Atomic Autosports at PRI 2024: Inside the Ultimate Racing Trade Show

Join the Atomic Autosports crew as they hit the Performance Racing Industry (PRI) trade show! 🚗💨 From cutting-edge technology and industry innovations to behind-the-scenes insights, the team shares their experience exploring one of the biggest racing trade shows in the world.

Get an up-close look at the latest performance parts, tools, and trends shaping the future of racing. Plus, hear what stood out to the Atomic crew as they connect with top industry pros and suppliers.

Whether you’re a racing enthusiast, a gearhead, or just curious about the world of high-performance autosports, this episode is packed with must-see moments! 🏁

Tired of funding your own racing?  Learn how to secure sponsorships with Atomic Sponsorships.  Join the waitlist and be the first to get the discounted sponsorship program.  This proven and successful process will not only help you identify real sponsors, but also build relationships with people that will help you pay to race.  Visit AtomicSponsorships.com to join the waitlist.

If a podium is your goal in 2025 you need to head over to see the Atomic Autosports team.  From custom track alignments and corner balancing to fabrication work and everything in between - Atomic Autosports gets your car ready for the track.  Visit Atomic Autosports.com to learn more.

From simple tire swaps and brake upgrades to corner balancing and dialed in alignments, Atomic Autosports gets your car ready for the track.  Whether you are an autocrossers, time trial, road racer, or track day junkie - the team at Atomic Autosports can tailor their services to your budget and your needs.   Visit AtomicAutosports.com to learn more.

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

Find all episodes on the Atomic Autosports website.

Transcript

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All right, gentlemen, wrap up. Perry, in one word. Matt, we're going to start with you. Enthralled. Enthralled. Brian. Engaging. Engaging mind is people. Like you. All right. Welcome to another edition of the Late to Grid podcast is your host, Joe Snow. And I am not only in the Atomic Autosport studio. I am in the Atomic Auto Sports shop with the atomic bombs. And we are a week, home since I and thought we do a recap episodes, talk about what we saw, what we learned, maybe talk about some shenanigans and, bring back what we can to you, the listener. So enjoy. So, guys, what were you most surprised about at the pre show this year? Brian. Boy The amount of like minded people that were at the show, there was a lot of people that I ran into that, just everybody was there for the same reason. Race cars, engines, whatever it was suspension. Everybody was there for one common thing. And every single person that I talked to shared some sort of common interest with, I mean, I was I stumbled into a wrong event I thought was about marketing and marketing a business, and it actually was marketing racetracks and saving your racetracks. And I ended up hanging out the rest of the night with a couple of guys that own a circle track. And we found common ground with racing and grassroots all the way down to talking about super duties. Matt, what about you? What surprised you about the show? So I, I did a couple seminars that were really good, and there was a lot of interesting, more so tactical side of stuff. But while you guys were off doing your marketing thing, I walked through some people, saw some products and got a chance to talk to people like, the guys over at cortex, they do, Mustang, you know, what's likes, basically anything suspension related for a, you know, 195 197 Mustang, you know, similar to the the Goodyear Mustang that we built not so long ago. I talked to them about their kits and what they offer. That was a big highlight. Kind of pick their brains more about their cats. Loves cool stuff. Yeah, I was surprised about how crowded it was. It seem. And I, I was looking for some numbers before we recorded it. They said about 70,000 people attended for it was crowded. Everybody was there in a good mood. Everybody was talking, racing, trying to your point, you know, shared goals. Keep racing legal and to keep it fun and get more people involved. So let's talk about our trip out there. So we left after work on Wednesday ready to go. Jumped in the, Super Duty and headed west. And the other side of Columbus. We hit some snow, which was a whiteout condition. Brian Blatt at the wheel. Brian, what was it like driving the boss's truck? Through the snow due to whiteout? Well, thanks to, you know, a great mechanic. It, it handled fantastic. It's always a fun time driving the boss's truck. The best way to explain it was, Star Trek. I felt like at one point in time, the snow was so much that it was just like you're just driving through the galaxy, and, we almost watched a Nissan Altima go into a ditch. We had a ram behind us, but don't worry. We locked, locked the Ford in for high and put the pedal to the metal, and we, we lost the traffic like it was nothing. We did it. And, after that, after that, I think we had to make a quick food break. Food stop. So, copilot Bill navigated us to a restaurant, or I should say hole in the wall bar. The old Brick Tavern only. And, it was beautiful. There was all of one person there, and we walked in there in the middle. Of the blizzard. We did it look like a hallmark movie where someone comes into a super small town, Springfield, Ohio. We didn't see anyone eating any cats. If you understand the reference. But, yeah, it seemed like a hallmark movie. We roll into a small town, the snow gets super heavy and thick, and who knows, we could have, I don't know, start of a life there now, what were your impressions of walking into the old Brick Tavern? It was great. Until I opened my wallet and found that I didn't have my debit card. So, like, my store you got. I got to buy, you know, dinner, and I go open up a tab. Oh, crap. I can't pay for this. So. And then I was trying to trace Craigslist back where I can think of where it's at. And finally, I called the gas station out here by Atomic Auto Sports and, I left it there like a big old dummy. So that was nice that they at least said, yep, it's here and we'll hold it for you. Yep. So, it was again, it was good pizza. I don't recommend the mozzarella sticks. Yeah. And even the guy, the bartender said don't get them. Yeah, Brandon just had to have them. Yeah. We, though those. I think that was quite the funniest part. It's like, what kind of use of food? Yeah. What kind of food do you have? Lists. All of three, maybe four options a frozen pizza, breadsticks, mozzarella sticks. Not recommended. And that was about it. Yeah. So we played some pool, we played some touch tunes, and then we hop back in the truck and headed out in a panic stop at the last exit. Actually, it's a first exit in Indiana that loops you back around into Ohio so we could buy some beer. Because you can't buy a cold beer in Indiana. Nope. But, thanks to Brandon Anderson, who rode with us, tell us where to go and, look at a lot of cabs. Yes, we did look at a lot of CVS. If not Miami. Maybe next trip. So I'm setting, but we checked into the hotel, and, they were great. It was, you guys did I then? Oh, I forgot about that. I want to tell that story so. Well. So for the listeners who don't know, you don't know Matthew. Matthew tends to sleep very, very heavy. You could do a burnout. In your C5 Corvette. And he would not wake up if he was out like a light. So we get to the hotel, it's probably 1:00 pm, and, after we drop Brandon off at his hotel, Matt immediately falls over straight across the backseat. Get to the hotel. He's dead asleep, and Bill and I look at each other and Bill jokingly says, should we leave him here? Yeah, leave him here. He'll figure he's a big boy. So sure enough, we left him in the back of the truck with the truck locked. When the hotel checked in, I think we were in there for a good half hour. We were. It was 20 degrees outside before Matt woke up. Yeah, I was tired. Go. Go to sleep. Yeah. So that was great. So the show kicks off Thursday and for those of you that have not attended pre opening breakfast is always a great name of a keynote so to speak. This year Travis Pastrana gave the talk. I didn't know much about him other than a little bit of his NASCAR days, but man, that was you guys didn't get a chance to attend. But it was. He shared some great stories. For those of you that don't know, he has family. Worked hard to get him where he is, mortgage the house three times, scraped, begged, borrow to get him on a bike, broke all kinds of bones in his body and he just keeps pushing on and really down to earth. Guy rode in on a dirt bike, actually ran into the breakfast. It was pretty cool. But that that always sets the stage for the energy of the show. Mike Good, who's the new president of PR? I gave some great updates about what they're focused in on. And then the show opened up. So let's talk about Thursday. What did you who's you talk to? What you see what you like from the show. Well, I guess I can. Kind of start with the education. So, you know, kind. Of. Kind of walk the show. For me, it was looking at, you know, vendors that we use here so I can be informed with, you know, what's new with the parts, what's new with this? Any questions I have that clients have asked about certain fluids and what's good for them and what's not good for them. So, you know, got a good time? Just, one of our big parts distributors turned 14, met with them, had a couple good conversations about what's new. And all that. Ted did some seminars. So one of the big ones. Sure. Man can touch on a little bit more, but, attended the pagan AG ID. Yeah. Padgett brakes. Their head engineer was there doing a break seminar, which was probably, for me, the highlight of that whole day was just doing that. So informative on brake pads and rotors and, you know, things that I even think about. You know, one of the examples is a lot of guys say, you know, a lighter rotor. But what you know, think about is the heat dissipation going through the rotor and heat going through the rotor. So sometimes in some cases, a heavier rotor is better because it doesn't overheat and does not get as hot as quickly. Compared to a center lighter rotor. Things like that. You know, when you got to racing, like all the O'Reilly's rotors will do me just fine, and I can run the race pads of whatever brand you like. And, he informed us that, yes, it does work, but, steel and the metal that is in those rotors, there is a difference between that and a higher quality rotor. And so in some cases that is not the best option. And, that that was the highlight of my day. Just that and just talking to the vendors. That was the highlight of the day. Well, we're going to get back to that. Yeah. Well look, all circles happened. What were you pestering about all day? So excited for lunch. Bears man. Dahlonega. Lunch bears. Lunch bears at the, The whistle, whistle stop. We made a stop at the whistle stop. All right. That was our go to place all week. Yeah. Don't tell everybody our secret. No, ma'am. Will you remember your Thursday two minute lunch bear spell? No. That was a good first day. I always forget how much walking and stuff to see. There is f at the show. I think I kind of meandered around. I went to the the break thing with, with Brian, learn some more technical stuff that was really, really interesting. Sass people. I just moseyed around, didn't really have an agenda of who I wanted to see, just, you know, stopped by the cortex booth, stopped by, you know, looked at the hog booth. People like that even stopped by the, you know, one by ECU Masters learn about their new abs, you know, standalone unit, you know, and how that's all control and stuff like that. And spent a lot of time at the long anchor Longacre booth, learning about their scales and how they work. And, you know, of course, they're selling new products in this. And at the other end, they actually have some newer tools like, magnetic camber, caster gauge and stuff like that. So, so that's cool. And even got, I'm learning a set of like, setup sheets, basically use here at the shop. Great. Yeah. You know, Thursday really surprised me. And I'll tell you as much planning as I put into the event. Here's what I want to see here. So I want to connect up with atomic. Being a businessman member, we get access to the lounge business member lounge so we can, you know, meet people there and talk to them. As much as I had that game plan together, I entered Thursday a little nervous. I thought, man, I want to walk the show and what am I going to do the rest of the day? And within the first two hours, I ran into more people that even just people that we've met online never even spoke yet connected with them, talked about racing, talked about the podcast, talked about the shop and I after that I was, oh my gosh, yes, this is awesome and made some great connections. Learn a little bit about some people and what their goals are for 2025. You know, the reason I bring that up is you never know who you're going to run into. You never know who else is going to be there, but you always still need a plan. And, the plan kind of fell apart after lunch, because that's when, the marketing sessions we attended were it was a little difficult to stay, stay awake. But for the listener, ever since I hired Brian, all he talks about our lunch beers, how many lunch beers can we have? And folks, just so you know, we never have had a lunch beer while we've been working at Atomic Auto Sports. Seriously. But since this was a little bit of a travel and, a little bit of a getaway, that's exactly what we did on Thursday. A couple of lunch beers. We met up with some new friends and some old friends at the whistle stop. Had a great lunch. There's good. It was great. But man, you know, we were going on, what, four hours of sleep will have a couple lunch beers and then sit in a session shoulder to shoulder with people. Yeah, but you know what? Price education sessions never disappoint. There's always great people giving them great ideas being shared. And you're in a room full of smart people that want to grow any big, any big thoughts from Thursday afternoon now, as we kind of cruised along since almost the show? It's yeah, there's kind of nothing that really sticks out bouncing around, you know? For me, I kind of was looking for some stuff that, you know, I myself was interested in, you know, it was, you know, if you do the sessions or sometimes it's hard when you're bouncing from session, especially over a half hour to kill. So you're like, I'm sure you know, I don't want to stand here. So you'd run over and maybe see something might interest you on your personal and bounce back to the session. It was it was really busy. And then, you know, same thing. Like you set up, you walk in and all of a sudden there's someone that knew us from the shop or knew the name and, and asked a question and it was just a very and you, you have an agenda and you get stuck there. Stop 13 times on the way going over there. But yeah, for me, I think Thursday was just a big, more or less seminar sort of day. Yeah. And, it's good. You know, one thing I did was sat down with Chris Ludwig from LMS, CFI, and as the two of you know, and mentor the listener, you know, Chris is he's wired the rx7. He also wired one of our Dodge Neons for the radio racing team. He's wiring, another one with a standalone ECU. And, you know, one of the big takeaways from the entire show was stuff that Chris and I talked about. And it comes down to data. And when you have the ability to not only acquire data but then learn from that data, it can really help your driving, whether that's selecting a brake pad, selecting a brake rotor. To your point earlier, Brian, understanding what's happening with the the vehicle dynamically engine. So that's a big takeaway for the listener is just where can you gain data, whether that's an app you're using on your phone for lap time, standalone ECU, an aim unit, a catalyst, an apex, whatever the case may be. Even though we just talked about two instances of data for the neons, that was big. Yeah. That's huge. I mean, you can really go down a rabbit hole and spend a bunch of money in sensors and, and spend as much time looking at stuff, but if you don't know what you're looking at either, it's kind of useless. I mean, that's how you know. That's right. A lot of time. Well, watching these Drag Race guys and they're they can go based off of their, you know, shock travel. And they know that they need to loosen up front end or tighten up the, you know, front, you know, based on their 64 times. Comparing that to the numbers, it's insane how fast people are going. Oh same thing for a road race guys too. Yeah. It was It was interesting, like for me, you know, walking around a little bit of time they had with Matt and just kind of hearing, you know, while I'm not installing the parts, but still, you know, I talk with the cortex guys just hearing how the system works and how their products work is good. You know, for me. So I know someone comes in with that system or is interested in that system. I can explain it further. But the thing that blew me away and I you know, I know it's there, but you don't really think about it was the Longacre, you know, just looking at the technical sheets that they have and looking at the scales and getting to actually play with the software that's there was interesting because when you think about quarter bouncing, you just think that, okay, car weighs 2,500 pounds. I've got X amount of weight in each quarter. My alignment is set where I want it to. We're good to go. And there's so much more to that than you know. And a lot of the products that were there we rarely saw, adjustable. Was it a brake bias? But instead of adjusting the at the line pressure, it adjusts the actual pedal travel. And so things like that with, you know, with my old car and even stuff that comes in the door, sometimes you don't think about that because you never, you know, you always just say, go brake pedals, a brake pedal, a gas pedals, a gas pedal, and I have the brakes that I have and you don't really think about the difference that adjusting those minor components makes. And, you know, the more you talk to these guys, it makes a big difference in like Matt said with the Drag Race guys, I mean, that saves seconds in some applications. Oh yeah. Or there any other big learning opportunities appear. I sent me a size of I didn't know that existed or something that wasn't there that you expected to see. Right. So the big thing for a lot of companies will do like, like half cuts of their products. So like the BorgWarner booth, for example, they make, you know, turbos and all sorts of stuff. You know, seeing their new, you know, technology with the anti surge protection in their compressor housings, the when you try and you know, going from a shop standpoint, when you try and say why do I need this. You know seven hour extra compressor on my turbo. You can explain why you know back pressure back into the blades. Anti surge kind of protects that keeps you from you know overtime where not turbo I mean that's a completely like rudimentary way of explaining it. But just for the sake of time here to be able to see that and see the technology in the blades, the shaft, the bearings and the whole compressor to exhaust housing, it's pretty interesting to see. Same thing with all the, you know, a lot of it's, you know, big diesel stuff for, you know, billet block drag racing stuff. But even seeing, you know, short companies, I stopped by. I can't remember the name of them, but they do a lot of sequential and stuff for rally cars. Stopped by their booth and they had a half cut and seen how this the control works and it all together. Now, if you open their pamphlet and see the price tag on some of their suspensions so that I'm really cool, I can walk away. But yeah, yeah, let's. You know, say note, you know, he said this stuff, you know, for those who don't know, I love anything diesel. And so you know that, that kit that we talked about potentially for your truck, SS diesel, DCR they have a conversion kit, they have a disaster prevention kit for the CP four. So you go on the website and you read about the pump or how the disaster prevention kit works, and they're like, okay, yeah, CP four fails and this stops it, but you don't really understand how the kit works or what it's designed to do. And I never really knew the difference between the two until you actually have the kit in front of you. That's a it's cut in half. You see how it's routed, and then you talk to these guys and like, yeah, one is to prevent the issue from ever happening. Or if it happens, this one won't prevent failure, but it will prevent damage. Major damage. If it fails. It's just this is more downtime. This is no downtime. So it's interesting to see that. And it helps to from a, you know, from a shop standpoint because if someone has a concern of something like that, no matter what it is, you can know depending on who the person is, what the best option for them is, depending on what their needs are. Beautiful. I think it's important that, anyone that does autocross or solo events, if you need anyone to place cones, the three of us can do cone placement very well. Yes, maybe just all around your car. I don't know my car placement on the track. I don't think we should say too much, because I'm not sure the statute of limitations on, messing with, traffic cone traffic. I mean. For the viewers, I mean, it was it was, of course, private property sanctioned event. And we were volunteers. Yeah, yeah. So we may or may not have arranged stacks of cones late, Friday night. Yeah. Yeah. May or may not have. So why were we out late, though? So it could be late to grid, I don't know, having a good time networking, seeing other people watching karaoke, Yeah, I wish I was that useful out there, but. You know what? The whistle stop did not disappoint because they were the only place in town that did not have a line to get in, and they had no cover charge. Yeah, I really shouldn't say anything. We don't want people start crowding that each year. We were we were talking about the in the considering it on her. Yeah. Slippery you. Yeah got oh this is a yeah. Yeah. You know the show went so quickly and I didn't even get to see everything. Kind of disappointed. Over the happy hour, we missed the happy hour and Thursday night and talking about. We didn't miss it. We didn't miss it. And Friday night. Oh, yeah, that was good. So if you go to PRI, folks, you have to do the happy hour. It's included with your admission. Great networking, great food, great beer. Then you get to see Lucas Oil Stadium from a different a different perspective. But, Friday or Saturday, we decided to head over to Chip Ganassi garage sale. Oh, yeah, that was pretty neat because we got to see the race shop, Indy Car shop. And we all came home with some souvenirs. Yeah. Matt, what you get? I got a Indy car. We'll, I got I believe it's the matching wheel socket from it. So they've got, you know, dates to one. They can't run these. We also they apparently it cracked or broken in some way. And so they've just been was it 30 years that they've just been hoarding all this stuff. This is the first time they've gotten rid of stuff. Oh, always. I'm throwing it away. Yeah. But the more stuff people bought, the more stuff came out. It just kept coming up like, hey, where is this coming from? Yeah. Brian, would you come back with, the wall art? I have a like for. Okay. I got a, wheel, a side, two, three piece, maybe a two piece wheel off of a Cadillac DPI. It was a car. Yeah. So that was pretty sweet. And, I have a single center lock socket off of a Ford GT, so, I think that's going to look fantastic on the wall. Or maybe we'll see if it's in the budget to fit those hunting run. I think it should run first. Well. Tough crowd, but I think the coolest thing is probably building it as bill thing and getting something that wasn't even out on the floor. Yeah, so I bought an Indy car wheel and a socket center plug socket for a Ford GT, and I was just chatting up with one of the Ganassi guys about. I know these Firestone ones are hard to get. I wanted to put a Firestone on an Indy car wheel and he's like, yeah, you can't get them. But if you want something tire related, hold on a minute. But ten minutes later I was first in line. They brought out four Ford GT wheels, so I got a rear wheel off of the 85 Ford GT. With a tire, with a tire with a michelin. And the, it also has the lug nut, the center lug on it. And of course we have the matching. So I always wanted to make a coffee table out of something like that. So I mentioned my wife, hey, can I put you on Facebook Duty and Marketplace and go find a piece of glass? She's like, no, I have I have pieces of round glass underneath our bed. Perfect. So there we are. And, how long it stay in your house? About it after we get it all set up? About an hour. We enjoyed a whiskey near it. And then she said, put it in the truck and take it to the shop. So it did look good, and it helped us validate. We wanted around table in that lounge. So snap that one. Just it just not that well, I thought I made that. I thought you were just saying that. Just made the neighbors jealous. That's why you had to take it out of the house. Probably. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But, yeah, I think in hindsight, maybe I would have attended maybe one less session and hit the floor a little bit more. Just, think, you know, on the drive back and thinking of all the things I didn't see and all the people I didn't connect up with, but, no regrets. Best I ever. I think I was really fun. The, a time ago, sports and Goodyear was. I was there, too. Yeah, unless I let some people refer to it as the Yellow Submarine. So. So that was cool to see that. And our sticker still on it. Yeah. And keep in mind, guys, that that car's probably going to see some track time this year. I hope so yeah. So stay tuned listeners on that. So that's kind of our wrap up on pre I want to talk to the atomic bomb. So a little bit more about their racing. Yeah. And their car scene and all that kind of stuff. So Matt in 2024 you didn't get the two minute lap at pit. Nope. But you felt more comfortable getting more aggressive and wheel the wheel racing. How did how did you decide to get a little bit more aggressive, and what did you do to get the feeling on that and still stay safe? Yeah. In 24, I spent a lot of time driving, not my car, which was awesome. Now a lot. I got a lot of opportunities. This time I was for track day. We had some people that I coached. I'm just doing open track stuff. By no means is a guy out there and here's how to be fast, but it was how to be safe on track. And even some clients like throwing the keys to their car and, drove that. And I had the opportunity to do Grid life Gbtc one of our customers would, when I was picking up his car after doing alignment and, help him get in the trailer and stuff, and he goes, hey, what are you doing on this day? I don't know, probably nothing else. All right, well, you're driving this. I know what he does. Yeah, I, I bought the ticket. I can't make the event. Just buy my ticket. And I asked Bill. I was like, what did you do? Yes. How much is it? Just the ticket and fuel and whatever. And obviously if I brought it up to my car, which I didn't want to do, I saw him. I was like, did you pay? I don't know, why didn't you? Because that's no smoking deal. Yeah. Come to find out, sprint racing is a blast and I'm going to need to do something sprint racing related. But I realize coming back from the event, watching film on the race starts, I was. Yeah, I had radio in my ear and I heard the green flag and started to go, and I immediately backed out because I just got nervous because not my car, but, you know, realizing that I can be more aggressive, I can gain places, just to, but get it, you know, sticking my nose in places with other cars, you know, making passes, being aggressive. I learned a lot there doing that as an endurance racing. You. It happens, but it's not always the case. So let's talk about that. This is what's the big difference in two sentences between sprint racing and endurance racing that you observed doing your first sprint race? Other than the time. Other than the time, yeah. Sprint racing is 100. You know, you are it almost ten times, if not at ten times the the entire time, you know, endurance racing, you're able to settle in. Sometimes you're conserving fuel, conserving tires, conserving race, conserving the car to go eight hours versus a 20 minute race. The adrenaline for the entire 20 minutes is a lot more, high than it is. You know, after an hour and a half or an hour, 15 in the endurance car, unless you're always in traffic. Beautiful. So, Brian, you had a big, successful year off the track, but with a big project and swapping out the cab and your super duty. Oh, yeah. Why do you have the swapping out? A little rusty. Rusty? So I bought the truck a couple of years ago, and had some rust, and I was planning on, you know, you see, body works. I was planning on fixing it, and it just was kind of too far gone. And we were at, Dragon, and I was looking on Facebook one night just talking about cab swaps, and I found a rust free cab with a title in Tennessee. So I said, well, if I pulled an engine out and I've done this, I can do that. And, it transitioned to basically six months pretty much every night after. Worn that, you know. Who's counting? A good a good surgeon. Good, a good, you know, spring through the summer into the cold fall of basically me in the parking lot of my shop with the cab off with the help of some friends, getting the cab off by myself. Just going back and forth between parts and parts. So I stripped the old cab down to nothing, do a shell and put everything from that wiring harness to seats, carpeting, windows, everything into the new cab, put the new cab on and wired everything back up. And now I now have a rust free white truck. It was black before. Now it's white. But it's rust free. It's quiet, and it looks significantly better than it did before. So that's no small task. I think you should be really happy with your results. Yeah. It was, I appreciate that. Yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun. It was a really good, learning experience. There was a lot of, you know, there were some frustration here and there because you don't know certain stuff and try to do it, but it's, you know, for me, I'm, I plan on keeping it for a while. So it's good to know how that stuff goes together. And it's it's really crazy to me when you look at the new stuff compared to the old stuff, how simple it is. I mean, you've never done it before. It can be kind of a daunting task, but, it's just, you know, like everything, like I say, it's just nuts and bolts. That's all it is, you know. To work on it. So. Yeah, it was, it was, it was a fun project. And if I do it again, but, it was, it was a, it was a fun project. Looking back at it, you learn a lot. So nice. Yeah. I, you know, my biggest thing in 2024 was I got the race, the seven in a legit race won our enduro. Fourth overall, first in class. So I was really excited about that. But I think the biggest learning opportunity for me was just getting faster. And our neons and just understanding how to go a little bit deeper into the corner, how to feel the brakes a little bit differently. You know, Chris, you know, Kyle acro and Chris Ludwig being at the races with us and dissecting data was huge. As silly as it sounds like looking at race keeper stuff, like the video is just, you know, I've looked the video before, but having the race keepers in the cars now was, was super helpful as well. Yeah, I think starting from March till I mean it was a tough season overall, but we learned a lot just car setup wise, learning different, you know, alignments, changing the dampening sway bars etcetera, etcetera. Just the overall sign up for the car. So it was dialed and we had them. Yeah, thankfully we had that Friday practice day and it was, you know, in the morning some send the, you know, main team guys out the cars get them set up. And then after that and then that was good. Get everyone else in the cars. Let's talk about 2025 goals Matt. You got two big goals zero. Stay in front of Joe. Who's your brother, you know and then grid life. Yeah, right. So I'm hoping, Mr. Ryan here buys my turbo BP setup from my Miata. That ever since I bought the Corvette has just been setting. Where are we at with that? Brian? We're getting there. It's running really cold there on the podcast. You, Henry Stack. Yeah, that'd be awesome. You want Viper know? Yeah. So we're we're working on it. To kind of. For those who don't know, I have an abundance of projects sitting in the shop and the. Miata, was a, an a car that was perfectly fine. And Matt and I had a race a couple years ago to who could turbo their car first, and I was second with that, and it, it had a failure. I'd bent all four rods. And I was planning on doing a rebuild myself. And I now seem to have walked into a potential built 1.9l. So we'll see. I don't know, I think, you know, the listeners now have heard this commitment. Right. This interest. Yeah. So I guess rewind. So my goal grid life gtk I'm tired of the Turbo Miata stop. But the cars that serve a purpose to me anymore. It's unfortunate. So I want to go I want to start doing real real racing. I can't afford to put a set of 315 square tires on my Corvette every every race weekend. So the solution that to me is, you know, going back to the Miata and kind of, go out and do, do some wheel to wheel with it. Also, Brian by as my engine and hopefully a 24 goes in and, Chris Allen CFI, I was talking to him about some wiring and stuff like that. And Paul on that. So Brian, your big goal for 2025 is to get the car done. Yeah. So I think I see a connection here. Yes. Back to that race. Back to it's almost like fake back to the engine. Yeah. But do more racing. So you know that car has always been something that I've wanted to race and the st as much as everyone in this room and everyone listening may or may not agree or disagree that I don't really want to race that car. Any more than I have with autocross. I'd like to get that on track and do some track nights. Maybe a time trial. Mapping me out across Austin Miata? Yes. Running. So my goal is spy, hopefully, you know, maybe end of spring or so. But I have it running and just be a streetcar drive to the track. Drive it home. Sorry, Bill. So in the spring would be, like, middle of June. Yeah. Sweet. All right. Dates been set? Yeah. Yeah, he says enthusiastically. Say, I'm going to be screwed on this because he's not gonna buy my engine until the beginning of June. And then, K series take. All right. We're going to pause here. It's just Chris work on his kids car. He's. Walking around up here all willy nilly. Yeah. How are you? I'm great. How are you? Oh, sorry. Sorry about that. Josh. I don't know if he really listens to this. Oh, really? All right, so my goal for 2025 is more road racing with the R7. So it was built for SCCA production. Many have told me it won't be competitive in that class which is fine. I'm there for the fun. So we'll, competition license has been secured and tech is already down in the card and logbook, so now it's time to race it. And there's going to be a couple Cub Racing experience events where that as long as it's one hour or less, I will enter that car so I can just go solo. Well, I'm going to have to advocate for an hour and a half races. Well, or I can hire a pit crew. That's the other part I can do. Yeah. Do you think they'll should what the viewers know, or maybe do a poll of something else that maybe he could potentially race this year, maybe drive himself to the track in the vehicle, a cart? Yes. I should go go kart. Yeah. Maybe I'll. I was just curious if the viewers knew about your potential. So other than constantly asking for lunch beers, Brian is constantly in my ear about M3's. Every M3 that goes up for sale within 500 miles of the shop. He sends me. Shouldn't he be working? It's after hours. Okay. Me story here. Yeah. Brian, I appreciate that. And the late to grid license plate could be on a rx7 or a m3. We'll see any of the viewers have a cheap running M3 or a cheap running R7 project. Bill, you should have ranked the late to Grid podcast. Yeah, if you have. An M3 like an E90, A92. On the cheap? Yeah, let us know. Wow, that'd be awesome. I prefer the E90 but we'll go 92. Perfect. Yeah, it looks like we got a busy 2025 and we're. Yeah, you're gonna be doing, throttle actuators and rod bearings. It's all right. That to me, you know, one thing we didn't talk about it pry was some of the conversations we had with folks that get us on track, like auto interests and NASA. There's some exciting stuff happening. So, folks, if if you haven't looked at your schedule, doesn't matter who you're running with or what part of the country you're in, start looking at the schedule because it's filling up fast. There's a lot of events. There's conflicting weekends. You got to get the calendar set, get registered and get the car ready. Yeah. The, the auto interest guys were, very, very nice to talk to. Very good to learn about their program. I did not know that. I knew about the program and what they did, but, you know, learning more about how, in-depth they go with driver education was, was really, really good. Actually piqued my interest, too, from from being new or myself to, you know, potentially racing with them just for the from the standpoint of, you know, what am I doing wrong? Tell me, you know, you've done it a million times. What am I doing wrong? See. So auto interests or NASA's HPD program perfect for a driver like you, Ryan, you've been on track a few times, you've race a few times, you've done plenty of autocross program like that. And this is for the benefit of listeners. Well, you know, you get some coaching. Here's what you're doing, right. Here's what you're doing wrong. Focus on this because I've said it before, you can go out and get tons of C time, but if all you're doing is repeating the same bad habits, it doesn't really help. Yeah. Is there anything we didn't talk about, gentlemen, that you think we need to? I don't think so. I'll tell you what. So let's let's talk about this real quickly. We've mentioned NASA. We mentioned auto interest. Atomic auto sports is authorized repair, tech shop, actually, for both those organizations, if you happen to be within a driving distance of atomic autosports. Wickliffe, Ohio January 25th, 2025 Rolex Watch Party. It was popular last year. It's gonna be popular this year. We are looking at a tech day with auto interest sometime in March. If everything goes as planned. A lot of exciting things happening. There will be a big year, big, big year, big racing year, man. So with that, I want to thank Brian Blatt, Matt Harbert, the atomic bombs, as we call you guys. We also have a fabricator on the team now, Sam Kwak. And who I started, I met him, I think it was in 2017. He started helping us crew in with us and stuff. So Sam is, also an atomic bomb. He's our fabricator. So we'll do in cages, roll bars, custom fab work. Awesome. Well, welder. So if you do need anything for the car, you have a project. Get a hold of Brian. Brian at a ton of cargo sports.com. Or you can give him a call or send a message through the website. Anyways, if you have questions about your car getting it set up, Matt can get it dialed in the corner, balanced, set up, whatever, whatever you need. Let's talk about it. If we can't do it. We'll be honest and upfront. Let you know we're not the right guys for you. So with that, I have one bit of advice for you. Don't be late to grab.