DB motorsports

Ever wonder what it costs to feed a race car?

Plot twist: you have to feed the crew too. 😂

We’ve had people ask again how they can help DB Motorsports, so we thought it might be time to pull the curtain back a little farther and show you what it actually takes to get one race car through a race weekend.

From the grandstands, it looks pretty simple:

Load race car.
Drive to racetrack.
Go fast.
Come home.

Cute. 😂

Behind that version are tires, race fuel, fuel for the tow vehicle, entry fees, pit passes, travel, food, maintenance, parts and approximately 847 little things that apparently multiply when nobody is looking.

And that’s on a good weekend.

Break something and the calculator just starts laughing at you.

None of this is a complaint. We choose to race. We love this sport, and we’re incredibly fortunate to get to do it.

But when someone asks us, “How can we help?” sometimes it’s hard to explain that helping doesn’t have to mean writing a giant sponsorship check.

Sometimes it’s a tire.

Sometimes it’s fuel.

Sometimes it’s a meal on the road.

Sometimes it’s a part sitting on a shelf.

Sometimes it’s $20 toward something the car is going to consume anyway.

And sometimes it’s completely free — share a post, tell someone about the team, come find us at the track, or introduce our little corner of racing to somebody who’s never experienced it before.

It all matters.

So we’re going to start showing you a little more of what actually goes into getting the 39x from the shop floor to the green flag.

One expense at a time.

Starting with the two pictured here: tires and keeping Bruce supplied with Doritos. 😂 #

There’s a strange place between “look how far we’ve come” and “look how much is still left to do.”

We seem to spend a lot of time there. 😂

There will always be another thing on the list.
Another job to finish.
Another problem to solve.
Another mile to travel.
Another goal sitting just out of reach.

And maybe that’s why it’s so easy to keep looking ahead and forget to look around.

So today, we’re looking around.

Not because everything is finished. One look at the shop will tell you that’s definitely not true. 😂

But because there is an awful lot to be grateful for in the middle of the unfinished.

The people who keep showing up.
The lessons we didn’t necessarily ask for, but needed.
The opportunities we couldn’t see coming.
The miles already traveled.
And even a few things we once hoped for that have quietly become part of everyday life.

There’s still work to do.

There probably always will be.

But gratitude doesn’t require a finish line.

Sometimes it’s standing right beside you while you’re still working toward it.

The work can wait long enough to notice.

There are race weekends.
And then there are race weekends you circle on the calendar. 🏁

This next one has been circled for a while.

Not because we know what will happen.

We don’t.

But because after the season this team has had, simply getting to this point means a little more than it might look like from the outside.

There are still lists on the whiteboard.

Still things to check.

Still things to pack.

Still plenty of work between here and loading the trailer.

And waiting a little farther down the road is something pretty big — $10,000 to win at Salina Speedway.

The biggest payday in the track’s history.

That’s a pretty big stage for this little family-built team.

So we’re not looking past Monday.

We’re just going to keep checking off the list…

and getting a little more excited every time we do. 🏁

The countdown continues.

📸: slick productions

The countdown doesn’t start when we load the trailer.

It starts right here.

With tires to check.
Bolts to tighten.
Things to inspect.
Things to change.

Yesterday was one of those days where there wasn’t one big job happening in the shop.

There were twenty little ones.

One person working on tires. Someone underneath the car. Someone grabbing a tool.
Someone holding something out of the way.
Someone asking a question. Someone else trying to remember where they put the thing they had in their hand thirty seconds ago.

It isn’t glamorous.

But this is where a race weekend really begins.

Not when the green flag drops.
When a group of people decides to show up and start checking things off the list.

And now?

The crazy countdown begins. 🏁

We have a race car to get ready.

Most of a race car’s life isn’t very glamorous. 😏

For every lap you see on the track, there are a whole lot of hours you don’t.

Checking things.
Cleaning things.
Measuring things.
Tightening things.
And occasionally staring at something for an unreasonable amount of time because “I don’t remember it looking like that.” 😂

We fired the new heartbeat last weekend, but that didn’t make the 39x race ready. It just checked one very important box.

Now we’re back to the little things.

Maintenance. Fine tuning. Going over the car. Getting the carb where it needs to be. Making the list for dyno day. And probably adding three things to that list for every one we cross off.

Because race day might be the part everyone sees…

but race cars are built in all the hours nobody does.

And around here, that’s just another Saturday at DB Motorsports. 🏁

The dangerous part about having a couple weeks before race day is thinking you have plenty of time. 😂

For the first time in a while, this weekend might actually be…semi-calm.

The new heartbeat is in. We’ve heard her run. The big push of last weekend is behind us, and race day isn’t quite knocking on the door yet.

Sounds relaxing, right?

Yeah. We don’t believe it either. 😂

Because “a couple weeks” in a race shop has a funny way of turning into a list.

Maintenance to catch up on.
Things to check.
A carburetor still needing some fine tuning.
A dyno day to get scheduled.
And probably at least one “well, while we’re here…” that hasn’t introduced itself yet.

None of it is particularly glamorous.

But this is the part between the big moments that makes the big moments possible.

So we’ll enjoy the slightly slower pace while we have it.

Because September is sitting right around the corner…

and she’s bringing race days with her. 🏁

Welcome to the calm before the storm.

Never be afraid to stop, turn around, and remember where you came from.

We spend a lot of time looking ahead.

At the next race.
The next improvement.
The next problem to solve.
The next goal sitting just a little farther up the mountain.

And sometimes, when you’re always looking toward what’s next, it’s easy to feel like you’re still standing at the bottom.

But you’re not.

There was a time when some of the things sitting in our shop today felt impossibly far away.

There were mountains we weren’t sure we could climb. Times we couldn’t see the path. Times when the only thing we really knew how to do was take one more step.

So we did.

And we’re still climbing.

I’m beginning to think that’s the point.

Maybe we’re never supposed to reach a place where we look around and decide we’ve arrived. There will always be another thing to learn, another goal worth chasing, another mountain waiting somewhere beyond the one we’re standing on.

Because when you stop climbing and simply settle for where you are, you risk losing part of what got you there in the first place.

So keep looking forward.

Keep reaching.

Keep climbing.

But every once in a while…

stop.

Turn around.

Look at the distance between where you’re standing and where you started.

Remember the people who climbed beside you.
Remember the ones who gave you a hand when the climb got steep.
Remember the days when you weren’t sure you’d make it this far.

Then turn back around and keep going.

The peak may always be somewhere ahead of us.

But that doesn’t mean we haven’t climbed a mountain already. 🏁

Not every job on a race team requires a wrench.

When you see a race car at the track, most of what you see happens right there in front of you.

The driver.
The crew.
The car.
The tools.
The adjustments.

But there’s another side of a race team that isn’t nearly as easy to see.

Someone has to make sure the parts are ordered before they’re needed.

Someone has to keep track of what needs maintenance.

There are tires, fuel, registrations, schedules and travel plans.

There are sponsor commitments to keep.

Photos to take. Stories to share. Messages to answer.

A trailer and equipment that need their own maintenance.

And somewhere there needs to be a plan for what gets done first when the list is longer than the hours available. 😂

Around here, some of that lives on a whiteboard.

Some on a clipboard.

And probably an unreasonable amount of it lives on a color-coded calendar. 😂

None of those things will make the 39x turn a faster lap by themselves.

But forget enough of them?

The 39x might never make it to the starting line.

That’s one of the things racing continues to teach us about a team.

Everybody doesn’t need to know the same things.

Everybody doesn’t need to do the same jobs.

And the person holding a wrench isn’t necessarily doing something more important than the person making sure the wrench — or the part it needs to install — is actually there.

There’s room for different strengths.

The mechanical brain.
The engineering brain.
The fabrication skills.
The person who notices the little thing everyone else walked past.
The organizer.
The photographer.
The extra set of hands who simply asks, “What needs done?”

It all matters.

Because a race team isn’t built by everyone doing the same thing.

It’s built by a group of people bringing what they have and putting it toward the same goal.

That’s the part you don’t always see when the car rolls onto the racetrack.

But long before the green flag falls, the race has already required a whole team. 💜🧡🏁

It runs. So we’re done now, right? 😂

Yeah… that’s not exactly how race cars work.

Hearing the 39x come to life Sunday was a pretty big box to check.

But here’s something that might not be obvious if you haven’t spent much time around race cars:

“It runs” and “it’s race ready” are two VERY different things.

Sunday’s goal was pretty simple — make sure we had everything connected correctly and get the new motor to fire.

Mission accomplished. ✔️

Now comes the fine-tuning.

Take the carburetor, for example. We put our carb on this motor because, well… the motor isn’t going to do much without fuel and air. 😂

But that carb was set and tuned for a completely different engine.

It doesn’t know we changed the program.

So now we start adjusting it for this motor and dialing everything in.

At the same time, we’ll go back through the rest of the car.

Check for leaks. Check fluids. Check fittings and connections. Finish the maintenance list. Run it again. Listen. Look. Adjust.

And then comes another tool we’ve added to our toolbox — the dyno.

We’re still learning there too.

The dyno gives us a place to make adjustments, collect data and actually see what the motor is doing before we ask Dakota to take it onto the racetrack.

And when your driver also happens to be an engineer, data tends to become a pretty important part of the equation. 😂

Dakota’s brain works a little differently. To him, those numbers aren’t just a dyno sheet that gets stuck in a folder.

They’re information to compare, study and eventually add to what we’ve jokingly come to call our Bible of Knowledge.

Every run teaches us something. Every adjustment adds another piece. And the more information we have, the better decisions we can make the next time.

Because just like everything else in racing, having another tool is only part of it.

Learning how to use what it tells you is where the real value starts.

We haven’t scheduled that dyno day yet, but it’s another step between “it runs” and “it’s race ready.”

The nice part this time?

We have time.

We’re still a couple of weeks away from race day, so we can work through the details instead of racing the clock.

At least that’s the plan.

This IS a race car, so we reserve the right to retract that statement at any time. 😂

Sunday was about giving the 39x her new heartbeat.

Now it’s time to learn what makes that heartbeat happiest. 💜🧡🏁