Ryan from DSX Motorsports was able to help crew for our Pikes Peak race car over a weekend of testing as we were getting ready to run in the 2021 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

For this episode we start out talking about our experiences testing on the mountain. Ryan made an observation that nearly every part that is on our Pikes Peak race car is also available for sale on our website. We discuss the build and this inspired a write-up on the blog that details every part currently on the car.

We also have a good conversation about the cars that come to run up Pikes Peak and what drives Hill Climb culture in general.

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

When you are getting ready to go to the track for a track day or even a race, does your car have to be perfect before you put it on the trailer? 

This has been a topic of discussion here lately and it has broken down into two groups: Those that think, "Yes, the car has to be perfect and running 100% before going to an event," and "No, just get it as close as possible and figure it out once you get there."

What became clear when we started to talk about this was that this is a subject that many people, customers, and competitors alike, have run into. 

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

We all love to go to the track or to an event to drive our cars. It is one of the most fun things we can think of doing. But sometimes everything else about going to a track or an event can be stressful. Sometimes so stressful that it can take some of the fun out of the day altogether. We have talked about this a bit around the shop, and we all sort of discovered that this has been something that we have all dealt with to one degree or another. And in finding out that so many of us here had wrestled with this, or developed a strategy to make the process of getting to the track easier, we decided we should have a conversation about it.

A big thanks to Nigel, Jeanette, and Ryan for sitting down to have this conversation!

We hope this helps, and thank you for listening!

Mid-week bonus episode! 

Right as we were wrapping up recording episode #28 of the podcast, Tasso had a question that he wanted to throw out. He had just acquired a Miata shell that he intended to turn into a race car, but he wasn't sure what to do with it. It also turned out that Blake and Kelsey had also just got a Miata that they intended to turn into a race car as well.

Thanks for listening!

The inspiration for this conversation was to talk to Dave and Bucky about their first run in One Lap of America in a Subaru STI S209 and to talk about Lasek Rallysport which they just launched as a part of the Rally Ready Driving School.

One Lap of America is a truly unique event that places a unique set of demands on both the car and drivers and Bucky is putting together a number of videos documenting their run this year on his Youtube channel.

Bucky and Dave also have a lot of history in Rally Racing. It was a lot of fun to talk to them about what they love so much about driving on dirt, and about how much they love the Rally community in general. That was the inspiration for Bucky to launch Lasek Rallysport in conjunction with the Rally Ready Driving School.

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

For episode 30 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsport Podcast, we have Scott Crouch, Andy Kingsley, Dave Kern, Stephan Verdier, and Victor Kuhns joining Tasso and Jon to talk about the Pikes Peak Hill Climb.

As we are getting ready for the 2021 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, we had the idea to reach out to a few fellow competitors that we have run this race with over the years to have a discussion about their experiences running the race, and what it is that makes Pikes Peak such a unique event.

Through the years, Pikes Peak has been a race run on fully dirt roads, as part of an SCCA rally event broken up into stages, partly paved, and then as its current state where the road is now fully paved. This group of competitors has run the race in all of these forms, so they bring a great amount of perspective and experience to this conversation.

We really enjoyed sitting down with everyone to record this episode, and it is full of great information and stories.

Thanks for listening, and Stay Tuned!

For episode #29 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsport Podcast, we have the usual crew on hand with Ryan from DSX Motorsports, and Tasso from OTC Racing. We had not caught up with them for a few episodes, and Scotty had also taken his car to the track for the first time since he finished all of his winter projects, so that is the first part of our discussion for this episode. Nigel is on as well because he has been making a ton of changes/updates to his race car to get ready for 2021, and he has run into the budget slaying monster called Scope Creep more than a few times in the process. This is something that pretty much anyone with a project car or race car has run into, so we decided to have a conversation about it.

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

For episode #28 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, we have Victor, Blake, and Kelsey from the DM Rally Team as our guests with Tasso from OTC Racing.

A few weeks ago, the SCCA Clifton Hillclimb was held in Clifton Arizona, and Victor was there running his JDM GC STI rally car, and Blake and Kelsey were running their N/A Subaru GC Rally car as well. We had not been to this event, so the first inspiration for this episode was to get everyone on to talk about what the Clifton Hillclimb was like. This sounds like a very fun event, and it is another one of the rare Hillclimbs here in the US that takes place on paved roads (the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb being the other one of note).

But since we had Victor, Blake, and Kelsey on, we wanted to talk to them about a Hillclimb that they all were able to participate in a couple of years ago that was part of the Brig Hillclimb Series in Japan!

Being able to travel to Japan to take part in one of the races in their Hillclimb series was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience for them, and we definitely wanted to hear as much of the story as we possibly could. What really stands out is how similar both of these events are even being half a world apart. 

We hope you enjoy the episode and thanks for listening!

Through 2020, Jeanette (Red Queen Racing) had started to work at Pikes Peak International Raceway, and one of the things that she organized there were some Women's driving clinics and track days in addition to the other events that were put on.  There was a great response from these, and we wanted to bring Jeanette on to talk about what she was doing at PPIR, and about these events. In talking with Jeanette, we decided that we wanted to talk about them under the broader topic of the culture of Women in Motorsports. 

To help us with the discussion, Jeanette brought in Kaitlin and Alice who she has been driving with at some of her events, and we brought in Lea Croteau who has been an instructor in many driving clinics and the Bridgestone Winter Driving School, as well as co-driven with us at Rally Colorado, and the Pikes Peak Hill Climb.

We had a great conversation and we may well have to have these guests back to talk about this part of driving and Motorsport again. Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

For Episode #26 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, we sit down with Olly Clark from Roger Clark Motorsports to talk about all things Roger Clark. We start off by getting a sense of where Olly and his brother Matt got started with racing and Subaru's, and how that turned into what Roger Clark Motorsports is today. We also get some great insight about where the first Gobstopper race car came from, and how that has now turned into 3 Gobstopper race cars. The first 2 of them have had huge success and become icons in their own right, and it looks like Gobstopper III might have the biggest impact of them all.

A huge thank you goes out to Olly Clark for joining us on the Podcast.

This is a great conversation and I hope that you enjoy it!