Keeping the Pedal to the Metal with Bud Moeller

This episode is sponsored by Culligan Water

In the latest episode of The Adrenaline Zone, hosts Sandra Magnus and Sandy Winnefeld have the pleasure of speaking with Bud Moeller, a vintage Formula One race car driver who seamlessly balances his passion for high-speed racing with a successful consulting career. Bud shares fascinating insights into his world, shedding light on the unique camaraderie among racers and the meticulous preparation involved in maintaining these historic vehicles.

Growing up overseas, Bud developed a deep appreciation for cars, sparked by his father’s Mustang and the exciting world of muscle cars and Formula One races. His international upbringing, combined with his academic pursuits in chemical engineering and an MBA from Harvard, set the foundation for his diverse career and adventurous spirit. Bud’s story is a testament to following one's passions, no matter how unconventional.

A pivotal moment in Bud’s life was his introduction to racing, sparked by his fascination with cars from an early age. He shares how his exposure to the racing world in England, watching Formula One races at Silverstone, cemented his dream of one day owning a Ferrari and competing on the track. This passion drives him to pursue vintage Formula One racing, where he now competes in high-speed races across North America.

Bud’s engineering background is instrumental in his success as a racer. His ability to understand the dynamics and mechanics of cars, combined with his analytical skills, allows him to excel on the track. “I think it makes me a better driver because I can drive the car and know what’s going on,” he says, underscoring the value of technical knowledge in racing. His experience highlights the intersection of engineering and high-performance driving.

One of the key themes Bud discusses is the intense preparation required for vintage racing. From maintaining the structural integrity of the cars to ensuring safety standards are met, the effort behind the scenes is immense. “The cars do take quite a beating. We crack test everything at the end of the season,” Bud explains, illustrating the meticulous care needed to keep these vintage machines in top condition.

Despite the physical and mental demands of racing, Bud thrives on the adrenaline rush it provides. He shares how visualization techniques help him prepare for races, allowing him to mentally drive laps and perfect his strategy. “I try to drive laps in my head and actually time them,” he says, demonstrating how mental preparation is as crucial as physical training in racing.

The conversation also touches on the unique challenges of vintage Formula One racing, such as the limitations on modernizing safety equipment and the need to fabricate parts to original specifications. Bud’s dedication to preserving the authenticity of these historic cars while pushing their performance limits is truly remarkable. His stories of high-speed crashes and the resilience required to get back on the track add a thrilling dimension to the discussion.

Finally, Bud’s passion for flying parallels his love for racing. He describes how he started flying to stay occupied during family trips and eventually pursues it seriously, becoming an instrument-rated pilot. His drive to master the skies reflects the same adventurous spirit that fuels his racing career.

Bud Moeller’s journey is a captivating blend of passion, precision, and perseverance. Whether on the racetrack or in the skies, his dedication to pushing boundaries and embracing challenges offers inspiring lessons for anyone looking to pursue their dreams with unwavering commitment. Tune in to The Adrenaline Zone to hear more about Bud’s incredible adventures and the insights he has gained along the way.

If you enjoyed this episode of The Adrenaline Zone, hit the subscribe button so you never miss another thrilling conversation, and be sure to leave a review to help get the word out to fellow adrenaline junkies.

Transcript

Bud Moeller: The camaraderie in our sport between us as participants is good because we want to have respect and good friendship with our competitors. Because when you're going into a corner, wheel to wheel and the machines are very expensive and you don't want to direct your friend or your own, you have respect for that person. So we're always trying to do things to get to know them.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: Many of us dream of doing difficult things that completely dedicated professionals get to do.

Sandy Winnefeld: And some of those dreams include being a race car driver, which only a select few actually get to do.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: To wit, we were privileged to interview IndyCar champion Josef Newgarden, who has won the Indy 502 years in a row.

Sandy Winnefeld: But what if you were able to own your own vintage Formula 1 race car and race it all around the country in real high speed, competitive races, in addition to your day job?

Dr. Sandra Magnus: Well, that's what Bud Moeller, our guest today, does, living his dream and racing on the vintage Formula 1 circuit.

Sandy Winnefeld: And he's done a lot more than that. But first, hey, it's hot out there on the track. So many thanks to our sponsor for Season 6 of The Adrenaline Zone, Culligan.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: With Culligan's drinking water systems, you can get the ultra filtered water you need to fuel your high performance lifestyle right on tap. Learn more at culligan.com.

Sandy Winnefeld: Dot we caught up with Bud at his home in Virginia.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: So, Bud, welcome to tThe Adrenaline Zone. We're really looking forward to this conversation.

Bud Moeller: Great. I'm pumped to be here. Thanks.

Sandy Winnefeld: So, race car driver, you got a chemical engineering degree from Georgia Tech. Go jackets. And an MBA from Harvard, and you went on to a very successful consulting career. That alone would have been a life story right there. But what generated your interest in racing cars and also becoming a pilot?

Bud Moeller: Well, I was a teenager when my dad bought a Mustang. It was our family car, and I probably washed that thing three times a week. I just thought that was the coolest thing. And, of course, at that point, I did everything I could do to put my hands on car magazines. And, of course, all those car magazines would have racing information in them as well. And I just got deeper and deeper into cars. Back then was the muscle car generation. So Mustangs, Camaros, Corvettes, on through the GTOs and all those kinds of things. And I was just enamored with how cool this stuff was. I was living in England at the time, and we'd go to Silverstone and watch the Formula 1 races. So I was exposed to that very early on. And even as a kid, I thought Ferraris were the most beautiful cars ever made and really cool, and it'd be amazing if someday I could have one. So I started as a kid with a dream and kind of grew from there.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: So how did growing up largely outside the US? Because, of course, your father was a member of the foreign service. How did that influence your life?

Bud Moeller: I think it was one of the best upbringings possible. Europeans have more in common with me, I think, because a lot of them will move around countries. In Europe, as you know, the countries are almost like states in the US. So somebody lived in Texas, then moved to New York and then California, three different countries in Europe. But I lived in Germany for four years, Japan for about four and a half years, and then England for five. I only did third grade in the States. And so when I came back for college to Georgia Tech, it was like going to a new country and being in the south. It was very different, maybe than the rest of the country, but I had to learn the US culture and all of that. Fortunately, I went to school with American kids all around the world where I lived. I was in the Department of Defense schools. So it was the American curriculum, American kids, for the most part. But the country is very different than the kids, as you know. So it was a fabulous experience. I was fortunate enough to be able to take my family overseas to Singapore for six years. And I think it was a phenomenal experience for my kids, as well as my wife, who had grown up in Florida, only been out of the states for a two week vacation to Italy and Greece until we as adults started to travel. So for her to live overseas was just flower.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: So Singapore is really beautiful. Did you enjoy living there? And did you learn any languages while you were bouncing around the planet?

Bud Moeller: Yeah, I did. I learned a lot of what I call taxi language. I mean, I can go from the airport to the hotel. I can order food, find my bags, those kinds of things. But, yeah, I learned German as a little kid. I learned a reasonable amount of Japanese, which I've probably forgotten most of by now. Learned French in high school, that was my language of choice. And then when I lived in Singapore, I was in three countries a week, most weeks. And so I had to pick up enough language to get around. Not fluent in any, but enough to know if I was being insulted or being praised.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: Very impressive.

Sandy Winnefeld: So, as an aside, way back then, when you were living in Japan as a kid, I'm sure you had a much fuller head of hair back then than you do now, but you were a child, like TV or movie star in Japan, sort of an american Dennis the Menace, as my understanding. How did that all come about, and what was it like?

Bud Moeller: Yeah, it was a very unusual connection. There was an adult couple that knew my mom and dad, and they were on this weekly television show as sort of middle aged adults, and all the show was all about just sort of their situations in life. And it was done in English, which was a novelty in Japan. There was only one other English language show over there, which was some courtroom drama from the US that was imported to Japan. And one of their shows, they decided they needed to have a couple of visiting kids because there was something in the script that got written. So they asked my parents about this and said, “Hey, we got a couple of kids.” So they put me and my sister on the show, and we were visitors, and the fan mail was incredible. And just like in the soap operas where somebody dies and then comes back or they're the sister, and then they come back as the aunt or whatever, they recast me as their son, and I was on that show every week for about three years. So, really–

Sandy Winnefeld: Were you blonde back then? Because I know that there's a fascination with blonde kids.

Bud Moeller: Yes, there definitely is. No, I was dark here. My sister was blonde, so she got a lot more attention than I did at this sort of thing.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: So clearly, you had an adventurous upbringing. Is that how you ended up getting into vintage F1 racing?

Bud Moeller: Well, I think I've always been a bit adventurous. I think growing up overseas and having exposure to those kinds of things does open your world up quite a bit. When I learned how to drive, I was a very fast driver. We won't go into all those stories.

Sandy Winnefeld: Was that overseas or in the US?

Bud Moeller: That was overseas. I actually got my driver's license in England. Then when I came to the States, we left the Mustang that we had in England, and I bought a Camaro for my college days. So my fascination with muscle cars and everything continued. I don't know if I can make a direct connection to adrenaline and growing up overseas, but definitely I am one of those people that I won't call myself an adrenaline junkie, because that almost feels like somebody needs that to survive, but I definitely thrive in adrenaline environments.

Sandy Winnefeld: So as you grew up fascinated by the muscle cars, driving them, admiring them, wishing you had one, did you ever get really into the maintenance side under the hood in the process?

Bud Moeller: I did. As much as I was washing the first Mustang that we had, I was probably tinkering on the second one most of the time. So much so that my dad actually suggested that I go into an automotive course. It was offered on the base, and a lot of these guys that were either mechanics in the motor pool or something were taking it, and we were into the details of how differentials worked and all that kind of stuff. And I loved it. I thought it was a lot of fun, but I had a lot of other activities between sports. I was a competition trap and skeet shooter. And so as interesting as that was, it got squeezed out.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: Okay, so I have to ask, why did you get into chemical engineering instead of mechanical engineering?

Bud Moeller: Yeah. You'd think there'd be a natural connection with local or automotive. When I was a junior, that was when all of the selections needed to be made for national merit scholarship tests and SATs and things like that. And I remember being asked this question on the forums about what I wanted to have as a degree. And I asked my dad, because I really enjoyed chemistry at that time in high school, and I said, “I kind of want to put down chemistry because I really like it.” He says, “Well, do they have chemical engineering?” And I looked and it was there, and I said, “Yes.” And he said, “Well, they get paid a lot.” I ticked that box. And as they say, the rest is history. I just took chemical engineering. And it was a fabulous discipline, as you know from having taught at school and everything else. The chemical engineers get a little bit of electrical, mechanical, everything but aerospace, maybe. So it was quite a broad engineering degree, and it was fabulous. I loved it.

Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah, we have a lot in common. I think we're about the same age, and we probably got to Georgia Tech based on the national merit thing. But I had a horrible chemistry teacher in high school. My dad was very sympathetic so I get it. So I wanted nothing to do with chemistry, so that's why. And I labored under the aerospace engineering was always the second hardest major at Georgia Tech back then. Now, even chemical engineering is the second hardest major. And biomedical engineering is probably the hardest. But pretty amazing.

Bud Moeller: Yeah. Chemi still has more hours, but I think biomed's got just, again, that breadth with the biology and the engineering, everything.

Sandy Winnefeld: We all managed to avoid organic chemistry. That's what was a big thing. But most of our listeners are aware of Indy car racing and contemporary Formula 1 racing, and we're going to ask you to compare those later on. But tell us about vintage F1 racing, how to get started, and what's it all about?

Bud Moeller: Vintage, anything. It is driving cars that were supposedly pretty interesting, exciting, and performed well back in the day. Although there are so many categories, you can have everything from pretty pedestrian Jaguar up to Ferraris. And Formula 1, as I think most of the listeners will know, is the fastest form of motorsport in the world. If you say drag racing because they go in a straight line, yes. But as soon as they have to put on the brakes, they use a parachute, they can't turn the corners. It's a different kind of racing. But if you want to think about actually racing on a circuit where you have to go left and right and use brakes for a little past. So we race cars that were from different generations. The US series that I've been in for a while, races cars from the ’70s and ‘80s. So it's a lot of the people that folks that are very knowledgeable about racing from the olden days would recognize, like Jackie Stewart. And that I owned a car for 25 years, it was driven by Gilles Villeneuve, a very famous Canadian driver. And his teammate, Jody Scheckter, won the championship for Ferrari in 1979. I had the 1980 car. So we take these cars, we race just full on hard racing. About half of the group are ex professionals, and we put on a very good show. But, show aside, we're actually all competing very hard to win.

Sandy Winnefeld: And these are not like 1930’s cars that are going 45 miles. These are fast cars.

Bud Moeller: Yep, yep. We're 180-ish maybe at the end of the decent straight, we're cornering at 4 G's. Modern F1 cars will touch on 5, so we're not far from that. At 4 G's, your head and helmet weighs about 60 lbs., so 60 lbs. of lateral force on your neck is quite a lot, especially in S's, every lap. So it takes quite a bit of conditioning to be able to drive one of these things.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: I've got a million questions, so let me start with the cars, and then I'll get to the question I'm supposed to ask. But for the vintage cars– So, safety standards have changed over the years. So from the vintage viewpoint, are you allowed to upgrade the safety parts and it's still vintage, or where do you draw the line between that?

Bud Moeller: It's unfortunately still vintage. We can't do anything to upgrade the material, say, to carbon fiber or anything like that. But we do have roll hoops, which they had back in the day. We do have onboard fire extinguishers, which they may or may not have had back in the day. There were a lot of fires, certainly in the middle ‘70s, where people perished. And seatbelts. Everything else is based on the structural integrity of the. The monocoque and the surrounding material, which is aluminum.

Sandy Winnefeld: So I would think that you at least have modern restraints.

Bud Moeller: Yes.

Sandy Winnefeld: Because that's been a huge advance in safety. Just the restraints on the driver. You're using those?

Bud Moeller: Yes. Six point harness. So, two between our legs, the lap belts, and the two shoulder belts. Then we use a Hans Device, head and neck system, which basically straps very strong carbon fiber, almost like a wishbone sort of thing, that gets strapped to us, between us and the shoulder harness, that being then strapped to our helmet ensures our neck never stretches so far in a crash that it would–

Sandy Winnefeld: And your head cannot hit the steering wheel, which is obviously a very bad outcome.

Bud Moeller: Right. And again, I think for us, with the Formula 1 cars, we're driving with our arms almost straight out. So unless your belts are loose, as they were with Dale Earnhardt, for example, there's no way that we're going to hit anything going forward. Because again, our body's not going to move. And then we've got the tethers to the helmet, and then that does go far. And that Hans Device, literally saved my life. I was in a really high speed crash where a front suspension failure had occurred, just a mechanical failure while I was braking at about 180 something and into the wall. My neck was completely shattered, but I lived.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: Wow. Getting back to the cars now. You've had a number of cars. One of them, I believe, was a British built 1979 Ensign N179, which I have no idea what that looks like, and a 1980 Ferrari, which, of course, I'm more familiar with. But what's your favorite, and what are you racing these days?

Bud Moeller: I added to the stable a 1982 Williams, it was the championship car for Keke Rosberg. His son, Nico Rosberg, went on to become champion with Mercedes in the current Formula 1, I don't know, back maybe 2019 or something like that. 2018 somewhere there. So I've had those three historic Formula 1 cars. The Ensign is like a dot point in history. It failed to qualify more than three quarters of the time. The era where there were more spots than more cars than spots on the grid. So, like the 8500 today. So in the one quarter of the time that it did qualify, it failed to finish, all but once, for some sort of breakdown or crash.

Sandy Winnefeld: Was that a used car salesman that sold you this thing?

Dr. Sandra Magnus: I want this car.

Bud Moeller: –some weekends or something. And one time that it did finish, it finished out of the points. So it's this little dot point in history. But I have about a 40% podium rate in that car because we did a little bit of re-engineering to improve reliability and handling performance. And the engine and gearbox was pretty standard across most of the F1 cars in the ‘70s and ‘80s. So that's all standard. So it's just going to be about the driver and the handling of the car. And, yeah, so I've done pretty well in that car. We call it Cinderella because it gets no respect. Everybody wants to take pictures and sit in the Ferrari and hear about it and nobody cares about the Ensign, so she’s Cinderella.

Sandy Winnefeld: There you go. One shoe can change your whole life.

Bud Moeller: Yes, it’s more modern, still vintage because they were out of currency cars. I raced with the Ferrari factory for about 15 years and most of that time was in a 2003 Formula 1 car that was ex Rubens Barrichello. He was Michael Schumacher's teammate. And we would race, we would drive. I can't say race. We would drive as Ferrari's International Demonstration Team and we'd go to 6, 8. 10 countries a year. They'd sell tickets. People would show up. Ferrari would get a lot of uplift from the brand. They'd sell a lot of merchandise, sell a lot of cars, all that kind of stuff. We had that car in North America seven times, and I broke the outright track record in 6 of the 7 tracks. So they got tons of uplift from that. That was when you asked about my favorite, I mean, anything that's going to break track records has got to be a favorite.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: I'm very sad to hear that 2003 was vintage. I feel like that's like yesterday. I just want to make that comment.

Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah, I was going to say I actually went to the Monaco Grand Prix in 2001 and was privileged to be in the tower there where you get to watch the race drinking champagne the whole time. It was amazing. But that's now vintage. And Michael Schumacher, by the way, won that race in a Ferrari. They were dominant at the time. But with modern F1 racers and those cars, what is the real difference between them and what are the challenges associated with driving the old ones rather than the new ones?

Bud Moeller: So we've got three areas, right. We've got the ‘70s, ‘80s, we've got my ‘03, which is a very different car than either end of the spectrum. The old cars, H pattern gearbox, three pedals, gas brake and clutch, shift as you would driving a manual transmission jeep. And that's all there is to it. The ‘03 had lots of driver's aides in that era. There was traction control, which meant that I could hammer coming out of the corner even before I was completely coming out of the corner. And the traction control would ensure that there was never enough power that the rear would start to slide. And it moderated all that. So our driving technique was either full brake or full gas. Almost nothing in between, unless it was a big sweeper or something like that. Very different driving style than where you have to modulate the throttle.

Modern F1 cars, you do have to modulate the throttle because they've got almost– It’s debatable. It depends on what you read. But let's say close to 900 horsepower. They have an electric boost, and if you get on that throttle too hard because they're turbocharged, you are going to spin the tires. And they have to be careful about that. They don't have anything else that helps with any handling, so they can make a ton of adjustments. If you've seen a Formula 1 steering wheel, there's 20 dials and switches and all that. And I had that on my ‘03 car as well. There was lots of stuff that was adjusted. This car, you could literally probe. You can't do this while you're driving, unless you're Schumacher, but you can dial up the track map. And if you decide that there's some debris in one corner and you want your traction control to be stepped up a couple of notches because it's slippery and you want to make sure that it compensates for that, pull up the track map, dial the corner, set the switches, hit a button and program it. And then every time you got to that point in the track, elements of the steering wheel would automatically adjust for that corner.

Sandy Winnefeld: And you have to do that as a driver. That can't be done for you remotely. Even though they've got tons of instrumentation, they can't control anything in the car, right?

Dr. Sandra Magnus: That sounds like a lot to do.

Bud Moeller: Yeah. At one point, there was a two-way torch and they could actually come back and remap the car, the engine and all that sort of stuff. But that was banned because it just was getting the driver out of the equation too much. So modern pro is a lot about the driver, but there's so much driver equality right now. If you take a driver that's in a really lousy car at the back of the grid and put them into a front running car, they are going to run very well. And that happened a couple of years ago when George Russell, who was racing for Williams, that was one of the back markers, took over for Lewis Hamilton, who I think had COVID. And he got into Hamilton's car and was like second in the race or something like that. He was just phenomenal. Whereas he was just racing for Williams that couldn't show his potential.

Sandy Winnefeld: Is that a function of the engineering of the car?

Bud Moeller: It is. And the cars are very close. I mean, top to bottom on the Formula 1 grid is maybe a second and a half in a lot of races in qualifying, so that's pretty close. When you can stick around a minute and a half to two minute laps, percentage wise, that’s pretty close.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: So let's talk a little bit about how vintage races work. Is it a circuit like the F1, and how often do you have them, and where and when? Is there a season? Is there a sponsor? Just how does that whole thing come together?

Bud Moeller: It's very much like any other race series, including modern Formula 1. Modern Formula 1 goes to 20 different countries or 22 something. We just stay in the States or North America. We race in Canada and Mexico as well. It is a series, so we have a set schedule. Usually we have about a dozen races a year. Some are double header type weekends. The series tried to do a points program like Formula 1 to see who would get the most championship points. They kept doing that in Europe, but they didn't do that in the states. Only because there were so many people that were in and out. If they come from Europe and race in the states twice, and this too, and then come back for another one, it just, somebody might just show. Get a participation trophy. You show up at enough races and you might be first. So it just was kind of a false economy there.

Sandy Winnefeld: We would do that for millennials, but we wouldn't do it for old guys like you. Right?

Dr. Sandra Magnus: This is vintage.

Bud Moeller: Old cars would be nice. But otherwise it's very much like a Formula 1 weekend. We have free practice, we have qualifying, and then we would have two races, usually on a weekend, a Saturday and Sunday, sometimes only one. And then what was fun about us? We'd race at big vintage events, but also in big professional events. We would race with the Formula 1 guys once or twice a year. So think of it as going to a concert and we're the warm up band for the main stage. And we would race on Sunday morning and they would race on Sunday afternoon. They would qualify on Saturday, and we would race on Saturday after they qualify. So we got great crowd exposure, and so many people would write in or give us feedback that, “We came to see you guys. We don't like modern cars. We don't like– They all look the same.” Or whatever. And then we show up and we've got cars from 10, 12 years span, and they look very different because of the evolution of aerodynamics and understanding that things would take place and then they'd be banned, and then they'd come back in another way, and then they'd be banned again and so the cars look very, very different. And it's fun for them and fun for us.

Sandy Winnefeld: Well, that makes a lot of sense, because for a road course, I mean, it costs a lot of money to set it up, right? So you might as well ride on the backs of the modern guys, rather than setting all that expense to set up a course just for you guys, right? Do you do ovals also?

Bud Moeller: We never do ovals in Formula 1 cars. Even the modern don't do it. The Indy cars do, but not us. And our mix would be purpose built road courses. So there are many, many courses in the US that have other types of weekend racing or clubs that come and use the track. And then there are what I think you were thinking about, where it's literally a street course through a city, and it takes a couple of weeks to set it up and then break it down. Like Monica, when we've raced Long Beach as a warm-up band to IndyCars, we raced, actually, through the streets of Las Vegas. They brought Las Vegas as a Formula 1 race.

Dr. Sandra Magnus:Yeah. I wondered if you had gone out there. I was out there for a conference when they were messing the streets up to get ready for the people. All the locals were complaining.

Bud Moeller: There was so much noise. But I hope they enjoyed the– Well, it's going to be there for five years, at least. But we raced there back in ‘07, I think, as a one off. And it was crazy, but it was a lot of fun. We ran in the old strip area around the golden nugget and that kind of thing. But the weirdest thing was, it's a street course, right? So it's a regular set of operating streets. And at 5:00 every day, we'd be off the track. The safety marshals would go around and make sure the track was clear, and then it'd be opened up to traffic again. Even with all the barriers and fencing and everything else. The problem in Las Vegas is their computerized traffic system couldn't isolate certain traffic lights to be turned off. And if they literally set off, turned off a whole chunk, they would be closing off streets that city traffic was on while we were racing on adjacent.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: Oh, my.

Bud Moeller: So they left the traffic lights alone. There's so many, as you can imagine, driving for a couple of miles. And every intersection you come to has like four or five traffic lights, right? You got two hanging overhead, one on the side to turn one. And they couldn't bag and unbag them in a short enough time. So we literally were driving around with the lights. And your brain is coming through this corner, and it's a blind left hander. And you go through the left hander and you see a light change from green to yellow and your foot wants to lift. And I've got to just ignore this, and then you do that enough. And then you get in your rental car afterwards.

Sandy Winnefeld: You're running red lights. You got any tickets?

Bud Moeller: Something that just messes with your body?

Dr. Sandra Magnus: No, I totally get that.

Sandy Winnefeld: That is hilarious.

Bud Moeller: Long Beach, they were able to shut everything off. That's good.

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Dr. Sandra Magnus: Let's talk about the cars again for a moment because it's a lot of wear and tear. And so these are vintage cars, so you have to prep them, you have to maintain them in order to keep them running and race worthy. Do you have problems maintaining them because parts might be obsolete? Do you have to make parts? You have to maintain them to the certain vintage standards, too, right? How does that all work?

Bud Moeller: Yeah, we can't upgrade to more modern materials and that sort of thing. I mean, we do have to fabricate every suspension component. At least the engine and the gearbox are pretty standardized. But everything else that hangs around that is unique to that particular brand or, and in fact, that particular year, there are very few things, even with a single make of car, like Ferrari or Williams or anybody else that would have the same components here to ear because they keep designing things. So our guys have to fabricate everything, brake pads and calipers, those sorts of things are available. But even calipers are challenged because back in the day they had four piston calipers, and you want to go to a six piston caliper, which they put on Corvettes and things today. Can't do that because it's not original. So we have to keep looking for things that are the right size and the right performance variables and all that to fit. The cars do take quite a beating. We crack test everything at the end of the season, everything is magnafluxed, every suspension part. We change a lot of the hardware, mounting hardware, just because if there's a microscopic crack in something, you don't want it breaking. And again, that's what happened to me a couple of times where suspension components broke and then you're just riding a missile.

Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah, it's not like too bad you're out of the race. It's safety for that, right?

Bud Moeller: Yeah. I'm in two completely different cars, many years apart. Left front suspended, suspension failed. One, I was coming through a 140 miles an hour corner and turning right, and I can see, because the wheels are exposed, I can see my left front wheel starting to turn out. And before my brain could be, what that, I was into the wall and far disintegrated. I mean, it's just a mess. And then the other one, where I was braking at 180 something, I literally saw the left front wheel twist off with the entire suspension assembly. Twist off, take a bounce, and go flying a hundred yards. And then at that point, I've got three wheels, no front brakes, and again, pretty much a missile. I just was able to get the car turned at about 45 degrees, and that at least kept it from being head on.

Sandy Winnefeld: But sort of a side question, because I'm not an experienced race car driver, but I know a little bit about it. And you brake hard going into the corner to get more pressure down on your front wheels so you can turn. Are the front and rear brakes calibrated differently to get more pressure on the front brakes than on the rear brakes?

Bud Moeller: Definitely. In fact, I think about, on average, about 80% of the braking force goes to the front wheels because you have weight transfer. Think of the physical dynamics of the car when you brake, everything is pitched towards the front, so you have more weight on the front, so those tires are going to grip even more. And so more braking in the front than the rear, as that weight transfers. If you have too much braking in the rear, those rears lock up. And then if you're at a slight angle or you're breaking into a corner or something, then the rear is going to start to slide out. So, yeah, the brake balance is a very important thing. And we would adjust that typically two or three times a weekend.

Sandy Winnefeld: But I would think you have to have a decent sized support team. You can't do all this yourself to be able to race. I'm assuming there are pit stops. You have a pit crew, you got tires, so tell us, how do you cobble these guys together?

Bud Moeller: So my guys that I've been with for almost 30 years, my crew chief used to be a regular mechanic on Mario Andretti’s championship Formula 1 team at Lotus back in the day. Andretti’s won the championship in ‘78. My guy was a very young mechanic. He didn't go to college or anything. So he's working there on the lotuses, in the pits and all that sort of stuff. He went on and supported IndyCar teams and sports car teams and things like that. Created his own shop. And then, like I said, I've been with him for 30 years. Very knowledgeable guy. And then he brings along apprentice guys who learn the trade as well. There are probably three or four big F1 support organizations in the US, and some of these guys will move back and forth between them, but they're all excellent quality. Some people try to go smaller, it's a lot harder. But the camaraderie in our sport between us as participants is good because we want to have respect and good friendship with our competitors. Because when you're going into a corner, wheel to wheel and the machines are very expensive and you don't want to wreck your friend or your own, you have respect for that person. So we're always trying to do things to get to know one another. And then the mechanics work very much the same way. If somebody has an engine failure and the whole car needs to come apart and replace the engine in two hours or something, people from other teams will come and just–

Dr. Sandra Magnus: Oh, that's nice.

Bud Moeller: Yeah.

Sandy Winnefeld: So I have to ask this question because the reason why Sandra is on this team here is because half the people in the world who take risks are women. Has this sport been successful in attracting women as either drivers or pit crews or engineers? Or is it still kind of a male only thing? Or how's that working?

Bud Moeller: It's growing as with every, I kind of want to say single gender sport, right? Because you usually have men and women's sports in parallel. But this is kind of a gender neutral sport, but it hasn't been one that many women have raced in. I think there's only one woman in Formula 1 history who actually took the green flag and raced a few races back in the ‘70s. There is a woman who was on the British downhill Olympic ski team who raced in a non championship Formula 1 event maybe a couple years in a row. And she was very, very good. But that's all that she was kind of allowed to do back then. And I've actually raced against her. She came and raced in some of the historic stuff.

But, yeah, it's been hard to get women to be upwardly mobile into the sport and through the sport. So there's now something called the F1 driver academy. It's women only, and they race in a special car, I will say, because it's a different formula than any of the others. One of the complaints is it's a little bit too much of a jump from what they are driving up to Formula 4, which goes 4, 3, 2, 1. So maybe there'll be some changes to that, but they're definitely trying to build the ability for women to race against women, take the best of them and see if they can migrate them up in the sport. And that's happening in other sports as well. I know probably just, I could name off the top of my head more than a dozen female race car drivers in different series, and it's great to see them coming up. Katherine Legge, who used to race IndyCars, is going to be trying to qualify for the Indy 500 again this year. She's late entry, just announced last week, literally, and it was so exciting to see that she's going to have a shot at the Indy 500. She'll be the only woman that would be in the field this year if she makes it.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: Let's shift the conversation away from the machines for a moment to you as the driver. So what steps do you take to mentally prepare before a race and kind of get yourself ready?

Bud Moeller: Well, I've been doing this for a long time. I think this might be 35 seasons in a row now. So it doesn't take any mental prep for me the day of, or even the hour of. I'm always doing interviews. I'm doing pictures of people, letting little kids sit in the car, talking to folks. My family is there, or other friends. I'm literally up until the time where they say, “You've got five minutes to go,” and I have to start putting my helmet on. I'm busy chatting with folks. The mental preparation prior to that depends on whether I've raced that track for or not. If I haven't, I'll try and drive it on the simulator if possible, if I have. But it's again like the big Formula 1 weekends with the professional guys, I'll do some sim time as well. I try to drive laps in my head and I actually time them. I'll click the timer, close my eyes, drive the lap, and see if I can come very close to what my lap time would be. And if I can visualize it, then I've got the right rhythm sequence and breaking points and all that in my head, so that when I hit the track, I'm usually, for me, I just maybe my engineering background or something, I learn new tracks very quickly and I get up to speed very quickly. I'm often in the top 1, 2, 3on the very first practice session.

Sandy Winnefeld: That visualization, bud, is really fascinating for me because I studied baseball hitters for a while because I was trying to compare them to landing an airplane on an aircraft carrier. And the best hitters and the best pilots always would do that visualization thing. And it's almost like you were warming up your brain, the synapses in your brain that are going to fire during the real thing. And I'm interested to hear that you did that.

Bud Moeller: The benefit to me is if I have a corner that I feel I'm not quite doing correctly or feel like there's more speed in it, but I'm kind of stuck in this rut because I've got the rhythm already in my mind, I'll dream it differently. I'll visualize it differently before I'm going to bed. And I'll imagine carrying an extra couple hundred RPM, raking an extra 50ft later or something like that, just to see if I can get that slightly different pattern in my head and then try it the next day. But it's very physical. The G forces are no joke. The mental processing, speed requirements, no joke, all that sort of stuff. But the mental side of it is absolutely huge. You look at these guys that are out there driving and you think like NASCAR cars or something, and you're like, “Yeah, they're just a bunch of hits. They're just driving around in circles.” Well, there's a whole lot to that sport, and there have been guys that have left IndyCar and gone to NASCAR and done terribly. So it's just got to do with their discipline and their particular experience.

Sandy Winnefeld: So, speaking of IndyCar, we had a really good conversation with Josef Newgarden.

Bud Moeller: Oh, yeah.

Sandy Winnefeld: And he reflected on how his approach to risk management has changed over the course of his career. And so I'm interested in your thoughts on that. How do you balance the fearlessness required to race at high speed, inches away from other cars, with the risk management required to do it safely, realizing that if you bang out of a race, it's your money, your team, the whole thing, and potentially your own health? How do you balance those two things?

Bud Moeller: Yeah. And I didn't get to see the Josef interview, but he's married, I think he's got a kid now. So that changes your mindset. Having a mortgage changes your mindset.

Sandy Winnefeld: He talked about that.

Bud Moeller: Yes, work and pay a mortgage and that sort of thing. And you'll see a lot of drivers will often slow down when they get married or when they have these additional responsibilities. And it's natural. I think it's absolutely natural. For me, I'm a little weird. I've been doing this a long time, but I don't have fear. It's a weird thing. I don't know if fear is innate in humans, but it may be something genetic because we're patterned as humans to be afraid of only two things, falling and loud noises. And I'll be in a restaurant or something, and some server will drop a giant tray of glasses and everybody in the restaurant will jump. And I'm just like, “Yeah, okay, I know what happened. Dropped glass. Big deal.”

Sandy Winnefeld: Somebody dropped their watch. Yeah. Okay.

Bud Moeller: So that lack of fear, that lack of fear response, I think, has allowed me to stay in the cerebral zone and be thinking more about analytically breaking markers. Where am I hitting the accelerator? How much speed can I carry through here? And if I have an oops, or the rear starts to slide or the front starts to slide, or I make some kind of mistake, or there's a bump that I finally got onto because I was in a slope part of the track, it's just like, well, that's– Like AI, right? It just goes into machine learning and you just deal with it. And the kind of fear thing just doesn't compute with me.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: But you did. You mentioned, though, that you had a couple close calls and basically what sounds like some pretty serious crashes. So did that not affect how you approached the race at all?

Bud Moeller: No. It's like they say about having to get back up on the horse after you get kicked off. So that very first big crash that I had, the first suspension failure, I was only two years into racing and I was at a practice event. I leased the car for the day, practiced, it failed, went into the wall. Car was completely destroyed. I mean, tweaked the chassis, the body disintegrated. I don't think I passed out. It was like somebody turned the dimmer down really low and then it came back up.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: It's like, what just happened?

Bud Moeller: I pushed the fire button, I got myself out of the car, got checked out by the paramedic guys. But I was a mess. I had broken a couple of things and I was a total mess. But I was two and a half hours from home. So I got in my car, went to 7-Eleven, bought four or five bags of ice, packed them around me and drove home. I drove to the swimming pool because that's where my family was, the 4th July weekend, I think. And I hobbled out of the car and my daughter saw me and came running over and gave me this big crushing hug, which I'd broken ribs. And I just said, “Hey, get mom for me.” And I just told her what had happened and drove home and went to the doctor. And I think about six or seven weeks later, I was cleared to race. I went back to the same track in the same kind of car. And on that very first practice session, as I was going through that area where the suspension failed, I mentally started to lift my foot. And I'm like, “If you're going to do that, get out of the car right now. Give up racing, because if you're going to let every little thing like this little turn into a slowdown, then you're not made for the sport.” And so I put my foot down. Even though I was still in some amount of pain, I qualified first and won the race that weekend and never looked back.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: Wow.

Sandy Winnefeld: How cool is that?

Bud Moeller: One of these other things, that other big crash, I literally shattered my neck. But not only having no fear, I have very little pain. So I actually raced the rest of the season. And at the end of the season, I was saying to my wife, “My neck's still a little bit sore.” And she said, “If you say something is sore, we're going to the doctor.” Went in, MRI, the surgeon said, “It's a good thing you came in because your neck is in a million pieces. If you had just tripped on the way into my office, you could be paralyzed for life.”

Dr. Sandra Magnus: No way.

Bud Moeller: My wife said, “Well, he raced the rest of the season.” I'm like, “Shhh.”

Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah. Well, it sounds like your neck and your head are pretty confined in the car. So that's probably the safest place to be if tripping was going to discombobulate your whole neck.

Bud Moeller: Yeah. So we did neck surgery with plates and screws and cadaver bone and all that stuff. Six months later, was cleared to race. I got into the 2003 car, went to New Orleans Motorsports Park, where I'd never been before. The cars had been there in April, and Juan Pablo Montoya qualified at a 121. I had never been there before. It was incredibly bumpy. So don't be that in breaking zones, we have these numbers that we see that are markers for what we should. The car was vibrating so badly and shaking my eyes so hard, I could not read the numbers until it was a five or four or whatever. So crazy. Anyway, I ended up breaking the track record that weekend by three seconds after the mantle in the indie cross.

Sandy Winnefeld: That's amazing.

Bud Moeller: So again, just sort of like, here's another disaster. Come back, get on the horse, and ride it off.

Sandy Winnefeld: But I always felt that my aerospace engineering degree really helped me as a fighter pilot. It wasn't decisive, but it was a very important underpinning for my understanding of what was really going on with the airplane, both fighting against other airplanes, but landing it on the ship as well. How did your engineering degree contribute to your ability as a racer?

Bud Moeller: I totally believe it does, because just as I was talking before about weight transfer under braking, you understand the dynamics, you understand limitations, being outside the envelope. You think about how many diagrams do we have with the airplane where it shows an envelope? And if you're on the other side of that envelope, bad things happen, whether it's the coffin corner, whether it's all speed, all those kinds of things. And so understanding all that, I think, made me a better driver because I could drive the car and know what was going on. But it also allowed me to translate that to my crew to say, “Here's what the car is doing.” And we would have joint discussions about changes that should be made. And oftentimes we're experimenting because who knows what these old cars will do, because even they didn't understand the aerodynamics very well back then. And we try some things, and sometimes we go forwards and sometimes we go backwards. And it was a great learning experience. But understanding enough about the dynamics and mechanics, I think, helped overall to improve our performance.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: You've mentioned the IndyCars quite a few times, and so I'm suspecting that there's a little bit of competition between IndyCar, and of course, we did talk to Josef Newgarden, as Sandy mentioned earlier in our podcast, journey about IndyCar. But it seems like there's a little tension between IndyCar and Formula 1. So how would you compare the two? What do you think about that?

Bud Moeller: Yeah, there is. And they'll say they're faster because they draw ogles. Where you're full at the end of 500, you're almost full throttle the entire lap. So you can get up to speeds of like 240, something. We don't do ovals, but if you put us on the same road course that they're on, whether it be circuit of the Americas, that's probably the one place where we overlap these days, the F1 cars are like 10 seconds a lot faster. I know. Same. There's kind of no comparison.

Sandy Winnefeld: So they're designed for the cornering that's required. And an IndyCar has to be sort of a hybrid, I guess.

Bud Moeller: Yeah, but it's got to do with the basic formula. The reason they call it formula cars is because there is some formula of things. You have to design your car within that box. It has to do with weight, wing aspects, the length, the cord length, the height, all that sort of stuff. What can you do with other aerodynamic elements on the car and things like that? The IndyCars are heavier. IndyCars are all identical. They are one single chassis. Everybody gets the exact same car. There are different aerodynamic pieces that you can buy from the chassis manufacturers. And then you kind of decide which of these pieces you want to put in your car.

Formula 1 is exactly opposite. Every team must design their own unique car. So, quite different. And power plants in IndyCar, there are two power plants. You pick the Chevy or you pick the Honda. In Formula 1, you want to design your own engine. Go ahead. Somebody else wants to sign an engine and sell it to Formula 1, that works. So there's multiple different engines, and so they're about as different as chalk and cheese. But again, given the regulator's box that they require these cars to be designed within, cars are penalized with what they've got to work with. And that makes the Formula 1 cars be able to be a little faster.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: So, is there a little bit of ribbing back and forth between the drivers and the two?

Bud Moeller: Yeah, there is a little bit, because guys will retire from Formula 1 and go to IndyCar and do very well. It's been a while since an IndyCar driver went to Formula 1, but that has happened before, too. So we like to joke about those guys being on retirement. We'll go drive with the old guys and that sort of thing. But they are excellent racers. The challenge in IndyCar is because those cars are all literally identical, it now comes down very much to the driver and the crew in making those small adjustments to find that speed. But when they put it on the track, it becomes very difficult because some of the people just make these bonsai moves to try and move up a spot, and they crash the other guy.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: Everybody.

Bud Moeller: Formula 1, you've got much more difference in speed, especially on the straight, because they've got a real wing that they can flatten out. If you're within a second of the person in front of you, you're allowed to push a button that flattens you in wing in certain zones, one or two zones on the track, usually in straights, and it gives you an extra 12 km an hour or so and 12 miles an hour maybe. And it gives you more speed for passing. So it's a very different formula in many ways.

Sandy Winnefeld: Okay, interesting. So before we wrap this up, I have to ask you if driving a vintage F1 racer was not adrenaline inducing enough. You're also a pilot. You have your own plane. Tell us about your flying career. How did you get interested in it? What kind of plane do you fly, and where do you get your kicks out of that?

Bud Moeller: Well, I started flying about 15 years ago, and it's because my wife's mother had Alzheimer's, and we made a commitment to go down there to be with her for a week, a month, to basically give her dad a rest. And my wife is a nurse, and so she was a very good caretaker. And she said, “You're going to be bored to tears down here every month when we go down. We got to find something for you to do.” And we knew there was flight school there. And she said, “Why don't you check out flight school?” And two days later, I was taking a test flight, and I said, “Yeah, I want to do this.” So that was 15 years ago. Went on for my instrument rating. So instrument rated pilot. I had a meridian, which is a turboprop, for about 10 years, and then bought a vision jet about three or four years ago. And that's my current ride. It's about as different from racing as you can imagine. As a fighter pilot, think of how different you are compared to a commercial airline pilot, where the biggest thing they want to make sure is nobody spills their coffee.

Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah, right

Bud Moeller: Yeah. And you're all about Jenkins– You're out there trying to get away from missiles and all that kind of stuff, and they're just– I'm on the radio with these guys all the time and they're like, ”We're getting a little bit 34,000 ft. Is it any smoother up at 36,000 ft or 32,000 ft?” I'm like, “Okay, it's a little bumpy,” but who cares? I'm just going. So it's a completely different world. I try to be very smooth because I want my passengers to feel very comfortable. I would love to do some aerobatic training and be able to hot dog around and kind of do the equivalent of Formula 1 racing, maybe in the sky. My wife will not let me go and do air races or anything like that, so I'm probably about doing the max I can right now, other than just some fun.

Sandy Winnefeld: I will say that one of the best fighter pilots in World War I was Eddie Rickenbacker, who was a race car driver. Right?

Bud Moeller: Yeah.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: Anyway, well, bud, I think we're going to wind down. It was really wonderful talking to you. I've learned a lot about vintage Formula 1, which I didn't even know was a thing until Sandy reached out to chat with you. So thank you so much for spending so much time with us. It was delightful.

Bud Moeller: Well, thank you. I hope your listeners enjoy it. I'd love to come back if you've got a million questions and you want me to come back and answer them. But great fun to talk about my favorite place in the world. Racing, flying.

Sandy Winnefeld: Well, it's always fun to see somebody get a lot of joy talking about their business. So thank you again for being with us.

Bud Moeller: My pleasure.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: That was vintage Formula 1 race driver Bud Moeller. I'm Sandra Magnus.

Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm Sandy Winnefeld. Thanks again to Culligan for sponsoring this episode. Get exceptional water for exceptional performance. Learn more at culligan.com.

Dr. Sandra Magnus: And please pass our podcast around to your friends and we'll see you next week with another fun episode of The Adrenaline Zone.