The Bucket List: Why Driving a Supercar on a Racetrack Should Be on Yours

Summary

In this episode, The Car Chick® speaks with Adam Olalde, founder and CEO of Xtreme Xperience, about the exhilarating world of supercar driving experiences. They discuss the importance of bucket lists, the entrepreneurial journey of identifying market gaps, and the thrill of driving high-performance cars on racetracks. Adam shares insights on how Xtreme Xperience operates, the significance of car control, and the philosophy behind living life to the fullest. The conversation emphasizes the joy of experiencing supercars safely and the transformative power of adventure.

About the Guest

Adam Olalde is the CEO and Founder of Xtreme Xperience, the nation’s premier supercar driving experience. After noticing demand for high-end test drives, he started renting luxury cars in Chicago, eventually expanding to racetracks. Today, he leads growth and development, continually enhancing the Xtreme Xperience program and making the world’s most exotic cars accessible to anyone who dreams of driving them.

Takeaways

• Experiencing supercars can be accessible and affordable.
• Living life now is more important than waiting for 'someday'.
• Xtreme Xperience offers a unique driving experience.
• Car control is essential for safe driving.
• Supercars are designed for the racetrack, not the streets.
• Driving experiences can change your perspective on life.
• Adventure can inspire you to take more chances. 

Resources:

https://www.thextremexperience.com/

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You can view a full list of resources and episode transcripts here.

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Copyright ©2024 Women’s Automotive Solutions Inc., dba The Car Chick. All rights reserved.

Chapters

• 0:00 Bucket List Adventures: The Thrill of Driving Supercars
• 2:02 Entrepreneurial Journeys: Finding Opportunities in Gaps
• 8:32 The Someday Effect: Living Life to the Fullest
• 10:43 How the Xtreme Xperience Works
• 19:55 The Thrill of Performance Cars
• 23:15 Safety and Responsibility on the Track
• 23:45 Understanding Car Dynamics
• 26:20 Choosing the Right Car for the Track
• 28:59 Favorite Tracks and Driving Experiences
• 32:06 Breaking Myths About Racing
• 33:51 Getting Involved with Extreme Experiences

Transcript

LeeAnn Shattuck (00:00)
Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Straight Shift. I've got a big bucket list trip coming up. I'm going to be flying over to the UK, spending a couple of days tooling around the English countryside in a rental car, where I'm going to hit the bucket list item of driving on the wrong side of the road, and also seeing Stonehenge, and then taking a Transatlantic crossing back to New York on the Queen Mary 2.

So, finally getting to do this big bucket list thing that has been sitting out there on my list for probably 20 years. So actually gonna happen. I've been thinking about bucket lists a lot lately. So when the founder and CEO of the world's largest supercar driving experience reached out to me and said, Hey, let's do a podcast together. I was like, ⁓ yes, please. Hell yes. That's absolutely perfect. So...

In this episode, we're going to talk about driving super cars on a racetrack and why Adam and I both believe that even if you're not a motorhead, why this type of experience needs to be on your bucket list. So let's just get into it.

My guest today is Adam Olalde, the founder and CEO of Xtreme Xperience. Welcome Adam. Thanks so much for being here.

Adam Olalde (01:18)
Yeah, I'm stoked. I'm excited. Thanks for having me.

LeeAnn Shattuck (01:21)
You know, Adam, you and I have some things in common other than our addiction to racetracks and neither of us really set out in life to be entrepreneurs, but rather we tripped over an opportunity because we saw a gap in the market between what consumers wanted and what was actually available to them.

So please tell our listeners a little bit more about how you got this idea when you were just 25 years old to let complete strangers take insanely expensive supercars that you didn't even own then out on a racetrack.

Because, you hey, what could possibly go wrong with that?

Adam Olalde (02:02)
You know, that is probably the most accurate synopsis of how most entrepreneurs get into business. And then in our industry, you the car industry is a very small one, as you know, and the gaps in what the market offers and what people want to do are so prevalent in my opinion that we are often winging it, making it up on the fly and just trying to hope and pray that it doesn't go too wrong.

LeeAnn Shattuck (02:06)
Hehehehe

It is.

Adam Olalde (02:31)
But like you said, I tripped over it and I actually got into the luxury concierge industry. So I thought what people wanted was to be able to drive these cars and act like the owners of these cars, but then give them back at the end. And I wasn't wrong, wrong, but there are far fewer people that economically could pull that off because even to rent a Ferrari, costs a couple thousand dollars a day and then we have to maintain it.

It comes back with three wheels and people are like, I don't know what happened. And I'm like, what is going, this industry is a mess. And I found though, that if I could fine tune that and get people the experience that they wanted at the price point that they could afford to pay, that we could really grow this thing. And then I said, that's experiential. We're going to create experiences. And, ⁓ so I tripped over it. I got back up and then I saw in front of me and I actually hosted our first racetrack experience as a marketing event to

get more eyeballs on the rental car business brand. And when zero people who came to the racetrack came back to rent a car, I said, if 2000 people showed up for my marketing event and zero people came to rent a car, maybe that's the business that I should go after. And that's what we did. And like you said, I've been writing the book ever since, because there isn't a book. I don't think there's gonna be another one. So it's up to me to author it, and we're doing the best we can.

LeeAnn Shattuck (03:48)
I think that really is what entrepreneurship is all about is that pivoting because you try something and you think, this will be great. And then the market tells you something completely different and you go, ⁓ okay. And you just pivot because you're listening to your customers and what they want. And just because everybody else out there is like, that can't be done. That's crazy. You shouldn't do that. There's no way to do that. If you just have the mentality of anything can be done if

you're crazy enough to try it and figure it out and be okay with accepting that failure is part of it. I do a keynote speech called Lessons from the Racetrack that's about overcoming failure because I learned that being an entrepreneur and running a business is a lot like racing cars. You're gonna fail about 80 % of the time and that's okay because it's what you learn and then what you do with that other 20 % that matters. So I really commend you for.

you know, taking this very risky idea and making it work and making it into something that is just so damn fun and reasonably affordable for the average person. Because yeah, I mean, none of us are going to be able to afford one of these cars in our lifetime. Who are we kidding. But to be able to drive one and to be able to drive it on the racetrack. That's just amazing.

Adam Olalde (05:07)
We knew,

we knew why these cars were built. We knew how people wanted to experience them. We just needed to figure out, we as society needed to figure out a place to do that. And Xtreme Xperience decided that we could raise our hand and we could be that place. We'll bring the show to you. We'll keep it affordable. We'll keep it safe. We'll let you put the pedal to the metal. And guess what? You have to come back a few laps later so I know where you are. Then we can...

keep the program running. And that's really what it was all about. Yeah. And we've had a blast because, you know, to your point, failure is really only accepting that it's over, falling down and getting back up. That's just learning. That's just learning.

LeeAnn Shattuck (05:45)
Yeah,

absolutely. I'm a big believer in if you're going to have one of these cars. So I've I had an old friend from back in my consulting days who started a business. It was kind of like a time share on these cars without. OK, you know, people don't want to necessarily buy one, but they can own a time share on it and use the different cars in the fleet kind of, you know, whenever they wanted to a certain amount per month. But he found that didn't work either because

The people that wanted to own them wanted the ownership. They wanted to have it in their garage so that they could bring all their friends over and show it off and brag that they could own it. They didn't necessarily drive it. And most of them don't even know how to drive it. I can't even tell you how many accidents I see happen in the news with celebrities and your athletes

that are doing stupid things, because all of sudden they have all this money and they go out and buy this super car, but they never learn to drive it. In my opinion, there is no point in even owning one of these cars if you are not gonna take it on the racetrack where it belongs and learn how to drive it properly and learn how to drive it safely. Why have 600 horsepower if you can't use it and you can't use it safely and you can't use it legally? That's just silly.

Adam Olalde (07:06)
And that's why we pivoted so quickly from the rental car concierge business, because it just wasn't what those cars were designed for. Driving them down the street and looking rich. I mean, it wasn't even feeling wealthy like you just alluded to, because you weren't. You rented it. And that's kind of like a faux pas in the industry. So, it wasn't, people didn't want, they didn't want to just look rich. They wanted to feel rich. And that was not what I was in the business to provide. And I couldn't do that for them. But if you wanted to just feel speed and adrenaline and

check that box ⁓ that could you do what you watch on TV when you see F1 and IndyCar and everything. Well that we could provide and we have a lot of fun every year doing it.

LeeAnn Shattuck (07:45)
And that's great. And it's so different from like the NASCAR experience because they don't actually let you drive. Trust me, I asked and they said no, even to me. But I also don't like this whole drive fast turn left thing. People who are NASCAR fans, they want to experience that. That's a phenomenal thing to do. But those of us that grew up watching F1 and I've been road course racing most of my life, turning left and turning right is just phenomenal. But being able to do it in one of these cars that

the whole reason they exist is they were born from this tradition of European racing. And that's just a whole different ball game. I found most people that have a bucket list, or at least they say they have a bucket list, almost none of them ever actually check anything off that list.

Why do you think that is? I know you have kind of called it the someday effect. I did, I did. And I love that idea. That's, that's so accurate.

Adam Olalde (08:32)
So you heard about it. You heard about my someday effect.

You know, because I ultimately am successful at what I do, not because I'm passionate about it. And when I say it, I mean driving a Ferrari on a racetrack or whatever it might be. I did not grow up a race car driver. I did not grow up wrenching on cars and maintaining my own cars. I grew up wanting to get the most out of life. I wanted to enjoy everything that life could give me. And I saw when I looked around me how many people

were putting it off for some day and that drove me crazy. I didn't know why it drove me crazy as a kid, but I was like, okay, so you're gonna work your whole life. You're gonna make all the sacrifices. You're gonna retire and right when you can retire and may have enough money to buy that Ferrari, now you're too old to get out there and enjoy driving it. And I said, this is crazy. This whole concept is crazy. I want to enjoy life when I got the most life to joy. Now that's a little contradictory because we don't have

the means necessarily when we're younger or if we, you know, or if we do, we're giving it to children and whatever else sucks, sucks the midlife out

LeeAnn Shattuck (09:42)
Yet another reason

I don't have children.

Adam Olalde (09:46)
And I love mine, but they're a lot. And so I said, hey, there's gotta be a way to get the most out of some day today. And I didn't start this business with that in mind. I learned that through this business. I watch a hundred thousand people a year come open their eyes and experience "someday" with Xtreme Xperience. And I go, that's the gift I'm giving them. I'm not giving them the Ferrari and the Lamborghini like they think. You know, that's why they came.

But I'm unlocking their idea that, you can get out there and experience someday today and hopefully that inspires you and that changes the way you look at things and say, hey, I'm gonna take some more chances. I'm not gonna accept failure. I'm just gonna enjoy every day because it's a gift and not worry about buying a Ferrari when I retire one day. And so I really got on board with that and I challenged, I said, hey, my job isn't to inspire people to think about what they would wanna do one day or put on their bucket list.

My job is to challenge why you're not doing it today.

LeeAnn Shattuck (10:43)
Definitely. Well, let's talk about then how this experience works and what kind of cool cars are in it. So if someone has this on their bucket list, you know, what do they need to look for? Tell us how the Xtreme Xperience works.

Adam Olalde (10:56)
We try to make it as easy as possible. And I did this, going back to your lesson on entrepreneurship, totally by accident. The good part about most entrepreneurs and CEOs is that we make a lot of decisions and then we see what happens. We don't do a lot of research. No. I live by the 40-70 rule. If I did less than 40 % of the amount of research, then maybe I should do a little bit more. But if anything more than 70 and I've overthought it, the idea is old, move on.

I kind of, maybe I operate right around 50. If I thought about it for 50 % of the time, then that's good enough. Let's put this plan into action. And that's what we did. So I started a racing company in Chicago, not realizing that car payments were due 12 months out of the year, but in Chicago, you can only race about four or five months out of the year.

LeeAnn Shattuck (11:41)
Yeah, this thing called winter. Yeah.

Adam Olalde (11:43)
Yeah, so

the first winter came and I said, we have a problem. So I said, well, the only way to keep making car payments is to keep letting people drive these cars. So I loaded up a truck and I took it to Texas and I said, okay, we can drive here now. It does snow in Texas as well, but I dodged it the first season. Thank goodness. God was watching out.

LeeAnn Shattuck (11:58)
Hey, I have been at Road

Atlanta in the snow. It's fine. It's fine.

Adam Olalde (12:01)
It can be done. We don't do that Xtreme Xperience yet,

but after this many years, we probably could figure it out. So we loaded up our show and we took it on the road and that was 13 years ago. And I didn't look back. We just became a traveling car experience, supercar experience specifically, because then we could keep it accessible. We could bring it to every city in the nation that had a racetrack within about an hour or so.

We could bring it to people affordably because by planning structured events, now I could, you know, amortize expenses and I could sell you a ticket that you could afford. And then of course, safely, because in the beginning, I sat in the right seat with the first customer who drove. And I realized, going back to what I said before, not being a pro race car driver, let alone instructor, which is two very different roles. I survived three or four laps around the racetrack. I got out and I said, there's gotta be pros who do this.

I need to hire them. And so we brought that element into our program and they don't keep you from max performance. They encourage safe performance and you always get more out of your driving experience because of the crew of instructors that we have. And then I said, we need to take this everywhere. and I think we're going to make 55 stops at 55 markets next year. We've got

probably about 80 cars in our fleet. The Ferraris and Lamborghinis of course are the most popular. Porsche has come in number three. We have a couple models of Porsche. And then we kind of have a rotating rest of our fleet. We try to switch it up every year from the Nissan GTRs, Audi R8s. We have had McLarens at times. We've got Corvette Z06s now.

We are limited to a certain extent because we have to pack everything up in a semi truck and bring it out to you, but we still bring 20, 25 cars per city. So there's plenty to choose from and plenty of cool cities to visit if that's on your bucket list. Or if you're just at home and only have an afternoon to make of it, we will come when it's convenient and you can come out and see us. And so ⁓ throughout the years, we've added little elements to our program. We've hosted rallies, open road driving experiences,

all day driving events if you wanted to actually come out and drive every single car in the fleet with a dedicated instructor for instance. We have done autocrosses but ultimately the core of what we do is our super car driving tour and we just grow it every year.

LeeAnn Shattuck (14:24)
I can't imagine putting one of these supercars on an autocross course that's so small and so tight. I mean, like, you can't even use any of that horsepower.

Adam Olalde (14:33)
No, was definitely not the

most popular of the idea. Because people get in a Ferrari and they say, speedometer goes to 220, so I think I should be getting pretty close to that. And in an autocross, of course, you never would. The cars themselves mechanically didn't like it either. But ⁓ the road courses are the perfect medium, right? We don't just turn left. We make lefts and rights, and we go straight. We don't do backwards, ideally.

LeeAnn Shattuck (14:40)
Yeah

No.

Ideally.

Adam Olalde (15:02)
But that's really what, you we found the sweet spot and people can always manage 10, 12 minutes on the racetrack before they get a little fatigued because they're not pro drivers. And so they have no idea what it takes to be a pro, to be a pro driver. So, you know, we do everything for them when they show up at the racetrack, they get a safety briefing by one of our pros. Then they go down to pit lane and they go for a ride along first so they can see the racetrack. We've got the track

all set up with visual cues, know, apex cones and braking zones. It's just things to help them really maximize their driving experience and the racing line, which is a term that they learned about 15 minutes prior to that. They go from, you know, pulling in the parking lot. And I mean, we have everything. We've got people who pull in the parking lot in their own Ferrari that they were never gonna drive like they're about to drive my Ferrari. We have people who pull in in a minivan because they've never seen a Ferrari. And we've got people who pull in in their M3s, their, you know, their sports cars of their own.

LeeAnn Shattuck (15:37)
you

Adam Olalde (15:55)
and things like that. Race track instruction in the classroom down to pit lane for some safety gear and for a ride along. Then you meet your drive instructor who jumps in the right seat and then you go out and give it a whirl. And then everybody does great. That cadence really helps familiarize you with the race track and the concept of driving. And then I give you a video of yourself in the car afterwards and a t-shirt that says I did it. And then you get back in your minivan and

the next on-ramp you see just suddenly became a sweeper and you get to show your family what you learned and then tell your friends about it come see us again.

LeeAnn Shattuck (16:29)
You

I refer to the corner down at end of my street as turn one. So yeah, I totally get that. But that's the same methodology that we teach. I've been a high performance driving instructor for many, many years now. And so I always like to teach what I call the track virgins. I want the newbies that have never been on the track before because I tell them, we are not going to go fast today. We are going to learn how to put the car in the right place every time.

And sometimes that's just like, can just see the weight lift off their shoulders and they're just like, oh, phew. And they don't realize that their lap time has gone down by 12 seconds from the beginning of the day to the end of the day because they have learned that technique. They've learned what the racing line is. They've learned what an apex is and where it is and how to hit it every time. And those are skills that you can apply on the street every day. Cause nothing drives me more nuts than getting onto the freeway.

and watching people early apex the on-ramp every time. Drives me absolutely crazy. Like, this is just a very basic concept that would make you a much safer driver if you knew how to do it. I think it's great that you do the same things. It's just the differences you're doing it in this really amazing, ridiculously high horsepower, highly capable and properly maintained car. Cause that is key.

Adam Olalde (17:45)
Yeah.

Big shout out to my 20 mechanics. They don't leave these cars. Everyone asks, what do you do with these cars when you're done with them? Do you sell them? Are they even assembled properly anymore? Or do they just follow up, you shut the door and it falls apart like the Blues Brothers. And ⁓ I said, have pro mechanics,

LeeAnn Shattuck (18:02)
Hahaha!

You

Adam Olalde (18:17)
in pit lane, looking at these cars every three to five laps. So this car is in better shape than the car at the dealership. And I promise you of that. It's got a little life on it, but I promise you it's in better shape because we can't have a loose screw, a drip of fluid. We can't have anything. So these cars are very, everything.

LeeAnn Shattuck (18:33)
Nope, the tires are at the proper pressures. The brake pads

are good. You have the right type of brake fluid in there. Yeah, I mean, people don't necessarily realize how much prep goes into even these types of cars. We've got a company here in Charlotte, based here in Charlotte called GMP Performance, and they're a shop, but they also do track support and help, you know, the rich people that do own the Porsches and other German cars,

prep them for the track and they end up being their track support at the track days and stuff. These are for the people that have the money to do it and it's great. But so much goes into that. Even just when I take my little Mini Cooper to the track, because I instruct in exchange for free track time, you know? But just having to do everything that I have to do in my daily driver, which is not stock, but still making sure I've got the right brake pads, putting in

Adam Olalde (19:17)
Who doesn't?

LeeAnn Shattuck (19:28)
the fancy brake fluid that's not gonna boil and you're realizing the difference between cars that are equipped to do that versus just your daily driver. 'Cause I can tell you from experience that my stock brakes have lasted me almost four years on the street, 17 minutes on the track. And I, and I melted them down through the backing plate. So, you know, you've got these cars that

one, they were designed for this. So the chassis are built to do it. The suspension is built to do it. Whereas, you know, your Honda Accord or your Toyota Camry was definitely not designed to do it. And so it, gives you such an even better experience. It's about not just going fast, but about cars that were designed to handle these kind of curves. And these are not just straight line drag race cars. These are cars that can handle an obscene number of G-forces

in these turns and for me that's where all the fun is.

Adam Olalde (20:30)
It felt almost sacrilegious at first because I was inexperienced and growing up, like you said earlier in our conversation, you buy the Ferrari and then you don't let dust get on it and you don't let dirt get on it and you don't let miles get on it.

And so the first time that I took this Ferrari out and just thrashed it, I was like, one, am I going to break this darn thing? And two, my gosh. And then I said, hold on a second. I don't think that Enzo Ferrari wanted these things parked in garages. And then you realize that he's out trying to win F1 races. And so all of the technology and the price that I paid for this car is because it's capable of these things. And suddenly you realize that I think we're doing these cars a disservice if we don't take them on the racetrack and let people drive.

And so it changes your whole perspective on on cars and how they're built and what they're built for and and that's been a lot of fun to then just get out there and say all right you were built for this show me show me what you got. Let's do it

LeeAnn Shattuck (21:30)
My philosophy is also, because I get really irritated with the people that do stupid stuff in these cars on the Just a couple of months ago here in Charlotte, they busted a huge street racing ring and $1.5 million in cars, including two Lamborghini Huracans. People - if you can afford

a car that costs more than a lot of houses, you can afford a track day. You can afford a membership at the racetrack. You know, they're actually not that expensive unless you're talking about a place like Monticello. If you own one of these, put it where it belongs and that's on the racetrack and do it legally, do it safely. Even Paul Walker died

riding in a Porsche Carrera GT that was being driven by his best friend and racing team partner. Regular roads are not designed for this type of driving. And it's not legal, it's not safe. So, if you own one of these, put it on the damn track. Or why do you own it in the first place?

Adam Olalde (22:39)
That goes back to the exact first answer I think I gave you today, which was we founded this company because we know how these cars were built and we know what you want to do with it. And there was not a place to put those two things together. People were trying on the streets and they were flipping cars. They were not driving them at all. Both are bad options. Come to the racetrack.

Get in a Ferrari and say, let's see what zero to 104 in seconds feels like. And you know what? We can safely do that. You can have an awesome time. You can video record the look on your face when you first experience that, and we'll keep doing it. And so that's always been our mission for all those exact same reasons.

LeeAnn Shattuck (23:15)
I learned car control growing up on the snowy back roads of Wisconsin, because you know, I'm

from up north Midwest as well. But you can learn the extremes of the car's handling at like 10 miles an hour when you do it in a big snowy parking lot. To really learn how to control one of these cars with this much power, you have to have the right environment and an instructor to teach you the physics of it because it's just, you just don't experience that anywhere on the road.

Adam Olalde (23:45)
Yeah, and the cars are getting crazier. I mean, I've been in business now for, like I said, just shy of 15 years. And, you know, we were driving Ferrari 360s and 996s and stuff back then. Fantastic cars. But, you know, the most recent Ferrari that we have in our fleet, you know, is your standard 296 GTB with the hybrid 880 horsepower. I mean, like, and that's, it goes up from there.

LeeAnn Shattuck (23:58)
Mm-hmm.

That's the slow

one. ⁓ Relatively speaking, that's the slow one. ⁓

Adam Olalde (24:11)
That's the slow one exactly. I don't want to see that on the air, like I want to like think that.

That's

your entry level, you know, mid engine Ferrari, rear engine Ferrari. And so it's the whole industry is pushing towards more powerful things, more turbocharged things, more supercharged and hybrid things. And so you've got to learn how to drive them otherwise.

LeeAnn Shattuck (24:33)
And not only does it have that much power, but in a lot of these cars, the engine is not where most people are used to the engine being. For the vast majority of people out there, the engine is upfront. It's under the hood or the bonnet, as they say in the UK. Very few people understand what the physics are, the dynamics of the car are when the engine's in the back. If you're lucky, it's in the middle, it's right behind you, and you have this just unbelievably perfect weight balance. That's what I...

started racing and I had a mid-engine Porsche and man, that's just, the handling is amazing. But then when you get into like a 911 or another one of the cars where the engine is truly in the back, you wanna talk about something that is very, very finicky. And the difference between getting the back end to rotate and ending up backwards is like literally a hiccup. All of a sudden you're like, oh, I'm going to go, oh, hey, I'm backwards. How'd that happen?

Adam Olalde (25:28)
not to clarify for anyone listening to this, we do not let you get to that close of the edge. 10 tenths is a true number. It is not a number in our vocabulary. We're more like a seven tenths. But a seven tenths to someone who hasn't been on the racetrack before will feel like a thousand tenths. And so it's pretty cool to...

keep it well within the guidelines and safety limitations, but also give you an experience that you've never dreamt up before.

LeeAnn Shattuck (25:54)
The only other downside is that it's addictive. you don't want to do  Yeah, you are a drug dealer and your drug of choice is horsepower. So I get it.

Adam Olalde (25:58)
I'm a drug dealer. that not, that's not what you had in mind?

I

I deal dopamine, I deal it and I deal it straight to the vein, come get it.

LeeAnn Shattuck (26:09)
That's right.

Come get it. Okay, so of all the vehicles in your fleet, which is your personal favorite and why?

Adam Olalde (26:20)
I love that question and I think you actually kind of teed me up for it because right now if I was going to go down the racetrack I would pick our GT4, our Cayman. It's a well balanced light car with plenty of horsepower and it allows you to drive it. I've always compared Lamborghinis to, ⁓ I've never flown a fighter jet but I've got to imagine if I...

when I fly one one day on my bucket list, I will feel a lot like driving a Lamborghini on a racetrack. So that's a complicated one to drive. Ferraris are always great and they come from the F1 lineage, but just being able to, something to be able to drive a car with one or two fingers and have its nose go where you need it and just be able to hustle around the racetrack but be a pure driver's car, I'll pick Porsche nine times out of 10.

LeeAnn Shattuck (27:10)
That is one of the main reasons that I am a Porsche girl. I refer to it, it's just driving with the right pedal because you can just use the accelerator, to change the weight balance of the car. And literally, especially if you get into like a carousel turn, you literally just do this with the gas pedal and it just shifts the weight back and forth and you get a little understeer, you get a little oversteer, a little understeer, a little oversteer. And you can literally just drive the car around the track with your right foot.

Adam Olalde (27:37)
For most of our new

drivers, our virgin track drivers, right, like you're gonna be fighting with an 800 horsepower car the entire way. You either gave it too much or you took away too much or you're understeering or you're oversteering. You're fighting the whole time and it's exhilarating and you get out and you're like, I don't even know what happened but I'm exhausted. Where, you you call it, you know, right foot driving. I call it Mario Kart driving. Same thing. Like I know in Mario Kart there was a brake button. I don't know which button it was. I did never use it.

LeeAnn Shattuck (28:02)
You'll

need it.

Adam Olalde (28:04)
And that's, you know,

when you have the right horsepower, and these cars are way more horsepower than any new track person deserves. But either way, when you have a more reasonable amount of horsepower in a car like a Cayman, then you can do a whole lot more of that. You can focus on putting the car where it needs to be and driving it without just confusing it. So you're not riding a bull, you're just trying to navigate your way around a racetrack. So, yep, I love those cars. And then our customers do too, right? They all come out and they got to drive the Italian super models.

So we knock that out of the way and then I say, okay, now go date a German girl and see what how your experience is different and they see it and they feel it. They know why.

LeeAnn Shattuck (28:43)
German over engineering when you're on a racetrack is a really good thing. When you're just a daily driver, it can be a little, you know, pain in the butt, but I do love it on the racetrack. Speaking of tracks, of all the tracks that you run these experiences at, which track is your favorite?

Adam Olalde (28:59)
I really enjoy driving Atlanta Motorsports Park in Dawsonville, Georgia. I mean, there are so many little obscure tracks. We just came home from High Plains Raceway outside Denver. Middle of nowhere.

LeeAnn Shattuck (29:09)
wow.

Yep.

Adam Olalde (29:12)
On purpose, but in the middle of the plains outside of Denver. We had, what did we have, 70 plus feet of elevation change. You had a couple of 2000 foot straight away. Just kind of had everything that a race track, a road course needed. And I really enjoyed the heck out of But then in November, we're going to to Circuit of the Americas and drive where the F1 drivers. So I mean, you we have such a wide

variety, but it's really any track where I can take a small car out and still have a great drive because you don't need to be fighting down 3,000 foot straightaways with the attack pegged.

LeeAnn Shattuck (29:46)
No, but I completely agree with you because I like some of these smaller hole in the wall. It's like finding that little hole in the wall local restaurant that, you know, it's not the one that people talk about all the time, but it's like the one that locals know. So that's why I actually like my home track at Carolina Motorsports Park, which is in, know, Kershaw, South Carolina, literally the middle of nowhere. But yeah, I mean, it's it's doesn't have any elevation changes, really, which I like it

Adam Olalde (30:06)
Mm-hmm. One of the first tracks we ever went to.

LeeAnn Shattuck (30:15)
as track, as an instructor, because I can just teach the technical turns. You don't have to worry about not being able to see the track. One of my first track events when I first started was at Road Atlanta. You know, when you're, you're coming down that back straight and you're hauling ass and you get to the heavy braking zone and you make the hairpin left, right. And then you start going up the hill under the bridge and you can't see the track and you're sitting there holding on for dear life going....

Okay, the track was here last lap. I know what's gonna be here this lap. I just have to hold on and aim for that tree and know that the car's gonna come over that and it's gonna settle and the weight's gonna settle and then I'm just gonna shoot around the right hander onto the front straight. But you're kind of shitting bricks at the same time. So it's kind of nice teaching newbies on a flat track where they can see everything. It's a little bit safer, but as an experienced driver, it's like, yeah, you love those, that roller coaster feel of going over those.

Adam Olalde (30:57)
this.

Yeah, I'll

always take a little bit of that. But I hear you, yes. At Kershaw, I could look out over the domain and see everything and know where the cars were at all times for the most part. But yeah, a little elevation change, little something off camber, that's gonna put the track in the top.

LeeAnn Shattuck (31:26)
I love, love, ⁓ Barber down in, Alabama and Birmingham. That is a phenomenal track because that's the type of track where there's not a lot of long straights. So the high horsepower cars don't have as much of an advantage. You can take, you know, a much lower horsepower car that's set up to handle the curves and just absolutely drive the snot out of it. And that's the track where we started the joke of, know, eh, brakes are for sissies.

You don't need those.

Adam Olalde (31:54)
Yeah, that's also the problem with my program though is a lot of the tracks that you're now talking about, we don't visit because of all those reasons, you know, so the brakes are for sissies tracks. I need my customers to break. I'd like to put that in a disclosure. or an ashtray. yeah, lot of the tracks on our circuit, you know, they have to be, we can't scare people away either, you know, and that's a really important part of it. Cause I think too many people,

LeeAnn Shattuck (32:07)
Yeah, I like my students to break as well.

Adam Olalde (32:19)
think that race car driving is not for them for so many reasons. It's too expensive, it's something that you have to be foreign to do, or it's just so freaking dangerous that like I'm not gonna get anywhere near it. And those things don't have to be true. And so we're trying to prove that simultaneously, even though we're letting you have your cake and eat it too, which means I've never been to a track, I don't own a Ferrari, but Adam says I can have both these things on the same time. So if he says so, how does Adam pull it off?

Well, we've got to do it at some manageable racetracks and we've got to do it with the right processes in place. But with all that being said, ⁓ we still go to plenty of cool places.

LeeAnn Shattuck (32:55)
And even if you drive one of these supercars at 50 % of the car's capability, you are still going faster than you've probably ever gone in your life. The car is just so, so incredibly capable. So yeah, I, cause I was looking at your current fleet list on your website too. And I was like, Ooh, which one do I want? Which one do I want? And I'd probably have to try the Ferrari GTB just to try it. But I would end up.

Adam Olalde (33:03)
Yes, guaranteed.

Yeah.

LeeAnn Shattuck (33:23)
probably back in the Porsche. That's my happy place.

All right, so I'm going to put all these links in the description below, but tell people if they want to learn more about Xtreme Xperience and sign up for one of these ridiculously amazing days, or if they want to get one for their loved one who has this on the bucket list. I mean, what a phenomenal birthday anniversary, know, Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule, know, whatever kind of presents. This is just amazing. Where do they go? What do they do?

Adam Olalde (33:51)
Go straight to our website, www.xxspeed.com and you will find everything you need right there.

LeeAnn Shattuck (34:01)
That makes it easy. I absolutely love it. You mentioned something, there might be a discount code for Straight Shift podcast listeners.

Adam Olalde (34:07)
You know, yes, let me send it to you and you can post it in the link.

LeeAnn Shattuck (34:11)
Okay.

Awesome, we'll get a car chick code.

 Well, thanks so much, Adam. This has been so much And audience, tell me what's on your bucket list. Put it in the comments and is it car related? Is it something totally different? I just want to know what your hopes and dreams are. And then Adam, I will both challenge you to then make it a reality. So until next time, folks drive safely. We're out of here.