IndyCar Champ on Growth and Diversity in Racing

interactive Broker students, So welcome to you. Also, of course with us is our auto columness for Bloomberg Pursuits, Hannah Elliott, who actually brought us Joseph. I try to bring you the best at the weekend of two times Indie champion, like Hannah. Yeah. Anyway, alright, so first of all, congratulations, welcome, thank you. Um. So, what's the state of racing right now? Well, we're here to just just distract everybody, know, with all the chaos that's going on right now, we want you

to just think about racing and good things. Um. But the yeah, the state of racing is good, you know. We um We're still going forward I think Indie Car

is an exciting time for us. We're kind of growing. Um, you know, we've gone through some swings over the last twenty thirty years with just the series, the identity of it, the popularity and uh, ever since I joined back in two thousand twelve, we've just had this nice steady uptick and growth and and I feel like we have a lot more momentum on our side now with Roger Penskey acquiring the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the Indie Car Series, so we feel like the direction of where that the

series can go, and really the growth potential is is pretty enormous right now. All right, I don't know why he's been so serious. What's it like to race? It's awesome, that's yeah, No, I I love it. I grew up. I'm from Nashville, Tennessee, and I played stick and ball sports like most you know, suburban American kids. Baseball was kind of my sport as as as a young guy. And uh, I always loved racing. I love cars that

went fasts the first thing you raced. So I raced just go karts, traditional like hundred cc carts and um, you know, they go like sixty miles superload to the ground, and there was nothing like that around Nashville, Tennessee. So my dad actually had to take me. Uh we we did this round trip three and miles up, three and miles back to Indianapolis. It was the closest carting track to to Nashville, and we did that. We went up there, figured out how carting worked, and then tried to get

into cars. And then you kind of just learned how the you know, the series form up, and then how to maybe one day try and pursue a career in motorsports and what I'm so curious what separates a champion from someone who's really good? And I mean, when you were driving these cards, did you know from an early age I'm really good? Did that come later? It came later? You know, when I was a kid and i'd watch indie cars on TV, especially around street circuits, which is

a track type that we run on. I'd watch these guys, you know, handle these seven hundred fifty horsepower super fast cars in between you know, twenty foot of walls like that's that's you know, the track was the walls basically lined the track super tight. And I had no idea how they'd be driving these things at two a mile miles per hour in the street courses. I was like, man, there's there's just no way. It looks so dangerous, it's crazy. I mean, they're like it's like riding a raging bull.

And then there's they're so masterful when I was a kid watching the drivers do it, and I never thought it was possible, to answer your question, for me to be able to be capable of that, and so I just got into it for the love of cars, the love of racing, the competition, and then quickly you learn like I'm pretty good at this, like maybe maybe I'll be able to drive cars one day. And then you get into cars finally and you're like, yeah, I think

I could possibly get good at this. Was there a discussion you had with your parents about this, Um, yes and no. I beg to start racing go cards since I was like three years old, and it was always a no until I was thirteen, So it took. It took a lot of convincing to hey, let's actually go

try and do this. And so to go back to what Hannah said, I mean, you understand you're pretty good at it, but then there is that, you know, a matter of seconds or middle of seconds in some cases inches feet that separate you know, a true champion, a winner from someone's like, yeah, this is pretty good, but what's the difference. Yeah, it's honestly so like once you get to the top level and you're like, hey, you know, I'm I'm I'm pretty good at the sport. I'm lucky

that I have some talent. It's so much more than just being fast or being inherently talented at something. You have to have such a complete package at the top level of it. Um you really have to be diverse in your skill sets and and that a lot of what the driver does is he's like the quarterback of

a football team. You know, he's leading the pack. He's kind of directing on everything that we need to do, not only just on a race weekend and what decisions we make, but also globally, like how are we developing the race car, what's gonna make the race car fast? And all those decisions really derived from the driver. So the driver has to have a really good skill set to lead the team and lead the engineers and mechanics around the right path. That's that's what makes you good

at the top. Is it a case though, like with any I don't know sport, if you will that the more you do it, the better you get, like practice, practice, practice, or that's not necessarily the case in racing. No, No, it's very true, very true. I think with anything, particularly indie car racing. IndyCar racing, amongst all of motor sports, is probably the most diverse. So with NASCAR, they're so predominantly oval racing. You know, probably the tracks that visit

are all ovals. For indiecr it's split across four different track types. So we race street circuits, like I was talking about earlier. We'll just go into a city like Long Beach and have a long breeze ground prix. They'll set up a temporary street circuit. Then we'll race that

road courses, which are permanent road course tracks. Then we race that big superspeedways like the Indianapolis five two and a half mile oval, and then we were raced on short ovals which are only just like a mile long, but there's a little small baby oval, and they are all so completely different that if you're not good at all of them, you're never gonna win a championship. So the diversity that it that it requires to be good in Indy Cars is pretty cool. So tell me why

Indiecar for you? Why not NASCAR? Why not Formula One? Why not Formula Even? I think a lot of what I honestly, the diversity, like I was just talking about, is what draws me in. Um. I also like the parody in our sport with IndyCar right now is next level um every I mean, you can be with the lowest budget team on the grid, you know, with maybe the smallest amount of people, and you can have a chance at winning races. I mean truly, you actually can

compete with the top the top teams. Like you know, I get the drive for arguably the most successful team in the paddock, Team Penskey, Roger Penskey's team, and they've won eighteen Indianapolis five hundreds over the hundred and four year history. They're like the winning, They're nearly at race. He's had some really well known drivers too for his team. You know, your predecessors that an iconic in the racing world. You're listening to Bloomberg Business, We Carl Master along with

Jason Kelly and in our interactive Broker Studio. Right now, we've got IndyCar Champion Joseph Newgarden, along with our auto time champion to time champion, along with our auto expert. The person we go to when we talk about really supercars and all fun things in the car industry is of course Hannah Elliott, who writes for Bloomberg Pursuits. So, and I want to toss it over to you. I'm

so happy to be here. I'm so excited to have you here, Joseph, because auto racing is fascinating and we've seen some new changes with IndyCar, especially these new errow screens. Can you tell us a little bit about them? What they do? These are not the halos that we've see in Formula One. They're separate and different. So how do you feel about them? What are they pro con Yeah? I think so for like the average viewer, just to give a you know, a digestible, so I used to

I'll start off average viewer. No, No, it's good. It used to be funny for me because like when people ask me what I do, I used to be so hesitant to say I drive race cars because it's such a it sounds like what it's six year old kids, which is kind of awesome. It's hard to explain it, but now I'm like, I'm trying to embrace it so much more because for me, it's like being an astronaut. Yeah, I mean, it's such like a wall thing. You know. It's like not many people fly rockets into space and

that's kind of like what our jobs all about. So to answer the question, yet, an indiecr it's like a jet fighter plane, but we just raced them on the ground and so it looks like a jet fighter plane with inverted wings. It it goes fast on the road. And um, typically open will cars have always been open cockpit as well, so it's exposed helmet for the driver and the wheels and tires are exposed. But that exposed helmet kind of like riding a you know, a fast

motor GP bike or something. That's been the last big safety advancement is well, where can we make the driver's safer and and head protection has been the thing that we've needed to do. So now we're putting a screen on the car. And too, to your question, it's it's

very similar to Formula one. Formula one just did a halo, so so just a structured piece on top of um, on top of the cockpit, but on for the IndyCar, the aeroscreen is both a structured piece and a windscreen, so it's a fully integrated canopy which looks like a fighter jet now and I actually think the cars look more like fighter jets than did before. Um. It's the biggest safety advancement in motorsports in my opinion in the last probably twenty five years. Game changer, total game changer.

I think, you know, any the fatalities that we've had in the sport over the last twenty years, UM, this sort of device is really what would have helped in those situations. And and we've been trying to create something like this for a while, so it's it's inevitable. A lot of people were against it because of the style of it, but it's inevitably had to come. Does that change how you drive? Sorry, yeah, definitely. So the weight

distribution of the car is totally different. It's a lot heavier, you know, it's about sixty pounds for the device moves the weight distribution forward. Yeah, it's a lot. The weight distribution moves forward about one and a half percent. So because of that, just mechanically, the car drives quite a

bit different dynamically, it's still different. Uh well, let's end sort of where we began, or start to wrap up where he began, which is a lot of changes to the circuit, especially the ownership, the investment from Mr Penskey. What is change. You've got new sponsors coming, I mean there there, it feels like there's a lot of sort

of winded near sales to use another form transportation. So the Penskey group, you know, obviously they're gonna take some time to get their hands around everything, but um, you know, a lot of it's going right into the speedway to start with. You know, the Indianapolis five are Holy Grail. It the super Bowl of our year in the championship for the month of May. Um, Roger really wants to

improve the fan experience. So one of the cool things is Verizon is going to be putting five G in that entire race track, and it's gonna be the first facility to have full five G capability by the time we get to May. So it's a really really cool thing that they're putting in. Everyone in the crowd is gonna be able to have access to that they're putting in more screens. Uh, they're they're renovating every bathroom in

the facility. They're creating new walkways for people, just little things that you want to think about, but that go directly to the fan. So Roger's done a great job of that for the Speedway and then the series itself. You know, I think we're just trying to figure out the best way to move forward continually with audiences. You know, it's such a moving landscape right now with digital media

and how people consume things. So with our partner NBC, I think we've got a good foothold on you know, where do we want to go five or ten years from now? You know, I want to ask, and actually this is a hand of question, so I have to give her credit for it. Like, you know, what do you eat on race day? Like? Do you have anything quirks? Like you know our traditions that you do? Um now, think nothing crazy. I think you just want to stay

away from anything new. So here's the weirdest thing, Like I need The only thing I like to have before a race is a nap. So I used to get so tired before races, and I was really concerned because I'm like, thirty minutes before the race is gonna start, I'm like definitely tired. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm not alert. I can't drive this race. The races that I'm most tired are the races I perform my best. And I don't know what that means. I don't know

if that means I'm like focused or or something. I have no idea, but I'm super happy when I'm tired now before a race. It means I'm gonna do good. Jason Kelly Carroll Master here with you in New York City alongside Joseph Newgarden, two time IndyCar champion, and Hannah Elliott, auto columnist for Bloomberg. Canam okay, So, Joseph, I gotta know your twenty nine right under thirty. You're a young guy. Um. Everyone saying young people don't care about dry having anymore

about driving cars. Is driving going away? Man? That's the million dollar question, you know, Like, I don't know who's tuning in right now, but everyone wants to know a lot of people are banking on it, you know. There there it's a great question. I think to some degree, yes, I think there will be options in the future. What's the runway to get there? You know, I think we're pretty far out still, to be honest with you, I mean I think at least five ten years out before

you start getting evis um to be super prevalent. I'll say this, I don't think race car driving is going away. You cannot take out the human element of racing. I mean I I personally, but you could remotely. But do you want to see a robot race? I don't video game people watch video games, and but you have to see a human playing it, right, you know, you don't watch the computer play each other. So I don't think. I think there's always a place for human performance within

driving and racing. Uh as far as every day on the road, I definitely think there'll be a shift. When's that shift? Everyone wants to know, and I will say, well, I will just say, like, even like we've been some some highlights of your winds and things like that, like that moment where you jump out of the car and like your team is there, like that sport, you know, like and I don't think you can really machinize that. That's under worn. Okay, So what's your daily driver? Oh?

My I drive a Tahoe. I'm you know, you can do anything. That's my daily driver that checks out a drive. I have, yes, And did you like it? Just quickly? Yeah? I did. It was very large screen, large screen in the center, very interesting, you know, like a massive like three iPads and one sitting there. That's good. They do a good job. Good luck on your next race. Thank you guys, all right. Season starts at mid March. Joseph Newgarden,

two time IndyCar champion. Hannah Elliott, auto columnist for Hamberg News,