Long Beach Debrief

This is, is off track.

What happens if you start panicking?

It's uh, it's just 'cause I really like the book, uh, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

It's not like an anxiety thing.

I take, I take medicine for that. Have

You ever thought to like have different backgrounds for the three monitors?

Because like, I don't, that seems aggressive.

I think that would be worse. I think it'd be weirder

to have like different backgrounds. Perspective.

It'd be like three, three pictures hanging on your wall.

You wouldn't have three of the same pictures. I

Don't like that.

I don't like that idea. Yeah.

You should make like one, a picture of me, won a picture of Alex and then won a picture of me and Alex.

I literally, I have, I have a picture of you.

Yeah, I have a picture of Alex. Yeah.

And then I have a picture of Hazel. So Right. I

There.

I Love how I got the middle.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a good picture.

So, alright, we'll retune this a little bit.

One picture of me, one picture of Alex and then one picture of Hazel, Alex and I.

Hmm. Um, Without you.

Without me. Yeah. No. Got it.

I dunno if you noticed your name was not. I know. I

Don't know if that, uh, that picture exists yet.

It might, might Not. It's possible to happen very soon.

That's true. I'm coming to nd like in

48 hours tomorrow. Yeah.

Mm-hmm . So what you're saying is

we got some new screens coming. .

All right, man. That was a slow start to an episode. Wow.

Well it is 6:00 AM Well don't For some of ust James.

Oh, don't worry. I I never do.

Um, what are you eating? Don't say

Breakfast.

Banana bread. It's awesome. Homemade.

Kelly. Kelly Win Kelly's on that white girl cake.

You know how it was like sourdough and Covid Was just gonna say she's years late On it.

Well, whatever. It, it's cyclical.

It didn't say she was fast at things. .

It is cyclical. And look, let's be honest,

banana bread never goes outta style.

Banana bread's pretty fire.

Here's, here's what's interesting. I don't like bananas.

I mean, I will, I will eat bananas because they're a, a convenient snack and like heading to the gym source or the source of potassium workouts or whatever.

But like, I force it down Interesting.

Get it phrasing not 'cause it's shaped just 'cause I don't like it.

Do you know what's good is if you have, if you dip a peanut butter or dip banana and peanut butter mm-hmm. That makes it good.

It's not impossible. It's not stiff enough.

again, he's right. Phrasing like Right.

I understand the phrasing, but he's right.

Like you would have to apply the peanut butter to the banana. You

Can't do at night unless you're Putting it in with the peel and then we'll handle you Doesn't Make any sense.

That's kind of No, what I, let me, let me paint you a picture.

Yes. You can just like spread it on. That's fine.

But if you're using like natural peanut butter, it's kind of goopy enough.

You can just dip it in.

If you're like rocking gif, extra crunchy or skip.

Yeah, that's not gonna, that's not gonna work. Well

What the hell are we talking about Guys? This

Is what happens when Dip bananas.

This is what happens when we start recording early in the morning after a long weekend.

Uh, which we should probably talk about at some point.

Well, we should probably talk about it because lord knows most people didn't see it. Yeah,

We'll talk about that too.

But we should talk about the race itself and then we will get into who watched it or not and why.

Okay. So Alex, let's just, we'll cover off your,

your weekend and then we will, we'll cover the race off, you know, in totality, right.

And then we will cover some other stuff.

But I remember very clearly that on this show you, after a very positive sim session declared that you were gonna win the race.

Did we not? I don't know.

This is what the people are here to find out.

So how did your weekend go?

Well, the 27 car one, it's just, I'm five years removed from it. ,

you just, there was a bit of a mix up there. Yeah. That

Car, that car does have good success there, Jeremy. That

Car's really good there. Jeremy.

Jeremy's won that race a lot.

Jeremy, like, I'm starting to think that maybe it wasn't me at all.

Like Jeremy's just the man, , , Jeremy Mills of course.

The engineer of the 27 car.

No. Uh, okay. So yes, I was, um, I was very optimistic.

Uh, okay, when I signed up for this. Sorry,

Be more specific to what Okay. ,

Um, I, I and the team and probably everyone knew that like Long Beach was their worst track.

And there was a lot of, there was a lot of things that came down the pipeline in the off season.

There was a lot of things that were learned at St. Pete.

Um, there was a lot of things that were developed in the sim and even though it's a road course, they were, uh, um, correctly applied at thermal.

Um, there was a lot of, of very good things that were happening from an offline vehicle sim standpoint, from a shaker rig standpoint, from a driver in the loop sim standpoint to where I, I fully was, as I said on the show, like incredibly confident that we had resolved a lot of the issues that they had had there previously and that we were gonna have a, a really big step forward and, and be competitive.

Um, and some of that ended up being true.

Uh, unfortunately not to the extent that we were hoping for.

Um, so on Friday we kind of came to the track with a sim develop setup, which is, is is a brave thing to do, I think.

Yeah, it's in a lot of respects. It's

A little risky.

It's a little risky. Um,

but the reasoning for it was, well, the baseline that we have there is a team sucks.

So w why would we bo like start There?

That's insane. Why would you start there? As

We already know, that one sucks. Yeah.

So you might as well like swinging for the fences a little bit.

Um, which we did and, and we missed in, in some respects.

Um, but what I love about this team, and it was clear from the first day at the, at the or first half day at the Sebring test, their ability to pivot, um, when things are in the <inaudible> is incredible.

You know, because it's a small group.

Because everyone ultimately that is in the engineering truck, whether it's my race, engineer, engineer or not, they're all involved in the building of the setup.

So everyone has a very clear understanding of what the car is and why the car is doing X, Y, or Z, whether that's good or bad.

Right? And so when you're, when you suck,

it's quite, it's a fast, it's a fast turn.

'cause you're not trying to convince one person who doesn't really understand why and is trying to theorize based on what they previously did or based on what the sim is saying or whatever.

Like everyone came to this decision together and it's like, bam, okay, this is why it doesn't work.

Right? Um, and so we, we, we kind of,

we, we kept some of the things and we went down a different avenue on some of the other things, uh, overnight and Saturday.

And it was, it was much better.

Um, and then we qualified eighth.

So I think considering we were literally 24th in practice one and like, I couldn't drive the car to having a completely different day with conditions.

Like it was much, much cooler Saturday than it was Friday.

Um, and only seeing the green tires again in qualifying like the, the execution level and the ability for the team to like dig out of a hole is, is really, really good. So, and

That's, that's a big deal because like we talk a lot about how in this series it's, you know, it's limited track time.

You have two practices before qualifying.

If you don't, we talk about this all the time.

If you don't roll off the truck strong, it is really hard to rebound from like an off start.

But the jump that you guys made from first practice to qualifying was like pretty significant.

No, it was huge. Um, and,

and ultimately like we, we were still missing a big step of pace to like the, the pace headers.

But I think, I think a lot of that, I think Jim sleep a lot of think Jim Fell asleep.

Jim fell asleep. Di actually fell asleep. ?

No, I was watching a video on my phone.

Uh, I looked like he was sleeping.

Can we just cut it so that I like he was sleeping.

Sorry Alex. I didn't mean to interrupt.

I just thought that was pretty funny. It's fine.

So we were still missing a lot of pace to the, to be contending for pole or honestly the fast six, but we were the second best Chevy.

Right. And I think that as much as, I hate to say this

and it pains me to say this, there's still a massive discrepancy at Long Beach in particular between Honda and Chevy.

Just 'cause of drivability. No, no, no.

The drivability Chevy has done such an amazing job in the off season with the drivability and the torque delivery and the consistency and everything.

And like, it's good. Okay?

There is just an architectural difference that is impossible for us to overcome until there's a new engine.

Okay? When, when HPD designed the engine,

and without getting into the details of it, there was very specific hardware components that they design that generates significantly more torque mm-hmm .

And less top end than a Chevy.

And Chevy built their engine for Indianapolis and for the 500.

And that's why you see the difference.

Now, there was a period of time where Chevy also on top of that had a lot of issues with drivability and traction and, and the torque surges and all that sort of thing.

But that's all been dialed out and there's still this difference.

And it's like, well there's only, you can't, there's only so much you can do with a Homologated engine.

You can't start changing components. Um, so that is it.

It's cool because Chevy did everything that we asked.

It's sad because we still are gonna indefinitely be in this hole at certain places until there's a new engine, which Lord knows when that'll happen.

So, um, fast forward to the race, uh, we, uh, tires were a big topic of conversation.

There was a period of time where it looked like the green tire was gonna hold up.

Um, thankfully I think for everyone it didn't , uh, which meant, which meant it went to a three stop.

But here's the thing, James, um, I really don't like this version of IndyCar, um, this version of IndyCar that we, okay, we extend the race distance.

We all know why we, we want to try and get rid of the super massive fuel safe two stop and, and make it a race that's, you know, cars are pushing and um, you know, you can see, you can see true pace be the differentiating factor mm-hmm .

But the, the alternate tire is so poor that it ends up not actually being a factor because you can't run a, a stint of any significant length on the alternate.

So it ends up being a fuel safe tire save kind of two stop.

Anyways. It's a, it's a pseudo fake three stop.

And quite frankly, that's why aside from wheels, you know, quite honestly a rare mistake at the start in St.

Pete, that's why there has been no yellows, right?

It's because no one is driving at a hundred percent anymore.

Everyone is driving around at 85%, 90% trying to kind of conserve tires, but also having to hit a fuel number because the alternate tire doesn't last long enough for you to be able to do anything.

And this version of IndyCar sucks.

It's not, it's not interesting. I'm sorry.

It's not fun to drive, it's not enjoyable to race.

I'm not saying that there can't be good shows.

I'm not saying that the race on Sunday was bad, but the fact of the matter is there is no yellows because no one is trying, and it's wild to me.

So it seems like there's, is it, is it one problem?

Well, I feel like there's two problems.

I I feel like the, what you're talking about on, in terms of the racing and what's happening and what you're having to do from behind the wheel one issue.

But then you say it's not fun.

Is it not fun because you're doing that?

Or is the car not fun to drive even at a hundred percent? Well,

The, the car, I mean, long Beach, long Beach was a, was one where it was very apparent, you know, the weight of the Car. It was

An eyeopening, it was an eyeopening one where, you know, teams are developing and teams are, are able to, you know, get the thing to do a lap, right?

Like, and, and the alternate tire is softer than previous years.

So like the pull lap time was pretty fast.

Like Kirkwood did a, like that's a fast lap, but it's, it's one, it's one iota of the weekend and it's such a small fraction of being able to push the car to that limit because even in qualifying it, it's one time, it's not like you get two laps at that.

So you get ultimately throughout the entire weekend, three laps where you get to drive the car at a hundred percent and it does a pretty respectable lap time and it's like nice and fun to drive the rest of the time it's not there because the hard tire doesn't have really the, the ultimate grip to support the weight of the car.

It's a good tire in terms of durability, but it doesn't have that grip level to, to offset the 70 odd pounds or whatever.

Especially at a street circuit, especially with bumps and pavement changes and, and you know, challenging braking zones and that sort of thing.

So yes, for very small glimpses it's like, it's nice and ex exciting, but it's such a, a rarity now over the weekend that it's on a, on a whole, the cars aren't fun to drive.

Um, and Is there a fix to that other than just the new car ?

I mean, is it, is it get rid of the hybrid?

Is it fix the tire? Like change the

tire compound in the middle of the season?

Which I, I know they're not gonna do either of those things. There,

There is fixes none of which will be applied.

Maybe they will be applied in 2026, but for 2025, no I don't see a fix For the, for the, for the racing itself, right?

Mm-hmm . We came into this year

and Firestone was tasked by IndyCar with input from teams and drivers.

Firestone did exactly what they were asked to do.

Yeah, I know this is Not, yeah, okay.

Yeah. We're just making sure they have mm-hmm .

Making sure that's clear. Yeah. They were tasked

with bringing a tires that had a bigger delta, bigger difference in lap time between the hards and the sauce.

And that had the saws kind of fall off more and, and kind of not last a stint.

That was almost sort of the idea in a lot of ways. Right?

But wouldn't that already happen with the, the hybrid anyway, with the added weight? Yes.

I'm gonna pretend like Alex didn't tell me that They, they just wanted it, it to be like a very obvious difference, like a, a big difference between the two tires.

So we saw in St Pete that with the effect of the hybrid and the heat and all those things, it was almost, it was probably too much there right?

But they make a street course tire in for both compounds.

So that was kind of, I think a little bit unique to St.

Pete. Um, so they, they,

they did what was asked.

And you're saying that the knock on effect of that becomes the alternate is so, uh, degrades so much that you end up having to just run it for as long as you can.

But it's really not that as long as you can to then have the other stints just be super fuels on the primary.

So we've inadvertently created a monster in that you can't push the alternates in the race too hard because you need 'em to last as long as possible.

But that long as possible is just long enough so that way you put the hards on and it's just drive around to a number to make the race.

Correct. Okay. So

Street courses now street courses, thermal is not a fair example because like the d there, it's Just a weird Race, it's a weird race.

Barber will be much more telling with how those races are gonna go because ultimately, and ultimately the compounds have not changed really from 2024 to this year.

So there's still hope that this isn't the case for the entirety of the season, but certainly Detroit and Toronto will be this.

Right. And, and um, yeah, Barbara

and NGP will be good kind of yardsticks.

'cause NG p's always been interesting because that's one of those ones where the tires work close enough that some teams and setups, it was a, it was a black race for them, some teams and set up it was a red Race.

Well, no, just one car. It was a black race.

Yeah. fair for the most part.

It's, it's a red race there. Right.

Uh, so we'll see, we'll see what happens at those events.

Um, but yeah man, the fact that we've gone essentially three races without a caution.

We had one in a first lap thing. Right.

Uh, pretty unprecedented. I don't, I don't know.

I don't know if we've ever had that, But that's what I'm saying, like my, there's not even a a physicality to it anymore.

Like you're just driving around in zone two. Yeah.

Heart rate wise. Yeah.

You know, because you can't exert yourself to challenge the car because you won't, well, A, you don't have the fuel to do it and b like the tire, even the primary, like it's not, it's not um, unlimited grip.

Like it's good, it's durable, but like you can't just drive like <inaudible> because again, the extra weight of the car and all this sort of thing and the extra demand on the rear tires with hybrid deploy and all this stuff, like you can blow up the blocks as well. So right

Now that said, first laps are still risky.

Mm-hmm. And St. Pete, obviously we had an incident

but thermal and Long Beach we did not.

Pit cycles are still risky. Mm-hmm .

And you know, it looked like the hards on an out lap at Long Beach were kind of tricky.

Yeah, they were. They looked not great. Yeah.

So when you've got guys in these, you know, green flag pit cycles coming out on hards when some dude on hot tires is coming up on them, not making mistakes, not having any of those passes go sideways.

'cause we had, I mean we can get more to your race.

You got ho you got hosed in that.

You got, you had a stop that took longer than planned and ended up Yeah. Story of my life bro.

Ended. Right. Uh, we'll get to that.

Ended up getting dumped out basically at the front of a five car train of cars on hot tires bad and just, I mean there's literally nothing you can do.

Yeah. But that's a prime opportunity for,

to go sideways and to have a caution.

Um, uh, Erickson had a similar one where he just got dumped out in front of people and just got trained for two laps and like, again, so as much, you know, Kirkwood was under the most pressure you can basically have in an IndyCar race, which is street course on hard tires on an out lap with a good driver and a good car on hot tires behind you and nobody screwed up.

So I will have, I, I gotta give you guys all a lot of credit as well for this.

Yes, fine. For the 90% of the race where you're cruising

around to a number, there's still 10% where there's o ample opportunity for guys to screw up.

Sure. You're right. And haven't done it, um, outside of St.

Pete. So, um, anyway, let's get back

to your race qualified eighth, which was brilliant.

Had an awesome start. Mm. Picked up a couple spots mm-hmm.

Running sixth. And then,

Um, big shout out to both Marcus's, mark Marcus.

I Marcus Square Mar The mar the Mar because, um, I was in a position where like I was the only place I could, I started on the outside of row four.

So like the only position I could really be was on the outside of turn one.

And because the way the Long Beach stackup effect, like rows three and four are like the magic rows.

'cause you're like accelerating to try and catch up to the front two rows, but by the time you get there, they decide to go.

So you're like, you're carrying some extra miles an hour.

So it was awesome. Right.

It's a long beach phenomenon that only really happens in those two rows.

But anyways, so we had that momentum and we were able to get up alongside the marque.

Um, but I, it was three wide and I was on the outside of both of them.

And I gave as much room as I could to Armstrong who was inside of me, , who had Erickson inside of him.

Um, and was there anything about it? No one hid anyone.

No one, no one touched anything.

And I sent both a text afterwards being like, thanks, glad we all survived.

All of our races ended up being <inaudible>. Anyways. .

So I, I mean whatever.

Um, so yes, so we started six, we started on the alternate, uh, everyone before cars started on the alternate.

And, and let me tell you, the cars started on the primes, uh, because there was no yellow.

That was, uh, that was the magic.

But again, who would've thought that a street course race in IndyCar would not have a yellow?

Um, I banked on that in St. Pete. It didn't work.

Uh, so I was like, well, I'm not gonna do that again.

And, you know, had I done that again, it probably would've been pretty good.

But I digress.

Um, we came in with Kirkwood, um, a couple seconds back from him and we had a issue getting fuel in the car, uh, which whatever, I mean, I, it doesn't, I doesn't bother me anymore. Are

You like allergic to gas?

Like is that, guess I'm starting to think it's your problem.

'cause like three different teams, multiple races, the, the common denominator here is like you're, you've got a weird magnetic energy that just doesn't want fuel around you. We call it the

Opposite of a Dixon.

No. Like . Yeah. Like I will accept all responsibility.

I don't know what you want me to say like At this point. Yeah. I'll just

Take it at this point.

Like, yeah, whatever. Like I get,

I don't even get mad anymore.

Um, so, uh, we came out, we lost, uh, three spots just in that.

And then I came out and I met Joseph who was on hot Tires.

Mm-hmm . In one. I had to break, I lost another spot

to someone at someone else.

And then I ended up losing a spot to Erickson.

And so then that kind of set our day.

We lost like almost nine seconds and that whole exchange between the out lap and the pit stop.

Um, and then ultimately we were on the, I don't wanna say wrong strategy, the, we were on the strategy that won the race.

However, the four cars that started on the primes, um, lard who drove a great race, Santino, who drove a great race, um, Kiffin, who also drove a great race Yeah.

Career Best and Stingray, who drove a great race mm-hmm .

Um, those four cars were the ones that started on the primaries and they just vaulted everyone, uh, Dixon as well.

But you would expect that. Um, so those all five cars,

excuse me, not four, that star on the primes were in the top 10.

So you combine our issue in Pit lane, plus we got beat by those cars and we end up 15th.

So, uh, uh, positives to take from the weekend were, it was by far ECRs best Long Beach.

Um, a lot of the things that we discovered and thought would work did work.

Um, the sim correlation and the, um, all of the magic stuff that we thought we'd have going into Long Beach isn't quite there yet.

Uh, but again, a a huge step forward.

So I'm coming away with they're happy.

I, I knew that the street courses were gonna be the, the challenge for us.

Um, in 2025, we've survived two fairly well.

Uh, two to go. Um,

but again, getting to a part of the calendar that I'm super excited about.

All right. So that's, that's your day.

Um, the day on the whole mm-hmm .

Was, was interesting.

Fan, fan turnout. Let's just talk about

that for a second. Dude.

How about Friday? Looking like race day?

It phenomenal. Like,

they're gonna start having a problem with too many people there and like, not being able to move around and not enough bridges and stuff. I,

I've never seen anything.

I I don't think I've seen anything like it outside of Indy.

Like it was, it was mind boggling. It was really, really awesome.

Great to see. Um, it was fun

because it was, it was Buxton's first time going to Long Beach and seeing his reaction to it was actually kind of interesting.

'cause obviously he's been to some big races in his time and, uh, he was just absolutely, he was like a kid in a candy store.

It was hard to get him to where he needed to go.

'cause he kept getting, he's like, you know, a DOS Right.

Attention deficit. Ooh. Shiny.

And he just kept getting, you know, distracted and around Susan British version of Hunter Ray.

Yes, exactly. Right, right.

Um, so yeah, huge credit to everybody at the GPLB and, uh, the Acura Grand Prix Long Beach and everything that they've done, Jim McMillian and his team, as we heard earlier in the year, the event's now been purchased by Penske Entertainment.

So it's a Penske entertainment property.

But, you know, I, I spoke to some of the big wigs up at Penske Entertainment who said like, look for this year we kind of just let it run as is.

And, uh, watched now kind of through a different lens from the promoter side and took some notes on things, on things to do.

But fundamentally, I mean, that team does a great job.

It's, it's hard to argue with, with what they've done 50 years it's been going.

And uh, and I mean, I dunno if I heard specifically this was a record crowd, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't. It

Was, it was. Yeah.

There you go. Um, easy to

210,000 people over the weekend, which is, Dude, that's huge.

When you consider huge, when you consider F1 and the magnitude that it has gotten to and also the scale, like the, the tracks they go to are much larger than ours, dude. This is a

Small place like place.

There's not a lot of grandstands Like that is, that is on par with what F1 is pulling in in the States.

And that's, I mean, that's incredible.

So like, let's, let's put it this way.

So I remember that Suzuka one of the most storied racetracks in the world, uh, permanent road course.

Lots of space, lots of grandstands, 255,000 over the weekend.

Yeah. We did 210 at a street course

I know Where like four of the 11 corners have no possibility for viewership.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm . For like track side viewership. Mm-hmm . .

So like almost half the track, like a third of the track.

You're not even, there's not even an option to hold people.

Yeah. So yeah. Super impressive.

And like obviously you got the IMSA race on Saturday, which is huge.

Mm-hmm. You got drift cars every night, which is awesome

that when the IMSA pad, I mean Foreigner Foreigner played Saturday Night Foreigner played, I feel like we're just glossing over the jumpy trucks.

Oh yes. Stadium Super Trucks always a

popular addition to the calendar.

Um, and dude, the the other one that blows me away is when, when Saturday Night Thessy pad clears out and that whole bit of the paddock area becomes this like car corral for insanely nice and expensive supercars.

So you go from like millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars in race cars and race trucks to like probably more millions of dollars in just like people's personal horses in Yeah, dude, it was, there was, they were packed in there.

Yeah. I was walking around like I've never felt more

poor than I do in this moment.

Like, this was an unbelievable thing to get to walk through some really, really nice cars.

So yeah, event awesome Race honestly was still pretty good because even though there's no cautions, um, we had those alternate strategies playing out and it was really fascinating to keep track of Luard and how he was doing.

And Stingray career best finish for him.

Shed out Stingray, uh, or career match best, uh, best on a Rotor street course career Best finish for Kiffin Simpson.

It also drove a great race, incredible, you know, 16 places up for Santino.

So great job from him.

Um, then you had still the Battle of the Andrettis, then you had Polo versus Kirkwood on that final stop.

Like, dude, I was sweating for Kyle on that out lap.

Like, it, it was, I've you've been in those situations, you know how tense it is and how tough it is.

You've got the guy that's won every race so far this year on your gearbox on hot tires.

You have zero room for error 'cause there's concrete walls everywhere and you have to just go out and put your foot down and get it done.

And he did it. He thrived under

the pressure and got it done.

Great to see lard getting that podium amazing.

And moved up to third in the championship.

And I gotta say, man, and you, you, you have a, you'll have a, a unique ability to have perspective on this.

But since, since Patto kind of became the, the guy over at McLaren and you know, we've talked a lot about how this setup has developed around his very unique driving style and all these things.

Everybody that's been alongside him has like taken some time to find out how to get pace outta that car or make the car their own three races into his time there.

He's got two podiums in his third in the points.

I don't know the last time Patto wasn't the top point scoring driver on that team.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I I know the last time he wasn't the head of the championship.

Yeah. Say after two round, you know,

maybe had bad St Peter something, but Yeah.

Is that, is that, are we seeing like maybe a, a shift in the power dynamic over there? I don't, I mean,

I don't, I don't necessarily talk to too Early to tell.

Yeah. I don't talk to enough people over

there still to know.

Um, I do know that Christian's engineer Chris, uh, Lawrence, who was my engineer last year, doesn't subscribe to the philosophy, um, that it's the five car or the highway.

Right. Um, and so I think Chris, in his third year

of being a race engineer, like I saw what he did with Felix, um, and Felix's best year at McLaren was with Chris as a rookie race engineer.

Uh, my best year at McLaren from a PACE standpoint, um, was with Chris.

And so I think as Chris is getting more confident and getting more into that role of being a race engineer and he has someone as fast as Christian and and all, and honestly now with the experience that Christian has, you know, he's not a rookie or a young kid anymore seeing these things for the first time.

Like he's, he's been around the block and quite frankly, like the Ray Hall cars on street courses are good cars.

Um, they are able to, to make a, a good step.

I don't think Patto has necessarily changed.

I think Patto is still as quick as he's always been.

I think Patto is still probably the lead guy there.

But it'll be interesting as the year goes on if this dynamic continues in some way, shape or form, um, how the people start to spin it.

If you look at the facts, I mean, Patto had a problem in St.

Pete qualifying, I forget why he qualified as bad as, or like just me just Made, made a mistake in turn way. Yeah,

Yeah.

Fine. Made a mistake. Yeah.

Had a, and then had had like a really bad hand dealt to him in um, uh, the race with a flat and whatever and drove up to 11.

So I actually drove a really, really strong race. Yeah.

Thermal Pole. Almost won.

Almost won really, really good drive. Mm-hmm .

Because again, as you talk about the kind of new requirements from racing an indie car in terms of hitting a fuel number, taking care of tires, whatever, whatever.

Those aren't things you normally would attribute to Pado and, and like his driving style?

Oh, I would, I would say the old Pado.

I think PATOS figured it out by Now.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah.

So like Thermal was a great example of that.

Mean only one guy beat him.

They had better tires at the end, whatever. Mm-hmm .

And then even in um, long Beach, he had qualified Christian.

Christian just ended up on the alternate strategy, which worked really well.

Like had Patto started on hard, he could have done the same thing.

Mm-hmm . So maybe it's too early

to be making conclusions like that.

And if you think about it, Pat's actually had some really, really good drives this year.

F1, spoiler alert, if you don't want to know what happened, turn it off.

Pastry won for pole. Uh,

another impressive drive from the young man, Russell second, Norris third Red Bull in trouble.

I don't know, lots of different things, but it seems so I'll be honest, I didn't, now there's all the rumors that Max is leaving, right.

'cause the car's not fast enough.

But like if Max were to leave Red Bull, where would he, where would he realistically go?

Wherever he wants, but, well, I mean it's not that easy, right?

He's not gonna McLaren, he's probably not gonna Mercedes.

'cause Antonelli is the chosen one and Russell's pretty close to a new deal.

He, I mean, Aston Martin makes the most sense 'cause he loves Adrian Newie.

Adrian loves him. He loves Honda. Honda loves him.

Both those guys are there.

The team's already said that for 26, our drivers are set.

It's Fernando Alonso who'd be hard to fire and the owner's son, which would be hard to fire.

Not impossible. It is F1, but I don't know. I

Mean, I mean I think Ferrari, uh, it'll be interesting to see how long Lewis lasts there.

Um, I know. I mean, it's gonna be more than a year,

But Yeah.

It's gonna at least be there next year. Yeah,

I know.

So I don't see, I don't know.

I just don't see it. I don't see

It.

We should, I mean we should give a huge shout out to Yuki because I think that that's the first time that a second Red Bull car has been anywhere near Max.

Yeah. Um, he was near max in qualifying.

He was near max in the race.

So that's a huge step forward from what was a disappointing Japan, I think.

Uh, which was good to see. Yeah,

He finished within 10 seconds of him in the race, which is pretty solid, you know, two 10 ish and Q2 in qualifying, which is pretty solid.

So yeah, shout out to him.

It'll be interesting to see how that dynamic develops.

Uh, over the year, Tony Stewart won his first top fuel race, which is very cool.

Congrats to him. My, uh, young man,

Liam McNeely speed group client swept the USF uh, 2000 weekend in Nola.

Shout out to him. I wanna give

a big shout out to Rob Wickens.

Well, I want talk about his whole weekend because Yeah, I got the, the debrief of it Sunday night.

Sunday night And um, I, I'm just, I'm not surprised because why would I be surprised?

But I am surprised because how can you not Be surprised? It's still so impressive. Right.

You Can't, cannot be impressed.

Right. Um, so practice one, uh, they had an issue with,

uh, some of the hand control systems and all this sort of thing.

So didn't didn't get really any lapse practice.

Two, he goes out and puts it P one like Fastest car Like DFAS is not, not unreal.

Like just fastest. Okay.

And a very weird ims. A rule. I didn't know this existed.

I didn't know knew for this year. Oh, okay.

Well that's why I didn't know it existed.

Mm-hmm So in IMS a, which this is so stupid, So dumb.

Like this is ridiculous.

Uh, and we thought the FIA was bad , apparently if you cause a red flag in practice two, you get your fastest lap in qualifying another independent session deleted. I

Don't think it's just practice two.

I think it's any practice Even worse.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's bad.

Like walk me through James the rationale behind this.

Like why, why, why does this Exist?

So I will explain to you in order all the reasons this makes sense.

Okay. I'm done.

Sweet. But dude, when, when this rule was at,

so we were at Daytona in the driver's meeting and this rule was like explained in the driver's meeting you could have heard a pin drop.

Everybody in the room was just sort of like, look at.

They're like did I Did Did hear.

Did I hear that right? Did hear right. Yeah.

Like he meant, he meant if you cause a red in qualifying right .

Right Nene practice.

So if you cause a red in qualifying, do you get executed?

Yes. Harsh but Fair. Hmm. Uh,

It's just here, here's here, let me just, let me just vent real quick on why please.

It's so obvious why that's dumb. Yeah.

But like practice is just that. It is practice.

That is when you are supposed to push beyond the limit to find the limit to drop a wheel, to go in a runoff to whatever.

Half the time reds are caused by mechanical issues. Yes.

Because cars have been sitting for a month since Sebring.

Mm. Or three months since petite. When you get to Daytona

Or they're cars and they break And they're, the race cars being pushed to limit <inaudible> happens like the to penalize teams and drivers in qualifying for look, if you like, are trying to race a dude and practice and you mess up, you know, mess up a breaking point and you t-bone a guy and end his, they can't qualify.

Yeah. They can't run because you've totaled their car. Yeah.

Fine. Maybe there's a,

maybe there's some repercussions that should happen.

But because a guy dropped a wheel on power spins out and the car won't restart 'cause the alternator's too hot or something to like, you just ruin the race at a place like Daytona, whatever, qualifying doesn't matter at a place like Long Beach, a hundred lap race for pass a hundred minute race for passing's impossible qualifying is everything.

You literally ruin a team's weekend. Okay.

Rent over. So super stupid.

So anyways, uh, Rob apparently caused a red, I don't know the details of it, but uh, that's Stuck in a runoff 'cause there was a mechanical issue and couldn't reverse or whatever. Great. Anyway,

Great.

So he um, lost his best lap in qualifying, which meant that he had to do two fast laps, which is hard, uh, because tires as we all know don't last forever.

Um, so to put in like, you can't have you, it's not like you can do like a, oh, a semi fasts lap and then a fast lap because a semi fasts lap ain't good enough.

So you have to do like two heaters.

And so like that's hard to get the, like the tires don't do that per se.

Uh, so anyways, they started, uh, a little bit out of position, um, because again, they were fastest in practice and they ended up qualifying ninth, is that correct?

Eighth or ninth? Yeah, eighth or ninth.

Um, but, and the race was what it was because you can't pass.

And it was a just a, it was a war out there.

But I don't think any of that should overlook the fact that he jumped in a car that he's really never driven, uh, with a hand control system that he has very little experience with, with a team that has no experience with.

And they were immediately on the pace.

And while we know Rob is like the man and can drive anything fast at all times, as we said at the beginning of this conversation, it's still incredibly impressive.

And I'm super happy for him and proud of him.

And it's awesome that I asked him point blank.

I was like, okay. So it was ultimately a <inaudible> result.

Was the team happy? He was like, dude, they're over the moon

and that's all you can ask for as a race car driver.

Especially in his position.

So, um, I can't wait to see him in the other two that he's doing because if Long Beach is any indication, 'cause he was like, man, quite honestly, like the hand control system history course sucks because like if you look at the hairpin, you know Yeah.

You're trying to like, he was like having to guess 'cause your hands come off the wheel.

'cause it's so much like steering lock you have to put in and his hands have to stay on the wheel because that's what's controlling the brake and throttle.

And so he was like having to judge like when his hand would come off, like the speed he needed to be at.

So anyways, I can't wait to see him on a permanent road course 'cause like it's gonna be Yeah, it's gonna mess everyone else.

It's gonna mess up, it's gonna mess up for people.

It's gonna be great. Um,

and then that was his Saturday job then his Sunday job, you know, he's sitting on the 27th stand helping that car out and you know that that went pretty well for, I mean them so well, I mean he is there.

Okay. That's that's the Sandy Sisson, I'm just saying.

Yeah, his car, his team won. Mm-hmm . It was a team effort.

Mm-hmm . Um, but yeah, very exciting.

Um, so yeah, that was Long Beach.

You've already been in the sim since then. How'd that,

How your help?

How's your have James? Uh, good.

I mean, what I love about what we're doing is, um, man, we are, we're correlating events immediately.

So after every event we've been in the sim on Tuesday.

Um, and that won't reap any benefits till next year, but next year it'll be, it'll be huge because, you know, so much of the, the problems, I don't wanna say problems.

The question marks you, you have leaving a sim session is like, well is that real?

Like is it really gonna do that in real life?

If you, if you go do a 90 lap race at Long Beach after having been there for three days and then less than 36 hours later you are on the sim at Long Beach matching the feeling matching Right.

The corner speeds matching the balance to a point where you're like, yep, that's exactly what it was.

When we go back there in March of next year to prepare for Long Beach, like there's not gonna be questions of Oh is what's happening because you're not, you can't remember 12 months ago.

Right. You remember break points, you remember certain Yeah.

Things that happened. Not the detail, not the minutia.

Right, exactly. So no, it will be No

that's exactly what it was.

That bump is real. That traction event you have is real,

like that breaking instability is real and these are what we think we need to do to fix it.

Did it fix it or not? Yes. Okay.

Well you're gonna go to Long Beach a step ahead.

So that's, that's pretty cool that we do it.

I've, I've begged teams and manufacturers to do that for the entire 10 years I've been in IndyCar and this is the first time it's actually happened.

So it's pretty exciting.

It's a lot of work. It's a big slog.

It's you finish a weekend, you have to go straight to the sim, which we've talked about is not always the most fun day to do it.

No. And you are just trying to dial, it's like you said,

it's, it's such an interesting process because you're come in fresh outta the car and you're like, okay, in this corner it's doing this.

So they manipulate the, the track grip, the tire grip, whatever for that corner to feel like that.

And then this corner to feel like this and this whatever.

And then you get So it's not even about making the car feel good.

No. It's about making the car feel exactly like it did.

So now you've got the starting point for next year.

Yeah, we didn't make a single setup change.

It was purely tire model changes.

Track model changes. Right. Um,

So you put the setup that you ran mm-hmm in the car and then you just tweak the model essentially until it's so like what, do you know what your best race lap was?

Uh, 68 9. What was your best time in the sim?

Well, we, we Like how close did did You get we correlated qualifying.

Okay. Sorry. How'd you qualify? Uh,

67 1.

And what was your best time in the sim?

67. Oh, I'd say that's pretty good. Pretty

Good.

I'd say that's pretty good. Pretty good.

God. Technology's neat. I like that. I like that stuff.

Pretty cool. Alright guys, well that's Long Beach.

Uh, got a weekend off coming up. Have any big plans?

Uh, big plans, man, sleep.

Enjoy one of two weekends off this month because Lord knows once May starts it's <inaudible> for all of us until September, but hey, at least then no one can complain about three week gaps between races. ?

No, those get a September and complain about six month gap between races.

But that's a different conversation. I mean,

All of which should be complained about.

Yes. I'm not saying it's wrong,

but at least for a couple months we don't have to hear about it.

Yes, true, true, true, true. Uh, Tim, go back to bed.

Alex the plan. Alex, assume have fun at the gym,

Uh, Or wherever you're going now.

Yeah. Thanks. I Gotta go

do laundry from a three week trip.

Wish me luck. This has been off track with Hinch and Rossi.

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Long Beach Debrief

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