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This is off track.
I know you put money on Splendido or whatever.
s Pandora, Same thing.
It's not. Splendido is a different horse.
I won my first bet at the Breeder's Cup and then lost my next 67 bets.
Hello. Welcome to Off Track with Generos Rossi, where yes,
the boys are gonna recap their Breeders Cup experience, which I think Tim just summarized quite nicely.
Uh, also sounds like most people's football bets this week, uh, based on the people I was hanging out with.
So guys, hello. First of all,
Who are you hanging from?
Home Welcome with Bet's on Football, Fish and Depu and Connor.
Oh, yeah. They're not very
Good.
I don't, I'm not like a, I I'm not a Sportsbet.
It helps that LA or California doesn't have apps that let you Sports bet. Yeah,
You would, you would be Otherwise I the point, I was literally in, in the process of making I feel like .
Um, but yeah, Tim, You would totally bet a ton if you lived somewhere that it could let you do It. .
Yeah. Um, , I don't know if I, I don't if I can go back
to horse horse race betting though.
This is my first time doing it. I lost so much.
I feel like I just, I don't think I can do it ever again. So
You won your first bet?
Mm-hmm . See, that's also what happened to me
with my first horse race bet.
And then I just never bet on horses again.
See, that's the way I should have done it. Yeah.
Now, don't get me wrong, I had a great time.
It's Tuesday morning. We went Saturday.
I'm still a little hungover.
I haven't had anything to drink Sunday or Monday. like,
Alright, well let's, let's, Tim, let's hear all about it.
Tim did, uh, Tim did one of his events.
You know, it's, uh, did he Fall asleep sitting upright, holding a drink?
Pretty much. Pretty much.
He was pretty, he was pretty sleepy at dinner, but he didn't fall asleep at dinner.
But, uh, we got back to the hotel.
Um, keep in mind we were in California.
We had a 6 45 dinner reservation.
So we were probably done with dinner around 7 45.
Um, we got back to the hotel, Hotel.
Wait, is this, this is Saturday night.
Mm-hmm . Saturday night, got back hotel, post event.
Post event. Got back to the hotel at eight
and we were like in the top of the fifth, no, probably top of the seventh of game seven of the World Series.
Mm-hmm . And went back to the room
and it was like, this is, this is incredible. And Tim, we had
Almost a full pizza still from dinner that we were like, we're gonna go back to the room, watch the game and eat. That's
Not, not we.
Anyways, you, I tried to keep you up and wake you up and tell you to pay attention.
And all you kept saying was, I don't give a about baseball.
i's true. Don't care. I couldn't care less.
Stop bothering me about it's all true.
And I'm like, this is game seven of the World Series.
It's in extra innings. Like, this is awesome. Stay awake.
It's eight 30. Anyways, he did not.
Um, well, we had a great time. I had a great time.
Did the Jays win? Um,
I hate you Tim.
You did not. I hate you so much. You did not. Did not.
Because did you know that they didn't?
We've already spoken about it this morning before we started recording.
That was mean, that was cruel. And it was unusual.
That's, and it was me.
Here's, here's the thing.
I, um, I, I never, I never was into baseball. Mm-hmm .
Um, we have a very good friend who's super into baseball.
I never could really get behind it.
Um, I found myself falling in love Play.
Sorry, was the very good friend who's super into baseball.
Are you talking about George Steinbrenner the fourth?
Yeah. Yeah. He likes it. How'd
He get into it?
I fell in love with playoff baseball and the Blue Jays and I feel like I could, I can be a fan of the Blue Jays because I'm, I'm married to a Canadian and most of the people in my life are Canadian.
So I feel like it's acceptable to be a fan of the Blue Jays. So yes, I'm
Currently, 'cause like, but I've never watched a baseball game before, so it's not like, I don't know.
I had allegiances to other teams. Right.
Like, I've never even been to a base. That's not true.
I've been to three innings of a baseball game.
Um, were you throwing first pitch? I was,
yeah. ,
um, dude, look that while we're on the topic, we'll get back to Breeder's Cup.
But while we're talking about the World Series, that was one of the most electric series that has happened in a long time. And I'll openly
Admit, so I asked this question and everyone was like, no, no, it's usually like this, like playoff baseball.
Like regular season baseball's, dumb Playoff sports, right?
Like everything levels up. Play off hockey.
Well, maybe not football, football seems like it's, if it's a good game, it's a good game.
But like playoff, hockey's a different level.
Playoff baseball is a different level for sure.
Um, playoff nascar, we'll get to that.
Um, anyway, I, so, you know, I grew up in the Toronto area.
My family had season tickets to the Jays.
We used to go to 20 games a year and I loved it as a kid.
We were there for, you know, not like in the stadium.
The parents took the tickets when they were in the World Series.
I went to a World Series game, um, you know, when I was a kid, loved the team, loved everything.
And honestly what happened for me was, I don't you, I dunno if you know this, Alex, in 1994, there was a player strike and baseball didn't run for a year.
So the Jays won the championship in 92 and 93, the World Series in 92, 93.
And then baseball stopped.
And when we came back a year later, everything was different.
We weren't as good. And the,
the whole strike put a sour taste in a lot of people's mouth and they kind of turned 'em off baseball.
And, and I was just kind of one of 'em.
It was also right around the time I discovered go-karting.
And so a lot of my priorities changed.
I kind of fell out of love with baseball for a while.
And I guess a little shamefully it took, the Jays getting really good for me to kind of get back there.
But this, this off season, sorry, this playoff season has really made me fall back in love.
Not just with the Js but with baseball.
Like, I understand the game now so much more than I did as a kid in, in my career.
I got to meet a bunch of players and being friends with them, I've learned more about the game anyway.
And so now having kind of like a reason to watch and an understanding of what I'm watching has made the whole thing a lot more fun.
So I'm, I'm back man base.
This World Series got me like back in love with baseball and I am all on board.
Um, again, 162 games is way too many games.
I'm not gonna pretend like I'm gonna watch all those, but, uh, I'm definitely gonna be paying more attention and supporting the team in a huge way.
And I am happy about that 'cause it really brings Canada together.
And I include you in that. Alex,
as an honor Canadian. Thanks man. Thanks
Man.
You, no, you brought up a good point when we were together the other night where like, it does bring Canada together because there's, there's one team, right?
You look at Canada as a country and there's a bunch of hockey teams and everything, but you can be on the west coast of Vancouver and see someone wearing a Jay's hat and be like, wait a second.
And then realize, oh wait, yeah, no, you cheer for them too because you're in Canada, right?
Um, so no, this is like a Toronto guy that's in Vancouver, that's a Vancouver guy who just loves the, the Jay's. Yeah.
And I, and I also just, um, I thought the storyline was cool.
You know, you've got the Dodgers, which are the, the benchmark of everything, right?
And the pen spend money of baseball and they, they have, you know, the, the highest profile players and they've got all of the pedigree and everything.
And then you have the Jays who maybe were this team that was supposed to get blown out and it was this kind of David versus Goliath story and it came down to Extra Indians of, of Game seven, which is just why it was Yeah, that you're right.
That's why it was such an electric series is 'cause the backstory of the teams.
It wasn't Dodgers Yankees, right?
It was, it was Dodgers, blue Jays who, who have had a, a drought for a while.
Anyways, um, very cool, uh, loved it.
Breeder's Cup. Quick summary, um,
with all this, I wish I would've seen it.
You should have kept me up. Okay, Tim. Alright.
So Breeder's Cup, your horse was not there.
My horse was not there.
Um, but it was, it was very cool because there was a lot of, there was a lot of storylines going into it.
Um, so the, the Breeder's Cup classic, the main race, um, you had the returning podium finish from last year.
You had, um, the, going into the event you had essentially a, a horse that was unbeatable, um, who unfortunately was scratched, um, by the vets going into the race.
And, and this was kind of a, a big topic of discussion and there's, there's two sides to it.
Um, and I'm, I'm firmly on one side.
So for the past five-ish years, um, horse racing has, has taken a, a huge step in initiative in protecting the horses.
Um, because there was a period of time where horses can't talk, right?
So even if a horse what they can now, no.
But even if a horse appeared to be normal, um, and with all of the money and, and the stakes that are on the line for, for everyone, uh, trainers, owners, jockeys, et cetera, um, there was incidents that were happening and, and horses, when they get injured, like you don't, you, you don't really fix 'em, right?
If a right, if a horse breaks its leg, it's, it's, it's kind of a, a life altering situation.
And so there was, um, introduced was independent vets, um, into the sport where every single day, every single horse is evaluated by independent vets.
And that involves blood work.
That involves visually watching them behave in their stall and walking around.
It involves scans on their legs and everything.
And it is to, they have to sign a, basically approval for them to go race.
Well the main, the, the big daddy horse, his name was Sovereignty, he was the, the heavy favorite.
He had beaten everyone.
He was a, he won the derby, I believe.
Um, so he was he the right horse?
And he had a fever when he arrived in Del Mar, um, from, from Kentucky I believe.
And this was three days before the race.
And it was just a fever. He was acting completely fine.
He was eating. That's a big sign of whether a horse is sick
or not, is, you know, if they've stopped eating or whatever, he was behaving fine, eating fine fever, blood work was ran.
He had a small, like cold, essentially like a small infection.
And they pulled it and they're like, absolutely not.
Um, and that came under a lot of scrutiny because it was like this, this horse could run because he's not, he has a cold, there's a lot of athletes that perform just fine with a cold and his fever had reduced by the time the race came around and they didn't let him run.
And I think that that is an incredible stance.
Obviously if I was an owner of that horse or the trainer of that horse, would I feel that way?
Probably not. But I think ultimately
in these situations you have to have a black and white sort of line.
And there's no gray area.
It's like the horse either meets the requirements and, and the health conditions at the timeline that we specify or he doesn't.
Right? There's no judgment call made by someone.
It's yes or no. And are there
still incidents in horse racing?
Of course. But has it gone down drastically? It has.
And I think that that's just a really good thing that takes a lot of effort, um, to, to actually execute and and protect the animals.
So anyways, um, just wanted to get that out there.
Otherwise it was an amazing event.
The horse that won was, um, a horse from Japan who, uh, finished third in the race last year in the Breeders Cup.
But everyone kind of thought he was a little bit robbed.
He finished second in the derby.
He's been like kind of there thereabouts and grade one stakes races.
Um, but like a Japanese horses had never really been able to break through on the US stage for whatever reason.
And so Japanese horse won a Japanese pitcher, won a Japanese hitter.
It was big day for Japan. Uh, big weekend for Japan. Yeah.
So, um, big sports, a very cool event. We had a great time.
Tim got introduced to horse racing and all in all it was, I got to see my favorite horse run in his last race.
Um, he's off to stud and, and have his retirement.
Who's that? Which is cool. His name is Fierceness.
He is fierceness second most successful three-year-old Colt in US horse racing history After Sea Biscuit. Um,
No, after I think Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leone. Hmm. So not the country.
Jokes aside from me earlier. I had a blast.
It was really cool. Thank you again, Alex, for including me.
It was this awesome event, great weekend.
We had a good Halloween with Hazel.
Got to meet Elizabeth Banks and Brian Baumgartner from the office.
It was, uh, yeah, it was really cool.
I wanna touch on that for a sec.
So you were introduced to this woman in your area, I guess wherever you guys were hanging out and You started, he just, he was just talking to p random people and then he turned to me.
He was like, I think that's Elizabeth Banks. And I said, which
I didn't realize until she started talking 'cause she was wearing big glasses.
Like I was just talking to the people around us, which really I think annoyed Alex throughout the day.
Well, he's a big fan of talking to strangers.
We know that. Um, so you're just talking to random people.
One of them happens to be Elizabeth Banks, you find out after initiating conversation.
Um, I'm just wondering if it was as, I guess you realized it this time, I, I just, I always bring this back to your time where you tried to pick up Lady Gaga at a bar, not knowing she was Lady Gaga .
Yeah. That was less that,
that it was just general actual conversation about, about the ponies.
Right. About the ponies .
And uh, and then you just sort of established that she was Elizabeth Banks.
Did you ever like, corroborate it?
Did you say like, Hey, you look Yeah, familiar.
So I will I go to Alex?
I was like, pretty sure that girl I've been talking to is Elizabeth Banks.
He was like, yes, that would make sense given the context of where we are right now mm-hmm .
And I was like, okay, is it okay for somewhere like here for me to ask her for a photo?
Mm-hmm . And he was like, he thought about it, he goes,
wait till after this race.
So after the race, and she's there with like a group right.
Including her dad who I'm now talking to.
And I was just like, Hey, weird question.
Are you Elizabeth Banks? And she was like, yes.
I was like, ah, cool. Could I have a photo ?
And she's like, of course.
And then, but that like, but I sh obviously I shouldn't have, right?
Because we had been talking for like 15 minutes and that just completely ended it.
That was just like that. And here are the last words.
We will speak to each other. Yeah.
Mm-hmm . But you got your photo.
Um, I did, I I was really hoping you were gonna say when she said, yes I am.
Good gig. If you can get it.
Oh, I should have, which famously you're lying to Lady Gaga, which you asked what she did for a living.
And she said, well, I'm Lady Gaga.
I'm sorry. Good Tim. Much funnier Tim in seriousness.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We were at an
after party at Indy and Yeah, yeah.
You're Hear the story. Sorry.
She, she went up to Yeah, you were busy.
She went up to the bar and Tim was also at the bar and I mean, she was like wearing uh, you know, black T-shirt and jean shorts.
Like she was just dressed like a normal person.
We did, we did numerous shots together, Right?
And so they were just chatting at the bar, ordering drinks.
And he got to the point where he was like, so what do you do for a living ?
And she goes, I'm leaving Kaka.
And typical then the, the horror sets in of what he's done and the mistake that he's made.
And he just goes, good gig.
If you can get it, have a good night.
Takes his drinks and walks off .
It's one of my five favorite Stories.
I told story so many times. I, I've told
that story numerous times on this podcast, , it's, It's still one of my favorites.
I don't, I don't listen to you, Tina doesn't listen to this podcast.
It's fair. Even while we're recording it.
Um, well good, I'm glad you guys had a, a fun weekend and, uh, congrats to who won again. Japan's
Uh, forever Young Forever Young great song. Um,
Halloween was also great.
Alex looked amazing in his costume. Well
Yeah.
'cause you couldn't see his face. Oh,
Exactly.
So here's a, here's, here's a funny story, James.
Okay. So I ordered a Halloween costume to mm-hmm .
Tim Taos because I I wasn't gonna travel with it, right, right.
And it was like, we're going trick or cheese.
So I was like, okay. So we'd run upstairs
and put our costume on.
I try for eight minutes to get the shirt on and I, I cannot, like, it is, it is far too small.
I ordered a large, I guess I needed an XXL Halloween costumes run small, the pants barely fit.
The pumpkin head was fine, but like the shirt didn't work.
And I was like, well I I all just wear the pumpkin head and normal clothes and like that's good enough.
We're just walking around the neighborhood.
It's not like some contest.
And um, before we were about to go out the door, I was like, Tim, you wouldn't, you wouldn't happen to have like anything that resembles this.
He was like, I might.
And the second drawer he opens is essentially the exact thing that I needed.
And I was like, of this is the only house of any of my friends that I could ever go to that yes could pull this off.
Yes. Yes. That is, uh, it
Did have a little bunny tail on the back of it though. Well,
But the front looked the same . Anyways,
There was nothing surprise to me about that.
It has nothing that surprised me about that.
Um, You know what I was thinking too, over the weekend, 'cause obviously we had daylight savings time here in the good old North America.
Well yeah. Kind of a how do we feel about it,
but b can we just talk about like how much harder it was to not miss the next day before all phones and clocks just changed themselves?
Like you had to be very aware that it was daylight savings time.
Make the conscious effort to reset your clock to the right time or set your ar your alarm for the appropriate hour earlier or later or whichever way it was going.
Not in this situation. You would just be,
be there aggressively early. Well
Say Yeah, but either way, right? Like
Right. I
Just wanna know who's still, Who's asking for this still, why are we still doing this?
We do need to, to stop this, but what do They even care anymore? I
Think so they just follow the sun regardless of what the time is.
No, because it, you're Growing stuff.
Times are the amount of, No, the amount of hours in the morning that would be in darkness otherwise.
'cause they gotta like have stuff out the door for deliveries by a certain time.
Right. And so when the days get shorter
by moving the time back, it allows them to have a bit more daylight in the morning. Public
Support for eliminating the practice is 62 to 74% of the US according to recent polling.
I would love if there are any farmers listening, if we have any farmer fans to chime in on this.
Uh, that's a hundred percent message.
Why it message Tim on Twitter? I would love to know if
that is accurate and if that is why we do it.
And also if you are still in support of it or if there are workarounds because it is a weird practice, um, in a lot of ways for a lot of reasons.
But hey, if, if you guys need it, it doesn't really actually affect me all that much.
So, or really anybody. It's just a minor inconvenience.
So if it actually has some real impact on the farming world, I say we keep it.
Um, I also was doing a lot of like, 'cause I've been home for like a week for the first time since May.
As you and I were talking about Alex longest stretch in my house.
And that amount of time leads to doing a little bit of like, you know, chores around the house and cleaning some stuff up and fixing some stuff or whatever.
So we go to Lowe's to buy some stuff to fix things around the house.
And then one of the things wasn't right, so you go back to Lowe's and you return it and you're like, cool, I'm getting X dollars back.
That feels nice. But then from the walk
to the return from the returns back to the exit, especially if you have Becky with you, you end up collecting a few more things and then when you go to check out again, you've now spent more than you returned and you're still net down.
And then we go home and something in that batch of things wasn't right.
So I got to go back to Lowe's again and return something and I was like, yay.
Money back until I walked back to the store and collected more stuff and left money down again.
It's quite a, quite a system they've got there.
But there's also something about like when you something and you get that money back, it is like having money you never had before.
It's, and I don't know what that is. It's like, because
I just Returned something from Amazon and it was like 85 bucks I didn't have, yeah, let's go out Because you had already committed that money, that money was gone.
You were never seeing it again. You didn't need it.
You had accepted that it was not something that you needed to survive and now it's just magically back and that's a cool feeling.
But yeah, then you go and spend even more and Can I return sports betting tickets?
You may not do that.
Oh, okay. Before we get to the NASCAR race, which
I think will be important, but it'll also be a somewhat lengthy discussion.
Uh, couple small things.
RLL announced that Cal Sagan and Brian Barnhart are leaving McLaren and heading over there, which is interesting.
Uh, Alex, you and I have both worked with certainly Brian directly.
Um, and you, was Kyle there when you were there?
Kyle was there when you were there, right? Mm-hmm . Yeah.
Mm-hmm . Didn't, yeah, it's gonna be, it's a good get for,
uh, RLLA lot of respect for both those guys.
A lot of, uh, a lot of years in the sport.
Obviously we've talked about Brian a lot on this show.
We've had Brian on this show.
Um, we've had Kyle on this show, haven't we? No.
Didn't meet Kyle on once to Talk about no Pit stop stuff.
I don't think so. Um, I I'm curious if it was a
package deal because it's, I don't know, it's weird for them both to leave McLaren and then immediately show up at the Same thing at the same place.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, which if it is fine.
Um, also there's a lot of people leaving McLaren.
It's, it's, it's kind of interesting, um, and I don't really know why, like my, my front end mechanic, um, for the two years that I was there, uh, was who was incredible and it was like on a fast track to become a crew chief.
Uh, got moved to the five car this past year, it was on the rear end and won a bunch of races and finished second in the championship.
And you would've thought that he thought racing was pretty cool, especially on the career trajectory that he was on.
And he's outta there.
Um, and you know, Kyle came on just in 2024 and he's already out of there.
Um, and I don't know, it's, it's a, it's an interesting one because, you know, we've talked about it a lot on the show.
It's, it's really hard to find people in, in IndyCar in all positions, engineers, mechanics, whatever, all positions except drivers.
It would seem and, um, excess of those.
And, uh, so because of that, teams do a like really try hard, um, to keep their people.
Now obviously, you know, people need to get let go or fired because of reasons X, Y, and Z.
But, but that wasn't the case here.
It was two people deciding that they wanted to change.
And it's just, it's hard to find replacements for people like a Kyle Sagan or a Brian Barnhart.
Um, so I don't know.
I I just find it, uh, a little bit of a weird one.
But also McLaren has the most depth in terms of personnel.
So if any team can afford to lose people, it's gonna be them.
And it seems like RL L's picking up a lot of people too.
It seems like they're adding to the roster.
Yeah, that's and that's true.
Um, you know, testing guys like Mick Schumacher, it seems like they're trying to make a, a big run for things. Yep. Um,
The other news was, uh, Olivier Boon who was Marcus's engineer, um, and Roma's engineer at Andretti, basically the 28 car engineer for the past four years, um, has left and gone to McLaren, um, to, to be in charge of their damper program to, to create a damper program, I think, uh, which is scary because McLaren does a lot of very good things and gets a lot of very good results being pretty far
behind on the damper program compared to other teams.
Mm-hmm . And so now if he's able
to impart some good andretti knowledge, uh, in this off season, that's gonna be, it's gonna be tough for everyone. But, uh, yeah, man,
If McLaren started doing really well on street courses now because they've got the, the trick damper program, Uh, that Andretti's had, that's, that's not good for everybody, um, except McLaren.
Um, and on the Andretti side, they announced that they resigned Kyle Kirkwood.
I don't think any big surprise there.
Uh, young man's been doing a great job team wants to make sure he's there for the long term.
So congrats Kyle on the New Deal. Multi-year.
Obviously there's no details about this, that or the other, but, um, not a super shocking one.
Uh, yeah, I think that's kind of IndyCar news.
So let's we go to nascar. Congrats Kyle Larson.
Kyle Larson won the championship.
Kyle Larson did not lead a single lap at Phoenix.
Denny Hamlin won or led over 200, was cruising to victory in both the race and the title battle until a caution was three to go forced in overtime pit stops happened.
Danny's crew chief made a call for four, or sorry, the 11 team made a call for four.
The five team made a call for two.
That track position gave Larson the advantage.
I think he finished third in the race, then he finished fifth in the race, restarting fifth and 10th and the championship.
It has brought up many questions.
It has been a interesting sort of four, eight hours in the NASCAR world.
Really more than that because it sort of goes back to Saturday night's.
Xfinity race, Connor Zi had, This is the bigger one for me.
It well, it's it is, but it's it's the same conversation, right?
So, so Connor zilch it isn't, it Isn't.
But, but let's, let's get into It.
Let's get into it. So Connor Zi had a, um,
once in a lifetime, once like once in a sporting history season in Xfinity, won like 10 races, won everything dominated, Not, not only won 10 races and dominated, he led every single metric.
Yes. Like highest starting position. Top top fives. Yeah.
Highest average finish running position.
Laps led everything, every single metric of the season it was him. Yeah.
Right. So you go to this format
and he's obviously in the championship four, and he just doesn't finish first of the guys and the, the dude that wins the championship, um, Jesse Love has had a fairly muted season enough obviously to get himself there, but in comparison to, to zic like nothing, it's very tough for people to wrap their heads around this to have a like hall of fame Xfinity season.
And yet you can't say that you're an Xfinity champion, doesn't really seem right.
I get that there is this whole concept of the playoffs of the underdog can still win, right?
But is motorsports the same as stick and ball sports in that case?
Is it a cool story that the little guy beat the big guy or is it a depressing story that the team and driver that performed absolutely top all season long consistently, maybe Phoenix just isn't their track.
And this is what's always bugged me about this system is when it comes down to one race, if you're just really good at, and it's always at the same track, I just don't, I just don't think that's right in racing.
I don't think that's right in motor sports.
The, the thing about the cup deal, and I'm curious to your point, so Kyle Larson under the old point system would've been the champion, I believe is what I understood from all the people on Twitter, right?
So they're like, so the right guy did win.
It's like, well if your defense of the playoffs is that, well, the guy who would've won in the old system won anyway, but the guy who should have won based on the playoff system didn't win.
But that's not true. I I, yeah. Okay.
Fine Racing, it's not happens and there's green race checkers and that happens all the time.
Racing is horrible.
And Kyle didn't win the championship on a technicality for something. No. Like
He made a good call, Kyle drove well, and Kyle, Kyle was leading the points.
Kyle beat him in the race.
You should not be a champion because you led 200 laps to the final race.
Like I wanted Denny to win. Like I would that that's a cool
Story.
Yeah. Emotionally, I think
a lot of people wanted Denny to win. And,
And so for two and a half hours you're watching on TV and you're like, oh my God, he's finally gonna do it.
This is amazing. And then he doesn't,
so the default is the playoff system sucks.
And it's like, well no, because Denny wasn't the Kyle of the series.
Denny, Denny wasn't ahead in the points on the old system.
Denny was like seventh, right?
So he was only in that position because he was good through the playoffs.
And so had it worked out, a lot of people would've been, I think excited for Denny because he would've been the people's champion.
And he's been so good for so long and so good at Daytona and has, has everything on his resume except a championship.
So people would've been pumped, right?
But that's not the right guy winning. Yeah, no,
I, you're right.
I i I don't actually disagree with that part.
I think he, there was definitely an emotional element for a lot of people because of Denny's story and, and everything for sure going into that race.
But it's still, it still kind of begs the que so, okay, so let's say that caution doesn't come out.
Denny does win, then all the Kyle Larson fans are like, well, Kyle would've won on normal points.
The playoff system's dumb.
The playoff system is really stupid.
And so that is, that is the point that needs to be made regardless of who won a championship or not.
And so this is it, right? This is kind of the, the,
the question that I, I posed to people on Twitter.
I did a poll and it was, you know, what is more important?
Because we did not know who the champion was gonna be until the last corner of the last lap.
In that sense, it created excitement, it created that, that game seven feeling, right?
Where the, the next pitch could end.
The game could end the series, right?
The next corner could determine the champion.
Is that what people want in Motors sports?
Or do you want to reward the team and driver that performed the best over the course of the however many race season your season is?
And if you look at the comments online, it's fairly overwhelming that while this attempt to keep it exciting down to the last race is good, in theory, most of the fans that replied to me, apparently Mark Martin had just done a similar uh, poll.
Someone else had done it as well, and it was ni it was like 92 to 8%.
Now, a few caveats in that one, most of my, the people that follow me on Twitter are race fans.
They're diehard race fans and they're gonna default to the more pure way of going racing.
I think that's a fair thing to, to kind of deduce for my fan base on Twitter.
The other thing is, is we can't see the data in terms of the TV viewership, um, in in, in terms of, 'cause I said, I said maybe this helps.
'cause the whole point was this was supposed to help keep people interested into the late part of the season, especially during football, whatever, whatever.
Mm-hmm . And everyone loved posting these things saying,
look at the steady decline of overall viewership since the playoffs were introduced.
Fine. You cannot know that
that wouldn't have been even worse if there wasn't a playoffs system. Yeah. I
Mean there's at the same time there's a steady increase of NFL viewership over those past six years since the playoffs have been introduced.
So, so that it's fair, that's a right, that's a messy metric.
I don't really, I don't really look into that one. Right.
Um, maybe the series, the networks, whatever, have some information we don't that shows if we didn't have, 'cause I'll be honest, man, I, I'm a very busy guy.
I don't have time to watch 36 NASCAR races.
I do love the sport, I respect everybody in it.
I follow it as best I can, but I do make an effort to tune in or at least try to catch the end of elimination races and the final race.
And if, if, if Larson had locked it up with three to go, I would've made no effort to watch Phoenix.
That's true. Because, you know,
I'm not a diehard single person guy that I'm, you know, rooting for week in and week out.
Yeah. So does it work?
Okay, interesting.
'cause I'm, I'm the complete opposite, you know, we're both race fans, we are both fair weather NASCAR fans.
Like, I'm gonna watch Daytona, I'm gonna watch Talladega, I'm gonna watch Bristol. Yeah.
Gonna watch, I watch five to eight a year.
Yes, exactly. I,
I intentionally tune out during the playoffs.
Um, not intentionally, but no, sorry, I subconsciously tune out during the playoffs because I don't like the gimmick.
Right? Right. Is it entertaining?
Sure, I can get entertainment this time of year from seemingly any sport now that I love baseball, right? .
And so I don't need my motor sport to fulfill that adrenaline.
What's gonna happen next, like this is fall.
You've got football, you've got, you've got the NBA season starting, you've got the World Series, you've got plenty of things to keep you interested from that standpoint.
Racing, and we've talked about this before and we don't, we don't need to get into the, the, the rhyme and reason why I don't believe it works, but, but stick and ball sports, you're, you're one-on-one essentially.
So you have to have a playoff format because it doesn't work otherwise in racing, you're having to beat 27 to 40 people every single week and every time you show up at the racetrack.
And that should be rewarded more than just beating another team.
And it, it, it's not, it's not apples to apples.
It's much harder to win a motor race than it's to win a football game.
I'm sorry. It is.
And so that, that performance from that entire organization throughout a season should not be undermined because of gimmicks.
And, and that's just, that's my point on it. Um, yeah, so
It's, there's a lot of, and again, I co I completely agree.
I'm not a fan of the playoffs. I think the, the team
that does the best over the season deserve the championship.
Motorsports is different than those other sports.
Um, one of the other things that was a, a common comment or common reply to your point was these quote unquote gimmicks that NASCAR have have added over the years.
Stage racing green, white checkers, like over time, all that stuff.
People don't even like those a lot more than I, I realized I didn't, I didn't understand, I don't think anyone like hated stage racing, right?
Yeah. It's dumb. I didn't think anybody
in the sport liked it.
I didn't realize that that fans watching at home were quite as passionate about it.
Green white checker. Again, I get the concept,
I get the idea behind the concept because fans also do like to bitch when races end. Caution.
I don't mind, I don't mind the overtime green, white checkered as much.
I think you could have ended that sentence a little earlier there, James fans like that bitch, Right?
That is true. And that's why, and that's
Twitter race.
That's not No, no, that's not, that's ev that's everything.
All fans like to give their opinions on things that usually comes across as complaint.
And so I think that, you know, NASCAR and any racer, any sport series, any, any, any league can't just, you know, listen to Twitter polls because again, people are emotional and not always rational in those moments.
But I think it's time to take a little bit of a look at it because even though there's a good argument, you know, like that the right guy won the championship in cup this year, there's no doubt that the wrong guy won no offense to him at all.
It's just like that was a generational season from Zillow, right?
Like everybody gets that, um, that there's a tweak.
So one of the proposed things is 'cause if, if there is data that supports that playoffs keep ratings, you know, higher than without them into the fall, how do you feel?
'cause I guess it used to just be the 10 race championship, essentially you'd get to the break point and then it was 10 races.
I think this is like, when it first started, it was then just like a 10 race run to the finish and then people could still wrap that up with more than one race to go.
I think Jimmy did that a couple times.
Um, so one of the things that was proposed was still eliminations, but rather than going to a a final single race, it'd be like three three and then a four race run with, you know, eight cars or whatever.
And best over those four is the champion, is that a, is that a compromise that you could get behind?
Is that a happy medium? I don't know.
Sure. Because I guess ultimately someone who sucked
or was average, that's, that's unfair.
I I'm not talking about Cup at this point.
I'm, I'm switching back to the Xfinity thing.
I don't think Jesse Love is even in the conversation at that point.
So yes, I think I I could be on board with that, but also I just, I don't who, who decides if, if the majority of people's polls on the internet, which is not a huge sample size, but it's a big enough sample size to get an opinion if the majority of people are like, this all sucks.
What is preventing NASCAR from just going back to just a traditional points coin system, I guess is my question.
Like why does it need thing need to be compromised? Only thing,
Only thing I can think is that they either have evidence or really strongly believe that the ratings would be even worse without it now. Yeah.
I mean, race series do know all Traditionally speaking.
Mm-hmm. The, the thing that I think is
almost overlooked in, in the whole thing is the, the bigger problem to me, and this is not a a NASCAR problem, this is a every bracing series, but Formula one problem is the drivers aren't stars.
Not the way they used to be. And
I mean, Ryan, What draws popular? Ryan Sweeney
There.
He he did that. Mm-hmm
That's impressive.
That's impressive. Most people don't
know who Ryan Blaney is.
Yeah, it's City Swee does. City Sweeney. Yeah.
Yes. That is cool. And Like more of the connection,
They're the cross pollination of, of motorsports people pop culture is, is good.
Um, they're not, they're, it's just not how it used to be.
And, and I know that all this series know that and I know that all the series are trying to, you know, all their marketing efforts are going towards it, but it's, they gotta think outside the box.
They gotta do something different 'cause it's not working.
And if you make people care about the drivers, they will tune in regardless of the time of year, regardless of whether there's a championship on the line or not, or someone's gonna get eliminated.
It's about making these guy stars. Right.
Great point. James F1
Is objectively boring.
The Poles sitter has won 70% of the races this year and it continues to grow because people are Leno nor fans or their max for Tapin fans or the Oscar Pache fans or the Louis Hamilton fans or their Charlotte la CLA fans or they George Russell fans.
Or it's really cool to watch an F1 race In person.
No, on television.
It looks so good and I will die on that hill.
Can you mean you have that on visually? It looks incredible.
It is. It is something that you turn it on
and whether you're paying attention or not, you can stare at it.
It's like the masters at Augusta, it's the most boring thing on earth, but you are looking at the visuals and you just, you can stare at it for an hour and a half because it's like that.
This is, this is great. You saying
Relaxing.
The tracks look good, everything's like painted well, the banners are everything.
Like well put together the Quality of the cameras, like it's all like super high hd.
Like it's just, it's pretty to look at and I think that goes a long way.
So yeah, for you it's not even that.
Like the cars are spectacular to watch around a track.
They are, but it, that's not, that's not the differentiator.
It's the quality of the, of the places.
It is how they make it look visually and every event looks like an event.
Alex's thumbs up, tell me that he agrees.
Um, yeah, it's interesting.
I, I don't, this conversation's come up a bunch in the last however many years since the playoffs started.
It does seem to be louder this year.
And I do think more of that honestly is because of what happened in Xfinity than Cup.
But the whole thing is being highlighted and it'll be very interesting to see if it leads to discussions in the off season and any changes for next year.
That said, uh, cup is done, which now means we are down to solely Formula one in terms of, uh, the racing that we cover.
I head to Brazil tomorrow.
Um, what do you got? What do you got on this weekend,
Boys?
Max, max by a million.
I'm going to Phoenix do some tire testing, which is gonna be wild to do tire testing right after 75,000 laps run there over the weekend.
Really weird time to choose to go tire testing.
Good point, but good point.
I'll let you know how it goes next week. Can't
Wait.
Can't wait. Tim, what are you up to this weekend? Got
A parent, Suay.
Okay, See you next week guys.
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