The Blind Apex Podcast
The Blind Apex Podcast
Episode 151: AI Race Engineer
The guys at RACESETUPPRO.COM join me to talk about how their product can help us get faster by dialing in our cars! I didnt think it could be done, there are so many factors... but these guys are making it happen!
If you like what you hear, please share the podcast or think about supporting it at buymeacoffee.com/theblindapexpodcast
Absolutely. So we take into account basically anything you could have in your car. And the reality is you don't have to put it all in at first, right? Like if you're really just concerned about tire pressures, like plug in the tires that you're running, plug in the size, uh, and kind of plug in like what's your target hot pressure, right? Uh we can then kind of go from there with a lot of stuff.
SPEAKER_02:Welcome to the Blind Apex Podcast, where amateur club racers tune in to get faster.
SPEAKER_03:This episode is brought to you by Deachworks Fuel Systems. Use Apex 10 at checkout to save 10% on fueling your passion. Not that long ago, I said this topic was probably too complicated, well, to actually exist. And here we are. We're going to talk more about AI. And specifically, what I'll say is how to get an AI race engineer in your pocket to help you with race car setup. I've used it a little, I've definitely explored it, and I've got a couple of gentlemen from Race Setup Pro to talk more about it. Welcome to the podcast. And can you guys please introduce yourselves to the audience?
SPEAKER_01:Sounds good. So hey everyone. Thanks for having us on. Uh my name's Tim. I'm the technical side of Race Setup Pro. My background is honestly in tech, right? Uh fintech, e-commerce, uh, have a bunch of roots in the startup world. Um, I've been into cars and was introduced to Oval Racing when I was a kid, right? Uh I used to run around kind of um uh kind of racetracks in the northeast, hanging out in the paddock for modified cars, just watching them go around and around and around again. Um, so I was hooked on from when I was a young kid. And I think I've had about 15 or so cars that I've been tinkering with throughout my lifetime, right? I love to understand how things work. And about four or five years ago, I got an E36, which brought me into driving on track. Um and for the first few years, it was a ton of carting, sim racing, time attack kind of style stuff with the local club that I helped run up here in the Northeast called Com Sports Car Club. And then this year I've really been digging into wheel-to-wheel stuff with Champ Car Northeast GT. Uh, and I'm gonna make my debut over on GLTC over at Pit Race. Um, rest in peace. Pour one out, everyone. Uh, it's going away soon, unfortunately. Um, so what that's led me to in the last couple of years is really digging around with car setup, right? Uh driver mod gets you most of the way there, but fighting a bad car is something that is really tough, right? Weather conditions changes. Sometimes your setup that goes from one track to another track uh kind of works to a varying degree. So I started to really dig in, study, and understand this, and uh met Jeff a few years ago. We got started talking about the idea. I'll let Jeff you kind of introduce yourself before getting ahead of ourselves. But um, yeah, it's been a fun, fun past couple years.
SPEAKER_00:So I am Jeff Zizulis, uh Jay-Z, uh, you can call me, uh, or my kids call me Chief, whatever works for you. So nobody in my family was in cars, not a single person. In 1994, I ended up at a Ford dealership at 19 years old and bought a bright red Mustang GT. Um, I still wasn't into cars, I just liked that one. Uh, I started drag racing and you know, it was fun. I got into the 11 seconds and I realized it was, you know, an 11-second adrenaline rush. So as my kids grew up, I got out of drag racing and we got into motocross, and I was horrible at it. Um, I ended my motocross career with three months in a wheelchair. Um, and that was only one of many crashes. So um, by the way. Yes, they do.
SPEAKER_03:But at the motocross track, oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I got a new hip because of it too. Oh wow.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but at the motocross track, they say with age comes a cage, and I didn't know what that meant. Um, but I had a 2012 Boss 302 Mustang. I took it to Thompson with SCDA, and my first instructor, Butch, was amazing. At the end of the day, I said, if there's one piece of advice should I take away from today, what is it? He goes, Go buy a Miata. So I did. Um, and we all know they're really slow, and to make them, you know, go decent around a track, you got to have them set up right. So I'm a bit OCD, so I started measuring tire pressures, temps. Um, I'm too cheap to pay for alignment, so I started figuring it out myself. And then I quickly realized people were asking me, what should my pressures be? And at that point, with all the research I was doing, I was saving away these files, and then it became, hey, my car is under steering in turn four, what should I do? And we talked through it and make some adjustments and came up with this idea. And, you know, Tim approached me and said, Hey, if you need help with this, let me know. I'm like, Tim, I don't need help with it. I am lost. I I knew what I needed it to do, but I am not a software guy. I've been in sales for almost 30 years. So my job in sales is to oversimplify things, complain to the IT guy about it, and get him to fix it. Right. So Tim and I meet, and yeah, we launched Race Setup Pro and it's been live for a week. Okay. So officially live, beta tested for a few months.
SPEAKER_03:So it's raceetuppro.com, not raceetup.pro, correct?
SPEAKER_00:Correct, raceetuppro.com. Thank you. Yep. Yep. So the website's live. Um this weekend, I'm at the track. Two people signed up, they used it, both of them came up, and it's always the same thing. I didn't actually think it would work. One of them, it's their home track. I posted it on Instagram today. He's got hundreds and hundreds of laps there in the same car. He's like, My car didn't even feel fast, and I beat my personal best by just over a second, which is huge. We know what we pay for parts to beat our personal best by a second.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah. Yeah, we know how much horsepower that is, and we know how much you know where you have to to mess with the the weight, power to weight ratios and things. I have a I have a booklet, and I believe it's with my catalyst somewhere, but it's a booklet that says uh if you're pushing, do this. And it has a page if it if you're oversteering, do this, and it has a page. Um and I don't well, and I I haven't looked at it in a while, confession, right? But it's uh it it'll tell you like more clicks here, or no clicks here, or go more toe out this way, or toe in or add more camber, whatever. It's an old timey flip book. And I tried to use it for a while, and I was like, it's not really tailored to me. How does it know if I have compression and rebound for my shocks, these types of things, right? And I and I'll also confess some things. So I uh have a mountain of tire pressure data with track temps, ambient temps, barometric pressures, top cold pressure, what the hot pressure was coming off, all that jazz. Because, like you, my the number one question I was getting, what are you setting your tire pressures to?
SPEAKER_02:Yep.
SPEAKER_03:Um, and I was like, we should just make an app that says I'm here, this is the weather, link it to like weather bug or whatever, and then tell them what tire you're running, and then it should recommend something, you know. Yep. So uh that never really got going. I have mountains of the data, but it never really moved. Because like you.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it didn't get going with you, because we had the similar idea, yeah, right? Because I I think it is the I mean with cell phones, it's can you hear me now? At the racetrack, it's what should my pressures be. Correct. And the the three of us could be in the same car with the same tires and the same setups, and like different pressures for driving style. Yep. So um yeah, so it's it's the the famous question.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so race setuppro.com. I go and I create a sign-in. Okay. I sign up for the the service, there's different plans. Maybe we get into that now. Uh yeah. What's the levels here?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I can run through that. So we have three different levels right now. Um, each one comes in a monthly or annual subscription. Right now we're actually running 50% off for our first 100 users. So we still have some spots left if anyone's interested in trying this out for the annual plan. But the three different levels. So we have weekend pass that gets you two track days a month. Um, basically, you start your track day, you get an initial analysis, uh, and basically like a baseline setting for your car and track setup, right? Understanding what you have in your car and just saying, like, hey, you know, wantkins Glenn, it's a high-speed track. Uh, maybe you should do X, Y, and Z based off of that. Um, for post-session interviews, uh, that's basically what happens after you go through and start your track day, right? You get off the track. I'm having issues with understeer in in mid-speed corners, right? What are the adjustments I should make, right? Here are the ambient temperatures, here's the track temperature. Uh, if you know your tire pressure is awesome. We try and kind of prompt people in the right direction to say, like, hey, you should be checking this stuff. Uh, and then we can give you feedback on it too. Uh, so that'll start to give you an analysis based off your handling issues. Um we'll uh and then basically we're logging all of the tire attempts over time. So eventually, we don't have this quite yet, but eventually we'll be able to use that for both making more kind of high quality recommendations and then also kind of uh letting you know like what worked for you and what didn't, right? Um so that's the weekend pass. I won't go into detail about all the specific areas for this, but it's really gated based off a number of track days per month. Uh so starter, you get four track days per month, 18 post-session interviews, we assume about six sessions uh a day, and then pro 10 track days per month, uh, and 60 post-session interviews per month. There's also a vehicle count associated with that. So if you're running multiple vehicles with the pro plan, you get three vehicles instead of one, uh, where you can kind of enter your setup information um and kind of track it that way.
SPEAKER_00:And Khan, I think it's important to point out like our software doesn't know like what level of driver you are. So we do start at a baseline. Um, we've had questions about, hey, well, it's saying this and I know that, right? This is where we're gonna make a recommendation. But then as you do your post-session interview and you provide feedback, it starts adapting to you.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Right. But you know, that's it's one of the many rabbit holes we could go down when we're designing this. How do how do we determine how your level of experience, how good of a driver you are? Because if it's number of track days, that doesn't mean you're fast. If it's lap time, you might be fast. But what you know, running a 120 at a track in one car is much different than 120 if you're in a Miata, right? Compared to 700 horsepower. So we haven't we haven't dug into that yet, but it just starts at a baseline. But as soon as you start entering your information, that's when it gets really you know customized to you.
SPEAKER_03:Right. So I've chosen XYZ, whatever. I don't I actually don't remember which one, what level I selected, but I I have high ambitions for 2026, but we'll see. Um you select your plan and then you start to build out your profile. So what's right, what's in your profile that people should know? Because I totally jumped in head first and I don't know certain things or didn't know certain things. Um so I'd like everybody to be educated before they like press that button and are ready to go.
SPEAKER_01:So absolutely. So we take into account basically anything you could have on your car. And the reality is you don't have to put it all in at first, right? Like if you're really just concerned about tire pressures, like plug in the tires that you're running, plug in the size, uh, and kind of plug in like what's your target hot pressure, right? Uh, we can then kind of go from there with a lot of stuff, right? Like there's simple things you can recommend that a lot of people don't even reach for at the track. Like, hey, I'm under steering. Okay, drop your front tire pressure a little bit, right? Like increase that contact patch. Um, and so there's a lot of stuff we can do with that. But outside of tires, right, you know, uh, we take into account wheel width, right? So we start to understand like how that impacts kind of like the whole entire tread section width and like um scrub radius and all this sorts of stuff that like an increased wheel width can can introduce, right? Um, everything about suspension, right? Are you running single, double, triple adjustable? Do you have stock suspension, uh, alignment settings? Uh, this is a nitty-gritty one, but it's also really important, right? Like understanding your alignment. It's a one-time thing to go in and fill up this setup information, right? So, like looking it up is the more data we have, the better the recommendations we can give you. Uh, so really understanding like what's my caster at, right? What's my front camber, rear camber, uh, front toe, rear toe, all of that stuff. Um, and we support it in any kind of um you know unit of measurement that you want. So degrees, millimeters, uh inches, whatever kind of works there. Do you have a corner alignment, right? Uh, do you have a corner balance? Like all of this stuff is relevant. Um, we take into account, obviously, like total weight of the car and driver. It's a common way to do it on track. We don't want to assume like uh, you know, you have a 2800-pound car, but you're a hundred-pound driver, like that's a different thing than if you have a 300-pound person in the car, right? Like it's it's going to affect affect things. Uh, so we take that into account. Sway bars, right? What do you have for sway bars? What's the adjustability on your sway bars? Um, aerodynamic uh stuff is in there, though I do have some plans for some pretty big upgrades so we can start to understand like drag numbers, so we can start to understand um kind of like downforce like at 100 miles per hour. Uh, there's a lot of stuff in there that'll help us make some better recommendations. And right now it's pretty simple um in terms of arrow. That's that's something we want to dig in on, but just uh we need to get around to it. And then finally, brakes, right? Uh, this is a safety thing more than anything, right? Uh making sure based on all the other things, if we kind of notice that you're running OEM pads and have a very serious setup otherwise, like we want to let you know, like, hey, maybe this isn't the safest thing, right? Like there could be a consequence here uh for not running like a race pad or kind of a hybrid pad, uh, especially depending on kind of what they select uh in terms of their kind of goal, right? Are they just out there to have fun and practice, or do they really want to go crush some lap times or even put in a specific lap time target? Um, so some of these are kind of more safety focused while we're asking, so we can make some recommendations in that front, and then other ones are purely like, you know, increase your rear wing, decrease your rear wing, whatever it is, right? Some more kind of standard car set of device things.
SPEAKER_00:And what's really awesome is you can also just check the box for stock suspension, right? Stock alignment. So we tried to develop this so you can show up to the track with your you know, brand new, you know, name your car. And literally it's just gonna help you with your tire pressures. But you don't have you likely don't have somebody that can go to that's gonna look at your car for your weight and make a recommendation. They're just gonna recommend what they run. But then we also wanted to make it appealing. So you mentioned, you know, the SCCA NASA. You know, these are people that have been running their cars often for a while. We wanted to make it valuable to them as well. So it's finding that balance of yeah, you can run a stock car and for 10 bucks you can get some input on your tires and cut your lap times, or just make your car feel better because so much of it. Uh, in one of the podcasts I was listening to, you talked about you've gone off in turn one twice at Summit Point. Right? So confidence is key. Like it had to take a while to get your confidence back. We know on track, confidence is king. So if we can make your car feel better for your driving style, stock or full race car, then we've won.
SPEAKER_03:So uh I have a couple of questions. One, uh, if I'm running a stock car, would it also uh make alignment recommendations? Generally, yeah. Okay. Yep. Okay. And then uh one comment is when you go down the arrow rabbit hole, uh, be ready. And uh maybe I think I have my data from the wind tunnel if it gets that serious, if you want to see what comes out or how it comes out, at least from the A2, because that's the most common one people use on the east coast.
SPEAKER_01:So um at least, you know, if you could send that over to me, that would be awesome. I think there's probably like 3,000 formats that I'm gonna have to figure out how to deal with, but uh having an initial one to wrap my head around it would be great.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you'll at least see how they do it down there. So it'll cover at least the east coast. I don't know what the west coast guys are doing, or anyone in the central United States who goes to one, uh more people go than they say. So uh yeah, and so the other question is um have you guys thought about incorporating kinematics into the like advanced level, like so the measurement of the suspension pieces and all that stuff?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Um, but I think I think our initial standpoint is we really want this to be a 90% solution or an 80% solution. Um so there's kind of like all of this really advanced stuff ends up being a lot of lot of work for a very small select few people that would use it. Right. And a lot of those people are more folks that would like maybe have a race engineer buddy that they'd talk to anyways, uh, and kind of like have in their in their Rolodex, right? Uh so I don't want to try we're not trying to replace that at all, right? We're really trying to be like a cheap, reliable solution that you can have in your pocket for quick and like very useful advice. Um the really advanced tuning, I think we'll get there. I just think it's there's other things where we're trying to tackle it first and make sure it's really useful to the broad population. Uh, but yeah, I've I've gone down that rabbit hole before and it it would be complicated, but awesome too, is the thing, right?
SPEAKER_03:So so that's fair because the level of effort on our part is large enough, right? So me legitimately, first off, you would have to have the right kind of instructions to tell me how to measure correctly, and then it's only as good as what I put in, you know. Absolutely. So there's that that bleed area where you have to trust the data. So it becomes the the more detailed you get, uh, the harder it is gonna be to trust the data. I I've mismeasured before, right? They say measure twice, cut once. I I've measured once and had to cut two different boards before, you know, like mistakes happen. Um, I just I I feel like it's on our user level for their I why do I want to be at I I want to say that there's more people that would actually do it if it were easy her to do, right? So they'll probably put in the effort to measure it, but they don't want to have to then go into the tools that are out there now to enter the stuff, right? If there was an easier tool to use, they might do it more often. So that's there's a balance there. I see it, but I just Wanted to make sure.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, but but I couldn't agree more. Like on the tooling side, and I think it's one of the big things that has drawn me towards building this out, right? Like Garmin Catalyst, you called that out earlier. I think that's a great example of something you just put in your car and it just works, right? Like it just works. Minimal setup. Um, there's some other data loggers out there that like they're great, but you really have to learn how to use them. Garmin Catalyst, it just works. I think FireLaps, you had them on recently. I think they're another great example of a company that's really like introducing some modern tech in here. So it doesn't feel as complicated, even if you're doing the same thing, right? So there's a way where we can make race setup or like car setup simple, like remove a ton of the complexity and really get people towards like, you know, action and like understanding of how to pull this stuff off rather than you know really consuming themselves with theory and um trying to remember that and memorize it at the track or having you know logbooks or something, which you kind of pointed out, like they're they're not context aware and they're kind of a burden to pull out and go through and find the right page and like all of that kind of stuff. Um, and when it tells you 20 different things you could do to your car, it's like, well, which one? You know? Yeah. Um and that's kind of overwhelming and not confidence inspiring either.
SPEAKER_03:Uh in my opinion, at least with my car, uh, don't even bother Googling it because the information on the internet is useless.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and when you talk about, you know, your your rear camber and toe, right? Yeah. And the peak and what happens, right? It's gonna be hard for somebody to to find that. Um, this is where we come in. So when when um when we were doing the market research, because there's nothing like this, right? The closest thing to this is something you're gonna use if you're like an MZT. And at that point, you're gonna have multiple engineers taking the measurements and doing it all, but it still doesn't give you an actionable item. And it doesn't tell you why. So this is where you know, I'll give Tim all the credit. He did a phenomenal job of not only getting the output of saying, okay, here's what you're gonna do with our data sources, but here's why you're doing it. Right? And that's I mean, that's not the secret sauce, but that is part of the magic, is understanding why. Um now, the why might be different from what somebody knows, and that's where they run into a challenge. So we get that feedback of like, hey, it told me to do something differently than my friend did. Right. And it's like, okay, well, we manually looked at your car and the software was right. I'm sorry, but your friend gave you inaccurate information.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so but the IMSA teams are gonna have two engineers, three engineers, whatever. They're gonna have whatever tool they developed while they were learning to be engineers, right? Yeah. Yeah. They all have a laptop, they all have a spreadsheet, it all has some sort of calculator in it, right? They're not hand jamming this stuff. At least I hope not. But then they see what this information says, and then they have to recall what they learned and the experiences they've had to then make the changes, right? There's there's no uh like wires crossing between what's entered and the recall because you have it built into the system, right? There's a there's a level of human error, right? His friend could have been like completely uh they're not doing it on purpose, right? Uh they uh tell you add some camber when they really should have said take some camber away or whatever it is, right? It's it's one way or the other, it's it's it's a different, right?
SPEAKER_01:And it's interesting too because they might not know that you have a double wishbone suspension in your front, and like maybe adding camber isn't necessary, right? Like maybe they're pattern matching against their E36 that has McPherson Struts, and like, yeah, you need all the camber in the world because the car's front suspension geometry sucks, you know. But like there's so much of that where it's like you know what you know, but sometimes the pattern matching is incorrect because of that.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so before we get into the stuff that comes out, because I have my initial stuff that so I enter my vehicle, and you guys know on the back end what's a McPherson, what's a double wishbone, what's a beam axle rear, all of that stuff is in your database somewhere.
SPEAKER_01:So we know a lot of it. Um, I've spent some time compiling and like filling out our database with basically what I could find in my time constraint um kind of limit of plugging it all in. We still have more stuff to plug in, right? Like I'm not going to sit here and say it's perfect, but yeah, we have a really good understanding of a lot of the common cars that are out there that are running, kind of like McPherson Struts, divorced kind of rear ends, all of that kind of stuff. Just so we know, like, hey, why is your rear end like why are you running a 15k rear spring and a 12k front? You know, like that's crazy in a lot of cars, but then you realize, oh, your motion ratio in the rear is 0.65, right? And then it's like, that makes sense now, right? So we we have a lot of that. Uh we're still improving. It's one thing that I'll say to anyone that ends up joining, especially listening to this podcast. If you see anything that's funny or any funny recommendations, um, it's probably just some missing data on our side. So shoot us an email, uh, support at raceetuppro.com and like we'll get it taken care of within days. Like that that's kind of our turnaround here. So uh we'll we'll make it better with with everyone and we'll fill in the gaps kind of as we go.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and I think with all startups, you have to understand that not everything's gonna be perfect all the time, and the input you can give them just betters the uh the product, right? And if you make it better, it's more usable for you, it's more usable for everyone. Just pat yourself on the back over that because there's no need to be like, oh, they they missed a period or whatever, like the the the kg spring rate is reading like a LB spring rate instead of the other way, whatever, like something got crossed on the back end, whatever.
SPEAKER_00:Well, so so yesterday at the track, I had to go up to a guy and I just told him, I'm like, we do not have a C8Z06 um in our database yet. Like, I would love for you to come and enter your information. So he comes walking over with his notebook and he goes, By the way, I have an aftermarket suspension. And I'm like, Great, no problem. What do you got? He's like, I got quad adjustable shocks. And so we entered all the information the best we could. It was a little bit different than uh um because each setting had a different number of clicks. We didn't account for that, but we made it work, and so then he goes, What's it telling me to do? Here's what the car's doing on track. Sure enough, he looked at what his chassis shop expert told him, and the software nailed it. And I looked at him and said, The best part, you don't have to bother somebody on a Sunday, right? Right, right. So that it did get that right. Trust me, we've we found plenty of bugs. Um, but the more users, the more accurate it gets. That's a great part of AI.
SPEAKER_03:So I have a uh this is another question about the more users and and how your AI is operating, but uh on the back end, are you gonna start relating uh like my setup with a 2007 civic to somebody with a 2008 or something similar, like generations per car? Are they all gonna start grouping data by car, by type, and things like that?
SPEAKER_01:I think to a degree, right? Uh it's not anything we're necessarily going to expose to the user on like a dynamic basis, right? But we use it as part of the training set for like the AI that we have trained. Um, and the other thing on the A AI that I'll say, it's like we use it, but we mostly use it for formatting data and like making it more personal and like more relevant to the track that you're using, and and really just like I don't know, if you go back 10 years ago, you'd look at something like this, and all it would be able to do is like bullet points, like you know, increase uh front compression to nine, you know, increase front rebound to nine, and that would kind of be it. It'd be really hard to have personality around some of the suggestions and really gluing together some of it. So that's where we're using AI for the most part. But from a training standpoint, too, there's something interesting to be said. Once we start getting a ton of data, I think the biggest use case for it is going to be tire recommendations, right? Um, because we can we can look at all of the different pressures that people have run. We ask them to put in their laptime targets, their laptime actuals, all that kind of stuff. We can start to see what really works. Um, because the hardest thing about tire pressures is you go on Hoosier's website and you look up like what should I be running a 255-4017 for pressures? And it's like 38. And it's like, no, no one does that, right? So we can't use anything published online. We also don't want to get data from forms and stuff because you have, I don't know, like it's not reliable by any degree. So we want to really start sourcing that ourselves, um, have it backed with some data too. Uh, it'd be great if we could partner up with a telemetry company to really get like some objective data, right? Uh, to your point, like good data in is good data out. So, like, if we can improve the data that's coming in and really start to make some decisions with it, uh, that would be magical, right? And it doesn't take that that much. Um, but that that is definitely a goal of ours. So I do data every day, and I I you can correct me if I'm wrong.
SPEAKER_03:It's your your uh your device, your AI. But personally, I would prefer like I didn't guess at my shock settings. I wanted to know what my shock settings exactly were for that event by corner to enter in because I didn't want to put in shaky data because shaky data produces inconsistency. Shaky results. Yep. So if you don't know it, don't put it in. If you can go home and do it, add it later. Like it absolutely from from what I've seen, it's it's very uh simple to to just operate and work around, which I appreciate, right? I deal with things all day that are way overly complex, right? We don't need it this complicated. I don't know who designed it to be this complicated, but this system is really easy to use.
SPEAKER_01:So absolutely. And that that's been a big focus for us, right? Like we want to take the complexity away from you, but that doesn't mean there isn't complexity like over on my side of things. There's a ton of it, but we don't have to surface that to people, right? Like we need simple kind of questions around like what is your car doing, right? Let's try and figure out why it's doing that, and let's try and figure out some recommendations. And then you get to come back and tell us if we were right or wrong, right? Are you still under steering, right? In mid-corner, um mid-corner stuff that's like, you know, high speed, like uh high speed sweepers. And it's like, if you are like maybe we didn't tell you to do enough, um, or maybe we just made a bad recommendation. And I think for the most part, it comes down to like baseline setup, and we're just not moving the needle enough. But again, that's data, right? We can start to really figure out um how many clicks is appropriate given a baseline setup and all of that kind of stuff. So we'll we'll we'll start doing that pattern matching once we get some more data for sure. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:I so con when you had Manny on, he talked about a clean car at the track was one that was prepped. So if I could lay out the perfect world for one of our users, is on Thursday you would go into the software at your desk and you would enter everything because you have access to your clicker settings and you know your cold tire pressures and all of that. If you're trying to do it Saturday morning at the track while you're getting to the driver's meeting and out on track, you're only gonna enter some of the information. And some in is gonna give you some out. Right. But on Thursday, if you enter the information, on Friday you can make those baseline adjustments, and on Saturday morning, you can go do your first session, and then it takes two minutes to do a post-session interview. And our software isn't gonna give you the right answer because there isn't a right answer. What it's gonna do is put you on the path to get your car to handle better. Um, you know, one of the things Ross Bentley said on on his podcast was if your car is not giving you issues, you're not pushing hard enough. That's fair. So because once it's at a level where it's handling properly, your confidence is up, and now you're gonna push harder, and now you're gonna expose the next weakness, and the software is going to adapt with you along the way.
SPEAKER_03:That's that's why we work on the car, work on ourselves, because it's sort of like a one step at a time. You know, you improve yourself to the point where the car feels ruined again, and then you have to figure out how to make the car feel better, and then you go a little bit faster, and the car sucks again, and you just keep you just keep pressing forward.
SPEAKER_00:So And you said it, you don't like to buy tires.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, I hate buying tires.
SPEAKER_00:So your flicker settings on stickers should be different than your sticker settings on six or eight heat cycles, right? And it sounds like you're like me. I mean, I run my Hoosiers, I flip them on the on the rim. I'm getting 25, 30, 35 heat cycles out of them, but my suspension has to adapt because the car's not handling the same thing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's not happening uh over here. Uh I have a McPherson Strut front wheel drive um at 10 heat cycles, they're screaming for mercy and showing cord. So uh I get like two weekends out of the fronts, which is good. And then I I don't mind that. If you want to be competitive, you gotta stay on the on the Crispus tire. So if I can get two weekends out of it, I'm good. And the rears they can stay on for about 10 years, I'm okay with that. But okay, so I did my initial setup and I did it based off of my last event at Summit Point. I do want to make a caveat that I don't think I personally, so I still do a sheet, it's part of my check, my checklist for going out, is I put in what my suspension setup is. If this thing tells me to change it, then I need to update my sheet. The temperature changes, I need to update my my cold tire pressure goal, right? Or because my hot's gonna stay the same, right? So I I don't necessarily think I can set everything on Thursday and forget it, but I I do understand that I need to be prepared, right? And I think that's the biggest thing. Fill out my normal checklist sheet, go out, come back in. I can put everything in while I'm doing that, I can hot wash myself. How was the car? Where was where was I struggling? And then I can put that in the hot wash. But so uh one thing that I think is really good is that you have at least the setup analysis that I got done. Um, you have key takeaways, you have high priorities, you have medium priorities, and low priorities. And so I I think that's good because some of them are easy to do, some of them aren't that easy to do, track side. Um, so it really tells you like a high priority that you can do pretty quickly, you know, and there might be one that you can't do really quickly, so it allows you to decide, you know, how much effort some of us don't have time, right? Can I make a shock adjustment and a tire pressure change? Yes, because I have 45 minutes. Am I doing a spring swap? No, not in 45 minutes and not getting it back on the ground with the correct measurements that I feel I need, let alone what the system would need, right? So um, yeah, so let's talk about that. So I have this basic setup in it, and it gives me some pointers so uh that I need to make adjustments for. I'll make those adjustments and I go back out. So walk me through the process. So I come off the track, I log in, what am I doing now?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so you come off the track. So if you have a track weekend, uh you'll start a track day, you'll select the track, you'll enter in kind of the initial temperatures for the track, right? Um, you'll select the setup that you're gonna be using. Some people, I know Jeff, you have a bunch of different setups. Like you have track specific setups. So some people do that. I'm kind of lazier. I just have a setup for my car and I'll kind of tune at the track and just kind of keep on going from there, right? Um so you select that, you select some goals and stuff to kind of set up like, hey, are you doing a race? Are you doing time trial? Uh, do you have a specific lap time target? You're gonna tell us your goals that you're going into it, just so we can kind of like set our tolerance for some of the suggestions about like how aggressive we want to be with them, right? If you're going to do a race, you really need that feedback quick, right? And sometimes you're gonna wanna be like out on track and be like, okay, I want one too many clicks front compression, but that's fine. You can go back and you kind of like might intuitively know to change that. Um, from there, you have the ability to kind of do post-track interviews every time you come off the track. So you get to fine-tune all the handling issues that you have. Uh, you get to say, all right, I have mid-corner under steer, uh, you know, maybe I have corner exit over steer, right? Whatever kind of the combination of issues uh you have, you get to plug those in, right? You get to tell us where your tire pressures are at, where are your um, you know, what are the temps at, right? Um, hopefully you're taking kind of like inner, outer uh, and center temps, right? So we can start to make some some kind of recommendations based off of that. And then similar to what you got here, we'll give you a recommendation, right? We have a little more data to go off of, we have a little bit more information about your goals. Um, and then one thing that I still need to introduce is basically selecting uh a recommendation to apply, right? So you'll select the recommendation, we'll update your setup, you go ahead and apply the change, and then we get to track that, right? So we get to understand what we've changed over time. Uh, you get to come back and again tell us rinse and repeat, right?
SPEAKER_00:It will instruct you to not do three changes. Right. Right? It will it will guide you to say, are you sure you want to do two? Right? It's it really we want you to do one at a time. Okay, because then you know what's what's happening on your car.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so I'm at my on my setup analysis complete, and it's telling me to decrease my uh front compression by three clicks, and then increase my rear rebound by three clicks. I think that's plenty because I'm working on two ends of the car, right? So I can select it, I can click on it, it says selected. If I press, oh, it says apply one change. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. Awesome. And so that that might be broken right now. Full full uh disclaimer here. Yeah, but that's like half big.
SPEAKER_03:But that's the intention, is that it will update my information with the things done. Can that's right. Can can I be bougie and request that when I select it, I can select whether I do the front or the rear or both.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's a great idea. Honestly, I think you're the first person that provided that feedback, but that makes a ton of sense. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Because I would literally do one, I would probably do the front because I'm always complaining about the front end of my car. And then the rear seems like spot on, right? Especially if I can get a little more grip than the the it takes it away from the rear, just that little bit extra that I want. So I would work there first. So just yeah. I mean great feedback layman's. Yeah, but yeah, I I I gotcha.
SPEAKER_00:I haven't got the and you can do all this on your phone. Yeah, that's the best part.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so I haven't laptop there. Um I'm well by the time this goes out, I'll be at I will have done a uh day at Pine View in New York, and then uh I may Keep the car together. I'm waffling. I may keep the car together enough where I can do the last event at Summit Point just because I want to really dial it in, whether I make a gear change or not. Um, you know, who needs a couple mile an hour on the straightaway? I don't know. But um yeah, so I I actually I'm really excited about this product to really come out and start using it. Um one question I have is do you anticipate that AI will run out of recommendations?
SPEAKER_01:No, and here's why. Okay. Um we're relying less and less on AI for recommendations as time goes on. Okay. Um, you're a data guy, right? You know good data is good data in, good data out. With AI, that doesn't exist, right? There's always hallucinations, context window is getting better, all of this kind of tech stuff, right? Like it's moving in the right direction, but it's still not consistent. Um so the reality is we can codify a lot of this um and then rely on AI for some of this stuff that we really don't know that's a little more experimental. Um but I think the reality is with user feedback, with stuff that you're saying, with stuff that our user base ends up saying, like there's an infinite amount of stuff that I think we can ultimately accomplish. And you even called it out before, like doing kinematics or doing like CFD data, right? There's so much stuff we can dive into if people get tired of the recommendations that are being made. Um but the reality is, and our hunch is every track is different, right? To to Jeff's point, your tires are different every time, right? So you're never going to the track with the same car, the same um kind of like external variables. So everything's always changing, right? Yeah. Um, and you're always kind of needing to tweak your car so it can help you, you know, kind of do the same thing you did last time or better, right? Um, so I think we can go a long way with almost what we have now and kind of like really refining what we have now uh with kind of like you know, damper settings, um, sway bar recommendations, arrow settings, all of that kind of stuff. Um, because the reality is like every time you go out on a track, it's gonna be a useful tool, right? Like um, it's always different. So so it's it's hard to uh yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:So the pro teams who have more data than anybody never stop making adjustments, right? Because it's always different. The driver's experience level, just if they're at the track for three days, their experience level is different on the third day, right? So the the tweaks are endless.
SPEAKER_03:I I I I don't disagree. I think I'm on a I don't it's undetermined what version Toyota R I'm on right now, but there's a new one coming out, right? And and so just that change alone, yeah, especially on my car, my car is very tire moody, okay. It's very pressure moody. If you miss the pressures, you are hosed in my car, okay. Just how it is. Uh some cars don't care as much. Mine cares more than average, I would say, right? But between that, weather, uh anything, anything, you know, ambient temperature, how much drag is going into the car, you know, as your your uh brakes wear, sometimes you they create drag on the system, and that starts to alter the handling of cars in certain types of corners. There's all sorts of things that need to be overcome. Um my thing was I really um oh man, I'm I got an old man moment that I I just wanted to to make sure that people realize that this isn't a short-term thing, you're not gonna learn it all. Maybe you can, okay. There's I mean, I was one of those kids that memorized the back of all the baseball cards. So over time, especially if you stay in the same two tracks like I have, and you experience the same weather in the same months because the schedule never changes. Some of those things are gonna be redundant, but there's other things that happen, right? I changed brake pads, it altered how my car was uh uh coming into the corner because it didn't want to release. It was a very slow pad to release, okay? So it it changed things, right?
SPEAKER_00:So uh there's different, there's always gonna be something, and I think it's important to realize that one of the great things about this sport and many of us that do it is we are chasing tents. Like people that are satisfied don't do this sport, right? The the the people I've met that have been doing it for 30 years are still chasing how to get faster. So, and you know, once your car is kind of plateaued, what do you do? You change it, and then you sometimes you can be starting over. I've I just switched my car to a 200 treadware tire for grid life, and it is a completely different setup. Like I'm doing test and tune days because my camber's wrong, my toe's pretty much the same, but the camber, the tire pressures, the tire temps. So I'm you know, type and I'm typing it into the software, and it's telling me what to do, and I don't even have to think about it.
SPEAKER_03:So uh here was another thing that uh uh another recommendation, mostly because I don't remember because uh it's been a week since I put my data in. Um but when we're so this is a caution to the users, and then maybe uh something for you guys to think about is uh like a definition of what mid-corner pushes or what mid-corner overseer means. Um and then you as a driver, when you're making this input, you really have to read through those or really understand what the your expectations are so you can provide the right feedback, right? Because it could be you're seeing a mid-corner push. You think it's a mid-corner push, but you really need to evaluate maybe your brake is sticking, or maybe it's the transition of gas to break or break to gas that's causing it, or something, right? So you have to you have to the more educated you are as the user, the better information you can provide, and then then you will again get better information out. So I think that's totally that's a just a recommendation for you guys to maybe help some people, especially the newer they are with the system. Um, yep, you know, those guys with stock cars, they don't always know what they're doing. I definitely don't know. Well, yeah, it's okay, but then where is it on track, right? And how correct, right?
SPEAKER_01:The whole yeah. So it's it's a big thing, right? Like being able to understand if it's a car setup issue or if it's a driver issue, or maybe it's something mechanical that's influencing it. Like, we can probably ask some questions that can start to drive us closer to understanding that. And uh it's really important, right? Like, are you experiencing snap over steer because of a setup issue, or were you like sawing at the wheel and your car just went wild because you were asking it for too much? That's important stuff because at some point it's actually not a setup issue, and we probably should recommend some other stuff to folks, right? Um, so that's something that's on the roadmap. Okay. Uh just trying to nail down like what that looks like and how do we again not overcomplicate that, right? I think the whole ethos of this thing is like keep it simple, right? Like keep the user input simple, but extract a lot of information uh based out of those inputs.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know the guys that I race with, they I have the catalyst in the car right now, and they want um a better view of me driving. There is no view of me driving, right? It's right out the windshield, it's a catalyst. Okay. Um, because they want to make sure when I complain about my car, it's not my fault. Because I mean we're the human element, right? So I and it's all perception of me, right? It's my perception of the car. I've had somebody else drive my car, and he's like, I wouldn't change a thing. And I was like, I just want a little bit more rotation, you know, mid-corner, like or you know, corner entry, whatever. This is what I want. And he's like, No, no, don't do that. You know, uh, it's perfect the way it is. And and I've made one minor adjustment. My car's a moody with the rear ride height. So I changed the rear ride height, and the last time I went out, I couldn't get enough clean track to see how fast it would go. So um, but the fact I still have a complaint and then I'm still getting feedback, I got feedback on my setup. I'm I want to go try it, right? Like if it'll make me go faster, let's go. Let's go do it. You know, so awesome.
SPEAKER_00:So our goal for someone like you is can we help you find tense? Can we can we help you gain confidence in your car? Um, once you get that turn-in that you want, what's next, right? Because once you have the turn-in, probably something's gonna happen mid-corner or corner exit that you're gonna want because now you're carrying more speed in. Correct. And you know, this is the great part of the sport, and this is where you know our software comes in to help.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and then then once you get that type of corner, right? Because you you ask about slow speed, high speed, mid speed, you define that stuff. I remember that. So you're gonna cause once you make that tweak, maybe you caused an issue somewhere else. Okay, now we need to figure that out.
SPEAKER_01:So uh and then what it becomes, it becomes on the driver to figure out almost what to prioritize, right? Right. Like where where do I need to get the time? And and that's something we could probably dig into a little bit uh as well, right? Understanding the tracks, the corners, right? Iterating that I don't know, maybe kind of like getting on gas early is should be an easy priority and it's a safe way to kind of drive and it's also quick, but it's not the only way to get around the track. So some of it's gonna be up to driver preference and kind of reckoning, reckoning with yourself, like where are the places I'm okay with the car not feeling great if it can feel great in these other kind of spots for sure.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. And it may change by track, right? I don't need a car that's high speed stable as high speed stable when there's no high speed corners on the track, right? So um, yeah, so you can you may need to change it up, but so okay, what by the time this goes out, it'll be a couple more weeks from recording. So it'll be three or four weeks from the time you guys went from beta into uh live. Um let's talk about just so people realize there's people who are using it, and let's talk about the success they've been having recently.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so we've seen it on everything from race cars to uh bone stock, just adjusting air pressures. Uh one of our uh early wins was a gentleman that lives at NJMP. Um so if you're wondering how much track time he does, he lives at NJMP. His race car was broken, he took his streetcar out that he's done lots of laps in, and he couldn't believe it. He actually beat his PB by over two seconds. And this is somebody that knows what they're doing, checks their pressures, they know their car, they know the track. And the, I mean, we just keep hearing that over and over again. Um, you know, uh time trial people uh setting PBs in time trials, one one up in Canada is part of the beta. He was ecstatic. Um, the best part for us is everybody comes to us with doubt. They're like, I didn't think it would work. And it's like, well, thank you for trying it anyway. Because there isn't anything like it. Right. Um, this past weekend, I was doing free analysis for people. And you know, two of them signed up. They did one session, their first session with changes, beating PPs. Right? And that's their first session. Now, when you're cutting a second off, you can't expect to cut another second off. Like that was the big win. But that's why it's find those tents because that's what's going to happen. Um, but our whole goal was to build confidence in your car because there's a ton of data loggers out there. There's fire laps now for driver development. There's a lot of people that you can get to sit right seat, or you can watch videos, take classes, read books on the driving. Um, but we joke because we know it's often said it's it's you know, it's not the car, it's you. So we joke and say it's not you, it's the car. Right. Um, but it's really both, right? Because we do need driver development, and that should be coming from data. We also need it as real-time input from an experienced person sitting next to us if you have a right seat. But the piece that's been missing, and it I will I will tell you, it is so hard for people to wrap their head around this when they take it, because human nature is we want to understand what's in front of us. And when we tell them we're gonna help you with your setup, they're like, Well, do you put sensors in my car? Nope. It's interview-based. Okay, do you plug into my OBD too? Nope. You're literally gonna tell us what your car's doing because you already have something plugged into your OBD too. Right. Right now, let us help you with the car.
SPEAKER_03:Correct. And everybody's different, like you said earlier. Your setup, car set up different than mine. Even if we had the same setup, you could have a complaint about entry, I could have a complaint about exit. Like how we drive, it's it's all about how we drive. So we have to always work on ourselves as drivers, but then independently we need to figure out the vehicles, and we have to provide that input. And I'm happy that your product is taking personal input and then providing a personalized solution. I think that's important. It's not just uh a page of 15 things to do, right?
SPEAKER_00:Like so and the best part is you don't have to tell your friends you're using the software, they can just think you got better, right? You don't have to give us any credit if you don't want because there's plenty of people that just want their friends to think they're an amazing driver. But I have a buddy that can hop in anything and drive it and drive it fast. I am a sensitive butterfly. If my toe is off, I have to adjust it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Right? I agree.
SPEAKER_00:We're here for you. Awesome. Either way.
SPEAKER_03:So, guys, is there anything else you guys want to talk about for uh race setup pro? Did we miss anything?
SPEAKER_00:I my one ask is for people to log in and just try it out. You know, for the amount of money we spend on our cars, you can literally try our software for 10 bucks. It is the cheapest tool you will have in your trailer, but it's going to be foreign. This is different. There's nothing, there's literally the closest thing to this on the market is a ridiculously expensive software package that you need multiple engineers to measure camber arms and angles and all stuff that I can't do. Right. But for 10 bucks, you can go faster in the weekend. Like, how do you not try it?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, absolutely. Uh I mean, you got me as as somebody paying right now. Just I I want to know. I want to know how it works. I want to know how it can help me. Like you said, I I need to find those tenths. Um my consistency according to the stupid Garmin is like ridiculous. But it's yeah, that I just need that much more speed. And if I had the consistency, then it then the fight's on, right? So awesome.
SPEAKER_00:Well, we look forward to hearing from you after Pine View.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah, we'll see. I'm I'm getting some coaching. You know, I need I need to fix this idiot driver that drives my perfectly good car.
SPEAKER_00:So you use the software too, and just give us credit for all of it.
SPEAKER_03:Well, we'll see.
SPEAKER_00:Congrats on getting the coach. That never ends.
SPEAKER_03:I appreciate it. Um, yeah, where can everybody find you? Instagram. Let's reiterate all that, please.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. So uh we are on Facebook, but we do focus on Instagram. It's raceetupro on both and raceetuppro.com. Uh if you're anywhere in the northeast, pretty much every weekend you can find one of us on track. So we're we hit it hard.
SPEAKER_03:Awesome, guys. I appreciate you coming on.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for having us.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, thanks for having us. That was a ton of fun. Until next time, keep working on yourself, keep working on the car, and let's get faster.