We Won a Race! ft. Tommy Kendall and Jonny Lieberman!

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Smoking Tire – "We Won a Race! ft. Tommy Kendall and Jonny Lieberman!"

Date: December 9, 2025
Hosts: Matt Farah, Zack Klapman
Guests: Tommy Kendall, Johnny Lieberman

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Episode Overview

In this lively and detail-packed episode, Matt and Zack celebrate a victorious weekend at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) alongside racing icon Tommy Kendall and automotive journalist Jonny Lieberman. The group unpacks their recent class win at a World Racing League (WRL) endurance race in Texas, diving into everything from behind-the-scenes race strategies and driver data analysis, to personal driving revelations, teamwork, and some classic car rental shenanigans. The tone is energetic, self-deprecating, and filled with camaraderie, making this a can't-miss for fans of grassroots motorsport.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Victory at COTA: The Race Breakdown

• Chronological Race Recap:
  • Practice & Qualifying
    • Team Open Throttle prepped several BMWs, with extra seat time for drivers to familiarize with the track.
    • Initial hiccup: Team forgot to fill the race car for qualifying. “We got off to a bad start because our team, Open Throttle, forgot to put gas in the car for qualifying.” (Johnny Lieberman, 05:15)
  • Saturday: Learning and Penalties
    • Saturday felt like a "practice race" for the group, with notable mistakes including fueling violations and track limit penalties.
    • “We got all our mistakes in on Saturday, for sure.” (Tommy Kendall, 03:16)
    • Notable penalty: Visor not down during refueling resulted in a lap penalty.
  • Data Analysis & Improvement
    • Tato (Matteo) served as data coach, overlaying lines and pedal traces to help everyone improve.
    • “I listened to the data… Your best lap and your best lap on both days was about the same, but your worst lap on Saturday was five seconds slower than your worst lap on Sunday.” (Johnny Lieberman, 04:05)
    • Revelations from data and Tato’s sim practice paid dividends.
  • Sunday: The Big Win
    • Strategy: The team skipped a driver change, opting for longer double stints to save critical time.
    • Tato started in P7, surged to P3 by turn 1, and set up the car for a successful multi-hour run.
    • Last-minute splash-and-go fuel stop led to a dramatic finish, winning the class by just 9 seconds.

2. Team Dynamics & Individual Performances

• Tato (“Matteo”):

  • Young racing phenom, coached the team using detailed sim and data analysis.
  • “When I told my wife I wasn’t the fastest in the car… she’s like, what?!” (Tommy Kendall, 08:03)
  • Noted for unique lines through the COTA S’s, which gave the car significant advantage.

• Matt Farah:

  • Notably improved between Saturday and Sunday.
  • Pulled a double stint on Sunday, holding onto P1/P2 under pressure.
  • Notable admission: “I dove into the pits behind the Cayman… it was a bonehead move.” (Matt Farah, 41:13) [Recounts mistaking a flag for an instruction to pit]

• Tommy Kendall:

  • Veteran driver called on for ‘closing’ during both race days.
  • Managed tire wear and navigated yellow flag strategy with expertise.
  • “For two days straight, all Tommy did was talk about yellow flag strategy.” (Johnny Lieberman, 45:16)
  • Returned to competitive racing after 11 years away.

• Jonny Lieberman:

  • Honest about being “slow” on Saturday, ultimately gave up his Sunday seat to Matt for the best chance at a win:
  • “You don’t get any more money for being the fastest journalist.” (Johnny Lieberman, 39:14)

• Open Throttle Racing Crew:

  • Praised for car prep and behind-the-scenes support (shout out to crew chief Zach—only 24 and called the winning strategy).
  • Emotional moment: “I’ve never seen more grown men crying, dude. He just called a winning race with Tommy Kendall driving.” (Johnny Lieberman, 49:42)

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3. Technical Insights & Driving Lessons

• The Power of Data:

  • Tato’s sim work and post-race data sessions comparing throttle and brake traces led to major lap time improvements for the whole team.
  • Key lesson: “Whoever gets to full throttle first onto the straightaway is the fastest; NOT whoever gets on throttle first.” (Tommy Kendall, 61:27)
  • Throttle/brake overlap and patience at corner exit, not just “all on/all off”, proved fastest.

• Race Strategy & Endurance Tactics:

  • Maximizing stints to reduce pit stops, capitalizing on yellow flag timing, and risk management with penalties.
  • “The only way we were going to beat the screaming goat [the #1 rival car] was stretching fuel and picking the right strategy.” (Matt Farah, 43:45)

• Track Specifics:

  • COTA’s S’s and the unique lines/pedaling required (“I noticed that nobody else took this line, especially coming out of the S’s, hugging that road all the way to the left… that’s where I could go from 200 ft. behind a car to 50.” – Matt Farah, 32:27)
  • Restarts were wild due to the multi-class structure, with fast prototypes and slower cars all mixed up.

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4. Personal & Memorable Moments

• Team Spirit and Unselfish Decisions

  • Jonny giving up his seat: “That’s a bro move right there. Straight up team player.” (Matt Farah, 49:33)

• Tommy’s Return to Victory

  • “The last time you won a race was September 11, 2004. Tato was born in March 2004.” (Johnny Lieberman, 52:17)
  • Emotional reconnection with grassroots racing and old friends: “The grassroots is your peeps, because you built it from… and that’s what this is all about.” (Tommy Kendall, 51:32)

• Crew Chief Zach’s Triumph

  • Overcome with emotion after the win, realizing he’d called the race for legends.

• Classic Rental Car Stories

  • Lengthy digression on racing and “abusing” rental cars over the years:
    • “We used to really race our rental cars.” (Johnny Lieberman, 103:39)
    • Dan Binks and the Cadillac woodpile incident (hilariously returned after jacking the floor back into place).

• Data Coaching Dynamics

  • Tato coaching Tommy Kendall, a racing veteran, on his driving technique, and Tommy’s openness to improvement:
    • “The minute you think you have nothing to learn….” (Tommy Kendall, 116:28)
  • Tato, at 21, not fully aware of the racing legends around him: “I called Hannah that night and I was like, it’s really weird… like, I don’t care how fast you are 21-year-old, I’m tempted to be like, take it.” (Matt Farah, 115:22)

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5. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (w/Timestamps)

• On Race Improvement:
  • “There were some lessons, some hard lessons learned over wine and data.” – Matt Farah (04:21)
• On Their Rivals:
  • “The car to beat in our class is an E46 M3 with an LS motor… ran two to three seconds a lap faster than [us].” – Matt Farah (34:34)
• Tommy’s Return:
  • “I haven’t been in a competitive race since… 11 years.” – Tommy Kendall (19:44)
• On Data and Coaching:
  • “It was wild for me to watch. [Tato] instantly starts in with: ‘Alright Tommy, so what we’re doing here in this turn is this…’” – Johnny Lieberman (53:50)
• On the Tato Line:
  • “I passed him on that Tato line… that’s where I took it back.” – Johnny Lieberman (71:45)
• On Endurance Racing:
  • “So many opportunities to screw up… It’s refreshing. I was having to think harder than I have in a long, long time.” – Tommy Kendall (19:13)
• On Teamwork:
  • “I knew if we wanted to win, I had to let Matt keep the car. That’s Racecraft.” – Johnny Lieberman (74:36)
• On the Feeling of Victory:
  • “That emotion, though… everyone that has raced knows how hard it is… you have way more bad days than you have good days.” – Tommy Kendall (50:32)

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6. Listener Q&A & Fun Sidetracks

• Technical and Car Review Questions
  • Debates on best used SUVs, special editions, value of “notchy” BMW shifters, modern electric car torque democratization, and more.
  • “Whoever gets to full throttle the first onto the straightaways is the fastest — getting on throttle first is the enemy sometimes of getting to full throttle.” – Tommy Kendall (61:27)
• Movie Cars & Nostalgia
  • What movie cars would the crew build for fun/profit? (Tumbler, Ronin S8, Amphibious Esprit).
• Rental Car AI Horror
  • Hilarious/ridiculous experience with new AI-powered rental car inspection scanners at airports.
  • “You drive through and a little AI damage scanner… ring of fire.” – Matt Farah (103:03)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------|:---------------:| | Introductions & Context | 01:16 | | Saturday Race and Penalties | 13:01 – 19:13 | | Sunday Race Strategy & Execution | 34:08 – 49:03 | | Technical Driving Lessons & Data | 59:04 – 63:17 | | Emotional Victory Moments | 49:32 – 52:02 | | Listener Q&A / Misc. Automotive Topics | 75:32 – 102:46 | | Rental Car & “Old School” Racing Tales | 103:03 – 108:32 | | Final Reflections | 109:12 – End |

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Summary & Vibe

The episode’s energy is relaxed yet electric, truly reflecting the post-race high. There’s a strong sense of earned satisfaction—humility in learning, pride in teamwork, and a deep joy in grassroots, analog racing. The crew is refreshingly honest about their mistakes, their learning curves (even for legends like Kendall), and the shared sense of accomplishment. For motorsport fans and track day dreamers, it’s a revealing peek inside the magic, drama, and grit of amateur endurance racing.

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Transcript

[Matt Farah]

What up, everybody? Welcome to the Smoking Tire Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by off the Record. And if you drive on America's highways and byways, then sooner or later you are going to get pulled over and you could very likely be getting a ticket that could put points on your license. And points could potentially affect your insurance rates, your employment, your credit score could affect a variety of things. And you don't want them, trust me. That's why we at the Smoking Tire only use off the record. If you get pulled over, don't plead guilty. Go to offtherecord.com TST that's offtherecord.com Tst and we will give you 10% off all legal services with off the Record. Wherever you got that ticket, off the Record will assign a qualified attorney in their network to fight it for you. And other than submitting the ticket and a little bit of information, you have to do basically nothing. And if they don't get those points off your record, you don't pay. So many people email me about off the record and how they have gotten those points off of people's license and it could be you next. So go to offtherecord.com TST 10% off all legal services with off the Record.

[Tommy Kendall]

All right.

[Matt Farah]

On this episode of the podcast, Johnny Lieberman and Tommy Kendall are joining us in studio because we were class winners at Circuit of the Americas this past weekend and we're here to download the race a bit and talk about about it. It's a good time. And we got a very pretty trophy. It's the Smoking Tire podcast. Let's go. What's up? Hi.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Hey.

[Matt Farah]

Johnny Lieberman in studio. Tommy Kendall's in studio. And two apologies start up front. I seem to have picked up the racetrack sniffles from being outside all week.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Like, just worn down.

[Matt Farah]

Worn down. And like I'm a little sniffly and.

[Johnny Lieberman]

My voice sounds like, what flavor of coconut did you get in Texas?

[Matt Farah]

I don't. I did take a COVID test this morning. I do add a precaution. I do not have Covid, but I feel a little. A little worn down. But. And also the other apology is that Tato and Sergio aren't here because they're still in Texas. And I'm not trying to, like, do a show about a thing that these guys invited us to without them, but we had to do a show today anyway. And I don't want to talk about anything other than the fact that we went to Texas, rented a race car and won a race.

[Tommy Kendall]

Race Ride home some hardware.

[Matt Farah]

Sweet.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, baby.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, this was a good time. And of course, you know, all anyone wants to know is whether I went faster or Johnny went faster.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Matt went way faster. Matt was way faster than I went.

[Matt Farah]

A little faster, but that's okay.

[Zach]

Tommy, you owe me a thousand dollars. I'm just kidding.

[Tommy Kendall]

I was going to say. Wait a second.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, Matt. Matt is much faster than I am.

[Matt Farah]

It was still. It was fun. It was. I mean, so it was like. It was, you know, practice day. And then it turns out, like, for us, I think Saturday felt like a practice race.

[Johnny Lieberman]

It was.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Like dress rehearsal for Sunday race, maybe, Right?

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah. And I like how they do it as two separate rounds, you know, because Lemons. It's cumulative, right? The two days. Yes. And so, you know, we got all our mistakes in on Saturday, for sure.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I mean, you know the difference, because, you know, Tato, again, out here, like, he got out of the car both days in P1. When he got out of the car, that car was in P1.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

The big difference was. And I'm gonna flate you for a second, Matt, if you don'. You got out of the car.

On the first day at P7 when you got out of the car. Second day, it was P2.

[Matt Farah]

Also, that.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yes. So that was. The difference, was that you improved radically from day to day.

[Matt Farah]

I listened to the data.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

Which is funny because I actually didn't really. I did a little bit.

[Johnny Lieberman]

You did because you didn't fluctuate.

You had no laps that were. Because your best lap and your best lap on both days was about the same, but your worst lap on Saturday was five seconds slower than your worst lap on Sunday.

[Matt Farah]

That's true. Got better.

[Tommy Kendall]

The cluster was. They were. The cluster was together.

[Johnny Lieberman]

So that was.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. There were some lessons, some hard lessons learned over wine and data.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yes.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And I really. I wish. That video.

[Tommy Kendall]

That was an epiphany. Was it not?

[Matt Farah]

Well, dude. So this. Okay, so. So.

[Johnny Lieberman]

All right, so where do we. Real quick. Here's where we start. Do you remember? Because he doesn't remember.

[Matt Farah]

Do you remember when he punched himself.

[Johnny Lieberman]

In the head four times?

[Tommy Kendall]

No.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Where's Sergio? I was very frustrated.

[Matt Farah]

I was frustrated because I'm an honor.

[Johnny Lieberman]

He went like this really hard.

[Matt Farah]

I don't. I mean, I didn't do it hard enough to, like, hurt myself, obviously. Unless maybe it was permanent. Maybe that's why I was better. But. Okay, so how do you want to. Do we want to tell this chronologically, or do we really just want to Talk about Sunday.

[Tommy Kendall]

You're the boss.

[Matt Farah]

I don't know. I don't know.

[Zach]

I say chronologically.

[Matt Farah]

Chronologically.

[Zach]

Because I'm curious about practice and all of it. Like, I know Friday.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Friday was qualifying and practice and practice. But. But. But the race. We got off to a bad start because our team, Open Throttle, forgot to put gas in the car for qualifying.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

The first time we mentioned these wonderful people.

[Johnny Lieberman]

The best. The best.

[Matt Farah]

And the great job they did led to a race win.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

The first mention in this show is about a mistake. And that's unfair. I think it's unfair to them. We had a full day of practice. They brought a bunch of BMWs. Not just our race car. They had a little. They had like an F30, like, 320 on good tires and suspension. And I took probably 25 extra laps in it just to lap. Like, press launch. Like, was that car free? Yeah, like, go. Yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

I was gonna say that's exactly what it was like. Cause you're like, is that thing available? I can take it out. I'm outta here.

[Matt Farah]

They also had a GU.

E92 M3 with, like, straight pipes on it that I did about 10 laps in until the brakes completely failed. And that thing was a riot. I mean, that thing was, like, insane.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And that was what we were supposed to be driving. So I raced with these guys. Watkins Glen in 24. And there's a car called Hulk, and that was what we were gonna drive. And it's a E92 V8. It's a real bully. It's real fast, real powerful.

That car got sick, and so they had a. We were in a M235i Clubsport, which is great because it's, like, factory new for their shit.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

It's a very new car and also.

[Matt Farah]

500 pounds lighter than the M3.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah. Down quite a bit of power.

[Matt Farah]

The M3 was faster in the straight, the black one that I drove. But our car was better in the corners, and our car was faster. Like, overall, our car. Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Could turn a faster lap for sure.

[Matt Farah]

So Tato qualified and. Yeah, like, unfortunately, Mike Gorman. Open Throttle. Lovely guy. Their whole team. We got assigned this dude Zach to be our. What's the term? Crew chief. Is that what Zach's role was on the radio? Organizing the strategy? I don't know. How old is Zach? 24. 24. Wow. Zach was 24.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Let me. I can find out either way.

[Matt Farah]

He's a young. He was. He's a young man.

[Tommy Kendall]

Just so people are clear, Tato, is Mateo correct? Yes. Tato is Mateo side of the.

[Matt Farah]

Sergio. Tato's dad was on this show a couple months ago talking about immigration law. It was incredibly insightful and it's only gotten worse. So we're gonna have him back to talk about that. He's our team principal. Sergio, we could say. And Matteo is his son, who's a 21 year old super trofeo driving hot shoe that makes time appear out of air and is an unbelievably fast fucking racing driver.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Tommy, would you second that?

[Tommy Kendall]

I would second that, yes. When I told my wife that I was not the fastest in the. She's like, what? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

By the way, he had you by three seconds.

[Matt Farah]

Wait, so what?

[Tommy Kendall]

Pretty close. Pretty close.

[Matt Farah]

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[Johnny Lieberman]

I have no idea. I didn't even look. I was not having. I was having a bad day on Saturday, okay? I slept. No excuses. I just. I was very slow.

[Matt Farah]

You flew in from Portugal.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I flew in from Portugal. But you know, I just. I just never.

I just never got the S's. I never got the S's and I was getting just murdered at the end of the 2nds. Everybody passed me because I was like. And I was just in my own head and I was very slow.

[Matt Farah]

I didn't mean to harp on it. I think it was like a 45.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

I think.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, could have been. I didn't.

[Matt Farah]

I did a 235. Five was my best. And you did a 30. Did you have a 33 or were you in the 34s?

[Zach]

I think.

[Tommy Kendall]

I don't even think I was.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I think he did a 35 flat.

[Tommy Kendall]

I think 35 flats both days. I think right on the. Oh. Never, never dipped in the 34.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I remember like a 35.06 or something like that.

[Tommy Kendall]

And there was like a.04 one day. So they were both right on dead. And I was pretty sure, you know, obviously you never run a clean lap. Right. So you're, you're all. I mean this. I used to, I used to run lots of clean laps. They're pretty, pretty darn close here. I'm like. I said we got all our mistakes out of the way on and on Saturday. That's actually not true because I made hundreds of mistakes on Sunday. But they were small.

[Matt Farah]

We also gave, we gave Tommy the toughest job of driving last both days. So the car was its most worn out. So I mean, I'm sure there's time.

[Tommy Kendall]

One set of tires for eight hours.

[Johnny Lieberman]

One set of tires. We took some dumb penalties. Like I got a, on Saturday I got a fueling penalty. I didn't have my visors down in the car because I wear glasses. And if I have my visor down and we're sitting there with no airflow, they just fog up. And so I, I don't know why. This is really annoying. You have to like recycle the car, reset the rate, turn the radio on and do the fuel thing. And I couldn't see. And they're like, do the reset.

[Tommy Kendall]

Reset.

[Matt Farah]

Do this five or six step startup procedure on this car and fuel it between drivers. Turn it off.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah. And so I flipped up my visor to like look down and poke buttons. And then we got. And Tato had gotten one earlier I didn't know about. So they. WRL is rad. They give a lot of warnings before you get a penalty. Yeah, but he had already had a warning for that. And they take fueling seriously. So it's one warning and so we got that. And then you got pushed off track or something a couple times.

[Tommy Kendall]

No, it was all track limits. But it was funny because we were being told there are track limits. And all my experience in practice and so forth was it's a free for all. And so I'm like, so when I started my stint, I kind of did it incrementally using more and more and more. And I'm like, you paved it, right? And I'm like.

I haven't heard any warnings. I haven't heard anything. With five minutes to go, they're like, you're out of warnings. And so I'm like, oh, so they are watching. And they were clearly only there were still some places they weren't monitoring or judging it. And some places they were and I didn't know which was which. And then the very last one.

The overall leaders were coming up on me and I out broke myself trying to stay out of the way. And I went off a little wide on exit there. I'm pretty sure that was the one that docked me. So I think with two minutes to go, we got a track limit.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Do you want to tell the story.

[Zach]

Of the 1010 Club or do you not want to tell that story?

[Tommy Kendall]

Oh, I'm happy to tell that story.

[Zach]

Yeah, I saw you there. We saw you there. And I was like, oh man, I.

[Matt Farah]

Think you won the macan Macan show.

[Tommy Kendall]

I was the fastest in the program there.

[Zach]

And I just happened to like run into you. I was like, oh man, you smoked everybody. And you go, well, no one's watching the back corners.

[Tommy Kendall]

When I first got there. So this was last year and it's on the new 1010 circuit. But we were running these electric macans and so they had these coned gates. And so it was kind of like a hybridized. It was like an autocross. So anyone who'd ever driven the track normally was probably gonna be mind effed. So. And there was one area where they had this gate and then the whole this huge curb. And it was like you could just totally straight line it. And so I'm like, that's what we're doing. And so I.

[Matt Farah]

This is why you need a kid.

And a veteran on the team together. And then in the middle, just someone who won't crash and fuck it all up.

[Tommy Kendall]

Right?

[Matt Farah]

That's actually a win strategy. Yes.

[Tommy Kendall]

And so on that deal, Scott, Speed. I said, speed will figure this out. And so the first, the first. And we got two laps of practice and then, then it started. So the first round, speed was quick as I was right. Second round speed was quick as I was right behind him. The third one, I think he might have had a penalty. Clipped a cone. And also I told my. We had. I had a pro Am Rob Coughlin was my teammate. I said, the cones really don't matter. This thing accelerates so fast that you just want to get this thing pointed and make hay and then be tidy through this stuff. And so in the final one, I was. I nailed it. I come in and Jeff Gordon's there with his screen and he's part owner there. And so he goes, you got me by 3 1000. I said, let me see that. I said, I ran a 27. He goes, oh my God, you got my 1.003. And so. But then Rob clipped a cone, so we didn't make it a 5,000.

[Matt Farah]

You remember Rob from the Audrain thing? He was the one with that insane fiat. Yeah, 20 liter fiat or something. He was driving nuts.

[Tommy Kendall]

He's got awesome cars.

[Johnny Lieberman]

That is good advice though, because I did a thing years ago with the guys from Roadkill where we were doing a Kia Rio versus all the Roadkill cars. And we're doing like an autocross. Thing is no one was paying attention and I was. They were like killing me in all the cars. What's happening? You know, I'm. You know, Matt, you're faster than me.

[Matt Farah]

But I'm not that slow.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And finally I looked and they were just cutting off the last corner completely. And then I did it in Freiburger's Camaro and I beat him.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, the holes.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And then I even said on camera, I'm like, man, I beat you in your own car. And they cut that part out.

[Matt Farah]

Always be the editor in situations like that.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Right, right, right.

[Zach]

Go back to.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, but in fairness to. To both Johnny and T with the visor thing, every race, amateur race I've participated in, someone on the team has gotten a fueling violation. It happens all. Cuz doing this with your visor down sucks. Yeah, you can't.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Again, my glasses just fog up.

[Matt Farah]

So everyone tries to like. They crack it a little bit. They try. And I raced my whole stint with my visor all up anyway, so.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, everyone does. But I think the penalties took us from what, P9 to P11.

[Matt Farah]

I think it was more than that.

[Tommy Kendall]

No, we would have. The first one took us from like third or fourth to ninth and the second one took us to 11th.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, cuz the fueling one was a lap penalty. A whole lap. Track limits was like 30 seconds. Oh no. A plus one lap. You're.

[Zach]

You're.

[Johnny Lieberman]

You're out of it.

[Matt Farah]

Basically not. Well, I shouldn't say that. Other cars could up, you could break something, whatever. But okay, so that was Saturday which is, it was not a terrible race, but for two fairly small penalties that were, like, consequential.

[Tommy Kendall]

This is a good time to say, this is what's so cool about this. You get a glimpse into how hard this is. You watch an F1 race or a high level thing, and everything just works so precisely. But the reality is there's so many people doing so many jobs and there's so many opportunities. It was easy. Everyone would do it. And so it's refreshing. I was having to think harder than I have in a long, long time. Because everything that used to be just second nature and natural to me was not. Because I haven't thought about it over a decade.

[Matt Farah]

Have you been a caged race car since?

[Tommy Kendall]

I haven't been in a competitive race since. For 11 years. And so I've done a few corporate events, but you're not hustling that way. You're not trying to find the brake zones and those things. So it was. The brain was working.

[Johnny Lieberman]

We should also real quick mention that, you know, Sergio was sitting right here on the podcast and we were like, hey, we're doing that race in a few months. Who else is driving? And he's like, Tommy Kendall. But he hadn't actually.

[Tommy Kendall]

I hadn't committed yet. And I heard that. I'm like, oh, I guess I can be the a hole.

[Matt Farah]

But so funny. And in that first race, you know, because of that, because Tato ran out of gas during qualifying, he started P13.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Of 27 cars in our class and brought it to P1. Yeah, he did a double. He did 2 hours 40 both days, dude.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Doo doo. But he's very talented, that young man.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, he's young and full of all the energy and very, very fast and into it.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Like, he really has decided this is his life's focus.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah, it was inspiring to see because he literally. That's all he thinks about all day, every day. All day, every day. Not most of the time. Doesn't have a girlfriend that I'm aware of. It's 24 and he is the most delightful K. You know, I went to Italy and watched him compete in the world finals. And even when things didn't go well, always a smile on his face, always upbeat, always, you know, firing people up and so forth. So really, that parenting Sunday, when it did go by. Yeah. Parenting a to Lolo and Sergio.

[Matt Farah]

Yes. But he, I mean, he put on an amazing, amazing job. And then. Okay, so, yes, Saturday, you know, not terrible. I mean, you know, finish mid pack. Didn't. Did fucking DFL didn't crash or break the car. Like not so bad, you know.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And then we had an eight course dinner.

[Matt Farah]

Chef Sergio hooking up the chef at the house. The Argentinian chef.

[Tommy Kendall]

Reminds me of my grassroots racing days.

[Johnny Lieberman]

You had an Horatio and dude, you.

[Matt Farah]

Know, we were, we were pitted next to my old teammate and coach, Kevin Madsen, who was working with what are they called?

[Tommy Kendall]

Rapscallion stack racing raps.

[Johnny Lieberman]

They were driving those weird Mustangy things.

[Matt Farah]

GT cars which are these like racing only non production based sort of tube framey things that look a little awkward but go pretty fast.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, weird Mustangs.

[Matt Farah]

But they had a fucking massage table, bro. I was trying to say I love Kevin and the cars are cool, but these guys had a massage table and had massages going.

[Tommy Kendall]

I borrowed some coffee creamer from their motor coach.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Zach]

There's a couple came out of a cow that they had in the coach.

[Matt Farah]

Yes, there was a couple teams that I would feel comfortable openly stealing from.

[Tommy Kendall]

Sure.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah. We should also mention like Jim Farley.

[Matt Farah]

Was there racing Jim Farley's paint marker.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah. Yes, Farley was there.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, we saw Jim. He was racing a Mustang with Mark Rushbrook as well. And we saw Johnny and I saw a what appeared to be an engineering mule of a C8 Corvette that has a round steering wheel. Gotta take one more break, folks, because true work is supporting us this week. Fall weather is coming in in cold, but sometimes hot, but sometimes wet, sometimes also windy. Like at Coda this weekend. It was all of those things on the same day. And TrueWerk is performance workwear built like it matters, because it does. Founded by trade professionals who are tired of wet, heavy gear weighing them down, Truwerk set out to make workwear that keeps pros comfortable, capable and ready for whatever the day throws at them. Designed with advanced performance fabrics for lasting comfort all day mobility and year round job site protection. And every piece is tested on job sites with trade pros. So when conditions change, you're still ready. Now this ad is really targeted towards trades professionals, but the fact is Zach and I have been wearing this true work stuff and we are not really trades professionals. We're like outdoor people. And Zach's been wearing the jacket. It seems to be enjoying it very much. He's nodding his head over there. I've been wearing some of their pants which I wore when we went on our hike in Utah. I wear them when I'm out doing outdoor stuff. I was worn at the track this past weekend and they are light. They keep me both out of the wind, but also warm and cool. It's pretty, pretty awesome. Great for if you're outside all day and you can upgrade your day with workwear built like it matters. Get 15% off your first order at truework.com cod code tire that's T R U E W E-R-K.com, code tire at checkout. 15% off your first order truewerk.com code tire and we are brought to you today by Quince. Dude, Quince is coming in hot, warm, soft. It's really delight. I'm talking about Mongolian cashmere sweaters. I'm talking about Italian wool coats. Quince pieces are crafted from premium materials and built to hold up without the luxury markup. Making the essentials every guy needs. Quince has the Mongolian cashmere sweater. Starting at just $50. I got this sweater. In fairness, the one I got was like $80. But it was still a super, super soft, well fitting and really nice looking sweater for a very, very much 1/3 price of what it would be in the designers. Plus they've got denim and chinos that fit just right. The outerwear lineup is no joke. From down jackets to wool top coats and leather, built to last. All pieces are made from premium materials made by trusted factories that meet rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. But by cutting out middlemen and traditional markups, Quince delivers the same quality as luxury brands for a fraction of the price. It's everything you actually want to wear. Built to hold up to season after season. Again, the Mongolian cashmere sweater I got, which they say is as low as 50 bucks, I think in some colors and sizes it is. I got the XXL and I, I got the luxurious Egyptian like gold. And so I think mine was like 80 bucks. But it's so soft. I've been wearing it all the time in my house. I don't even want to take it outside. It's just like I sit on the couch and be warm kind of thing. And they sent me some really nice button downs for fall. Some tartans, some plaids. It is excellent. You can get your wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled at Quint's. Don't wait. Go to quints.com tire for free shipping on your and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N c e.com tire quince.com tire free shipping. 365 day returns quince.com tire and now back to the program.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, but it was a Cadillac.

[Matt Farah]

It was a Cadillac wheel. But in the airbag cover was of a fairly production looking embossed stingray airbag cover.

[Zach]

Which do you think the engineers are testing round wheel technology?

[Matt Farah]

I mean, dude, I'm just saying if they're coming out, if they're decided that they've seen the light and in fact things that should be round.

[Zach]

You think they're doing Cadillac supercar under the guise of C8?

[Johnny Lieberman]

No, no, no. So Alex, I forget his name. Former Corvette engineer who's now doing robotic stuff like not, not like Tesla robots but like factory robots at gm. He's moved on to like they're using AI to optimize that. But he worked on all the Corvettes up through ZR1. He was there with Sean Bailey who does like Corvette Communications, TC Klein and Tony Roma who was the head of Cadillac V is now the head of Corvette. And that black Corvette that's going to get a cage and just become a WRL race car. And so they. There's a round steering wheel and aftermarket seats in it. Yeah, I don't know.

[Matt Farah]

I'm not saying anything. I'm just saying what I saw.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Matt was more excited by that round steering wheel.

[Tommy Kendall]

It's this kind of car geekdom that I, that I'm learning from Tommy in.

[Matt Farah]

A streetcar sports car. What is the correct shape of the steering wheel to you?

[Tommy Kendall]

I've only driven round steering wheels even in race cars. I've never driven a butterfly wheeled car. Yeah, yeah, I don't like that. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I'm so happy that our. We had a regular steering wheel in our race car.

[Tommy Kendall]

I'm doing a little aside. It was fun hanging out with the two of you guys in terms of this sort of minutia. But you are so clear on what you like and what you don't like. As are you. And I don't always agree but I like that. You know.

But it's pretty good. And race car drivers, I've always said the best ones are basically the most discerning and AKA best complainers because you have to be able to perceive what's happening and describe it. One of my weaknesses is I was always good at making good with whatever I had. And so sometimes I would just, I can't change this. And then sometimes I wouldn't even remember that it was a complaint. And so anyway, so everyone has their different styles. But yeah, that's how things get better.

[Matt Farah]

I'm pretty good at talking about what the car is doing when I have a radio, which I didn't for most.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Of Both of us, by the way. Yeah, we should explain that too on Saturday. So, you know, so, you know, you're the next driver in. So, like, get your, get your suit on. And I'm sitting in my suit. Hey, Matt's coming in. Put your helmet on. And you know, you put the earplugs in and the sock and the helmet on. It was hot. And I'm sitting there and I'm sitting there and like, I'm like, I'm gonna take my helmet off. No, no, he's coming in dead. Radio.

[Matt Farah]

My, my side of this was the plan was for race one was Tayto was gonna do somewhere between two and a half and 2:50. The driver limit for any one driver in a race is three hours. So you can't have some Pro Am where one pro does whatever.

[Zach]

Right?

[Johnny Lieberman]

Three hours. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

So.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Excuse me.

[Matt Farah]

So Tato does, I mean, he's very, very fast and comes in. I go in next and I'm out for like 25 minutes. And there's like a long full course caution. They're like, come in, we're gonna splash you with fuel.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Fine.

[Matt Farah]

I do, I go back out. Then my radio completely dies. So I, I, then we're each supposed to drive 9, 90 minutes. Tato does his long one, and then each of the three of us do 90 minutes.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And that's an eight hour race.

[Matt Farah]

And that's the eight hour race. But they, because they filled me up and because I, I don't, I'm not like watching the clock, but, like, got a couple gallons left and like, I don't have this radio and like, I'm not seeing like a pit board come out. So I'm like, okay, I guess, you know, when, when I'm out of gas, I will come, you know, come in and never, it never really comes. And then after, like, they ran out.

[Johnny Lieberman]

With a pitboard and they literally put it out as you passed.

[Tommy Kendall]

Well, there's, there's, there's a lot of green open throttle cars and a TC Klein car that's the same color.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, right, right. So. So it was hard to see which green car from far away, blah, blah. So I ended up doing a little longer than I was supposed to. And it changed nothing. It changed nothing. But, but I had radio issues the next day as well, and I figured out.

Like, I had radio issues. So I'm like messing with my cable on the back straights, which is, fortunately, they're very long, so you actually have a few minutes to think about that. And then Zach's radio at the other end started dying.

[Johnny Lieberman]

His battery went out.

[Matt Farah]

His batteries are so like, oh, my God. So.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Which almost cost the race in a way. We'll get to that.

[Tommy Kendall]

But yes. More insights into all the little things that happen. And you don't. You never know about if. Even if you're. You're at a race that you have to manage and deal with, have contingencies, think on the fly on what do I do?

[Matt Farah]

Team sport.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And then one more thing before we get to Sunday was Taito heroically fought for data.

To get the data from Open Throttle. Got the data and really sat there and was really coaching the three of us, me, Matt and Tommy on pedal position and breaking points. He really takes it seriously. Didn't have any want. We had these lovely bottles of wine.

[Matt Farah]

He also, and I have to say, I mean, maybe you drove it different or maybe you drove it different. I drove his exact recommended line around the track.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Which is slightly different than what my natural body might have wanted to do. And I noticed that nobody else took this line, which especially coming out of the S's hugging that road all the way to the left deep and going up. Nobody else but me, when I was out there, took that way. And that is where I could go from 200ft from behind the car to 50 was right there in that section. By taking his way every single lap. And I didn't confidently go, I'm gonna set up this guy coming out of this corner. Because that gap is like, it closes every lap. It's great.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And so it's funny when I walk in, we're doing the data overlays and mj, who was coaching us then, Michael Ryan Johnson, he was like showing me what Klaus was doing, what he was doing. Then he gets to Tato's line. He's like, just forget that.

[Tommy Kendall]

He's like, that's.

[Johnny Lieberman]

That's something else.

[Tommy Kendall]

Only he does that well. And this is developed. Tato had never been to Cota before and he's been running on the sim for weeks. Weeks. And. And trying different cars because the exact car isn't available to trying to match up with it. Would it feel like grip wise and power. Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

We'd show up, remember? I'm sorry, but we'd show up. And he's like, okay, we have an M4DT. This is like, hulk. Okay, next week we show up. Okay, now we have a Mustang.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

You know, I told my horror story on last week's episode about how frustrated I got in the city.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Oh, yeah. It was horrible.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. It was not great. But he was. He was studying it very intently. And so Sunday we go jump ahead to Sunday you stuck. Starting order was determined by best lap of previous day. So we start PC and I have the video. I'd love to.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I can text it to Zach right now.

[Matt Farah]

How do you get the video?

[Zach]

Drop it to 2019 Mac.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Let me find. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, let's. Tato starts in P7, and by turn one is P3. Okay. He did.

[Zach]

He did an unbelievable rolling start or standing start?

[Johnny Lieberman]

Rolling.

[Matt Farah]

Wow. Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Oh, dude. His. First of all, he wants to come off that corner so perfect because he accelerated past these faster cars like it's crazy.

[Matt Farah]

Executed a perfect start.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And versus the car to beat in our class is an E46M3 with an LS motor in it that consistently ran two to three seconds a lap faster than Tato or any or any of us. All their drivers were like as fast as us, and their car was two seconds a lap faster.

[Tommy Kendall]

Their fastest, fastest lap. So. So the fast lap from the day before. So even Tato, as quick as he is, we were the seventh fastest car, basically. And so he made it happen with that.

[Matt Farah]

So he. I mean, it's an unbelievable bit of driving because we did not have a horsepower car.

[Johnny Lieberman]

270 horsepower.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Yeah. And this other car, this M3, was apparently a class higher last year and was just slightly detuned to run it on.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, it was an LS motor.

[Matt Farah]

It might need to be detuned a little bit more. We got some. This is from Sentinel, and actually I'm talking to the Sentinel guy later this week about maybe doing something with him for funsies. So we were actually able to get live stream video from the car, which is cool, because.

[Tommy Kendall]

Sick.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Because Zach could, you know, a coach could walk like Tato could get on the radio and go, hey, take this curb wider like real time.

[Zach]

That's amazing.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

That's allowed.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And then we're. This is heading into turn 20. So this is the final left before the main straight.

[Matt Farah]

Final corner before the start. And. And. And pretty good quality video, actually.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Zach]

To be able to stream that.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And then this. This tower on the left, the way.

[Matt Farah]

Front with the big wing is really the car to beat.

[Tommy Kendall]

So they get Screaming goat, it's called.

[Matt Farah]

So here's green.

Dude. Watch. Watch Tato move up the left side right here. Watch this. Just wide open in the left.

[Zach]

Sure.

[Matt Farah]

Don't go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

[Zach]

Right across the blend line.

[Matt Farah]

And then perfect. Break Kicking right here, dude. And then look how quick he comes off, too. He doesn't give up. Position of the clip ends, but, like.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah, momentarily. Second sick, right? Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

That's bad again from P7. It's pretty good. In a 270 horsepower car, it's hard. That's supposed to have the same power.

[Matt Farah]

To weight as all the other cars.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Wow.

[Matt Farah]

In theory, the one in the front.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Had better power to weight.

[Tommy Kendall]

You can't win the race in turn one, but you can dramatically improve your position.

[Matt Farah]

And then, I guess it was.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Oh, was the.

[Matt Farah]

Was it the first day where there's a huge crash in turn? Yeah, the first day was. There was a huge crash.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

That took out a bunch of cars.

[Johnny Lieberman]

No, that was good because Tato did the same move day one, and he. If he just held his position, he would have been wiped out in that. In that mob. But he got in front of it, so. And there was a car spinning behind him.

[Matt Farah]

The video that we got, he's gonna. He's making a highlight reel. The video's great. So he goes from P7 to P3 in the first 10 seconds, holds position, works his way to P2.

Actually, we make the pass to P2 while the other car was in the pits. That V8 car was thirsty, so he goes to P2 while your car's in the pits. I get the car in P2. Tayto does 2 hours and 40 minutes. I get the car in P2.

[Johnny Lieberman]

You got it in P1 because the other car pitted. Yeah, the other car came into the garage. That was the P2 car.

[Matt Farah]

Got in.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

But I went out, and I did. I did a double. I did a full second tank. I did 2 hours and 44 minutes in the car, which is the longest I've ever driven race car for consecutively. It was actually. It was so much fun. I had the best time, and I held the position. Like, I didn't give up any positions. I came in and gave. And Johnny.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Well, here. So I'm sitting there like. Like, I was slow. And Tato again got to P1, and it was like, we kind of. I didn't know on Saturday, I didn't know how slow it was going to be. So I went up to Tommy and I'm like, hey. And the other thing is, I knew Zach and Open Throttle. They had a really miserable year. They hadn't won anything, not a podium. And it's. You know, there's a lot of races.

[Matt Farah]

That was out of normal for them. Very unusual.

[Johnny Lieberman]

So I went to Tommy, and I'M like, hey, you know. Cause we're an hour shorter. And I'm like, you know, I'm doing the math. I'm like, if Tato's like, you know, P1 and Matt does what he does yesterday, you know, and you get in the car and do, you know, we could get on the podium. We could be P3, you know, I don't need to drive. And Tommy's like, no, we're here to have fun. And then I walked up to Matt and I'm like. And you said the same thing. You're like, nah, dude, we're just gonna have some fun. But then Zach, the crew chief was like thinking, shit, we could be P1, you know, so him and Tato pulled me aside. They're like, listen. And before they even pitched, I'm like, totally. Like, if Matt does we just improves a little bit.

[Zach]

Bit.

[Johnny Lieberman]

He can hold P1, P2 and yeah, so, and I didn't need to drive. And I, I Years ago on the C63 Black series launch, I learned like, you don't get any more money for being the fastest journalist. You know, like, there's no, there's no real, you know, so you don't. Yeah. And, and you know, I Did you.

[Zach]

Not drive on Sunday?

[Johnny Lieberman]

I didn't drive on Sunday.

[Matt Farah]

Oh. He very graciously gave up his seat so I could do a double.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And, and keep the car in position. So I didn't know about. Because I had no fucking radio.

[Johnny Lieberman]

He car. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

I came into the pits, I undid my harnesses and they just go, no, no, you're staying. I go, what? He goes, you're staying. And I'm just like, I was there.

[Tommy Kendall]

And I was in my suit. But they didn't say anything. Then I, I, I, I, I said, he unbuckled. So I jump up, I don't have my helmet on. And they go. And they're put stuff in the back.

[Matt Farah]

In there was like three and a half minutes. So you have time to calmly put your some.

[Johnny Lieberman]

But not a lot but, but accidentally it turned out like, look, let's say I was as fast as Matt. Another driver's change would have, we'll get to it would have cost us P1.

[Matt Farah]

So, so I did. We had a hilarious fuck up though.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Which I will admit publicly.

I'm, I'm lapping and I'm in, I, I, I'm in an area. There's a full course caution. But very frequently during full course cautions, you find yourself like, not where the pace car is. It's fucking huge. And so you find yourself going full speed. You're still going full speed. And if anyone's listening to this, you're supposed to. And you weren't going basically full speed. Listen in the driver's meeting, please. Okay, Not. Not full, full speed.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Supposed to go 85% full speed.

[Matt Farah]

You're going fast. Okay.

So I'm coming around the last corner of the track before the pit entrance. It's turn 19. The pit entrance is there. Okay, okay. And all of a sudden, I'm following a white caiman that's in our class.

The corner worker pulls. As I come around the corner, I see him pull out and wave a white flag. As soon as that happens, the caiman just dives across the track and into the pits. Like, last minute maneuver into the pits. And I was like, I have about a half a second to have the following thought happen in my head.

Usually white flags mean the race is one lap from being over. Yeah, I wonder what that flag means today. And then. And then I go. If I don't go into the pit right now, and it means to go into the pit, I'm gonna get a penalty and we're out of the race. I'm in. I'm in P2. We're gonna be out of the race. If I do go into the pit and it means nothing, I'm gonna feel pretty stupid and we're gonna lose like 15, 20 seconds, but, like, we won't get a penalty.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

So I have that whole thought in between turn 19, exit at full fucking beans. And the entrance to the pit, which.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Is like 150ft, it's not far.

[Matt Farah]

I dive into the pit behind the cabin. I also, I also, I have a radio. If I was anywhere else on the track, If I was 200 yards further back, I would. Would have had the answer I needed to what that flag was. But I didn't. So I drove through the pits, and.

[Johnny Lieberman]

White flag means debris on track, Slow.

[Matt Farah]

Moving vehicle on track. There was a. There was a wrecker circulating on track, which. Yeah, see?

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, I thought it was debris.

[Matt Farah]

So, you know, okay, you know, sorry, guys.

[Tommy Kendall]

You know, for clarity, debris is the orange and yellow.

[Matt Farah]

Debris is the orange and yellow. Yeah.

So, you know, I'm on the radio, you know, sorry, guys. That's a fucking bonehead move. I picked the lesser of two. Bonehead, evil. Okay, no problem. No problem.

It costs like, 15 to 20 seconds. This will come into play.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

This will come into play. So I finished my stint and like, honestly, I did pretty good.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Like I did.

[Johnny Lieberman]

You did really good.

[Tommy Kendall]

Pretty good.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And P2, I think you got out of the car.

[Matt Farah]

P2. Yeah, I ran very consistently.

[Tommy Kendall]

But what was happening during. Towards the end of your stint, which determined why you went the full double is I was sitting with Zach and saying, hey, we're getting close. Close to being able to skip. If. If we stretch this, can we skip a fuel stop? Because we weren't going to beat the screaming goat on speed.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

And so I said, can we figure out. Because they definitely. They were using fuel, they're going to have to make three more at that point. I said, can we do it on two more?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

Or one more my stop.

[Matt Farah]

Miles per gallon.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah. And so.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Which is way better than the LS engine car.

[Tommy Kendall]

So that's what we were going on. So that's why you went longer. And when I got in the car, they. They said. And he says, we're going to go two hours. I'm thinking in my head, I'm like, we'll get some yellow.

[Johnny Lieberman]

It was an hour 45. You got in there an hour to 45 left.

[Tommy Kendall]

And he said, we can go the whole. They're saying we're good to go to the end. And I'm thinking, I said, and so we've got a fuel counter. And so we're going. And then. And they're asking for fuel readings. Fuel readings. And I'm pretty sure I'm like. And then there was a caution and I wasn't as plugged in as I should have been because. And it took almost two and a half laps to catch the pace car for the thing you were. It's a long lap.

[Matt Farah]

I was expecting it to be chill, but really you were humming.

[Tommy Kendall]

Humming, but not humming enough because there was a car that was holding a bunch of us up. And if we could have caught the tail end, that would have made the whole. If we would have done our splash that we eventually found out we had. If we would have done our splash, then, yeah, it would have been a cakewalk.

[Matt Farah]

This other car did have to pit, but Tommy did also for a quick five gallon splash.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

So both cars are out at the.

[Tommy Kendall]

End, but they got trapped. The key was they got trapped on that yellow. Depending on where the overall leader is, they can split classes. And so.

He got trapped. I was leading now after their stop, he was behind the overall leader in the yellow come out. So he didn't get to go all the way around and catch up to the back of me and erase the Big gap, by the way.

[Johnny Lieberman]

For two days straight, all Tommy did was talk about yellow flag strategy.

[Matt Farah]

This dude knows his.

[Johnny Lieberman]

He's a chess player.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah.

[Zach]

So many races.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, absolutely. But, yeah, I mean, this is literally right. We spent two days talking about, like.

[Tommy Kendall]

Because I said, do they do wave arounds and so. Because that changes if you wave around and so forth. And more people understand it now, but back in the day, not everyone did. And you can really. The race. So. And then the next piece is. So now I'm leading, the race goes green, and so I've got better part of a lap. But now it becomes apparent we're going to actually have to make a splash, too.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

And so we make this splash.

[Matt Farah]

And we were like 2 minutes, 40 seconds up.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And Tommy has to come in for fuel and has like 12 laps left in the race.

[Johnny Lieberman]

So he gets back out. I think it was like, there's 58 seconds gap.

[Matt Farah]

I remember that very clearly. When you went out, it was 58 seconds.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And there was like 10 laps left or eight laps left. And the other car's four seconds a lap faster than us.

[Zach]

Oh, wow.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

So we're just sitting there doing math. I mean, me and Sergio and Tato were like, like on the calculators.

[Matt Farah]

Like, dude, it was a. This car is like humming. You know, Tommy's doing what he can do, but this other car is like, just faster.

[Johnny Lieberman]

It's a 400 horsepower.

[Tommy Kendall]

But I also was not. So what? One of the things I did, I said, I need the information. I need to know the split. I need to know minutes left the whole time. And they. They were giving me the split, but they weren't giving me minutes left. And I still thought we were good, but because of the track limits thing yesterday, I wasn't running as. I wasn't running flat.

[Matt Farah]

Flat. Yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

Because I'm like, I can't. I don't know if we have any warnings. I said, I have to be super clean. So I said, if you tell me, said I can give. I can give the time back. You don't get extra points by winning by more. And so. And then when I restarted that thing, I was in the middle of a total shit fight for about five laps. Just chaos. And so those laps, restarts are wild.

[Matt Farah]

Some of these restarts are so giving.

[Tommy Kendall]

Back bigger chunks of time there.

[Zach]

But four seconds left now, and I.

[Tommy Kendall]

Always did this when I raced. I asked for all the information so that I could. You can't judge risk reward if you don't know the full picture. And so it was more dramatic for you guys. I knew what was going on. I knew that the math was going to work.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Real quick, the restarts, because there's this GPU class, which are these, like, prototype.

[Tommy Kendall]

It's like, things F4 car with a body elan.

[Matt Farah]

Prototypes. Yeah. They handle amazing, but they have no horsepower, so they actually almost pass you.

[Zach]

On the straight, but their lap time overall is shorter.

[Johnny Lieberman]

But they can also just jump, like. Like if you're in any. If your wheels turned at all, they just jump you.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And so on the restarts, you'll get, like, four of them coming across your bow. It says.

[Matt Farah]

Because when they start the race, they start it in class order, but in a restart, you're all mixed up. Yeah. So, like, mayhem happens on a restart. It's really, really hairy.

[Zach]

I love it.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, it's. It's a wild.

[Zach]

I've only done the lemons version, but that's wild, too.

[Matt Farah]

My first go lap after the lap, my last restart was maybe I passed somebody in the esses, which was one of my goals, to try to do that. And I actually was able to do it. And I was like. In my helmet, I was like, motherfucking. Yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

I'm glad you didn't tell me that was one of your goals, because I would have said that's. That's a bad. That's a bad risk.

[Matt Farah]

It was a bad. No, I wasn't gonna. I wasn't gonna do it. It was just one of those, you know, I hope this. I hope I'm able to say I did this. Yeah. But, no, I mean. And Tommy brought it home and we won by nine points. Seconds, which. And that's when I was like, whoosh. That drive through.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Right, right, right, right, right, right. But again, another driver's change at minimum, 45 seconds. And we weren't even that quick, you know, so, you know, and plus, you just cycle the car and all that.

[Tommy Kendall]

If we. If we had. If we had been. Had everything on, we could have done a stop and then on that. If we'd done the splash, it probably was. The only way we're gonna do it was this way. Was skipping that. But if we had done the splash under that last yell, you would have then had two minutes.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

And then.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, but it might have.

[Matt Farah]

Might have got caught. So. Yeah, it's.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Look, it was P1.

[Matt Farah]

It was a nail. I mean, Johnny Valiantly, you know, gave up his seat to. To be. When we had a shot at winning the race, which, you know, was.

[Tommy Kendall]

Let's let's go past Move.

[Matt Farah]

That's a, that's a bro move right there. Straight up. Team player.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Look at this picture, though. So, so confirm Zach is 24.

[Matt Farah]

That's Zach.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Look how he's hugging. I'd never seen more of grown men crying, dude.

[Matt Farah]

I mean, he was, he was, he kept it inside until, until the race was over. And then he was like, dude, I just, like, I just called a winning race. The Tommy Kendall was driving.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I said, hey. I said, come here. I'm like, you came up with the winning race strategy with Tommy Kendall in the car. And he was just like, was shaking and it was just awesome.

[Matt Farah]

And even, dude, after the race, we were drinking beers in the parking lot. He all of a sudden put it together that I was the guy in the Super Speeders first to get a ticket video.

He's like, I can't believe you didn't say that was reasonable place to pass at the time. Like, oh, motherfucker's quoting me back from 07.

[Zach]

He was nine years old.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, dude, exactly.

[Matt Farah]

I was not a role model.

[Tommy Kendall]

That emotion though, I mean, everyone that has raced knows how hard it is. And I mean, it's just like you're just maxed out. Whatever level you're at, you're maxed out. And so you have way more bad days than you have good days. So that was cool to see a real cool thing for me over the weekend, seeing people, those two officials, Randy Buck and Jim Davis are guys I've known for 30 years. And so all these people that I've mixed with. I get a Instagram DM on the morning from a guy says, hey, here's a picture. It's me with this little kid. He says, that 10 year old is now crewing on the 99 car.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Oh, cool.

[Tommy Kendall]

And so I went and found him and got another picture of me and Ben Reilly. And so all these know the grassroots is your, is, is your, your peeps, you know, because you, you built it from. And that's what this was all about. All these people that, that love this because no one's really making money there. There's a few people and it's.

[Matt Farah]

No, the massage money is making 225 an hour. That's about it.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Chef.

Hirachio cleaned up.

[Tommy Kendall]

So it's, it's, it's. It was, it was really neat to get reconnected with that. And there was a guy in the garage next to us, Matt Guyver. That was on setup. The setup show that I did those Pontiac Solstices there were two guys in the race from that setup show. So just getting reconnected with all these people and realizing everyone's on their own paths and doing it.

[Johnny Lieberman]

The other my favorite moment. Well, besides the hug, my favorite moment was you said the last time you won a race, if I have this correct, was December of 2004, and Tato was born in March of 2004.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah, it was actually September 11, 2004. The last. The last Trans Am race I did in a. In a full TA car. Driving for Rocket Sports in the Jag was the finale, and I, I, I was trying. We'd had some mechanicals early in the year, and so I, I needed to max points, and Jen losing to finish worse than fifth. And I max points plus whole lap, sled fastest lap and all that, and I win. And he finished fifth, and we tied, and he won the tiebreaker for the title. So that was my last win, was 2001.

[Matt Farah]

What a treat. Yeah. One. 2001. September 11, 2001.

[Tommy Kendall]

2001. Yeah. And so, I mean, it was. It was 11 years since I really raced anything.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

And I didn't win in the Viper or. Yeah, yeah, 2001.

[Matt Farah]

Right.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Sorry. Potatoes get. Okay, okay, Wait, so what.

[Tommy Kendall]

Oh, Tato had just been born.

[Johnny Lieberman]

No, no, because that 2001 was 24 years ago. He's 21. We got that, right.

[Tommy Kendall]

Oh, no, 2004.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah. Something else happened.

[Matt Farah]

It might have been overshadowed by something.

[Tommy Kendall]

I don't know.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, wow. That's very much not a Jaguar, is it? Yeah, that looks just like all Jaguars on the showroom floor look.

[Zach]

Yes.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Anyhow, it was just. It was.

[Tommy Kendall]

I used to have myself convinced back in the day that the cars we raised look just like what. What they were supposed to do.

[Zach]

They printed headlights.

[Matt Farah]

Well, this time it did. This time it definitely did.

[Zach]

Was Tato giving you Tommy data on Saturday night?

[Tommy Kendall]

Oh, yeah. Oh, 100%.

[Zach]

Was he like, oh, Mr. Mr. Kendall.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I think you should break. Like, it was wild for me to watch it because I sitting there like, what other 21 year old, like, literally, like, no compunction at all. And he instantly starts with, all right, Tommy, so what we're doing here and this turn is this.

[Tommy Kendall]

Here's what I want to see. Here's what I want to see. I like that. I like this here. And then there was one point, and he's like, he says, there's these little bounces in the throttle, trace in the hairpin. He says, I'm confused by this. And I said, let me explain to you what that is? I said, said with my foot injuries, I said, I can't rest my heels on the floor and pivot and use the throttle on the brake. So I said, I'm hanging my right foot in the air, working the throttle. I'm hanging my right foot in the air, working the brake, which is insane.

[Matt Farah]

Can you imagine doing that for 90 minutes? That's the craziest shit I ever heard.

[Tommy Kendall]

And so I said, that's actually my foot bouncing on, tapping the throttle as I'm trying to trail it in.

[Matt Farah]

If you were driving like a formula car where you're more, like, laid down, would that be easier on you or harder?

[Tommy Kendall]

No. What I do in a car that I'm going to drive, I build basically, like, because most people, your heel is resting and then you go forward and your foot gets lower and the gas pedal gets lower with it because of the way it pivots. I build a ramp because my foot slides so the ball. My foot doesn't get any lower. So I build a ramp that's sloping away from me, and I slide on that ramp so my foot can be supported.

[Zach]

Now you're not holding your leg up the whole time. You're just pressing.

[Tommy Kendall]

Okay. So my, like, thinking about the weakness weekend, there's. There's. There's time there. For me, there's probably. In terms of getting to where I'm super confident I'll be able to shift the weight exactly like I want. And like, like in turn 19, that's really important how you float the car in there. There's probably.

[Matt Farah]

I'm not sure I ever did that one.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Perfect.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah, sure.

[Matt Farah]

I overdid it. Perfect.

[Johnny Lieberman]

It's so big.

[Tommy Kendall]

It's a tough one. It's really tough. I mean, it's. Yeah. So that. That's the kind of thing where there. There's definitely time there. And again, I was. I was making sure, especially after the penalty sat and so forth, operating on the right side of the risk curve. And so that's what that was intended like. Oh.

[Zach]

So is having all this data. Did you guys have this back when you were racing or. A version we had pretty close.

[Tommy Kendall]

You know, there was. Yeah. So I was. The very. When I first started, we did. And then that came in. In, you know, the late 80s, early 90s. So we had most of this stuff. There's more sensors now and better sensors. Bill Mitchell was a guy. He was a journalist, but he was really a tech guy. He was our data guy. I always tell people one of the key things on A race weekend. When you see what's happening in Formula one in terms of process, everyone's constrained on time. So a lot of things you just don't do between sessions because you don't have time. One of our secrets is we had everything refined. So, well, you get the data out of the car, you get it up in a useful form because there's so much data. How do you view it and how you can. Can you pull out the areas you need to focus on and, you know, for. For maximizing gear ratios and so forth. And so Bill would come up with all these different ways to sort of display the data to us based on what we. And some of it was like, yeah, that's not useful. Cool, but not useful. And so. And then because on the. The sessions, you got to get it out, you got to understand it, you got to understand what's actionable. Then you got to get the. They'd come to us and, hey, Gearbox is out. We need the info. Info. We're like, but we don't have it yet. And so. And. And you've only only got two hours for the session. And so every piece of the equation, there's a real iteration. You hear that in the tech world now, the speed of iteration is really useful and some people just can't do it. Like on this weekend, I wasn't that plugged in, but.

You don't have the time to say, hey, this is an issue. Can you fix it? I wouldn't even bring it up because it's just like, if we can get the thing just everything bolted together, people seat time, that's going to be the maximum. Maximum importance. But. So that was a little geeked out.

[Matt Farah]

When you were talking about with Bill Mitchell and that type of data. It wasn't more about. It was more about building a faster car than making you faster than something else or.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah, almost all of it was. I rarely had a super fast teammate that I could. A couple times I did well when I was teaming with Wayne Taylor and the GTP car, I did so there it was useful, but mostly it was about a faster car.

[Matt Farah]

All I've ever used it for is to compare myself to a faster person.

[Tommy Kendall]

Right, right.

[Matt Farah]

It's. And it's been incredibly useful every single time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Way more useful to me than video. Tato tried. We didn't have data on practice day. Like, they had just bought this car and the track wasn't loaded.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Whatever the cares, but SIM card.

[Matt Farah]

But we didn't have. We didn't have the date of the practice day. So that's why I say, like, Saturday was a practice race, because we actually had data after that race. But he was trying to do it on video. And, you know, he.

[Johnny Lieberman]

He.

[Matt Farah]

I did his line, and he just, like, went faster at all of it. And I'm like, well, it's. It's clearly not where I'm putting the car. Like, just show me throttle and brake pressure. And like, once I saw throttle and brake pressure, it was like, oh, yeah, overlay.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Like, you had a revelation, though.

At the dinner table. The pounding on my head thing. It was. It was wild, though, because, yeah, Tato's just like, yeah, I start breaking here, and I hold it for two corners.

[Matt Farah]

And that's like, what. So that was crazy. You know, when you. When you take. When you go to racing schools and learn from a lot of people, and when you're racing slow cars, when you're racing. You know, when you're racing E30s, whatever, they're just like, you're. You're either full brake or full throttle. Like, those. That's what you are. Like, if you. There's no coasting, there's no maintenance throttle. Those are. That's not. You're not racing. I've heard that over and over and over. And in Saturday race and in. I'm getting. I'm getting, like, you know, opposite lock wheel spin out of every corner.

[Tommy Kendall]

Tight corner.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Every hairpin confirmed. I was doing a lot of that, too.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And. And, you know, Tato's corner exit speed is much better than mine. And his, you know, his throttle pressure is way. His curve is, like, way different. And. And he's also. Oh, he's also doing, like, multiple places in the track. He's literally coasting and. Multiple places in the track, he's dragging, like, a 30% brake pedal for, like.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Five seconds or a 5% brake pedal.

[Zach]

While on throttle at all. Like, rally slowly, just to tuck the.

[Tommy Kendall]

Front just a little bit.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Pin the front end. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

But for, like, two seconds.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Wow. For instance, you know, at Cota, there's two S's in a row, and at the entrance to the first S, he goes like. I mean, it was like 2 or 3% break, and he holds that out of the second S. It never lifts.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And it's. And everyone else, you see their ARCs through the S's start getting wider and wider. His just gets narrower and narrower and he's crushing people.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. I mean, and also just his. He has a.

[Johnny Lieberman]

His.

[Matt Farah]

Going into turn one, up the hill, I hit the brakes Harder and later than he did. Harder and later. And he. And he had better exit speed from the corner. Exit speed because he's braking less. Yeah. I mean, so.

[Tommy Kendall]

But yeah, one of the big epiphanies was so. So when he was releasing the brake, he was immediately given a jab of throttle. Because he's thinking, I. You don't want to code. I was.

[Matt Farah]

I was going from brake back to.

[Tommy Kendall]

Gas real fast, and he would get a spike, and that's when he was getting loose. He'd gather it up, and I'd say, tato is going to the gas later than you.

[Matt Farah]

Yes.

[Tommy Kendall]

But when he goes to the gas, he gets after it much more aggressively than ever. Everyone pulls out.

[Zach]

He doesn't trail on. He's just like. He rolls into it.

[Tommy Kendall]

He's basically letting the car set and rotate a little more, which you do, especially in a heavy car. And the longer the corner. And so one of the. I told Matt, I said, there's one of the fallacies. Everybody says whoever gets on the throttle first onto the straightaways is the fastest. I'm like, no, that's not true. It's whoever gets to full throttle, the first onto the straightaways is the fastest. Because getting to the throttle first is the enemy sometimes of getting to full throttle.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Tommy Kendall]

If you're not.

[Matt Farah]

And that strategy, like, actually really did make things a lot better. Like, it didn't make my fastest lap any faster, but it all of the difference for me between a tooth. My best was 235.5. My most was like 237.2 was like my most meat. The difference between 237.2 and 241 is wheel spin out of the two hairpins. That's literally the only difference if everything else is the same.

[Zach]

Did it also make other parts of the track just feel more stable? Planted? Etc?

[Matt Farah]

It made it a lot easier to set that pass I talked about with the Tato line up. The red. That pass is complete. Coming out of the hairpin of 11, passing with better exit speed onto the front straight. That's where that setup ends.

[Tommy Kendall]

Three times less dramatic. Less dramatic.

[Matt Farah]

It was it, dude. The problem is it feels slow.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yep.

[Matt Farah]

It actually feels slow. Slow.

[Tommy Kendall]

I joke with people. I said it almost doesn't feel fair that it's less dramatic. It's not as hard, and it's faster. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

11 in this photo, Zach is the one at the top right corner.

So that, you know, is the exit speed from there, which starts back at the up, up one. Up to the Left starts there. That's where that starts. Set up for that. Yeah, but yeah, no, his, his, the data was fucking right. And his interpretation of it and Tom's.

[Tommy Kendall]

Now video. Video is new. We had no video. So the video, connecting the video, because we used to only look at squiggly lines. And so, you know, for beginners that wasn't that useful. And I remember having teammates and I was usually the fast guy and so I wasn't in a hurry to help them figure it out, you know. And so whereas I look at like sometimes I'd be faster in nine corners, they'd be faster in two, and I'd be like, I need to figure those two out. And I was pretty good at looking at it. And they'd be looking and they weren't quite as good as figuring the other part out. And so. And video helps a lot.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Especially if you can click on the line and it pulls up the video right there.

[Tommy Kendall]

To that end. I used to, when I was driving, I wouldn't let people follow me because that's the best learning tools to follow fast guys.

[Zach]

Right?

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

And so once the race starts but on all through the weekend, I would always stay separate on the track. And like some guys like Jennal Ozzie used to always try to follow me. And he, he'd go out with me and I'd just pull in the pits and sit. And Banks says, what are you doing? I said, I'll sit here all day. I said, I don't need any more practice. And then eventually he'd go back out and I'd tail him back out. And he. And it used to drive him nuts because I'm like, I'm not showing, you know, because they'd be even in probably eight corners and there's your edges are in a couple key spots. And I don't want him to be able to figure because he probably like you do you think it's in the places you're really beating your brains out. And sometimes it's not.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

And once the light goes on, it's like, oh, yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And so driving schools use lead follow.

[Zach]

As a coaching technique. So you don't want to be doing lead follow.

[Tommy Kendall]

Nope.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. And getting, you know, getting your exit out of the last corner, 20 onto the front straight. It's just a 90 degree easy looking corner. Like not easy for some reason, it's just not easy.

[Johnny Lieberman]

But that was one too where it like, you know, it was surprising Tato didn't get a penalty there because he was so wide and you'd watch the video. Everybody else is like, maybe on the curbing. He's almost over the white.

[Tommy Kendall]

On the entrance, on the exit.

[Johnny Lieberman]

On the exit and the entrance.

[Matt Farah]

I think they only cared about that there. If you used it to make a pass on somebody or did something like that.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Well, I'm convinced they didn't care about turn one. I think turn one.

[Matt Farah]

Do whatever you want. Certainly not in the first corner of the race. There were fucking six wide across across that thing.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah, well, that's what. That made it hard to try to game, you know, track limits. You're like, okay, they're not enforcing it everywhere, but they are enforcing it someplace. They didn't tell you exactly where it was.

[Matt Farah]

You'll be loud as you want on the corkscrew, right?

[Zach]

Yeah, yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Just stay away from five and six. Yeah, right.

[Matt Farah]

But I mean, you know, it was, it was such a good time. I mean, the team was super stoked to have, you know, finished the year with. With a win. And this, I mean, this car, it's a, it's a factory race car, but like, I think it's a stock engine just with like cooling upgrades. It's a ZF 8 speed auto.

[Johnny Lieberman]

It had 10 more horsepower than the Hyundai Veloster.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Which was very hard to pass. Even you said so. Yeah, Veloster. The Veloster was quick, dude. I got by it, but it was tough. That Civic si was tough, you know, and the. And, and it, it just. They said they do oil changes every 50 hours on this car. And one set of tires and one set of brakes for. For a whole race. Like, not bad.

[Zach]

That's pretty good.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Props to BMW, right? Like what a very well rounded car.

[Matt Farah]

That's a pretty good BMW. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and actually I think, I think I had the most fun racing the other because there's a lot of these in our class. I had the most fun racing the other ones because you're like, hey, we're in the same year. Like, can I get by you? You know, how do I get by you with you?

[Zach]

Because then, you know, racing. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

You know, it's fun. Yeah, it was great. And WRL is, I think, is a. I mean, you've raced in so many series. I think this was like a very welcoming and, and like, well run series.

[Tommy Kendall]

Welcoming and well run. Well said because. Yeah, I've been hearing a lot about it from friends saying this, you know, and as things have gotten more and more expensive. It started with lemons, where people. It was kind of a jokey series. You know, for fun series. But it just showed how much people are thirsting for good racing that's reasonably affordable, if you can say that in racing, you know. And so WRL is definitely the sweet spot on the value equation. And.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And they don't have like a tyrant. You know, I've been to different races where it's like you just get lectured. The drivers meeting is just a big old lecture.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah. RJ's up there saying okay. And he's super. Matter of fact.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

And. And they follow through on what they say. And so it's bad when they, they, they say we're gonna really crack down. And they don't crack down at all. Pretty soon you're like, yeah, they're not. They say that, but they don't have the balls to pull the trigger. And here it's like, do what you want to do. These, it's like good, good parenting. These are the rules. And yeah, no, I think WRL is really, I mean, the field. How many cars was it? 78.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

27 in our class. I think there was like 10 prototypes and a bunch of these GTO cars which are basically like GT4. Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Like an M4.

[Matt Farah]

M4, GT4K. GT4 cups, you know, cup cars. They rip.

[Zach]

Yeah. I drove the M4 GT4 and it's very serious.

[Matt Farah]

Oh yeah, Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I drove a 911 cup.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, they're awesome. Yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

Those two guys that finished a half a second apart came by me two laps from the end. I didn't know that. Would have been nice to know that the leaders are separated by seconds and they're, they're not giving any Fs now. And so because they caught me right at the end of the straightaway and the Porsche got by me. But the B W. He was. Patience was not an option at that point. And so they were coming, I think.

[Matt Farah]

Was that class determined by less than a 7.5, 0.5. Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

At the last seven hour race. And for amateur racing, that's insane.

[Matt Farah]

That's really super legit. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think, like for people, I don't. I wouldn't go to this series from nothing. I would probably do a lemons race or a champ race or an AER race from first and then go to this one because the speeds are higher and the cars are faster. The cars that are passing you are passing in a faster, more aggressive way in the faster classes. So I wouldn't just go to this cold necessarily. Although you can if you have a comp license. This can Be your first ever endurance race. I would probably do a slower race first to get yourself in the vibe. But if you're comfortable driving a race race car, these are. This is a fun time. Yeah, it's really fun. And these.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And also, by the way, real quick, like, you got to drive a hell of a track. I mean, that was.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

You know, that was fun.

[Matt Farah]

It's. It's a track that. It's fun, and it kind of can. It's like, there's parts that really kind of beat you up a lot, and there's other parts that are, like, pretty chill.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah. I mean, back straight is like. There's a lot of nuance there. Like, I. I. This first time I've raced there, I've been on it before, but never really hustling. And, you know, I'm. There's. There's still time on the table in some of these places. You know, the S is. The S is one of the great series of corners in America that's very, very challenging. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Like, the way that worked, I mean, ultimately is you. You turn into that first one flat, hit the brakes at the first one.

[Tommy Kendall]

Start brushing the brakes as you're passing that first eight, and you're on the.

[Matt Farah]

Brakes again until you start to turn left again. That's that, like, 10% brakes for dabbing, dabbing, dabbing. Yeah. And that's that. If you get that right, it feels real nice.

[Zach]

It's six corners back to back.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, I never got that right, but it's a lot of fun.

[Matt Farah]

But the bit over the crest. Oh, that green. That green diamond thing, that's the Tommy Kendall cut line is right there.

[Johnny Lieberman]

That is. That is the best part of the track.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I like that.

[Zach]

Did you each have a favorite driving moment?

I mean, you got to pass people on the S's. That sounds like that was you.

[Matt Farah]

I had a couple where I. I set up passes against other two series where I said, four corners ahead, this is where I'm gonna go. And I did it, and I was like, that's. Fuck. I can't believe I just actually made that happen. And so that was like, all right.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I had my stint again. I knew I wasn't going so hot, but there was one BMW, and I don't know the number, but he came up on me, and I kind of picked up my pace. And then for 90 minutes, it was just me and him together.

[Matt Farah]

That's fun.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And it was like, he got ahead of me at one point, but then I got him back. I love that stuff. And it was a 90 minute battle and whoever that driver was, that was me. And that was really fun and it was great. And it was like, you know, he would kind of get closer to me in the corners and I'd get him on the straight a little bit and then, yeah, it was cool. And I passed him on that tato line.

[Matt Farah]

Nice.

[Johnny Lieberman]

That's where I took it back.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. That is the fucking line, man. Really?

[Johnny Lieberman]

It's a cheat code.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Tommy, do you have a moment?

[Johnny Lieberman]

Did you have a moment?

[Tommy Kendall]

It was more a process, you know, getting out the second day and just stringing laps together and watching the timer in the car and trying, trying, because again, hustling down through the S's at first, you, some of those guys would come, you follow the quick guys to the S's and you're like, wow, I need to man up here. And really. And it's, it's subtle, but it's, it, it compounds. And so really getting the confidence where you really are able to hustle it through there without making mistakes, you could, you can hustle it through there and you're going to make some mistakes, some of which are maybe going to be really consequential. And so, you know, doing it in a, in a smart way. So was fun to kind of, you know, I'm still not razor sharp like I. And so I've gotten good at saying, Listen, I'm almost 60 years old. I haven't been in a car in 11 years, so give myself a little bit of room and everyone's expecting you to still be, you know, Senna. And so to push that stuff at bay and just challenge yourself, racing, it's funny, racing is a great micro. It's kind of the Steve McQueen line. Racing is like, he meant it differently, but it really is because it's all the stuff happening at once. It's you battling in your brain on pushing yourself and doubts and this, that and the other. And so it really is fun. There's nothing quite like it that taxes you the same way. And the mistakes hurt and the successes feel good. Like at the airport last night, we.

[Matt Farah]

Were all freaking drained. So tired.

[Tommy Kendall]

I was so tired.

[Johnny Lieberman]

It could have also been the 7,000 calories of French fries we wolfed down. Yeah, right.

[Tommy Kendall]

But satisfied, you know, it's just this great feeling. I woke up this morning and I'm tired and I'm sore, but my mind's like quiet and it's like, that was that. And then you.

That'll get me that and six bucks will get me a Latte. So, you know. But it feels good.

[Zach]

Yeah, definitely.

[Matt Farah]

And you're like.

It'S so easy to.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Be like, oh, yeah, I know.

[Matt Farah]

We're just fucking around. We're just fucking around. And then, like, we're P2.

[Zach]

No, get serious real quick.

[Matt Farah]

Real fast.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Saturday night, like, Tato was super serious. We drank a lot of wine, and I don't know. I wasn't feeling all that serious. And then. But I remember it was Zach, and Tato came up to me after. I was like, you know. Cause I was like, matt's running real good. Like, you didn't.

[Tommy Kendall]

You know.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Cause the day before, again, he got in P1 or P2, and it was P7 when I was getting dressed, I was like, all right, it's fine.

[Tommy Kendall]

Whatever.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Tato's a wonder kid, and we're normal humans. And then when you were like, P2. And they came up to me and they're like, we really got a shot here. Like, would you mind if Tommy went in? And if there's time at the end, we'll throw you in? And I was like, absolutely, 100%. And Jack was like, I think Tommy can go the whole time without refueling. I'm gonna leave him out. I'm like, totally. That's great. I don't have to take a shower.

[Matt Farah]

That's Racecraft.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, Racecraft. Yeah. It was great. And. And we'll. We'll get Sergio and. And Tato back here. Make sure you follow Mateo Ciderman on Instagram, by the way.

[Tommy Kendall]

Spelled like Spider man with no P. Yes, S, I.

[Matt Farah]

Not S, E, I, S, I.

[Tommy Kendall]

Just straight S. Now, speaking of life, we also need to give a shout out. Sergio's uncle is fighting for his life in a burn center in Dallas. So they were heading straight there. He was in Cancun and had a gas oven on Thanksgiving explode in his face. And so cousin Sean, who's a friend of ours, that's his father. So, yeah, so we're thinking about them.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, that was a crazy story. And of course, there's, like, not, like, laws in Mexico for that kind of thing. So it's like, you know, you can't, like, go sue somebody. She's like, whoopsie. Which is really, really terrible. And on that note.

Do we have anything from the people of interest? Of course. The patrons we love so much. Patreon.com the Smoking Tire podcast. Get in the game. Get questions for the live show. Get to watch the live show. Get to watch the show the day it's recorded, rather than waiting. Get it to get extra show. Get to get show without extra ads. If you like the show, it's more show, just all around, more show. And let's get to them. All right.

Okay. Smug, demure, just cute. New patron, longtime listener. I've been living in China for the last seven years and saw directly the sudden change between ice to electric and how incredibly fast Chinese cars improved. My only problem with electric cars is they made it possible for everyone to have a sub 5 second 0 to 60. And most of the people are not decent enough drivers.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yep.

[Matt Farah]

I.

I kind of.

[Zach]

Should this be regulated is basically the crux of the question.

[Matt Farah]

I don't, I don't necessarily think it should be like.

[Zach]

I feel like. I don't think we've seen. I think we were all concerned about this. And also with hypercars and supercars, the question is, have we seen an uptick in accidents as a result of that? Johnny shaking his head. I agree with him. I think most people, like we talked about in the last show, if you hand a normal person a thousand horsepower ev, they're going to tap the gas, go, whoa. And they're never going to touch it again.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I remember when I started at Motortrend, we had a C6ZR1 and a guy who used to be married to a friend of mine was like, you got.

[Matt Farah]

To let me drive it.

[Johnny Lieberman]

You got. It's my fucking dream car. You got to let me drive it.

[Matt Farah]

I'm like, okay.

[Johnny Lieberman]

So we found this straight ass road, middle of nowhere, to 4,000 rpm shifts. 4,000 rpm shifts. 4000 rpm shifts. Fuck, man. That was the craziest moment of my life. And I'm like. And I wasn't going to be like, no, go to seven, because I shouldn't have been letting him drive. I mean, it doesn't really matter.

[Zach]

Wasn't the famous McLaren F1 story. It's like someone.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, Ralph. Yeah, the Ralph story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very short.

[Zach]

Ralph.

[Matt Farah]

Ralph Lauren's. One of his McLarens wasn't running well. So he did what anyone in 1996 would have done with their McLaren F1 wasn't running well. They plugged in the 144 modem to the wall and the car called Gordon Murray or whoever the fuck they called in England. And two guys in tweed jackets show up and they look at the car, they take it for a quick drive and fiddle on a computer for a second and they go, shift higher. And then they leave and fly back to England. And that's the entire story. Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

So, yeah, no, I mean, like, I. We just drove the new Rivian Quad, and, like, why a Rivian needs a thousand horsepower? I don't know.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I know why. Because it's rad. Why not?

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. As long as people are saying that they're just going to keep making things with more horsepower, I'm happy that most people aren't using it most of the time.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I mean, I think it gets into a bit of. And I keep mentioning this guy, but Thorsten Veblen, who's an economist from Wisconsin, theory, that leaves your class. I think people are bummed that horsepower has been democratized, because if you think about it, why should only the ultra wealthy be able to have really, really, really fast cars? They're not inherently better drivers because they're rich. And so Veblen has this thing, theory of the leisure class. The idea is like, okay, electric lights come out, and only wealthy people can afford to get their homes rewired. So a electric light dinner was very romantic and desirable. Then the poors get electric lights, and only the rich can afford to, like, burn the candles. So then a candlelight dinner becomes romantic. So when anybody can go 0 to 60 in 3 seconds, suddenly I don't care about that. Well, wait a second.

[Zach]

That's all you cared about for years now.

[Tommy Kendall]

Analog.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I need. I need to go deaf. I need to be deaf. My car must deafen me real quick.

[Matt Farah]

Leonard Meredith. When I drove the 750, as a Coda, I didn't do lap times. In fact, I spent most of my time sideways. And it was a great time. And because of that, it made it harder to drive clean in this little race car. I was like, this is a drastically different experience. Optimus prime it. All that oversteer on the exits of the hairpins was a great time until Taito told me to stop doing it.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Sure.

[Tommy Kendall]

To be honest with you.

This is what it's about.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, I've seen this in the videos.

Okay, wait, hang on. Let's. Let's do ones that focus on the. On the day star in an unreasonably priced car. When is the next race? Sergio said we should talk about dates for next year. Daytona.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Daytona.

[Matt Farah]

Bro. Bro. Who needs a chef when you've got lollipops? Am I right?

[Johnny Lieberman]

I wasn't gonna mention it saying bottle service.

[Matt Farah]

I would.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I've.

[Matt Farah]

You know, I've never driven Daytona.

[Johnny Lieberman]

It's. Isn't that a shame?

[Matt Farah]

You probably.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I shouldn't even. Probably.

[Tommy Kendall]

The first time you go up on the banking and the thing just turns sideways. And one of the biggest epiphanies is on a bank track forward is up and to the left.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Yes.

[Tommy Kendall]

So you can't see. And so when you're going really fast, I mean, the lower you sit in the seat, and it's Dale Earnhardt, senior window.

[Matt Farah]

Who put the window.

[Tommy Kendall]

917 had the window up there. Yes. And I drove one of Dale seniors. I was the first person besides him to drive his Busch grand national car. And there was. It was the weirdest thing. The seat only had a right side on it, and the left side went over. The door bars were padded. And he used to. That was. That was one of his secrets. He'd get down next to the door and he'd look through the side window. And that's why he got caught up, I think, in way fewer accidents on those super speedways.

[Matt Farah]

In the documentary, his early cars used, like, seats. Seats out of a van. He didn't like racing seats. And so he had a fucking van seat in his car. It was crazy.

[Tommy Kendall]

When I was in there, way later in the.

[Matt Farah]

In time, that car should have had that seat.

[Tommy Kendall]

I said, I said, I know what you're doing.

[Johnny Lieberman]

He goes, rick Mears told me this wild story one time when it was Daytona 500 and there was like two laps to go, and his neck gave out.

[Tommy Kendall]

Indy 500 for mirrors.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Oh, sorry.

[Tommy Kendall]

Sorry.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And. But his, like. So his head was. Fell to the left and when he was driving, he could see. He couldn't see anything. Couldn't see forward, but he could see, like, the lights and. And then he could, like, get, you know, on the radio, they could tell him, like, if there was someone in.

[Matt Farah]

Front of him or whatever.

[Tommy Kendall]

But he could.

[Johnny Lieberman]

He drove like, two laps looking up through the glass.

[Tommy Kendall]

Wow. Yeah. Mears, that guy's my hero. One of. One of.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

Soft spoken, nice guy.

[Zach]

Right.

[Tommy Kendall]

But just. Oh, man, what a gunslinger.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, that top one was good. Johnny or Zach.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Sorry.

[Matt Farah]

Chase. The Monte Carlo says, if you were to each start a business making movie cars and selling them, what would you make?

[Johnny Lieberman]

Oh, the Tumbler.

[Matt Farah]

Well, isn't Jay Ryan selling those?

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, he says, similar to the Tumbler, but.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I mean, you'd want to sell.

[Zach]

It's like, what do you want to sell and what do you want to drive?

[Matt Farah]

What do you want to drive around? Right? Like the Thomas Crown Affair. Mustangs are pretty cool. They're like safari, you know, Shelby Mustangs. Those are pretty rad.

[Zach]

I love the Fast and furious pre runner Charger, like That's what I want to drive around.

[Matt Farah]

Sure.

[Zach]

Would anyone buy one? Actually I bet those would sell pretty well now.

[Matt Farah]

They probably could sell a bunch of them in Tennessee.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I like the, the S8 from Ronin, but I mean you can just.

[Matt Farah]

For them.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

I want the amphibious Esprit from James Bond.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Oh yeah. I think, you know, unfortunately, you know who owns it? Yeah, we do.

[Matt Farah]

He's giving it up. Okay, well, Elon Musk owns.

[Tommy Kendall]

I think. Does he? We're gonna make them. We're gonna make them.

[Matt Farah]

Oh yeah, we're gonna make them.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Johnny E.V.

[Matt Farah]

Giberman.

[Johnny Lieberman]

There we go.

[Matt Farah]

I understand the Rivian's R1s gen 2 is the one to have.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

But if gen ones are creeping into the, the high 40s, is the suspension a deal breaker or is the car still a nice daily for 50?

[Johnny Lieberman]

It's fine if you're 50.

[Matt Farah]

It's.

[Johnny Lieberman]

It depends how you drive. So that what happened with the suspension. So you know, they, I think they just started developing the truck first and they took 15 inches out of the wheelbase and then had the same suspension pieces.

[Matt Farah]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

So the R1S road worse. But also if you pushed it, sir, are you going to push your car? If you push the car, the rear end steps out, which is a really strong, strange thing to have happen because it just happens.

[Matt Farah]

There's no warning about this. Yeah, when I reviewed it, they, it's essentially the same steering ratio and everything. But they just cut the wheelbase.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

And it drives like a car with a cut wheelbase. That's like what the Audi Sport Quattro. You ever drive Zuckerman's? Yeah, that's how it drives where like you have way more rear action for the amount of input you do at the front.

[Johnny Lieberman]

It's weird, but it only happens when you're pushing it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, but you can feel the, the motions that lead to what will happen at lower speeds.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah. So for Gen 2, what they did was they actually changed the rear suspension pieces. So they solved it. So look, if you just commute around town, it's totally fine. You know the gen one is fine. I would say get the gen two just because.

The potential for what they're going to be able to do with that new chipset is like I'm going to Rivian autonomy to day on Thursday because they're announcing like their full self driving and like you'll have that like my truck will never get that.

[Matt Farah]

The quad I had, I used the, you know, lane centering. Whatever, whatever they Whatever they call it, their hand system, whatever it's called. Yeah. I drove to Irvine and back with it.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Pretty good, honestly. Pretty good. And.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And so rj, last time I talked to him, and it could be a little bit out of date, but, like, that same system on my Truck uses like 75 to 80% of the processing power available. On the Gen 2, it uses 1% of the process, so it's a much better chipset.

[Matt Farah]

Ryan's Witty username. Great to meet you guys. This weekend, can I get a review of the victory whiskey? I don't remember the name of it. It was something from Texas. I don't.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Rather I'd say everybody who wasn't me, and maybe Matt really liked it.

[Matt Farah]

I thought it was fine. I thought for the sip I had of it, it was fine.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Texas whiskey does this weird thing where it's just like, boy, when they were making that, it was too hot out. That's my impression of all Texas whiskey is like.

[Matt Farah]

It's just.

[Johnny Lieberman]

It's got a harshness.

[Tommy Kendall]

This is the kind of discernment I was talking about, is lost on people like me. So I thought it was pretty inspired. The victory celebration was inside a room, so there was no champagne spray. But they said rather than giving them cheap champagne and spraying it and wasting, let's give them maybe slightly better whiskey and they drink it.

[Johnny Lieberman]

So it's.

[Zach]

Again, that makes sense.

[Johnny Lieberman]

The open throttle. The open throttle dudes were stoked. They were. So, in fact, Zach, who Tato confirmed he's 24. Zach didn't drink a beer. We were hitting Modelos after the race. Zach's like, I'm waiting for that Victory whiskey.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I gave him the bottle just.

[Tommy Kendall]

Like the Rolexes at Daytona. That's expensive. Expensive whiskey.

[Matt Farah]

It's earned the hard.

[Tommy Kendall]

That's what I'm saying.

[Matt Farah]

I hate that part of F1 where Brad Pitt, like, gives back the Daytona. I gotta watch. Like, all right, dude, enjoy living in your van.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Down payment on a house.

[Johnny Lieberman]

You really took that movie way too seriously.

[Matt Farah]

No, because it. Because it gets so many of these little minutia details right. And the plot of it is so stupid. I remember when big things, it gets so wrong.

[Johnny Lieberman]

When Ford versus Ferrari came out, I interviewed Mangold, the director, and I brought up a couple things, and he's like, you know, I didn't make this movie for you. You already know all this. I made this for your wife. So when you're like, let's go see a car movie, she won't be like, fuck, James Mangold.

[Zach]

Yeah, very good point.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah. I learned in Days of Thunder. I watched Days of Thunder and I just tore it apart downshift on the street and so. And then I. For the next decade, several decades, I'd meet young people like that's the greatest movie of all time.

[Matt Farah]

Time.

[Tommy Kendall]

I'm like, my what I know ruined that for me. So I've learned actually to suspend my knowledge and just go in to be entertained. And so I mean some of them, like you said, but they got, they got so many good things. Right?

[Matt Farah]

Here's my problem with that specific scene.

[Tommy Kendall]

Uhhuh.

[Matt Farah]

IWC is a sponsor. He's not. The guy living in a van is turning down the $50,000 Rolex from the watch. He just one. And what does he say? I got one. And IWC's selling that now, dude. That's what I'm. That's why. I mean like that is like an unrealistic plot point for a purely commercial reason, right?

[Zach]

Or does it show that he just does it for the love of the.

[Matt Farah]

Game and the love of this van? You want to come in to Tommy's.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Point, Candy in here to Tommy's point.

[Matt Farah]

Counterpoint.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I took my 8 year old to see F1 movie. And like at some point during the movie, there's a railing in front of us and he starts doing like push ups on the railing and I'm like, stop fidgeting. And he's like, I want to be like Sonny because Brad Pitt was doing push ups. And I'm like, whoa. He's like connecting, you know, so I.

[Matt Farah]

Won'T ruin it for him.

[Zach]

Okay.

[Matt Farah]

But I think we have maybe a slightly more evolved audience.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I was very much entertained. I suspended disbelief.

[Zach]

I enjoy the movie a lot.

[Johnny Lieberman]

The only thing, the only thing again I thought was was stupid was like we gotta engineer the car to go faster. You know, it's like the old Dan Deardorf quote. Like well, they need to do now is score more points than the other team.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, the whole building to me on Saturday. Have you tried going faster?

[Tommy Kendall]

Pretty funny.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Right?

[Matt Farah]

And. And then I did. And then I did and I didn't. Yeah, I did it.

All right.

Anything else?

[Johnny Lieberman]

Oh, I like 12 inch cylindric.

[Matt Farah]

12 inch cylindrical.

[Tommy Kendall]

Really good.

[Matt Farah]

That's really good. We get one of those in two weeks. I haven't. Have you driven one of those yet?

[Johnny Lieberman]

I get one of those in January.

[Tommy Kendall]

Okay, cool.

[Matt Farah]

It'll probably be the same.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Same one and Spike's getting it. We'll have a big party.

[Matt Farah]

I'm excited to try it. Let's see the 12 inch cylindric works for most and drives 5,000 miles. I want to haul a dog, a mountain bike and a kid.

I love the idea of an LX470, but a Cayenne might be more fun for 30k. Don't get a cheap Cayenne. I can't tell you enough to not get a cheap.

[Zach]

It won't be fun when it breaks.

[Matt Farah]

They're so expensive. Little stuff is expensive in those things.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah. Oh, especially like first gen. Yeah, first gen is insanity. Somebody told me they did the door, the window motors and like it was just so over engineered. It was like a 24 hour job to open up the doors, take change the window motors and put them back together. My Bentley.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And yeah. So, but, but the l, I mean LX470, 30, I think they're a lot more than that. I don't know, I think they're like 60.

[Matt Farah]

I mean if you. No, that's, that's for like a size one. Okay. The 470s are used now.

[Johnny Lieberman]

They're okay.

[Zach]

Tony Angelo is selling his right now. It looks awesome.

[Matt Farah]

I mean I have no problem with the lx.

[Tommy Kendall]

Exactly. Zach, when are you getting the Dolce Chilindry? When are you getting yours?

[Zach]

We have to split one.

[Tommy Kendall]

Okay.

[Zach]

It's a timeshare situation.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah. The royal me.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, here, I like this one. Bush did 997. What is your special, your favorite special version of the special version. Right. So like. Yeah, yeah, like a version within a version.

[Johnny Lieberman]

So C63 black series.

[Matt Farah]

Yes.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, wait, this will take a second though.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Okay, let me think.

[Zach]

Why you think? On cars and bids there are LX470s as cheap as eight grand.

[Johnny Lieberman]

What?

[Zach]

And they go up from there? Three. But yeah, you could get three for 30 grand.

[Matt Farah]

So the Mercury Villager Nautica edition, I will, I will take, I mean like.

[Johnny Lieberman]

You know, I mean, I don't know, like the, the Diablo SV Monterey edition. I've driven two of those now. Those are rad.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, how about. Yeah. Miura svj.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Sure. I mean I haven't driven it.

[Matt Farah]

SVJ was actually special. Yeah, I mean not special. Rare. Rare.

[Johnny Lieberman]

There was two.

[Matt Farah]

There was two. And now there's many. Yeah. Okay.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Tommy, you got one.

[Tommy Kendall]

I can't really contribute to this, but I, I. Because I haven't driven most of them, but Black series. I own a C63 black series. I drove. I went to the CLK press launch expecting it to, to be not that much different than an AMG and Came away like, oh my goodness.

[Johnny Lieberman]

So that was the most mind bending car.

[Tommy Kendall]

Been in love ever since. So I have a C63, they're doing.

[Matt Farah]

Manual swaps on them now.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Also that may not be for you. The classic center. There's that red one.

[Tommy Kendall]

I've got a lot of miles on that red one.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, me too.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I love that red one. You can borrow it.

[Matt Farah]

Dan Henderson says, do you ever find it tough to review a car with its MSRP in mind with some models having so much cash on the hood with incentives? I mean, conversely, this is not in the question, but you could say with other cars that have ADM on the hood. Hard to compare a Rivian with. Rivians are great and have a no BS sales model, but compared to a Lightning with tens and thousands rebates, it can muddy the water in terms of value. The thing is, we don't spend a lot of time at dealerships. We don't get a car to test and then call around 10 dealerships and go, what's the best deal you can give me on this car? To find out some kind of a market price, if that's what you could. Maybe someone does that.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And I have a friend who has driven both with this model. With this example, he's driven both the Rivian truck and the Lightning. And he got a Lightning because it was like $12,000 on the hood. And he's like, you know, he's like, yeah, the Rivian's better. But like, first of all, the lighting was cheaper to start with and 12,000 off. He's like, he's like, I'll suffer with the Lightning. And he loves it, you know.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, I mean the easiest way for us to work is msrp. I mean, and although that, although Rivian has a no BS model, like what's to stop Rivian from changing the price of their car? I mean, they do change all the time. Tesla does it all the time.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And well, Rivian doesn't change the price, but they just come up with like absurd lease deals. Yeah, like you can get a dual motor for like 509amonth, which is like, you know, good luck getting a Corolla.

[Matt Farah]

For 509, by the way. You should, if that's really a deal, you should get that.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Well, they did it, you know, they were really kind of struggling. Like about 18 months ago they had this. That's why everyone in LA suddenly got dual motor SUVs, because it was like 509.

[Zach]

Also, ADM usually gets more press. It goes around the blogosphere and when we hear about it versus cash on the hood doesn't get as much attention.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Now is the time to get a CO6, by the way.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Oh, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Okay, wait. Okay. This is a good one. Cost Cobb tuning. I love a Connecticut reference. I just got a BMW 340i coming from a Toyota 86. Love the speed space and cockpit room, but I miss the shifter of the 86, the notchiness. Is it worth chasing a notchier shifter with bushings or a short shift kit? Or enjoy the car for what it is? Since the BMW forum said the aftermarket will never be as good or the BMW will never be as good as the 86, I don't anyway to shift your shift. I have an opinion on this. Do either of you?

[Johnny Lieberman]

I can just say that BMW shifters are rubbery and it's because it's the same ZF thing that's been in production for 100 years. It's never going to change and I just think it'll never get better. I think the forms might be right in this instance.

[Matt Farah]

I have driven several aftermarket shifters in BMWs. They've all been straight garbage. The BMW shifter is rubbery and absolutely nobody makes anything better, in my opinion. Occasionally you have a race car that has a super short shift kit in it which is paired with a very.

[Zach]

Tall lever like Thad's thing, and that.

[Matt Farah]

Ends up in a decent place. If you're literally racing but on the street for your car, just leave it, man. You is where you is.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah. Again, I remember when Jag had that V6F type for a hot second that.

[Matt Farah]

Had a manual, that had the BMW gearbox.

[Johnny Lieberman]

It was the same gearbox. And I remember I was with Camisa driving around and I'm like, it's rubbery, just like the BMW. And you know, it was.

[Matt Farah]

It was exactly.

[Johnny Lieberman]

It's the same gearbox. Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Not a bad car, by the way.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Not a bad car.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, this sob story. Zach and I were just talking about this the other day. The number of cars driving around with their lights turned off at night has become alarming and dangerous. With all the safety regulations required for cars now, why aren't manufacturers required to have an auto on for car headlights? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, because we live in a country that doesn't have laws, just like. Really?

[Zach]

I guess they're all required to have a backup camera now, right? Since 2015 they are, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Also, you're required to have DRLs.

[Zach]

I think this should be on their list. Like, just make the auto setting mandatory on all the cars. And this is definitely a problem in cities, not rural areas. It's dark. Like, you hit something, you remember to turn your lights on.

[Johnny Lieberman]

But going forward will be less and less of a problem, as everybody now is. The nighttime signature has become, like, the thing that designers think about so much. Like, I took a black home last night, and it was a new seven series, which I could see from.

But you know what? As bad as it looks in the daytime, if you're trying to find one car at LAX at night, man, there it is. Perfect.

[Tommy Kendall]

Really worked to that end. Like, I think a lot of issues, people leave their cars in auto. Whenever you valet it, they switch it to auto off. That's just kind of their standard deal. My wife and her macan. We were leaving somewhere. We were in separate cars. I said, honey, you're. Because that was the opposite. The lights were on, but the. The backlights were dark.

Yeah. So it should be an auto.

[Zach]

Because around here, I do see cars where I don't think they're doing a lot of valet and they're still driving without their lights on.

[Matt Farah]

There's not one solution.

[Johnny Lieberman]

That's a nice way to put it.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it would be. It would add cost to cars for sure, because now you have to have the sensor, But I think it probably would be a good idea. Yeah.

[Zach]

Those are the last three.

[Matt Farah]

Okay. Chew down says on the east coast, in the winter, we have to add air to our tires because the air density increases with lower temperatures. Why does the opposite not happen in the spring? It's a good question.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Well, tires lose one psi a month.

[Matt Farah]

That's why. It's a good question. But it's also a good question with a very obvious answer as well.

[Johnny Lieberman]

But people don't know that. Like, again, we used to have this guy at Motor Trend, Scott Mortara, who moved to Seattle working for the drive shop. But it was like his. He was mad at humanity because people wouldn't inflate their tires. He was just so angry at all times. Like, we'd be somewhere, and you could visibly see someone's tire was low, and he'd just lose his mind. Like, how do they not fill that up?

[Matt Farah]

Blah, blah, blah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

But, yeah, I mean, your tire. You know, I have a bunch of portable air chargers. I just go around once a month.

[Tommy Kendall]

And by the way, if you've ever pushed car. Cars around. Yeah. You know, tire pressure matters. If you. If you care about efficiency and fuel mileage and so forth, pushing a car. Yeah. You're like, you'll check your tire pressure.

[Matt Farah]

No I think, yeah, it's because when you add air to your tires in the winter, but because you're adding air anyway, you. You were only thinking about the temperature and not how long it's been since you've probably added air to your tires.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Right, right.

[Matt Farah]

Explorer. I hardly knew her. Will I try to test drive the GR Corolla again when I scout for the upcoming road trike experience? No, I don't need to. I mean, the last gr I drove three GR Corollas. The last one had spreaders left in the springs.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Oh, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Like from shipping, like the shipping blocks.

[Johnny Lieberman]

This thing rides like.

[Matt Farah]

But I know what it's supposed to ride like.

[Johnny Lieberman]

They did change it. You know, 25 got way stiffer than 23, 24.

[Matt Farah]

No, it was. But. But I had driven a 25 manual. This was just the auto, like. And so, so I was like, are there new settings with the auto? And they're like, well, maybe. But also there's. Yeah, no, I'm actually, for the next scout, which I'm doing in January, I'm gonna drive a lucid gravity.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Nice. Have you driven the gravity yet?

[Matt Farah]

No. It's supposed to be very nice.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Again, I love lucid. I like all the people that wear their blah, blah.

[Matt Farah]

They just.

[Johnny Lieberman]

They go 97% and quit and it just get it all the way right. Like it can't. I don't know. But yeah, gravity is an extremely great handling minivan.

[Matt Farah]

That's fine. I'm a pro minivan. You guys know it?

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, you are. But I mean, you know the Rivian. My truck's a fast truck and basically about the same horsepower. And it was humbled by the gravity.

[Matt Farah]

Like humbled. It's also. I'm getting a grand touring which has supposedly a 450 mile range. I think in real world it's probably in the middle. The of three's fine.

[Johnny Lieberman]

No, it's probably like 4 10, 4 2, 0. Honestly, lucids go far.

[Matt Farah]

What I love about a Lucid is it's 300 miles at 90 miles an hour.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Farah]

That I really like. That's a good. Because I don't know what do I.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Need to go for the gravity motor? The gravity's heavier than the air, obviously, but the gravity motors are more efficient than the air motors. I didn't do a range test. I had it, but I mean, it just never even got to a point where I needed to charge it. And we were running around engineering Angeles Crest and filming and everything.

[Matt Farah]

I'm driving a thousand miles across the desert. Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Oh, you'll be fine.

[Matt Farah]

You'll love it.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, you'll love it. You won't turn on because the key is a piece of shit.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, so just. They didn't fix that.

[Zach]

Well, the trunk won't open like Jason.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Finski's according to my. My deep throat. Inside lucid, like. Yeah, they just bought a. Again, you walk up to the car and it opens up because it knows you have the key on you. And then you get in the car and it won't turn on because there's no key, Detective. So what I would say is get the app and do phone as key, and that should be fine.

[Matt Farah]

Speaking of minivans, quick review. Rented a Kia Carnival, the Kia of minivans. It was the first minivan I've used in six years to not have an automatic power trunk.

[Tommy Kendall]

I stood next to Johnny at the back of it for a while, and Johnny's like, there has to be a minute. No.

[Matt Farah]

I stood there staring at it, Head hurts for a minute, going, what the fuck?

[Johnny Lieberman]

So, Tommy, that's how car journalists think.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah. So I'm like, I think. I think you can just close it. Yeah. I was like, no way. Yeah, no way.

[Matt Farah]

Because it wasn't. It wasn't that I'm too lazy to close it.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah, no, it was.

[Matt Farah]

There has to be a button. I'm just not finding it. And then I'm gonna tell people it has a manual thing and someone's gonna go, hey, yeah, it's down here. Buttons right here. You know, it's. It's inside the A on the Kia badge or whatever, you know, just. No one told you, Matt.

[Johnny Lieberman]

They're gonna say, hey, asshole. Anyways, no matter what you do.

[Matt Farah]

So. No, but they gave me a van with a 300 miles on it. Brand new van, as nice as it could be. And not a bad conveyance.

[Tommy Kendall]

It worked.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Carnival, compared to all other minivans are luxury items.

[Matt Farah]

It had kind of a nice intake noise when you got on it.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yes, it did.

[Matt Farah]

Like, it wasn't bad, the steer. If you tried to go more than 5, 10, this thing would push into a ditch immediately. But why are you doing that in a minivan?

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I don't know.

[Matt Farah]

The only reason I bring it up even at all is because I got it from Hertz at Austin, which has the AI scanners now. Oh, yeah, there's. They don't check your car in anymore. You drive through and a little fucking AI damage. Scanning. Ring of fire. No. Yeah, dude.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Oh, that's no good.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, this shit's been outsourced it's incredibly problematic.

[Johnny Lieberman]

But that's also. I mean, one of my favorite moments from Lemons.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Oh, shit.

[Matt Farah]

Look at that.

[Johnny Lieberman]

One of my favorite moments from Lemons was we used to really race our rental cars.

[Matt Farah]

Yes.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah, we, like, you know, because we would get to a track on Thursday and we gotta check out the track and, like, you know. Well, they.

[Matt Farah]

We. I. You know, the Thursday. I'm glad I didn't go through the trouble because we were supposed to have a practice day at Cota on Thursday and just quali. Was Friday, but it was pissing rain all day Thursday, so they canceled practice effectively and moved it all to Friday. But at first I was like, can I bring any car on track during practice? If so, I'll fly to Dallas and get a McLaren, you know, and have a good time for the day. And they said, no, you can't. It turns out that wasn't right. True. Yeah. But we. We've run vans in the HPD for races like, a million times.

[Johnny Lieberman]

There was a Wrangler. Rubicon.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yes. Yes, dude.

[Matt Farah]

A guy.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I was in the.

[Matt Farah]

Practicing a Wrangler.

[Tommy Kendall]

I followed through the esses. I thought. I thought I. I thought I clicked into a video game. I'm like, what is going on here?

[Matt Farah]

Cruising usa.

[Johnny Lieberman]

But so. So one time we.

[Matt Farah]

The Jeep or the Testarossa, they're the same speed.

[Johnny Lieberman]

One time, after a long meal, shall we say. We had a Chrysler 300, I want to say, and went over a parking thing. And I don't know what we ripped off, but a lot of fluids came.

[Matt Farah]

Out of the belly.

[Zach]

The car.

[Johnny Lieberman]

But we were right near the airport, so we had, you know, two rental cars. So one, I will leave their name out. One of the lemons people pulled in, and then I pulled the PT Cruiser right behind it and, like, touched the bumper. There's no way to.

Yeah, we.

[Tommy Kendall]

Bye. Bye. See you later.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And so.

[Zach]

That sucks.

[Matt Farah]

So, yeah, we didn't even have to do. Do you just leave it? You know, And I did not get dinged, although we did. We did forget to stop and fill it up for gas. And that probably. That car cost me, like, 50 bucks.

[Zach]

Well, to catch Johnny up real quick, the early reports on this tech were that one, it was finding problems that the human eye couldn't. It was like picking a ding that might have been there. And then the second was it would basically text people and say, the charge is going to be $448, but if you pay it right now, it's 239. If you can test it. It might be $448. So it's very well.

[Tommy Kendall]

By the way, they don't scan it after the last Hertz employee drives it and gives it to you.

[Matt Farah]

They scan it on your way out.

[Tommy Kendall]

Oh, they do.

[Matt Farah]

I got scanned on the way out. Yeah, yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

I didn't.

[Matt Farah]

I don't. I got scanned on the way out. I got scanned.

What's worse. What's worse is go through the scanner with a rental car with no miles on it or with a rental car with like 25k on it.

[Johnny Lieberman]

No miles.

[Matt Farah]

I think no miles is scarier, right? Oh, no, no, no, no.

[Johnny Lieberman]

You think it's better, dude, 25k. There's going to be so many things damaged. And that's what I'm saying.

[Matt Farah]

It wasn't me.

[Zach]

And, you know, if this whole AI think supposed to save money, the processing fee for the repair. This is for a different case was $125 plus $65 administrative fee.

[Johnny Lieberman]

So you're what?

[Zach]

What.

[Johnny Lieberman]

By the way, what's a $250 repair? Like?

[Matt Farah]

They like a scratch. I touch up.

[Zach]

They probably just mark it in the computer.

[Matt Farah]

They probably don't do anything.

[Johnny Lieberman]

They don't do a goddamn. Anything they charge. They just make up the number.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

I will share a car rental damage story. I think the statute of limitations has expired.

[Matt Farah]

Here we go.

[Tommy Kendall]

My croce. This is. This is from the 80s. Dan Binks legend, Dan Banks. Back in the day, it was Lime Rock, and there was one of these back roads that we used to all take. And I was. This was before I was even with him. And they went sailing through this and they missed it. And they went off into the grass in through someone's yard. The next yard was about 6ft lower, and they launched and they landed. They landed on top of this wood pile. And it. And so basically now the. The headrests are hitting the roof in this Cadillac. And so they take it. They get it off out of the wood pile and they take it back to the track. They put an air floor jack on the seat with some boards and they jack the. There was no scratches on the outside of the car. They just bent the floor somehow. They bent it back. Ish.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Excellent.

[Tommy Kendall]

And returned it. No charge.

[Matt Farah]

Amazing.

[Johnny Lieberman]

That's wonderful. That warms my heart.

[Tommy Kendall]

So that Days of Thunder, that was the only part of that movie I didn't. I said, that is real. That is 100% real.

[Matt Farah]

Done. Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And that's why you say, you know, don't buy used rental cars. Don't Buy used press cars.

[Matt Farah]

The last and only other time I won a sanctioned race or was part of a team that won a sanctioned race was it was at NCM in Kentucky. And I had been overcharged by the rental car company for a Nissan Versa, which was just tragic car.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yes.

[Matt Farah]

Cheapest available. And so I had been overcharged and I saw my thing and I was annoyed and I was like, well, I'm going to get my money's worth. And I ran about 60 laps of NCM. I fully smoked the CVT gearbox, I fully smoked the brakes, and it was. But the paint was ace.

[Tommy Kendall]

No problem.

[Matt Farah]

Tagged, no cones was ace.

[Johnny Lieberman]

That's all that matters.

[Matt Farah]

It was all that matters.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Fine.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah, it was good. I got my $500 Nissan.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Is somebody gonna be like, oh, the Versa's not driving as well as it should? Like, no.

[Matt Farah]

Feels in.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Spec.

Shift'S terrible. Check. Bad brakes.

[Matt Farah]

Check. Well, thanks for coming down today, guys. That was a good Monday, following a great Sunday. And extra special thank you to Sergio and Matteo for having us and for the open throttle guys doing a great job. So for those who don't understand, they hear us talking about this race and they're like, well, I don't have a race car. What do I do? So there's like 10 different companies that own the race cars and that run the race cars.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Or more than 10.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. However many for each series, pretty much almost all the cars in the race, the vast majority of them are operated by teams who sell seats in a race. Just like you would get an entry in a HPD track day with your car. Basically, you pay the track day company to do that their track day. Well, you pay these guys and they prep the race car, they show up, they run the car, they fuel the car.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Breakfast, lunch.

[Matt Farah]

They make you snacks. They make you snacks. And if, God forbid, the car breaks or you crash it, they fucking go all night to fix it. Get you back in the race. And you pay a few thousand bucks for a weekend and it's done. You show up and you race, and if you do it by yourself, you're going to be in a car with people you. You might not know, or if you do, with buddies. You could rent a whole car. Yeah. Which I recommend, if you can do that.

[Tommy Kendall]

And there are. There are pitfalls, you know, in terms of if you pay for the weekend and someone gets in it before you and crashes it, you don't get in it. You know, there's different owners, deal with it differently. The reality is, some of them that are really small the money is spent getting there. And so it sucks. Like someone that have deeper pockets, they might say even they might eat it because they feel bad for you and so forth. And there's the entire. It's like Airbnb. There's a gradient from the cheapest and it literally goes all the way almost to Formula one, basically. So in terms of what you get and.

You do well to talk to someone in this space because some people are known as being more shysters than others and other ones are more upstanding and some of them look good and a lot of polish, but they don't run as well beneath the surface, so. But don't let that stop you is what you're saying.

[Matt Farah]

Yeah. Sometimes like a not very good looking race car can be very fast and sometimes a very shiny one could be run by a bunch of dick bags.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And the car's not very fast, but open throttle.

[Matt Farah]

These guys are great.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Totally recommended.

[Matt Farah]

Mike Gorman and Zach and Chris and Charlie. Charlie.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Well, Chris retired. Chris is moving on to Career Cup.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, yeah. It was his last race. He got him a W on his last race. I forgot about that.

[Tommy Kendall]

That's cool.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

Everyone else on that team who was cool and whose names I unfortunately can't remember because my brain only has so much space, but lovely group of guys.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Yeah. Excellent, excellent time. Super good times.

[Matt Farah]

Thank you to our patrons for asking good questions today and everyone else for playing along. And this is gonna go back to the Sergio Garage. I don't think it deserves to live here, but I wanted to have it for the show.

[Johnny Lieberman]

So Splurgeo, he's getting. Getting us all one.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, is he? Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Oh, okay. That's fun.

[Tommy Kendall]

Which is pretty magnanimous. In my Roush contract, it was written that I do not get the trophies. So I used to try to sneak some out, you know, off the podium and you know, when I, when I won The Rolex in GT with Paul Newman in 90 95, they didn't get.

[Johnny Lieberman]

He told this story Saturday night story there.

[Tommy Kendall]

They. They didn't give Rolexes to class winners then. And they.

[Matt Farah]

And just overall.

[Tommy Kendall]

Just overall. So even though with my two class wins there, I don't have a. I don't have a watch. No. Nope. And so. And then normally I wouldn't.

[Matt Farah]

I think you should be able to buy a Daytona and have it engraved yourself. Nobody would question it.

[Tommy Kendall]

True. Well, I guess I'll tell the rest of the story. So with Paul, I knew I wasn't going to get a trophy and I knew we weren't Getting watches. And then Roush ended up making Paul a replica trophy, but not for me. And then.

I was with him a few months with Paul a few months later, and he comes down, he said, can you be a ride to the track? I said, sure. He gets in the car, he has brand new Daytona. And I'm like, I get it. He's the reason everyone wants one, you know, literally. But. And that watch actually just sold at auction for the old one. Sold for the crazy money back in the day.

[Matt Farah]

But the second one.

[Tommy Kendall]

The second one sold, that's engraved, you know, Rolex Winner, 95. And the other half of that story is when he passed, I thought of approaching Joanne and saying, hey, I feel weird about this, but I said, can I make a donation to the camps and, you know, and buy the trophy and the watch? And that was before the other watch sold for 17 million bucks.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And so she's like, yeah, big donation.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah, so what's that? But I'm like, I guess that window's closed.

[Johnny Lieberman]

What did that one say?

[Zach]

Buy you a watch?

[Tommy Kendall]

Well, the funny thing is, I guarantee you I didn't. You know, he was super private on the being sick. I guarantee you, if I'd said, I mean, when you're done with that, I'd love to have that. He took the other one off his wrist and gave it to the daughter's boyfriend.

[Matt Farah]

That's how.

[Tommy Kendall]

So I'm pretty sure he would have wanted me to have those things.

[Matt Farah]

Oh, man.

[Tommy Kendall]

That's the fact that I can just close my eyes and remember doing all this stuff with him. You.

[Matt Farah]

But you think he bought that for himself, or you think someone bought it for him?

[Tommy Kendall]

I think Rolex gave him that. I'm pretty sure Rolex gave you.

[Matt Farah]

That's cold.

[Tommy Kendall]

I'm pretty sure.

[Johnny Lieberman]

When did they change it, though, for classmates? I know.

[Tommy Kendall]

I think, like, the year after that.

Because 96. Yeah. Then they gave him to the champions and the Rolex winner. So with that math, I should. Because I have five IMSA championships, two Rolex winners. Yeah, I should be rolling it, but I don't.

[Matt Farah]

Somebody cough one up.

[Tommy Kendall]

Well, and then the final insult to injury is, for the first two seasons of my career, I spent all my prize money in 86 and 87 buying Rolex subs and GMTs for my Firehawk team, my GTU team, and then my GTU team the next year, I've bought 12 Rolexes as gifts to my team. And, you know, and so somebody.

[Matt Farah]

We need to go for.

Tommy. Tommy's day.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Tom, Tommy needs a Daytona.

[Tommy Kendall]

Wow.

[Zach]

I love all of that. And then if you flashback 48 hours, Matteo's like, oh, so what I want you to do here in this mess, this time.

[Matt Farah]

No, for real.

[Johnny Lieberman]

I got a picture. Here, I'll send you a picture.

[Matt Farah]

Zach. I called Hannah that night, and I was like, it is really weird. And I was like. I was like, I don't know if, you know, if TK is, like, being a good sport or is really trying to learn or whatever, but I was like, if I am this dude. And, like, I don't care how fast you are 21 year old, I. I'm tempted to be like, take it.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Tato may not know. Really? Honestly, he might be like, this is my dad's buddy.

[Matt Farah]

Well, for sure. And. Cause I was like, that's Jim Farley. He's the CEO of Ford, by the way, he's Chris Farley's cousin. And Tato goes, who's Chris Farley? At which point I had to go have a talk with Sergio about his parenting.

[Tommy Kendall]

Yeah.

[Johnny Lieberman]

However, as I explained to Matt, Matt owns shoes older than Tato know. So.

[Matt Farah]

Well, so look, here he is with a Fanta. Not.

[Johnny Lieberman]

Not drinking wine with.

[Matt Farah]

Bought a 24 pack of Fanta for three days in Austin. That's how you know he's 21.

[Tommy Kendall]

He was drinking grape and orange.

[Matt Farah]

Alternated.

[Zach]

Yeah.

[Matt Farah]

So. Yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

Well, I mean, the minute you think you have nothing to learn.

[Matt Farah]

No.

[Johnny Lieberman]

And also.

[Matt Farah]

And also. And also, TK had to suffer the mild indignity of attending the rookies meeting, which was.

Everybody up there who recognized him was like, the fuck you doing here?

[Tommy Kendall]

Well, the officials, when they. After the meeting, the price thing yesterday, the two officials says, we were cracking up when we slammed you with that track limit. Say we're like, what?

[Matt Farah]

Like, oh, it was great. Thanks for coming by, boys.

[Tommy Kendall]

You bet. Super fun.

[Matt Farah]

Thank you, Sergio. Thank you, Tato and all the crew. That was fucking great. Let's do it again next year. Take home another trophy. Yeah.

[Tommy Kendall]

Happy holidays, everyone.

[Matt Farah]

Happy holidays indeed. Now it is December. I'll see you guys Thursday. Bye.