This
Is off track.
The listeners are upset that Tim has a gap in his teeth, which quite
. I like my gap.
Do you? I do. You know, it's not, Hmm. Okay. Why, why do you like your, because you can squirt, like, you can do like one of those waterfall things through your teeth. I
Can, I can do that. Yeah. I can whistle real loud. Yeah.
Prove it.
Let's hear it. That's actually, that is, that's
Louder than I thought.
That's quite loud. Up here? Do you suck or blow, Tim?
I can do both. Oh, Yeah. Really? On the whistle, we're talking about whistle. Oh,
Right.
Wait, how do you, was that a, that was a blow. Oh, interesting.
I can't whistle
You can't like whistle outwards. You can't
Whistle. I can't make a whistle sound.
I've got a very talented mouth. I can whistle. I can, I can. Ve whistle suck. I can, you know, I can,
God, I cannot wait to move on from this
Conversation. Can you twirl, can you twirl your tongue? Of course you can.
Oh, the, the clover. Can you flip it over,
Look at you guys. Look at you guys. Just a bunch of talented man. I
Used to be able to touch my nose and my tongue too. Yeah.
I can stick out my tongue and touch my nose. But then
It kept growing, so I don't think I can do it now. That's not what I said. I said touch my nose with my tongue. Anyway. I know.
That's why I said it differently.
Most people just listen to this podcast. They can't see anything that we're doing, and all the noises that we're making are just offensive or, or
Annoying. We bring it up because I don't know, like this is, this is the, this is the holiday time, right? This is Christmas time. This is time where everyone's supposed to be mer and bright. Yeah. And you're supposed to, you know, extend a little bit more graciousness and gratitude towards people because it's, it's about holiday cheer and for whatever reason Yeah. Our listeners are just real. Oh, pissy . Towards,
Hang I can't wait. All of'em. A few. Someone needs to rip into James next because I've gotten the .
James sitting there being the guys
Do me, do me. . . Yeah. We, well, we can, I
Mean, your shirt hack combo today is pretty atrocious.
Dude, this was, I gotta be
Honest. Looks like you're about to hang sheet
. That is so
Accurate. Uh, well look, any, any plaid pattern is, is, is fine by me and, uh, goes well in the homeland. Um, but I will, I will be honest with you. Today was an insanely lazy day. It was this as just as, as dressed up as I got. We went to a friend's Christmas party last night and
On a Tuesday. That's pretty rude.
Um, it's just like, like as once you, like, everybody's got so much stuff going on, so you kind of had to like, you had to improvise
And, no, I'm not saying it's bad that you went, I'm just, it's kind of rude that they would host a evening of celebration where I'm sure there was things consumed other than water on a Tuesday on a school night, like Thursday. I get it. Fridays are busy, so, so Thursday makes sense.
But it was, it was then or, or never. Like everybody else had too much family and other stuff. It's just that time of year. Right. I feel like once you pass the 15th of December, every day is a suitable day for a party.
So like, Tim's every year round day. Yeah. Correct.
Yes. For what the, the 15th to the 31st of December for us is the 1st of January to the 31st of December for Tim. Mm. He's just, it's
Why he doesn't know anything about racing. His jokes aren't funny and he has a gap in his
. I can only assume that that was Mark's cousin. Um,
Mark Jr.
Mark Jr. Um, but yeah, so we had a great time with some friends at a Christmas party last night. Today was do absolutely nothing. Catch up on shows and cuddle the dog's day. Tremendous day. Mm. Just a great day. Uh, and then we have so much, we've got family.
Better be careful about complaining about all these parties and, and events and dinners. You have to go
. Yeah. Like, yeah. This is what you can rip me on, guys. Um, I've got a, yeah, I dunno. I I just got a lot of stuff going on. It's, you know what it's like when you go home for the holidays, it's always like, I
Don't do any sort of socializing. Yeah.
But you know, you know what it's like. I'm not saying you do it. I'm just saying you've heard this, you know, this situation before where most people,
People, I've seen it in movies, I don't know anything about it. Exactly. Right.
It's just like that. It's just like that. So at this Christmas party last night, it was, it's like, it was like kind of Becky's close friends from high school is kinda like the core group. Um, and they decided to do a white elephant thing. No Secret Santa. They did a secret Santa thing. And, uh, so obviously, you know, somebody got Becky and this was the gift that, uh, her friend Sloan got her. And man, it brought the house down. It was like a $25 limit and it was secret.
Santa Sloane got Becky and this is what she got her.
Nice. and not watching on YouTube, it is breaking into acting for dummies and
Yeah. Helpful, helpful.
It was, it was good. Uh, Darcy was there and he also took a, a, a quick spin through the, through the books to see if you can pick up any pointers. Um, my personal favorite part of the book is the chapter on how to cope with drug addiction. . Not a joke. Not a joke. That's,
That's for, they just understand that that's gonna happen. It's just
Assumed that anybody that gets into show business is gonna be an
. Okay. If, if there was a similar book for like how to be a race car driver for dummies, what would the equivalent be there? Like what's the, what's the dirty little secret?
How to post about being at the gym, how to post your workouts.
Okay. All right. Yeah.
Or sorry, how to not, how to, how to not post your workouts.
I feel like that's Downhill. Like that hasn't really, although I will say it's popped up a little bit recently, but that's also, I don't blame, I don't blame people as much during the, you know, off season 15 month off season that we have. Yeah. Um, when you're doing it in July, it's kinda lame, but like it's tough to get content out there right now. Like True. I'm not saying that I'm gonna be posting it 'cause I never do, but like, it's just, it's hard.
It's hard. Yeah. Um, so I don't, I don't hold that against people, but yes, I would, I was gonna jump, mine was gonna be, um, your workout doesn't count unless it's on an Instagram story with music,
Right? Yeah. Marco And, and the temperature. But what's the temperature, right? Of course when you're running outside. Um, yeah. So what, what do you have going on Alejandro?
Um, well, nothing. Uh, we go to Toronto on Monday, um, the 23rd and we're there for three days. Um, so quick trip, but there for the important parts. Christmas Eve, Christmas day, um,
Boxing Day. Let's not forget the Canadian tradition of
Boxing Day. I mean, that's more a British tradition, but, okay. I mean, you are owned by the Queen. We do still have
Her face on the money.
Yes. Yep. Uh, then I come home and
I mean, and they're in defense. They're no longer owned by the queen
Or a king. It's the king. Yeah.
,
I don't know, does that sound any different? It's the same. Same thing. It
Is, you know, technicality.
So I gotta get home on the 26th, uh, because Tim and I on the 27th, um, gotta go do some stuff. So, um,
I like, I like Tim's . I really hope we cut this part of the video and everybody can see Tim go, what? The 20, what's happening on the 27th? like, had no idea.
I was, because somebody was walking by outside the window. I, I did know that we are planning on hanging out, doing some escape rooms and just chilling.
There's just, yeah. There can't be many left in Indianapolis that you guys haven't done.
I am actually curious if there are any left,
We might make our own . We might, we might, uh, have Kelly lock us in a room. Okay. I'm gonna stop there. I was gonna
Say we could do the opposite of escape rooms. See if we can break into James's house.
That's super easy. Easy. I have
Code.
I know, but we can't, has the code,
Can't use the code that we know. Oh,
Rock Also easy. it's doing it without getting arrested. That's the challenge. Um, yeah, no, I'm gonna have you on video and you've just admitted it that you're doing it, so I feel like Yeah, but
This is is not the worst thing I've admitted.
Uh, exactly. And when the cop when the cops, they'll be like, oh, it's you
Podcast. Oh, you guys are, you guys are buddies. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah,
Whatever. Can we come in to you? Yeah.
We heard somebody broke in too. We're here to check it out. James asked us to swing by.
Did I ever tell you guys the story about the time that the alarm went off when Becky like was first here? Like first moved to Indy and the alarm went off and I was out and she couldn't get ahold of me. And so the, she just sat there in the kitchen, the alarm's gone off. She's like panicking, trying to find me, trying to find whatever, nothing. She just like, kind of gives up and just continues eating her breakfast in the kitchen.
And then all of a sudden, like 20 minutes later, a cop just starts walking around the back of the house and just like sees her sitting there. The alarm is now just stopped, I guess eventually it just shuts itself off, or the alarm company shuts it off maybe once the cops are on the way. And, and so she's just sitting there in her house coat eating yogurt. And the best part was, is our, our screen door in the back had fallen off.
And so it was just like resting up against the railing of the deck there. And so she sees like the, the screen door's broken off and there's this woman sitting in a house with the alarms gone off and she's like, oh, hey. Yeah, sorry, I just moved here. You know, my boyfriend owns this house and whatever. And the cop was just like, yeah, okay. And that was it.
Fair? Fair at all. This is pretty fair. Like, look at Becky in a house coat. Like you would, that's not what a rob does. What if
She was like a crazy ex and she just murdered me or something? Mm.
Well, I No, I can tell you based on an experience I had at my house that the cops don't ask a lot of follow up questions. , um, they just kind of
Clean things up and off you go. Yeah,
Exactly. I do, I do apologize for that men blast. So that reminds me of the story when I was leaving downtown with Connor still. Um, and this will be a good segue until we need to talk about Connor big news today. Um, or on Wednesday rather when we're recording this. But, um, Connor and I were living downtown, Liza, uh, who is a lady who used to work for me, um, lives in California.
She stayed at my house, um, I think it was like the Monday night after a 500 banquet or a race, or it doesn't matter. She'd stayed at the house after a race weekend and had a super early flight out to LA in the morning. And I was still fairly new in this townhouse, so like was setting the alarm every night and doing all those things and was habit and she didn't know. 'cause she had never stayed there before anyways.
So she was staying in the downstairs room and it was like right next to the front door. Just right by the door. Yeah. Right. So her Uber came, she went out and so it probably did a little beep beep, but she didn't think about it as like, maybe that's just the door chime when you open the door. Didn't think about it as the alarm. Well, townhouses, most people know like they're stacked tall.
And so the master bedroom and Connor's room were on the very third floor, but the alarm panel was by the front door, or actually by the back door, by the garage. And so the alarm ended up going off and she had to leave for this flight at like four o'clock in the morning. And neither Connor nor I woke up to the alarm going off. 'cause we can't do it all the way upstairs.
effective alarm. And
We only woke up when we heard yelling coming from the second floor, like where the kitchen living room area was because the
Cops were going through the house.
The cops were going through like clearing the house. And so we both drawn in the hallway in our underwear at the top of the stairs, looking down on two cops shining flashlights up at us.
What year was this? .
Yeah. Um, this is 2017. Okay.
Or 18. I was more wondering if this was like the banquet right after you won the 500.
No, no, this was not have been on the newspaper that morning. No, I didn't have Have this place at the time. And, um, so anyways, the cops were like, do you live here? And I was like, looking down and like my underwear being like, yeah, yeah, I mean, I
Didn't show Well, your alarm's going off. And I'm like, okay. And Connor was like, dude, Liza. And I was like, oh, <inaudible>. Like, I had to like a friend stay over and she had to leave for the airport early this morning. She must've like set the alarm off. And they were like, so there's no one else in the house
And I hope not.
Well, Connor was like, well, Anyways, the cops were like, all right, you guys are good. And, uh, we went back to bed. So that was, that was the cops coming into my house with the alarm going off in the middle of the night story. Good times.
Oh, good times guys. Good times. Set the alarm. Yeah. Remember, set the alarm.
Very important. Or, or at least when you set the alarm, get an alarm that has like a repeater speaker. Yeah, dude. Like, or like another panel or something.
There's no place in my house. You could be and not hear the alarm going off. But this is what's dumb about it is it's so loud from the panel. It's not like we have other speakers, I don't think anywhere else in the house. It's just so loud from the panel. That means that when you go up to the panel to try to type in the code,
You are just like, you
Are bleeding from, from the ears. Yeah. Like it's worth taking the time to go to the office, grab a helmet, put it on, and then walk up so that you've got free hands to do the code. So brutal. Um, which again, now someone can get mad at us for complaining about having an alarm system or something. Uh, yeah. Tim, how are you feeling? Are you feeling any better?
Still a little sick. Hazel's better. Uh, so she's back in school today, but yeah. No, I'm, I'm still still a little rough. There's just everybody's sick. Like that's that time of year. Anybody who has a kid is sick right now. Oh.
Oh yeah. to Hazel's teacher and I was like, yeah, she doesn't have a fever. She's like, she's, I think she's better. She's still like a little sniffly and the teacher's like, just send her like every I'm sure she got it here. Don't worry about . She's Immune to whatever's going. It's
Fine.
Everybody's got give it, she got it here. You know, . Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah, that's fair. No, I'm looking forward to going back and, um, and hanging out with, uh, with Alex. You'll be up in Canada or wherever you're going, James. I'll Be in Canadian still. Yeah. When you get there. All right.
Well, speaking of Connor, like you said, it was announced today that he will be doing a full season with, with Kos holing racing alongside Sting Ray. Rob, I just have to prove to the guy who did the anonymous comment on our YouTube video that I know something about racing.
Yeah. Except you pronounce it Yukos. When it's Kos.
Okay. I, I feel like I've heard it both
, I've, I heard
Kos. I feel like I've, yeah, I feel like j that's kind of like J hhr. I feel like that's whatever, you know, those Greek sandwiches. And I'm not gonna say the name of it because I feel like every time I say it, it's corrected. It's like it's a euro, oh, I'll take a guro. They're like, no, it's a euro. It's like, I'll take a euro. They're like, no, it's a hero. I'll take a hero. No, it's a guro. It's like, it's just this cycle of you can never get it right and you're constantly corrected.
So Greek sandwich,
JHR, we'll We go. J HHR there. So that, it's a couple things. I mean obviously it's great for Connor. Yeah. He has been as always, hustling to get the program done and like, look, this is the part of motor sports that sucks. And when we make the joke, I say joke that racing's like the dumbest sport on earth. It's for reasons like this. Right?
Actually, I believe it's pronounced yolk.
Oh God, it's ho Come on
It goes with these dumb jokes.
Mark
. I'm sorry, I'm laughing. I'm showing off the gap that that is very jarring for him. Sorry. Jarring .
Oh man. Um, so yes, no, super happy for him. Obviously he got that opportunity last year to jump in and performed, uh, trying to keep that car in the leader circle, um, and is being rewarded for that. Uh, because I don't know, they haven't announced any sponsorship yet, so we don't know what the program is there. Um, but we're just super stoked for him, man. Super stoked for Connor. Great that he'll be back on the grid for a full season. Um, not a partial program.
Don't know if he's gonna have any other exploits. Last couple years he's been doing some NASCAR stuff, some Marcus, some trucks, some Xfinity, some whatever. Um, hopefully it'd be good to see him do more. I know it's like, it's tough with the IndyCar schedule 'cause it's so, like, it's so condensed this year.
I don't know. I I mean you may have had different conversations with him, but like from what I've gathered from him is he is like pot committed to IndyCar. Yeah. So I don't think anything else is on his radar. Um, and I I just echo what you kind of said. Like it's, I don't know that there's been a driver. I'm sure there has, I don't want to take away from what other people have done.
I mean, maybe Jack Harvey is a similar example, but another driver who's kind of been in and out on the fringe, like outside looking in and then still like, fights back and like works their way back into it. Like, it's usually when in this sport, when you're kind of done, you're done.
Done. You're done. Yeah. Um, and so for him to be able to a, not get deterred, um, by that or deterred enough to stop trying, like for sure, like, you know, we know him and we know the, the, the mental challenge that this has been for him over the past couple years. And it's, it's amazing to see the resilience that he's had through kind of those ups and downs to continue fighting, to put a program together, um, to be back on the grid in 2025.
In, in arguably when it's the hardest to get a job in this series. 'cause of condensed car count in the sense that teams can only run a certain amount of cars and, and all that sort of thing. And, and going up against really good free agents in the Iuss and such. Um, you know, it's both
Ri and Lee , And you know, you've got a Rojan you've got, um, you know, I'm sure there's lots of guys out there still with, you know, good backing and support from a financial standpoint. And when it's only three seats left on the grid, it's not like three, maybe five it no it's three. Yeah. To be one of the guys that, you know, beats out all those other ones and is one of 'em. I mean, that's a, that's a huge accomplishment. It really is. It really is. And, uh, uh, super happy for 'em.
And hopefully there's, you know, more good news coming on that side of things. And as you said, uh, was three and then there were two, and now it's just the Dale coin entries that have to, uh, have to be sorted. I wanna throw in an honorable mention you were talking about, you know, and I'm sure there have been plenty of other drivers that have kind of had a similar path or been through that stuff, but honorable mention to Alex Tagliani, because I got to like witness some of that.
That guy, that guy was a wheeler, a dealer and put programs together, like bought into teams, bought chassis. Like he did things, he did crazy things to like keep his programs alive and, and stay running. And um, that's the same kind of hustle I think I see at a, at a Connor. It's, it's cool to see that it's paying off. Um, so yeah, just coin left a bunch of different names, rumored to be attached to it. Obviously one of the Enus did a test for them at the Speedway.
The re variety, I guess the r variety of Enus. Sure. Um, so yeah, I mean, we'll see what happens on that front. I have no idea. Again, we've joked that it'll be May before they decide it's racing in St. Pete. Uh, but, uh, yeah, two left. So we almost have a full field almost ready to go. Almost, Man. Almost ready to go.
Um, the other thing that was kind of big, maybe not big, but the other thing that was revealed this week was, um, you know, all of the, the broadcast times from Fox for 2025, you know, we obviously knew that everything was gonna be on network. Um, that's all confirmed. Um, and you know, there's no, there's no have any night races.
I Do we have any night races? what I was gonna say is like, there's no real surprises in the schedule. Nothing bad other than there's, there's no night races for any, any of the short ovals. Um, the latest race is I think Iowa Race one, which is a 5:00 PM Eastern time. So 4:00 PM local time start. So yeah, Just the hottest time of day. It's such a shame, right? Because like Iowa was obviously not a great race this year, not great races this year.
Um, and I know that the series is working on that, whether it's a package tire, compound, constructions, whatever. Uh, but man, even just, I feel like even just going at night would help so much. I know that it's not that easy, right? Like this is all dictated by TV windows and things like that and makes it a huge challenge. But, uh, God, I'd love to cease and night races. I think Indy cars racing at night just looks so cool, especially on the ovals.
It does, but like, also, every time we bring this up to the series, like they are, they're all on agreement. Like they, they can't do anything. It's
A ticket thing.
I know. Um, so the, the only thing that I really would like that it to get more momentum behind, and I don't really know what the objection is, other than potentially you're giving up some at person ticket sales or in-person ticket sales, I should say. But like, I understand we can't do Thursday night. I understand we can't do Friday night 'cause of primetime. Why can't we do a Tuesday night, a Wednesday night, Wednesday night? Yeah. Like it's, there's no reason why not.
Like we, everything we do in this series is driven around, oh, we need these network TV numbers and we're willing to sacrifice seemingly a lot of other things in order to ensure network TV numbers stay the same. Okay. Yeah. Or continue to grow. So why don't we make sure the quality of the product is good and have a network TV race on a Tuesday night? And you're gonna get a lot of numbers. 'cause no one has anything else to watch. You're not competing against anything.
So I think that even if you manage to get people to turn up on a Wednesday night, right. Which I think you could, I think if if it's a good draw, people go to basketball games. Hockey games. Exactly. Concerts. Concerts, lots of stuff on a weekday. Right? So I don't think that's the issue. I think the issue is that these races are supported by three days of ticket sales and no one's gonna come watch practice on Monday.
Very few people are gonna come watch qualifying on Tuesday for a race that happens on Wednesday. So to, to justify the cost of hosting a race, you really need people going in the doors for three days.
Uh, okay. But I, I would argue Gateway is an interesting case study to where that's not necessarily the case. Right. Gateway is a very condensed two day event. Right. And let's be honest, no one really goes on Friday for qualifying at two o'clock in the afternoon,
Right? Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. It gets pretty quiet there, I suppose. Yeah.
Let's be honest. No one goes to qualifying on short oval days anyways.
That's true. All right, so Gateway, let's
Do, why would you, so why can't we do Thursday? Um, Thursday is still like primetime shows. It's not sports per se, but they still release like, I don't know if it's what it is now, American Idol or whatever, but it's still like network television shows come out when was Dancing with the Stars? Wednesdays?
Mondays. So yeah, there's something on Thursdays Might be tu now it's Tuesdays actually, but Right. Yes. I see, I see what you're saying. It's like, yeah, network, prime time weekday stuff. Got it. Um, okay, well we're not gonna solve that problem today, so that's fine. Um, other, we don't
Solve any problems on here.
I disagree. We theorize a lot of solutions to problems. Um, so big news over in the F1 world that was not unexpected, but now is official in that Sergio Perez is out at Red Bull officially,
I think, I mean, everyone knew it was coming. It's nice that they allowed him to do it. I mean, pseudo on his own terms, even though that's certainly not the case, at least the in history, it will be remembered as C Checko decides to step away from Red Bull racing instead of Yeah. The
Headline Sacked. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, I am very interested to know like what his involvement, because it's been mentioned for a long time that, you know, he's still gonna be a part of the team. He's still gonna be like an ambassador, a representative, whatever you wanna call it. Like, what, what does that entail?
Because it's not a, it's not a, I understand when McLaren has an ambassador, I understand when Mercedes has an ambassador, it's a car brand and the automotive arm can use said person to like do corporate events and be that guy that's trying to sell cars from showroom floors. What does an ambassador for Red Bull do? Yeah, I mean obviously there's a lot of events like, you know, show car runs and stuff like that.
Um, I can't imagine he's gonna be doing like sim work or go into a reserve driver role. I don't really see him filling that situation. Um, so yeah, I don't, I, I don't know. It's a good question. I mean, I could kind of see it like keeping him involved in some capacity seems like a good way to try to keep some of the sponsorship that he comes with. Maybe that's part of the appeal of keeping him in the family. But it's just an interesting one, man. I mean, we all know he had a contract.
He's been saying it for the last six months, um, and at this, and, and, and while, yes, he's getting to say he is leaving under his own terms. We all know the pressure that was coming from the top, but at some point, right, if a situation's not working a driver's, you're gonna want out. Right? Like you're, you're not gonna want to go back. And so there are two scenarios.
There's either the scenario that Chaco really believed that there was something that would or could change in the off season and he could come back and be in his 2023 form, or the relationship had become untenable. You know, the, the dynamic in the team was too damaged. The philosophy of the car was never gonna suit his style. And then what's the point of suffering that kind of beating for another two years?
You know? And I don't even just mean for Max, I mean the, the public stuff, the media stuff, everybody, all the speculation, all that crap that you gotta put up with. At some point, if you see the writing on the wall, you're like, I don't see how this gets better. I know I've got two more years on this contract, but I would rather just not do this because this isn't fun. Like, he did not have fun this year. And going back and doing that in 25 again would not be fun for him.
Yeah. especially one of the best. Like, it's such a tough situation. But you, you, you, I don't know that even, even after the year that he had, I don't even, I don't know that that went on long enough for him to believe that like he couldn't rebound at some point, you know? But,
But, but could he rebound there? That's the thing. Yeah. Like I don't think, I don't think Gecos believes that he's done racing. And maybe if there was like, because the grid's obviously already all booked up now, um, that,
So do you think he'd pop up somewhere? No, I don't. I, that's where I'm kind of curious about what his ambassador role entails. Like there's no way he could go IndyCar racing.
Yeah. I don't, I mean, none of those guys really seem to have an interest.
It is weird, huh? Like how, how against it, Ricardo was considering how much he loves America. Like, he was like, oh,
Gross. But it's ovals, right? They're just, that's the, that's the biggest deterrent for all these guys is just ovals. Um, which is too bad because at least half of them, I truly believe if they tried it would absolutely love it. I do think the other half wouldn't and would never get comfortable and competitive, but it's, you know, until you try it, look man, I I hated them before I did 'em. Right? Like same I thought os were dumb. Same a hundred percent.
And then you do 'em and you're like, man, these are so much <inaudible> fun.
I mean, they can be horrible.
Oh, it can be the worst Sundays of your life.
Yes. Yes. where you're just like, I'm not even gonna turn. Yeah. I just, that was funny. I just, that was funny. It is funny, funny
Give, I've started seeing Junior
Point. When you give a really good joke, you don't laugh at it or smile because
, well now I'm thinking about it. Mm.
Now he hit his own head. Oh, mark Junior's living run free up in that massive Scully,
. You know, I don't get attacked for the, the Gap. Usually it's the hair. So, you know, this is new. I liked it. Yeah.
People just mixing it up. People just mixing it up for you, keep you on your toes. Uh, so yeah. So then I assume we all think that it's gonna be, uh, lost and that goes in the car over Yuki.
I will say, I'm not gonna say who it is, um, 'cause I don't want him to get in trouble. Uh, but a very prominent F1 journalist who's been around for eons, um, he's very good at his job. Did tweet that. Yuki got the, the Red Bull Sea got the nod and then it was deleted very quickly after. So I don't know if that was a mistake, like a draft that was loaded or something, or like that is the case and he launched it too early. I don't know. But like, that was a weird thing for him to put out there.
I heard a rumor that it may have been either like a fake account or he got hacked or something.
Oh. a convenient excuse. Right? So who knows, watch this space maybe his test was great. Yeah. Um, so yeah, so that's that. And that's now that has to be decided. And then they'll figure out who goes in the V carb next to whether you cure or Lawson, whoever stays. I assume it's jar from F two, but we'll see. Have we talked about the track house entry for Daytona? We have not. We have not. We've not talked about any sort of Daytona.
Let's Daytona a little bit. Um, well let's start with mine. So yeah, it came out that,
I mean, to be fair, you didn't even tell me about it, . I literally asked No, you, you, you mentioned something in passing. Oh yeah, I got these three endurance races and I was like, wait, what? You like, oh, I didn't tell you. I'm like, no, .
Yeah. How does it feel, bro? , now you know how Tim and I feel for like all the groundbreaking news in your career. Whatever, learn on the phone,
Joe, you knew. You
Knew. I didn't know, didn't know any of your stuff. Mm-hmm . Anyway. Uh, yeah. So f um, switching manufacturers again. Yes.
PAFP,
Faf pf uh, suboptimal. I know what you're gonna say. Not ideal and it's true, but things happen. Racing is a business
And No, no. So so back up. So back up. So from everything that I was aware of, yeah. And I think what the world was aware of based on an article that PFAF put out was they were closing their doors. Yes. Like they were, they were, they were done racing. The McLaren deal was coming to an end. It wa it didn't meet expectations. Um, the owner, Chris faf, was kind of tired of putting in his own money.
They as an organization in ims, a racing have done a phenomenal job from the commercial side, but still, like it's hard to get, it's expensive to go pro sports car racing. So they were done. The next thing I know is James is doing the endurance races for PAF. So like there's a, there's a big amount of things that had to happen between Yes. Shutting the doors to, we're doing a full season .
Correct. Um, and we would need three individual episodes to cover all that. That's
Fine. But, but the, the high points are they are coming back high in GTD Pro with Yeah.
With Lamborghini. Okay. So Lamborghini
Replacing any, like, did Lamborghini leave someone and come to them?
Yes. So Iron Lynx, um, and, and Lamborghini's relationship ended for various reasons. And it was one of those kind of fortuitous things, man. Like, there was some mixed feelings about whether kind of making the faf announcement about, you know, pulling out of imsa um, public when, when they did was a good idea or bad idea. Everything happens for a reason.
It ended up being a blessing because at the same time, Lambo was negotiating their exit with iron links and needed a car, needed a team, sorry, to run the car. And so Faff was looking for a, a, a partner, a manufacturer to partner up with and, and some, you know, resources to go racing. And Lambo needed a team. So, um, Chris Faff and Steve bti and, and everybody and Don Rohrer, everybody over there did a lot of hard work.
And man, it's the back and forth required, like, this is, this is, you know, again, I've been in this business a long time, so I've been through this a hundred times. But like, this is what we were just talking about with Connor, right? Like that the constant changing of the situation. The, the number of times the story change, the details change, whatever, like it's sometimes these deals come together in the most obscure ways and the most convoluted ways and whatever.
But ultimately everybody put their heads down and, and got the work done. Obviously everybody on the Lambo side, everybody on the FAF side. Um, so yeah, very exciting, uh, for, sorry.
No. So I guess just the, what that means directly for you is the team obviously missed the test, the series test that happened in December, which, or maybe end of November, whatever in November. Yeah. Um, which that team dealt with last year. You know, I was, I had a front row seat to that and the roar was a challenge for them because they were learning a whole new everything.
But what made that challenge even harder was that particular chassis, car engine package platform was not as proven like it did race before in Europe, but it was still fairly new. And you know, especially with American tracks and the challenges that they create, that car had some, some bugs that still need to be worked out. The Lamborghini, I imagine is the Huan Evo, which has been around now for five years.
So Sure. So that car, even though faf is getting it late, they're all gonna be learning new systems all over again. The bugs from the manufacturer that this car out of the box should be in a much better spot from a reliability standpoint than yes. What they had to deal with last year.
I think yes, as a, as a package in totality, it is more sorted and is more proven, uh, from a reliability standpoint. Performance
Is so you should win. Just give you the watch.
Let's, I mean, yeah, let's just, let's just cut out this long, arduous day for everybody and, and just, uh, move on to the important stuff. Um, no. Yes. It's gonna be a challenge, man, like you say, because here's the thing, even though yes, the package is proven, this individual car will be brand new and everything needs to be run in and worked out and debugged and whatever. So, um, so yeah, we're gonna have to go to the roar and do all that stuff.
But again, the team has now done it really two years in a row. 'cause our last year with Porsche was kind of a brand new car in a lot of ways. Um, yeah. So
At least you're used to not having time,
Right? Yes. And, uh, and yeah, should be good. So, uh, teammates are all Lamb Lambo factory guys, uh, Marco Elli, um, Andrea called Re and, um, Jordan and Pepper. So yeah, I get the three races like I did last year, which is exciting. And, um, looking forward to getting back behind the wheel. Um, all right. The, yeah, the other IMSA news that I just find interesting 'cause like the, so the IMSA entry list for Daytona came out.
So it's like all these kind of stories have broken in the last, you know, whatever, however long Yeah. Last week or so. But the one that's really interesting is the track house entry, track house, successful NASCAR team. Uh, Justin Marks runs that program. They, they're in bike racing now as well and they've announced, uh, they're running a Corvette in GTD and they've got a super stacked lineup.
So because it's the GTD car, it's the ProAm car, their AM is Ben Keating, who's probably the sportiest am I've ever seen, like Sportiest bronze driver. He's a gentleman driver, but he's raced prototypes successfully. Um, GT successfully, he is done La Ma, he is done Daytona, he's done all the big races. He is won all these championships. Super, super capable driver. And then they're thrown in SVG who we know can wheel, um, Scotty Mack, who we know can Wheel, and Connor Zi, who can Wheel Wheel
Has won literally everything he's done
Ever and has already won Daytona in a prototype. So that is a super stacked lineup in a very good car. And that's gonna be fun to keep track of and see how our, our boy Scottie Mack does chasing down that watch,
Thankfully. You well, are you racing against him? No. You're
In pro? No, because they're, they're GTD. Yeah. So we're a pro car, thankfully. I wouldn't wanna go up against That
Would suck.
Yeah. I mean, look dude, there's stacked lineups and pro up and down the grid, right? So just adding another one would be annoying. Uh, so yeah, I mean, look, there's a lot. That's what I love about Daytona man, is it just gets all these guys out there. It's cool to see guys from different, and girls from different disciplines, uh, all running together.
Um, Scotty Max gonna be hyper motivated 'cause Joseph won himself a watch last year and he's gonna want one of those bad boys, I don't think Will, I'm not sure Will's ever done a tone. Uh,
He has not. Uh,
So yeah, I don't know why he should probably get on that. Um, but I mean, when you're will power, you just buy Rolexes, you don't need to win 'em. Uh, so yeah, so very excited to get back behind the wheel with the boys and girls at faf. And um, I'm gonna be bummed that you're not there, Alex not there to share in the misery.
I I will not be. Um, you know, during the roar, I'll be on a beach in Maui. Um,
Doesn't sound like as much fun. There's beach beaches everywhere. You can go to a beach whenever you want.
That's true. It is called Daytona Beach. Um,
True. I'm also gonna be on a beach,
So when I get back, I am going to a horse race. Uh, it's called the Pegasus Invitational. Where's that? Um, Miami. So, okay.
I was gonna say like, where in January are you going for a horse race? Mm, got it South. So you'll be right around the corner. So horse race I'll on Saturday and then finish the race, drive up, catch the end of, uh, the Rolex.
I won't do that, but I'll be cheering for you from my . Whatever. You can fly up.
It'll be a short point there.
Not doing, doing. Um, alright, so come on. We, uh, we covered a lot. I, I dunno if the audience knows, but we're gonna be taking, um, Christmas time off. There may be a bonus episode coming out on Tuesday from a special guest. Uh, so stay tuned to the space. Don't wanna commit to it, but there's a high possibility of that happening news to me, but no, it's not, Tim. We've literally, we've literally talked about this at length. Yeah, we think we were gonna save it. No, we didn't. Oh,
No, let's just knock it out. No, no, not that special guest, the other one.
Oh, got it, got it. Okay. Anyways, um, I, happy
Holidays I was trying to do a nice outro, but you know, screw, y'all have a great Christmas. See you in the New Year. What a, this has been off track with Hinch and Rossi. Off Track is
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