HPDE Beginner Mistake: How Horsepower Is Your Enemy

and I looked at our cameras and our cameras was someone random getting in the car and like and like struggling with the door and getting in we’re like “Holy this car got stolen.” Yeah customer calls us hey hey guys uh I just need to pay for my car like what the you talking about you going to pay for your car have you not heard her voicemail your car is not here [Music] off the racing

Welcome to Off the Racing Line today’s episode is packed with insights as we dive into HPDE what is it how to get started with track days and the essential tips for prepping a street car for track usage instead of the usual instructor war stories well we’re going to be sharing some unforgettable automotive shop nightmare tales our guest today is a motorsports enthusiast whose journey started in drifting and has since evolved into competitive racing he’s a certified master technician for BMW Ferrari and Maserati and the owner of Corset Technique a European automotive shop as the chief tech inspector at Farah Events he is the first line of defense for ensuring cars are trackworthy and safe my good friend Mr jonathan Salerno great to be here good to have you man guys great to be here thanks for finally inviting me i think it’s the third episode all right i I have a question right off the bat why aren’t you a Porsche certified mechanic because I never worked at Porsche okay well I worked on many Porsches we’ll have you on the show anyway we can continue go ahead let’s start we can make an exception yeah for sure john your journey into motorsports started in drifting uh tell me how that came to be and how and why you transitioned over from drifting into competitive racing ah man drifting was I’ll make it quick and then I’ll explain a little bit more quick it was the cheapest way to get into motorsports and it was the quickest and easiest way with the crappiest car I had which was an E36 M3 a BMW yeah it was awesome i I learned how to do drift illegally called street drifting back when I had my E30 and it kind of led me to you know what I’m not so bad at this when I moved to Florida this was back in Georgia when I moved to Florida I met some friends we started doing some street drifting and when I mean street drifting was always beyond warehouses never actually like on public roads wareouses we always kept it safe no intersection no intersection nothing stupid yeah that was before the right it was pre- internet nobody why would you Why would you do that if you weren’t doing it for the videos we I I don’t It’s funny because when we were when you told me about this and I was like I wonder if I have any videos of me drifting i have nothing nothing from drifting nothing until I was doing competition you weren’t chasing clout exactly right i wasn’t chasing clout it was just for fun mhm and it became a a thing where I was like “Actually this isn’t bad.” So we in Florida we used to go to Countyline Dragway back rest in peace that place great little racetrack in the middle of off of 27 middle of nowhere um we used to drift there all the time um where where else central Florida Raceway i even drift in road Atlanta um so where did where did the transition happen how did that happen so when I was drifting I always It was fun but it was fun to a point and I always felt I could do more with this the the unlikely transition was I had to sell my drift car to fund my house oh i sold my drift car because that’s down payment bought my house now I was looking back in the getting into the world of drifting and whatnot and then I was like you know what racing is going to be the proper the course of this i grew up a little bit more the drifting crowd started getting younger to a point and I was like you know what drift racing at least road course racing is something I’ve never done let me try to get into this and I bought another E36 M3 to try road course racing and it was great but it was daunting so I actually did one event at Homestead and I pulled I after that I was like “Whoa my car is not ready for this i need all so much suspension work so much engine work it’s pouring oil it’s not the right place for this let’s do autocross.” So that was fun that was fun for a while um I just no offense to the people that like autocross i hate working corners i hate working the cones i stopped doing autocross because of that it was you know you do a 40 secondond run and then two hours worth of working the course i’m like I don’t want to do this dude i I vowed that the day I could pay more to not stand I I will do that no problem i think they offer that now where you can actually pay more and not work the course i’ve never done autocross my life yeah but anyway so your progression was very much uh very intentional in in educating yourself in acquiring those skills to be a better driver exactly so it was interesting because once I left the world drifting I had a motorsport void for about four years and in that void it was just a lot of I was working California going back and forth before I opened the shop but when I got my A36 and I got back into the motorsport world I realized man it’s kind of interesting because drifting gave me a certain skill set that not many other people have on track which is car control so that was actually going to be my my leadin you know to the next question which was that what skills did you learn in drifting that transferred over to racing nicely and you were just about to talk on that and also address that and also tell me maybe some of the things that you had to unlearn from drifting to make you a better driver in racing it’s it’s funny it’s actually the answer to that what I learned to help and what I need to unlearn are almost the same thing slip angle control okay so slip angle is an amazing thing that makes you faster unless you do it too much i probably do it too much and I overdrive the out of my cars because I like the car feeling a little bit on the over steer side slip on control though made me be comfortable with that when a lot of people It’s funny we’ve posted videos before of my driving and like turn one at Homestead i’m like doing I I I do steering wheel switches at turn one because the rear end starts coming out under braking i’m completely comfortable i have to me it doesn’t even I don’t even notice it i think um Brandon or somebody else mentioned that you’re crazy like how are you how are you doing that at turn one i don’t even notice it i do it in turn even on turn six sorry um turn 10 down that sometimes the back end will come loose you know ah that was a little weird some people freak out so drifting taught me to be comfortable with the slip angle with the over steer scenarios but it’s interesting because it’s also that it can it can hurt your times yeah it could also be a bad habit that you got into because you got so comfortable going sideways and now you’re very comfortable going sideways on the racetrack but that slow right exactly exactly and it’s uh it’s actually really funny my first my first or second one of those autocrosses I did with my with my A36M3 i went out and I was doing crap times and I was like you know what i’m going to have a little bit more fun i’m going have a little more fun and this specific autocross the people didn’t like fun drifting drifting was really frowned upon and they used to yell at me for doing it and I understand i understand and you want to mark up this asphalt and so on and so forth but I realized this one day when I was doing the autocross event that if I put a little bit of slip angle a little bit of slip angle I was faster than by a tenth and that’s when it kind of kind of hit i was like “Holy wait this actually means something i’m I’m doing this for just for fun but it’s actually resulting in a faster time somehow.” And I started doing it more and more and then I realized this is too much my time started dropping down right so it’s really interesting to see that I how it like the dynamic approach between how you can use slip angle to your advantage but if you go too far it’s completely negative it’s a detriment it’s bad it’s a fine line getting the car pointed up the next straightaway just enough that you back get back to wide open throttle as soon as possible without completely smoking the rear tires absolutely having the rear end pass you absolutely right it also really helps having underpowered cars and that’s really all I’ve learned on let’s uh transition a little bit over to the your involvement in tech for FAR uh one of the reasons you were chosen to run tech inspection for FAR is because your incredible attention to detail which is something that I first noticed at your shop um can you walk us through what it takes to ensure that a car is ready for the racetrack particularly in HPDE so at a bare minimum right I guess there’s different tiers to this because how serious do you want to get into this right like in the sense of you want to do brake race brake pads race suspension but at a bare minimum if you’re entering HPDE at least tires right at least have 530 seconds on them at least please 330 30 seconds works but if you’re at wear bars I mean you’re going to smoke them pretty quick brake pads I would say at least 5 millimeters or more like at least half at least half at least half new brake fluid and then from there it really comes it’s it’s more dynamic depending on the car um if the transmission fluid has never been flushed if you haven’t had an oil change recently if your power steering fluid is old um like those things get much more dynamic and much more intricate depending on the car but at a bare minimum tires brakes and fluids right those are things that you can visually inspect for absolutely okay absolutely and obviously seat belts and Right the normal things okay so we talked about what you typically look for in a tech inspection um what tell me a little bit of uh circumstances uh where you had to fail someone’s car because it wasn’t uh trackw worthy and essentially voiding their their track day anonymously of course we don’t call we don’t call any we we don’t we don’t call anybody out here on offdo that this guy with a cave in silver number 18 he’s the worst stealing my number uh it’s actually a good question so so many of you probably know me from from being your tech inspector i know I come off as an i might look like an and I look like I want to fail you but I don’t trust me I don’t i just want the everyone to be as safe as possible that being said I do have attention to detail on this but mainly I have failed people from having ball tires like showing cords to having metal metal brake pads to having active oil leaks yeah yeah like active oil leaks like you don’t need to change your oil if you just do a couple laps to put more oil in you just keep going it’s been I’ve seen some cars that are in rough shape but let me tell you it’s kind of funny because you can’t judge a book by its cover i have seen some cars and I’m guilty of this of judging a book by its cover i’ve seen some cars roll up to tech and I’m like “Holy this car is not going to pass.” And they are fantastic i mean and they follow everything to a tea everything is solid on the car i have I’m super surprised it’s awesome good job and then the flip side I’ve seen the GT GT3 RS’s come in with ball tires right or no brake pads and you’re just like well it sucks so we’re going to talk a little bit in a minute about what you know how how can someone that’s interested in this sport and getting into the sport how to get their cars ready you know for an event like this so we’re going to get into that for a second uh in a minute uh first I want to talk about um some of the misconceptions that we I think us consistently hear from people that want to get into the sport one of those is uh that I hear all the time and I’m sure you guys do too somebody that’s wanting to get into the sport and they’re telling me “Hey um I’m going to go to the track i’m going to join you guys but I got to add another 100 horsepower to the car.” Right and you you guys know that this is the last thing that you should be adding to the car before you hit the track so can you tell us a little bit about maybe some other misconceptions that you’ve heard people think they need to go to the racetrack in in their daily drivers sometimes man I would say the number one thing is power that’s like the number one thing i have had so many friends of mine that say “No no no i’m going to go next year i’m going to go in a month i just need to tune my car i need another 800 horsepower yeah I need another I need another five horsepower power is I hate to say this it’s stupid because it makes the car undrivable if you are not used to it right so absolutely i’ve took a I used to have an F87 M2 Comp i I took it out to the track one time while when I bought it and it was tuned horrendously too much power took off the tune i was faster much better car control bmw did a damn good job on that car out the box how it came now apart from that other things are I need to get race tires i need to get race pads no you don’t you’re not racing right the key word here is race racing tires racing brake pads you don’t need that right if you’re doing HPDE look are the stock compounds great no they suck but will it get you through being a first timer there absolutely you’re going to be just fine you can go with 300 treadware tires and you’re going to be fine especially if it’s your first time there now if you’re advanced different conversation right pushing the car to a larger limit you need to change components accordingly um I remember instructing um I believe it was with Chin i had a student in an M2 and you know we do the the pre-track u conversation that we have with students and he’s telling me his car is tuned I think it’s close to 600 horsepower and I’m thinking oh my goodness it’s going to be one of those days and I I remember him specifically telling me cuz the car was just uncontrollable you know it just you can feel the wheel spin as he’s you know changing gears he’s driving off traction control at that point yeah and he he’s he’s uh absolutely not having a good time and I remember telling him I’m like “Listen you know just back off a little bit you know and then you’re going to have you’re going to have fun.” And he I remember him he looked at me and he says “I’m not having a good time.” Right no right he was trying to you know control this beast and it was just too much horsepower for him so horsepower is your enemy when you don’t know how to handle it there’s a reason that expression exists right it’s It’s more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow everybody should learn on whatever the lowest horsepower not to make fun of my Miata friends but you know a Miata a BRZ something like that you’re exponentially better off learning how to drive on that and then slowly stepping up your game from a power standpoint because yeah you throw somebody in a car like that and they think that they’re doing themselves a favor by putting a tune on it absolutely not yeah the overwhelming majority of cars especially for somebody you know first second time have way more power than than they need or they can control you can hide behind horsepower you get straight away you get in a Miata you are not hiding it humbles you yes it it really makes Yes as as we know it really humbles you it really makes you realize wow I suck i don’t know what I’m doing um question for both of you what are the top four to five mods that someone who’s getting more serious about tracking their car should consider let’s say you know from this is the most important to probably the least important the last one on your list top three or four i mean I guess it depends if you’re are you talking about a firsttime person right cuz uh let’s say somebody that’s has already gone to a couple of track days and say you know I like this i’m going to stick with it what are the next mods that I should get you know once you’re beyond that I think everybody and I was absolutely guilty of this when I was three or four track days in right you get to the point where you know you go out the first time and you can get away with your 300 treadware regular street tires and you can get away with your regular street pads and that kind of stuff and I think everybody maybe everybody’s a stretch but the overwhelming majority of people have probably gone in search of that that magical brake pad that can work both on the street and on the track right so if you’re speaking the same thing your unicorn pad right your stock brake pad right that’ll work for your first event maybe your second and obviously all these answers are subjective it depends on how hard you’re pushing right but first couple events you can probably get away with a street pad street pad by event you know maybe depending on your how you progress six seven eight you definitely need a trackpad there’s that little in between there where you’re just like well I really don’t want to spend you know five six hundred bucks on my trackpad yet i don’t want to have to try and you know I got to take off the wheels every time and swap calipers and I’ll you know take off the calipers and all that kind of stuff it’s a pain in the butt so I’m going to find one pad that I can take both to the street and to the track and you may be able to do that for like an event or two but it it just doesn’t exist you just once you get to a point you you burn through those sport street sport pads uh they’re just they just can’t handle the additional stress your number one you’re saying brake pads for for once somebody has gotten to that level you’re really like if you’ve gone a couple of times and you love it just bite the bullet save the $600 on your Street Sport Plus pads and just go right to a dedicated trackpad so give me two three and four um again tires at that point in time to John’s point earlier you can get away with 300 treadware tires for your first few events um eventually though you’re much better off going to a 200 treadware tire you know once you get to that point in time we talked about fluid already camber plates some kind of lower control arm adjustment so that the the that’s one of those things that pays for itself takes maybe a year or two to pay for itself but you’ll get an extra two events out of a set of tires if you’re not rolling over onto the sidewall because you don’t have enough negative camber and look once you really start pushing um I’m going to say something i’m going to go a little bit sideways here you asked the question about modifications to the car a Hans device anybody that is pushing even remotely I know we all wear Hans devices um you know once you get to the point where look what is a Hans device a Hans device is um so we all have our helmets here and the Hans device sort of the the ones that we wear as instructors we mostly have what’s called a hybrid Hans which will work on both um uh three-point regular street what does it stand for what does Hans stand for head and neck train system there you go there’s no R in there it should be called Hunters they made They made a terrible terrible flaw i guess it doesn’t roll off the tongue very well does it uh so yeah anyway it basically uh the hybrids ones that we wear it sort of straps you around and kind of gives you a hug um and it’s got some tethers that basically god forbid you get into an accident and your head flies forward it sort of restrains your head from popping off your It protects your neck and really your your back from uh detaching right for lack of better terms yes yes exactly so okay so so I Yes I would absolutely go safety you know with with for your for your average HPDE person that’s going four or five times a year you know if you’re not pushing that hard I don’t know that you need to go full cage and all that kind of stuff and seats and harness all that stuff will keep you safe but you know for the for the intermediate person the three-point belts and all of the the safety equipment that cars come with these days airbags and that kind of stuff get a Hans and you can you can I would I that’s what I wear and I go into 17 at 145 at Sebring and I wouldn’t want to go much faster than that though to be honest with you like you know once you’re going up to you know the Turbo S’s or you know the the GT cars you know the M4s and kind of stuff that have going back to that 600 horsepower Um yeah I’m not terribly comfortable doing 150 so for people that don’t that are not aware of you know Sebring turn 17 um I think that we should explain that this is not I95 and you’re just going 150 mph straight no you’re actually turning into into a corner at 140 mph plus and please don’t go 150 mph on I95 no I know that there’s there’s going to be somebody that’s listening saying 145 I do that only 95 right yeah yeah turn and do it right it’s a little bit It’s a little bit harder right um all right you tell me top four or five modifications for a guy a girl that’s you know still driving their their car to the track okay number one brake fluid okay yep number one brake fluid i I can’t even count how many times I’ve had people come to me with boiled brake fluid it’s It’s And it’s It’s What happens when when the brake fluid gets too hot and how does it get too hot on so it gets hot because of friction from the brake pads pretty much from just the braking system the heat radiates off goes onto the fluid the fluid is a very good conductor so to speak and it picks up the fluid the problem is many like majority of the brake fluid it’s in in your car for stuff for example if it’s a year old it’s it’s lost its wet and dry boiling point by a a large margin so bra fluid hydroscopic absorbs moisture as moisture gets obviously moisture gets hot steam all these things turn into bad things right the first thing I would do and recommend is new brake fluid and if you can get SRF awesome it’s liquid gold it’s expensive as but that stuff is amazing it’ll last a long time yeah and we change it once a year and honestly sometimes it feels overkill but there that’s a different conversation brake fluid number one um number two suspens suspension now it depends on the car whether or not it’s camera plates in my opinion or just full-on suspension altogether but suspension makes a car much safer to drive because it’s much more predictable um and I’m not talking about two or three ways i mean if you’re just starting out one way just a decent coilover from let it be Billstein i mean well yeah actually Billstein JRZ BC’s were actually not bad pcs are okay they’re not bad for like going out there a first few times the problem is you’ll outlive your you out grow them really quick if this is something you get into but so fluid suspension and then at that point it really depends on the car right because now you’re getting to a point of are the brake pads adequate material so maybe break pads at that point if you’re really if you’re late if you’re a late break kind of person okay because there’s different personalities on track there are people that love the late break like a and there people that love the trail break people that love the just throttle down so it really depends on what your what bad habit you picked right to for the next one right but regardless suspension tires at least downgrade the tires or sorry upgraded tires from my 300 tread were worth like a 200 um or a more reputable brand mucho mucho machos aren’t going to get you aren’t going to get you far on track you know those tires yes mucho Machos yeah yeah one of many i think I had lunch there the other day quesadilla is fantastic the tacos sound like they would be good there absolutely yeah you know the uh the braking system is something that I think most people don’t understand the abuse that it’s going to take at the racetrack whenever when I have the same conversation with people asking me hey what how do I get the car ready and the first thing I tell them is brake fluid you know just make sure it’s it’s new and preferably something with a higher boiling point because you have no idea the the stress that the the braking system is going to go through because I if you’re going to spend money right on something should you and this just makes sense if you’re going to spend money on something right you have money burning your hole in your pocket would you rather spend money on something that is going to help you stop or help you go faster right like why would you spend money on something that’s going to help you go faster if what you can’t Right exactly so yes I I prefer choice A you can go fast but not stop or you can go or you can already or you can be going already faster than you probably want to be going choice is easy there but and it’s also it’s also that it ruins your day so I have been an instructor and I’m sitting in the passenger seat and so many cars that have boiled their fluid and it completely when you’re when it’s the first time you’re out there whether it be Sebring Homestead wherever and you don’t change your brake fluid and you go out and you lose brakes it’s a it’s a I don’t know i got to explain the feeling it’s like you you are like that’s it i’m going to die this car is going to kill me it’s when your stomach goes to your throat you have that sinking feeling a lot of people don’t say “Fuck I want to go back out.” That was great no people are like “This is bad i don’t want to do this again.” Yes they hang They hang it up like “This is not for me.” Yeah it’s a bad experience completely hey listen let’s shift gears real quick mike I’m going to turn this over to you um let’s We’ve been talking about HPD so let’s talk a little bit more about what is HPD what does it stand for um you know you have a wealth of experience in this field you being a chief instructor um who is HPDE for what kind of driver you know does it attract you know talk to us a little bit about that sure so you’re all about giving me the acronym tests today like I didn’t study for study for any of this HPD stands for uh high performance driving events driving education driving experience I think the E is sort of interchangeable I think we do a great job at FAR at leaning on the high performance driving educ education there right um you know we do all kinds of classes from basic car control the over steer that John was talking about earlier teaching you know so many people don’t understand right the the the first basics that we talk about are are weight transfer right people don’t understand what weight what weight transfer means right you jam on the brakes all the car in the all the weight of the car shifts to the front axle that squatting down of the front axle actually increases the size of the contact patch that’s of the rubber that’s in contact with the track surface right and when that happens you’ve got more grip up front than you do in the rear of the car that’s why the brake calipers and the brake rotors on the car you go out and look at your car the front brakes are a lot bigger than the rear brakes well that’s because the people that do all this engineering know that when all that weight gets thrown forward contact patch gets bigger those tires work better let’s put the bigger brakes on that same reason that most high performance cars are rear wheel drive because you got the opposite happening right all that weight shifts back you want the rear tires to be driving because there’s they’re those are the ones that are squatting down and getting larger right so we talk a lot about weight transfer under steer over steer give me the uh the 10,000 foot view yes of HPD for for somebody that is listening in and they have uh a sports car they have a Cayman or an M3 and and they’re listening in they’re wondering “How do I get my car on the track is is can I do that with my car?” Yeah it’s funny you say that because that’s how I got started in the sport i had no idea this was a thing right i was at home playing Gran Turismo thinking I was the coolest thing since since sliced bread um and but like said I I always had enjoyed motorsports right so I was on the internet at some point in time i had just stumbled upon a 2002 Corvette so I was on a Corvette forum and somebody mentioned “Oh we’re going up to Sebring with Safe Motorsports.” And I was just like “You had a Corvette?” I did we don’t talk about it i don’t picture that what it’s hard to picture that that right i’m sorry continue i still have the I still have my uh my New Balance sneakers and my white my white socks in the closet all right away from they’re in a they’re in a time vault at home uh so no anyway I was on the internet there some guys said “Oh you know we’re going to do that.” I had no idea it was a thing so yeah the thing is and it’s great is and again um you know as long as you have any basic car will do right you don’t need a a Bugatti or anything like that you know we always talk about Porsches and BMWs and that kind of stuff but you know come on out and whatever you have we’re going to give you a little bit of education make sure your your brake fluid is fresh that you’ve got decent pads decent tires and yeah we’re going to we’re going to get out there we’re going to put an instructor in the car with you it’s very safe right um you’re they’re going to be in the right seat we’re going to give you some introductory stuff about what you should do on track and then like I said we’ve always got somebody in the right seat they’ve got a communicator and they’re going to walk you around a lap and you know one of the things that um I wanted to mention because I I see this a lot you know you and I look at the registrations come in for for FAR and you know I’m sure that we’ve we’ve seen it for other organizations as well when we ask about track experience so we can understand where to place that driver what rung group right is this a novice rung group you know driver if they have only a couple of events is it an intermediate driver with you know 5 to 10 track days or is it advanced you know we want to know what’s your track experience um what I’ve seen a lot um I think people try to shy away from from getting an instructor i’m assuming probably because it cost $100 more and uh and so under experience and I kid you not I see this i have a lot of drag racing experience street drag racing experience um I’ve watched something that you really want to brag about i’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos that’s another one um what’s the other one um drag racing YouTube videos sim racing which now is is more valid than than my Gran Turismo experience when I first started yeah yeah if they say if they they say sim racing okay that’s valid but if it’s like an Xbox thing right uh not so much but yeah that’s that’s the kind of stuff that I get so I think it’s important to mention that the instructor is so important you know because when you go out there you have to understand that you you really don’t know what you’re doing when I think all of us can say the same thing when you go out there you realize I don’t know anything i don’t know how to drive you have to like relearn how to drive because it’s opposite of what you learn how to do on the street so many things getting down to breaking are the complete opposite of what we do on the street but look I was exactly the same way right i had I had three or four days in me and I was like “Okay I’m getting the getting the hang of this i want to save my hundred bucks and I want to go solo as quick as possible.” And it’s exact you should hold on to that only having to pay $100 for as long as you can because I’m telling you once you go out there and you know we we do a couple of check rides right we have two instructors make sure that we believe that you’re safe and capable you’ve got good situational awareness you know where the corner workers are you know what the flag definitions are once you’re out there on your own trying to teach yourself just by going through gas and brake pads and tires it’s not cheap and eventually you get right you get to the point after 3 years four years you’re sort of at this plateau there’s other people that have the same car or slower car that are faster than you and then you’ve got to go hire you know an actual right somebody like me right which is not $100 i charge you a hell of a lot more than than $100 right so yeah no seriously we we make sure that our instructors are are highly competent and capable so yeah any advice that I could give somebody that has three or four days and they want to go solo man take that take that that cheap $100 experience for as long as you can until the instructors are literally kicking you out of the car absolutely i can see that the the $100 is an investment in your education again high performance driver education right so $100 is nothing um I I definitely fall into that same bucket where I wanted to go solo as quickly as possible and then I spent the next couple years just turning laps trying to figure out what it was that I’m doing wrong because I wasn’t going any faster and then you have to hire somebody like you you know $800 $1,600 for the day whatever the case is is way more expensive so definitely take advantage of that the $100 extra um hey listen we’re going to go into uh rapid fire questions for in regards to HPD okay a new segment well I’m looking at the time and I’m like man we got a lot to cover here so so this is going to be a rapid fire so keep your questions like you know boom boom boom boom um this one’s going to be for both of you i’m going to start with you Mike best and worst cars for HPDE track days uh best car probably a Maza Miata or a BRZ especially for a beginner i mean I’m leaving out my obvious Porsche answer because you guys get tired of me hearing me say that worst car is something that’s heavy like stay away from the gigantic sedans that weigh 4,200 pounds and come from the factory with 600 horsepower because you the consumables brake pads brake tires very expensive where would um like the the Porsche TYON fall in in that category in the terrible category yes i mean any any EV is going to be a problem right because you’re only going to get three laps before you have to recharge it and just the the weight of them blazingly fast weight blazingly fast yeah weight is the enemy which is why Miata is always the answer right what do you think uh best car best and worst car worst car crown Vic there you go right well it’s it’s heavy it’s got a I could say Lincoln Town Car got a Cadillac i mean we can do all minivan pacifica not ideal for HBD not ideal for HBD though though I did have my Tesla Model Y in the track one day and got a point buy from a Cayman that made my day of course burned through the brakes the next corner that ended badly but a lot of people might think uh track days are only for race cars or high performance vehicles uh can you clear that up can someone bring their daily driver to HPD event and if so what should they be prepared for yes absolutely you can bring your daily driver right i started uh other than the Corvette that we don’t speak about um my first real track car was a Golf R Volkswagen Golf R and a little GTI would have been just as capable ford Focuses like I said Subaru BRZ you know the small and light is sort of the key there and again break fluid is really all you need your first day out all right question number two we’ve all heard of track day etiquette this is a big topic amongst organizers right uh what are some common mistakes people make during their first track their first few track days and how can they avoid them i think the number one thing is to to leave your ego at home because it’s a lot harder than it looks right 100% ego yeah it it that is the number one answer people come in and they think that they’re great and they realize before they’ve gotten to the end of the first lap oh this is harder than it looks you know um it it really is so I would say the number one thing would be that I think you should open up your meetings or your like your u the driver meetings the driver meetings as you don’t know right yes right we’ll change that to be the first slide let’s start with this right on the slide you don’t know something to consider all right question number three as a new HPDE participant what should someone expect from their first track day what are the main things they should focus on especially when it comes to safety and getting the most out of their experience right brake fluid brake fluid break have we said fluid i don’t know we mentioned brake brake fluid um yeah once you get brake fluid honestly drinking and I don’t mean the alcoholic variety thank you for clarifying that you you should be going through water like it’s going out of Gatorade Pedialyte whatever pick your poison absolutely um do not get a good night’s Get a good night’s sleep the night before um no going out in South Beach until 2:00 in the morning um you’re not a race car driver yet right exactly right and and just prepare for like sensory overload it it’s it’s a lot right i mean like I still we go out to SLS i sit on the grid and there’s still a little bit of butterflies there and we’ve got thousands of laps at at this point in time over hundreds of track days so just go into it check your ego you know make sure the car is ready make sure you’re well rested try try not to drive to the track the day of oh yeah yeah well it goes back to my get a good night’s sleep right oh yeah right yeah if you’re if you’re coming from if you’re coming from 2 hours away and text starts at 7:30 in the morning it’s a rough day yeah get get a good night’s sleep in in a hotel near the track the night before instead of getting up at 3:00 in the morning and driving as I got older I realized that that was certainly a luxury right as you get older you know sure you you’re you can make a little bit more money when you’re young you’re like I’ll just drive there and save myself 150 bucks from the hotel right as I got older no right about the time you’re falling asleep in the drivers you’re meeting you realize that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea yep all right uh question number four there’s often a fear of not being fast enough uh from beginner drivers um how do you address that fear with new drivers and why is it important to focus on driving within your limits well by by fear of not being fast enough um they’re going to get they’re afraid that they’re going to get in other people’s ways okay well that’s why we we very clearly in the beginner group have rules about point buys right and that’s why you’ve got an instructor sitting in the right seat because their eye is in the rearview mirror that way the the beginner can focus forward right all you have to worry Right right exactly instruct out the windshield drive out drive out the windshield right it’s all about vision um so look it’s you’re going to be slow right all of us were slow i can only imagine how horrible I was on my first track event that was like before GoPros because I’m so old so I don’t have video of it but I would pay like 500 bucks for because I’m sure I was terrible everybody is terrible every one of us if if you go back and think about your first event was awful so just don’t worry about it right there are people of all skill level cars of all different performance variety the overwhelming majority of my good friends are people that I met at the track now everybody is there to help to make sure you have a good time put you at ease so just go out do your best have a great time and don’t worry about it also something worth mentioning is that we’re not going to throw a a beginner driver to the track with advanced drivers right they’re going to have their own run group with other noobs to to the track so it’s not something they really have to you know worry about yeah no excellent point all those run groups are separated basically by what comes down to lap time i mean it’s about experience but at the end of the day it’s it really is lap times so you’re going to be out there with a group of like-minded people that have a similar amount of experience um yeah just relax and have a great time all right let’s talk um let’s talk quickly about the importance of driver progression as it relates to HPDE right uh at what point do drivers usually start to transition from novice to intermediate solo uh and what does that shift look like in terms of skill and mindset yeah you know it really depends is the answer you’ve got some people I mean I’ve ridden with people that it was their second or third day and they were ready to go solo right and then I’ve been with people that are on the day number 15 and they’re still not ready to go solo um so and that’s the reason that we do the check rides and we have two set two instructors ride with you right we don’t want to just rely on hey you’re your one instructor just you know wanted to cut out early for the day or wasn’t feeling well so they said oh yeah this guy’s good to go solo right we always make sure you have two two sets of eyes to make sure that you’re ready to go solo and then we continuing Right exactly you know just the continuing education we have the classroom is tailored for that right we’ve got novice classrooms we’ve got intermediate classrooms we’ve got advanced classrooms so sort of as you progress and start to gain more experience and more speed there’s something for everybody to make sure that you know we’re continuing that right i’m not going to teach somebody on their first day to turn in early and to trail break it’s just not going to work but when you start working with intermediate students that are like “Hey this guy’s got the same car as I do but in in the advanced group and I’m looking at his lap times and he’s 5 seconds faster how is that possible?” All right all right well let’s start doing a little bit more you know advanced techniques um so that you can practice that and eventually make that next step up sure all right John let’s shift gears over back to you uh you also own and operate Corsa Technic now how do you pronounce that correctly technic technic yeah okay corsa Technic a performance automotive shop u tell us a little bit about the shop the kind of cars you typically service uh what it’s like running a performance focused shop dayto-day all right um so the vision was I was working at a I was working at Ferrari actually uh I after over a decade at BMW five six years of Ferrari I figured out not that I can do better but customer service is something that I I can I can intertwine that really well with my ability to fix cars i think I can do this so that’s where Course Tech was born um started in 2017 been in business over eight years now it’s been an awesome ride roller coaster but it’s been an awesome ride um and it’s it’s really taught me how to put together my hobby I guess more so of my my passion and make into a job that I love doing it’s awesome to go into work every day and not only having a great work environment but having a great place where I know everything apart from everything being done right that I can provide a service to somebody they’re looking for not break the bank and them be completely content with their car after they’re done it’s just an awesome feeling right i would do something with my hands and the result is this car is faster this car handled better this car is fixed this whatever it might be it’s an awesome gratifying feeling so the mantra from what I understand for your shop is you’re providing dealer style service at a much lower cost correct correct we have all the same scan tools um and we go actually above and beyond in procedures from being in the dealer figured out everything that worked and a lot of what didn’t work you know inefficiencies in the system and what we did was make it where it’s you bring your car in every car gets an inspection right so it doesn’t matter if you bring your car in for example an oil change or an engine or wipers it’s going to get a 35point inspection and at that point you get a foundation of what you’re looking at for your car right it’s not something we’re charging for it’s just something that we can tell you hey your tires are done you’re pouring oil your wipers are even something as simple as your wipers are streaking to which the customer usually goes I just came here for the oil change trying to screw me which is which is totally fine right because we totally understand the mantra that it’s such a bad like it’s not a mantra it’s such a bad what’s the word the industry has a bad rap yes the industry has a really bad rap so we do everything by when we when we do the inspections we actually provide pictures and videos and everything because we believe in full transparency i have been in too many scenarios getting my own car fixed at dealers where they completely me so bad paying for things that weren’t done not knowing what the person did i hate that and I never wanted someone to leave my shop with that same feeling so we kind of covered a little bit about you know um customer you know go having bad experiences i want to hear about the other side of that right what kind of nightmare stories you know can you tell us having you know having running a shop what kind of like I don’t know like crazy stories that you know maybe customers have done you know in in in the past that you’ve encountered i mean this is where the anonymous portion of the show is very important for for John’s future business strongly anonymous strongly anonymous um that we I have two actually really good stories one is just a funny one uh we performed a lot of service on a specific car i don’t want to name it because it might Yeah on a specific car we can’t say BMW or anything like that you say BMW let’s say BMW it’s a lot of BMW to work on yes uh we did a large service on a BMW waiting for the customer to come pick up um we don’t hear from the customer for like a day or two sometimes it happens they’re out of town whatever the scenario might be come in one day my adviser calls me hey did this customer pick up their car the BMW is gone i’m like no what the are you talking about this BMW isn’t here anymore go back we’re like what is going on what like why why is this car not here holy call the police and start the whole process the car getting stolen did you try to reach out to the customer at that point yes like your car’s not here we called We called 2:00 in the morning did you and I looked at our cameras and our cameras was someone random getting in the car and like and like struggling with the door and getting in we’re like “Holy this car gets stolen.” Yeah customer calls us hey hey guys uh I just need to pay for my car like what the are you talking about you need to pay for your car have you not heard a voicemail your car is not here yeah no no it’s okay it’s It’s I gave I gave the keys to my offspring to a friend to to pick up my car someone picked up the car at like 4 in the morning with a black hoodie and they fumbled the keys they fumbled the keys in the door like they were nervous like they were nervous it completely every single thing even when the police came looked at the video were like “Oh yeah someone stole this car.” Yeah let’s make a police report they were like it was crazy wait so what happened then the customer just picked it up the customer thought it was completely okay to come pick up the car before paying because he had an extra key oh we still had his key right okay but he wasn’t refusing to pay no no but it was like nothing ever happened have you ever had that though that like a customer tried to steal their own car this was a one and only chance so now we changed certain per like certain systems in place where that can’t happen anymore okay but this was a a like a wakeup call to us like “Holy this could happen.” Yeah it would just so happened that this person actually called us unknowingly that this was going to be a problem you’ve had to also have encounters where you know you give a customer the bill and uh they freak out and this is this not what I expecting you kind of shared with me a little bit um female customers their go-to is what uh crying crying crying and look it’s it’s I don’t want to laugh about this right because it’s not something to laugh about i understand there are like hard scenarios and people call like fall on hard times i completely understand the thing is that and I know my service advisor Akira he’ll he’ll attest to this that people somehow treat us as their shrink really and it’s a crazy thing because they trust us with their cars they feel like they trust us with their emotions which is fine we are I am off were talking hanging out and all this stuff but some people really opened up i’m going through a divorce and you know you got to understand you know times are rough you really open up and you’re just like “This is getting uncomfortable i’m sorry your bill’s still $300 we your battery is still done in your car so you What do you What do you want to do?” So I’ve had that scenario so many times and it’s something that people get really comfortable and they open up to you which is awesome you know but it’s they get comfortable opening up with you which makes you guys very uncomfortable which makes us very uncomfortable because we’re all for you know being your friend and listening to everyone’s problems but there’s comes there comes a point where like we don’t need to know that you’re you’re living not in your house or you’re in a divorce or your husband’s cheating on you or you’re cheating on him like we don’t need to know this just you want to pay for your oil change you start filing that like this is too much information yeah we’re just like yeah this is cool what meanwhile you’re like I have 13 other cars that I need to get to yeah and and and you’ll be surprised how often this happens and it’s a lot it happens a lot and you know I understand people fall in hard times and a lot of people don’t expect their bills sometimes because you know we we don’t we’re a European focused repair facility and we work on a lot of European cars and exotics expensive cars expensive cars and expensive cars unfortunately have the expensive expensive bills expensive maintenance and at that at the turn of you know someone coming in and saying “Oh how much i didn’t know how much this was we have everything in place to for them to see the price before they even approve it but they still come in after and still cry about it.” There’s a reason why used BMWs are so inexpensive because the repairs are not inexpensive not just BMWs well I’m using that as an example because you you’ll see used BMWs like I don’t know $67,000 go ahead and buy that and see what it costs once you take it to the shop right i have no I have no idea what Vanos is so I just know it’s expensive to fix depends on the car yeah it depends on the car a lot of people A lot of people think “Man I got a great deal on this car.” No you didn’t if someone starts the conversation with “I got a great deal on this car.” I immediately want to say “You got fucked.” Yeah come back to me in a year yeah it got 15,000 miles let me let me look at the car and you’re going to learn how much of a good deal it was very rarely do you find a good deal where it’s like “Wow this car is really clean.” You’re right you as the the the shop owner are thinking “No no I got a good deal.” But to be honest no because I I don’t like taking advantage of people that in that specific scenario someone took advantage of that person and it puts me in a positive scenario but I don’t want to be in that scenario i’d rather you bring me a car and say “Hey man everything’s going awesome i want I want to maintain my investment of this vehicle to make it the best it can be right we treat every car as an investment so I want this investment to keep on trucking so I can right it can pay me back in miles and safety that’s what we want john um you uh the course of course the technique your shop is expanding quickly uh you are actually moving into a new larger facility uh this week next week yeah so you know huge congratulations on the very very welldeserved success that you’ve had thank you um along with that growth I know you’ve recently launched an exciting new arrive and drive program uh called velocity track experience where um you rent out track prep cars and offer trackside support tell us a little bit about that what what that program entails what kind of cars you rent out it’s an awesome awesome awesome program um so we saw this this void of renting HPDE cars right a lot of people rent race cars but it comes out it comes with a very lackluster service sometimes and we want to provide not just the awesome service behind it but also HPD cars so we rent this and specifically we have an ND Miata 2018 ND Miata um it’s an awesome awesome car this is one of one of the fleet we also have a E90 uh spec E90 car that we have as a rental it’s a full race car E92 M3 race car and people can just show up um pay the fee and get on the track yeah and they and it includes includes your track insurance includes pretty much everything other than if you it up and your track entry right so it’s a great way for you to if you don’t have that car right if you drive that Crown Vic or that Pacifica for you to rent a car come out have a great time and not worry about any consumable on the car because we cover the fuel we cover the tires you cover the brakes well it’s and it’s also a good way for you know some we’re fortunate that we’ve got a couple of great tracks in our backyard right but when we go to Sebring right if you’re outside of the Florida area and you want to cross check off that bucket list of driving Sebring International Raceway hop in a plane from wherever you are fly in rent a car at Orlando airport drive in just do an arrive and drive and fly back home exactly right yep no strings attached well unfortunately that is the end of another episode i know you’ve we’ve had a lot of fun doing this um if you’ve enjoyed this episode be sure to click that subscribe and like button if you are a driver a race car driver uh HPD driver instructor or whatever and you have you know cool stories interesting stories that you want to share reach out we would love to have you on the show and have you tell your stories and remember everything interesting happens off the racing line see you next time everything interesting happens off the racing line i took the hard road i burned these stripes the ro from dreamer to driver ain’t always straight kept my head down fueled by faith i lost some time but found my name fresh and made a diamond out of me