This is, is off track.
Tim, why are you hung over on a Tuesday?
On a Tuesday? Man, that's
Just on a Tuesday. Like what were you doing? Was it midnight football? Was it sports related?
I did, I did watch the Bengals. Uh, just destroy the Cowboys there in the fourth. They
Did not destroy them by any means. They barely won that game. The
Cowboys collapsed in the fourth.
Yeah, but the Cowboys are potentially the worst team in football. So like that's not an accomplishment. Yeah, yeah,
Yeah. Uh, my neighbor Scott is Big Cowboys fans. We were just talking about that. No. Had some neighbors over. We played, uh, played a little poker night, but I'm not hungover. I'm just a little tired.
You literally opened with I'm hungover on a Tuesday, but like, why does it matter? That wasn't recording. Oh, well. Okay. . But why does it matter if you were hugging? So if you had a poker night, you should, I it makes sense that you were having a drink and days of the week. Just days of the week, you don't have a, like a job, so it's fine. Um,
It, it was, uh, it was kind of back. So we played for like three hours and by the end of it, only one person was out. And we just kept doubling the blinds and doing everything. But it just was like a pretty evenly matched game. So at about 11 30, 11 45, it was just like, do you guys just wanna call this and just say nobody owes anybody anything? It's like, yeah, probably .
See, that's not, that's not how Marco and I play poker.
No, I'm aware. You guys, guys keep going back to the at TM until somebody's just so angry they have to quit .
We also did $10 buy-ins and no buybacks, . So it was, the whole night was, was pretty low stakes.
Interesting.
Isn't that funny that when it's low stakes, everyone plays well and when, soon as there's a lot of money on the table, people start well and also making dumb moves
And also is like, oh yeah, I'm fine. Like we can
. Yeah. I remember that one time we were playing poker at your house, Alex and I was the house. And you kept losing and then you just kept
Jack.
Yeah. Yeah. I was Jack. Cool story guys. And you, uh, they
Were also upset about
It there. Yeah, but my favorite part was like, at least twice, maybe three times you disappeared and came back with just another wad of a hundred dollars bills. And I'm like, is there a safe in your house that I don't know about, which I probably shouldn't if you do, but you just have cash, like stashed somewhere in the house and you just kept coming back with more. And it was, it was very funny.
, I would assume he has a safe,
I have a safe and I
Don't have anything worth keeping safe. Like, all right. I think we have to do the mature thing here and shoot the dogs. Uh, James, you're back in America.
Yes, I'm back in America. I got back late last night. Um, how
Long are you in America for pal?
Till Sunday.
Till Sunday. So not long.
So not long. I It still won't be another, it still won't be a full weekend, which means that from the end of the IndyCar season until the end of the calendar year, I will have spent one full weekend at my home. Mm. . Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I don't even know why I have a home anymore. I'm just gonna sell it all. I'm just gonna sell everything.
I mean, I, I've been saying that past two and a half years. Why you have a home in Mindy? But, um, yeah. Okay. So where are you going on Sunday?
Uh, up to Canada for the holidays.
Oh, that's early to go to Canada. That's,
Um,
That's 11 days early.
It's the 15th. Yeah. We've got, we got friends to see and family to see and uh, you know, there's just, it, it fills up. It actually fills up. So like our first, I think commitment, so drive up on the 15th and then Becky's like, friend group is doing a big friends Christmas thing on the 17th. So we kind of have to be up on the 15th. 'cause you want a day to just kind of chill and then Yeah, man, I've got some dinners with some friends and we have some family stuff.
Um, after Christmas on the 28th, you're gonna have a, you're gonna have a deal day with this. I am attending
Gulfstream
20th high school anniversary
Reunion. Okay. Yeah. All right.
Now 20th reunion. Sorry. Hold on a sec guys. Hold on. Okay, so the dogs were barking because there was a package getting delivered to the house by UPS, but man, I wish I could snipe a photo of this. UPS must be like short on trucks this holiday season because there is just a black Tahoe with the letters UPS in stickers on the, not like the logo, just literally like store bought like stickers UPS on the door. I don't love it. And I'm not gonna open the door to see what the package is on .
I would, uh, uh Okay. I don't, yeah, that seems weird.
Seems very strange. 'cause like, let see if I can get a picture of it. There's,
There's a lot of like Amazon trucks going around there, like the budget rental vans and stuff. But to have like a personal car with like, essentially duct tape letters on the side. Yeah,
It's basically that. Yeah. I'll, I'll find it on the come get it. I'll find it on the ring cam, but I'll send it to you 'cause it's pretty funny. Uh, but yes, so I've got my 20th high school reunion, which is, uh,
Nuts. And so, so we've talked about this before and I, you, you've said, uh, a goal of yours for a high school reunion would be to show up in a helicopter. Yeah.
In a helicopter.
Is that, is that still the, is that the plan? No,
I don't think helicopter guy.
I used to be a much bigger helicopter guy.
Yeah. I used to, I used to chopper more and then I liked life, so I do it less now. Um, no, no, this is not, there's not really a great landing spot for, uh, for a looked on this one. What's that?
So you've looked into it. Obviously
There's like a soccer field or a football field at this.
No. 'cause we're not, we're doing at a bar. We're not doing it at the school. Like if it was the school, yeah, we would totally be choppering in. But, um, no, sadly.
So how many people from high school 20 years ago do you still communicate with Well, I married one of 'em.
I married one, um, her brother's another
That doesn't count.
Um, okay. So like, like communicate with regularly,
Um, that, you know, that you would be, I don't know that you would be excited to see him. 'cause it's like I, I talked to them enough that it'd be like good to see 'em in person versus just like, oh, hey,
Very few. Very few. So like, I figured Yeah, I mean like you, you know most of 'em right? 'cause they would've been pretty much the guys in the wedding party, right?
Um,
Like Blaine and Randall and Cody and uh, and so yeah. But then there's a lot that you just like, kind of like casually know stuff about because of social media and what have you. But no, if you're talking about like, people who I cut off the top of my head name, their significant other and, or like even just know if they have kids and how many, not even necessarily the kids' names. It's a short list. It's a short list. Uh, but there's plenty that I'm excited to see, um, and catch up with
Any, any old crushes. Uh,
I'm trying to think. In high school I
Dated in or Becky it.
Well, no, 'cause we didn't date in high school. Um, but most of
The girls, him as like a guy. She just dumped you at prom.
Yeah, exactly right. We went as friends and then she went home with another dude. Um, no, I'm kidding. She went home with her friend, uh, I think, which was
Dude
? Uh, no,
A friend called dude.
Yeah, it's a female friend named Dude. What? That's not weird. Um, I only think, I think I only dated one. She was at hockey one . Well, yeah, it's Canadian. Uh, I think I only dated one girl from my high school friend. So
Do you think shell be there?
Meaning, I don't know. I haven't actually seen the guest list. If
She, if she was there, would you like be interested to see what she looks like?
I would assume she looks the same. I
Don't know. No, I mean, like, dude, 20 years man can do a number on people. Yeah. That's a bad way. Like, dude, it's a long time.
Insane thing to think 20 years ago we graduated high school. Uh, yeah. I
Mean, no, that probably what not Alex and I
No, no
. Yeah. Don't, don't lump us into this. Don't lump us into your your old man stuff.
God, I can't wait till you guys have your 20th high school. You wouldn't even go Alex.
I wouldn't, you wouldn't, wouldn't go .
Do you talk to literally anybody from your high
?
.
I was about to say yes, but she didn't go to my high school. She was just my next door neighbor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So no, so
No. Okay. Uh, Tim, you still close with some high school friends?
Yeah, I, I talked to the
Exact number of the ones that I want to, like I have a group chat Yeah. With, with the friends from my high school. And then I have another group chat with the people that I rode
With. Wait, you have the phone
Numbers? One of my coaches and, and that's it. Those are the only people I want to talk to.
You don't just have 'em like on Facebook you have their actual phone numbers.
Yeah.
Yeah. Man, hang out when
I'm back there, dude, I even, I even regularly communicate. I say regularly. I occasionally communicate with one of my old teachers from high school on Twitter.
I I do, I I communicate like on Instagram with my old kindergarten teacher. Is that weird?
Yes. So back, back, back in home, you know what I mean? Uh, Abu Dhabi. I was in Abu Dhabi for a race. Wait, when did we talk last? Did I tell you? I told you I was seeing Marvin. Right?
Uh, you already told us you saw Marvin.
Did I tell you all about it? Did I tell you about the dune buggies? Yes.
Yes. Yeah, yeah,
Yeah. Okay. I don't
Remember. Wow. It shows, shows how much our conversations mean to you, James.
I just don't understand
The last, last episode we talked, we talked about Mark and all of his things that he had to say and everything that you had been doing leading up DD and we talked about Cutter and all those things. Um, yeah.
This was after we went Yes. On the dune buggies.
Yes. It sure was. You said, do you need to beat yourself? A couple of those, yes. All
Fields. Yeah.
Dude, that's wild.
So
A lot
Louis Hamilton has done at Mercedes, uh, F1 season. Yeah.
Let's talk, let's talk about that for a second. I am, I I'm a little tired of the, the stroking for Lewis. Like he's not leaving.
This is, yes.
He, he's just changing teams to arguably a more prestigious team. At least historically. I'm not saying like necessarily current. I mean historically there's no
Argument
Historically. Exactly. Um, and is getting more money and is gonna be probably more famous because he's in red and representing the eria. Like why is it this like pity party of like, oh, thanks for everything Louis. It's like, okay, yes, he's ending a legacy at Mercedes, but Mercedes should be more sad than like anyone
Else, right?
Yes. Anything Mercedes wanted to do to kind of cap off the career and acknowledge the achievements and the accomplishments and their time together. Awesome. Longest driver team relationship in Formula One history, which is kind of impressive. I didn't realize that until this weekend. I
Didn't know that at all. Yeah.
Yeah. But, but to like have him get to stop his car on the front strait as well and do donuts and, and hang what he, if he's retiring a hundred percent, I get it.
Absolutely.
The donuts were weird. Move for getting fourth place
Also. Like he had his own little, little banner thing to stop in front of
Was obviously pre-planned. It's not like he's going to, no offense. So her like, no,
He's, you'll him,
Everything is
Good for him. You see him three months in a good car in a race winning car. Mm-hmm.
Right on the podium.
Like it, everything's fine. We don't need to, he's not going, he's not dying. Like it's, it was very strange. I was with you. I'm with you on that. That was a bit strange. Yeah. On that note, hell of a drive, hell of a drive from
Him. Very good. Um, he got super boned in qualifying. I I have a lot of, I have a lot of, um, sympathy for Lewis 'cause I feel like some of those things that have happened to him this year have happened to me. Um, it gets kind of screwed with the timing, leaving pit lane and traffic and all this thing, these sort of things.
And then on his one time lap that he has for something good to happen, um, someone IE Kevin Magnuson tries to do the right thing, get out of his way, hits a Ballard, that Ballard gets stuck under Lewis's car. Lewis doesn't transfer. Lewis qualifies 18th. Um, when he had had a car that was, you know, a top six car, I think on pace all weekend. So that was, um, that was sad to see, but yes. What a, what an amazing recovery he had. Still not as impressive as old.
Uh, Chuck le cleric dude. Um, for Ferrari though
His first lap. So also had a, well he had a, he went quickest in Q1 and then got his time deleted for track limits. Again, just banging your head against a wall of track limits. So he started 19th and it's not even, so look, there was that incident turn one where, um, whoa, max, max drop kicked pry. And they both spun around, both kept going, but both spun around. So you get two free spots there. Neat.
But then dude, the way he just managed to pick off another nine cars, you 11 cars in the first lap. And like I said, it's not just like a bunch of dudes drop, kicked a bunch of guys. It wasn't some massive pile up. He just got a good start, got a few off the line, picked up the two and turned one and then it turned six went on the, like, everybody just decided to cram up on the inside cause the biggest accordion effect. And he just drove by like five cars in one corner on the normal racing line.
And it was awesome. Mm-hmm . Uh, and it kept, kept Ferrari with Oster going out and sign started second, maintained second, and then got La Claire up into the points immediately. It, it actually made the, the constructors battle like a bit of a thing. It made it kind of interesting because Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
No, because essentially what happened was, um, you know, all of McLaren's eggs were in Land's Basket. Right. You know, he was on pole, he had to control the race, but if anything happened to him, bad pit stop, uh, untimely yellow, a mechanical, any sort of thing, um, they would've lost constructors 'cause Ferrari recovered to two three. Whereas if it had just been Carlos up there and Charles was struggling down in 12th or 13th or whatever, um,
And Oscar was still in the race and
Oscar was still in the race, it wouldn't have even really, the pressure would've been off. So McLaren had to deliver for 55 laps. Lando had to deliver for 55 laps and they did so quite easily from the outside it looked like. But um, it was pretty cool to see that level of execution under pressure. And it got them their first, uh, constructors' championship of this decade, which is crazy to think about.
It is crazy. I mean it's, uh, everyone was talking about how the last one was 26 years ago, back in 98 or whatever. I, I still like kind of call bullshit on that 'cause they wanted an oh seven. They just got, they got disqualified for being, you know, dirty rotten cheaters heaters. Yeah. Um, but like they, they won it on track. They had the two best drivers and they only lost the driver's championship 'cause they're dumb.
But, uh, yeah, so since 2007 really and, uh, super impressive, very rare that a driver wins the title without the, that team winning the constructors. But just kind of highlights some of the struggles that Geco had in the Red Bull, um, Ferrari. Great job. I mean, very few times this year did they have like the fastest car on a race weekend?
And that's actually what's so impressive about the fact that they took that thing down to the last lap of the championship because both their guys just were so good at bringing home those fourths to sevenths when their cars were kind of average. Um, you know, McLaren had the strongest car at a bunch of races. Mercedes had the strongest car at a bunch of races. Obviously Red Bull started with the strongest car, but like Ferrari, you could say Austin and you would've thought Vegas.
But then Mercedes showed up and blitzed them in Vegas. So like, I think Austin was the only time I can remember, at least in the second half of the year where they just like blatantly had the strongest car. Um, but you know, they, oh well, Monaco, I mean Charles just killed it in Monaco 'cause he does, um, you know, science in, in Mexico. They were strong there, but so were others. So like when you could think about how many times McLaren had for sure the fastest car, how many times.
Red Bull for sure had the fastest car compared to how many times Ferrari did really, really impressive executional season long by the team, by the drivers. Shush.
Which is, which has been a, a big weak point of Ferrari over the past couple of years
For sure. No, absolutely. So it's, uh, it's, it's, it was really genuinely exciting. Like going into the race, you kind of were worried that it was, you know, it was a massive points gap and McLaren locked out the front row, kind of thought it was gonna be a wash, but right from the first lap with Oscar going backwards and Cheryl going up, it was like, game on. Uh, but yeah, great weekend, great end to the season, the racing season, everything's pretty much done now.
So even though F fe just like started again, but racing is done my last work trip of the year. Thank goodness. Yeah. You're now like unemployed. Unemployed.
You're now super unemployed, but that's okay.
Super unemployed. That's all right.
Because you're a talented, nice guy.
I'm sure something will happen will come about. Um, worst case
Scenario, scenario, you can start an OnlyFans.
There you go, man. There you go. Yeah. What, uh, what'd you get up to this weekend, Alejandro? Um,
What did I get up to this weekend? I, um, nothing. I, I went to Charlotte, uh, to go to the old stimulator. Mm-hmm . Uh, Sunday. So it was in the sim yesterday. Um, we seemed to go to the sim a lot at old ECR, which is good. Which is good. I mean, considering that we have nothing to do from September to March. Thanks Indy car. Um, it is nice to at least stay somewhat in the mindset of car development and driving race cars, even if it's virtually. Um, so that was good.
Um, I had a travel adventure, um, on Friday, but I'm gonna save that for the main show guys. 'cause really the main show is a, is a travel episode. Um, unless Mark's listening, then I'm gonna blabber about Cadillac and dread F1 for three hours. Um, don't forget
About how early you got up. I think Mark needs to know
That is true. That is true. I didn't get up early today. I actually slept until nine and I'm feeling a little drowsy because of it actually.
Well what about how early you have to get up to fly your plane to go do your simulator work in Charlotte?
Yeah, it is dark.
It's gotta be tough, man. It's, it does get dark early these days. Dark.
It's chilly lonely up there by myself. You know, all I have is coffee, music, some snacks and
You're plane.
Yeah,
Just you and your plane just flying around . Just, it's tough.
It's a
Tough, tough get going places, just doing stuff, you know, just you're really doing stuff.
Things with my toys. Yeah. Anyways. Um, so that was my weekend, Tim. Um, how's your girlfriend? We
Went to Universal yesterday and yeah, it was fun.
Just, no, no, no arguments there. We're not, we're not going, we're just, we're just cool with it now. We're just, we're there. I'm pretty
Tired. I'm not gonna, I'm just gonna cut this anyway.
No you're not. No you're not. You
Can't cut things. That is not you part of your job. Descrip
Description, the bad stuff. No, no. Hang on. You can't get bad stuff. What I do, it's actually, we need you to do that quite a bit. Please don't stop doing that.
Please don't stop. Know how you still have a job. It's 'cause I cut
Stuff. No, I don't Tim actually have a job.
You, maybe you should. Maybe you should have cut less stuff from James. Yeah. He would've seen more, more rain.
Should maybe you should have cut more stuff and I'd still have a job. How about that? How about that? Well,
Do you think it was the chugging sunlight video We did. Was that ? Was that the nail on
The, that may have started things off a precarious path. Maybe. Maybe.
I blame, I blame, I blame Tim for that one.
Mm-hmm . I blame Tim for most. You brought
It up. It's still on our YouTube by the way. Anybody can go watch that if they want. I thought we pulled
That.
No, we just kind of left it there. Oh, we pulled it from Instagram.
It's fine.
Interesting. Should be fine. Should be fine. Anyways. I'm not worried about it. Um, well guys, uh, that's all that we really need to talk about today 'cause we've hit our time limit. Um, and your dogs are going crazy, so they're going so crazy. We'll see everyone on Thursday where we'll talk about some big IndyCar news. Mm-hmm . Um, some driver, lots going on. Movement has happened. Uh, we will talk about, um, Cadillac F1 because some stuff happened there. And, uh, yeah, that's all.
I guess Lucy has some things to do today. So,
Yep. This has been off track with Hinch and Rossi Off Track is part of the Sirius XM Sports Podcast Network. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, please give a five star rating and leave a review. Subscribe today, wherever you stream your podcasts. We are at Ask Offtrack on Twitter and Instagram. And if you wanna follow us on Twitter, we're at Hinch Town and at Alexander Rossi. If you wanna follow them though, we have no idea why you would. He's at the Tim Durham on Twitter.
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