Episode 59: 2025 Season 1 Build Preview

This week on the I Racing Down Shift, It's almost built season. We take a look at everything coming to twenty twenty five season one. We've also got the latest Die Racing esports updates, plus a recap of everywhere we've been over the past couple of months.

We're ready to go. Strap it.

Welcome to I Racing Downship Tommy Host, Greg West, I'm back of the boys, Kevin, Bobba and Chris Leoni. We've got a great show for you, as we.

Always do everything.

Every time I need a new tackle. We even make it through the opening sentence before trash talkies. Kevin woke up on either the right or the wrong side of the bed this morning.

I'm ready to go. Let's go.

I mean walked into the kitchen this morning, the bistro or the chili bowl, whatever we call it where they keep the snacks. Thanks Kim. And you know, Kevin just.

Fired up the cup of coffee already, So let's do this.

Three cups of coffee. Yeah, my goodness.

And I thought I had a problem. Your problem is unrelated to here.

Here we go, which one, Kevin, what have you been up to?

Oh man?

Lots lots, lots lots I don't know where to start. I went to Nashville for the weekend, which was unbelievable if you like affinated.

Yeah, yeah it was.

It was a great trip with great friends, playing some golf which maybe we should.

Talk about, maybe we shouldn't. And I played in the golf term and last weekend participated. We participated.

It was super fun. We took a lot of shots, yes, lots of shots. We raised a lot of money and turkeys for the locals because it was a fundraiser. You bring a turkey that was the entry fee for the local food bank. So we actually did some good work.

There were no nothing else of interest happened at all that.

We won't talk about the rest of it, but all day. But it was super fun.

You didn't drop the turkeys from helicop?

No, no, no, next weekend that's okay, Yeah, okay, sorry, my scheduling is off.

Yeah, we had fun, We have fun, raised a lot for a good cause.

And and it's Thanksgiving time, right. I went to a friends giving last weekend, which was amazing, and the host the texts.

I didn't get a text.

You get it's called friends giving, not worth Yeah.

Colleagues giving, that's the holiday party later today.

Yeah, but anyway, the host dear friends listeners of the podcast, so I wanted to give a shout out to Kathy to see if she's actually listening.

So we'll see.

Wait, now, do we have a fan count? I feel like that we need like this.

We're almost a.

Second six six, This could be six fans well, and I've met some people that are also not I Racing members, so I think we might be up to like seven or eight. We can talk about in all of our adventures a little bit later.

But speaking of I Racing members that I met, I was at a Lego store last week and I ran into an iRacing member.

How cool was that?

You just are living your best life.

I still play with Legos.

Got where are the kids?

And you? Like? Now, I had fun and you get to be a kid exactly.

Kevin is living his best life. When I grow up, I want to be Kevin.

So what have you been up to? Greg?

We've had a lot going on. You and I were in Europe.

How could I forget? Oh?

Hey, it's it is under bullet point one item sea.

Oh I didn't get to it yet.

We skipped Chris going to Vegas though, we'll come back to you.

I printed it for you.

Kevin printed my notes in Comic Sands And if anybody this is like an inside joke at I Racing and Larry, if you're listening, I apologize it was not my idea, but yeah.

Kevin, that makes it very legible, very legible.

In Comic Sands. Most people listen to this are like, why is this funny? And you just's you had to be around.

But SIM Racing Expo was super fun.

SIM Racing Expo was super fun. It really is. I think this the fourth or fifth year I've gone to it. This was the biggest one I've ever seen.

For sure.

They filled the venue. Yep, absolutely fantastic. The ad crew, they've done a great job with it. It's coming to the US.

This is gonna be one next March in Austin, associated with south By Southwest, So a little shout out to that.

Yeah, I'm sure we'll be there.

I have a sneaking suspicion, but I gotta be honest with you. We don't have a booth of these things, but we walk around in our I Racing polos and we get an opportunity to talk to members and it's really funny. A lot of times you have these people that are super passionate and get an opportunity to actually answer their questions and maybe answer some of their gripes and explain kind of the why in a manner in person that I can't do in the forums on Twitter

It's a great community of people.

It's so much fun. And we've gotten there's people that we see on a regular basis now it's almost like friends.

It's almost like they are friends.

We see them once every year.

Yeah, but they get the friends giving to absolutely.

Oh god, anyway, Greg, I'm gonna start a spite Thanksgiving friends giving it.

Thanks, Chris, appreciate it. Anyway. A long story short sim Racing Expo. A ton of fun. Yeah, a ton of fun. We won't talk about me getting a phone call one in the morning or anything.

No, it was it was a good time.

We did make it to the airport, yes, on time.

I did not miss a flight.

You did not miss a flight, Yours was in the afternoon.

That's so true.

Oh oh, and then I stayed around actually then met up with Steve in Valencia for the FIA Motorsport Games, which is the coolest on site event I think I've ever been to. I I think there were fifty one, fifty two, somebody fact check me. I think around fifty competitors from that many countries. You know, people from all over the world coming to compete. You know, big nations,

That's great and that it was just a ton of fun.

And the best part about it is the racers all got it. Yeah. Last lap of the final we got six cars within two seconds of each other at SPA going into last chicane and I'm sitting there just biting my fingernails. Please please don't want it, Please don't do it. And they went too wide through the final chicane at SPA and came out the other side. It was an excellent race, excellent show, great opportunity with the FIA. We're

But uh, anything else you want to talk about your European trip? Nope, I didn't know if there was anything else anyway, All right, let's move on.

Don't know something.

I got to go to the F one Expo in London.

Oh that's cool.

I got to see Grosjon's cockpit from the big accident.

Oh yeah, you sent me a picture of that. That was frightening. Yeah.

Yeah, if this I thought it was gonna like kind of like a kid's exhibit. It was at the Excel Center I think, and in London.

Pretty cool.

This was super cool afternoon if you if you're yeah, I wish I could have stayed like for a couple more hours. I went with one of our friends. We're gonna talk about a little bit. Paul from Motorsport UK took me down there.

One other thing from our trip. We went to the Dortmund game. Oh, we went to the door. What a great sporting event, right, eighty one thousand of our friends.

Yes, who are not coming to friends giving but they were what an event it was. It was one of the coolest sporting events I've ever been. I guess somebody said that.

Somebody told us yea allegedly.

I mean, I'm a huge soccer fan, as you know, Greg is whatever, you're a sports fan, sports fan, Yeah, and I think you still had a good time.

So I had a great on an atmosphere.

So if you're ever ever looking for a soccer slash football game to go to, I highly recommend going to a Dortmund game.

It was like an SEC football game meets European soccer.

Yeah, super cool, super friendly, great crowd. It was awesome, steepest stadium I've ever seen. It was a little sketchy.

Yeah, it definitely wasn't up to US code. At some point during this podcast, we're gonna talk about SIM racing, I'm sure, but we don'ta talk aout.

Christ Chris did something.

I will try to keep mine quick so we can get into the sim racing and hopefully is quick.

If there's a thumbnail for this, I think it should be Chris from Vegas.

I appreciate it. Greg.

Yeah, no, I I was twenty four hours from my doorstep back to my doorsteps.

So that's how quick this trip was.

Flew to Vegas, just brought a backpack, got out of the airport, went straight to the Perry Ellis store, wore the suit out of the store, went to the South Point for the off Road Motorsports Hall of Fame induction.

Did you return the suit when you're done? No?

No, I didn't have time for that. I had to take a red eye back. I didn't want to lose, lose the whole day of work on Monday, and I made it to the meeting.

He did. I made it to the meetday morning meeting.

He was there, but this was it wasn't It wasn't very active in the was there?

How bloodshot his eyes?

It was all right?

Yes, yeah, yes, yes, yes is the answer. But did you sleep on the plane? I got about an hour? Yeah, hour and a half maybe, yeah, No, Jeff Blue is the best one to sleep on I've found.

Okay, okay. I flew back on Virgin Atlantic and was very impressed.

Also a great Greg.

I was in cattle class in the back and still had a ton of room.

Yeah. I missed Virgin America dearly, but I digress Ormhoff induction. It was the biggest one they ever had. They had twelve people going in. Usually they have three to five. But my good friend, longtime collaborator Jim which the Hall of Fame was this off road Motorsports Hall of thank You.

Yeah, or I was like Ormhoff just.

For those that Chris Chris went to something related to off road racing.

No, you heard this one before.

But anyway, my good friend, longtime collaborator Jim Beaver.

Was hosting it for the fourth time. You know Jim Baber.

Yeah, I know, right, not the actor, not the actor. There is an actor and they get each other's fan mail all the time. It's they did a podcast together.

I know of one, Jim Beaver. Yeah, and it's not the actor.

Anyway. This was the that Ken Block went in, and obviously Ken and I had some stories going back to GRC, so I wanted to be there for this one. Had a couple of other friends and then Mia Chapman, who I've also done some work with, won the Impact Award, which was incredibly special, which is one of their awards for like the you know, the up and comers, the people who are doing it right now. So it was a really cool event and it's a really nice suit.

I'm telling you, Sean, that needs to be in the thumbnail somewhere.

Look, I know, Greg, you were disappointed walking in seeing me wear the ugly sweater for the holiday party. If we didn't have the holiday party and the ugly sweater, I would have worn the suit in. But yeah, you guys, Yeah no, we had a directive from the I Racing Events Committee to wear ugly sweaters.

So Kevin and I look at each other and not an ugly sweaders anyway. Oh god, all right, let's talk about some racing stuff. Let's get into it. Bullet point number two for those of you falling at home, Kevin, we got a big sale going on something that I racers wait for an entire year.

Black Friday is happening.

Started a couple of weeks ago, continues until the second of December. Great deals for any sort of customer.

What kind of deal.

If you're a new customer, because I know some of our listeners are not members yet, fifty percent off any new membership, pretty good deal.

That's a deal in right.

And if you're an existing customer, whether it's current or laps, twenty five percent off renewals of one or two years, and that.

True or false, is the only time of year that you can renew at a discount.

Mostly that is generally true. It's the biggest sale we do any year, at any time of the year.

So yeah, it's super fun and I got to be honest, looking at member counts, it seems like it might be working.

Nice job.

You know, I do what I can, so no, but it's a it's a great deal if you aren't going to stick around. The other thing to note is if you if you want to add a year, it adds to whenever your your membership expires. It's not like it starts from the day that you add this offer, so you can add on the.

Year's some people that have like stacked up like to.

Your memberships that have like more details iRacing dot Com, slash Blackfridy, all the details are there in case I misspoke on any other com.

Click on the banner. You can't miss it. So all right, Well we're gonna do something a little different. Usually we talk about the build after the build, but due to the timing of this podcast post Greg Hill's blog.

He already told everybody.

He told everybody what's coming. We're basically just gonna regurgit.

You We're gonna parrot what Greg said.

Okay, that's we hit two very different ways of explaining that. So Yeah, twenty twenty five Season one build cars Chris Supercars Gen three and can you please ask the community to stop tagging me in the forums asking when there.

I'm not sure that the community is gonna listen to me very much, Greg, But yeah, different kind of supercars from the ones I'm used to, but these are really exciting. The Chevy Camaro Gen three, the Ford Mustang Gen three. As you've mentioned obviously, these have been a big ask from certainly our Australian supercars community, but numbers the world over. I mean, there's such a cool looking pair of cars. They're gonna be awesome to drive, you know some of the some of the different.

Tracks that these cars hit.

You know, our Australian community I think is going to have a blast with these.

Yeah. And I think this is a you know, it's like elbows out GT racing. It's it's less proper than like European GT three racing. This is like like imsamiadas, you know, meets go.

Cars, so a ton of fun.

I have to admit the the North American Contingent that races these cars is an incredibly dedicated group.

Yes, for sure, and I mean we have two we have.

Two series for these cars, even though they're not necessarily the highest participation cars. It is a niche, but we keep that. We have the version that runs just on the AUSSI servers because you know, the speed alight only goes so fast, so we have the the Aussie folks so they don't have to worry about high pings but still get good races every week with North American and

Well, one question that we should get ahead of. Obviously, if you've bought the previous generation cars within the past year, you will get some form of a credit refund.

Back details in Greg Hill's block, Greg Greg Hill. If we try to remember going to do that, but exactly.

It. Yeah, we'll put a link in the description.

Link in the description below. Yes, sorry, Sean.

So that's the Ford Mustag GT and the Holden ZB Commodore for those of you, just to be totally clear, Just to be clear, Yeah, that that's the previous generation. Those are going to go to legacy content, so they'll be taken out.

Of official series. The new ones will replace them.

All right, everyone put two fingers, all right, that's two cars now, number three Kevin, it's.

My turn, your turn, BMW two.

I'm excited about the BMWM two coming to irasing. It's going to be a free car, so it's in the base content. Amazing to have a great car like that from a great partner like BMW. It'll be another rookie series, so it'll be an alternate to the Miana series that we run. I think Greg's gonna shoehorn it into some other series.

Perhaps there will go in some some more special series. I bet you see it at the ring.

Yeah, I would go on, I would, so you're.

Probably gonna see it at the ring. There's actually a really cool format change though that we're gonna be making it rookies. That's not on this list. I'm off we're off script.

Throw it down. So we tried something new.

This season with the open wheelers at Rookie. We have them instead of going off every hour. We have them going off every half hour, So the V I think is on the hour and on the half hour, and then the ray f F sixteen hundred is on the fifteen and on the forty five. There's a Rookie open wheeler race going off every fifteen minutes, and they share a calendar, so new users can see the difference between two cars, but they only have to learn one track.

Away and they can jump between them right exactly.

So with the new BMWM two coming in, we're gonna do the same thing with the GT side, So the Miata and the M two are going to share a schedule. They're going to be going off alternating every fifteen minutes. We've actually seen a rise well, there is a GT race going off everything on the hour, the Perfect five. We've actually seen an increase in participation across the board by running the races more often at Rookie. Great, and we're still getting huge splits, so great. I'm pretty excited

And race, absolutely, that's what people want.

The other cool part about this tagline, oh yeah, Well, the other part about the car is that Chris has the note wrong. By the way, he says, there's a pace car. It's actually a safety car. Chris, you know, it's the European thing.

All of our road course cautions that happen on IRIS.

Yes, so, so it'll be another choice for uh that So what do we have the BMW, we have the Porsche, we have a generic car, we have a truck.

The truck.

The truck is always but super excited to have BMW on board for this.

I can't wait to now.

Kevin just has to tell me where to put the BMW safety car, what series everywhere?

That's not what you told me earlier, because that's not true. I don't think we wanted on NASCAR, so I.

Want on a NASCAR. I'm feeling that maybe putting it with the Ferrari Challenge my.

Not probably not Cup, probably not. All right, I'll get back to you.

Yeah, you know anything dirt road.

Probably No, we'll take it. We'll take for Yes too. Maybe Chris is definitely gonna test drive this car for Yes two and see how it does.

You can't drive pace car, yeah, safety, Well, you wouldn't want me driving the pace car. You remember Detroit a few years ago, that Indy car race that'd be me.

No road were no truckloads.

We're not kidding.

Oh, everybody actually.

Just believed, well you sold beautiful.

Moving right along, all right, So three fingers up, raise a fourth finger. We got a fourth car coming accurate in SX GT three EVO twenty twenty two. Nice, very highly requested cars. Absolutely, and the GT three field just keeps getting bigger. This is also going to run in our Global sports Car Championship Series, a bunch of them, the ones that are sponsored by IMSA. They're not an IMPSA analog. They race in both North America and Europe.

Like sixteen sixteen. Yea.

There is a lot of work by are the dev teams on optimization, frame rates, load times, the stuff that it's not sexy work, but it makes a massive difference. Huge kudos to that entire group that has made this possible. Because these fields look awesome. It is such an authentic experience, so we're really excited about that. But yeah, accurate n SXGT three EVO twenty twenty two coming to I ra sing it'll be once again in the multi class and the GT three only series.

And then Kevin.

The Ferrari four ninety nine P Hypercar. Super excited for that car. A lot of people thought we would never have a car like that. It's awesome, it'll be running in the series. You would expect it to run with GTP cars. I think El said, I think I think they're going to put it in with the other product.

Is there a prototype only series? There is going to be an update.

It's in the notes it says something redesigned, Redesigned, Redesigned Challenge series is the l.

M P two Fixed Prototype Challenge has been reformatted to l and P two is going to be are other prototypes because there are multi names behind them, whether.

It's GGPT ripercar or whatever, they all.

Home all agate together, just like they do in the real world. And so that series is being reformatted to be to have all five of the our newest prototypes on I Racing.

Amazing see how many words have we used?

Reformatted, redesigned, and Greg Hill's blog said reconfigured, slash, reconstituted, reconstituted, reconstituted.

That Yeah, that was.

That well done?

All right, well anyway, hey, I didn't write it. Greg Hill done five cars. That's five cars. That's amazing.

We got five safety car and a safety so five and a half yeah, five and a half cars.

Hey, I have an idea for a week thirteen series. Moving on wrong Meeting, Chris, wrong Meeting.

I gotta do week thirteen. So we'll talk later. Yeah, so but that's not all. But wait wait you order now, you'll also receive nothing because the rest of it is you gotta pay for it. Well kind of yeah whatever. Anyway, for our we were talking about, you know, going to the UK, our friends at Motorsport UK, we're bringing another British track to I Racing, and this one I didn't know anything about. I'm gonna be completely honest with you.

It's nice pipe.

You can run GT threes here. This track, though, the art team has gone above and beyond because you can drive all over the infield amazing, which means you have the air strip, which means those that like to go and these people that like to drag I'm looking at Chris. They like to use tracks for what not what they're designed for. There is basically another dragstrip. No, yea, this does not mean drag racing is coming to I Racing.

I forgot about Hackenheim. Yeah, thank you form. It's really cool. The track is excellent.

I cannot articulate or do justice the strides that Greg Hill and his art team have made in the last couple of years. On the visual quality of the tracks, it is absolutely mind blowing. Even going back to tracks that are made just a couple of years ago, the the level of detail has just They continue to re

The hosting the broadcast. Yep, they put it together, I believe.

Yeah, we just do the pass through. They work with race Spot Excellent Racing. They have a support series with the ray f F sixteen hundred and then the the main series with the FIAF four and so it's nice to partner with them to have some series branding and it just makes sense. So really excited for that. Hope in the community will so you will get behind it as well. All right, move on, Hewsett's it's got dirt on it.

So Chris, see when you said speaking of British things. I was just thinking, man, that's a weird segue into Hewestt's. It's not a British track.

No, no, it's not at all. It's not in the South either, No it's it's also not in the South.

But Hewsett's has been one of the most popular asks among our dirt oval racers for quite some time now. Obviously a sponsor of a real world four ten sprint card in the World of Outlaws with David Gravelle, who has been a great supporter of I Racing over the years. Really exciting to have that track coming not only to the main I Racing service, but also eventually No tid and table announced on this yet, but as DLC too. World of Outlaws Dirt Racing twenty four So same scan,

Have you got have you? Have you gone around on Alpha and flown or flowing around the track.

Yet not as much time as I've spent trying to rallycross the M two.

I'm not even surprised, not even surprise.

I I am who you want me to be.

I don't even know.

I don't know what that means. But I don't know what that means. No one knows what it will go. It's provocative.

I need more coffee for this podcast. Possibly something from that golf tournament this weekend. All right, but wait, there's more NASCAR refresh. Now this is an art refresh. Uh.

We're excited because this was just down the road. It's our local home track on the Hampshire Motor Speedway.

I love it. Yeah, there's an oval there and that's fun and all magic mile, but I love it.

Has the best roval in the business, the.

Absolute best roval in the business. I have gone off the track there in a Formula V. In the real world, I've stayed on the track a little bit too.

I have done that, and not in a Formula V but in a portion. Didn't hear anything but yeah casual little flex, Yeah.

But little flex. You had to sell your portion.

Look, I did sell it, so I didn't have to sell it. I chose to sell it.

Okay, Wow, we're in the weeds.

Sorry, Okay, so who went further off track us?

Just now? Are you guys on the new Hampshire Roval? Yes, yeah, yeah, it's a great track.

Anyway, it's part of the overall NASCAR refresh. This track's coming next and then you'll see more and more over the course of the next year.

Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of these come down. We have some other that are listed here, but we're not one hundred percent they're going to make the builds, so we're going to hold off on that. If you want to know, go check out Greg Hill's blog because then he said it and we didn't say it. So that's really the goal of these podcasts. See if we can get out without geting yelled at. Sometimes they're successful. I don't think we're going to be on this one.

But just one important thing on these NASCAR refresh type tracks, these updates, if you already own the track, this is an automatic free update.

It'll just happen.

It'll just it's magic.

It'll be exactly need to do an update. So it is the magic Miles Greg.

Hey, he did it, Hey job.

Thank you? All right, moving along, moving along, all right? Now features This one's really cool.

Uh, debris refresh so when you go off track spinning out, which may have done Actually we missed the century right there. So now we're doing a better job of calculating the amount of tire debris, that debris that goes on tires, debris gets thrown on the track. And we've got uh, you know, grass, gravel, sand, and it's dynamic. Yep, it's not pre planned or whatnot. You also have the marbles, all of that, the crazy math behind out how it

We're working on it. We want to be able to show it because it's it's very graphical.

It's hard to describe it. But once you drive, I can't work in these conditions. I can't work in these conditions.

And he just processed the comic sands.

Moving on. We have a bunch of other feature updates for this build. The GTPs and the l m P two's are getting an updated tire model that is also going to be coming to NASCAR, but it won't make this build, but I think you odds are you'll see it by March. By the March release. But in short, tire is better. I think that that's the release.

That's a short note.

Tire is better. So there's good AI behavioral improvements. This is one of my favorite things. The AI now if you may contact them, will blink their head lights at you as if they're angry. It just brings them to life a little bit more. They will also blink their lights at appropriate times, you know, if you're coming up to lapy or whatnot. But really, if you hit them, they're gonna.

If they're lapping you, you've set the AI too hard, too high.

I think we may have a feature to talk about with that in the near future, but not today.

Okay, And then.

This is the one that I'm gonna hand to Chris because he was just gonna quote Greg Hill's blog.

Yeah, I'm looking at it right now.

You're looking at the graphical improvements.

Yeah, I'm looking at the graphics engine enhancements. I mean, so what's going on right now. Obviously we are trying to develop and we're going to develop a fantastic new graphics engine at some point, but.

We're not gonna leave people without dates.

Greg's just taking the biggest sip of coffee. Well, I'm reading this off. Significant improvement to the specular lighting model. No longer rendering speculator into the cube map. Essentially what's happening here. Scenes used to be brighter and blurrier than they were intended to be, and so we've refined that a little bit. Again, go to Greg Hill's blog and you can see a couple of before and after shots

I mean, once again, go look at the blog. But in short, you know, I racing has typically had a little bit of this yellow tint to it, and just the way it's very almost looks like a little bit of a warming filter. And this has remedied it. Not with something hacky. There's not a filter. It's just like the way that the scene reflects the light from the sky and some other amazing witchcrafty stuff that I don't understand. But in short, I racing look better.

I think that, Yes, that's what I got out of it.

That's what I got out of it. Yeah, some other people that are really can explain it a little better.

So you like Greg's block, gregs, I think we referenced, not me others. Does anybody have a count on that?

Everyone?

Okay, listeners, we need you to go back and moving on.

This is the part of the podcast where christ is the talking to me and Chris, Me and Kevin nod Our heads uh E. Sports update. NASCAR contendercies wrapped up this week in Texas. The top thirty made the cut for CO consideration this year.

Yes, yep, so exciting going into next year's NASCAR Coca Cola I Racing Series. The free agency pool is going to be a little bigger. In the past, we've had forty drivers. Now we have fifty, so there's gonna be a little more competition.

For forty spots. For forty spots, yes, and make the driver the race is bigger. It's just a bigger pool to choose.

From, exactly. So you know, previously, if you were that first driver out, second driver out, you know, it's.

Just heartbreak for you.

It's you're basically rooting for somebody to not be in the series next year, for somebody to decline an invitation or whatever else. Now you can still go to the table in free agency, you can still talk to teams, and there's a chance, you know, that a driver who maybe didn't have the contender season that they felt they deserved or that they might have been capable of, might kind of get a second chance, might get a lifeline.

New rookies, just as there is really every year.

So as the as the off season continues to progress and the twenty twenty five team lineup is is solidified. Justin Malillo is going to have all that information for you at I Racing dot com.

And we also had the College Series this week at Michigan. I don't I think the College Series really surprises some people if you don't know what it is, but it's I mean, esports at the college level is exploding right now. And Chris, you can tell U a little bit more about that.

Yeah, for sure.

I actually had friends texting me about the College Series broadcast on Tuesday that I don't think it ever watched a sim race before.

So it's compelling.

It's compelling, and it's captivating people outside of that space. And you know what she told me was, you know, I really like how the you know, how the college athletes kind of present themselves and how they how they're pushing themselves forward. And obviously Drew in the and Sean and Cisco and the entire broadcast team have done a great job and presenting these races and also developing some really cool paint schemes.

Yeah.

I love how these cars and trucks look.

But Michigan was this week's race, and since we follow an academic calendar, the season started in September and it's going to continue through the academic year. They get a December break, just like you know, real college students. So the next race is going to be at Walkins Glenn.

That time attack are real college students.

They're not like them.

They are like them. They are college students.

Yeah, too far removed from college to know the difference. Time Attack opens January seventh for Walkins Glenn. So if you're in college, if you're eligible again, our website is going to have all the details on how to register. Go compete in that time attack and try to earn your spot in Awesome.

Moved on to next on the list. IndyCar, the inaugural season wrapping up this week at Nashville.

Yep, Diego Pinto dominated most of the championship. Didn't win a ton of races, but sometimes it's about consistency. Still found the winner circle once this year. Other drivers have won more races but haven't had quite the same luck. By the time this comes out, the race is going to have run. Diego's got a decently solid cushion, so he is probably going to be the champion. But again, Justin's gonna have your end of season recap at I race it's.

A fun series to watch. It's a mix of road and oval, so we don't do a lot of that in on the esports level, so it does mix things up a bit, right, There are definitely guys that are better at one of the two. So it's not done. You know, there's a big lead, but it's not done. It's an oval race tonight, so and.

Anything can happen.

Anything can happen, especially for the change exactly, especially a track like Nashville with the you know, with the concrete.

So looking forward to the race.

Should be a good race in those cars, I think probably the most complex car, I know, the most complex car on the service to set up and get tuned up just right so the you know, to run at the front of that field. Big feather in the cap for anybody, not just those that are winning.

And of course shout out to our friends at a butt Kicker for coming on in supporting that.

Yeah, big fifty.

Yeah, and Tody Car has been huge too. They're they're promoting it, putting stuff up on their site. Uh, it's a to be working with Indiecar again.

Feeling that there might be some expansion in that relationship in some capacities.

I hope so, I think we'd be open to Yeah, I would hope so too.

Yeah, click bit.

O.

World of Outlaws we got an all new format for twenty four to twenty five season.

Yeah, this is a really cool new format to the World of Outlaws Pro Series. In the past, we've done two different pro series, or maybe we've just done the one for four ten sprint cars, but we had separate series for the four tens and the super late models. This time around, the series is fifty to fifty and you have weekly qualifiers to get in, not unlike a real world.

It's so good. Yeah, it's it's it's such a blast.

I mean you have to be great at both of those vehicles to try and go for this championship, which, in fairness, in the past, a lot of the drivers who were the best in that east in both of those esports series, we're also pretty good in the opposite car as well.

So although there's such a different driving experience, I cannot drive I apps, I cannot get around the track with any pace whatsoever. I've had Tyler like try to show me how to do it, because he races one in the real world. Yeah, I just I do not get it. I do a little bit in the in the sprint cars, but it's what is really cool about this. These are

To do it one hundred percent. And so mondays at eight pm Eastern, that's when you can tune into our socials and to be able to watch these. Logan Ramsey won the first super late Model race at Belusia, and then Tanner Pettit won the first four to ten race at Weed Sports. So we'll see how many different winners we have this here there. It would not shock me if we have ten winners and ten races.

I think that's a good championship if you do that. Moving on now esports, this is a cool one because it's not necessarily us managing it, but we're helping support our partners at IMSA.

Yep.

This is on a great series.

That's correct. Ims IS is all in on esports. They're running this series. We are supporting it. Obviously, we're doing the broadcast and providing other support that we can. First races, this weekend, so hopefully this podcast will be up before then.

There's suns that's going out tomorrow.

Okay, all right, so Sunday, there's four races we run through I think January on the dates in front of me. But Team Racing, two classes you know, so so, mixed class, super funs like you know, they're all in so it's their off season. It's a perfect time to run this, right because they're they're they're able to fully support it and should should make for some great racing.

Now, this is invitational only.

Invitation only so which was managed by MS so there wasn't a traditional qualifying max although there was a way people could get in through a time attack system, but generally it was invitation only.

So yeah, very cool. They put on some of the best racing we see. Uh, the relationship with IMSA has come, you.

Know, and I know that Drew is super excited. Drew one of my podcasts, like somebody. He also likes Rhode Atlanta and that's where the first race is. So I don't know if he didn't know that about Drew loves some road Atlanta.

Yeah, he goes peteete every you don't he does.

He's from Atlanta, right, yeah.

Atlanta, all right. I think that's it. And on that note, I guess that's a wrap. So thanks for listening to this episode of the I Racing Downshift. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else that Chris has put this thing for. Chris Leoni and Kevin Bobbit, I am Greg When and Sean the sound guy.

Shawn the sound guy. I didn't know that was your last name, Sean.

Yeah, I have Greg West and we will see you on track