2 1:03:26
57 dr looks good. Great, great wheel. Great, great, great, great. Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:03:29
like first off, remember I have more of a German background, so a lot of my wheels are going to be on like the German side of things. No, whatever. Like Oz Futuras, like the BBSRS is a classic. You might not like Meshies, but it's a classic. OZ
Speaker 2 1:03:45
Future is not cooler than VSKF.
Speaker 1 1:03:48
Five spoke to five spoke. Oh yes, it is.
Speaker 2 1:03:50
What? Because as a center cap, the
Speaker 1 1:03:52
K the KF is Japan's knockoff torque thrust. They knocked off the American Torque Thrust, which was never a good-looking wheel ever.
Speaker 2 1:04:03
That's we do have to go to break now because now you're really hurting my feelings. Let's take it. Let's take it. Let's take
Speaker 1 1:04:09
a quick break, and we'll come right back. I'll let you prep. I need air conditioning. I'm hot. I'm hot. So the other week we held Trefunks. For those of you who listen 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 car as 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. I need 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 technique.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 Tech help you along the way. All right. So during the break, we decided that we would not continue this conversation. You didn't have to swing at me as if we might not continue our friendship, but I couldn't help myself. So your VFKFs are just whack, and here's why: because it's basically as if you took the torque thrust and put it in the a blender with all of the advertisements in the back of Dub magazine in the mid 2000s, and like that to me is just not a motorsport.
Speaker 2 1:06:08
You're literally selling me on the wheel even more. Everything you're saying is like better and better and better.
Speaker 1 1:06:12
Like Hurt and I get into this argument all the time. Here are the two arguments that Hurt and I get that have just become fun now. One is the Mazda FC RX Seven is a Temu version of the 944.
Speaker 2 1:06:26
Oh, but the 944 is one of the worst cars ever made.
Speaker 1 1:06:30
Oh my God, we got some problems. Well, I mean, like,
Speaker 2 1:06:32
even Porsche guys say that though.
Speaker 1 1:06:34
It's not great. It's actually it's a great chassis with a bad engine, which is actually pretty similar. Oh my God! It's a team immersive enough for free. Very similar. That I will say this: I Mazda even admitted that they use the 944 as inspiration for their design, which like makes sense, right? But and obviously the FDE has a similar look to a Corvette. Like there's inspiration things there. That's one of the fights we have. The other fight we have is around KFs, and for me, it looks heavy. It looks. It just. It's a style wheel, and I get that. What makes it cool and drifting is it almost shouldn't be on it. But to me, it feels like a like a dub wheel. Like it feels like it comes out of sort of that side, and which is weird because I'm all for spinners on drift cars, but there's something about the KF that I just I do not enjoy the lines of it. There's like an organicness of the line that just doesn't work as a wheel for me. For me, most wheels need to have like a real motorsport background to them, so that wheel just skips me for that, and and look, I also like big, fat, heavy plated like wheels, like like monoblock wheels, and I get that those aren't really a motorsport style. There's just something about the KF that is all the wrong pieces. Maybe it's because I worked in hip hop for so long that I just hated the style of all the wheels to the point that when someone finally made the penis wheel, I was like, "Finally, there it is. There it is. This is what was underneath all those designs was just a bunch of cocks." I
Speaker 2 1:08:10
I'm just I and see I do love spinners though. Spinners on drift cars. I don't understand why
Speaker 1 1:08:16
they haven't gotten bigger. Like a few people have done it, but like looks
Speaker 2 1:08:20
phenomenal.
Speaker 1 1:08:20
And by the way, I went to Hurt. We Hurt and I talked about spinners forever on his car because I was like, "Yo, if you're gonna go KFs, like just go the whole thing. It looks sick. Let's just do spinners." And then when Wheel Pros bought Hoonigan, I'm like, "Dude, this is the moment. Like, let's go." Because I think they had the Dub brand. Like, let's go just actually make spinners. And unfortunately, it never happened. And I've seen a few people do it. We've talked about it on this pod before, but I just like that. Actually, feels like it makes sense in Germany. It when spin and floaters too would look cool. You
Speaker 2 1:08:49
worked for Dub when spinners came out. Correct. I was at
Speaker 1 1:08:53
rides, but they were the competition for Dub. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
Speaker 2 1:08:55
Okay. But while you were doing that, is when Spinners came out. Oh, I remember when Sprewell
Speaker 1 1:09:00
was like, like that drop when like because they called him Spreewells in the beginning because he was really for like two weeks because he was like the first person to show them off and everyone was calling them Sprewells before everyone kind of realized like no they were spinners and then
Speaker 2 1:09:13
I remember watching like I think I was actually
Speaker 1 1:09:15
a massive appeal when that happened but yeah I was there
Speaker 2 1:09:17
it was a mess it I think what really pushed Spinners was when they used to do what was that tour show on MTV? It was like it was like rides, but it was like for the house on MTV, and then we go look at cribs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that was I think that was Shack had them or something. Yeah, or Spree. Yeah. And I just remember, I was like, that's the coolest thing in the world. And 20s were big back then. Yeah. If you had 20 2s, you were like rich. The the
Speaker 1 1:09:38
magazine Dub was named after the idea of double, like it was like double, it was like anything in a 20 was like I forget. Actually, I should know this. I used it was double. I forget why they called it 20s, but it was like double. I forget. Fuck, I should remember this. You
Speaker 2 1:09:54
did at one point. Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:09:55
definitely knew it at one point. But that part of my brain has been replaced with probably like. Some weird camber adjustment I need for my and I lived in
Speaker 2 1:10:02
Atlanta yeah and so it was big it was big it was a thing double dimes double dimes okay
Speaker 1 1:10:08
a double dime was a 20 because like drug language like drug language so it was like we would call them dub deuce right right so it was double dimes or dub deuces right and then like so that was what a 20 was yeah yeah yeah and
Speaker 2 1:10:18
and it was it was there was this like I think it was probably over like two or three years where there's this competition of how big wheels you could fit on your on your Escalade, and like 20 sixes capped out. That was like that was like that was if you had it on 20 sixes, you were like, oh, I don't know if
Speaker 1 1:10:31
you know this, but I did Donk magazine, so I was the editor in chief of Donk. I was the first person to like put a donk in a car magazine because because Dub was so Dub was so West Coast,
Speaker 4 1:10:43
yeah,
Speaker 1 1:10:43
they weren't seeing what was happening in the south. The
Speaker 2 1:10:45
donks, the bubbles, all those, yeah, yeah. So Donk
Speaker 1 1:10:48
Box and Bubble magazine, I did because I was at Rides and we were in New York, and even though it wasn't in New York, we had writers in Miami who were like, "Yo, you got to come see this," and like that, like so I was there when that all like exploded. So trust me, I get it. I I get it. Floaters,
Speaker 2 1:11:06
floaters were fantastic.
Speaker 1 1:11:08
Shout out to MHT with the floater. They started that design, but I get that. But at the same time, I just the KF just doesn't do it for me.
Speaker 2 1:11:18
That's fine.
Speaker 1 1:11:18
Yeah, that's
Speaker 2 1:11:19
fine. I I mean I I it's funny because my rebuttal is everything you named off. It looks like it doesn't belong on the car. It looks heavy. It's big chrome. It's got American heritage. They just ripped off America. This is actually my response to your hate. So I'm just gonna agree with you, and that's why I like. I
Speaker 1 1:11:34
want a good fight, but yeah. But you, you like everything I said is the reason exactly why I love them. Yeah. Do you has KFs on your car. Yeah,
Speaker 2 1:11:43
dude, I got a few KFs.
Speaker 1 1:11:44
It's fine. I get it. I love it. I'll tell. I'll give you five wheels in the in the community. I like way more. And I hate to say this now because now this wheel has become like the gold wheel. But like the Blitzo three, when when Will Rogey first put him on his 14, I was like, "Wow, that wheel's sick!" Because to me, that has more of like a traditional. That was
Speaker 2 1:12:07
like the PIAA wheel here or whatever back in the day, golf, whatever. Oh, I guess so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But had similar like almost PBS. Yeah, but the Blitzo
Speaker 1 1:12:15
three ended up becoming like the wheel, right? I mean, if you have a, if you ever chat with Adam Lz.
Speaker 11 1:12:21
Oh my God! He
Speaker 1 1:12:23
has a his backdrop of like his Zoom call is like 40 oh threes, which is $100,000 because they hit like 8000, $9,000 for a set at one point, right? Maybe even hit 10 grand, which is crazy. I've seen because it was an unloved wheel. Meisters 37 Meister phenomenal wheel 37 phenomenal wheel. And we're
Speaker 2 1:12:43
talking three-piece, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I even like that Advan Tri spokes.
Speaker 1 1:12:48
Yeah, I think those are fun. Like they just come
Speaker 2 1:12:50
in like randomly. Yeah, I like Trispokes
Speaker 1 1:12:51
in general. Same. Yeah, same. Yeah, I like Tripos. And again, like I get that the Tri spoke actually kind of lives in that weird world of like where the KF is, where like it's it's kind of hokey and that's kind of why you like it or hate it. Yeah, it's like polarizing. Yeah, definitely. I don't know, man. The KF is like it has grown on me, but I remember when like Hurt first put him on his car. I was like, those. He was so stoked on his shoes. He had like one of the
Speaker 2 1:13:15
last when KFs were going out. He called up work and he got like one of the last sets of KFs too. So it meant something to them.
Speaker 1 1:13:21
Yeah, but I'm a classic wheel person. Like I love Watts, like like a Watanabe wheel, which by the way is is also a rep wheel.
Speaker 2 1:13:29
Yeah, because they
Speaker 1 1:13:31
repped so many brands in front of them, but Mini Light was the first one.
Speaker 2 1:13:34
Correct,
Speaker 1 1:13:35
right? So the Mini Light was the first wheel. Like, and then there was there were
Speaker 2 1:13:37
like 14, and then there was like
Speaker 1 1:13:39
Westerns and and what was the other company? Superlights. There was a bunch of other companies that made them. And then, obviously, that being said, I do think Watts did the best job at it. And and and like that is actually, and this is a total tangent, but like I think like I will jokingly say the Japanese rep things because they do. But the Japanese, if there's something to be studied, is their ability to take something from another culture and just improve on it in a way you didn't understand? Whether it's like the weather, like what they did with denim,
Speaker 10 1:14:13
oh yeah, what they've done
Speaker 1 1:14:13
with hip hop, what they're doing with low rider culture right now, right now, what they've done with so much stuff. I mean, I think you go look at the attention to detail around that. So, like, am I surprised that they took a torque thrust and made a better version of it? No, I just never thought the torque thrust was a good wheel to begin with. So, there's that. We do
Speaker 2 1:14:32
a lot of. I mean, so we like JDM much like they like USDM. It's wild, and there's this cross. I mean, the the the music they listen to a lot of times, and now we're listening. K-pop is one, which is not Japan, of course, but like that's like one of the biggest up-and-coming cultures that we have right now. We we always want like something else. Yeah, of course. We want something else. I
Speaker 1 1:14:49
also think as Americans, like we sometimes don't understand how much culture we birth, not just because we have like a particular. It's a hard thing to frame because, like, one American exceptionalism, which makes us think we're better than everybody else, whether that's true or not is a whole other conversation. But allowed us to push forward on certain things, right? We also had this like industrial era where we just exploded doing everything. We also had these cities like New York and Atlanta and Chicago and L.A. and San Francisco and I'm gonna forget some and people will complain that like just boomed culture, but at the end it doesn't really matter because New York's the only one that matters. But like all of Philadelphia, shout out Philly, Philly, Philly's great by the way. Yo,
Speaker 2 1:15:37
I love I love
Speaker 1 1:15:37
Philly. I wouldn't if I had I would move back to Philly instead of moving back to Philly is
Speaker 4 1:15:42
sick.
Speaker 1 1:15:42
Yeah, I went to
Speaker 2 1:15:43
Philly and I was like, oh my god, really? Philly's a great place. Yeah, it's a great place.
Speaker 1 1:15:46
It's still gritty too, which is good. But yeah,
Speaker 1 1:15:48
um, but Philly was always like, like New York hates Boston.
Speaker 4 1:15:51
Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:15:52
but like New York always looked at Philly as like you're right. And I don't know how Philly feels about New York, but that's just what it's
Speaker 2 1:15:57
kind of like a little mini, mini like Philly. It's kind of like we're trying to be New York, but it's
Speaker 1 1:16:02
Philly's doing its own. It's just out there trying to survive. And they will fight you on a cheese. They'll fight you for a lot in Philly, which is kind of what I like about they like fighting. And they,
Speaker 2 1:16:10
I, you thought New York drivers are bad? Philly people will drive to work willing to die.
Speaker 1 1:16:15
Philly today is the energy that New York had when I was there in the 90s. Like New York to me feels like kind of over, right? And I don't, I take that back. New York to me is going through a moment right now, which is feeling like it's lacking a little bit. You know, the Knicks brought some stuff back last, like you know, a couple months ago. But there's the Knicks
Speaker 2 1:16:37
can't save New York though. I'm sorry, they can't save it. We'll
Speaker 1 1:16:41
see what Ken. The Yankees can. Oh wow! All right.
Speaker 2 1:16:43
You're a Mets guy.
Speaker 1 1:16:44
No, I'm a Yankees guy. I grew up in Queens, and I'm still a Yankees guy. Oh my god! I grew up in Queens. I'm still a Yankees. So my
Speaker 2 1:16:50
mom was it. My mom and her family they lived in Jersey. Okay, and my my nana was pregnant with my mom during labor. They went across the Brooklyn Bridge because she didn't want to have a jersey. You
Speaker 1 1:17:01
Italian background?
Speaker 4 1:17:02
Yeah,
Speaker 3 1:17:02
yeah.
Speaker 2 1:17:02
Italian Jew.
Speaker 1 1:17:03
Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's an interesting combo.
Speaker 2 1:17:05
Is it? I thought all of us are like Italian Jews. No, no, no, no. I think it's an interesting
Speaker 1 1:17:09
combo because, like, there's a moment in time, especially in New York, where like, if you were Italian or Jewish, it didn't really matter because you dressed and smelled the same. Like, you both were wearing Jacqueline Nor. I love Jacqueline. A curve.
Speaker 2 1:17:22
I have it in my luggage. Of
Speaker 1 1:17:24
course you do.
Speaker 2 1:17:24
Of course, the green bottle though. I'm not a sellout. I'm not going blue or any other the OG
Speaker 1 1:17:29
with the gold lettering. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. You can still
Speaker 2 1:17:31
buy it, but you have to buy it at TJ Maxx now. Yeah. But no, my my grandma did not want to have a Jersey girl, so she literally drove over the bridge so she said she could be born. I
Speaker 1 1:17:43
respect that. I respect that hustle. Yeah. So
Speaker 2 1:17:46
now my mom, they're like, "Where are you from?" My mom says New York, but they lived in Jersey.
Speaker 1 1:17:50
I mean, she gets the yeah. I don't know. There's a whole argument right now over like what makes you a New Yorker. They
Speaker 2 1:17:55
ended up moving to Brooklyn, but yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1 1:17:57
There's a whole argument about it, and it got really, really heated on on like Instagram and TikTok and everything, and it all started because J Lo was on Subway takes. Do you ever see Subway takes? No, it's good. I do
Speaker 2 1:18:14
see J
Speaker 1 1:18:15
Lo. Okay, and J Lo basically said like, if you weren't born in New York, you're not a New Yorker, right? Because like transplants move to New York, they live there for you know 10 years, and they feel like they get their New York.
Speaker 2 1:18:25
They get the accent after like five years or something. Yeah.
Speaker 1 1:18:28
And my feeling on it is, I don't know. I don't agree that you have to be born there, but you do have to have grown up there, which means you have to have gone through the school. You have to have gone to school in New York, which would argue like you may have been born in New York, but then like went to a boarding school in Connecticut. I don't know if you're a New Yorker because like if you didn't have to dice it up on the train going to school or like deal with just all the stuff that like is not normal for kids. Like kids go to school on a school bus. Like I took the fucking E train to school. I don't even know
Speaker 2 1:19:01
what that is.
Speaker 1 1:19:02
So yeah, like I went to I went to Jamaica Queens for school, and it was like you know there was like it's just a different thing that that you become really really independent when you're like 12 or 13, and once you get that subway pass or bus pass or MTA pass, whatever it is at the time, like all of a sudden, all of New York was your playground, and I think that that just creates a very different person, and that's the thing that forms a New Yorker. Anyway, we have now tangented a little bit. We're going to get back to KFs. Is
Speaker 2 1:19:32
that where you want to go? Is that where you want to go?
Speaker 1 1:19:35
I get where you. I get your feeling on it on this wheel, and I actually. So we do another show on this podcast called Firing Order, and it's about listing like the greatest wheels of all time, whatever. And like I've had this conversation, like why haven't we done that show yet? And it's because like one, it's very subjective, but two, it's like I think we actually have to like do like the greatest Japanese like you know. Motorsport wheel, the greatest Japanese style wheel, the greatest Euro, and like do them as groups, and then have like the final battle royale where we do like okay, now the greatest ones of all these groups have to be picked. I would
Speaker 8 1:20:12
agree
Speaker 1 1:20:12
because like I I so much of why you like wheels is because of how they look on the cars you like.
Speaker 2 1:20:20
Correct.
Speaker 1 1:20:21
Right. I think a lot of where like I think when you look at what makes a really good wheel, it's because it actually works on a lot of things, and that's why the TE 37 lives in a top three space for me because I've seen TEs on Civics, I've seen TEs on Porsches, I've seen TEs on Corvets and Chargers, and they always kind of look good. I've even seen TEs on trucks. I mean, we built
Speaker 2 1:20:48
yeah the off-road trucks. Yeah, yeah, that the
Speaker 1 1:20:50
the off-road version, but even street trucks, we built like a knockoff version of the Ford. We called the freight name, and we put it on. We originally had it on TEs.
Speaker 2 1:20:59
Looked phenomenal, and it
Speaker 1 1:21:00
looked great. And it's like so. Like making a wheel be universally acceptable, I think is a really difficult thing. So like that wheel sort of gets the nod for that one. Like that's really good.
Speaker 2 1:21:11
It is. It is, and and I think I like the KF because drifting is also one of those things where we build drift cars not in the style that I'm in, or that I built my car, it's not function first. It's form first, so those wheels don't look like they should fit. And so I buy put it, put it, put a name on it. What
Speaker 1 1:21:28
do you call it? Because when I when we were paying more when I was at Hoonigan, we just referred to as grassroots. But now it feels like because you keep using the word like a style car, style car. You feel like that's really kind of yeah.
Speaker 2 1:21:39
Because a style car, it would be like if it's like if if to a high level listener, I would be like final power car, you know, like like you know this event that a car where
Speaker 1 1:21:47
fitment matters more than your ability to steer.
Speaker 2 1:21:51
Correct, correct. My steering might bind because the front's too low, and I go, well, I'll drive around
Speaker 4 1:21:56
it, right?
Speaker 2 1:21:56
You know, something like that. Now, I will tell you, like, say, drifting also is kind of great in this style aspect because you don't just own KFs; you own multiple. Of course, you know. So I have TEs, I have Regas, I got the KFs. I have
Speaker 1 1:22:09
Regas is a great wheel too. Reg
Speaker 2 1:22:10
is a phenomenal wheel. They break. How do how do you
Speaker 1 1:22:14
feel about them reissuing the Rega? Heartbroken. Yeah, because it's one of those like once you reissue a wheel, it's not rare anymore.
Speaker 2 1:22:22
It's not. It's not. And and it's it's not like they reissued it and it looks a little different. It looks like a Reagan. It's the same wheel. So they do bigger
Speaker 1 1:22:29
sizing now.
Speaker 2 1:22:30
Bigger sizes, great, good. Now if it's a NSX or whatever, I don't. Yeah, but I do. So I have like the gold ones, you know, which I don't think they make now. I think it's just only, or I think it's only the whites, maybe blacks as well. But like, even building my Civics, I had Spoon SW, you know, which is fantastic, phenomenal wheel.
Speaker 1 1:22:48
That wheel made me start liking Hondas. Like, think about that. Like, because before that, there's this like weird revisionist history where people are building Hondas, '90s Hondas that like aren't gross, and you're like, no, no, no, they were gross in the 90s. They were gross. They didn't start looking good until the early 2000s when like you started getting spoon. Back then, everybody was running like TSW, like like Sea West Body Kids, Sea West Body Kits, or worse Arabuni Shogun. Arabony was
Speaker 2 1:23:21
good though, yeah. And the audio bond sound system, like we get, there was like a playbook for it. You go to Circuit City, you stack, and that's
Speaker 1 1:23:27
what was there. And like, yeah, there may have been a few cars in the rough that were like had real style, but that was not what the majority was. Fast and Furious one, people go to Radwood with cars, and they're like, "Oh, I'm like, that is not what the fucking cars look like, dude." The
Speaker 2 1:23:39
baddest Civics to this day that I've ever seen is those black ones in Fast and Furious One. They were that was the coolest car. They were
Speaker 1 1:23:46
actually ahead of the time there, yeah, because that's not what most the cars looked like at the time. No,
Speaker 2 1:23:51
and and so so there was this beautiful and like AM seven crew. There was like these guys in California and stuff back in the day that really helped push this like JDM scene or shaved engine bay stuff and like ripped off basically Volkswagen is really what stretched
Speaker 1 1:24:04
tires and shaved engine bays came from Europe
Speaker 2 1:24:06
100%. And I don't, yeah, it was
Speaker 1 1:24:09
the but the shaved engine bay thing really came from low riding, right? Like yes, like it all like because remember the Germans were looking at low riders, so like because there eventually became a time where all of like the like Werther C cars, which was the big show in Germany, we're all starting to put hydraulics on their cars and doing like these crazy trunk paint jobs and like all this stuff that really felt like low rider or like mini truck, right? So like that came from that. But the stretch tires came because two for you probably know is TUV would not allow the tire to expand past the fender, so they wanted to run bigger wheels without having to do body work, so they would stretch the rubber. And it's like it's a crazy thing to think about because now, like everyone runs like everybody does across all kind of markets. Well, I don't know. There is a big movement for good old chunky boys. I like a good chunky tire too. It
Speaker 2 1:24:57
has, but the cars be built. This is it has to make.
Speaker 1 1:25:00
Makes sense. When
Speaker 2 1:25:00
you buy this, if there's one phrase that I could say on this podcast, when you get a car before you do anything, choose your wheel. If you want big puffy tire, if you want stretch tire, and then you build the car around the wheel. I strongly, this is my boy Tyler speaking, buy the wheel and build the car around the wheel because you can change because it's the same way when I build a car in like fours, you know. I pick the wheel and I'm like, all right, now what body kit matches this? You know, do I want to go over fender? Do I want to do this? Do I want to do that? Do I want to stick steel quarter? Whatever it is, wheel has so much. It's why we're so passionate right now about talking about VSKF. I have found
Speaker 1 1:25:36
I have found wheels that I built cars around.
Speaker 2 1:25:39
You will buy a vehicle. Oh my god! I
Speaker 1 1:25:40
can't believe I found this wheel. I need to build the right car to fit this wheel.
Speaker 2 1:25:44
Strongly believe that absolutely. And you're not alone on this. People will buy a wheel and then go, okay, now I gotta now I gotta find the car. You know, and and and wheels are like the most important modification to a car. Period. Above, if you choose to go LS or JZ or whatever, it does that doesn't even matter. We're talking the wheel is the most important thing on a car.
Speaker 1 1:26:03
It's like sneakers. It's like or hats. I think both are like these things. Like it could change the entire look of something by just doing the wheels. Yeah, it
Speaker 2 1:26:10
really can. If
Speaker 1 1:26:11
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Speaker 2 1:28:19
Prospec has now become the category that's for the obtainable, and I'd have like you've thought
Speaker 1 1:28:24
about this. You didn't fucking hesitate. I am
Speaker 2 1:28:26
so ready. I can I can hear you circularly
Speaker 1 1:28:29
breathing right now. You're playing tuba. Go run
Speaker 2 1:28:32
so free. Okay, so you have Pro, which is unlimited horsepower. You got the budget. It's best of the best drivers. They know what they're doing, and you just put them out there, and you're like, "Go, boys, go! Put on a show. Put on the Monster Truck Show. Be the character. Do whatever you need to. Bring the big sponsors. Legitimize the sport." Pro Spec is no longer a feeder series. Pro Spec is its own thing with a horsepower restriction. My idea for Pro Spec was all cars have to be on a single play clutch.
Speaker 4 1:29:00
I know, and they have to go the whole route. That'll limit your power.
Speaker 1 1:29:03
You know, I've never heard anyone say that before. And you can look. That is such a power limiter because you can put as much power as you want, but like may not last a whole event. Smoke your clutch,
Speaker 2 1:29:11
correct? And you can put a window hole in the transmission, and each clutch is serial numbered. Then you could get a clutch partnership, just like GT Radio runs the spec tire for Pro Spec. Now everybody has to run this ACT, Exety, whatever single play clutch, and so you build everything around that. Means you can still run a dog box. Are you series doing this yet? No,
Speaker 1 1:29:28
that's a great idea.
Speaker 2 1:29:29
So I mean, because it's too expensive and it's not real to put cars on dynos at every event to check their horsepower. And not only that, but easy, but yeah, I mean, but and that puts on a show as well. That's a power to weight thing that they do as a legitimate motorsport. They could do a dyno at FD, but I think just make it easier. Single play clutch,
Speaker 1 1:29:46
man. That's a great restrictor.
Speaker 2 1:29:48
And so now you bring in the other guys. I like the four round idea still because it's still obtainable. Guys don't have to get $100,000 season together. They do four events. You know, like I could do four events across. U.S. If I really wanted to max out my credit cards, so but I think it also brings in like your front street guys now. It brings in these other car guys. It's not, and this is not me speaking down about Kevin Wells at all and the rules that he's made to make Prospect more obtainable. But like Kevin Wells said, you have to have a stock factory steering call in Prospect. I don't know if you know that or not to make it more. You can't have a pedal box. Okay, these are things that kind of make it a little bit more street, and he's been pulling back on that, pulling back on that, trying to get a little bit more streetcar. But I think,
Speaker 1 1:30:26
do you think those are good rules?
Speaker 2 1:30:28
Yes, I, I, I, Pro Spec as a feeder series. I think like if somebody does well in prospect, yeah, they could run pro. But I think almost pro just needs to be a petition at all times. Like if you want to run pro, show us that you have a program ready. You know things of that nature. Okay, you know show us that you can bring value to the sport. You're a qualified driver. Okay, now you get your license. Not like you need to place top three here, and that's the only guys that come through. That's that's kind of where I I. It's not that I disagree, but if I would change, yeah, I think pros, and now you're bringing those style guys we're talking about into the same show in front of 10,000 people, and I think that's awesome. You know, same rules on you know chassis if you want or whatever, but realistically, now you have the guys running the same exact track, same exact zones, but 450 horsepower, maybe 500. I don't know. They'd have to figure
Speaker 12 1:31:24
it out. There
Speaker 2 1:31:24
might be guys out there running 1000 horsepower and just putting Coca Cola on their clutch every run. Oh, trust me,
Speaker 1 1:31:29
people are going to figure out how to do
Speaker 2 1:31:30
it. Clutch coolers or something. Have you
Speaker 1 1:31:32
ever seen? I think like it's like drag cars that do it, where they put the transmission on sliders so they can do fast clutch changes.
Speaker 2 1:31:40
No,
Speaker 1 1:31:40
they basically put the transmission on like bar sliders. Yeah. So like you unbolt it, you slide it out, you pull the clutch out, and then you slide it back
Speaker 2 1:31:48
in. Oh, that's kind of cute. That is actually cool. Yeah. No, yeah, I think they. Yeah, you get one clutch per round, and that's it. So all three. And
Speaker 1 1:31:55
I like it as a spec clutch. No pun intended to the spec brand, but like literally, like you get your clutch at the beginning of the event, and then like you have to install it, and that's your clutch for the weekend. Yeah,
Speaker 2 1:32:04
and then throughout the season, now you're just giving the guys plates. You know, maybe they get
Speaker 1 1:32:08
two clutches or something. Two
Speaker 2 1:32:09
clutches, like the flywheel, whatever. If they get it, but yeah, in the maintenance clutch, so you get four plates, whatever. They're all serial number, doesn't even matter, and that's that.
Speaker 1 1:32:16
That's an interesting one. I I like what you're saying there. I actually think that FD could actually just have more classes in general because I think that there's a lot of downtime, and especially as someone who doesn't get to the event anymore, like viewing on the stream, I think there's a lot of other things that could happen, and I don't think all of it has to be live. Meaning, like I think you could do an event on Friday that then just gets aired as like shoulder content as needed, like you know, and I agree with that. And I think that I like your idea for the clutch limiting piece, but I actually do think that like a final bout or like a like a super D, there is like a place for that that just kind of lives as that is, right? And for me, I actually think that team drift is something that would bring a different audience to the group because there's something about learning to drive with your boys that is just on a whole other level. Like one of the best ride-alongs I've ever had in drifting, and I've been in so many cars over the years, was with James Dean and Piotr because, like,
Speaker 2 1:33:20
that's that's that's a top echelon. But go ahead, I get it, I get it.
Speaker 1 1:33:24
But it's like it's because those guys drive together on a level that other guys don't. And the reason why they crushed the series that year that they came together in the Warthouse Hoonigan cars was because their complements of driving together. I just did filming, and I actually wanted to mention this on the. I wanted to mention this on the pod I did with Ryan Turk, but we just talked about a bunch of stuff, and I forgot about it. Was you know Ryan is Ryan's one of the drivers in the new Drifter film with Sun Kang, and it's funny because I had like because of the way the narrative works, and I did all the narrative for which cars ended up where because I knew all the drivers and I was able to put that together. So there's this whole sequence scene of of you know Sung's character Tree going through sort of like the run at at this event called Legends of Drift, right? Which is this like fictitious drift series. It's kind of modeled as like a feeder for FD, right, and they're going through this series, and I put Ryan up first, and it was because Ryan had to go home, so we needed to film the Ryan part, and I knew we weren't going to be ready, so like the whole reason was that like Ryan ended up in that position was because Ryan had to go home because he wanted to go spend time with his with his son. So I was like, all right, cool, we'll we'll do this piece. I'll put you in there. And what I forgot was like, Di and Ryan have driven together for so long that like I was like at some point I was telling them to like back off because like their chase at like their chases looked better than what I knew I was going to get out of everybody else because the comfortableness of Di and Ryan driving together because they've driven. Up against each other so many times that there was so much trust that they would literally go door to door on each other, right? I mean, I think there's one moment where I think Ryan's tire actually touches die, right? Like you're, you know, and you're you're there, and like like they're just reaching each other. Didn't need to happen during. Didn't need to happen in filming, especially not for that scene, because in the scene it like isn't supposed to be that close yet. But there is something super special about that, and I think that you get that in team drift in a way that, like, when you're competitive with each other, that might not happen in the same way because, like, you're trying to out drive the other driver instead of trying to drive together. And I think that that's a whole other part of the sport that, like, maybe a lot of other people don't get the same. No,
Speaker 2 1:35:38
I mean, so let's look at this like as a literal thing. I I can actually prove your point 100% correct. James Dean, Jack Shahan, Connor Shanahan, your top three for the season, right? First, second, third. They live less than a mile away from each other and grew up less than a mile away from each other.
Speaker 1 1:35:56
Yeah.
Speaker 2 1:35:56
So James Dean was there. I mean, they were telling the
Speaker 1 1:36:00
Irish would just dominate?
Speaker 2 1:36:02
We need to stop booking trips to Japan to go drive with Japanese drivers and try and advance our skills. We're all going to Ireland. You want to get better? Like, just make sure one of them's around. I don't know. I
Speaker 1 1:36:12
don't know if this exists anymore, but like Irish as the Irish as like a motorsports group have to be studied because at one point in time, there was a statistic that there were more WRC cars racing rally in Ireland than in the rest of the world. Like there, like it is crazy. Like Ireland, just there's certain motorsports they love, and like rally and drifting are high, high on the level.
Speaker 2 1:36:36
There was an old motorsport phrase in rally actually, whereas if you want to win, get a fin, and that was like what in the 80s or something like that. And then Ireland just took off. And even Sorensen, Sorensen in his acceptance speech last night goes, "I look at the lights when they click off before I go," and he's like, "What fires me up is when the green light goes instead. I picture an Irish flag." He's like, "I don't want to be Irish. No, I want to be American flag." And that was like his argument. He's like, "That's that was," and I was like, "Okay," because again, Formula Drift is like as American as apple pie does, based off a Japanese sport. Yes, yeah, yes, but it is like big power, big smoke, like all it's it is everything. It's the golden corral of motorsports. Oh my
Speaker 1 1:37:18
god, I love that.
Speaker 2 1:37:19
Yes, it's everything you want. I always
Speaker 1 1:37:21
refer to it as supersizing. Like whenever I look at an international sport that's not working here, I'm like, we just have to supersize. Supersize it. Yeah,
Speaker 2 1:37:28
that's a great way to look at it. Yeah, but it is. It's it's it's it's what's some people's favorite part of drag racing is the burnout. Like everybody, and you know what? Other Forbes people are watching NASCAR waiting for the wrecks. We tell them to put the rear bumper on the wall, so every time they see a car go by, they're like, "Is it a wreck? Is it a wreck? Is it going to happen?" We tell them to get inches away from each other. You know, drafting, drafting is great. When you see people bump drafting, well, they're hitting each other the entire lap, and now you have a story you can tell it is can tell it's it's mano a mano. It's two cars at one time, and the whole race is right in front of you instead of like normal racing where you see the cars whizz by you, and you're trying to figure out who's in first and what the storyline is. No, it is everything's right there. It's it's it's the best form of motorsports because like the story is literally happening right in front
Speaker 4 1:38:10
of you,
Speaker 2 1:38:11
and it just gives you everything you want in motorsports. It gives you the style, different engine noises. Even you go to Petite Lamaze, and you would see the Corvette go by, and you're like, "Oh, America!" You know, like it's just or the Panos car, you hear it coming around the corner before it ever did. That of course Mazda, you know that was like the most exciting thing about like when you go to Lamaze or anything like that. Well, guess what? We have Ferraris. We got four cylinders, six cylinders, V eights, whatever you want. It's drifting. It's wild in the comments again. Like it's locked. It's anything. No, it's just gotten better.
Speaker 1 1:38:42
Well, do you think? And we'll go back to this. So I'll quote it. Some people feel that maybe one of the problems with FD is that it's taken too much of the attention and spotlight, and not from an audience side, because there's an argument that there's a massive audience for these other things, but from a dollars and cents side, right? That that it has sort of been the vacuum in the room that has brought all of the money there. So you can't make the money to go run, you know, final bout, right? Or like the like Appalachia. I never say it right. How do you say? Because you're
Speaker 2 1:39:18
Appalachia.
Speaker 1 1:39:19
Well, that's a that's one I haven't even heard before.
Speaker 2 1:39:22
Drift Appalachia.
Speaker 1 1:39:23
You just say Appalachia.
Speaker 2 1:39:24
I don't know if that's Georgia or me or not there. But
Speaker 1 1:39:26
like like there is like this is a word by the way, and this is again a total tangent that when I was a kid it was like Appalachia or like Appalachia, right? And then all of a sudden like I was told like no, we've all said it wrong for we've forever.
Speaker 2 1:39:39
That's I'm saying like I was kind of being joking. I think it's like the it's like the Apalanca. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is kind of
Speaker 1 1:39:45
yeah. It's like that first time someone's like it's Porsha.
Speaker 2 1:39:48
Oh my god, I want to slap that person. It is Porsche though. It is
Speaker 1 1:39:51
Portia. It's his last name. It's his last name. I know, but
Speaker 2 1:39:54
people just come and people say like Porsche. You're like yeah, yeah. You're just like too. There's certain
Speaker 1 1:39:59
things like there's certain. Things I will agree to because people will call me out for. I think one of my sponsors is a company called Vera, but technically it's Vera because you don't pronounce W's in the German language. But like I just feel like a douchebag doing that because I'm not German for me to be like, oh Volkswagen Vera, like it's like we just don't say it that way, right? You
Speaker 2 1:40:21
don't want to sound too much. I'm a purist. Yeah, but then there's some
Speaker 1 1:40:23
words that like I do feel like like like saying like Nurburgring like the Nordic Schleift like like like the way they say it. It's like oh maybe I do want to say that way. Then you're like oh I just sound like now I'm like Barcelona like I don't have a lisp. I don't know why I have to say it that way. So
Speaker 2 1:40:37
I feel bad ordering asada tacos instead. Just no, give me a steak taco." I feel bad. I like, especially California, I'll be like toast asada. It's
Speaker 1 1:40:45
always funny when like you or you'll go somewhere and like someone doesn't know how to like pronounce the word like acai. Asai,
Speaker 2 1:40:52
I'm still
Speaker 1 1:40:53
and they're sitting there going like, "The can I get the acai bowl?" You're like, "Oh boy, it's all right." My dad, because he's just a fucking born in Brooklyn, like he'll come here and he'll be like, "I'll get the baja tacos," and I'm like,
Speaker 2 1:41:04
"Is it colloque? Is it close? Is it colloque? Oh,
Speaker 1 1:41:09
I don't even know.
Speaker 2 1:41:10
See, see, and it's hilarious. Every time that's the new one. My my wife is very
Speaker 1 1:41:14
because she grew up here. Like my wife is very good at correcting me on all of my
Speaker 2 1:41:19
women are growing up. They're really good.
Speaker 1 1:41:20
Just correcting me. Period. I need to finish that sentence. We can move on. But yeah. So anyway, back to what we were saying. Yeah. Look, I just think that there's all these other things that are happening in the sport that maybe maybe aren't getting the same amount of attention because FD is sucking up a lot of the air in the room, and what some people say, I'm not saying this, but what some people say is that maybe some of those other things would actually have a better way forward. Because, and I'm going to give you the last one, there is a critique against Formula Drift that it has now been here for almost 25 years, right? We're approaching 25. Are we there yet? We're there. Almost, we're close. Yeah. And some people would say that it feels like there. It's hit a ceiling, right? Like audiences haven't gotten much bigger. We're not seeing like the cars are getting crazier. The competition is kind of continuing to step up, but we have less automakers in the business than we did 2015 years ago. We have probably less overall sponsorship money based on FD. Most of the guys who are competing, guys and girls who are competing in FD, are doing a ton to supplement their content by being influencers. Now, look, that is motorsports worldwide, but that's all happening, so I think there's an argument of maybe this wasn't the maybe FD was maybe not the the shouldn't have been the lead horse. Okay, I just throw that out there, and I will say there are parts of this that I agree with. There are other parts I don't agree with, and then there are other parts that I can agree with, but I can also understand why it's not true.
Speaker 2 1:43:02
So, like in NASCAR, you know, say, are
Speaker 1 1:43:05
you a NASCAR guy, by the way?
Speaker 2 1:43:06
I like motorsports in general. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm not. I'm not going to sit on the couch and watch NASCAR races. That's not like my go-to. You know, I would rather leaf blow with my electric leaf blower, which
Speaker 1 1:43:16
is kind of sick. It's so satisfying. I got I got a Milwaukee over there. We could play after. Oh, the real good one though is that I don't even know the name of the brand, but it's like
Speaker 2 1:43:25
small one.
Speaker 1 1:43:26
No, no, there's another leaf. My my son has this little mini leaf blower that we used to clean the sea cars. Sick, yeah. But there's this other company we bought it at. It's like 48 volt, and like they just make leaf blowers, and we used to use it to clean up all of the tire, like slag that would come off in the parking lot because it would get so like clumped up. It's gonna be strong to blow up. Yeah, it was pretty good. It was pretty good. We also would use it just to clear smoke out from the old shop. Powerful. Yeah, it was pretty good. So anyway, absolute tangent. So electric
Speaker 2 1:43:56
leaf blowers were sick. But so so there's this form of NASCAR where like say your Target or M and M's or Nestle or whatever that wants to come in and sponsor driver, you actually go through NASCAR instead of just hitting up, you know, Ricky Bobby or whatever, being like, I want to put my logo on your car. You go through NASCAR. NASCAR goes, okay, here's your menu. You could get these drivers from this team, top five, or you know, pick from these five. You could get one or two of these guys from this team, and you know, tell us how many rounds you want to sponsor the car? Where you want your logo to be placed? All these other things. NASCAR kind of puts it together, hands that over to the team with a lump sum of money, and here you go.
Speaker 1 1:44:29
Yep, yep.
Speaker 2 1:44:29
And that, but what you lose is a lot of your own content and what you could do and freedom to like maybe shop. You know everything but a manufacturer. Basically, you know what the car even looks like. You have no hearsay at all. One day you could show up and your car's pink, and you go, "Okay, well, I'm driving a pink car today." Right. So there's that. Now let's look at F1. F1. Now you can sell. You know, if you're McLaren, you can actually sell and control your partnerships and stuff. But McLaren says you can't do any media at the track. You can't leave your pits. You know, you have no storyline to be told because we're telling the story now. Okay, Formula Drift is basically like the Wild West. Get your sponsors. Doesn't matter if it's a fleshlight company. Doesn't matter if it's Borla exhaust. Doesn't matter who it is. It could be Ford, Monster Energy, Rockstar. Doesn't even matter. Formula Drift has their own beverage partner. You know, and there's a Monster Energy drink car out there, and there's a Rockstar car out there. So you have that freedom as well. And at the same time, unlimited media. You want 10 media guys out there feeling if you can afford it, go ahead. We'll give you 10 media passes. Build your story. Build your program. Do whatever you want. A lot of guys don't have the energy, talent, time to put all those things together. Having that wild west freedom to roam, whatever it is, they're looking for their $20,000 sponsor to get them through maybe one round. Let alone looking for you know what they really need to do the season, which is 120, 150, $200,000 to do a season. That's not the price of the car. That's what it costs. These guys are still paying for tires. A lot of them are still paying for tires. When you get two laps to repair tires, you know. So I see both avenues of where they can benefit. Would let me ask you: You're a Formula Drift Pro One driver. You're coming in. Would you rather pick your sponsor? Would you rather them pick the sponsor for you? Would you rather do all the work, hustle bustle, build your deck, go to SEMA, represent yourself, show your value, and maybe gamble and get enough money to cover the season or profit a little bit. Or would you rather say, raise my hand, Formula Drift? Who'd you get for me this year?
Speaker 1 1:46:35
Yeah, obviously, I'd rather do my own. Is what I've done in life. That's what makes sense, and I think there's similarities of this in other sports. So, you know, for like in in rally, which is what I know best, there's basically you either go as a factory supported team and you're just showing up. So you're a Ford driver, or you know, or whatever. Now a Toyota driver, a Hyundai driver, right back in the Citroen driver, whatever. And like you show up and you really have no say. Like you maybe get your helmet, right, and that's it. Not even your suit. You just get your helmet, which is similar to Formula One. The reason why Ken and I decided to not go that route and not go the like what you referred to as like a salary driver is because like we wanted to have the option to do more with the team, and we wanted to have our own liveries, and we wanted to have our own stuff, and we wanted actually own our own car so we could go do our own things outside of the event, and and all of those things. And we went the customer program side. Customer program side is always more difficult because like you got one, you have to do it all on your own. Second, you always get second to the factory team. Factory team is always going to get the better stuff. They're never going to pass you down as much. So, like, I totally understand that side of it. I think that that piece is. I think that's what actually makes FD great. Like, I like the things I love about FD is the Roma Jung style, is the tell your own story style, and they've been good and bad with that over the years. There was a period of time where FD like kind of you know hit everybody with a copyright strike, and nobody was able to like upload footage from FD events, and and I think they actually made a big mistake because, and this is like a whole other podcast that at some point I'll bring I'll bring the right people on to talk about. Maybe you can come on to defend FD, or we'll have Ryan or agree. I don't
Speaker 2 1:48:18
know. Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:48:19
yeah. I think that they went through this period, and I get it because, like, they were trying to figure out how to continue to monetize the sport. Because, like, the number one thing commenters don't understand, and not all of them, but the masses sometimes don't understand, is like, all of this shit costs money, and no one's fucking banking as much as you think they are. Right? Maybe not true for Formula One, but for a lot of these smaller sports, it's like they're still trying to figure it out, right? And FD is 20 plus years into it, and I'm sure there's still weekends where Ryan and Andy and those guys are sitting there going, "This wasn't a good weekend. We had a horrible storm hit. We lost this. We lost that. We're gonna do this. We're gonna do that." And it's like it's it's it's always a business, and you're always trying to run the business side of it, right? But there was this period of time where they decided to basically restrict video content coming out of FD. I think unless you had, and I don't want to like be too specific here because I don't remember all the details, but like you had to be like a media partner, you had to do this. You had to give them certain things. You had to do whatever, and all of a sudden, that and for a few other reasons that I'll save for another day, like this this DIY automotive like Drift Media Group kind of shrunk, right? So the Will Roges of the world, like Will Hobo, you know, all of these guys, sort of like you know, OMG Giraffe, like there was just this like whole group of people, and I'm I'm just naming three. There was there was hundreds of them, right? Like all the way down to like you know Andy Lapuka and Shoot First Media. Like yeah, they were covering drivers, but they were also like making their own edits. And and I've talked about this on the pod I think before. But this to me was the this to me was the golden era of drifting, and I know for a lot of the drivers, like Ryan mentioned this, he hated this era because it meant that like he had to be more than a driver. He did well at it, which is weird to hear him be like, "I did." It was my least favorite era, but you know his favorite ever was like when you could just show up and drive and go home, right? And it wasn't like this whole other thing. But from a from a media person, right? Like I'm a content guy. That's what I am. There was this amazing moment where you had, you know, every weekend was the event, and then on Monday was the uploads, right? Or and when it was both blogs because you had like the speed hunters, you had like Lindbergh when Larry was just the guy with Limburg, right? That was it. Early days before Larry, before Larry Chen was Larry Chen. It was like Lindbergh and his friend Larry, right? You know, doing doing stuff on Speed Hunters, and then you had you know Motor Mavens, which was where Andy Sapp was with Antonio, and like you know, obviously there was like OMG Drift, and there was there's a whole bunch I don't even remember
Speaker 2 1:51:03
the magazines. You had Source Interlink, yeah, you had that, and then you had
Speaker 1 1:51:07
guys like Hurt who were doing beard life cuts and uploading them, and like, you know, it's like he wasn't like what was he even slinging? And this to me was the closest drifting ever felt to skateboarding because skateboarding had this model as well, where there were like certain guys who were like, "Oh, I'll only skate with a Tiba Jefferson. Like he's my dude. He's the one that you know." Like these were these moments that I think drifting lost and didn't realize what they were losing when they lost them. And it's not entirely FD's fault. It's also a cost thing because everyone used to travel with their guys. I mean, there's there's so many names out there that I can think of who are like. I talked about this a little bit with Jeff Swart when he was on. Like, so many people came out of the like drifting media complex, right? Like, there was so much content to be made. There was so much out there, and if you wanted to watch Drifting set to trap music, you got it. If you want to watch Drifting set to Sad Boy emo, you got it. Like it was this, it was culturally this really really fun time in Drifting, and I think there was a series of things that happened. I think it was more affordable for people to hire, like you know, or for multiple teams to hire one creator or you know or one sort of production to to handle it, and then I also think that there was this sort of like weird lockdown from FD because they were trying to figure out whoa is this stuff valuable? Like maybe we could sell this, right? And I don't even know. I don't even think they do that anymore. I don't think they don't because now because of like creators and vlogs, like everybody has that. But there was this, like, I would just remember, like, it just disappeared one day, and most of those people went on to never shoot drifting again, not in a level that mattered.
Speaker 2 1:52:49
I don't even know the whole story of why that happened or what it was, but I remember being as a viewer and a fan, and still having like part of a team and stuff like that during that that phase. I will tell you now. Like we have a Dropbox with every run, with everything. They hand us all content. Pull just like tell us what you don't have it. Like let us know. So right now, yes, we get
Speaker 1 1:53:10
again. Like I'm saying, this is like 2015, 2014. Correct. So I remember also at the same time, YouTube really started pushing copyright on music, which also changed because people were making like banger edits to music, so that was also a big.
Speaker 2 1:53:24
So that this is my. I remember going to Vimeo and just like refreshing my Vimeo, waiting for these upsets because they were not doing the copyright music stuff. This is actually where you are uploading like the highest quality images and all this other stuff or videos, and Vimeo was really where it was at
Speaker 1 1:53:41
Yair, like all those guys, Yair, all these guys,
Speaker 2 1:53:44
and and yeah, and like you're right, Beard Life was like trap, like hood music, and like I was like, this is new, this is fun, and we did, we had all these different like content creators, and they may not even be just featuring a certain driver or partner. They like I Yair, I don't think he was just doing one driver.
Speaker 1 1:54:00
I mean, there no no. A lot of in the early days, a lot of these guys were just covering. They were just covering the event. Just covering the event. So you
Speaker 2 1:54:06
had it all, and there wasn't like you. So now on YouTube,
Speaker 1 1:54:09
and the economics usually where they were traveling with a driver, they'd make the driver's content, and then they would do like their brand edit. And Hoonigan would do the same. We would like we would go to events, and we would, and it was a lot of it early on was hurt and like someone else, and we would go and cover our guys, but we would also just cover anything at the week, anything in the week.
Speaker 2 1:54:28
You're absolutely right, and and like so, even now, I'm a sales manager for Link ECU.
Speaker 3 1:54:33
Yep,
Speaker 2 1:54:33
our media guy also runs Daily Driver Media, so he does both. You know, he'll come, he'll give Link their deliverables, everything else they need, but of course he's filming every run. You know, he doesn't see every car who does a link driver not, so he'll throw his own edits together and do his own thing as well. And there's a value to that. Now, also drivers might get upset, like an actual driver might get upset if they see you are supposed to be shooting for me. Why did a week later another edit come out that features? Everybody, you know, I thought I need your time for me. Yeah, you know, and I'm also seeing other sides of it where the media is. It's not that it's getting better because I don't want to say anything bad about any of the guys that are out there. Like Will Roge is without a doubt the most talented person I've ever met in my entire life. On top of like Andy for photo and and Josh Aaron being right there as well. All these guys you've just named off, yeah, all of them are crazy talented. Have you seen any of Matt Fields? I haven't. I
Speaker 1 1:55:25
actually went up to him at Good Life, and I said, "I think you're making some of the most compelling storytelling that I've seen come out of Drifting." And like, please keep it up, because and it's the same reason why you're on this pod right now. Because I really enjoyed the the clips you were making. Because at a point, it at a certain point, like I did not have the time to follow drifting, but I still wanted to follow it. So you were making that content for me that I could check in on a day or two after the event and understand what had happened, and gotten most of the points, and had a few laughs along the way. That was super valuable. So my content, I think Matt has done a good job at like telling the story of like what he's doing and like what's happening and obviously there was like you know some drama in the beginning of the year and it was great to kind of see it from his perspective and it did actually remind me a little bit of like what that storytelling felt like in the early days which I think was more wild wild west and I know that for a lot of people this lives in people's vlogs and there's a whole world of like they go out for the weekend, and you're gonna get to see like what the weekend was like for them in their vlog content, right? And there's a lot of creators in the space. I I just miss an era where there was media covering the event as media, and not always media covering the event as the driver or the brand.
Speaker 2 1:56:42
I'm I'm I'm upset that we don't have a slide America, and it's been how many years now? We don't have anything that remotely comes close to it, or even attempted to come close to it. I mean, it took Joey Redman and the most talented people around him to put that together in a couple years into the sport, and we haven't had that again. I mean,
Speaker 1 1:57:01
speaking of Joey, Wrecked is back, right? Like they're without Joey. Without Joey, Joey's. I don't know the full details, but I think they bought up. Brian
Speaker 2 1:57:09
Eggert and Edgar Saramento. Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Speaker 1 1:57:11
They interviewed me somewhere, and they walked up to me, and they were like, "We just want to ask you some questions." And I was like, "For what?" They're like, "For Wrecked." I was like, "You're back." What? Because Wrecked was when I was at Hoonigan. Wrecked one, we were friends with those guys and we knew them. But that was like the information was coming through Wrecked faster than it was coming through FD. So like if you weren't at an event and you were like trying to, I mean, at one point Hoonigan had like nine drivers. So it's like we were just sitting there trying to, you know, you're trying to see what's happening. We would we would get the information from Breck. Plus, they were they loved drama and they would talk all the shit. And they oh, that's
Speaker 2 1:57:45
Joey, Joey, Joe. So,
Speaker 1 1:57:47
but I mean, back to the Slide America thing. Obviously, Andy Sapp and I have you know I've told him I think that like there's and and he knows it. So it's not like I gave him the idea, but it's like I think there needs to be like a second coming of that because you have you have this early story that feels very early now, and like the sport has changed a lot, and you will feel that when you put those two things side by side,
Speaker 4 1:58:12
right?
Speaker 2 1:58:13
Because that it's that what what makes this it's a documentary. Yeah, I was gonna say, please explain for people who don't. So so this thing called Slide America. It's it's a documentary series that came out very very early, only on DVD. I mean, this is well before the YouTube stuff. And what they did was travel the U.S. and hit like key states or key regions where drifting was still growing. So you have like Orlando, you have some Tennessee on there, Georgia, of course, and then you go up to the East Coast, California, and they go and they they're not just filming like these FD events, but they're filming like street drifting. They're filming like these like small parking lot events. As as the sports grown, and it's great to look back on it now because you see like key players in the industry that were actually in that documentary. But it basically just was kind of like a thing where when it came out, it says this is drifting. You know, when back in the day, we were always saying, "Like, have you seen Fast and Furious?" Well, Fast and Furious Tokyo's Drift wasn't even out yet. By the
Speaker 1 1:59:06
way, I have a show concept that I haven't even pitched the boys yet, but it's called "This Is Drifting," starring Animal Style, and it's literally like a. It's not like Slide America, but it's a concept of like maybe reanalyzing what drifting is today, and like with with sort of like those guys at the front doing it, but I would love it. I
Speaker 2 1:59:26
love it now because you get to actually now where when we brought out you know Side America when Side America was was introduced to the world from drifters' perspective, it really did a great job telling that story of like this is what drifting. We're here to stay. Get used to it. Now I'd like to see this is what drifting's become, and I think that can absolutely happen.
Speaker 1 1:59:44
I think, but like this, I have so many thoughts on this, and they expand beyond drifting. So, like one, you know, there was Slide America, but there was also like the Keep Drifting Fun, you know, like tour and and eventual film, right? So, Will Roge, who anyone. Listeners, this pod knows like is sort of creative partner of mine. We do the Jim Conna films together. He's my he's been my DP for the past for for all of the Travis films and um and and other stuff. And yeah, like really really smart dude. But he started by driving a shit box air cooled Volkswagen bus with Hobo, Josh Heron across the country, breaking down town to barely lasted,
Speaker 1 2:00:26
telling the story of drifting in every small town that had it, and there was so much of this in the beginning of this storytelling, and and this this is where I jump outside of drifting. The other day I was talking about a documentary project that I'm working on with a friend of mine, and we were talking about how modern automotive stories aren't being told in right
Speaker 2 2:00:48
okay in a documentary
Speaker 1 2:00:50
sense that we keep telling Ford versus Ferrari. Ford versus Ferrari happened in 1966. That is exactly 60 years ago. 60 years ago is a story we just keep repeating, right? That we we really have a struggle telling for some reason a story that's not 30 years old, right? Like even you think about all the like the big docs or the like Art and Senna. Like we finally decided to tell Senna's story five years ago, and everyone blew their mind. Like
Speaker 2 2:01:16
it was one of the best docs of all time. It was great. It
Speaker 1 2:01:18
was fantastic. But like why why did it take that long to come out, right? And and where at the same time, 50 Cent's telling the Diddy story, and like it ain't even over yet.
Speaker 2 2:01:29
He's he's still in trial.
Speaker 1 2:01:30
Yeah, like like at the same time, you you started this podcast talking about the Elizabeth Holmes, right? Like like her story literally is like happening live, so like the rest of the world is telling stories as they're happening, but for some reason other than like maybe people are gonna be like drive to survive. That's a format style that's different. I mean, go back and take a moment in time, like ESPN 30 for 30 or something like that, and like how do you go tell this this quick little moment? We were talking about this, and I had this like moment where the real reason hit me as to why we're not seeing this anymore, and it was depressing. Which is, at some point, we shifted the storytelling from like a journalistic view, where somebody who wants to go tell a passionate story goes and tells it, to now it's my story. Like the vlogging and the influencer and the creator world has made it that you tell your own stories, right? And nothing wrong against that. I lived in that world. Like there's a world of that, but we. But most of those, some of them do. But most of those groups, like they're telling their story. They're not telling their. They're not going and telling someone else's story. Well, because who's going to pay for
Speaker 2 2:02:44
it? Who's going to benefit from it? It needs to be the person putting out the money. Theoretically, correct.
Speaker 1 2:02:48
But like, even some of these people who are telling their stories, someone else needs to tell their story. Right? The Adam Elz story is a fantastic story.
Speaker 2 2:02:56
It's insane. It's phenomenal.
Speaker 1 2:02:57
I don't know. You probably know this better than I do, but Will Roge and I were discussing that we think Adam LZ is the fastest driver to go from drifting to a podium win in history. And like, like, do we think anyone else has gotten there faster than Cole
Speaker 2 2:03:14
Richards?
Speaker 1 2:03:15
Okay, Cole
Speaker 2 2:03:16
Richards. Okay, humble can I be humble brag?
Speaker 1 2:03:19
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Humble brag. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 2:03:21
Adam Elzy moved to Florida. I was a drifting instructor that worked his first drift event, and so we were doing OSW. Me, Pat Gooden. It's not just me, Tommy.
Speaker 1 2:03:30
This was at
Speaker 2 2:03:31
OSW. OSW. Just he was a you know BMX guy, whatever you know, and and we kind of knew. Tommy pointed it out. He's like, "That's the dude from DMX videos, it's like, oh my god, that's the guy from the DMX videos. So it's not like we gave him extra attention or whatever, but we he was like the only guy at the track with a GoPro. So we're like, all right, this guy's taking himself seriously. We just give him some extra pointers, you know. And so you know, he let us all. I think all three of us drove his car. We were kind of telling him like, hey, this is kind of messed up. This is that, that, and the other, right? And then not only that, we did see him really start to progress. So, like, I I hit up Adam and I was like, "You need to come to Injuku. Come check out the place." Nobody at Injuku knew Adam as he was. Nobody rides bikes. Nobody. He was just absolute nobody.
Speaker 3 2:04:13
Yeah,
Speaker 2 2:04:14
and even Nate Hamilton was my roommate at the time, and he had no idea Adam had
Speaker 1 2:04:19
no idea that you and Nate were having. Yeah, your roommates.
Speaker 2 2:04:21
Yeah, small world.
Speaker 1 2:04:22
When was that?
Speaker 2 2:04:23
Oh God, I don't know, like 15 years ago, something like that. But yeah, so Nate, Nate loves skateboard. Nate loves you know BMX. He loves riding his bikes and stuff. He still it was just a new kid.
Speaker 1 2:04:34
All the early stuff that Hoonigan did with Nate, he was always on a skateboard for. Like all the photos, all the photos was like some of the best
Speaker 2 2:04:41
roller shots. There's like he used it for his pitch deck. He's like holding on to the side of his own car. Yes, yeah, we did that as that
Speaker 1 2:04:46
was like his hero card for a while. Then there was a livery launch that we did with him where he's like doing like a kick flip in front of the car or something. Yeah,
Speaker 2 2:04:53
and he had the asymmetrical livery. He's great guy. Nate's an amazing human being. But we brought him into a Juku and we did. See him progress very, very, very quickly. Now let's look at notice the difference between him and Cole Richards. Simulators came out. So Cole Richards was kind of a sim driver, you know, messed around the sim and stuff. Wanted to get into drifting. His mom set up a thing with this guy named Ron Ewerth. Ron used to be in Formula Drift a long time ago. Still had his retired Formula drift car, and just they met at a grocery store. I believe his mom, Ronnie Ewerth, met at a grocery store. She said, "My son wants to get drifting." He said, "Bring him by." Cole went to his first pro am, which I was judging, which was also the first time he ever did tandem. The only thing Cole did before this is he went to school at Takayana School and went through Takayana School. Jumps into Ronnie. By the
Speaker 1 2:05:41
way, little quick factoid that probably not many people know: the A eight sixes in in Drifter movie are Taco's old cars
Speaker 2 2:05:50
because he's got 10 of them and nobody else has one. Yeah, he Tacos the. But I just
Speaker 1 2:05:54
like that one of those cars is actually one of the old Falcon cars.
Speaker 2 2:05:59
It is. Yes, it is very cool. So cold jumps into pro am first year, gets his license. Like, and I I remember going down to his pit, and I'm like, I'm I'm managing the shop Core Works, and I'm like, I I need your son to drive for me. He's got it. There's like this thing in drifting where you either got it or you don't. You could tell when a car is in front of you and you're in transition and he's still on throttle. That guy's committed
Speaker 1 2:06:21
through the smoke. Through the
Speaker 2 2:06:22
smoke, committed through the transition. Through and he lands it. Feel
Speaker 1 2:06:25
where the bumper is, right?
Speaker 2 2:06:26
He's just he's got it. The kids freaking got it. What does he do? He goes to pro spec his first year, gets rookie of the year, and he just got out placed. I think he got fourth place his first year. So he just went from pro am to pro spec, got fourth. Had like a lackluster pro spec year, I believe the year after, and then now he's rookie of the year. He went into Long Beach round one and almost podiumed as a rookie at the hardest track of the season
Speaker 1 2:06:52
in pro.
Speaker 2 2:06:52
In pro,
Speaker 1 2:06:54
wow, that's an upset.
Speaker 2 2:06:55
That's insane. I think it was fourth place he ended up getting. That's insane for for. I mean, other than Daigo Saido coming in as a rookie, which is but he wasn't a rookie because that's what I
Speaker 1 2:07:04
mean. Like other people have shown up in FD, but they've had years of experience. Correct,
Speaker 2 2:07:08
correct, and and this is actually pretty sick. The drivers and the people in the room did this last night. It's not me even bragging about him. This is what everybody else did last night. You know, it's it's the banquet. We're handing out trophies, and Cole gets Rookie of the Year. He had one of the loudest applauses from the drivers because they respect him. They're like this kid, this kid, dude.
Speaker 1 2:07:27
It's crazy to see like the coming from the simulator world, right? Like
Speaker 2 2:07:31
sim drivers, and I'm telling you, look, we J Mo.
Speaker 1 2:07:35
Yeah, I mean, you know, Hurt, you know, Hurt learned how to drive, like, learned how to drive drift cars from games from games. Of course, I know. I learned from yeah. I think like he learned just the basic concept of like counter steer. You you start
Speaker 2 2:07:49
to learn like over rotation and what you do when you start to feel over rotation, even with the sticks. And no, absolutely. Now sim is just a whole nother thing where you add an actual clutch pedal to your left foot and you have a shifter over here and a handbrake. You could drive in the steering wheel, and you feel force feedback. And now we're seeing these kids come in, and the Sorensens are young. There's the baby Sorensen. He's a child. He's running prospect, and he's absolutely crushing. And after each round, you know what to do? They prepare for the next round on a simulator. There's 14 year olds out there drifting competitively.
Speaker 1 2:08:18
It's wild.
Speaker 2 2:08:19
It's insane.
Speaker 1 2:08:20
I will say this though, as someone who watched this happen to snowboarding, I remember rooting and cheering on you know Sean White when they wouldn't let him compete in the U.S. Open at Stratton because he was too young, right? And we were all like, "Let him run!" Like you, you know, he's a young ripper, and now I think there's probably a lot of people who know a lot more about snowboarding that would sit on podcasts, being like, "Oh, well, Sean White was the beginning of the end, right?" And he progressed the sport, but I think that, and I want to bring you back to this because we're we're debating this. I think that there's also this weird world where like drifting went from a bunch of guys having you know drinking some beers in the kiddie pool and it being a hangout sport to like parents are now sort of putting their kids in a line to become very competitive at it, right? Because there's an opportunity, right? I mean, Ryan Turk said something really interesting on the pod the other day, and I I I took it and I didn't process it fast enough to ask him about it, but it's like he made a career of drifting, which was something he never thought he could do. Now you now you enter drifting knowing it could be a career if you play your cards right, right? Like the whole time, every day was a surprise to Ryan that he was still getting paid to do this.
Speaker 2 2:09:39
Yep.
Speaker 1 2:09:39
Right. And where now you show up and you see the von Gittens of the world, and you're like, not only can I make a career, I can then become a team boss, and then I could launch an RTR and be like the new Shelby for Ford, right? I mean, the where you can go with this is actually pretty big. So, like, do you think that the opportunity? Has changed the sport in a good or bad way. I mean, obviously, it's changed the sport. The opportunity's still there. Yeah, the
Speaker 2 2:10:06
opportunity is still there. It's just I think the opportunities become more rare. So you have people like Ben Hobson. Ben had an LS 240, did clutch kickers, all these white trash redneck competition events or whatever. You know, Ben's just a
Speaker 1 2:10:18
little know Ben well because he used to come out to Hoonigan Burnyard and literally sent it to the car was on fire. Yeah, yeah. Ben's a
Speaker 2 2:10:24
great dude. He lives in Georgia. You know, I bought my pickup truck from his dad. Like great Lithia Springs Ford, by the way. Yeah, they gave me a great deal. They gave me a great deal. Anyways, so Ben he fought to go out there, and he was never top dog. He was just you know he he would do really really well, but then when he came into FD, he's like, nah, like I need to train, I need to be on the sim. His whole life, like if if you want to hang out with Ben, you're going to his garage and you're working on the car. Like that was that, and then he comes into Prospec and just wins Pro Spec by such a substantially. I think he won it in a four round series. He was already winning it in round three. They're like, "You ain't going nowhere." And guess who attention that caught? Vaughn. And now Ben gets to make money driving RTR.
Speaker 1 2:11:10
Yep.
Speaker 2 2:11:10
So the opportunity's still there. Now that's a little bit more rare than back in the day, though.
Speaker 1 2:11:14
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think back in the day, I actually what my argument was was I don't think they knew there was opportunity. I think a lot of these guys got into the sport not knowing if there was going to be an opportunity, right? Like especially in the early aughts into like 2012, 2013. I think it was a let's ride this till the wheels fall off and then go get a regular job. I think
Speaker 2 2:11:37
it's. I think it's even okay. I think it's like falsely. I think it's the exact opposite. Now, I think there's more people that think there's that opportunity. That's what I mean. That's what I mean. Yeah,
Speaker 1 2:11:47
absolutely. But do you think that the attraction to it has has changed? And like, and and again, I I can't really speak to as much for drifting, but I I can talk about like snowboarding. Like when I got into snowboarding, it was still a sport that you know wasn't really allowed at most mountains on the East Coast, right? There was a few mountains that allowed it. There were, and then like that grew and the grew, and then all of a sudden it was you know it was in like Volkswagen commercials and you know and it kind of continued to boom, and then it became something where kids were training for snowboarding at like six years old, and then then the Olympics came, and it became an Olympic route. And like I would, if I was to bring in guys like you know Todd Richards, who is an Olympic announcer, but who also loves a good old fashioned method air because like that's a stylish trick, but would never get points in the Olympics. Like the big issue with with with with snowboarding, is that it's all about how many spins you can do now. Like I don't even know where it's at anymore. It's like it's such a ridiculous number that you're like I don't get it. It's just like gymnastics with a snowboard, and for a lot of people, that's like lost that original vibe, and you can tell that because every once in a while someone will put out like a resort video where they literally just like like do like a lead follow and just mob a resort and just do like sick like side hits and pop tricks and it'll do fucking millions of views because people miss how simple it used to be, right? And how it's it's become unattainable. And I think that this is where we keep having that conversation of like, is FD going down the route that eventually it's going to be like, well, he spun a 2790. I don't even know if that's a fucking number that makes sense, but like, where like where it just gets so outside of where it started that there's either sort of a lack of like attention anymore because of where it's going, right? Because like I feel this way about Rally. I think Rally's gotten too fast. I think the cars are so fast now that like you can't even really see what they're doing anymore on stage, and they don't move like they used to. And I miss the old like car sliding all the way off the edge and like cars upstairs. It looks like the driver is just working.
Speaker 2 2:14:02
Yep,
Speaker 1 2:14:03
I miss that, right? And that era is behind us because aerodynamics came in, and when aero came in, it made traction very different. I
Speaker 4 2:14:10
did it.
Speaker 1 2:14:11
Do you think there's a world where one? Some people might argue, and I don't, but some people might argue that like drifting is already there. But I think there's another world that's like well, where is drifting in 10 years from now in FD and in competitive tandem?
Speaker 2 2:14:24
I love that
Speaker 1 2:14:25
versus where maybe the kids who think like it should still be KA turbos and in a parking lot, right?
Speaker 2 2:14:33
So I think
Speaker 1 2:14:33
or better on a toga road. Sure, sure.
Speaker 2 2:14:35
So this you know there's there's there's this comes back to the different forms of motorsports, but I think like your snowboard analogy is very relatable to motocross, where whip whip is like the coolest thing you do on a bike. It's one of the more simple things. It's one of the first things you do. Yep, learn how to whip the bike, right? And now, what does X things have? Like biggest whip. Yep. And they just keep sending guys for a period of time. Well, in so many, everyone
Speaker 1 2:14:55
does like the knuckle hits now because that's right. Yes.
Speaker 2 2:14:57
So what is that for drifting? I'd probably say the end. Biggest entry. So, do we see a world in Formula Drift where, like, say, their downtime now they just run certain cars or whatever it is, and they just keep sending them a big entry comp, and so that's the thing. It's just a 30-minute session. Big entry. Do you remember
Speaker 1 2:15:13
when there was like a gangster entry like call out during the early events, like in the mid? I want to say late 2000s, like early maybe like people like you. I think there was a gangster entry award that you get. I think so. I think like Conrad
Speaker 2 2:15:28
Groomwald in the Camaro did like some weird. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you're right. I'm hitting the nail on the head. That's actually yes. And so I think there is that. I think there's there's a there's not. It's not like there's a lot of downtime in Formula Drift because each portion of downtime is there for a reason, which we covered. But I do think that there's like this aspect that could be added into it. So like we, I, I want to bring the local town heroes in. That's like kind of what I want to do. What do we do with them? Is it the team comp that we just talked about? Is it a big entry comp? Is it you know what is it where the guys are just going to do not a whole season? They're just going to focus on the region. I think that would be huge, but I mean, not only for perspectives.
Speaker 1 2:16:06
What you're saying is, and let me repeat this back to you. What you're saying is, is let Pro One keep going. Let them do. Let it become something just like if it continues to evolve, and all the cars are on 2,500 horsepower and running on methanol, sick. But let's build a show that is more encompassing of the full sport.
Speaker 2 2:16:29
I agree. Okay, I can support that.
Speaker 4 2:16:30
I agree. I can support that because X Games isn't just hurt.
Speaker 1 2:16:33
I think what my fear is is you pull everything the other direction because remember, what toppled X Games in my opinion was Street League for skateboarding because it was like they like I think Deerick had more of a finger on a pulse to go this is like what kids want to see they want to feel like it's competition but it feels more like in line and then X Games I think kind of came back with like the video parts which I thought was really good but I think it was hard for everyone to like watch it in the same way, right? But like, I guess what I what what I like about what you're saying is is like just let pro one fucking cook.
Speaker 2 2:17:10
Let them keep on doing the thing. Let's advance the sport. Let's but
Speaker 1 2:17:13
let's also think about some other pieces here to make it broader of what this correct
Speaker 2 2:17:18
correct. I don't think pro needs to change much, let them be the pinnacle. Let them have unlimited horsepower. Let them add sensors on things you never thought would ever existed. Like let let pro be pro, but also let's shine the light on the other forms of drifting because there was never other forms of drifting back in the day. It was you were going drifting and building yourself up if you wanted to go pro one. But now we have these race tracks that are just one turn racetracks. We have these things that there's so many different other forms of drifting. It's the same exact thing in a car, but we're doing it with different style cars, with different style drivers, with different types of expectations, different show. But we can use the same racetrack and feature them as well. And again, I I want to rephrase. Do
Speaker 1 2:17:58
you feel like the Atlanta Grid life event that was the FD grid life. It was like the beginning of that.
Speaker 4 2:18:04
I
Speaker 2 2:18:05
hope so. I hope so because I'm I me as an Atlanta person. There's only one time in the year that I get to ever even drive that track, and so it was it was great.
Speaker 1 2:18:13
And FD only uses a piece of it. Only
Speaker 2 2:18:14
a piece of it. Correct. And so they did a very good job. Nick Swan, who does the driver crew?
Speaker 1 2:18:21
Big shout out to Nick Swan. Big Swan,
Speaker 2 2:18:22
amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1 2:18:24
yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 2:18:24
He he does the driver approvals and stuff for Good Life, and he really focused on bringing out the Atlanta guys, like or at least the Southeast guys, and so they could put on a show in front of their crowd. So a lot of spectators have seen these dudes drive other little race tracks and stuff. So you know you have that vibe. But sending us all out there. I mean, I'm driving through Smoke. I was honored enough to be able to drive, and I'm not seeing anything. And I'm just like, there might be a car wrecked on the other side, whatever. And the spectators are seeing that too. They're seeing a car spin, and me almost hit them. I mean, Sapp
Speaker 1 2:18:53
came back out.
Speaker 2 2:18:53
Sapp, do you know? He told me
Speaker 1 2:18:56
he told me he was absolutely terrified.
Speaker 2 2:18:57
He was. We pitted next to each
Speaker 1 2:18:59
other. Yeah,
Speaker 2 2:18:59
and he was. I helped him get his car together. Got him like a racing seat because it's so out of spec. Like his seat expired back in 1995. Like it was so bad. And we hard cried together after our first session. We held each other and hard cried because like we hadn't got. I love that. I haven't heard that
Speaker 1 2:19:17
expression before, but I've I've hard cried with the boys before. Let me
Speaker 2 2:19:21
pull up the line, it's me, Austin Lawless, which is an amazing, amazing human being, and Andy's happy. We roll in together, and Swan's there, and like Swan is Swan's business when he's on track to do do got his gloves on, gloves on. He's sending cars. That's what he does. He sends cars down down the line, which is like he's the orchestrator of the event to show you see. He's
Speaker 1 2:19:39
also like an OG organizer. Did a ton of stuff like in the Midwest. He doesn't just run great, no. But he he
Speaker 2 2:19:46
puts on the show. If whether it's you see five cars go or one car, Swan knows this car should go solo. By the way, he has a cameo in
Speaker 1 2:19:52
the Drifter film.
Speaker 2 2:19:53
He told, yeah, yeah, it's pretty hard. You start, you start. Okay, good, good, good. He needs one. Swan stopped. Grid when he saw Andy come and was just like, like slow clap and like he broke he broke character broke character when he saw Sapp pull up because we've talked about Sapp a lot on this this podcast and again we also said he doesn't have social media so you're not going to be able to find him but you'll find his work you'll find his work and the thing about Andy Sapp is he is an original FD driver. He is an not only Formula Drift. He is an original drifter. Yeah, he is one of the first groups of people who drift, and so he went into in America, and he went on to a big hiatus. Well, he's working on amazing projects with you, Zach Brown Band. He does like their their stuff. Yeah, his full
Speaker 1 2:20:38
time job is he travels with he travels with musicians and basically does all of their like live, you know, live photography, which is a crazy job because you live on a tour bus with the band and you're on for like a few weeks and then you're down for like a week and then you're on and you know so he he has this crazy life that has unfortunately I think in the you know past decade or so made it a lot harder for him to get out for car culture stuff, but he is a phenomenal, phenomenal person who I met. I met him in the early days, but I reconnected with him because we were looking for a different style of photography for the Giancona films when we started the Travis films. So we started. So we reached out to Andy to come, and then after that, I was like, I need Andy on everything. On
Speaker 2 2:21:22
everything because he he has this beautiful artistic view, which like I don't know, like if he told you how he's like got certain shots, but he's like talking to the bartender, like, can I go on your roof and all this other stories? So
Speaker 1 2:21:34
he's also my son's second favorite uncle. Will Rogi is my son's favorite uncle, but Andy Sapp is second favorite. Yeah, I think your
Speaker 2 2:21:42
son shows wise because they're two of the best people. Really solid human beings. So, so unfortunately, because of his career and where it's put him, the car sat parked unchanged, not modified, nothing. Same tank of gas from 2009 in it. You know what I mean? It just sat at court. So him to come back out and drift. Not only that, but a very intimidating track like Road Atlanta. It was a lot of people felt it. It was you know in the Team Rowdy guys. He lives in Atlanta and he's back out of retirement driving Atlanta. It was one of those moments for especially Atlanta drifting where we just like which is cool because
Speaker 1 2:22:19
this all happened like to your point, this happened inside of like an another event, right? Correct. It's like event. It's basically an event inside of an event inside of an event. Yeah, yeah. So it's Russian nestled the nestle nestled dolls.
Speaker 2 2:22:33
So what did that take for that special moment to exist? A Russian nesting doll.
Speaker 1 2:22:37
Nesting. That's it. Yeah, Russian nesting dolls. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2 2:22:40
What did it take to make that moment that means so much to a lot of people in Atlanta, to a lot of people that were in the crowd, to me, to this person? What did it take? It took EMTs to stay on the track side. It made sure that there was someone there for track cleanup or whatever. It made sure that you know Nick Swann's in line and maybe insurance and some other stuff. That's what it took. So I like
Speaker 1 2:23:02
I like what you're going here, and I will say I want to stop and say like whatever we're just over two hours or so into this conversation, we probably go for another five. But you do have a plane to catch eventually, and I do have work to do today. But because this apparently is just a hobby running a podcast. But
Speaker 2 2:23:19
there's a timer there. Yeah, that's how that's how I know. It felt like 30 minutes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 2:23:23
No, I think one thing that like I want to start by saying you've made me change a little bit of my perspective on things for some of the FD stuff because you take a very strong like I still hate chaos, but like you, but I understand your reason for liking them, and that's fine. We can agree to disagree.
Speaker 2 2:23:40
Plus,
Speaker 1 2:23:40
but I guess because like I'm always like a underdog grassroots person at heart. Like I enjoy the grassroots side of things, and I once explained to Ken because like Ken was a pro guy. Like he loved the pro side of things, right? And it makes sense, right? Like his company, DC Shoes, was a big supporter of like some of the craziest stuff that happened. You know, Danny Wade jumped the Great Wall of China, and DC made that happen, right? And you know, all these sort of things that they developed. And as a pro driver, he really was looking at sort of the pro side of things. There's a there's a reality here that like I will admit, and Ken was well aware of, was like Ken skipped the line in rally. Right, he had a little bit of money. A lot had a lot. When I say a little bit, yeah, a lot of money when he sold DC, and he was able to like go to one of the best rally schools in the world, and then use them to go help support him to start racing. Right, right, and and then he was, and this is the part that I think where where his money changed from actually being good was like he was actually a good enough driver right from the bat that like Subaru jumped in and supported him right like it was like he paid his way to get to a point and then from there they took over right where there are people who just pay their way their whole life and that was sort of and I think because of that he didn't really. Like come up in the trenches on the grassroots side of things, where like I built a rally car that never got to a stage because you run out of money or things happen. Right? Actually, in my situation, Ken Block happened, but that's a whole other conversation. But like, but and I was with the I was with those other grassroots guys who were coming up and building cars in the backyard of Yonkers and all these like crazy things to go do an event and and so I've always loved sort of the underdog and that side. I always when we were looking at sports, we're looking at you know motorsports. I always was curious of like how can we make the grassroots bigger. And at some point, I don't know if you know, like we did an event called Gymkana Grid, which was like Gymkana as a motorsport. And the thing I liked about it at the time, and I really thought that this thing was going to take off eventually, and unfortunately, it never did. And there's complicated reasons as to why, but but initially it was growing, and like Daiyoshi Hara came to the first event and went was first in rear wheel drive and not far off of all wheel drive, right? And I loved it because it was like it was drifting, but it was against a clock, right? So he still had that driving style and whatever. We grids its own conversation, but I think the thing we were talking about at one point was like Ken was looking at the big events. Ken was looking at like we take over. I mean, we went to X Games. I mean, we built an event that was at X Games, which was crazy at the time, right? And it did really well at X Games. And so Ken kept looking at you know the big events, the big events, the big
Speaker 2 2:26:29
opportunities. Yep.
Speaker 1 2:26:30
And I'm sitting there like writing a rule book so that we could get it like sanctioned for parking lots. And he was just like, "What are you? Why? What are you doing? Like, why are you wasting your time? Like we have to go build this first, and I just said to him, "There's no World Series without the Little League, right?" And I think that whenever I think about sort of things like FD getting too far up there, it's always like, "How does it lift the Little League, right? And how does we make sure that the Little League is still working, right?" And you know, and Turk was said that he thinks one of the greatest things now is like there's drift schools, there's simulators. None of this existed when he got into it. He had no idea what he was doing. He just had to figure it out, and he had to find friends and go figure it out that way. And now there's like easier paths in. So if you don't happen to become friends with the guys that would eventually become Drift Alliance, right? Or you know, in that group, like you can still get away in, right? And that I think is all really interesting. So, and I'm saying this because I think the thing that you convinced me of is that maybe there is no, maybe there, maybe there should be no ceiling on what on what pro becomes, right? And pro keeps running, but I think it's important that like there are certain things that FD as a group attaches the hitch to to bring with it, because otherwise it may be in in like this outer sphere that just feels so separate from like what's happening on the ground that there's not the same entryway. And and this is where my fear is is that eventually the entryway feels like Formula One, and I don't. I know that's really far away, but but I'm drawing comparison, which is like I don't think like if my son was like I want to race an f1, I'm like kid, we ain't got that good joke.
Speaker 2 2:28:10
Yeah, we ain't got that
Speaker 1 2:28:11
money. But if he was like I want to be a professional drifter, I'm like actually I know somewhere I and and I'm way farther ahead than most people. But a lot of people are listening to this podcast who don't work in an industry, don't have a rolodex of numbers, like you know, don't have some of the same successes I've had in my life. I I don't want FD to get to a point where it feels unattainable. I don't want that story of I I you know he he jumped on a simulator and was able to get there. Like and and I think it can happen because I've watched it happen to other motorsports, right? Like you, you eventually build a gap so far that if your kid's not competing in karting by six, they're never going to get to the higher upper echelon, right? Right. So,
Speaker 2 2:28:51
no, I agree, and I think there's this is where like grid life comes in, and this is why you have like animal style on the same track as as von Gitten and the rest of the guys, because yes, it doesn't matter if we're you know drifting style cars. If we got a 350 Z with no front bumper or whatever, we still want to drive on the same track together with the pros, and we still want the 10,000 eyes on us. 100%, 90% of the reason why we go drifting is because we want to look at the pictures afterwards, and we're refreshing our Instagram to see if somebody got a clip of us driving. We want to see that stuff. That's what grid life got right. Put us all on the same track at the same time with some of the best. I have like my friend Sebastian now on the same track and chased down by Osbo, and it's sick. And he's just in this little SR 20 skyline, you know, busted bumpers, BN kit. Yeah, Seb rules, and he's just Osbo was on him. And you know what? When Seb came back to the pits, he was shaking.
Speaker 1 2:29:40
Yeah,
Speaker 2 2:29:41
and it's not that he's an Osmo fan; it's because he knows what Osmo is capable of, and he was on the same track at the same time, getting pushed around in front of 10,000 people.
Speaker 1 2:29:50
Yeah, I just told Vaughn when he was on the pod that one of the this quintessential moment. It was 2008. The new Mustang had dropped. Vaughn and I decided that we're going. Drive the car cross country from from California back to back to New York, right? And you know, at the time, I was like, I wouldn't even say I was a fan of drifting at that point. I would say like I thought drifting was cool, but like I wasn't really paying a ton of attention to it. And we went to a local event at a Greyhound bus depot in Houston, and it was just so sick to watch these young kids, like who were out there in like a mix of cars, and they got to go like we were in the stock Mustang, but like you know he went out there and went door to door with a bunch of kids. First he watched them all drive, then he was like, "All right, I'll tandem with this kid, this kid, this kid," and he went out there and he slid with these kids. And like, here is this guy who, you know, whatever. Couple few years later, goes on to be the champion, but was the dude who won d1, right? And and and they were so stoked to drive with him and to do a part of it. And I walked away from there going, "Okay, I get it now, and I like this sport. Like that was like the moment where I went from being a journalist who was just paying attention to all of it to being like, okay, I'm a fan of this because I it felt different. It didn't feel like other motorsports. It felt unique, and there was this like, you know, I I competed in a few contests when I was when I rode BMX, and I didn't enjoy it. It wasn't why I was there. I was there to go hang out and ride dirt jumps with my friends after school. Get maybe someone stole their mom's VHS tape, you know, full shoulder-mounted player, and we got a few shots. And then you're like, man, I'm not as good as I think I am in my head. It always looks better in your head. That tabletop was always flatter, you know, in your head. That that that that X up was always way deeper in your head, and that note, you know, like whatever it was. But um, yeah. But that was like that's what made it for me. And I saw that in drifting in a way that like I didn't see in other motorsports, and I always thought that was really cool. So anyway, we're at this point in the combo. Like I like what you're saying. I like this idea of like I think FD needs to be a bigger arena for the whole sport. I think maybe sometimes FD doesn't realize, and I'm sure Ryan's listening. Love you, Ryan. But I think sometimes FD maybe doesn't realize that like they're the kings, like they're the ones that made it, and the best thing to do in that situation is to like lift the others up because like all boats rise with the tide in the sport, especially when the sport is this small, right? And and we deal with the same thing in rally racing where you have like infighting and people are annoyed about this event or that event, or everyone still sees it as a competition, like only one's gonna win, and it's like at this point, like drifting's done well. It's become a world, like it's a worldwide thing that everyone knows. Now it's more of a question of like how do all the things sort of like work together to strengthen that, right?
Speaker 2 2:32:55
I agree. Well, I'm literally
Speaker 1 2:32:57
repeating back to you what you said to me, so hope you agree. I'm adding my color to it, but I, I, and
Speaker 2 2:33:04
I do want to point out this is my first year ever working for Formula Drift. I know I've been in Formula Drift for a very long time, so you've been outspoken
Speaker 1 2:33:11
a lot of a lot of it, a
Speaker 2 2:33:13
lot of it, and it's it's because of and I
Speaker 1 2:33:15
think you're still outspoken, which is nice to see because I don't know if everyone in FD is outspoken.
Speaker 2 2:33:19
No, I am not a decision maker of Formula Drift whatsoever. Everything I've discussed right now is what I would like to see, and I hope I don't lose my job on anything. Thank you, Ryan. But like, no, it's it's it's it's all an opinion-based thing, and and realistically, Ryan does respect my opinion. It's why I've got this job. The drivers, I love the. I had to tell him on stage last night. I may poke. I may jab. I might source for hard answer. I may call you out if you flop or you do this or that. But at the same time, I respect each and every single one of you. I'm not trying to create a false narrative. I'm really not. It's just I love this sport so much.
Speaker 3 2:33:54
Yeah,
Speaker 2 2:33:55
and this is kind of my avenue. This is I'm not. I found myself in like a host avenue or a speaker avenue. I never saw this coming. Much like I'm sure you 30 years ago never saw yourself going into this role of you know in your garage hosting a podcast. Yeah, I mean, and everything in between, of course. Yeah, I
Speaker 1 2:34:10
mean, the hosting the garage and the podcast feels like a little bit of a step down from maybe what I was doing previously. I should have just totally. But I enjoy that. No, but I never. I as a journalist, it's so much of like not being a part of the story, you know. Sometimes, and it was weird for me to then sort of break in front of the camera, which was never the plan. Like my plan was like Hurt was going to be in front of camera, like Vinny was going to be in front of camera, and then there became more need for like the brand to have more of a like the brand voice, and since I was a founder and an owner, it just made more sense. And then all of a sudden, I was there. And then yeah, it's weird, and yeah, and it's not something I love. Like I don't mind it. I don't mind talking. I do really enjoy doing the podcast. Like right before we went on, I was stressed because I have a bunch of other shit I got to deal with today. And as I was walking out the door, and like I, you know, gave my wife a kiss because she was leaving, and she was like, she's like, kind of gave me the like breathe thing, and I was like, no, no, I'm about to go do something I really enjoy for two hours, which is like have a good conversation with someone, and I so I enjoy this piece of it. What I really enjoy is making is telling stories about other people. Like that is the part I enjoy. I don't always enjoy telling my own story. I don't mind it, and I know there's people here being like, "Scotley, we fucking talk about yourself." But it's like I talk about myself, and as it relates to like things I've done with other people, and it's like that's part of the story, and I enjoy that. So, and I enjoy. That's why I brought you on because I think that you are someone who is now helping sort of prop up and tell stories of the drivers, which I think is really important. I think that that that sport needs more of it. I wanted to sort of have this conversation. I didn't want to. I didn't want to position. I did a. I did an episode with Ron Zaris. I don't know if you've ever met Ron, but he was. He worked with me all the way back at the zero 60 era, he then went to work with me and Ken. I then left to go start Hoonigan. He stayed with Ken. Really was kind of like Ken's right hand photographer and like content person. And then then at some point he kind of got you know tired of doing that. Wanted something different. He came over to Hoonigan and was with Hoonigan with us for the last couple of years, and he was always a little bit more behind the scenes. But if you ever watched Comeback Labs, he was like he was Labcoat Ron, so he did do a lot of explaining stuff on there. But anyway, Ron and I did like a "How the Hell Do We Fix Rally in America" as a episode because we're going to see Rally come to Tennessee with the WRC, which is you know the higher level, and we had this conversation. And at first, I was like, "Man, would a conversation today be like a how to like like not how to fix drifting, but like how does drifting takes this next step?" Because I think if if I was to say the way that I feel as a again, I call myself an outsider, and Will Roge was here. He'd be like, "You're not an outsider. You've opened so much fucking pathway in drifting that you don't realize it, but but I sit there and I I just am like I see where we are we are and I see the momentum building, but I can feel us pressing against a wall. Like I feel like it's not going forward, and it's like we need to make some incisions to like break through that wall and figure out which way it goes.
Speaker 1 2:37:17
And I think there's so much opportunity in one of the places, one of my lucky situations in life is I've been around things when the opportunity is bubbling, and being been able to be like, okay, how do we like, how do we let this go? How do how do we how do we go do this next thing with it? So, and I think that you know that's the conversation we kind of inadvertently had today. It's like, hey, there's a lot of opportunity here, a lot of cool things going on, but like, where does it really grow from here? And I'll be honest, I don't know if I ever thought like you had the like the UN model of like we just all come together, we all come together.
Speaker 2 2:37:54
No, I'm drifting ain't broken. Formula drifting. It's not broken. How do we? It's not broken. I
Speaker 1 2:37:59
think you're right, and I. That's why I stopped myself when I was like, "How do we fix it?" Because rally in America is broken, in a way.
Speaker 2 2:38:07
In a way. The
Speaker 1 2:38:07
current year of rally has actually been really, really good, and you can see it's moving. But like, we have so much broken, fractured elements of what the sport has been over the past 20 years, which starts and stops, starts and stops, so much so that when the WRC is coming here in a year from now, there's a ton of us who are really excited about it, and I think a bunch of other people are like, one more disappointment, like one more. This isn't going to be that moment where it catches on, right? We had, you know, Colin McRae come to the X Games. We thought that was going to be the moment, and it, it, you know, and then we had the Jim Kana films, and we thought that was going to be the moment, and there was all these things, and they just never got there. And now there's this new generation of young kids racing in rally. You know, Leah Block, Seth, like Connor, like all these guys. And you sit there going, maybe actually this is it because we finally have the youth here. Because as as Leah so eloquently called it, she called it the masters like of rally because it was all like old guys who had won another national, you know, national championships coming to compete in America, or it was, you know, like some of the older guys like Ken who didn't do it when they were younger and they were trying now. So it was like a group of 40-year-olds racing against each other. And I'm like, I get how that could not resonate to Adult Swim series. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I, I get how that could not go. So, you know, so I sit here with you being like, man, maybe we have to have another conversation. We bring some other people on, and I actually think it'd be really good to bring on someone like a Will Rogey because Will still watches fucking like every live stream. He does. He does. Like me, yeah, he loves it. But he also has he has he's got notes.
Speaker 4 2:39:43
He's
Speaker 1 2:39:43
got notes, right? So I think like that could be a good conversation because you have a very positive you have a very positive outtake here. So I'm going to jump to questions because I did text I did text Andy Sapp 20 minutes before you. Got here, and I said, "Hey, I said, hey!" I got Greg on the show today, and he said, "First off, he started by saying that that has that made his day because now he gets to listen to the two of us chat." This this this entire episode may have only been made by made for Andy. Made for Andy, and I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. But he said he he. I asked him if he had any special questions for you, right? Like, because because obviously, like you and I don't know each other well, right? We've we've ran into each other at events. I'm sure I've seen you here and there. We had our first real conversation a month ago, but he said this, and and I wanted to wait till the end to ask you this question because I now understand it, he said, "I would love to know just where he gets his energy and enthusiasm for car culture and drifting, because it feels like he has an endless well to draw from, and it is infectious." And and I I before you answer, I want to tell you that like I feel that way. We've been sitting here now for just over two and two and a half hours, and I can't help but feel like you've actually changed my mind on sort of how I was looking at FD, and maybe even a little bit on KS. Now that's the end of the. And most people don't listen this far, right? You do like
Speaker 2 2:41:15
Chrome, right? So
Speaker 1 2:41:16
I do like Chrome on certain things. I'm I'm a big I like Chrome. I also really like gold plate, so like I was heavy behind Hertz shift to gold plate of wheels because like I'm a big gold plate fan. So yeah, a little bit. Yeah, I mean when at one point B.J. Baldwin redid his trophy truck, and I had him anodize everything purple, and then we did chrome wheels on a trophy truck. Phenomenal. Yeah, which like the that audience did not understand, so no place like Chrome, no place like Chrome, no place like Chrome. So, or super high polish. But so anyway, I I I do think that like I'm just gonna say this and and take this. Like I think you're a very good spokesperson and ambassador for the sport because I asked you a bunch of questions today that you had an answer for and you always had sort of a positive answer and I don't think that that's easy I think for a lot of people they get into the negativity or they just don't want to answer it because they don't want to get in trouble for it right so but you took all of that stuff and I and a lot of what you said I was like this was one way to say it. That's one way
Speaker 2 2:42:21
to look at
Speaker 1 2:42:22
it. But but a lot of other stuff, I'm like, all right, cool, I get it. So anyway, how how like where does your where where does your enthusiasm well come from?
Speaker 2 2:42:29
I owe I owe Drifting my life. People could say that about like a band. Yeah, people say that about like a person they meet. People can say that about everything. But like, it's it's the character I am today. Yeah, it's because Andy asked the question. Is why I'm tearing up.
Speaker 1 2:42:47
That's okay, bro.
Speaker 2 2:42:48
So through like high school, I've always been bullied. I I tried football and I sucked. I was third string.
Speaker 1 2:42:58
Yeah,
Speaker 2 2:42:58
I tried the cross. I could never catch the ball. I tried making friends. I was never there. I had a cool car in high school, and I got made fun of it because I had a body kit and all this other stuff. And it was a racer because that was like what it was.
Speaker 1 2:43:13
And you lived in Georgia.
Speaker 2 2:43:14
I lived in Georgia. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I screwed up so bad. I screwed up so bad, and I never had it. I never had like my my dudes. I never had my crew. And then cars. And like, there's something about hanging out with a person inside a garage, and having a beer, and being vulnerable, and talking about everything or whatever it is, or fighting a problem, or the the whatever I I blew up my engine. What am I going to do? And you have like friends there in a second to help you. And not only that, but like things you can learn life lessons from people, and like friendships that would never ever ever exist without cars or drifting, and so again, Team Rowdy guys, I had a Honda Civic and they welcomed me with open arms into their whole little drift crew, and it didn't matter that I had a hot Civic or anything; it's just they enjoyed hanging out with me, and I got accepted for being me. And that was just like the start of it. And then I started drifting, and then started to get a voice into drifting. And I'll be damned if I'm going to be a negative voice on drifting because I owe drifting everything.
Speaker 1 2:44:38
I respect that, dude. That's that's huge. And like, I think a lot of us have like a very similar story, right? Like you know, I think there's a reason why so many of us of a certain age come to the sport from in just motorsport, right? Or a lot of or car culture or whatever it is, like that we come from. Skateboarding, and we come from BMX because I think those were like the original Outkast sports. I don't think they are anymore, right? But when I was younger, it was right. Like I was, I think I have a very, I have a very similar story to you in that like I like I sucked at baseball. That was like the sport that mattered when I was a kid, and like I remember striking out and getting made fun of, but like I learned, but like and it's it's so funny because one of the kids who went on to become one of my best friends, but like when I was little, like you know it was like pickup game, little league, and I struck out, and he was like just so mad that I was on his team, and he was a few years older than me, you know. And then we started skateboarding, and like I could ollie higher than him, you know, and like it was this like weird like thing, and and then we sort of we we ended up becoming good friends through it all, and it's funny because like now it's like we don't really talk that much anymore, but like you know he'll still like he still pays attention everything I do in cars, which is like you know interesting to kind of see, but yeah, man, I I think that this is something that you know we don't talk about a lot. Is like how the culture of all of this is really good, and I've had a lot of conversations with like whenever there's like a law that comes out that tries to like shut down car culture. All right, I never try to fight the law on the merit of the law because it's like whatever I understand how maybe this or this or this is dangerous, right? But what I do always try to fight it on is like I don't think you're seeing the value of car culture as a whole, right? Like for people like you, for people who grew up in like you know fucking bad sort of like you know gang situations that found car culture that got them out. The connection between people, right? I know that. I know that. I know you know Killer Mike as well. And it's like I went to an event with Mike out here, and we're walking around, and there was this dude with I think it was a Chevelle. I don't even remember. And you know, he had a Confederate flag on like the back of his car, and it's like if you have a Confederate flag in California, like you're you're waving that flag on purpose, right? It's bold, right? And Mike's chatting him up, and afterwards, I was like, Mike, you you catch that that dude at like you know Confederate flag on the back of the car, and he's like, Yeah, I saw it. He was like, He's like, but you know, he's like, I figured it was an opportunity for me to connect with this dude about a car, and not to connect about who we were, but to connect about this other thing. He's like, and I didn't, you know, he's like, I wasn't gonna say anything about it, whatever. He's like, this hobby just brings us all together in a way that we can, you know, we can really sort of just get to know each other without like reading all those other things because me and him had an interest in that car. We got to share that first, and he was like, "And maybe he'll leave here thinking like that dude like had a different perspective than I thought he would. Like didn't judge the book. Like all those kind of things." And I and I can't. And I always go back to that moment.
Speaker 1 2:47:57
And he had this one statement that he said, but I think to to you know to to your what you were saying, like this idea that like this hobby just like it transcends so many of our other beliefs, right? Whether it's like cultural, religious, or whatever it is, that like there are people who like I would not agree with on politics, but I can sit and talk with them about cars for hours and become connected to them in a way that makes me see past those other pieces, where those other pieces sometimes are so hard to see past. And like, I think that yeah, car culture I think did that for for so many of us. I I had a car club that I started, and in like I was like 19, and like those dudes are like none of them belong in the same room together, you know, it was like just the most random collection of people from Queens and Long Island, New Jersey, and like that we were just so different. But this love for like stupid Volkswagens like brought us all together, and like we're still friends to this day. Yeah, and like I think we often don't talk about that side of it, we talk about you know we we get into academic debates over whether or not you know there should be a power limiter in this sport or why there isn't money here, why there isn't there. But like no, I I I appreciate that. It's like one of the most truest answers I've had anyone say on the show, and it's like yeah,
Speaker 2 2:49:17
that's where my energy comes from because I've I've I've had times where I don't have energy. I've had dark times in my life, like we all have. We all do. And do you know what? The people I lean on are the people I've met in the car community.
Speaker 1 2:49:29
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 2:49:30
And are I have? I have. And when I say I owe the car community and drifting my life, I truly mean
Speaker 1 2:49:38
that. Yeah, yeah. No, man. I I super appreciate that. I will say that, yeah. Look, I owe the car community like everything in a way because, like, I was like a college dropout who was struggling to make it all like make sense and never thought anything would happen. I mean, I. Have people all the time sit there and be like, you know, I think you said like, oh, you know, do you think you'd be sitting here doing a podcast? I'm like, I didn't think I'd be doing much of anything, right? Like I was the opposite of just wasn't working, and somehow car culture gave me a path that allowed like my fucking ADHD brain to find a home where I got to win and do cool things and develop this like great group of friends and become dear friends with someone like Andy Sapp who who lives nowhere near me. I never lived in Atlanta, but like we're still connected like that, right? And he's connected to my family now, and like you know, yeah, it's it's such a it's such a great space, and I think it's something that, like, I know people talk about this for other things, right? I'm sure if you're really into like stand-up arcades, there's a great community for it. I think just in general, hobbies have really good communities, right? There's something about car culture, though. I think because it is really broad, and there's a lot of different people who are into it, and there's so many different pieces of it that like we all find this like weird connection in the middle, right? And and like I think because cars also have like an identity element to it, like you get to be that, like you get to like KFs, and you know you
Speaker 2 2:51:19
get to like whatever trash you like, yeah, exactly, and that's and that's like and that's okay, and that's okay,
Speaker 1 2:51:26
you know, and like and we get to joke about it, and we get to put you know we get to put you know Calvin pissing on your other your least favorite logo on the back of our cars, and it's still it's still hilarious, you know, and um, I it is a great part of it, yeah, man. So, well, look, I I really appreciate what you're bringing to drifting now. I appreciate that. I I've had different moments in my life where I felt closer and further apart from the sport. I would say right now I feel pretty far away from it because I'm not as involved in it day to day. Yeah, I want to get in on the content side. I think there's some storytelling that needs to be told in Drifting. I think some of it is from a different era. I think some of it is of a current era. I think there's different ways, but I do want. I just want to thank you because I think that, like you know, your debt to the sport I think is is probably paid. But like you, but we, but I think the sport still very much needs you here because one, you love the sport, but you're not afraid to call it out for its problems, which I think is really important. And you're also funny, and you don't take it too seriously. And I think that that's the problem. I think it's a problem with motorsport in general. Is like I'm sick and tired of listening to experts talk to me academically about racing. Like I just don't care. Like I want to hear your enthusiasm for why you love the sport, and I think that comes across right now. I really
Speaker 2 2:52:47
appreciate that. I really appreciate that. I appreciate you. I appreciate everybody who got me here in the seat. I appreciate you know Formula Drift, Grid Life, CoreWorks, Link ECU, like all the people who like put me on pedestal and allowed me to do stuff like this that led me to this position.
Speaker 1 2:53:03
We appreciate everyone who's listened this long because I'm still going to ask one more question, so we're still going. So I wanted to give you a moment because I know this this last question also brings is also and I purposely saved this last question because I obviously I obviously know this piece of your history because we have mutual friends. So you've mentioned Cora Works a lot of times through this, right? It was a big part of your history. One, like for those who who don't really understand Cora Works, like you know, one I I kind of want to get through that. But in a second part of it, unfortunately, something that you and I share in common is losing a friend who was also a big part of like your career, your momentum, ran a company together, like doing all of that. You know, I struggle with this all the time because it's like that move forward moment, and both of us also sort of beyond. And I don't, I don't know the story from you, but I obviously we we have mutual friends. Also, we're sort of semi, sort of forced to move on without that thing.
Speaker 4 2:54:08
Yeah,
Speaker 1 2:54:09
right. Like I'm not wearing I'm not wearing a hoonigan hat anymore. You're not wearing Cora Works. Like it's this thing that's in our past. It's a big piece of our history. For those of you who don't know what Cora Works is? Can you kind of explain that for everyone?
Speaker 2 2:54:23
Yeah, yeah. So Cora Works is a shop. It was started, founded by this guy Tyler Clayton. We referenced it. He was roommates with Andy Sapp, part of the Team Rowdy Crew, Drift Mechanics, and he really in Atlanta. He was building cars with style. He always had style first. He was one who told me buy the wheels, build the car, and and when I came into Corey Works, I was fresh out of a Juku, and he's like, "Hey, I got this shop, I got this space. We need to make some money. Let's let's let's do something cool together." And so we immediately started doing like Formula Drift, Street, everything we could, and really had like a unique perspective to it because we were drifters. Every ounce of money we maybe put back into drifting, and people saw that we were drifters doing things for drifting. And Tyler was hands down, you know, just this such a genuine person, such a genuinely nice person to everybody he came into. It's a guy that nobody could talk anything bad about. So the company started becoming pretty successful. We hired on friends, and it's so people say don't work with your friends. I say nay, nay. They were make sure you choose your right friends. But because of their loyalty and what they did, we became very successful over a period of time. We created image for ourselves. We went through the Formula Drift Rings, Final Bouts, Super Ds, all that thing. We we just kind of love. You guys
Speaker 1 2:55:41
were a brand that was important everywhere, which I don't think a lot of people can say that in drifting. Like there's people who are really important in the grassroots space. There's people who are really important in the FD space. But you guys sort of played that evenly. We played
Speaker 2 2:55:55
Formula Drift. We did Front Street over there in East Coast. We did Amelson the West Coast. We we tried to fit where we could, and Tyler unfortunately got diagnosed with lung cancer, and that's anybody who has cancer. It's so long, and I know you lost Ken in a very different way, where it's very sudden. And there's no way that's harder or easier. I'm here to tell you, a loss is a loss. And for some reason, throughout the whole time, though, I thought Tyler was going to be the one who beats it. Tyler's going to beat it. Tyler's going to be fine. Tyler's going to be beat until he didn't, and it shook us. And so we kept the shop going as long as we could, up until January one. We closed the doors of this year, and without getting into like so much detail about that, what it did to me is I was losing in my mind my community. I was losing my identity. I was losing every aspect of what I thought a future was going to be. I thought I'd never set foot back at Formula Drift unless like I was I don't know. I thought I would never get back into drifting or be able to go drift events, and be recognized for you know how I was when I was doing the stuff. I I thought I was losing a way to contribute to the sport and a way to get back, and so I took some time off, and I was like, I don't know what I'm going to be able to do. I don't know where I'm going to land on my feet. I it's a joke, but I was turning applications to Lowe's because I'm like I'm ready to be normal, you know, and not that there's any problem with that, but I'm like I just slow it down.
Speaker 1 2:57:26
Yeah, and it's funny because the joke I used to have, I said to Ashley, I was be like, I just gonna go get a job at Home Depot. I told that to yeah, like this weird feeling that like you're like I just want like I just want something normal. I don't want I don't want a job I love so much that I can't let go of. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2 2:57:41
and I, I, I poured not time into Core Works. I poured myself.
Speaker 1 2:57:47
Yeah,
Speaker 2 2:57:47
much like Coon again. Yeah, that wasn't that was 100% an extension of you. And you see your identity when you see that logo on a car in a parking lot at a mall. You feel something. Even to this day, you feel and and depends on what the car looks like. I get that, I get that. And and today, like, um, I went to this guy at Rodney's house. Rodney's a great guy, and and he still has his core work sticker in his car, and like, he's like, I kept it on there. I'm like, dude, it's just it's just like something like that means something. And so I took time, and I was so fortunate for having Ryan Sage reach out to me and be like, "We're gonna make something for you." Because you guys were
Speaker 1 2:58:28
doing like you were doing your own personal sort of, you know, sort of commentary recaps that was sort of like you and Cora works together and just kind of fun. Yeah, we
Speaker 2 2:58:38
were active in in Formula Drift. So what we did was these things called 62nd recaps because we're busy on Monday. We're busy, so I don't have time to like sit down and do this, unfortunately. So we did 62nd recaps, and they just they took off. They were doing fun and they were witty and this and that, and you know, and you know that did catch Formula Drift attention. Let alone I was at Formula Drift tracks for many many years, but Ryan made a position for me, and he makes me feel very valued there. And at the same time, I reach out to this guy Chase, and Jason is the he's he's in charge of Link ECU here in the U.S. He's a VP, and Link has a very close relationship with Formula Drift. They're a sponsor. They sponsor Prospect, and so Link ECU was like, let's do this harmonic thing where we both hire Greg, and utilize. And I feel like not only am I still able to be part of the community and give back, but I feel like I have like a future that I can see as well. And and I can't thank those companies and those guys enough to kind of give me this opportunity to still be around my friends, as selfish as that sounds, like as stupid as that sounds, like I could have that that job at Lowe's. I would have just lost all self value and self worth. Would I still go drifting? Absolutely. Would I still have my friends? Realistically, absolutely. Could I still go to Formula Drift rounds? Yeah, I'll pay for the ticket, but no. I wanted to be able to do more, and when CoreWorks closed, that was when you tie your your identity to a brand and it goes away. It is hard.
Speaker 1 3:00:14
I know. I mean, not that it gets completely away, but it's it's a very. I mean, it's almost different because it's like it's something I have no control over anymore, right? So, and I have a very complex relationship with it now because of where it's at. It's something that I think is really difficult for people to understand who don't work in companies that like are your friends That are like these things that you build that like are attached to your identity. Vinny famously said, I think on the first episode of this podcast that you know he was like he's like I just didn't realize like I woke up one day and like my entire friend group was gone, right? That I used to show up every day to work, and those were my friends. And I thought we'd stay more in touch, but like life gets in the way, and you don't see each other as much as you think you will. And you're kind of these like you know you may be in a group chat, but like it's different than like sitting in the same building with everyone every day. And you know there were so many of us at you know at Hoonigan who were you know just grabbing lunch together or you get those 15 minutes out the car even if you had a really busy day on like phone calls or whatever it was like that that piece and I don't think any of us realized how it was going to affect us right and you know and I I don't need to repeat this for the audience because the audience has heard a bunch but like I you know, I found therapy. I took my own journey, like after leaving Hoonigan and all of that, because it was more of it was one. It was the loss of Ken, which is like something I will deal with for the rest of my life, right? Like, and and I think in a similar way for you, it's like it was this person who you know I who like I found support through who I found like purpose in that I was able to create these things with that also was like a person who drove me to like be better and like not just better at you know at like my work like like better at my life like Ken was one of those people who, you know, he had this like sort of rule, and and I really respect this rule. And the rule was was like, we don't work with people who cheat on their wives, because if someone cheats on their wife, then there's a good chance that like, if they can't be loyal to that person, they probably won't be loyal to us, right? And it's like, you know, and look, there's a lot of people out there. I'm not judging anyone on their affairs. I know strange things, crazy things happen in life, but it was like it was a mindset from him that like you know made me think about like I looked at that whole team and like our whole team was a group of guys who were like were on the road traveling with you know monster girls around all that and like all the dudes did the right thing all the time, you know. And it was like just this community of guys that we built around that kind of stuff. And like these were like weird pieces that all like just vanished one day. Like one day I'm working at another company, and like I left automotive for a year, which was a horrible decision because I did do the. It wasn't it wasn't Home Depot. I went to go work for you know for animation and work for this company called Super Plastic, and like it was a fun job and it was fun at first, but like I just woke up one day and I was like, it's not that energy anymore, and I was like willing to I I was willing to throw it all away to just go do something, and in many ways like this podcast was that thing because it was something I could turn on pretty quickly. I could make happen. I could do it in my garage. I could have friends buy. I could have a voice in something again.
Speaker 1 3:03:47
I can put people on, and like that was the start of it. And now it's like I'm like weirdly back fully in it because it's like with everything with 321 and FMA group and grid life. It's like we're fucking on. Coming back. Yeah, we're on. We're we're we're building a lot at the moment again. It's fun to build again, and I'm obviously trying to like connect everyone back in. But like, yeah, no, I you know, I don't. I'm not happy that we share that together. But you you seem to have taken a positive out of it. But I mean, you're not even a year out from it, which like I wish I could tell you it gets fucking easier, but it doesn't. It just gets more complicated as it as it goes on, right? But like, I think it is really good that like you refound a place and you were able to get there because like I wasn't. It took me a year to like figure out where I needed to be, and then it kind of took me another year after that. Like I don't really think I kind of figured out a way forward till like a few months ago, if I'm being honest, right? And even now, I don't know if that's it, but like, yeah, because you don't want to get you don't want to live in that shadow of it, but at the same time, like you want to like you want to you want to start to like build something that like casts a new shadow that that shadow is a part of or something. I don't know if that makes sense, but like you know, it's like. You don't want to just stay in that moment, but at the same time, like you, you want to carry it with you as you go forward. Yeah,
Speaker 2 3:05:06
I never want to close that book. I never want to close that chapter. I never want to like forget. I have it tattooed on me, and I wear it with pride. It's I never want to forget our accomplishments, our struggles, and what we took to get to these places. And and you know, even if I do remember things, and I like tear up, or I cry, or I feel bad, and like I'm missing Tyler, I'm missing the boys, I'm missing what we had. I also have to remember that. I tell myself this about a lot of things, but I I don't own that. I own the memories, though.
Speaker 13 3:05:37
Yeah, yeah. I don't get.
Speaker 2 3:05:38
I don't own core works, or I don't have that, but I I fully have own all those memories and those accomplishments, and so I need to learn from those and keep on going on with those. And you know what what's in my future? I don't know. I hope it's up. And just with that hope determination, I mean, it got me very far with Koru, and I'm excited to see what happens next. I'm tired of being down about it. You know, of course I was shook up. Of course I was sad. Losing your your best friend, losing your buddy, and losing something that you share something so closely with, and then showing back up and still seeing their cars there and start to accumulate dust, and seeing their tools and their shoes exactly where they put it, and their hat, and all this, it it's we never touched it. So Tyler passed away, and the shop stayed open for a couple more years. And we never moved his shoes.
Speaker 1 3:06:27
Yeah,
Speaker 2 3:06:28
we we just were still finishing his cars. We were still wrenching on his cars as if he was there. We we there were certain things where I didn't want to change the font on the logo because he didn't want to do it, even though he wasn't there to like rebuttal or anything, I we didn't park in this parking spot.
Speaker 1 3:06:45
Yeah,
Speaker 2 3:06:45
and that went on for a couple more years. And I'll tell you what, like it was almost healthier if the world doesn't change. If you don't change for the world, the world will change it for you. And it was almost healthier to be able to like kind of let that go.
Speaker 1 3:06:56
Like first off, I mean, I I don't know if you've listened to the pod before, but like I don't know what it is, but I think when men are forced to talk for more than two hours, eventually we become vulnerable, and I think it's okay. I'm a big supporter of it. Like I said, I've had my own sort of journey in the past three or four years of like my own mental health of of dealing with things and dealing with everything, I've unfortunately have lost probably more friends than than anyone should. In it, I don't know why it is, but you know, I've I've have I mean, literally like 30 plus friends have died in my since my childhood till now, and I I don't know what that is, but it eventually makes you really numb.
Speaker 9 3:07:41
Yeah,
Speaker 1 3:07:42
makes you really numb. Makes you to the point where you get a text message if someone died, and you just go on with your day. And it wasn't until Ken died that like my whole world fucking stopped because I couldn't go on with my day because Ken was my day.
Speaker 4 3:07:55
Yep,
Speaker 1 3:07:56
and it made me take a massive inventory of of everything, right? And it also gave me time to like mourn all these things, you know, that had like that I had just hadn't mourned for for for decades, and because it's so easy to just be like, I'll just do this, or I'll be busy, or I'll stay doing that, and I think just like I don't know, I I don't know why we do that as people, but you know, and look, we even did it when Ken died because we just immediately got to work, it was like, "What can we go?" Well, you have to stay
Speaker 2 3:08:25
busy because also I want to point out, it's it's it's no disrespect. When you lose a friend, you lose a friend, no matter what their impact is in whatever industry or how many friends they have or whatever it is. But when you lose somebody like Ken, who's a business partner, somebody works side by side, somebody that makes decisions with almost throughout everything, you could almost just say like where I want to go vacation, and if you're out Ken, he might be part of that decision. Just saying, when Ken passed, the world got shook. The automotive industry got shook. My mom was talking to me about it. She doesn't know, and she doesn't know what a Ford Focus
Speaker 1 3:08:59
is. Yeah, it
Speaker 2 3:08:59
it was so much more, so it's so much harder to move on because you can't get on social media without seeing it. You can't even. It's hard to put on TV when after it happens. It's hard to do anything, anything. You're going, you go grocery shopping, and you're seeing Ken Block stuff in the toy aisle.
Speaker 1 3:09:16
Yeah.
Speaker 2 3:09:17
So it's like a constant reminder. And not only that, but you tied your relationship so closely to Ken Block that now, like, I know if you went to FD this weekend, somebody would mention him to you. Without
Speaker 1 3:09:28
a question, yeah, without doubt. Which is, it's tough because I remember at first it would annoy me.
Speaker 11 3:09:33
Yeah,
Speaker 1 3:09:33
because I think at first you're like, I just came here to fucking escape for the weekend.
Speaker 4 3:09:38
Yeah,
Speaker 1 3:09:38
and it actually made me like not want to be in automotive for a while, and I think it's one of the reasons why I left automotive because like I can go to Complex Con and not get bombarded by people being like, "Oh man!" Like, and like everyone, everyone wants to tell you their Ken story. I think as time went on, though, I I was able to sort of like understand that more, right? And it's like. Debt's weird. It's a hard thing to mourn. I don't think anyone really, I don't think really anyone knows how to understand it or how to deal with it. And people are just going to do it differently, right? And for a lot of people, like they they want to say something. They want to. They don't want to not say something, so they feel the need to say something. You don't have a sign on you that says like, "Hey, I don't want to talk about this today," right? And I'm and I'm sure you dealt with the same thing with Tyler, right? It's like you go to events and it's like maybe not Ken Block, but in drifting, everybody like knew him, knew Cora worked. So I'm sure no matter where you went, like you hear it and you become that person that people want to reminisce with, or they want to like share their memory with, and like, yeah, man, it's a it's a weird thing because, um, I was well aware of my connection to Ken when he was alive, but I also very much had like, I I was doing my own thing in even inside of Hoonigan. Like, I a lot of people don't understand this, but like Hoonigan, like Ken was the race team side of it, and like Joncana, and then like everything else, like Hurt and Vinny and Soupy and Danger Dan, and like the whole other gang of people. Like it was just like a separate business. Like he was in Utah, we were in California. Like you know, aware he was aware, but like I was just I was just managing and running all of that on my own, and then all of a sudden, you know, when he passed, it was weird because, like that, for the rest of my life, that was going to be a part of my story.
Speaker 2 3:11:31
Of course,
Speaker 1 3:11:32
just as it is yours, right? Like the rest of your life, your friend's death is like now a part of your story, right? I was
Speaker 2 3:11:39
with you when we were talking last month, and that person didn't even know that you weren't with Hoonigan anymore.
Speaker 1 3:11:44
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a random fan
Speaker 2 3:11:46
came up to you while we were talking and had no idea that you weren't with Hoonigan anymore. Yeah, yeah. And so that's going to stick with you.
Speaker 1 3:11:52
Yeah, yeah, of course. And it's not just the Hoonigan part; it's the the you know, it's like
Speaker 2 3:11:56
correct, correct.
Speaker 1 3:11:57
Yeah, it's just that that greater thing. And at first, it was sort of annoying for me, but I don't know. I, you know, it's it's it'll never be at a point where you're like, oh, the the wounds are healed. But I think it's one of those things where you get to it and you're like, okay, like I realize the value that this brings to other people, you know, because I it was actually it was actually my mother who reached out to me at some point, like a couple days later, a few a week later, something, and she was like, "She's like, you know, honey." She's like, "I," because I used to always say this to my mom, and my so my mom works in cancer research, right? So my mom and my dad are both scientists. My mom is a is a research scientist. She's now like vice chancellor of research at Rutgers, and has done a lot and has been involved has has been involved a lot, right? And I used to get like so stressed about stuff at Hoonigan that like I just felt like life was ending over, right? And I would like you know, and my mom would ask me, and I would feel bad complaining to her because I'd be like, I'm. I make videos about kids doing skids. Like it's really not that important. It's not that important, right? And my mom would, you know, my mom would be like, "Well, you know, we all have our jobs, and it's fine." I was like, "Yeah, but I'm not like curing cancer, right?" I was like, "It's just not that important. It's just not that important. Like I should not be as stressed as you are, right?" And she's like, "I know, but anything you do, you're gonna be serious about, and it's gonna stress you and whatever." And then afterwards, my mom, like, she she screen grabbed. This is where I'm gonna interpret. She screen grabbed a bunch of things and sent them to me, and she was like, "I don't think you guys realized the impact you had. Like, I don't think you realized how important you were to people, right? That like you don't just have to cure cancer. Sometimes you can't cure it, and you have to be that thing that gets people through it. And I and she's like, and you guys clearly were that. She's like, you read these comments, and people are like, I was going through this horrible time in my life, and you know, and Ken, you were there for that. You were there. There were there. There. And it's like, I don't know. I think it made me change a little bit of my perspective of like what it was that like we built and like we were able to sort of put together in that in that moment. And you know, it also made me kind of change like what I thought about storytelling. And it it's it's like you realize like escapism and the world we fucking live in today sometimes is just as important as the cure, right? Because it's like can't always get the cure, you know. So it's like cure's not
Speaker 2 3:14:30
there. Yeah, yeah. I'm here to tell you, my my dude who had cancer, there's not a cure for it. Yeah. But you know what he watched? Your stuff. I remember being on the couch with him, watching, knowing that Andy worked on this project and watching it, and it got him through those moments. So you may have not done the cure,
Speaker 1 3:14:49
yeah, but that's that's a big piece of it, yeah.
Speaker 2 3:14:52
Who was just getting through it?
Speaker 1 3:14:54
Yeah, I mean, and that's I think that that's something that you know, it's like it's it's nice to kind of take a step back. And look at that, and you know, here we are, three hours 15 minutes into this, three hours, three hours and 15 minutes, a three-hour break. That's the break. But it's like, yeah, and you know, and it's it's it's great to hear that because like I'd met Tyler, I I did not know him well. I met him at an event or whatever. You know, same thing. Like I think like a lot of us in drifting, it's like we kind of float through through each other, yeah, yeah, yeah. The people around him, including now knowing you better, it's like I, I can speak volumes of that, and and I've obviously have heard, you know, a lot through through Andy, kind of like through that period, right? And and and the struggle of it all, and it's like, man, that shit's not easy, and it's like it's weird to think it's like brands, like a brand means something. It means so many different things to different people. But like a lot of times, I think for the people who are there helping build it, it's like it is so important in a way that I can't describe. And like you know, afterwards when you know obviously our situation was a lot different, but like you know, there's this feeling that like, and I think it's very different because I think this is really was the truth for you guys. Your guys' situation. It's like for us, it like a lot of people think that ended because Ken died. That like really wasn't the truth. Like the business was very separated. We could have continued going. We kind of were at our end, and if anything, Ken's death actually extended it. Like, you know, Hurt was already was already moved on. He'd already accepted a job with NBC, and like, and was already having conversations with Payne. So like, that was already happening before Ken passed, and all of us was sort of like at our end. And then all of a sudden, you know, we wake up one morning. He, you know, he's gone, and it's like, okay, fuck, we got to kind of like get back together and like try to make this work. And then I think we just, I think I woke up one day and was just like, I, I just wasn't enjoying it anymore. I was, I was, I was fighting to make it work, and I was fighting against what it was, and it was, it was a you know it was a different business of than what we were than what we had built and and we had both agreed to that like we had sold the company we agreed that it was going to change and I think that there was just always this idea of like all right we'll do this for like a few years finish out the contract and we'll go do something else right there be something else and then there wasn't that, there wasn't that something else. And I think like I had to wake up that one day and have that moment of like, yeah, this isn't like I'm I'm doing this for the wrong reason. I'm doing this for the wrong reason, and I just need to like go do my own thing and and separate and do something different. And now it's interesting because it's like, you know, I'm still involved and helping out with like his kids and doing stuff with you know with with obviously the foundation and and the and the blocks and all that's fun. But then I'm also doing like I'm actually really excited about all the new stuff we were doing, and I've got conversations with all the old Hunigan guys and doing that, and and it has become sort of like this this great moment. So like I don't know. I don't even know where we're going anymore. Other than just, other, other than just, other than just, you know, sort of agreeing with this. I, I, I mean, other than us both, sort of going through this, and it's like I hate that we share this together.
Speaker 1 3:18:12
But at the same time, I'm excited to see like you know your positivity on this out right, and and like your next steps on it, and I I knew I had I knew we had to talk about this, and I saved it to the end because I was like I was like this might be emotional for both of us as it was, but um but definitely wanted to sort of sort of get there. So anyway, with that being said, you do need to get to the airport.
Speaker 14 3:18:39
Yeah.
Speaker 1 3:18:39
Um. It we we've gone well beyond what I thought this was going to. We broke three hours, which even if people don't know who you are, they are always excited to hear that is a three hour plus episode.
Speaker 2 3:18:52
Oh, neat!
Speaker 1 3:18:53
So yeah, three hours is sort of like the is sort of like the mark. Like everybody wants a three hour episode. I don't know why it's a really long. Yeah, our our longer episodes are like what people want because they break them up. They want they listen to them over days and stuff. Yeah, if
Speaker 2 3:19:08
you live in L.A. like an hour and a half to work, an hour and a half back. Exactly. Right.
Speaker 1 3:19:12
Right. Right. Right. So, but so to end this, you know, often a lot of times when I have people on the show, especially drivers or other like you know YouTubers, there's always the conversation of like I want to work on something together. We should probably just tell the audience that like we are secretly have already been discussing working on something together. So like that's already there, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on today. Obviously, it has something to do with drifting. Yeah, and I'm I'm excited to kind of get that going. But I don't know, man. You got any last? You got any last words before we wrap this up?
Speaker 2 3:19:46
I'm just I'm just cheesing to be here in this seat. I do listen to the podcast. Uh, I mean, R.J. Devere. You didn't have to
Speaker 1 3:19:53
just. You don't have to. You don't have to say it's okay. I know. I know you. I know you. I know you hit the Chat GPT for all the notes on the way in. I'm
Speaker 2 3:19:59
actually the. When I'm like, oh, this one's under an hour. I'll knock this one out. It's a commitment,
Speaker 1 3:20:04
man. I get it. I get it. No,
Speaker 2 3:20:05
but I'm honored not to be here in this seat, but to be next to you because of what you've done for this automotive community, what what you've contributed, what you've done for drifting, how you've put us on a pedestal. How again, we we joke about how many Hoonigan stickers are on there. There's more Hoonigan stickers on cars out there than any other automobile related brand, and it's now they're all in
Speaker 1 3:20:28
police reports. But yeah, of course, it was better back in the day.
Speaker 2 3:20:33
But it's because your hard work and the people that you assembled to help you get through that and get reach that goal, and and I idolize you as not because it's easy to idolize a driver and look at their stacks and see how they drive, and you're like, oh, that's awesome and stuff. I idolize you because you're a businessman, and and at being your position, you never wanted to be the person in front of the camera. Just like you said earlier, that was never your goal. You wanted to make sure that this person succeeded, that this person excelled. That you put, we kind of knew who Ken Block was, but we didn't know Ken Block until you guys started working together. We know Travis is strong enough, but not as a rally driver until you guys started working together. We know of Hurt, but we didn't look at Hurt as who he is as a human being now until he met you. And so all these people, then all these amazing human beings, you are on the other side making that happen, and so I'm honored to be here right now because you have made those people and you have made careers with people so that they can have successful lives, and so that's why I'm honored to be here.
Speaker 1 3:21:33
I appreciate you, dude.
Speaker 2 3:21:34
I appreciate
Speaker 1 3:21:35
you. Now we can now we can we can end the show, handshake, have a hard clap.
Speaker 2 3:21:39
Thank you. The
Speaker 5 3:21:43
mailbox is the mailbox is full. The mailbox is full and cannot accept any messages at this time. Goodbye. Goodbye.
Speaker 1 3:21:58
By now you might have realized I really enjoy European things. I mean, my cars are European. My tools are European. I mean, my producer he's he's British, which I think is still European. That was rude, but go on. Can I tell you what I did this weekend? What did you do? So I decided that I'm gonna actually park the Vanagon for a little bit and get back to driving the RS2. Like literally knock the dust off of it. And to do that, I figured I'd do a little preventive maintenance. It's not something I think of when I think of you, dude. Yeah, you see, the problem is that car gets a lot of things right, but there's this one issue where the strut bearings just constantly fail, especially if the car is like slammed on its nuts like minus. So I ordered a set of strut bearings from FCP Euro, got them, and was gonna swap them out, and I stripped this really annoying nut. Like seriously, curse the German engineer who designed this. It's like a weird half castle nut. It requires this weird specialty tool, and if you put too much force on it, it gives up. So anyway, I stripped that, and now my car was on a jack stand. And honestly, I was about to just leave it there. Like I've left many other projects to die, but it's the RS two. So headed in, went to fcpeuro.com, found the part because they had it in Arizona. They were able to overnight it to me. Boom! I had it the next day at my farm. Got the car back on the road. It was awesome. FCP Euro most likely has the parts you need and can get them to you pronto. You know, so you can keep driving the cool cars. That's what matters. Heatwave just created my favorite sunglasses of all time, the Easy Rider photochromic. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I've learned to really value what yellow lenses can do for your vision when you're driving at night in your 40s. And look, I get it, yellow lenses they can be a little dorky unless you're cosplaying as the operator from Sicario. But with these, they actually transition to look like regular shades in the sunlight, letting you stealthily blend right in. So anyway, thanks Heatwave for making these for me. I guess they actually made them for everybody. Go find yours at Heatwavevisual.com. Hey, if you're into older analog cars like me, then you might not know that these days the suspension actually talks to a computer. But KW knows and has sorted Porsche 997 and 991 owners with their new DDC plug and play coilover system, which integrates seamlessly with Porsche's active suspension management, aka PASM. Historically, installing aftermarket coilovers meant you lost the ability to toggle between suspension modes, rendering that switch on the dash useless. With KW's new system, you get to have your cake and eat it too. Factory controls and a 911 that rides on rails. Find yours at kwsuspensions.com. Have you ever questioned why only sockets are privileged enough to get asked to dance by the breaker bar? I mean, seriously. So many other tools could benefit from part-snapping leverage. Our favorite German tool company Wera has solved this conundrum with their new X Power Actuator. What is it, you ask? It's basically a long bar that accepts a ton of different inserts, which range from the Joker self-adjusting wrenches to ratchets, bit drives. And even a weldable blank insert, you know, so you can make your own unholy creation. Ultimate fan clutch tool, anyone? See all the batshit things they make for this wild mechanical implement at Wearatools.com.
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