RaceSchool.com Podcast hosted by Larry Mason

Emilie Amante is the sales and marketing chief for AVCO Art. This company specializes in unique automotive and racing artwork that is customized to the owner’s car (plane or boat) and puts it into a unique background. The sky’s the limit here with what they can come up with. I met Emilie at the 2025 San Marino Car Show where she showed me some of AVCO’s interactive artwork. This company’s work is...

Julia Price is a front-end mechanic on the Rahal Letterman Lannigan NTT IndyCar Series team. She’s new to the position this year and in this interview on race day morning of the 2025 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach weekend, she takes a few moments out of her busy schedule to tell us what she’s responsible for on the cars and also how she got into the sport in the first place. She’s very petite, yet...

Jennifer Symington leads the marketing division for both the Honda and Acura brands. During the media day for the 2025 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, we had the opportunity to sit down with her and hear how she has made a successful career for herself doing what she loves. You can tell that she is a strong supporter of the brand and tells us how that came to be. She also gives advice to young gir...

The Martin Auto Museum is a fantastic place to visit if you’re ever in the Phoenix (Glendale), Arizona area. We took a road trip and marveled at the extensive and amazing collection of such a wide variety of vehicles there. Cars from the very beginning of the automotive age to today are displayed along with a nice selection of race cars, movie cars, custom cars and classics. Additionally, there ar...

Conor Daly has enjoyed a long career in auto racing from the USA to Europe and back. Although he’s jumped around to numerous teams in the Indy car paddock, you’ll usually find him running up front during the Indianapolis 500 (he led the most laps there in 2021). In this interview (taped during the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach weekend), we go into a deep dive of what it’s like to race at the “500...

Tim Coffeen enjoyed a long career with Newman-Haas Racing as a mechanic on their Indy cars. We caught up with him at the 50th Anniversary Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach where he was reunited with, and working on Newman-Haas machinery that graced the streets of Long Beach, and for that matter, the entire season. In this interview, he tells us about the legendary drivers and champions that he worked...

Jordan Roddy is the proud owner of Sebastien Bourdais’ 2006 Aura Grand Prix of Long Beach race-winning Lola Indy car. Roddy, who hails from Australia, took some time before going on to win his second race of the weekend at Long Beach (in the historic open-wheel races) to tell us about it. In this interview, he gives us a bit of background on this car and why it’s significant. He also tells us how...

Brian Redman is one of the top drivers of his era and also the winner of the inaugural Long Beach Grand Prix back in 1975. On the 50th Anniversary of the event, we got a chance to sit down with him at the media luncheon and have him reflect on how he got to Victory Lane that day. He also regales us with racing stories of the 60’s and 70’s and how he coped with the extreme danger of those times. He...

Vince Tjelmeland is a race car driver with a vast array of experience in multiple categories. We caught up with him at the press day for the 2025 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach where he brought out his beautiful Lola T332 F5000 car (ex Danny Ongais) for everyone to see and hear in preparation for his race at the 50th Anniversary of the Grand Prix where he’d be running with other historic cars in h...

Cris Vandagriff is the president of the Historic Motor Sports Association (HMSA), an organization that helps bring historic racing cars to race fans and tracks today in their period-correct configuration and livery. If you ever hear the stories of “the good ole’ days” and how great the race cars sounded and looked at phenomenal race tracks, Vandagriff’s organization brings those sights and sounds...

In what has become an annual feature prior to the Fourth of July holiday on the raceschool.com podcast, we interview CHP officers to get safe driving tips and some insight into what the officers do and look out for while helping to keep motorists safe on the roads. This year, we met up with previous raceschool.com podcast interviewee (and FastLane alumnus) officer Craig Mosley, and for the first t...

Some race car drivers make a splash and then fade away. Others make such an impression that you recognize them throughout their career and still talk about them long after they’ve retired. One of those drivers is Paul Tracy. A kid from Canada who made his presence felt in the junior formulae, he went on to become a Champ Car Champion winning numerous races along the way. Some of his detractors did...

Will Power is the King of Qualifying! He extended his all-tme record in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES when he earned career pole number 71 at World Wide Technology Raceway (WWTR) near St. Louis. During the media luncheon at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, I was able to sit down with Power and ask him about his secrets of success to qualifying. He explains how difficult it is and what it takes to get...

Colin Braun has raced multiple classes of cars over his career and, for the most part, has been successful in everything he’s driven. We caught up with Colin at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach Media Day where he was giving pace car rides and also evaluating an new Acura track day road car (we’ll have a walkaround podcast on this one in the future). He started off the year with a second place po...

Santino Ferrucci has been on a roll lately. Another great finish at the Indianapolis 500 (5th), and his first real podium* at Detroit (2nd) have kept him in the championship points hunt again this year. Ferrucci is a fun-loving guy and really enjoys his racing with AJ Foyt. This year he has a new teammate in the highly-touted David Malukas. We caught up with Santino at The Thermal Club where he sh...

Marcus Ericsson is the 2022 Indianapolis 500 winner. He came to the NTT INDYCAR SERIES from Formula One. Spending most of his career stateside at Chip Ganassi Racing, Ericsson scored multiple wins for the team, of course, none bigger than Indy. He joined the Andretti Global team in 2024 and in the first race at St. Pete he qualified in the Firestone Fast Six. We caught up with Ericsson at the foll...

Jack Harvey had a stellar run in the junior categories of open-wheel racing on his way up to the NTT INDYCAR SERIES. He’s a former British F3 champ and is a winner on both the oval and road course at Indianapolis in the INDY NXT by Firestone series. In the NTT INDYCAR SERIES, he spent the majority of his time at Meyer Shank Racing before he moved to the Rahal Letterman Lannigan team. Unfortunately...

In our last podcast we learned how Roberto Guerrero climbed the European racing ladder to Formula One and then hopped the pond to race Indy cars. This week he talks about the transition from a road racing background to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. In 1992 he earned pole position there in a Buick-powered Lola but never took the green flag! In 1987 he had a terrible crash during a tire test at t...

Roberto Gurrero had an incredible motorsports career climbing the European open-wheel ladder to make it to the pinnacle of worldwide motorsports – Formula One. From there, he came stateside to race Indy cars for some of the biggest names in the sport from the team ownership side as well as design and engineering. We sat down with him at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach media day where we found h...

Chris Pook is the former travel agent who had the wild idea of staging a Formula One race through the city streets of Long Beach. Between himself, Dan Gurney, Jim Michaelian and a number of others who were critical in getting this event started, they all overcame numerous obstacles in trying to make his dream a reality. This iconic event will celebrate its 50th Anniversary on April 11-13, 2025. At...

Felix Rosenqvist has been fast in every race car and series he’s ever been in. Joining up with the Meyer Shank Indy car team in 2024, he started nicely with a heat-race win in the non-points Thermal Grand Prix race and he followed that up with a pole position at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. We caught up with him at the press luncheon just a couple of days before he earned that pole. In this...

Tim de Silva is a race car driver who races not only in Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) club racing, but also in the Historic Motor Sports Association (HMSA) where he races vintage Indy cars and Formula One cars. He’s raced around the world in some of the most iconic and wonderful cars like these and more in vintage racing. We caught up with him at the 2024 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach where h...

Dave Looper is the chief mechanic for John Sweeney’s Pennzoil, John Andretti/Jim Hall Indy car. His day job though is as an employee of Doran Racing who’s work in professional motorsports is known worldwide. In last week’s podcast, we spoke with Sweeney about what happened to his car at Long Beach and how Looper was instrumental in getting the car ready to get on track again. This week, Looper giv...

John Sweeney is a race car driver who competes in the Historic Motor Sports Association which requires the cars to be historically correct based on the period of time the cars raced in. That means that the memories of the fans who watched these cars raced back in the day, get to see them in the glorious liveries that they remember. We caught up with Sweeney at the 2024 Acura Grand Prix of Long Bea...

In last week’s podcast, we had the opportunity to interview Santino Ferrucci in the driver’s lounge of the AJ Foyt Racing transporter. While we were there, I noticed that he had a very unique design on his helmet. He was nice enough to spend more time and talk about his colorful and fun design and hint of some other designs to come. Unlike some drivers who keep the same design through their entire...