Ryan Hardwick: From a College Business Plan to Winning Le Mans

Ryan Hardwick has won the 12 Hours of Sebring, the Rolex 24 at Daytona, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the triple crown of endurance racing. He then won a world championship with Manthey, Porsche’s factory team. He also co-owns Mountain Motorsports, a multi-line powersports group that grew from one Honda store in Tennessee into a dozen dealerships across Tennessee and Georgia.

Throttlecast host Grant Brewer has known him for nearly 20 years, going back to when the first Mountain Motorsports had just opened in Kodak, Tennessee, and Grant was selling BMWs. On this episode Ryan tells the full story, from a hare-scramble race in the mud to a text from Andy Frisella that turned into a prophecy.

Motorcycles before bicycles

Ryan grew up in East Tennessee and learned to ride a gas-powered dirt bike before he could pedal a bicycle. He got his first bike at four and was racing cross-country hare scrambles by six. His dad believed in pushing kids a little past their comfort zone.

That applied to Justin too, Ryan’s best friend and later his business partner. Justin learned to use a clutch in the Hardwicks’ driveway the day before his first race. He spent the whole race stuck on the first hill climb and burned the clutch out trying to get up it. The local racing newsletter put him on the cover: “beginner class struggles.” It started a lifelong friendship.

A class assignment that became a Honda dealership

By 19, Ryan was a freshman at the University of Tennessee and racing jet skis professionally. Through racing he met Honda’s national sales manager, who mentioned that Honda was taking applications for a new dealership near Knoxville. Ryan’s dad asked the obvious question: why not apply?

Ryan had an intro-to-entrepreneurship class that semester, and the whole assignment was a business plan. He wrote his about the Honda opportunity, with local dealer Charlie Janson teaching him the numbers: building size, staffing, and payroll. He got a good grade and then sent the plan to Honda.

Honda required an owner with dealership experience, so Ryan offered Charlie 25% for his name on the application. They were approved. Charlie had also applied on his own and been turned down. “I was a freshman in college, man. I had nothing to lose.”

The first Mountain Motorsports opened in 1999, during Ryan’s sophomore year, with 11 employees. Twenty-six years later there are 12 locations and a 13th coming in the Tri-Cities.

Why their stores sell every brand

The second store was in Conyers, Georgia, on I-20, and it’s still one of their top performers. It also set the model. Car dealers usually sell one brand. Mountain Motorsports buys the franchises from several small dealers in a market and puts them all under one roof. In Conyers that meant about 55,000 square feet.

The reason is the customer. “If I only sold Hondas,” Ryan says, the salesperson has to call the Honda the best bike no matter what the rider needs. With every brand on the floor, the salesperson can point to the right one. The manufacturers that push back, he notes, tend to be the ones with the weakest product that year.

Getting there cost a decade. From 2000 to 2010 he and Justin worked seven days a week, with no vacations and no social media. The nicest car Ryan owned was an electric-blue Nissan 350Z. His advice to younger entrepreneurs is not to measure themselves against someone in their third decade of business. “Just keep going to work.”

SpeedWorks: an exotic car museum in Gatlinburg

Ryan didn’t see a Lamborghini in person until he moved to Atlanta, and he never forgot the feeling. So he, Justin, and a few partners opened SpeedWorks in the center of Gatlinburg, built mainly for kids.

Fourteen cars sit on lit turntables and rotate through the collection. At recording time that included a Ferrari Enzo, a 25th Anniversary Countach, and a Bugatti Chiron. There’s a bank of racing simulators with monthly lap-time contests, and an Underground Racing twin-turbo Huracán Spyder visitors can sit in for photos. The cars also tie back to the business. Ryan and Justin have always set company goals with a car as the reward.

Racing against the best in the world as a bronze driver

Endurance sports car racing is one of the few top-level sports where an amateur can race alongside the pros. Each car has three drivers, and the rules require one gold-rated, one silver-rated, and one bronze-rated driver. The gold drivers are separated by thousandths of a second. “The bronze driver, this is the difference.”

Ryan started in Lamborghini Super Trofeo, where every car is identical and the only variable is the driver. He passed his FIA license test on the first try, which most people don’t. It took him about eight years to reach the FIA World Endurance Championship with Manthey. There, a crew of 62 runs two cars at the track, and the team manager’s last words before a race are “do not crash this car.”

At the Le Mans win, he was the fastest bronze driver over the full 24 hours by a good margin.

“We’re going to win Le Mans”

His longtime backer Andy Frisella, founder and CEO of First Form, called every step. Six hours into Sebring, Andy texted that they were going to win. They did, and his next text was about Daytona. Two years later they won the Rolex 24 at Daytona, and while the family was crying in the pit stand, Ryan’s phone buzzed: “We’re going to win Le Mans.” They won Le Mans, then came from behind to beat the factory Ferrari for the world championship.

The hard part nobody sees

Asked about his hardest conversation, Ryan doesn’t talk about business. It was convincing his wife, Whitney, to let him race again after a crash at Daytona left him with a brain bleed and doctors advising him never to drive again. He woke up in the hospital with no memory of the crash.

What helped him come back was breathwork, taught by his trainer Morgan Finley. It keeps his heart rate down before qualifying and his grip loose on the wheel.

The Supra they bought back

His favorite car isn’t the rarest one. In 1997 he and Justin bought a Toyota Supra and built it together in their garage, adding a turbo kit and an intercooler. They sold it to help fund the dealership. About three years ago a friend spotted it on Facebook Marketplace in Orlando. They checked the VIN, bought it back, and restored it.

His advice for anyone deciding what to do next: “If you’re passionate about something, I would advise you don’t wait. Find a way to do it.”

Watch the full episode

The full conversation with Ryan Hardwick is above and on YouTube. For more from the Atlanta car scene, browse every Throttlecast episode.

Throttlecast is recorded at The Ride Lounge, a private car club and climate-controlled car storage facility in Peachtree Corners and Midtown Atlanta. Members keep their cars in monitored bays, and some of the best stories in the Southeast get told on the lounge floor. Schedule a private tour.