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CORVETTE TODAY #92 - Meet GM's New Sports Car Racing Brand Manager, Laura Wontrop Klauser
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May 8, 2025
When GM decided to bring all of their racing entities under one person, they picked Laura Wontrop Klauser to lead them. In this episode of CORVETTE TODAY, your host, Steve Garrett, introduces you to Laura. She's a Mechanical Engineer, she track races, she truly loves her job. And she talks about bringing all of GM's racing together to share ideas and research. Also learn about the future of Corvette Racing on this episode of the CORVETTE TODAY podcast!
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0:00
[Music] welcome to corvette today the podcast
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that talks about everything corvette with your host steve garrett mc and dj at one of the largest corvette weekends
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in the country corvette fun fest president of the corvette club of kansas city missouri and radio disc jockey at
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the number one radio station in kansas city for over 40 years here's steve garrett
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[Music] thanks for listening to corvette today
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the podcast that talks about everything corvette brought to you by mid-america motorworks pursue your passion at
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mamotoworks.com i'm your host steve garrett i appreciate you tuning in you can listen to corvette today on all
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you can also sign up for the printed version there as well corvette fever magazine come along for the ride also
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mid-enginecorvetforum.com the forum that focuses on the new mid-engine c8 corvette meet a lot of
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fellow corvette enthusiasts like yourself at mid-engine corvette forum.com also a shout out to
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canadiancorvetforum.com welcoming corvette owners from around the world my guest on corvette today is the sports
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car racing program manager for general motors she's an automotive engineer and enthusiast her hobbies include road
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course performance driving at tracks like vir sebring and mid-ohio she also
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has a very cool website called cars and chocolates dot com and we'll talk more about that website during the podcast
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please help me welcome to the show laura one trop clowser laura thanks for joining me on corvette today thanks for
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having me what a great opportunity to talk about the car i know and love so much you and me both well laura let's
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talk about your early career let's talk about your upbringing and how your parents and family played such an
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important role in your life and also talk about your early introduction to speed and cars well i was blessed to be
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able to grow up on a small piece of property in maryland i would call it a farm but i think that's not fair to people who grew up on actual farms that
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produce crops and have animals and all that this was just a bigger piece of property but it meant that we always had
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something to do on the weekends whether it was fixing an outbuilding or working on the house digging trenches my dad
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loved to say that labor day was meant for laboring so those long weekends were always busy on our side but i grew up
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with great family setting mom and dad were both very supportive of everything let me kind of figure out who i was by
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trying all different things did 4-h did all sorts of activities at school but ultimately the thing that caught my eye
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the most was anything that had to do with mobility whether it was riding in the car when i was younger or waiting
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until i finally was old enough to reach the pedals on the big john deere tractor so i could drive that and then getting
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my license that was always something that i found interesting and about the age of 13 i decided i could make a
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career out of this and what i wanted to do is i wanted to go move to michigan i wanted to work for one of the big three
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and i wanted to design the cars that i love so much sports cars obviously being the ones that were the most interesting
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to me so i set myself on a path to do that first i thought i might want to be a mechanic but i was really good at math
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in school so i decided to turn that into mechanical engineering and that's what i went and pursued in
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college and had the opportunity to work on formula sae when i was at wrestling or polytechnic institute fell even more
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in love with cars and then got a little bit of the racing bug at that point found my way to general motors through
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that so it kind of all progressed nicely in fact almost a little like it was planned it wasn't it just happened to
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work out but when you love something and you know that's what you want you can usually find a way to get there and that's a perfect segue into my next
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question because i know you graduated from rpi you had your bachelor's there and you got your mechanical engineering
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degree your master's there at the university of michigan so talk a little bit more about your college career and
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how that led you right into gm so the bachelor's i did very traditional i went to campus for four years had the time of
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my life mainly because of the formula sae program and the great friends that i made in that and that was my life in
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fact i remember a funny story my parents came up to see me i think it was october was the first visit day that they would
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have normally on campus the freshman year they came back a couple months after i'd been there wanted to see how i was doing and of course all i could talk
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about was working on this race car project and i wanted to show them the shop i wanted to do all that and i
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remember that they were looking at me a little confused and finally they're like hey aren't you going to parties aren't
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you you know this and that and i said i was like no i have a lot of friends but i'm working on the race car
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and i love it and i can't get enough of it you can tell they were perplexed by this but clearly as time developed and
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as i got even more engaged with the program i led it in junior year the year that we placed ninth in michigan
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competition which we're so proud of they came to understand how important and how critical it was i went to school or into
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classes i did my homework i did all that i kept a nice high gpa but the race car to me was the way to take all of that
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stuff we were learning in the classroom and apply it and really see how it would react in a real world situation so it
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was the best learning tool that i had they finally made peace with that was what i was going to be up to and i i would let him know whenever i'd go out i
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had friends on the side too that weren't on the race car program all right mom i'm going out with my good friend kate tonight we're going to have fun we're
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going to go hit up this party and i think they felt better in the end for that but it was nice to have parents that supported education and the social
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side of college too absolutely right laura talk more about that formula sae
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program because i'm not sure a lot of people know exactly what it is but it's so darn cool yeah it is a fantastic
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program sponsored by sae of course what it is is you are designing and
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building and then competing with a open wheel formula style race car so
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everything from creating the cad images and the documents to create the car to
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manufacturing it and then taking it to the competition and actually driving it or participating in all the different
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things that are at the competition it's done by the students so it's usually a group of anywhere from seven to some
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teams are huge some of them are 30 people or more that are working on this and it's all supposed to be student-led
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student-run i think in most colleges that is the case and it's really that opportunity again to take all of that
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knowledge they're throwing at you in the classroom and the equations that you're doing and the word problems and all that
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stuff that they try to create reality but it's making it reality and i think one of the coolest things you learn
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right off the bat is you can do all the equations you want but at the end of the day there's things like tolerances and
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there's stuff where reality doesn't always play nice like it does in the computer environment or it does when
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you're just simply doing some math trying to figure things out so learning that lesson quick right away freshman
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year and then learning how to adapt that into your design process was huge but then also in addition all the great
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engineering side of it you're learning how to play nice with others to break it down simply it's a team project you
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can't do it by yourself and everyone knows what the goal is the goal is to build an incredible car and go beat up
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everybody at the competition and win but there's so many different ways to get there and so there's a lot of freedom in
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the design and what you do with the car so it was trying to learn how to get everyone rallied around a single point
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or get us all on the same path or find ways to complement each of the members of the team and how we could figure out
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how to make the design process work and we weren't doing conflicting things and ultimately that's what happened our
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junior year the team that was in for junior year jived really well everyone knew their role on the team and that's
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what they did and all of those roles complemented everyone else and that's why i think we were able to bring such a
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solid race car and do so well is we all had that going on for us in addition to having really smart people on the team
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that knew how to put some great designs together as well very cool now i know you're a corvette person at heart talk
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about the corvette that you and your husband own and what you guys like doing with the car yes i have a c6 a 2013
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grand sport when eric and i started working at gm i had the immense privilege to be on the corvette team as
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one of my first assignments and i got to know the team well and at the time they had a program where they would take some
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of the extra cars that we had at gm and they would allow employees that were on the team to experience them at a very
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controlled track environment first track that we went to was putnam park and thankfully they let me bring my
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boyfriend at the time now husband down because i think he wouldn't have talked to me for a week if i got to do that and
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didn't take him with me of course and rightly so i would have been mad too if it was reversed but that program went
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away right on bankruptcy but i had purchased a cobalt ss turbo that was my daily driver which was still a pretty
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track capable car so eric and i kept going with the group that would go to the track but we brought my cobalt and
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then eventually we realized it was time to up our game a little bit so we started hunting for a corvette and i was
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able to find one at one of the local dealers in michigan that was at a fantastic price we were catching it
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right before c7 was launching so it was time for them to do some inventory turnover and it's been our track baby
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ever since we love it we haven't done anything crazy like put a cage in it because i do still like driving it around in the summertime when i can take
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the removable roof off and just enjoy that but it goes to the track and it's
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what we've been honing our skills in and it is a very different animal from the cobalt that we started in but it was a
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great progression because we learned how to take a lower horsepower car and drive that fast and then transition into the
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higher horsepower cars so it was a nice way to walk up for skills very nice now as i alluded to in the introduction
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you're passionate also about cooking talk about your hobby talk about the cooking website and how you tie all that
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into corvette racing well i've always enjoyed baking i think a lot of that is because it was such an
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important part of the family growing up my mom cooked almost all of our meals when we were little and even to this day
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when i go home i'm looking forward to a home-cooked meal and of course my grandmother unfortunately she's no longer with us but going to my
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grandmother's house and eating dinner with them was such an important part of my childhood so being surrounded by food
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and the whole preparing with love and all that was a big deal and i found that baking really fit nicely for me because
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it's a science and you have to be pretty exact and that's my engineering brain likes that i like the measurements and
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knowing that depending on how much baking soda you put in that's how the reactions will happen so i kind of use
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that as my creative outlet or whenever i'm a little stressed and i just want to do something where i create something i
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do it with baking and i play a little bit with chocolate too i found that to be kind of an interesting medium to work with as well so it's just been there for
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me for racing it started when i was only in charge of cadillac but i would tell the
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teams if they won a race i would send them down a care package because i noticed that if you watch the end of the
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race we have the great win ceremony well the drivers get all the attention and that's how it's set up nobody's
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complaining but the mechanics oh my gosh they work so hard the races are one with them as well doing what they need to do
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in the pits and having the beautiful pit stops and getting the car ready and all of that so i sent the care package to
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them as a thank you for all the great work that they've done so it's kind of become a thing in fact as my workload
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has increased and i've gotten busier it's turned into a all right i got to be smart about we're coming home from a
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race weekend this team won i got to get their care package out but i love the opportunity to thank the whole team for
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everything that they do and who doesn't love a nice batch of brownies or some interesting cookies that's awesome and i
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know that the team calls them win biscuits don't they yes axr coined that term one of our cadillac teams they won
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the championship this year in imsa and the first thing they did when they saw me over in victory circle when they
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brought the car was they said okay this is what we want i said well you made it easy for me you told me exactly what you
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want you have to think about it that's awesome well laura let's take our first break when we come back in segment
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and now back to corvette today with your host and my husband steve garrett
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[Music] hey thanks for listening to corvette today the podcast that talks about everything corvette brought to you by
15:21
mid-america motorworks pursue your passion at mamotorworks.com i'm your
15:26
host steve garrett with me today is laura juan drop clowser the sports car racing program manager for general
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motors in the second segment we're going to talk about her time at gm laura you started at general motors in 2008 on the
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passenger car side of the business talk about your beginnings with gm because i know when you started you were getting
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started during the c7 era like you had alluded to in the first segment but then you went on to cadillac ct6 and spark
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and sonic as well yes so my very first job was one of those where you say pinch
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me this can't be real i had the opportunity to work with the corvette team on what was the c7 at the time but
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we hadn't told anybody it was coming so it was really exciting to be on a secret project if you will as we are getting
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ready for the next generation of the cards this is back in 2008. it was an opportunity to meet everyone on the team
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which was great the job that i did was called vehicle definition imbalance and what that job entailed was you were
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supposed to take i would say marketing wants and requirements that come across a little on the softer side such as the
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phrase fun to drive the car needs to be fun to drive you're supposed to translate that into engineering metrics
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so the engineering team knew what we were trying to do so fun to drive could be 0 to 60 in 3.2 seconds it could be
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handling so many g's as you're doing a corner those kind of things and so it was trying to quantify this image of
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what we wanted the car to be and we had this group for every car that we produced so the corvette was almost easy because we kind of know what a corvette
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needs to be but then if you're trying to apply some principles to either a brand new product we're putting out or one of
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our suvs that you had to think a little bit and go okay what exactly is this specific car or truck trying to achieve
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in the marketplace what do we want to be known for all of that so it was a great opportunity to see the car from a
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holistic standpoint versus only being focused on one specific part understanding how we were setting
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everything up and how everything was supposed to integrate and play together and then of course having the connection with the corvette team getting to know
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them getting to know that product was a dream come true for me i figured that just like any young engineer at gm i was
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going to end up on whichever product i did and i was going to work really hard and make it the best car truck that it can be but being able to do that with
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corvette it was a dream come true that's for sure now you first started out as a program manager for the cadillac atsv
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talk about those days with cadillac and your involvement with that racing program yes so a couple jobs in
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production later i had the opportunity to apply for some racing positions that were opened in our racing department and
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these were ones that only come around once every so many years they definitely aren't things that you see often so i
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threw my name in the hat i crossed my fingers that they would see that i was still involved with formula sae as a volunteer and running the dynamic events
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and that i had done some really great jobs in production that had given me a lot of background experience and hope
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that that would catch their eye and thankfully it did so i had the opportunity to interview and ultimately they placed me with the cadillac ats vr
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program which was running in pirelli world challenge sprint racing in the us
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and it was such a great way to get started in racing we were treating it as a factory program we only had one team
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it happened to be pratt miller that we're running two cadillac sports in pirelli world challenge and it gave me
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the opportunity to see how a team is run because when you look at it from the factory lens the oe is controlling the
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budget and then really integrated in with the team versus customer programs like we have with the dpi program and
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our camaro gt4 we create the car but after that it's up to the team to take it and run it and of
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course we stay in touch and contact but you're not in their day-to-day operations telling them how to spend their five dollars or whatever you're
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more or less giving them big goals and saying this is what we want to see with this program and then allowing them to
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figure out how they would be meeting that for us and then for whoever else is sponsoring them so i like that i started
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in the factory environment it gave me a good way to understand how racing works and then when i had the opportunity to
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switch over to dpi when we sunset the ats program that was a great shift to go
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from factory to customer and then have to learn how to encourage different teams with different agendas who have
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different sponsors to work together and to try to achieve the goals for cadillac as a whole so it was a great new
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challenge and it's one that i mean i still don't know exactly how you're supposed to do it sometimes i get lucky and sometimes i don't in terms of
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getting everybody to play nice but for the most part i think if you give them an area where they feel safe and they
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can come and get support and that we're going to be there and walk the walk with them it gives them an opportunity to say
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okay i'm a part of this bigger family than just my little team absolutely right and also you had some time with
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the camaro in the gt4r race program too that had to be really cool it was it
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turned into a bonus assignment i was working on the cadillac program and the person that was looking after our camaro
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program ended up leaving the company and he went on to work someplace else so my boss at the time asked he's like well
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they're racing in imsa you're already there do you want to just go ahead and take this over and i was like yeah that should be fine it's been a really
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different perspective on how to do racing it's a lower level racing in the
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institute so it's a smaller budget and you really see some great innovation out
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of the teams because they are taking not that much in terms of resources from a money perspective and figuring out how
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to still run a race program which the fundamental and the basics are still there whether you are a multi-million
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dollar operation fully backed by an oe or you're out on your own and you're trying to scrape together your budget so
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it's neat to see how they were able to take their circumstances and figure out how to give themselves what they needed
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to be successful very cool also let's talk about gm's effort to kind of streamline the entire racing program
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because they named you in a new position as the sports car racing program manager so we're bringing all the teams under
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one umbrella aren't we yes well one of the things that i would notice as i was
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growing in my role in racing is that we had a lot of programs but they didn't
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always talk to each other it's not because they didn't want to it's just you're so busy in racing and the clock
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is always ticking no matter what you don't think to reach out or to do that kind of stuff because it would take a
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couple minutes and you could be using those couple minutes on whatever tasks you have to get done right now so i had
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pitched the idea that it made sense to bring the teams together in fact we were doing that behind the scenes you know
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working with the different program managers trying to get together making sure that whenever we communicated this
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gm we were consistent whether that was coming from the corvette racing side or cadillac or camaro so that the sanctuary
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body understood that it was the same group and we weren't giving them conflicting goals or messaging so we
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figured that side of it out but really it came down to how to better share resources whether those resources are
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budget or their different humans that are supporting with different skill sets and how to make all the programs
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stronger by leaning on each other and that's ultimately what happened when they decided to promote me to the sports
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car racing program manager the goal was to bring all that together so we could be more efficient and i'd say now that
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we're done with year one of that we're definitely getting there there's always room for improvement but it's been great to see how the cadillac program was able
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to support corvette and vice versa even the smallest things like sharing a racetrack for a test very cool and it
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makes total sense as well so with you managing all the teams that's a lot of race cars racing sometimes all at the
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same time and a lot of people to manage as well so let's talk more about that because i'm sure that presents
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coordination issues and talk about some of the intricacies and some of the challenges with this new role you hit
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the nail on the head it's a lot there's a lot going on in gm motorsports in general we also are standing up a new
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tech center down in charlotte for mainly supporting our nascar operations but we are going to be creating more of a
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knowledge hub for racing for our company there and bringing some of that engineering in-house in addition to that
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the growth that's happening there we've got the changes in the sports car side then we got permission to not only do
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the lmdh program with cadillac but to do gt3 with corvette as well usually we have one big sports car program and then
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some complimentary ones this is two big programs that are coming down the pipeline so the biggest challenge has
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been managing all of the workload that's coming with this i wouldn't say that i was super amazing at it this year
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now that we're at the end of the year i'm realizing i left a lot of vacation days i guess i just gave back to general
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motors which when you have a year exciting is this it is what it is we're building a team to help make sure that
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we can support this properly so right now i have three people that work for me we're about to bring on a fourth here
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early next year and then we have plans to bring even more people on board to help on the technical side so that we
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always have a group that is available to help with just day-to-day operational things as simple as getting purchase
24:09
orders out so the teams have access to the funding that they need or if we need to be interacting with the sanctioning
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body giving our feedback on a new rule or regulation that they've proposed working through getting our two new cars
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developed and approved all of that so we're bringing a lot more people to help do that but again all in one group we're
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all sports car racing some of us will be more focused on cadillac some more focused on corvette but at the end of the day we continue to come back with
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each other check in regularly and we have the mission of making sure that all the programs are successful very cool
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well laura let's take our final break and in segment number three we're going to talk specifically about corvette
24:45
racing we've got sports car racing program manager laura clauser on corvette today american hydrocarbon your
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913-653-8783 visit us online at retirewithtrue.com investment advice offered through true wealth and company llc a registered investment advisor in
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the state of kansas this is the corvette today podcast with
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steve garrett hey thanks for listening to corvette today the podcast that talks about
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everything corvette brought to you by mid-america motorworks pursue your passion at
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mamotoworks.com i'm your host steve garrett with me is laura clouser and in this third and final segment we're going
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to talk specifically about corvette racing laura corvette racing has had a very very successful race history talk
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about your integration into the program along with your new job well one of the
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cool things about coming on board with corvette now is i actually knew quite a
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few of the team members pretty well because some of them have migrated over from the ats vr program that we did when
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i first started racing in 2016. so i had that and then just being around and
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working with pratt miller in general they support us in many different ways on the racing side i've gotten to know them a little bit being in the paddock
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with them at imsa and so when i transitioned over i think it was pretty seamless for myself and for the team
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they already knew who i was they knew my quirks they knew what i could do to help them from a support standpoint so it
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worked out really nicely i'd say in general it's been busy there's a lot going on we've got our gt3 program that
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we're working on and getting that race car designed we had to make some modifications to the car for insula for next year and then of course we still
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had to run this year's season and we had to go for that championship so it's been so busy i don't think anyone's had the
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opportunity to think too hard it's just what do we need to do let's do it well that's a good way to approach it that's for sure you've got a terrific
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team at corvette racing talk a little bit about the team and the drivers there with the race team yeah we're fortunate
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we have some of the best that are running the car for us right now hands down and it's one of those that it's
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been such a great program for the past 20 years and how we've done it they've represented us well they've shown the
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world what corvette is capable of and then allowed our fans to grow and to have that community and all of that
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which is what's going to be so interesting about switching into the gt3 program where we will still have the
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ability to have our factory team although i don't know if it'll be the same factory that you're used to just
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because the landscape is changing a little bit with the gt3 side of it but we also will have the opportunity of
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customers now that are included in the racing and whether they're in imsa or they're in other series eventually
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around the world we're gonna have the opportunity to have corvettes all over the place racing which i'm really excited about it's almost like having
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the best of both worlds you can still have your team that shows the world what they're capable of and working with the
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car and then we have the ability to bring on other teams to grow our family that sounds fantastic talk about the
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relationship with corvette the production car with the new c8r because i know in the introduction taj said that
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the lines between the production car and the race car are becoming more blurred and more blurred which is a good thing
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for everybody buying a corvette absolutely and actually we're even taking it further when we get into gt3
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with being closer to production one of the neat things about how it works is when we decide it's time for the next
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generation of the production car we immediately start thinking about what would be a good thing for the production
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car that also would be good for racing and the mid-engine platform was one of those that checked both boxes for sure
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it enabled the ability to shift the weight it enabled the pivot point to shift in the car and a couple other
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things that would stem from that that allowed us to take the race car to the next level of its performance capability
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and of course competing against others out there that have similar layout made a little bit more of an apples to apples
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comparison the productions he knew this and it was all part of the discussion and really when they started the initial
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design work on c8 the race side of the house was involved from day one and we were designing the two side by side
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there's definitely some differences in the race car there's things that we have to do by regulation there's things we have to do in the production car by
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government regulations too right so you're gonna see some differences there but on the flip side the philosophies
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and the aerodynamics theory and all of that were developed side by side so that they could each complement each other as
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they carried on their process of getting ready to be launched that's so cool too because you know that when you buy a c8
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corvette you're getting pretty darn close to the race car and that's a cool thing yes you know corvette racing has
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always dominated in the class that they've run in sometimes they haven't had a lot of competition from other brands i think they're kind of scared of
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us but talk about the future of corvette racing and what we can see in the upcoming years oh my goodness so much
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change and i know that it's got some people uneasy because change is difficult but i think it's going to be for the better when we step back and we
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take a look at it competition is huge and this year we are very proud of everything that we accomplished the team
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worked so hard between all of the chaos that the pandemic keeps causing to our schedule and how we move things around
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then lamar kept getting moved and that was a huge undertaking that we had to figure out and all that our championship
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is well earned and we're very proud of it but we're really excited for next year and the hope that the class that
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we're going to be running in is going to be significantly larger than it was this year there's nothing like having such a
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nice variety of vehicles that you're racing against and a bunch of different teams and drivers to add to the
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excitement of the race and really to challenge yourself to figure out how to be creative to get around different
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things and each car that's out there has its own strengths and weaknesses so it's learning how can you play to your
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strengths and play to everybody else's weaknesses and that's how you can come ahead of everyone so i think the
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challenge is really exciting for everyone in the hope that it's going to be a nice big healthy class so that we
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have a lot of competition absolutely corvette racing fans are passionate fans aren't they oh my gosh they are
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talk about the relationship with the fans and how you do your best to make that experience for them the most fun we
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love our fans our program is the envy of the whole paddock because of how
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fantastic and loyal and willing to show up our fans are in fact when we have
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conversations with the other oes they won't come out and say it but you can tell that they're jealous of what
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corvette has and i'll take that one all day to the bank we're so excited and proud of what we have and the
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relationship we've built with our fans in fact the hardest thing of the pandemic by far had been having to be
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shut away from everybody especially when a lot of things started changing i don't get too into a lot of the comments on
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post because some of them can get a little crazy but i've been keeping half an eye on what's going on out there and
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i know at the beginning people were worried they didn't understand so much was changing it was scary and i get that
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because change can be very scary but now that we've been able to have people back in the paddock with us at imsa we can go
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over to the corrals we can see people we can talk to them we can interact that has been so awesome because all we
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wanted to do was to tell everybody don't worry corvette racing is here we're not going anywhere racing has been a part of
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corvette's dna for such a long time and as i explained it's important for as we develop each generation of the car so
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corvette racing is definitely here to stay it's going to look a little different because things have changed but that's okay we're still going to
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find a way to grow it and to keep the cars on the grid to keep the excitement to keep our fans give them something to
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cheer for it's just been great to be able to interact with people again and remind them that we're still corvette we
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just were locked in the paddock for a little while while this virus was wreaking havoc on the world absolutely right laura thank you so much for taking
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the time to be on corvette today i really appreciate it all the best of luck in 2022 with corvette racing thank
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you very much thanks for having me and cannot wait to get back out there in daytona in not that much time
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thanks for listening to corvette today and please be sure to tell your family friends and other corvette enthusiasts
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about the corvette today podcast and also thanks to our flagship sponsors mid-america motorworks pursue your
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you've been listening to corvette today with steve garrett if you'd like to contact steve with any thoughts on the
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podcast or ideas for guests on corvette today you can email him at stevegarrettdj gmail.com
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that's stevegarrettdj gmail.com garrett has two r's and two t's or
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connect with steve on social media on facebook twitter or instagram using at steve garrett dj
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thanks again for listening to corvette today [Music]
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