IHRA cancels some 2026 events (11 Viewers)

[sfw1960]

While 1926 may have been a better time to be alive, the fact that I've seen the dishonesty factor ramped up on the guy, I don't doubt he's gamed that part of the system too as pitiful as it sounds.

 

[GumbyWVU]

I know a lady that since I have met her, at least 10 years ago, claimed to be of Latino decent, learned her language and everything was about being Latino. Dress, culture, actions. Wife and I would laugh as she was born and raised redneck.
Literally 6 months ago she found out she was not Latino and she really is Native American somewhere in her heritage. Now she goes around hooting and hollering smoking a peace pipe.
When I see her now I ask her are we Mexican Indian or American Indian this week ??

That's hilarious....she probably attends regularly the Chuch of What's Happening Now also.

 

[Butch]

Here' another good read on this Cluster F

MSN

 

[Under_Pressure]

Great article. It's becoming clearer to me how an unknown contractor that a few years ago appeared to have tens of millions in revenue suddenly had many hundreds of millions and was being touted as a major full-service data center builder while still being almost completely under the radar for the construction industry as a whole. A "make it happen" motto probably goes a long way with Elon and his lieutenants, and it's not surprising that he would be willing to take a chance with an out-of-the-box contractor who he feels better aligns with his philosophy than a blue chip company that would typically be leading projects of this magnitude.

 

[Jim]

Great article. It's becoming clearer to me how an unknown contractor that a few years ago appeared to have tens of millions in revenue suddenly had many hundreds of millions and was being touted as a major full-service data center builder while still being almost completely under the radar for the construction industry as a whole. A "make it happen" motto probably goes a long way with Elon and his lieutenants, and it's not surprising that he would be willing to take a chance with an out-of-the-box contractor who he feels better aligns with his philosophy than a blue chip company that would typically be leading projects of this magnitude.

I love the way Cuttell blames Elon Musk because Cuttell spent money he did not yet receive. I am no fan of Musk but blaming him for the downfall of IHRA is ludicrous.

 

[Mike]

Jim, you understand that up until the triple crown race that racers had been paid?

 

[ironpony]

I was a contractor and I am somewhat holding out that Darryl was the one that got screwed over on payment. I was involved in projects where what he said happened has happened.

 

[Jim]

Jim, you understand that up until the triple crown race that racers had been paid?

Yeah. How does that matter? The track purchases and the Triple Crown were the big deals Cuttell made.

Remember that even as Bernie Madoff scammed more people, the early investors got returns to help Madoff build credibility. The way scams work is that they appear to be doing what they say early on, until momentum makes them unsustainable.

The bottom line is that Cuttell made purchases, took actions, and made promises that he knew he did not have the money to fulfill.

 

[Jim]

I was a contractor and I am somewhat holding out that Darryl was the one that got screwed over on payment. I was involved in projects where what he said happened has happened.

As I see it, the payment from SpaceX is irrelevant. The issue is that Cuttell was trying to fund one business with anticipated revenue from another business. He tried to do too much too quickly, and it came back to bite him.

 

[Mike]

Jim, agreed on the to quickly part.

 

[Under_Pressure]

I agree that even if Cuttell is 100% right and SpaceX is 100% wrong and he should have been getting every dime of these payments, how he was doing this would seem to be an insane and reckless way to do business. Literally living paycheck to paycheck due to spending heavily on unprofitable non-core businesses. And it seems he ended up killing the golden goose because of it.

 

[Mike]

I agree that even if Cuttell is 100% right and SpaceX is 100% wrong and he should have been getting every dime of these payments, how he was doing this would seem to be an insane and reckless way to do business. Literally living paycheck to paycheck due to spending heavily on unprofitable non-core businesses. And it seems he ended up killing the golden goose because of it.

True. Yet, within the past week I've seen people posting on social media how DC was just trying to improve the sport and getting butthurt if anyone points out the obvious (this is also for his other non-drag racing series).

I believe a flaw in many people is the inability to admit they were conned, so they shoot the messenger instead.

 

[ironpony]

It is obvious that no one commenting has been in the general contracting construction business. Standard operating procedure has you relying on everyone else paying in a reasonable amount of time. Yes you have a safety margin of your own funds you are working with but at almost any given time if a big payment gets delayed, not made you are going to be in a bind.

Just imagine being told by your employer Hey I decided not to pay anyone this pay period, 2 weeks, I will catch you up all up next pay period, another 2 weeks. How many people would be in a world of hurt now add 4-5 zeros after that number and you might have the scale Darryl and Elon were in.
Most suppliers are shipping product before they are paid and if they do not get paid they are at a loss and if it is a big enough order compared to the business size it could severely hurt, everyone is relying o people to do what they promised to do.

Also if Darryl was on the hook for let's say 2 million for the current payouts, salaries etc. and you're expecting payments of 100 million from your client who has never let you down that is a pretty safe bet. People are running their lives the exact same way every month, now just keep adding zeros to put it in proportion.

And to use your examples of racers relying on their payouts to survive wouldn't that be exactly what happened here. Someone went out on a limb to go racing, didn't really have enough money to do it but did and then didn't get paid what they were counting on but didn't have.?? Sounds like very poor planning to me, if you're running an operation and 10k is going to make or break it, well..................

 

[ironpony]

I agree that even if Cuttell is 100% right and SpaceX is 100% wrong and he should have been getting every dime of these payments, how he was doing this would seem to be an insane and reckless way to do business. Literally living paycheck to paycheck due to spending heavily on unprofitable non-core businesses. And it seems he ended up killing the golden goose because of it.

I have to disagree with the non profitable comment, if he was truly waiting on hundreds of millions of dollars in payments, how much do you think he had invested, spent on overhead, parts, materials, salaries etc.?? to do the work he was owed on ??
Let's say it was 400 million and his margin was 100 million, not likely but anyway he had 200-300 million in overhead to cover leaving 100 million in "profit" which it truly wasn't. That money came from somewhere.

 

[Under_Pressure]

True. Yet, within the past week I've seen people posting on social media how DC was just trying to improve the sport and getting butthurt if anyone points out the obvious (this is also for his other non-drag racing series).

I believe a flaw in many people is the inability to admit they were conned, so they shoot the messenger instead.

It really is wild the gymnastics people will go through to argue that Cuttell is purely a victim here, a brilliant businessman who could have no way of predicting this would happen. He might be a decent guy (though there are plenty of people who would say otherwise), he may be passionate about racing, he might have made fine business decisions prior to 2024. But the fact is since he got involved with IHRA, he has made objectively terrible decisions, certainly with IHRA and, if even a fraction of the SpaceX lawsuit is true, with his core business as well. Honestly it seems like an addiction- addicted to buying race tracks and race series and having racers love him, and willing to risk absolutely anything to get more and more.

 

[Under_Pressure]

It is obvious that no one commenting has been in the general contracting construction business. Standard operating procedure has you relying on everyone else paying in a reasonable amount of time. Yes you have a safety margin of your own funds you are working with but at almost any given time if a big payment gets delayed, not made you are going to be in a bind.

Just imagine being told by your employer Hey I decided not to pay anyone this pay period, 2 weeks, I will catch you up all up next pay period, another 2 weeks. How many people would be in a world of hurt now add 4-5 zeros after that number and you might have the scale Darryl and Elon were in.
Most suppliers are shipping product before they are paid and if they do not get paid they are at a loss and if it is a big enough order compared to the business size it could severely hurt, everyone is relying o people to do what they promised to do.

Also if Darryl was on the hook for let's say 2 million for the current payouts, salaries etc. and you're expecting payments of 100 million from your client who has never let you down that is a pretty safe bet. People are running their lives the exact same way every month, now just keep adding zeros to put it in proportion.

And to use your examples of racers relying on their payouts to survive wouldn't that be exactly what happened here. Someone went out on a limb to go racing, didn't really have enough money to do it but did and then didn't get paid what they were counting on but didn't have.?? Sounds like very poor planning to me, if you're running an operation and 10k is going to make or break it, well..................

Right, but we're not talking about being able to pay the bills for Darana doing work on the actual jobs. Yeah you definitely rely on payments to cover your business expenses there. And if the payments stop you can be in big trouble through no fault of your own. Even without IHRA maybe Darryl would have been in trouble right now.

But we're talking about IHRA and other racing expenses. Purely voluntary, completely unrelated to the core business. And obviously unprofitable. This wasn't a business venture to invest some of this windfall in to make more money. This was literally throwing money in a hole- there was no way his IHRA model was going to be profitable. Now if you have a ton of money on hand and don't need it all and want to throw it in a hole because you enjoy it, great. People like us happen to enjoy watching people throw money in a hole, so we're glad they do it. But you gotta wait until you have the money in hand before you commit tossing it in or there is going to be trouble.

 

[Jim]

It is obvious that no one commenting has been in the general contracting construction business. Standard operating procedure has you relying on everyone else paying in a reasonable amount of time.

Everything you said applies to many types of businesses, not just general contracting.

Many businesses base their plans on anticipated revenue. The difference is that DC based his plans for IHRA on Darana Hybrid anticipated revenue, not anticipated IHRA revenue.

 

[GumbyWVU]

It is obvious that no one commenting has been in the general contracting construction business. Standard operating procedure has you relying on everyone else paying in a reasonable amount of time. Yes you have a safety margin of your own funds you are working with but at almost any given time if a big payment gets delayed, not made you are going to be in a bind.

Just imagine being told by your employer Hey I decided not to pay anyone this pay period, 2 weeks, I will catch you up all up next pay period, another 2 weeks. How many people would be in a world of hurt now add 4-5 zeros after that number and you might have the scale Darryl and Elon were in.
Most suppliers are shipping product before they are paid and if they do not get paid they are at a loss and if it is a big enough order compared to the business size it could severely hurt, everyone is relying o people to do what they promised to do.

Also if Darryl was on the hook for let's say 2 million for the current payouts, salaries etc. and you're expecting payments of 100 million from your client who has never let you down that is a pretty safe bet. People are running their lives the exact same way every month, now just keep adding zeros to put it in proportion.

And to use your examples of racers relying on their payouts to survive wouldn't that be exactly what happened here. Someone went out on a limb to go racing, didn't really have enough money to do it but did and then didn't get paid what they were counting on but didn't have.?? Sounds like very poor planning to me, if you're running an operation and 10k is going to make or break it, well..................

Well I appreciate your insights. From your experience then, would performance and/or payment bonds likely have a role in this contract mess with Space-X and Darana? I can only speak from a development and funding angle, but I would think bonds should have been posted.

Not to be nosy, but in your work did you have to deal with posting bonds? Good or bad experiences? Hopefully you never had to call one.