SP 15 Benchracing 2021 U4 Battle in BlueGrass from Rush, Kentucky

A play on the triumph and losses in performance and life.  The Talent Tank podcast will navigate the inner workings of lifestyle, lives, family, teams, careers, programs, and technology in and around the offroad motorsports industry.  What breeds success with your Talent Tank on full, failures when its on empty.  From the journey to the Starting Line to take that Green Flag, on to exploring trials and tribulations on and off the track in pursuit of victorious achievement and the Checkered Flag.

The Talent Tank presents Benchracing 2021 ULTRA4 Racing Battle in BlueGrass from Rush, Kentucky.  Host Wyatt Pemberton @555race is joined by Associate Producer and Clubhouse Moderator Shannon Welch @theshannonwelch and an Offroad Racing Panel of racers and enthusiast.   

On this Special Episode:
We head to Clubhouse for a new format, and benchracing this upcoming Ultra4 Racing event from insider course info, to the panelists picks by class.

After the Checkered Flag-
Todd Stauffer of Custom Splice making t-shirts for Wes Keans recovery support.  All proceeds donated to the Wes's Medical Expense Fund.  LINK TO FUNDRAISER

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:02

Let's drop the green flag on this episode of the talent tank podcast with your host Wyatt Pemberton bringing you the best, fastest, most knowledgeable personalities in Ultra4 and off road racing. Alright, alright. Alright. Alright, thank you everybody for joining in. This is the second time we've done this been tracing deal. As I was describing it today to somebody, they kind of asked what it was. And I was like, you know, I think the best way to describe it is, you know, you've got the NBA NFL, you know, even NASCAR. Right. And then after that, you know, they've got sport center, they've got kind of a media that that kind of caps before just talks about the sport? Well, I think, you know, that's kind of what this is hopefully going to develop into, is everyone who heard the first one we had, you know, a lot of East Coast guys on for Mo, I've been on West Coast race, I would like to know if this thing could develop into a situation where we've got West Coast racers on for East Coast events, really, you know, basically handicapping you guys on the east and, and vice versa for the West. And I think, you know, that builds a little bit of a competition, a little bit of commodity, and hopefully, everyone starts learning and learning who the other competitors are on the other side of the country, race in the same series as you I did want to bring up you know, immediately as we kind of jump into it, I'm gonna actually kick over to chip and I'm gonna kick over to Shannon for something but but chip. So So chip and I talked, maybe this was last night, but chip had the opportunity to you know, he wasn't racing, he was just hanging out. And he got to actually talk to other racers and see what was going on and other people's you know, it's when he wasn't as racer totally consumed with his own program. Chip. How's that? Sorry, I missed you. I'm having a ride in the bus out here to Kentucky and switched off my earphones. Well, the question I asked was, so last week at Moab, you, you weren't racing, so you had the opportunity to actually mingle and check out other people's efforts and other people's work? How was that? Man, I have to tell you, I haven't done that in a long time. And I have to say it was it was pretty eye opening, and a lot of fun. And it what it did do is I realized that when we get out there to races, specifically liking the hammers, we've got a lot of spectators and you got other teams walk around and introduce themselves. And I'm gonna talk for myself personally, but I'm sure a lot of other people can relate to this. It's like, you get very tunnel vision, and you try to accommodate other people. And sometimes that can come off the wrong way. And might people think, might you be in an asset or whatever, but you're, you're trying to concentrate on your race. So it was interesting to be the other side and go help out the, the Wix family and, you know, go around and talk to other people, I can sit and talk to Nick, Nick Nelson, who I never really got to sit and talk to the whole Jimmy's four by four group. I've never really met those guys, except for all famous Mike Stewart. It was pretty cool. And one of the things I took away from that was, I encourage people just to like, go get a beard, try to get out of the race out of their head and go talk to other people and fans and try not to focus just on the race because it is much more than that. It absolutely isn't. It is it is just like you said, it's hard to do it when you got your own race going. you're focused on. I mean, we are we're laser focused a bunch of Type A personalities. And then if when you get the opportunity to just walk 110 over one pit stall over. I mean, gosh, I'm all my best friends in the whole wide world. That's exactly how they came to be those guys. Right? Yeah. And I mean, that's how we met. And it was, it was pretty cool just to sit back and relax and, you know, walk around without a mission and actually try to go like, okay, I feel like I shouldn't be doing something. What can I do help with the race or, you know, help other people. I jumped in with the Wix guys, when they ripped off that knuckle during qualify, and it was pretty relaxed. I had a good time. And I recommend that to other people. No, I absolutely. The other thing I like to recommend is if you do get a break as a competitor, go up to the ultra Ford trailer and try to get just get on miles Pam, go meet with him and get on with them. Hey, Chip. Well, I've got you. You were the the competition director, or is that the competition Review Board director at this past event mo because you were your racer, but you weren't racing for the people that you don't necessarily read it online, you know, walk us through your role, and what that role is at every single race that there will be somebody to every race that has your that wears those shoes, and talk to us about the shoes that you had to fill. Yeah, that was a that was a new one for me. And, you know, I wasn't racing. So I you know, no skin in the game. And there was actually two red cards last week. And you know, I've never dealt with red cards. And one thing that I learned most importantly, to take away from that if you're going to file a red card, be very specific in what your red cards about whether it's a short course or you know, whatever your reasoning is, and it could be green thing. I mean, it's kind of like a lawsuit, you can sue somebody for anything. So that's the first part. The second part is, what do you want? What do you want the outcome to be? What are you trying to achieve? Is it you'd like, the person you're having the red card, you're filing the red card against? Do you want them to penalize? Or do you want a time deduct or whatever you you know, whatever you want it to be? We were in two different, totally different red cards. The first one was in the UTV class, it was some bumping and just just agreements on each side. And at the end of the day, the guy who filed the red card, he just wanted to time credit. And that's kind of hard to get back. If he would have said, I wanted the guy that I follow this red card for to have a time penalty. You know, that's a different story. So that's one thing I've learned. And then the the infamous one now, I won't say infamous, it was against Bailey, looking at what Bailey You know, he ultimately got DNF for short courses, and I looked at it, and a bunch of other guys looked at it, it was a very minor infraction. If you look at a distance and what the short course was, the bigger issue was Marcus Gomez was off course what he thought was awkward, which he was, and he got hit in that situation could have been so much worse than it turned out. You know, I can't say that. I wouldn't be. I want to take it. I mean, first mistake, if I saw that line that Bailey took, I might have taken it thinking I wouldn't be caught. Do you got caught because he hit Marcos. It was a hard that was a hard one. It was very black and white. But because it was Bailey, and he's my friend, and I actually picked him to win. That was a hard, it was a hard pill to swallow. For me. Well, I, you know, you and I talked to maybe that was Sunday night about kind of that outcome, you call me walk me through that. And then now that I've seen see video, you know, there wasn't any advantage to it. So I'm not really sure why, you know, if there was a little bit of advantage, but it people would argue that wasn't a big advantage. Well, that's not the argument anymore, that that's not the rule book, the rule book is you leave the course you leave the course. And at that point, that's the point where you left the plane of competition. And so if you want to resume your race, you would need to return an Oakland back there. So that's, that's the thing. That's different. Right? And that's a new rule for this year. I mean, before, it was the five times penalty game, and, you know, Bailey taken that thing, I could see a very minute advantage and want to say a minute, maybe a second. Yeah, I'd say it was a second, I would say a 10th of a second. You know, and you do that eight times. Okay. So it's eight tenths of a second. It's not a deal breaker. I mean, you could lose all of that with just one break mess up or, or whatever. But, you know, the rule was changed. And, you know, you go out of the course, you gotta come back where you come in safely. So and that happened. hammers too. Yeah. So as we look forward to to, to rush and we start talking about Russia. Do you know who the competition Review Board director is? No, I don't. We'll find out the drivers meeting, won't we? I bet we will. We will. Well, Chip. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for giving us a little update. Man. You got to mute your phone making some noise. Oh, yeah, I'm in this. I'm in this bus. I'll mute it, but appreciate you bringing me on. And you know, one thing else I'd say, JT and the guys did everything they could to make sure that those red cards were done correctly, thoroughly without prejudice. And I got applauded for stepping up on that. I really appreciate the transparency that you learned you you came to the insiders group and wrote up a nice really long, you know, two paragraphs, three paragraphs about what happened and how it happened and why it happened and why the outcome was what was that that lends so much confidence to the system and the system working? Yep. And if they did that, we're gonna see it again. And I have faith it'll be done. Right. Well, awesome. Chip. Thanks for coming in. I'm gonna kick it back over to Shannon Shannon. Jani Wyatt. Okay, you know as we move away from Moab, definitely congratulations to Brian Crofts Absolutely. His first you know ultra for when they're in 4400. Man, he's awesome. Hate to be you know, initially clouded by the Bailey judgment. And hopefully these guys are able to get a picture of the podium or whatever it is when they're in San Philippe here in a couple weeks. But anyway, um, Shannon, we lost Mark Matthews here a few weeks ago, and I know this past week there was a there was some ceremonies and some stuff some celebrations of life. Can you you elaborate on that? Sure. So for those that might not be familiar with Mark Matthews, Mark was turtle truck on pirate four by four and Dave Cole probably explained it best When he said there might not have been a king of the hammers if there wasn't a mark, because I didn't know what GPS stood for when we started all of this, so Mark was the guy in his for runner that would be out there, finding ways to get the various hardest trails up by hammers to connect with each other in such a way that we could create the king of the hammers Racecourse, super cool guy worked quietly in the background most of the time, but was usually the first guy on the scene to set up hammer town every year. And make sure that course was mapped out as perfectly as it could be. So we had a celebration with his family and his offroad family, this weekend out at Dave's compound in Johnson Valley, which was a perfect way to honor him and spend some time with his family out there, and it was we were very, I was fortunate I hit up wil Gentile with heavy metal concepts he was in Moab asked him I knew he had some footage because I know that he's spent a lot longer with everybody he did the origin stuff with when he created that cailleach origins video, and I thought he might have something that would just be a cool way for anybody that wanted to remember him because Mark really had a lot of people all over the country that just couldn't make it out, you know, on a week's notice, so will really stepped up for us, especially with all the work he had going on for Moab and, and put together just a four minute memorial of mark in his own words, really. So if you haven't had a chance to check it out, I recommend it. It was a great chance to honor him and Godspeed turtle truck. Yeah, absolutely huge, huge loss. I know you heard the stories, but he and Dave would go out and Mark course, you know, three, four or five years in advance, like and have the maps ready to go. So if you saw him out, if you saw Davor or Mark Matthews out pre running or whatever, like you wouldn't want to follow them because it was odds are it wasn't this year's course it was three years from now scores so I always got a kick out of that story because he said I'd heard people would follow follow them to see where they were going. That came up quite a bit this weekend. Or if they caught you following them. They'd purposely take you on a wild goose chase around around the lake bed for sure. Yeah, that's comedy. Well, let's uh, you know, I didn't put the disclaimer on this yet, but I will I think Shannon said it just before we hit record, but we are recording. We're gonna record one hour from eight to 9pm Central time. You guys do the math for what timezone that equals for you, Casey Gilbert, that's from nine to 10 your time okay. Just Just for everybody else. You can do the math case. You need some help on that. No, I'm gonna launch into a little bit of rush so we've got rush Kentucky this weekend. Ultra force never raced at Rush Kentucky rush Kentucky. I had to look it up. I mean, it's the Battle of the Bluegrass. But I don't know why I think that's a terrible name shin and I think this is a terrible name for a race for the Bluegrass to me would be much further west of this area. Maybe if we had somebody like James Cantrell on he was like Kentucky, he could actually tell us the truth but this seems like Healy woody you know, he'll killer stuff. I mean, that's why all the rock bouncers are there is a rock bounce event, where ultra fours running, you know, during the daytime and then the rock bouncers actually started like around 530. Rush Kentucky, it's, it's all the way in the northeast corner. I mean, the place is damn near in West Virginia. It's like 13 miles for West Virginia. It's like 13 miles from Ohio. It's it's nasty, like it is hills and trees. And I was checking out eight Gonzales's pictures today from the course. Lots of chainsaw action, lots of cutting new trees, cutting new paths by chopping trees down, and the hills look nasty straight up and down. And then we tell you straight up I saw miles with a snake like a huge, huge, huge black snake. He told me he was reaching down to get a get a log and move it and this thing just shot out of nowhere and it's like a six foot long black snake that would have been enough to be like I would load my junk back on the trailer and left but that's just me, no props. We see them all over the place. Oklahoma had a ton of them. Let me tell you that we had a pile of them the first year at Davis, Oklahoma. So that's just part of that's just part of endurance racing. Not on the west coast. You still get them on the West Coast you still get the rattlers but a little bit more when you had east of the Rockies for sure. And start knocking over rocks and kicking rocks up. I get it. So So some of the talking points I got on this race man. It's 7000 acres with over 100 miles of trails. These guys are open seven days a week. elevations. 20 440 feet. I found that to be an interesting, interesting stat we like I don't know what the elevation is at the hammers. I got to believe it's like 3000 I don't know. I'm totally guessing here. Let's talk about the weather man. I tell you last week and going into this weekend, this past weekend, it looked like the 10 day outlook was beautiful and sunny and Gosh, it's gonna be sunny there tomorrow and sunny there on race day and saying on Sunday, but it rained its butt off there all day today. The Ultra for crew themselves didn't get anything done. They got to the course this morning. It was raining everything was slick and sloppy. They get they kind of like stuck a rental car on flat ground. You couldn't walk. I guess it's super slick. The type of dirt it is, I guess it's like a clay when it's wet. It's super slick. So they call it they said they're going to go back to the hotel then they got out, you know, lunchtime, that's it. Let's go eat somewhere because it was still raining. And then when I talked to miles around 5pm Central time, so 6pm his time they were still there from lunch. So that that if that tells you anything, so we'll see what this what this looks like. I mean, I think be ready for tight woods in mud. You know, bring your galoshes, if you got a pressure washer, throw it in the trailer. You know, anything you know i scraper to scrape all the mud off the car. You know how that goes. East Coast racers know this like Bleiler and everything that those guys got out of the line mountain races. They know anyway 11 mile loop. You guys heard that they do not know how many laps each class is going to do at this time based on what the course looks like after it maybe has a day to dry out. But even mile said yesterday before it even rained. The areas that were down in the gullies and in that were shaded they were already muddy and it hadn't rained in quite a while. Yeah, and kind of kind of that's kind of it on the schedule, man. Well, actually, let me back up from there. The live show. Live Show is maybe or maybe not ago. We'll We'll see. At the minimum. I think all of us that sign up for the live show got a link this week to get our free t shirts. Awesome. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, everyone doubted that. And then here it is. Elon came through I saw Alan on Facebook or Instagram or something he made a stop in a pottersville pot or something or other Missouri to see a Mr. Easy Rick who dropped off the radar. So Rick Dobby could escape all of us and run off in and hide out in the woods of the Ozark Mountains. And Alan tracked him down. From what I hear on the live show, they're going to try to use Clyde's equipment. And you know, cloud runs the rock bouncer event, they're going to try to use his equipment. But that still leaves really the only stuff being broadcast out will be at the trailer level, which would be at Main pit, you know, the the singular pit? I shouldn't say in the course of this race. We'll see they aren't. They are optimistic on that. So So hopefully, we'll be able to get some information out of them. But I guess cell phone coverage and all coverage in general is just pretty crappy in the area, which that sucks. Um, it does been there done that many a time with whatever cell service we had available to us, though. So it can be good if they can get any information out. Those of us that are watching for home will certainly appreciate that. I'm sure. Yeah, exactly. So I've got Yeah, of course of events, you know, tomorrow supposed to be registration and some pre running well, and we'll see how that goes with. You know, it is raining there all day. Even here on the Gulf Coast. It's rained here all day, too. So Friday 2pm, mandatory drivers meeting, man, everybody make it to that if you are on site, you need to be there. Certainly to go over the stuff that chip and I just talked about with with just red, red, red card. And certain information. I will tell you some of the things that came out of the Moab event that I found to be very interesting was there were people that believe the course was 50 feet from line to center, Shannon, and during that driver's meeting, JT was very specific that the area VFE folks didn't want any new courses cut. So they reduce that to 25 feet either side. And that's actually what caught Bailey. I'm not sure Bailey knew or didn't know, the 50 or the 25. It's not for me to speculate, but I do know that that equaled you know, ultimately, the rule that he infringed on was the 25 feet rule. So and that that was in the drivers meeting, so you got to be there. I mean, it could it could be very consequential and detrimental to your race if you miss that drivers meeting. So hopefully everyone was on this. That's going makes it or on West Coast events. Just realize a driver's means, you know, quite important. I think one thing that we saw at Moab was separate race for 4600 we're not seeing that we're gonna see a UTV race, and then we'll see the limiteds the MC race of 4500 4600 4800 and then hopefully that equals lunchtime, lunch, a everybody hanging out and then uh, then the 4400 so crank it up after that, um, and this is the coolest thing. After 4400 rounds, and they did this at another race maybe was AOP or dirty turtles. One of those I don't even remember now, but Chris may put together a kid's race for utvs like the little kids have the 170s out and that might have been almost as cool as watching the class elevens run at km h They're gonna do that again. We definitely did that one year at dirty turtle, but I think it's been recreated a few times. I'm not mistaken. I think one of Casey's kids gets involved in that, if I'm not mistaken. He sees that true. He's probably not even listening more. He's on the panel, but that's because Megan's mad at him. He's supposed to be yakking. What do you know about the kid race? My kids raced it dirty turtle like Shannon said that last year at Alp, we ran a race and both my son and my daughter ran. They are doing a kid's race this year, but it's it's quite a bit more strict. The 170s we're moving a lot faster than what I think JT and you know, ultra for unexpected. So it's full cage now. Window nets, fire suit, HANS device, you know, the whole works to run that. Kids race. Now. There are a pretty good sized group of kids coming down for it, though, but my kids won't be doing that anymore. Just because I don't have Addison, the razor ready, you know, and her set up for it. And then Aiden, we moved up to a 1000 so he's actually just gonna have his car down there run around on the track. He won't be racing, but we plan to let start letting him race raise your class here soon. You know, the full size one. Well, if they if their cars weren't ready, have you talked to my friend James Cantrell. He's really good at on time in time prepping. He, he won't he hasn't answered the phone all day to day which means he's in his garage. He doesn't have cell phone services grad so we need when James won't answer his phone, you know, he's in the garage thrashing. I talked to him this morning. He was at the auto parts store buying some stuff and he said he was up to four o'clock last night trying to get his car ready and it wasn't close to done yet. God God bless him. He'll probably hear this on his drive drive to the track which is probably like maybe an hour drive for him. It's not that far. Before we get into talking about the classes and pre running this race and actually may be talking, you know, flashback a little bit. Did you guys all saw the information on Wild West Park closing while was Motorsports Park in Reno. So that means nationals getting punted. Yeah, I saw that that was that was a shocker for sure. This week. Yeah, I don't know if it's a big shocker. I just, I just don't know where they're gonna move to. I mean, I know I know, from a driver's perspective, Oklahoma is the no brainer. crossbar is the no brainer from a driver's perspective. But for a spectator perspective, it's absolutely horrendous. I did reach out to Eric Pender who was kind of the man on the ground that made wild west happen, right. And I he got back to me pretty quickly, it was just a text and he said, he's he's looking for for something else. So I don't know what's gonna come out of that. But he was really kind of, you know, involved with creating that course there. So I haven't gotten any more details than that. I told him if there's anything I could do to help, let me know. But it sounds to me like it was a business decision because it was owned by a construction company. But that's that's only the little bit that I've heard so far on that but where we go that's that's a good question. There was a lot I mean, we were talking about insiders this week. And yeah, I get Jonathan's perspective and and those from the east that's a it's hard to get to Reno I get it. And I also understand that it's not quite the same type of race as King of the hammers at all. It's nothing like King of the hammers. But man watching all those all those spectators on their feet for an entire day. And really getting to watching the ultra for drivers. Every class become rock stars for a day out there was was probably one of the highlights of my career with ultra for and so I would love to see someplace that really embraces the ultra for community the way that Reno has, and I don't know what city that is. I'd love I'd love for it to be somewhere in Oklahoma or maybe Arizona. I know people throughout Laughlin potentially as as something but the community really comes together in Reno, so that part's going to be hard to recreate, but I hope they do. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it's the crowd. I'm with miles and I were talking about this earlier and JT JT is kind of aware of this is we talked about this. A few years ago, Dave, Dave asked me some questions about about about other tracks, like some ideas, and he had said that worldwide tech Raceway, which is in St. Louis, it used to be like, gateway or archway or something. gateway gateway Raceway, NASCAR used to run there, I don't know 20 years ago, and they had approached Delta for about putting a course there and you could fit, you know, you've got the oval plus you've got a road course. Plus, you could shoot Out of the the course and there was some adjacent land that you could lay a pretty good dirt track out on. And I thought that would be a you know, because it's two miles from the from the arch. So you're basically in downtown St. Louis. And that seems to be middle of the country. I mean, you're wrong don't don't get no one get their hopes up. But it was just a cool idea that somebody was thinking outside of, you know, us going, you know, to the middle of nowhere Oklahoma, but potentially somewhere very urban. And realizing a retired NASCAR track. I was cool. I think that might be one of the things that people don't realize is I'm going to guess the Dave probably doesn't go more than 24 hours without somebody suggesting land to him somewhere. I know that I would hear about it at least once every three or four days and very rarely had he not heard about it and five others whenever I'd mentioned something that was worthwhile then he could he could spend every day just going and checking out a piece of land out there but I'm sure they'll come up with something that makes sense. I know they will send JT that's that's my call. Well, we talked about that man. Oh, and he dropped off Gosh, dang it. Austin fish foreigner was in the was in the crowd. I was gonna call in Austin and ask him about you know what we've got going on this weekend as well south of the border with San Felipe a bit since since Austin bailed let's roll into this man. Let's let's talk about rush so kyp oh sorry ultra for ultra for has never raced at Rush Kentucky we've raced other places in Kentucky I started thinking about it what other what other states and we raced both like all ends of the state in and I can't really none of them really kind of you know hit for me that we've done so many races in the same state but it's not really an anchor state aside from you say California I mean, that that's kind of like the like the no brainer right? I mean, what what was uh I'm drawing a blank on his name we did the the the four will kind of gymboree Bell bear. Yeah, Bill Baird's extravaganza was in Sturgis, Kentucky Sturgis. And then and then we raced another couple places in Kentucky. Yeah, anyway. Dirty turtle. Yeah, and Yep. Well, let's go into it. So this weekend's event we'll see you know what the mud I mean, everybody better get better be prepared to be dirty. I was just having flashbacks of this. There's like a Shannon Campbell picture from he won the race and he's got his helmet off and, and you can barely even you can't eat all you see is his eyes, because the rest of me is just like he just covered in mud. But uh, but you know, I guess, looking at UTV. I'm going through the UTV list. Yeah. I mean, I don't know any of these guys. I mean, Cantrell when we talked about him. I think a lot of these guys, Adam candidates on here. I know No kidding. Because he he actually won a UTV recently, and then got another one and then he had trouble with the decay of age as I recall. But I don't know anyone else. I mean, anyone in the crowd want to handicap the UTV race first. You know what Anthony young is asking to come up and speak right now and he happens to raise UTV Yeah, I'm gonna bring him up here. And I think I saw Jonathan take off his mute For a second there. It why Anthony's coming up here. I wish they would list kandam versus Polaris because I would basically pick any cannamd driver that's on here. Sorry, Anthony and everybody else but if I was gonna pick somebody you got to go with Jamie McCoy. I think him and Akan am on the east. It's gonna be interesting to see who can run with him. What What if it was a single seater? Hilarious I actually signed up Yeah, I know. He's Anthony. Alright, so we got Anthony on on. All right. Anthony talked to us about this race man. What are y'all thinking? Who Who are the contenders Who are you worried about? Definitely Jamie McCoy. You know, East Coast champion from last time. Always a contender he had a little bad luck it hammers his first trip out but uh, East Coast racing what he does so he's definitely on the podium unless something catastrophic happens can trail I don't know he's up in there. If he gets his car done. reason he didn't go to King of hammers so you could have done finished the car. We're a couple months past hammers and he's still got a car so who knows about him? The doors off right he'll hit a jump a door will fall off and then history is made. Or we actually got fun. He got smart. There's no doors on a new car. Winner winner chicken dinner. Yeah, I'd like to I like put myself out there in the top five somewhere. Russia's pretty good all around course. won't be able to race in the daylight last time we raised it was at night gets a little confusing at night there was real dusty last time so I'm actually for one happy to see some rain come in a couple days before the race that should help all the racing out No, I know I got you one not that might be able to surprise someone to his his first race was paying the hammers and I just know them because he's from Michigan. One of the Michigan guys here Jacob Toomas got a new players he built the thing puts down crazy horsepower he's a bit of a wheel man so it wouldn't surprise me to see someone new like him you know these tight Woods races on the podium. That's that's that's some good insight get inside information since I actually have his name circled because I did see that he was from Michigan was gonna ask about ask you about him. Well, I mean, Mark Welsh one of my lamb we haven't you know, Mark isn't here you know, a lot of the a lot of the West Coast guys certainly didn't travel to the east coast to go get muddy. And then a lot of your again, a lot of your your kind of named factor drivers. They're all racing. The Tex Plex race this weekend south of Dallas Fort Worth. So you got the Miller boys and and company staying down there, which which I get it I get that's that's their bread and butter. But man, I'd love to see them do more than more than just care. As usual. EMC rage yell, oh, I was gonna throw the name out there real quick. Dustin Robbins, he's, he's kind of in and out. Sometimes. He's kind of a checkers or wreckers. And I believe he did switch to Ken Ham. So curious to see what he can pull off and then you got Papa pose actually racing. Jamie McCoy's old car so that's a good proven rig. First two more names. And of course, you know, fully fully shaking down and Dustin's an Alabama guy right? In that where I know him from. Yeah, he's a southerner. Gotcha. Oh, that's, that's awesome. And slowly, as this program gets further on, it's forcing me to get more and more acclimated to the breadth of the drivers. I know, Myles. And I have had this conversation many times because he's going through the same thing. As the field, the fields continue to expand with new blood coming in. And now he's full time. So he has more time to dedicate to making sure he has information on all these guys. I've got, you know, just like most of your family and kids and all that stuff, plus a job, you know, but EMC talking about these guys. Dan fresh is the guy to be even though Dan's not racing here. He won ky he won mo and he just keeps putting down on the 4500. I picked you know, I put Justin Reese up there mo for the 4600 and he end up pulling it off. You know, he's just always a container in the MC race. And then Cody want young won the 4800 class, but total emcs for this race. I'm counting 16 currently, in 4500. You know, you got Cody St. Clair Dwayne garretson, Jesse Oliver and john grounds. On any given day, any of those guys can win. I'm going to I think Dwayne garretson is probably going to be the guy to the guy to beat Dwayne is a he's a mountain man. He's He's a beast. He's from those arcs. And they're very similar hills. Very similar terrain. he's a he's a tree racer, type course racer. I think that's kind of guy. grounds. I think grounds is racing in both. I think he's racing in 40 540 400 if I'm not mistaken, I think he's in both. I could be wrong. 4600 Anthony vinoy drew Harper, john Shaffer King Carter, Tyler haggard. JOHN shaffers in the audience, right. Let's talk to Shaffer gyimah. Up here again, I love Shaffer john. Yeah. If you're if you're there, we're gonna invite you up to speak. I did notice you were in the audience here. Hey, guys, Mr. Schaefer. Let's go talk to us about it. The RV we got 300 miles to go. So you're getting there? Yeah, we're getting there. Drive so far is good. You haven't lost the tires. As far as I can tell, unless we're dragging some, but we're still rolling. Well, we do have Casey Gilbert up here. So Casey can rub off on you. And you can change one here in the next hour. So we'll keep that luck going for you. Keep all those tires. So you're we had you on for the last for the first bintray session. You know, since co H, you didn't raise them up. So you got to talk about 4600 they're talking about a West Coast deal. So now East Coast, based on your class based on the MC, what do you think and what's going on in your head from a strategy standpoint, and now knowing that it's rained all day? on course? Well, I mean, this whole time I was thinking we were racing in the same place we did last year. And now after listen to the show, it's rush and I'm like, Oh, that's a I've never been there before. So I don't really know what to expect. Hopefully it'll dry out won't be too bad. I mean a few mud holes here and there and My car does really good in the mud. So I'm not really worried about it. I absolutely love what you just said that you didn't know where you were going. You're going to Kentucky. Thank God we had this conversation otherwise you wouldn't have gone to the wrong court wrong track or on course all that. Well, I mean, I had the coordinates are put in, I'm going to rush but I was for some reason I was picturing the same place we raced last year. But no matter which put the helmet on and we'll go, yeah, there you go. I like that attitude. Where do you where do you put yourself you put yourself on the podium, of course. Every time we go I I want you know, first place. That's my goal. I don't want to just finish, I always want to be on the podium. And 4600 I mean, it's really, you have to be able to finish the race. You know, you can't break anything you can't wipe out. You know, you can get a finish. You're going to be on the podium here. I hope so we'll see how many we'll see how many laps you guys have to do. One to 10 I mean, 11 mile race, I would I would expect it to be five to six to seven maybe. But you know me if it's sloppy, soupy muddy, and each lap is taking everybody 45 minutes and lots of winch and I can see that get shortened and shortened very quickly. And a lot of times JT will kind of play it by ear and kind of see what our pace is and then just kind of figure it out. He's good at that. He's very good at that. Well, awesome. Well, well good luck to you safe drive. Hopefully we didn't Jinx you on the on the trailer tires. But safe drive. As you guys get into Russia late tonight. And then. And then yeah, you don't get on insiders and let us know. Of course conditions when you get there tomorrow. Okay. Sounds good. Thanks, guys. All right. Well, Kisha john, good luck. Good luck. You know, that's awesome that john has two weeks in a row head and q1 and enjoin us. I love that guy already. Talking about 4800 I mean, we have King sandbagger with this, actually, to be honest, right here on the panel, the two largest sandbaggers of the field and 40 100 are both on the panel, Jonathan tahune. And Casey Gilbert, where you guys, what are you guys thinking about this race at this point, Jonathan? Ah, I keep laughing that you keep talking about this rain in this mud. And I'm like, would you expect it's an East Coast race, I think, I think a dry race is just as odd for us as it is a wet race on the west coast. So it's going to be exactly what we think it is. It's going to be a little soupy. It's going to be some hills and some rocks and, and, and there's going to be trees and they're they're going to jump out in front of me and I'll probably hit one or two and hopefully I can defeat the trees but I'm more worried about the trees and I am the mud. Who before every race is like is it like you guys play like paper rock scissors or shortest you know, straw draw to go cut the sandbags at Casey's car. Bailey Cole used to be in charge of that so I'm not sure who's doing that now that that he moved up. This is these are some shoes that need to be filled. Casey now you got your car together. And after the the spectacular show that you put on a coaching qualifying. What uh, what are you thinking about your race out here this weekend? I'm not like I'm not expecting that much mud, to be honest with you in those hills. Like you said earlier I talked to James, he said rush dries up real quick. And like Anthony was saying earlier, it turns into a dust bowl. But I just saw on on social media less than an hour or so ago that both the foltz boys are coming to so those guys. That's great. Yeah, they don't they don't care about equipment, and they don't care about racking so you gotta run a pretty good pace to keep up with those two animals. And then I see George Schooley. He's gonna be there with his Miller car, right? Yeah. How many Miller chassis is will be there this weekend? All of them. Well, you've got four from the blinders. You Yeah, Jerry. Eric's come in john grounds in his new car. The boilers what five or six of them I guess. We'll see. I you know, sadly, you know, this is gonna sound like I'm pandering but Casey, you're you're my pig. Even though I know you're freakin sandbag. in that class. We've got 2020 minutes t minus 20 minutes t minus 19 minutes. So let's, let's roll through 4400 real quick, Casey, while I got you on here, man. Talking about the 4400 race. This is gonna be fun. Right. You know, we just came off of this event where Bailey Cole lead Bailey Cole finished. First. He was physically the first finisher on time he won. But when it came back, you know, he actually had an issue on course that that actually, you know, took him out of the race and put him down to where he had DNF back at lap five. But that you know, Brian Croft ends up winning the thing. Well, Bailey Cole will be there this weekend. Bally Cole is you know, slated around. He isn't an irfs car. This is East Coast with a lot of trees. And you've got guys like Miller and you guys got you got blinders there and I think with Josh Bleiler the tree running machine that he is short tight courses line mountain winning. I just feel in the back of my mind that the it's really hard to beat Bleiler in a backyard like this. Is that fair? I think it's fair to and it's like you got Jason shear and Bailey coming from the East Coast or you know, West Coast, but I think their cars are too big to run over here. And it's it's hard to compete. Not that I'm, you know, swinging on their nuts or anything but it's hard to compete with the Miller cars and you know, between Miller and the blinders the way they prep their cars. Those cars show up brand new every race and they're ready to push them as hard as they need to push. It's hard to keep up with those guys in the woods. They just walk away from you just just walk away like I mean even just Josh and Eric in in rocks, they read terrain very very, very well. And I think you know, even rusty in these woods races i don't i don't think there's many guys faster than rusty Bleiler and Woods course. No, he's no slouch. No happy Pappy is always in it to win it. He is. And then I know we've got him in in the crowd here tonight. He's been on here before Nate Jesse Nate in his bomber car. Nate's a East Coast guy and he knows the train and he knows that and he's gotten faster and faster and faster, faster. so fast that he ends up wadded up out of college this year knocking him and his co drivers noggin brand Irwin brands actually here to tonight to that's pretty awesome. I'm pulling for them. I know when they they had a very, very good finish at Nationals, which was also a little bit of muddy racing. All the cars came in pretty dirty after that. I know they performed very well there. Jason shear. You can't ever count Jason shear out though. I mean, even even if it is Titan was that guy finds a way to be at the front of the pack at all times. He's pretty quick for sure. I'm reminded of something Lauren said one of the first times he went back east though he's like, I was too big, too wide too long. I was just too everything for this course. And he just I don't even know what's going on. And I'm thinking about the size of both Bailey and Jason's cars. And I think I agree with Casey on that. I think that it's tight. And those are some big cars. So those guys were carrying around chainsaws today widening course. That's the if they don't have a they don't have a tomboys with them. Right. And Tom is normally the guy that's like walking, walking the course with his chainsaw dropping stuff. That are a Gomez I my dad's first race he ever went to was two years ago at dirty turtle and we get down in there. We're pre running and my dad's just mesmerized by all this crap going on. And there's a Gomez car hanging in a tree. And I don't remember if it is Marcos or JP or whoever it was, but he's, we come around the corner and there's this little you know, Mexican guy screaming that he needs a chainsaw to get his damn car out of the tree. So just those West Coast guys, I mean, they attack these East Coast courses I think too hard with these big cars and they're gonna get tangled up. Yeah, for sure. And then you've got guys like their local you know, like Cody Hardesty you know, I mean, that's local local. I think that's as local as you get right that's Louisville Yeah, I don't see any reason why Cody won't be it You mean his his cars a little bit older but man if you if you know that course and you know what to expect up there then I see Cody being in there you know certainly is based on his car I think he's out there oh my god it's in there that you know we talk about with regularity, but we never seem racist as Jay Callaway. So I guess Jays gonna race. Give me a hard time. Jay. I definitely see your Tick tock, and your Instagram posts are on point. Let's get your your racing on point, man. I want to see a podium out of you, man. You Back it up. And then maybe Casey, you might be the one to know this or actually probably for him to be the next best. I see Stan. Stan, the man Haynes is on the ridge registry list. is Stan racing, or is he proxy or is he having someone else drive his car? Yeah, he's, uh, he's racing for himself. And that, uh, that wide open design chassis. So it'll be, again, a good Woods car and guy with experience. How to stand out. We talked we talked about this. He's 6765. I think that's impressive. And no matter how you look, that is impressive. And then as you all know, we had chip on a few minutes ago with with Rufus racing out of Texas, and in Zandi Williams is Andy is another one of Rufus drivers. It's cool to have in there I think chips chime in right now. Chip, your background noise is insanely too much. I'll go mute. I'll just go in there did. We're not there's no pre running tomorrow and I wouldn't go in there to the gates tonight. People are all stuck in there. So we're gonna find a couple miles out and stop. For the night, so you guys driving might want to take the same advice I got from JT Excellent. Excellent the thing when listening tonight, by the time the rest of the crowd hears this tomorrow, it'll be way too late. So I'll add to that, you know, Chip chip and I actually talked or text I don't remember which one it was yesterday, before they left Texas this morning. But FedEx delivered his shocks like last night like late last night and so that they were another one that was that we're planning to make the race and then we're just so worried about their equipment getting back after getting refreshed Africa wage. So insanity as we go through it, you know, I like to do this part. This is where I pass the hat around and ask everyone to handicap their guys man. And so at this point, got asked john john Shaffer handicap the the EMC in the 4400 race for us who you think who you think you're gonna your favorites are? Anthony, you still on here? Oh, yeah. All right. Who wins? Who in your opinion wins the 4400 race. I'll give you a podium. Let's go with Levi surely in first place. Eric Miller and second Josh Butler and third. All right, man, I like those pics. All right, tell him who you got. Oh, man, it's a toss of a coin between Miller and Bleiler. I guess it depends who qualifies behind the other one. Because I feel like those two are going to get back in their traditional cat and mouse game. And whoever qualifies and second is gonna just be on the bumper and end up winning on corrected time. So I'm gonna guess I'm gonna guess maybe Bleiler will take the poll, so I'm going to go with Miller to win. But I want to throw a Cody Hardesty in there to wrap out the podium. I like it. I like it. Chip. What's yours? What's your handicap, man? I think Bailey's gonna be back here with a mission with some fruit. And even though he's gonna have a big wild card, he got he can drive across water and mud and rocks and whatever. So I think he's gonna be up there. Jason, of course, can't count out the pillars of the Miller guys either. I mean, this is their backyard and then old dandy. He's bringing the 43 just in case. We're shooting for the podium too, but it could be anybody's game. All right. Kevin Jones. We haven't had you talk yet. And after we do the handicapping I want to ask you some questions too. But Kevin, what's your handicap? All right on I've got Bleiler first Bally Cole and second, just like chips something to prove and then I'm gonna Kevin Porterfield the third with that that's a wide open design cars. Well, that's right. That's a good call. Alright. Shannon Welch. machine and what do you got? I'm going with rusty ends up on the podium, and he's gonna be up there for sure. And I actually liked Porterfield as well. And I'm not ruling out Eric Miller. I'm just not doing it. All right, Casey, what do you got here case? Find the unmute button. I'm going with rusty Bleiler. Eric Miller and Cody harvest de man. You just yeah, I'm kind of I'm kind of there as well. I'm gonna I'm gonna mix it up a little bit. I think it's a rusty Bleiler, Nate Jesse. And then after that I'm it's somewhere but I'm gonna put it it's either Eric Miller Josh boiler for third for me. I'm sorry, Chip. didn't pick you. I heard somebody mentioned leave and I don't see him on the list. So I will tell you that if he was on this list, whenever it's wet and muddy, I wouldn't rule them out. But I don't see him. And that's Derrick West. I've never seen anybody who who can handle rocks and mud the way Derrick West does, but I don't see him on the list. But I never count him out if there's going to be mud. So if he happens to show up at the last minute, that's my vote. Absolutely. He was always the guy that got to beat next era and then even in ultra for anything on the on the east coast. Greg, I actually talked to him a few weeks ago. He You know, he has a solar install business. And he has been just utterly swamped from what I gathered from him. Well, I wanted to get one more thing in here. I know. Shannon, will you call Todd Stauffer up and let him up? And he wants to talk about having talk after talking to Kevin Jones here. Okay, Mr. Ultra for Jones. So how was Moab? You didn't do well? No. It was good to get that one out of the way I've been having too good luck so far and ultra for so felt good to get that one off my back a little bit. And in how do you feel about miss you just racing West Coast and missing out on this? This mud action that we keep talking about? I am a true California guy. I don't feel like I'm missing the mud at all on this one to be honest. So I asked you to handicap the 4400 race. But uh, but go ahead and handicap your class since you know some of these guys. Yeah, so I got to, I got to put Casey Gilbert on top and 4800 then I'm kind of rooting for Sean wretzky. And then Brian trimper. You just came off a qH finish some kinda hoping he does pretty good and 4800 I can see that where did Where did trippy finish? I had notes here somewhere, but I do not have them in front of me. He got he got 22nd at Keio Ah, but like I said it was it was his first time ever out there. So, which that was exactly what it was. It's he finished. And there's so many people that have never finished that race. So that says a ton. You want me to roll through 45 and 46 to automatic? Yeah, absolutely. I know you. I know. You've got notes. I know. I like the details. 4500 I got Jesse Oliver, Dwayne garretson. And then john grounds just really likes to get their third place. So I'm gonna put I'm gonna put john in third, even though I'd like to see him do a little better. 4600 Yeah, 4600 I think it's john Shaffer. All day, as long as everything goes his way. Then the rest of the fields kind of a toss up. But I'm a I'm a Ken Carter fan. We put it next to each other at at hammers. So I'm hoping Ken has a good, good showing. Well, I think john john will be happy to hear that and yeah, I agree and kimkins A kins a solid choice there anything but in a way as well. Thank you so much for coming on here. Mr. Ultra for Jones and giving us your handicap of the EMC from the west coast perspective of what you're missing out on. Yeah, read on. It's my pleasure. Alright. So I had Shannon bring up a Todd Stoffer, Todd, Todd Todd, and he runs a custom splice. You know, they're in Lawrence, Kansas. And Todd's been a partner of the talent tank since day one. Love this guy and everything he's doing for the recovery gear standpoint. But Todd is stepping up for an is stepped up for to help some of the issues in some of the shortcomings of injuries that happened to one of our racers a couple weeks ago with West Keene and the fire that he survived and Conway has gone through. Todd, will you chime in with what you've got going? I had to find the mute button like everybody else, you know, use this app near enough yet. So we we threw up the idea of doing a West cane fundraising shirt. For it up originally figured I'd sell 50 or maybe 100 shirts, and we're over 1050 we've shipped a budget a little over 1000 of the shirts already. And now we're also doing stickers. The stickers is a really nice design. You can find them on our website at custom splice, comm all the all the profits from that are going directly to his family, we are going to have to do a third run of shirts already. We did a first run before I headed out to an event last week. And then while I was at the event, I had to order more shirts because we'd sold more than I had bought. So it's really exciting to see this all over the nation. And we have a couple international orders even so that's really cool to see. But yeah, we're just trying to benefit the family and help them through a tough time. And proceeds going back to whiskey. proceeds are going back to his medical fund. Yes. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, thank you for putting that on. And you can go find those at custom splice.com for sure. Thank you, man. Well, Shannon On that note, I am I'm wrapped up any the rest of you guys hear in the crowd. have anything you'd like to put in? Or go quick? We didn't talk about Kyle and the Evie going south of the border for the weekend. Boston Kyle. Well, that was in my that was in my notes to talk about when I saw fish. So I started right now notes. I wanted to talk about fish cuz y'all my Lordstown fan. I mean, I'm an AV truck fan to begin with. I really liked one but so yeah, Boston, Kyle versus in his, you know, what do we want to say $25,000 for runner that does have a history of winning its class in Baja. It does, versus a 400 to $500,000 brindle, full bore Intel race truck that is basically had all of the Lordstown gear slapped on it. And what's cool about the Lordstown and and people didn't didn't get this when I was, you know, pumped pumped up about the Lordstown. They don't have like a central motor. They have hub motors, there's four of them on each corner. So it's a it's a four wheel drive, it's an all wheel drive. And if you lose one, you're still three wheel drive at the corners. And so like the rear like the rear axle, it's a solid axle, but it's like a trailer axle. It's just a tube with 150 horsepower motors on each quarter. So it's a 600 horsepower, you know, as programmed from the factory 600 horsepower 115 each wheel now they can turn that up. And you could go all the way to like I want to say they were talking about like maybe like 900 total horsepower, like bumping it way up. But then of course your battery life goes way down. But that's a lot of issues versus you've got, you know, a lot of things that could go wrong on this brand new truck versus Boston Kyle, who just finished you know, the AV race, King hammers this year and his truck is going down there. I mean, this is David versus Goliath, right? It absolutely is, though, from what I understand. I mean, I you've seen the posts, right? They've got both leaf springs and coil overs on it. Now that's new, and they're using a new battery setup. In what they used king of the hammers so they are not everything on it is is battle proven at this point. So it's going to be interesting. They've got a good group of them though. Dust junkies are down there. They've got people who know Baja, but you know, Broncos Bronco, they know baja too. So it should be pretty interesting to see how this plays out this weekend. Absolutely. So we're rolling into like the last two minutes of the show before my alarm goes off here and then we can start the after hours discussion. But Roger Norman and I were going back and forth on LinkedIn about this exact effort and the EB trucks and, and the brintellix boys. You know, Jonathan Jordan, we're on the 2008 nor remoter sports team when Roger won the Baja 1000 How crazy is that? Now Norman runs the whole organization. I found that to be pretty cool. Now the Berto guys put out put out good stuff. Wow, we just burned through an hour everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for another bintray session handicap and we'll see where this goes. A little bit like sports center but for ultra for maybe or worse. I don't know what Pardon the Interruption maybe it's like that only I'm not not as good a host as the ESPN guys but man everyone chin and thank you for setting up the room. Chin. Thank you for getting us all going. Everyone that participated in the panel. Thank you so much. Next time. Let's do it again. The next race we have coming up we will be doing San Felipe Bay So Ben tracing San Philippe that should be fun. You're an East Coast racer and you're listening in and you want to get in on a on talking about the West Coast guys if you're not going to be a simply pay, hit me up and and I'll get you scheduled on the panel and we'll have some discussion, guys. And there's the alarm. Alright, that's it one hour. Hey, appreciate everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening and taking a dive into the tail end team. Please like and subscribe on Instagram at the tail end or our website, the talent tank.com