Throttlecast: Episode 22

In this episode of Throttlecast, James Marcellana, founder of Jzilla Track Days, shares how he transitioned from a 20-year career in information technology to building one of the Southeast's premier track day organizations.

James discusses the growth of Jzilla Track Days, the importance of driver education, and what it takes to turn a passion for motorsports into a thriving business. Whether you're a seasoned track driver, a car enthusiast, or an aspiring entrepreneur, this episode is packed with valuable insights and great stories.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Here we are back again, and uh today's guest took what started as a bachelor party track day with a group of friends and turned it into one of the Southeast's most recognizable automotive communities. Uh JayZilla has grown beyond traditional track days into driving education, automotive adventures, international experiences, rental cars, and now expanding uh lifestyle brand. Uh but even with that growth, the focus has remained on making motorsports more approachable and building a community around the people, not simply the cars. James Marcelana, founder of JayZilla Track Days. Welcome to Throttlecast.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Man, happy to be here. Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

So, I mean, let's start out with the story that everybody wants to hear. How did your bachelor party turn into Jay Zilla Track Days? That's just phenomenal to me.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Yeah, so the Bachelor Party, right? You know, my best man asked me, hey, what do you want to do for your bachelor party? And I'm not the clubbing type, right?

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

And I was a club DJ for a long time in the 90s.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

No kidding.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Yeah, so the glory days of hip hop, I was a club DJ. So the whole like smoke and being out late at night, it wasn't really my thing. But back in 03, I had a bunch of spec meata friends that said, hey, we're renting this racetrack. We need to test our cars, we just need bodies there. I need 150 bucks. You can run all day. Great, right? So I did that for like a year and a half, you know, went through a bunch of tires. Never really thought I was a great driver, but it was nice to pretend, right? With these guys who are real race car drivers. So come 2010, you know, seven years later, I'm getting married, and my best man was like, he's not even like a fast driver guy. He was just like, hey, um, what do you want to do? I was like, well, we can rent little Tallodega for like 1500 bucks. You know, let's let's get like 10 people. We ended up getting like 15 people, so we got food and stuff, so we upped it to like 150 bucks each, right? So we had now we had a budget to work with with food. And everybody had such a good time that day. And this guy, Nick, goes, Hey, when is the next Jay Zilla Day? I'm like, why don't we do it in six months? I mean, this is pretty cheap. If everybody shows up, yeah, let's let's do it. So, how did this turn into a business? Is we did that for three years every six months, so that list of 15 people eventually grew to 45.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Wow. You had no idea this was. Did he come up with the name Jay Zilla or how'd that where'd they come from?

SPEAKER_00 2:33

So always been an entrepreneur, you know, being a club DJ like in the 90s. I graduated college with an IT degree, stayed at a job for about a year and a half to two years, and like I can't do this. I need to do something on my own. I started a company called Lanzilla, Local Area Networks, Zilla. And I had a client, this guy Jay Pady. I'd walk into his his um his shop, which is actually down the road here at Tilly Mill, and he would go, and hey, Jay Zilla's here. He's gonna fix our stuff.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

So that's how that came up. And then it became my internet name, like you know, like message boards, bulletin boards. Yeah, it was it was Jay Zilla.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Yeah. Did you have that AOL messenger handle? Was that it too? No, I didn't.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

No, I did not have no permanent AOL messenger handle because I always started like a new disc, so I can just get it for free 40 hours. 500 free hours in time.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

That's amazing. So, what originally pulled you into cars before JayZilla ever existed?

SPEAKER_00 3:35

So it wasn't even a performance thing. Growing up, you know, my first 10 years in the Philippines, I've always been, you know, around cars like that. My uncles had cars and stuff like that. You know, my great uncles had cars. And my great grand grandmother had this 1972, I think. Mercedes Benz. It's uh it's like a 200E um sedan, but everybody thought it was cool, right? It's Mercedes Benz, it's expensive, right? That's kind of cool. And then my father, his service car was a 240, like in the in the 80s. And then when I moved to the States, my stepfather had a 190E. So those that was like the bloodlines of cars, but my mom also had a Selica that was really cool. Like a she had like an 84 Selica. And growing up, we had a 740 turbo wagon, uh Volvo, and a Toyota 4Runner to go off-roading. So I've always been around like these cars, and and to what topped it off was when my stepfather totaled the 190, they bought a Miata in 1990. And in 90, I was turning 15 years old. So that's I got to learn on a Mazda Miata.

SPEAKER_03 4:50

Oh, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

You know, a sports car. Yeah, you know, as as a kid. So that's like along the bloodlines of like why I love cars. I've always been around like really cool things. Yeah, like my dad's best friend in the Philippines has an escort RS growing up. You know, I was nine years old. It's like I didn't know what an escort RS was. I just thought it was cool.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Yeah. Those are worth big money today. Yeah, those are good now. Yeah, right. So I guess the coolest wing of any car. Oh, absolutely. Oh, it's ridiculous. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

Big flat top of the back. Yeah. Yeah. I like those uh RS200s too. That's oh yeah, those are even crazier. Yeah, yeah. So along the same lines. So I guess the Miata was the one that kind of made you feel like cars are more than just transportation, is that right?

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Yeah, I mean, it even then in the Miata, when I was going to college, I didn't haven't really bought my own car yet. And that was like the spare car. And as a club DJ, you didn't have to haul gear, you just had to haul records. I can fit five crates of records in a Miata comfortably. Um yeah. So basically one on the bottom where the seat is, you know, where your feet are, and then one on the seat, um, and then one on top, and then the trunk will hold two crates as well.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

You do the luggage rack on top of the trunk.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

So if you have the top down, you can get seven. Oh really?

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Oh, because it's yeah. Hilarious.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

And then yeah, I had my little portable dolly and stuff like that. So yeah, I mean, I I I rode around in that car, and then I and then I ended up getting a Volkswagen Golf around 96 or 97, because by then the music collection was getting bigger. Nothing was on computers back then. We had to have hardware and software, you know, there was no software, it was all hardware. So I bought a Volkswagen Golf. Um, it wasn't a GTI, did not have GTI budget back then. But yeah, and that's when I fell in love with the brand and how much room it has.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

That's awesome. Are any of the original uh bachelor party members are they still participating in it?

SPEAKER_00 6:56

There's been a there are a few people that's that do still come to the events, yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Yeah, you're the only one out there advertising the uh luggage capacity of the Miata, fully testing it out.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

So, what did your wife think about this bachelor party turning into a business? What was that like?

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Listen, I picked up my wife on our first date two years prior to that in a lowered Miata with gold wheels and a roll bar.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

Oh, I love it.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

So I think she knew what she was getting into.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

She she knew what she was signing up for. Uh and then what were you personally driving in the first few years of Jay Zilla Track Days?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

So first few years of Jay Zilla Track Days is the same Miata that I picked up my my wife in. So I had that still during the bachelor party. Um, but at the same time, I also bought like a Volvo wagon, like a V70 wagon to drive every day. So during these track days that we did at Little Talladega, the Volvo would haul like all the food, the coolers, you know, the grill. Like I bought a grill that I used twice a year that stayed in the garage, like a portable grill. That's awesome. So just just because we knew we were doing this twice a year.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Yeah. So it took so three years of kind of every six months. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

And then you're like, hey, this is little Talladega, and then AMP opened in the end of 2012. So by 2013, um, I emailed a bunch of the drivers to, you know, there were like 45 drivers now after three years, right? Because a friend of a friend would invite someone can't come.

SPEAKER_03 8:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

So I sent this email outside, hey, I need this amount of money from you guys, and I can go try to get Atlanta Motter Sports Park. We ended up with 75 drivers that day. And I was like, I had no idea what I'm doing with 75 drivers. We used to do 15. So you just figured out. Yeah, I was figured, I was thinking, well, we're gonna do 45. There's 75 here. Let's figure this out. We figured it out. It's probably a shit show, like the first time. But it wasn't because everybody had a great time. It's also you know, nobody wrecked that first day, and it was just like it was it was good, and it was good for AMP, you know. They were just getting started. I mean, the paddock at AMP was dirt the first time we went there. Yeah, and and the the clubhouse that we had, the suite, was like this this trailer home with like a terrace on top of it. Yeah, and you had to take the sketchy stairs to go up and and watch from up there. It's a little different now. Oh, it's a little different now. It's so much nicer now.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Yeah, they're building homes on the track now.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

They got homes on the track, yeah. I mean, they have they have these condos over there. I mean, it's I bet the view from those condos are spectacular.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

Oh yeah, and you're inside the AC, you get your kitchen right in there, you can grab a drink, view whatever. It's cool. Um I guess for somebody watching that thinks they need a Porsche, they need all this equipment and stuff, what do they actually need to go out and have a good time at the track?

SPEAKER_00 9:51

My favorite car on the track is the one I'm driving. It does it doesn't matter. I I don't know if you've seen some of our social media, but we did like uh a video on a minivan at Road Atlanta to see if we can break two minutes. It's amazing. And the video is probably the highest like yielding video we have, like on social media. And the only reason why we did it was because one of my friends, Rick, took a van out there, and then my friend Gino took a van out there, right? And they went at it during like a session, someone was filming it, ended up getting about three million hits, like, like on Instagram. So what we did was, hey, why don't we um Gino was like, why don't we do a video and kind of like do like mock like the Corvette video when they broke sub-30s on the stock, you know, Corvette. So we do this video, like this documentary, and on an open pit lane day, it's like I I have 15 minutes for you to do this video before lunch if you want to do it. He goes, We probably have like one lap on this van. So you know, this this guy is like he's he's the driver, he's driven to 24, you know, at Nureberg Ring, he's driven in IMSA, you know, he's driven in Australia, he's driven in like all over the world, and he's got this crazy idea to do this video, and and I'm like, I'm the vessel. I was like, yeah, let's do this. So where do you need the cameras, right? Yeah. We do this video, he goes sub two, I think it's like a minute 57, and everybody, and we had like Stellantis like contacting us. I'm glad you did a video on the van. We did so much research and development on it. Like they cut funds over here, we could have gone faster. Like, we were getting messages from them. It was amazing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

And you know, that's it is a good video. It looks pretty darn cool. Seeing the thing right around.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

But you know, that's that's part of the charm of being in this industry is like you don't want to do this just to make money. Just you want to do like cool things.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Have fun.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yeah, you want to have fun.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

When did you take that shift of like you're having fun, you did the bachelor party, three years of the track days, and you're like, how do you know this could actually be a business?

SPEAKER_00 11:59

So it really helps when you have a full-time job, you know, to slowly build this up. Because as we know, like there's plenty of companies out there, right, that will get this funding and they do this, right? But when that happens is you get too aggressive and you can come down just as quick. So when you build this business, like as you have a job, you're doing this. So if if you fault a little bit, you just fault a little bit, you have time to pick that back up. So we knew probably like around 2019. So 2018 is when we did our first spa trip. So and we'll go over that later and how we got to that spot trip. Yeah, the crazy things that we do. But during that spa trip, a guy named Charles Klein came up to me, um, who's now owner of Chill Out Systems, and he goes, Hey, we gotta develop a system. I was like, What do you mean? He goes, This ice-based system that the racing industry has sucks. Just like, do you want to quit your job? And I was and I'm sitting here like, man, I got a kid on the way. Like, I got a second kid on the way, this guy wants me to quit our my job, and I'm sitting here like I've been in IT for so long. But I was on that point where Jay Zilla can probably go full time as well. So talk to my wife, and it was a scary time for me and my wife to jump ship. And and we did. So I worked with Charles for about two years um to do product um development to launch with him. So, man, some of the stuff that we did testing the systems in in the office, we would cover the box, make sure it's 130 degrees inside that box, which is uh usually the operating temperature of a car, like inside a car between 130 and 160. Is the suit still gonna be cold? And we're doing this like on the 20th floor of Atlantic, Atlantic building in Atlanta. Like the pencil, yeah, yeah. Um when the contract ended 20 end of 2021, I had a decision to make. Do do I get another job and keep doing this part-time, or do we go full time doing this? So and I told my wife, I think we could do it, and if I can't do it, I'll go find another job. And me diving in, my job before Chill Out Systems, I work for an advertising school for about six years. So I took everything that I knew advertising and marketing-wise, and really threw it at my company. And between the culture that we have and the advertising that we put out, I think we did 30% like the following year, and that was enough for me to return the battleship, and now we're going the right way.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

That's awesome. Yeah, it does. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Yeah, so it it took it took some time, but you know, we we were able to make it happen. It was steady. Just steady working. It was steady, and now we shot up like the last three years after that. Four years. It's been four years since that day.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

Um what matters most on somebody's first day, you know, coming out to your one of your events.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

You gotta have a smile on your face. I don't care how fast you went on track. You know, I don't care if this is like a one and done for you, uh a bucket list, you gotta have a smile on your face, like at the end of that day. If you don't have a smile on your face, it's like, why why are we doing this? I mean, some people do it for lap times. Um, some people do it because it's like a stepping stone for them to go racing. But for for like the average person, you know, you just you just want them to have an experience. And you want them to have something to talk about, you want them to have pictures to show off to their friends. Be like, man, I did this, it was amazing. That's that's really all I want. You know, if they come back, amazing, we'll give them another amazing time, and then they'll progress with us.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Yeah, are most people bringing their own car?

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Most people bring their own cars, you know. The whole rental thing, I mean, it's just very, very new, like in the United States, you know, it's not like the Nurburgering. Because in the Nurbergering, you have a track and you have an audience like every day of the week. It's a little bit different here, you know, in the United States. Um, because you only have a track they every so often. It's not like the track is open every day. So it's kind of a different business model, but yeah, most people will bring their own cars, but there are people that will arrive and drive because they're starting to understand what that is. We can talk about that a little later.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

And if they're brand new, I mean, is there a good rule of thumb like manual versus automatic for learning, street tires versus dedicated track tires?

SPEAKER_00 16:43

So the biggest mistake people have do in this sport is I can't do the track day right now because I still need my suspension, I still need my tires. So you've never done a track day in your life, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Bring your car that doesn't leak, that has a good amount of tires on it, and and decent amount of pads on it. Just bring it as is, just make sure it's not leaking, make sure it's not gonna blow up, make sure it's in good shape. And what happens is when you mod your car before you even do a track day, is it masks all your mistakes that you're making. It's not really making you a good driver, it's not making you a better driver because the car is doing everything for you. So we tell them, hey, why don't you uh just bring it as is? Forget the 200 treadwell trier. So bring it with the all-seasons because you're not gonna drive hard enough to wear any of that stuff out, you know, on your first day on track if you've never done any type of automotive stuff. So yeah, I actually advise people not to buy anything. And what happens is as you I was I had a great time doing that. Yeah, so now you know exactly what your car needs, now you know exactly what you want to buy. So it also prevents you from spending the money on the wrong things. Yeah, and even right now, so we've been doing this what 16 years now. So the last few years we've been playing this game of less grip is more fun, and we're buying like Amazon tires, 400 treadwear tires. You know, forget the lap times. If the car slides a little bit, let it slide a little bit. We've been doing this for a long time. You can control it, but it feels like it's fast, but it's it's not. So we've actually been on this like teeter tottering good tires, bad tires, good tires, bad tires. Yeah, whatever fun you want to do.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Alright, so you did little Talladega, you did AMP, you've done some more localized track, and then you end up in spa. That's vastly different uh coordination, logistics, everything. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

So you so you gotta get the spa, right? And then it's like, how did how do we get there? So what I did was even on the younger days of Jay Zilla, I always wanted to do things differently. Like I didn't want to do things the same way as everybody else. At the time we were doing everything the same way as everybody else. We were doing the same tracks as everyone else back then. I was like, we gotta be different. And I sat down with my buddy John and we were talking. I was like, holy crap, dude, didn't you used to race at Hutchinson Island? And he was like, Yeah, we did the Ferrari Challenge there. It's like, alright, cool. Call Hutchinson Island, right? And I'm sitting there, it's like, hey guys, we want to rent the track. It's like, and it was the Weston. It's like, wait a minute. Yeah, we gotta get you with special events at the Weston. So the Weston comes up and they're like, Yeah, we can rent you the track. It hasn't been used in a while, but yeah, we we can rent it to you. So I said, Alright, so we come down there, we take a track tour, and I was like, Great, we got things to work on, but we're definitely going to do this track. So it goes back to the same time, the same thing that I did with going to AMP. I messaged the drivers and I said, Hey, I need this amount of money from you guys, and I'll pick up Hutchinson Island. And everybody's like, What the heck is Hutchinson Island? And everybody's looking this up, right? So, and this is where the party started. So, Hutchinson Island, everybody stayed at the West End. So we take there's a boat that's on the West End, one of these taxis, to take you to River Street, and so party that night, track day during the day, there's no lights in the paddock. Everybody goes to the hotel, gets dressed, party at night, you know, downtown Savannah. Great weekend. But even during that time, sometime along there, someone was watching a video and said, and I was like, hey, what is that? He goes, Oh, this is Charlotte Mother Speedway. And I noticed that the lights were on, but it wasn't nighttime. And I said, Did they turn on the lights for us? It's like, yeah, they turned on the lights. Call Charlotte Mother Speedway. No, this is like December of um 2016, and it's winter time in Savannah. It's still kind of warm. So of course I called Charlotte off season. Hey, um, can we rent your track? How much does it cost? Will you turn on the lights for us? The whole nine yards. Man, they were like, absolutely, you know, we've heard about you guys, we'd love to have you here. Man, the track was so expensive. It was all it was three times more than what I would be paying somewhere. I was like, man, can we make this happen? February comes around, I send that email again. Hey, I need a stack of checks. If you guys want Charlotte Motor Speedway. Oh, yeah, we had fun at Hutchinson Island. You got Road Atlanta already. Yeah, let's go to Charlotte. And and I told him, it's under the lights, guys. We're gonna run from one in the afternoon to ten o'clock at night. You're gonna get at least two sessions at night. So driver's meeting at Charlotte, right? So I I put a post on Facebook a couple days before this event and said, if you had A dream track of what you want to drive. What is it? Where do you want to go? And every single one was spa, spa, spa, spa. Spa's what one. And the second one was Nerbberg. So it's like, okay, so they have where they have the press conference, right? I have like 120 drivers in front of me. And I get on this podium, I say, guys, I want to welcome you guys to this special event, Chalmers Speedway. Thank you, thank you for coming. I just want to tell you guys right now, the next special event is Spa and the Nerbergring. I had no idea what I was doing, right? I mean, I've checked out some rental companies, but you know, my thing was there's there's three things over there. There's good lodging, there's racetracks, and there's good food in Belgium. That I did know. So if I can put an itinerary together, I can put together a good trip. We had 15 people go to that trip. We even had a special guest, like Mike Skeen, came on that first trip in 2018. So that's how we got the spa. That's amazing. I just kind of pitched it and I had a year to research it.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

But so I mean you were doing you did an international trip before you even full-time in the business.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Correct. Yeah, 2018. Yeah. Because I wasn't really full-time, full-time until 2021, where I had no more side projects.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Yeah. So it's hard enough just to organize an international trip for yourself, let alone 15 other people that are coming over with you too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Man, I mean, we found like Michelin restaurants over there. So we ate at three Michelin star or listed restaurants that first trip. So I mean, I curated that trip, and that's you know, we haven't done that trip since I think 2022. Because right now everybody's like Nurburgering, Nurburgering, Nurburgering. So my buddy Eugene does the Nurburgering trip because he is the local, the Atlanta local that goes there for like a couple weeks a year. So he knows the area real well, and he's part of my staff, so he's kind of like my travel guy when it comes to that trip. Um, we have 15 people going this year, so it's sold out again. But this is a crazy trip this year at the Nurberg Ring, because you're gonna land there, and the very next day you have a TF day, a touring day. Touring days are usually from five to seven at night, but it's the whole day for that day. So it's like all the laps you can get that day, which is about 10 laps. The very next day is an open track day at the Nureberg Ring. So you get another 10 laps at the Nurebrig Ring. The day after that, they're gonna drive in the morning and go to Spa and do spa for two hours. So it's like back to back to back track days, and then they go to Frankfurt, spend a day at Frankfurt, and then come back home.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

It's a crazy trick. What are these guys for driving out there?

SPEAKER_00 24:42

So we have a partnership with Ring Freaks, and they're going to be driving anything from a Volkswagen Golf all the way to a Porsche GT3 and everything else in between. Oh nice.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Wow, so it's a great mix of stuff, too. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

So I mean they have a Cayman GTS, um, they have a couple variations of the three series of BMW. So the you know, you get you get the whole spectrum. They've been great partners for us. And and you know, they come every year. So when they it's their off season in December, November, they come to us, and then we go to them during the summer. Yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

All these tracks, I imagine you probably have uh you've probably tallied up some pretty incredible wild stories.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

We have. Um, yeah, we have.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

So just give us the wildest one you can legally tell us.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

All right, wildest one I can legally tell you. So it's it's Thanksgiving, and we just did Barbara of another sports park, and I get a phone call from Barbara said, Hey, we have an end of February weekend that just opened up. Do you want it? And I was like, Yeah, let's do it. What the heck? Let's let's just get it. So years ago, I couldn't just make decisions like that because we're still very young in in the business, but now I know that I can at least like break even. You know, if I can't break even at a barber weekend, a beautiful place like that, it's like, what am I doing in this industry? So we get a full house for the first February weekend at Barber, like in the winter time, the grass is dry, right? And we had a guy sometime mid-morning go off by the museum. And I guess his engine blows, there's oil, right? And the way it was described to me, and I saw pictures later, was it's kind of like Back to the Future, where you have the two tires and there's the fire, right? And that's going straight you know towards the museum. Now there's a barrier between the museum and like all this grass stuff, right? But here's the thing I just got these beats headsets at the time, and I put them on, that was the first day I had them, and it would read every single text messages from Messenger and your normal text messages, right? So we have the staff chat, and one of my photographers was over there where this fire started, and I can and he's texting, and my phone is reading to me, and I'm trying to have a conversation with this person, but what it's reading is yeah, the fire is getting bigger, and it's definitely getting closer to the museum.

SPEAKER_03 27:26

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

And I'm sitting here like, man, my insurance cannot cover that museum. So as I'm listening to this, I see this pickup truck coming out of the one of the garages, and it had fire bottles like just lined up. And I can hear my guy, and he's just like, Yeah, I think they just used the last of the fire bottle, and they kind of have it contained going the other way, but the fire's still gone.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Oh, kind of kind of have it contained. What a nightmare.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Yeah, it it was for me, it was a complete nightmare, right? Because it's like, who am I gonna charge for this grass? Because barber is known. Well, they were known back then, they're not as bad anymore. Or, you know, they don't really charge for grass anymore unless you really completely destroy it. And I'm sitting there, I said, Man, who this guy's gonna get charged, you know, whoever the driver was, I feel sorry for him. He's gonna get charged for grass. And I spoke to the guys at the tower, they go, No, it's February, the grass got lit on fire. That grass is gonna be so green in the summertime.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

Oh, that's cool.

SPEAKER_00 28:35

Yeah, you guys, you guys are good. We're so we're watching the indie race in May, right? Grass is green. Man, there's this patch of grass by the museum that was not green anymore. Yeah, it was it was it was like an acre of grass that was so green. So there were actually three patches that day that happened because we set the grass on fire spontaneously with break dust embers. Really? Yeah, so it's like, hey, there's a fire on the kink. I was like, well, who went off of the kink? Nobody.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

Nobody, wow.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Yeah, and also McLaren caught fire that day, too. So it was just a big, a big fire day. It's an average day.

unknown 29:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:17

What did you say?

SPEAKER_01 29:18

That's an average day.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

It's an average day. McLaren gets on fire. Yeah, McLaren caught on fire as well.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

There was no story behind that. Oh, yeah, that just happens.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

Certain portion of those. Um, what's the most like intimidating corner that you've experienced?

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Most intimidating corner for me, yeah, is um it's called South Bend at Virginia International. That's a tough track, man. So it is a tough track. Narrow too, right? Yeah, there's some narrow parts to some white parts, and South Bend is actually wide. But I've seen people go off South Bend, and when you go off South Bend, you go straight down a hill, right? And and you don't know what happens down there. I've seen some crazy like IMSA like stuff happen down there. And my buddy Gino, he was driving behind me. He's quick, but he was in a slower car, and he kept asking me, it was just like, why do you keep dropping the anchor at South Bend? And I was like, dude, that that corner is scary. Like, if you go off on that corner, you don't know where you're going to end up down there. So for me, that's the toughest corner. And the funny thing about that is we did VIR again last year, and I rented one of these like uh townhomes, and the townhome was on top of South Bay.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

Oh, perfect. Did you catch any uh bloopers out there?

SPEAKER_00 30:36

No, I mean it's just like it was just complete irony, and then I put an ad on Grassroots Motorsport this like a few months ago. It was my schedule, and on on and on there it says America's toughest corners was or the world's toughest corners, and one of them was South Bend, and my ad was next to South Bend.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

It's amazing, it's crazy. Yeah, very cool. So tell so tell us about the the car you have here today, the rental car program that you're trying to work on as well.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Yeah, yeah. So with with with with the partnership with with Ring Freaks, I got to sit down with Ray, and yeah, we got to sit down. Hey, what does it cost to really run a car like this, you know, at at the Neuburg Ring, versus like how much it costs to run it over here? Um, what do we need for the cars to cool them down? Because their laps are a whole lot longer than our laps over here, right? You know, you can do two and a half laps over there, and it's one session for us over here. So we got I got the cliff notes and I started putting some numbers together. And what I really wanted to do is like this is not really for your advanced driver, this is not even for your intermediate driver, this is for your beginner driver or for your Nava Solo driver that really wants to get into this. So it's a lower price point of entry to try out a really well setup car.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

Yeah. And how many of them have you built? How many have you made?

SPEAKER_00 32:04

So my plan was to build three of them the next three years. We're on car number four under 12 months right now. Um, I mean, there is a demand for them, but at the same time, I wasn't just gonna build a rental car. I want to build a car that could be seen so you could use it for marketing. Yeah, like this car right here. You know, we got a lot of help from every sponsor that's on this car to build a proper car. And one of my promises with Liquimolly was you can take it to your car shows if I'm not using it. So when their liquid molly rep needs a car, he can fit all his stuff in here, and he's got a proper car to show off with complete branding of the look of Molly Brand. There's cars.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

Yeah, it looks great. How long did it take you to make to build each car?

SPEAKER_00 32:54

So you have to design, you have to wrap, you gotta get all you got you have to have the right mechanic to do this as well. So I have a buddy, Alex, who owns Mod Junkie, and I sat with him. I was like, Alex, can you turn these cars around for me and and and build cars? Because yeah, so on his spare time, maybe two and a half to three months, and that's if everything goes perfectly between the sponsors as well. Hey Apex, can you send us some wheels? No, hey Fortune, can you send us the coilovers? Well, it's a five-week build on the coilovers. Um, Bridgetone, can you send us some tires? So everything has to come together perfectly. I'm getting better, I'm getting all the timing right, yeah, and getting everything like the same time so that you can build the cars faster. But we go through the cars, we change the timing chains, radiators, hoses, yeah like everything gets refurbished on the first.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

Are they automatic or are they manual?

SPEAKER_00 33:50

Automatics.

SPEAKER_01 33:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:52

Everything is automatic except for the Volkswagen Beetle. Um, because you can't blow up a you can't blow up the transmission on an automatic car. And that's the reason why we do automatics. And the ZF9 transmissions on the VMWs and the DCTs, the dual clutch, um on the Volkswagens are so good, they shift so fast. Whether you put it on sport mode or use the paddle shifters, it really does shift faster than than a manual transmission car, and that translates to you know seconds on a track, like every time you shift the gear.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

It's probably just an easier experience for someone's getting out of the package.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

It's an easier experience, you press the gas and you press the brakes. You're learning. You press the gas, you press the brakes, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Um, and if you don't have a car, I mean it's you know, what what does it cost to build something like this with all the goodies on it? I don't know, $25,000 on a used car on a five, six-year-old car. That's pretty good. Yeah. So you can build it for $25,000, but you don't know if you'll use again. So why don't you spend a couple thousand dollars and just rent one?

SPEAKER_01 34:52

Yeah, yeah, see if you really like it or not.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

Yeah, and try it out first, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Cool.

SPEAKER_02 34:57

Ready for some rapid fire? Yeah. Let's do it. Oh, here we go. These are the good parts. Yeah. All right. Uh best track in America.

SPEAKER_00 35:03

Best track in America. I'm gonna be a little bit biased, but I do love Road Atlanta.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

Road Atlanta. Yeah. I thought I was gonna say the beach. Yeah. The beach track. Best track outside of America.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

Best track outside of America. I do like spa.

SPEAKER_02 35:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

It's spa is like an even bigger version of Rode Atlanta, is what it is.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

Here's a good one. Best beginner track car.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

Best beginner track car. Um, so if you go front-wheel drive, I would say one of these. Yeah. It's they're so easy to drive, it's quote unquote uncrashable. Like if you tr if you crash one of these cars, you're doing something really wrong. You're doing something really wrong. Because the cars aren't very fast, but they handle pretty well. Yeah, and the brakes are amazing. And the other one is a Miata. Learning a car like a Miata, like zero horsepower, it forces you to drive it as fast as you possibly could. And then when you get to a car with actual power and wider tires, you're like, oh, this is so easy. So now you're passing the guys who started on these bigger cars because they don't know what quick is. Like, what is what is a quick corner? Where if we're in this little cheap Miata, you can afford to widen up, just go as fast as you can on it, right? Yeah. And check it out and see if you can hold a corner. Now you get a bigger, faster car. It's like, oh my god, this thing handles so well. Like I had a Miata and it was completely stocked, and I tracked it for a whole year. And the only updates I did to it was like I put lowering springs, I put um like better brake pads and better tires. But until I got what I needed out of that car, like I couldn't go any faster. Is that's when I started buying a faster car. My very first GTI that I tracked, I didn't put power on it until I knew that the car had nothing left.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

Yeah. Uh I'll combine these two. Most overrated and most underrated track car.

SPEAKER_00 37:11

Oh, track car or track? Track car track car. Most overrated track car. Wow. People people might you're gonna upset some people. I'm gonna upset some people. Um I think I think the Cayman is a little overrated.

SPEAKER_02 37:29

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Yeah. I mean great car. Yeah. Just just just not for me. I mean, I've driven one. I've driven one on a track, I've owned it on a weekend, you know, just keep it for a weekend, just just to check it out.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

I just don't I just don't see a dedicated track car. Yeah. And an underrated.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

Underrated track car. Um underrated track car. GR, it's it's gotta be the the GR86. Okay. I think it's I think it's very I think it's a very good car. Yeah. It's a great driver's car, just not very fast, but great driver's car.

SPEAKER_02 38:10

Uh one car you wish you had never sold.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

How about one car I wish that I bought? Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

I'll take that. Let's hear it.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

Yeah, so the one car I wish I'd bought was um a CLK 63 block.

SPEAKER_02 38:24

Oh, I love those. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to do those? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

So 10 years ago, I could have picked one of those up for like $57,000. I sold one for like $80, I didn't have $57,000 like 10 years ago, right?

SPEAKER_02 38:41

So good.

SPEAKER_00 38:41

So, but yeah, the CLK 63 Black is is that that card that you know I should have tried to buy it.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

I love a black series.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

All right some business ones quick here. What what was your best business decision other than quitting full-time and and doing it? Other than that, what's your best business decision?

SPEAKER_00 38:59

Best business decision is trying new things, like and listening to your friends and and see and and see if it's viable. Just listen to them. You know, every every bad or good decision starts with, hey, you know what would be cool? And you have that look in your face, right? And that's the exact look that they give you, right? So, you know, people will say, hey, why don't you try this? And and the best business decision is um just trying things that are new. Going to Charlotte, going to Spa, going to the Nuremberg Ring. Like, you know, now you have like sit five or six companies trying to do this, including Road and Track.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:39

So um, but we've we've been pretty successful and we've been very blessed that we get the crowd that we get to go every year. Yeah, best business decision is try something new and see if it works. The rental car system, I don't know anything about rental cars, but I asked enough questions to know that, yeah, this is going to be a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 39:59

Yeah. What do you think the most expensive business decision?

SPEAKER_00 40:03

Most expensive business decisions, you know, tracks aren't um, they're not cheap. If you have a bad day sales-wise on the track, you probably need five good days to cover that. Um, so those are like you know, this is this is gambling, like renting racetracks and you know, hoping that people will come to your event. So but you figure it out, right? You get sponsors. What do you do with the sponsorship money? Add amenities to your racetrack. Do things that you want to do. Like when you're at Petite Lama, you're sitting there, like, I wonder what it's like to be in that building, right? How come it's just all the high-end people that get to go in there that spend a ton of money? Now you don't have to do that anymore. The building is there for us to rent. So I called Road Atlanta. Can I get a suite in there during my event so people can experience what it's like, you know, to have you know a more elevated type event with more elevated amenities during those events. So now we start renting the suites like at Rhode Atlanta. You just gotta make sure that everybody's comfortable, everybody's having a good time. Make sure there's food.

unknown 41:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:11

Like make sure there's food, make sure there's drinks. So now we carry an espresso machine with us. We always have fruits. We always, you know, we have healthy and we also have non-healthy. So we have to make sure that we cover like all our bases. And you can't do that with track fees. So that's that's when the sponsors come in. And I tell the sponsors, listen, I don't spend your money on me. I'm not buying cars on your sponsorship money. This is what we're doing with it. And our margarita budget for after hours, like after track days, is somewhere around 15k a year.

SPEAKER_02 41:45

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

So all the sponsorship money just goes through. It goes right there. I don't even bat an eye. Like, I'll see, I'll see the bill and be like, yeah, just yeah, just do it.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

All right, if you think about it now, in you know, now and going forwards, what does success look like for you?

SPEAKER_00 42:02

Success?

SPEAKER_01 42:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

Man, success to me is I get to work whenever and wherever I want. You know, for me, success is picking up my kids at three o'clock. You know, if I'm making enough money to pay the bills, I have a couple cool toys. I get to take my kids to school or I get to pick them up. That's what success is to. I love that. Yeah, cool. And and I get to do that. I'm an older dad. I'm 51 years old and I have a seven-year-old. So as an older dad, you know, that's really what matters to me most because I've had my fun traveling and having a good time. I'm like, I'm in a different chapter of my life. So for me, success is getting to spend time with my family.

SPEAKER_01 42:43

Yeah, it's awesome. Awesome. Great. Well, thank you very much. It's awesome having you here. Yo, this was this was awesome. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

Man, I was I was ready to like hurt some people with tracks as well. We would light those up, yeah. With some of the lists, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:57

Cool.