It’s the run to the line. Workman’s off the track. He’s got all four Michelin over the white line. He’s defending. Welcome back to Off the Racing Line. I am your host Carlos Espia and with me as always is Mike Moore. Mike, welcome back. Thank you, sir. Getting ready for fall to come. Although the those cool temps coming to South Florida, so it’ll only be 89 instead of 94. So track season is upon us. I know. I can’t wait. Except for the Snowbirds, but they bring their racing cars, so it’s always nice to have them here. There you go.
Episode 15. Man, we made it. Who would have thought? I mean, I’m, you know, it feel felt pretty good about, you know, getting to three or four, but now 15. Yeah, we’re we’re gaining momentum. And does it feel like we’re getting the wind under our our wings? It does. You know, the show gets uh Well, hopefully our audience agrees that the show gets better every week. I don’t know that that’s necessarily the case, but I’d like to believe so. And yeah, no, we’re having a good time. I like to think that it’s a matter of just getting like the right um guest in here and maybe asking the right questions, getting some good stories. As long as we’re doing that, I think that’s pretty much the job, right? Yeah, absolutely. So, speaking of having interesting guests, let me do the introduction for the our guest today. Our guest today has been racing since 1974, back when SECA was the only game in town. He’s competed in the legendary 12 hours of Sebring, co-driven with names like Randy Post, and took third in a BMW Club Racing National Championship. He has spent 50 50 years turning wrenches at Red Line Bimmer, uh, a shop he now owns and operates, and today he also serves as the president of the BMW CCA Everglades chapter. Few people have seen the sport evolve as um as much as he has from the inside as a racer mechanic and a leader in the BMW community. Renie Bryant, welcome to the program, man. Thank you. Thanks for having me. How you feeling? Good.
How about you? Not too bad, man. That was that was quite the uh quite the introduction. You’ve seen it all. Yeah, I’ve been here doing this for a while. Very good. You know, it’s funny. um before every show, you know, we have um a call that that I do with with our guests and we go over sort of, you know, some topics and they tell me essentially their their story, their motorsport story. And uh Renie is no exception when I say that. I was surprised, you know, how much he’s actually done. I know that you’ve been around Yeah. for a long long time. Like when I first started in this game, um I I met Renie at his shop and and I saw pictures of him like black and white picture like not black and white just faded very faded in color pictures and I was like okay this cat has seen some you know some stuff but as we’re going through our phone call I was like damn like I didn’t realize you had done the 12 hours of steing that’s that’s pretty uh well we built that car out of a a 320 that we bought partially done. And then we finished it off and ran Miami Grand Prix first. Mhm. In ‘ 83, which was the first one. And we ran on Saturday before it rained. And then we took it to Sebring. And we had the engine, the transmission, the wheels, the tires. If we had broken something, we were done. But we ran the whole 12 hours. It was great. We were running out of gas toward the end. And people were like, “Oh, you’re still running. Oh, here. Take this gas.” It was great. So, we’re going to get into the 12 hours in a little bit. I want to jump uh into your mechanic story from mechanic, you know, to master technician. 50 years under the hood, particularly working in BMWs on BMWs. Pretty much. Yeah. Um what has changed the most in uh working on BMWs over the year? The electronics. Oh yeah. No, no doubt about it. I mean beginning the most complicated electronics are in the radio and now you got full width touchcreens and they can pull up any any information you want any data you want. You can watch TV you can do whatever you want to do and it’s not anything like we used to have. as as a as a nonh hardcore BMW uh person myself, I have heard that sort of the heyday of BMW was somewhere shortly after the 2000s uh and and since then lately they’ve just gotten to be over complicated, no longer really that ultimate driving machine. Do you do you agree with that assessment?
I do. Okay. Really the last one that we tell is the E46 series. That was the last easy to maintain, great car, drove great. And for us greatly uneducated BMW people, that is the year up through 2006. Yeah. Well, it’s Yeah, that’s the last. See, look at that. I’m learning. I’m learning something. Two to six. 2001. Actually, 2000. Yeah. To 2006. They were great. The E90s were pretty good, too. That’s one that followed on to that from 06 to 11. Those are okay. But then you start getting way more complicated. Way complicated. Way heavier. Yeah. It’s funny you bring that up because it was actually on on my my bullet points here as far as you know what you would consider the golden era of BMW. What what do you think that that was that golden era? Well, like you were saying, probably in the in the early 2000s, you had the E46, the E39, the E38, all great cars. And then the the follow on to the E38 was the later of the 7 series, the E65, and the E66. They’re terrible. So, what went wrong? bean counters. I think the what the bean counters the fact said you got to make this cheaper and they tried to do too much with what they had. They had we got to be better than Mercedes. That’s always what always the thing. We got to be better than them. We got to have the first V12. We got to have this. We got to have that. So they went overboard with a lot of that stuff. Gotcha. Do you see BMW heading in the right direction or the wrong direction? I think they’re coming back around. Yeah. I I see the M2, which is a great car, and I see that and I say there and some of the new um not project cars, but show cars, and they’re starting to come back around to the regular way of thinking. The other thing that I don’t I don’t like on the newer ones is the electronic power steering, the electric steering. It just doesn’t feel right. Yeah. Doesn’t feel BMW like at all. I drove one of those, I think it was the M2 that I drove, and it was it felt it felt funny. And I think my guess is that that’s just like an enthusiast thing, right? Because in the Porsche world, they will tell you that everything post 2012 when they got rid of the, you know, the true hydraulic steering, oh, it’s become numb and blah blah blah blah. I mean, the truth of the matter is it’s still exponentially better than 95% of the cars out there. But when you get those purist, you know, again, air cooled, right? There will people tell you that Porsche hasn’t made a great car since they went from air cooled. So everybody, every generation is sort of going to have their own complaint about whatever the latest and greatest technology is. That 2012 is saying the same break for us really. Mhm. When we went to the newer cars, what I don’t like is it feels on center. It feels like it wants to be on center all the time. You know, small inputs just wants you to go back to center. So, you’ve um we talked a little bit like I I mentioned over the phone about, you know, where you started, you know, you’re coming up in in the in the motorsports world in terms of uh Red Line, right? You now own You owned it. We already have. Yeah. Did my partner my partner Ned back in the day and now his son Tim?
Okay. So, silly question, but I always wonder about these things. Um, what’s like one of the dumbest things you’ve seen a customer come in, you know, a problem that a customer brought to you? It’s there’s a list. How long is this show? Hey, we’re running out of line, man. All right, I I’ll I’ll give you one. This lady comes in with a I think it was a 5 series of some kind. And we did some brake work on it and some other stuff, and the wheels were horrible. They were just black as this shirt. I said, “Well, we did a lot of work in this lady’s car. Let’s wash it up for So, we washed it. But we clean the wheels. Parts looking nice. She comes in, pays the bill. What did you do with my wheels? What do you mean? Those are No, my wheels are black. Those wheels are silver. What did you do with my wheels? You stole my wheels. Oh my. She was proud of her brake dust. Yeah. She had no idea that they weren’t supposed to be black. Well, it’s amazing. She must have not bought the car new or just forgot about I don’t know, man. But that was like That was one of the weirdest ones is Did she demand to have him black again? It took me 15 minutes to convince her that those were actually her wheels. Yeah. Did she then ask where she can get them powder coated? No, she wasn’t up on it that much. But yeah, she didn’t get See all the other cars out here. See, they all have silver wheels. Yours car does, too. Oh, wow. Okay. Interesting. This is a BMW owner. Yeah. H I mean, there’s a there’s a broad spectrum of it doesn’t matter what brand, right? There are people that there are people that drive around that don’t even know what model car it is, right? They see it as transportation from point A to point B. They walked into a dealer one day and said, “Oh, look at this pretty car. It’s got a nice color interior and they made their entire purchase decision off of that.” So, yeah, that’s how the old lady ends up with the M3. Right. Exactly. Yes. Right. Um, let’s let’s uh transition over to the 12 hours at Sebring and you racing that. Um, talk to me a little bit about that experience and maybe the evolution of that race as you’ve seen it over the years. Well, the first one I ever went to was in 1970 with a friend of mine’s dad and him. I didn’t even drive there. He drove us there and I’ve been to everyone since. So, I’ve seen a lot of different stuff. It used to be there was a lot of back in the day like um backyard builders like us. You know, we bought that 2002. We built it and nobody told us we couldn’t go to the 12 hours of Sebring. So, we did, right? You know, we had we we had the Webers on it and I drove and two and Axel and and Mike Guido drove and we just kept turning laps. The thing was bulletproof. One thing that was pretty funny was on the back straight back when used that was on the 5.1 mile course. So, it was way longer than it is today. And uh somehow or another I got in front Peter Greg was just going to pass me in the Porsche when the full course yellow came out. So, he couldn’t pass me. So, we’re out in the back where nobody can see and he comes up next to me. He goes, “Go.” Because he wasn’t going to sit behind me the whole time, right? Because back then, you know, I thought you had to slow down for a yellow. Not in that car. You’re just going going as fast as it would go the whole time. Nobody noticed. So, I’m surprised, you know, I think watching the that race now, you just see some super cars and, you know, some professional teams. You’re saying that back then you could just show up and race it? Yeah. Anybody? We did it. Bob Speed Products brought their Maverick. I mean, there were guys from Central Florida and a Camaro. I remember guys would bring Porsches and they would just run like SECA one weekend and then come over and run the 12-h hour. So, well, they started I think 83 cars in that race. Yeah. I mean, they went from one bridge all the way down the road around the corner and now they start 40. Right. Okay. So, that’s probably one of the the big changes that you’ve seen over the years. It’s mostly professional teams now, right? No, it’s all professional teams. There’s there’s no amateurs out there anymore. What else have you seen changes as far as the evolution goes? Um well, obviously the cars are faster. Yeah. Uh there’s a lot more money being spent. I mean, like I said, we used to do it ourselves. You can’t do that anymore. You need a half a million bucks to go out there and run. Now, we were there not long ago uh with Farah running one of our events. Um and somebody was saying something. It was anecdotally about how that race, that one race, the 12 hours, basically generates enough revenue for that track for the year. Do you think that’s true? I don’t think that’s true. No. No. Well, NASCAR owns the track now, you know, right? Well, the lease on the track. You can’t own the track. You can only lease it from the Sebring airport authority. Really? Yeah. Okay. But yeah, that’s um it runs all year. There’s SECA, there’s FAR, there’s testing, there’s all kinds of stuff out there. Yeah, everybody runs it. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. And what was you mentioned the track configuration, how it’s now, how back in the day it was 5.1. I know that you know the hairpin by the hotel used to go Yeah. much further. What are the other significant track changes were? Mostly on the back straight, right, where 16 is now, that used to be way down on the other end. Interesting. You’d go out, you’d go around the restaurant at the airport, actually. Oh, okay. Okay. Cuz people would sit on the patio in the airport and watch the cars go by. Gotcha. Okay. So So they just shortened it up this way mostly to get it off of the air active runways, right? Cuz the FAA would have a cow whenever they had to go out and have a race. Oh, you have to shut down the airport. So they made it now so it doesn’t matter. That makes sense. And the other changes is from 145 they they put that in when they ran the FIA supercars there like the McLaren F1 and and the Mercedes GTR. They put that little squiggle in before you get to 16. That didn’t used to be there. Gotcha. So, it was um I imagine took out my favorite corner, which was the Green Park chicane. And where was that? That was you come out of the hairpin and you go down what is a quarter mile or so, and you make that there’s a little squiggle to the right. Right. That used to be you had to turn right and left. There was no going through there flat. Gotcha. Okay. Out there where the the club course pit entrance is. Exactly. I used to make all kinds. I had a a neon factory car, an ACR, and I used to make all kinds of time in there because it was front drive, so you could just pound on it. So, it sounds like um it used to be maybe a little bit of a wild wild west, you know, back in the day. Not so much anymore. No, not so much in the racing side. Still on the on the spectator side. Yeah. It’s not as crazy it used to be cuz we used to have some real fun over there back in the day. But um tell me what it was like racing with some of these legends that you’ve raced with. You mentioned Randy Post. Yeah. What was that like? He’s, you know, he’s a really truly nice guy and we had a good time. He’s like, “Hey, you want to go do this?” Sure. When I was racing, I had a Mini. I had the 49th Mini built. The factory gave me to race it for two years and there was a 12 hours of Homestead. So, I called him up said, “Hey, you want to race this? Sure. Will you buy me dinner?” “Yeah, it’s cheap because he’s a vegan, so it was easy.” And uh so he came down and ran and my other friend Kates B. Jones came and we all ran and I think we ended up finishing sixth overall in a 12-h hour race with for with the car took five minutes to fill it because it had a stock fuel filler. But he and Casey were out there trading the hot laps or burning a set of tires off the car in 45 minutes off the front. Anyway, yeah. Yeah. Um, tell me a little bit about, um, we talked about the SECA being really the only game in town back in the 70s, early 80s. Um, what was that like then? And then, um, how have you seen the maybe the changes in the sport as some of the new clubs have, you know, come in? It was back well, like, you know, it was much bigger back then. We’d get 100 200 cars. We’d have two nationals a year at PBIR and run maybe six or eight races a year. And it was the whole thing was there was a lot more it was a lot more friendly back then I think because we’d have a beer party every Saturday night and everybody would come everybody that raced all the corner workers the whole thing be m you know hundred people there maybe more and it’s tapered off is the sport is expensive obviously unless people have the ability to do it. So the main thing I’ve seen is smaller numbers and smaller people, smaller crowds. And do you think part of that is also because there are just more organizations doing it, so it’s a little bit more spread out or do you think that the overall volume of participants is just down? I think the overall volume of participants is down, right? So it’s it’s probably it’s between the two things with the overall number of participants being down and the number of avenues that you can do it. That’s probably has really hurt when you go to the average event now, you know, if there’s 30 cars because there used to only be four players in town and now there’s eight players in town. Yeah. I mean to that to you know that line of thinking maybe it’s just more spread out you know because the sport is is gaining more popularity you know in terms of HPDE you know there’s podcasts like this you know we’re talking about telling everybody that they can put their own uh street car and learn how to drive it on on a racetrack and today’s cars you know are coming out and they’re so capable that you can’t really extract everything out of it legally on the street. So, the only way to really do that is on on the track. So, I tend to believe that there are more people doing it now is they’re just more spread out. Yeah. Well, we didn’t have HPDs back then. You had to have a race car. There was no take your street car out. Yeah. And maybe that’s it. Maybe maybe the the number of people there’s since HPD didn’t exist 30 years ago, you know, you got to figure the number of people that went out there and raced and thought, “Well, I really like this, but man, it sure is expensive.” and the commitment. Yeah. If I could only if I can come out and only do it two or three times a year and not have to get quite as prepared and I don’t have to worry about, you know, certifications and roll cages and all that other stuff and a truck and a trailer and all that other I can just drive, you know, my street car here and show up and, you know, buy a helmet for a couple hundred bucks and the rest of it, the car stock, you know, a couple little things just to make sure from a maintenance standpoint, your brake pads, your fluid, and yeah, I’m just going to go out and have a more casual time. If that didn’t exist before, your your choice was either do nothing or go sort of allin, whereas now you have that middle ground. So I’m curious because you were there from the beginning and you saw the emergence of HPDE clubs, right? You saw the rise of especially in South Florida of PBOC, NASA BMW club, we used to do it too. We had performance driving events as well. So tell me a little bit about that. I’m really curious. Um when did HPDE come into the picture and who brought into the picture? Um, I think PCA was probably one of the first ones to do it. Oh, yeah. And then BMW club we started doing I I’m trying to remember what year that would have been. And and before that got started, was it was autocross a thing? It was autocross. Okay. And it was much bigger, too. There were more people doing that because you couldn’t take your car on the track. Right. Right. But now, right, you got to figure there’s a number of people like I’ve never done an autocross event. My first my first is you stand out in the sun all day for 3 minutes of track time, right? And you got to be on right now when you hit the button. There’s no take a couple laps and figure it out. There’s no warm up. No warm-up laps, no walk the course, none of that stuff. You go. Yeah. So, it’s kind of a nerd sport really because this guy’s got a different brain than we do. All right. So, so PCA were probably the ones that initiated the whole HPD experience. Um I I want to hear from your perspective like when you started seeing you know the the chins and the PBC’s like what was that like? Did you see it as a sort of a welcoming thing? I think so. Yeah. I think it’s great. I think more people coming into the sport no matter what they’re doing is great. You know I was in instru right seat instructor for quite a while and people don’t even want to do that anymore because you get somebody that goes out and they buy a 600 horsepower car and they don’t want to listen to you. you can very easily end up in the wall and people have Yes, for sure. You know, it’s the right seat guys are are few and far between. Yeah, we had uh we had uh I’m not going to out anybody here, but and one of one of our recent registrations, you know, we ask people, hey, what is your experience level to try and make sure, okay, do they need an instructor? Do they not need an instructor? If they do need an instructor, obviously, you know, we’re going to put somebody that maybe has only instructed a couple of events with somebody that has never been to the track before. Whereas if somebody is, you know, looking for a little bit more advanced coaching, we’re going to put them with somebody that’s a little bit more senior instructor. So we always ask for the the amount of experience that people have. In one of our recent registrations, the the person under experience put street hooning. So I thought to myself, well, good luck to this instructor. So I guess I’m going to draw draw some uh make them draw straws and whoever gets the short straw is getting street. Those guys always give me the problem. To to his credit though, to to that driver’s credit, he did register for the right group. Correct. Typically when we see something like that, they register for like solo, right? Like I’ve got 30 years of experience driving on the street. My hope is that he was doing it sort of half injust and that he was kidding. We’ll find out. Well, we had a guy BMW school at Sebring and uh he was an ambulance driver. So I know how to drive. I drive ambulance on the street all day. I know what I’m doing. I don’t even need to be here. You guys, I don’t need an instructor. I’m good. were like, “Okay.” Right. Second session, he put it on the door in the hairpin. Right. Yeah. We didn’t see him anymore. He went away. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s unfortunate. That’s something that we talk about on the show is that we don’t want people to have that experience because they usually don’t come back. No. And like you said, the sport is always in need of more drivers. And that I think that’s part of the reason why it’s the community is so welcoming because we realize like we want to have fun with other people out there. So we want more people to come out. So we don’t want anybody to go out there and just have a bad day. No, you know, it’s not it’s not ideal cuz they tell their friends and Right. Yeah. No, and it’s it very much is a word of mouth thing, right? Social media, people are posting their laps and that kind of stuff. So do you think SECA is growing, stagnant or dying in Florida? Unfortunately, I got to say I think it’s dying. Yeah. And why do you think that is? Well, it’s the there’s other things they can do. You can take your boat out and go fishing. You can go to the baseball game, the football game. There’s so much to do down here. There’s a million things you can do. But that was always the case in South Florida, though. Well, there’s more people down here now. I think there’s more there’s more interaction around other things. Uh but it’s also like like we were saying, it’s expensive. Yeah. If you have a dedicated race car now, you have to have a truck, you have to have a trailer, you have to have a place to keep it, you have to work on it. It’s not easy as you know. Yeah. So, there’s there’s less and less and less people doing for us for SECA. I’m on the board SECA as well. And our we make all our money for the whole year on the majors the first of the year cuz we’ll get 230 240 cars because the first major of the year everybody comes down here to get points and that pays for because we lose money on every other race that we run. We’ll lose 20 $30,000 on every race. That’s crazy from our end of the world. And was it always like that? I’m thinking I’m thinking in terms of track fees like the cost to rent the track. Oh yeah, it’s astronomical now. Homestead just this year bumped it five grand. Five grand an event. I know because I hear I hear from the FAR ownership. They tell me how much it cost. Well, then you get tracks like Kota that I heard that the the track fees that Kota charges are like I think it’s like 30 as much as you know Sebring or something like that. Yeah. I heard there’s a lot of events that aren’t going to happen now because it’s just too expensive, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, no. you know, as as being involved with the organization that puts it together. Obviously, you know, you this is not a charitable Yeah. thing that they’re running here, right? They’ve got to make money. So, as participation, if that starts to wayne while at the same time, the tracks are increasing their rates, you know, something’s got to give eventually. Yeah. You know, it’s I uh recently, I think it was this week, I put out the the the challenge. I I made a short about the uh the challenge um for for street racers and where I basically challenged them to bring it to the to the racetrack and if they turn a faster lap than Mike or myself, then I’ll give them free track days for the rest of the year. Um it was it actually had a relatively warm reception, but one of the comments that I saw on TikTok, it kind of stood out and somebody was saying that it would help if it wasn’t so expensive, which is very valid. It’s a valid point. It’s expensive just to just for the track fees, right? Um, somebody mentioned also that in California, I don’t know where, I don’t know how, you know, truth this is, but they were saying that they were doing track days for 175 bucks, you know, something like that. Like, if we were able to do that, I would do it all day long because it invites more people to come and try out the sport. But it’s just with these track fees, I’m telling you, it’s 15 $20,000 a day. You know, I think Sebring is even the ambulance plus the plus the workers workers plus the emergency services insurance like it adds up. So there’s no way that we could charge that little unless we can somehow generate 200 cars. Yeah. Well, there’s then it becomes a space issue, right? You can put Yeah. You know, so yeah, I I can’t imagine what the quality of the track is that they can get away with only charging $175 and not losing Yeah. a whole lot of money. And then the other factor is, you know, instructors, right? And you mentioned you know instructors is is our bottleneck right and we live and die by the number of instructors that that we have available you know not I don’t think it’s just far this is every organization that’s everybody in order to keep generating and bringing in new drivers we need to train them and to train them we need instructors and I think to your point a lot of instructors are basically saying ah I’m done with this I’m it’s I think the cars are just getting too fast yeah and it’s it it I think people coming to the realization that this could end badly at any moment. Well, and I think another factor there is the amount of money that it costs to go, right? You just mentioned, you know, a track out in California where you can go for $175. So, if I’m an instructor, um, and I say to myself, “All right, well, I can either pay $175 and not risk my life sitting in the right seat with somebody that has never that I don’t know, you know, maybe it’s not worth saving $175 to do that.” Now, if the track fee is $500, suddenly, you know, maybe it is worth me volunteering my time uh for those track fees. But yeah, you know, I mean, if if it was 20 bucks, you’re not getting anybody to sit in the right seat, right? Personally, as an instructor, I love seeing that light bulb come on. Oh, yeah. No, it’s just the best thing. Yeah. There are I mean, you know, instructors fall into a wide group of people, but but by and large, there are those that do it because they’re volunteering their time so that they don’t have to pay the track fee. And there are those that are doing it like you and I and Carlos that you get that there’s you know there’s there’s a point where uh especially before I started competing in SLS you know I almost got more enjoyment out of instructing than I did driving because when you see that light bulb go off and you can see that smile behind you know they get out and they’re giving you high fives and stuff when they realize just what the car is capable of and all that they’ve learned over the course of the day you know that’s that really does it for see it is like like you have the street survival shirt on that. It’s I don’t if anybody knows that’s a teen driving program, you know, of course that we do at BMW Club. And a lot of the kids that it’s this whole day Saturday, they have to be there at 8:00 in the morning. Can’t use their phone all day. They can’t hang out with their friends. They don’t want to be there. Somebody made them go. That’s at about 9:30, 10:00. By about 1 or two, they’re like, “Oh, this is fun. Let me go do it again. I love it.” And it’s it’s great to see that happen. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that’s that’s one of those programs that I uh it’s one of my the favorite my favorite things that the club does, the BMW CCA club does. Um there are other issues that I’d actually like to bring up um regarding the BMW CCA, but to close the the point on on the instructor thing, um I I like I like instructing. Um, I think a lot of instructors also feel this way, they can vicariously live through that student that for that first track day cuz you only get your first once, right? And so trying to relive that through a student, I think it’s so great cuz you feel it. You feel the energy, you know, that they’re like, “This is amazing. This is the greatest thing that I’ve done in I don’t know how long.” And you as an instructor, you’re part of that. You’re part of that experience. And it’s it’s a high, you know, and and I think that’s one of the reasons why instructors keep doing it. Yeah, for sure. To watch somebody go from that sort of nervous panic, oh my god, this is terrifying. I don’t have any idea what I’m doing to having that level of confidence at the end. Even that little bit that that a beginner gains over that first day is tremendous. And the way the student that driver like when they know that it was because of you the instructor that they were able to get to that point in a relatively short amount of time, you know, from the morning to the afternoon or from Saturday to Sunday, they’re a completely different driver. And they turn to you and they look at you and they say, “Thank you. That was amazing.” And you know that that thank you was directed to you because you made that happen as an instructor. Yeah. They know that they could not have accomplished that without you. And it’s a great feeling. Yeah. I love that’s one of the one of the things I enjoy most after we do an event. You know, we send out an email afterwards and we ask um both the instructor for feedback on the student to make sure that we put them in the right group next time, but we also ask the students for feedback on their instructors. Um and you know, the majority of times they’ll provide at least a sentence or two. And I always take that and forward it to the instructors for saying, “Hey man, here’s your virtual pat on the back. Person loved it. They said, “Hey, if I, you know, want to come to the next event, can I you know, please hook me up? if I want. I got one today where the the guy just signed up yesterday and he said, “Oh, you know, can you pair me with Jerry because I went with him last time and it was awesome.” I I love reading those and I’m glad that you you CC me on them. I would say nine times out of 10 that student requests that that instructor over again, which is a compliment, but at the same time, you know, this as a chief instructor, you want them to have a different experience with a different instructor. So, as much as we’d like to, you know, oblige What are you cutting them short? You get to you get to a point where it definitely is a benefit to to have somebody different sit the right seat. Now, if somebody’s coming for an event and they’re coming both days, I think from a consistency standpoint, like you’re learning so much from day zero to day two, that there’s a big benefit to having that same voice and that same But yes, you’re absolutely right. Once you get to day, you know, four or five, um, if they if they aren’t solo yet at that point in time, yeah, you know, there’s definitely, you know, everybody has different learning techniques. has different learning styles. Um, so yeah, mixing it up a little bit definitely a benefit to have there’s there’s more than one way around the track. Yeah. Right. Um, so the different instructor is going to take a little bit of a different approach with people and there’s there’s absolutely a benefit to doing it. Well, we’ve swapped instructors in the day too because one guy doesn’t, you know, the instructor come, I can’t deal with this guy, the student, I can’t deal with this guy. Swap them around, give them to somebody else and everybody everything works for. Yeah. And the majority of times we have had that same experience. And it in the overwhelming majority of times it’s not like the student was wrong and the instructor was right or vice versa. It’s just sometimes people just have personality conflict. You just have different communication styles. And like I said, it’s not that one of them was right and one was wrong. You switch it. They both have a great day. Look, we want everybody to have a great time, right? The instructors and the beginners. So, we want both of them to come back. Yeah. All right. Let’s talk about the BMW CCA, which is the car club of America. Yes, sir. One of the things that I mentioned, um, and I’m wearing the shirt, the Street Survival, um, I I helped you guys as a coach. Um, I love that program. Um, Renie already talked a little bit about it. Basically, we they bring uh teenagers out and they it’s it’s almost like uh the way that we did Chin, like a taste of the track. So, we do some slalom exercises. We I think we do some threshold breaking. Well, the first thing you do is threshold breaking. Yeah. Because we want them to feel what the ABS feels like when the first time they hit it. A lot of the experiences we wanted them not to be the first time on the road when they see it. So ABS braking, ABS and turning, then they’ll get a classroom instruction, which is me, and then the next one they do is uh the slalom, like you said, because I’ve had, you know, I used to be a a car instructor for a long time before I moved to the classroom. And they just leave the car and drive. And I say, “Put it in first.” Am I allowed to do that? Like, yeah, you can do that. It’s okay. They put it in first and then they can feel the car engine breaking and slowing down. on like wow that’s totally different like yeah imagine that we also did uh some skid pad exercises the last one of the days a wet skid pad yeah where you actually they get to feel the difference between um under steering and over steer well we teach them how to catch a wet skid right so they’re not on 95 somewhere the first time it happens to them they just panic 80% of them nail the brakes every single time it’s like don’t do that so you teach them that and you know they’re going to be a better driver for sure you’re going to save a whole bunch of you know it’s save their life in fact just because they do it better and is do you does is this event still go on and do you use do you use Sebring as a venue because of this it’s a different chapter up there FIU right or somewhere I run uh Miami Dade College North which is actually the police training compound oh so it’s great it’s got everything we want it’s got the skid pad it’s got a classroom it’s got bleachers because the parents come yeah that’s what I I I wasn’t aware that anybody other than Sebring had a skid pad but obviously the police. That’s actually the hardest thing. If we could find more venues, we’d run more schools, you know. Um, from what I remember at that school, it I guess just anecdotally, it was kind of funny um being an instructor with a with a teenager and I could feel either the under steer or the over steer well before they ever did because they’re not famili they’re just learning how to drive really. And so I remember one of the students like I think the rear end was kicking out and I was like counter steer counter steer and it was just such a slow like oh I have to go the other way and by that time it was already too late but like we take that for granted just all the experience that we have as drivers but you see it with the brand new driver 16year-old you know and they they like oh I guess I got to go the other way and it’s already too late but that’s the place to do it on the highway, right? To Ry’s point, so that when they start hydroplaning on I95 the first time, they’re just like, “Oh, yeah. This feels familiar and I’m going to turn into it and Right.” Yeah. You know, and the other funniest thing is the girls are usually better students. Oh, yeah. What do you think? Quicker. I think they listen more. Well, I think the guys already think that they know what they’re doing. I don’t need But the girls listen to you and they do what you tell them and they turn out to be better students. Well, especially at that age, right? Everybody knows the girls mature faster and Yeah. the boys are the hard-headed goobers that don’t know what the hell is going on. Oh yeah, I’m not going to listen to you. Just like would I wouldn’t listen to my dad. Whereas the the girls are a little bit like, okay, I’m going to go into this. I’m a little bit more cautious, so I’m going to actually listen to what my teacher has to say. Yeah. So, yeah, absolutely great pro uh program. I encourage anybody to to take their kids, you know, through that one. We’re looking at, I think, mid- November for one right now when they’re of uh driving age. Want to drive on a real racetrack but don’t have a car? Velocity Track Experience offers track ready car rentals for HPDE and racing. Whether you’re flying in from out of state, out of the country, or you want full track support without worrying about prep, maintenance, or transport, this is your arrive and drive solution. From an agile Mazda MX5 to a fully prepped BMW race car, Velocity provides everything you need to hit the track with confidence, including expert support and optional coaching. Just book your favorite track car, show up and drive. Go to velocity trackperience.com and start your track adventure today. To that, I I do have a gripe with the the BMW CCA. Well, what is it? So, I had forgotten about this entirely. Um, of course, as I’m putting together the the draft for the episode, like I remembered it. I was like, “Oh, yeah.” and I started getting angry again when I real when I remembered it. So, here it is. U I’ll give it to you. Um I was a member of the the CCA for a couple years and I had started with another another guy. We started Florida Bimmers, a a BMW club. Um and we wanted to do, you know, driving, we wanted to do rallies, we wanted to do I mentioned this a couple of times on the show, we wanted to do track days. And so I started bringing up some of these ideas to the to the club. Um and uh they were just pretty much like, “Yeah, no, no, we’re not going to do that.” And so I thought, “Okay, instead of complaining about it, um I’m not the kind to sit there and complain, why not just try to change the culture?” So I went for a a board position. I had like already two years I was eligible to be a board member and it’s just a matter of getting the votes and you become a board member. So I went after that and I I believe the other guy that owned Florida Bmers with me went after another position. Um and then at the president at that time which I’m not going to mention her name yeah we she reaches out to me with this scolding email telling me that I know what you’re doing. you you want to infiltrate us essentially and misuse the the chapter’s funds, you know, so you can go and do these these fun things and this and that. Like she was accusing me of all these things when in reality my the purpose for me wanting to bring sort of a new blood to this is we already had several hundred members, Florida Bimmers, and I would say more than half didn’t even know what BMW CCA was. So I was like, you know what, I can introduce them. Why have members here, members there? Let’s just bring them all together under one umbrella and we can do all these different events. And so, and so essentially my desire to go for a board position was shut down by one member. She was the judge, jury, and executioner. And I got such a bad taste in my mouth. I was like, really? This is the way that a club runs? Like I can’t I I I can’t imagine that it’s growing based on on what I saw. Yeah. She’s not there anymore. She got she went away. Yeah. But but it’s that mentality I think still lingers. No. That’s why we wanted her to go away because you were not the only one. If if she didn’t like it, if it wasn’t her idea, that wasn’t it. It was done. Cuz I said, “Listen, Carlos here is going to help us. He’s going to bring us all these people. The you know, we’re going to do this cool. It’s going to be great. You know, he’s he’s going to be But you know, well, he’s going to bring non-members in and he’s going to spend. So, isn’t that how you and then you make Isn’t the goal to bring non-members in to grow the membership? Yeah. Yeah. That’s why Yeah. There’s It’s a whole thing. So, so yeah, man. I was like really upset and I Yeah, I was on your side. I was I know you were. I know you because you’re a former racer, you know, so I know Renie was going to, you know, be on my side, but it I was, you know, thinking about it now years later, I realized that it wasn’t so much what was done to me. It was more about I think just wasted potential, right? Like we could have done something really great with that club. And the club used to be like a big thing. you know, BMW CCA, like you mentioned, they had club racing here in Florida, like it’s become less and less. I wonder why, you know, with that sort of mentality, you know, if that’s the way that you’re treating newer members, younger members, you know, at the time I was, you know, quite younger. Um, I just I I I wish they would change that mentality because I would imagine I haven’t been back in in a few several years, but I imagine that it’s still sort of, you know, the older types that don’t really care to do, you know, track days or anything like that. Do stuff like that. I mean, like, I’m the president. I get to talk about stuff like that and see if I can make it happen. I’d love to do that stuff, but as we were talking about before, it’s become prohibitively expensive. Yeah. You know, there’s no way we could run Homestead for 30 cars. Would it would kill us. And the other thing I also realized is the the whole liability and insurance bit, right? Um I remember years ago before I got my agency started like full-time, I I got a position in a Fortune 500 company. It was my first one working at in that size and I realized like I don’t ever want to work with a company this big because any decision it was it was like trying to move this gigantic robot in a different direction and it took meeting after meeting different departments to try to change the color of you know the banner on a website or something stupid like that you know I’m like this is dumb like I I like I like being quick about things making quick decisions and implementing those changes. And that’s kind of the way that I felt the BMW CCA chapter was. It’s like change was very very difficult and they were very reluctant to accept any kind of change at that time. You’re 100% correct. So it’s changed. Yeah. Yeah. We we got it was only I only have four other board members than me. So it’s a lot less people a lot less stuff to deal with. Good. And where where does the region go to and from geographically? All the way across the state and we go far north as I think Indian River County. Okay. So we’re pretty big like Okchobee South kind of. Yeah. We’re at 1500 members. We’re we’re pretty good. Okay. So all the way up to Melbourne type. Yeah. I don’t know if No, there’s another one. Sunshine members up there. Vero something like that. Yeah. So, where where I was going with that as far as the insurance and liability, um I know that that’s that’s also a big hurdle because I’ve been talking to Brian Jacobs. He’s the the chapter president with the PCA here. Um so, trying to get that chapter to do like a track day. Oh my goodness. Even if it’s a joint event, they have to specifically say this is not a PCA event. We’re doing this in conjunction with somebody else and so forth, you know. And I know that BMW CCA is probably not that much different than than that. I think you’d be surprised. Well, I don’t know, Renie. I remember you invited me to to a barbecue not long ago. I actually I came across my my daughter and I were riding bicycles at Morami Park again this year. So, same place. And I came and I saw all these BMWs and I was like, “Oh, what’s going on over here?” My people. Yeah. I rode my bike over there with my daughter and they was ready. I was like, “Oh, it’s a barbecue. So, come on in.” you know, like have some food. So, I started walking up there and somebody a woman, I don’t know who it was, she’s like, “Oh, stop, stop. Did you sign the waiver?” I’m like, “For waiver? We have we have we have to have waivers for that.” Goodness. So, yeah. My point my point is like like running running with FAR like we welcome other organizations like BMW CCA and PCA. I’m talk I’m actively speaking with Brian about trying to get you know some of those guys to run with us and I think what’s helping is us changing the culture within a far now that it’s much safer. It’s run a lot more efficiently and and safer. Um clubs like PCA and hopefully BMW CCC are more apt to want to participate with us knowing that they’re going to be their members are going to be treated well. Right. Well, and isn’t that sort of I’m imagining that’s how PBOC first started, right? That there there wasn’t quite enough interest on the from the PCA side to be able to get a whole PCA specific event and there wasn’t enough interest on the the BMW CCA side. So the two groups came together and said, well, we can spawn this other thing that doesn’t have as much politics involved because if we can take, you know, get the field with half PCA members and half BMW CCA members, then maybe we can actually bring enough people that that we can not lose money. It’s a good point. That was a Bob Varela thing that started PBOC because PCA existed and BMW club existed at the same time and it people got siphoned off from both clubs to run that, right? Oh, it was just it was another organization where he could run. Yeah. But I think to your point, there’s less of that national oversight and li, you know, liability. It was pretty much him and that was that. Yeah. It’s like we’re going to run the show the way that we want to. And I thought they did a pretty good job. They did. All right. It’s your point with the insurance uh through National if I want to have like when we do Target 66, they it’s free insurance. I just put in a form and it’s free. We just have to get the waiverss, right? So, as long as we get the waivers, the national will support it, right? And even if you want to do a driving event, it’s a minimal minimal amount of money. Well, I’ll I’ll tell you this here live as we’re recording. Yeah. If you guys wanted to do something with FAR in, you know, essentially if if you could bring, let’s say, 15 20 cars of your members, we would give you your own run group. Okay? And that way you guys are running, you know, your members are running at, you know, at the same time as long as you provide your own instructors for them. Like we can make something like that happen. Um I just I want to make sure that everybody is getting their fill for Yeah. for for track days, you know, and they don’t have to go searching somewhere else for it. Yeah. No, I’m all for it. I get people asking, “Are we going to do any track events? You’re opening this up to us. It’s awesome. We could do that.” Yeah. So anyway, so that’s something we can have a discussion on, you know, offline. Let’s transition over to um EVs versus gas powered vehicles. Do you think that EVs will eventually just kill the the gas powered engine? Uh I don’t think so. No, I don’t think so. I mean, you’re even seeing it now where a lot of manufacturers are walking back their EV programs like Mercedes and Chevy. Oh, we’re going to be all EV by 2030. Well, that went away. Mercedes was so into it that now Mercedes is going to buy engines from BMW because they don’t have new engines for their cars and BMW has the specs that they want. So, I think hybrids will come around. Yeah, because that makes way more sense than a pure EV. Well, you just saw a huge shift talking about manufacturers and Porsche, right? Porsche they they were they had come out and for years they had been saying the Boxster came in is coming to an end, right? 2025 is going to be the end. I think production ends in like 3 weeks or something and they just last week announced that they were so supposedly they were moving to all those plat that platform is going to be all EV, right? Um, and they just announced at their their latest uh investor their latest investor call uh just a few days ago that they’re going to bring the next generation 718 boxer and Cayman. They’re going to bring the top level trim models are going to continue to have a combustion engine because everything is just falling flat on its face. There is a I believe that there’s a time and a place uh for EVs. Um we have one and it’s a terrible one, but if it wasn’t for the fact that it wasn’t terrible, uh we would enjoy the ownership experience. you know, if you’re just running around town and stuff. Oh, yeah. You know, my my girls have one and part of that was I know that my girls are never going to have to go to a gas station at 1:00 in the morning if they’re on their way back from the club, right? They can always just come straight home. Now, obviously, they have to be responsible enough to make sure the car is charged enough, but you know, as battery technology gets better, once you get to a point where you can have an EV that has 400 miles of range and it can charge in 7 minutes instead of the 25, 30, 35 does now, then it will become it’ll it’ll make a lot more sense. Oh, for sure. You see these guys that do cross-country trips and you you know they have to find a charger and half the time they find one it doesn’t work and it adds like two days to the trip. Yeah. And they’re sweating trying to get to the next place. I think we’re going to get to that place whether it’s uh electric vehicles or hydrogen vehicles which I’d love to get into that with you but unfortunately we’re running out of time. I remember of the BMW hydrogen 7. Oh yeah. What whatever happened just give me a synopsis of why that never took off. uh infrastructure. Yeah, there’s no hydrogen state. The closest hydrogen station is at Cape Canaveral at that point. Yeah. And that’s the problem. They’re great cars. They’re safe. They’re fast. They make more power, but there’s no infrastructure. You can’t fill it up. I would imagine that um there’s probably not a lot of money to be made there. Also, hydrogen gas station or gas stations, but hydro Yeah, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t think so. Yeah, I think that’s the the the the biggest I think fallback is that there’s not a lot of money to be made. So, let’s not push that one, you know, with with EVs, you know, there’s the batteries, there’s there’s a lot of stuff there components that you can make a lot of money from, you know. Oh, yeah. I still think I still believe that at some point, probably within our lifetime, especially with the rise of autonomous vehicles, I think we’re going to be sitting down with our grandchildren one day and they’re going to be asking us what it was like to drive a car because there’s going to come a point where kids just don’t want to. We’re seeing it already. Oh, yeah. They don’t want to drive. They don’t need to drive because there’s Uber, autonomous vehicles are going to be on the rise and people are just going to, you know, call for a vehicle. I think soon you’re probably not going to even own a vehicle. You’re just going to have like a like a lease kind of like Netflix where you just rent whatever movie you want. You just choose the car you want and it comes and picks you up. So, I don’t think I I don’t think that we’re going to outlive that. I think we’re going to be telling our kids that, you know, we used to race cars. Well, there you know, there are there just like there are different instructors, some that do it for the free track time and some do it because they love it. There are people that that don’t see driving as a pure way to get from point A to point B. Right? If you told the majority of the population, “Yeah, I go to a racetrack and I drive around in a closed circuit and I spend hundreds of dollars doing it and hours and I sweat and it suck brakes and it’s miserable and I hate everything about it other than the fact that it’s awesome.” They’d look at you like you were a crazy person. Yeah. Well, it’s like when horses cars took over for horses. Everybody said, “Oh, there’ll be no more horses. They’re all going to be gone. You won’t be able to see them.” And people now people have leisure horses. There’s more of them now than there were then. So it may go the same way with cars. Yeah. The guy that goes to work every day, he can walks out, there’s a car, it takes him to work, then it goes and takes somebody else to work. But there’ll be track like you’ve seen all the country club tracks that are coming around now. So there’ll be P1, there’ll be motor enclave, there’ll be concourse club, and that’s where you’ll go drive. That’s crazy, man. We we have a handful of of uh private tracks now. And there’s another one close to Jacksonville that’s being built. It’ll be interesting to see what happens there because I’ve heard mixed reviews of, you know, like how is Flat Rock doing and how is, you know, the the what is it? Circuit Florida, the new one, right? Like, yeah, you you you would think that at some point in time that’s going to become a supply and demand issue. Um, where that point is, well, when it does, it’ll open it up to more like people like us, right? Yeah. when they can’t when they can’t when they can’t sell when they can’t sell. Yeah. They they’ve run out of people to to drop down $200,000 a year to do it and to buy to build a $3 million home then. Yeah. All right. Ready? We are under 10 minutes, so we’re going to do a rapid fire segment and hopefully we can crank these out really, really quickly. All right, I’m ready. All right, rapid fire questions. Here we go. Which teaches you more, wrenching on a BMW for 50 years or racing them? It’s two different skills. I think you you learn more wrenching on them. Yeah. You know the insides. You know what they do. So when you’re driving it, you can feel stuff and go, “Oh crap, I got to do this or I got to do that. You know what the sounds are. You know what’s going to happen.” All right, that makes sense. Um, what’s more political, SECA rules meetings or a BMW CCA boardroom? Um, SECA for sure. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Those old gray-haired guys have been doing this for years. All right. What’s aged worse? BMW cooling systems or BMW club politics. Probably cooling systems. Oh, yeah. Sounds like Well, you say a B46 and a B-58, right? That’s in the newer cars. At about 80 to 100,000 miles, the oil filter housing starts to leak cuz it’s plastic. Yeah. It’s underneath the intake manifold. There’s a lot of plastic on those engines. Eight hours of labor to do that. That’s crazy. So, you bring your B-58 in. Oh, I got a coolant leak. Oh, well, that’ll be $3,500. What? Yeah. Yeah. And that’s the way they are. That’s nuts. What were you going to say? Uh, no. I was just I was going to say that it sounded like the uh based on the recent changes with the aforementioned person that’s no longer in charge there, it sounds like it’s probably right. That’s actually getting better. Whereas the coolant systems are getting worse, right? Cuz like I’m running it now way better. All right. I know that you’ve run um a lot of endurance races back in your day. Oh, yeah. And so we have I think now two standing questions that I like to ask endurance racers. And so here we go. Here’s the first one. One hour into a two-hour stint. Would you rather have or would you rather fight break fade or bowel fade? Ooh, that’s a tough one. Um, your crew would much rather have you have brake fade. That’s for sure. Imagine. So, the dry cleaner certainly would. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I’m going to pick brake fade. All right, that’s three for three. That’s that that’s the answer that people usually go with. Okay. Uh, more embarrassing. Running out of gas or running out of talent? Oh. Um, talent for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve run out of gas before. It’s not a big deal. You didn’t care? Because you can bring it on the crew chief. If it’s not you, you can blame, hey, gas. Gage must have been broken. That’s not my fault. There you go. All right. Uh, looking back on your life, what is the one thing you would do differently if given the chance? That’s a toughy. Uh, you would have started in a Porsche, obviously. Oh, no. No. No PE cars. We don’t like those. Um, it’s man, it’s really hard to say. I I really don’t have a good answer for that. I’ve had a pretty good time and I’ve done pretty well, so I can’t really complain. That’s a good answer. Great attitude. All right. Uh, number seven. In the evolution of BMW, which era’s cars were total crap? Oh, the E65, EC66, 7 series. Absolutely. Which years were those? Those were When did those pieces of crap come out? Right about 2001. No. So, so, so, well, so, so the heyday of the 3 series and the M3 was a low point for the larger cars. Uh, yeah, for sure. Imagine that. They just, they just, that was a just a junk. Just terrible. Number eight. Is there a European brand better than BMW? Of course not. Well, I mean, let’s not let’s not get carried away. Just half-hazardly throw out an answer. Let’s give it some thought. Well, you might be as you don’t want to think about that one. You got a problem going there. All right. Um, number nine. Has anyone ever come to your shop and asked you to replace or refill the blinker fluid on their car? BMW riders don’t use blinkers. We don’t know anything about that. They don’t work. That’s an excellent point, actually. Great answer. All right, number 10. What is your all-time favorite BMW and why? Depends on what I’m doing with it, but I’m going to have to say an M3 of of any generation. Oh, yeah. They all have their little quirks and nuances. The 30 M3s, obviously everybody loves those, but they’re terrible street cars. All right, so let’s dive into that one like super quick. If it’s the M3, what generation would you take? I’m going to have to say the uh the E90 series. Really with the V8. Yeah, that’s a fun car. Oh yeah, that’s the what the 2007 to 12 or something like that. 13. Yeah, that’s what Trevor and Rohan and you have, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what sold me on that car was the the DCT. Just the shifts were just lightning for that time. The SMG is terrible. So, yeah. And I went from an SMG, which I later on converted to a manual and I was like, “Oh, this is the way to do it.” Uh, but then when I tested the the uh DCT on that car, that’s a whole another thing. Amazing. All right. Almost as good as PDC. Almost. Almost. Right. That’s what most people think when anytime you’re comparing anything to a Porsche. That’s what most people end up saying is it’s almost as good. Yeah. So, you just skip all that problem and go to what the best is. All right, we’re going to move on to our last segment, which is the guest challenge. Right. This is where you have a chance to challenge two of your friends to come on the podcast. So, if you want to look right into your camera and uh lay down lay down the challenge. All right. Am I doing this right? Yeah. Okay. Uh first guy is going to be Kenny Bear. He’s a he’s a fun guy. He can tell stories for three hours. He’s an old uh sports 2000 racer and also a a former smuggler. So, he’s got stories that you can tell forever. He knows all the big guys. He did all this stuff back then. He even wrote a book on it. So, awesome. Going to be my first choice. What’s the next guy? Next guy is going to be Greg Ira. Greg’s a good guy, too. He is a three-time SECA national champion. Two times in a 240Z Dodson and once in a Z4 from uh Prather. And he’s a good he can tell you all kinds of stories. and his brother is also a multi-time national champion, so he’s really good at it. All right, there you go, guys. The challenge has been laid down by Renie. If you guys are interested in coming on the podcast, simply go to offtheorracingline.com, fill out the form, and let us know when you want to come in. Uh, just know that we are fully booked like 3 or 4 months out. So, very popular. Be thinking about, you know, next year, but we’d love to have you anyway. So, just fill out the form and let us know. Uh, with that, that is all the time that we have. Renie, it’s been fantastic talking to you and listening to uh, you as well. Thanks for having me, these uh, these stories. Mike, thank you for being here again. And remember, everything interesting happens off the racing line. See you guys next time. I took the hard road. I’ [Music] dreamer to driver ain’t always straight. Kept my head down, fueled by faith. I lost some time but found my name. Pressure made a diamond out of me. I’ve arrived and I brought receipts. Wrote my truth between the scars and this piece. This ain’t love. I’ve earned this seat. Off the racing line where my story begins. Voices scream, break. I burned past the cones. Storms behind me. Focus on the next turn. I’ve carved a path where none existed. Built from the bruises most people resisted. Now every mile is proof I’m alive. late. We’re still chasing the light. I’ve arrived and I brought receipts. Wrote my truth between the scars and his peace. This ain’t luck. I burn this seat. Off the racing line where my story begins. [Music]
