Wisconsin Racing feat. Josh Bilicki

Pay Drivers & The Modern Racing Landscape

Josh: I think at the end of the day
there were always pay drivers — I learned about quite a few of them from like
the 80s, 90s — but it's not to the point where it is today. Johnny Sauter is
one of the only drivers in the Truck Series — he came out and said, I think two
or three years ago, “I'm one of the only drivers legitimately not bringing my
own funding or sponsorship to the table and getting paid to run a truck in the
NASCAR Truck Series.” 15, 20 years ago when the Truck Series just came out,
almost everybody were legitimate pro drivers. Now they're all still pros, but a
lot of them are self-funded. Even looking at the movie Ford v. Ferrari — I saw
it a few times — you've got Ken Miles, who obviously was a wheelman, but one of
the reasons he was able to drive that car was because he was able to work on
it. I don't know as much as some of the drivers, but I've been around — growing
up obviously going to the track with my dad, helping him, we always prepped our
own go-karts. When we moved up to road racing, we prepped our own cars. We
bought the cars from somebody already built, but we did everything ourselves in
a garage. There's very few drivers that can actually do that anymore. A lot of
drivers just show up and drive. I think that really separates the really good
drivers from just the mediocre drivers, because mediocre drivers might not know
what it takes to make these changes, or what it takes to make the cars go on
the track. There's so much involved in making these cars go on track.

Adam: I'm sure part of what's helping
offset some of the challenges of getting funding or becoming a pro driver —
some of the marketing avenues have helped a little bit. Social media — so you
have more arrows in your quiver than maybe somebody did 10 or 20 years ago. But
you really need probably the driving ability plus the social media presence
plus the networking plus the sponsorships — you've really got to have the whole
package.

Josh: Yeah. You look 20 years ago when
Dale Earnhardt Sr. was alive — the numbers that followed NASCAR were just
ginormous. Obviously they've gone downhill a little bit since then. But at the
same time, while the TV ratings have gone down, the social media presence —
whether it's Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or just live streaming — has gone
way up since then. So on one avenue you've got a little bit of a downfall on
the TV side, but you've got a rise on all the social media presence. I have
sponsors that come on — they straight up tell me, the branding on the car is
cool, but we get more just from the social media side. We use the branding on
the car to take photos and everything to do things on social media. We use
NASCAR as a platform, but we're not selling — whether it's insurance, like
Insurance King, they're not selling policies just by having their logo on the
racecar. They're going to profit from it and make a return on everything else
that comes with it on social media.

Building a Social Media Brand

Adam: How did you build your social
media presence? Because you have close to 15,000 followers on Instagram. Is
that just something that organically happened over time? Do you have a strategy
in place?

Josh: I think when I was — I don't
know, 16, 15 — I just started my page and I've just been learning and growing
ever since. I look at a lot of other drivers and what they do and how they
promote themselves. A lot of drivers nowadays don't maintain their own social
media. I still do all my own social media — I respond to all the messages and
the hero card requests. You get tons of these. But I think one reason mine is
growing is because I do interact with the fans, and they do know it's me.
Whereas when they message Kyle Busch — first of all, he has a hundred thousand
followers, so he's not going to see the response. And even if somebody does see
it, it's not going to be Kyle Busch. I think that's one thing that separates
me, and there's a few other drivers that do handle their own social media, and
their social medias have grown kind of like mine. I do take a lot of time on
social media — more than I probably should.

Adam: Yeah, it does help. I'm not on
Facebook anymore, but I'm on Instagram, and I've really enjoyed following you
on there.

Josh's First NASCAR Cup Race

Adam: I remember — three years ago —
you first ran Cup, was in 2017?

Josh: Yes.

Adam: And I remember it must have been
a Sunday race. It was in California.

Josh: Yeah, Sonoma.

Adam: But I was traveling for work,
and I ended up at the airport like three hours ahead of time, because I knew it
was going to be your first Cup race. That's awesome. And again, I heard about
it because of the social media thing. We saw each other probably every few
years, but you're able to more or less stay in touch with what you were doing.
I remember thinking, number one, how cool is that, you know — once a go-karter
at four, now you're in a NASCAR Cup race. But then my next thought was, I
cannot imagine what it's like to hit the throttle the first time in a Cup car
starting the race. What was that like?

Josh: That whole weekend was just
awesome. Rick Ware and I had started planning that in December, so it felt like
it took forever from December. I remember the first time at the track, we had
some issues. Rick Ware Racing, being a small team, that was their first year in
Cup.

Adam: Was it tires and resources and
backups?

Josh: It ended up coming down to
resources. The lack of resources and funding obviously affects some things. We
got to the track and there were some issues with the fuel cell, so we missed
first practice. But second practice we got there and we were actually pretty
competitive. For as low budget as we were, we were pretty competitive.
Qualifying came around, and I out-qualified BJ McLeod — he and I were in road
racing in identical equipment. I qualified him, and one of the first things
Rick Ware said to me was, you have to watch out for him because he's a wild
man. And he is — he passed me in the grass at the start of the race. But the
one thing I remember most from that race weekend was there was a restart where
everybody pit except for like me and Boris Said, and some of the cars 25th on
back. So I think I restarted like fifth, and everybody behind me had fresh
tires. I had some used tires, and Sonoma just eats tires. It's a second or two
difference a lap — watch your mirror right? My first Cup race and I have all
these veterans, Jimmie Johnson and all these guys, right behind me. We just got
annihilated. When everything sorted itself out, we were right behind Boris,
which I thought was pretty cool because he's been in the sport — it was like
the first third of the race.

Adam: I remember thinking, oh man,
he's going to have some fun here.

Josh: History story in the past — I've
asked my team and my team has even told me, we just want to take care of the
car, let's drop to the back. And I'm shocked that my team demanded me dropping
to the back, being my first Cup race and my first time ever at Sonoma. But it
was definitely a learning experience, and it was awesome.

The Different Racing Team Tiers

Adam: Think about the NASCAR teams at
that level — how many different types of teams are there? You have the big
budget, big sponsorship teams. I'm sure there's a middle of the pack from a
budget and sponsorship, and then some of the lower budget teams. From a speed
standpoint, like at Road America or at Sonoma, from a low-budget team to a
high-budget team, what is the lap-time differential? Does that account for two
seconds, three seconds?

Josh: In the Cup Series, it's greater
for sure. You have teams spending — Jimmie Johnson, Kyle Busch type teams —
spending upwards of 35 to 40 million dollars a year. A lot of money. On the
opposite spectrum, you have smaller teams spending three to four to five maybe
at most. So in the Cup Series at a road course like Sonoma — it's just over two
miles — lap times are about a second different. On the road course the driver
can make up a little bit of it. Like when we go to Road America, that's a track
where I feel most comfortable. I had a top-12 or top-15 there — wait, a couple
years ago, with BJ McLeod Motorsports, and I'm back with him this year. Ran on
used tires, we finished 12th at Road America in 2017. That's still my
career-best finish. I remember in the past, the last five laps, chasing down
Elliott Sadler — he would just pull on me out the straightaway. He probably
made a second a lap, just motor-wise. The difference between our motors was, he
had a Hendrick motor, we had a leased PME motor. The difference in price might
be 30 to 40 thousand dollars a weekend. We don't own the motors — we're a
sports car...

Adam: So they're always leased?

Josh: Yeah, we leased some. I'm not
sure with Engine Millis, but it's much less than Hendrick. If you lease a motor
from RCR, Hendrick, or Joe Gibbs depending on what car you're running, it's
going to be upwards of 50 to 60 thousand dollars a weekend just to lease it in
the Xfinity Series.

Adam: What about transmissions — is it
the same type of program, or are there a few different transmissions you guys
choose from?

Josh: Obviously — I'm pretty sure we
own our own transmissions. In the past I know that we have leased our
transmissions, but we have transmissions. Yeah, we have different transmissions
— obviously when we run a road course, we have special transmissions. The
difference between the transmissions is not that big of a difference. It's not
as much as the motors. But going back to your question, we're running chassis
that were in [from] four to five years ago. The newer chassis are going to be a
little bit quicker. At Road America in the Xfinity Series, if you put me in a
Joe Gibbs car and then I go out in BJ McLeod Motorsports car, which is a couple
years old, it might be a second and a half to two-second difference. That's
big. But at the same time, I think at the road course, a driver's talent can
become — some of it, not all of it — especially at Road America with the long
straightaways, you get killed up the hill. But it's part of the sport.

Oval vs. Road Racing

Adam: You have a road racing
background, and you transitioned to ovals at a certain point. Did you run
Slinger for a couple years? I've never raced — I want to.

Josh: My first ever oval experience
was at Jefferson Speedway in 2011 or 2012, and it was with a big stock car —
not a late model, it was a sportsman. Not a lot of horsepower, just really big.
We ran four races. It was so long ago it feels like another lifetime. The
things I learned didn't really translate to what I'm doing now. The cars were
so different. If I would have run a late model or a super late model at
Slinger, I think a lot of that would have transferred, but with the car I ran,
I don't think much transferred. So my first real oval was in the NASCAR Xfinity
Series at Phoenix in 2016.

Adam: Were you pleasantly surprised
how challenging and fun it was?

Josh: Yeah. It was with probably the
lowest budget team at the time. It was a team I ran my first NASCAR race with
at Road America, and they invited me back to run Phoenix and then Miami. I grew
up playing NASCAR on PlayStation 1, PlayStation 2 — when you play video games
on PlayStation, you think it's just easy. All you're doing is going in circles.
My whole career, my mindset was, I'm going to go sports car racing, make this a
career. When this came around, I jumped on it, and I was shocked. To this day, I
find oval racing almost more challenging than road courses. When I went to
Phoenix for the first time in a very low-budget car, we didn't have a helmet
blower — so it's 150 degrees in the car, no fresh air — red flags, championship
finale race. It was the second to last race of the season, so there was just a
lot going on. That was one of the first times I ever actually felt like I was
way underprepared.

Adam: What makes it more challenging?
Is it the sheer competition of other drivers, or are there aspects of oval
track racing that are just that much different than road racing that you had to
learn for the first time?

Josh: I think there's a couple things.
One is obviously the chassis you're in — you always want to outperform the
chassis you're in. If we're in a car that's a 35th-place car, like we were at
the time, I'm out there trying to bust laps off, qualifying laps, and I'm only
going 35th. That gets frustrating, gets hard, and it mentally drains you.
You're always on the limit of whether the car is going to break free or if it
gets tight and pushes. You want to be really close to that limit the entire
race — whereas road course racing, you can kind of back off a little bit. But
on ovals, you always want to stay on that limit.

Adam: Is there some technique — what's
it called, going into a corner you actually try and bind up the front end? Or
is it something with the braking system? Or do the same principles apply as
road racing, or are there other techniques unique to oval track racing?

Josh: It really depends on the track.
There are some tracks we don't use any brake. There are some tracks we use very
little brake. Some tracks we use a lot of brake — the short tracks.
Mile-and-a-half tracks like Chicagoland, we typically don't use any brake in
the Xfinity Series, and the Cup Series, you're wide open. The cars couldn't be
any different nowadays, but I think the technique is the same. If you're a good
driver — especially now you're seeing a lot of these Cup drivers who can run
road courses, and they're competitive — I think if you're a good driver,
whether you come from road course racing or circle track racing on dirt or
asphalt, you can adjust. It just takes a little bit of time, which it
definitely took me some time.

Running at Daytona

Adam: What was it like running Daytona
for the first time? Have you run the full track and the road course?

Josh: My first experience ever at
Daytona was coaching in a Porsche in 2014, 2015, before I really started racing
professionally. It was the road course. I was shocked how steep the banking is.
Then we went back there in 2017 in the Trans Am series, same track — the road
course — TA2.

Adam: TA2, yeah.

Josh: We finished on the podium, which
I thought was really cool. It was a smaller team, the car was old, but it was a
lot of fun. The race started in the rain and ended in the dry, so it was cool.
The following year, in February — so three months after that TA2 race — was my
first time ever on the oval. I remember thinking, going for the first time into
turn three at speed in the pack, is this car going to stick? You've just got to
hold it wide open. And it does. But Daytona is pretty challenging. You look at
Talladega and Daytona, they're the same length, but Daytona is really narrow
compared to Talladega. The cars get really tight, even in the Xfinity Series
where you're going 190, compared to the Cup Series.

Adam: That's pushing the car a bit.

Josh: Yeah. Especially off the corner,
when you're in the draft and there's no air on the car, the car can do one of
two things: it can get really tight, or it can get really loose, depending on
what the setup is. So I still learn a lot every time I go to a superspeedway,
because I don't have much time in the draft. But it's pretty wild racing in a
pack in the draft at Daytona.

Adam: You ran TA2 — have you run a
regular TA car as well?

Josh: Not yet. I want to. I still
think those are the coolest cars in the country.

Adam: Especially the current
generation with the sequential shifters. I know you ran GT1?

Josh: Yeah.

Adam: I still think those are the
coolest cars in the country. I've owned stock cars, I've run Trans Am cars, and
some of the older Mustangs. The Trans Am cars are just — tons of horsepower,
tons of tire. We've always kind of fought braking problems, so when you're
slowing down from 185 miles an hour, it's nice to have brakes.

Josh: Which I know you've experienced.

Adam: Yeah. But there's nothing like
it.

From Go-Kart Racing to Pro Driver

Adam: So way back, you started go-kart
racing at four, right?

Josh: Four and a half, five.

Adam: What does that process look like
for somebody getting into go-kart racing? You eventually got into shifter
karts, and you had a lot of success in that. What did that first 10 years in
your racing career look like?

Josh: I look back, and I remember it
was just fun — going to the racetrack every Sunday with my dad. I remember we
had a lot of family come out. Going back to my first go-kart — I remember
walking out on Christmas, I think it was 1999, and I was four. I remember
walking out in the garage and there was just a go-kart sitting right there
between my parents' cars. Ever since then — even before that — I was in love
with motorsports because my dad obviously raced. Growing up racing every
Sunday, it's all I ever wanted to do. There was a time where I started racing
motocross for a little bit — anything with a motor, it's always what I wanted
to do.

Adam: Did you race exclusively at the
karting track at Road America? Dousman?

Josh: We started just at Dousman. Then
when Road America opened their kart track — I was probably eight or nine — we
started racing there a little bit more often. We ran strictly locally for the
first three or four years, and then we started traveling a little bit more.
When we got into shifter karts, it was kind of right at the downfall of shifter
karts. Now they've kind of come back.

Adam: I didn't realize there was a
downfall locally.

Josh: Yeah. For a while, Badger Kart
Club just canned their shifter kart class, so we arranged our own makeshift
little series, and we ran shifter karts for a while. The shifter kart is still
one of the most fun things I've ever driven in my life. They're fast, and the
power-to-weight ratio is unlike anything else — maybe a Formula One car, which
I don't think I'll have the opportunity to drive.

Adam: Shifter karts — how many speeds
is a shifter kart, usually six?

Josh: Yeah. So you can run the stock
motor, the Honda motor, which is a lot more inexpensive — I think that might be
a five-speed. But the motors we ran were from Italy and they were a six-speed.
It's basically sequential, like a lever on the steering wheel. They're fun. I
want to get another one, for training purposes. You see a lot of drivers,
whether they're in Formula One or even NASCAR, a lot of drivers still — their
problem after physically — they're fatiguing. They're demanding.

Adam: Yeah. I remember my dad watching
him at Norway — Norway is a kart track — and there's a really long banked
left-hander. I remember watching him, before I moved to shifter karts, at the
end of the race his head was just bobbling the wrong way. They're demanding. A
little different than the group six Mustang, for sure. After five laps, they
wear you out.

Staying in Racing Shape

Adam: Do you do anything to stay in
shape for racing season, other than honing your skills on iRacing?

Josh: I do quite a bit of cardio —
mainly biking, to be honest. Jump rope. I've had really no issues inside the
car as far as sheer strength. I don't have a lot of arm muscle, but it's mainly
all cardio and making sure you can go the distance, especially when the races
are four to five hours long and it gets hot.

Adam: When you did your first
four-to-five-hour race, what was your longest race previously?

Josh: Before NASCAR, I've done some
long stints at Thunderhill — I've done like a three- or four-hour stint at
Thunderhill in a sports car. But it's different because it's way Northern
California in December, so it's cold. My first ever real awakening was in the
Cup Series at New Hampshire. It was 2017, right after my first Cup race at
Sonoma. It was hot — like a hundred degrees — they kept red-flagging the race
because they put some PJ1, the sticky stuff, down and it kept coming up. They
had like three or four red flags. When there's a red flag, you're just sitting
there, and there's no circulation in the car. I got dehydrated, I probably
didn't drink enough water, and at the end of the race I went to the ER and they
put some needles in me. They got me a lot better. But that was the first race
where it was about a four to four and a half hour race, and it really woke me
up. So since then I've done quite a bit more cardio — not as much as I want to,
because the business side of things takes over quite a bit. If I had the
business side taken care of, all I'd be doing is riding my bike, and I'd
probably start lifting weights. But the business side just really takes over.

The Business Side of Racing

Adam: On the business side topic — the
sales, the marketing, managing Josh Bilicki Racing — is that not a full-time
job?

Josh: It's a full-time job. It's 80%
of what I do. I've been very lucky where the past three years I've been able to
race full-time and pay my bills off of racing. But what people don't see is the
behind-the-scenes part. I'm at the computer making cold calls or sending emails
out or making my own renderings. I'm at the computer at times 12 to 14 hours a
day, and I get drained out just staring at the computer.

Adam: Haven't even stepped on the
track yet.

Josh: Exactly. The most frustrating
thing is when deals don't come together. I'll use California as an example, or
even Phoenix. This year I worked really hard to sell sponsorship for California
and Phoenix, and unfortunately I came out dry for both races. You spend two or
three weeks just busting your butt working on deals and they don't come
through. But on the other end, I've been really lucky with some of my sponsors
right now. A big one of mine is Insurance King, out of Rockford, Illinois. I
put almost no thought into going after them — I just shot them a Facebook
message, and they came back and said, we're interested, we want to learn more.
We talked on the phone. So you've got the sponsors you worked really, really
hard after, and you've got some that you didn't. It's just different
approaches, different companies, what makes sense for them.

Adam: And it's interesting because
that's how the non-racing business world is as well. We have engineering
departments, sales departments, marketing departments — they're all really
important. You've got to have a good product, you've got to have good engineers,
good designers, but if you don't have a marketing channel or a team selling it,
it doesn't really do anybody any good. So in the racing world, you've got to be
a great driver but you also have to dig into the game — you've got to be a good
business guy and a good salesperson.

Josh: Yeah. Even growing up karting,
there were drivers who were beating me constantly, and they may have just not
been able to put the business side of things together, and they're not where I
am today. You feel bad at times, but it's a cutthroat sport. It's just like any
business — you have to set aside your emotions. There are times where I'll feel
bad for somebody because I didn't make the race, or they had a sponsor fall
through. I think to myself, I've been in that position. It's like any other
business — it's very cutthroat at times. I think it's probably even more so.

Adam: I'm sure you kind of need to
pull back and take a longer-term view on it. It probably sucks that week, that
day, but if you pull back and say, you know what, I've made a ton of progress
over the last five years, it probably softens the blow a little bit.

Josh: Yeah. Looking back at times, we
sent other cars home in qualifying. You feel bad for them, and then after the
weekend you think about it and it's progress for you. At the end of the day,
that's what you want to do — you want to make progress, and you're still part
of it. There are a lot of people that have the dream just to be part of it one
time, and just being a part of it over a decade is pretty cool.

The Next 10 Years

Adam: What's your ultimate goal? Is
the focus on NASCAR, is it sports car racing? Where do you want to go? What
does the next 10 years look like?

Josh: Right now, for the next 10
years, I'm fully committed to what I'm doing right now. I want to win races.
I'm very lucky to be in the position where I am able to make a career out of
racing, but at the same time it gets frustrating sometimes — you're running
110% for 20th place, 25th place, whatever it is. Eventually, I do want to take
the ladder up and hopefully race for more competitive teams. My strength right
now is road courses, so this year I feel like we can go to the road courses and
get in the top 10, maybe top 5 if we're lucky. It's a long shot — we've seen it
before, winner a race. But I do want to be able to drive for that team that's
able to win races on a weekly basis. Hopefully in 10 years I'm there.

Josh's Favorite Track

Adam: Of all the tracks you've run,
where does Road America rank?

Josh: Still number one.

Adam: Is it really?

Josh: Yeah. Not just because it's my
home track. It's beautiful, the track has a lot of elevation, it's fast, it has
some slow corners. It's perfect.

Adam: For the IRA spot, yes, it is.

Josh: It's a driver's track. Going
there brings back so many memories because it's one of the first tracks I've
ever been to. So Road America is number one.

iRacing & Learning the Track

Adam: We've got a few racing people
here at Wisconsin Lighting Lab. We recently got a racing simulator — we just
installed iRacing. So I'll have to take you up. Have you ridden Road America?
Show us how it's done? What is — I mean, how big of a role does iRacing play in
your weeks between races and learning tracks?

Josh: I haven't had that much time on
it. I've been running IndyCar at Road America. But it's amazing — the physics
are pretty darn close to reality.

Adam: Yeah. Are you on it every single
week?

Josh: That's funny you bring that up.
Literally this last week, I bought a better computer to support my iRacing. For
the last five years I've had a really cheap hard drive that I could barely play
online by myself. When I'd try to join a lobby with other people, it just
glitches and my frames per second was under 10. It was a bad graphics card. So
I bought a computer from somebody here in Fond du Lac. He built it for me, and
I've played non-stop for the last three days, because it's so incredible the
difference it makes. The graphics are awesome. I've been running a Porsche a
lot at Sebring, because it's 12 Hours of Sebring this weekend. So I use iRacing
a lot. Especially I think I'll use it this year a lot. One of my weaknesses,
coming from road course racing — I don't quite have the knowledge of setting up
these oval cars, the NASCAR race cars, or whatever, late models. So I really
want to use iRacing to help hone that skill. I've actually had a notepad where
I'll take notes, I'll make changes and see how they affect the car. You don't
always get 100% feeling because mine is non-motion, but you do get a feeling,
and I think you can translate that to real life. When I go to the track, at
least my communication skills with my crew chief that weekend — it's pretty
close to reality. The one big thing it misses is the throttle response — it's
hard, you can't feel your rear tires. But everything else — turn-ins versus
trail braking and everything else — man, this thing is pretty dialed in. There
are times where you're missing that feel. If you have a hundred-thousand-dollar
simulator with motion, that's a little bit different. With my simulator it's
just the pedals and the wheel, so you're missing that feeling. When the car
gets a little bit free on you, especially at ovals — I think it's more
challenging on ovals because you're always on the limit in real life. So when
you're close to that limit in iRacing, you might not feel it step out, and by
the time it's too late to correct it. But it's a phenomenal tool to familiarize
yourself with new tracks or jump in tracks you're going to for the first time
in a year — like Mid-Ohio. I don't get to race there as often as I used to. We
just go there once a year in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. So I'll play the whole
two or three weeks before that, because that's a track we're strong at. I'll
just go in iRacing and just log laps in the Xfinity car so when I go to the
track in real life, I have most of my braking points down.

Adam: Have you tried it with an
Oculus?

Josh: I have a VR set.

Adam: We've got one. It's a little
finicky — we're still trying to get it calibrated and set up — but I did like a
half a lap one night last week, and it's pretty cool. I've done it once before,
and I was running the new Ford GT at Road America, and I was getting the same
sensations. I was looking at my gauges in the same spots, adjusting myself in
the seat in the same spots that I do at the actual track. So once you get that
Oculus on, it's pretty cool.

Josh: I have — it's completely
different, but for PlayStation 4 and Gran Turismo — I actually get motion
sickness after like half an hour. That's one reason I haven't invested in it
yet, because I feel like for what I use it for, it might not be as beneficial.
Looks like motion sickness. But at the same time, when I look at a lot of these
actual big Cup drivers that are using the manufacturer simulators, they're also
using the screen.

Adam: Are they?

Josh: I think for a reason — they're
probably not using motion. I think VR is really cool, but I think for what I
use it for, I think it's more beneficial to use it on screen. I might be wrong.

Adam: I never thought about that. I
did a VR headset basically simulating a roller coaster, and I made it through
like a quarter of one lap and I was getting sick. So yeah, I guess it's better
to use the screen and be able to put more seat time in than to use the Oculus.

Josh's Racing Heroes

Adam: So who are some of your racing
heroes?

Josh: That's tough. Growing up, it was
always Michael Schumacher, just because when I was growing up he was just
dominant. I loved the red cars. Another one was Jeff Gordon, because he had a
bright race car but he was also dominating — he was good on any track, big
track, small track, road course. Going back now, I still think those two are
some of my racing heroes. And even on a different note, Travis Pastrana — you
know, growing up kind of in the motocross world too — the guy was just a
daredevil. He was nuts. Anything he wanted to do, he could basically
accomplish.

Adam: Have you had a chance to meet
any of those guys?

Josh: Never Pastrana. I've met quite a
few motocross riders when I was riding motocross. I looked up to him — I think
he's pretty cool. Pastrana, if he wanted to go rally racing, he'd go rally
racing and he'd be competitive. When he came to NASCAR he had a little bit of
trouble, but he still did it, and I give him a lot of props for that.

The Wisconsin Racing Legacy

Adam: We were talking before we
started, but one of the goals we have with this WiLLcast is not only to
interview people and technologists in our industry, but also Wisconsinites that
are making a mark on their industries. You'd mentioned that obviously Wisconsin
has a long history of racing — whether it's Road America, Slinger, other tracks
— but you'd mentioned that this year was the first year at Daytona that there
was no Wisconsinite actually running in the 500. I want to say it was like 40
or 50 years.

Josh: I laughed at that, with Paul
Menard retiring. He was the last Wisconsin driver in the Cup Series. I won't be
full-time in the Cup Series this year — I'll run quite a few Cup races — so
it'll be cool to keep the Wisconsin heritage in NASCAR in the Cup Series. And
even the Xfinity Series, there's no Wisconsin driver in the Xfinity Series.
Oddly enough, I think there's four or five truck drivers in the Truck Series.
So you've got all of them in the Truck Series, but the top two series in
NASCAR, there's no Wisconsin drivers.

Adam: So who are the Wisconsin drivers
in the Truck Series? You're doing part-time?

Josh: I'm part-time between the Truck
Series, Xfinity Series, and the Cup Series. I'll run probably 30 to 40 races
this year. Last year we ran 42. It's a lot. But I look at some guys like Tony
Stewart — he ran like 90 in his spring car. So I'm like, alright, that's a lot.
In the Truck Series you've got Johnny Sauter full-time, Ty Majeski full-time,
Natalie Decker she's part-time, Derek Kraus full-time. They're all late-model
drivers — circle track drivers. You've got myself, and you have somebody else —
Louie Gosselin? No, not Gosselin. Louie — oh, sergeant — Louie Goss. He's going
to run a couple races, maybe.

Adam: That's a good sign that over the
next few years, more Wisconsinites are going to be making it up to the Cup.

Josh: I hope so. Johnny Sauter, I
think he's pretty comfortable where he's at in the Truck Series — he's been
around for a long time. But Ty Majeski, great driver, Derek Kraus — those two,
I think eventually they want to move up to the Xfinity. Ty has had opportunities
in Xfinity, but he took his budget, went full-time truck racing with a winning
team, so I felt like that's probably the best move for him.

Adam: Nice. If people want to contact
you for anything — sponsorship opportunities, other partnerships — where can
they reach you?

Josh: Facebook, Josh Bilicki Racing.
Instagram, Josh Bilicki. And Twitter, Josh Bilicki. I maintain all of it, so I
read my messages constantly, whether they're hero card requests or just
messages — questions — I try to answer all of them.

Adam: Awesome. Well thanks a lot for
coming on.

Josh: Yeah, a lot of fun. Thank you.

Adam: Absolutely.