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Behind The Scenes at Laguna Seca With Pete Brock and Zak Brown artwork

Behind The Scenes at Laguna Seca With Pete Brock and Zak Brown

Adam Carolla Show

September 7, 2026

Pete Brock is an American automotive designer and racing legend best known for designing the iconic Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe and working with Carroll Shelby on some of the most important American racing cars of the 1960s.

Speakers Adam Carolla, Zak Brown, Pete Brock

TopicsComedy

Adam Carolla (0:00)

Well, legendary driver, designer, constructor, the guy who made and built the car that just sold for 43 million bucks, the Shelby Daytona. Pete Brock, my old friend, is back for a walk around that car. We're out on the road. This is a Car Week special. And Zak Brown, the team principal, the man who runs McLaren F1, who also brings a lot of cars to race, will take a walk around his race cars.

So we'll do a special Pebble Beach edition right after this.

SPEAKER_2 (0:39)

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Zak Brown (1:05)

That is so fetch.

SPEAKER_2 (1:06)

On Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.

Zak Brown (1:10)

Best thing that's ever happened to you financially.

SPEAKER_5 (1:12)

Go.

SPEAKER_2 (1:13)

Easy.

Pete Brock (1:13)

Sold my car on Carvana.

SPEAKER_6 (1:15)

Amazing offer.

SPEAKER_5 (1:16)

Really?

Pete Brock (1:17)

I hit 200 on a scratcher.

SPEAKER_6 (1:18)

Did the scratcher come to your house and hand you a check? No.

SPEAKER_2 (1:21)

How many scratchers did you hit to get that? I hit a button on carvana.com once.

Pete Brock (1:26)

Okay. That's fair.

SPEAKER_2 (1:27)

It's like the lottery, except you always win.

SPEAKER_6 (1:31)

Not like the lottery at all, actually. Exactly.

SPEAKER_2 (1:34)

Inexplicably good. Offer's worth bragging about.

SPEAKER_6 (1:37)

Sell your car today on Carvana.

SPEAKER_2 (1:39)

Pick up these may apply.

SPEAKER_5 (1:48)

From Monterey, California, this is The Adam Carolla Show. Adam's guest today, car designer Pete Brock, and the CEO of McLaren Racing, Zak Brown, and now, Adam Carolla.

Brock here, front of me. One of his legendary creations, the Shelby Daytona.

Adam Carolla (2:10)

I know a lot about the car. You should know that in the Ford V Ferrari movie, whenever it's that plywood buck in the background, whenever they're in Shelby's shop, that's Pete's creation.

That's this car, but not this car. This car was Italy, right?

Pete Brock (2:25)

Well, this car is the car that actually sold Ford to go with Shelby because it was the success of this particular car that Ford looked over and said, it's the team that's winning. That's the team we should be with. And that's why he hired Shelby.

But the car was not accepted because it was not a quote Ford and they have, they were wanting to build up the GT40s.

Adam Carolla (2:49)

So the rule for homologation is it's the chassis. It's not the body. So who figured that out? This is a re-skinned Cobra and normally you have to homologate and make 50 examples of it, but you already had the homologation done with the Cobra.

Pete Brock (3:10)

Well, it was an interesting story. What happened is that cars had to be built 500 cars, all right? Now, Ferrari was doing very well with his wrecked car they call the short wheelbase Ferrari.

But as they went along about third or fourth year, the E-types and the Aston Martins were beginning to catch up with them. So they had to make some changes to the car. But Ferrari didn't want to make any changes aerodynamically to the car because it was so successful.

But the guys in the shop said, no, we can make a better Ferrari. They were working on the GTO body lines aerodynamically and they went on and they got better and better and better. And they finally showed them that the car was so fast with the new body on it that that was what they should do. But Ferrari didn't want to build 500 of those cars. So, there was a wording in the rules that there was called an evolution of type, that you could maybe change the grill a little bit or the wheel openings or whatever. So, he tried to trick the FIA into saying that his total new body was just an evolution of type. And they said, no, no, no, sorry, we're not gonna accept that. So, Ferrari went around to every organizer of every race that he was gonna run and he said, if you don't call your representatives at the Commission Sportives and allow them to make one-off changes to the body completely, I won't bring my team. So, they changed the rules that you could put a new body if you long as you had the original chassis that had been homologated.

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