Late to Grid - Grassroots Racing

Inside PRI 2025: Strategic Networking, AI in Racing, and the Power of the Game Plan

• Bill Snow

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In this episode of the Late to Grid podcast, Bill Snow takes us inside the 2025 Performance Racing Industry (PRI) show in Indianapolis. Covering over 1,000,000 square feet of exhibitor space, Bill explains why this is his favorite industry event and how grassroots racers can benefit from attending. He breaks down the importance of arriving with a clear "game plan" to navigate thousands of exhibitors and maximize business growth.

The episode covers key highlights from the show floor, including the use of Artificial Intelligence to analyze driver data, the legendary opening breakfast featuring Mario Andretti, and a behind-the-scenes look at how Atomic Autosport uses the show to solve complex technical and e-commerce challenges. Whether you are a business owner or a hobbyist, Bill explains why a PRI membership is a vital investment in the future of the racing industry.

The season might be over, but the work is just beginning. Don't let your track, autocross or racecar sit idle this off season. Now is the perfect time to tackle those projects that get you one step closer to the podium. For upgrades, maintenance, or that big performance project, there's only one name. Atomic Autosports. Get ready to dominate next season. Find us at AtomicAutoSports.com and book a call with Bill to review your project and goals.

It's getting to be the cool time of year and you're ready for hot deals to update your car for next season. Now through December 31st, 2025, if you go Mishimoto.com and put in "grid15" you'll get 15% off the entire catalog. The only exception we do have a blackout date during Black Friday through Cyber Monday, but through the remainder of the year, 15% off!

Atomic Autosports has some pretty big news! Track first now has a physical presence right inside Atomic Autosports. That means you can get your car Atomic prepped and grab essential safety gear, helmets, shoes, gloves, and more all in one spot. We can also have your purchases shipped right to our shop in Wickliffe, saving you on shipping. Stop by and check out the expanded selection.

Thanks for listening and taking an interest in growing grassroots racing. The Late To Grid podcast shares the stories and inspiration that help listeners along their motorsports journey.

Find all episodes on the Atomic Autosports website.

I am just back from pre 2025. Perhaps you've attended the show before. Perhaps you've only heard about the show and dreamed about going. In this episode of the late Great podcast. I'm going to share everything that went down for us at 2025 pre. Let's throw the green flag on this episode. Let's. Well, welcome back to another episode of the Late to Grid podcast. As I mentioned, just back from PRI and, if you were there, you knew it was very snowy on the way out. If you were there, you know, it was very crowded. But if you weren't there, I'm going to share all my perspectives, everything I learned, and tell you a little bit more about the pre-show. So first, if you don't know what it is or there's still confusion about it. Performance. Racing. Industry. It's owned by the Sema organization, and every year they put on a racing show in Indianapolis. Now, over the years, it's been in some other locations like Orlando and there was a lot of talk this year about the history of the show and how awesome it is to have it in Indiana, specifically the motor racing capital of the world, Indianapolis. In fact, the governor talked a little bit at the opening breakfast. I'm gonna talk about the breakfast in a little bit. Michael. Good. The president of Perry, talked about how awesome it is to have it in Indianapolis as well. So first let's level set. It is over. I think it's 1,000,000ft² of exhibitor space. The entire convention center in downtown Indianapolis is filled wall to wall, plus Lucas Oil Stadium, where the Indianapolis Colts play. The entire field is transformed. And this year it had race haulers. It had trailers. It had a huge sim racing experience there as well. To talk to you a little bit about that. Over a thousand exhibitors and this year 161 new exhibitors. Talk about growth in our industry. That is absolutely awesome. And tens and tens of thousands of attendees. So who can attend? Well, anybody actually can. There's a couple of different types of memberships. You have a individual membership$40 a year and you are in. And then there's business memberships that start off at $395 and go up to $995. Tomic Autosports, of course, is a member, been a member since 2022. And, why would you join as an individual member? Perry does a lot for our industry. When tracks are fighting for their lives because of legislation and regulations, Perry is there. When our industry is under attack at the state, local, even federal level. Perry is there to back us up. So your $40 goes a long way. Plus, it gets you into the coolest show around where you can learn about everything racing. Whether you're doing drag racing, you're doing ro, road racing, time trials, autocross, whatever it is, it is represented there. This is my favorite show ever. I've been the CMA, I've attended Apex during CMA. I've been to trade shows in the telecommunication space, the franchise space, automotive aftermarket space. No matter where I've been in shows, I've participated in, spoke at, exhibited at PRI is hands down my favorite. You know why? It's where business gets done. It's where you learn about what's going on in the industry. It's where you can attend educational seminars to make yourself better. I have a saying if you're not growing, you're dying. And I took the entire time I call a sports team. So we had Brian, Matt and Sam and myself all there to do just that, to learn to network and to grow. And again, you don't have to be a big company to be there as a PRI member. Again, $395 is the opening membership and it gets you so much. And talk a little bit about that too. So, I got so many notes here, I want to make sure I talk about everything. So this is either my fifth or sixth PR. I gotta go back and count my badges. And every year it gets better and better. And I might share a little personal note with you. Like you, I'm busy. I'm busy with work. I'm busy with family. The show falls in December. We have a lot of holiday things going on, a lot of year end planning for the businesses. There was a point where I was like, I don't know, maybe I don't go. I was actually a little bit under the weather too. And I got to tell you about two hours in three hours into the first day on Thursday. I couldn't believe I thought about even skipping it. That's how powerful this show is. Just a couple hours there. It was amazing. So, we roll in Wednesday night because I want to tell you about the breakfast in a minute, but we roll in Thursday night. I've got a couple of hotel rooms out by the airport. Any. Anytime I got a sports crew. We just jump in in my room and we're all kind of sitting around talking.

It probably was 10:

00 at night.

11:

00 at night. First thing I do, I jump on Facebook Marketplace, and I want you to listen to the end of this episode, because I have what I think is the coolest part of this trip to pre to tell you about it happened on my final day there, and it started Thursday night because like I said, I jumped on marketplace and I start looking for Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indy car collectibles and parts and anything I can find. Indy and I went there to find that kind of stuff. But I had one thing in mind that I needed to get. It's related to last year's show. Stay tuned to the end of this episode to find out exactly what I bought last year, what I bought this year, and how they go together. So that was our Thursday night. We got in, the marketplace. We talked about our game plan and what was going to make a great show. So before the show started, weeks before the show started, I called the Atomic Auto Sports Team together, and I said, guys, we're investing money to go to PRI. We got travel, we've got miss time in the shop, we've got memberships, all that kind of stuff. We have to make the most of the show. And that's my pro tip to you. No matter what show you're going to, no matter what conference you're going to, you have to go in with a game plan. I do that with everything I attend, and that's exactly what we did for this show. Who do we want to meet with? Why do we want to meet with? What business problems do we have right now? We want to solve? What racing problems do we have that we want to solve? Because everybody there at that event can help us with that. And I'm going to share you some very specific examples of what we came in with and what we left with. So like a lot of conferences, there's an app, there's a floor plan, there's information about the exhibitors, my advice study all of that, put together a game plan and execute it. Because you know what happens. Those doors open, you hit the exhibit floor and now you are lost. You're drowning in thousands of exhibitors. Shiny things show specials. If you don't have a game plan to get you back on track, you're going to go home and say, I didn't accomplish anything. But I saw cool stuff, which is still cool. But remember, we want to grow. We want to learn. So again, set goals, set meetings, and have clear desired outcomes from what you're doing. I also want to share we've been a business member, like I said, since 2022, and there was a lot of confusion the first day. Apparently we didn't. Although we were a business member, we weren't recognized as a business member. And their system for that show, there were some things we should have been invited to that we couldn't get into. It was all solved by day two. PR team great. Got us in there. But you know, we use the members lounge for meetings with a lot of our partners and vendors that we use. And, it's a great resource if you think about becoming a business member. So while it was a little frustrating the first day trying to work through those issues, we got them solved. And the PR team said, next year we are gold. And apparently they switched platforms. It made it a little bit, a little bit of a of an issue for some of the members. Price starts off on Thursday morning with a breakfast. Doors open at 630. And I got to tell you, when those doors open, that room is flooded. And, the hotel or the convention center puts on a great breakfast for everybody. There's a lot of energy there, stuff playing on the big screens and, Ralph Shaheen is usually the MC has been for most of the years I've been going there. And then you have Michael Good, who does a great presentation. He's the president of PR. I working to get him on the podcast to do an episode as well. But the opening breakfast sets the tone for the entire show and quite frankly, almost for the entire year. Here's what happens at the opening breakfast. You end up sitting at a table and you meet people from other areas of the country, other areas of racing. And, that was exactly what happened this year. I sat down the team and I sat down with some folks from, I think it was New Zealand or Australia, and they work on circuits, sequential, easy for me to say, gearboxes for race cars. So they had a booth there and they were trying to drum up some support. And then we met some folks from California that did a few different things, including very cool canopies that you use trackside, and they had their own race team as well. They were there to learn. So you, you never know who you're gonna sit down with and meet. But here's what the breakfast is all about. It's about sharing great information.$69 billion. That's the racing industry impact. The past year, that information was shared. They do Hall of Fame inductions for both. A couple of the inductees unfortunately passed away, but they were recognized and their families were there to be honored. And then there's always a keynote. Shouldn't call it a keynote, but an opening breakfast guest this year? None other. Mario Andretti, probably the biggest name in racing, right? Daytona 500 winner, Indianapolis 500 winner and a, Grand Prix champion. He's the only one that's ever gotten those those three. He shared some funny stories about cars. He had experiences he had, how he came over to United States and started racing all the lessons learned. I didn't realize he raced a Hudson Hornet, right? I'm a big cars fan, and we know Doc Hudson from that really, really neat thing. It really sets the energy for the day. And a quick story. A few years ago, Roger Penske was the featured guest at the breakfast, and, we left Cleveland about 1130 midnight, stopped in Columbus on the way to Indy to drop off a car, slept in the truck for about an hour before the doors open on that breakfast. That's to me how important hearing those industry leaders is. And, you really need the full three days Thursday, Friday, Saturday to see it all do it all. So why not start off with that included? Breakfast? A couple other things. I am big on the education component of PRI, and here's what I mean. The entire week is filled with learning opportunities sessions, and they're very specific to track promoters, for example, sanctioning bodies. If you if that's your background, you can learn about setting up your car brakes, tires, aerodynamics. And then there's business things that are covered as well. So this year I attended a lot of the business sessions. I want to tell you about a few of those because they were huge learning opportunities for me. One had to deal with artificial intelligence. You can't go anywhere without AI being part of the discussion. Whether it's people making funny pictures at a holiday party or in a meeting, or using AI to help you craft a better email, or perhaps write your life plan. But in this specific instance, there's two industry experts that one of them came from motorsports and is heavily involved in the motorsports industry, and they really gave a good perspective on how to use artificial intelligence to grow your business. After the presentation, I talked to one of the presenters and I said, listen, everything you presented help me understand how to implement that. About a four minute conversation. Boom. Now I fully understand how I can better use AI in my business and in my marketing. I've attended a lot of online sessions about. I read a lot listen, a lot of podcasts about AI. No one ever explained it like that. That's the power of learning. Especially at PRI. There's a really cool panel discussion. Listen to this folks. You want to talk about being in a cool room. There was the president of you SAC. You had a higher up from NASCAR. You had an HRA represented. You had the president of SCCA Sports Car Club of America, Mike Cobb, John Doonan from IMSa, the president of IMSa, all five of those people. One room on a panel talking about how do we engage new young leadership in our sport and in our industry? It was a pinch me moment because here's why I'm second role Ro. It's a it's a small, intimate room too. It wasn't one of the huge rooms. They're all talking about their perspectives. And the big takeaway is we all need to work together. It doesn't matter if you like drag racing. Roundy round stuff, road racing, autocross, grassroots, high level. It doesn't matter. We need like all forms of motorsports, we need to support all motorsports organizations and companies that support us. But here's a really cool I spent, I don't know, probably 7 or 8 minutes after the presentation talking to Mike Cobb, the president of the SCCA. I'm the membership chair for our local region. I was sharing some ideas with him. And, you know, we ended up having a great conversation about pit race and what we need to do as racers, drivers and those interested in our sport. What we need to do to make sure that pit race doesn't happen again. And there's some circumstances there that no matter what we did, probably wouldn't have been able to save pit race. But you want to know what those things are. We need to be at the track. We need to support the groups that are at the track. We need to support the vendors at the track, and we need to promote what the track does. That's the simplest thing that we can do, and I think if we did those things, we're going to make the tracks and that where we where we participate, where we play even stronger. Another one of the sessions that was really interesting. There's a lot of talk all week about influencers and content creation. And as you walk a show floor, like PRI, there's people walking around with all their little handheld cameras, big cameras. You got camera crews going, everyone's creating content. Everyone's looking to get eyeballs on their stuff. But one of the sessions I attended was basically, how do these content creators and influencers really impact a business? And I attended it from from two ways. One is, how can our businesses be using content creators and influencers a little bit more? But then if you if you take a look at, like our radar racing program, what can we do to better support our partners and our sponsors that want eyeballs on their content? And here's an outcome I did not even expect from this session. So there's a there was a couple, there's a couple manufacturers. They make products that racers use. And then there and then the other three people were influencers, content creators. So there's a lot of back and forth about what the businesses look for versus how the content creators operate and what they're trying to do. And Brian from Atomic Sports was was sitting next to me, and he's looking up one of the content creators, huge YouTuber. And then afterwards we approached him after the event, he gave us a few minutes of his time, and we solved an e-commerce issue that we've been having an atomic Auto Sports. Who knew who knew that just by being in that room? And Brian doing a little bit more research on some of the presenters, gave us the idea that how are you doing this? Because this is something that we're struggling with. Where else is that going to happen folks, other than pre we're business, I like to say gets done. Those are just some pretty cool, some pretty cool. The things we attended there was also, opening night Thursday night. They always have a happy hour, for all the attendees. And there's a little VIP section for the, the, the business members. And we were up doing they able to do some sim racing up there and then also network with some other business members to understand what they're doing in the industry, how they're leveraging pre to help them. And we got some good takeaways from just meeting some some new people. Now I want to move on to the show floor, some of the cool things that we were able to see and learn about and some problems that we specifically solved. One of the exhibitors that caught my eye. So here's what I do when I walk a show floor like I am. If you've ever been around me, I walk quickly. Boom boom boom boom. I'm walking past boots. What applies to me? What applies to you? The listener in the first booth that caught my eye on Thursday was Zaggy dot eye. And there's a gentleman there. I'm going to work to get him on the podcast. He's developed an AI tool that you can dump your data into and then start asking you questions. So imagine that you're running an AME data logger. For example, you could take all of your data out of those sessions, out of that race, out of that event, put it in there. And now you can ask it questions about where where you could get better. What trends do you see? What if you look at the data traces, what's working, what's not? I think that is huge because he's just got the tip of the iceberg on this. There's a lot of places I could go now imagine dumping in data from you. Another driver. Another driver. Where are you guys? The same. Where are you different and where can you learn from one another? To me, that was absolutely huge. It's the first time I've heard about AI being used to look at driver and car data, so I can't wait to have him on and he can do some deep dives into that. A couple problems that we were having on the radar racing team. There's two, and the first one's going to seem very simple to most of the listeners driver comfort. So we do endurance racing and we have Paragon cooling systems in the car. That's where you have a cooler basically with a pump in it, and you fill it with cold things like ice and water, and it pumps it through a shirt that you wear. That's the simplest thing. Well, you know, we've tried we've tried frozen bottles of water, big ice chunks, small ice chunks, you know, ice and water. And it just doesn't seem to work. So stop by there, Booth. And they said, here's what you need to do. And they have these cool little gel packs. I already bought 25 of them for the race team. They're already delivered. And we're going to give it a try at our next event. But they gave us very specific information. Here's how you need to set it up. Here's how you need to freeze them. Here's the water level exactly where it needs to be in their in our racing program. It's really important because you run in the summer and it's very hot, and we have people that pay to race with us. I want to make sure those drivers are well taken care of and lots of comfort. So that was a huge win. Another thing for Raider racing is we run rugged radios in the cars, got them from track first. They did a great job getting us set up, but one thing that we've learned is as the event goes on, sometimes communication falls off a little bit. Well, they're all battery operated radios because we're running UHF and they don't have an in-car solution yet, so I know it's on the works should be out first half of 2025. But in talking with one of their engineers at PRI, he said, you need an extended life battery in the units that you're running in the cars because you can't swap those out quickly during a pit stop necessarily. So wow. Because here's what happens as the battery drains the voltage or the wattage output lessens. So then that that radio can't transmit as strongly as it did before. Simple. Simple solution a few batteries and we should have rock solid communications all season long from our radio. And here's another really cool thing that we were able to put together while I pri race keeper. I've had race keeper on the podcast before. We're going to have mine again. This, coming season because they have a cool new product called Race Keeper Connect. So if you if you know what Race Keeper is, it's a unit that goes in your vehicle camera forward, camera backward. But not only is it capturing video, it's capturing a lot of data that you can use to make your driving better. So here's the cool thing. Now they have the ability to stream that data to the web so that we could do in-car footage not only back to our pits, but also people at home, friends and family sponsors that want to watch. You have the ability to do that now with this race keeper Connect. Really excited to get this in the car. But here's how PR I help put this together. So we've been kicking around race Keeper Connect. I got to see it at Nelson Ledges a little bit at the final. SCCA race. Bill Stevens from Race Keeper was there and Bill's been a previous guest. He was the guy working for IBM that first did computerized lap timing at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Take a listen to that one. I love that episode. I love Bill Stevens. Great guy. Anyways, at PR, I was in the business lounge. We had a room reserved and I had race keeper. So was Bill Stevens and their president, and I had Chris from LMS, EFI, who does all of our in-car data. He builds the electronic systems inside the cars. And I wanted to make sure that by putting this race keeper in the data from race keeper that, would be able to read the ECU data and that the connections would work and the wiring would work, and I knew I needed both of them in the same room to figure it out, make sure before we spent the money to buy Race Keeper Connect. It worked. Sure enough, it did. And it was great to we actually, we should have thought about this a little bit more. We actually did a little bit of a live demo from the meeting room. We should have publicized that and put that out. And some other folks could have seen it. So it was really good to, to put all of that, together. We spent all day Thursday, all day Friday, going between sessions and walking the floor and having conversations with people. Now, Saturday is generally the day where people say, all right, packing it up. It's been a fun trip. I know the show is open 9 to 4, but we're heading home. Brian and I didn't do that. So all the other Atomic Auto sports guys headed home. They had stuff to do for the weekend. They saw what they needed to see and they accomplish the goals that we set. But Brian and I, we were in it for another day and here's why. So I talked to you earlier about the coolest thing that happened at Pier. I. So I told you I was scouring marketplace and I found a Firestone Indy car tire for sale in Indianapolis. And I messaged the guy, Friday night and I said I, you know, is it still available? Here's why I'm in town. You know, let's talk about some pricing on this thing. And, we agreed to a price, and we agreed to meet Saturday morning by the speedway. Here's why. This is important for me to get it. If you know anything about IndyCar racing and Firestone, those tires are not available. Firestone owns those tires. So after a team is done with them, they go back to Firestone. They get looked at and then they get shredded. So getting one is impossible. Here's why it's important to me. Last year, pre Chip Ganassi Racing had a garage sale and I got a Ford GT wheel that came off of one of their cars with a michelin tire. It's a coffee table in my office. I also bought a wheel from Scott Dixon's Indy car. It had hit the wall at the, Belle Isle race in 2022 because it was it was bent. It was not really bent, but because it was damaged. They take those out of commission. So I bought that. We'll just a wheel, no tire. How do I get an IndyCar? Firestone tire. Can't do it. Talk to a lot of people. I had friends from Hoosier say I can get you hooked up on Hoosier friends at Goodyear. Said we'll get you a Goodyear slick. Could look good on their. This guy in Indianapolis who actually lived in Medina, Ohio for quite a while, which is close to where I am. He had a display tire. There was four of them. He originally had gotten. Somehow he'd gotten these from an IndyCar team. It was on one of the chassis that was rolled around to shows exactly the tire I needed. So it was great. Brian, I picked that up. It was a very snowy Saturday morning. Well, we had breakfast at Charlie Brown's. If you been to Indianapolis and the main street next to the speedway, Charlie Brown's great breakfast place filled with tons of racing, specifically Indy car stuff. And then we went over to the museum to take a quick picture with my Firestone tire. And then we headed to PRI. Saturday was the hustle day. Here's why we learned so much Thursday and Friday that we had to go back and talk to more people. We hadn't had a chance to talk with, and that was the get it done day for Saturday for us. So we sat down and had a meeting with the guys from Sema data to understand how their data offering can help some of the things that we're doing. Back at the shop, we went and had a great conversation with NASA, specifically the Great Lakes region. The our shop, Atomic Auto Sports is a certified NASA, NASA shop. We do logbooks. We get tech sheets done for their events. So we want to make sure we connected with NASA at that event because they have an awesome track, which is their endurance series is going huge in 2026. We're going to come on to talk about it. But we wanted to make sure that we made that connection, learned everything we could to make sure we can support the NASA membership. Great. And then we went over to Lucas Oil to see all the awesome trailers. And man, what a realization. The trailers are so cool and so expensive. So, for now, I'm keeping my old trailer, but the entire part of the whole, the area was all sim racing. They probably had to have 25 or 30 sim rigs set up, and then a couple other, folks that make some rigs had their little display set up. It was really cool to see all of that. They had a competition during pre as well, simulated, race competition. But, the Goodyear had their hauler and had their display set up and Jay Chapman who was a recent guest here on the podcast, Brian, Jay and I sat in the Goodyear hauler, which this is the hauler that goes to NASCAR races. This is like Operations Central. And we spent about 45 minutes talking to Jay about Goodyear racing, everything they're doing, the tires, all their plans for 2026 as it relates to sports car racing. A lot of cool things going on. So stay tuned. Stay close to Goodyear Racing and, perhaps even another project that, we'd love to be part of as it relates to the Sports Car Club of America, Goodyear and Atomic Auto Sports.

But then we stay at about 4:

00, and, that's when the show ended. We got over to the truck. Getting out of there was crazy. The snowfall was heavy, but, but we made it, and it took about 2.5 hours longer than expected to get home. But we got home safely, and, it was an overall, just a great, great show. So to recap, if you haven't been the pre, find a way to get there. I understand there are time constraints and there are money constraints. If you can find a way to get there I highly recommend it. You're going to learn so much. You're going to see people. You're going to meet organizations and companies that can help you along your motorsports journey. If you have a business, whether it's racing or not, even attending some of those seminars are going to help you grow and learn and be able to do even more. If you did attend pre this past year, I'd love to hear from you. Reach out whether it's on the socials, put a comment on one of our post or just reach out to me directly. I'd like to hear your feedback, what you liked about the show, what didn't, and of course, if you're going to be there next week, attend next week, next year. Because I'd love to connect up with you at the 2026 PRI show and work together to see what we can do to make grassroots racing even better. Thanks so much for listening. I am super excited that you are involved in our sport. I'm super pumped about the next season and as you work to get ready to get on grid, I have one favor to ask. Don't be late to grid.