SPEAKER_02: 0:16

Well, we are back with a second season of Track Side, the podcast for Marshalls. My name is Jimmy Osborne.

SPEAKER_01: 0:24

And I'm Jessica Elta.

SPEAKER_02: 0:26

And we are beginning our second year, second season of interviewing and interviewing officials, race officials, race administrators, marshals, other people that are involved in the motorsports world, especially here in the U.S., but from wherever we can find them, and they'll agree to put a microphone in front of their face. But uh we are continuing with yet more interviews in a second season of the podcast. And uh, Jess, I'm really excited about that.

SPEAKER_01: 0:57

Yeah, I who'd have thunk it that we we didn't get canceled in our first season. We're still, you know, of course, we have no sponsors to cancel us, so I guess that's maybe why. But no, I don't know. No, it's it's this has been so fun, and and I think we're we got some really good ones in store for this season, especially our our season premiere today with who we're talking to, which we'll get to later. Yeah, yeah, so we'll yeah, what have we even up to?

SPEAKER_02: 1:24

Found our groove as this season went on last year, and uh so it's our job to keep it going and maybe even ramp it up a little bit more in 2026. And uh I think we're up to the challenge.

SPEAKER_01: 1:38

I don't think so. I'm I'm afraid to go back and listen to those first couple. We were probably I was probably horrendously I know I was so I'm afraid you're awesome, but uh no, it's been it's been fun. I I we have gotten complimented that it seems to be it seems to have gotten a little more cohesive as time's gone on.

SPEAKER_02: 1:56

So that's well that's also the introduction of third third-party voices, but that's also a good thing to do. Yeah, that's true. Yes, they've they've certainly been fun to produce, and um, it's been great to have a few friends tag along for the journey, and um uh so yeah, our first year ended with 13 episodes. We had somewhere around a thousand downloads from literally all over the world. That was a really good start, and um I think uh that given this somewhat of a it's not really a niche, it's just a specialty. That I I saw on Instagram a reel explaining the difference between a niche and a specialty, and I think we're not quite niche. Yes, more motorsports marshaling is not a big thing, but it's not niche, niche is crypto and people that work in developing crypto apps, you know. Okay, that's that was the example they used, by the way. Specialties is motorsports, motorsports marshaling, because doesn't matter what you're doing, as you heard through our 13 episodes, they're going to be marshals at every single one of them, and so that's been the fun part about uh getting to do this podcast with you. So, what have you been up to in 2026 so far?

SPEAKER_01: 3:13

Yeah, well, I think um, you know, got got some SECA stuff going in the in the early part of the year. I was um I uh surprisingly graduated from the steward training program with the SECA. I was like, what? Are you sure?

SPEAKER_02: 3:29

Congratulations. No, that's really that's really a cool thing.

SPEAKER_01: 3:33

Uh so I'm a regional steward. I know that's still that's still not really, you know, the to to really be able to be legit, you gotta you gotta move up to the city. I'm on the ladder now. So that was that was very cool. And so um yeah, so I got to to be to do my first race um on as a regional steward, um, which was at uh Motorsport Ranch Crescent in Texas. And I worked on the M, which is steward of the meat. So that's kind of like you're part of the court. So if there's any type of um request for action, I won't get into all the details of the forms and stuff. The famous, yes, the famous uh SECA paperwork. We won't get into that. That's a whole episode. So um, but it essentially the internet show, what it is is if there's any kind of, you know, like if the marshal calls in, you know, hey, we I witness contact between two cars at this turn, whatever, or a passenger in yellow or anything like that. What will happen is that gets called in, the operating steward or the chief steward will write up uh, you know, either chief steward action if they saw it, or you know, a request for action as it's called, and then that comes to us as the SOM to investigate. And so typically what that entails is we have to go track down the drivers involved and get their in-car footage that is a GCR general competition rules requirement that for racing you must have a camera running in your car at all times. So we will what we'll do is we'll review that, we'll review witness statements, this and that and whatever, and then we would make our decision. So that's your kind of uh judge, jury, whatever you want to call it. So that was that was very uh interesting experience. So that was cool. So yeah, that that was kind of it. And um that was really, yeah, that's it. I think for I think that's it.

SPEAKER_02: 5:21

Yeah, but it's only but considering that we're in the first we're considering this is the first week of February as we record this, that's that's a pretty big checkbox that you've cleared just in the first five weeks of the year.

SPEAKER_01: 5:34

It was fun, it was very cool. And I guess I I was in the SAT program for a year. I don't know if there's this, it's just kind of if you kind of do all the rotations and you know, okay, yeah, you you're you seem to be getting it. We're gonna move you up. So I'm still, you know, of course we go up divisional and then national steward, so that would be kind of the next, you know, steps. So we'll see. But um, I am planning to, I have penciled in to go to the runoffs this year. I've heard that's a really that's almost kind of, I don't know if it's a requirement, but it's a it's a very small for the SCA Marshall, and you need to do it.

SPEAKER_02: 6:08

I I did my first runoffs last year at Start, and it was fantastic. I had a great time, and I plan on going back again. So there you go. All right.

SPEAKER_01: 6:18

All right. We'll all have to rent a house, all of us. All of us going.

SPEAKER_02: 6:22

Well, we'll need more Texans to go to to get that going. But uh that's a whole yeah, that's a whole different podcast episode.

SPEAKER_01: 6:30

Yes, but um, I've heard like stewarding the runoff specifically is a really cool thing. Um, because you can kind of do one day in each of the things if you're there the whole time or whatever.

SPEAKER_02: 6:40

So I have penciled in to do, I'm hoping to do like four days, hopefully, and to kind of do some rotations and meet all these famous or infamous, whatever you want to say, people that you always kind of hear about runoffs and and all the people at the national office, because they'll all be the yes, yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 6:57

It's like the Super Bowl of SECA. So like, am I allowed to say Super Bowl? Is that it's trademarked.

SPEAKER_02: 7:03

Well, we're gonna say it anyway.

SPEAKER_01: 7:05

Okay, we might get sued by the NFL.

SPEAKER_02: 7:08

Well, you said S O U P, right? See? Yes, there you go.

SPEAKER_01: 7:13

Yes, I did superb owl. That's what I meant. You know, owl. Superb Owl. Yeah, that's what I meant. But anyway, what have you been up to? You had a trip recently.

SPEAKER_02: 7:22

Well, other than a few um track days at Circuit of the Americas, which uh were really just track days, but um the big racing event that I got to experience was my very first Rolex 24 hours, and uh that was courtesy of the SCCA. So I was named worker of the year two years ago in 2024 as uh starter of the year, and there are seven, I believe seven-ish, the number can vary. Um, workers of the year announced every year at the runoffs. You were announced among this the winners last year at the at the runoffs, so uh you know a little bit about that from the external side, but um, in any case, um one of those recipients, just one of the seven-ish recipients, is chosen to win an all-expense paid trip sponsored by Mazda to any race that Mazda is affiliated with, and um, I was the lucky winner of the trip in 2024, and things fell through the cracks. There were some personal changes in Topeka, and we really didn't start the planning for my trip until late in the year, and then of course it was Formula One, and I was busy with a bunch of other things, and so as we were kind of entering our discussions, it was really deep into the fall, and um, and uh the folks at the the Topeka, the folks in the main office of SCCA said, Well, you could still go to blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and the Rolex 24, blah blah blah. And my brain stopped at the Rolex 24. I said, That's on the on the table, even though it's in January. They said, Absolutely, we'll make that happen. And so I said, That's the race I want to go to. So um, I had to come up with the plus one, and of course, my wife Stacy is always the first person I look to, but she is a casual race fan, and uh probably would not have enjoyed most of the 24-hour experience as uh as I would have. So she very generously deferred to my son Eric, who um you know as well. And uh Eric and I went and absolutely nerded out. So it was the first race I had been to as a spectator, I figured out in 12-ish years. And um, I used to go to indie car races up at Texas, Texas Motorsports, gone to one in uh Phoenix, and you know, here and there, but I hadn't been to one since I started marshalling in 2014. And looking back on it with travel and things, I figured out it had been about 12 years. So going to a spec a race as a spectator is a blast. I had forgotten how much fun it is, and of course, Imsa and and everyone involved with the Rolex 24, they pull out all the stops, they advertise what they call the great the the largest fan grid walk in all of racing, and I have to agree. Um, for both the the four-hour race that they have on Friday, the Michelin pilot challenge, that uh is a sanctioned race, but it's sort of a practice race with sort of the junior little junior teams of of uh IMSA. They put on you know a fabulous grid walk and then a four-hour race, and that was a lot of fun. Uh, then we got to do the big grid walk, and uh because of SECA, we got to where you know the really nice all-access credentials that IMSA occasionally provides, and um, that was a lot of fun. So we're able to go to places that not a lot of the ticket buying fans got to go. Uh, we get to go, you know, right behind the grid and pit walk, uh, the pit wall, you know. So we're literally right behind the teams, couldn't go out onto the pit lane, you know, or anywhere close to it. But you know, you can get pretty close, and of course, basically able to go anywhere we wanted to go. So I think it was a great first experience because you know, a big event like that at a big facility like Daytona Mo International Speedway, you know, you got to kind of learn your way around. And I think going as a fan kind of lets you know how the event is organized, how things work, how to get around, where things are. And then now when we go back, I want to go back and work. And going back and working, you know, now I've seen it, now I know what that's like. Now I know, you know, what the merchandise works, you know, the where the merchandise trucks are and and how the shifts work, you know, on the corners, and you know, that marshals do get to go around and participate in some things, which I would love to do, you know, being a marshal on a corner there at uh at the Rolex. So, you know, it was it was a really, really, really fun experience. And of course, you know, besides that, those nice credentials that we had, then our friends, the Imsa starter, uh start team, allowed us to come up on the on the box for uh we were able to go up to the start stand and I was able to actually film because I was a fan and behind the tape, I could actually film. So I had my 360 camera with me, which is the Insta360 camera that I brought, I bought for Egypt, and I'm I'm still working on that footage by the way. But um, so I got to film a restart from the Michelin Pilot Challenge from the start stand. And let me tell you something, it looks awesome in 3D. I was wearing my Quest 3 headset, and it looks like you're actually up on the start stand, so it was actually really neat. Um, we got to go. Uh let's see, where else do we get to go? We got to go see so many great things. Our friends, the Bryans, um, spotters for the Reese Competizione 62 uh Ferrari in the GT GTD Pro class. I get all those acronyms all bungled up. Uh, they brought us up and to let us watch what they do from the spotter suite, which was an absolute treat. Talk about something you don't have any idea as a marshal that goes on. Um, it was completely eye-opening. It's so cool that we got to go up there. We were up there for the night practice on Friday. Um, our friend Gabby, Gabby Casolino got us in. She invited us to come up to race control, which was really cool, and um got to see the uh 24 race control uh from IMSA's point of view, and it was very different, as you're about to hear. So, yeah, it was a great experience. My huge thanks go out to the SCCA for sponsoring that trip for us. Eric and I had an absolute blast, and uh the folks at SCCA make that happen. And uh, you know, if you're fortunate enough to win one of those trips, then make sure to send the SCCA some pictures and let them know how much you enjoyed it because it is an absolute once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01: 14:58

Ah, that is so cool. So, I have to ask you, did you stay the full 24 hours for the week?

SPEAKER_02: 15:04

Actually, the whole time we were on premises the entire 24 hours. Now I'm gonna tell you from 1 a.m. to about 4:30, it was pretty rough. My app, my weather app said it was 60 degrees. That was the coldest 60 degrees I have ever felt. We weren't, you know, had we copped a blanket from the hotel, we would have been fine.

SPEAKER_03: 15:32

Yeah, but we weren't. You didn't have your Vegas jacket?

SPEAKER_02: 15:35

I did, I did, but I didn't I didn't bring it with me. I I thought, ah, 60, it'll be fine. It was still in the hotel, but I had my my coda jacket with me, and I I rocked the coda jacket all weekend long, so we were there, we weren't necessarily happy, but we were there, but what we were able to do.

SPEAKER_03: 15:57

We stuck it out.

SPEAKER_02: 15:58

We did stick it out, and one of the things that we were able to do is we um decided, you know, at 4:30, it's kind of like, well, the heck with it. We're not gonna get any sleep. Let's just go. And so we made our way back down to Pit Lane, and uh our friend Morgan Least was on the uh doing the night shift for Imsa. He's working overnights, and um, so we were able to kind of wave at him a little bit and uh kind of get some unauthorized footage from some places we maybe probably couldn't or shouldn't have been, but we were there for a little bit and got some really cool footage and then we got out, so yeah, it was it was a lot of fun, but it was a really, really neat experience, and yeah, that fog was no joke. I know that people made memes out of it, and it had been foggy that morning, you know. When we got to the track on Saturday morning, it was already fog, or I'm sorry, Friday morning. No, it was Saturday morning, it was really foggy, and so I wasn't really surprised when after the race started and the fog had kind of come down a little bit. Um, you could see the fog coming in, and I was like, Oh, this is gonna be bad, they're gonna have to make some decisions, and sure enough, they had to go yellow. And I I said, Why are we yellow? Because you know, you normally look out and see you know emergency vehicles moving and all that, and I didn't see anything. There were some fans, one of them was wearing a uh a raccoon onesie. Now that's the thing if you're a racing, if uh racing racing vandals, yeah. Yes, the the I've seen that car, but the racing vandals, uh the vandals team, it their raccoon is their mascot. Apparently, somebody had bought their onesie and was wearing it anyway. I said, Why are we why are we yellow? And uh he said, fog, and I thought, are you kidding? And then I realized, yep, that's exactly what we were doing, but yeah, so that was our our 24. It was a great experience, so much fun to be a part of. Everybody, huge crowd, gigantic crowd, and you would never know it looking at the stands because you know, they're they can put something like a quarter million people in the stands, yeah. But um, but you know, there was a gigantic crowd, it was very, very crowded, tons of sports car enthusiasts, and everybody was great, it was uh a great experience. The racing was wonderful, just all around, highly recommend going to the 24 and taking one in if you're a race fan or a worker. They finally they told me they finally have enough had enough workers at this last event, but occasionally they don't. And uh boy, Central Florida uh put together a pretty good program and and got that staffed up. And uh yeah, there you go. Oh, we got to the Texas crew that was out working the kink it turned five as well.

SPEAKER_01: 18:52

I was gonna say, I think we a lot of people we knew were Kevin Taylor, Perry, Lee Tilton was there.

SPEAKER_02: 18:58

We saw Lee uh and Brad um from the Houston or the Houston region, Lee's from Louisiana. Uh, we saw them there later, but we didn't see them when we were on the corner because they were off shift at the time. But uh saw uh Kevin and Perry and uh a couple of the other Texas folks down there at at the kink turned four.

SPEAKER_01: 19:16

Oh, cool. Well, there you go. Next year, that's that's where you'll be. You're working next time, huh?

SPEAKER_02: 19:21

Uh yeah, I'd like to. I love endurance racing, so any yes, anything to do with it, I'm I'm there for it. But uh yeah, that would that was a fabulous event, just every bit that I thought it would be.

SPEAKER_01: 19:33

That's super cool. And um, our guest today was there. He kind of talks a little bit about that. Do we want to give an intro?

SPEAKER_02: 19:41

Go for it, you're already on a roll.

SPEAKER_01: 19:43

Oh, okay. Well, so today we have uh Jim Swinthal. And uh, if you're if you ever worked um any of the F1 races in the United States, you've probably heard his voice before.

SPEAKER_02: 19:53

Or an indie car race.

SPEAKER_01: 19:54

Or an indie car race, I should say. Yeah, I how could I forget? He talks a lot about that. And IMSA, he does all kinds of stuff as you're gonna hear. But I would think that probably, yeah, our our anyone that's listening to this probably knows him from F1 or Indy, probably because he does some other things for the other series that I didn't know about. I thought he was Marshall Comms, so that I certainly learned something new. So you're gonna hear a little bit about the other role, the other hats he wears, which are there's many of them. Fascinating story for sure. So uh yeah, we we know him. I think that's where you and I at least know him from initially, right? Is F1. That's where I first met him.

SPEAKER_02: 20:29

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 20:30

The same for you, I assume, yeah. So, but yes, he's very heavily involved with um some of the other series in the United States. And so um, yeah, I think uh we'll just jump right into our interview with Jim Swintell.

SPEAKER_00: 20:46

So we'll we'll start with the uh the proper part of this by thanking you guys for the opportunity. I was part of a podcast when I was the Marshall Communicator for Champcar. It was a weekly thing. Uh, and I kind of came off as an expert because I was the only person in race control who was talking about some of the things that were happening on the racetrack. So I I really enjoyed it. Uh, and uh I appreciate you guys giving me the opportunity to get back to it. But uh as far as my uh racing origin story, I grew up in South Bend, Indiana, uh 150 miles north of Indianapolis, in the shadow of Indianapolis, in the shadow of the Speedway, as it were, uh, long shadow, uh, also in the shadow of the University of Notre Dame, where I went to school. Um, and I remember early on, I was helping my mother on Memorial Day, Memorial Day being in the middle of the week back then, and she asked me, Are you gonna listen to the Indianapolis 500? Are you gonna listen to the race? And I said, No. I I've got I I obviously had much better things to do back then, either playing with space caps. Or army men or something like that. I was completely uninterested, right? A couple years later, in 1966, my brother goes to the race. And that was the year there was the big crash in 66. He was sitting in the first turn and he's telling me all these stories that only half the cars came around after the green flag, followed by a couple of loose wheels. And I watched the replay because it certainly wasn't live then. I think you could watch the race a week later on on ABC or something like that. And I was along with his stories, I was completely hooked on this. This is really great. I get it completely. A few years later, I go to Indianapolis with my dad. We go to the second day of time trials because you know my dad being part of the greatest generation certainly wouldn't go on the first day because the first day is too crowded. And I remember this very clearly. Back then the cars warmed up, indie cars warmed up very slowly. They did not have the electronics that we have today. And so the first cars go out, first car goes by about 50 miles an hour. Hmm, interesting. A couple more laps, maybe a hundred, maybe a hundred and twenty. And then I looked into turn four, and here comes a car, and it rips by. And it was the first time I ever seen something go that fast on the ground. And I really couldn't believe my eyes. It looked as the sound from the car was coming from behind the car because of the visual of the car was meeting my eyes before the sound was hitting my ears. I'm just, this is amazing. And my dad reaches over to me. He says, Are you alright? Why, Dad? So you're shaking. I mean, and I remember I was shaking like I was in 30 below weather. And I shook for about five minutes until I finally calmed down. Maybe that was a foreshadowing of the rest of my life. I don't know. But uh that that was quite a day and quite a bit quite an experience. Um about 10 years later, I graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in architecture. Uh, and yes, uh, to completely saturate it, my thesis project in my fifth year of design was a sports car course in northern Indiana. It was a little bit more of a of an urban planning type of thing than uh than uh buildings, but uh I got high marks on it because I certainly had the enthusiasm. Uh got a job, moved to Chicago, uh joined the vaunted Chicago region SCCA. And back then you still had to have a sponsor to get into the SCCA. It was still a club, it was kind of a guys' club. Uh you had to go to the general membership meeting, somebody would kind of put their arm around you and check you out and make sure that you were okay. Uh, and then you had to go through another little uh uh uh a little, what would the word? Another little sort of interview thing, and then and then you were in. But I made it there. Um I started training out as a marshal because I wanted to be close to the action. Uh my first weekend at um a driver's school was at Black Hawk Farms in 1980. It was 38 degrees and raining. Uh so I tolerated that and I knew that I could I could make it as a marshal, right? Um and as it was, uh a month later, I did my first day as a marshal at Road America, which was going to become my home course. Uh, and that was the day that Mount St. Helens erupted. Oh wow. Yeah, so there's all these things happening that are connected to me doing these things for the first time. So again, overall progression of my experience is kind of the theme would be being in the right place at the right time. And and we'll get into that a little bit more. But the the story that I tell often uh is about how the circumstances kind of lined up uh uh and how my indie car origin story started from going from just a marshal. Uh Chicago region, this is two, I've been marshalling two years now. Chicago region has an event in the fall called the Chicken Race. Uh, I think it's the Kettle Moraine Regional, but they call it the Chicken Race because there's a big chicken dinner on Saturday night. It's about a two-hour drive from Chicago to Road America, but early that morning my alarm did not go off. I don't know why, but it just didn't. Uh I wake up very late. It's already light, uh, but I said, uh I want to go to that event. I drove up anyway, I got there late in the morning, and I run into the flag chief. Well, Jim, we got to find a spot for you. Um he sends me out to post 11A. This is a post that they don't even use anymore because it was too effing dangerous. All right. It was called the catcher's mitt by the Marshalls back then. Um right now it's all fenced off and walled off, and you can't even get back there. They don't they don't use it. It's at the exit of the kink. Um so and it's damp. It's it's cold and damp. And I'm back there in the afternoon working a session, and a Formula Ford at the kink, at the apex, has a wheel break off. Right at the maximum sideways load, right? He doesn't hit anything, he does about three, three sixties, winds up in the middle of the track. Nobody hits him. They go one side, they go to the other side. Uh me and the guy who was with me, I think we turned and ran into the woods because we figured we were gonna get hit by something because we're standing behind Armco back then. Just Armco, up to the knees, double high Armco. Um, so I I radioed in, got the session stopped. Uh and again, Marshalls were kind of first responders back then. So me and somebody else hopped out on the track, and this driver gets out. And since I'm the first person he sees after this, he thinks I saved his life. Okay. He he just he couldn't get enough of me, right? I I got him uh uh off the racetrack, help came, took him away, took his car away. Uh later that night uh at the chicken dinner, I see him on the other side of the uh uh of of the uh of the the dinner hall there. Uh I go over and and and start a conversation with him. And no, the car's busted. How's the car? The car's busted. I'm putting on a trailer, I'm going home. Uh I'm from Detroit. And we start to get talking about marshalling and stuff, and finding out at Detroit that this guy also volunteers at Michigan Speedway uh as a course observer when Cart runs there. Okay, Cart ran at Michigan twice a year. This is before the Michigan 500. And he says, You think this is exciting, standing, you know, 30 feet away from the edge of a racetrack while these little piddly shit cars go by. You should stand on the outside of Michigan Speedway when indie cars are going by at 200 miles an hour, a few feet away from you. And back then, the outside of Michigan Speedway was just Armco. No offense, just Armco. All right. It was a different, it was a different day. But but he called me that winter, he got me the invite, and Cart was very young back then. If you walked in with a little bit of experience, they welcomed you. So we're gonna take this guy who's a course observer or uh uh a marshal and turn him into a course observer. Uh, and it was relatively easy. So in in in in 1982, uh Michigan 500, I worked my first cart race. Uh, and as as of last year, I have done 600 uh indie car races. Wow. But but you see, if you roll that story back, the alarm clock. I got up there late. I got assigned to 11A. Had I been there on time, I would have probably been at 1 or 5 or 14. Uh and the wheel had to break at that spot. This guy's from Detroit. We break up a we we start up a friendship, and it leads to me getting my first IndyCar gig. That's the way it laid out.

SPEAKER_02: 30:57

That's pretty cool. Can you explain what a course observer did? I don't think a lot of people would realize how speedways integrate course observations.

SPEAKER_00: 31:06

Well, you don't you don't flag, it's all observing and it's all uh uh communicating, right? And and back then when we had uh cart used uh volunteer observers. IndyCar does not, IndyCar pays everybody, but um the the standard uh arrangement was usually four or five people. Uh one person would the person with the headset would usually be crouched down against the wall. You're on the outside, and and I began the uh the the the the crouching position because it just one less thing you have to do not to get hit. Because a car's coming at the wall, it's gonna hit the wall. You don't want to run from the wall because stuff's gonna come over the side. So you basically go flat, right? And if I'm tucked against the wall, uh Michigan put in concrete by the time I made it out to that part of the corner, but um, you just hug the wall, you felt the vibration, you kept talking, right? And you and you were able to call the yellows. You had all sorts of um power because you could bring the whole track down based on what you saw. If you made a mistake, you brought the whole track down by mistake, right? But but uh one person looking forward, one person looking backward who's not watching traffic, so it's a little bit like a blue flag or yellow flagger combination. And then you had one or two people who crouched down around you who could you could send down the track or up the track to look for debris. Because back then, a lot of stuff fell off a lot of cars. Uh the observers today, God bless them, don't have to work as hard because cars weren't breaking, cars weren't oiling, cars weren't cars uh don't don't don't break, don't oil, don't uh blow up like they used to. We we had a lot of work, we had a lot of downtime because indie cars were not built to that standard back in the 80s.

SPEAKER_01: 33:14

I think sometimes observers are also used as judges of fact. I think that term is sometimes used. I don't know if it's always synonymous, like one-to-one, but I think it's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00: 33:23

Back then it was because the well the thing that we that we prided ourselves on, and we still do, is no matter what race control is doing, what the people in race control are doing, and we didn't have the camera saturation back then that we do now. But every car had a set of eyes on it all the time. You couldn't essentially miss anything if the observers were pointed the right way and paying attention. So uh if if I I can remember Chief Steward Wally Dollenbach actually summoning a course observer, and and uh if somebody had a pit exit violation or something like that, yeah, we called it. He would talk to the observer because we we didn't have video back then, and it was the it was the uh the the observer's word, you know, against the driver.

SPEAKER_01: 34:20

So lots of witness statements to fill out.

SPEAKER_00: 34:23

We we had to do a lot of write-ups. Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes, yes. By the by the time I became the uh uh the chief observer for uh for champ car, we we had got rid of all that. And so uh yeah, lots of write-ups. Everybody in fact, if there was a big crash, everybody on the corner had to write something up. So at the end of a 500-mile race, you're sitting there writing for 45 minutes.

SPEAKER_02: 34:52

Wow. So then how describe to us the process of going from course observer to chief observer to race control.

SPEAKER_00: 35:03

Yeah, well, uh I had uh I had a 10-year uh uh 10-year stop on the on the on the start stand. Um I did 50 races as a volunteer on my own dime, and an even 50 um before fate, uh, luck or my own gumption uh allowed me to turn another page. Um in 1989 I was the course observer on the start stand. There are course observers around the track, and there's also one on the start stand. Um we go to our first race in Phoenix, 1990. Uh the Indie Light starter has a business issue and he can't make the trip. So Hank Thorpe, the chief uh uh uh steward for Indie Lights, uh Nick Fennaro, the cart starter who really didn't want to do anything with Indie Lights, and Johnny Caples, who is the cart president, got together and said, Jimmy, do you think you can start this race? And when somebody asks you a question like that, you don't say no. Nope. You say sure it can. I had never started a race before. I but you know, I was certainly well aware after spending a year and a half up there, uh knowing the uh the workings and the familiarities of the start stand. So uh started my first Indie Lights race at Phoenix. Um it went fine. My uh uh assistant that day was Gary Barnard, uh, who was also uh a very good observer in his day and went on to very good things with Cart and Champ Carr. But but Gary tells the story that the only reason that I was the starter is because I beat him up the ladder that afternoon. Uh so um uh the Indie Light Starter could not commit to the rest of the season. I was offered the gig uh as the Indie Light Starter and the cart assistant starter. Uh, and since I didn't screw it up at Phoenix, uh I was off uh as a starter. Now I I was still working as an architect in downtown Chicago, but 1990 happened to be a downturn in the economy, uh, and I got laid off in the middle of the summer uh into a part-time status with the architectural firm that I was with. Uh and interestingly enough, three days after I went on part-time, I was offered the position to travel as an official with CART. It was as if uh my architectural elevator was going down and the motor racing elevator was coming up, and I stepped off from one to the other and kind of kept kept kept moving up. And such were the circumstances back then. So um in 1993, Nick Fenoro retired, and I ascended to to become the starter for CART, which I did for 10 seasons, 177 starts, not that I was counting, uh, because Nick had done 200 and I wanted to surpass Nick. Uh my first start uh was in Australia, uh, and my first front row for cart was Nigel Mansell and Emerson Fidopaldi. Wow. Bringing the field down for Jimmy's approval. Uh my last start in Mexico City, 2002, Emerson Fittipaldi was my honorary starter. So he was part of my first start. He was part of my last start.

SPEAKER_01: 38:55

Oh, that's cool. What a full circle moment there.

SPEAKER_00: 38:58

Yeah, yeah. He's uh he he is uh exactly the way he appears. He's a wonderful human being, absolutely. Uh and we had a we had a few adventures here and there on the racetrack in between all of that. Um so uh uh 2003 comes along. Chris Neifel is now the uh the the race director. Uh he's reorganizing race control. Wally Donald has stepped down, I think, for like the fourth time. Because things Wally would step down and something would happen and he'd come back. And he'd step down and something would happen and he'd come back. Well, this was it. Um and and because of some of the decisions that I had made on the start stand, uh, and some of the advice that was being given to ears in high places, uh Chris Neifel and his henchmen at that time, uh his his deputy race director, Bo Barfield, uh decided to bring Jimmy into race control and off the start stand because if I would have stayed too much longer, I probably would have gotten thrown off. Uh because again, because of some of the decisions that I made and and the way they were received, not by everybody. Uh, and I will tell you again, uh it wasn't an easy job. You had to anticipate what the cars were gonna do at the line before the cars got to the line. So let's say you're an umpire trying to call a ball and strike when the pitch is halfway to the plate. Okay, sometimes you'd get it wrong, most of the times I got it right. But um the way it went was most of the drivers wanted more wave-offs, and most of the teams and owners wanted less wave-offs, and so I was kind of caught in the middle trying to do what I thought was right. Um, I had uh I was I I was given the opportunity to wave off my first restart ever at Phoenix that day, and I think I grabbed uh a lot of positive attention because it was absolutely terrible. There was a there was a car stuck like in third place, there was a couple of laps down, and so first and second are getting away. I mean, really getting away. And no, we can't let this happen. So I I waved off my first restart. Um and and I had a few events, um Chicagoland Speedway, I think I had three wave offs in a row. Uh Portland Speedway, um, I couldn't get a it there's a long straightaway there, and I couldn't get the front royal to to line up side by side. They were they'd come out of the last corner, they'd single up, which was a great advantage to the second place car, and a great disadvantage to the first place car, and that was what I was there to prevent, right? So uh essentially that's the way that went. So they moved me upstairs, and uh let's make Jimmy the Marshall's Com. He knows he used to be a Marshal. Um, and so uh I was the Marshall's Com for Cart and then Champ Car uh until Champ Car was absorbed into IndyCar uh at the end of the uh 2007 season. We had one final um race at Long Beach in 2008, which we ran with Champ Car vehicles, but it counted for uh IndyCar points, and and that went the way of the rest of our teams at that point.

SPEAKER_02: 42:41

Wow, what a history.

SPEAKER_00: 42:43

Uh yeah. Um so IndyCar already had officials. So I would I consider this my exile from from motorsports uh as a as a paid official. Uh but IndyCar did not carry a marshal communicator. They they they relied on local talent. Um and because of the relationships that I had uh uh hammered out, uh I was able to become the marshal communicator for the Long Beach IndyCar Race, the Edmonton IndyCar Race, and the Sonoma IndyCar Race in 2009. Uh that got noticed uh and right before the beginning of the Sonoma Indy Lights race, uh 10 minutes or so on a Sunday morning, Brian Barnhart, the race director of IndyCar, taps me on the shoulder. I want to talk to you for a moment. You got a few minutes? Well, I got about five minutes, and I got a race to do here. Okay. Uh he said, I like your work, I like your style, I like your voice, I like your cadence. I want you to join IndyCar Race Control. Okay, and this is kind of what I was there for, right? Fingers crossed. And I assume he meant. As the traveling Marshall's communicator. They were going to pick up a Marshall's communicator at that point. He says, No. I want you to be the race control communicator, talking to the teams and officials and dispatching the pace car at all the events starting in 2010. And that again blew me away. I had no idea that that was going to fall into that shape. So ten days later, I get a phone call from Scott Elkins. Scott Elkins is with the uh American Le Mans series. And Scott and I worked together the last years of Chamcar as it uh as it came apart. ALMS is now IMSA. And he said, Well, we're re there's that word reorganizing again. We're reorganizing ALMS race control. We want you to be the Marshall's communicator. And I said, ten days ago, I just got a call from Brian Barnhart uh offering me uh a full gig with IndyCar. He says, Well, you think it over, tell me what you'd like to do. We'd really like you to join IMSA. All right. Um, and good advice comes sometimes from the most unlikely places. Uh during my exile, in order to uh make the trains run on time and put food on the table, I was working at a frame shop uh making some fine art prints for a guy who did uh who was framed all my artwork at the time. Um I told him, you know, I got two offers. I I want to go back into racing. And he he knew all about my commitment to racing. I was what am I gonna do about this? Without blinking, he said, Can you why can't you do both? Right? So I went back to Scott and Brian. Uh they liked it. Sure. And so since 2010, I have done all the indie car events as the race control communicator, and I've done all the IMSA races that don't conflict. So that's essentially where I'm at now. Uh in 2012, I was asked uh by the safety director Lon Bromley at Coda to join the race control team for Formula One there. Uh so I've been doing that as the lead marshall communicator uh ever since 2012, uh, which now developed into Miami and Las Vegas. And along with you guys, uh I am the proud uh participant uh and the only uh race control and officiating team that does three Formula One races a year. And isn't it great that we have three Formula One races in the United States and no United States Formula One drivers?

SPEAKER_02: 46:55

Yeah, it's it's we've we've tried a few times.

SPEAKER_01: 46:58

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 47:00

What an arc, Jim. That's just such an amazing career. Now, I want to delve more into this connection. Uh, when we visited with George uh Silberman at the end of last year, he was talking about how he had gotten his career all set up to work in real estate and working with you know that one direction and everything switched. That obviously you had done theses and degrees in architecture. I mean, there's got to be some cognitive dissonance in here about where you've ended up. Clearly, it's worked out for you, but um, I mean, do you find ways that the architecture somehow manifests itself somehow in in your racing?

SPEAKER_00: 47:51

I think I'm a I think I'm a good problem solver. Uh maybe underutilized sometimes. Uh, whenever uh either the the the IMSA race control physical space or the indie car physical space is often a challenge. Um everything we have in race control nowadays we carry with us, except for Indianapolis. We have kind of a Formula One type setup that was built when Formula One uh was running there in the in the early 2000s. Uh but um uh often it kind of comes to me, well, how's this all gonna go together? And and the latter part of my architecture career, I went from doing buildings and and big pieces to doing uh office build-outs, which I really enjoyed because you actually got to see something get built rather than just doing a bunch of pretty drawings, which is kind of a contradiction. Sure. But because that's what I do now. But but um yeah, I think I'm a pretty good problem solver. I will I will always try to approach something from out of the box. Um whether it's doing something at the racetrack or doing something at home, uh come up with an interesting solution, and I'll turn to my wife and I'll say architect. Architect, okay. Let's let's look at it this way, right? Um for example, um the uh St. Petersburg pit lane uh is has uh it's gonna need to have room for 36 trucks in it this year. Trucks are coming to St. Petersburg. 24 indie cars fit in there fine. 27 IndyCars, I guess, fit in there fine. Uh, but they also want to bring 42 Mazda MX5s, 42. That's as many as they run at Daytona, right? So take tearing a page out of Detroit and out of Arlington and out of this new Markham track, maybe it's possible to put the cars on both sides of the pit lane. It's a 50-foot-wide pit lane, and and so I I would I just made that suggestion to the MX5 guys today. They'll put it in their pocket as as possibly a plan plan B, but um that's kind of where it's uh number one of uh an artist and an architect, it's not what they draw or what they create, it's how they see that kind of makes them different from the average bear. And um I I think I was able to use that and still able to use that uh from time to time.

SPEAKER_02: 50:47

I think that and and it's normally Jessica's turn to jump in, but I want to follow up that thought because I happen to be at the Rolex 24 this year. You must have been off shift because you weren't in race control when I was invited to go up there with Eric.

SPEAKER_00: 51:03

But being being 69 years old, I I I you get some time to get the big eight hour off, right? Well, well deserved. And then everybody everybody works that around. But um, I I enjoy going to bed early and I go uh enjoy getting up early. So I went I went back on in the middle of the yellow. Gotcha. Um and and as a side comment there, I did not think that we we went we went green at at 6 30 and I was still on, and uh it kind of came to me to to to help pull that all together. I figured somebody else would be doing it well after the sun came up, but anyway, that so that that was a thrill.

SPEAKER_02: 51:47

But my question has to do with you know, uh, since Jessica and I both work at Coda, we're very familiar with that race control layout, and it's as you described with you know the Formula One standards, and like India has, you know, IMS has there's this wall of monitors, and everyone has their defined positions and all that. In Daytona, there's nothing like that. You guys have gotten had to wedge yourselves into the what looks like this corner of a room, and I mean I can see how your architectural look at the view of things would have to come into play because of the way there the the flow of information is so different in that scenario, and it really frankly surprised me. I had never seen a race control that was that pardon my language, but twisted. It was it nothing normal about it.

SPEAKER_00: 52:48

It's a NASCAR build it, it was patterned on the way they officiate, and they officiate in the old school style, press box style. Everybody's looking out the window. Uh their races are like that. When we when IndyCar goes to a short oval, we look out the window too, and we're kind of in the same situation because that's usually what we've been been given there. But but as you could see, we're in a we're on an upper level, uh kind of disused space because I think NASCAR officiates from the bottom level up against the windows. Um they actually asked us um when they were re-sculpting that space when they when they remodeled a few years ago. Well, what would you guys like to see? And they showed us the plan, it had an upper and a lower spot, and Mr. Architect goes to Paul Walter and says, why don't we ask them to take this upper level and make it demountable so that they can use it as an upper level, and then when we're in there for two weeks, you know, doing those two events, we can take it apart and we've got a much bigger, broader uh uh single level uh area that we have just about everywhere everywhere else. You you should you should come to Toronto, you should come to uh um actually we're not going back to Toronto, but uh Toronto and and uh CTMP have very large, big, beautiful spaces that are just empty, right? But again, most the the way we do our work, we've got the Marshalls, we've got all of the images that uh NBC or Fox show us, and since we don't necessarily have to be looking out the window to do our job, in fact, looking out the window to do our job wouldn't wouldn't tell the whole story. So we're looking at all the images that uh uh that that the TV producers use to to build the to build the broadcast, uh, and we're sitting in sort of a V formation so that we can see the monitors and we can also see ourselves and and hear ourselves. We don't do as much crosstalking as you might think, but there's like a baseball infield, there's a little bit of physicality that you look over and you see what uh uh uh what your mates are responding to, and and you cue off of that. So that's the that's the reason that's the reason for the V. And then uh off to the side or in the back or wherever it will fit is uh a couple of replay screens where the driver advisors or the uh stewards uh uh basically do this video forensics because everything that comes into the room is recorded, whether it be the video, uh, the audio, uh the TV signal, the telemetry from the cars, uh all of that stuff is used to put an incident back together when there's a complaint.

SPEAKER_01: 56:01

Yeah. I've heard about that U shape or the circular or whatever. I think that that sounds I've never worked in a formation like that in race control, but I think it sounds like that that's how it should be. Then you can see each other. You know, I'm feeling Jamie and I are so used to the tiered stadium seating, whatever you want to call it, where we're having to turn around and look at each other and yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 56:20

Uh Bo Barfield and Chris Neifel, I think, authored that in the early days of Champ Car.

SPEAKER_01: 56:27

Yeah. Well, that's cool. So, okay, so this is what you think you said 2012? Where do we leave off? Where you took most of the 2012.

SPEAKER_00: 56:38

We haven't um I think you asked me uh what uh what I actually do. Um because I can do something a little bit different. Uh you know I'm the Marshall's communicator for uh for Formula One, uh, and we know how that works, but um in IndyCar you can you can erode this gap here because I wrote this down so I could um where is this? Okay, uh in IndyCar. Uh I am the uh race control communicator. Uh the responsibility and the role there uh is to notify via radio the teams, the officials, and any of the participants that happen to be listening to the race control channel uh the ongoing ongoing condition of the racetrack. Uh where the incidents are, who the penalties are on, what's happening next. Uh it's very service-oriented. That kind of comes from uh from CART uh servicing and making sure that the teams uh aren't guessing uh regarding what's going to happen next. Um as the race control group developed um at IMSA, uh I began uh as the Marshall's communicator, but I worked my way into the same role. And so I am now the deputy race communicator, race control communicator in IMSA. But the other primary function I do uh in IMSA, usually at the beginning and the start and the uh and the finish of the race, is I'm the lead communicator between TV and race control. Uh that is nicknamed the Red Hat. Uh it's a term that's borrowed from the NFL uh to make sure that uh the play doesn't continue uh until TV is back from a break. Well, in motor racing, it works the other way around. You help the producer time the breaks so that they don't miss the restarts, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 58:58

So they can do cleanups and stuff while they're on commercial.

SPEAKER_00: 59:01

Yes, usually, usually there's an incident, they'll show a replay of the incident, they'll go to a break, they'll come back, they'll cover the pit stops, then they'll go to another break, and that second break, they've got to go in order to make sure that they catch the restart. And and if you've if you flub that part, you got egg on your face until you get it right the next time. But when I began doing it, uh I fouled off a couple of those, and uh that is essentially the bones of what you're doing. Everything else is uh is kind of added. Um you explain any penalties or rulings uh which will then get related to the TV announcers, and you know that the TV announcers are always right, and they know exactly what they're talking about, right? And so so I guess that uh starts with us and and a good relationship between race control and the announcers. Bo Barfield and Calvin Fish were um instructors at the Mid-Ohio school together. They have a very good um uh grasp of what each other are trying to do, and I have heard Calvin Fish explain um penalties and rulings, often using the same words that Bo would. So there's a very good relationship in uh IMSA between NBC and and race control.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:35

Yeah. That's interesting. I bet you so I think a lot of our listeners are are marshals that I'm sure know who you are and are probably were not aware that you did some of that other stuff, the other stuff. I think most people are so used to hearing you as the flag communicators.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:49

Yeah, it's something that we we had a we had a dearth of of uh of communicators and we had a dearth of marshal communicators, and uh well uh we need to keep Jimmy around. Uh Jimmy knows Bo, Jimmy knows the way Bo thinks, and so let's put this on me. And I I've done uh I've had a lot of fun with it. It's a unique position because I'm the only pair of ears in that whole event that hear how the TV broadcast is being made and how the race is being run. Nobody in race control can hear the TV producer, and nobody in TV can hear what race control is talking about. And so if there's if there's a level of trust, uh, and I usually have that, I can tell the TV producer that something is coming. You can't share it with the audience yet because we haven't announced it, right? You've got to be careful on your sequencing. Uh, but if he knows that the car that's in second place is gonna have a drive-thru for something, he can find the replay, he can find the tape, right? Um they see things from time to time that we don't. We see things time to time that they don't. And when we see something that's interesting, and they're uh we can insert it into the broadcast. I will tell them, I'll give them a time of day, look and look at such and such a camera or look at the in-car uh on this BMW, and you can see how something sets up, right? And they'll look at it and maybe once or twice a race, uh, once or twice a weekend, they'll show it. And I yell out in the room, race control replay, race control replay. Here you go, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:37

So do you get a producer credit then?

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:40

Uh a small one, a very small one.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:42

Do you really? Because you should.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:44

Uh the the the it's interesting. The the when Fox was uh the IMSA broadcaster, I worked with a fellow by the name of Greg Oldham. We had an outstanding relationship. He trusted me, I trusted him. I told him all sorts of stuff that I shouldn't have that I really can't tell the producer I work with now. Uh but Greg Oldham has worked his way, and he's now the red hat for IndyCar. So I know what Greg is dealing with when sometimes on the other side of the headset, he's listening to the producer, he's listening to the director. They're boiling over there wanting to know when the rain is going to stop, when are we gonna go green, right? We've got a cleanup. I don't know. So it's like an orchestra conductor. You gotta try to look way ahead. Yes, you listen to the broadcast and you watch the incident get cleaned up in IMSA. We've got this big, giant, heavy process where we lay we we wave a bunch of cars around. All of that has to be managed, and TV for the most part is happy about it unless it's at the end of the race. They want to get back to racing again. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:04

So are you still doing the any of the TV stuff at all? Or is that is that your current role right now? Still?

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:11

Yes. Uh I again I split it. The the the long race at Daytona. I did uh NBC, the mothership, was on for the first hour and the last two hours. So I was the red hat at the beginning of the race, end of the race. I hopped off. I did uh a few hours on race control. I took my uh eight-hour break. Uh I came back ship shake. And when you come back at three in the morning, and most of the other people there haven't left yet. And I'm showered and I'm all bushy-tailed and ready to go. Okay, come on, come on, come on. And then and then I walk in, and and oh, uh, so how long have we been yellow? Well, we've been yellow for 90 minutes, and we're gonna be turned out we were yellow for six and a half hours. And I tell you, it was like being on the inside of a dark, creaky pirate ship. Nobody was talking. You could hear the instruments whirring, you could hear people shifting around in their seats. I mean, it was like there was nothing to say. Stuck in the doldrums, but I will give him some credit by staying yellow. There was still an aspect of the competition that and there was a rigor there that had to be applied. Uh we didn't park the cars, and once you park the cars, you get the officials involved. Yeah. The possession of the cars comes out of the team's hands and into the officials' hands. And we didn't need that. You go red when the track is unraceable. The track wasn't unraceable. It it we were doing absolutely. fine at the speed we were moving. So I I thought that was really interesting, unique, and and somewhat somewhat wonderful. Well I'm probably in the minority on that.

SPEAKER_02: 1:06:11

No, actually as a fan, and that was the first race that I had attended as a fan in about 12 years. I, you know, at 7 30 in the evening I saw the fog above us in the in the lights and I thought, uh oh, I remembered that morning was foggy too. Yeah. On the way to the track. Here we go. And sure enough and so I wasn't surprised and I think IMSA did the right thing.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:36

Yeah when I wasn't again I wasn't looking out the window when we went back to green but it was still foggy when we went it was it was just barely clearer than it had from corner to corner.

SPEAKER_02: 1:06:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:48

And and the other interesting thing and again it's part of IMSA's process IMSA's process ran for six hours. When a prototype would stop and come back out again it got to take its place at the front of the prototypes. So all the spotters are still wide awake and involved the GTD cars, the GTD Pro cars and the P2 cars had to look out and make way you you're you're driving around out there at 80k and up on the right and only on the right comes this uh big prototype right and takes his place at the at the end of the prototype queue and so on and so on. So it it was a very active uh six and a half hours.

SPEAKER_02: 1:07:36

Yeah I will agree. So I know this just knows this many of the marshals who have uh heard you listened to you met you and know you from all of those previous decades of service that you've so passionately given us not a lot of the newer marshals that are listening to this podcast know about your other passion and that is art.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:05

Thank you I was I was waiting for you to get to that oh we're we had to do the racing part first but don't worry I wasn't about to let this well they they go very hand in hand as you'll see uh shoved sideways in all of this time away from home because working for two series actually three series when they come to the United States uh I'm away from home 30 to 35 weekends a year I miss out on a lot but but um winding back through history uh I needed a side gig at the time that architecture completely uh fell away from me right uh I did a deal with an automotive art gallery in Chicago as I was still living in Chicago suburban Chicago called the Motorsport Collector you can still find them online uh great products although they they don't do as much art as they used to because automotive art had some of a somewhat of a falloff and and we attribute it to the fact that all the people who bought quality stuff ran out of wall space and and art doesn't look that good on a ceiling. But um so I did a deal with Paul Zimmerman from the Motorsport Collector and and this is again back in my early days working with cart on the start stand he agreed to sell any artwork that I could make uh and so what was sort of a hobby at that point became uh a sideline uh and a uh a a small little bit of of income but regarding the inspiration behind what I do if you remember the 1960s movie Grand Prix and a lot of people have been talking about Grand Prix movies because F1 uh but both uh one of the characters in the movie Jean-Pierre Sarty uh and Roger Stoddard the the departed uh brother of Scott Stoddard uh they both had uh commissioned paintings hanging in their studies that were given to celebrate their world championships uh and the romantic in me at that point said I think I can do that and there might be a market for that and I approached Firestone who was sponsoring Indie Lights at that point uh who I was the starter for uh and I said I think I can do the same thing and again they didn't say no God bless them so my first commissioned work uh was of Eric Bachelar who won the 1991 Indie Lights Championship it was uh an image from a race at Portland that was presented to him at the banquet um and he still has it hanging in his office uh it's still in good shape although I haven't seen it uh and Eric as you might know is an IMSA team owner he's a Ferrari owner uh he had he had uh a car or two running uh at Daytona and uh he's very involved in Ferrari challenge um so I do a variety of things uh the major pieces that I do now uh generally a capturing uh of a memorable moment uh an incident a race win a checkered flag a pass an important pass a chronicle uh or like a document or something something that actually happened um and then usually try uh to make it from a viewpoint that can't be made with the camera you're standing right in front of the cars are coming cars are coming right at you right uh and so uh I used to have a website but uh I wasn't home enough to be able to maintain it but if you go to my Instagram account you can see quite a few of the things that I've been doing so uh my Instagram account is gymstagram 31 okay 31 is our lucky number my wife and I gymstagram uh you'll see a bunch of things there uh amongst all the other little bits and pieces and some of the food that I've cooked because uh in the 20th 21st century before you eat something you take a picture of it of course uh uh you'll see that I'm a San Diego Padre fan you'll see that uh uh I I believe deeply in Notre Dame football but um you'll see there that they are quite realistic looking uh uh I am an architect uh there was a motorsports artist who passed away just recently um from Indiana uh his name was Ron Burton uh he worked on AJ Foyt's crew and he always referred to me as that architect oh that looks like something that architect would do uh but um I this I'm a student of the technique of Michael Turner a hero uh who probably still the foremost British motorsport artist I think he's in his 90s he's still uh working uh and again uh secret to a long life is staying active and being creative that's true uh so uh and it's not uh coincidental that he did the paintings for the movie Grand Prix that I that caught my eye uh at the at the beginning of this conversation uh the medium that I use uh it flows from my architectural career uh marker and colored pencil on illustration board uh I use very little paint uh I will paint the sky with uh opaque watercolor from time to time just to make it look smooth um and in in in architecture back in the 80s we used to render buildings this way uh uh images of buildings because uh marker and colored pencil very friendly medium you can start you can stop you can answer the phone you can go to a meeting you can go home uh you don't have to wait for paint to dry you're not chasing anything like that and you can still look over my shoulder when I try to paint I'm a very sloppy painter so I've been dabbling in ai and I thought I thought I would ask ai to give me some questions to ask you. And most of them were most of them were pretty which which AI platform do you use? Well it's kind of a long story because let's just call it you you've never heard of it it's called Max running on Olama because I'm running it myself I'm not um anyway so that's neither here nor there I'm gonna have to take that out all right but most of the questions it gave me to ask you either we've already covered or we're kind of those silly how did you feel when but there was one question that oh I'll talk about my feelings that's not a problem there was one question it gave me that I would love to hear your answer about and the question is and I am quoting the AI exactly here what was it like having Dario Franchiti buy your Tukuma Sato piece wow isn't that interesting yep uh he he found out about it somebody told him um I uh did that that was commissioned by uh an organization that was doing uh art for IndyCar back then uh Lids uh um store that makes hats uh and they were dabbling in other merch at the time um and I did that and somebody told Dario that I was doing it um we made a bunch of prints but I still had the original sitting here um and so Dario is a big fan of my work he's a historian he understands uh the way I put things together I understand what he likes uh but uh it was interesting because I sent him an image of the piece and Dario being Dario he had to diddle around with it a little bit okay uh and and this is this is this is where architecture meets art because as young architects uh we would be working on a design a plan an issue and some senior designer and some senior official would come and look over our shoulders and they'd look at it for a while and they look at it for a while and then they're gonna make changes they got to make a change to it. Well do a little bit of this do a little bit of that okay fine uh and between uh us guys we used to call it the fire plug theory okay every dog that came by had to make his mark on the fire plug right uh Dario's got pretty good taste he was there he knows what what what went on I think I made some adjustments to what the way he looked in the cockpit which was fine because it it made a better piece out of it but um and again my artwork tells a story and it told the story of what happened that day and Takuma tried to pass him on the inside and there was a little bit of controversy and I made sure that you could see that uh Dario was above the groove a little bit half a car above the groove right bo Barfield who was the race director at the time said yeah that's right okay um Tacuma did us a favor by spinning and ending the race there because if two Tacuma would have passed him Tacuma being being the driver of a very wide car might have made it a little difficult coming out of four had Dario tried to pass him back and maybe the officials would have got had to get involved and you don't want to get involved at the end of an Indianapolis 500 so I mean that was that was a big deal and and uh luckily captured it uh Takuma going sideways as Dario goes on to to uh to take the win um I did uh a piece for Dario winning the 2007 500 uh which was in the rain called it Gloaming Glory um I did another piece for him when he won the 2007 championship yeah um and it was a it was a situational piece where Tony Canon was his wingman the name of the piece is wingman and Tony was uh making his car very wide so that Marco Andretti couldn't pass because Marco Andretti had to finish on Dario's tail to win the championship and Tony Canon didn't allow that to happen and so uh we made a we made a painting of it I talked to Dario uh last year at Indianapolis and he still has some ideas i I don't have the time that I used to but uh he won't let some of these ideas go uh he's he's got a couple that he hasn't forgotten about so again there's there's ideas and opportunity on the table good good question ai very good question I'm surprised you admitted that yeah again but the image tells a story and and is and is a as a springboard to tell more stories about the stories that the image tells there you go and it's cool that you mentioned you know you you try to get an angle that no one else was able to capture you know you you did it based on yeah that's that's super cool. Yeah I mean I work I work from photographs you of photographs of cars standing still I mean I I I I need something that's pretty accurate uh because I'm not very good at at taking a car uh that's a three quarter view of one side and okay let's just draw it completely from the side a I can do that now but I can't yeah uh so I I usually I I take some of my own series of photographs I can I I put them together in Photoshop and then uh again this is part of my architecture coming out before I start on the final I will show my client a sketch I'm not here to surprise anybody or unveil you need to see it before you sign off on it it's just like building a house or a building yeah blueprint the the the the the person who's paying you to do this needs to be happy. Absolutely that's so cool yeah well we what was it uh gymstagram31 everybody needs to check out his network and maybe you'll get some new customers uh please well I just I'm really backed up I I uh the currently the uh the only ongoing repeating gig I'm doing is and you'll see some sketches on gymstagram from a couple years ago uh the IMSA Hall of Fame which is in its fourth year uh commissions me every year to do uh uh images and sketches of the usually four cars and six people who get um inducted we put this we put the sketches together we push the uh portraits together it kind of looks like a Mount Rushmore effect oh that's cool and I love I love drawing drawing the old vehicles from uh the 20th century so there's plenty of those so you wear you wear yet another hat for IMSA then in that yeah that's right that's right so um all right we've talked about your extremely you know prestigious career a lot of you know lots of different positions and this and that and I know that you've already kind of mentioned all the right place right time yeah Malcolm Gladwell outliers moments that you've had of seizing an opportunity that was presented to you but um you know what else can you kind of like any advice you can give to people that are wanting to do what you do or wanting to get into motorsports full time can you can you give some wisdom to our to our audience here? Well how did this all come about uh you need to be certain on what you want to achieve uh and what you want to do and and kind of put yourself in its way uh and and I I guess I'll get a little woo-woo here and I don't know where you guys are on the woo-woo scale uh I I'm I'm I'm going up the ladder as I get older but your your thoughts and your desires and your convictions are the cause of your uh are the cause the reality of what you are living in is only the effect you are the cause the things around you are the effect um uh I was just reading a very bold statement from from one of my uh sources that the universe will not give you what you want the universe will give you who you are so uh I think I've been doing this on an unconscious level for a long time but now I'm working on doing it a little bit more consciously um a lot of people call it manifesting um it's it's very new age but uh look at the circumstances I was in the right place when I needed to be to get a job in Chicago uh to to sign on as a marshal when I did and with who I did to be at that corner when that Formula Ford broke uh when the Indie Lights uh uh series needed a starter uh when IndyCar and IMSA called ten days apart so um it it it has to do with being very certain and and putting your mind and putting your conscience in what you want to do before you get there um I met my wife Diane at a cart race in Vancouver 1990 her first words to me were oh so you're Jim Swintell right um I guess I'll tell that story um Diane was working for an Indie Lights team as a PR coordinator um Indy Lights was being uh was was the brainchild uh of Pat Patrick and Pat Patrick wanted to make the races a little bit more exciting so he asked uh Hank Thorpe the chief steward what do you think of double file restarts uh not very much patrick no we're gonna do double file restarts so where's the next race uh detroit street circuit uh and this this was before Belle Isle and before the the little band box that we have now which was only a a shadow of the of the original Detroit Street Circuit which was really cool um and so we came up with an idea uh it's gonna be uh double file start that's fine double file restarts okay um let's uh uh Hank Thorpe took me aside before the start of the race and without saying anything and reading between the lines because I had a very good relationship with Hank Jimmy you want to make sure that those cars are lined up just right on those restarts before you let them go. It's okay I can do that. I've already shown people I can do that we got to the first restart uh front of the field doing fine back of the field starts racing I mean a swarm before I put the green out waved it off try it again waved it off I think we waved off two of them we went green again we had another crash repeat lather rinse repeat okay um and then I get the word from race control um Jimmy uh we're getting close to the end of the race here the next one has to be green no matter what okay sure it was terrible I went green anyway uh Paul Tracy wound up crashing uh Tommy Byrne won the race uh and that was the end of the yeah that was the end of the double foul restart and so it it was it was it was the it the effect that Hank Thorpe was looking for. Uh by the way uh Jeremy Shaw was a uh young reporter then and as soon as I was putting my equipment down after the race was over he pops up into the starter stand and says were you instructed to give the green flag on that last restart because he knew it was as terrible as I was and not knowing what to say I lied to him and said no that was all my decision and he smiled at me and he went back down The ladder. So it was the first time I ever lied to a member of the press. You took the fall? Yeah, I did. I did take the fall. But that was the end of the double file restart. And uh a half a season later, I came looking for somebody in the media room, and there was Diane. This guy wasn't around, and Diane said, Well, I will I will let him know that you're looking for him. Who can I say is asking? And I said, Jim Swintell, and I got the famous response, Oh, you're Jim Swintell.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28:41

Ah, okay.

SPEAKER_00: 1:28:42

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28:43

She's like, oh, that that terrible starter.

SPEAKER_00: 1:28:46

Yeah. And I'll tell you, most of the heated arguments between my wife and ourselves, myself, not about bills, not about who's going to do what around here. It's about some ruling that came down and affected one of her drivers.

SPEAKER_02: 1:29:05

I would believe that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:29:06

I certainly have to take I have to take the race control line. She's a competitor. Uh uh, she's a part-time sailor, really tough, right? Um and what's great is we get to travel together. She's still involved working for a PR group that covers uh a couple of IMSA series. She had eight cars that was uh under her uh auspices at uh at Daytona. And and I couldn't do any of this the way I do it uh without uh Diane being around or her full support when when I'm not.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:43

Ah, that's so cool. And and you get to so you get to travel and do all this stuff, but you you you go your separate ways during the race, but you're still getting to be involved.

SPEAKER_00: 1:29:53

At Daytona, she's in the infield. I'm in race control. Uh it's very hard to get from one to the other. Uh so uh I will drop her off or we'll go our separate ways. She'll go to the paddock, otherwise race control, and we don't see each other. And so at the end of the day, it's a little bit of a deb debrief. She has her stories, they usually differ from mine. Uh but uh yeah, it's it's it's quite the uh uh the competitive relationship from time to time. That's that's fascinating.

SPEAKER_02: 1:30:25

And you've been married how long, Jim?

SPEAKER_00: 1:30:28

Thirty one years. Coming up on 31.

SPEAKER_03: 1:30:32

Oh, very cool.

SPEAKER_02: 1:30:34

We should add diplomat to his list of uh titles as well.

SPEAKER_00: 1:30:38

Uh Kyle Novak calls me his Secretary of State. We we often have are paired with other sanctioning bodies, uh, one of which I'm very close to, uh USF 2000, the uh the Anderson group. Um and uh they'll come in, they'll set up not enough room for them. Uh uh, we've got to tell them one thing or another. It's a little uncomfortable. Kyle goes to the diplomat in the room. Jim, would you sort this out for me? Yeah, okay, I got it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:16

So, what haven't you done that you that you wanted to do? Is there anything that you've got to do?

SPEAKER_00: 1:31:20

I've never been a competitor. Um we we I I did a video for IMSA race control uh two seasons ago, and there were 20 people in that room, and all but three had competed in one shape or another. Competed at Le Mong, competed at an Indie 500, was a Formula One driver, all right? Uh uh go-karters, uh a sprint card driver. Um absolutely amazing. Um but myself and and two other people, including the great Mark Rafoff, who who was has been an official all his life as I have. Um but I I tell you, uh on occasion, you know, I've been on a go-kart or something like that. Uh and when something kind of doesn't go my way because somebody made made a decision, boy, boy, can I get the red mist fast. Oh man. I mean, so so there's a lot of tamped-down competitor aggression that is just wadded up somewhere in the back of my soul.

unknown: 1:32:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:34

All right, we're gonna we're gonna keep an eye out for you in like indie lights someday, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 1:32:38

Yeah, that well, that's uh again, that's why uh, and people ask me, would you like to become a race director? Absolutely not. Because when motor racing is so competitive nowadays, uh, especially indie car racing, where almost everybody can win, okay. Um as the competition got closer, uh the competitors began to draw the officiating into the competition. The the decisions that are made. Yep. And exploiting the seams. Was that call right? Was that process right? Was that done right? And uh on the IMSA side, IMSA IMSA officiating is like a paella. There's all sorts of different things we do for all those different series. They're like ingredients, and they all have to be added at the right time, or else you mess up the paella. IndyCar is more like cooking a steak. Okay, you can cook it medium, you can cook it rare, you can cook it well done. It's still a steak, but at the end, nobody's happy with the way you cook the steak.

SPEAKER_02: 1:33:48

Um but um completely unrelated. I have to ask what cooking metaphor you'd apply to NASCAR.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:01

Um gumbo. That's kind of what I was thinking too. Uh uh fast fast food. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02: 1:34:09

I like that. I like that. Okay, we'll leave that one there.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:12

Um carry on, Mr. Swintal. Not necessarily bad fast food. Some fast food is bad, some fast food is good. Correct. It's fast food.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:21

Well, now I want to know what F1 food is. Now you've started this can of worms, Jamie.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:25

What F1 is um uh is a seven-course meal.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:34

Um by mistake, first year of Formula One, uh, 2012. There was uh a little FIA cafe in the building behind race control there. You guys know where it is. The team building building. By completely by mistake, Tim Mayer took uh race control in there to eat lunch on the day of the Formula One race, and we had like squab and crab and and and uh leg of lamb and stuff like that. I said, This is really the greatest. Okay, it was a mistake. We shouldn't have been in there. Um and and we've eaten box lunches ever since, but right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:20

Wow, that's funny.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:22

God bless Tim.

SPEAKER_03: 1:35:24

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:27

Such great stories.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:29

Yeah, I mean, this was this was quite a wild ride today.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:32

I I think we got quite a little continue to talk about a little bit more about the Marshalls. Um I I was asked more than once at Formula One, well, how can I be a better communicator? How can I get better? Um, three things. Uh, number one, get yourself into race control as an observer, no matter where you are, no matter what level you're at, whether it be at the club level. Uh Bill Armitage, who is the chief observer for IndyCar, regularly regularly does tours for the Marshalls, trying to get your eyes on our equipment and show you how we do things. Because once you come inside that room and then take what you know back out with you, you're immediately going to be a better marshal.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:21

100% agreed.

SPEAKER_00: 1:36:22

Yep. Item number two, whoever the communicator is, be very sympathetic for what they're going through. Um keep the communicator out of trouble and make sure the communicator looks good to the race director. The race director is asking that communicator to be the good shepherd, the good shepherd analogy. I know my people, and my people know me.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:50

And that's why I correct your lap counts, Jimmy.

SPEAKER_00: 1:36:56

See, the race director doesn't know the marshals very well, uh, believes in them. Uh, very happy that they're there, uh, and uh and a vital part of what we're doing, but uh they don't understand martial culture. Uh that was one thing that Tony Kottman, who was uh race director of Champcar, and it's he he kept me where I was because I understood martial culture, and I could take steward speak and relate it to a marshal. Um any any communicator in race control who is doing that job, and Jessica, you're one of them, uh, worth their salt is already overqualified because you are thinking like the people that you're feeding information to up above you, the race director, the race chairman, you know what they're looking for, and you have the opportunity and you have the ability to sometimes draw it out of the marshals who are communicating to you. Um and and the other thing is, and you couldn't do this in the 20th century. I think you could probably do it very easily now by hook or crook or whatever. Record yourself. Find out what you sound like. Uh find out how how you sound to the people around you. And I don't know whether you connect something to uh your headset. Uh I I ran into somebody at the Formula One race who plugs something into the landline, uh, a a side a side recorder into the landline and made sure it worked. Uh but once you start hearing yourself, and I still do it, once you start hearing yourself and what you sound like to other people, uh what when I started as a communicator, as a Marshalls communicator, going in from the outside and going to the to the inside, it was a whole new world. Uh I was very scattershot. Uh and I recorded myself a couple of times, and and Joanne Jensen, who was one of my forebears, said, think about being a tone communicator. Not necessarily just your words, your tone conveys a lot. Yeah. Right? Uh, and so those of you who have heard me know that I have a tendency to be as irreverent as possible until I'm not, and then I don't have to tell you that we're into some serious shit here. That's right. It's just it's just the inflection.

SPEAKER_02: 1:39:35

Yep, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 1:39:36

No, being being friendly is huge because no one wants to be yelled at, you know, even if these tense situations, it's just like, you know, no one wants to feel bad about like that they didn't say that thing right or whatever.

SPEAKER_00: 1:39:47

Yeah, I had I had again as I learned the craft, I I had my issues uh uh raising my voice to people, and it there are there are other ways around it. Uh uh, and that's why uh Kyle has me as the uh Secretary of State. Um I I try to be sympathetic for what the other person is dealing with. Uh I've been in I've been in all the Marshall's shoes. Uh I've been in just about everybody's shoes in race control. Uh there's uh when Chris Neifel came into um IndyCar or uh cart race control, uh he really uh uh put an emphasis on being loose and having fun and not taking it as seriously uh as as some others might.

SPEAKER_03: 1:40:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:40:41

He he he he he turned the he turned the the the tiller of of what race control does, and it's never been it's never been the same since.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:52

Yeah. I think it's definitely you know important to have like the the fundamentals, you know, as a race control communicator of like like a lot of us came from SCCA, right? There's a very specific SCCA way you say things and whatever. And I think that's a really good foundation. But I know like the other stuff that you you know, it doesn't have to be like no one's gonna slap your wrist if you didn't say it that as long as the job is getting done.

SPEAKER_00: 1:41:15

That's right. That's what matters, and it's a little easier now because we can usually see what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:21

Yes, right.

SPEAKER_00: 1:41:21

That wasn't the case before, and and uh you had to be a lot more accurate in in painting a picture. Uh and and and from time to time, especially in Formula One, I mean I'm looking at so much. So I want you to to be a little bit more aware of what's coming in rather than what you're putting out. Because when you're describing something, you're kind of describing it for the good of everybody else on the landline, right?

SPEAKER_03: 1:41:57

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 1:41:58

Yeah. I can I can see that uh that Georgie Russell is is pulled off in in some uh runoff somewhere, but nobody else does. So uh again, we still need to have all of that rigor uh in case uh all of this stuff disappears. The Marshalls will always be there. Um they see things we see everything uh from a little bit higher and sometimes a little bit better, uh Las Vegas being one of the places. Uh looking through all that fence in in both directions is extremely difficult. Right. Uh, but uh you see things in three dimensions. You can still hear the cars better than we can, you can still smell the cars better than we can. And boy, did I learn a lot about the way cars smell back in my early days as a course observer uh at Michigan because you you cars gonna blow up, you can smell it a couple laps ahead of time, right? Yeah, so uh and and and the camera, because it's only two dimensions, it it can lie to us. Yeah, nothing lies to you people who are out there swiveling around three dimensions. Uh it's there's there's no comparison.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:17

Yeah, and I think that's one of the things that I know I think Jamie and I both have been dinged on before is like we're you know, don't ever flag from the tower, right? We you know, we have the cameras, so we're kind of giving play-by-plays that other people can't see, but sometimes it's like let the marshal do that, you know, that move to something. But I think it also depends on the equipment you're using, because you know, those landlines is we as you may know, you know, you know, obviously in other marshals, you know, that's that party line style. You can talk over each other if you're using handhelds, you gotta make it more of a what they say, postcard rather than a painting or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00: 1:43:54

Because if you've got something, you've got to free the landline up to go full force yellow.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:59

Yeah, we can't you can't go on for an hour talking about it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:44:02

Yeah, and and there's and there's some expediency involved. Uh, and working with American race directors and working with the Formula One setup is completely different things. Um I think uh the communicator at two told me, Jimmy, why am I seeing red on the TSP panels? Are we red? And I and I stopped looking at the screens and I look at the map, and the map is red, and I was behind the curve on that because we had uh we had a a position change in the person who would who had been advising me that. I said, No, we can't do it that way anymore. Okay so uh there's there's uh in Formula One, the FIA representatives, they all sit in the back of the room, they all have their headsets on. They only talk to our clerk of the course, Paul Walter, and he dispenses what we need to do about what kind of an incident. Because we do it three times a year, because we have such good relationships, because the race director is new, uh a lot more forgiving. Uh, and don't get me wrong, I love Charlie Whiting, but but uh we could never do it fast enough uh in in the early days of uh Formula One marshalling in the United States. We couldn't respond fast enough, right? Now we're a lot faster uh just because of the way we're set up uh with interveners and with the cranes and putting all that on the same uh network, right? So uh it's uh it's Formula One's structured very well, uh, but it is still it still has a little bit of that quote unquote archaic old school way of doing things. When we went to when Indicar when when yeah when Champcar went to Belgium, we did a race at Zolder. A Marshal would call in an incident to the Marshall's communication. The marshall communicator would write it down and tear off the sheet and spin around and hand it to the race director who was sitting a couple rows behind him. That was your that was your high speed freaking response, right? And if we don't work that way, guys, we gotta we gotta work a lot faster. They were dumbfounded.

SPEAKER_01: 1:46:42

Wow. That's crazy. Well, where are we gonna see you next time, Jim? What's your what's your year looking like? Where are we gonna see you next?

SPEAKER_00: 1:46:53

I I Arlington, maybe until and I we promised we weren't gonna say anything about it, but until the Washington, DC race showed up uh on the IndyCar schedule, uh as I said, I've been doing this since 2010. Uh and until that new wrinkle is added to the schedule, this is the first year since 2010 that all of the IndyCar races did not conflict at all with WeatherTech. IMSA WeatherTech races. Nice clear across the board. The only um conflict I had was uh Miami, Miami, right uh conflicting with the uh Laguna Seca Imsa race, and Paul Walter, uh who is the clerk of the course for IMSA and uh clerk of the course for uh Formula One in the United States, said Jimmy, you're going to Miami. I missed Miami last year because it was opposite an indie car race. So I'm thrilled to go to be going back to Miami. But uh as a result, I think I'm gonna surf this wave of opportunity as hard as I can. Um, I will be 70 next year, uh, and it's time to start cutting back. Uh, Diane and I may be moving out of Southern California uh to a place that it may not be as accessible. I live eight minutes away from John Wayne Airport here in in uh in Irvine, and you can imagine how much time and money that has saved me over 30 years of traveling around. Uh, so I'm gonna work hard this year. I'm gonna kind of come off the gas. Uh I'm gonna do something part-time. I'm not gonna give it up entirely. I think that would be a mistake. So we'll come up with something, but uh I've got it I've got a test with IndyCar at Phoenix in a few weeks. We're going back to Phoenix. I'm gonna have a hell of a time with corner numbers because they've turned that racetrack around since we raced there last in 2018. Uh and after that, uh St. Petersburg, uh Long Beach, uh and and again again places like Long Beach and Detroit uh are IMSA and IndyCar races, so I get the double dip. So I'm working both of those. Uh so it's it's all it'll be all the IMSA races except uh now uh Laguna and VIR, which is a conflict with the with the new Washington DC race and all the Washington or all the uh the Indy car races. So you'll see me if you know if you know where to look for me, and now you'll know what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:49:50

There you go. Well, Jimmy, it's been great visiting with you and loving all of your stories and your fabulous heritage and This sport. It's always a pleasure to work with you for the F1 events. And uh, we've been looking forward to having you on the podcast for quite some time. So great to sit down with you. But we know Diane's waiting out there on the porch for you.

SPEAKER_00: 1:50:14

So our title is I can hear the fountain from here. Yes, she's turned the fountain on.

SPEAKER_02: 1:50:19

So but we thank you for possibly we can do this again.

SPEAKER_00: 1:50:22

Uh possibly maybe we do this again after uh uh some time has gone by and uh and a couple more pages have turned. Absolutely. You're always looking back on. I kind of I kind of got you through how I got here and and what all this means to me. Uh, and then maybe next time we'll we'll throw a little bit more uh spicier, racier.

SPEAKER_02: 1:50:46

Oh, weird notes about we are all in for that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:50:49

About how I really feel about Nigel Mansel, okay?

SPEAKER_02: 1:50:52

There you go. Write that down. We will have the uh the absolute uncorked Jimmy Swintal at a future episode.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:01

I think you should be doing a promotion for your book tour. We'll will be will be a way you can promote it for your mem memoir memoirs that you probably should be writing about.

SPEAKER_00: 1:51:10

Bo Barfield is writing a book, and I'm in it, and Chris Snifel is writing a book, and I'll be in that too. There you go. Chris Sniffel's book will be a lot saucier than Bo Barfield's.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:24

Thank you, Jim.

SPEAKER_02: 1:51:25

Appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:27

Looking forward to seeing you hopefully at some point, somewhere this year.

SPEAKER_00: 1:51:31

God bless you, and God bless Marshalls everywhere.

SPEAKER_02: 1:51:38

Well, there you have it. He's a architect, he's an artist, he's a race control communicator, and as we now know, he's a philosopher too. Who'd have thought it when you uh entered into this little podcast episode with Jimmy Swinthal? Fascinating guy. I mean, talk about calm in the face of the storm. That's how I always think of Jimmy as just the absolute calm in the face of a storm. You know, at an F1 event when things are going sideways, Jimmy's on the radio and he's always explaining it and what's gonna happen and what they need to do, and just the epitome of what race control communicators ought to be.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:24

Yeah, he's he's definitely considered the gold standard, I think, by a lot of people of you know, of what a race control flag communicator should be, which is exactly what you just described. And if there is ever a race control hall of fame, he should definitely be in it for sure. But uh he's always so kind and so nice and just hilarious, by the way. As I'm hopefully you you he he had some funny stories, but just in person, you know, he definitely doesn't hold back with some of his stories. And I certainly do. Uh he uh I can't remember if this was this was in you can cut this out if you want to, Jamie. But he he said he wanted to come back again and tell some spicier stories. I can't remember if he said that on camera or not, or whatever. So you can take that out if it wasn't included. Probably just take that out, sorry. Anyway, um, yes, it was it was great getting to talk to him and um yeah, we appreciate his time. And um it sounds like we're gonna be seeing him, I think, pretty soon um in Arlington, yeah, which is the inaugural year this year, um, IndyCar event, among other things, of course. They've got a couple sports series, so we're we're gonna be there at that one. So um looking forward to seeing that.

SPEAKER_02: 1:53:39

So IndyCar is um feeling really good about themselves right now as they've announced not one but two new events this year, and we'll talk about both of those. Uh, you heard us talking about them both, um, because not only do they have the race by executive order that we'll now have in uh in Washington DC, but also this new one in Arlington. And this this race in Arlington is going to be interesting because there are a lot of parallels between that the the indie car race in Arlington and the F1 race in Miami. They're both around professional football stadiums, and those owners are and the teams are both heavily involved. So I'm wondering if Jerry just uh looked at his buddy in Miami and said, I could do that too, or I could do that better.

SPEAKER_01: 1:54:37

So uh yes, yeah, we'll never know, but yeah, it's probably one of those two for sure. But uh yeah, it should be interesting. Um, have you been to that venue before?

SPEAKER_02: 1:54:48

I have not actually, and um, I I've been to Arlington a couple of times, but you know it's been ages, and you know, I don't really get off uh up to the Metroplex very often, and when I do, I'm more on the western side over at Eagles Canyon Raceway rather than in the actual plex itself. So it'll be interesting to see. I know the planning is going on. Our buddy Mike Vandamint is uh deeply involved with it, and uh you and I are helping him to various extents as we get ready. And uh I I know I'll be working a corner there, so you know that's really about all I know so far.

SPEAKER_01: 1:55:29

Yeah, no, it's it's been uh it's been he's been doing a great job, and and Gabby, who you mentioned earlier, she's helping out quite a bit as well. So kudos to the whole team. They've had a lot put on their plate and they're they're doing a great job of of getting all the logistics handled and this and that. And so um yeah, I think it should be pretty fun. I I'm doing the the volunteer coordination for that. And um uh funny story, if you if you've applied and you haven't done your FNC certification for SECA, uh don't don't hate me. Um that is that is a new uh well it's there's they're kind of putting a deadline that everyone has to do that now.

SPEAKER_02: 1:56:09

So I know that there was the way I understand it, not uh to take the pressure off of you as a person, it's not you making them happen. The way I under the way it was explained to me, and you can just leave this as it is, is in order to renew your F and C license, whenever that happens, forum SECA, they're gonna ask you to take the course. So I have taken it, I just had to do it this last week, but it it's a good course. You won't, you know, just plan about 90 minutes. It's not gonna, you know, you're not gonna have to study, or you know, if you've been a marshal even for a year, you're gonna do fine. If you're not a marshal for a year, you're gonna learn, which is what those courses are designed to do. So just do it, it doesn't cost you anything, just knock it out. You get a pretty little picture on your SDCA badge that you've taken the course, just do it, and that way it gets out of the way. So there it is.

SPEAKER_01: 1:57:11

Because if you are a national yeah, well, thank you for backing me up there. Um, yeah, it was it was widely announced, um, I think like two a year and a half, two years ago. Uh, I don't know if anyone read that article. I think they forgot it.

SPEAKER_02: 1:57:24

That's probably what it is.

SPEAKER_01: 1:57:26

And so they were doing it in waves where like the different license levels. So this is the final year that if you are a nationally certified FNC license holder and you don't do it before December 1st on your next renewal, they will yank your license if you don't. So this is kind of why we're trying to get ahead of this for people. So I assure you, this is not us power tripping in any way. It was, you know, yes, uh Mike the flag chief is wanting everyone to have this as they should. And it's also just for everyone. I yes, we know you are very experienced, but um, you're gonna have to do this anyway. And we hope we're doing you a favor because you know, when it comes F F1 time, if you your license has been mysteriously disappeared, it's because uh now you don't have a license.

SPEAKER_02: 1:58:09

And you know, the other thing too is as we've discussed in our episodes last year, the Europeans have to do far more to maintain a license than we ever have to do. So, you know, the fact that you're being asked to do one little 90-minute course just doesn't carry a lot of weight. So just relax, enjoy it, do it, and keep meeting us at the track. You know, it's not gonna be the end of your world. Just do it, it's done, you're finished, and move on with your life.

SPEAKER_01: 1:58:44

Yeah, and uh, but yeah, it's it's gonna be fun. We're looking forward to it. Um, yeah, first year. Um, I have been up there. I've never been to a Cowboys or Rangers game, but I did work the NFL draft one year back in my festival days. Um, they they did it there.

SPEAKER_02: 1:59:00

It wouldn't be a podcast without Jessica referencing her music history.

SPEAKER_01: 1:59:04

Well, I just I'm having some PTSD because I walked 40 miles on concrete over like a two and a half day period, and it was just it was it was like I it was I'm I'm I'm hoping I won't have any kind of episode, you know, flashbacks of oh the concrete of automatic.

SPEAKER_02: 1:59:20

We'll we'll have to get you some green and checkered hous.

SPEAKER_01: 1:59:23

Oh, there you go. Yes, but no, it should be fun. I'm looking forward to it, and um yeah, I think I think we're all looking forward to uh yeah, I haven't worked indie car since since it was a coda the one the one time in 2019. So that was that was like seven years ago. So yeah, it should be good to get back into that realm to kind of see what's going over there. But no, uh Jim was great to have on the show, and um he talked a lot about race control, and we're definitely we have plans to do a proper full-blown race control episode one of these years, but um I think he gave a pretty good over high-level overview of it. So we'll definitely get into it more. Um, we probably bored bored you long enough.

SPEAKER_02: 2:00:04

We have been going for quite a long time.

SPEAKER_01: 2:00:07

But um, yeah, I'd love, I'd love to delve more into race control in a future episode for sure. But I think he hopefully kind of gave a good good review there. So yeah, I think um I think that's that's about it. I think anything else you can think of for now.

SPEAKER_02: 2:00:19

Yeah, I think we've talked everybody's ears long enough, and we'll uh we'll come at you again with more. So I want to let you know that this podcast is copyright of its owners and creators. And though Jessica and I are employed by Circuit of the Americas, nothing we say represents an official opinion of or endorsement from the circuit or any of their clients or series we might mention. All opinions are our own. So that's gonna wrap up uh S2E1, as they say on Netflix.

SPEAKER_01: 2:00:51

It's been fun, yes. It always is to uh as S2 as S2E2.

SPEAKER_02: 2:00:58

There you go. Let's see. Yeah, so if you uh have ideas for other podcasts, uh people we might talk to, and uh you can include yourself in those lists. So get in touch with Jessica, and everybody knows how to get in touch with Jessica because she's our social coordinator. Everybody knows her and will talk to her. Me, they go, Who's that guy? So no.

SPEAKER_01: 2:01:20

I have I do have many, many email addresses, though it seems that uh I get emails from all the different yeah, all the different uh events I do. But yeah, no, yeah, love love to hear from people. All right.

SPEAKER_02: 2:01:31

All right, folks. We'll see you on a future episode of Track Side the Podcast. Thanks, everybody.

SPEAKER_01: 2:01:36

See you. Thank you. See ya.