Snow Day

This is, is off track. Hello and welcome to another off track with Hinch and Rossi. Uh, 20, 25. Guys, it's finally here. It's finally here. And we're, it's our first show of the new year. Uh, does that mean like it's a new season of the show? How does this show work? Like, do we go by you? Well, actually,

I don't know 'cause we're gonna record Tuesday's episode after this, but it will come out first. Ah, so this will be the second. And actually, and actually last week's came out on the second. So this is, this is our third of the new year. Well

Start over, James. No,

I This is the first one we've recorded in the year. That's what I was gonna say. Welcome to the first time we've actually recorded in 2025 . Uh, which I think makes a difference. I think that's an important thing to, uh, why not to delineate. Um, yeah, it's, well, we're recording on Monday, so Yeah. We've gotta record Tuesdays later, but whatever, uh, it's the first time since we've all been speaking together in the new year, so welcome to the new year guys. How's 2025 treating you so far

Already? <inaudible> it up. 2026 is my year, though.

That's, Hey man, I'm, I'm with you on that. I think you're gonna do great in 2026.

Use that joke every year.

There's a lot of jokes that he uses every time the opportunity comes up to use them. It's true. It's just kind of his thing. He's got his bucket of 15 jokes. Mm-hmm . Four of which I steal pretty regularly. Yeah. And, uh, and the rest, he just reuses ad naum until they're done really funny anymore. But does he,

Does he have in his bucket? Is there any funny ones?

No, not yet. Not yet. Still working on those. That's again, 2026 really coming out strong with some funny stuff.

You may not know anything about racing, but at least you don't have good jokes.

At least you can't write good jokes. Sorry, pal. And I

Don't edit. Well,

You know what, I'm actually, I'm gonna give you a rare compliment here because I have, I mean, I listen to other podcasts, I listen to other shows, and some of them that are similar format to this, like just people randomly bull, um, have like some like, like way bigger than ours, way bigger than ours, making way more money than we do. By that I mean money. Money. Um, yeah. And it's, there are some very strange editing decisions on some of these shows.

Why you guys pay me the medium bucks.

That medium's a stretch, man. We, we pay you a very nominal fee for the amount of work that you put in, but we appreciate it. We appreciate that you're

Doing it. All right. I'll take it. I'll take it. You

Get more on the backend, I think, than the average, uh, producer slash So I've

Getting money from both of you guys for years. So, ,

That's, that's probably true. You do have access to all of our credit cards and social security numbers. So you probably own a couple cars that actually we finance and don't even know it. No. Oh, good times. . Uh, Alex, how was New Year's?

It was fine. Um, just, just hung out, just watched football, made some food. Um,

Did you make anything good?

I made a, uh, a, uh, blueberry tres leche with blueberry, uh, actually not blueberry, lavender meringue kisses with homemade caramel, um, and whipped cream. So yeah.

Was it homemade whipped cream?

No. of those things to home make. And you chose to just, It would've been, but, uh, you just

Whipped the cream.

We didn't have enough home milk or, uh, half and half whole milk. No. Um, heavy whipping cream. That's

The one Yeah. for whipped cream. Um, but yeah, anyways, making a meringue as a son of a bitch. But I figured it out, man. You just gotta be, you gotta be very patient, which is not really my ammo, but No, but at all. But figuring stuff out is so, it doesn't surprise me that you figured it out. What do you, what is a meringue? I don't even know what a meringue is. I've heard of like lemon meringue pie, but I don't actually know what that means.

So meringue like what, what constitutes a meringue?

Yeah, sure. Okay, so it's like a filling. It's

No, it's a topping. It's a, you know, um, those little, uh, cookies, the famous Parisian cookies. What are those called? Tim

Macarons Or macaroons? Yeah.

So the shell of that, not the filling the shell that's kind of crispy exterior, but soft still. Yeah. That's,

Oh, okay. All right. So wait, if you have a lemon meringue pie, there's like crispy.

You have a lemon me pie? You have a pie.

Ah, amen. No, so like, America has ruined.

Got it. it's, it should be like lemon custard with a meringue topping. So like a slightly crispy topping. Got it. Okay. with some sort of fluffy marshmallow ready whip in a pie crust. God, tell us how you really feel. Well, no,

I'm just saying like, it, it's, it is hard to make, so like, people don't Yeah.

Make it. Yeah. It's,

It's a French, like art, like Yeah. Food, chemical science type thing to make it

So now that you've figured it out, are you going to be making more meringues in your future or?

I will make it for special occasions. 'cause it's like, it tastes pretty good and it's cool to be able to like, produce it. Yeah. Yeah.

That's how I feel about making creme brulee. It's

Just like, but like, it's a, it's a sum of a bitch, so

Probably not. That's how you feel about making babies.

I've only done that the one time.

Right. But it was, it was, it was a lot of work. But it's cool. It wasn't suret a lot of

. Not on my end.

Not to, not to make the

Baby, not to make it, I suppose. I guess I was tied my, with like Right. Turning it into an adult, which Oh yeah. That's been a bad . Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh, uh, alright. Tim, how was your New Year's?

It was good. It was, uh, speaking of it was her, it was Hazel's birthday. Yeah. Um, so we, we hung out. We, uh, we had cake. The nephews came over, played with a train set, you know, all the, all the stuff you'd usually, oh, I took her to the Idol George Museum. 'cause we were still back in indie. They have that, uh, um, Christmas train thing that we always go see every year. They even IMS was even represented. I don't know if you guys saw that.

I've is the first I've heard of. I don't know what you're talking about. You're saying they

Do this like every Christmas, the Idle George Museum downtown in Indy does It is like Jolly Train. You know that James,

I know about new fields and that's

Southwestern Art. A

Museum I know about Museum of Hardware store that has to train the parking

, you guys should, uh, you know, maybe experience the city that you both have lived in Idle for a while. George Idle George. It's the Idol George family.

Because

No, it's spelled with an e It's, it's a really rich family. Went to school with a, with a couple of the Ile Georges

No, but no relation to the George Georges

No, no. Ile Georges one word. E-I-T-L-E-J-O-R-G.

Oh wow. That, oh. So I, I assume that was like a hyphenated joint.

Oh, that's the, I call it like, it's the tele gorg where the

IMAX is. Nailed it. You nailed it. Yeah.

. Oh yeah, I've been there. Yeah. I mean,

I've watched Walked through there to get cocktails and popcorn.

We've definitely been there to watch Top Gun . Yeah.

Okay. So, so the Idol George Museum downtown

Atele Gorg.

The Atele, Tom Cruise's house. I'll, yeah. Cruise. Cruise. I'll Cruise Li Cruise. I'll let

Lily and Max Atele Gorg know that that's, that's their names. Now I

Parked That is. Okay. It's a great museum. You should, you should go

There for more than parking.

Never go to a

Museum. No, they have a lot of southwestern art. That's a, you know, that's weird

In Indiana, it's a cool museum. I feel

Like I actually went to,

They do, they do a thing where they have like a massive room full of train sets, but the stuff around the train sets are built to be like representations of different parts of America and Indiana. So they have, like, they have IMS with a, with a train track going through it. Uh, they have the, uh, Lucas Oil, then they have like Las Vegas and Pioneer Towns. It's, it's cool. It's like a, a thing they do every Christmas. So we took Hazel there for her birthday and then got ice cream.

Did you meet Tom Cruise while you were there?

No, he was not, he wasn't home. He wasn't at the Atella Gorg Museum for some reason.

Tom, Tom Cruise. Yeah. He He's got several houses here.

I I have met him once on top of a mountain, on

A sea hill. Yeah.

Yeah. I, I'm just gonna leave down here, but, okay. , uh, it's a great story though. All

Ski hills James, Mr. Mr. Uh, you're a big alpine ski guy now, huh?

Big, big ski guy. Uh, three days on the hill in the last 22 years. And I'm telling you how

Many bone breaks?

Zero. Well, wait, it's a mountain skiing.

Yeah. Yeah. . Sorry. , right. Too soon.

Yeah. Uh, so yeah, got back on the slopes. 20 plus years since I'd done it. And I mean, I gotta be honest with you, not the smartest place to get, like, to try it again for the first time. Like, went up one of the big gondolas at Jackson Hole, like didn't even start at the bunny hill. It was just like, well, let's just go for it. Got to the top one, looked down the first hill. I'm like, Hmm. Blue squares here are a little more aggressive than they are in Ontario, .

Definitely I know she left Ca Cassidy off on that list. Well,

So, so Cassidy, that was only her second time skiing. Got it. So she stayed on, she was doing lessons for like the first day, uh, didn't ski the second day and then saw her on the third day. And yeah, she was doing very well for her second time ever doing it. Um, but yeah, like Becky and Evan obviously have skied. Actually I think Becky said, oh no, Becky went skiing with you in Tahoe like two years ago and that was her first time in eight-ish years.

That was fun. We should do another Tahoe trip. We should

Do that. It was fun. Now I can ski. Uh, but no, it was great man. I had a lot of fun. It was funny though, like I was standing down the hill

Real good. I pray ski part.

Yes. That was also a good part of it. .

That's the a pray. I'm gonna pray, man, myself.

You call it, it's, it's, I pray waking up . Yeah. You're really good at just going, waking up and going straight to the bar,

I pray. Dene dee.

. . So, uh, so no, like the, the first couple, the whole first day, like, I would get down the hill, but I pr I wish there had been a camera on us skiing. 'cause you would've seen like everyone else, like looking like they know what they were doing. And then me just like arms and like legs really far apart, but like managed to make it down. But man, was it hard on the legs when you haven't done that in a long time, Mike?

So actually I wanna, I wanna talk about this a little bit before we get into Alex's. Well, no, I guess we already covered Alex's, um, . You guys can't really ski as drivers. Alex, I know you have like a carve out in your contract. Right? But most, most drivers have it explicitly stated in their contract that they're not allowed to ski. Right?

Yeah. It's the no fun clause. Right? Yeah. So it's anything fun, skiing, snowboarding, uh, wakeboarding, wake surfing. Well, actually wake surfing I think was two newest sport for that one to be in there. Uh, rollerblading, BM Xing, uh, dirt bike, para, you know, dirt bikes, uh, skydiving, bungee jumping, any that cool extreme stuff out. And that's why I

Stopped. That would just like trigger my anxiety is basically like, yeah, it's the tim fun clause.

I've always found it. I've always found it interesting like how many F1 guys still ski in the winter. Like, I think,

I think a lot of people there carve it out too. Like that was kind of where I got the notion that that was okay. Right. Um, 'cause skiing in Europe is a pretty big deal. It's pretty popular. A lot of all countries have mountains that you can ski, um mm-hmm . So I think that they all kind of just do that. And it's very much the unspoken rule. Like my contract has it, but it's like specified as no off piece extreme.

Yeah. Yeah. as I'm not on a closed run or on in the back country or something, it's fine.

So you grew up skiing. I don't know if we've ever talked about this on the podcast before, but like you had to, I, I remember you staying in, keep in mind, I'm drunk most of the time we hang out, but like you had to make the choice between racing or skiing at some point.

Who's, who's got, who's got lawnmower outside their house. Yeah. I'm

Gonna mute my mic. Okay. And say no whenever I record.

Well, I can tell you no one has a lawnmower going in Indiana right now. There's eight inches of snow.

Oh. Gotta stop you back. We'll get back to that.

There was, it wasn't really a choice so much as kind of when I convinced my parents that I want to go go-karting, they were like, all right, if you're gonna go go-karting, it's all school. I'll go-karting. Like, there's no other things you're doing. Like I played, you have no

Time for anything else.

Right. I played, um, uh, baseball. I played like, I didn't play, but I was on the football team and did did other sports. Yeah. Um, and they were like, no, we're gonna, if we're gonna spend this sort of money, you're, you're only gonna do this at all times. So that was kind of it. It wasn't like there was a career wishbone. Why? Where it was like you have to choose one or the other. It was just more like, you gotta, you gotta focus and give up all other hobbies, which

Wishbone is a sensitive word for me. Can we just say fork in the road?

Sorry. Sorry. I said why after I said

. Uh, you're right. Mine was more of an a shape. Um, so how, how, how old were you when you started skiing?

How old? Yeah. As far by as I can remember, dude. Yeah. Like

You were like 3, 4, 5, 4. Yeah.

Yeah. And my mom was, my mom was awesome. Um, about it because, so we lived the closest mountain was probably, you know, 25, 30 minutes. That's awesome. Um, the closest like

Big

50 minutes. Oh wow. Um, and so whenever there was like a decent chunk of snow, um, you know, the town that we lived in wouldn't really get hammered that hard. So not every time would schools be closed. And my mom was a trooper 'cause she, like, she loved to ski too. My dad was, is an amazing skier. And so she'd call in the school, say I was sick and we'd just roll up to the mountain and mom and I would go ski for the day. So. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of time on the own.

I love that. And like, do, would you say you still do it at least once a year? Like once a winter?

This, this will be the first winter. I haven't skied in probably since I was six years old. Really?

Yeah. Wow. So. Mm. I mean, winter's not done. You can still sneak away somewhere. It's a shame. There's nowhere close at all to

Here. So my rule, my rule ever since I think perfect

North, I won't ski past January past new.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's smart.

Yeah, because it's like, I feel like this might be optimistic, but I feel like, oh, if I do a wrist on December 26th, I'm

Good by I might be fine by St. Pete. Yeah. If I do a wrist in January 30th might be tough. Yeah. It's funny you talked about, uh, like snow days and obviously, you know, growing up in Toronto we would have snow days. Snow days were the greatest things ever. I don't know. Tim, did you ever have a snow day living in Indie?

I had one. In, in the 12 year because I went to, I went to park tutor and they were just like famous for not having snow days.

Oh, okay. So like other kids had more.

Yeah. I was talking to my brother about snow days today actually. 'cause it, you know, his kids, they're in indie. You guys got like 10 inches of snow. So his kids had a snow day, but it's, they know it's just digital learning days.

So this is what I was getting to, this is exactly what I was getting to as I read this article that

We were watching the football game. You can go on a second. We were watching the football game last night and I was just talking to Kelly and I was like, remember when you were a kid and the ticker at the bottom, right? Yes. Just like alphabetical order waiting to get your school school closed and you'd be so happy. But now I guess that's not a thing.

No, not only is that not a thing, like, because they don't have proper snow days. Everybody also just has the app. Like if they canceled the school, I would just get it ding on a parent app. No, the ticker

No, the ticker's still there. I know, but

You would know. Yeah. But they also have an app. Yeah. Like

I would know immediately when waking up if Hazel, like I know when it's a rainy day drop off, uh, at her school because the app like pings me and lets me know. So like, everybody's got that now.

I heard about this news, but when

You miss your school and have to wait for it to go all the way back through the

, I, I heard about it in the news and I got so sad because snow day's growing up were awesome. They were like, they were so much fun. Not only do you get a day off school, you get a day off school because the world is now just covered in amazing fun. And you could just go out in your front yard, your backyard, you didn't have to have to go anywhere. And you could have so much fun.

It. Yeah. I think you should def they should definitely not do e-learning days. It should still just be a snow day. I

I can't wait for you to have to edit this episode. 'cause every time you unmute,

You unmute. It's so loud. It's unbelievable how loud it's . Ah,

But James, that ain't our problem. Unaffected.

No, it sure isn't. Um, speaking of skiing and, and Apre, there's a, there's a bar there at Jackson Hill Wallace called the Manji Moose. And I just loved the name of it. I just needed to shout out the Manji Moose for having an incredible name. And actually it was a great bar. If you had a bar, Alex, what would you call it? Have you ever thought about naming a bar? No.

Did you go to Million Dollar Cowboy?

We did. We did. Like it went to Million Dollar Cowboy, went to Manji Moose. Uh, ate at a few places in the hotel, which is really nice. Like, I mean, everything there is super nice, right? Like it's all, uh, it's all, it's all cool vibes, but like, also not like, not like stuffy. Like, it's like it's not Manji Moose is is Ex. Correct. It's not Aspen Manji Moose is exactly what you think it is. Like, it's exactly what it sounds like. Uh, but it was a good time. It was a very good time.

Driveway? Lots.

Wow. I was floored at how many people I saw around Indianapolis using snowblowers to clear the snow. Or sorry, leaf blowers clear the snow.

It's, dude, it's like people were making a run on Sunday, Saturday for like eggs and ground beef and to toilet paper. It was like, guys are we 50? Are we seriously doing this? Yeah. It's seven inches of snow. That's gonna be over a 14 hour period. Mm-hmm . You're fine. I will tell you, I drove downtown last night, drove back home last night and then went to the gym this morning. Um, it's a lot of fun. It's,

It's, it's It's so much fun. It's like playing Mario Kart. I tell you what, there are some absolute imbeciles out there though. Like, Indianapolis as a city, like just loses its mind as soon as it snows. Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm It is hilarious. It's funny 'cause I was out for lunch. I came back and Becky was like, oh, I didn't realize we didn't have any, any paper towel left. I'll get it. I'm go, I'll go get it. No problem. Like , I was so, so willing to go back out. 'cause it is.

Super Mexico slash Texan.

Right. So never seen it. Maybe he doesn't ski or I don't know, whatever. So he doesn't,

He goes to the beach in the winter.

Right. So he was going to the gym and he had a story of him walking from his front door to his car, which wasn't in a garage for some reason. Which seems weird. I feel like his house has a garage

Filled with Supercars Okay, that makes sense now. So he had to go drive his snow car and he literally took like, like 13 gallon garbage, like trash, kitchen garbage trash bags and tied them around his feet and walked to the car. Oh, I bet that didn't work.

It super didn't work at all. And I'm just like, I I text does, does he not own boots? Dude, they're called Boots, man. Like you could probably get free pairs from people 'cause you're super famous. Just say you need some snow boots. It's insane. The picture he

Posted, I mean super famous. He's not on billboards.

Well, true Pata who I, the picture that he, I don't know how, from his door to his car, he got that much snow in the bags because he showed a picture picture of what his shoes looked like and it was like he just walked through the snow. Like it should have worked at least kind of. It didn't even work a little bit. So I feel like we should start a uh, I feel like we should just go out and house his face right now. No, no,

I haven't gotten to that yet. I'm watching this.

Oh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. How he clears his car. That was from yesterday. That's uh,

Also why does he need to clear his hood?

Well, you should do that. That's just like, why? Because it all blows up onto the windscreen and like blinds. You, you what

We should wipers are for?

Yeah. But like, it, it causes like a whiteout in front of you, like the windshield wipers get it.

But that's part of a fun bro. , I try and go quicker to get a bigger

.

I try, I actually try and leave with, with clearing as minimal spot as possible and then drive looking through a little tiny hole in the windshield. Yeah. But then, so then people think that I can't see, but I'm still driving by 'em at like

The speed limit. Two x The speed limit. Yeah. No,

The the speed limit. Okay, sure.

But also that makes you the <;inaudible>; when you're driving behind, you can't like, you're just so much stuff's flying off your card. Perfect. Yeah, it is. You Yeah. That's on, that's on brand. Um, this is the

Dumbest thing I've seen in a long time. nor

Did he ly

I mean, bless his heart, he's not known for being a rocket scientist.

So Yeah, he's, I look he was, it was, there was some ingenuity in how he was gonna get to the car, um, but it just didn't work out the way he was hoping. So I imagine an investment in Boots will becoming Yes. That means you just have to carry your gym shoes into the car and then into

The gym. I don't think so because that'll, this was our biggest snowfall in three years and it was seven inches. So I don't think

It was, but it was nice. It was so nice, man. Like I was outside wonderful playing around dogs and this morning and oh, it was so much fun. I love it so much.

I don't think it's like, it by a few days.

No, but like look, it's, it's patto. He's, he makes enough money, he should just buy a pair of boots and then he just has them for, if this happens once next year, it's, it's worth it. Anyway, back to some racing news. Do we have any racing news there? Any racing happening?

Not really.

Aluminum wheels.

No, we're not, we're not getting into that. We covered enough wheel stuff last week. , um, did we, which which apparently went over really well. Apparently. Our, our steering, our steering wheel segment was a big hit. Uh,

I doubt with people that are important.

Well, no, no, no, no, no, no. The eight to 10 people responsible for the wheel probably were not thrilled. But at the other, you know, a hundred people, I

Listen. Did you guys get any blow back on that? I'm always wondering. 'cause like I feel like we find out people listen to this show in IndyCar. Like enough. Listen,

Listen Tim, we can't get in trouble for telling the

.

Yes you But's, a lot of people get in trouble for that. .

Okay, well I was told wrong as a kid, It's fine. Should not set you free.

It sometimes really doesn't. It can get you in quite a bit of trouble. Um, yeah, I, it is funny how many people, as long

As we complain in non letter format,

That is true. Letters are big. No-no. Mm-hmm . Uh, I did find out that Katie Simpson's a big listener of the show. So shout out to Katie. Uh, if

Only there was like a way you could get like a group of people to like form a, like a formal group. Like you could be like into a thing.

Yeah. You like negotiations?

Yeah. Like a guild of some sort. Looks

Like unionize of some kind. It's like a union of people.

No, don't use that word. Don't

Use that word. Oh, you can't say that one. That's that's me. You get into trouble, right? .

I'm telling the truth guys. Okay,

So Mike Shank, there's an article saying that MSR is looking at doing fly-in pit crews for their IndyCar

Program. That's a good topic to talk about,

Which I think this is something that's pretty regular practice in the nascar. What

Is, wait, what is a fly-in pit crew?

So normally on an IndyCar team, the, the people going over the wall, the men and women go over the wall also are mechanics on the cars. Right? Okay. So it's your front end, rear end mechanics. You know, it's sometimes damper engineers are going over, someone has another like hands-on job with the car. But a fly-in crew is a dedicated group of people that just come in on a Saturday night. Usually

An ex college athlete.

A lot of ex-college athletes, um, that just come in on a Saturday night and they don't touch the car outside of pit stops. They're not mechanics, they're not engineers. They're, they're not truck drivers. None of that stuff. And this is pretty common practice in COP specifically. You'll see pit crews, again, a lot of collegiate athletes that, uh, train couple days a week and just fly in on SA on Saturday night, do the race Sunday go home.

'cause it it it is and I think, um, you know, people might wonder why, and I, and it's, it's a sensitive subject because not, it's not as, it's not as simple as okay, we find ex athlete, right? And um, he's just gonna, he or she's just gonna do 12 hours of work and, and then go home. Because you gotta take into consideration the, the emotional connection and the feelings of the men and women did do work on the car, right?

So to, to your, to address a couple of your points. I I agree. Like it is an emotional connection for a lot of the mechanics. I mean a lot of them love going over the wall. They love being part of the team on that, you know, side of things and, and that element. But to the point you just brought up. I mean, sometimes they show up, we look, let's call a spade a spade. It's going back to can't get in trouble for telling the truth.

Y you a hundred percent know my answer. My, my argument to that is

You'll lose the mechanics

At what expense, how many mechanics are you willing to lose? Yeah. If it's one, I can probably replace one. If it's two per car, where am I finding four mechanics?

Like that's okay. So, so then the counter, so then the, sorry, the next question is then, are you comfortable with a scenario where you allow every mechanic and do you bring in five or six fly-in pit stop people and they do a shootout in the shop and every month, at the end of every month there's another shootout and the best seven get to go over the wall. Is that fair?

It is fair. And it's what, it's what McLaren did last year and they, I mean it aside from Penske, you know, I would say that the five and seven car were the, the class of the field in terms of like overall average pit stop time and and that sort of thing. And that was a hundred percent what they did. It was tryouts. There was a financial incentive to, if you went over the wall, it was your salary that you got, plus there was bonuses attached to like if you were the fastest car in pit lane.

So how often were there changes on the five and the seven car, would you say?

Five and the seven car? Um, I think I, I ended up having like a switch twice, but it was between two people.

So one guy left and then came back kind of thing Or like was subbed out sub

Back, like burned the spot back. Yeah. Yeah. The five, I think it was kind of the same thing. Maybe one extra time. The six was tough because the driver rotation and stuff, there was a lot of that car was a revolving

Things turnover from top to bottom. Yeah,

Exactly. So yeah. Yeah. I mean very, very limited because the people were committed, they wanted to be there and they knew that they had to earn it. So the, the practicing every single day was not an issue. Um, there was the buy-in to the fitness side of it and the results were shown on the time sheet at the end of the day.

And that's just it. Right? It motivates you to train, you know, whether it's something that the, that the team prescribes or something on your own time to, if you're, you know, feel like that's not enough or you're not as quick as the other person for that role,

Everyone responds to competition. Yeah. Whether you're type A or type B, it doesn't matter. You, you don't wanna show up to a group competitive event and get kicked. Like you might be okay with, oh I finished fifth and not well killing yourself 'cause you didn't win. But no one wants to be the worst. And so there's always gonna be that motivation to not be the worst.

And I do feel, I do really believe that like if you work in racing, you're, you're an inherently competitive person. 'cause it doesn't matter what role you have in the team. This, this, this job sucks man. Like it's not for everybody. It is not like, it's not glamorous, it's not all the things that, you know, Hollywood wants you to think it is necessarily. And you, you do it because you love the thrill of competition. You love winning, you love being part of a winning team.

This is a wrong read on it, but it seems like part of a trend, like IndyCar teams getting less lean. I mean I know the hybrid added a huge expense and it seems like more teams are having people with huge amounts of money come in. So it makes sense. Like why a few years ago somebody would be a mechanic on the car and over the wall and maybe drive one of the trucks. But it seems like it's part of the trend of a lot more money getting into IndyCar. Of course there's gonna be separate jobs.

I don't think it's so much less. I see what you're saying. I think everyone, even though as drivers we've realized it, I think now from top to bottom everyone's realizing how competitive It's competitive Yeah. And how hard it is. So it's like, well we're spending all this money anyways. What's an extra x to try and give us an edge? Whereas before it was like, well we should be able, we're we're so and so, so we should be able to get by with cutting that corner.

It. It's one of those things, right? I feel like teams have a formula for how much they're willing to spend per 10th of a second gain. And if you can justify that this expense of the extra people will find you an average of two to three tenths at a pit stop. I mean two to three tenths on track, a team would spend a million dollars to get that much pace. Like just pure pace on track.

Within two years. Great point. Yeah.

'cause you just, you can't afford to have uh, have any kind of disadvantage

That is spoken. That is the truth

Spoken. Alright, I'm available.

Like someone was gonna get I'll be a weekend try. You can try out, try.

Yeah. I would love to see you try out for one of those positions. If you had to go over the wall, Tim, what position would

You want? You could probably decent some.

The fueler sounds fun. I like a risk of fire. I think that'd be the best.

That's a weird thing to like,

You know, I like to live on the edge.

All right. Can see you. You

Kind of, it's like Alex driving in the snow .

You literally just said you reversed to all the things that are a no fun cloud. You wouldn't like to Mainly I don't wanna do it because then I wouldn't

Be allowed to drink at the race. Be sober. Yeah.

Right.

I don't wanna see a race sober. You guys just go in circles. This is the most boring

Thing in the world. Yeah. Yeah. . Yeah.

Here's the worst part. I don't even drive them anymore. I just still have to watch every single one of them. Stone cold sober. And it's uh, it's

Getting old dude. Sometimes, sometimes when you're in the race, you're bored. Yeah. If there's like a six second gap front and back, you're just like pounding rock and it's hot . Like it's not, that ain't fun either. Like, let's be honest, ,

I was trying to joke, but I Yeah, I guess we all

Hate racing. No,

. .

But there will be, there will be like three races a year, right James? Yeah. Where you are just like, your mind is numb. 'cause it's basically just a test session. Yeah.

It's either waiting, you're

In that gap. The stop cycle. Yeah. Yeah.

You're in that gap, like you said, where there's just nothing, you're not catching the cars in front and the guys behind you aren't catching you or you've had some issue and you're two laps down and you're literally just driving around for the sake of

Yeah. Oh, those are, those aren't boring. Those are, you're just furious and angry. Like the ones where you're like sixth and it's four seconds up the road, four seconds back. It's been green. The whole race. Everyone's the same strategy. Yeah.

Everyone's gonna say it's Road America. It's Road America. When everyone spreads out and the pit stop windows are one lap and everyone's doing the same thing. Oh, you're running alternates distant instead of primaries. Cool. Awesome. And it's the same

Well except last year and the alternates at Road America, but

Well, yes. I mean it's not always like that, but because of the, the small windows. Yeah. Yeah. We can often get that kind of race there.

Oh, well. Okay. Let's end on this. Um, let's, it's not, it's not announced yet, so we're not gonna go into too many details, but, um, there are gonna be some changes to quite a few of the races next year, um, in terms of overall length slash distance, um, in order to eliminate some of these super fuel safe to stop races mm-hmm . Um, some of that is be 'cause of that reason. And also some of it is because Fox wanted some bigger broadcast windows.

A hundred percent. And, and they did this, I think it was Long Beach, they did it to five, six years ago kind of thing. They extended it by five laps or short, I forget which way they went. I think it was extended to stop it. Oh

No.

Right, because it went from Wasn't Now.

Now. But fuel, fuel economy wasn't as good, I feel like. Oh, okay. everyone was too stopping it and so they made it a little bit longer. So that was harder to two stop. And, but Everyone's still two stop.

Yeah. Yeah. , there's not a perfect science to it, right? Because one yellow, look, here's, here's the thing about that, and I gotta, you know, you gotta throw this out there, one yellow flag in all those calculations go out the window, right? A hundred percent. So you're still gonna have those races happen. It's still gonna, you know, fuel saving is a part of IndyCar racing and I don't think that should change.

So does Tim, with that yawn

Provided on there, um, anyway, uh, yeah, so employment will be fun. Uh, hopefully, you know, that'll happen soon and um, that'd be neat. Otherwise, that'll

Be neat. Needo gang,

Have a great Thursday and shout out to Katie Simpson and we'll talk to you guys soon.

Hi Katie. Bye bye.

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