IndyCar in D.C., NASCAR Races in the Snow and Nissan Turns Over a New Leaf

Hello and welcome to the gas. We have a bad news, good news edition today. I'm Gary Gastlow.

This is the Gary and Alex show. And with me, of course, my cohost Alex Nunez Alex. I have

some unfortunate news to share with our listeners today. And is it that I'm fired? Well, that

would be fortunate news for some of them, I'm sure. But no, I have to issue the guest's

first correction. I'm somewhat mortified about this. A couple of weeks ago, you might remember

we were talking about the America 250 celebration. The USA is 250th anniversary. And in an effort

to sound fancy, I referred to it as the sesquicentennial because that's fancy Latin language sounds

pretty cool, right? Well, the other day I was in a car, I forget which one, and happened to notice

the license plate, which was from California, said sesquicentennial. I'm like, oh, that's

interesting. And then right next to it, it said 150th anniversary, which actually was in 2000,

but I guess they still have these plates. And I quickly realized that the correct term I should

have used was semi-quincentennial, sesquicentennial, one and a half centennials, semi-quincentennial,

half of 500 years. So really, I feel bad. I let you down because you're involved in this.

I disappointed our listeners. And the worst part about it, Alex, for me, I had a year of Latin

in college. And the one time I ever had to use it in my professional life, I blew it.

Gary, I'm just going to say it. All you ever had to say was America 250 and you'd have been good

to go. So it's true. It's water under the bridge. We're trying to sound smart. I'm not smart. I try

to pretend I am. I like to think I am. But I am not smart. Nevertheless, there's a lot going on with

the America 250. We didn't talk about it last week, but I forgot to mention, you know, Chevrolet's got

the new Stars and Steel collection. That's part of the celebration. A couple of different models

with some stickers and decals and such. They put one up for auction at the Barrett Jackson auction

in Scottsdale. It was a Corvette ZR1. Special edition. They're only going to build 250 of them.

This particular one had a couple of extra little touches on it. Cherry auction sold for $2.6 million.

I'll give you one guess who bought it. That would be Rick Hendrick.

Rick Hendrick, who buys pretty much every charity Chevrolet that goes up for auction,

has several million dollar Corvettes. Rick Hendrick's car collection is incredible,

and he does like having these Vin ones, especially. And especially when it comes to these Corvettes.

He's cool because while they do eventually end up in the private collection,

he often does put them on the floor of one of his showrooms in Charlotte. I know he actually got

the first ZR1 when that was built, and that was actually there, so people can come in and check

it out. I've not had the pleasure of seeing his private collection. I know people who have,

and my understanding is that it is a pretty awesome thing to see in person. Little surprised

they don't have it all as a museum, but I know that actually had some problems. I know Jay Leno's

got his great collection. He's just like, man, if I open this up at his museum, now I'm dealing with

all sorts of regulations and all that. I don't want to deal with any of that. So maybe Rick Hendrick

is thinking the same way, although video I've seen from inside of it looks like he's got a nice

set up there. Also on the subject we last week got confirmation that IndyCar is going to be

holding the Freedom 250 in Washington DC the weekend of August 21st, 23rd. This is going to be

street race held right in the middle of DC, right around the National Mall. The proposed layout's

going to run from Capitol Hill down to Lincoln Memorial and back. That's going to be four,

five miles, depending on how they finally set it up. Obviously President Trump pushing for this.

He's friends with Roger Penske made it happen. Look, I'm sure a lot of people are out there.

I know a lot of people are out there who don't like the optics of it. They think this is a

Britain circus thing and they're not fans of Trump. So now they're already saying bad things

about IndyCar for being involved in this. I don't think there's too many of those people though

in the big picture. I think this is going to be one of the biggest racing events in American history.

I'm with you. Also free IndyCar street race in DC. I mean, it's going to pull a ton of people.

These street races are fun. As long as you can still sort of get around easily. It can be

it can be dicey depending on the street circuit. But although with this, they're working with such

an enormous amount of space with that National Mall. I have a feeling it's going to be pretty

easy to get around. You might actually see the race itself so well. Street races you just never

do. It's about the scene. The cars go zipping by. But that's not what it's about. It's about the

scene. The street races. Listen, you find one spot where you can see the cars go by and hopefully

that where you can see one of the big monitors that's actually carrying the TV feed that allows

you to actually watch the race. I mean, the dirty secret for most races in person is you still see

it best on any of the 8 billion billboard monitors or auditions around the circuit. Not where you're

necessarily sitting. That's not a shot at it because the experience is great to be at a race

and you see it and you hear it and there's a ton of fun stuff. Listen, people are going to complain.

Whatever. Let them complain. I think it's going to be cool. It's going to be really interesting.

It's sort of unprecedented that you have a street race announced for a city that does not do street

races and it's just going to happen because they're just going to helicopter money all over this thing

to ensure that it happens. And it sounds like it's already coming into the teams. We saw

Graham Rahall on social media saying his phone is ringing off the hook with sponsors even more

than for the Indy 500, which is kind of astonishing to me. I'm going to be interested to see

where the paddock for this is because that's always a fun part of Indy car races going to

check out the garage and the paddock and all that, but also the layout of the track. There's the

potential for some enormously long straightaways here. The speed might be insane, depending on

how they finally put this thing together. But again, you mentioned free admission. I'm sure

there'll be some fancy VIP areas as well. The general admission will be free. Still will be

an incredible lift to get this thing done in the next seven months. Street races are hard enough

to organize, let alone the middle of a big city, let alone the middle of a city like you mentioned

doesn't usually hold races like this. Although I don't know if you remember this, but DC has had one

auto race before, not by them all, but 2002, the American Le Mans series, Imps's predecessor,

held the Cadillac Grand Prix of Washington DC over by RFK Stadium on the streets and the parking

lots over there. It was a one-off race. Definitely didn't have the cool backdrop. This one's going

to have, but right now RFK Stadium is being demolished and redeveloped. So they couldn't do

it over there, which I'm sure would have been a lot easier than trying to do it on the national

television product, which again, a huge consideration. It's going to look great. Just the same way

NASCAR when they raced on the streets of Chicago, awesome on TV. It's a big factor.

Yeah, and Fox was very involved in the announcement. They're certainly going to help set up the

track as well to get those great shots because that's really what it's going to be about,

getting the monuments and the buildings in the background. While that's a very big track,

NASCAR just kicked off its season on its smallest track on Wednesday night. Supposed to be on Sunday,

got snowed out, got pushed to Wednesday, but they still couldn't avoid the snow for the NASCAR.

Cookout clash at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem. This was a wild one. Not sure it went the way

they hoped. 200 lap race, first 100 laps were fine. Then the snow and sleet arrived. Not a big

dump, but enough to cause them to go to the wet weather tires and things definitely got wet and

wild for the rest of the race. Lots of contact, lots of yellow flags. It was a real mess. I feel

bad for the teams going to have to fix up a lot of these cars. Then they ran into trouble that

there were so many yellow flag laps that the car started running out of gas. Kyle Larson came in,

Chase Elliott came in. They don't even have pits at this race because it's too small. You got to

pull around back into the paddock. Then NASCAR just said, you know what? Everybody's going to come

in and get some gas because we're not going to make it to the end. The race went about an hour

longer than expected. At the end of it, Ryan Priest won. Maybe not a surprise. He came up through

Modified, has a lot of short track experience, has raced at Bowman Gray, probably more than anybody

else in the Cup Series. It was a very exciting win for him. Here's what he thought of the race.

I don't care what type of a race car driver you are. It's 35 degrees. You don't know where you need

to be for air pressure or adjustments or all these things. When they set these race cars up,

they're in for dry conditions. You work really hard to get to that level. There was a lot of

emotions there. Obviously, I'm on the good side of it right now. I'm extremely happy and proud

to have had this opportunity to be holding this trophy at a racetrack that I won here 12 years

ago or 10 years ago, whatever it was. This was part of that journey to be at the Cup level.

I've been doing this full time for the most part since 2019. I remember I was going to,

like, I'm not kidding. I was moving back to Connecticut or two years ago. The stars aligned

and this opportunity at RFK came about. I remember there was nights where I thought,

is this going to come together? Or am I just going to be another story where

it falls apart in the last second? I'm grateful that it happened.

Alex, I don't know. It was a spectacle, to be sure, but this being maybe one of the biggest

years in NASCAR history with all the new changes, the return of the chase, the end of the lawsuit,

all the fun stuff. Not sure this is the look they wanted to kick off the season on national TV.

So let me preface this by saying I did not watch one lap of the race. The entirety of my

monitoring of the situation of the race was basically Bob Pocrus on Twitter and texting

with you throughout the thing. So it sounded like it was a disaster. I also saw on the online

chatter, despite it being a bit of a disaster in some respects, people were still really happy

that this happened because people love seeing cop cars at Bowman Gray.

Yeah, it's fun when it works. This one was just sloppy.

It comes off. It almost makes the argument. It's like, just put the clash back if they tell them

what. NASCAR really starts in a week, whatever, a week and a half now.

Yeah, I liked when the clash was at Daytona. It was kind of a shake down before the season

actually started. Of course, Daytona is coming up next with Daytona Speed Weeks.

It's so awesome. It is, but it's only five days this year. I think it's about time to change that

name unless they bring the clash back next year, which I wouldn't be surprised after

how Bob and Gray went this year. I love Speed Weeks. The one time I was there for a lot of it,

if not the whole thing. And this is just sort of man on the ground stuff. But if you're there,

those days leading up to the 500, the Thunderbirds are practicing every day. So it's like

free show, all of that stuff that everybody looks forward to at Daytona. And when they do that fly

by, it's really amazing because they did multiple passes and it's super cool. But if you're there

in Daytona for Speed Weeks, those guys are overhead all the time. It's kind of fun.

All three series, of course, will be there. And as usual, we have NASCAR Truck Series news because

that is the hottest of the series this year. I'm telling you, man, trucks has a lot of juice

going into this season. Definitely this first race. We already got Tony Stewart coming back,

racing for color, racing and Ram. Travis Pastrana is going to be in the Nice Motorsports,

Chevrolet, and now his teammate is going to be Cletus McFarlane. Folks, if you don't know him,

I'm sure you do. He's one of the biggest YouTube motorsports and car guys owns his own racetrack

in Florida. Did some ARCA races last year. He's going to be doing some more this year. But having

him in this opening race, I know Fox loves this guy. He's on the air even when it wrecks out of

races. You can't finish the race. But that kind of star power for a truck series race

is really something else. And let's not forget Frankie Muniz coming back for another year. And

they are definitely promoting him. He's all over the place. He's in that new Dale Earnhardt

documentary that they've got going on Fox. Of course, the other new, the brand new

truck announcement for say Pete, where trucks is running as one of the support races for the

IndyCar kickoff weekend. We've got another big name shown up there, a big surprise name actually.

Yeah, not so much of a surprise when you hear the background, but it is Dario Frankchiti,

who is going to drive the number one. And this is something that unsurprisingly was sort of

nudged into existence by Jimmy Johnson, who is also going to drive that truck,

you know, this season. Those guys are buddies. Jimmy lives in the UK, you know, Jimmy and Dario.

If you saw last summer, it's like, you know, they were hanging out driving together,

racing at Goodwood, all that fun stuff. So we have another sort of big star, Dario Frankchiti,

three time, you know, Indy 500 winner, awesome guy, fun guy to watch, clearly enthused about doing

this, knows that knows that circuit very well, obviously, I think it's be a lot of fun. And

it's kind of cool that you're getting all of these sort of stars from outside of NASCAR,

you know, just jumping into trucks all over the place to have a little fun.

People may forget Dario Frankchiti spent much of 2008 racing in NASCAR in the Cup Series and

the Nationwide Series with Chip Ganassi racing. This was the year after he won his first Indy 500,

couldn't get a good sponsor for Indy. The following year decided to give NASCAR a shot,

if you could believe that, then went back to Indy and of course won two more Indy 500s,

ended his career there with four championships. Been a long time since he's been in any car,

you know, he had to retire in 2013 because of a concussion he suffered and trucks are very

different from Indy cars. So it's going to be interesting to see how well he does in his first

real competitive race since then. I think he'll do well. I mean, it's not like he hasn't been,

you know, racing, he's like I said, you'll see him show up at Goodwood and stuff like that running

vintage equipment. He was also one of the key development drivers for the Gordon Murray car.

So it's not like Dario has been sitting, you know, knitting sweaters, you know, the whole time

driving Frankchiti is more than capable of jumping in a race car and be fast.

Trucks on a street track going to be pretty interesting down there in St. Pete. But this

weekend we're going to be getting a look at a very different type of car when Cadillac reveals

its Formula One cars livery in a commercial during the Super Bowl, making a big deal about that.

They threw in some teasers out there with John F. Kennedy's speech about the moonshot Cadillac

definitely setting a high bar with this return not return with this entry into Formula One.

As part of this, the Cadillac Tommy Hill figure merchandise finally went on sale

yesterday. First day, all of the Checo Perez merch sold out. There's still some

Valtteri Bottas t-shirts and hats left, at least on the website. Yeah, it's pretty classy looking.

Tommy Hill figure stuff. They're definitely going for that American style. Have you yet to see the

cheesy racing gear? I would expect maybe some of that would be on the way or they just going to

What you're seeing with the merch is a lot of predominantly black, predominantly white.

The Hilfiger stuff adds that shot of color in some circumstances. One of the interesting

observations, a lot of women commenting back to the Cadillac Formula One X account saying

where is the women's line? Because there was not any sort of dedicated women's...

There's some in there. There's some. Maybe not as much as I think the demand was for.

But I found that interesting and to me that speaks to sort of one of the big differences

of Formula One driven by things like Drive to Survive. That audience is not, you cannot sort of

just segment it by, it's not just like an audience of dudes. It's a big mix as evidenced by immediate

feedback from women who wanted merch and couldn't get it. As for the big Super Bowl ad launch and

the installation they have in Times Square right now with the car in the box, the box is opaque

right now and it will become transparent after the ad or whatever. This is the sort of go big

or go home stuff that I think is completely warranted for a program like this. I mean costing

them fortune. A lot of the juice in Formula One is by doing big, visible stuff like this.

So I think that is smart. Frankly, yeah, I mean I feel like Cadillac could have been doing stuff

like this for product launches for a number of years. Every time they had something, you know,

cool to put out there or something that was culturally significant. But so here we are.

They're going to be in the thick of it. It's one of the few ads that I'm actually looking forward

to seeing. I haven't really seen a whole lot. Super Bowl is usually all this ad chatter. There's

interesting stuff, but this one seems like it's going to be a big one.

Do you think it matters how the team performs this year? I know they think

and have indicated they're planning on being competitive year one, which is usually pretty

remarkable for a new team, although we do have the new Formula and this is General Motors. It's

not some shady little startup Formula One team. They've got all the might of any company possible.

But do you think it's going to matter as far as the fans are concerned?

No, I don't think that.

Or do they get a pass for the first year?

Listen, I don't think it's going to matter that much. I think fans are,

A, excited that there's a new team in Cadillac there.

Clearly, the drivers have their own force of gravity around them that, like you saw,

the Czechos stuff sold out pretty much immediately. So do they want to perform well?

Of course they do. It's a racing team. Nobody that is in any form of racing doesn't want to

be fast and show up and be competitive. Does a lousy season, and I don't even want to

predict anything this early. We haven't seen anything. Everybody's running brand new equipment.

Does it impact anything like that? No, I really don't think it does.

All the teams sell merch, all the teams have following, and you're going to get coming off of

this a full season of Drive to Survive a year from now that has the Cadillac team and that whole

story, and I think that'll be compelling and actually pull more people in year two as they

sort of follow the sort of the introductory narrative of this new asset. I'm a little surprised

the other American team, Haas F1, hasn't pushed its promotions a little harder this year. They're

kind of giving Cadillac the stage. I know they really have been a pretty low-key team, but

they've been there a decade now. I feel like they could have turned it up a little bit this year to

almost get on Cadillac's coattails and make it up. Haas vs Cadillac kind of battle. Ford's obviously

in there as the engine supplier for Red Bull, but I don't know. I really don't understand what Haas's

interest in F1 is. I think it's a real B2B play for them selling Haas machines to all these

corporations that hang around F1. Formula One in general is a giant B2B play. It'd be hard to

argue that anyone is better at lining up these B2B sponsorship deals than McLaren.

That car is like a rolling billboard of every sort of B2B company on the face of the earth.

But yeah, Formula One is a hugely B2B-centric sport in terms of the partnerships and all that

stuff. That's what the spectacle is about. The scene at these races is there's a ton of deal

making happening and you can bring those clients in. It's very conducive to all that stuff.

We did some Ford news this week that's not F1 related. Nata, the big national automobile

dealers association events going on in Las Vegas. All the automakers, meaning with their

dealers there, having presentations, many of which are behind closed doors. Jim Farley was

out there talking to the Ford dealers and gave them an update on the $30,000 electric pickup.

Ford is planning on releasing next year and he released a few photos of it on social media,

not complete pictures of the pickup. Just a couple of crop shots, but we got to see a look at the

front. It's not a grille. It's got a flat panel. It's an electric car. Kind of a slopey hood from

what you could see from these crop shots. And a big part of the news is they're doing what they're

calling unit casting, what Tesla started as giga casting. Instead of having a hundred and

something parts for part of the vehicle, it uses two. They're just these giant pieces cast in

these huge machines, supposed to make it cheaper to build, easier to assemble, which also lowers

the price. They've got a pretty ambitious target here, $30,000 for a vehicle that's going to be made

in Kentucky. Ford doesn't have any vehicles that are priced less than $30,000 made in the United

States right now. It's cheapest one is the Ford Maverick that's made in Mexico and it's about

$30,000 once you throw in the delivery fees. This can be about the same size as that. Ford's put a

lot in this and you know we're seeing a lot of pullback from the electric car segment, but they're

at least for now full steam ahead on this, even as they killed the Ford F-150 Lighting and don't

really have anything else in the works except for this vehicle and then other vehicles that will

follow it on the platform. With affordability being the talk these days, what do you think,

$30,000 electric pickup or would you rather see Ford sell a $25,000 compact car?

I think if they can actually get it out the door for $30,000, it will find an audience. The pricing

is going to be everything on this, otherwise people are just going to buy Mavericks. Ford wins

either way in a sense there. Will they buy an EV pickup if it's $30,000? Again, it just might

if it's good. It's got to be good too, so we'll wait and see. Ford has sold as many Mavericks as

it can build. I'm actually surprised they haven't added another factory to increase production for

that yet. It's pretty wild how popular that is. I've tested a few recently. One of the big changes

this year was they added an all-wheel drive version of the Hybrid Maverick pickup that gets 37

miles per gallon. I've said it before, I think this is probably overall the best deal in cars

today. Although having a pickup is just different than having a car or an SUV. Got four people on

board, need a place for the luggage or the groceries. It's going in the bed, so that's

kind of sloppy and I'm not a big fan of that. I wish they had a SUV version of this at that price

with that kind of fuel economy. It's built on the same platform as the Bronco Sport,

but that's not available as a Hybrid and is a pretty tiny SUV. But I guess this is what the

plan on doing with this electric pickup, which is going to be about the same size as the Maverick,

and it's supposed to have a roomier interior even. Plus, under that hood, it's going to have a

frunk, so it does address that issue as well as far as carrying things around. As far as

affordability is concerned, Tesla's been cutting prices on some models even as it eliminated

the Model S and Model X. Last week, announced that last week, just announced a new all-wheel

drive version of the Tesla Model Y. It's bestseller on the bestseller cars in the world. $43,630,

$294 miles per charge. That's for an all-wheel drive model, the cheapest real-wheel drive

version of the Model Y, $41,000, so it's two grand less, and it's 321 miles of range. There's a lot

of good compact SUVs right now, electric SUVs, but whether or not you like it, the Tesla Model Y

really is still best in class. But I was testing another vehicle this week that kind of put a

perspective for me. It's the new Nissan Leaf. Now, you may remember the Nissan Leaf was the first

electric car of the 21st century mass market electric car when it went on sale in 2011. Back

then, it was made in the United States and Tennessee. They finally stopped building them there and have

moved it back to Japan. But that original one, Alex, I was looking at the other day, starting price

$33,000, which would be like 50 grand today. It had a range of 73 miles per charge. In 2018,

they came out with the second generation Leaf, 151 miles per charge. But this new one,

base version, $31,000, 303 miles per charge. But those are just coming into dealers now. The one

I tested was a Platinum, $41,000, $42,000. Front-wheel drive, 259 miles. For me, putting that up against

the Tesla, I'm going with the Tesla. It's just objectively a better vehicle. But if Nissan can

actually start shipping the $31,000 one with 303 miles per charge, I think they might have a

pretty strong competitor here. It's not a big vehicle. Rear seats a little tight, but it feels

really premium, at least that Platinum one I tested did. And that beats the Chevy Equinox EV,

about like $4,000 or $5,000, which is the only other vehicle, the next cheapest vehicle,

where you can get 300 miles of range out of an electric car right now.

Yeah. I mean, I feel like, again, on that, once you're talking about this price segment that

used to be easy to find something in that price range, around $30,000 or so, Nissan's biggest

competitor in American showrooms for that car is going to be the Sentra, which is still essentially

a brand new car and has all the stuff that everybody wants. And it's going to undercut it on

price and it doesn't require anybody to alter their sort of daily way of life in terms of

charging and stuff like that. So like you said, there's better options. And I think a lot of these

lower priced entries, especially from brands that are not EV native, like Tesla, are going to compete

in-house with other product on the showroom floor that is as inexpensive or less expensive.

And when it comes to affordable vehicles made American, I will use that affordable buzzword.

Right now, the cheapest US built vehicle of all is the Toyota Corolla, which is $24,120.

And the second cheapest is the Toyota Corolla Cross at $26,385. And interestingly, the Nissan

Altima, not just the third cheapest vehicle at $28,825, but also the cheapest mid-sized sedan

right now. It's not until you get to number four, the new Chevrolet Bolt that's not quite on sale yet,

but will be soon, $28,995. That's going to be competing against the Leaf, but it does only have

262 miles of range. That's made in Kansas and they've already announced it's going to be out of

production next year as they start building more Chevrolet Equinoxes, which are currently made in

Mexico. They're going to be expanding production to that US plant. I'm just, I'm shocked when I see

the Corollas being the least expensive cars made in America. I just feel like the American brands

maybe aren't even really trying. And why should they be? Right now, they're making tons of money

and selling everything they can that's expensive. They're selling stuff that makes money, but

Toyota is showing that it's going to win that low-end argument. The Corolla and the Corolla Cross

are extremely capable and rock solid vehicles, especially at those entry point price ranges.

And it's not like you have to worry about it breaking.

One other vehicle that recently moved from the United States to Japan, the Subaru Outback,

was made here for years. They just started to build the Forester here instead, which is Subaru's

best-selling model. I'm actually going to pick up an Outback to test a little later today,

so we'll be talking about that on a future show, maybe even next week. And we will be back

next week with more from Daytona because we're going to be hot in the middle of Daytona Speed Weeks.

I still don't know. It's been quite a while since it's been a multi-week event. Anyway,

we will be back next week. Alex, good to talk to you and thanks everyone for listening. We'll see

you next time. The gas is a production of 8-car media and American cars and Ricin.com.

IndyCar in D.C., NASCAR Races in the Snow and Nissan Turns Over a New Leaf

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