(metallic music note)
(race car engines running)
- [Announcer] Four drivers, two cars.
One goal to win.
Follow the new 3GT Racing Team in a six-part series
as they make a name for themselves in their first year
on the IMSA Circuit.
We're taking you behind the scenes, behind the wheel,
and into the drivers' lives outside the track.
The all-access ride along starts right now.
This is In The Pit with 3GT Racing.
(cinematic music)
- [Sage] I like to keep it lighthearted around here,
just keep everybody on their toes, and I like to have fun.
- [Race Announcer] That battle unfolding between
the #14 of Sage Karam, and it is a good one.
- [Sage] What you see on camera here, how I'm acting is
pretty much how I act with these guys,
it's all having fun, joking around,
but when the time to get serious is there, you get serious,
I know when that is, you flip the switch and you go.
(cinematic music)
- [John] Sage had a bit of a reputation
for being a wild man, and I think what most people don't see
about him, and what we saw, really in him is that,
when you put the helmet on him, he is an absolute scholar.
He's brilliant in the car.
- [Paul] For me, Sage was a guy that I had seen from afar,
he came into our spectrum really through Scott Pruett,
who was his teammate at Ganassi.
- [Scott] It's great working with Sage,
he's great young talent, very bright future ahead of him,
and so we continually try and figure out how to work off
each other's strengths the best we can.
The nice thing is that we're very similar in speed,
so we're able to have a situation where we can
really focus on what's best
to get this car to winner's circle.
(car engine passing, rock music)
- [Sage] My roommate is my teammate in the other car,
Jack Hawksworth.
You suck, bro! (laughter)
It's pretty funny because we've had kind of a story,
background, and we started racing together in Star Mazda,
he was racing for Pelfrey, I was racing for Andretti,
when I figured that he was going to move to Lansing, Michigan,
and I was thinking about doing it, I thought hey,
maybe I'll just approach him, and we become roommates,
and we put all the past behind us and moved forward,
and we've become like really good friends
ever since we started living together and,
everything's competition.
Oh, my gosh. - That was a horrible miss.
- That was not even my fault, that's a glitch in the game!
- [Jack] We'll play squash or something like that,
and we'll play the rackets, one of us loses and stuff,
so always competition.
- Ohhhh!
- It's that easy, gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen.
- Good game, mate. - Good game, mate.
(guitar music)
- [Sage] See these swings?
My grandfather built those for me when I was two years old
or something, this used to be his old house,
and they're still there.
And that's my best friend Spencer's house,
he's been my best friend since third grade,
so he lives right there, right up the road from me, so.
On top of the hill to the left is Mario, and now Marco,
Marco bought his dad's old house.
Yeah, it's a small town, everyone kind of knows everybody.
This was my high school,
and this is where I played football,
wrestling, racing, football, all at the same time.
Wrestling room's right behind these doors right in there,
so that's where I spent the days of hell right in there,
every single time you stepped in the room,
you just knew it was going to hurt.
- [Jody] That's good Joe, drive through him,
good job, good job!
I always wanted to be a race car driver,
but I came from a very humble background,
and my parents could never afford to take me go-karting,
we couldn't even afford to go and watch the races
at Nazareth Speedway, so yeah, I'll be the first to admit,
I kind of live through my son.
I got him into go-karting when he was four years old,
he was a natural.
I was his mechanic, 'cause we couldn't afford to hire
other mechanics to tune the go-karts, so I learned a lot,
I didn't know what I was doing, I was a schoolteacher,
he's probably a pretty decent driver today
because of some of the crap I made him drive, he was bad,
but he learned to drive around it,
and became a better driver because of that, probably.
- [Sage] You know, when you're in here wrestling,
Dad usually cranks the room up to like 90 degrees,
100 degrees, it feels like, and when you're in the race car,
it gets super, super hot, so I feel like when we can train
in the harshest environments,
we're going to be ready for the harsh environments
when you're racing in Texas in the blistering sun.
- [Paul] For me, the part about Sage that's interesting,
is that he was an athlete, he was a wrestler,
and I can identify with that, and that's a one-on-one
competition, and gets us back to that last lap.
Mano y mano, and you have to beat the other guy,
or you walk off with your head hung,
and he's not a guy that's willing to do that.
- [Sage] Things got pretty heated at Detroit,
the last few laps me and Jack were together,
and Paul was hinting for me to let Jack by,
and but John's like, well why would we let Jack by,
pretty much, and I'm like, not letting Jack by,
and Jack wants to get by, but it's racing,
and that's what we've been doing all season.
- [Paul] When you get a guy with Sage's raw speed,
but that little bit of reckless behavior,
you can bring that back.
It's really hard to get in the race car with a driver,
and push harder on the gas pedal.
- [Sage] My goal is to turn myself,
and for the team this year,
we knocked off the top ten goal pretty quickly in the season
which was great, the team wants more,
and we really want to get a top three,
I'm hoping in the near future,
we get that result that the team's been working hard for,
I've been working hard for,
and Lexus has been working hard for,
because everybody really deserves it at this point.
- [Announcer] In the next episode of In The Pit,
meet Jack Hawksworth, a natural-born racer,
ready for a new challenge.
- [Spotter] Ready, ready, green flag, green flag, go go go.
- It's quite exciting to be part of something
from the ground up.