Explosive Race

This is off track of the like, like generic go-to dollar a bottle.

Water brands. I, I gotta say

that like ice mound is pretty salt arrowhead's not bad.

The Nestle water is shockingly good for a chocolate company.

I think three days in a desert.

And I still wouldn't drink Dasani though.

You couldn't be, I don't know what it is.

I would drink my own piss before Dasani.

No, no. What um, have you guys ever had these things?

Sorry Alex, have you ever had these things?

Okay, we gotta stop on the chewing the joke. The joke is done.

I'm not even, that's not even me.

Okay, well you can Genuinely enjoying these things.

So hey, made good. If you're

listening, we like your product.

Send us some Alex. If your

Gold goldfish is, We like you.

So those, those goldfish things are good.

What happened to the fried Ritz? Do you remember?

Like the air fried Ritz crackers that we found and they were like somewhere between a chip and a cracker and they were insanely good.

No, No. Uh, they were so good. They were, I don't know.

We had, we kept finding 'em for like a minute and they, they had salt vinegar ones. I

Do remember They were banging.

But I think these, these have replaced those, these are identical to those.

It said, that's what reminded me of it.

It looks very similar. It sounds, I can tell

by the crunch it's a similar texture.

Do you know what like the, the, the most dangerous phrases that somebody can say to me as Alex, just absolutely necks that bag of goldfish is, I think we needed, I think we need two trips.

I think we need what I think we need, I think we need two trips.

I think we need to do it in two trips.

It doesn't matter what it is.

Groceries, like vacation, it doesn't matter.

No, no, no, no, no. Like groceries, uh, like luggage after.

It doesn't matter if I'm, if I've got a car parked in front of my house or my garage and we're emptying it and someone says to me, I think we need two trips.

That's a challenge. The,

The length of time I will spend to orchestrate your engineer.

How to do it in one go. Yeah.

Like I've, I'm never more determined for anything in life than to do it in one trip.

If somebody says that, even if they don't, like, I'll open the back, like the tailgate of the truck and just be like, Hmm, how are we gonna do this today?

And like, it'll take me much longer.

Like I will spend time to make it work.

It'll not be faster, but it's just a principle thing.

I'm with you on that. I'm Not,

I Yeah, no, if you have to go back, I saw that'd be right up your alley.

If you have to go back for groceries, you failed.

If you have to go back to your car for a second time. But like,

I'm Gonna carry, I'm gonna carry like a lot of them.

But if I need to go back, like, okay, I'm sorry.

So you go to Costco and you just unload 300 pounds of <inaudible> at once?

I don't go to Costco. I feel like Costco's different.

Yeah. Why

Is Costco different? Because

You buy stuff in bulk in Costco.

Okay. So everything is bulk. What if I buy, I'm

Talking about like a normal, I'm talking about like a normal grocery store run.

Costco is separate, I think. I agree.

But luggage is not No, but luggage for summary.

'cause like if you can carry it all through the airport, you can carry it to the door. That's

A good Point.

Right? Like it's an amount of stuff you've had to transport

altogether for the entire duration of whatever time you've got.

Well, I'm actually shocked, Alex.

I kind of thought this would be this exact sort of thing that you would like gravitate towards Inefficiency. No,

That's But, but going back and forth, that's why find inefficient, even though often times.

No, but you literally, mm, Yeah.

It goes the other way. A lot of times it doesn't.

A lot of times I figure it out and it is faster and more efficient.

I just like the challenge, I think.

Alright. Well, Alex,

how was your first Father's Day as a dad?

Did Ben get you anything cool?

Um, no. Uh, and I wasn't with him

and, uh, my job sucked, so, I mean, I don't know. It was fun. It's a

Good one. It was a good one. Yeah.

Yeah. Your plane landed safely. So

A lot, lots more, lots more.

Lots more coming up. There you go.

Can only go up from here. Hmm.

All right. Well you, Tim,

How was your, how was your, how was your Father's day?

Hold on. Let's not, let's not jump ahead here.

Okay. Um, it was good. Went to the, uh, the car show.

They do an annual, uh, uh, car show on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills on Father's Day.

So I went and looked at a bunch of cars.

I'll never be able to afford Beverly Hills. Does it?

Copy? No protests interrupted

It.

No. Weirdly those weren't, uh,

in Beverly Hills, if you, okay.

I don't wanna get into politics at all.

Those protests covered like seven blocks.

We're a massive city. Those protests were very small.

That was like, it, it didn't affect my day-to-day life at all with these protests going on.

Yeah. Um, there's,

Yeah. Understood. So

Anyway, went, went there, um, walked up and down Rodeo Drive, looked at some cool cars.

I figured out like the Midwestern pole in me to become like a dad that's into car shows is getting stronger every year.

Okay, that's good. I was enjoying it.

I like, like the 1950s and sixties Mercedes the most.

Those are, those are the best.

Oh yeah. No, I, I was gonna say no, Tim,

you could probably afford some of these cars, but then you said that and now, now you can't.

Yeah, no, definitely not that.

No, I checked, I looked. Yeah. And then that's 300

L Yeah.

Grilled a burger and, uh, and played video games with Hazel for the rest of the day.

What video games We played, uh, the Harry Potter thing on Switch, and then we played Fortnite. Okay. Fortnite.

Isn't Fortnite like a army? Shoot him up game?

Yes. And Hazel's surprisingly good at it. So

You clearly don't have any qualms about children playing violent video games?

I mean, I played a lot of violent video games.

Then again, I turned out like me. Yeah.

On second thought, , maybe I should make some adjustments.

Could be some issues. You know, you said you

Growed a burger and I saw you post it.

You said your annual Father's Day burger. Is this a thing?

Yeah, I've done it every year. Uh, does

Hazel make it for you?

No, but she's a vegetarian make, so I make her her own.

Okay. Uh, no, I make it, it's, it's on a bagel.

It's with bacon. I put the onions

and the garlic inside of it.

It's got pepper jack cheese and American cheese and a little bit of horseradish.

So two questions. Where did this recipe come from

and why a bagel? I

Don't know, but it's really good.

It's just did it the first year and I was like, I kind of like this.

So I just do it with a bagel on, uh, on Father's Day.

Why do I feel like the reason you did it the first year was you were out of other bread like materials.

Very good chance. Very good chance. That's what happened.

You like, okay, bagels kind of bread. Let's do

this .

Yeah. Yeah. But I try it, I recommend it.

Cool. I love that. All right.

Uh, I played golf, which was cool. Yeah.

You golf, you were just talking about before, before we started recording.

I'm, you were talking night races and why, what you got to do a result of them?

Yeah. Well, not exactly, you didn't invite me

to your golf, so I went golfing on my own.

Um, no dude, I, the hotel we stayed at had like two golf simulators in it.

And because night races are the greatest things on earth, and we can, we can, we're gonna talk about all the different ra ways that night races are amazing, but one of them is you get to come in a little bit later.

And so after a nice brunch meeting with our producer and director, we, uh, well, Buxton, to be fair, wasn't feeling a hundred percent.

So we, we got permission to go in a little bit later than originally planned.

And, uh, we took that opportunity to rest up at the hotel, watch the F1 race, go hit a few balls at the, uh, simulator and then cruise on in and call a banger of a race.

So, um, I'm pro night races in general.

Alex, are you pro night races? How

Could you not be pro night race?

I completely agree, brother.

I don't know. How could you make

multiple trips for groceries? You know,

Touche.

Um, I, the only thing I, I'm pro night races.

I don't know that I'm pro two day events.

Oh, interesting. Okay. Explain. Um,

Well Just 'cause Saturday's so busy. It's awful.

Yeah. It's, and it's just horrible.

It's horrible on the team.

And if you have any weather, it delac it and it makes it even harder.

Yeah. It's just, it's terrible.

Um, and then it's another kick in the <inaudible> on Sunday when you sit around and don't do anything because you're waiting for the greatest time to race on Earth.

Um, I'm not saying that you can necessarily do anything Sunday.

Maybe you could. Um, I don't know.

It just, it, it seems like, I, I, to be honest, I don't know that I like any of the Indy car weekend schedules even on three day events, because Friday is also a waste of time.

Um, right. So I, I think our, just our time management

as a series needs some work. Like,

I think, or track time management.

I think, I think the two day event at Indie GP works like Saturday is still busy, but like Sunday isn't a waste in terms of like, you're not doing nothing all day.

'cause you have warmup and then you have the race, and then you're kind of outta there at a reasonable hour.

Now, obviously that's not a night race, but like question, would it be possible to do, could you do, could you do qualifying on Sunday and do your practices on Saturday?

Probably. And the question then becomes,

if a driver has an incident in qualifying, how much time do That's fine.

Oh, you qualify at 11:00 AM and if the race is at eight, Dude, what time, what time was your crew into the track on Sunday?

Two. So that's a problem.

If you're qualifying at 11, you're, so If you qualify in at eight, so if you qualify at two, you're in it noon, maybe.

I mean, we nearly had to because of the threat of rain.

Right. So there was like a chance

Wouldn't the rain on weren't on Saturday, we weren't gonna qualify.

We were gonna practice for, we were gonna do the race practice on Sunday, which isn't really a solution because you wanna practice the race practice in as similar conditions at night as possible to the race.

Yeah. Or at least evening time anyways.

I don't know it, there's, maybe there's not a solution to it for night races at least.

Um, and I'm just griping about already looking ahead to schedule in Road America where we're gonna get there at noon on Thursday and not do anything on track till 4:00 PM on Friday.

Um, but that is what it is.

Should we go golfing on Friday morning?

No. All right. I

Was, that felt like a No.

That's gonna become a yes as soon as we finish Recording .

No, that felt like a No. You are not gonna go golfing.

I'm gonna go golfing, but you're not invited because either we already have four or I know how much you hate it and suck at it and we just don't want you part of that, which is all totally fair.

Um, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what the rain delay on Saturday did do though.

Uh, Buxton, I don't know how this started.

I don't know what prompted it, but he started talking about N 64 and how great goldeneye was.

And he went on his phone and found a like, old video game store, like 10 minutes from the track, called them and well told our stage manager, Cynthia, stage manager, Cynthia about it, who then called them, saw if they had an N 64 4 controllers and goldeneye, all of which they did.

We bought it there on the phone, had someone go pick it up.

So basically Cynthia and Hannah from Fox. Amen.

Shout out, got a 64 with goldeneye delivered to the booth within like three hours of this idea popping up.

And then in between sessions we were just plugging into our program monitor and sitting up there and playing Goldeneye.

It was incredible. It was one of the best days

of the race rack ever for a rain delayed day at nol.

You guys would've been so proud.

It wasn't quite as good as bringing your own TV onto the airplane like you two did , but it wasn't far off like it was.

We, we like, we're reconnecting chords in the booth so that way we could have 64 playing.

Do you think so? Good. Do you think Goldeneye is better

than like Zelda?

Well, Butzel not multi multi. It's multiplayer.

Is that true? Mario Karts still the best, right?

Mario Karts still the best, but Mario Kart was not available at the store.

We will have it for next week, but, uh, I think, I think goldeneye is one of the best multiplayer games Yeah.

Ever created for any console ever. This

Just reminded me of one thing this weekend I went over to the girlfriend's house and played her.

She got the new switch, so I played the new Mario Kart.

She's like, oh yeah, let's try it. Mario Kart.

I was like, okay, I'm going to warn you here that like, I'm very good at Mario Kart .

Like, uh, she's like, well, no, no, don't, don't like, let me win.

Let's play. And I, she, it didn't go great.

Yeah, I bet that was a huge turn on being super good at Mario Kart and just destroying her. Yeah. But

That was great.

It it wasn't great. Sorry Alex, you had your hand up.

I'm, I'm just, is this the first time we're actually admitting you have a girlfriend?

I think we've talked about it. I think

We've talked about, I don't know if we've ever heard you use that term.

Okay. No. On the show,

So, okay.

Well she's not that good at Mario Kart .

There you go. Nice. Dude.

Alex, I have a question for you.

As an avid golfer, have you ever set your phone up behind like a tee box and videotaped your swing? No,

I don't care that much. Okay.

Okay. Here's the thing. We all know my

position on golf, right?

And I do actually see some value if you're trying to be better of videoing your, I guess it's not video taping anymore, but videoing your swing and being able to analyze it.

Yeah. Get to review it. Yeah.

Right. I get it. There is literally nobody on social media

that cares what your swing looks like.

So the, the posting of just like a random driving range shot, I almost rather I feel the see your lunch.

Like I feel the same way about televised golf in general though. Yeah.

But those are like pros doing it. Well, still

Don't like it.

No, I'm with you. And,

and even that's unbearable to watch.

Like I get that you want to tape it because you, but like, unless something hilariously bad happens, like that's, yeah.

That's, if it's funny, cool.

If you're just like showing people that you can swing a golf club, you are not in an elite group.

Like a million people a day in this country do that.

I don't know if anybody really wants to see it.

Maybe I'm wrong. Alex. As an avid golf guy,

are you super stoked when you see a friend of yours put up a story of them just swaying at a driving range? No.

No. There are some like golf pros

or like semi pros. If

It's a, if it's a golf account That I follow, that I watch Yeah.

And I'm like, that's pretty sick.

'cause it was like an incredible shot.

But it's not just them hacking away at a driving range.

It's like, right. Oh,

this is a 140 foot chip in over water straight in the hole.

Like, that's kind of cool.

Totally. That I understand.

Or like Bryson making a shot over his house and he tried one shot every day for like 86 days until he got it in.

That was kind of cool. Yeah, it's impressive. Yeah,

It's impressive.

I don't know. Golf. Okay.

Well there was a race, um, not great for you, Alex, but, uh, Why Tim?

Because I thought you were gonna win.

Why? I dunno.

Touche, but, uh, an entertaining race.

The, the in it, it was a Show.

I wanna know why it wasn't good for me, Tim, from in your viewpoint, because I Thought you were gonna win. I already said

It was better than 16 other people's.

Yeah. I Okay. . All right.

You said you said it was worse than 10.

So , you said you didn't have a great day at work.

Yeah. Doesn't

Mean you can say it because you don't know why it would be bad or Not.

Okay. All right. Sorry.

I, I should have assumed you'd be thrilled with 11th place.

That's my bad for holding you to a higher standard.

I won't make that mistake again.

I mean, I'm probably more thrilled than Joseph.

That's fair. Um, And Scott and Will. Yeah.

Yeah. Not agree. Not a great run for

The Penskes Penske Corp.

Yeah, I bet Rogers happy he chose Lamar over Gateway. .

Man, I was just trying to do a segue and, uh, talking about the race, but if you wanna be difficult about it, let's, let's be difficult About Alex.

How was your night? How was your night pal?

Terrible. It's terrible. Tell us why. But we can

Say it, but we're allowed to say it and go. Great. No, no. I

He's allowed to say it.

Listen, And honestly, James is allowed to say it because he probably has some like reasoning to back it up.

You, you know, nothing. My

Reasoning was you said it wasn't good.

average reasoning at best. That's, that's just lazy.

That's just, that's, that's like plagiarizing reasoning.

Plagiarism reasoning.

Yes. Dad, You just came here for a fight.

Show your work , you're like, cite your sources. It was you motherfucker,

Uh, show your work.

Oh, he pissed.

Oh, well Show your work.

Be on a T-shirt now. That's the next T-shirt.

Oh Lord. All

Right.

Sorry. Anyway, how was your terrible

night, ?

I don't, I I it was just bad.

Um, the weekend was generally good.

We were pretty good in practice.

One going into qualifying and then we, uh, I think underestimated how quick we were gonna go.

So we missed the gearing a little bit.

And James, you know, it's pretty big penalty on a short oval if you're, if you're too short and it's kind of a double whammy, um, because you are using the hybrid a little bit to, There's some workarounds with the hybrid.

And so we, anyways, our lab one wasn't very good 'cause of some things, uh, sequences that, that were a little screwy.

Um, so we qualified 12th, I think we could have qualified like seventh, um, which ultimately wouldn't have mattered in the race because everything that was good on Saturday was no longer good on Sunday.

Um, I don't have any answers for anyone at the moment other than we were of the cars that finished, there was only one car slower than us.

Um, and this is not an insult to anyone, it's just the fact that we were, we were essentially the worst, um, of anyone that finished out there bar one car.

So, uh, we're gonna try and understand why that is.

Um, because it was the same car that Christian had and it was the same car that I had on Saturday night that we were very happy with.

So very disappointing with that just because, not really the result.

'cause like there's indie, we all know indie car racing and you can have good cars and finish 11th and, you know, that's sometimes the way the cookie crumbles, but it's just, it's disappointing when you're <inaudible> and you finish 11th, um, because there's really no like, positive to take from it Other than the fact that you finished 11th and guys with better cars finished behind you because like Yes.

That's actually a pretty good salvation all things Considered.

Well, I mean, if you're a glass half full kind of guy versus a glass half empty kind of guy, then Yeah.

Right, right, right. Or if you're Alex, that glass

Just smashes the glass on the sidewalk.

Um, but I want to, I want to take a moment to give huge props to Christian because he, he had a lot of things dealt against him.

Um, he was on the wrong side of a pit, closed light with the, the Joseph Louie accident.

Um, so he took, uh, service in a closed pit lane, which meant that he had to do a restart from the back of the field.

He was on fire at what point in pit lane.

Um, and he, he was without a doubt, the best car out there.

Um, and had I think double the amount of on track passes of anyone else.

And his third place was not a, oh, he was just really brave on a restart and cut a yellow sort of thing.

Like he was, he was the class of the field out there for the entire night.

Um, so I just wanna say that that's hugely impressive.

So congrats to him. Congrats.

DCR that's the, the first podium for the new ownership group.

Um, and pretty amazing to see that happen so quickly.

Is that the, the congratulations bell, Tim.

It's my phone, but yeah. Okay.

And it's really cool to see that happen so quickly for the new group.

Um, which I mean, that was a, that was a big deal for them.

So Good job Christian. Good job. 21 Carr.

And that's really all that we need to talk about from the ECR side.

We can now talk about everything else that happened at night, which let's just talk about.

Finally, we had a banger of an indie car race in 2025.

Look, Detroit was an exciting race.

It was an entertaining race. Sorry,

Sorry, But, but this was a banger, but a classic was classic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This was like, the tone was set

with the pyro on the pace lapse.

Oh my goodness. Which seems to get better every year.

And by better I mean bigger, and by bigger I mean scarier and more dangerous. Um,

And, and by that hotter Dude, like, Do we classify that as pyro or just just a gas line Breaking small munitions.

Yeah. Right. Like it's, it's, uh,

It's not really a firework, it's like a bomb.

It is a bomb. It's, it's a small bomb.

Um, which I guess is pyro.

Like, I don't know, we, so, you know, like the, the booth is up above the grandstands, like at start, finish, right?

Mm-hmm . The grandstand, you know, that's,

this is like a old school racetrack.

Okay. It's not, it's not the most like newly constructed

place in the world that pyro went off.

It's not that the glass vibrated a little bit, it's that the entire grandstand swayed.

And I'm not kidding, man. We're like 10 stories up

or whatever in this thing.

Uh, I don't it was, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put in the request now for next year's pyro will be like, turned down 10%.

I just Howard, uh, I don't need the, that's a, I don't need the boosts a falling off the back of the thing.

Oh, guys, you weren't in it. Most Canadian

Thing you've ever said, you Weren't in that Force, the grid until the green.

Oh, that's fine. Yeah, let's do that. Okay, that's fine.

Actually, I'm, I'm okay with that.

But pyro, pyro, I mean, this is, this is America, dude.

It needs to be bigger. Always.

Do we just aim it then like maybe away from the track?

Because if we felt it, the people at grand stands must have lost their eyebrows.

So McLaughlin talked about feeling the heat.

Were you able to feel that Alex?

Yeah, but let me, this has been their kind of thing, like the Yeah, Bob Marino Automotive Group does an incredible job of the promotion of this race.

They have since IndyCar went back there in 2017, I feel like.

Um, and the, the pyro and the fireworks and the three white salute has always been kind of their thing as a, as a, as a tribute to Indianapolis and a thank you to the fans that make the trip and, and all this sort of thing.

And it's been a night race for a while off and on.

And so from the first year it was always kind of a big deal and you could always feel it in the car, but like this year it actually was hot.

Like it was a very strange situation because you're pretty insulated in the car and like, you're not, it's not blowing at you like it's just going vertically next to you.

And it was like, it actually threw your suit.

You felt it on your skin, which was, um, pretty, pretty crazy, but awesome.

Pretty crazy at the same time. I loved it.

I mean, it was, it was, we, we've had pretty sick parade laps this year.

I mean, if you think about the Blackhawks at Indie and now like nine bomb going on and I do with regularity at Gateway.

Um, pretty cool.

Then the race got going and again, I mean we saw last year a big improvement in the quality of the racing at this place.

And I, for one, put some credit on the Highline practice and I know we've talked about this, whether it's actually putting rubber down or just getting drivers comfortable. Yeah,

You're right.

Being up there extra 500 pounds of down force had nothing to do with it Last year. Oh yeah.

Because we run road course swings now instead of the short oval kit .

Oh, so a lot the extra flap is on there compared to before.

Yeah, That's down Horses we're a well research show.

No, I know. It's a, I know it's a,

I know it's road course down for us, but I guess I forgot that we used to not run the flap there.

Yeah. Um, regardless,

I still think the Highline practice helps get drivers comfortable with the highline and makes them Sure.

More willing to do it in the race. Mm-hmm .

Um, but anyway, so the racing was good last year and it was right from the get go.

Good. This year. Little Dave Lucas,

I don't know if you probably haven't even seen this yet, Alex, but like Lil Dave, ma Lucas pulled a pretty neat fourth to first in lap one program, which was cool to watch.

Um hmm. He, he, he put it all outta the table

and was pretty cool.

Uh, yeah, the first bit of the race was, was kind of just manic.

Like there was tons of passing happening.

Connor was just slicing his way through the field.

Like Connor's run in that first stint was unbelievable.

And we'll get back to him later.

Uh, Christian right off the bat was having a good start.

Uh, Kirkwood actually was one of the guys that was moving up a fair chunk in that first sort of stint, first half, I don't know.

And then man, series of crazy things started happening.

I don't know. I don't know which, which we start with.

Well, okay, hold on, let's start with, so Devlin, uh, unfortunately found the wall like lap four caused the first yellow and that car went back to the garage as the car was coming back out onto the track though, we caught dev running back to his car, uh, in pit lane.

And one of our very experienced top line camera guys was running after him, following him, kind of chasing this story in the most literal sense.

And then Dev, I think almost overshot his pit box like running and stopped and Bama our camera guy, like just bowled straight into him and like, I dunno if he hit him or not, but like avoided and went down live on tv.

Yeah. He is okay to see his head come into frame. Yeah. Yep.

Bama is okay. Uh, he's a, he is an incredible human being

and he's, he's a hell of a camera guy and uh, we're glad that he was fine and, and, and we're impressed with his ability to, to keep up and keep the shot going in the first place.

But man, I think, I don't know, do we just skip right ahead to the, to the big yellow, do we start with Powers yellow?

I mean we've got 15 minutes left, so let's pick and choose our storylines here.

Okay. So power running second in a really good spot,

having a great day, qualified on pole middle of three and four, just shoots up the track and, and gets into the fence.

And it was from a right front going down, which is something we very, very, very rarely see in the IndyCar series.

Was there any indication throughout the weekend that there was any concerns on the tire side, Alex?

No. So do we have any thought

of whether this is debris versus maybe a particular setting that the team was running?

Or is this just freaks outta circumstance?

I don't have any information.

All I have is historical evidence that would say that on short os pe cars have failed right front tires in the past.

Um, it's been a while since that has happened.

Um, but it, it could be, it could be a lot of things.

Um, I take that back because during some ti well, it's kind of unfair, but during some tire tests, the tire Tests, Yeah, yeah.

That doesn't really count. So that doesn't really matter.

So no, in an approved, uh, tire arrow track combo package, the only teams that have had right front failures, um, are Penske.

So you would have to assume, and this is purely an assumption that it's something they're doing copy.

Okay. So bad break for him.

I mean, he's been the top, uh, Penske guy in points, which is crazy sort on Poll because It's Will, but just because of Yeah.

Where they've, where they've been all year and where they are in the points.

Yeah. Started on poll, so the data come undone for him,

you know, obviously felt bad for him.

Then you kind of fast forward, uh, and Joseph was doing what Joseph does at Gateway and it just worked his way to the front.

It's, it's really impressive. Like, it's

Funny 'cause his, his opening stint or like the first 25 laps wasn't that good.

Like I was, I was behind Colton who was right behind him and like he wasn't, I was like, oh, maybe he is beatable here.

And then all of a sudden, like it got to lap 30 something and he just literally, it's like, he was like, okay, now I'm warmed up.

My muscles are loose, I'm good to go.

And he just, he just disappeared.

He just started passing everyone and started going to the front and it was like, oh, okay, well cool. See you.

He was just binding his time and like we heard it on the radio sled and balance in the car.

So he was kind of waiting for the stop to get some winging it, but he was just very patient.

He lost a couple spots, wasn't getting frustrated about it and just sort of working his way through it.

It was impressive to, to kind of just watch the whole thing unfold.

Uh, then he got his way to the front as he does, uh, between some passes on track, some pit cycle stuff, whatever.

And then something happened right in front of you, which led to an interesting scenario.

Yeah, so Louie was, um, Louie was very impressive actually.

And uh, I was kind of in my own race at this point with Scott and Alex and we were kind of doing the fuel safe game.

Um, and Louie came by all three of us like hauling ass and he was ripping Lane two and you know, he was making it work and he, you know, he, he was doing a great job and it's, it's always this, this debate you have with yourself because like, as much as, you know, like Lane Two's viable and Lane Two's working every lap that, you know, come upon it again, like there's that much more dust and that much more marbles that have gone up there and it's, it is something that the risk, you know,

very insignificant but still increases lap after lap.

And I think he, you know, just, it was one of those things where it was just a little bit too much at that time in, in the track condition and just got a hair, a hair high.

'cause he had a little bit of a moment.

And as soon as you get out of the, the good stuff, James, I mean, you know, you're, you're a passenger to the outside wall and you know, he, he didn't have a very hard hit.

But as we know at 160 miles an hour, any hit on an oval is, is gonna break something.

And as soon as you break a tow link, you kind of don't have control of the car.

And so I kind of saw him up against the wall and he was trying to keep it against the wall from what I could see, but at some point, like just the inertia of the car and everything, it's gonna move off the wall.

And I started seeing him come off and I had already kind of committed to the bottom.

Um, and then Palolo was right behind me and Joseph at this point had a pretty big run on Paolo.

And so Palolo went high, Joseph went to the bottom and I think he wouldn't have even seen Foster coming across the track and had nowhere to go.

Huge impact, scary incident. Thank God. Both are okay.

Super. Like listen, I, I don't care what you think

of Joseph, I don't care what you think of Team Penske, like you have to feel for someone who, at a place like Gateway, he had worked his way up into the front.

He was in a commanding position aside from something crazy happening, like what ultimately did it was his race to lose and to see it taken from someone like that, like that sucks.

Like you don't wish that on anyone.

'cause like it's, when it happens to you, it's a pretty horrible feeling and, And especially just with how spectacular that that incident was.

I mean when, when you see Joseph's onboard and you see an indie car broadside perpendicular to the racing line on an oval, that's like worst case scenario.

It's like the scariest stuff you could possibly imagine.

And I feel for Louis, because again, completely out outta his control, the the right rear was broken and was just flopping around.

And uh, and when it hooked him left, man, like, oh God, it's just, it's just like your heart goes in your throat and you watch the replay from, from Joseph's onboard in real time.

It's just the gnarliest thing.

And like the, the, I would love to know what the last thing that like went through his mind before he knew it was gonna be an impact because it's just gotta be like the worst feeling up and over, upside down.

But, uh, a MR safety team was to the car within three seconds of it coming to a stop, which was pretty frigging impressive.

And again, just highlights the incredible work that the men and women that are part of the safety program do on a weekly basis for us in the IndyCar, uh, world.

And yeah, luckily both guys were, were okay.

So credit to Theara, credit to the tracks, credit to IndyCar, everybody that's helped make these things as safe as they are, uh, to be able to walk away from a look like that is pretty, pretty significant.

Uh, and then, you know, this, this is kind of where the race started going on its head a bit, you know, in that first yellow, there was those cars at the back that took, took the yellow to top off, right?

And that's, that's, those guys always end up coming back in play later down, you know, the, the line as the, the stints sort of add up and, and those differences add up over the course of the race.

But I think for me, the next kinda, and I'm definitely missing stuff and I apologize to everybody, but we're running outta time 'cause just go back and watch the race.

It was amazing. So the next one for me was,

was Dixon getting himself up to the front, which was the most Dixon thing ever.

Uh, Tim's Texting me, I have to be honest, during the race, I have to, I have to be honest, and again, this is no disrespect to Scott or the nine car or whatever, they weren't having a good night. Like

No, they can, I was not that fast.

I wasn't having a good night, but like I, I was pretty comfortable in front of him.

Like again, me, polo and Dixon ran together most of the race and like he was one car.

I felt like, you know, I, I can race you, I can keep you behind me.

Like we're gonna battle this out for the top 10, the three of us, whatever.

Right? And then sure enough

with like 60 to go, I look up at the leaderboard and they're like, oh.

They're like, oh yeah, the nine car has a lap on everyone.

And I'm like, but, but well why ?

Like, and Then I'm like, oh, well obviously I was feeling very confident about my prediction that Dixon was gonna pull it off when he was a lap up and got that free pit Dude, I think it was even before that you called it and then that happened. Yeah, no,

That's what I was saying.

I was feeling confident about my prediction when that happened.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because you had called it a bit before that, then that happens and you were just like, ha ha, well Dixie does it again.

And uh, incredible. Yeah.

Didn't quite work out, but man, that's, that's the power of staying out late on a short oval.

And when you're Scott Dixon and can save fuel like that, God damn it is an impressive thing to see.

And so then we had, oh, hold on.

We did, we gotta talk quickly about the battle again.

I don't know what restart it's on 'cause we had so many and there were so many good battles, but Connor go into the lead and just the battle with him and Patto for like six laps or something after that restart was epic.

So you had McLaughlin and Ma Lucas who both got three position penalties for improper lane usage in pit lane, which isn't one we see a lot.

Um, it's not the same as unsafe for police obviously. Funny when I

Got that, when I got that penalty at uh, at Indy, I got sent to the back at a restart.

So three spots would've been nice.

Yeah. Was that this year?

No, this was 2020. I just hold a grudge.

Okays, it's still Rare for you. Yeah,

Yeah.

Um, anyway, so that's why those guys drop back, which brought Connor and, and Patto up a few spots.

Obviously both guys doing a great job to be up there.

Um, but dude, that, that battle was awesome and Connor, we talked about it last week.

Something about Connor in this racetrack just, just jive man.

Like he needs to drive into Road America tomorrow like this weekend and convince himself he's a gateway.

There's just, there's, there's something mental there.

He is just gotta pretend like he's in Illinois.

I know it's like St. Louis but it's not, it's Cross river.

So like he's gotta just pretend he's in Madison, Illinois or wherever that track is and he's going to a 1.25 mile oval

and just go out there and do his thing because it's unreal.

Uh, one of the most exciting battles of the night and then we're doing some pit cycles.

The undercut was working for some guys, the Overcut was working for some guys and then ultimately, uh, Kirkwood who'd been like a sixth to eighth place car it looked like most of the night, you know, benefits from guys like power going out, Joseph going out McLaughlin having his issues certainly, but was having a straight up race with Mel Lucas who was the next be like, he was probably the second best car after uh, um, new Garden before he went out, got him on the pit cycle

and as he came out on track, Dave tried to go on the high side of three and four.

Kyle held his ground, maybe got a bit wide, pushed him up and, and uh, Lucas brushed the wall caused a yellow and that kind of set up the, uh, the dash to the end.

But I gotta be honest, man, coming in here, you know, we had wait on, before I get to that quick touch back on Christian who as you say, started near the back, drove up to the front, got that penalty for the having to pit under close pit, went to the back fairly late in the race and just absolutely motored his way by almost the entire field.

Seven we, we counted 71 passes.

Next highest car was 38, like genuine on track passes.

Un unreal drive from him.

Um, and, and yeah, it came down to the shootout between, uh, between Kirkwood, um, and Patto there at the end, right?

Patto? Yeah, sorry, spacing there. Um,

At least one of us pays attention.

So on a day where Chevy qualified top five, top six led, no Armstrong wasn't fifth, was he?

No, Joseph was fifth. Mm-hmm . Top five. Hmm.

They qualified top five, uh, led almost the entire race you have.

So first of all, it just looked like it was gonna be a Chevy day all weekend along.

It looked like it was gonna be a Chevy day.

Hondas will have won all the races up to this point, two drivers have won the first seven races up to this point.

And of those two drivers, Kyle's never had a podium on an oval and Palo won his first oval last time out.

So like not a specialist.

Competitive always, but not a specialist by any stretch.

I would've put a significant amount of money on having our third winner of the season.

But lo and behold, 27 crew hold it out.

Brian heard his strategy.

Uh, Kyle Kirkwood driving Jeremy Mill slash Dave Siefert engineering because Jeremy Mills the normal engineer for there.

Shout out Jeremy, he's at home resting, um, nursing a little bit of an injury but still dialed into the weekend.

He was plugged in, he was on the radios, he was whatever.

He was on the intercom, he was part of the show just from a distance, but they did it man.

They executed and got Kyle's first win on an oval, have maintained eight races, man, eight races, two people have won. It's

Crazy. Has that happened

Before on?

Not since like 1980 or 19.

And, and I think if we do one more, it's like 1964, but like I remember one year, 2017 maybe we had seven winners in the first eight races.

I say this as respectfully as possible to both, uh, Kirkwood and plo. I hope we don't have it again.

Just don't show up. Yeah,

just don't even come to America.

Give us a break. But like from the championship

standpoint, it's interesting because, okay, so yeah, so Kirkwood's Non second, Well, I say Matt Pros at Kirkwood, Matt Prospa to, uh, Christian, great days for all those guys.

Honorable mentioned vk got another top 10 bang on.

Well done buddy. Uh,

Connor on another great race at Gateway, uh, Alex on salvaging at 11th with a 26th place car.

You know, there's, there was some guys with some, some good drives there. Santino

Top five.

Santino top five Santino Had a good Drive.

Another which again, like he'd had kind of a rough weekend.

This is a place he normally excels.

We were expecting it all weekend long and it wasn't there when Lucas was qualified up up there. But then in the race, I mean, I mean

Schwartzman Schwartzman, yeah, 10th dude Cal iot almost won.

Well, okay, yeah, I'm kidding.

Max chilling almost won the 500. I mean whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you're saying.

Um, but so, you know, we have this championship where Polo's won so many races off the start and he's kind of running away with it, but then he has a couple races that don't go his way.

Detroit not his fault here, you know, finished.

Where did Pian finish? Eighth. Eighth, yeah.

So again, still eight, which is like all you need to finish on like on average over a season to be a champion.

So if that's his bad day, everyone's, it's kind of screwed.

But what's good for the championship is second and third or Kyle and Patto, they keep scoring well, right?

Like those guys finish first and second here.

Kyle won in Detroit.

So if you don't have the points penalty for Kyle in the 500, you know, this is a much closer battle and uh, and there's still a lot of racing to go.

So it is not by any stretch over, uh, it's, it was an exciting race and now we get to go to Road America.

So I, I mean I think we've talked about this probably your favorite road course in the country. Oh

Yeah, yeah. I mean, walk-ins there, I mean,

Just below Barbara Maybe, but oh Lord, uh, no Road America Walk-ins Laguna.

Those are, those are my three favorites.

So, um, I'm, I'm pumped to go there.

It's, it's just, it's a cool weekend, man.

Like the, the campsites are always completely sold out.

Um, you're racing through a forest, it feels like usually it's like crisp and cool.

It's gonna be hot as, uh, this weekend, but that's okay.

Um, and so yeah, I just, I think it's, it's, it's one of those, I think we have seen the perfect, we have seen the epitome of IndyCar racing over the past month.

You have a glass smooth super Speedway in Indianapolis, a barbarically bumpy street course in Detroit, a short oval at night at Gateway That we nap palm before it starts.

And then, um, like one of the vintage, like the longest road course vintage road course in America, um, coming up next.

And so it's, it's pretty cool this stretch that we're on, um, for, for IndyCar and, and kind of just what, what, what is the makeup and DNA of our championship.

It's a great way of putting it.

This is a, this is a fun little stretch for that exact thing.

And you know, we had one guy win two of those races, the other guy win the other two of those races, .

So we've got, uh, it'd be interesting to see who comes out on top there. Maybe

One of us should all step up and, you know, beat them like You guys sh should also try doing It.

Do you mean like in the race or like Tanya Hardy.

Wow. Oh my God. Like in the

Knee.

Didn't bro hard asks Darn As Too soon.

Uh, yeah, I mean, Alex, why don't you just like, he Didn't say he wasn't gonna do it. I won that. Noted .

Don't, don't you just wish you could take like some of the 29 seconds that you won this race by back in like 18 and just a apply it to like a lead maybe in a different year.

I mean, he was 19 first of all, but whatever.

Can't keep track. All you. He's, he's prickly today.

James, why don't I, I'll just win by 38. How about that? Okay.

Challenge accepted. We'll see, that'd

Be great.

Honestly, a third, if Kyle and Pallo win would feel like a win. .

It's first in class, First and second, like, yeah, , uh, what's the name of that restaurant in North America?

That's so good. I always

Forget. I'm

Not Something telling you on the air. Yeah,

He doesn't wanna say it so that I'll bleep it. Okay, I'll bleep it. Okay.

It's <inaudible>. No. What is it?

Yes. Why are you asking me if you know what it is?

Oh my God. I just, yes, that's what it is. Yes.

I've been wracking my brain trying to remember that.

Yeah, definitely bleep that out.

Um, well, uh, yeah, that's it. I think. Good chat.

Uh, if you are listening to this on the date is, uh, coming out and you are on your way or already at Road America, remember that Thursday night at Kins there's a charity, uh, bartending competition, which me and my Fox Sports colleagues will be participating in as well.

A bunch of drivers. So by Kins

Sure.

Last year during that, didn't you?

It was a couple years ago. Was

That two years Ago?

Yeah. Is that gonna happen again? It will not.

It's a great, uh, it's a great event for a great cause.

So make sure you swing by that.

And I think that's all I got, Tim.

I don't know, what am I missing? See

You guys next week.

Are you gonna be there? No.

Oh, you made it sound like you know you Were coming.

No, I meant like to you, you were missing saying to the viewers.

Oh, that. We'll see you next week.

Got it. See you guys next week.

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