This week on the I Racing down Shift, it's a firecracker four hundred s
best. I hope that my forty three driver when we get to Wednesday that
they're just sick. Parker Clickerman and Landing Castle talk about well Nich their race
unique. You went to someone in real racing and said we're gonna make a
almost month long event, they would look at you like you're insane, and
some of their different approaches to watch. I have enough children to go between
us. Landing's got enough FI to start the Landing Castle from the one team
all this Mars strap In Welcome to the I Racing Down Shift, Tommy host
Greg West. So I'm back of the boys, Kevin Bobbitt and Chris Leone
episode fifty and a half. It's the first time we've ever done a half
episode. It's awesome. It's almost like we just have a two really good
guests and we have a really big event on I Racing this week, so
we kind of had to do it right now and we didn't have time to
do the rest of the fun yes, so it was like with this way
or not right and now Steve won't yell at us for this hill of us
for other things this week. Oh yeah, yeah this out if Chris edits
it in time, that's all on Chris's shoulders. And you people wonder why
I'm in therapy, don't. I don't wonder why boy you really toss that
soft. So lots going on. I racing U you know Spot twenty four
last weekend. We've got the the Firecracker four hundred coming on this week,
and we have the Race for More two point four coming up on August third.
That's a Thursday night. So a bunch of big special events coming up.
MS Society fundraiser ranks, Yes, that is the fundraiser. But where
you told me to be brief? Alright, so brief, but check the
forum post near you, check out the MS Society's website, and uh be
ready to save your money up so you can give Steve Myers and Chadkin assad
penalty because that's just fun for everybody, really, absolutely so, without further
ado, though, let's get our great guests on the podcast. So once
again, Parker Clickerman Landon Castle and they're here to talk about get Firecracker four
hundred an Irish. All right, we're back with all three of us this
time. Kevin and Chris have joined for the interview portion along with Parker Clickerman
and Landon Castle here to talk about some oval race coming up something like that.
Chris, why don't you take it away? Yeah, just when I
got out of interviews, you guys have dragged me back in other duties as
assigned. Yes, Parker, Landon. Awesome to have you guys on here
to talk about the third edition of the Firecracker four hundred and an awesome event.
I've been able to be involved a couple of times over the years,
but I kind of want to start all the way back at the beginning,
because I don't even know the story of how you guys kind of met up
and started working together. So I kind of want to go back to the
beginning. When did you two meet in racing and how did you guys kind
of strike up a friendship in the first place? Take Away? Yeah,
we so well. Parker and I've always kind of had shared experiences as in
the sport as professionals. We both kind of were brought into NASCAR as young
drivers attached to large organizations. We were both tasked around the same time period
as well as test drivers for these big organizations. Parker being at Penske,
myself being at Hendrick Motorsports, and so our journeys were very similar. And
we also even you know, had similar experiences that through those early years in
the Bush and nationwide Axfinity series all one series but three different names there.
We had different or similar experiences through those series because you know, we were
kind of given chances, but they weren't proper, you know, full time,
fully invested. It's we just had interesting experiences and a lot of alignment
there. So we were kind of always adjacent friends. I think, um
even you know when we racing the Cup Series against each other when he was
at swan Um and obviously we're both you know, strikingly handsome. So uh
that's so nobody can see that in a tank top. Yes, that's right.
Let be known for the record. More weeks of summer's almost over,
So I gotta follow up question. You guys are such good friends on track,
Does that mean you've never had any contact on track like ever? I
don't know. I think we've raced the Yeah, I don't think we've ever
ran into each other. Never good for you've never had any you know,
major maybe an eye racing now Attom set the You know. The funny thing
is like we yeah, we both also have an affinity for eye racing,
and I think I racing is ultimately what what really you know, hit off
the friendship or helped it bond the most. UM. You know, through
that time period, we were both big SIM racers and had our hands in
the earliest editions of eye racing UM. And so when the pandemic came around,
UM, we both maybe because we think alike and we have similar career
trajectories and and everything, we both saw the opportunity to race UM, to
use the time in the pandemic UM to hone our skills on eye racing.
And so we both not just participated in in the Pro Invitational series and and
even beyond Pro Invitational just the whole platform itself. We didn't just participate in
that. I think you know, both of us fully invested in it,
UM and and I think you can see how we reap the benefits. I
mean, the partnerships that came out of that for myself with UM, you
know, Blue EMU and UM Parker with UH with the E NASCAR team and
UM and really all that that kind of synergy is what formed Eracer in the
summer of twenty twenty. Um, and so we were just fully invested in
in sim racing and uh and then obviously are the continuation of our similar lives
has continue to pan out. The only the biggest difference in our two lives
is I have enough children to last to go between us while he's still you
know, the single life. Not single. He's in a healthy relationship,
but for a married guy would clarify there quickly, right, Yeah, basically
Landing has enough. Yeah, Landon's got enough kids to start the Landing Castle
from the one team. Yeah, I've kept it lean over here. Yeah,
he can have a full pit stop. So I think one thing just
to expand on that, like in that period of summer twenty twenty to give
you credit. Um, you know, and as you mentioned, we were
part of the earliest I was on an email chain of the original first email
that was like, hey, when the pandemic hit, we should do an
eye racing race with all the cup with all the cup drivers, everything was
Steve and everyone. So uh, I felt very attached. What's that.
I know. I'm sorry, it's true. Um, that's a great point.
We should do that. But then you know, from that moment onward,
uh As Landon said, we really you know, leaned into the Provitational,
which was a cool experience considering what was going on in the world the
time, right and um, from that moment, you know, just struck
up a friendship. We practiced a lot, and then Landing came to me
and said, hey, I want to do like a big event. I
want to He's like, what would because he had done the lc QC many
if you remember back the Lending Jaw Castle's Qualifying Challenge, which I think I
participated back Landing when you were you know, qualifying in the Cup Series all
the time. It was a really cool idea where hundreds of sin racers had
to do, you know, try to go through this bracket to become you
know, do one lap for a huge amount of money and off that,
I think it spawned your idea of like doing an even bigger event. And
that's when the eighty seven car was coming out and it was like you just
said, I want to do the Firecracker four hundred and I thought, well,
that's really cool. I'm it. So that's you know, that's the
genesis of it, and you know, it's been cool to see it come
to life. And then that first year I couldn't I could not believe the
response, and I could not believe how much money we spent thinking it happened,
and how well it worked on this service and you know, the platform
that I Racing provided to do it, and it was so cool, and
I think over three hundred and fifty competitors that year or something. And then
to see what it became came in twenty twenty one was insane. And now,
you know, in the third edition, I was just saying earlier,
I feel like, to me, you know, this is the second amount
second highest amount of competitors, so more than twenty twenty not quite as many
as twenty twenty one, but the enthusiasm and the dedication of the competitors this
time around, and even the recognition amongst just viewers and people in the racing
industry that have come up to me of the last couple of week they've been
paying attention, it's unbelievable. You know what this has become and sort of
the brand and what it's you know, what's known to be and so it's
just a really cool event. But I got to give Landing credit in that
you know it came from his brain. You know, it's funny going into
the original some of the original goals of the Firecracker four hundred when we were
like, let's make this event huge. One of our main guiding principles of
this event, you know, as Eracer, right, not just even beyond
just Parker and Landon putting on the Firecracker four hundred, like the Eracer team
and everybody that puts the event on, one of our guiding principles is that
we wanted to make our competitors feel important. We wanted them, we wanted
to make celebrities out of them if we could. We wanted to make superstars
out of them if we could maybe maybe superstars is a better word, because
we wanted the event to be so big and so important that that it meant
something to these drivers and it wasn't just another fun sim race. And that
goes down to every detail, like the format of the event and how difficult
it is to navigate through the event and just just making it to the Firecracker
four hundred itself isn't just reserved for the best sim racer. It's really just
the best sim racer of that day, and the one with the most luck.
Maybe at times, you know, we talk about weather vara variation and
things like that, but also our promotion of the event. Um. You
know, one of the original things that we did in the days leading up
to the event of the original Firecracker was we made hero cards for each starter
in the race because we wanted them to to a have something special that like
recognize their accomplishment that they would promote on social media and use to promote the
event because you know, again, our goal is that we want to make
make these competitors superstars. And it's funny because as this then the second edition
and now you know, two years later in this third edition of the Firecracker
four hundred, one of the the biggest accomplishments or maybe biggest satisfaction I get
out of that goal is when I see our competitors with sponsors for the Firecracker
four hundred, and these are we don't again it get you know, we
have our own partners of the event and our own sponsors that you know,
because we spend it, like Parker said, We've spent a lot of money
to put on this event, and we help subsidize that with sponsorship. We
get nothing out of our competitors getting sponsorship. But it's so cool to see
them out there fundraising for their paint schemes and promoting partnerships and legitimate you know,
partnerships across the industry, whether they're racing endemic or non racing endemic.
We've seen it all and we see them promoting on our timelines, and to
me, that is like one of the ultimate signs that that our initiative is
working, that we want this to be, you know important, to the
point that maybe Corporate America is going to look at this and be like,
how can we be involved in this event? For sure? I want to
go back to that format just for a second, because by the time this
comes out, we're going to be preparing for the big show, the four
hundred miler. But it's three weeks to get to that Wednesday night race.
So the forty three drivers that are there, I want to go back to
the beginning, how did they get there? Because it's a very complex and
detailed qualifying over multiple weeks. You mentioned weather variables, There's so much going
on. How did these drivers get there? You want to take this or
me? Yeah, I've been doing a lot of talking, but I will
I will start with I will take this one too. So the if you
I think it's to go all the way back to the beginning, I do
want to start with the race itself. The spirit of the racist of is
that we wanted to replicate the original Firecracker four hundred. It's very similar to
the thought of replicating an Indy five hundred on I Racing or a Daytona five
hundred on I Racing. You know, you want to have those important elements
like the duels and you know those the twin races or the four lap qualifying.
You know, for the Firecracker back then in nineteen eighty seven, it
was two rounds of qualifying, or at least that was a hallmark of that
period, was two rounds of qualifying. You know, obviously with these cars,
they're very special because just running an eighty seven car round Daytona fully trimmed
out at two hundred miles an hour, is actually no easy task. So
that was the most important thing, was like, Okay, we want to
have a forty three car field that was made up from two round qualifying,
right, but we also want an event that can support hundreds of competitors.
So we had to figure out how do we go from three or four or
five hundred competitors down to let's say eighty eight competitors so that those eighty eight
competitors can do our two round qualifying and then they can be split. You
know that can eighty eight is a meaningful number, and it has a lot
to do with the size of the servers and things like that, but it
was a meaningful number that said, hey, a lot of guys are going
to invest in single car qualifying, not all of them are going to make
it right. So we basically custom created this format, this tournament bracket to
go from four hundred, five hundred, you know it can it can manage
up to about almost five hundred competitors. And that is very similar to what
you would see at like the Knoxville Nationals or or the Chili Bowl, where
the competitors are grouped into prelimb sessions, prelimb events. You know, at
the Chili Bowl, it's everybody runs Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night,
Thursday night. And within those prelimbs, I think we fill out an
entire server. So there's sixty two drivers and each each prelimb, and there
is where they have to go through single car qualifying, a heat race where
there's no cautions in the heat race, so those are a little bit wild,
and then a consolation race. If you don't transfer through your heat race,
there's a there's a consolation race which has soft cautions, so lenient cautions.
Lenient cautions, I think is our is our actual terminology for that.
And then that field gets narrowed down into a somewhere around thirty six to forty
car field where we take the top eleven out of that prelim feature forty lap
feature. There's a pit stop, you know, we adjust the fuel loads
so that there's has to be some strategy involved. We take the top eleven
out of that. That's what gets our eighty eight car two round qualifying fields.
So the reason it takes three weeks is because one of our original our
other original principles of this was we wanted to take time. We want to
consume IE racing for three weeks. We want to take up everybody's time for
three weeks because because we feel like that is part of this emotional commitment that
it that makes the event important. I hope that my forty three drivers when
we get to Wednesday, after all of the prelim stress and the open qualifying,
and they went from fixed setups to open setups and all this stuff.
That they get to Wednesday and they are so exhausted that they're just sick and
they're nervous and and and when the race is over, I want the depression
to set in. But it's over, because that's what makes things important.
That's what makes things feel um, you know, that's what brings out the
emotion, and that's what you know, you enjoy the whole you you you
ultimately you enjoy it. I'm being a little dramatic, but but that commitment
is what makes the event important. You guys have definitely done a lot about
in terms of making it like leaving it into the fabric of some racing.
It's it's really amazing. And if I could just add on to that,
you know, the three weeks also allows storylines to play out content. You
know, that was as Landon said, consume I racing, but like consume
the common station for that time period to us was something that you know,
in real racing, they've gotten away from that, right with the eighty five
hundred used to be a month long the Daytona five hundred speed Weeks was a
month. It's all now being condensed because of costs and financial reasons and that
sort of thing to shorter time periods. And for us, one of the
other guiding principles of working with you guys at Eye Racing and the amazing platform
you provide to us is allows us to do what real racing can right and
right now, If you went to someone in real racing and said we're gonna
make a almost month long event, they would look at you like you're insane
because that would cost of bajillion dollars and no one could feasibly do it.
And on I Racing, we can do that. So I think that's one
part that really, you know, allows the sim racing sort of motorsport tournament
to play out. I know that you've got the Chili Bowl and you've got
Naxo Nationals that sort of thing, but I think for this, you know,
the idea of a stock car race and four hundred miles and that sort
of thing, it can live on as a month long event basically in Eye
Racing, and the tournament aspect, to me is my favorite part because I
know I've been a part of you know, the all the great special events
you guys do. I've done the D five hundred, I've done the U
you know, Towy fo Hours in Daytona, which is one of my favorite,
Towy Fer hours of Dumber, granging at the bathrooms, twelve hour those
are awesome. And there's you guys, you know, have thousands and thousands
and thousands of people around on the world all competing simultaneously. You know.
I think the firecracker is in the I is sort of the idea of,
hey, how can we have almost everyone feel like they're in the same race,
right, and they're going towards one race in general, And so maybe
there's a little bit of limitation in terms of the size that could get to
in the scale, but it it does allow it to feel pretty big when
hundreds of people are posting about it and that sort of thing. So well,
it's more exclusive, I mean that was yeah that you know. It's
it's not in nothing against leagues, because leagues are a very good thing and
they serve a great purpose. But leagues are almost by definition exclusive, right
because you have to you have a limited number of field and it's the same
drivers over and over weeks kind of achieving a goal of a points championship or
something. It has to sort of limit itself to that group of drivers.
Where we're taking the same concept of a league, right, because we're taking
weeks to promote and put on this event. Even the weeks before the event
actually starts. There's practice races and this like community building around it because people
get together and they race together. It actually almost operates as if we came
to the public and said, hey, we want to put on a six
week league where the nineteen eighty seven car runs, right Where in this league,
we're just going to run Daytona with the nineteen eighty seven car for six
weeks straight. Except it's not a league. It's a tournament, right,
So it's way more inclusive. It's scalable, you know, the scale,
the flexibility of the competitors is way more scalable. We can support hundreds of
competitors and they're all racing against each other regularly through their practice races and the
prelimbs and qualifying and things like that. But it's not exclusive like a league.
It's funny you say that because one of our big things this year,
one of the big pushes of I racing is community building. You know,
there's already enough real world barriers to entry to real world racing. You two
have lived that life. That's why people got involved in SIM racing, because
they didn't have the financial means, you know, or the luck to make
it to the big show. Yet there's you know, other places where now
that you're seeing more and more barriers be put up in SIM racing, But
with I racing special events or events like this, the barriers dropped. If
if you can wheel it, you can get in the race. And that's
why I think this is such a cool event. Even though it's not one
of our our you know, regular Eye Racing official special events, it kind
of falls into it. This might be the only sort of private event that
we've ever promoted, like you know, I mean we could talk about when
we get excited about usually we're like, oh, we want to talk about
our stuff. But this was really cool. But it's such an added value
to the community, and you guys do such a great job promoting it,
and it's a ton of fun. And you're right though, you guys take
over I racing, especially the oval side for this period of time. That's
all anybody's talking about. That's all social media is talking about. You know,
it spalls over and now it's firecracker and you know, be rated you
guys to get on a on a podcast at you know, eleven o'clock on
it. I love it so yeah. I just think it's super cool.
And just the way you've set some of these things up. I mean,
you know, landing, You've got such a history with qualifying on I Racing,
and these two rounds are qualifying. But I think my favorite part is
the weather variable and when you go into second round qualifying and you've got to
gamble if you're not in the top twenty, that's already made it in.
And is it going to be a cooler day? Is it going to be
a warmer day? And we saw some surprises this year and setting the grid?
Yeah wait real quick, go on. Have you hung out in our
discord though, in the competitors chat, because I don't know if they agree
with the weather variation, competitors don't like the rules. Yeah, it's so
so. I don't want to, you know, make fun of competitors anyway,
but just so they know, as real race car drivers, you know,
we deal with as everyone knows in racing immense amount of variables. I
like to say racing is the art of basically managing unlimited variables, right,
And that's part of the Firecracker four hundred lores that this was a grueling race,
right, that was incredibly tough, and so we want that to be
a part of the sim racing version. And part of that is making it
as realistic as possible with the you know, the weather variation you guys provide
on the platform and therefore using that and that means you're not always going to
get the ideal conditions, which is a wonderful discussion on our discord each and
every Firecracker four hundred and this year here maybe more spectacular than ever, but
for us we love it because it's like, hey, you know, as
much as you guys are frustrated, that is everything we go through weekend and
week out in real life racing. One of my favorite competitor moments on that
discussion was when our dear friend Blake McCanless, who obviously you guys know him
well at eye Racing and we know him well at Eracer because of his how
much he helps out. Um he's uh, you know an absolute staunch supporter.
I think it's at the right word of of what we do at ERACER
and participates in everything we do. When he finally made a comment in our
discord and a frustration with the weather variability and felt like it was too high,
um and at the weather variable was just too high, and the weather
was changing too quickly and the track was changing too quickly, And I simply
just responded to his message and said, you either die a hero or you
live long enough to complain about Eraser weather format qualifying formats. But you know,
it's funny the other the other thing, um and not. You know,
I'm not trying to just minimize any complaints about that because because our you
know, our rule book is a living, breathing document, and that's one
thing that we do with these events that that is difficult, you know that
that Eye Racing can't do or doesn't do with the official events. You know,
the operations of this event isn't entirely scalable. It's it's very labor intensive.
You know, we're we're taking on this manual task of adjusting some rules
and formatting and using certain parts of the service to create this sort of custom
event and it fits just perfect for this audience that we're trying to make.
But you know, our everything is living and breathing and nothing is perfect,
and so we're constantly trying to improve it. But for a lot of the
weather complaints that I've gotten this year, especially because the weather was so volatile
in Daytona, in real Daytona over the course of two days and that translated
into our weather for that Firecracker four hundred qualifying, you know, we had
some people that were just just truly critical of it, and We're like,
you just need to be fixed weather, or they want to blame Eye Racing
and say that, you know, Ie Racing has a you know, issues
with their weather. And my response to that is like, Hey, anybody
who has an issue with the weather changing and it changing the speed on you
know, and you're qualifying and from one car to the next has never or
tried to qualify at Indianapolis Motor Speedway at ten o'clock in the morning because a
single cloud on a day that is it's seventy five degrees but the forecast is
going to be ninety in two hours and there's some clouds in the sky and
you're trying to make one lap round two and a half mile racetrack. You
will the variation. And here's another actually thing that puts this all together.
Our field and I in a Firecracker, four hundred is so tight. It
is so competitive. We're talking about hundreds of a second, right, well,
in real life at Indianapolis Motor Speedway or any of these big tracks.
The reason I use Indias and examples because it's a big track that we used
qualify in the morning. A single cloud could swing your lap three tenths of
a second or four tenths of a second, not three or four hundreds,
right, And so for these drivers in the Firecracker to be upset because they're
like, man, I had a pull winning car. Somehow I went from
having a top five capable car and I didn't even make the cut. I'm
like, we'll shoot the cut from first to twentieth, and our race is
only two hundreds or a couple hundreds. So you know, it's in my
mind. I look, I see some of the weather variability that's on the
platform and that's happening, and I'm like, I don't know, I still
think it's realistic. It's a features, not a bug. We've been there.
I, Kevin and I have had this discussion and then on the receiving
end of this argument. Remember we tried changing the qualifying open qualifying for a
special event a couple of years ago and had had a variable weather on and
I think I'm still getting similar conversations. Yeah, it's tough though, like
you, it's one of those things and not you know, I know we
want to keep the talk about firecrackers stuff, and I want to keep talking
about but I do want to make a point that this is where it's tough
to make decisions, you know, and rely on driver feedback, because the
drivers inherently want what's most comfortable, most predictable, you know, what makes
them feel best behind the wheel. It's just like I used to see have
this frustration when we would do Good Year tire tests because I was racing full
time in the Cup Series. We'd go do a good Year tire test and
you as the driver, you're you're driving these different tires and they're giving you
these tires and you're out there by yourself, you're not in a racing environment,
and they go, which tire did you like better? And it's like,
well, you ask me that question. I'm going to tell you I
like the one that had the most grip, that was the fastest, that
had the least amount of fall off. You know, in my car,
drove the best on that tire. Like it's inherent for me to say I
liked that tire. It was more fun to drive, it had more grip.
But then you get in the race and you go, oh, this
tire sucks. We can't race in traffic. It's got too much grip.
It's got there's no fall off. It's you know, like we can't.
We never change the tires or we only take right sides. It's like,
well, that's the tire we picked because at the test you just asked me
which one I like better. So it's tough. It is tough to to
rely on drivers. I don't you know. We deal with it enough with
the Firecracker. I can only imagine trying to build a whole platform and satisfy
them. Try try setting an incident limit for the spot twenty four but we
got close. But the roles the day twenty four hours we've had, we've
run into that it's limit a couple of times, so we know all about
it. Steve, Yeah, stand the track. That's key, That is
the key. Nope, yeah, we won't go down track limits. Don't
even bring that up. Forty five minutes later, bus stop, I'm guessing
exit the bus stop. That's back to life. That's right. We should
just bring in you know, dynamic suspension where you hit it enough it he
just ripped your suspension off eventually, you know, really nobody would ever get
mad about that. Ever. There you go. All right, guys,
well, we appreciate you guys taking the time to come on. Super stoked.
Firecracker four hundred qualifying four is ongoing. We got the big event coming
up this week. What times the main race? It's Wednesday? Right,
what time? Yes, Wednesday eight am eight pm is close, which yep,
all right, that's perfect and we will be well. Parker and I
will be back in the studio with suits and ties with David Shieldhouse for the
main event. The Firecracker is dressed like you're dressed now come on. No
no, no, no, I'm not. And the two hundreds tonight as
we're recording this on Monday, so which is you know, just the one
last thing on that is obviously the top eighty eight that make it to that
second round, I'll get a chance at a race because aside for a couple
alternates, because we do the Firecracker two hundred, which as a full fuel
and they race for considerable prize in that as well. And and then you
know they we have the Firecracker for on on Wednesday, so and the broadcast
for the two hundred is usually a different crew, and we got a different
crew tonight, so we try to give a little different flavor. Cool.
So Chris a little bit of pressure, do you get this edited and out
today so that we can promote their race tonight? Yeah? Come on,
He's like, stops talking so I can get this editor. Well. I
do have one more question though, Are you going to bring the suits and
ties to the next recording of the Money Lap? We should? We should
just go we should go straight from Money Lap into Firecrackers. So we're wearing
uh so we're in our full suit and ties. Yes. Listen to the
Money Lot podcast. Thank you for the plug there. Chris Parker and I
do have a podcast. We talk about all motorsports, not just NASCAR UM
as well as the money Lab newsletter that goes out three times a week.
So that's been fun. Building that out. Very cool. All right,
well, yeah, thanks a lot. Guys over each other for a little
bit. That's what we usually do. Yeah, usually just him and I
arguing on this podcast. All right, park figurem atlantic Castle, thanks a
lot. Looking forward to the show this week and uh yeah we'll have like
to keep you guys back on and talk about other I raising endeavors. Also
we need to tell Parker about the time I took this place car the Lime
Rock, but that's another story. Training. See you guys, Thank you. See