On September 16th, news broke that Cobb Tuning had settled with the EPA and was fined $2.9 million for violating the Clean Air Act. With Cobb Tuning being so involved with the Subaru community, this definitely caught a lot of our attention. Jon and Harvey from The Boostcreep talk about the implications of Cobb's EPA settlement, and what it could mean for the Tuning industry going forward. If you would like to take a look at the the Cobb Tuning EPA Settlement, or the other cases mentioned in the podcast, here are links to them: Cobb Tuning https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/cobb-tuning-products-llc-clean-air-act-settlement https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2024-09/cobbtuningproductsllc-cp.pdf Cummins Diesel https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/2024-cummins-inc-vehicle-emission-control-violations-settlement Rudy's Performance Parts https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/rudys-performance-parts-inc-and-aaron-rudolf-clean-air-act-settlement-information-sheet Thanks for watching and Stay Tuned!

It seems like every year EV's are getting a bit better, and this year, a couple of them have made a big jump forward. As I have hinted at in a few earlier videos, I am now driving a 2024 Tesla Model 3 Performance, and when Mike Pettiford of Go 4 it Services heard this, he was initially couldn't believe it. Mike brought down his 2023 Golf R and we both took a drive in the others car to get a sense of how they were to drive, then we sat down to discuss how close EV's were starting to get to something like a classic Sport Compact car to drive. Was the Tesla fun to drive? Could it handle anything like the Golf R? We talk about it all on this episode of the Flatirons Syndicate Podcast. If you would like to stay up on what Mike is up to at Go 4 it Racing, make sure to follow him here: https://www.instagram.com/go4itracingteam/ https://www.facebook.com/go4itservices Thanks for watching and Stay Tuned!

This is the week of the 2024 Pikes Peak Hill Climb, and our car and the team are up on the mountain getting ready for the race this Sunday. With all that is going on, we didn't have the chance to record a new episode of the Podcast, so this seemed like the perfect time to go back to our Pikes Peak Roundtable from episode 30 of the Podcast. This was recorded as we were getting ready for the 2021 Pikes Peak Hill Climb, and we had on a number of guests with a ton of experience on Pikes Peak. We talk to: Scott Crouch - Flatirons Tuning driver Andy Kingsley Stephan Verdier Victor Kuhns Dave Kern It was a great discussion, and definitely worth checking out if you missed this episode. Thanks for watching and thanks for your support!

Jon, Scott, Ryan, and Tasso sit down to talk about plans for 2022.

Super Lap Battle 2022 at Circuit of the Americas is this weekend as you listen to this.  We are taking our Pikes Peak car to run this year with our driver Scott Crouch, and Ryan is bringing out his Super Taiyku car as well.

We talk about our plans and expectations for Super Lap, and then what we have in the works for the rest of the year.  Tasso is working on getting his car up and running again, and discovered a few leaks that needed attention as his transmission was getting fixed.

And we came back to the same plan that we had nearly at the beginning of the Podcast, that reliability is our overall priority for the season.

But for Tasso, somehow that quest for reliability also involves removing the blow-off valve completely from his car.  Stick around for that discussion at the end.  If it works, it is going to be pretty interesting.

Thanks for listening, and Stay Tuned!

We have special guest Olly Clark from Roger Clark Motorsport joining us on the podcast again!

The biggest news since we last spoke with Olly is that their newest race car, Gobstopper III, has now been revealed. They have been doing a lot of testing, and are working to get Gobstopper III ready to compete in the 2022 UK Time Attack series, and we get a lot of insight into that process.

We also talk about Subaru's, the Motorsport community in the UK, and we even have a good conversation about the 2021 Formula 1 season.

Thanks very much for listening and we hope you enjoy this episode.

Stay Tuned!

Jon and Ryan sit down with Brian from iWire to talk about wiring, Subaru swaps, and everything Subaru wiring.

Anything to do with wiring, and the electrical system, in general, can be really hard to diagnose.  And if you are trying to do something like swap a turbo engine into a car that didn't come that way, there can be a lot of wiring involved.  For many of us, this is the part of those types of projects that we like least.  But that is what Brian from iWire likes and does best.

iWire started out as a service to help merge two Subaru wiring harnesses together to make turbo swaps much, much easier for the rest of us.  But now, Brian and the folks at iWire have taken the wiring knowledge that they have gained and started to make other wiring solutions available to make other projects easier for all of us like Fuel Pump wiring, grounding kits, finding the right plug, etc.

We have a great chat with Brian about all of these topics this episode, and we even take on the discussion of the EJ20X and EJ20Y engines towards the end of the episode, so make sure you tune in for that if you are curious about those engines.

Thanks very much for listening and Stay Tuned!

Bucky Lasek is back on the Podcast!

Bucky has been working on a ton of projects, so we wanted to check in with him to talk about what he is working on, and to talk about anything that he had planned for the new year.

This turned into a fantastic conversation about Bucky's projects, Skateboarding and how it really relates to driving, and even how Bucky got involved with Subaru's Rally program.

Be sure to check out and follow Bucky's Youtube channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCciHWxn1ZNqFtgAxAqMxR6g

Thanks for listening, and Stay Tuned!

Jon and Ryan sit down to talk about Subaru suspension with Drew and Myles from Racecomp Engineering.

Right upfront, I'm going to tell you that this was a great conversation, but we got so caught up in it that this ran a good deal longer than our regular Podcasts.

But it is well worth it.

We start off talking about how RCE began, and then we get into a really wide-reaching discussion about Subaru suspension, the difference between Japanese and European coilovers, how RCE built a relationship with KW, and their process for developing their Tarmac line of coilovers.

By the end, we then started talking about the 2022 BRZ because they just got their first car that they can start driving and testing, and they already have some great insight into the differences between the new BRZ, and the previous one.

And how the new BRZ compares to a 944 Turbo in fact.  It is a lot closer than you might think.

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

For episode #58 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, Jon, Scotty, Ryan, and Tasso have a question that we have talked about amongst ourselves a fair amount here at the shop, and we decided to throw the question to a Podcast.

If you had a budget of $50,000 and you had to buy a car, build it for a series, and race for a season, what would you buy, and what type of racing would you do?

Now, full disclosure, none of us has or has ever had $50,000 to play with, but since we wanted to talk about buying and building a car, this seemed to be a reasonable place to start.

The underlying goal of this topic is to have a good discussion of how you use your budget, how you pick the car and class, etc., and that is exactly what we had here.  It was definitely clear that with all of the experience that Ryan, Tasso, and Scotty have had building their cars, and keeping them running for a season, there are a lot of good lessons that they would apply to this type of scenario.

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

Thanks everyone for listening in 2021! We will be back in the new year after a quick break over the holidays. 

Your support means everything to us! #staytuned to what we have planned coming up next year.

For Episode 57 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast Jon and Scotty sit down with Ryan from DSX Motorsports and Jeanette from Red Queen Racing to talk all about PRI and what it tells us about Motorsport in 2022.

The Performance Racing Industry Trade Show ( PRI ) happens every December in Indiana, and it is the motorsport equivalent of SEMA. The main difference is that this show is very heavily focused on racing products whereas SEMA covers just about every aspect of the automotive aftermarket.

We wanted to see what stood out to Ryan and Jeanette about PRI this year, as there were definitely some surprises.

There are a lot of developments coming for race cars, engines, and electronics as you would expect.  But what about driving simulators?

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

If you watched to the end of Episode 56 with Harvey, we talked about making a bonus episode about Methanol, and this is it!

For the bonus episode of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, Jon, Ryan, and Tasso talk with Harvey (the owner and Tuner/Calibrator from The Boostcreep) about Methanol as a fuel, and Methanol injection.

Tasso had started working out whether or not he could possibly switch from running E85 in his hill climb STI to Methanol. Could it be done? And would it be worth it?

Because it is related, we also talk a bit about Methanol injection in this episode as well.

Jon, Ryan, and Tasso sit down with Harvey, owner and tuner at The Boostcreep, to talk about how Tuning works.

For a long time now, every modern car's engine is controlled by a computer or ECU. When this first happened in the mid-90's, the first thought was that this was going to be the end of modifying cars, and tuning them to make more power. It didn't take long for people to realize that the function and control that the ECU offered was actually a huge advantage, not a limitation.

But even now that tuning, or re-maping of the ECU is fairly common, there is still a fair amount of mystery around how that works, or what exactly a Tuner is doing when they re-map an ECU. That is why we wanted to sit down with Harvey from The Boostcreep. He has been Tuning cars for over 15 years, and has a wealth of experience when it comes to tuning a wide variety of cars.

To start to talk about this topic, we first talk about the 4-stroke engine cycle, and what is going on in the engine because it is critical to have a good understanding of that process before you start to talk about adjusting how the ECU works.
From there we have a great conversation about what the ECU is doing, and what tools the Tuner uses to increase the efficiency and power of an engine.

Thanks for listening, and Stay Tuned!

Cobb Tuning has just released their NexGen Flex Fuel for the 2015 - 2021 WRX, which comes after the release of their first NexGen Flex Fuel kit for the Sti. We were definitely glad to see Flex Fuel come back as a function of the Cobb Accessport, but when we saw that the new system was running through the CAN Bus on these new cars, it was clear that there was a lot more that Cobb had to rework to make Flex Fuel available again. We were able to sit down with Lance and Billy from Cobb Tuning to go over everything that was involved in getting Flex Fuel back on line, and the processes that they go through when developing a product like this. We also talk about the benefits of running E85 and Flex Fuel as well as touch on some of their future plans for this system as well. Thanks for watching and Stay Tuned!

For episode #55 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, Jon, Ryan and Scotty sit down with Paul from Verus Engineering to talk all about Aerodynamics.

If you have listened to many of our previous episodes, then you know that aerodynamics, and how to improve the aerodynamics of your car is a topic that we have discussed more than once.  For this episode, we got to sit down with someone who works with automotive aerodynamics every day, so we definitely wanted to get as many questions answered as we could.

There are a lot of aerodynamic parts to chose from if you are looking to improve the aerodynamics, some big, and many small.  Rear wings and front splitters are the common place to start, but there are a lot of smaller parts like canards, wing end-plates, and diffusers to consider too.

One of the great things that came out of this discussion was a perspective on what works when it comes to aero, where to start as you are making modifications to your car, and most importantly, how to tell if you are moving in the right direction with the parts that you have added.

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

For episode #54 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, Jon, Ryan, and Scotty sit down with Keith from 969 Performance to talk about Twin-Scroll turbos.

We have a new series on our Youtube channel where we answer a Question of the Week. A couple of weeks ago we answered a question about whether or not it was worth converting a WRX or an STI to a twin-scroll turbo.

We have a lot of experience in this area because that is exactly what we did when we first built our Pikes Peak racecar, and we have tried a lot of different iterations of twin-scroll turbos on that car.

After putting that video up, what we realized is that this topic was one that deserved a deeper discussion because there are a lot of things to consider when you are picking a turbo, much less considering changing the configuration of exhaust and turbo, etc.

One person that we knew that has a lot of experience with twin-scroll turbos is Keith from 969 Performance. He has played around with a number of different configurations, and most importantly, he has tried a number of different twin-scroll turbos on EJ207 engines.

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

For episode 53 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast Ryan and Jeanette have just come back from the SEMA show in Las Vegas, so that is the focus of our conversation.

SEMA is a huge show held every year in the Las Vegas Convention Center, and it is typically a showcase for all of the major aftermarket companies to show off any of their new products, etc. It is also a great opportunity to get a feel for the direction that the Market and Aftermarket will be heading in the next year.

We talk about what Ryan and Jeanette thought was cool, and what stood out to them, as well as what seemed like was missing from the show this year. Electrification and Electric Vehicles were definitely the big new additions to the show this year. The Hummer EV was showcased here for instance. And now there are a growing number of electric options for motor swaps for older cars, etc as well.

And what about Subaru?  What was their presence at SEMA this year?

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

Jon, Ryan, and Scotty sit down with Mike Pettiford from Go 4 It Racing.

The inspiration for this episode came about after we recorder episode #48 where we discussed how many times the driver is as much a cause for a handling issue as the car or set-up might be.  After that discussion, we wanted to bring that conversation around to how you can solve that problem by improving as a driver.

And that brought us to driving instruction.

Driving a car at speed on a track is a lot different than driving normally on the street.  The rules of the track, track etiquette, and track awareness are all very different skills that have to be learned.  It only takes a little bit of instruction to get to know the basics and to start to learn how to drive consistently and safely on track.

Going through the NASA HPDE system is a great way to get started there for instance.

But after you get to know the basics, and you start to want to go faster and add some race craft, it can be a harder and much slower process to learn those skills.  That is where good driving instruction can come in to help you progress more quickly, and also to help to discover or unlock some of the secrets of being a faster driver.

For this conversation we talk with Ryan Dussex who has been instructing with NASA and the SCCA for a couple of seasons as well as Mike Pettiford who founded his driving school, Go 4 it Services, more than 30 years ago.

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

For episode 51 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, Tasso from OTC Racing, Scotty, Nigel, and Jon have a conversation about one of the more overlooked but crucial aspects of taking your car to the track.

Budget.

It is no secret that the more you take your car to the track, and especially if you start to compete in one form or another, you are going to have to have some kind of budget. No matter what your budget is, the key is to work within that budget, and make sure that you are getting the best value for your money.

There are most likely a lot of expenses that you would expect for a track day or event such as tires, fuel, entry fees, and maybe brake pads. But there can be a lot of unexpected expenses that you can run into as well like towing costs, or parts failing that can add up quickly and take a big chunk out of your budget.

Is it more important to make your car fast? Or to make it more reliable?

Will you have a better season if you hit more events? Or is you spend more time testing and shaking down you car?

And as part of this podcast, we talk about our plan for our Pikes Peak race car. Do we build the engine? Do we put in a sequential transmission?

Or do we do both?

And what impact will those changes have on how we calculate our budget for an event?

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

For episode 50 (!), Jon, Scotty, Ryan (DSX Motorsports) and Tasso (OTC Racing) talk about how important it is to use the time you have in the offseason so that you and your car are ready to race next season.

Now that colder weather is setting in and winter is right around the corner, it means that for most of us, the season is wrapping up. Whether you were able to make it through a full season of racing, or your season ended a little earlier with a failure that demands attention, most likely the start of the offseason means that you have a car in your garage that needs some work.

The great thing about the winter months is that you have time to work on those winter projects without the pressure of an event. But if you don't start thinking about what you want or need to do, those months can be gone in a blink, and you might end up having to rush through the final prep of your car for the first event of the season. Or worse yet, miss that first event because your car isn't ready.

Thanks for listening, and Stay Tuned!

Jon, Ryan and Scotty sit down to talk about how the last NASA Rocky Mountain event went at High Plains Raceway.

When you are building a car to compete in a specific class, it is natural that your focus would be the cars and drivers that you are competing against. What Scotty and Ryan discovered was that sometimes taking a look at what is going on in other similar classes can be enlightening, too. That change of perspective can give you some ideas of new things to try as well as new benchmarks for how competitive your car actually is.

Scotty and Ryan are usually focused on the NASA Time Trials classes, but the classes that got their attention this weekend were GTS2 (German Touring Sedan) and GTS3. These are typically BMWs that have lower power-to-weight limits in their class (14:1 in GTS2, 10:1 in TT3) and these cars race wheel-to-wheel. There is no guarantee that they will even get a clean lap. But with all that, those cars would dominate the class they would fit in for Time Trials.

This led to two important realizations: First, that it can really help to run a car in a class where there is a clearly tried and tested upgrade path, with parts that are known to be effective, and second, that sometimes your brakes are just slowing you down.

Thanks for listening! And thank you for your support. We hope you enjoy this episode, and #staytuned.

We talk about the Global Time Attack presence at the Long Beach Grand Prix.

Then we talk about the best approach to dealing with a handling problem. What do you do if your car understeers? Or has a handling problem in general?

Most of the time, the place that we start is by adding a part like a sway-bar, etc., and/or to adjust the setting of the suspension that you have (if there is any).

This will usually allow you to dial in the handling of the car the way that you want it, but is this the best approach?

One of the other aspects that has a large effect on how your car handles, and one that is rarely considered, is the driver. How you drive the car also has a significant impact on how the car handles, but it seems to be something that isn't discussed as often.

Until now.

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

For Episode 47 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, we have Dave from Rallispec returning to the Podcast to talk about Subaru engines.

If you listened to our first podcast with Dave (Episode #24), you know that Rallispec started building and modifying Subaru's before the WRX had even landed here in the US.

It didn't take long for them to get a pretty clear idea of what components in the engine needed to be changed out or upgraded to hold more power reliably, and that was the start of their engine program. Now, all these years later, Rallispec has a number of different engine packages available starting from short blocks that simply have forged pistons installed all the way up to closed deck blocks that are built to hold more than 900 horsepower.  

In this episode, we talk with Dave first about the different options that you would want to consider if you are looking for a built block. From there we move on to have a great conversation about how important it is to consider the entire engine package from the turbo to the heads and valve train as well as the short block. Whether you are just looking for a first step to improve your EJ255, EJ257, or EJ207, or if you are looking to build a full long block for your WRX or STI, there is a ton of great information in this podcast for you.

Thanks very much for listening, and Stay Tuned!

For episode 46 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, our guest is Farah Nanji from the Mission Makers Podcast.

Farah has two separate, but successful careers. She has a successful career as a DJ, but she has also had a passion for motorsports since her early childhood. Farah spent a couple of years racing karts competitively in her childhood, and then in 2011, she founded a group called Regents Racing which put on various types of motorsports events.

In this episode, we talk with Farah about how she found driving and motorsports initially, how her interests in motorsports and music overlapped, and how both of those interests, coupled with her interest in business, form the basis for her Mission Makers Podcast.

For episode #144 of the Podcast, Jon and Jeremy sit down to talk about taking an old car to the track. Jeremy has a number of Subaru's that he has driven on track, and all of them have some years on them. As more of us are looking back to the earlier WRX and STI to build track cars, this is becoming a more common thing to see at the track. So what should you do differently to prep an older car to take to the track? And what should you do differently once you get there? And is a newer car really the solution if you want to avoid some of these issues? Thanks for watching and Stay Tuned!

For Episode 45 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, we catch up with Tasso and talk about his experience at the Lands End Hill Climb. There was a lot of tough competition there, not the least of which was Rhys Millen in his GRC Hyundai. Tasso, Rhys, and Dave Kern were all battling for the top step of the podium all weekend.

From there we talk about how the open rule set for Rally AWD in the CHCA has let Tasso and Dave Kern (and a couple of others) develop their cars to the point where they were actually able to run times close to what Rhys Millen was able to do in his car.

That shows how capable the Rally AWD cars are becoming in the Colorado Hill Climb series.

So does the open ruleset raise the level of competition?

From there we talk about the differences in competing in a series with a very strict rule set (like NASA's time trials which Scotty runs in), versus an open rule set, and the benefits of each.

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

We sit down with Utah Motorsports Park Lap Record holder Shawn Murphy to discuss his time attack WRX STI. He holds the records for NASA class TT2 for the Outer, East, and West Circuits, as well as TT1 and TT2 records for the Full Course.

His current race car started out as a daily driver, but once he started to take his STI to the track, it didn't take long for it to fall into dedicated track car duty.

The progression of Shawn's build started out focused on power but took a bit of a turn when he realized that he wanted to prioritize reliability over straight-line speed. Once he did that and started to focus on other aspects of the car's performance, such as brakes and suspension, he discovered that his car kept getting faster and faster.

Thanks for listening, and #staytuned.

We have 3 very special guests join us for a fantastic discussion of the origin of Time Attack in the United States and Australia.

Our guests for this episode are Ian Baker who is the organizer for World Time Attack in Australia, and Jason Dienhart and Kiet Le who organize Global Time Attack and Super Lap Battle.  We talk with Ian, Jason, and Kiet about what drew them to the sport of Time Attack and how they started organizing events.

The sport of Time Attack, and especially the cars that are running the event, have changed a lot since its origin in Japan in the mid to late '90s.  As technology has improved, everything from the power that the engines can make, the tires, the weight of the cars, and especially the amount of aero added to the cars has changed significantly.  And because of the open rule sets in the unlimited class for these races, some of these cars are pushing the absolute edge of performance and are setting times close to that of open-wheel formula cars.

Thanks, and #staytuned!

We took the Pike's Peak car to High Plains Raceway for a shakedown. The day didn't exactly go to plan, but we did learn some really important things.  One of the main ones being that a lot of the small things that you can do to make the car better, can make the car a lot faster.

Scotty is in the process of rebuilding his engine after having a catastrophic engine failure.  At this point, he is just starting to piece the car back together again, and he is in the middle of the decision process of what he can and can't re-use.  This coupled with balancing the wants and needs that you have to get an engine back together, and a budget that was not prepared for that level of failure makes for a lot of tough choices.

We also break down how much progress we have really made with the Pikes Peak car, and try to bring a little context to what those improvements amount to.  It turns out that making a lot of small improvements and not jumping down the obvious path of more power has landed us in a place where a seemingly unattainable lap time might just be attainable!

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

The Competition Director for the American Rally Association (ARA) Preston Osborn joins us to discuss his new role with the ARA, rally safety, and the future of rally in America.

We discuss how he got started with rally, winning championships, and how that prepared him for his switch from competitor to director.

We also talk about the future and direction of Subaru with the upcoming WRX and STI.

Thanks for listening, and #staytuned! 

We sat down with Ryan from DSX Motorsports, Tasso from OTC Racing, and Scotty from the shop to catch up on the events of the past few weeks.

Tasso and Dussex both drove at Gridlife Alpine Horizon, Dussex in Time Attack, and Tasso in the Rally Sprints. The Rally Sprints were a new addition this year, and they were run by Rally Ready Driving School as a bracket elimination. This format created some great racing, and it is safe to say Tasso had a lot of fun running that weekend.

Dussex was driving his Super Taikyu car in Time Trials, and even though he didn't get exactly the result he was looking for, he still had a solid weekend.

Scotty took his 2011 STI race car out to run with NASA at the Utah Motorsports Park, and things did not entirely go to plan.

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

Cole is a driver that we have followed for several years now, first because of all that he did with the Lyfe Motorsports GTR Time Attack car. He has competed in that car in many Time Attack events, including the World Time Attack event in Sydney Australia, and he still holds many track records here in the US. He has even brought that car to the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, and we have raced with him there a few times.

Then Cole started Sierra Cars where he is now building an open-wheel race car from the ground up. We had the opportunity to drive a couple of the Sierra Cars on the ice at Georgetown Lake and they were so much fun. These cars were so easy to drive and so predictable, it was clear that a ton of development had gone into them.

We talk with Cole about Sierra Cars, Time Attack, the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, and even a couple of really cool projects that he is working on as well.

Hint: one is a very cool Subaru, and the other is an iconic Time Attack legend.

Enjoy the conversation and thank you for listening!

Few people have run as many different types of cars in the Pikes Peak Hill Climb as Rhys Millen. He has run front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive, and all-wheel cars in the Pikes Peak Hill climb from when the race was fully dirt, up to the present day where the entire road is now paved. Not only that but he has also run both internal combustion engine cars as well as fully electric cars in the race as well.

Rhys has been very successful in all of them.

When we reached out to see if we could talk with Rhys about his experiences running the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, he was actually getting ready to run the Norra 1000 race in Baja, California. He was racing in a car that he has designed at Rhys Millen Racing, the 4 wheel drive Jackal, so we definitely wanted to find out more about the development of that car as well.

We had a fantastic conversation with Rhys talking about all aspects of the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, off-road racing, rally, and we hope that you enjoy it.

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

Scotty, Ryan from DSX Motorsports, and Tasso from OTC Racing are all coming off of a big weekend of racing.

Tasso ran the Continental Divide Hill Climb, his first event in over a year. He walks us through his mental preparation after such a long break, how he got up to speed again, and how he did.

Scotty and Ryan ran with the NASA group at Pueblo Motorsports Park and they both had a really productive weekend. Scotty is still chasing a fueling issue but was able to get a good result from the weekend anyway. They both drove Scotty's car and offer interesting comparisons between it and Ryan's Super Taikyu car.

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned! 

We got the crew from Professional Awesome to join us to talk about Records, Time Attack, and a lot more.

We have been a fan of the Professional Awesome Podcast and the parts that they have started to make for a while now, and they have definitely inspired some details of our builds on a couple of cars, Scotty's 2011 STI in particular.

They have a fantastic Podcast as well (which you should check out if you have not already). We were really excited to have the opportunity to join in on a conversation with them.

We discuss how the Professional Awesome Crew came together and some of their history. We also talk about what their approach to a build is. We also got a lot of good information about the consultation that they do to help their customers build faster race cars.

And of course, we couldn't have the Professional Awesome guys on without talking about the significance of records. In Time Attack especially, winning is great, but for many of the competitors, the overall goal is to beat a record in a given class or to set an overall track record. That kind of mindset is one that we are starting to embrace, and it is one of the driving forces for the whole Professional Awesome crew.

This is a fantastic conversation, and we hope that you enjoy it.

Thanks for watching and Stay Tuned!

PS: We are pleased to announce that Professional Awesome parts are now available on our site!

We just had Dominic Acia of GetaDomTune on the podcast a few weeks ago, but he happened to be in the area and when he stopped by the shop, we had to sit down and record another conversation. One of the biggest questions or suggestions that we got after talking to Dom last time was about the Subaru FA20DIT and FA24DTI engines. So that is what we talk about here. Dom only had a limited amount of time so this conversation is somewhat short, but there is a lot of good information in here. If you have any other questions or topics that you would want us to discuss with Dominic, make sure to leave them in the comments below! Thanks for watching and Stay Tuned!

We sit down with our driver Scott Crouch, Ryan Dussex from DSX Motorsports, and Scotty from our shop. We go over our experiences running the 2021 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. 

This was the 99th running of the race, and our 10th consecutive year competing. We made a few positive changes to our race car, a 2014 WRX, and we saw signs in testing that we were headed into race week on the right path.

The way the Pikes Peak Hill Climb is run is unique because testing and qualifying occur for the entire week leading up to the actual race.

This year, a lot happened in the run-up to the race, and on race day itself, the mountain had another surprise in store for everyone as well.

Weather can be a factor any year on the Peak, but it was major for every single competitor this year.

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

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!

Smeedia returns to the Podcast for Episode #142 to talk about the end of his 6-Cylinder STI. This is Tanner's third time on the podcast and the original intent was to bring him back on after his 6-Cylinder STI was fully up and running. But now word has come out that he has decided to part out the EG33 6-Cylinder engine he has been working on for all this time, so we had to get him on to talk about it. It is safe to say that Tanner has put his heart and soul into this project, so it is certainly not an easy decision to change course at this point. So we wanted to get an idea as to what went into that decision. We also wanted to get an idea of what direction he might go in next. A big thanks to Smeedia for coming back to the Podcast, and I hope you enjoy the conversation! 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!

For Episode 25 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, we start off talking with Ryan from DSX Motorsports and Jeanette from Red Queen Racing about driving in the Global Time Attack event at The Ridge in Washington State. From there we open up a topic that has come up around the shop here a few times. Do you have to be humble as a driver to improve and get faster? Getting faster and being a better driver are pretty much the goals for all of us, but we have taken different paths to get there. 

One thing that we have been wondering is: Does your mindset have a big role to play in how you develop? We decided to discuss this and we hope you enjoy the conversation, and that it is helpful. 

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

For Episode 24 of the Flatirons Syndicate Podcast, I had the chance to sit down with Dave from Rallispec and pick his brain about pretty much every aspect of the Subaru drivetrain.

Dave founded Rallispec over 20 years ago, and he has a wealth of experience building pretty much every type of Subaru from modified street cars, Rally Cars, and track cars. He has more experience with just about any kind of Subaru transmission than anyone and I wanted to get his perspective on what works, and what doesn't and especially about options for the STI 6-speed. One of the topics that I particularly wanted to ask him about is dog-box gear sets, and sequential gear sets for the STI 6-speed because of the amount of experience that Rallispec has with those types of transmissions. We spent some time talking about this and Dave answered all of the questions that I had or could think of on these topics, and I think that this podcast is a great source of information if you are looking to upgrade your Subaru transmission. 

Thank you for listening, and Stay Tuned with Flatirons Tuning.