Late to Grid - Grassroots Racing
We share the stories and inspiration that will help get more people behind the wheel and on the track. Track days, HPDE, SCCA, NASA, ChampCar, LeMons, and autocrossing - we interview drivers and industry insiders that will help drivers along their motorsports journey.
The name, Late To Grid? In the past the host, Bill Snow, was always late to the track, late to get the car ready, and hence - Late To Grid. His goal with the podcast is to grow the sport and highlight the tools and resources that will help you get to the track and faster behind the wheel.
Late to Grid - Grassroots Racing
Zero Experience, 24-Hour Race: Nigel Boyce's Jump Into Wheel-to-Wheel
In this episode of Late to Grid, we talk to Nigel Boyce, a mechanic who went from zero wheel-to-wheel experience straight into a 24-hour endurance race! Nigel shares his unique path, starting with a lifelong love for cars, graduating to autocross and time trials in his Honda Civic Si, and finally finding his track car in a Dodge Neon.
Nigel recounts the chaos of his first endurance race, including a frantic, eight-hour, last-minute drive to find a mandatory fire suppression system. He offers great advice on the mental shift from running 100% in time trials to maintaining a steady pace in endurance racing. Plus, as a mechanic, he details how his trade helps him troubleshoot everything from a blown fuse to rear suspension damage right in the paddock.
This is a great listen for anyone who wants to just get started—Nigel's best advice is simply to "just get started".
If you're chasing lap times, you need a track ready setup for your car. Get to AtomicAutosports.com to get your car scheduled to get you on the podium.
Track ready setups for time trial drivers and others
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.
Let's say that you have zero wheel to wheel racing experience. So why not enter a 24 hour endurance race? That's exactly what Nigel Boyce did. Less for the green flag on this episode. Well, as I mentioned, I have Nigel in studio. Nigel, it's great to have you here on the grid podcast. It's great to be here. My first podcasts ever. So I'm excited. Well, we're going to be talking about a lot of firsts because, you and I met at your first not only wheel the Wheel race, but your first endurance race. Your first 24 hour race. Yep. I think that's pretty cool. But first, before we get there, let's talk a little bit about how you got into motorsports and racing. And it was your uncle that got you interested. What did he do? Where did he take you? How did he get you to get the racing bug? Well, it really started with a, He kind of got me into cars because I'm always. I'm. I've always been really big into just cars in general. And just my love for cars kind of just evolved into a love for racing. He didn't really directly get me into racing, but that's where it really stemmed from. So you can kind of root it back to him. Gotcha. We can blame him or we can celebrate him for that. So when you celebrate there, you go. That's awesome. So where was it where the cars sort of came closer to racing. How did that come about? That's actually a really good question. Honestly, it just became went from loving cars to loving driving. And then from there, it just kind of became like, how can I get on track and just make myself a better driver? And it just kind of evolved from there to autocross time trials. You know, an endurance race. That's right. Let's talk about autocross. When did you do your first autocross? It's 2018. I just bought my daily driver, which is a Honda Civic Si, and I went to a my first autocross, like, not even two weeks after I bought it, just to try it out. I've been in love with it since. That's awesome. Was was that the intent behind the Honda was to do autocross or Honda? And he thought, let me go have some fun. Well, I used to work at a Honda dealer before I worked at the Dodge dealership, and I used to have another Honda Civic, so that was the one car that I never really wish that I got rid of. And I just kind of eventually worked my way into getting another one. And from there I was like, I'm going to not get rid of this one and I'm just going to do what I've always wanted to do. Get out there and start driving it. Start having some fun. What was that first autocross event? Who put it on? Where was it? It was done by a group called the Poughkeepsie Sportscar Club, which is an affiliate to Mohawk Hudson, SCCA, kind of a sister club. And it was in Kingston, New York, and I just kind of showed up and everybody was super friendly, and he talked me through it and what I had to do, and just took to a duck like water, I guess. That's great. So rolling in first autocross and the people were supportive. I think that speaks a lot about our sport and how welcoming we are. What surprised you most about the autocross event? Something that you didn't prepare for or something you thought was really cool? The variety of cars was cool. It's just we had the Gypsy test typically shows up with, like, actual, like open wheel cars and stuff. So they actually have a, a pretty deep log of actual race cars that show up. But also just the, the general, just people that normally show up, you know, corvettes, Porsches, everything from Miata is the Mustangs. It's a good time and everyone's just out there having a good time driving as fast as they can around a bunch of cones. Did you did you think autocross was going to be it and that would be the only thing to do? No, not really. I just kind of went out there to try to sharpen my skills before I decided to jump to actual track driving, which was actually ended up being a lot easier of a jump than I initially thought it was going to be. Right, so the Take the civic s eye on track. Is that the track car? Yep. Well, it it's my daily driver, my track car, my autocross car, which eventually led me to get into the neon because that showed up for sale one day and I was like, you know, it's cage car. I can use this to get my wheel, the wheel license. And then the neon kind of became my track car. Yeah. Oh man, we're going to have some fun talking about neon. Was it the neon that caught your eye or just a caged car that could go on track? It was mainly because it was caged, but the price for the neon was too good to pass up. And I kind of already knew being a car guy, that neons were pretty good in the amateur racing world. So I kind of expected that it was going to be just as good as, you know, the legends say, as they. Yeah. What what what was the history of the neon? Was it an ACR was a showroom stock car. From the history that I see on the, the logbook is that it was initially a production racer, and then when it was no longer a production racer, it was converted into an endurance car. And then went through a bunch of bean dances, mainly at Watkins Glen and Summit Point. At one point at one or a 12 hour race, Summit point. I don't remember the year, but it was in the logbook, which is cool. So. Oh, that's awesome. And then from there I used it as a track car, and eventually my friend Benjamin hit me up and he's like, do you have a car? Would you like to go racing with it? I said, I guess. And he said, well, if you can get the car ready, I'll pay for your entry into the 24 hour race. And that's how I ended up in VR. That ended up being a big fiasco in itself, which is quite a funny story too. Oh, we're going to be talking about that. So how long have you owned the neon? About three years, maybe four. Somewhere around there. All right. And it's been a pretty good car for you. It's gotten you through some track days. Oh, yeah. The whole reason the the endurance race came up and began with. Because I let Benjamin drive it at Pocono at a time trial. And between him and two other friends, we had four drivers, and we did 330 miles in two days with the car. And it just ran flawlessly. So they made the the so they made the, the offer, like, hey, this could actually be, you know, still an endurance car. So we decided to, try to prep it to pass safety. Yeah, I think that's that's a great story. You know, starting off auto crossing in the hand and doing some track days in the Honda, just seeing a neon for sale. And then the buddies come together and we talk about, hey, let's go have some more fun. Let's do this. Let's do that. Now, there's something else we can do that's endurance racing. So let's talk a little bit more about that. You guys decide to enter a 24 hour race at Vir. Did anyone do an endurance race on your team before? I think Benjamin did at one point, but I don't know if it was a 24 hour race or not. There, he he told me he had a miata at the time, so I don't know if it was his Miata or if it was somebody else's Miata. But he did have an endurance race in the Miata, so he had at least a little bit of experience. He had more experience than pretty much anybody else on the team. Yeah. So, so we met, like I said earlier at Vir for the Champ Car 24 hour race. And, the team, we're getting our two neons ready, and then there's a hey, look, there's another neon. Just roll then. So I paddle over, talked to a couple people on your team and, you know, you guys are unloading. You're trying to get through tech and all that other stuff. I want to talk about how you were finally able to take the green flag because you were missing something you needed for tech. What was that? The, fire extinguisher system? Yes. Yeah. In the SCCA only just requires a, fire extinguisher bottle, which I had in the car, but we didn't have the system that would spray the driver or them to put the, pull and all nighter. We had one of our team members drive eight hours to go pick up this FIA approved bottle and hooked it up first thing in the morning. So I'm going to guess you guys are scouring Facebook Marketplace from the paddock a ver. And you found one that was four hours away. And the story I heard, the guy left it in his front yard and you guys picked it up. Yeah. Because he wasn't home when we got there to pick it up. Drive back, install it. And then you took the, you started the race a few minutes after the green flag dropped. Right. I believe it was about an hour and a half to two hours. Okay. After after the green flag. That is. A story. I mean, you had to do it in order to race, so you might as well go for it. Makes a good story. And, credit to our teammates. She ran out there and grabbed it and we, we got it up and running. Got the car ready, got it through tech. And we went out there and started racing away trying to knock out laps. That that is awesome. Think about what could have happened right. Punctured tire on the drive out. Car issues on the drive out. It's not the system that you actually needed. Right. Could have been a scam, right? Yeah. No one ever get scammed. That marketplace right? But it. I don't know how they. I don't know how they necessarily pulled the logistics out to go get it. I don't know if it was on marketplace or if it was just this person said this and got leads and and found, that was that was a team thing which credit where it's true. Our team also had pretty good, you know, hook ups and logistics to be able to figure that stuff out. I think it's a great story. And then you, you took the green flag here. You know, you're out there racing. What, other than not having the fire battle. What surprised you most about a long endurance race? Well, the biggest thing that caught me off guard is when I got out there on track. Because I'm coming from a world that was predominantly time trials, where everyone is running 100% all the time. So getting out there on track, it was more like everybody's running 70, 80%. So it was kind of like it was kind of trying to learn myself to win things down and just not wreck the car, to knock out lap after lap after lap. It was just a different mindset than what I was used to. And when I came in and I relayed all that information to our team because my whole team was basically all time drivers. So I was like, you guys don't need to go out there rippin on the car 100% the entire race. You can slow it down. It's fine. Just knock out the laps. That was one of them that caught me off guard. Yeah, that's one of the conversations we have on our team. Is we're not looking for fastest time of day. This isn't. Go out and put down your fast lap. You got to be consistent. Got to be safe. Keep the car off the curbs. Bring it back for the next driver, because you got to finish a race in order to win a race or win a class. Got to take the chase. You got to take the checkered flag. Did you then drive that first stint? I did, but mainly I drove it mainly because I wanted to make sure the car was okay because I just put a wheel bearing on the front. You know, Dodge now has a wheel bearings. Yeah. And, our first driver that was initially going to leave, he wasn't quite ready to take, had an issue with his zipper on his fire suit. And by the time he got to sorted out, I managed to throw my suit on and get out there. So I'd rather knock out some laps and wait around with somebody fiddling with their zipper. Whoops. Plus I had set the car up and stuff, so I was making sure the settings and everything was right and the car just felt good. And just get a good feel for the car before I handed it off to somebody else. Yeah. But you came with a truck and trailer full of stuff. But was there something you forgot that you needed for an endurance weekend? Preparation. We showed up, but we we didn't really have a plan. We we kind of winged it 90% of what we did. We just kind of winged it as we went. We just showed up with a bunch of tools. That's how it starts. The first thing you have to do is just show up. Yep. Right. You'll learn as you go. And I'm sure if you needed something, there were people there that that had it and tried to help. Yeah, I had to really wire up the Nissan switch because the, an extra switch only was set up to turn off the the fuel pump only. Yeah, this was an SCCA standard, so I had to rewire it, shut the whole car off, and I needed to find soldering for big, thick, battery cables. And I walked around the grid and, and, a nice team that had all BMW helped us out. They gave us a soldering a blowtorch and we managed to wire that up nice and neat. That's the beauty of the paddock, you know? And everyone's willing to help. No one's going to, you know, push your way or say, you know, tough like you should have, should have been more prepared. Yeah. Even when we were looking for the fire bottle, we were scouring the the lot and getting all the leads we could from any team that would willing to give us a lead. And I think that's I think that's how we ended up finding the bottle. Okay. Yeah. We had, we had the officials rolling around for us, talking to them too, because we wanted to make sure that what we were going to pick up was still legal to the rules, because the first one we came across wasn't quite legal to the rules, even though that one was a half an hour away. So we had to find one that we that they were like, yeah, this one's okay. You guys can go get this because we didn't want to make the the trip or put the effort ended up at the end of the day, not being able to still pass stack for something silly like the bottle being the wrong bottle or something. Yeah. So let's talk about the rest of the race. What were some of the, did you have any mechanical issues? Was there, any anything else that surprised you during the event? We did keep blowing a fuze for the fuel pump, which I believe I figured out, but at it couldn't get it figured out at the race. So what we did, we just kept putting bigger and bigger fuzes. Then we started the 28, and by the end of the race we put out a 30 in there. But we've done 230 amps on that circuit. Once. Yeah. It was, it was Ginger man. And, kept blowing. That's that's a pretty common failure on that on that car. Do you have it all fixed for your next event? I believe so, because when I wired up the transistor, I actually wired it into the fuel pump circuit because I figured I can turn the transistor on and off. I flipped the switch. I think the wire shorted out for the transistor, which is blowing out the fuze in the pump, because that's we rewired the transistor. We never had any more fuel issues. So I'm I'm kind of leaning towards that was the issue with our specific fuel pump. Yeah. Yeah. It could be. So by trade, you're a mechanic and you just happened to work in a Chrysler dealer. How has that helped you with your racing? Having a mechanical background? It helps a lot, because when something happens, I have to know whether to just kind of jump right in and start trying to figure out what's going on. Especially being a dodge mechanic, I can kind of know, like, how the circuits typically operate for electrical issues. Mechanically, I kind of just know how to maintain the car and what to look for, what to feel for, and just the general processes of the old to replace stuff if something breaks down. So it's nice to know that. And it's also nice that I have all the tools that I can just pack up and take to the racetrack, too, because that saves a lot of money and just having a trailer full of tools all the time. Yeah for sure. So that do people when they find out your mechanic at the track they grab you and say hey how do I do this. Can you help me with that or help me troubleshoot sometimes. But usually I'm busy trying to set up our car or trying to fix something that was going on because we had a lot of, a lot of unforeseen things going on during the course of the race that, that took some, some. We had everything and anything under the sun was just going wrong for us. Yeah. Did you take the checkered flag? We did, we did. That was my goal was to show up and at least finish the race. I don't know what. Benjamin had it in his head. We were going to win, I told him, slow his roll. We have to finish the race. And that was my goal, was to finish the race. And that turned into, quite a challenge. What was the biggest challenge you faced during the weekend? Well, I think the biggest one we were faced was when we got hit. One. Oh that's right. Yes. We had I just we just swapped drivers. So we had a new driver that hadn't gone out on track yet, and it was just kind of going around feeling things out and just drive along. And somebody tried to dive bombing, and he slammed right into our passenger door. And in this process, he also damaged our rear suspension, and we had to finish the rear suspension out because the, that there's that rear bolt that goes through the bottom of the subframe and the rear there that holds two low control arms that was actually twisted and elliptical inside of the subframe. So the whole suspension was kind of tweaking side to side. So we had to pull out a welder and weld up some plates to hold that in place. And then once we had that all straightened out, we kind of eyeballed it. We went out there and hit the track again, but two hours later we were on track for two hours. That's when they tell us that our transponder was no longer working after all this. So then we had to go back in the pits, rewire our transponder back up, and then get back out there again. So we did fix the car, but we also lost two hours of track time because, our transponder was out and nobody really kind of told us until it was two hours into that stint. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Oh that stinks. I you know, I, I forgot about you guys getting hit. And we were watching in the pits the Champ Car live feed and our team watch that happen. And that was a hard hit. Yeah. Our driver was okay. He did initially complain of a headache, so we sent him to the medic, but it ended up just being a little dehydrated. But he was ultimately fine at the end of the day. That's what ended up being determined that it wasn't our fault. So, you know, just a racing thing. Yeah. I yeah. And we saw that BMW on the footage too, pulling into the pits. And he got just into the paddock in the front just fell apart. That didn't make any. So I'm pretty sure they got the car back out to one good, good thing nobody was hurt. And good thing the car got. Your car got back on track. Yeah, we had to, we had to go to TMI there. The the the race store and get a mirror and rig up a little mirror in there because they took our mirror out, and I still can't figure out how to get the door open, because how can I replace door of the door? Can't get the door open, but I'm still working on that. Yeah, I'm still working on that. I'll figure it out. I do have a spare door. Do you? Yeah. It's not the end of the world. It's just trying to figure out how to get the door off so I can replace it. So I was all time. Yeah. I think I can get to the back of the bolts for the, the latch there. And I think if I could spin them out backwards I can loosen the latch enough to get enough wiggle out of it to get the latch to pop. But you know, that might be the springtime project. It sure. Yeah. I gotta tell you, the the more and more we we do the endurance racing, the more and more body work we're doing. There is quite a few hits that, the team was at Mid-Ohio, and, eventually they put new way to use some, some tape to hold some things together on the car, and the team rode on it. This is not your turning point. Yeah. So it's it's definitely a contact sport lately. Yeah. I mean it happens because in the case of our team, almost everybody in our team didn't have any actual racing experience. Like like on track. So I know some focus when we went to the not the drivers meeting. And there was also a lot of people there that have never been on track, but I do I do a lot of simulator driving, so I kind of knew what to expect. I know how to keep the car safe, at least. But some people were. I guess we had a guy that was trying to be a little bit of a hero and dive bombed us a little bit, but you know, that's he did get docked two laps for it. But I don't know if that actually really affected him more than it affected us. Oh, okay. Did you do any night driving? I did, and I'll be honest with you, I didn't do a very good job wearing those lights up. They were they were really dull. So we were just kind of flying around the track and trying to see what we could see. But by the time I did my stint at night and I had already been up, just between prepping the car and fixing the car and rebuilding that just I think I was up nearly 24 hours. So I was pretty, pretty tired. And I ended up running off the track and I came in. I was like, I gotta get to another driver and I'm getting too exhausted. This point. And this was around two in the morning. Sometime around then. That's a smart move to to make that call. Yeah. Because it was a turn ten. Actually I went off on, I went oh I just kind of misjudged it and just went off and went down the little hill and hit all the little bumps and I was like, yeah, I'm misjudging that. I might need to, I might need to get that might be a little bit more tired than I think. Yeah. Were you able to go to sleep after that? Yeah. Yeah. Because, we put, ironically, the guy that was in the car when it got hit, we put him in the car and he went out there and drove for two hours, and they they had the red flags fog. So we didn't need another driver for a while. So all of us got some pretty good sleep until the, the fog lifted and they got everybody back out. So that was a pretty nice break for us as we were all running on fumes at that point. Yeah, you got the adrenaline going. It's easy to stay up. I shouldn't say it's easy to stay up, but, you know, you kind of want to stay up. You want to see what's going on. You want to get make sure the team's doing what they should be doing. But at the same time, you gotta rest. You gotta have your mental focus. Yeah. So, wrapping up the weekend. Is there something you brought that you didn't use? That you thought, man, we are absolutely going to need this. A 24 hour endurance race, and you didn't even touch it. I did buy a press to do wheel bearings for Nitto, plus a bunch of extra well bearings. I ended up using the press one time to replace the bearing right before we even went out on track, just because I didn't quite trust it. It was an old bearing. And a lot of tools. I brought a lot of tools to do this, that and everything. But other than that, I can't really think of anything. We had way more tires than we needed to because we brought six. We brought, Falcon 615 case, and we brought 12 of them, and then a set of candles and in hindsight, that was way too many tires. Yeah, the tracks seem to be pretty good on tires. Yeah. We actually went through one set of tires and one tire that we ended up getting a flat on because we hit something, but other than that way we could still go out there and probably run another 24 on the set that we had. That was a total misjudgment on how many tires we needed. At least you were prepared. That's the important thing. Yeah. Like I said, we we wanted to be prepared for as much as possible, but we didn't really have a plan to do it. So I'm pretty pretty proud of the team for being able to just wing it like that and roll with the punches. Oh, absolutely. So is there another 24 hour in your future? Possibly. I mean, the team is up for it, but it's going to again come down to funds because truth be told, we don't really have a lot of money. We're not really a well funded team. We're just we're like a bunch of friends that wanted to be out there and hit the track, and I'd happen to be the guy that owned the car, and that was the closest thing that anybody else out of being able to get out there. Yeah. Do you what's the racing look like for the rest of the season? You guys need to go out and do something again. A lot of the guys are actually out at the time for nationals out and, pit race this weekend. All right. I'm not going to make that one because I got some personal things I got to take care of. But I wouldn't be there if that wasn't the case. And you'd be time traveling the civic. Yeah, that's kind of my time travel car that I the the neon has kind of become a little bit of an autocross car at the moment. And because the, I ran out of tire for my civic and I don't have the budget to get new tires, so I got plenty of tires for the neon now. So, yeah, that's now my, my temporary autocross car till the end of the season. So what class with that running autocross? I run FSP. I don't know if that's the class is supposed to be on, but that's just the class. I decided that. Okay, this is falls in the rules, and this is the one I'm going to run into. Do you have another autocross event planned? Just pretty much finishing out the local season. I don't really have any national tours nearby going on. That's right. That's seat time at the local is just as good as any national seat time you're going to get. I keep telling everybody there that if you get good at autocross, jumping on the track is a much easier step and than you would ever imagine a lot of autocross was make really good time trial drivers. That's yeah that's awesome advice. And while we're talking about advice, I asked what you wish you had known when you first got started and your response was it was easier than your thought, right? Yeah. Because I thought, I thought I would have been like an autocross pro and I would've needed all this modifications to my car to get out there and this, that next thing that's just really not the case. You can go out there and do it with whatever you got, as long as it's mechanically sound. So is that is that the advice that you would offer to someone that's looking to get started? Just just get started. Yeah. I mean, go to your local autocross track. Run a couple runs with the group, get comfortable with it, and jumping up to going to an HPD event at an actual track is not that hard of a job. It's actually a little easier if you ask me. When you want to learn something, whether it's about endurance racing, autocross, your neon, what are some of your go to resources? I just kind of scour the internet. The neon. I got lucky because there's a whole, like, a whole bunch of, documentation that came with it. You know, I got the, all types of books and logs and the history of the car and what's been done to it. And all that stuff I have on, a big binder, books and stuff with the neon. So that's that's helped with the neon a lot. But, you know, old forums and stuff. Internet works good, Facebook works great. There's the, the neon ECR group that they have on Facebook, which is great. A lot of good information. There. And then that's pretty much a lot of good information. You can talk to people at the track. That's good. Good for setups and what they're running and how they can help you. And you can always ask them what the, you need help. If you know you got a line you can't figure out or break point, you can't figure out a lot of good information out there. If you just want to ask the questions. Right. Yeah. There seems to be a good amount of community surrounding the neon. You're right, the Facebook groups, lots of opinions, but lots of ideas and a lot of help within those groups. I asked you what your racing goals were, and I love your response because, I'm going to read it verbatim. I have pretty low goals. Honestly. I don't have unlimited money. We're going to talk about that in a minute. Am I driving is average at best, I think. So my goal is pretty much to get on track when I can and enjoy my time. There. And I love the last part of that, because to me, that's what this is all about. We're just out there to have fun. We're out there to have a good time. If we collect hardware, super great. But just like you and your crew at the 24, hey, let's go do this. Let's go have some fun. Oh! Something broke. Let's fix it. I think that's great. Let's get to the end of the track. Just got to enjoy it. So that's all. It's a good way to just kind of get your mind off things in the real world. You know, just get to the track and just focus all your energy. Just being at the track. It's a good time. It's a totally different vibe, honestly. Yeah, it it is. And I even stopped by a track yesterday. Or it's, a track day was just going on HPD event, and I had some friends there, and I had the opportunity just kind of swing by and say hi. I was there for two hours. I left there with the biggest smile. I didn't bring my helmet. I didn't sit in a seat just hanging around the the cars. And I think that's what makes our sport so great. It's the people. It's being there. It's meeting people like yourself and just seeing the sport grow. And you don't have to have the big transporters. You don't have to have, you know, the big money and the fancy cars and the the Porsches or the BMW can have Dodge Neons. And you can still find them cheaper, with cages in them and everything. The great, great cars to get started in. I don't want to hear that. I'm done buying the. So let's go back to the budget comment you made, because this is a topic that comes up with with racers all over, whether they're experienced racers or just getting into it, you don't have to go into the dollars and cents. But how do you determine the budget you're going to put together for your autocross or your track days, or even your wheel the wheel stuff? Well, generally I kind of budget my time trials and autocross stuff, and so I kind of figure out, where my tire budget is, how many brakes I'm going to eat through. If you do this enough, you can kind of figure this, this, this out just from, you know, getting out there and doing it as consumables, as consumables are always the biggest budget eater, entry fees and all that stuff for this year because of the 24 hour race, I kind of just do all that to the wayside and just whatever money I was going to spend on time traveling and going to national events for autocross and stuff, I was just going to put off to the side and make sure I had a budget just for the auto. The endurance race, and that actually helped out a lot because we ended up buying a lot of, spare parts and just tools and stuff that a lot of it we didn't actually end up meeting. So it's nice to be prepared. That that's a good thing. So one thing we used to do, we we would sometimes go, circle track racing, not with the neon, but we would buy hubs, brakes, axles on Friday. And if we didn't need them, we chip them back on Monday. So for the for the listener it's kind of like how do I, how do I make a parts list. Just don't open the box. Take it with you. If you don't need it you just take it back to the parts store. Or in my case, I usually just throw it off to the side and hold on to it till I will need it. Because you could do that too. Yeah. What? So as you've been auto crossing and doing HPD events and, now the wheel. Well, what is the best racing advice you've received? I've got so many. Just good advice. But a lot of that is from the time trial community. Like, sometimes slower is faster. You can't always be just getting out there, you know, balls to the wall all the time. Sometimes you just slow it down a little bit. Get your bearings. In a sector, it's better to lose time in one turn. Then do a series of turns. So if you can set yourself up right for one turn, you can, and it'll make you faster in a session. Sometimes that's the way to go. Also, you know, you don't need horsepower. Horsepower is pretty overrated when it comes to road racing. I mean, it's nice to have, but you don't need it if you got, you know, how to tune a car and just need to make sure I can turn stick to the road. Yeah. Horsepower sometimes can cover up mistakes. Yeah, I say that all the time to, Well, we're getting towards the end here. And before we, wrap up with a final question, is there anything we didn't talk about that you wanted to cover? Any topics? Any ideas? I mean, I'm. I can't think of anything off the top of my head. All right, so now it's time for the final question. Think about autocross. Think about time trial. Have you ever been late to grid? Yes. All right, all right. What's the story? Well, there was the, running endurance race. We ended up being late. The grid on that one. Just because we missed the fire bottle. And a couple of the time trials. Agnes, been late. The grid just straight got there late. Is the driver meeting or anything like that? And sometimes they'll end. Sometimes I don't. Most of the time they're pretty good. They know they have a lot of people understand. Sometimes you're not always on time. Something, you know, traffic happens and delays and things like that. Well Nigel, it's been great having you on the Late to Grid podcast. I can't wait to see you at a track again very soon. I'll try to make it out. I'm always trying to make it out there so I'll see what my budget says and hopefully we'll, we'll see you face to face again. That'll be year. It's always a good time to be out there. Awesome. Well thanks again. Yeah.