Hinch's Test & Alliances

This is, is off track.

Is that why you just didn't text us back?

Trying to plan the Tuesday episode this Week?

Um, I was in bed. Uh, because let me tell you something.

Jet lag with a newborn is a real <inaudible> .

I don't understand, I don't understand either of those things.

Please explain, uh, What, what bed is.

I understand why you don't know what that is, James, because you again, are gallivanting the world.

Uh, Tim knows exactly what that is because he just got out of it. I,

I just clearly got out of the shower. My hair is

Still very wet.

Did you just get out of bed?

Why are you showering? No, I was, uh,

I'm painting some walls in my apartment and I I didn't do it all that carefully. Do you have

This skillset to paint?

That seems like a risky endeavor. Yeah.

I sure don't. Do You know the three Ps of painting?

Hmm. Primer paint and pajamas

Not being are three. A single one.

Hmm. Well then why Am I wearing these?

I, I don't know. Dirty socks.

I'm not, I'm, yeah, I'm not entirely sure.

You shouldn't paint if you watch your floors .

Well, there was just a little bit of painter's tape on that sock.

Okay. Painter. Anyways. Um, hi guys. Wait,

What are the three pieces of painting now? I feel like

Preparation.

Preparation and preparation.

I like mine more. Hmm. Yeah.

That's why your apartment walls look like <inaudible>.

Not yet. Well, one of 'em does.

Yeah. The one that you painted.

Yeah. It looks okay. I

Feel like there's only one wall in your apartment that can be accessible.

I'm starting off and That's the walls going up upstairs.

I'm starting in little sections.

Why is your hair wet for having Painted?

I just got outta the shower 'cause I got a little paint on me . Oh.

Because the painting not going great, so we had to shower.

Got it. Got

It.

I did, I painted a door last week and I got a little bit of white paint in my hair and it took forever to come out.

But then it just looked like I had little streaks of gray and it was like, no, no, no.

It's because I, it's because I'm a mess.

It's not because I'm older. It's .

Do you have any gray hairs yet? I do not.

I do. I'm still counting the ones on my beard. Yeah.

You got a couple up here? I got a few in the beard now.

I got the, I got the side. The side ones going.

The side ones going. I don't have

Any up here.

Do you think if you grew your beard out, you'd see more in your beard?

Because I feel like for guys it starts like down here first a lot of the times.

I don't know. I dunno.

No, because I let it, I let, I let it get fairly long and there's no gray in it.

But I do, every single time I go and get a haircut.

'cause they wrap you on the black like sheet thing.

Um, it's like more and more gray and less and less black on there. And I'm like,

Huh, .

This is fun. This is a fun reminder every five

weeks. .

Yeah. Yeah. Well

My grandpa Bert didn't go gray until he was like 91.

So I'm hoping I got that. I don't think you're

Gonna make pal. That works.

That's fair. That's how that works. So was never gray.

Yeah, I, uh, I had a very lengthy discussion.

I won't say argument, I'll say discussion with my father-in-law last week.

Who, who thinks he's still blonde?

Um, I gotta tell you. Super. He's, he's super gray.

Like he's, he's like white in like the sideburn region, right.

Kind of up to the ear. And he is like, yeah.

And then he's like, I'm gray here, and then I'm blonde on top.

I was like, no pal. You're gray gray here

and you're white here.

Like you're, you're gray on top and you're like, like bleach white here.

But he, he's holding on to hope that he's, he's still, he's still kind of black and he's got hair.

He is got like a good head of hair for a 75-year-old dude.

But it's the majority not the color he thinks it is.

The majority of my gray hairs came while he was giving his wedding speech during that time period. .

So like four years, it's still happening. Yeah. Yeah.

So you're still collecting grays. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Terrific. Um, okay, so wait, so, so how, how ,

I'm just laughing at the name you have on your screen, but hopefully people can't see.

But , how is, so you're with, you're in England. You're in England now,

And you're In England currently with Kelly and Ben.

Uh, also known as Ken.

That's their, like, that's their celebrity couple Name. Interesting. Did

You bring little Ben to Big Ben? Well,

We haven't gotten, so we're, we're out in the country right now.

Um, kind of just relaxing with the sheep and, uh, enjoying some nice meals and catching up on sleep as best we can with a newborn.

Um, we're going to Paris tomorrow. And

What, you're already going, you just got to England like yesterday?

No, we got to England on, we left on Sunday.

So we got to England Monday morning.

Uh, so we're gonna Paris Thursday. It's away.

It's it's Wednesday night. Wednesday. Yeah.

I don't know where I am Alex.

We're actually, it's okay. I think it's Thursday for you.

It's Wednesday. It's 6:30 PM I meant for James.

Yeah. It's super Thursday for me.

It's, it's 1:30 AM on Thursday Morning.

Yeah. Is this our first time doing this in,

in a different day? We're all

Three.

I didn't Bali on My honeymoon like two days.

We're in different, but yeah, we're all three in different continents. we're

Yeah, that's true. That might be a first.

Yeah. We've got two hemispheres covered.

Yeah. Yeah. We're, we're killing it guys. So sorry.

But No, wait. So before you go to par, wait, how long,

so why such a short trip?

Ting? Why go to Parrot if you're already over?

How has Ben on the flight? Let's start there. We

Need to reboot him, Ben, On the plane. It's a travel podcast

Was, uh, fantastic.

So it was a night flight.

So we, we set ourselves up for success.

Um, I will say it was booked, um, with an hour and 10 minute connection in Chicago from Indie.

It's just tight.

Well, it's Not with a kid.

It's not, um, I tell you what's tight, uh, when your flight from India to Chicago is delayed by 50 minutes.

Yeah. That makes it tight. Then

It became tight.

Um, so we were running through basically Kelly, we made a very smart executive decision to, instead of gate checking, leave Kelly behind the stroller, we checked his stroller in Indie.

'cause we knew it was gonna be tight and we knew it was probably gonna get delayed more.

'cause planes don't, it initially started as I was delayed 20 minutes, but we're like, that's not how flights work.

Right. So we were, she strapped into her chest

and I had both bags in my backpack and it was like, all right.

It's like fortunately only one section of gates over, they closed the door in eight minutes.

If we run, it's like a five minute run. So done.

We'll get there easy.

Um, the problem was, she, she couldn't run that fast.

Not because she couldn't run fast, but with the way Ben wasn't the carrier, he was like almost bouncing out.

So she had to like push his head down while running to just to like lock him into place.

And we got there and the, the, the, the gate agent was, it's like A mass damper but without a top on it. ,

right? You're like, no, no, thank that

for, for a little human.

Um, the, the gate agent was like, oh my God, you guys actually made it.

And we were like, yeah, it wasn't fun.

He was like, I am beyond impressed.

So they obviously were tracking inbound passengers and connections and they, they had written us off.

Anyways, so that was that little adventure.

Um, got him on the plane.

He slept four out of seven hours.

Uh, nice. That's not bad. Not bad.

Four, four and a half outta seven hours.

Which was, which was great. Obviously.

Um, you know, we're 15 minutes from landing.

It's been everyone to your seats for the past 15 minutes.

And he, uh, himself.

Oh, so that, I mean, as you would expect, um, um, so you deal with that.

So he's got a good comedic sense of timing. Right? Right.

So wait, when you say you deal with that, do you mean in the sense that like, yeah, you put up with the smell until you land and then can go change 'em? No.

Or like, like I don't care.

You changed him on the coffee table in front of the No, no.

Kelly just got up and was like, my kid pooped sue me. Wow.

The flight attendant was like, okay, be quick.

So it was, they were very nice about it.

They didn't, they were, they were very understanding. Yeah.

So we landed, we, we drove out to, uh, the part of the country called the Cowa.

Mm. And we've been here for, for three days.

Um, have had some amazing food and checked out the little villages.

We're going to Paris tomorrow just for a night.

Um, Kelly's never been.

And we're just gonna tick the box since it's so easy to get there with the train.

And then we'll be in London for five days following that. So

Oh, you're like doing a day Trip to London. In London.

We're doing like a, like, like a night trip.

A single night trip. You guys have dinner plans yet?

No. It's hard to make dinner plans

with a board. So just I know a

Good restaurant I could recommend We have send it, but we have just, we've learned I'm very schedule pro schedule. Yeah. And

You're schedule oriented kind of guy.

We've learned that you just can't do that. So you gotta

Just go with the Flow.

We were gonna have a, like a nice dinner tonight.

We're not doing that. Mm. Um,

because we had a really nice lunch that was late 'cause we were late and we ate lunch at two today.

And so yeah, it's fine. Everything's great.

Tremendous having a great time. Tremendous.

Yes. Love that for all of you. Hmm. Um, excited.

I'm, yeah, it's, it's, it's gonna be an interesting single day adventure to Paris and then back. But, uh,

Why, why do you think that's interesting? It's a train ride.

No, I know. It just, it's the, it's the act

of like moving hotels for one night to then just move back to the same country you were in.

Look, I get it. I I've moved a lot

of hotels since I left my house the last time.

I haven't been to my house in a while, guys. It's been a minute.

I just sent you the dinner recommendation.

It was one of, uh, so Hemingway and Fitzgerald's favorite places.

Cool. I got it. Um, so yes, , James, you, you are,

you are in and outta hotels.

Um, why don't you catch us up on where you've been since back who?

Well, um, I'm in, You're in Singapore. I'm

In Where did come from?

I'm Singapore. Thank you. Yep. Where did you come from?

Where'd you go? I'm in Singapore. I came to Singapore from

Florence.

Exactly right. Uh, I, I, yeah, so I left, I left Florence,

I don't know, I mean earlier today, but yesterday I'm not, I don't know.

I I left Florence recently. Um, why

Were you in Florence?

Was this re rejoining the Dalton family?

Let your own trip Go back. Yeah. Okay.

Let's, let's, let's run it back. So, um, is that just gonna

Be forever?

Are they just, are they just gonna travel Europe for the rest of time? The

Office, the whole family.

We're all just, we're just, we've all sold our homes. He's

Nomad now.

We're just nomads. The Swiss family hit books. Yeah.

Each have one suitcase. Yeah, exactly.

Swiss. Ironically, we haven't made this room yet,

but it's on the, it's on the list.

Um, no, we don't, we don't do that.

Uh, but so, so Baku, Baku went to Baku and then I left Baku and I went to Florence.

And the reason I went to Florence is because, uh, I needed to be close to Maje because I got to do my little drive in a form of the one car on Friday.

Last Friday. You did get to do that.

We need to talk about that. It did get do.

Let's talk about it. Yes.

Um, so yeah, I mean, we kind of talked about it ahead of time and kind of tease it a bit, but, uh, ha very generously agreed to allow me to pilot one of their TPC cars.

TPC of course, testing previous cars, as long as it's a 2-year-old car or more, you have at this point unlimited miles.

That's kind of changing. Or maybe it's already changed.

I don't know either way. Um, as a bit of a feature

for F1 tv, I commentate on F1.

I've never driven an F1 car.

So the idea was to give me that opportunity.

And what was sort of cool was the day was shared with Rojan Rojan, who the last time he drove an F1 car, it tried to oven roast him in, you know, where that was Bahrain.

And after his accident, you know, he missed his last, what would've been his last race in F1, uh, the following week in Abu Dhabi.

And then Mercedes had said, Hey, we're we're gonna give you a test to let you get back in an F1 car just to, you know, so that wasn't your last experience, but then COVID and complications.

And that never ended up happening.

And so, uh, the, the team principal at Hao had put together this day where Roman was gonna get in the car.

And uh, my good friend who's the comms manager there, Stuart Morrison, was like, well, if we split the day, we can kind of do a twofer.

And we got Rohan in the car to kind of get back into F1 and finish a few laps that he didn't get to do post, uh, you know, post his accident.

And then I got the chance to sample F1 machinery for the first time.

And it was, it was such a weird day, man, because, and we sort of chat about this, it rained the entire time, like it was a miserable day at the racetrack.

Mam, jello was an incredible racetrack in an incredible part of the world.

Um, so scenic so beautiful, but it poured rain all day long.

And, uh, Roman was in the car first and he did a bunch of running all in the wet.

And something I learned about TPC testing, Alex, which you'll find as frustrating as I did, is they do not let you purchase intermediate tires.

So you can have full wets or slicks.

Now, anybody that follows Formula One closely, at least for the last few years, will know that any conditions that require the full wet are usually too wet to even go racing.

So while in a one or two car test, 'cause there were a few other cars there doing some pelli testing with only a few cars on track, you know, maybe you could get away with it as long as there's not a lot of standing water.

But fundamentally the extreme white only comes out when it's really too wet to run at all.

Once it dries out enough, you'd go to an enter because the wet degrades too much.

Well enters weren't an option.

So all of his running around it does it dude.

And there's some other things that happen that like, just, I'm like, oh my God.

Even here, even in the pinnacle of motor sports, some of this stuff happens.

Red Bull had a whole situation with their program, which was comical, I will tell you offline.

But we, you know, we're there amp pan around all day in the wet, it was time to switch over.

So I got my first taste of F1 machinery in the wet, and then it started to dry.

And Alex, as you know, and this is where, look, Tim, very interested in this story, very, very, very invested.

There is just, look as you know, you know how impressive a Formula one car is you raced in Formula One.

You can also acknowledge that regardless of how good a car is, if you are driving on rain tires full wets on a nearly dry track, a car's terrible.

Like there's no car.

It doesn't matter how good the car is, there's just nothing that can compensate for that combination Sure.

Of a full at tire. On a nearly dry track.

So like, my first run was kind of in wet conditions, and even then I was , I was blown away at how late you could break in the wet in an F1 car, like absolutely blown away.

And then the next like three runs were all on full wet tires on a drying track, and it was getting progressively worse.

So like, it just felt terrible.

Like the braking was again, still pretty impressive and the acceleration is kind of what you'd expect it to be.

But I wasn't getting a sense of like that the downforce and the ability, the capabilities of an F1 car, you know, and then it was drying up.

And so after my last run on the wets, they're like, all right, just, just key up the radio and give us a little bit of an insight around the lap about how dry it is.

So I'm driving around at, you know, a hundred kilometers an hour and explaining what I see on the track.

And I was like, like if it was me, if this was Indy car and this was me, I'd be like, a hundred percent, let's throw some slicks on and let's give it a whirl.

But this isn't my world. You guys have to make that call.

And so he went in the garage, sat for a bit, and I heard after the fact that all the engineers were saying like, well, yeah, of course he's gonna say it's dry, but like, we have no idea if it's actually dry.

But then the other two cars that were there threw on slicks, they went out and they stayed out for a run.

And so the guys were like, all right, I guess it's good enough.

And we were like counting down the minutes to the end of the test day, thank God in Italy they run until six o'clock, not five o'clock.

And so they threw on slicks for the last run.

And dude, like I, it's ridiculous.

And I, I I, I think the first thing I text you was just dude, and you wrote back LOLI know, like , it's .

It's, I I have always appreciated and respected the fact that you raced in that category.

But now like having sampled, however briefly what those cars are capable of.

Mm-hmm . My thoughts of you running around suzuka,

my thoughts of you running around Singapore are like, it is so impressive what those things are capable of and what those drivers have to do.

Did you get the, um, the feeling like you were driving on glass?

So what's interesting is this generation of car with how stiff they have to run 'em in the ground effects and all that.

The bumps were so much more prominent on slicks than on wet tires.

Like on wet tires. There's just

so much more give you felt like a little bump and it kind of felt like an Indy car.

And then bumps that you didn't think were really bumps, they put the slicks on.

You're like, like, oh man, that actually kind of hurts.

Like I get why those tracks have to be.

So Bill your table smooth for those cars right now in this, this current iteration 'cause Ing so stiff when, when George and Lewis a a, a couple years ago and the Mercedes were complaining about their backs from the purposing, you could relate. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah, I can, I can understand.

Like, I didn't have, like, they've obviously come a long way.

They don't have really the purposing anymore mm-hmm .

But if I thought about the one little, there's a bump, right?

Kind of by pit in on the front stray at ma.

And when you hit it in the wet, you kind of like felt a little bit when you hit in the dry, it was like d and you're like, you know, hitting the limiter and like fall shifting and stuff.

And so I was like, man, if I could definitely see that if you got into a pattern of the car just doing this down the straight, that would be very uncomfortable.

I could 100% see that.

But the how late you could break into corners and the entry speed with which you could just throw it in there and then for like, probably more than anything, the combined traction on exits was ridiculous.

Like, it was, it was ridiculous.

It doesn't make any sense that you could be that fast in the middle of a corner still turning maj like you're still halfway through the corner and just start feeding the throttle in with no regard for anything about an over stream.

It just goes, it just goes and, oh man. Ridiculous.

Ridiculous. Yeah, it was so much fun.

I'm gutted that I only got one run on the slicks, but I'm, that really sucks.

Also so fortunate that I got that one run on the slicks, it's such a weird sort of position to be in, but just, uh, the way the thing performs, how it, how it works, the way it works, um, it's hard to not kinda leave that experience with just a, a whole new level of appreciation for what the guys that are really good in that series do.

Do you find though, that like, it, there's such a far separation from every other category of car, not, um, forget the performance aspect of it, but just like the build quality and how nice it is to drive?

Yeah. Like that's the thing that blows my mind.

You can, you can drive a well-balanced IndyCar, you can drive a well-balanced prototype.

You can drive a well-balanced GT three and all this stuff.

And they're, they're nice to drive for the most part, but it is a completely different planet to what a Formula one car is.

And it's just, it's, it's amazing the distance that they have on literally everything else.

It's, it's hard to kind of explain this to people that haven't driven multiple types of race cars.

Right? But the, the, the closest thing I can say is

that the, and this, I dunno if this term makes any sense or is really relevant.

There's just, there's no slop in anything mm-hmm . Right?

Like, it's, it's a weird word to use when You release the clutch for the first time, you're like, oh my God, that's how it's supposed to be.

Right? And like the brake pedal, the throttle pedal,

the steering inputs, there's just, there's no slop, there's no margin, right?

Like everything was built to the, within the nth degree of tolerance of what it needs to do.

And so it just does it all so well.

And you know, like I, I didn't, I mean, I got very limited dry running and so trying to push the limits and the fast stuff, but under like, just the way that compared to a wet tire in a dry track, you know what that's like, right?

The whole thing sort of slides around, it moves on top of the tire or whatever.

Then once you put the slicks on, the thing is just so responsive.

Like it's unbelievable.

And the fast section like six through nine at Magel, like trying to comprehend what this thing was capable of and I was nowhere near the limit of the car was unreal.

The, and the braking, like the, the brake system is so efficient.

Like you, you don't have to hit the pedal anywhere near as hard as you do in IndyCar.

Yeah, true. Like, even though you're going so fast

and you have so much down force and so much braking capability, the physical effort through the pedal, right?

So I'm not talking about whatever pressure translates to the brake system and, and how all that stuff works.

I'm talking about how hard as a driver you hit the pedal, it was a fraction of what you have to, like in any car, you're like, here we go.

And you like, as hard as you physically can into the brake pedal with your left leg and trying to slow this thing down and the F1 car you just like , you just like, just breathe on it.

It's like, ugh, stopping so fast. It

Helps though.

It helps though when you breathe on it though, you've already got like four longitudinal G helping you.

Yeah. like put pressure

On the back, just lifting off the throttle. It's like,

Yeah.

It's like, oh Yeah.

It's, uh, so yeah, incredible Experience takes on a whole new meaning.

Unbelievable. So much fun, such a cool opportunity.

Can't thank, uh, Haas and, and and MoneyGram and everybody who let that happen.

AO and Stew and, and everybody Dom. Um, yeah.

What a day man, what a day.

And again, I was bummed it wasn't dry the whole day, but I'm hoping that maybe at some point I can weasel my way into another one and, uh, and do, I was like, well the 26 cars are so different, we're gonna have to do it again with a 26 car to really get a good understanding of it.

All right.

So it's a, I'm gonna put the ask out if anybody listens to this has like a vast car collection and you have an F1 car from any year.

Yes. Will you let me drive it like five?

I would love to drive it five feet.

No, I just wanna like nudge it a little bit.

I just want it so that all three of us can say we've driven an F1 car.

I don't need to drive it far.

I just need to like, right, like five feet.

But right now, just right now we can all say we've driven an F1 car and raced in the Indy 500. So

Okay.

Baby steps, we'll burn that bridge when we get to it.

Um, yeah, I would just like to put it out. I don't know.

You know, I feel like I have some friends that maybe have an old F1 car.

Probably not. I mean, but

Mario has one.

Oh, does he? Okay. Yeah, I was gonna say no, it's in car.

Just putting the ask out there. Yeah.

I don't think any, any of any of our multimillionaire listeners that just have like a huge car collection and are down for a down for a laugh.

I mean, if Zach Brown listens to this, he's got a bunch of old F1 cars.

Well, Tim, have you done anything? Cool.

You know what? I have some racing to cover.

Um, Hazel had her first cross country track or cross country meet of the season yesterday.

She did the, uh, she did the two miler and uh, she had a, a 2046.

So, you know, just under six mile per hour pace. James,

Do you remember when Tim was training and then ran a half marathon?

Yeah, I do. I do. I should do that again.

Whatever happened. Whatever happened to that guy.

I know I ran along with Hazel for some of it and then one of the refs was like, Hey, you can't do that. What?

Why? He's like, you're trying

to like help her set her pace.

I was like, nah, I'm trying to get pictures of my daughter.

It's dumb GI guarantee you I'm not gonna run two miles.

I don't like that ref. Yes. Do you call

Refs in cross country? I dunno.

Whatever man. Whatever that guy was, I don't like him. Guy

With a flag. Yeah.

Uh, so now I'm in, uh, Singapore.

It's, it's the Grand Prix weekend here.

But I had an interesting experience flying in as a travel podcast.

You'll appreciate that as a pilot. You'll appreciate this.

So flying again, second time this year on a 7 47, which again, I'm still shocked they're in existence, but whatever, 7 47 coming into Singapore, gliding in nicely.

And I'm like, like we're just hovering.

Like we're at that point we're like, we're just hovering above the ground and you're just waiting for 'em to kind of pull the throttle back to just get the, get the wheels down, whatever.

And I'm like, man, a lot of, a lot of airport has gone by in the window.

Like we're, this must be a long runway and then the rear wheels touch.

And I was like, all right, I guess we're good.

And then no sooner do the rear wheels touch.

Does the guy just absolutely Matt the throttle and pull out and we do a touch and go and have to pull off, pull up again.

'cause there was just a massive tailwind that the guy was, he was like zero throttle and just, we were just not falling.

And so we had to go and we did a touch and go into 7 47, which I thought was kind of fun.

I wouldn't think that'd be that fun.

I mean, I'm sure he was panicking a little bit, but I thought it was kind of cool.

No, I mean, what's the worst that can happen?

What's, what's funny, what's funny about jets, well passenger jets is, um, you would think, well they are 100 per, they're 99% more capable than general aviation propeller airplanes in all conditions except one.

And that's go around really?

Um, because not, not because, um, they're lacking thrust and lift and capability and performance and everything.

But there's such a, there's such a delay in terms of when they like go full juice right to the turbine spinning up to them actually generating thrust to then creating enough thrust and such to relift off and everything.

I bet from the time he decided to go around to the time you were in the air was a solid, like pushing 10 seconds.

Whereas on a prop plane you just hammer it and it like sorts itself out.

'cause it's immediate throttle and immediate propeller thing in your back in the air. That is,

That is so interesting because I Prefer not knowing That IKI kind of thought that was sort of how it worked.

Mm-hmm . In the sense

that I didn't think the throttle response was like super immediate.

Oh, no, no.

But I remember thinking like, I was floored that as soon as it felt like from in the plane, they made the decision to go back up.

It was ama it was, I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe how quickly that thing accelerated.

I mean, it's a jumbo jet. No.

So they would've gone, it's massive gone.

They would've gone like from 40%, let's call it to a hundred and then they would've been watching like the, the revs.

It's not revs, but the revs go up and it would've been building, it would've been like ball.

It's almost like, it's almost like they made that commitment before we even touched the rear wheels down.

But we were still like, ah, we've committed to this.

And he is just kinda like wheeling the thing.

Yeah, because the front never touched.

Yeah, that's like wheeling up the runways.

Wind, wind shear is a really bad thing for jets.

Um, and they've got wor they've got weather systems and now will have a warning and the planes have a wind shear detection in it because passenger jet have crashed on arrival with nothing wrong with them because the wind will go from being a headwind to a tailwind as you're dropping through an altitude layer.

And because of this phenomenon of a turbine engine, it can't recover fast enough.

Whereas when you're in a, When you're a plane, this's fun.

This is cool to know all this. Now

When you're being a non-urban plane, wind shear doesn't really matter.

It'll be bumpy or whatever, but if you had to get out of it, like I said, there's an instant kind of climb out performance whereas on a jet there isn't. So sorry

You say climax performance Clx out, but also, Okay.

Yeah, That's what I Heard.

What would you tell about climax performance?

Okay guys, we had a comment on our YouTube that I sent you guys yesterday complaining about us spending too long talking about soup.

And he was very clear that that's not why he's here.

Uh, he's here to listen to us talk racing.

So any good soups lately?

I mean, you know, I don't like soup, so I gotta say no on that.

It's a no from me dog.

Was this Brad from Brownsburg or Avon or Whoever?

I was somebody on the thing. I sent it to you guys. Hmm.

I feel like out, out of anger for that, I went and had a french onion soup at the farmer's market just to like have some soup to talk about My, what Are our feelings? Burn

Your mouth.

My in-laws had a french onion soup in Italy that was the thickest meatiest french onion soup I've ever seen.

It was a meal by the time their mains came, they just packed 'em up and took 'em home because the french onion soup Pool. That sounds like a good

Meal.

I mean, if you liked soup, it sounded like a nice program.

Uh, it's not my thing, so I wasn't all about it.

But yeah, they, there's a great french onion soup meal meal at a little Italian restaurant in, I don't know, somewhere Italy.

Anyway, uh, that's, that's all the soup talk we have time for Alex, you don't have any soup? No soup to talk about.

So in the actual racing world, uh, there was some news, uh, that has emerged.

First and foremost, Dennis Hauger, who won the Indie Lights slash Next championship, uh, within Dre this year is confirmed with Delco racing, which is great.

I mean, another example of, you know, a young driver coming out of, uh, Indy next and getting straight into the big show full season, uh, as well as an andretti technical partnership with them.

So clearly still some ties between Hauger and the Andretti Squad.

Um, which is cool, man, I'm excited, I'm excited to see what he can do behind the wheel of an IndyCar because I feel like in the last, you know, 10 years we've seen some drivers come outta lights that were dominant in lights and kind of struggled with the transition up.

And I feel like we've seen some drivers that were decent in lights, but maybe not the complete headline sort of guys that got into the big cars and like something just sort of clicked and we saw some really good performances.

Yeah. Um, who knows, who knows?

I'm, I'm glad that, you know, we've talked a lot about this show or a lot on this show about the road to Indy.

Um, a lot of our guests have talked about the road to Indy and, and what an amazing program it is and how it's unlike anything else on the planet really.

Um, and there was a couple years there where, you know, it was really successful in getting guys from let's say carts to lights, but then the step from lights to Indy car, it wasn't really happening.

And it seems that the past couple years, you know, the guys that have won the Lights Championship have gotten the opportunities in IndyCar and it's really making the road to Indy the complete pathway that it was set out to be.

So credit to everyone, um, involved in that for making that what it is.

Because it would've been really sad if someone like Hager after the performances that he had in 2025 wasn't able to make the step for, you know, reason X, Y, and Z.

So that's great. The technical partnership thing.

You know, I think, I'm not saying this because I'm, I'm driving for a team that doesn't have one.

Um, because I had the same opinion at McLaren and quite frankly I had the same opinion at Andretti.

The technical partnerships are getting a little annoying, um, because I just, I I don't, I don't know, I don't know what it is benefiting, um, aside from, well, I know exactly what is benefiting, it's benefiting one guy's bank account and it's benefiting another team's performance.

But in terms of the series, you know, Formula One, it seem like two pretty Good things has the Formula One has, you know, kind of a, a stance on this.

The, the Toroso Red Bull relationship has always been in a gray area.

Um, the hos Ferrari relationship was always a little bit in a gray area.

I just, I I'm, what do you think about it, James?

Like, it, it seems that it's getting a little bit outta hand, um, because now quite frankly, you've got quite can askia with a B team.

You've got Penske with the B team, you've got Andretti with the B team.

So you've got the three, the three heavy hitter teams all with subsidiary teams.

Is that a good thing?

Is that a bad thing or is that a thing that is completely irrelevant from someone that is commentating on the series and for our fan base, Et cetera?

That is a great question.

That is a, that's a very good question.

I guess I, let me, let me answer it by countering with a question.

In saying that, do you think that technical partnerships, Allah, Anasi and Shank, Ella Penske and Foyt Ella, uh, Andretti and, and Dale Coin, do you think that they have a massive, or let's call it, let's not let's call it a meaningful, um, impact on the, you know, I not to use the term in like a, in a bad way, but like the, in the B team's performance.

Do you, do you think that it's to the point where those teams are performing at a level that they would otherwise not be without that technical partnership?

Well, I think it's certainly allowing those teams to do that, yes.

Um, I don't think there's any evidence contrary to that.

Um, and, and where, where, it's weird for me, and this is coming from a non-competitor standpoint.

This is me taking a step back saying I'm not driving against said cars, is, there was a very clear direction from IndyCar in terms of the future of the series of having teams that brought, um, a certain level of quality and commitment to the championship.

Um, and they were rewarded with a charter, right?

We've seen the rumors that have come out regarding Prema as of late.

Um, and you know, there are potential future in the series all kind of being linked to, to big spend for not any really guarantee of anything because you don't have a charter, right?

Because we've talked about the charter and the value of a race team without a charter is purely just the equipment that you have, which is whatever the value of that equipment is.

It could be 10 cents on the dollar, it could be 20 cents on dollar or whatever.

It's right. So IndyCar took a very hard

and fast stance that we wanna have 27 charters, we wanna have it limited to three charters per team, and we want it to be about the quality of the teams and the people that have been here through the thick and thin.

We wanna reward them for that.

I'm just wondering, by making it so that the big teams are having now an influence on the small teams or on a select amount of small teams, is that really bringing the best organizations into the field for these charter programs?

That's my only question because, you know, I, and I'm speaking only from, I don't know how the current systems are set up.

I, all I know is that when the technical partnership existed between Andretti and Shank, you know, all of those engineers and such were Andretti employees, right?

Those weren't actually Shank engineers, they were Shank mechanics, but they were, they were Andretti employees, right?

So that, that IP is still being kept in house at Andretti.

So when Andretti decides to leave, if Shank doesn't find another suitable replacement, which they did in GSI Shank is is going to take, its, you would imagine a step down, right?

Because even though they've been in the championship for the past two or three years, they haven't been developing their own stuff and their own things.

You know, we've, we've heard about the Foy relationship, if it were to end all of the good stuff that was brought over would go away, right?

It's not like you, you pay, you know, for the technical support for a year and then that's, you know, IP that you get to keep, you're just basically renting the services of that big team, right?

So that's, that's my only caveat to it is is is it really bringing up all of the teams into the level that that IndyCar is wanting?

So your argument, you, sorry, your position on it is more that those teams are so beholden to the whim of the, the A teams in terms of whether or not that they continue on those partnerships that it's not really bringing the team to a higher level.

My my my only point is, and it's just an argument, right, is you've got Prema, right, who is invested, a huge amount of capital has brought in people from overseas has really tried to figure out how to go IndyCar racing and make Indy cars go fast.

And that's a very hard thing to do from the European way of racing.

We saw it with Carlin, we saw the struggle that that was, we've seen it in the past, right?

And Prema was no exception, albeit for going on pole for the Indianapolis 500.

So Prema, if they were to leave the championship, let's say, and if they were to leave the championship because they weren't able to have a charter and have a guarantee of a future earnings in the sport, right?

Let's say those things happened and it was because there was a team that was existing and they were basically renting performance.

Is that, is that right?

Is my only question because Primo went about, and I'm not saying there's a right or a wrong way.

I'm saying they went about it to the traditional way, right?

And are not being guaranteed or rewarded anything.

Meanwhile, teams are going about it the non-traditional way.

It's the very efficient way.

If I was a team owner, I'd probably do the exact same thing because hundred percent.

If I could spend X amount of millions of dollars and have instant performance with another team's 15 years developed ip, of course I'm gonna do that.

But is that, is that really elevating the championship?

So the, the two points I'll make, and again, not necessarily in support or or opposition to, but it's just the two sort of points to I think keep in consideration anything that condenses the field from a performance standpoint is good for the sport globally, right?

Because you're increasing competition.

So if you've got Dale coin racing that is normally a second off the pace of Andretti and now all of a sudden with the same equipment, you know, sorry, with some shared engineering prowess Yeah.

We bring that down to four-tenths that brings more people into the mix and essentially in theory makes the racing tighter and better.

So you could argue that that helps the championship in a global sense, right?

From the, the, the prema example is a good one in terms of the charter program.

But I think the caveat to that is you've got a team like Dale who maybe doesn't have the, the resources or has never had the resource that Prema did getting going, but has put in, you know, 35 years or whatever of, of blood sweat, tears and cash into the series.

So fine, he's now trying to increase the performance of his team through this per the rules currently totally legitimate way.

Are you saying that he's not as, uh, deserving of a charter because he is doing that?

When you look at the fact that he's put in 35 years of being in the series versus prema that's shown up in year one.

No. Spent a bunch of money. Sure.

But are they more deserving than a guy that's been here for three decades?

That's a, that's a no, and that's a very valid point.

I, I would say my only then rebuttal to that is Dale, this partnership is alleged to be only one car and it's only alleged to be the Hogger car because Dennis is under some sort of further longer term relationship Umbrella agreements you have No idea about, right?

Right. So you're gonna have, you're gonna have one car

that is adding to the competition and then you're gonna have another car, which in theory will be quite a bit different.

And so for whatever driver that gets in that car, whether that's um, a guy that finished second place in indie lights or third place IND lights or someone from App two or wherever, right?

In the sports cars, whoever Former F1 guy That's gonna, that, that's not a really good situation to have because then you're having a rookie, right?

Having all of this support of a bigger team and in under the same umbrella you're having a rookie that can have very, um, drastically different fortunes because they're with the original Dale Coin racing team, right?

Which in some, in, in some respects is phenomenal.

Like you look at what they did this year, they beat me in the championship.

So it's not saying anything against Dale Quinn racing.

All I'm saying is you're, we're starting to really muddy the waters here in terms of teams aren't allowed to have more than three charters per the rules.

So what they are now doing is they're basically buying cars at other teams.

They're not even doing it for whole teams and having whole B teams.

They're just buying individual cars to place their drivers because they don't wanna lose them.

But it's under different umbrellas and branding and it's just, it's getting, I feel like it's heading in a direction that gets messy and does hurt the integrity of the whole system that was designed.

Yeah, I don't, I don't disagree with that.

I think for me, the one thing that is glaringly, you know, standout in this is that having a different number of cars allowed in the field than charters seems fundamentally flawed.

It's, it's different in NASCAR when teams and, or sorry, I guess tracks can accommodate more than what the charter number is, but like if we just went to 26 charters and only 26 cars allowed to enter any given race, we'd eliminate some of that problem.

You could tackle the technical partnerships a different way, but like having 25 charters, but allowing 27 cars to show up to a race and start a race so you could potentially have 29 cars show up, but only 27 start, but only 25 have charter.

That whole thing seems so convoluted and messy to me.

I think we should pick 26, make it 26 charters, 26 cars chart every race outside Indy and let's actually create some value to owning one of those charters.

'cause right now you can spend all this money like Prima did without any guarantee that you're gonna be in races if someone else shows out.

Like the whole thing just seems a little bit, you know, this isn't the, this isn't the days of like usac when it's run what you brung and everybody shows up and tries to make the field like we're not there anymore.

Hi Kelly. And I just, I dunno, I just, I just,

I still think it seems flawed for us with the current landscape of any car to have different numbers of charters or whatever they're called and potential starters, you know what I mean? But yeah, say

Yeah, I, I just, yeah, I, to end on this, I just think that the, it was always cool, it was always really cool in IndyCar.

It, the IndyCar I grew up watching was the Dale coin stories, right?

Of this semi's barbecue, underperforming, underfunded, car boy Scouts of America car, whatever, right?

They would show up and, and every once in a while would smack it on the podium or would win a race or would do Whatever.

Justin Wilson in a Dale Cohen car beating Ryan Briscoe and Aki Watkins Glen.

Exactly. And now,

and now for the most part, that ex exists.

That doesn't exist. I mean ob so

because truly now there is Juncos, Hollinger, ECR, Ray Hall and McLaren, those are the only teams left in the championship that are independent.

Everyone else is all linked up together.

So it's, you don't have the same, in my mind, storylines that can develop.

And it's just a little bit, it's a little weird, but maybe that's just the future of the series.

Maybe at one point everyone's gonna be linked up and that'll be what we have.

Juncos and McLaren did try and do a, a thing but didn't really work out too well.

Yeah, it's more of a commercially Yeah, you're right, you're right.

Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting.

It'd be interesting if it was kind of positioned that those sort of technical partnerships can't exist anymore.

I wouldn't necessarily be against that.

'cause yeah, I think that's kind of the, the nature of the sport.

Um, but like you say, that's a good thing, good place to end because we are over time now.

So, uh, thanks for listening.

We'll cover Nashville next week and, um, have fun in England slash paris slash England and I'll have fun in Singapore slash Singapore slash Singapore.

And Tim, you know, whatever. Have fun or don't.

I don't really. I don't really care. Happy

Birthday, Larry.

I'll say that. You're

Larry, Happy birthday, Larry.

Oh, happy birthday, Larry. Yeah, that's, that's good news.

Happy birthday to Larry. Appreciate your pal.

This has been off track with Hinch and Rossi.

Off track is part of the SiriusXM Sports Podcast network.

If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, please give a five star rating and leave a review.

Subscribe today, wherever you stream your podcasts.

We are at Ask Off Track on Twitter and Instagram.

And if you wanna follow us on Twitter, we're at Hinch Town and at Alexander Rossi.

If you wanna follow them though, we have no idea why you would.

He's at the Tim Durham on Twitter.

Find us on YouTube and subscribe to our channel for exclusive video content.

Off Track is produced by Tim Durham, and by that we mean fi.

Hinch's Test & Alliances

About this episode

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

More from Off Track with Hinch and Rossi