Interview with series co-directors Scott Giles and Karl Shultz

Daniel Mendoza: Ok, I'm here with Scott Giles and Karl Shultz, co-directors and founders of the East Coast Honda Challenge. Gentlemen, first question. Give us a quick re-cap of the season, in as few words or as many words as you'd like.

Karl: Expensive.

Scott: (laughs) From an individual standpoint or a series standpoint?

Daniel: Let's get an individual standpoint first.

Scott: Individual, I did pretty good. I had some rough moments though. My brake system decided not work at various points during the year but we seem to have got that sorted out and managed to win the class championship with some serious fighting with Chris Brinson. And racing is much more expensive than driver's schooling. You actually end up spending less time in the car but being much more brutal to it. So...

Karl: Hard though that may be to believe.

Scott: Karl?

Karl: It's kind of a mixed bag. Quite a learning experience, an expensive one at that. Spent a good portion of the season struggling with my mental game. Sorta tend to be either really, really on or really, really off. Closing up this weekend with a positive note though, and it's been great fun to watch the thing, I mean from a personal perspective it's been awesome to watch so many people having such a good time.

Daniel: Next question, Scott, from your perspective how did you come into this season feeling in regards to the ECHC growth?

Scott: Actually we had some pretty high expectations we had established with NASA. From the beginning basically we were selling an unproven product to both NASA and sponsors. It looked really good on paper, but we were presenting folks with a race series that had not yet turned a wheel on track, something nobody had tried before...

Karl: Excellent...

Scott: Excellent timing. So the good thing about it was, with Hondas being as popular as they are, NASA was seeing a lot of HPDE entrances from Honda guys, who were kinda, I don't wanna say ostracized, but really not necessarily welcome at places like BMW or Porsche club events. It's understandable, it's the BMW and the Porsche club, it's not the Honda club. So there were a lot of us that were constructing and running in those clubs in Advanced and Instructor groups because we didn't really have a good place to race.

Karl: Yep.

Scott: ...but we were able to get NASA's interest in a race group, and we set pretty high goals from the beginning. Our agreement with NASA was we would like to have our own run group with nothing but Hondas on the track, but in order to do that we would have to have a minimum of 20 entrants. We would also have to have those 20 entrants at least 2 weeks out from the event so the scheduling could be done. We thought that was pretty aggressive but we agreed to that, and that basically became our goal, 20 entrants per race. Coming in we figured we would have some races where we would not have 20 people, we'd have 10, 15 maybe, and we've had well over 20 at every single event. We've averaged 24 I believe.

Karl: I think that's right.

Scott: So for all the events of the year we've averaged 24 entrants the high being 33 at SP and the low being 20 at CMP. But we've had our own run group for every race this year, which exceeded our expectation. Our sponsors are incredibly happy, NASA's incredibly happy, and we're incredibly happy.

Daniel: Karl, any thoughts to add?

Karl: What he said. I can't cover it much better than that. We had some close moments with people, including myself, waiting until the last possible minute to register for events. But now I think we've built up a level of credibility with NASA where they're willing to cut us some slack as far as you know, "it's ok if you guys late register because we know you're gonna get the 20."

Scott: Also, just beyond participation numbers and credibility, beyond that, we seem to have gathered up a reputation with everyone involved that we often are the best show out there. We appear to attract the most people up to the fences to watch the races and apparently create the most excitement among the groups that are here at the track. Plus we're drawing spectators to Hyper-Fest and other NASA events. From both perspectives, from the competitor's standpoint and from a spectator's standpoint, things are going better than we ever expected.

Daniel: Where did you feel that the ECHC put on the best showing? Not just in numbers, but in overall competitiveness.

Scott: I gotta say Lowe's. The night race on Saturday...

Karl: Since I wasn't at Lowe's , I'm gonna have to go with...

Scott: Who was that in your car?

Karl: I don't know, I think it was... It may have been my mom. Maybe my cat.

Scott: We were actually approached by multiple people after that race that told it was the best race, period, that they had ever seen. Including, NASCAR, F1... It was under the lights with the infield road course. We lost track how many passes took place during the event. That was probably the best show. I know it was a great show from the inside of my car. At some points I was tempted to pull over and park so I could watch. Karl did.

Karl: It was a good show, "good job Karl." "Please don't lap me please don't lap me please don't lap me." That would be one of the mentally "off" weekends for Karl this season.

Scott: So you're not gonna pick that one?

Karl: No, not really. My sentimental favorite is Summit Point, which one was it, Sunday, when DePew stalled in front of me at the start and I had to make up all those positions. Everyone went at it hard at Summit.

Scott: That was a good one too. Had a lot of spectators at Summit Point, had 33 entries on the grid...

Karl: Seriously, I'm gonna have to go with the night race at Lowe's too. Just because it is next to impossible for club racers at our level to get that "24 Hours of Daytona" type experience where you're running under the lights on an oval with a road course and racing that close. That's an experience that few people in our position are ever gonna be able to get. So yep, gotta do Lowe's.

Daniel: Probably pretty obvious but just for the record, will there be a 2003 season?

Scott: Yep.

Karl: Oh yeah

Daniel: Any new tracks you're gonna add to the schedule?

Scott: Well everything is tentative at this point. We'll do the same tracks we did this year and right now we're looking at adding Mid-Ohio and one other track. It's very likely gonna be Beaver Run, maybe even Watkins Glen. We're planning on doing seven weekends overall next year. So 14 races, two races per weekend.

Daniel: I know we had discussed a bit on honda-tech.com that there were going to be some changes to the rules. Are there gonna be any big changes, or just minor adjustments?

Karl: The biggest change is gonna be that we're gonna add minimum weights. We got a lot of research done as far as weighing cars at Lowe's thanks to OPM bringing up their scales. We're not gonna just use SCCA and such weights. We can make the minimum weights make sense for Hondas, because that's all we have. Some of the problem child cars in SCCA racing are Hondas that are saddled with too much weight to carry around. We don't have that problem. That's gonna be the biggest rule change that we're gonna make.

Scott: And of course we're going to have access to scales next year which we did not have this year, which is why we did not have minimum weights. We could've had them, but it would have been an unenforceable rule, and there's no sense in having an unenforceable rule so we just let people "run what they brung" weight wise.

Karl: For the record, minimum weights will not apply to hybrids. With all the possible combinations in car parts you can't possibly do that.

Daniel: Who should keep an eye out for?

Scott: For 2003?

Daniel: Yes.

Scott: Favorites? Well with Jack leaving H1 after his dominance this year, who knows. There's a lot of people building cars for that class. John Whitaker will have Jack's car. John's a very good driver. We know the car's fast, so we know what's gonna happen there. Todd Reid seems to be sorting out the gremlins in his car. He turned the fastest race-lap at Lowe's. Uh...

Karl: Reid's got the game to take the class if he can keep the car bolted together. There's a guy that has been telling me he's gonna come racing in his CRX hybrid, a guy named Duane Taylor, been instructing with Car Guys for a long time. I'm gonna put my money on him in H1.

Scott: I'm not gonna put my money on anybody. It's a wide open ball game. There's no telling what's gonna happen there. In H2 I'll have to pick Corey again with Jason Franza nipping. We're not sure right now if Ratcliffe is coming back.

Karl: I'm gonna go with Franza.

Scott: Corey or Franza. If Warren can quit busting his stuff he may be able to show something.

Karl: Warren can be fast. Oh, well don't forget Curpier.

Scott: That's true, but he keeps busting his stuff too.

Karl: Franza's the only guy in H2 that's consistently fast and not broken. That's why I'm going with him.

Scott: H3...

Karl: Me.

Scott: I'm not picking anyone. Wait, I pick him , I'm not picking me. It's bad luck to pick yourself. I intend to try to win H3 again but I'm not gonna pick me so I'll pick him. No wait, I'm picking Chris Brinson.

Karl: I'm picking me.

Scott: I'm picking Chris Brinson.

Karl: I already have bad luck so I'm gonna go with me.

Scott: So you can't go anywhere but up?

Karl: Right.

Scott: H4 there is really no telling. Lyonel Kent has been really really fast all year and so has David Rhodes. James Evans intends to run the series again after winning the championship this year. Adam Richman will be bringing back more experience and a stronger car next year. Oscar White is getting ready to move up from instructing with NASA to racing in H4. Oscar is extremely fast, I'm not picking. There's no way you could predict this one.

Karl: I can't begin to pick H4. Wide open.

Scott: Yep. That class had 6 winners in 10 races this year. Unreal.

Scott: H5, I'm gonna have to go with Richard Floyd to repeat.

Karl: Yep.

Scott: ...he's finally got that car sorted out. OPM did some good work on it and he's looking dominant right now. Took him all year to get there but now he's very, very fast.

Daniel: Going into today with this showdown between Richard [Floyd] and John Whitaker for the H5 championship, who do you think will come out on top?

Scott: I don't know, right now I'd say that if it continues to rain, John could win it. If it's dry I gotta go with Richard.

Karl: Agreed.

Daniel: With the plans for say a Mid-US or West Coast Honda Challenge, how involved are you guys getting into that?

Karl: The first thing that we do when a region approaches us as far as picking up the series, is we make sure that there's an agreement that they pick up our rules and they don't touch them. The problem that we're gonna run into is people running West Coast Honda Challenge out in California but there's something different. If we ever get together and do a National Championship kind of thing, we're broken. Ohio is already recognizing Honda-Challenge classes. But I don't know if they have their own race group. There's an effort to pick it up out in California. So we're involved. We don't do things for them like the trophies, and the website, and dealing with contingency sponsors and all that sort of stuff. We don't fund them either - we fund East Coast. But as far as the inner workings of the way the thing goes and the rules and such, we're heavily involved to ensure things stay consistent.

Daniel: Any last words gentlemen, regarding today, the season, the future?

Scott: We're gonna do it again next year bigger and better. That's all I got. How about you?

Karl: I'm looking forward to spending even more money next year in an effort to catch this guy [pointing to Scott].

Daniel: Sounds good. Thank you gentlemen for your time and good luck with 2003!