0:00 / 0:00

Doug Boles Explains it All

Off Track with Hinch and Rossi Dec 17, 2025 33 min

0:00

About this episode

Doug Boles shares insights on managing the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and IndyCar, highlighting his busy schedule balancing both roles. He discusses the recent repaving of turn two at the Speedway, revealing the discovery of original bricks beneath the surface. The conversation then shifts to the new independent officiating board created to enhance transparency and impartiality in race control and technical inspection. Doug explains the board's structure, the role of the managing director of officiating, and the involvement of the FIA. He emphasizes the goal of improving transparency in rule enforcement while maintaining IndyCar's control over rule-making.

Topics: indianapolis motor speedway management turn two repaving and track maintenance independent officiating board race control transparency managing director of officiating role fia involvement technical inspection process offseason workload race director and stewards appeals process

IMS and IndyCar President Doug Boles joins us to take us through the changes happening to IndyCar's officiating during this off season. Plus, he tells us why he's busier now than during the season, what's going on with the turn 2 repave, and more!

+++

Off Track is part of the SiriusXM Sports Podcast Network. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, please give a 5-star rating and leave a review. Subscribe today wherever you stream your podcasts.

Want some Off Track swag? Check out our store!

Check out our website, www.askofftrack.com

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel.

Want some advice? Send your questions in for Ask Alex to [email protected]

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Select text to request an explanation

This is off track.

I'm just shocked you haven't blocked my email yet.

Yeah, it's, it is bizarre when Tim was like, Hey, we're gonna reach out to Doug and see if he can come on the show.

I'm like, you're, you're gonna do, you're, you have his email.

You're, he's, he's responded to you in the past and he will, you think he'll do that again, huh?

Definitely responded. Yeah. There you go. Happy to do it.

But Doug, that's why you're, you, you're the, you're a man of the people.

Even even people.

People and people, people you like, you guys like Tim.

And that's, uh, it's a big deal. We appreciate that. Doug.

Hello. Welcome again to Off Track with Hinch or Rossi.

Uh, the Tuesday show is sometimes an either or program.

And, and today, Alex is not here.

I I'm just gonna take, I'm just noticing something right off the bat.

Are you, are you a a desk stander?

Are you standing at a desk right now? I do. I

Do both.

I do both. So the desk actually goes up and down.

I actually have a little treadmill underneath.

I can't sit still. Right. That's my biggest problem.

But there are moments where I will sit down, but most of the time I love to stand.

So I have a, I have a standing desk here.

I'm at the IMS office right now, and also I have a standing desk over at IndyCar in the summer.

Then I just try and like get my steps back and forth between the two.

So I'll do whatever I can to keep moving. ,

if you need help learning how to sit down, I'm, I'm really good at it.

Arguably too good, Tim. Arguably too good. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, steps,

steps on the treadmill under the desk during office, and then in between getting steps going from office can Walk.

That day's a little cold. Right. And I wouldn't, but,

but when the weather's nice, yeah.

It makes for a nice, uh, nice walk.

And I can always do conference calls or whatever walking around the up and down the grandstand.

So if you ever call me during the day and we have a conference call and I sound like I'm outta breath, I'm probably hiking up and down steps, the Speedway taking notes as well.

You know, the stuff we gotta fix know, it's a, it's a, it's a good opportunity for me to, uh, drive everybody crazy here with notes of things.

We need to keep working on This.

I mean, look, everybody knows you're the hardest working guy in motor sports and you know, I think that was even before you had to take on a second job of running IndyCar.

That was just on the track side of things.

Now you're doing both. Tell me that the off season for you

is at least slightly less manic than when you're, you know, I know there's no probably time off for Doug Bulls, but not having to chase IndyCar around for 17 weekends a year, whilst also doing everything you do wearing both hats.

Is it a little bit calmer right now?

It's actually worse. . Um, and, and, and I,

and I think that's a lot of it's because you know how it is you get in the season, 'cause you do this, you get in the season, you get a cadence going.

So your body gets used to, okay, I gotta fly out this day or drive out this day to get to an event.

Here's what happens in an event.

I'm coming home Sunday night or Monday.

You've got things you have to do.

And there's something about being in a hotel room too that allows you to get more work done in a lot of ways than when you're in the office.

Right? True. So, um,

there's something great about the first race of the season, being a race fan's great, we're racing, but more importantly, you know, it really sets that cadence for you.

For us, especially this off season.

There's just so much going on, really trying to get ready for, for the Arlington race, trying to get the season kicked off, second relation second year with Fox.

So making sure that we make as big a splash this year in the off season, leading into the season as we did last year with Fox.

Obviously the independent officiating board thing, uh, getting that up and going, and there's still a lot of work with that.

We got the board name, but we gotta get an MDO hired.

There's a lot there. Um,

and then certainly engine manufacturers.

We gotta get our engine manufacturers deal deals done so that we know that we have engine manufacturers on board leading into not just 28 when we have the new car and the new engine, but right now, 20 seven's a gap year.

Right. So we need to make sure that

we're sort of sorting that out.

So it's actually a little bit busier right now than in the rest of the season.

So, uh, hopefully by the time we get to Christmas, things will settle down a little bit and maybe there's a few days there before we get really going the beginning of the year, uh, once we get back in January.

So the season is your slow season in a, in a weird way, but You know what I mean.

You, you, you get it right. I mean it's, it's exactly

how it, how it is and it's what we want to be doing.

Right. So that makes it, it, it makes it a little easier too

because you're in the flow of, of the things that you really want to do.

The long off seasons honestly are not the greatest thing in my mind.

And, and it gives you a good excuse too, right?

It's like, oh, well I can't be there for this meeting 'cause we're at St Pete this weekend, or we're in Phoenix this weekend, we're in Arlington this weekend.

So like, it does have a little bit of, it does kind of inadvertently block off a lot of time for sure that you have to just focus on that one thing, which is what's happening at the track.

Whereas when you're home for five months, that excuse doesn't exist anymore. Interesting.

I that, that is, that is very true.

And, and uh, you know, it, it is good to get going and then January, January and a lot of what, January and early February are the worst travel months of the year because you're doing all of this stuff on the front end.

So we've got our own testing that goes on. Right.

But you, everybody goes to the 24 hour race 'cause that's the beginning of the season.

So you're down there just interacting with people.

Uh, I'm on the Atca board, so AKIs meets you try and get down to Daytona 500 for a few days down there.

'cause same thing, you know, as a promoter here at the Speedway, that's really important a NASCAR relationship.

Even more important this year with the Phoenix race.

So get down there for that.

There's just so much travel that goes on early during the week.

It's really not weekend travel.

So once, once the season starts, once we get to that last weekend in February, 1st of March when, uh, when things get going, then that's when it'll get a little bit easier. I think I

You're, you're the first person I've spoken to in a long time, Doug, whose travel schedule.

I do not, uh, I do not envy at all.

Uh, I've had a busy year, but you, you just have a busy everything.

So, um, you touched on something that is, is really the, the core of, of why we wanted to have you on the show today.

Yep. But before we get to that

and kind of explain a little bit more about this new governance structure for the series for all fans, 'cause it is a little bit intricate and it's a little bit detailed, it's very different from what we've had.

I just wanna touch on another one of the kind of side projects that you've had to be managing as the head of the, of the speedway, the last little while, the repave of turn two and some of the, some of the footage, some of the stuff that came outta that.

Just talk us through why it had to happen, what it was that actually happened, and then Yeah.

Some of that cool stuff that you gotta see.

It's funny, I mean this really started in 2017 or 2018.

We had a fall test out year. You actually were testing.

Um, and Dixon was testing and I remember calling you guys after the test and saying, Hey, do you notice anything on the racetrack?

And we were really hoping to hear nothing, but we were worried about turn two.

'cause that's when we really started monitoring that bump out there.

We'd ground off as much asphalt really as we could without really getting ourselves into a situation.

And you were, you weren't concerned about anything at turn.

Two, you had some things that turned four that bothered you.

Um, Dixon had told me there were two things on the back stretch that bothered him.

And then we realized we were having some other water issues on the track.

So we did those core samples.

I think it was in 2018 actually.

Mm-hmm . And the core sample came out of all the way down

to the bricks that we took from turn three.

But it was really trying to understand what was happening under the surface.

And then over those last six or seven years, the racetrack that bump in turn two continues to get worse.

And before May this year was actually a quarter of an inch higher than it was last year.

We scan the surface of the track every year so we can compare what the track is doing.

Hadn't been repaved since 2004.

So we rolled it and it got back down to where it was leading into 24.

So we thought we were fine. But in the summer

with the heat, it actually got worse.

And the NASCAR guys, and I think the first time it really sort of became public was when Kyle Larson said something on the radio that the bump had turned two seemed significantly worse.

So we were concerned that if it was continuing to grow, that if we didn't do anything in the fall, we could come out of the, the freeze and this winter and get into March or April and realize we can't solve this problem with the short amount of time we have to get to May.

So we decided to excavate, figure out what was going on.

And as we got down, we realized the bricks were getting compressed and pushed up into the surface.

So we were gonna have to remove those.

And there were a couple other spots right in that turn too.

So we removed them and as we were doing it, we did, we were real careful to get down so we could see the bricks, which was pretty cool.

And then when we started taking bricks out, we thought, let's just really see underneath that bed of four inches of sand is there really the surface from 1909 still there.

And so to be able to pull that out and see it was pretty cool.

And then we patched everything up, put it back together.

But it was really a preventative project because that turn two bump was continuing to get worse.

And, uh, the testing so far that we did in October, everybody feels like we're in good shape and ready to go in May. So

Does that give you a good sense of how to tackle a problem in the future?

Or should another bump pop up in three or in four?

I th I think so. Um, I think it, you know,

this one was pretty significant 'cause it was all the way across basically the width of the track there at the, at sort of the exit apex as you're coming on outta two onto the, on the straightaway.

We've got some isolated ones that are a little bit smaller, uh, that right now aren't an issue.

Uh, but we're gonna continue to watch those.

Obviously sometime in the near future we're gonna have to resurface the whole track.

Like I said, it hasn't been done since 2004.

But as drivers and engineers and manufacturers and tire manufacturers, the one thing you know about this surface is, you know, this surface, you know, the grip level, it's one of those things you just don't really have to worry about.

If we go to a new asphalt, that's gonna completely change the game.

So we're trying to do everything we can to keep from having that one variable, uh, raise its head and really have to have to deal with it.

When they did it in oh four, it took them three or four years before they really got all of the undulations and all of it out of it to get it as smooth as it is today.

So we're trying to do everything we can to prolong that, uh, time that we do the re the resurface.

Yeah. Fascinating. Well, there's,

I know you posted some really cool videos, uh, on Twitter about everything that you guys did there and seeing again, some of the original bricks and standing on a bit of racetrack that no one had stood on and, you know, a hundred plus years.

Very cool stuff. Yeah. So anyone that's interested,

it's on the, the Speedway, I think Twitter account as well on YouTube Channel.

YouTube channel and yeah, you had it as on yours as well.

Yeah. Um, alright. So recently it was announced

after much discussion over the last, I mean, I think it's probably been more than a year, right?

It's probably been, uh, 18 months, two years when the kind of discussion first started about the idea of some sort of different structure for handling race control, technical inspection, everything associated with that.

We then kind of heard late last, well, when was it?

I guess it was mid this year, maybe somebody announced that this was a plan we were going forward with still some details to come out of what that was gonna look like. I

Think, I think we confirmed it in May when we had all the challenges in May, right?

That look we've been working on long before I got here.

There was work underway to try and figure out how could we put some sort of independent officiating structure in place just to eliminate any optics challenge or anything with, with the way the series is owned and by someone who actually races in the series.

But moreover, just for everybody to feel like it's independent of manufacturers of teams.

So we announced in May that we would get there and that's took a lot of work over the summer to get where we are today.

And so I know there were several different mm-hmm .

Solutions discussed. Yes.

Um, ultimately, you know, kind of break down for us the, the structure of what we're gonna have.

I know there's still a lot of pieces to come into place.

Yep. But essentially the, the board

of this new entity has been selected.

How did that happen? Who are those people?

And then we'll get into some of the positions that still need to be decided, you know, below that. Yeah,

Sure.

Yeah. Y so in the summer we spent an awful lot of time sort

of looking at all kinds of different options from, you know, kind of really staying with everything we had today and figuring out is there an audit board that can audit how it works?

Um, a completely independent board that had more than the three members that we end up now.

So we talked about do you have team reps and, and manufacturer reps and others on it.

We looked at the FIA, we met with the FIA, a couple of our team owners really felt like looking at the FIA made a lot of sense.

So we actually, the FIA came and visited us at the Milwaukee race to see how, how things were going there.

Interestingly, uh, the FI's response to us after they were here was that the system isn't broken.

What we have is the broken, in fact, there's some things we do much, much better than the FIA does.

Uh, but that what we needed was that firewall between, uh, the series ownership and, and the decision making.

And then, so taking a look at all three of those, we ultimately settled on this three person board, the, uh, independent officiating board.

Um, and we originally were trying to figure out how, how do you populate it?

So we talked to the owners at an owner's meeting and we agreed that the best way to populate it was allow the owners to nominate people to serve on this independent officiating board.

And then we were gonna allow the FIA to make a nomination as well.

So you'd have two that were nominated by all of the teams, and then, uh, one that was, uh, appointed by the FIA.

So when we got those nominations, uh, basically what happened is those nominations went through a vetting process.

And by that process it means, hey, uh, James Hinchcliffe, uh, Tim said, you'd be great on this board, would you be willing to serve on this board?

And so first finding out that they'd be willing to serve.

And then secondly, going through a conflict of interest, making sure that there weren't any conflicts.

Uh, and then once we got to that point, all of those, we didn't, we didn't, uh, eliminate anybody or add anybody.

We let the team, you know, the team owners do that.

And then the team owners voted from the original pool and voted it down to a smaller pool.

And then last week, Monday through Wednesday, they voted on who ultimately the two were that would serve on behalf of, uh, uh, not even behalf of the owners, but we're selected by the owners.

So we had, we have, uh, uh, Raj Na and, and Ray Evernham are those two.

And then, um, the FIA, uh, appointed Ronan Morgan Ronan's been in the FIA for a long time, 50 years in the sport.

So those three, uh, will, we actually got them on the phone together.

Uh, they knew of each other, uh, but didn't know each other.

So it was fun to get them on the phone.

Uh, we have a meeting coming up here shortly where the three of them will begin.

Now, the process of propping up this, um, it's a, it's a separate not-for-profit organization, has nothing to do with, uh, with IndyCar, will be completely separate from us.

And their job really is to hire the managing director of officiating.

And that person then will, um, be the person who ultimately decides the implementation of the rules, who sits in what spot, how it works, and that person will report to this board.

But this board's only job really is to say the, the MDO is doing a great job, or we need to remove the MDO and bring somebody else in.

Uh, so that, so they're not an appeals board.

Why I think a lot of people thought these are the three guys that are gonna come to every race.

It's not, that's, that's not the case.

So once we get that up and going, um, the other thing that, that, um, that that independent officiating board will do is we'll agree upon a budget.

They will be given the budget, and then they'll be responsible for hiring and the implementation of that.

Uh, and it's not anything that we can control.

We can't hire the people, we can't fire the people, we can't influence the people.

Um, all of it is gonna be a really run through the MDO and the, and the IOB.

So a lot of pieces still to work out before we get to March.

Um, but we're excited about, uh, moving this forward.

And I think, uh, I think it'll work, uh, I think it'll work pretty well With the nominating process. Was I, was I

close ?

Yeah, you, you just, you just missed the final, just missed it. Final Just

A little, little bit. Just a little bit.

Okay. Yeah. See, here's the thing.

Tim, had you been nominated by anybody, as Doug mentioned, he would've called and said, are you willing to serve on the board?

I you never got that call.

I think so many spam calls, you know? Yeah, that's true.

I just, I figured it's Doug always calling to ask if I need a $50,000 loan with low $400 monthly payments, , , everybody else gets 12 of those a day, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's Good. Usually, usually about that.

So a a few quick things on the, you know, you said that you guys sort of went and did a, a vetting process on all the people that were nominated.

Was that info then shared with all the owners before their elimination process started?

Yeah. So if, if, if you had nominated somebody

and in the process that person said, look, I'm not interested, I don't have the time, whatever, then, then we let you know that, hey, your person you nominated declined to be part of this, uh, voting process.

Uh, so that, so that was the case.

If, if they didn't pass for a conflict reason, um, then we would've let you know that too.

And, and if there was a, if there were things that weren't necessarily conflicts, but might've felt like they could have been.

So for example, if one of the nominees had sponsored a driver at one point in time, we put a little asterisk by it and then a bullet of what, what those were.

So that as the owners voted, uh, they knew what could potentially be a conflict.

It was a clear conflict.

They, for example, worked for a race team and just quit working for 'em two days ago.

You know, that's sort of inside.

We, we, we wanted at least 12 months of really working for IndyCar, for working for a team, for working for another major Motorsport series.

Uh, just because we wanted them removed enough.

And, and it wasn't a requirement that those nominees even know anything about motorsport.

In fact, we had a couple that were just pure business people.

Uh, so that was the idea. We wanted, we wanted

to let the owners nominate who they thought might best managing a, manage a managing director, and the process of, uh, technical and race inspection for IndyCar.

So you've got the board now who you said, you know, their, their main role, really their exclusive role is to hire a managing director and then oversee them and make sure that they're getting the job done.

Yeah. Within the managing director role,

they're gonna be given a budget to run this entity.

Yeah. What are we, what are we calling this thing ?

What, what is the, what is the managing director in charge of from a, from a naming standpoint?

So you would, it's, it's really, it's really indi uh, IndyCar competition.

Okay. So if it, if it has anything to do with,

uh, implementing rules.

So IndyCar will continue to write the rules. Mm-hmm .

If you think about it like the NBA, the NBA writes rules, and then they hand the rule book over the referees and say, Hey, refs, go do it.

Got it. The difference would be if, if somebody wanted

to appeal the NBA still kind of has the right to, to deal with that.

In this, in this instance, if, if a, a team was penalized by the managing director, um, and they wanted to appeal, the, the way that the appeals process will work will be written out in the rule book, but it will be managed by, um, the managing director and then the independent officing board.

This is one other thing that they would do, is they would go through the process.

So IndyCar, as we know, IndyCar today, would not have anything to do with it.

It would be that separate entity that deals with the appeal process.

So again, um, we wouldn't be involved in, in any appeals.

The only place where, where we would be involved would be if it's an offtrack related situation.

So if it was a, yeah.

Some sort of, um, detrimental to the sport kind of issue if you had to, I think we drinking at the speedway again. Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah. And that would be, that would be,

that would, that would remain with us.

We can definitively say off track is detrimental to the series .

Let's not draw attention to that, Tim.

We're trying, we're trying to stay in business for the time being.

Yeah. So, okay. So that's, that's good. It's good to know.

This is, these are the kind of nuggets that I'm learning and and hopefully people listening are learning.

Yeah. So the rules themselves still written by Indy Carr.

They're just enforced by the group.

If there's, there's no power in this group to change a rule.

I mean, I'm sure they could make suggestions to Indy Carr if They, there was something, the, the way it said is they could make suggestions to change the rules and that, and, and it would be our obligation to, to look at those and, and consider those.

And, and we set it up that way.

Because ultimately I think they'll get in there and think, Hey, here's an idea on how we can make this rule better or this rule more clear.

So we certainly want them to want them to do that.

But a little bit, unlike where the FIA is with F1, you know, FIA writes it and, and they have the authority to do that.

We didn't wanna completely turn our product over to an independent board.

So that's why, in that sense, they ha they would have to come to us and then, and then together we would decide whether we implement that rule.

Now maybe we do it next year, maybe we don't do it all for whatever the reason is. And

That's, that's honestly one thing that I, I I, and I love that approach.

'cause I do think that's one thing IndyCar's always been very good at is, is kind of looking, you know, introspectively at things and making adjustments, making changes that are for the benefit of teams, drivers, fans, the sport.

So I, you know, I think that's not an area that this series is needed help with.

So that's good. That, that kind of still is,

is in their control.

The managing director then will have a series of people below them, right?

Are we talking race director, head of technical inspection?

Yep. The stewards, all those positions. All,

All of those.

'cause those are all functions that are implementing the rule.

So those functions will all be separate from us now and would report to the managing director of officiating, the managing director of officiating would decide to, to hire them, retain them.

All of that is, is solely in that, in that bucket.

We, we don't have any influence over that, but Absolutely.

So as you think about it today, uh, the things that we've always done, race director, technical, all the people that work for 'em, the pit, the, the, the pit stewards that are, you know, work in pit lane, you know, all of those pieces would be part of the competition side of the business that would be at the, the responsibility of the managing director of officiating.

This, the structure that has existed in terms of how many of each and, you know, roles and responsibilities, is that something that is sort of a, a template given to the managing director and said, fill these roles that you have this many people in these particular positions, here are the job descriptions.

You go find the people. Or does the managing director

actually have some freedom to adjust, Hey, I want, you know, a, a race director and an assistant race director, I want five stewards instead of two.

Like, do they, do they have any freedom in that or is the template there for them to just sort of fill out?

No, I, I think you have to give them some of the freedom to do that.

So, so what, what we have, the way we've looked at it right now is basically said, here's here's what we have today.

Um, we think it operates generally pretty well today, but that doesn't mean that you might not wanna make tweaks or changes to it.

Uh, so that, that will be really at the, you know, the management director of officiating will have to decide what, what he or she wants to do as it as it relates to those piece, those pieces.

And I think especially, you know, even if they said, look, I wanna adopt basically what we've done in the past from a structure standpoint.

And as they dive in, they may say, okay, I think these two or three things could work better and, and wanna make those changes.

And, and the way it's set up that they're free to, they're free to make those changes as they move forward.

And, and I think at the end of the day, it should just make us better now, just like everybody in this sport, they're gonna hear from owners and drivers and you know, that, that, so they're gonna get a lot of different inputs.

And so they're gonna have to begin to balance, balance those inputs and, and figure out what makes the most sense. For

Sure.

So talk to me a little bit about what you guys feel, what you feel, you know, the FIA has has kind of brought to this.

I mean, like, like you said, it was, they're included, they're not running the show, but they, they obviously have some input.

Has that been, you know, a, an easy relationship?

Has there been a lot of, you know, transfer of information and, and philosophy?

Or is it more kind of an observational role right now and maybe some more input down the road? Well,

I think it's really gonna be more of an observational role, I think where, where we landed, uh, on after the vote with the, with the two that, that were selected by the owners and with, and with Ronan, with the FIAI think you've got three really seasoned, uh, racing, uh, knowledgeable folks that, that will be helpful.

Obviously Ray Evernham, uh, spent an awful on a lot of time, uh, building a guy named Jeff Gordon, and then obviously doing his own race team and doing the things, doing the things that he's done.

Raj Ner on the manufacturing side, being at Ford and the GT programs he's run, and some of those, those pieces.

And then Ronan really his whole career, he was a race.

He was a off roader for a while and a rally racer for a while, and then, and then it's been on the officiating side.

So I think between all three of them, uh, you know, I think they'll, they'll bring a little bit different view, uh, together, but I think they'll all pull us in the same direction.

So what I'm excited about from the FIA standpoint is just having them, uh, be part of that group.

I do think there's some, um, they may be able to really help observation wise.

One of the things I think we can do much better, the FIA does well, it's just sort of on the transparency side.

So when you see a, when you see a, a rule violation, whether it's a technical, you know, say the car's overweight or it's, or it's, um, you know, the skid plate's too thin, you know, we've seen all those things happen.

You get a pretty proper, um, written mm-hmm .

Response of what happened that everybody can see the paddock gets to see, so they understand what, how they're officiating.

We haven't always done the great, a greatest job of doing that.

So I think in terms of the way we report, I think that's someplace where Ronan can really weigh in and say to the managing director of officiating, we're gonna need to be more transparent for the whole paddock to understand when we make decisions.

So I think that'll be really helpful.

That's one of the places I think, uh, they can help more in anything.

And just in the way that in, in the way that we report violations, and then hopefully on the backside of events, a transparent way for the teams and the paddock, and frankly IndyCar, uh, when they make a decision or don't make a decision, you know, how many times on TV you say, okay, the stewards are reviewing this, and then you get a report back that says they either are gonna act or they're not, but you don't understand why they did one way or the other.

So some transparency in that will help it make it easier for drivers and teams to understand, you know, how those rules are being implemented.

And that's one of the things I think, uh, I'm looking forward to the most in this group, is hopefully that transparency level arises so we all can just be prepared.

So, you know, when it's a avoidable contact, it's clear that it was an avoidable contact or not.

And sometimes those are, those get a little muddy. Doug,

There's this idea's been kicked around a bunch in the TV world.

So in, in my new world, this idea has been kicked around a lot.

And I'm just curious, you just mentioned something that, that kind of triggered it, and I'm just curious your personal opinion on it on that same sort of note.

There's been this idea in the past of, in the same way that in a, a football game, a basketball game, if there's a call, like a, a difficult call, you've gotta go up to the replay booth or whatever mm-hmm .

Then the, the, the head referee will come out in the middle of the field, the court, whatever, turn on their microphone and say, Hey, player X violation, Y penalties Z.

And off you go. There's been an idea of having, you know,

kind of a confessional style camera in race control and whether it's the race director or somebody nominated too, when there's one of these penalties come on and say, Hey, car X did, you know, violation y and uh, this is y we're giving the penalty.

Is that something that you would like to see or that you'd be open to trying?

I think the biggest challenge with that is having been in race control, uh, many times throughout my career, uh, it can get pretty animated in race control when you have sort of lots of different opinions.

I think it's a hard one that to have cameras in there to allow people to be really transparent and, and, and walk through those conversations.

I do think one of the things that is helpful is, and that's where I think the transparency, even if it's just written versus somebody talking about it, I do think transparency on why a call was made or why a call wasn't made helps you all tell the story of why that, and then also to be able to weigh in and go, well, I disagree or what, whatever.

But at least you know, the formula, why, why those decisions were made.

But I, especially in this, in this new format, I think, um, allowing, uh, stewards in particular to sort of debate on what's going on.

I, you know, in an F1, you're not looking in the steward room.

In fact, I, I found it interesting at, um, Vegas, I got a chance to kind of walk through how they do things in Vegas.

So you got race control and you've got stewards in a completely separate room, not influenced at all by what's going on in race control.

The way it works at IndyCar, our race director has an awful lot of influence on the stewards.

Uh, and I kind of like that at some level.

Um, so, so we just have to figure out how, you know, how things are gonna roll out.

But having cameras in the, in race control's, probably not, at least in my mind, at the, at the end of the day, I'm not gonna control it.

Right. Um, but in my mind it's probably not the,

the, the, the thing to do From what I've heard, it would be its own really good reality show. . Well, it really depends

On you'd to Are right now I, right now we have some colorful stewards, so yeah, You need somebody with the bleach, uh, definitely Dump button on that one for sure.

Is there, is there like some selfish part of you that's just like, man, I have to deal with 8,000 things every day, just so relieved to have this off your plate where if somebody's mad about something, you can be like, no, no, no, this is on them now.

Don't take it up with me. like, yeah,

I'd, I'd, so I'd I'd say I'm 50 50 on that, you know, look, I've been around forever and I, and, and while we can do things better, and there certainly were optics issues, you know, from my side, clearly there weren't any, our team, I think in a lot of ways probably was more difficult on, uh, on Team Penske maybe than other teams just because they were worried about that.

But I get the optics issues and, and I, and I certainly like the idea of being completely removed from that.

I like the idea of letting somebody else, uh, handle that.

I also do like the idea of not getting screaming phone calls from team owners either at the end of the race or it has happened during the race where team owners would call and, and expect me to walk in race control and change something.

And I've not ever viewed that as, as my position in race control.

So having that is definitely, there's a selfish side likes that.

But, you know, I've been around for a long time and, and our series for the most part, I think is run really, really well.

I mean, we have moments all race, all race directors and tech folks have their moments with drivers and with teams where they think they've been picked on or should have ruled a different way.

But for the most part, I think it's been really good over time.

So there's a little bit, a little side of me that's a little sad maybe to see it move on.

But I think you're right. More than anything,

I'm excited about this new, uh, opportunity to move forward.

I think we have a great way of, like I said, being more transparent and making our fans and our teams feel better about the decisions that are made are not made. Yeah,

Def definitely a lot of positives that are, that are coming out of this.

Um, I guess the final thing, Doug, and, and again, thank you so much for, uh, for taking the time because again, you are and apparently the busiest part of your year, and here we are, you know, sapping up your time.

Uh, what's sort of the timeline?

You know, obviously we're, we're days away from kind of holiday break, new Year's is just around the corner, and then in less than two months we're going racing in St.

Pete. When are we expecting

to hear decisions on things like, you know, race director and stewards and, and kinda the rest of the structure below the MDO?

Well, in our, in, in our initial get to know everybody phone call, uh, last, I guess it was on Friday, um, we've told them that basically the most important thing they have right now is, is getting a an MDO on board and figuring out what the structure looks like.

Um, we'll get, we'll get that group together and they'll formally begin doing that, um, sometime probably this week.

Uh, so I would hope that you've got an MDO and a structure really in place early in January.

We, we, we really need it in place before we go to our first open test.

So it really needs to be done by the middle of January.

And then, uh, certainly, you know, they'll, they'll really be, uh, having to execute when we get to, uh, when we get to the first race at St.

Petersburg, but we really want 'em in place, um, making the rounds, understanding how things work by that, uh, first open test in the middle of January. Alright,

So it's all coming pretty quick. Coming thick and fast.

It's coming fast. That's, it's coming fast. Yeah. Yeah,

I'm Excited.

I'm excited about it. At the end of the day,

I think it's gonna be good for, it's gonna be good for the sport.

I think it'll be good for the teams, it should be good for the drivers.

And like I said, the biggest thing I'm looking forward to the most is just some real transparency on decisions, why they were made or why they weren't made.

And I think that'll make the paddock feel better about things and certainly our fans.

And it eliminates one more reason to talk about something other than the amazing racing that we have on track.

Doug, just one last thing and this, this might not be something that you can or want to answer, but are you expecting big changes in key roles or is it, is it likely that, because as you say, it's not that anything's been broken in terms of how things have been running that the, the powers that be, whoever the MDO ends up being kinda looks at what's been happening?

Think, yeah, I mean, I'll, I'll pick, I'll pick a position.

Kyle Novak's doing a good job as race director.

No reason to change that. Or is there a thought

that maybe there's some change coming? You

Know, I, the, the answer to that is I really don't know.

And I think that's really gonna be up to the MDO just to sit down and, and if, if you're, if you're that new MDO, you probably do look at the structure today and say, do we try and replicate this as we go forward and then build from there?

Or do we try and start from scratch?

So I think it's, it's really gonna be up to that.

MDOI think you said it best.

And, and I said this in a, uh, in a, in an owner's meeting also in a, in a driver's meeting, I, you know, um, Kyle and Rocket, this is not really about them.

This is about how do we completely remove the officiating away from the paddock so that if there aren't those questions of did this person make this decision because they felt like he was pressured to do that or do, uh, or do the other.

So, um, it's a great question.

I I don't know the answer to it.

You could see something completely different or you could see something that's relatively similar with a new boss in charge who's gonna just make sure that, um, things are, things are run, um, smoothly and, and maybe slightly differently.

That just, that's really gonna be up.

The MDO truly we are out of it, right?

That it is not our job to tell people how, how that structure is gonna be.

Our job is to hand them a rule book and let them officiate it.

There you go. Alright.

You heard it here first, or not if you heard it somewhere else.

But, uh, Doug Bowles, thank you so much for coming on and giving us a little bit of, uh, of explanation and clarity about what's coming on the IndyCar side.

I certainly learned a lot. Hope again,

hopefully everybody listened in and really, really appreciate the time, bud.

I know it's a busy time of year for you, but excited to get things going. Well, thanks

For having me.

And, uh, I'm excited to get things going too.

I can't wait to, can't wait to get to St.

Petersburg. Likewise. All right. Cheers, buddy. Take care.

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.