Riffing on IndyCar and Formula 1, the hosts unpack an AI-generated racist t-shirt tied to motorsport chatter, then pivot into event logistics like the Freedom250 Grand Prix and what’s (not) known about tickets. The conversation turns into racing-game territory—Forza Horizon, The Crew, Test Drive Unlimited, and how different games model cars, physics, and progression. Later, they debate real-world car ownership and governance topics: taxes, registration workarounds, and F1’s rules, messaging, and sports-washing framing.
Hello! On this episode, Jordan and I divert from our episode plans to discuss The Shirt. Jordan then explains to Vicki her experiences playing the newest entry in her personal BDS-Compliant-Forza-Horizon series, The Crew: Motorfest. (It's not very good.) Next we laugh at some rich people who might face consequences for (allegedly) dodging taxes in California with the Montana plate loophole, and then Vicki goes down a wormhole about the Other MBS.
To check out Jordan's photo gallery for Pittsburgh peeps, check out pittbert.gay! Submit this week if you want to submit your work!!!
As always, our opening theme is off horse tranquilizer simulator by Stella Spazzatura!
"...ke, you know, they would have the really fun like 911 versus Corvette thing. And, you know, like this i..."
The Porsche 911 is a sports car made by Porsche. It’s famous for being quick and fun to drive, and it comes in many different versions. People bring it up when they’re talking about what makes a car enjoyable on the road.
The Porsche 911 is a long-running sports car known for its rear-engine layout and distinctive, recognizable shape. It’s often discussed because it’s a benchmark for “fun” driving and has a huge variety of performance versions. In the podcast context, it’s being compared as the more engaging option in a sports-car matchup.
"...ly way to get. I think it was the 886, the Toyota Corolla, Hachi Roku. Do you and so I couldn't get it."
The Toyota Corolla is a regular, everyday car made by Toyota. It’s known for being easy to live with and for not being overly complicated. People often mention it because it’s a common choice for daily driving.
The Toyota Corolla is a compact, everyday car known for being practical and widely available. It’s significant because it’s one of the most common “go-to” models for reliable transportation. The podcast mentions it in a list of cars, likely as a recognizable, mainstream choice.
"...thing. Every Ferrari felt the same, even like the F80, which it's cool that the F80 is in there."
The BMW M3 is a high-performance version of a BMW 3 Series. It’s made to be faster and more fun to drive than the regular model. People talk about it when discussing sports cars that are meant for driving, not just commuting.
The BMW M3 is a performance-focused version of the BMW 3 Series, built to deliver sharper handling and stronger acceleration than a standard model. It’s discussed because it’s a well-known “driver’s car” and has had multiple generations with different engines and character. In the podcast, it’s referenced as part of a comparison of how different sports cars can feel similar or different.
"Do you not like the F50 woman?
[2062.7s] No, the F50 is great.
[2064.2s] But the F50 is from before when I thought Ferrari was still cool."
Ferrari F50 is a classic Ferrari supercar name brought up as a benchmark for when the speaker still thought Ferrari was “cool.” The F50 is known in enthusiast circles for being a late-20th-century, track-bred Ferrari with a strong motorsport heritage.
"since Forza, it has like a fake AI agent companion that directs you to events
[2079.7s] and tells you about what you're driving."
They’re talking about a game character that acts like an assistant. It’s supposed to help you by pointing you to events and telling you about the car you’re driving.
An “AI agent companion” in a racing game is a computer-controlled helper that gives guidance and directs you to activities. When the speaker calls it “fake,” they’re criticizing how it behaves like an assistant rather than reacting like a human co-driver.
"But like Ubisoft is a French company.
[2084.9s] I don't remember which one of their thousand French studios made this."
Ubisoft is a company that makes video games. Here, they’re being mentioned because the game’s features come from Ubisoft.
Ubisoft is a French video game company mentioned as the publisher/developer behind the game being discussed. The speaker connects the game’s design (like how it talks to you about what you’re driving) to Ubisoft’s identity as a French studio.
"I love that movie. It was just like, ah, the Acura NSX GT3. And I'm like, what are you fucking talking a..."
The Acura NSX is a sports car made by Acura. It’s built to be quick and exciting to drive. The podcast also references the NSX GT3, which is a racing version of the same idea.
The Acura NSX is a sports car from Acura designed to combine performance with everyday usability. It’s often discussed because it’s a notable, technology-forward model in the sports-car world. In the podcast, it’s mentioned alongside the NSX GT3, which is a race-focused version used in motorsport.
"...ew GT that has like the front end of a Volkswagen Beetle for some fucking reason. Points in if I'm going t..."
The Volkswagen Beetle is a small car made by Volkswagen. It’s famous for its distinctive, rounded shape. In the podcast, it’s being used as a visual reference for how another car’s front end looks.
The Volkswagen Beetle is a compact car with a very recognizable rounded design and a long production history. It’s significant because it became an iconic, widely recognized model worldwide. In the podcast, it’s referenced for its front-end look in a description of another car’s styling.
Term
open world
"Um, I, it's just, it's so ass.
And it's so, it's like six out of 10 ass where it's not bad enough that I could crucify it,
but it's also not good enough to like fill the open world."
An “open world” game lets you drive around a big area freely, not just on one closed track. The bigger and more interesting the map feels, the better it usually is for driving games.
In racing/driving games, an “open world” means you can freely drive around a large map without being limited to separate tracks or missions. It’s usually judged by how much area you can explore and how varied the driving routes feel.
"God damn it. That's how I got the, the V12 or the V8 Vantage Zagato, my favorite pervert Aston of the last ac..."
The Aston Martin V8 Vantage is a sports car made by Aston Martin. It uses a V8 engine and is meant to be both stylish and fast. The podcast is mentioning it while discussing different Aston Martin Vantage versions.
The Aston Martin V8 Vantage is a performance-oriented sports car from Aston Martin, powered by a V8 engine. It’s significant because it balances a dramatic, luxury sports-car look with real driving performance. The podcast references it in the context of Aston Martin models, including talk about V8 versus V12 variants.
"Do you know what they've got right now? No, no. Alfa Romeo 4C Spider. Oh shit. Okay. Well that, that I actually endorse. Okay. But the Corvette would be a better car."
The Alfa Romeo 4C Spider is a small, lightweight sports car with its engine mounted near the middle. The hosts are talking about how it stacks up against a Corvette using things like track-style grip and real-world driving results.
The Alfa Romeo 4C Spider is a lightweight, mid-engine sports car built around a compact, performance-focused layout. In this segment, it’s being compared against a Corvette, with the hosts arguing about which car is “better” based on real-world driving metrics.
"Objectively, using metrics that you can like evaluate in the real world, like skid pad and acceleration and reliability into your comfort and plastics quality and quality control"
A skid pad test measures a car’s lateral grip by having it follow a controlled path while tires are pushed to the limit. The result is often used as an objective indicator of how well the car can corner before traction breaks.
"Objectively, using metrics that you can like evaluate in the real world, like skid pad and acceleration and reliability into your comfort and plastics quality and quality control"
Acceleration just means how fast the car can speed up. In car comparisons, people use it as a measurable way to judge performance.
Acceleration is how quickly a car increases speed, typically measured with standardized tests (like 0–60 mph or 0–100 km/h). In performance comparisons, it’s used as an objective metric alongside grip and other real-world factors.
"Objectively, using metrics that you can like evaluate in the real world, like skid pad and acceleration and reliability into your comfort and plastics quality and quality control"
Reliability means how likely a car is to keep working without breaking down. The hosts are listing it as one of the real-world things to consider when judging a car.
Reliability refers to how consistently a car avoids unexpected failures over time. In comparisons, it’s often treated as a practical “ownership” metric alongside performance and parts support.
"and acceleration and reliability into your comfort and plastics quality and quality control and parts availability and you really,"
Parts availability is how easy it is to find replacement parts if the car needs repairs. If parts are hard to get, fixing the car can take longer.
Parts availability describes how easy it is to source replacement components when something needs repair. It affects repair turnaround time and overall cost of ownership, especially for niche or less-common models.
"It's the spider though. The Joy-De-Veeve, what's Italian? ... You ever drive like a battled Alfa Romeo Spider and it feels like a twist in the center, like a fucking skateboard when you're cornering."
The Alfa Romeo Spider is a classic Italian convertible/roadster. The speaker is talking about how it feels on the road—especially when you push it in corners.
The Alfa Romeo Spider is a classic Italian roadster known for its open-top driving experience and characterful handling. The speaker contrasts it with other roof styles and emphasizes how the car’s structure and feel change when you drive it hard.
"Why do you want a hard top? Structural rigidity with the carbon tub."
A carbon tub is the main structural frame/shell of the car made from carbon fiber. It helps the car stay stiff so it feels more controlled when you drive.
A carbon tub is a rigid structural “shell” made from carbon fiber that forms the core of the passenger cell. Using a carbon tub can improve stiffness and reduce flex compared with more traditional steel body structures.
"Why do you want a hard top? Structural rigidity with the carbon tub."
Structural rigidity means the car’s body doesn’t bend or twist as much when you drive. A stiffer body usually feels more stable, especially over bumps or in corners.
Structural rigidity is how resistant a car’s body is to flexing under load. Convertibles often have less rigidity than fixed-roof cars, so manufacturers use reinforcements (and sometimes a carbon tub) to reduce twist and improve handling.
"And you know, you just get used to it. You're like, wow, my rear view mirror wiggles a lot. Like lorrily. You ever drive like a battled Alfa Romeo Spider ..."
The Toyota Supra is a well-known sports car. Here, the speaker is talking about a specific older Supra with a removable roof panel and how that kind of design can make the car feel less stiff over bumps.
The Toyota Supra is a performance coupe known for its strong enthusiast following and tuning potential. In this segment, the host specifically mentions a “Targa Top Mark III,” using it to illustrate how roof design affects body stiffness and ride/handling feel.
Term
rear view mirror wiggles
"And you know, you just get used to it. You're like, wow, my rear view mirror wiggles a lot. Like lorrily."
If the rear-view mirror shakes or wiggles, it often means the car’s body is moving around more than you’d like. That can happen when the car flexes, like in some convertibles.
When a rear-view mirror visibly moves, it can be a sign the body is flexing or vibrating more than expected. Enthusiasts sometimes use this as a “seat-of-the-pants” indicator of how much the chassis twists under load, especially in open-top cars.
"And that's just, I think, part of what makes it, I would, I would absolutely go for the spider. Mid-engine convertible is just like, that's pervert shit meant for me specifically."
A mid-engine convertible is a convertible where the engine sits near the middle of the car. The speaker is saying that combination is especially appealing because it can feel very balanced and sporty.
A mid-engine convertible places the engine near the center of the car (typically behind the seats) while still using an open-top body style. This layout can help balance and handling, but convertibles also face stiffness challenges, so the chassis design matters a lot.
"Mid-engine convertible is just like, that's pervert shit meant for me specifically. Yeah. The C8's got T-tops."
T-tops are roof panels you can remove, leaving the car more open to the air. They’re not a full convertible, but they give a similar open-air vibe.
T-tops are removable roof panels that leave two openings separated by a structural “T” bar. They’re a compromise between a full convertible and a fixed roof, often aiming to reduce weight and improve open-air feel while keeping some roof structure.
Term
standard deductible
"If you're still, if you're the, if you're still taking this, like the standard deductible will
[2837.3s] also probably, will always be the better listeners."
A deductible is the amount you pay first before coverage kicks in. “Standard” usually means the default option the system uses unless you choose something else.
A standard deductible is the fixed amount you must pay out of pocket before an insurance policy (or similar coverage) starts covering additional costs. In tax/finance talk, it’s often used to describe the baseline threshold that affects how much you can claim.
"What if I financed a bad little treat car from Carvana or CarMax, and therefore."
CarMax is a company that sells used cars. It’s another option people use to buy a car without going through a typical dealership experience.
CarMax is a large used-car retailer known for a standardized buying process and lots of inventory. It’s often mentioned alongside Carvana as an alternative to traditional dealerships when shopping for a used car quickly.
"What if I financed a bad little treat car from Carvana or CarMax, and therefore."
Carvana is a company that sells used cars online. People use it when they want an easier way to buy a car without going to a dealership.
Carvana is an online used-car retailer that sells vehicles through a digital shopping process and delivers them to buyers. In enthusiast circles, it often comes up as a convenient way to buy a “project” or second car without dealing with a traditional dealership.
"I think, I think that, I think Alfa Romeo 4C is the spiritually correct thing to purchase
[2870.7s] with Tran Girlies."
The Alfa Romeo 4C is a small, sporty car built around handling. It’s designed to feel nimble and fun, and it has a turbo engine in the middle of the car.
The Alfa Romeo 4C is a lightweight, mid-engine sports car known for its small size and sharp, track-focused feel. It uses a turbocharged engine and a compact layout that makes it feel quick and agile even without being a big, heavy grand tourer.
"want it to be for something like the guys, look, should they have tax dodged on their Paganis? ... The Pagani press people should let us drive that Utopia that comes and hangs out of the US."
Pagani is the company that makes some of the most exclusive supercars in the world. Here, they’re being discussed as the brand that still has Zondas available and might let people drive their newest car.
Pagani is the Italian supercar brand behind cars like the Zonda and Huayra. In this segment, the hosts mention Pagani in the context of whether the brand is still producing Zondas and whether they could get access to a newer Pagani model.
"Speaking of, hey, do you know they're still making, they'll still make you a Zonda? ... A fresh Zonda, Fernando Alonso got a fresh Zonda delivered."
The Pagani Zonda is a very rare, expensive supercar made by Pagani. The interesting part here is that people are talking about getting a “fresh” Zonda even though it’s based on a design that’s been around for decades.
The Pagani Zonda is a high-end supercar built by Pagani, best known for its exotic design and hand-built, track-focused engineering. The hosts are discussing how Pagani is still producing Zondas long after the original debut, which highlights how the Zonda became a modern collector icon rather than a short-lived model.
Topic
Gran Turismo 4
"Oh my God, I was just saying, I played with that car in Gran Turismo 4. ... I think it might have been an even Gran Turismo 3."
Gran Turismo 4 is a racing video game. The host is saying they learned about the car through the game before talking about it in real life.
Gran Turismo 4 is a racing video game that many car enthusiasts played, and it often includes detailed representations of real cars. The host mentions it to explain that they “played with” the Pagani Zonda in the game, connecting gaming familiarity to real-car knowledge.
"It's like, if you can afford to buy, for example, for this next quote, like a 488 Pista, [3387.9s] those are used $800,000 now."
The Ferrari 488 Pista is a very expensive, fast Ferrari. It’s the kind of car people talk about because it costs a lot to buy and keep running.
The Ferrari 488 Pista is a high-performance supercar from Ferrari, known for its turbocharged V8 and track-focused tuning. In enthusiast circles, it’s often discussed alongside other expensive, low-volume Ferraris because it’s expensive to buy and maintain.
"...er a certain dollar amount. It was all, like that Veyron that would show up, Montana plates. So they didn'..."
The Bugatti Veyron is a supercar made by Bugatti. It’s built for extreme performance and is known for being very expensive. The podcast brings it up as a car that stands out because of its reputation.
The Bugatti Veyron is an ultra-luxury, high-performance supercar built to deliver extremely high speeds and power. It’s significant because it became one of the most famous “top-end” supercars of its era. The podcast references it as a recognizable, expensive car that people associate with very high wealth or status.
"It's a $20, it's like a $25 ticket, yeah. [3445.0s] Yeah, I would also just love to see somebody get pulled over in a Veyron for not having a front [3448.2s] plate."
A front plate is the license plate on the front bumper. Some places require it, and if you don’t have it, you can get a ticket.
A front plate is the license plate mounted on the front of the vehicle. Some states require it to be displayed, and not having it can lead to a citation even if the car itself is very expensive.
"...e state of Texas. I got front plate tickets in my S2000. All right."
The Honda S2000 is a sports car made by Honda. It’s known for feeling exciting to drive, especially when you rev the engine. The podcast mentions it in a personal story about owning one.
The Honda S2000 is a sports car known for its high-revving engine and driver-focused feel. It’s frequently discussed among enthusiasts because it’s engaging to drive and has a strong reputation for performance character. In the podcast, it’s referenced in a story about getting tickets, which highlights how it’s a noticeable, fun car to own.
"Help me out here, Jordan. Yeah, when you get rear-ended by Franco Colopinto or
[4201.8s] FIA Blossom, yeah. Thank you."
FIA is the organization that makes and enforces the rules for big auto racing. They can punish drivers or teams with penalties if something breaks the rules.
FIA stands for Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, the governing body that oversees major motorsport rules and championships. In Formula 1 and other series, the FIA sets regulations and can impose penalties or fines for conduct and rule violations.
"And so then he did an interview with Motorsport.com,
[4236.0s] MBS did an interview with him, which is, I should note, my former employer."
Motorsport.com is a motorsport news website that publishes interviews, race coverage, and driver quotes. When drivers speak to outlets like this, those statements can become part of the public record and sometimes trigger backlash or scrutiny.
"Also, because I found out that at the Saudi GP last year, Max Verstappen wouldn't even talk
[4306.6s] about the race and like penalties he got with the media afterward, because in his words,
[4313.8s] quote, the problem is that I cannot share my opinion about it because I might get penalized"
The Saudi GP refers to the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, an FIA-sanctioned Formula 1 race held in Saudi Arabia. It’s a major stop on the F1 calendar, and media access and post-race comments can be especially scrutinized after contentious incidents.
"Also, because I found out that at the Saudi GP last year, Max Verstappen wouldn't even talk
[4306.6s] about the race and like penalties he got with the media afterward, because in his words,
[4313.8s] quote, the problem is that I cannot share my opinion about it because I might get penalized"
Penalties are punishments for breaking racing rules. They can affect where a driver starts or how much time they get added, and sometimes drivers get in trouble for what they say afterward.
In motorsport, penalties are official consequences for rule infringements—such as time penalties, grid drops, or other sanctions. Drivers may avoid discussing them publicly if they believe comments could lead to additional fines or disciplinary action.
"It turns out that our WRC drivers had actually
[4329.1s] been getting fined for like talking about swearing interviews or whatever and talking about like"
WRC is the World Rally Championship—racing where cars run timed sections on different road surfaces. Drivers can get fined for what they say in interviews.
WRC stands for World Rally Championship, a global rally series with cars competing on timed stages over roads that can be gravel, tarmac, or snow. Like F1, it has rules and can fine drivers for comments or conduct related to interviews and swearing.
"also I don't know why that if you're like fine
We're going to do petrol powered cars again why wouldn't you switch to something more interesting
than a v8 yeah"
A “V8” is an engine with eight cylinders arranged in a V shape. People talk about it because it usually sounds and feels powerful, even though it can use more fuel than smaller engines.
“V8” refers to an engine with eight cylinders arranged in a V shape. It’s a common enthusiast shorthand for a certain kind of displacement and character—typically smooth and strong, but often heavier and less efficient than smaller or hybrid setups.
"I'm like ah are we doing
v8s because that is the biggest thing that like out like I assume we're gonna
lose at least one or two manufacturers when we do this because Audi only came in because we
kept v we did v6 hybrids but we dropped the complicated mguh sure"
Audi is a car brand that also shows up in racing. The host is using it as an example of how manufacturers decide whether to join a racing series based on the rules.
Audi is a major automaker that competes in top-level motorsport and has historically entered racing series when rules and manufacturer incentives align. In this segment, the host mentions Audi as an example of a manufacturer that “only came in” under certain powertrain conditions.
"because Audi only came in because we
kept v we did v6 hybrids but we dropped the complicated mguh sure Honda came back because"
“V6 hybrids” means a powertrain that combines a V6 engine with an electric motor/generator. In racing discussions, it usually implies a rule set that pushes manufacturers toward electrified engines and more complex energy-management systems.
"but it's it's not going to make anything better also I don't know why that if you're like fine
We're going to do petrol powered cars again why wouldn't you switch to something more interesting
than a v8 yeah why not go all the way into that that's where I have to go I'm like ah are we doing
v8s because that is the biggest thing that like out like I assume we're gonna
lose at least one or two manufacturers when we do this because Audi only came in because we
kept v we did v6 hybrids but we dropped the complicated mguh sure Honda came back because"
Honda is a car brand that also competes in racing. The host is saying Honda’s participation changes depending on what the racing rules are asking for.
Honda is a major automaker with a long motorsport history and a strong presence in racing series when the regulations fit its engineering priorities. Here, the host argues Honda’s return and continued involvement are tied to rule-driven incentives and internal strategy.
"we could branded an LSF1 motor oh my god like I oh that actually okay that now I'm kind of
your your new white new balances arc then you should get a then you should get a C9
Corvette influenced by F1 or whatever that's the F80 doesn't work on me but when American"
“F1” stands for Formula 1, the highest level of open-wheel racing. People mention it because it’s a benchmark for racing technology and rules.
“F1” is Formula 1, the top tier of open-wheel racing. It’s often used as a reference point for how racing rules and technology influence what manufacturers build for other series.
"then you should get a then you should get a C9
Corvette influenced by F1 or whatever that's the F80 doesn't work on me but when American"
The Corvette is a famous American sports car from Chevrolet. Here it’s mentioned as an example of an American car brand that could take cues from Formula 1 ideas.
The Chevrolet Corvette is an American sports car line known for mid-engine/track-focused performance in recent generations and a long racing and enthusiast legacy. The host uses it as an example of an American brand potentially being “influenced by F1” in how it markets or engineers an engine.
"I just uh like I I like the turbo hybrids I think they've been fun um the last generation was great and it the last generation of turbo hybrids guess what they also started off kind of underpowered"
A “turbo hybrid” is a car that uses a turbo engine plus an electric motor. The electric part helps add power and can also recover energy, so the car can be more efficient and sometimes faster in certain situations.
“Turbo hybrid” refers to a powertrain that combines a turbocharged engine with an electric motor/battery system. In racing (like Formula 1), this is used to improve efficiency and manage power delivery, often with energy recovery and electric assist.
"but also yeah well like doing the turbo hybrid stuff has been like yes the F1 races are quieter than they've ever been which is not I'm not immune to missing the scream of F1 but also noise pollution is a real thing"
They’re talking about how modern Formula 1 cars sound different than older ones. Part of the reason is that newer tech can reduce some of the loud, high-pitched noise, which matters for noise pollution.
The speaker is discussing how Formula 1’s modern hybrid powertrains can change the sound profile of the cars. This is tied to broader concerns about noise pollution and how fans perceive the “scream” of older cars.
"...e alfa Romeo julia and also the fucking dodge the hornet like that's I just I saw another one pulled off w..."
The Dodge Hornet is a compact crossover SUV made by Dodge. It’s designed for everyday use, like commuting and carrying people or cargo. The podcast mentions it as one of the cars being talked about.
The Dodge Hornet is a compact crossover model from Dodge, positioned as a smaller, more practical vehicle than larger Dodge performance cars. It’s discussed in the podcast alongside other models as part of a quick comparison or list of cars someone has seen. The mention suggests it’s noticeable enough to stand out in conversation.
"...re sweet hello human resources meme but about the alfa Romeo julia and also the fucking dodge the hornet like that's..."
The Alfa Romeo Giulia is a luxury sedan made by Alfa Romeo. It’s built to feel sporty to drive while still being a normal daily car. The podcast brings it up as one of the cars being mentioned in the conversation.
The Alfa Romeo Giulia is a compact luxury sedan known for its sporty driving feel and distinctive styling. It’s often discussed because it aims to combine everyday usability with performance-oriented handling. In the podcast, it’s mentioned alongside other cars as part of a rapid-fire set of model references.
"ooh oh I keep god damn I keep opening the uh the page of oldest fathers yeah he he's uh oh I know Al Al Pacino's on this list De Niro's on this list yeah he's he's emirati okay all right he's also 64 which he actually looks pretty good for if you"
The Kia Niro is a small crossover SUV made by Kia. It’s designed to be efficient for daily driving, often using hybrid or electrified power. The podcast is just name-checking it among other cars.
The Kia Niro is a compact crossover designed around efficient everyday driving, commonly offered in hybrid or electrified configurations depending on the model year. It’s discussed because it targets people who want a practical vehicle with better fuel economy than a typical gas-only car. In the podcast, it’s mentioned as part of a list of cars being referenced quickly.
"...e shoot quite soon with somebody with uh her ford maverick which is kind of cool I think she's actually doin..."
The Ford Maverick is a small pickup truck. It’s meant for practical everyday driving while still having truck features like carrying things. The podcast is mentioning it because someone has one around them.
The Ford Maverick is a compact pickup truck designed for everyday use with a practical size. It’s often discussed because it offers truck utility without being as large or expensive as bigger pickups. The podcast mentions it in a personal or local context, likely tied to seeing one in the wild.
Select text to request an explanation
Jordan does her worst clap yet, ask to leave the podcast.
Yeah, that one looks a little soft.
I won't lie.
Uh-huh.
It's my lymph-wristed nature.
You know this about me.
That you mean you're going to get more force in there, because you're just going to slap
them together.
Uh-huh.
Like a trained seal.
Uh, hi.
Hello, and the trained seal of this podcast.
Uh, hello, and welcome to TranGerliesmo Episode 15.
We have a great...
Oh, wait, I guess I should start with our names first, huh?
I'm really on it today.
God damn it.
Who gives a shit they know who we are.
No, I'm kidding.
I'm kidding.
We love you.
We love you.
I'll never call you a hog, so unlike the other show, you're below the trouble-tigs.
My name is Victoria Scott, and my pronouns are she and her, and I am here with my co-host.
Hi.
My name is Jordan Hofsitter.
My pronouns are she and her.
Why did I start drinking?
I knew you...
I...
There's no one else this week.
I knew I was next.
It's not like...
Yeah, well, we are here without a guest.
We have... we have a really good show that I was really excited to lead us off with.
We...
Jordan and I both did a ton of legwork preparing for this week's episode, and we did a lot
of careful note-taking and some, like, real-world testing.
But unfortunately, because we live in hell, and IndyCar is America's premier motorsport
for foot-gun enthusiasts, first we have to talk about the shirt.
Oh, my God.
I was sleeping in because I had a migraine when you tagged me in this, and then I saw
everyone who I give a shit about who covers IndyCar, like Elizabeth Blackstock, Fred
Smith, and everyone basically all posting the same image of a now-pulled... it was pulled
within an hour or two of it being shown, IndyCar... can we just call it the shirt?
Yeah, it's the shirt.
For those of you who were lucky enough to not see this, it was a cream-colored t-shirt
already bad that had an AI-generated version of the Lincoln Memorial statue of Abraham
Lincoln with a race car helmet where Abe Lincoln's head goes, which already... we're
not off to a great start.
No.
And above this, it said one nation, below this, it said one race.
And then the desecration of Lincoln Memorial feels like small potatoes.
It's so much worse than it was like... it's bad.
There's no way it's good.
It's like I've seen... I've seen race... like I've seen bag of shirts that are less subtle
or more subtle than this.
Like, I don't... this is... this shit is horse's dog.
Like, it's... it's crap.
Oh my god.
Genuinely casual clan wear, as I think the way that I would put it.
It's really genuinely like... for a brief moment, there were like 30 seconds when I
saw it and I was like, oh my god, that's so funny that they made this mistake because
like, I just... I lived in this brief moment where we lived in a better world,
country where Roger Penske didn't, you know, destroy IndyCar to become like the premier
sort of blood sport of the unwoke culture we are cultivating.
And it was like, oh, they made a mistake and just they have a hugely white office and nobody
ran this past anybody who wasn't white and they just put it up on the website and then
I remembered that like we live in hell and this was intentional and I was just like, oh...
Yeah, you went through that, the Hannibal Burris, the... I was so blissed
out on buying a bunch of cheap juice that I forgot racism existed.
Like, I... Bacci Bacci, like...
Do you know how often IndyCar... it's like IndyCar has such a complex about not being
F1 that they even have to like outshitty F1.
Like we're gonna get to F1 later in the episode because you discovered one of my favorite
guys that I've known about for years.
This is... once again, I feel like we're doing Woker John Oliver just because we're trans.
That's the only reason.
John Oliver, there is still time.
But like the... it's just... I've been... I took my glasses off the second we were talking
because I've just been rubbing my eyes because it's like, yeah, they pulled it.
Like, I guess credit to them that they didn't just try to like, no, it's fine.
I give them no credit.
Well, this is the shirt I should also note is a special edition made for the boondoggle
that Jordan and I both want to attend, the hashtag Freedom250Grand Prix of Washington,
DC, the seven-turn road course around the National Mall that is like... it's a stupid
spectacle because all this administration can deliver is stupid spectacle.
Like, I... and IndyCar has been like, okay, cool.
Well, we can't get it on the Petro State Dollars like globally, like, you know, F1 can, which
again, we will get to, but there's still plenty of like, grift to go around here.
Like, you know how much money there is just floating around right now from the worst people
you've ever met to spend on basically nothing but like a, like, fail-sun redistribution
program?
Our second ever episode was mostly about this race, this race, which we recorded that in
February, it's May.
That race is coming up on 90 days out and there's no ticket info, no spectator info.
Tickets, no, the tickets, it's just, they have a, they have a reserved, reserved
like grandstand at the start finish and then the rest of it is open admission because I
maintain the thing that they did is they planned the course and then realized, oh shit, we
have no way to enforce exit entry because there's no way to do that over an area that
large in Washington, DC, down the street from the Capitol.
I have started to doubt if this race is happening, which, in which case-
It better fucking happen because I'm looking at airfare.
You, me and Tigny and Stella have a pretty cool just weekend in DC looking at museums,
I guess, and in late August dying.
It's, I don't know, I'm from Texas, I'm used to late August being, I've told the story
on the show about when the Germans showed up for the Lodestar LeBah, the six hours of
Coda for the first time, and all the Germans showed up because they're like, ah, it's
in September, nice, nice seasonable light jacket.
And then they're all just like, I'm watching a bunch of German mechanics, like basically
trying to like shed as many layers of Porsche Motorsports where they can before they are
just fully like, I saw more Bavarian man nipples that weekend because these Germans had just
sweated through their white motorsport polos.
It was really brutal.
God, what a race, what a race.
The one, it's the old vine.
It's the old vine.
The shirt is the old vine.
There's only one race.
The human race is like, what about NASCAR, except NASCAR wouldn't do this.
They know better.
Yeah, if you had asked me, that's one of the few things I've been surprised by, right?
Because like, I would say on the whole, I've been pretty good at anticipating how horrible
things can be.
Pessimism is one of my strong suits.
But if you had asked me two years ago, hey Vicki, during Trump 2, what do you think is
going to be explicitly like the Black Rifle Coffee Company of Racing Series?
I don't think I would have said IndyCar.
No, because like, you know, as we've talked about, like the Indy 500 is the true great
melting pot.
Yes, people, mama's real animated yelling about this.
You could also yell about the Indy 250 for you to grab free with mama.
But I just, I cannot.
And shirt like Roger Penske and Donald Trepper are like very good friends.
They golf eat together.
Well, they used to golf when Trump could still swing a club.
Yeah, a mis-depressed conference with the president of Brazil today.
Don't know what's that about.
He's fine.
I'm sure he was bragging about his cognitive test results like three days ago.
So I'm sure he's fine.
Ivy marks on the back of both hands.
It's normal.
It's a good.
It's a good when they do that.
Actually, that's the stigmata because he's the second coming of Christ, Jordan, put
some respect on it.
Yeah, I think I think the other thing too, the thing is, it's like this shirt dropping
on the same, it wasn't exactly the same week, but it was within the same week ish as the
Voting Rights Act getting gutted and then redistricting Tennessee completely to erase
all black representation.
Like we, I have one note underneath the shirt and it is, we must raise General Sherman from
his grave and allow him to truly complete the march to the sea.
Like we just need second reconstruction.
This can never be allowed to happen again.
And like if you're, if you, if you designed this shirt, that's too much credit actually,
if you prompted whatever the fuck at Gen AI program to create this shirt, because it
looks like shit.
Grock, can you make me add a D car T shirt 50% racist print?
Grock, show me the Lincoln Memorial's balls print.
Like you, you should be ashamed.
You should never hold a job again.
You should be ashamed to like show your face in public.
You should carry that secret to your grave because it would destroy your life.
And like, I just, I just think that, you know, we, we obviously need a second reconstruction
because these people think that they have succeeded in capturing all of our cultural
institutions so they can get away with this shit.
Obviously they haven't because, you know, within like 10 minutes of that shirt being
posted on blue sky, they were like, I saw, I saw people who don't even know about motor
sports posting like, what the fuck is going on at IndyCar?
But they, they think that they have won to a point where they can get away with this
shit and they need to never feel safe again for having ever thought that.
Yeah, like the reconstruction to not go far enough.
We there's an old Robert Evans from behind the bastards joke where we learned all the
frog lessons and didn't punish enough people.
It's like, you know, I think we killed more Confederate horses for participating in the
Confederacy than they did like generals.
Like, yeah, well, I mean, just like, and you're editing the episode, so I don't want to
make you a ton of extra work here, but like like, like, you know,
well, it's like, well, shit, I mean, makes sense, I guess.
What are you going to do with that?
What do you have, like, I don't know if we can leave that in the episode.
I don't know if we can.
I'm going to just, and that was a fun little, that was a fun little thing that that's,
that's a wonderful little thing for the two of us.
Just just remove the person I explicitly said it for, and then it's a non specific
threat, fill in the gaps, imagine a person, imagine.
Imagine a person.
Yeah, I can't.
Shit, this is the thing, right?
Is it like I sound insane, because, you know, I'm like, this Indy car thing is like obviously
hilarious, but also at the same time, it is like a really, really like bright flashing
red indicator of a really genuinely serious crisis.
Like, I, and like, I don't even want to give them that much credit that it was like,
that that is what they were trying to, I think they're just all idiots.
I think everyone involved with the car is an idiot to some degree.
But here's, I agree, but here's the thing that I think is like crucial and something
that makes me less forgiving of this as I get older is like, I've worked in enough
workplaces where it was like 98% white people and all of management was white
people, where it was, even if they had somebody who would have noticed that this
was a bad idea and probably even spoke up to say it, they would have been like,
nah, nobody will read it like that, don't worry.
And you just, you just kind of get your, your contributions shouted down or whatever.
And like this certainly happens if you're like a trans person in the workforce or
whatever. But yeah, I, but it just like, I, it feels like even if
they did it as a mistake, which I don't think they did, no, it still feels like
an indicator of like, we, you know, the same sort of like reversal of woke one
where it's like, ah, we don't really need to listen to like these noisy people
clamoring for, you know, representation of the workplace or it's all meaningless
anyway. It doesn't, you know, this is, oh, hello, people.
Hello, BB.
Um, ow.
The, it's just, I don't know, I, I look forward to participating in second reconstruction.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's going to take, take a lot of work.
But as we follow our favorite woke CIA and Abigail Spandfeller or whatever,
her book of David says, as she does her march to the sea in her own way,
able to, uh, uh, yeah, I, I want to see a Democrat take office and I want, uh, day
one, uh, I want them to federally occupy Tennessee, um, like, not even, not even
like issue an ultimatum, just march troops in and be like, okay, we're
disbanding your state government until you guys decide to, you know, get with the
program and the program being which side won the civil war.
Obviously, this is pie in the sky stuff.
Nothing good can ever happen again.
I'm fully aware.
That's Scott.
I just am saying that.
All right.
And remember what I said about like making himself talk?
That's, that's one of those things that I think is maybe bad to say out loud
because saying it out loud gives it the creed.
It's like it's real and unfortunately good things can't have.
No, that was not an invite to get on the desk.
That was an invite to maybe get down for Mama Bebo.
Oh, be best thoughts.
OK, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
Tell me more, tell me more through you on the daybed behind me.
I just really this entire
like the bicentennial couldn't have felt this way, right?
No, I guess it was 76.
The thing sucked.
Maybe every big America.
So here's the thing.
I mean, I think America just kind of isn't great in general.
So I would agree with that take.
But also, I think that if you look at people's polling about the state of their
society and like what, how much buy-in they have, how much they they're like,
how much people think they can reform the institutions that exist versus the
numbers that have just given up entirely on the concept of things getting better.
I think things are actually worse this time around.
There isn't like great polling on it.
And obviously, like the malaise era is not a high point of like American idealism
or, you know, that's like in the wreckage of the civil rights movement.
The environment was like completely destroyed, like to the point where
Republican administration and a psychotic one at that gave us the EPA.
Really crazy to think about these days.
Yeah, right?
Yeah.
This is like three years after Penn Central had basically destroyed the entire
East Coast's ability to have a railroad.
Like things were incredibly bad, but I don't think the concept of elite
consequences and the inability to fix things had fully sunk in yet.
I think a lot of this is just like, you know, I mean,
it's so much more imaginable for many people now to see Roger Penske continuing
to like use IndyCar as his personal fiefdom until he dies, then hand off
control to whatever kid he's got that's going to do this.
Well, thankfully, he hates his fail son, so I don't think it goes to a Penske child.
Roger Penske will me, IndyCar.
Do it, you coward.
We couldn't do worse with it, you know, like we...
Genuinely, you couldn't.
No, I just, and it kills my, there's the IndyCar race in Portland, Oregon
later this year, and I was thinking, you know what, that might be fun.
That might be fun, especially if I pick up car to be decided on
to road trip with later in the year for like podcast stuff.
But I just, every time I think about IndyCar positively for 30 seconds,
they're like a hyperactive shitty child and they just go, hey, look what I can do.
And then it's just like, oh, yeah, yeah, you made a really racist shirt, buddy.
You know, you shouldn't, you know, you shouldn't do that.
And they're like, huh, I took it down.
And it's just like, yeah, but you like, you still put it up for sale.
Yeah, I almost tried to buy one just to see if like it would get fulfilled.
I would never, that feels like a cursed object.
Oh, yeah.
The only way I want to put one of those shirts in a museum after
second reconstruction so we can say, hey, they even tried pulling this shit.
And that's why IndyCar is now a worker co-op.
Like everything the administration has done, like they're just so
juiceless right now domestically that like this race is going to be a wet fart.
The UFC races or the UFC fight is going to be a wet fart.
Like the ballrooms never getting built.
Like I just.
Perm and crater next to the White House, which is really funny, honestly.
Yeah, every Soviet's wet dream has been fulfilled just by again.
Look what I could do.
Yeah, why did you do it?
Yeah, it's just that I see a continued slide into
perpetual shittiness in our future that I would really like to avoid.
But you have to start with like whoever made this shirt needs to be aware
that they could never tell anybody they made this shirt because we're going to like.
Dude, they're they're outside your house with hammers right now.
That needs to be the level we get back to where it's like, you know, say what you
will about woke one, but, you know, at the very least, it had the illusion
of consequences for like indulging the the worst and their worst impulses.
Sometimes or like.
Corporations at the very least felt like they had to pay lip service to the idea
of, you know, doing enough to either they would have had a person in the office.
They would have listened to to be like, you can't release that shirt,
which obviously is all gone.
Yeah, but it just was infuriating.
Nike apparently put out some survey to customers saying, hey, would you be mad
at us if we put money towards the ballroom?
How mad would you be at us if we did so?
And I'm just like, I feel like that is the wind of change where it's just
someone is just like, hey, before we do this.
Yeah, let's just let's just see how it goes.
Um, God damn, uh, do you want to I I just yeah, I mean, speaking of everything
being garbage, bullshit and not being able to play video games anymore,
because Microsoft, for some reason, has decided to like materially assist
the IDF in a continued genocide that is the bipartisan consensus of America
that they should just be allowed to do forever.
Yeah, that seems like a good enough segue.
I I thought it was very sweet that you said I did
meticulous notes for this week when in reality, I played a video game for
about 50 hours.
I in my ongoing quest for a BDS compliant Forza Horizon replacement.
A new a new game made itself available to me through my PlayStation membership.
I played a bunch of the crew motor fest.
Victoria, are you at all familiar with Ubisoft's The Crew franchise?
Um, it was like a.
Huh, I want to say it was like a heist game, but maybe I'm wrong about that.
You are thinking of a different game, I do believe, because the the the first one
had the really cool gimmick of you could drive across the entire United States.
Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah, like you would just kind of it didn't obviously make
you cannonball in real time across the the US, but like Howard's.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not it's not American truck simulator or whatever,
or Euro truck simulator or insert truck simulator of your choice.
But it's not Desert Bus.
I have never really played more than an hour or two of any of the previous
crew games because I just, you know, I had why buy store brand Forza when I had
Forza at like I had real Forza at home.
And like, you know, I don't I tried it.
I was for a while, I was reviewing a lot of racing games.
That is most of the things I published freelance for Jalopnik were racing
game reviews or what else?
But yeah, the crew Boater Fest is so fucking weird.
As listeners may remember, I played the last time the last game I played for this
was Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, which was also free through my PSN membership.
Which was bad.
Yeah, bad.
Also seemed to be made for
$40,000 or whatever.
This game definitely was made with far more money and yet still feels as cheap
and flimsy and hollow, which I think is actually just genuinely fucking oppressive.
Like, you know, the frame rates good, everything looks good.
But like it just still feels like crap.
This is the third of the crew game.
And yeah, it has the usual the new genre rapper du jour of open world driving games
where it's a giant street racing festival has taken over location.
This time it's Hawaii and it could feel like anywhere else except its palm trees.
Hawaii was the setting for the original Test Drive Unlimited.
And that was actually really good.
It was better. It was better than this.
I believe that Test Drive Unlimited was an absolutely incredible game
that did not get enough love anyway.
The second one took place on Ibiza for some reason.
You know.
Yeah, that was strange.
Yeah, I seemed to remember that the second one, I think, introduced planes and boats,
which I didn't play enough of the second one to ever realize that.
But there are still planes and boats in this one,
except out of everything that the game has offered me.
I think there's all of one of its two weird playlists, which are like, you know,
in Forza games, they were like the weird campaigns that would usually like.
I struggled to remember what Forza Motorsport called them,
because they were like, you know, they would have the really fun like 911 versus Corvette thing.
And, you know, like this is a series of theme races or whatever.
But yeah, yeah, the head to head challenges.
Yeah, the this game calls them all playlists and a bunch.
They've been adding a ton of them throughout the the lifecycle of the game.
The game is in year three currently.
So there's there's a ton of content there.
And at it, but like.
I it's all there's like three major race types.
Take that in the car.
There's fake if one cars, there's planes and boats.
The playlist never touch planes or boats.
It feels like there's one that I can see that is what kind of planes are in the game.
There's a jet.
There's like acrobatic red bull planes.
There's the little what's the little seabee, the little red fucker from the fifties.
I I'm I'm not sure it's like both like famous, famous racing planes
and also like aerobatics planes.
But also you can get like a non military.
It doesn't like handle if they all kind of play
like the Banshee and Halo, if you were correctly,
where they won't let you crash, they won't let you stall really either.
What's the fun?
Exactly, I I swear that they could have saved themselves so much time
by just cutting it because, you know, if you if you want to just straight
line from going to like the destination where your last race finished
and where the new one started.
Sure, I guess like hop at a plane and just straight line it
and then teleport back into being a car.
The boat, I have not touched a boat at all, because one I it.
All the landmass is where the the events are.
So like, why would I ever get in a fucking boat?
Like every car in the game feels.
Floaty bad.
They all they all it's it's so it's far more arcadey than a Forza Horizon
and Forza Horizon is already pretty arcadey.
Forza is already so arcadey like the the hodgepodge of cars
that they have in the game is like, do you want Max Verstappen's
2024 Red Bull F1 car?
Do you want a Mini Cooper from the sixties?
Like they're both in there and they feel other than like speed on the speedo.
And like, I guess how fast you could corner, they still feel the same.
Which is really fascinating.
And by fascinating, I mean, maybe if you didn't make the Skybox 10000
feet tall, maybe you did.
Maybe you maybe they would have all like.
Been better.
I have a theory about a lot of this, which is that I think that there are not
enough car perverts making racing games anymore.
And the I was talking.
Antigone, my wife was asking me about like the differences between racing
series, because I had mentioned that I couldn't play Forza Horizon.
And I, you know, wanted to because like I try really hard to, you know,
also abide by like the BDS requests, because it's the one of the very
few things I could actually do.
And I will admit Forza Horizon 6 actually is really.
It looks like appealing to me.
Although, although I did a rage quit Forza Horizon 5 after they had a
weekly event during a week where I was busy with work, where you it was
the only way to get.
I think it was the 886, the Toyota Corolla, Hachi Roku.
Do you and so I couldn't get it.
And so I log in the next week.
I'm like, Oh God, I missed the event to get this car that is, you know,
one of the cars that got me into enthusiasm.
I was a huge initial D fan.
I still am.
And they were all like 12 bajillion dollars on the like online
seller store or whatever.
And I didn't like, despite the fact the game gives you so much money,
it creates a ridiculous amount of inflation in the like in-game
store. So like a normal.
The Forza economy is like shambles.
Yeah, it's 40 million dollars.
You're shoveling Reichsmarks into a fire pit because they're more,
it's more efficient to buy Forza cars that way than it is to use the money.
And so like, I got so mad about that, I quit.
And, you know, I was explaining this to her as I think Forza,
and I think a lot of these like more casual racing games,
see cars as kind of like a skin in another game where it's like,
yeah, it doesn't really structurally matter if you have a, you know,
a sweater or like a jacket, you know, to play.
I don't know, take a game, Fortnite or whatever the hell the kids play now.
I'm 30 or 40 years old and I don't play games anymore
because of this shit.
But like versus like the way that I think car enthusiasts see cars,
which is like, you know, what is deeply meaningful and personal
and like a pathway to enthusiasm for one person and very unique
is, you know, not the same for another person.
And so it gets you get to this flattening mentally in the game.
And then you end up with games like this, where it's like, well,
what difference does it make?
Why would we redevelop the physics model for like front versus real drive
if we can just like not do that?
And here's like when this game tries to do the true car pervert shit,
it does it in such a weird way where the way I'm going to describe it
is going to sound good.
And if like Forza Horizon 6 did this, it would probably bang.
So many of the players are going through like the history of an OEM.
Like the ones I've played were Ferrari, BMW, Lamborghini.
And then there was one that was just like.
They also have all of these weird like fake characters,
like like all of these games, but like this one's feel so weird.
They have a fake old man called the Archivist.
And he is definitely like they they paid a fancy sounding British man
to just ram a lot about cars that he fake drove.
It's baffling.
But with these OEM tie ins like the BMW and Ferrari ones had like
the guys who run the museums as like video clip talking heads
of like telling you about either the car you're about to drive
or like that period in company history.
And a lot of it was like really well done, actually.
But then you get it back into the gameplay
and it just feels like such ass and like it feels like,
you know, the Ferrari one actually seemed like maybe the most well done.
And maybe that's Ferrari being their level of like quality control perverts.
The BMW one was so masturbatory and felt like a marketing effort.
But even then the like the non museum guy
a fake character who is like a fake racing driver tearing you through it
was still allowed to throw potshots at how bad some of the recent BMWs have looked.
And I was just like, are you allowed to do this?
You got the man from the Stuttgart Museum to like talk about this.
Like, why are they like, do they know?
Even if they know those cars are still on sale.
Like they haven't replaced all of them yet.
Like it's and then like the Lamborghini one just felt so phoned in
where it's just like you were driving these and that was the thing.
Every Ferrari felt the same, even like the F80,
which it's cool that the F80 is in there.
Like it's the first game I've played that has like the new Ferrari hotness in it.
But like I'm doing I'm doing.
Yeah, that's fine. That's fine.
That's your life.
Your life. It has the engine of their Lamar winner, Victoria.
And that's cool.
It's cool at a race car.
Jerk. Boo.
It's cool at a race car.
It's cool at a race car has the or the road car has the motor from the race car.
It's always been true.
Do you not like the F50 woman?
No, the F50 is great.
But the F50 is from before when I thought Ferrari was still cool.
That's fair.
I just.
Yeah. And then like like all of these annoying games
since Forza, it has like a fake AI agent companion that directs you to events
and tells you about what you're driving.
But like Ubisoft is a French company.
I don't remember which one of their thousand French studios made this.
But if you told me the voice actor was a woman speaking English phonetically,
like I would believe they.
Hey, pronounce Acura and pronounce it as wrong as you can.
And then I'll hit you with how the game pronounces Acura.
And Acura.
Acura.
I love that movie.
It was just like, ah, the Acura NSX GT3.
And I'm like, what are you fucking talking about?
It's Acura.
It's not hard to say.
It's like the game drives me fucking crazy.
And also I kept going back to it because I'm like, maybe maybe these
playlists are just bunk, maybe I just am missing it.
But it's just like the more I play and the more cars I got in it,
the more I just kept like I I felt like I was just.
It really sucks that I feel principled enough to not buy Forza Horizon 6
because like I just I know that that game, the cars are going to feel different.
There's going to be a differing sense of speed for all of them.
They attention to detail of the new cars.
Do you know how many Forza models they finally replaced?
Like they finally replaced like models that they have just been up resing.
It's Forza Votersport.
Oh, yeah.
Like they're putting it so much work.
I am familiar.
I am familiar with the S15 Sylvia in the Forza franchise.
That's a fake car.
It looks like a badly microwave baked potato.
The crew GT that has like the front end of a Volkswagen Beetle for some fucking reason.
Points in if I'm going to try to be nice about the crew motor fest.
I think I'm always a fan of like when they try to do motor sportsy stuff.
I think it's fun.
Oh, oh my god.
I put I forgot about this, but I ran on the notes, but I rancid about it on Blue Sky.
The NASCAR part.
They did a NASCAR.
There's a NASCAR part?
Where they actually did a pretty good job modeling oval racing in a way that was
you do you have fuel and tire wear that you have to manage and also do.
And it it's got mechanics for drafting.
They put so much effort into it.
Yet the rapper for it, the they are yeah.
They talk about drivers getting hurt in a way that is so blood sport
adjacent that it made me actually mad not to be awoke school.
But it's like when there are drivers within our living memory who have either
died or been so concussed like Dale Jr.
Did it quit racing because he was tired?
He quit racing because he had too many concussions.
And that is why he has a podcast instead of races now.
Yeah.
And yet this is like drivers losing consciousness and I'm like, what are you do?
Why is this how you would advertise this?
I thought we were past the, you know, let's every ad for a motorsport is just a 360
no scope crash compilation.
Try not to come like I just like I don't get it.
But it's so the game's so weird.
No, because like they again, this is kind of like the casual enthusiasm thing, right?
It's like, if you are a NASCAR enthusiast, there is a lot that goes into it.
That's part of why I don't like it as much anymore because like they have kind of
dumbed down the sport where that the like longer term strategy is no longer as effective
because of the like stage format and all that shit.
But if you are, you know, if you are a passive observer who thinks that, you know, NASCAR is
mostly about the big one, then the blood sport angle is what like gets you into it.
That's like, ooh, it's a sense of peril that makes it more dangerous to other sports.
And that's like how you sell it as being this like, I don't know, something that self-justifies
because it's like, well, these athletes are just crazier than the rest of them.
And that's why they're, you know, they're, they're in their prime and they're like very
actually fit and well trained, but they do this instead of, you know, playing basketball
because they want to experience the thrill of death or what.
They're all not playing basketball because they're all 59
That's why none of them are playing basketball.
They're all little manlets.
Uh, Carson Hovercar is the guy who just won Dega in the Chili's livery.
Apparently was at the Met Gala.
That was one of those weird like, no, Lewis Hamilton this year because he stood on business
and did it in the end of the Bezos Met Gala.
But also there was a NASCAR band instead.
But I just, I, I just, it's so, uh, the car selection is cool.
And also when they do like the, when they add the extra mechanics for either the motor sports
playlist or the NASCAR playlist, like it's well thought out and like kind of cute.
The spike, they're spikers in it.
I haven't played a race of gay where you could buy a spiker in a while, uh, which I didn't throw.
Yeah.
I think the last one I could do that was like grid.
Yeah.
Grid or like, or like Forza Boatersport 4, uh, the, the Xbox 360 goat.
Um, I, it's just, it's so ass.
And it's so, it's like six out of 10 ass where it's not bad enough that I could crucify it,
but it's also not good enough to like fill the open world.
Like I am just going to keep playing Forza Horizon 5, I guess.
And that's, I'm not going to do that either.
So I have just like, Assetto Corsa, I guess, is doing like a weird open world.
You could drive in the area, like the square miles around the Nürburgring in Germany.
That might be, that might be what I have to do.
If you work at turd 10 or playground games and you want to give us codes so we don't spend
money, I know, can't give it to the temptation.
It's so bad.
We are, we're, well also we're like media and one of the things that the BDS Foundation requested
was that if you are games, media or like automotive media or whatever, not to review
Microsoft games.
Oh, I was just going to play it in silence.
Yeah, I was just, I know, I was just playing in silence and then just not giving them money.
That's what I was trying to do.
Sorry.
No, no, no, I wasn't asking for a review code to review it.
I was trying to fleece a review code for some queer person who feels conflicted about working
at Microsoft.
No, no, no, no, no.
We're not reviewing, unless I, if BDS drops it from the list, absolutely we will.
But like, I don't think that's going to happen because even though Rahm Emanuel was talking
about immediate day one, no more arms for Israel, which from Rahm Emanuel, that is the
craziest, that is the craziest pivot on political opinion I have seen ever.
And that man's a burglarer by proxy.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it's also just kind of like, you know, that's he is the prototypical Democrat
licks finger puts up to wind, see what popular sentiment is type of positioning.
So yeah, no, but again, everything is unaccountable and the expectation is like,
at some point we will all collectively shrug and say, well, that was crazy and move on to
whatever is next without any repercussions.
So no, I, I mean, that's probably what Microsoft is going to do is just continue to aid the idea.
Yeah, I just, it sucks.
The collapse of the American empire.
Yeah, I just, I want to play at least good racing games while the empire collapses and I don't get
to do that, which I know is the biggest crime happening.
That is all a joke.
It is.
It is.
When they said, when they said nothing ever happens, but they were wrong because you can't
play the good racing game and that's something happening.
We are joking.
This is a joke.
This is a joke.
You should all know our political opinions.
You should know where we stand on this.
Like, I don't know.
But it is kind of funny because you would think that it's like racing games have been around
for a while.
I feel like we could probably make a good one again.
I, because like crucially, I, I, I don't think Forza Horizon 6 is going to be that good that
it would get me past the rage quit six months in when they lock away some other car I really
deeply care about from a special event.
Do you know what Forza Horizon 5 did as an end of life thing?
You can earn all of those cars that were locked behind like seasonal playlists now.
God damn it.
Sorry.
I shouldn't have told you that.
Yeah, I probably should have told you that.
But yeah, they just let you, you earn them now through like not even like
God damn it.
That's how I got the, the V12 or the V8 Vantage Zagato, my favorite pervert Aston of the last
actually.
Yeah, no.
Okay.
Well, I can't wait until Carbacks gets an Aston Martin Zagato.
For 30,000 dollars.
Oh no, real quick before we move on to the next thing.
I know we're going to reach.
Yes.
Carvada by me.
Do you know what they've got?
Do you know what they've got right now?
No, no.
Alfa Romeo 4C Spider.
Oh shit.
Okay.
Well that, that I actually endorse.
Okay.
But the Corvette would be a better car.
I don't care.
I don't think it would be.
I don't think for the, I don't think for what I value in a car, a Corvette is a better vehicle
than an Alfa Romeo 4C.
Objectively, using metrics that you can like evaluate in the real world, like skid pad
and acceleration and reliability into your comfort and plastics quality and quality control
and parts availability and you really,
but like I'm making the Italian hand gesture.
I'm making the Italian hand gesture.
You cannot, you cannot beat an Alfa Romeo 4C in that, that unquantifiable.
It's the spider though.
The Joy-De-Veeve, what's Italian?
Oh really?
Why do you want, why do you want a hard top?
Structural rigidity with the carbon tub.
Oh no.
Also like, look, if I want a convertible, I want something that was designed from a
convertible first, like the, like, there's, like if I got a Beata, I'd get a Beata.
Like, you know?
I drove a, I drove a Targa Top Mark III Supra that had all of the structural rigidity of
al dente pasta over like every, every bump in the road.
And you know, you just get used to it.
You're like, wow, my rear view mirror wiggles a lot.
Like lorrily.
You ever drive like a battled Alfa Romeo Spider and it feels like a twist in the center,
like a fucking skateboard when you're cornering.
Like, ah, it's like, I thought I could care to flip this motherfucking thing.
Yeah.
Well, that's again, that's an unquantifiable good.
And that's just, I think, part of what makes it, I would, I would absolutely go for the spider.
Mid-engine convertible is just like, that's pervert shit meant for me specifically.
The C8's got T-tops.
The real car, the I'm probably maybe picking up soon to have a,
uh, thank you, Matt Farah, writing me that I could write, I could write cars off of our taxes.
As long as I talked about it on this year program.
Can, can you do that?
Is that real?
Matt.
Holy fuck, are you serious?
I thought the, I thought, I thought that was a joke.
No, that's why Matt always has projects going, is so he could build fun things and write them off.
That's insane.
If you're still, if you're the, if you're still taking this, like the standard deductible will
also probably, will always be the better listeners.
This is not financial advice.
I, I'm talking about fighting Dr. Romeo, and it's not financial advice.
That's in fact, like, financial suicide advice, but like, you know, I, uh, I have a day job,
aid the beautiful Patreon subscribers, give us somebody that mostly goes to Vicky.
But my, my cut, I'm like, what if I had a little treat car?
What if I had, what if I financed a bad little treat car from Carvana or CarMax, and therefore.
I think, I think that, I think Alfa Romeo 4C is the spiritually correct thing to purchase
with Tran Girlies.
I don't have a garage.
If I had a garage, I could use.
Well, I, I erect a carport every time you park.
I'll erect your carport.
I don't know what to tell you.
Um, you want to talk about a bunch of rich, uh, you want to talk about a bunch of rich
assholes facing consequences, unlike the rest of America?
Yeah.
So I don't, I, so I don't really know anything about taxes, um, apparently.
I, I am so bad at running a business.
I am not a good entrepreneur.
If anybody ever called me one, I'd fight them.
I, I don't want to ever be considered like, oh, I'm a content creator and entrepreneur.
No, I make art and I am very anxious about filing my income taxes.
And that's all there is to it.
Um, there is a tax law that I do know, uh, which is that if you are in a state with a
relatively high sales tax, let's say, for example, uh, California, and you buy a car
and you want to not pay taxes on it because you are the scum of the earth and don't believe
that you participate in the society that is funded with tax money.
Um, what you do is you create an LLC in the state of Montana and you register the car to
your LLC and you can do this for like, I don't know what the exact money with Montana is,
but there are, there are organizations that have popped up there to do this for like a grand flat.
I think it's like 700 bucks in registration and fees for five years of registration.
Um, it is the tax dodge move.
It is illegal, obviously, because states don't like it when you don't pay them taxes,
that they are legally owed, um, but because, but because there are no consequences for
anyone with any money in this country, people have been openly flaunting it for years.
If you go to like any cars and coffee in California or really any state now, I've seen it in Washington.
Yeah, it was big in Texas.
Yeah.
Because Washington's got really expensive vehicle registration fees, uh, relative to,
you know, Montana, which is a flat fee.
So, you know, um, you know, people will just roll up on Montana plates and like,
you know, it's always like, oh, that person doesn't believe in society.
It was also the big, if you're going to heavily modify your car, let's say past street legalness,
it was also the dodge there because you don't, obviously you don't have to go get
the car inspected in Montana.
But yeah, they don't have any inspection.
So taxes up until right before I left, uh, still had yearly inspection.
So like, let's just say you're like, I don't know, do it a cat delete on something.
You registered your car in Montana because you hate the environment and everyone else around you.
Yeah.
Um, so, you know, and this is, this is actually goes beyond cars.
As I was doing research on this, I found out that one of Epstein's Gulf Streams
was registered to a Montana LLC.
Always love an episode.
And one of the same.
Yeah.
So, uh, and this is so bad that Montana has 2.68 vehicles per licensed driver in the state.
Um, the U.S. as a whole has 1.18 cars per driver.
For an example, there are zero Pagani is registered in the state of Washington, my home.
There are, I think, 17 or 18 registered in Montana.
No doubt, no uh-huh, uh-huh.
Which seems crazy.
The California Department of Tax and Fee Administration estimates that they have lost
$10 million in tax revenue since 2023.
Oh, that's not, that, that's three years.
Yeah, so, uh, they charged a bunch.
Yeah, so what they did was they decided that they would actually enforce the law
and charge, uh, a bunch of rich assholes with tax evasion crimes and conspiracy,
and like money laundering.
It was, it was like one of those things where I was like,
oh, shit, that's like actual consequences.
It was like 14 people, I think.
Um, not that they should.
Against mostly, but they, they're also, if they talk about this with each other,
that is a, that is a criminal conspiracy.
It's the, yeah, it is.
It is all total conspiracy stuff.
Are you taking sort of fucking criminal conspiracy?
Like, none of these people ever watched The Wire.
No, no, um, a Haggerty writer at Andrew Newton actually did a really good write up on this
piece that I think actually three days later, the New York Times stole.
So I'm doing, you know, more sourcing here than the paper of record for the United States of America.
Anyway, uh, he pulled out some specific quotes from this indict, 56 page indictment.
And one of them, one of them that I really loved was quote,
70,000 saved.
I can't believe the registration lasts for five years.
That's crazy.
Stupid California paid $3,000 to own a $600,000 car for five years.
LOL and Cali, that's like 75K for five years.
Hella dumb.
End quote.
You just, it's the, the fucking, I'll tell you what,
this shit does not look good printed out on Facebook all over.
It's just, all right.
Yeah, yeah.
You've got to be, look, folks, you're going to commit a crime.
Don't, don't post about it.
Don't text about it.
Don't text about it.
That's for sure.
Don't go along at the end of your crime.
That, that's real bad.
The next one that my favorite was, it was like my next favorite was a quote.
Lana, who as I suppose one of the alleged co-conspirators in this criminal conspiracy
to defraud the state of California of cumulative millions of dollars in tax revenue,
was Lana made me a fake bill of lading, which cost me $200, but did allow me to pick up the
Eurus end quote.
It would be the, not even for a good car.
No, it's, you know, just buy a Q8.
If I'm going to San Quentin for tax evasion, I feel like I would do it for something better
than a Eurus.
Yeah.
If I have to go hang out with like Elizabeth Holmes or Giselaid Baxter or whoever, I really
want it to be for something like the guys, look, should they have tax dodged on their Paganis?
No, but at least the Paganis, interesting.
Speaking of, hey, do you know they're still making, they'll still make you a Zonda?
Fresh?
A fresh Zonda, Fernando Alonso got a fresh Zonda delivered.
Really?
Yeah.
Isn't that like a 15, 20 year old car?
It is a 25 year, I'm sorry, it's a 27 year old car because they unveiled it in, I believe,
the year of our Lord, 1999.
Oh my God, I was just saying, I played with that car in Gran Turismo 4.
Yeah.
I think it might have been an even Gran Turismo 3.
That car is old enough that by the standards of most of my friend group, it's been an estrogen
for three years.
Pagani Zonda, there is still time.
The Pagani press people should let us drive that Utopia that comes and hangs out of the US.
They should let us have it.
Yeah, yeah.
See how that thing deals with Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Yeah, I will say, this is one of those things where it's like, I don't,
obviously, I try really hard to reconcile the fact that we have just the human misery machine
for what passes for a justice system in this country and it is kind of your duty to be
the very least until we can replace the system with something that is not fundamentally biased
and completely inhumane.
That said, they're testing the bounds of my patience and my good spirits as a human being
to see these guys being like, oh yeah, I skipped out on, in some cases, it's like hundreds of
thousands of dollars per car because these are not cheap cars.
It's like, if you can afford to buy, for example, for this next quote, like a 488 Pista,
those are used $800,000 now.
You could probably pay taxes on it, or if you can't pay taxes on it, an $800,000 car is not a need.
You don't need it.
I would.
You could buy a $400,000 car, pay the correct amount of taxes, and still have money left over.
Sound financial advice from your friends at Tranquilismo.
Yeah, it's just, this is one of those things where it has been so known.
Because yeah, even in the early 2010s when I was going to Houston cars and coffee,
all that shit was on Montana plates, especially over a certain dollar amount.
It was all, like that Veyron that would show up, Montana plates.
So they didn't have to want taxes as a front plate state, unlike Montana.
Which you're not, I mean, but also that just.
It's a $20, it's like a $25 ticket, yeah.
Yeah, I would also just love to see somebody get pulled over in a Veyron for not having a front
plate.
Everything I've ever interacted with, like Texas cops makes me think that they are, like,
largely.
They're some real bitches.
Of the culture.
Of the culture, yeah.
But they're the only person I ever know who has ever gotten in any trouble with Texas police
for basically anything about like loud exhaust or dark tint or whatever is,
it's literally only been black people.
I've never met a white person that that's ever been an issue for in the entire state of Texas.
I got front plate tickets in my S2000.
All right.
Well, that was, you were just being clocked before you were out.
That cop was an egg detector.
Ah, I was supposed to say it was like, I'm white.
So it wasn't clocked that way.
I understood what you meant.
No, no, no, I meant, I meant to, I meant the cop was like, well,
sure, sure, white, but also there's something else going on here.
I can't quite put my finger on it yet.
My minority detector is going off.
Yeah, I, uh,
No, I, okay.
Yeah, this is one of those things where it's just like,
consequences for your actions.
I didn't realize we still did that in this country.
Isn't that quaint?
And in a way that is like, you know, I think like as we see the
Department of Justice swing towards like, you know,
prosecuting James Comey for his like live posting on Instagram,
where the concept of justice is hilarious.
I forgot that you can have a society where like rich people
openly flaunting the law could be punished.
It's kind of cool.
This is a joke and this is bad and I'm going to preface it as a joke,
but like, hey, if they started, if they started like,
if they started prosecuting like the joined blue sky November 2024,
blue, maybe that would, maybe we need, maybe I,
maybe radical centrism has a point.
Maybe, maybe it's the truth somewhere is in the middle.
That's a joke.
That's all a joke.
That's parody, parody, parody.
God, it'd be at least it's all funny.
Things are awful, but at least they're funny.
For now, for now, my personal favorite of these texts,
because I also, despite reading through Andrew Newton's
write up for Haggerty, I did go through the 56 page indictment
myself because I was like, well, I got to find maybe there's
something else good in here.
And my favorite that I found was, quote, we need to ship a 488
piece from San Mateo, but on the bill of lading,
it's going to Montana and quote, which is like, yeah,
that's definitely a crime that you're talking about in texts,
which probably not the best idea.
But it was followed immediately with, is that doable,
LOL, end quote, which I can't imagine my anxiety law,
the LOL, hitting you somebody with the ha ha.
Can you do that for me, please?
Into the court record as I'm accused of dodging tens of
thousands of dollars in taxes on a $700,000, $800,000 car.
Like that's almost as bad as like going to jail.
That's, that's how you sit.
That's how like people like fumbly slide into my DFS,
like imagine doing that, but with like,
trying to not pay taxes on $800,000.
Yeah, at that point, you just got to angle for the death
penalty because you would are simply dying of embarrassment.
It would be quicker and easier.
Yeah, just all these guys just biting down hard on
cyanide capsules in the trial instead of spending 15 days in jail
just because they're so fucking embarrassed.
Oh my God.
What are you in for?
Well, the most embarrassing text ever sent.
I didn't pay it just for the money.
Taxes on my Pagani.
Step, step, like.
Again, we live in hell and everything is awful,
but it's really hard for me to jing up sympathy for these specific guys.
Speaking of people.
Speaking of guys.
Just speaking of guys, it's hard to be sympathetic for Victoria.
I love this.
This is an F1 story that I didn't write the notes for,
which means that Victoria saw a hint of a news cycle and then
went encyclopedia brown on this and decided she was colomboing to the bottom of this case.
Oh my God.
I haven't been called out that hard in years.
How did you know I read every encyclopedia brown book?
Because I also read every encyclopedia brown book.
We're brown-haired transsexual women with big glasses.
We're fucking dorks.
We're nerds.
Oh, good God.
Somebody should do a podcast about trans women loving detective fiction.
I was about to say, hey, November,
if you're listening, could you have Vicki and I to talk about encyclopedia brown novels?
I know you've tried to do movies or whatever, but encyclopedia brown.
Yeah, I did do that though.
Because I did see a little hint of a news cycle and I was going to put it in and
stub it and let you cover it because you usually cover all the other fun stuff.
Because you're actually a subject matter expert.
Whereas I kind of bristle at F1 because I'm like, this is sports washing
for the worst countries in the world.
But then I got interested because the way sports washing is supposed to work is you're
supposed to have a nominally good progressive thing over top, basically a human rights nightmare.
And so with F1, this has been the hybrid system, which technologically interesting,
I know the racing has been polarizing.
I don't have an opinion on it, so I'll leave that to other people.
It's good. If you don't think the racing has been good,
you have followed for culture war nonsense and you need to understand that.
If you were not a huge propaganda, including propaganda about do not trust your eyes that
the racing looks sick as fuck. It's good. Sure, there was the one accident, but also
fucking Franco call Pete does a fucking idiot.
What are we supposed to? Oh, the Argentines are going to beat me to death of hammers.
But so I was surprised when I saw that the F1 nominally said,
you know, there are a bunch of headlines that it's time to give up on woke shit.
We are going back to V8s. Time out.
They are still going to probably be either hybrid if they happen.
And also, he just says shit. He is the Donald Trump of just saying shit.
I do just want to throw that out there of like, well,
so that that probably to like, well, who said this?
Why is F1 saying it's time to give up on woke shit and go back to V8s?
And it turns out that in an interview at the Miami, Miami Grand Prix,
FIA President Mohammed Ben Suleyam said that regarding V8s quote,
it's coming at the end of the day. It's a matter of time and quote.
Apparently, the FIA has the ability to change the rules without any votes from the power unit
manufacturers by 2031, according to Ben Suleyam. But but they're asking for buy-in from at least
four of the six current manufacturers and get it changed for 2030 because they want to get rid
of the hybrid system so much. Cadillac. Cadillac is you.
Ford. Oh, oh, oh, okay. But like, yeah.
The nominal power unit. Sure. I was going to say,
it's like, because Cadillac is using Ferrari engines right now. They they
Cadillac, I think, is joining in on this so they don't have to build a complex hybrid system,
if I'm being honest. Well, and and this is used, you mentioned that they would still be hybrid,
but of the V8s Ben Suleyam said, and I think I pronounce his name right,
Siliam. But Siliam, thank you. Ben Siliam said, you get this quote, you get the sound less
complexity, lightweight, you know, you will hear about it very soon, and it will be very,
very minor electrification. So the goal is to get rid of, presumably, the main thing that's
kind of been like part of their greenwashing campaign, which is that they're doing like
aggressive hybridification. Yes, and no, it's F1 has been long, you know, the carpet emissions
from F1 are not the cars racing. It is all of the travel to get the cars all over the world. Also,
I know, but it's also like completely fake to begin with, anyway, as far as it's why it's why
it's a washing, like the on screen product having a cleaner drivetrain sells well for the idea of
being like, we care about the environment, we care about our carbon footprint, which obviously,
like, you know, that era is passing. So I guess it kind of makes sense. But I was curious about
Ben, this guy, this MBS, Mohammed Ben Siliam, because I had never heard of him,
because I don't know anything about F1. So I was like, he shouldn't be like this,
presumably, because like he's like the F1 head, and he should be kind of wanting the sport to
look progressive. That's like half the selling point. That's why they race in, you know,
a bunch of countries with horrible human rights records. And like in September of 2024,
Ben Siliam was appointed as the UN tourism ambassador for sustainable tourism. And the FIA
is the first sports federation to attain observer status at the UN climate change conference,
because it's like, so I was like, this was just surprising to me to say him be like,
all right, we're going back to V8, some whether you like it or not, basically, to the power
unit manufacturers. We're also using, so I started, yeah, he also helped change this rule set so
that we are on 100% biofuels, or at least like, yeah, but biofuels aren't actually, exactly.
It is. I guess I see the other thing where it's just like he, he still tries, he's trying to
play both sides in a way that is very him, as we will see through the rest of the stuff that
you know what this reminds me of? Dearber went to John Oliver many, many years ago,
did all of the stuff about how fucked FIFA was. Yes. The FIA has just been like this for a while,
but like, you know, they're like nominally in control of F1, but like Liberty Media is like
the commercial rights holder and has made most of the calls. MBS has just started being like,
actually, and now you get, you get to, I, listeners, this did start as a blurb in our
notes and like any good Vicki lead segment on the show, I looked away for like two hours and then
came back to three additional pages in our notes. I love this shit. I am thorough. I love this shit.
What can I say? I, I, I had a very specific style of blogging back when I did that for a living
and it has shown through because the thing that got me going is that I started googling,
Mohammed Benson, I am, and he seems like he is a minor supervillain in like a Green Lantern
comic. Yeah. He is second tier, but holy shit, how is he like this? In, so in 2023, just two
years after he began running at the FIA, the FAA rather pointedly updated its rules to ban drivers
from making quote political statements and quote. This was right on the heels of Lewis Hamilton's
pointed support for the BLM movement as a whole and specific advocacy for Breonna Taylor.
Sebastian Vettel had done a bunch of climate rights advocacy specifically speaking out against the
extremely destructive Canadian oil sands mining, et cetera. And so I was like, okay, well, this is
right after he took over, but like maybe this isn't just him. Like there's obviously a lot of buy-in
around FIA. And so maybe he's just like kind of the fall guy for this. And then no, he was in a
bunch of articles talking about how he wants to extend these rules to banning swearing.
At all. And of course it's like, at first I was like, well, during like press conferences,
I guess maybe, and then it's like, no, he just doesn't want any swearing at all because all the,
all the drivers are mic'd up constantly for the TV show and for broadcast and shit.
And so like you, you get rear-ended by, I don't know who the bad driver this season is.
Help me out here, Jordan. Yeah, when you get rear-ended by Franco Colopinto or
FIA Blossom, yeah. Thank you. You can't say fuck, which is crazy. They would find you or they would,
I think in the case for like Battle, they like made him do community service where he was like,
I like this. I like working with people. I just, I fundamentally morally opposed to this.
They made Max do it. Yeah. Okay, it was Max. Yeah. And so I was like, well, maybe he's just,
maybe it was the media or something. And so then he did an interview with Motorsport.com,
MBS did an interview with him, which is, I should note, my former employer. And he said,
quote, we have to differentiate between our sport, Motorsport and rap music. We're not rappers,
you know, end quote. When asked about these comments later, Sir Louis Hamilton noted a,
quote, racial element, end quote to those comments, which like, I understand that he has to be
diplomatic because he races in F1, but holy shit, that is one of the largest understatements of all
time, which then got me thinking. Do you remember the, obviously you remember the jewelry band,
where they were like, oh, you can't wear any jewelry while you're driving, which also was
seemed to target Sir Louis specifically because he tends to wear a lot of jewelry. And he was the
one, he had a bunch of piercings. He had a nose ring. He also, he also like, there was a big talk
about how he had piercings he couldn't remove. And there's, I remember working in media during
this and a lot of people were, you know, joking about it or whatever, but it was kind of like,
specifically targeted at him. So I get why he was kind of like watching his back with this.
Also, because I found out that at the Saudi GP last year, Max Verstappen wouldn't even talk
about the race and like penalties he got with the media afterward, because in his words,
quote, the problem is that I cannot share my opinion about it because I might get penalized
also, you know, so it's better not to speak about it end quote. And I was like, okay, he's just,
this is just Verstappen like complaining. Nope. It turns out that our WRC drivers had actually
been getting fined for like talking about swearing interviews or whatever and talking about like
the stuff that was controversial with the organization to the point where they basically
banded together and stopped giving interviews for several events last year entirely. Because
of this like spate of fines for swearing or speaking out against FIA, because that's considered
now political statements. And this all again seems to stem from MBS's desire to like control the
speech of all of the people who are racing in any FAA sanction series, which is a lot of them, all of
them. So I was like, wow, that's crazy. I can't believe the hosts of the truth telling Riyadh
Comedy Festival would allow cancel culture behavior and event on their soil. Again,
sports washing, comedy washing. This is also the reason why Lewis doesn't wear the pride
helmet anymore when he goes to like- I know. At Abu Dhabi or Hungry or whatever, because he's like
worried about- He's not allowed. Yeah, it's just such horror. He's not allowed, which is insane,
because the fact that Hamilton was so progressive and willing to speak out for causes he believed in
even when it had personal detriment and used his platform for such good was part of the reason
that I started to turn a corner on F1 and believe I could be like into it. You know what I mean?
It's because I don't want to watch shit and give money to racing series that hate my guts,
but that made me think maybe there was a place for people like us.
In 2020, when Lewis was wearing the Black Lives Matter t-shirts on the grid and
like arrest the cops who killed Brianna Taylor's shirt on the podium and wearing the progress pride
helmet at every single place that being gay or trans or whatever was precarious or illegal,
and then, you know, Sebastian Vettel also was on it. That was like- Even if Vettel was having
a miserable year, he was at least still my goat because he was- Racing drivers usually have bad
politics just as a rule because they're usually the rich sons of rich men, but like Lewis and
Sebastian were like banding to get the first Miami Grand Prix, and I'll bring this up because
the Miami race just happened. Do you know the t-shirt that Sebastian Vettel wore on the grid?
No. It read, the first race that will be held underwater.
Like where the Miami track is with the underwater unless some cool things happen.
Honestly, I think we can't even avert that. I think Miami's just lost at this point.
Oh no. You could go play Vice City and just recreate it that way.
Um, yeah, so yeah, but I was like, okay, so maybe this is a story where like, you know,
race management is a bunch of assholes, which is pretty universally true in every series I've
ever been into. And so maybe it's just like a management versus drivers thing. So how-
So this guy is- MBS, you know, Ben Celayum, must be incredible at like managing the suits
that he works with. No. No. Last year, the VP and his former supporter, Robert Reed, who you
might know as the guy who co-drove with Richard Burns, and also co-drove with Ben Celayum because
he- they like, he's a former rally racer, they drove together. He was a dog shit rally driver.
If I'm being like, I do want to pull him out of there when people go, well, he's a former driver
and I go, yeah, he was a rich dipshit who fumbled his way around the rally versus-
You're breaking the car.
Yeah, the front fell off.
Yeah. So he, Robert Reed, it was, you know, VP of, I guess, everything at FIA.
He was the vice president of the FIA.
Saying, quote, I took on this role to help deliver greater transparency, stronger governance,
and more collaborative leadership. Over time, those principles have been increasingly set aside,
and they can no longer, in good faith, remain part of a system that no longer reflects them,
end quote, which is like, oh, that's not good. If the guy that you got elected with as your vice
president, one, then they have a bunch of them. So it's not like the only one, but like if somebody
who is a supporter of yours that says that and then leaves.
If someone who literally used to place their life in your hands in the side seat of a rally car
is bailing on you, it's not great. That's not great, Bob. Yeah.
So I keep digging, right? And this is why this document hit three pages, because I was like,
oh my God, this guy's a monster. Like, he's a dick to all the drivers. He's probably kind of racist.
I think like, at least, yeah, he's racist. I'm going to call it. I think we can say that without
getting sued. He's racist. He's a legendly racist. It is our editorial opinion that he is racist.
There we go. Okay. Then the head of DEI and sustainability at the FAA was fired,
Sarah Mariani, and she sent her out of office message in the wake of her sudden
departure to, there is a life outside the FAA. A life where talent and dedication are rewarded,
where women in leadership positions can thrive, feel valued and respected.
Which that was all the comment she gave. Pretty grim.
I was like, I wonder why people don't talk about this more. And it turns out it's because
he's been pushing for incredibly restrictive NDAs for basically every aspect of the organization
to the point where he has straight up dismissed FAA Senate representatives and his supporters.
Ben Cussins was the big case last year because they wouldn't sign it and they gave pushback
and they were like, hey, we can't, we shouldn't do like these, these ostensibly shape the future
of the sport council meetings with like NDAs where we can't talk about things afterward.
So he just like, he had rewritten the rules so he could dismiss people and he fired this guy.
Then, then, then, and this is where I kind of went into sicko mode.
So the guy that MBS replaced the British FAA Senate Representative Ben Cussins with
was this guy named Anar Alekh Barov. And I was like, okay, what's this guy's deal?
And there isn't like a ton of information about him. I found out that his day job,
aside from, you know, pallet around in the FAA, is that he's assistant to Azerbaijan's president
sorry, Iham Aliyev since 2014. Now, Aliyev is a dictator, according to basically anybody you ask
and has been, I think, president for four terms straight. And this means that Anar Alekh Barov,
the FAA, was right hand man for Aliyev during the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabak
after they forcibly removed 100,000 people from like a city they'd been living in for generations.
But it was, he still took the job after Aliyev was named Person of the Year by the organized
crime and corruption reporting project in their inaugural Person of the Year award
after he beat out Vladimir Putin. So without knowing anything else about Anar Alekh Barov,
I'm going to go out on a limb and say he might not be cool. I think these guys are bad. Yeah,
I don't, but they're not. I need the Steven Universe comic from House of Decline.
Yeah, it's, it's bad. It's really bad. Like, he's, he's also, you didn't make this in the notes,
so I'm just going to throw this point. MBS is also just a weird dude. He like dubbed a water bottle
on Kimmy Antonelli this weekend in Miami after he won a water bottle that Lando Norris had already
taken like some big sips out of. So he just covered a child in Lando Norris spit for reasons. I just,
he was really touchy with Lando's hair last year. Like, he's just a weird guy. He tries to be visible
as the FIA president during F1 weekends in a way that no other FIA president in my life has been.
Like, you didn't see Max Mosley unless Max Mosley, like, something was deeply wrong.
Not saying Max Mosley was a good guy. There are a lot of reasons that Max Mosley was not a good guy.
You could Google that one. Where does the name Mosley go from, come from? I'm just trying to
remember. Don't worry about it, Kim. Okay. Anyway, I've been talking for so long about F1.
Shit, okay, we still have a little bit of time. I still have notes. I'm not done yet. I refuse to
end. Where were we? Oh yeah, F1. I can't wait for Baku sponsored by the Azar Bajani Laundromat.
Oh wait, never mind, that's not what I meant. That's a joke I put in and ran
past my wife and she didn't get it, so I probably should have cut it, but there'll be five of you
that'll like that one. Complex, buddy. Anyway. I did just open the Wikipedia page you liked.
$2.7 billion? $2.9 billion. There was a CNN journalist that raked in like $3 million to write
positive stories about Azar Bajani. God, we should have made it. Which is why, if you're ever curious
why there are so many Armenian Genocide deniers, I'm going to hazard a guess that you should maybe
follow some money, but in any case. It's pretty simple money to follow. And also,
dear nation of Azar Bajani, if you would like this story redacted from this episode of Tran
Gurlizmo, our PayPal. No, I'm kidding. $400,000 monthly pledge to the Tran Gurlizmo Patreon from
Don't Worry About It. Look, I have a computer science degree, which means that I could be
making six figures building child seeking missiles for Lockheed Martin, and I already chose not to.
So please, please use your your blood money to purchase somebody else. I'm good. Thanks.
You could maybe send it to Jordan. That's how she can get her Alfa Romeo 4C.
I don't need the blood money. I'm going to use our $15 a month tier today.
Oh, anyway, so in any case, at this point in the notes, I was starting to get a little punchy
with what I was writing because I said, well, yeah, so this MBS guy sucks. There was an election
last year. So just vote out the president. Pokemon go to the FIA polls, if you will.
And then did you did? Yeah, you learned the can of verbs that is how fucked running for FIA
president is. Oh, my God, they had like three candidates up against him that were like, I want
to run against this asshole. I hate him. But the election process for FIA president is set up so
each candidate has to have a team of seven VEAPs with at least one of them from each of the FAA's
six regions. And the VEAPs are chosen from a list provided by the World Motorsport Council,
which is the same council that MBS was pushing to have really aggressive NDAs about so nobody could
talk about what was happening in them. But then they select the eligible candidates. But it turned
out that for whatever reason, when the World Motorsport Council released their list of eligible
candidates for VEAPs, the entire South American region after the field shrank like crazy drastically
from the last election, only had one candidate. And that person was a diehard for Ben Celigem,
so nobody could pull a VEAP from the South American region because there were no other
candidates. If you're curious who that candidate was, it was Fabiana Eccleston, wife to Bernie.
Wife not daughter? I'm pretty sure it's wife. She's young enough to be but daughter if I remember
correctly. But I can uh yeah that's the guy who what owned uh what owned F1 from the 70s into uh
who got 2017 when they sold to Liberty Media. Uh yeah he went to prison in 2023 for owing 650
million pounds in back taxes. Did they put Bernie in prison? They put Bernie in prison because of
how much he was trying uh to oh I guess wait no Fabiana is his wife I'm pretty sure.
Huh is he still alive? Oh my god he's still alive. Yeah Fabiana Flossi was her uh maiden name.
She was the vice president of marketing for the Brazilian GP. That makes sense. Oh my god she
is 46 years younger than him. Holy shit oh my god he had a kid with her in July of 2020 as he
became and I am quoting directly from the hypertext of the Wikipedia article one of the oldest known
fathers. It's like him and Larry King right? It's like him and Larry King from CNN like I
know he's in the top 10 on Wikipedia for oldest fathers at the age of 89. That's genuinely kind
of impressive. Not that I have to hand it to him but like I don't think I don't he well and the
thing is it's like his wife is 46 years younger than him which I guess still makes her old enough
to have been my mom. Rich people are fascinating Victoria. I hope you like old calm lady.
Oh god yeah okay well in any case um she she is a diehard for MBS so nobody there were no other
candidates for South America um for the FA election and so they'll be if everybody was forced to
drop out and so Ben Siliam what did you say was? Silas Siliam. Siliam why am I so bad at that sorry
Ben Siliam won in an unopposed election uh because everybody was forced to drop out.
One of his uh would be opponents Tim Meyer which is it's the guy who ran the American
Lamal series which may it rest in peace or live forever depending on how you think Imsa's going.
I think live forever. I think Imsa is more ALMS than it is Grand Am.
I agree I agree. Granted there's some stuff that didn't make this that maybe
Imsa's top class is maybe falling the fuck apart right now because of economic realities but we
can get to that next week. Oh my god what about yeah we're gonna have to do it we're gonna have
to do a second geopolitical shapesplace special. Oh good god. Yeah well I've been reading about
jet fuel a lot lately. And how it can't melt steel beams yeah exactly.
Anyway uh the Tim Meyer was running for for FIA president and after he was forced to drop out he
alluded to the idea that uh MBS may have done some mafia shit to win uh quote what changed
did member clubs suddenly lose interest in shaping this sport or were they persuaded pressured or
promised something not to stand I can't say for sure but only three out of 12 eligible clubs
across South America and Africa put themselves forward independent of whether they support me
or not it's clear this is no longer a democratic process when choice is replaced by control
democracy is diminished end quote. You know it's fucked up when the guy who used to oversee
sports car racing in America when Imsa used to do you know the old nickname for Imsa back in the
80s? I don't actually. The International Marijuana Smugglers Association. How many race teams were
funded by people running weed to the US and go fast boats? It's not a car movie but we should
watch the Michael Mann, Miami Vice movie because the the amount of times they say go fast boats in that
as speed boat no go fast boat. Um yeah I I just thought it was very funny that when like when
a guy who is presumably quite wealthy with a long history of motorsports I think he comes
from a racing family so probably has always kind of been pretty wealthy when he's posting like your
lib father-in-law on Facebook uh about how there's no democracy anymore I think your racing series
might be sick and it's not and this is like this is a problem for every single series that the FIA
sanctions. I'm kind of honestly surprised that he's not trying to unsanction Formula E right now
especially as Formula E is moving to a new jet like a new generation of car that is going to be
basically as fast as F1 which I actually think is maybe why a bunch of the manufacturers are trying
to buy into the V8 plan because like you're not gonna beat
beat Formula E at being fast and green at this point even though we can like yeah talk about the
merits of like any of these things and like look am I immune to the argument as an F like I don't
know if racing needs to be this bastion of technological progress because it hasn't actually
been that for so long however it sucks that this guy is doing it this way it really feels
bad to watch my sport. Motorsports is the I like hockey a lot but like motorsports has always been
my sport it's really bad to see it all hollowed out by guys like Roger Penske. So I am I it just
feels bad it feels bad that you know this is just the hand we're dealt right now.
Part of why I was so compelled by this is because like I think in the same way that the the freedom
freedom 250 Grand Prix of America in Washington DC is sort of like an excellent example of
America's decline into this sort of like petty grievance fascist back rubbing bullshit
that just makes like it makes everybody's lives worse right like the no the racers hate it
it's not good for the teams it's not good for like the sport nominally it's not good for like
it obviously it's terrible for the country they do a bunch of racist shit that is genuinely just
inflammatory for no purpose it's awful it's genuinely terrible this is the international
version of that like this is this is the exact same pressures just in a series that happens to
also race in like every petrol state in the world and so of course they're you know weak to this
but it's it's not going to make anything better also I don't know why that if you're like fine
we're going to do petrol powered cars again why wouldn't you switch to something more interesting
than a v8 yeah why not go all the way into that that's where I have to go I'm like ah are we doing
v8s because that is the biggest thing that like out like I assume we're gonna
lose at least one or two manufacturers when we do this because Audi only came in because we
kept v we did v6 hybrids but we dropped the complicated mguh sure Honda came back because
laureth stroll went to them and said hey think of the biggest number you can and also they did
Honda never really quit like I can go through the the Honda quitting and unquitting saga at some
point because it is so it's so Honda they love quitting yeah they're about to win everything
and then scrambling back in Honda is the the personific the like vehicle personification
of that meme with the guy digging for diamonds yeah stopping mere inches from the the mother
load I don't think they were quitting in 2020 to uh Red Bull Racing winning both titles or at
winning the driver's title in 2021 is the funniest possible thing that's ever happened um
and then the Honda logo is returning to the cars the next year don't worry about it like you know
I just into the now that like I don't like GM because GM was is like oh we'll build a we'll
build an engine to this rule cycle I think if this happens GM just goes oh my god we can sell
we could branded an LSF1 motor oh my god like I oh that actually okay that now I'm kind of
your your new white new balances arc then you should get a then you should get a C9
Corvette influenced by F1 or whatever that's the F80 doesn't work on me but when American
manufacturers do it I'm kind of like hey you know that's pretty cool I just I if we're gonna do this
because like again we're worrying about the wrong uh thank you I felt that coming for the
last 30 minutes so that was actually a beautiful beautiful relief I just uh like I I like the
turbo hybrids I think they've been fun um the last generation was great and it the last generation
of turbo hybrids guess what they also started off kind of underpowered in week it's almost like we
need to give the teams time to develop these things before we throw them to the dustbin of
history but also yeah well like doing the turbo hybrid stuff has been like yes the F1 races are
quieter than they've ever been which is not I'm not immune to missing the scream of F1 but also
noise pollution is a real thing that I feel like we are all more cognizant of
uh and also like I think pushing like F1 did push hybrid tech in sports cars forward
but also as we go to as the world is going to go all electric even though I feel like you were
dragging a bunch of legacy automakers kicking and screaming as they try to hold on to the past in
yeah uh I just had a little cough there
I know we're never getting an alfa Romeo press car because even though even though we would even
though I would like I would get a julia and I would like baby and I'd be like it can do no
wrong it could leave me stranded on the side of the road in the middle of Idaho at like you know
big bobs transgender hunting umporium and I'd be like it's fine it's a good car you know it's
got a couple of quirks they they know I would do that but I've said too much about dodge so we'll
never get him now yeah I'm sorry it's okay I uh yeah I need someone make me the the ah you're
sweet hello human resources meme but about the alfa Romeo julia and also the fucking dodge the hornet
like that's I just I saw another one pulled off with its flashers on the other day by the way
that's been two in two months oh my god I forget where exactly what somebody DM'd me to let me know
they had seen a hornet running around some like remote fly-in town in Canada uh that somebody
apparently imported one up there and I was like that's wow that's bold I feel so good about every
decision I've ever made and ever will make because I'm not that person you know yeah sliding doors
etc etc um yeah uh do you have one final rib shot joke for uh I do I had one final note I had one
final note on this story and I said this MBS guy sure took a bone saw to the FIA
um it's crazy that there's two evil guys who go by MBS it's really crazy and they're both sounds
no uh mahamad the slayam is from um the uh UAE I believe is he really
yeah he's not I don't I almost positive I'd huh I I do get my petro states mixed up sometimes uh
ooh oh I keep god damn I keep opening the uh the page of oldest fathers
yeah he he's uh oh I know Al Al Pacino's on this list De Niro's on this list
yeah he's he's emirati okay all right he's also 64 which he actually looks pretty good for if you
asked me how old he was I wouldn't he looks good thought that anyway fuck for 64 if you were ever
curious to see what a long controversy section on Wikipedia looks like just look up this guy
that's where I started with a lot of this because I was like oh that seems bad and then
it just kept getting more and more interesting friends listeners if there's ever one thing
that you strive for in life it is to never one it's survivability onion don't have a Wikipedia
page don't have a Wikipedia page with a controversy section don't have a Wikipedia page with a
controversy section that is longer than all other sections don't have a Wikipedia page with
controversy that has its own subheadings within it yeah there's there's that I guess what did we
what did we learn oh we do that on my other show um yeah we don't need to learn anything here
tranquilismo never learn that's our motto next t-shirt shake hands with danger uh yeah I mean
the shaking hands of danger is us making fun of uh people connected to the Saudi royal family
no there again he's he's Emirati we're which I guess also I won't think too much about the
influence their country has although I think they're busy right now like fending off shahad drones
so it's probably fine they're probably not listening to hot casts right now probably
you think that other shit to worry about bigger fish fry I also truly don't know if he's
I think his brother is like uh assault in there who's like I guess nominally connected to some
degree of the government but like I I am not going to pretend that I fully understand Emirati
uh political structures at this time an hour and 37 minutes into our show about cars um nominally
but thank you nominally about cars uh as you probably know by now we record these episodes
the week before they come out and I was going to just update everybody and let you know that
shirts are actively being printed at the time of this recording let's fucking go and so I am
hoping by the time that you hear this they will be in my hands and ideally being boxed we'll see
how next week goes as far as like timelines but they should be coming quite soon so if you preordered
a trans girlismo t-shirt um awesome also one other ad I wanted to put out for myself and I know
Jordan has one too before we do the name reading at the end of the episode um I am putting out kind
of a a loose call for contributors and models and events to finish my next book uh pollination
which is a study of kind of like queer life in Seattle I have a whole pitch that if you want to
read it it's actually on the patreon um I have some limited galleries of work I'll share with
people if they're curious to see what it is but the general gist is that I'm doing a bunch of
slide film photography uh of is wide a cross-section of queer life in this city as I can possibly find
so I'm doing like uh studio shoots I'm actually doing a like a we deserve this style shoot quite
soon with somebody with uh her ford maverick which is kind of cool I think she's actually doing like
we're gonna do like latex I think for that one so like that you know it ranges from very safe
for work I've done like public events and you know book readings and stuff like that to you know
whatever whatever whatever any people are like extremely comfortable with and like you know are
willing to like work with me on we could discuss that sort of stuff if that sounds like a kind of
modeling that'd be interesting to you and you are okay with it being you know seen by other people
and putting a book and then you know I I would love to hear from people for that because I am
trying to get that book wrapped up by hopefully mid-June um so I'm gonna do a couple of last
pride events with it and then try to shoot through the rest of May and we'll you know that should
hopefully wrap it up but that is my first call I know Jordan also has one too yeah absolutely um
I was talking about this a while ago and then I was silent on it because I wasn't sure if it was
happening or not but I and a couple friends who I do the photo walks with here in Pittsburgh
are doing a gallery opening and show at the Roboto project in Pittsburgh um first Friday in
June June 5th uh you could come to the Roboto project and see the gallery show of uh all
submitted works from local queer photographers um and if you are a yinzer and a queer photographer I
thanks to my darling wife Stella have a wonderful website I can point you to which is
pittbert p-i-t-t-b-e-r-t dot gay uh and there is a link to the google form where you can submit your
works um submissions are going to close on May 21st uh because that gives us about two-ish weeks
to make sure everything is selected printed framed etc etc um so about a week from when
a week from when you hear this episode yeah uh as we were recording on uh May 7th for full
disclosure um yeah uh there will be another public photo walk that I will announce
sometime here soon and yeah um Vicki you want to get to the patreon names
yeah let's let's read the patreons anyway thank you for listening um and hopefully
we'll hear from some of you for both of our photography projects as we seek to turn
Seattle and Pittsburgh into cultural capitals for transgender people uh-huh uh-huh um
but they're gonna talk about this shit like they do new york in the 70s
but hopefully with a lot less like sad shit hopefully not Berlin in the threes
okay well on that note uh I'm going to thank our $15 and up patreon subscribers uh for
helping support our show and helping uh with me pay rent and the Jordan buys an Alfa Romeo
4c fund because I I'm not letting her buy a c8 uh that's not happening I want one so bad
no corvette nope anyway uh so thank you to James Gilbreth uh thank you to Charlie Strang
sorry I'm sorry Charlie uh thank you to Charlie Stangle uh thank you to Where Are You Marriabara
I just want to talk about Spark EV replacement batteries
oh my god I the email is kind of a private thing but this person has a great email address too
it's just phenomenal all the way through um thank you to Theodora Constantine thank you to John V
thank you to Buick uh thank you to Adam Shepard and Stephen Duckworth
Phelan mildly perturbed Asherin Chris Hepner dexas will thank you to Princess Reese promises not
to bark at loud noises thank you to Emma Alex thank you to the recent patreon started truncatingly
long username that's yeah uh that that specific uh subscriber who might also be the person who
gave you the forbidden velvia for a web gift incredible um specifically clued me in that the
the truncated username from a few weeks ago actually had a little bit more to finish the joke
but they changed the rules after she did that so I said oh that means you are the rule uh
one of my magic the gathering players at my shop realized that the wizards companion app
does not also have a character limit for your day
that was oversight
thanks
But, you know, they're coming back. We got to do it. Thank you to Julie, Julie Aguilar
Thank you to Gav and G whiz reviews crystal storm John Russell Josh J and
Selectric as always. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week. We're hopefully maybe something good
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