Beyond the Show: How SEMA Is Trying To Be the Defender of Car Enthusiast Rights

When you hear “SEMA,” you probably think of the show. The annual aftermarket parts bonanza is not only the largest regular trade show in Las Vegas but one of the biggest and most expansive in the world. And despite being technically closed to the general public—you can’t buy a ticket—it’s a cultural event that just keeps getting bigger. The upcoming 2024 edition will bring in 2,400 exhibitors, more entertainment, and more ways for regular civilians to get in and finally see the Hall of Brake Calipers in person.

What you may know, though many people don’t, is that the SEMA show is just one part of a massive organization. SEMA—the Specialty Equipment Market Association—is the main automotive trade group that represents over 7,000 companies that primarily want to make cool things for cars. It serves as a networking and professional education hub, offers R&D support to develop new products, and bridges the gap between automakers and the aftermarket. You know how companies sometimes have mods available for new models that are barely on sale yet? That’s SEMA at work.

Even more important, SEMA is a political force, lobbying federal and state governments over policy decisions and donating to politicians through its political action committee. As you’d expect, it pushes for fewer regulations and fights with the EPA a whole lot. But in this moment of huge change, SEMA is also trying to position itself as the defender of enthusiast rights. It’s supported legislation to enshrine right-to-repair laws, to offer tax credits for gas-to-EV powertrain swaps, and to safeguard people’s abilities to modify their cars.

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And despite the increasing complexity of new cars, advancements in prototyping and manufacturing tech mean the aftermarket industry is bigger than ever: $52.3 billion in 2023, according to SEMA. Well over a million jobs. I know it’s hard to believe that a trade group actually cares about regular people, and ultimately you have to be the judge of that, but it’s kind of baked in with SEMA. Few things in the aftermarket are technically essential, so the entire industry depends on people thinking cars are cool, having the means to buy something extra, and having a range of options to choose from. SEMA has to listen to enthusiasts, or at least pay attention to their concerns.

Likewise, SEMA CEO Mike Spagnola had to listen to me as I peppered him with questions during an hour-long conversation recently. If there’s anyone who can act as a frontman for something as big and vague as “the aftermarket,” it’s him. Spagnola is a lifelong enthusiast who started out sweeping floors at a Datsun dealership in California and hit nearly every rung on the ladder to the top. He seems to understand not only the business but why most people want to be in the business, and that is ultimately for the love of cars. We covered SEMA’s legislative wins and losses, the evolution of the SEMA show, whether SEMA is really “anti-EV,” and how modding might look in the future. OK, here we go.

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The Drive: A lot of people come into this industry with the understanding that most CEOs are trained pencil pushers. They’re college guys. They don’t understand the industry from the inside out. But that’s not the case for you. You’re a car guy. You have a lifelong love affair with Datsun, and Mickey Thompson was your mentor? What?

Mike Spagnola: All right. I think you’ve done your homework.

A little bit. So to get started, I wanted to crack into that and get an introduction to that side of you.

I started off, I think, from the time I was six or seven years old. I had oil running through my veins, as they say, loved cars. I grew up in the ’60s, and when the older kids were coming back from Vietnam, they’d have a little bit of money in their pocket, so they were showing up on our street with Corvettes and Mustangs and Camaros. You could hear them from blocks away. I would run out onto the street and onto the curb and watch them go by. The smells and the sounds were just amazing.

I was lucky enough I had a sister that was married to a race car driver who also owned a sports car center in Glendale, not too far from us. So, I got to go to his place, and sweep floors. I even got to change the oil on a Ferrari once, which was when I was about 12 or 13 years old, which was just amazing. Then in high school, senior year, I got to take vocational auto shop. At the beginning of the school year, a gentleman came in who was pretty famous and had gone to my school, who was going to offer a $200 scholarship to college or a trade school to the best student in the automotive class. I ended up winning that scholarship, and the guy that gave it was Mickey Thompson. So, Mickey continued to be a mentor to me up to the time he was killed in 1988.

Right out of high school, I was going to college but went to work as a delivery driver at a Datsun dealership, sweeping floors, delivering parts to body shops, running down to the headquarters to pick up parts from time to time. I had this love affair for Datsuns, wanted a 510, bought a 240Z, bought a 510, bought a Datsun truck, the Datsun Roadster, and started racing them in SECA.

A lot of people look at SEMA and think it’s just a trade show. But the reality is that there’s a lot more going on, and a big part of what you do is trying to protect the industry from changes that might put companies out of business. But before I lean into current battles, I wanted to ask: Over the last decade at SEMA, does any moment stand out as a pivotal one where everything changed?

I actually had a chance to speak in front of a pretty big automotive group a couple of weeks ago, and I pointed to an article that said, “Does the industry have five more years?” It talked about government regulations. It talked about technology, and could we continue to carry forward with technology because vehicles were getting much more complicated, and we wouldn’t be able to modify the way we used to modify. Then it even talked about the youth market. Would the next generation of youth be interested in cars?

When I finished telling them that story, I then let them know that the article was from 1971. So, this industry has always faced battles. It’s always faced different things going on, but we’re in an innovative group. We are a passionate group. We find ways, and I think that’s just the way America is, that we continue to innovate. We continue to find ways to make things happen. So, I would say in the last 10 years, it’s just a lot more government regulation in a lot of things. We know about the EV market coming through. We know that even the OEs have started to lock down their systems, so it’s gotten harder to modify. We know about all the cameras and safety systems that are going on in these vehicles that have a lot to do with how we can modify.

I love your reference to a 50-year-old article because it reminds me of watching the drama around the RPM Act. One of the things that put me at ease, as funny as it sounds, was reading back and understanding how the fight against people hot rodding has been around since the start of cars. It’s nothing new. 

Anyway, you brought up EVs. I mean, that is the new boogeyman, right? People are afraid that someone is coming for our cars, we’re going to see total ICE bans and all this. What does this transition really mean for the aftermarket in your view?

What we’re saying is that this change is going to take longer than people expect. I mean, here in California, they want to have 33% of vehicles, new vehicles sold by 2026 BEV. They want to do EV-only by 2033. We all know that’s going to take longer. There are other states that adopted California’s policy, but they’re now starting to back off too. It’s everything—range anxiety, charging infrastructure needed. We’re already getting blackouts in the summer here in California, so the power grid’s not set, all of that.

EVs are cool, and we think they’re part of the future. I mean, they’re fast. They’re new technology. They’re pretty cool. What we’re saying is there’s a lot of technologies out there. I mean, there’s a lot of low phosphate, low fuel that are coming out now that are pretty amazing. There’s biofuels. There’s synthetic fuels. There’s hydrogen, and we think those all play a part in the future.

You’re starting to see it now from the OEs. The OEs went gung ho. Ford and GM and some others have gung ho into the EV market, and now they’re starting to back off. Now, they’re starting to see that there’s 120 days, 130 days of inventory sitting out there of EVs. People aren’t buying them as quick as they thought they would. Both Ford and GM have now said, “Oh, maybe hybrid is probably the medium term, a way to go.” Toyota has said that all along. So, I think it’s going to take a lot more time for all these technologies to take place. What we really try to say is this is that the government shouldn’t pick winners and losers. They’re trying to pick EV and EV only, and they should allow innovation, which has always been a great thing in America to continue to drive forward and have innovation in all these different technologies.

We’re all for clean air, and we’re all for making the environment better. We’re all for making technology continue to move forward, but it shouldn’t pick one specific way that we all have to drive. I think that’s the right way to go, and the marketplace is starting to say that the consumer is voting with his wallet, and we’re seeing that happen.

But let’s just even take the EV market for a minute. A Ford Lightning truck still needs accessories. You can still lift them. You can still put tires and wheels on them. You can still put all the bed accessories on them. You can still do all the things that you would do to a truck other than powertrain. So, innovation and the aftermarket will continue. We’re pushing for more and more EV conversion production. I think that’s some of the hot rodders of tomorrow. It used to be when you wanted to convert your, say, ’69 Camaro to an EV. I know that’s a heresy for some of us, but if you took a ’69 Camaro and wanted to convert it to an EV, it used to be you had to take a wrecked Tesla and take the guts out of it and put it into that Camaro. Today, there are manufacturers popping up with battery packs, with electric motors, with all the harnesses, with all the controls needed. So, I think we had about 50 of those suppliers at the SEMA show last year that will allow you to do those conversions.

So, that market’s going to expand, and we’re excited about it, and we’re fostering that piece of the market. We’re also fostering all these other technologies. We had two vehicles at the SEMA show this year that were internal combustion engines, ICE engines that were running on hydrogen. So, that’s got a future to it. Again, if we allow innovation to continue to grow and expand and foster all these technologies, I think that’s the win.

There’s an impression that SEMA is against EVs. But you’re saying that’s not the case, and you embrace electrification. So it’s a tool for a job, but not every job?

Right. Look, hydrogen makes sense in heavy-duty trucks for sure, from a weight standpoint, from just the torque needed from all those sorts of things. There’s other economic aspects to this as well. If we were to go to EV and EV only, let me give you some stats. Just the SEMA aftermarket, just the aftermarket performance products is a $53-billion-a-year industry. We are $337 billion to the economic impact in the U.S. We employ 1.3 million Americans. So, if you push this concept, and make it mandatory, the economic impact that it could cause in jobs, and we can’t react that quick as a nation, as product’s being built as all those sort of things. So, there’s an economic piece to this thing that the legislators are starting to understand as well as, again, infrastructure needed, consumer choice, all that.

Heidts Automotive Group

I don’t know that you can mandate in America. Again, we’re seeing it. Look, there are people that want to buy EVs. They’re great, but my son drives a Tesla. It’s a great car for his local commute. We have EVs here all the time in the garage. So again, we embrace that. We just believe that, again, a lot of technologies should be able to carry forward, and that the government needs to understand what it takes to do those sorts of… to try to move this ball that quickly just doesn’t work.

From a hot-rodding standpoint, I mean, the goal is faster. The goal is always faster, better. However you got to get there, that’s what it takes. Now, you mentioned you’re a Datsun guy. I’m a Dodge guy. 300 and 400 horsepower used to be a lot, and we’re really getting past that at this point. That’s old news, right?

Oh, I mean, 600 hp is where you start now. Even from the factories, I mean, look what’s coming out of the factories. 600 hp is where you start, and you’re hearing about these 2,000-hp cars out there. It’s crazy. I don’t know how you would drive something like that. It’s more about bragging rights than anything at that point, but the ability to do more horsepower with smaller engines and more efficient engines, and less gas and all those sorts of things, again, this is American innovation that just continues to grow and thrive and be a part of what the fabric of America is. We got to continue to do that.

Yeah, and we will. I mean, no matter what, we’re going to find a way to, right? I mean, even if it comes down to being outlaws, how it really all started way back with bootlegging and all that. This culture is going to survive.

Look, I don’t mean to say it’s all rosy out there. We get laws that try to get put forward against us every day. I mean, there’s a law right now in California that’s trying to move forward that says you can’t drive more than 10 mph over the speed limit. In fact, they want to put a governor on the vehicles that says starting 2026 or 2027 that says you’re not going to be able to drive a vehicle more than 10 mph over the speed limit. So believe it or not, I mean, that sounds crazy from the beginning, but there’s some support for it, so SEMA went after that. We went after that through our government affairs group. We went out and did a survey. 69% of Californians are against that rule.

So, we have to stop these things in the roots. There’s other laws. There are lift laws. There are lighting laws. There’s all these sorts of things that really happen daily from legislators that we have to say, “Look, that’s not right. I don’t know why you’re picking on us, but a lot of these things just don’t make a lot of sense.” We do have an individual membership program now where consumers can join SEMA. It’s an individual member. We do have a PAC and a super PAC, so we are supporting legislators that support us, and fighting those that don’t. Look, again, there’s legislation that goes through that we agree with. We’re not for street racing. We’re not for street takeovers. We’re not for rolling coal on diesels.

Some of those things ruin the industry, ruin our reputation, and ruin the passion we all have for cars, but there’s also just nonsense bills that come out. I mean, the ability to take your street car, and convert it to a full-time race car shouldn’t be against the law, but it is. So, we have to fight that stuff. I’m telling you, it comes up day after day after day. I’ll also say that we have legislators on both sides of the aisle who support us on these issues. So, when these rogue rules come up, we have to fight them.

Right on. I think one of the biggest things that we do need to push for is responsible car ownership, responsible enthusiasm. With street racing, street takeovers… I know there’s a history of it, but there are lives at stake. It’s not a tailored racetrack and things can and do go wrong. I think one of the biggest things we could all do together is be responsible with what we love.

Absolutely. Look, I’m sure like you, I go to dozens of car shows every year, and Cars and Coffees and Saturday and Sunday meets and nighttime meets and all of that stuff. The majority of us are all cool with that. I mean, we all get it. We’re there for our love of our cars. We’re there for the look and for the sound. I’ve often said that you could solve world peace if you’re just talking about cars with each other, right? I’ve had the opportunity to travel the world to different car events, and people that look a lot different than us, and act a lot different than us, but you get talking about cars, and it’s a really peaceful subject. We all have that passion. Look, the majority of us all get it. There are a few that try to ruin it for us, and we just have to speak out against it.

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We have to leave racetracks open so people do have places to go test and perform and all that. So, we’re big proponents of making sure that there are safe places to go to drag race your car, or drift your car, or do whatever road racing you’d like to do with your vehicle. It’s critical that we continue to support the racetracks, and have a place to do that, not on the street.

The SEMA show itself is something I wanted to talk to you about. Traditionally, it’s a trade show that isn’t open to the general public, but over time, that’s been changing. You have this thing on Fridays where people buy a ticket and can come in. Are there plans for more public access?

I think the SEMA show has always been one of those shows that everybody would love to get to but can’t because it is a business. Primarily, over the 56 years we’ve had the SEMA show now, it’s been a business-to-business show, so you have to be in the industry. Manufacturers want to talk to buyers in part stores and in distribution and those sorts of things, online stores, all of that. So, it’s been a four-day trade business-to-business show. People have snuck in over the years, and we get that. They’ve got a buddy that works at a factory and gets them a pass or whatever it may be, but it’s really never been open to the public. So, the last couple of years, we’ve opened it on Friday to the public. You can buy a ticket to the show. Then we created SEMA Fest last year, which is a music and car festival that you can go to as well.

We’re excited about that, but, again, the industry is changing, where our manufacturers wanted to only talk to buyers and somebody in the industry. A lot of these manufacturers are now saying, “Yeah, we need to get to the consumer. We need branding. We need the chance to show our goods to the public.” Because if you think about it, everybody that goes to the SEMA show, or everybody that listens to this podcast is an influencer in some way. I mean, every one of us, whether you’re a buyer that comes to that show, or whether you’re a consumer that comes to that show, somebody asked you about your vehicle, or somebody asked you about a part that they may want to buy or what they should do to modify their vehicle, or even how should they fix their vehicle. I mean, I’m sure like you, I get those questions all the time, or I’ll be at a party, and somebody will understand that I’m in the automotive industry, and they’ll ask me a question about their own personal vehicle.

The SEMA show has about 160,000 people. Every one of them is an influencer in one way and tells others about our industry, tells others about product, tells others about things that they should do or buy or modify. So, we’re going to span that. We’re going to open it up to the public. Friday, you can come to the SEMA Show. It is the biggest and craziest aftermarket show in the U.S. So, you can come this year. You can enjoy SEMA Fest with us. There’ll be music and bands and food and all of that. That’s going to go on, and a celebration of the whole car industry. We’re excited about that. We’re excited about expanding that offering to the consumer. I think we’re a great brand that we’ve almost hit under a bushel, and we’re going to let everybody see it now, and take part of it, and be part of it, and come join the party.

Now, how about PRI? How does that fit into the mix for the consumer? I mean, being a speed and performance guy, it’s like… I was always like, “Well, yeah, SEMA is great, but PRI is the one we want to be at.”

Yes. PRI is the Performance Racing Industry. It’s another trade show and another organization that SEMA owns. Look, they’re both really cool. I mean, if you look at SEMA, again, it’s all the performance parts. It’s off-road racing. It’s racing. It’s drag racing. NHRA puts up a booth at the show every year. It’s all those sorts of things. PRI is hardcore racing. It is circle track. It is drag racing. It’s racing only. So, at the PRI show, which is every year in Indianapolis in December, you’re not necessarily going to find floor mats there. You’re not going to find vehicle wraps. You’re not going to find street tires and wheels. You’re going to find pure racing, pure off-road circle track, drag racing, NASCAR, SCCA, sorts of racing parts, and it is open to manufacturers that develop racing parts.

Again, we’re not trying to bring a floor mat manufacturer in there, but we’re trying to bring guys that make hardcore, not-for-street, racing parts. Then if you’re a racer, and if you’re a racer in the industry, or you got a speed shop in the industry, you can come to that show as well. So, it is still B2B, but if you’re a racer, and you can prove you’re a racer, I mean, a true racer and have a team and those sorts of things, you’re welcome to come to that show. It’s a pretty cool show. It is. We do it in December, because that’s the end of racing season, and people aren’t necessarily having to get to a race over the weekend. It is cold, but it’s pretty cool to do it in Indianapolis, the home of American racing right near the Indianapolis Speedway. We just bought last year an office, really, a nice building in Speedway, Indiana, literally a block from the racetrack where PRI’s headquarters are now at.

We actually have a race team in the building that rents 25,000 square feet of our business to run their racing team, Bryan Herta Autosport, so he’s in there. We’re in the heart of the core of the racing industry with PRI. So, that’s one of my passions as well, and it’s cool to be part of that.

Again, being a speed nut, that’s where all the really exciting things take place. I remember when Edelbrock debuted their Holley, and everybody was just erupting over what was taking place. At the same time, nobody on the consumer end really knew what was going on, but I think that is the more badass. That’s where it’s going on. Now, so one of the other things that’s come up a lot is the SEMA Garage. I know that’s something that you were brought on for. That’s something you’re very passionate about. Can you fill us in on what exactly is the SEMA Garage, and what takes place over there?

We just opened one in Detroit last year, and we have one here in Diamond Bar, California that’s been open now for 11 years, but it is literally a garage. Here in California, it’s a 15,000-square-foot garage. In Detroit, it’s 45,000 square feet, but the idea was to bring manufacturers and OEs together, as well as help manufacturers develop products, and take them through the product development cycle and get them to market. So, when we do these measuring sessions, for example, where, again, an OE will come in, we’ll work with all of them. We work with Ford and GM and [Stellantis] and Solana, everyone, Honda, Toyota, all of them, Nissan, where we typically get a vehicle in advance of it coming out. We’ll bring those vehicles in. We then invite all of our manufacturers to come in, and we help them through the product development cycle to get products from concept to market.

So for example, if you were going to build on the new Mustang a different suspension kit, we could work with you. First off, we’ll have the vehicle here. We’ve got the Dark Horse coming in, I think, next week, where the vehicle will come here. We will tear it apart. We will have CAD data to hand you. We have a 3D printer. We have all these different methods of helping you through the product development cycle. Along with the OEs, we’ll come and talk about the vehicle, and talk to you even with their engineers about the product you’re trying to develop. So, I think most of the OEs understand that the more aftermarket parts that are available for that vehicle, the better chance of a consumer wanting to buy that car and modify it. So at the end of the day, we’re helping OEs sell more vehicles, but we’re also helping the aftermarket develop products, and get them to market, which helps our industry grow, which helps the economy, which helps enthusiasts be able to buy products, all of that.

We really work with them all the way through making sure the quality is right, making sure that there are test cycles that you can do, whether it’s metallurgy, whether it’s, again, starting from a CAD drawing. We didn’t have that kind of technology years ago. Today, you can take a CAD drawing. You can modify it in CAD, starting with the factory CAD drawing, modify it in CAD, do your modifications, do what you want to do to it, and then 3D print it, and bolt it to the car. So, what used to take maybe a year can take you three or four months now. So, that’s what the SEMA Garage helps you do. We’ve got literally millions of dollars of equipment to take you through the emissions test cycle to make sure that your vehicle or that part that you’re developing for that vehicle passes the CARB EPA emissions test cycle. So, we walk you through that.

In Detroit now, we have an ADAS lab, which is all the automatic driving assistance programs. It’s the only one of its kind in the U.S. So, we’re looking at what happens when you lift up a truck. What happens when you lift it? What happens to the lane change departure warning systems? What happens to self-braking? What happens to backup cameras, all those sorts of things? We’re doing that testing both statically and dynamically. So statically, we have a lab where we can look at all those cameras. We can understand what happens when the vehicle has been modified, but then we also do the dynamic testing, and a lot of us have seen what happens when you will see these test vehicles that’ll run down a track, and then there’s a balloon car in front of it or balloon person walking across the crosswalk. The vehicle’s got to stop in time before it hits the balloon person.

So, we do that testing as well. Very expensive testing. That’s about $100,000 per test, but we’re doing that kind of work to make sure that when you modify vehicles, people know what’s going on.

What are you working on at home? I know you’re a car guy. I know you’ve got all kinds of badass things in your garage. What are you excited about right now? What are you thinking about doing as soon as you punch the clock? What are you running home for?

Punch the clock. Well, first off, we’ve always been involved in racing and just off-roading and all those sorts of things. I have three kids. Two of them are active in the automotive industry and race. We were out at Johnson Valley a couple of weeks ago doing some off-roading, and that was fun. We’ve run in some off-road races. That continues to be fun. This year, we took up legend cars, and so both my boys are running in a legend series here in California. That’s a huge learning curve, but it’s been a lot of fun. We ran our first race just last week, a good first race, finished mid-pack, learning a lot, learning about setup and tire wear and all those sorts of things. So, we’re loving all of that.

Then personally in the garage, working on all those vehicles, working on off-road stuff, working on personal vehicles, I’m currently doing a ’67 Datsun Roadster Solex model. They only made a couple of hundred of them, full frame off. So, chassis is all powder-coated now. Frame is all powder coated, I should say, and all the parts that go with it. The body comes out of paint hopefully next week. I’ve been able to gather up a lot of pieces, so I’m excited to put that one back together and get it on the road. That’s been a couple-year project, and finding all the pieces and parts for it. I guess, like a lot of especially rare cars, that has been a challenge, but I’m pretty close to having every original part for it that I can find.

Typically, I like to do cars modified, but that one’s going back all-original. It’s just because it was a cool car when I was a kid and kind of rare. Again, I cut my teeth on Datsun. So doing that, I have a ’55 Chevy pickup that was my grandfather’s car, my grandfather and my uncle owned, and so hoping to get together with that and get that car put together. My problem is probably like all of us, my eyes are bigger than my stomach, and I tend to buy cars, and then can’t ever get to them, but I’m looking forward with my son and my now grandson building that ’55 Chevy truck up, probably some sort of restomod on that, and just several other cars. Just even maintaining some of the cars to keep them running has been good. And racing, and then, again, business gets in the way. This is a pretty demanding job. I’m on the road a lot running the day-to-day of SEMA.

We talk about the show, and everybody knows us for the show, but there’s work we do the other 360 days a year. It is pretty grinding, but I’m passionate about it. I love it. I love the industry. I want to protect it. I want to see it grow. I want to see innovation continue on. So, that’s what I love, and then spending family time with my kids now and grandkids who are all car nuts and dirt bike riders and off-roaders. So, that’s fun playing with the next generation as well.

I think it’s funny how similar we all are in the ways we celebrate cars. I mean, you and I, right now, there’s 3,000 miles and a lot of other things between us, but I’ve also spent some time with Legend cars on dirt.

I didn’t know that.

Hank O’Hop

I have this ’69 Charger I’m restoring that was my dad’s car back in the ‘80s. I pulled that out of a field when I was 17, so it was technically my first car. It was his first car. I taught myself how to work on that, and that’s been my way. Along the way, I met a guy I was buying sheet metal from for the car. He was in Funny Cars for 30 years. He was retired by the time I met him. When I was there, he talked to me about his Charger, and this friendship started, and he became like my mentor. He took me under his wing. He retired from drag racing, tried to get back in a bracket car that was running 10 seconds, but that was too slow for him. So, he wanted to find another format that got him wound up, and he got into circle track. He had a Midget. He had a Sprint. The last one he had was a Legend. To me, that was probably the most interesting out of all of them, because it’s so weird. They’re a weird little car. Motorcycle engines. Now, are you guys on dirt or asphalt?

Asphalt.

How different is that?

It is so different. It’s my youngest son… Both my boys could get out there, and they’d be top three, four for about three laps, and then the tires would go away. So, you got to learn tire management, and you got to learn jacking the car. It’s completely opposite. I’ve been a road racer all my life. I did some SCCA stuff, and we still do track days and all of that. Circle track is a whole different mentality, and you can slip into old ways or ways that you usually set vehicles up if you’re not careful. So, driving into the corner is different. All of that happens. It’s a really fun discipline. You have to be really patient, and you have to really understand the vehicle, and be extremely smooth. In any form of racing, it’s about driving smooth, not necessarily driving hard, and you go faster by driving smooth.

Not only that, the confidence it takes when those packs, everybody gets bunched up. I’ve seen some violent driving. It’s not necessarily because anybody’s trying to be anyway, but one of the times, he was running the Midget. My involvement, by the way, is I’m the wrench turner in the pits. I’m the crew chief because I’m the only guy in the pit crew. So, it doesn’t really qualify. One of the tracks we went to, it’s a little eighth-mile track in the Midget, and some outlaw guys came out, and they’re brutal. He’s like, “I can’t.” He’s like, “I got to get out of the car.” I’m like, “Yeah, that’s how I always did things growing up, riding motorcycles. If I’m afraid of it, I’m not getting on it, because you’re going to get screwed up.”

Just a round or whatever after he called it quits after heat, a guy was actually driving on the chain link fence past other drivers. So it’s like, yeah, you have to be crazy confident, not just know what the car’s going to do. It’s a hell of a sport, and it takes, like you’re saying, a lot of that, and just flips it on its head. Then you get made to feel like a punk when some veteran comes over, kicks a corner of the car, and goes, “No, you got to be running this shock or this spring,” right?

SEMA

Right. Right. We’re learning all that. We’re learning. We thought it was going to be a less expensive series, and we run carts. We’ve run off-road. We’ve run a lot of stuff, and we thought this would be a less expensive series. Then you find out there’s a newer high-tech motor. You can go to disc brakes now. You can go to a different shock system, and so it’s going to take some money, but it’s also just like you said. This last weekend, both my boys got into some packs, and it was a lot of bumping and shoving and pushing. It was fun to watch, and it was fun to be able to even hear him on the headset to spot for him, but it gets pretty brutal out there.

You got to be able to keep the car straight when you get punched in the back, and not put into the wall, but it’s fun. It’s fun. It’s hard to break away the cars. For the most part, there are some guys that for whatever reason are way out in front, but most of the cars are pretty evenly matched. You got to qualify well, but you also got to race well, and you can’t. It really tests your brain power to not try to overdrive the car, or to the fact that you may pick up an eighth of a second a lap. A quarter second a lap would be a lot, and trying to get ahold of the next guy. So, you have to be smooth through 35 laps, and you have to keep your wits about you.

It’s nuts. I mean, we have the clay out here. So then the other issue that my driver ran up against over and over was spinning out, getting too much on the throttle. So, it’s like you’re hanging in that drift basically going around the turn. I don’t know how that translates to asphalt, how much of a concern it is, if there’s something else you got to worry about with the car suddenly hooking up, and going for the fence.

I’d love to try dirt sometime, but you have the same problem on asphalt. You cannot accelerate too quick. The car will get loose. You actually drive through the corner differently. All of that just being smooth on and off the throttle is… I mean, you can cook the brakes, and end up with no brakes. We saw more than one car get put into the wall at the first race of the season. That’ll ruin the car. If you hit the wall hard enough, you’ve just written off 25, 30 grand worth of car. So, you got to be smooth about it, and you got to trust the guys next to you. I mean, you are door to door, bumper to bumper, front bumper to back bumper, and you better trust the guy next to you.

Speaking of parts, going to PRI has got to be a whole different kind of exciting now. It’s like you’re going, and you’re not looking at parts for road racing. You’re looking at parts for circle track now, right?

Yeah. For sure. For sure. I think that’s going to happen this year. I’m just happy I’ve got two boys in the series. I’m just happy. So far, they haven’t taken each other out, because they’re pretty competitive with each other.

Yeah, it’s going to happen.

I think it will. I think it will, so I have to make sure that there’s no fistfight afterwards.

Well, unless it means you catching one, you got to step back and just let it happen at that point, but-

I might have to sell it.

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