This is off the racing line. I am your host, Carlos Espitia. And back in the studio with me is Mike Moore. Mike, welcome back, buddy. I’m happy to be back. There was a I watched uh watched episode 10, was it? Uh on my way up to the studio this morning, and there was like some 12-year-old kid in my seat. What happened? It was uh it was fantastic.
You know what we did last time here? We started the episode with announcements and I kind of like that format. Yeah. So, I think we’re going to start doing that more and more and I have a ton of announcements. Not just for the sake of doing them, but because I think it’s cool to share with our audience and with people kind of like what’s coming down the pipe. Uh a little bit of like behind the scenes, you know. So, you mentioned, you know, trackside episodes. We recorded uh last Friday at Homestead Miami Speedway, six 30 minute episodes. It was exhausting. Sounds like a quite the marathon you had there.
Yeah. Yeah. Um but it gave us an opportunity to talk to people that we normally wouldn’t have because they’re coming out of out of town from different states. So they’re not going to fly in just to come to the studio and record a 1-hour podcast. But if they’re going to go racing, then why why not meet them there, right? So there was a it was quite different than doing it here in the in the studio. Um I was kind of a little bit overwhelmed. Uh rain was in in the forecast. It was raining heavy right before um it started raining during one of the episodes and it was so distracting because all my all my my notes everything’s getting wet. That’s not a big deal. But I’m looking at the the the crew, you know, and they’re all scrambling. They’re putting tents up over all the equipment. I’m like, “Uh, were you still good and they’re like, “Yeah, keep going. Keep going.” You know, I I wouldn’t imagine that electricity and brainstorm goes well together. So, that makes perfectly good sense why that would be distracting.
No, no, man. And I I’ll say this for the record. I I’ve mentioned to this to a few people. Um I’m probably the last person that should be hosting a podcast. I will second that motion. I would feel like, you know, you should like back me up on other things. Why would I do that? Um I don’t I don’t like speak very well. But like I don’t shoot off the cuff, like thinking and speaking off the cuff, not very well. So I make up for it by writing stuff down, by being prepared, right? That’s that’s my go-to. So usually it takes me several hours, you know, to prepare for one podcast for one guest. I had a few hours to prepare for six guests in a three-hour marathon. It was grueling. Oh, and we had to run an event right after for Saturday and Sunday. So, well, based on the first episode that I saw, a job well done. I look forward to seeing the other five. And I’m sorry that I couldn’t be there. Yeah, man. We uh we definitely missed you.
Um Mike, I think we might be on to something here with this podcast. Let me uh read some statistics to you. 90% of new podcasts never make it past episode 4. Actually, they don’t make it past episode 3. This is episode 11. Yeah, for sure. Of those I know. of those that do make it past episode four, 90% of those will not make it past episode 20. So, we got we have a barometer to judge. We only need to make nine more. Yes. Perfect. Yeah. And we already filmed six, you know, at Homestead. So, we’re nearly there. So, I’m planning on, you know, maybe doing a big party for for episode 21. Maybe rent the studio. Uh bring all the previous guests in and we’ll just do sort of a roundroin type of thing. I don’t know. I think that would be kind of a cool idea. It could be extremely distracting for somebody like me that needs to be focused and having 30 people sort of, you know, being loud. I don’t know. We’ll see. But I think I think I want to celebrate it somehow. Yeah. Sort of like uh best of the best. Bring bring everybody back for a couple minutes of chatting. Yeah. No, a little uh little refresher for everybody. I think that’s a great idea. Yeah. I like it.
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Let’s get into it. Is today’s BMW culture more about the cars or just a bro hangout? Our guest has seen it all. From the show and shine car meets to the flatout nononsense world of track days, both in a car and a motorcycle. He’s a driver, a rider, and a bridge between two very different automotive worlds. From carving up the tail of the dragon to pushing the limits at Homestead Speedway, please welcome Brian Blash. Welcome, man. Thank you very much, guys. Good to have you, Brian. Good to have you, man. All right, listen. Let’s jump into it. We’re going to talk about two worlds colliding. Okay. Uh the meat the meat culture, the car meat culture is very different than the the track life culture. Agreed. I would say one says look what I got and the other says look what I can do. Right. Um talk to me about how you got involved into really both worlds. Well, the racing thing came very naturally. It was almost hereditary, if you will. Um, your father. Yeah, my father was into racing and my I call him my uncle Phil, but uh, you know, he owned a race team and growing up, I spent almost every weekn night at the race team and working on cars and going to every racetrack on the East Coast. And that was pretty much that. It was just natural. I fell into it at 20 years old. My dad put me in a car and that was that. Um the the car meet up. How did you how’d you get involved with that? Cuz you’re big into that. I think that also kind of came from my father.
My father always did the like concourse shows and really fancy car shows and I decided that wasn’t really for me. It’s not that I don’t like going to those. It’s just it’s not my scene. you know, it’s a lot of older people, you know, even though at this point I’m 45 and I guess I kind of classify as the older people now, but you know, when I was younger, I wanted to go to the shows where people were building cars that I was interested in, right? at the time. Admittedly, it had a lot to do with stereos and stuff like that, but you know, I also liked performance stuff and I wanted to see the supercharged cars, the turbocharged cars, the cars built with nitrous, all that stuff. You don’t see that at, you know, HPD track days or, you know, any wheelto-heel racing. Sure. Because weight is the enemy. Exactly. Reliability becomes a problem when you start doing all those bolt-ons that don’t belong there. Exactly. I remember at a track day I saw a guy had like open his trunk and there was a huge subwoofer. I’m like that’s probably not ideal for out there. As long as it’s strapped in, it’s helping his weight balance from front to rear. So, you know, maybe he couldn’t have taken that out before the track day.
Really? I don’t I don’t know if it passed tech, but but anyway, um that’s one of that’s one of the reasons why I wanted you to come in and talk about it because uh the two worlds are so different and it’s it’s a rare thing that one person really is so heavily involved in in the two different worlds. You go to a lot of car meets and you also do a lot of track days as well. So, I think you’re um I think the perfect guest to talk about really the difference between those two worlds. That’s great. I I mean, yeah, it’s it’s definitely two different worlds. I mean, you’ve got What’s the culture like? The difference between the two. Oh my gosh, man. You know what? I actually like the track days for the kind of the community better. Um, and I got to tell you, actually, I’m not really fond of the direction that some of these car meets and shows have been going. I mean, you know, it’s it’s just so weird these days. I think they’ve gone a little too far to, you know, hoodlum stuff. And I was going to ask you about that, like because you’ve been in that scene for for years. Maybe I’m just old. I don’t know. But it seems like it’s just gotten a little out of hand, you know. In what in what regard? I mean, you go to some of these car meets or shows and people are doing burnouts and, you know, drifting their cars and, you know, I just I’m not into that. I’m not into it at all. You know, it’s a different vibe. Yeah. I want to go and see cool builds, you know. I I like I I really don’t even like these big wings and all that stuff these days. I mean, you know, so all the people leaving those events that you see on YouTube and they’re crashing into pedestrians and curbs and trees, that that’s not really like an exception that actually goes on at most events.
No. Okay. Well, that’s good. Just just just your regular stuff of like bouncing off the rev limiter and those sorts of things. Yeah, that is pretty common, unfortunately. All right. So, so pedestrians being taken out by a Mustang, that’s not a usual thing. I mean, I’ve seen it happen. I won’t mention any events, but I’ve seen it happen. Um, I’ve even wrecked my motorcycle once leaving an event because some people asked me to do a wheelie and for some pure pressure, dumb reason, I did it, you know. I hope we have a clip of that. That’ll be fantastic. Does that Does that live on the internet somewhere or no? Thankfully, no. Okay. You’re spared that. My friends would never let me down, you know, they they would never let that one down. So, um, let’s talk about the the risk differences between a car meet, which I know it sounds ridiculous, but it’s mostly involving people leaving a car meet, right? like you said, being, you know, asked to do those burnouts or just take off and do a little bit of show for everybody recording versus um, you know, the risk involved in a controlled environment like a track day. Well, leaving a car meet if you’re susceptible to peer pressure, it’s a bad scene. Yeah. You know, if you shouldn’t go to the That’s actually an interesting question. I wonder if there’s some way like we we need to we need a researcher on this show to uh to look into the fact that what has happened more often, a crash at an HPDE event or somebody running into a tree or something leaving a a a car show. You know what? I’m going to I’m going to put our new um we have somebody that’s helping us. Oh, perfect.
So, I’m going to have her I just forgot the title that we gave her. Okay. Uh production manager, I believe it is. That sounds like a perfect job for production manager. production manager, if you’re listening, uh we need some um some stats on that. Whether HPDE events cost more wrecks than uh than car more insurance claims through through through track insurance companies or through regular, you know, car insurance companies with people beaching their lowered car on the median, leaving a leaving a car show. Seen that happen a lot. You know, at least at tracks, you’ve got runoff areas and, you know, stuff like that. some grass to run off into. In most cases, you know, hopefully you don’t hit a tire wall. And I I would also like to believe that the the people driving at a track event are probably more experienced at keeping a car under control and they’re used to that, right? Because they they’ve been doing it for a long time versus people that just got a insert high horsepower rearwheel drive car here last weekend and thought, “Oh, this is cool. I wonder what happens if you jam on the accelerator as you’re pulling out of a parking lot. There are a lot of a lot of things to dive into, but I think you you nailed one, you know, pretty well. Think about the difference, right? You go to a car meet and you feel that peer pressure to to peel out, you know, to burn out as you’re leaving the track meet or sorry, the the the car meet versus when you go to a track, like the last thing you want to do is try to show off in front of the people that really do know how to drive there. You don’t want to be the jackass that wrecks their car. And I think another thing may be that, you know, when you’re leaving a car meet, you’re going 10 or 15 miles an hour. So you probably think, “Oh, what could possibly go wrong?” When we’re out there on the track, you’re doing 85, 90, 120. So you’re much more cognizant of the fact that something could go wrong where at 15 miles an hour pulling out of a parking lot, you’re probably like, “What could possibly go wrong here?” Sure. Sure. For sure.
Um, you mentioned the community and let’s talk a little bit about that because we’ve we have discussed this in the past where the the track community that you just they’re friends. You feel like they’re friends. You can show up with no tools and just about anybody near you is going to just let you use their tools. I don’t feel like that is the case with, you know, um, a car meet. Not that you would need tools at a car meet, but it’s more more of a every man for himself. Yeah, I agree with that 100%. There isn’t a person that I’ve ever shared a garage with at a track day that didn’t become an instant friend, right? You know, I think you actually had one of the guys on here, uh, what was his name? Dave Shore. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Shared a garage with him at I think the first event I went to with Farah and spoke with him within the first five minutes. Guy was amazing. I think he had like a Porsche Cayman that day or something like that. The other one, him and I were running almost identical lap times. So, it was like instant best friends, you know. You don’t get that at car shows and or meets, you know. Um, a lot of these guys, it’s you’re in competition with them almost. Even if you’re not in competition with them, they’re in competition with you on as far as the build, right? as far as the build, as far as what you have, how nice your car is, how much money you’ve spent on it, all that. I just feel like it’s very it it’s just very competitive. Really? Yeah. That’s such an odd thing to hear, right? Because when you think about the track, you think that’s where the competition would be, but it’s really in the other scene. Yeah. You would think that it would be the opposite. Like we’re out there and most people are, you know, timing their laps. Obviously, we’re competing.
Um, so we’re definitely time our laps, but even even people that are just out there casually, the majority of them are doing some sort of timing to that’s the way they’re measuring of they’re getting better against the competition, yet they’re friendlier and they’re willing to help. Whereas people in a car show that, you know, there’s really nothing to be had there or the more the more peacock, you know, look at me versus let me help you. It’s fascinating because you would think it’d be the opposite. Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s two different types of competition for sure, but one involves camaraderie. You know, the other doesn’t. You know, there’s I’d say one out of every 10 people you meet at a car meet is going to have the type of personality that they don’t care about that stuff. Most of them, they’re going to look at your car, look at you, kind of make a judgment at that point in time on how much you spend on your car. And it’s it’s just a weird feeling, you know. It’s a really weird feeling because, you know, I worked really hard to get to this point in life, you know, and to build my car the way that I want to. Sure. I didn’t do it to to please somebody else. Yeah. I’m not trying to beat anybody. I’m not trying to whatever. I’m just trying to have a cool car for me. Yeah. And I feel like everybody, they see it and then they’re like, “Got to be faster than him, you know, got to be nicer than that. Got to have better wheels than that. Got to, you know, and I don’t know. I I think it’s it’s kind of like a compliment in a sense, but it gets tiring.”
Yeah. You know, um I took over Florida Bimmers. Uh we actually started um like the Bokeh Bokeh Club or something like Bokeh BMW club and then we took over Florida Bimmers and we incorporated the two groups and my purpose for that group was always to make it a track oriented group for BMWs. Um and I didn’t want to do any car meets but you know what do you do in between in between track days right and we’ve never we had never hosted a track day you know up until then. So, I kind of caved in. I was like, “All right, we’ll we’ll do one. We’ll do one car meet.” And then, you know, people showed up and it was it’s the way that we labeled it was Florida Bamemer’s driving group, right? We’re we’re going to drive. So, because of my disdain for car meets, I said, “You know what? We’re going to do rallies, you know?” So, our first rally, we went to uh Lake Okachchobee and we took back roads, which was fantastic. I already told you guys I’m a planner. I I like to plan. So we we did sort of a recon, you know, route excursion and it was just like roads that people usually will never drive. They were all back roads. They were actually kind of fun in Florida, which is an odd thing, you know, to say. I kid you not. Um our after our first sort of pit stop, you know, in one of the back roads, um a young kid in an M2 guns it as we’re pulling out and he ends up in the ditch. And I’m thinking, well, it was nice having a club, you know, that’s the end of that. had to be somebody, you know, it was going to be somebody. Yeah. So, just I think the liability and the pressure of of hoping that doesn’t happen again. Um, it was it was too much. I I and I started I started growing more and more disdain towards, you know, car meets. And I was having this conversation not long ago with some friends and it dawned on me why they’re so different. And I think this for me this is why. in the in the in the car meet, everybody’s, like you said, either competing or they’re trying to more or less say, “Hey, you know what? We’re we’re alike because we drive the same car.” Well, just because we drive the same brand doesn’t mean like you don’t know anything about me, right? As opposed to when you go to do a track day, it’s not what we drive. It’s we’re doing something together, right? Something that’s dangerous. So I think for us men that inherently becomes a bond, right? Like we’re doing something that could kill us, right? And we’re not trying to outdo each other. We’re if nothing else, like we’re actually learning from each other.
So it’s the doing part that’s really it’s the connecting factor, not the I have this emblem in the front of my car, so that means that we’re friends. It just there it’s too loose. Yeah. I think I I I think that you know a lot of the car meet people that are there are probably look at me right whereas when we’re on the track together it’s like oh look at you like how do I get better like you can help me whether it’s changing brake pads or help me with my line or something. So, yeah. And especially the guys that show up with 20-year-old BMWs and they’re outperforming other cars, like go ahead and laugh at that guy. He’s going to lap you. You know, that’s happened to me a lot of times, you know, especially with my last car with the uh G80M3. Taking that out to the uh track days, that is a humbling experience to take that heavy of a car out to the track. It does not matter how fast you are in a straight line. That thing was a pig around turns, you know, and you get passed by a couple Miatas and a Honda Civic hatchback and next thing you know, you were like, “This was a bad decision.” Those Miatas, man, when you see when you’re driving, and I know you had a very high horsepower uh M3, when you’re driving a high horsepower BMW and you look in your rearview mirror and there’s a Miata right on your bumper, man, that is humbling. Yeah. I think I was running 650 all-wheel horsepower at the time on 93 octane, you know, and this guy, I mean, of course, he was nowhere near me down the straightaway, but three turns later, he was coming around me, you know, so that’s just the way that goes, you know. Yeah. Yeah. All right, let’s transition over to um street racing versus tracking. We talked a little bit about it, but we were talking more about, you know, the uh the car meetups. Let’s talk specifically, you know, street racing. there’s an adrenaline factor there. Um, how do you how do you see it the difference between in terms of adrenaline between the two, right? The street racing and then track driving. Well, you know, you’re only getting, you know, everybody’s doing like a 40, 50, 60 m per hour roll race to 130ish, you know, we’ll say when it comes to the street racing, very few of them are what we call dig races from, you know, complete stop. Most of them are rolls. Um, you know, it’s a very short burst of either you you’ve got that feeling of Yeah. or that feeling of, oh, you know, but it’s very shortlived. And there’s also the the component of I hope I don’t get busted by the cops, right? So, I can see the you get busted for street racing these days. That’s a pretty serious thing. So, we’re going to talk a little bit about the new Florida law in a second, but but yeah, I could see the the allure of I hope I don’t get caught, but there’s there’s a little excitement to it. Yeah, you know, personally, I don’t think there’s enough excitement to it to not take it to the track. Oh, I agree. Um, do I get caught up in it every now and then?
You know, if a car that I think is faster than me or equally as fast is next to me, it can happen. But at the same time, I try to keep that to a minimum because I am in my mid-4s at this point. And you got a family. Yeah. I don’t want anything stupid on my record or anything like that. You’re running a business like Yeah. We responsibilities, you know, sort of trump the the want the desire to race on the street. I just felt really old saying all of that. Welcome to our world. We feel very old. You know, I How do you think I felt when I was uh you know, I was interviewing a 12-year-old just finished completing competition school. He’s racing his first race. I was like, man, that’s amazing, isn’t it? That is so amazing. That’s such a crazy story. And his I saw a little bit of that interview. I was amazed. He started carting at six and what a well spoken young man. Yes. like he was up there answering questions and like a maturity that you probably need to be piloting a car surrounded by, you know, other cars at at that level of competition. So, yeah, good for him. Absolutely. So, speaking of, you know, feeling old, I’m going to throw this out there. I I think street racing, I think those guys are complete idiots. And I’m saying I’m saying that from a former street racer because I was a complete idiot. So, it takes one to no one, right? And the thing is once I found, you know, track life and that you could just kind of get it out of your system going to the track now, it’s sort of our job. I feel like trying to promote that as much as possible and letting people know, hey, if you like that rush, that adrenaline rush, if you feel like you got a fast car, you want to race it, just bring it to the track. We’ll make you a better driver, you know? Definitely. I that’s why I always advocate for track days. I mean, as I’ve brought a group of people out to one of your events before trying to get I think two or three people have actually done track days now uh because of that. And you know, it’s all good and fun to drive your car fast on the street and everything like that. But it is pretty reckless. And it’s not just you, it’s other people around you. You don’t know what’s going to happen. Yeah. Yeah, stuff can happen to especially nowadays. You know, so many people are so distracted on the street. You know, you got some mom in a minivan, you know, kids screaming. She’s probably checking messages like and and you’re out there racing and she’s oblivious to like the tornado that’s coming up behind her, you know.
Exactly why I don’t ride the motorcycle on the street anymore. Yes. At least not down here. Tennessee, North Carolina, different story. So, we uh we talked a little bit about Florida’s new su well I mentioned Florida’s new super speeder law. I think for anybody that’s not aware of this, especially uh you street racers out there, let’s find out what it is. Florida has implemented a new super speeder law as of July 1st, 2025, which categorizes driving 50 mph or more over the speed limit or recklessly driving at 100 mph or more as dangerous, excessive speeding. This offense is now a criminal misdemeanor potentially leading to jail time and fines. I spoke to I think it was David Maher and he told me that one of his friends they actually took him straight to jail like shortly after this law was implemented. So it’s like they’re not fooling around, you know, like if you want to go race, if you want to see how fast your car is, um the street is no longer the place. Well, it was never the place to do it in, but now like you can actually face jail time. Am I the only one that thinks that there’s just going to be like an excess of Nissan Ultimas that are going to get inbounded at this? Insert a picture of a Alultima, right? Will a Nissan Ultima do 100 miles an hour? I don’t know. Oh, yeah. Unfortunately, I have seen way too many of right. Well, that is true. For some reason, when I’m in my M3 going down I95, every Nissan Ultima that comes up on me, for some reason thinks that that’s a viable race, you know. Why is that? Why? Why the Nissan Ultima? Cuz you see it everywhere. It’s It’s like a meme. Why do you think that is? I don’t know, but they drive crazy. They cut in and out of traffic like absolute animals. Whenever I pick up my car from Corsa, you know, whenever they work on it, I I don’t have time to go and trailer it. So, I just it’s only a few miles. So, I go pick it up and I kid you not, I’m like one of the slowest ones in a race car practically on 95 and I have an Ultima pull up next to me and it’s like doing the, you know, the the jumping like like let’s go. I’m like, come on, man. Yeah, people do that to me all the time. You know, a Porsche, you know, M3. I can’t imagine uh how many you must delivery every single like three or four times every drive you go 10 miles from uh from Yeah. I have people like I have people just they either speed up or they slow down and I see a phone just hanging out the window and they’re recording and I’m like you know I have people because I have my uh my Instagram on my quarter panel window. I had people send me the video that they took of me while they were driving. They’ll send it to me to my Instagram. Oh, that’s kind of cool, actually. Kind of creepy. Yeah, a little creepy. A little cool, though. You know, made me consider taking that my my handle off more than once.
Um, anyways, so listen, I’m gonna I’m going to lay down a what I’m going I’m going to call Carlos challenge to all the the street racers out there. If you think you’re fast, bring it to the track. Here’s the here’s the the challenge. You can bring any car that you have. If you’ve never done a track day before, if you have a 800 horsepower BMW, Ultima, whatever it is, bring it to the track. If you turn a faster lap than me or Mike by the end of the day, hell, by the end of the weekend, I’ll give you the entire weekend to catch up to us in my 17-year-old 350 wheel horsepower old lady car. If you can turn a faster lap than us, I will give you uh free track days for the rest of the year. Okay, that is an exceptional challenge and and hard to pass up, right? I mean, somebody’s going to come out there with a GT3 RS or something like that. And and the only the only caveat is if it’s they’ve never done any track days before, you know. My my my whole purpose for this is not to make fun of them or, you know, anything like that. It’s just to get them off the street. I want them to get off the street and come to the track and realize they’re going to realize, you guys know this. They’re going to realize I don’t know how to drive this thing. I don’t know how to drive this beast. So, my my purpose for that is just let’s make them actual good drivers, right? Yeah. I mean, they they’ve got the car, right? They they if they’re street racing, they’re doing something that they really shouldn’t be and now it’s clearly punishable by jail time.
But yeah, there there’s a significant difference between, you know, being on the the the Palmetto at two o’clock in the morning and, you know, jamming it in a straight line from 50 miles an hour to get up to 130 and trying to go into turn 17 at Sebring. And they already like racing. I mean, you already know that, you know, I mean, it’s just try to kind of curb it into the right direction. Well, there’s clearly a time and a place for everything, and the racetrack is the time and the place for that, not the turnpike. Let me ask you guys this. Why Why do you think these guys, and I’m thinking of the ones that put so much money into their cars, you know, you talked about just they’re always trying to one up you, so they they clearly have money. So, what keeps them from going and doing a track day? Do you think it’s they’re afraid that they’re going to realize and everybody else is going to realize that they don’t know how to drive it, you know, or something else? You know what I think it is? I think it comes down to nobody wants to do a track day until they can go out there in some type of car that everybody’s going to be ooing and aawing at like a GT3 RS or something like that. That’s what they have in their head. You know, nobody wants to go out there in a Miata. you know that you know to guys in the car meet car show world you know that’s not cool you know but you know you go out to a track day and you start realizing what’s actually cool for track days things change your whole viewpoint on things change you know okay so that’s interesting so you’re saying that maybe a lot of these guys they they put so much money into their cars because they’re essentially look at me type personalities, right? They want the attention. And then when you go to the racetrack, uh, they realize that they no longer have the big dog, you know, M3 or M4, whatever it is. There’s much much cooler cars out there, and there’s always going to be somebody that has a cooler car than you. It doesn’t matter what you have. Like, we’ve seen some crazy cars at the racetrack. So, you think some of that has to do with that? Like, they’re no longer like people don’t have their eyes on on their car? Well, for sure. when you go out to the racetrack in some of these big M8s or, you know, M5s or whatever the heck they are, you know, you’re in this big heavy beast of a car. All of a sudden, you went from having like the cool car at the car shows, car meets, having the refrigerator. Yeah. you’re kind of, you know, everybody’s kind of laughing at you a little bit, you know, and it doesn’t matter how fast it is in the straightaway or how cool it looks or any of that stuff, how clean it is, cuz your lap times are all that matters out there, you know? I mean, and honestly, some of those guys that know how to drive at the track, if you’re on the track at the same time as them and you’re doing stupid stuff around turns, they’re going to let you know it, you know, and it’s more of a safety thing than anything, you know? They’re not mean about it, but they’re gonna let you know it. Absolutely. Mike, let me let me get your take on that on that one question I posed. You know, maybe it’s um I mean I I assume it’s just sort of a mindset thing, right? They’re they are passionate about washing and waxing their cars.
They’re passionate about, you know, Stance Bro and Stereos and all that other stuff. I I think it’s just a completely different target audience, right? There there there’s certainly an overlap there, right? I go to Cars and Coffee every once in a while and and that sort of thing, but I’m at the track exponentially more frequently than I’m at Cars and Coffee. But when something good, especially if a Porsche thing comes around, you know, DRT or something, you know, yeah, I definitely go down there and check out all the, you know, insane builds and stuff. But I I think it’s mostly just there’s a very small overlap there of people that are passionate about making their car look good and people that are passionate about getting around track as fast as possible. That’s true. I mean, it I don’t know. To me, it kind of blows my mind. I I want to be good at something, right? It’s like you’re you’re learning a a new craft and then you’re perfecting it, you know, versus just throwing money at something that looks pretty and it’s depreciating in value. I don’t know. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I like both, you know. That’s why we have you like both. I like both. I I love nice things. I, you know, I like to build nice cars of I think this is my third M3. you know, fourth M3. Um, what happened to the the second one? Can we talk about that? The third one. Well, I went racing. I’m not a drag racer. Um, let’s put it that way. That was my first and last attempt at drag racing. And were you actually at the track? I was at the track. I was smart enough to be at a private track day to learn how to drag race. Um, there were only about five cars there. Uh, we rented out the track just the group of us by ourselves to Now your your M3, it was an M3 or an M4. It was an M3. You were pushing close to a,000 horsepower, weren’t you? Yeah, I was uh that particular car was making just under 900 horsepower to all wheels. Goodness. Um, the current one is just over 900 to all wheels. All right. Um, which is almost undrivable on the track. It really is. I mean, even at low boost, even if I were on 93 octane, low boost. Yeah. Number one, because of the big single turbo, the IATS would get so crazy that it would probably go into limp mode after two laps and that would be that. Um, but yeah, power-wise, you couldn’t lay into that. You’d you’d really have to watch your throttle and throttle response because that could get nasty quick. I assume that that’s what happened at the drag strip. It got nasty quick. No, I had a rear passenger side tire blowout at 130 plus miles per hour right at the end of the 1/4 mile and the whole car just I mean when I say it twitched sideways before I could even blink the car was completely sideways. I’m looking at the end of the quarter mile through my passenger side window and look ahead of me and it’s a cement wall, right? And so I just turned the wheel and hit the brakes and smacked it with the passenger side and that was that on that car. I think I bent the frame in four places and that was the end of that night. I was lucky to walk away from that one cuz the entire time at that speed, cement wall in front of me. Yeah, man. I was just praying to go home to my kid. I remember you posted that picture and I was like, man, I hope he’s all right. It was rough. I I was a little banged up, you know, I had some bruises and stuff like that just from the seat belt and the bolsters of the carbon bucket seats of the car, but man, that car did its job. I mean, all the safety equipment. I walked away from that, you know, with more of a bruised ego than anything. Yeah. You know, I mean, and when you can walk away from something like that, you know, you just got to, you know, thank God.
But, you know what? Case in point, you did the right thing. You took it to the racetrack. Even if it’s a drag strip, you know, he was in a closed, you know, course. Yeah. Right. Well, think about it. If you were doing that on the street, right, if you’re doing 130 m hour down the turnpike, even if it’s 2 o’clock in the morning on the street, and you know, you something goes bad there, you know, you’re going to take out other people that are driving with you, you may cross the median, kill somebody in a head-on collision. So, yeah. Also, at the track, you know, there’s EMTs, there’s there’s workers ready to help in in case something like that happens 2 in the morning. Like you’re going to have to wait till somebody finally comes around and realizes what a jackass you are. For sure. Yeah. And those guys were down there quick when that happened. Sure. I mean, you know, it probably wasn’t 20 seconds, 25 seconds before somebody was, “Hey, are you all right?” You know, type of thing. Yeah. And the whole reason I did it was because the following week, I believe it was, was a huge drag race here in Florida called FL2K. And I had signed up for it to do the BMW verse Toyota type thing. And uh I had never drag raced before though, so I was like, “All right, let’s go practice.” Everybody was like, “Yeah, we need to practice, too.” That was a great day turned into a bad one. Really? I’m sure. You know, I had a day like that about 15 years ago. I went drag racing. Same situation. This is in the E46 M3. And uh I ended up shattering my my rear axle shaft. Um and then I made a video about it and that was like just pretentious snob drive, you know, with a BMW and I I put it on YouTube anyway. It got like 350,000 views. Again, this is 15 years ago. That was like big time. I would have people come up to me like on at the track. I’m talking to them and they’re like looking at me and like they recognize me and they’re like, “Huh, I know where I know you from. You did a video.” Yeah. You you’re that jackass that broke his car. I’m like, “Yeah, that was me.” Great to be known for terrible things. Yeah. Um, one thing I will add to that is uh, one bad thing about being at the track was I had no track day insurance and so I had to eat that one financially. Really? Yeah. That was a pretty big hit. But an expensive lesson to learn about getting track insurance if you can’t afford to write that check. Correct. Well, you know what? I’ve never had track insurance for any HPD day, any anything. I’ve never had a problem. You know, like I said before, you know, even at the times that I have messed up on the track, it’s been a runoff or, you know, a grass field or something like that that I’ve went through. It wasn’t a cement wall, you know, and uh Yeah, there’s there’s not a lot of room for error on a/4 mile drag strip that’s got cement walls on either side of it when something goes wrong at 130. Yeah. Yeah. I did a lot of track days without track insurance. And something we always talk about is not if, but when, right? When the moment is going to come that you’re going to smack something. And I figured, you know what? Let me start buying that track insurance so at least I’m I’m ready, you know? Yeah. Do you buy it by the annually or? No, by the event. By the event. Yeah, by the event. Um, there is there’s a great video of you going through a turn 10 at Homestead Speedway and uh and somebody passed you on the grass on the left. Like that could have been really bad. But to Mike’s point, something you always talk about is situation awareness. You had great situation awareness. I mean, you’re not expecting a car to be passing you on the grass, but Yeah. I in the video you could see you turn your head and here comes Trevor just flying on the grass. I think he was trying to save it and not hit the wall. He definitely was trying to save it. Yeah. Yeah. He, you know, he just had a mess up behind me. I don’t know exactly what happened, but, you know, I saw it happen. I, you know, kind of just sat back and watched it and let it go by. You know, it looked like a like a scene from the Dukes of Hazard. thing was just jumping like all of a sudden he was like bajawing or something, man. It was it was like the Dar rally next to me all of a sudden, you know.
Yeah. And we’ve had Trevor as a guest on the show before and I’m curious now why he didn’t bring that story up. Would you like by the way I almost got a brand new M3. When we get to episode 21 and we have all of our all of our former guests back on, we’ll have to ask him about that. Yeah, I think he was just chasing uh fast lap time in that uh what’s that series that you have going? Superap. The superlap series. Yeah, I think he was just chasing a fast lap time in that and maybe came off that transition from, you know, banked wall down to the flat surface a little wrong or something. But, you know, no harm, no foul. I was actually more worried about him and the underside, you know, the undercarriage of his car. I I asked him uh in the garage after that. I was like, “Everything good?” You know, is the car all right? You you know, all that. He was like, “Yeah, everything looks all right.” Yeah. Trevor is really um you know, he’s he’s really like cool and collected. Um, I do want to mention since since we’re talking about Trevor, Trevor pulled off, I think, the most gangster move this past weekend. Okay. He was the the 2024 um Superlap Series champion in the SL3 class. So, that was last year. Oh, that’s great. He was the champion. Okay. And then he was building his car to go racing. So, he I don’t think he has run the Super Lab series with us this year, but you know, he’s still in the chat for the Super Lab. Um, and then we have a we have a guy Cory that he’s, you know, right now he’s the contender for to, you know, in for championship. Very good driver in his own. Very, very good driver. But Cory likes to talk a lot of trash. So, I remember I think Trevor posted something like Trevor holding the the championship belt, you know, this one right here. Um, and Corey said something like, “Oh, it’s cute. You’re living in the past.” Or something, you know, like I’m I’m the now, you are the the former, you know. So Trevor shows up this this past weekend at Homestead to compete in in his not the race car, but you know the the M3, the red one, and uh and he beats Cory both days, the the first day in the rain and then the next day um in the dry. Now this he didn’t like blow him away. This two t of a second two of a second. But the gangster move was when we’re doing the trophy presentation, here comes Trevor with his 2024 FAR champion, you know, like he just he didn’t say anything, but it was so cold, right? Like I I sensed it. I was like, “Dude, that’s a gangster move, right?” Cory standing right there on the second step of a second step of the podium. It’s like that’s like that uh Conor McGregor type energy, man. Yeah. He was just like and and it’s so weird because Trevor is so you know like to himself like he’s not very voice guy. Yeah. Yeah. So to see him just wearing that hat like you, you know. That’s fantastic. It was it was great. It was amazing. All right. Uh we’re going to have to skip a few questions here cuz we are under 10 minutes. So what I’m going to do is we’re going to jump into my favorite segment which is the rapid fire questions. All right. Hopefully we can go through these in under 10 minutes because we have a few things other things that we need to get to. All right, you’re familiar with the format. Yep. Try to just, you know, fire offuh answers as quickly as possible. Uh Mike, if some of these don’t fit you, not a big deal. All right, here we go. Car meets or track days. Which crowd is more likely to talk a big game they can’t back up? Car meets. Yeah, I think that’s probably fairly self-explanatory. A lot of people don’t uh don’t talk much smack at the track, surprisingly. No. Unless it’s like your best friend. Well, yeah. Well, unless it’s like one of your best buddies like, “Hey, I did this to my car. I’m going to crush everybody.” And then you get to the track that weekend and he’s like, “Quiet.” That was that was a warm-up question to get you guys warmed up. Well, and I think not to completely ruin rapid fire like I normally do. But I I think the other thing there is like you can talk all the crap you want to at a car meet because you’re not there there’s there’s not going to be any evidence to put you to you know you can’t disprove yourself.
You can talk a bunch of crap and you can sneak out when Exactly. Whereas if you come to the track and you’re talking crap, somebody’s going to find out in like 10 minutes how good you are. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. All right. Number two. Uh worst car mod you’ve ever seen at a meet. Oof. Stick on hood scoop. That was nonfunctional on a BMW. That is fantastic. God, that hurt me. Honestly, did it actually have a like a hole underneath it or just just No, just dropped it up there. Like taped on. I think it was like 3M taped on. It was the worst looking thing I’ve ever seen. It looked like something that should have been factory on a Subaru STI or something, but it was just kind of stuck onto a really bad, huh BMW 335i and I just really that hurt my feelings. Yeah. I want to get I want to get I want to get one of those hood scoops and put it on my Cayman. See how many people look at and they’re just like on the hood on the hood. Right. Yeah. The hood. I think I’ve actually seen that on a boxer before. I’ve seen that on a boxer. I’ve seen that on a boxer in Miami before. Awful. Let’s move on. Number three. Worst thing about the BMW car meetat culture today. I think it’s kind of going in the wrong direction with all the burnout competitions and drifting and all that stuff. Um, exhaust competitions. I don’t get that one. I don’t get that one either. Um, again, we’re probably just old, you know. But yeah, it’s just things where, you know, I just think it’s going in the wrong direction. I think it’s kind of turning more into the JDM type community. And don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that so many people are buying BMWs these days and that it’s such a diverse crowd. Diverse is a very polite way of saying that. Yeah. Something else. Yeah. But, you know, there’s just some of those things that I just don’t feel like should be at a BMW meet or, you know, something like that. It used to be a little classier from what I remember. It was. It was. Well, BMWs themselves like from a design standpoint used to be beautiful and classy. And now, with my apologies, so the BMW crowd, they’re hideous and they have been for years. The 2 series, they came out. It’s such an abomination. Ever since they changed that grill however many years ago, it’s not, you know. Speaking of grills, the G80 like grew on me. Like when it first stupid beaver looking thing, and now I’m like I kind of like it. Well, you know what? As soon as you get rid of that louvered stock grill and you put in like one of the nice carbon fiber ones and open up that area, it starts looking a little meaner. We had a couple of uh G80 full-on M4s at the track this past weekend. Oh my god. Yeah. Looks so mean cuz now the the little beaver tooth like it just it looks like this like they’re sucking air into the into their They look like evil Mustangs. Evil German mustangs. Oh my gosh. Okay, we’re running out of time. Uh, I’m going to skip number four cuz it’s very much like number three. Number five, track driving, car or motorcycle. Which is more fun? More fun the motorcycle? Faster the car? Really? Yep. Cuz you’re more likely to push in a car than in a motorcycle. I think it’s just contact patches, stuff like that. I mean, you know, I most tracks I’m going to be faster around in the car than I am on the motorcycle. Really? So, like if you’re in a corner, you can carry a higher minimum speed in a car unless it’s a long sweeping turn. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. You said the contact patch, think about, you know, how much rubber is actually this much on the motorcycle. But as somebody that that doesn’t ride motorcycles, I would have just assumed that the the weight and the fact that you can lean over, you know, 45 degrees would enable you to go around the corner and interesting. I learned something. That’s what I figured, too. All right, number six. Uh, Tail of the Dragon. Best run ever or overrated tourist trap? both depends on the day and the time you go. Okay. What about you? Um yeah, again I’ve been there numerous times and I am a bigger fan of all the roads that are around it. We talked a little bit about that with Jen a few episodes ago. The road the roads around it um they’re less crowded. They’re a little bit more open. They’re a little bit less touristy trap. Um so but yeah, a little bit of both.
I agree. If you hit Tail of the Dragon though early morning on a Thursday, it’s one of the craziest roads you could ever drive. I think there’s better roads around honestly be because I would rather do some faster sweepers and stuff like that than quick switchbacks, but and Jen mentioned that too. Yep. All right, let’s keep going. Uh, number eight, bigger ego problems. Slammed BMW guys or stretched bike riders? Stretch bike riders. Okay, they have bigger ego problems. Got it. Number nine. What’s more fragile, BMW cooling systems or BMW driver egos? Definitely the Egos. I think you’re right. Yeah, definitely. And number 10, street takeovers. Thrilling rebellion or absolute clown show. Man, that is such a circus. I can’t stand that stuff. Like, how did that even become popular? Why would you think that that would be a good idea? I don’t understand. Make it stop. You know what? I’m glad that YouTube is uh they’re um they’re killing all those all those videos. They’re not allowing them to Yeah, because Did you kill those? And what is it? the swimming or whatever where the guys are cutting through traffic or whatever, you know. Oh, man. That seems like a terrible accident I’ve done. I’ve never seen one of those. Most dangerous stuff. And I mean, like these street takeovers. How many people need to get hit by a car, you know, or whatever to get these things shut down, you know? It’s unbelievable. It’s wild. All right, listen. We’re going to go to our next segment, which is our guest challenge. This is where you get to challenge two of your friends to come on the podcast. Oh, okay. So, if you want to look straight into your camera and let him know you’re being challenged to come on the on the podcast. All right, Zolan Wallace, I challenge you. And Bill Mandi, I challenge you. All right, there you go. The challenge has been laid down by Brian. If you’re interested in coming to the podcast, go to off theraelingline.com, fill out the form, and let us know when you want to come in. Guys, it’s been a pleasure chatting again back in the studio. This is This is nice. Air conditioning. It’s not raining. Like there’s no water drops messing up your notes, so you don’t know what to say. Yeah, I’m sure you’re more comfortable here. Absolutely. Ben, thank you for having us again here at Junkies Podcast Junkie Studios. Brian, thank you for coming in. Really appreciate it. And remember, everything interesting happens off the racing line. See you guys next time. Pro truth between the scars and peace. This ain’t long [Music] [Applause] where my story begins. Where my story begins. [Applause] [Music]
