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French Trips and a New Schedule
French Trips and a New Schedule
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About this episode
The hosts share personal updates, including a poignant trip to historic WWII sites in France and experiences with equine rehab for racehorses. They discuss travel stories, including a notable layover in Istanbul and a late-night Tesla drive. The conversation shifts to the 2026 IndyCar schedule, highlighting improvements like a more balanced race calendar, the return to Phoenix, and new venues like Markham. They debate the absence of Mexico City, the choice of Laguna Seca for the finale, and the future of doubleheaders. The episode ends with thoughts on expanding street courses versus ovals to grow the sport.
Topics:
indycar 2026 schedule
travel stories
mons saint-michel
equine rehab
indianapolis motor speedway
phoenix race
markham street circuit
mexico city race absence
doubleheader races
street courses vs ovals
Hinch got sick travelling from Italy, to France, to Azerbaijan, via Turkey. So, some travel stories with a history lesson about an abbey from the Middle Ages thrown in for good measure. Then, the guys spend the second half of the episode diving into the newly announced 2026 IndyCar calendar.
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Tesla Model
"... of the night, it was, uh, I I've never been in a Tesla model Y before. You had an electric car through the cou..."
Car
Lotus Elise
"... I think We didn't find that out on the schedule. Elise though we've known about that. Yeah, I know, but ..."
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This is, is off track.
Thank God Tim's not wearing a hat today. Guys. Neither .
Hello and welcome to Off Track with Hi and Rossi.
And guys, I just gotta say right off the bat, first of all, yes, I, I'm sick.
If I sound sick it's 'cause I'm sick.
Um, was Alex pointed out? Yeah.
Is that just 'cause I didn't know being a cool dude made your voice different.
Um, how, how, how, what? You're sick.
Like 'cause of his travel?
No, like he's cool 'cause it was Travel.
No, 'cause like he's sick bro. You live in California.
That's dumber. That's dumber. Yeah. But it's not
Worse than what I thought.
It's not 2003 . Yeah. We're on grade
Eight.
I don't Know. You notice how you notice
how Americans say eighth Grade grade.
You say tight. All the, you say grade eight.
Say you say tight all the time. Still James.
That's very eighth grade. 2003.
I do not say that all the time.
Yeah, you do. I'm not gonna say I haven't said
that in the last five years, but I just say that.
I say that all the time. I feel like, ah, tight.
I don't think so . Unless it's like cool, cool, cool.
Tight, tight, tight. Which is like a joke
that's playing off a skit. Hmm. So
I always just thought that was from Brooklyn.
Nine. Nine. Cool. Cool, cool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Cool, cool. Coolay.
Anyways, you're sick. But like with the fever kind.
Yeah. Like with a head cold. Mm.
Stuffed sinuses, which really sucks when you're flying.
I haven't done that in a long time.
And man, they say don't fly when you've got a, a head cold.
They're right. It is a very unpleasant
experience on the way back down.
Still sort of feel like my face is trying to explode off of my skull.
But I just wanna say that I'm very impressed with us.
'cause once again, we're in three different places.
We had to balance a lot of things to make this happen.
And we're doing it. We're really doing it.
And I'm proud of us guys.
I feel like it's more you that needs the credit.
And then me and then Tim doesn't really need much of anything if we're honest. Yeah.
I have something today. I can't move.
Okay. Well It's a meeting with the, the principal
of the school though, so it's not like a work thing. Right.
Hazel in trouble? No principal's in trouble. Oh,
Not kidding. I'm kidding. Oh damn.
It's just, it's about like a Yeah, no it's, there's, It's because she's too, I'm not that kind of Parent, but yeah, we do.
And and you know what, it's 'cause it's because we have great fans.
Um, Tim. No, we do. We do.
Tim and I met a bunch of them in Nashville. I know.
'cause we didn't talk about that. 'cause we
haven't got to Nashville yet.
We'll get there later. Maybe next episode.
Um, next episode. Yeah.
But, uh, they're great. You guys are great.
Just want to give a little shout out to Fan Appreciation Day and that's why we do this.
So yeah, I'm in Nashville. Bajan. It's 1130.
I woke up in France very early. Oh, very. So, so, so early.
I have a travel story though. I don't know where to start.
I got so many things. We got a lot to talk about,
I feel.
Why did you have to get up so early?
Baku isn't that far from France.
So I was in Mosse Michel, which was a, is a place that's four hours from Paris.
Mm-hmm. Which is where I was flying out of.
And I had a 7:00 AM flight. Mm-hmm.
So I actually left Mosse Michel last night after dinner.
Got to a hotel by the airport at like one 30 and then had a 5:00 AM wake up call to catch my 7:00 AM flight.
Now. It's not that far, but I did have a layover.
Fairly lengthy layover. Four hours in Istanbul. Hmm.
Alex, have you flown through Istanbul? I
Have.
Why have you not told me about this?
It's pretty great, isn't it? It
Is, it is very quickly become my favorite layover place.
Layover airport on planet Earth.
What is it about it? Dude?
It's like the nicest shopping mall restaurant promenade combo you've seen anywhere in the world.
And it's in an airport.
I I feel like the, I'm exaggerating stuff.
The main, the main terminal, the Singapore Airlines terminal in Singapore rivals it.
Well that's got an actual mall attached to it. Right.
So like that you can just go to though, right? Sure.
This this, you have to be a passenger on a plane in order to Access. Right. Okay.
Just Week and relatable content on off track. . .
Anyway, it's enormous, right? It's enormous. It's so big.
They have two Lego stores in the same pla They have three different Hugo Boss like setups.
You know, they've got all the Highend stuff.
They've got all like the biggest duty free thing I've ever seen in my life.
20 restaurants. Pick your cuisine. They've got it.
The lounge. Oh my god. The, the Turkish Airlines lounge.
Good lord.
More than the most impressive setups I've ever seen.
It was like a had like all these different little food stations and it was really cool.
You had like little lockers you could put your bags and like not have to carry them around Or worry about them.
It's like, it's like a spa Feels, it's kind of like a spa.
It feels spa esque. Yeah.
You got showers if you wanna do showers like all sorts of food.
I had this incredible little combo of Turkish delights.
And I don't mean literal Turkish delight.
I know that's a thing. I mean delightful Turkish cuisine.
Sure. Four hour layover.
And I was like, I'm sad this is ending.
I want to be here for longer. . Hmm.
I can't believe you held out on me on that one.
Is there any other reports that you're not telling me about? No,
I would say, I would say there and I mean you've been through, you've been through Dubai.
That's not that impressive. I would say.
I would say Singapore or Istanbul are probably top the list. Yeah,
They're right up there.
They are right up there. Yeah.
Have you tried Orlando? It's great. Hmm.
Orlando does have a very nice hotel right in the terminal, which is a big plus.
I give every hotel that does that at or uh, airport that does that a big plus.
So on my four hour car ride from mostly Michelle to Paris in the middle of the night, it was, uh, I I've never been in a Tesla model Y before.
You had an electric car through the country Roads of France in the middle of the night on A four hour drive.
Sure did s palsy and it, and I didn't really, I I wasn't driving.
I I, it was, I got picked up. It was like car service.
And so I was like, I didn't really think about it.
And then I got in the car, we start driving the guy's like, hey, so just, you know, we're gonna need to stop at a supercharger for like 10 minutes just to make sure we make this trip.
And I was like, I don't love this at all.
This is a terrible idea.
Like we were, I'm like, why are, why are you, why is this the car that you chose for this particular drip or endeavor at all?
So yeah, had to like, pull over at 1230 or something, at some totally shut down side of the highway place.
Like no lights, nothing was on the stores, whatever were closed and just sat there.
This car with this guy for like 20 minutes while they like supercharged his Tesla and ZZ off we went.
I mean we did that when we went to Churchill Downs. It's not that fun.
It's not great. That's true. No, it's not.
It's it's, it's suboptimal how, wait, speaking of Churchill Downs, you went and saw your boy. I did
Go see my <inaudible> horse.
Um, and .
So this, uh, it's, it's a really cool facility as you would imagine.
Um, anything to do with grade one and two thoroughbred race horses that their esto their places of residents are pretty impressive.
Right. Okay.
And then if you imagine that they're, they're stables and where their home is pretty nice, imagine their rehab facilities, right?
Yeah. Like we're talking professional athlete,
NFL college ball, excuse me, player level of like cryotherapy chambers and infrared saunas and waiting pools and all of this sort of thing for horses.
And so I was out at this farm, um, and she was like walking me through kind of what they do and, and you know, her history and she actually used to be a jockey at some point.
Her name is, uh, Becky Maker.
And um, she got hurt riding horses and so she had to find a different avenue with horses and she didn't want to be another stable breeder sort of situation.
Yeah. 'cause that's a pretty, um, competitive market. Yeah.
Yeah. And so the, she started, um,
this farm at the same time when it was just starting to be more of a demand, the care that you were providing to horses.
Not every horse that breaks their ankle is shot sort of thing.
Like Right. These are animals that should live good
to know 30 plus years.
And so their, their lifespan needs to exist outside of the two to four years that they can make someone a profit on racetrack.
And so she, she started this equine rehab, the facility. Tim's
Like, eh, She started this.
No, I was just happy to hear that. 'cause
that's definitely not how it's always been. ,
um, an equine rehab facility with, with some pretty impressive partners.
Um, a lot of those breeders stables nearby help contribute to, to make this place.
And um, it's an incredible facility.
And anyways, so they take, um, race horses that either have an illness or recovering from an operation or an injury or whatever, and they run 'em through a one-on-one program anywhere from three months to nine months to kind of get them back into shape that they can be set back to the trainer and begin their program again.
Um, and it's, it's all inclusive therapy, food, the, the, the physios, the training, the accommodations, everything's paid for and built in.
So anyways, he's in a very nice place, getting very well taken care of.
Um, and he is, when I was there the last week, it was his first day kind of starting to trot and jog again, um, indoors.
So he's on his way back.
But the, the funny, the funny story was he was gelded, right?
So he was, he was neutered essentially.
And they did that for, the main purpose was, he was very hard to train.
He was a little bit of a, he had a bit of an attitude problem. ,
he was very distracted, um, by other horses and explain.
So I was like, so I was like, so is he better?
And she was like, no.
And we're like, oh shoot, , he actually gave himself bone.
He gave himself bone bruises 'cause he just got so riled up in his like area and wanted out.
And so they're like, yeah, he's still a, a menace. We're like, okay, cool.
So is this something? 'cause he's young, right?
Is this something that mellows with age? Maybe
She said it could or it could get worse, so could worse.
Not that going for worse. Yeah. Yeah.
Cool, cool, cool. Cool. Cool. Tight.
How, how long sick bro. ? Yeah.
How long can horses normally until they give up like race competitively?
Well, Like, what's that like?
I know it's, it's a hard thing, right?
It's like, it's like drivers, you know, but like, what's like a kind of ballpark age?
So Okay. If you want,
if you're talking about racing at like, the big events for the, the, the, the big trainers where The triple crown, The, well just the races that are gonna be on tv, let's put it this way.
Yeah. Not on FanDuel.
The races are gonna be on NBC or Fox or whatever that is.
Four years old. You're kind of peaked.
Like that's, you're not gonna go beyond four if you wanna go race at the horseshoe in Shelbyville, right?
Yeah. I mean that's 7, 8, 9 years old, so it's, yeah,
I mean it's, you're, are you gonna be at IndyCar At one level's The PG tour, right?
Right. Yeah. You're only there for,
for two, two to three years.
Right. Okay. Okay.
So his copy that his clock is ticking very fast and his time is running Now.
Yeah. He's what, almost three now?
He is three? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He's three.
Yeah. So like next year is his last year to do anything.
Okay. Which he probably won't. All right.
But we'll see, you know, he is.
But we'll have fun cheering tomorrow. Yeah, exactly.
And you know, spending money on him, it's gonna be, yeah, it'll Be great as we do.
Tim's got lots of money to bet on horses, so it's fine.
Uh, what else, what else to me, what else, what else did you get up to?
What else do you, what else do you doing these days?
Um, what else did I do?
Um, I'm gonna look at my calendar 'cause I don't remember. Uh, nothing.
It was off season. Alex, do nothing,
just been hanging out at home.
Yeah, . Just go to the gym, go
to the gym a lot. Hang out with my baby.
I'm surprised that he wasn't here for the show.
I was kind of half expecting him to be strapped to the chest, ready to play.
He doesn't, he doesn't need constant attention these days.
He's already outgrown that. I still haven't.
Hmm. Yeah, , we know he's already,
he's already, he's already like his dad.
He just now he already just dislikes people in general. He's just
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He
Really disliked me when I was over last time. He was not.
Yeah, that was, that was a, was a tough look for James.
He didn't like me the first time either.
He was like okay with me, but he was questioning second time.
Now, best buds Duggan made me feel slightly better is that he still was a little fussy when you took him one of the times. Not,
Oh, the only, the only time he's really not fussy is with his mom.
So that's, it's really reassuring.
Well, Becky Becky's got a weird touch with him too, which is Concerning.
I mean, I think it's just he, he's a ladies man on that stage. Yeah, yeah.
He's a ladies man In that stage where he is looking for, for females. Uh,
Fair.
Um, , Tim, are you, do you do anything cool or can we just move on?
It was, uh, the girlfriend's birthday, so we uh, all right.
I I stole your suggestion for Bishop and got her a spa day.
Oh, . Oh yeah. I hope she doesn't listen to that.
I assure you she does not listen to the show.
And then we did a little staycation in, uh, in Santa Monica.
Nice. I thought,
I thought you were gonna say your house for a second. I was just gonna
Laugh, my God.
A hotel room in Santa Monica.
Yeah. Yeah. I think you'd call it a staycation when
it's your residence.
What did you, what did you do on the staycation in Santa Monica?
She wasn't feeling great, so we just watched movies and had room service and uh, and yeah, Monse Michelle was awesome, right?
Monse Michelle is I, Alex, do you know what this thing is?
I don't know. I wanna know why you were there though.
So, so I, I forget how much I explained last week 'cause my brain's complete much at this point.
But we're, we were doing this sort of, um, Dalton family trip through, uh, France touring all the World War II kind of significant, uh, places because Becky's grandfather on her dad's side was a very prominent military man in Canada.
One of the first Canadians on the beach on D-Day at Juno.
And, and so her dad has all these places that he wanted to take Becky and, and Evan and I was very fortunate to be able to take along.
So, uh, we did all that stuff and like, you know, obviously unbelievably powerful things.
We went to Vimy Ridge and saw, you know, where one of the big battles was from World War I, and then went to, uh, Juno Beach and saw, you know, in Normandy and saw where her grandfather, you know, landed his boat on June 6th.
And, um, crazy story about this thing called the Canada House, which was a home owned by a French family that the Germans had taken over and was a kind of significant place.
It was used as a landmark for landing.
And the, the British bombers were told to like specifically not bomb this house.
And her grandfather's the one that like went in and threw a grenade into it to get all the Germans out.
And the family now still owns the house.
And it's been, and now it's now called the Canada House because the Canadians sort of saved it and kept it around.
And this beautiful, lovely woman named Nicole manages the whole thing and gave us a tour of the whole thing was very, very, very cool.
Uh, very powerful. Um,
and then, yeah, so just continuing the, the tour through France just to do cool stuff in France.
We stopped in Mons Saint-Michel, which Tim, why don't you explain what it is quickly?
Uh, sure. Yeah. Mons Saint-Michel is a medieval abbey
that was built on top of a giant rock in what is a, a field during low tide.
And during high tide, that rock comes an island.
Uh, supposedly a Benedictine monk was visited by St.
Michael in his sleep and had a vision that he had to build this.
He ignored the vision, was visited again and woke up with a burning hole in his head and was like, okay, I guess I gotta go build that thing now.
So he built it and since the Middle Ages, it has been a tourist trap.
They built a little town around it. It's an island.
Looked it up last night, has a full-time population of under 30 people.
Almost every building that's not used to sell tourist stuff is used as a hotel, uh, except for the, the Abbey, which is still up top. It's
A picture.
It's un it looks like a movie set.
Like it looks like a fake little world. But it's so cool.
Every, like, like you said, all these little buildings are all hotel rooms now, and all the streets are like the most complicated and like, it's the most convoluted layout I've ever seen anywhere.
And I love it. Like, there's no rhyme
or reason for anything as cool as Built the streets in cardia, Like cooler in some ways less cool in other ways, but it was, you have to just see it to believe it. Um, so, okay,
I, I wanna get back very quickly to the Dalton trip who Yes.
Um, came up with the route and plan and everything.
'cause that sounds pretty awesome. Mark
Fa father-in-law did all the, all like, okay, he like designed the itinerary, Becky then like booked everything.
Um, he started, started Planning it as soon as he finished his speech at James and Becky's wedding, which was just yesterday, Right, .
That's right. Yeah. It couldn't have been too long ago. .
Yeah, it didn't take him long to whip it up.
Um, but yeah, no, so yeah, it was great Here.
Say hit Vimy, hit Juno, um, saved some really cool little place.
Like we kind of moved every night.
That's the only bad thing about a trip like that is you're moving every night.
And because I'm on the road for a month, I have so much crap with me.
It's, it's like a lot of stuff and packing and unpacking.
But, um, but no, it was, it was great.
And, and he knows so much about like, the war and the history and, and especially the family history and it, so it was, it was awesome man.
It was really educational. Um, so that was,
that was a hard time.
Had some great meals, um, as you do.
I've eaten a lot of mus. What's your fav
Love wolf?
What, what's your favorite French French food?
Dude, I mean, I love, I love a good French steak. Tar tar.
They, they do it the best. Um, mm.
That one's kind of tough to beat there compared to other I Agree with that. Yeah. Yeah.
So there's a new schedule.
There is a new schedule. Yeah,
There is a new schedule and we should talk about it 'cause there's some really good things on it and there's some, there's some points that I wanna address on it too. Okay.
But You, you, you start, you tell me what you think.
What do I think? I think it's, uh, it's anti-man .
It's, it's not, he's speechless.
It's not, it's not, um, there's nothing wrong with the schedule.
There's nothing I, I think in, in a lot of ways there's, uh, quite an improvement over last year.
What's an Improvement you over last year?
I'll say in all the ways it's an improvement over last year.
Okay. Yeah. Um, you're,
you're starting the season off without a massive gap.
Um, yes, you have a big gap in April, but it's, it's leading into the 500.
So I think that's actually gonna be pretty nice to only have one, one race there.
Um, a lot of teams will test use their one test day in April as well.
We also have an indie open test, which is two days in April.
So that's, that time will get filled up pretty easily.
Um, so I don't mind that at all.
I like how the summer is more spread out, you know, there's, there, I think there's a triple header.
I, I might maybe not, but like, it's, it's usually, there's usually a weekend off.
Um, even if it's a double header, there's then a weekend off and then there's not another double header.
So it's, it's more spread out.
It's easier for, for everyone.
Um, not only from a, just a travel standpoint, but also the big thing for us last year that we really struggled with is when there's that many races stacked on top of each other.
And, and we talked about this on the show, development's really hard 'cause you're just trying to survive getting from one race to the next.
Um, and you can't really improve upon things.
So, um, that part's all very good.
Um, I, I am super pumped about going back to Phoenix.
I think we, we've, we've all saw the positivity of doing a double header at IMS with Cup.
So I think that this is gonna be a win-win for everyone.
Obviously we've known about Arlington, so are you Yes.
Are you, are you more excited about the fact that it's a double header or the fact that we're going back to Phoenix? I
Would probably say 70 30 more excited.
It's a double header. 30 Yeah.
Percent excited to go back to Phoenix. Um, yeah.
'cause of the Applebee's, right? Well
obviously , but you, Arizona doesn't know what's coming next April , Um, I'm back.
I also just that that's such a nice place to go in springtime.
Um, Arlington we know about, and Markham I'm really excited about because I personally hated the Toronto layout, but I love Toronto as a, as a city.
Um, so I'm really glad that we're still going there.
We're only 40 minutes outside of downtown.
I know firsthand what Markham is like from a community in a city, and I've heard firsthand about the amount of money and capital they're putting into that event.
So I think it's gonna actually gonna be a badass racetrack.
And there's a lot of, of horsepower, forgive the, the, the pun behind, behind that event.
So I'm pumped about that. The only thing I'm mad about,
and I think it'll probably be the same for you James, is where the finale's at kind Of Oh, that's actually not sucks.
What I was gonna Well, okay, I'll, I I was we'll get to that.
I was gonna say the biggest disappointment for me was no Mexico. Um,
Oh, well. So I guess, yeah,
Yeah, yeah.
Um, that's just, we weren't, you know, I think We didn't find that out on the schedule.
Elise though we've known about that.
Yeah, I know, but not for that.
I haven't known for that long. I,
I kept hearing they were still hammering Oh.
Trying to get it to happen until fairly recently.
It's, I I, I was frustrated just because we've talked about it so much and it would obviously be a massive event and you know, pat was a massive draw there and it would be great and all these things.
And then I got really mad when , or really frustrated when I think it was Nathan Brown tweeted, or like retweeted an article that someone had written, I dunno if it was the Indie star or not, this would've been before he was covering IndyCar about Mark Miles saying, you know, they're very optimistic about Mexico City being on the calendar and next year and next year was was 2016.
And it's like, man, have, we've really been having this conversation for, we've really been unable to make this happen for that long, but, well there's obviously Still still a less amount of time than we've been trying to get a new car. ,
touche. She, and look, I get it.
There's, there's so much that goes into making these things happen.
It's not just as easy as that.
And I know they've been trying, but that doesn't, you know, it's still, it's, it is tough.
It is tough to like feel like you got so close so many times and not have it, so they say like, ah, but we're really positive for 27.
I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna care anymore.
I'm not gonna hold my breath because, and again, that's not a shot at them.
Politics, money, all these things that come into these decisions and, and these outcomes have to be taken into account.
I don't know the ins and outs, I don't care.
I, I hope it happens, but I'm not gonna hold my breath.
I'm not gonna assume what's happening because these things apparently are hard to happen in terms of the finale.
Yes and no.
So there's a lot obviously of, of Chatter online about the finale going back to Laguna, which is something that we actively got away from in the past, which I do think was a good thing to do because the Laguna is one of my favorite places to go drive a race car.
And it's, and one of my favorite parts of the country and all those things.
It's not always a particularly exciting race.
It's not the most attended event that we have by a factor of all.
So it's not the best showcase for a a championship showdown.
That said, the reason that Nashville and Laguna sort of swapped right, was the lead in to that date that is now Nashville, that was Laguna is gonna be the World Cup final.
And in, in TV terms, that's like, it's winning the lottery.
You've got the biggest multi-day sporting event on earth, right?
The finals for the World Cup and the lead in that, that's a lead in for our final race.
So like you're watching the finals of the World Cup, the next thing coming up is IndyCar Nashville.
And when you, when you are potentially exposing the sport to millions, millions more people for the first time, you don't want it to be Laguna Sega.
And that's not a shot at Laguna. That's just a fact.
And you look at the Nashville race, which we haven't covered yet, but we will eventually, um, it, it was an absolute barn burner.
It was a banger, Alex, A hundred percent agree.
I I I, you're right.
It's gonna be amazing the fact that we have the lead in and it's going to in theory, expose our sport to people that have never even heard of it.
So that's awesome. There are so many other tracks
on the Oval package calendar that we go to that you can end the season at.
What there's no reason you can't by going to Laguna, you're ending it on, uh, a road course, which predominantly is a pretty lousy show.
As you said, it's fairly under attended on television.
It's, it's California, so it doesn't, there's not a lot of beauty to it in the sense that, you know, a lot of it's beige and, and it doesn't pop on on tv.
And the biggest one for me is you're not having the majority of our fan base within driving distance to the event.
And so when you look at places that you can go that de noval that you can have, that St.
Louis was a great race, you know that you have a promoter that goes above and beyond to make it a show that makes it some sort of spectacle.
At least if it's just visuals, right?
I mean, lighting on fire looked cool.
Like some of the coolest pictures we've had outta the year came from Gateway.
It wasn't just lighting, it was blowing up.
Like it was, it was unbelievable. Yeah,
Sure.
incredible, right? Or you have Milwaukee,
which now two years in a row has produced some of the best oval racing that we have seen in IndyCar in the past decade.
So why are those two, why are those two not the place where you ended it, I guess is my question?
Okay. I understand why, why?
Well, you can't do Nashville, but, So I'm, I'm gonna assume that Milwaukee is really tied to that date.
'cause it's tied into the Milwaukee state fair.
And that was part of the reason that it works when we're going back, like it's right off the tail end.
So all that like fan midway area or whatever is open and usable I think.
So I think that's kind of what would would, um, take Milwaukee outta the equation gateways.
That's a good question. That's a good one.
You know, I don't know when their cup date is.
I don't know if that moves us closer to or further from the cup date.
If it was further from the cup date, that might even be better.
Um, I don't know, but I, I think it was Just, I guess, I guess Milwaukee, Milwaukee is one week before Laguna, so that's where I'm annoyed.
It's our penultimate race races.
So we could have, we could have flipped the two. And
Why are you not flipping the two?
Like I understand your ways because Yeah, I'm, I I mean you would James.
You would hope. Yes. You would hope. And that's
All I'm Gonna say.
Yes. You would hope there's a reason We'll look into that.
'cause that's a, that's a good point. We're,
we're like media now, so we're gonna go like investigatively report on this particular topic.
You mentioned Markham, which I don Know who that we is.
'cause I can guarantee I'm not doing it and I doubt Alex is doing it. .
Well I'm not doing it by myself, So Alright guys, we're not gonna look at turns.
We're just gonna assume we're not there wasn't really a reason.
Yeah. , um, Alex Dam, move
Right along.
Just send Mark Miles to us again and then we'll, we'll ask him.
That's that's about the level of work we're willing to do. Yeah. Just
Text True too.
We're not gonna yeah, just, just text us.
Um, and we'll figure that out.
We'll, we, we'll we'll translate that to the people.
No dude, Markum, here's what's, here's what's cool we have, so like Toronto I think is pretty safe to say.
Again, I I love it.
It's, it's, it's, that track was where I grew up loving IndyCar.
That's what made me fall in love with IndyCar racing.
But it was objectively like the worst track on the calendar since 2016 or whatever when we made all the changes, it was way better before a hundred percent without a doubt.
I mean, Detroit, Toronto, same, same, different, but still same.
I think most people would still choose Detroit, but yes.
As a racetrack. Yeah. Um, yeah, so
it sucks to leave, but the commitment from the city of Markham to bringing IndyCar to that city and making it awesome is like, it's the kind of stuff that we've been hoping for and wishing for and wanting for so long.
Like, you look at what's happening in Arlington, right?
In Arlington, we've got a great partner or partners in, you know, the, the Cowboys and the who plays that, the Rangers whatever, baseball.
Um, and so, you know, they're putting in a ton of money.
They, they're kind of taking the Miami F1 template and applying it there.
Everything's gonna be new, everything's gonna be paved, everything's gonna be modern, whatever that is gonna set the standard for street course circuits in IndyCar.
We now have markum stepping up to the plate and trying to basically do the same thing right off the bat without the benefit of the Dallas Cowboys, you know, helping it out.
But the, the money they're gonna spend on infrastructure, I think it's gonna be the nicest street course that we go to.
Like they're gonna pave the whole thing from what I hear.
And it's gonna be, you know, again, a lot of new stuff.
Uh, look, first years temporary circuits are always a bit of a, a question mark.
There's always some, some unforeseen issues.
But we're very quickly now like raising the bar and the level of expectation for the street circuit in IndyCar is, and races like Detroit and Long Beach, et cetera, are gonna have to like kind of step up at some point, I think to, to start to match some of this.
Um, which I think is awesome.
I think it's great for the sport to see that kind of investment coming from multiple new venues.
Everyone's talking about this potential race in DC I think that's a real thing.
It's obviously not coming next year, but I think it's a real thing that's not gonna be done without, you know, the highest level of everything put into it.
So it's really, it is really great to see.
And I think at the end of the day, you can't make the calendar everything you want it to be in one year, right?
This is a building process guys.
It's gonna take a minute, but we've hit some pretty big goals I think for the 26th calendar.
I heard a lot of people talk about the Glen, uh, and that we should have gone to the Glen because they lost a NASCAR date and there's an open weekend and all this stuff.
I don't disagree, but again, unless someone's gonna pay to promote the hell out of it, I dunno if anyone's gonna go because we've just tried it before.
I would love it to work. I would
love to go back to the Glen.
You would love to go back to the Glen.
Yeah, I mean, I, here, here's why I, I'm a little, I hear what you're saying in terms of Glenn and in terms of like, okay, if, unless there's gonna be someone that pays to promote it, like it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.
But then you look at, you look at, I, I hate that we do this all the time, but it's reality.
You look at Portland and you look at mid Ohio, right?
And aside from them being, well, aside from mid Ohio being a legacy IndyCar race, there's not a whole lot of reason to go to that event.
Same thing with Portland, right?
Whereas Watkins Glen, at least you are in a different region of the nation.
I don't really think many people are paying to promote Portland either yet we continue going there.
So that argument doesn't really match for me.
And at least again, Watkins Glen visually is impressive visually.
It's, it's cool to look at on tv.
It's got a lot of the Road America essence to it.
Um, so I think that while people are suggesting, oh, we should go to Watkins Glen instead of go to another parking lot race in Markham, I disagree with that, but the logic of, oh, we should go to Watkins Glen instead of continuing to go back to Portland, which doesn't really work.
Like, I think there is a little bit of logic to that.
Um, so I would love to see really beyond anything, regardless of where we go.
And, and you kind of touched on it, just the quality of the events that we do go to be elevated.
And, and I think that this calendar is a very big step in that direction, right?
Because we've seen what Milwaukee has accomplished, obviously Gateway is, is having somewhat of a resurgence.
You've got the, the NASCAR buy-in at Phoenix, which is obviously gonna be a huge event.
Arlington you touched on huge, um, St.
Pete's always huge Long Beach with ims a weekend huge, uh, Markham huge.
And then you add in the month of May, you're at, you're at nine races, you're at more than half the calendar right there of, of knockout events.
Of events that like if people are asking me what should I go to to check out?
I can give you nine of them.
It wasn't many years ago where it was like two outside the 500 Indie Long Beach St.
Pete. That's about it. . Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, Toronto's a cool city,
but don't really go to the race. Like, yeah, yeah,
Yeah.
Just come on Sunday afternoon.
Um, the, the one that confuses me about that whole glen scenario is we still have a double header.
So like, so we've lost Iowa.
Let's, we we didn't touch on that.
We've lost Iowa off the calendar.
Made that track rest in peace for IndyCar.
It is tough, man, because that place used to just have some incredible, unbelievable races and it's such a shame, but To it.
But how here, how lucky are we that we, we found a, a really a plug and play re replacement with Milwaukee?
A hundred percent. So lucky. So lucky. Yeah.
And you know, we went from a double header there two years ago to no races this year.
Wait, was there a double header this year?
It was, yeah, it was a double header this year. Wow.
It was a double header this year to no races.
But we do still have a double header, which we've talked about a lot.
I don't like, I don't believe in, I don't think it's the right way to go racing and at this point it's not necessary.
So like we should have taken one of those Milwaukee dates and gone to Watkins roll the dice.
I'm very, I'm very, I'm very curious if, 'cause I, I had heard Doubleheaders were a thing of the past starting in 2026.
I wonder if the Mexico thing left them scrambling.
Oh, for sure. Make us race.
Oh, I, I I guarantee that's what happened.
I guarantee that's what happened. You know, it's,
it's a Penske owned race so they can just slap on an extra extra race and, and off you go.
Um, I imagine that was very much a contingency plan.
And again, because of Mexico fell apart as late as it did.
That's why you can't just pivot, be like, okay, well now let's start trying to put together a race at Watkins.
It was probably too late to even have that conversation.
So it's like, all right, I'm walk you with double header and look man, if, if Watkins doesn't have their cup race or their cup date in the future moving forward, maybe there is an avenue to explore there.
But all this stuff probably just came together a little bit too late, um, for it to be real Realistic.
So you being, you being the fan of the sport and the student of the sport as you are, if let's say Mexico City is never gonna happen unfortunately for whatever reason, right?
And we're done with Doubleheaders. So you gotta add a race.
Are you of the, the opinion that we should be going to a road course versus bring back another oval, a Richmond to Pocono or try and fire in another street race?
Like what, what does a calendar need from your standpoint to replace, to get rid of a double header weekend? What's your first choice?
That's a great question.
I mean, we, we don't have a mile and a half oval on the racetrack, or sorry, on the, on the calendar, on the race calendar.
I would love to see a mile and a half come back just because that's been such a big part of IndyCar racing for such a long time.
But more importantly, these things have to be events, right?
I, I do, I hate to say this, but I do think it is slightly more important.
Is Nashville not close enough to a mile and a half for you to Say that?
Yes. That that is kind of, I was,
I was sort of like holding back on it.
So because we have Nashville and because there's not an obvious mile and a half that's in a good enough market for Indy car close to enough to the people and all that stuff.
My honest next one would be Montreal because it's, it's a temporary circuit, but it's a permanent circuit.
It's in a city that's very passionate about racing.
I think the layout could be really good for IndyCar in terms of like the quality of the race itself.
Um, and you know, it kind of checks all the bo it could be a big event.
And so, you know, there's, there's a a, a faction of people of which Townsend Bell will say he is the, the leader of saying that he really doesn't want us to go to Formula One tracks and run the exact same layout as a Formula One car.
I understand the concern, you know, when you see the two onboard side by side and you look at the lap times, it's not a great, you know, it's not a great advertisement for Indy car racing.
But I do think if you put on a good show, that's what people actually care about more.
So I think if the race was promoted correctly, and I think if, you know, IndyCar went there and did a test and got the, the tire right and the, and the arrow right and everything right for the road course.
I know it sounds weird, but I think you could have a really good race in a great market that's that's close to the people and, and Motorsport hungry.
So that, that, that's my answer.
It's a very long-winded answer, but that's my answer.
How about you Backup would Be like, I don't know man, as much as Totally different, as much as totally different.
It pains me to see the quality and, and really now with Toronto being gone, um, it's really just Detroit.
If you look at the quality, 'cause we know Arlington's gonna be good.
We know Markham's gonna be good.
St Pete's great Long Beach is great.
So you, so if you're able to stay in that same level, I think you gotta keep adding street courses.
I think that's what gets people excited about the, the, the event as, as you so correctly said, it puts it directly in front of someone's face, whether it's promoted or not, because you can't get away from it because you're affected, good or bad by construction.
And so you're gonna know that there's a race happening and it's your best chance to grow the sport, both from an intended standpoint and a viewership standpoint because there's nothing quite like explaining to someone.
We shut down the city street that cars commute on every single day and we're doing 180 miles an hour over bumps between walls.
And if it's visually impressive and it's impressive from a, just an understanding standpoint.
'cause you don't have to understand technology, you don't have to understand downforce, you don't have to understand anything to realize that's pretty wild, right?
That's what's going to increase the value of our sport in increase the audience, especially in the demographic we're looking for.
I'm sorry, but 20 year olds, 18 year olds are not gonna go spend some, some will, but the majority are not gonna go spend three days in a, in a field to go watch race cars.
And that's just, that's not gonna happen.
So I say keep, keep adding street courses.
I think DC is sweet. Um, I mean nation, yeah,
DC will Nation Nation's capital.
That's incredible. And so yeah, it's my vote. There
It is, Tim.
Oh look, we're outta time, which means we'll have to cover Nashville next week.
Have a have a great weekend gentlemen.
And uh, we will, we'll chat. You know, I assume all things
Get some rest. James, you need it
Back?
Yeah, I'm so tired. I'm just gonna go to bed.
You know, we'll see. We'll see you next week.
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