Snacking with Successful Racers

This is, is off track.

So you know that the whole genre of talking to race car drivers while they eat has already been covered. When,

But that, that's a show called Dinner With Racers.

We're Like Snack with Dudes or Snacking with Successful Racers.

Hello. I'm supporting Once Upon a Time.

Alex Rossi supporter Jimmy John's with my, I'm supporting election.

The, the Sun. Oh, alright.

Obviously that's what what I'm referencing.

So for those that don't know, do you need This one?

Does it still work? There It is.

Yeah. For those that don't know,

when Alex won the Indy 500 and the press conference afterwards, he was eating a Jimmy John's sandwich and they, uh, they thought that was pretty awesome.

So I don't know. Alex, you wanna tell the rest of the story?

No. Okay.

Well, uh, I think our, our friend Greg at Andretti did he reach out and it's like, Hey, can we set up some partnership or something? No,

No idea.

This is why I asked you to do the story anyways.

It ended with Alex getting a card that just lets him get free.

Jimmy John's, it's got a black card.

Yeah, it's um, it's like an unlimited gift card.

I gotta be honest, man. We, uh,

we took advantage of that thing a couple times.

We had some for a while, hefty, hefty orders. Um, those

That catered.

I think you moved my daughter's class one day. Like

Catered my wedding .

Um, I think, uh, I don't know.

You know, we, I think we have, I dunno, I think we pick up new listeners every once in a while.

So those that haven't been listening from the very beginning might not know about the concept of Brenner, which was when my golden doodle.

No, not the concept of your golden doodle.

The concept of your golden dole's name. Yeah.

Which came from when on an off weekend we had brunch, which turned into lunch, which turned into dinner and we just called it Brenner.

Um, Jimmy and John, uh, both played a big part in, uh, we Yeah.

In those days. And then there was, was it big logs

or where was it that you got free wings from for a while?

Did he also abuse that Big lugs?

Yeah. Don't offer, offer

Free stuff to Alex because James and I will take advantage of it.

Especially food related stuff's. Just .

Actually I take that back. You should

offer free stuff to Alex .

I mean, I'm pretty sure we're gonna go to Cracker Barrel for our off track A GM pretty soon here.

The problem, the problem with, um, the Jimmy John's card is there wasn't very many of them.

And so when you would try and use it like in store, they would be very confused.

Yes, that is true. Um,

'cause they were like, oh, is this a gift card?

I was like, no.

Ish. But no,

Ish.

But it's funny 'cause like they, I don't know if they clued into us or whatever, or just people that they handed said card out to, but there was a limit and if you went over that limit, you had to call like a number and have them reload the card.

And so it got a little awkward because I think it was like, I don't remember if the limit was 200. I

Thought it was like 200 bucks, $500 or whatever.

Yeah, $200 in Jimmy John's is a significant amount of sandwiches.

It's a lot of sandwiches and Cookies.

And it was really, it was really tough when like, I'd reload it and then, I don't know, a week later it'd be like, Hey, The next day I'm Out.

Yeah.

So Saturday was pretty hit me up was another, and, uh, Yeah, hit me up with an another couple.

Hyundai, please. I

Need .

I need a, I need a deposit into the bank of Jimmy John's.

Good times guys. Good times.

So yeah, if you're listening and you wanna offer us, uh, free food, uh, uh, acquiring cards or apparatus is apparati.

We're in, we're all in.

Um, Tim, you look really young.

It's like you shaved and got a haircut.

Uh, no, I just showered. I just shaved and showered.

So my hair's still wet because I, I just got home last night and like today is the do laundry and, and kind of get everything back in order. Clean

Your, and you Just get home face.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shave it off.

Shave off the little bit of growth.

I didn't fly with my razor.

Speaking of, speaking of, um, grooming.

Okay. There was A pretty, pretty fun little scenario

that presented itself, um, to me. Kelly and Tim

Has Ben shaving already?

No, uh, Tim text me at like, I don't know, two o'clock on a Saturday being like, Hey, who's your, who's your dog groomer?

Teddy had been in the dirt, you Know, and I, and I had, I swiftly responded with, um, old doggy style to which he responded with.

When I typed that in the internet, other things populate .

Like What? Which is,

I wasn't, I wasn't upset with the results.

It was just not I the current problem.

Right. What, what results came up?

What else is named that? Yeah,

Google it. You should Google it.

Could you, could you, like, in detail tell us what came up? A lot of

Links that apparently you can't open in the state of Indiana.

Oh, interesting. And so I was like, okay, yeah,

that's my bad.

Uh, she might not have a website yet, um, or is on page 17 of the doggy style Google query.

Um, and so I, I just gave her, uh, gave Tim her number and what a star.

Not only got her in, got Tim in on a Sunday, responded with Yeah, at first I, I texted, said, Hey, Is this Tim from off track?

If so, no.

Yeah, just straight up. Is this Tim from off track?

If it's Yeah, then no, and she was great. She made it work.

I had, I thought I was gonna book it for Monday.

She was like, I'm actually available Sunday. It was great.

She came over, she cleaned Teddy, he looks great.

Everything was awesome and she made fun of me. So

Let's, let's, can we shout out the company again just to give her a little bit of love for Dog's?

Doggy style. .

Terrific. Um, wow.

That's actually a fairly interesting way to market your business.

It's pretty good though when you think about it.

Well, good and bad. They could get lost in some other,

like you gotta do some really good SEO you know, to make sure that that's to Beat out, to beat out Heavy hitters. To beat out. I had to

Be careful on the, uh, I had to be careful on the Venmo.

Like, what is it for? I didn't wanna put doggy style.

I'm like just dog grooming.

Why Not do I don't know that?

Who's that college quarterback that got in trouble for his Venmo notes?

Boy, I'm glad that wasn't a thing when James, Marissa, myself all used to Venmo each other because We, I I thought of that exactly.

We used to put dumbest stuff in the Venmo notes.

Doesn't that stuff like just stay in your history though.

Body Probably Disposal was one of them we used Frequently.

Yeah. I remember my, my brother was like,

does Alex not realize that, that these are all public? Because

Like, you would've, can we also just talk about how thats how it's a terrible idea that everybody's stuff is just public. What's

A terrible idea is you can't send a Venmo transaction without a caption.

Well, you could send it private though, but like, no, any, all my ven you have to fill out the memo.

I know you still have to do a memo, but that's stupid.

At least you can have it private.

So I'm going through some Are You looking through your old one boy?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just found one that I sent to Kelly

for a not insignificant amount of money that says, quote, A good time in Mexico. .

Oh. Oh. Then Kelly sent me some money that said .

Oh Lord. That said, please keep my brother out of jail.

Hard emoji. That's

Not even the bad Ones.

No, it's not. I just laughed so hard. That one.

Alex, you paid me for annual friendship dues.

Um, I can't read most of these .

You sure can't. Yeah.

That's the only one I can read. Yeah,

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, wait, what did you say for this one? ?

That one, the kids say, Hey, .

Oh, what did he say for this One?

You can't, you can't say any of 'em. Like,

Let's, let's, lets actually talk about this then.

'cause it was a, it was a college football guy who had Venmo comments and it was like sports betting or like betting on this specific team.

And his response is those were like Venmo caption jokes amongst my friends.

We weren't actually betting.

Those were just like the joke captions. Oh.

Which quite feels pretty believable to me, considering everybody I know on Venmo. .

No, because what we joke about is like, I don't know, homicide and weapons.

And he was betting about like, oh, a homeboy is gonna have two and a half plus touchdowns.

Like, that's not funny. Like's

Not, I didn't go into this specific subject murder, but I just thought, it just reminded me of like, when Tom Brady was getting investigated for the Deflategate stuff and the NF L's, like, gimme your cell phones.

And he's like, I destroyed them with a hammer.

And everyone's like, man, that's super incriminating.

I was like, no, that just tells me that he's in group chats.

Like , there's there you would need a warrant to get into the group chats that I have with just you guys.

Oh God. Well, With,

I mean, also put a little bit of context into that based on everything that went down with him and Giselle.

I don't think it was necessarily a group text.

Interesting. It Probably, I

Individual text we're going off track.

Not usually a Tom Brady, uh, defender here, but I I understood that move.

Okay. So off weekend, Alex, how did you spend it?

Not on a yacht. .

Well let me, let me just preface this by saying you should try that.

It's great. . How did you spend a dollar?

You you went We went to a little, uh, sporting event in town.

I did not. I um, I did our,

our fantasy football draft, which you missed.

I did. Um, and then I hung out for basically two days

with Kelly and Ben with a little bit of Tim thrown in there.

We did two different escape rooms.

Um, we uh, did you get outta both? We did. Mm-hmm .

We accidentally booked the same one that we had already Done.

Yeah. We'd done years ago and then we

Moved into a different room that we thought we hadn't done and we had also done that one.

Yeah. You guys had done, it felt too bad at, at that point

To like, well it was, it started, it started off where you get blindfolded and you go in and it's like pitch black in there and we're all kind of like, this feels familiar, but it was like kidnapping two.

So it was like, maybe this is just how kidnapping one also started.

Hmm. And then we're like feeling our way around a,

a dark room and it's like, oh yeah, okay.

I remember this is here and that's over there.

And like yeah, we need to, we need to switch real quick. .

And so it turns out we've done every room at that location.

So this is why this Is now just every room in Indianapolis.

Now we've done one of them twice.

Wouldn't it be embarrassing if you didn't get out of it the second time?

It was six years ago.

We like went through and it's embarrassing.

Saw a picture, so I didn't remember a single thing from it. You

Just said, oh, I remember this is over here and this is over there.

No, I remember the first one, the one we switched into was six years. Oh,

Got it, got it.

Oh, okay. So if you didn't remember fresh enough,

this is why you just need to move to these virtual escape rooms.

'cause you could just load up a new one.

Yeah. But we tried that and it wasn't that fun.

No, I know. But they gotta get better.

There's, there's gotta be a better way to do it.

It was like the VR concept.

It just opens up so many possibilities of What do you use your VR headphones for Tim?

I don't use 'em anymore. They just sit there.

Everybody I know that bought an Oculus is like, yeah, I don't use it anymore.

It just, it was, it was novel for like two months and then no one cares anymore.

Correct. I used it

Once and technology is not Yeah.

Not going. So I, sorry, I thought you went

to the sporting event that was in Indie on Friday. Did you? Where was

That?

Are we not talking about Liv?

Are we, do we not like that? Isn't that

I think that is what he is talking about.

Not saying that. I mean, it's a, it's a fox.

It's a fox property.

No, I wasn't trying to avoid the name. Oh,

Okay.

Um, no I didn't go to Liv mostly because it was very hot in Indianapolis this weekend.

Um, and it seemed to be incredibly well attended, which wow, that's great for Liv.

Not great for Alex. Um hmm.

Lots of people. So I decided that I didn't want to be

with 50,000 people in a very hot day for the first event that they've hosted.

Um, so I watched it on TV and I had a great time watching it on tv.

I do, I do know from the people that went, um, that it was a great experience.

Um, nothing but but positive feedback.

Um, it seems like they certainly know how to entertain, uh, watching on tv.

Um, it's, it's fun to watch.

You know, you think of golf and you think of the PGA and everything as being very, you know, proper and uptight and very stuffy.

Stuffy. Right. Liv kind

of throws all of that out the window.

Um, there's music on, it's Like the bar stool of his Yeah.

But it's still like some of the best golfers in the world.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, and it's like, unlike those

that watched Happy Gilmore and the kind of how they made fun of Max Fly, which was the, the alternate league to what Happy Gilmore played in Liv plays by all the same rules.

It's just a little bit more upbeat and trending for a younger audience.

Anyways, um, everyone said was awesome.

One thing that I, I heard about, which I think is sick and IndyCar should take note is so it's a three day event, right?

Um, much like not Too dissimilar from Yeah.

Our races and there's merchandise tents not too dissimilar from, from our races either, but what Liv did was every day they completely like did a 180 on the merch tent.

So it was all different merch from what they had the previous day.

So like you had people in there and stuff that they had bought the day before spending money again.

'cause like that stuff wasn't available.

So I think it's a great idea for IndyCar for the NBA.

Well that's not three day events anyways for any sporting event.

That's three days to like not have all of your stuff out all the time.

Yeah. Yeah. 'cause then people are just gonna choose the one

thing they like the most instead of being like, oh, I didn't know this was gonna be here today.

I guess I have to get my wallet out again. So you

Got your event t-shirt, but that means your Saturday event t-shirt and your Sunday event. T-shirt.

Mm-hmm . Or your event hoodie.

That's actually, it's only available on Saturdays, so Yeah.

Yeah. No, that's pretty clever.

Get them back into the store multiple times. Mm-hmm .

Exactly. Annoying for the customer,

but probably a smart move.

Yeah. Um,

What did you do, James?

Besides I went on sitting on a yacht. I on

Vacation.

What was that? I don't know. What

else, what else do you need to do?

It looks, it looks as though you either got a lot of sun or you got blonde tips or maybe it's just the Light.

Think it's the light tips are tips are still, you know, brown.

Um, great. Definitely got a little tan, which

for me is hard to do.

And like, this is tan for me. That's what's so pathetic.

Yeah. Yeah. Um,

but no, great time down in The Bahamas with some good friends.

Uh, tons of time in the water because it's the best water.

I love it down there. It's so beautiful.

Uh, some great meals, some good laughs.

Um, yeah man, it was, it was wonderful.

I, uh, I love it down there so much.

You, I try to get down there. You need

Bit of a break because you had been on quite a stretch since May, I must say.

That is true. That is true. Yeah.

It was, yes, it was a welcome disconnect and like, you'll just leave your phone for the day kind of thing and you know, check it once in the morning, check it once a night and kind of get through the rest.

And what a nice, what a nice disconnect and recharge.

And now ready to go. 'cause I'm pretty sure my next weekend

off is Halloween, so that's cool.

Um, but yeah, no back and excited to get into Milwaukee.

Uh, before we chat Milwaukee though, um, we did say that last week we were gonna talk a little bit about polo 'cause we didn't really get into his grayness.

I know it's Alex's favorite subject at the moment.

I don't mind it. What we all

what a season our asses kicked. Yeah.

What a season is it?

Like, are the guys, are you guys like talking amongst each other amongst yourselves about it in a, in a way where it's like at the end of a race you'll go like, or like drive a intros, you'll see Colton or you'll see, you know, I dunno, Dixon or someone just be like, man, what the, how is he, what is happening?

How is this happening still? Uh,

Not really.

Um, I think everyone has an immense amount of respect and appreciation for it.

I would say talking to him is more annoying because for him it's kind of just everything.

It, it, he's not, he doesn't seem surprised by it.

Not saying that he's cocky about it, but he is just like, oh yeah, you know, we just, we had a good weekend and the car was good and strategy was good and it was just pretty straightforward.

And like that's every weekend you talk to him sort of thing.

Um, so I think that's, that's kind of tough, uh, to, to come to terms with.

But I think the realization that I have had is he has differentiated himself so much that if you're able to kind of reverse engineer and understand his excellence, especially in 2025, and you're able to like, apply just a little bit of that to yourself and, and to the, the, your own operation and,

and the, the things that you're doing, you're going to elevate yourself in a pretty large way.

Right? Because it's, he's let's say, 30% clear

of the field, right?

And then everyone else is within a couple.

That sounds like a Big margin. Think

it's more than that. I mean,

No, no, no.

I don't think it's more than that. I think

30 percent's large.

Okay. Eight, eight races

to three would say it's more than 30%.

To three would say it's way more than 30% Copy.

Oh yeah. Almost. All right.

All right. I see what you're saying.

Okay. 10%, It's significant.

Yeah. 10%, whatever. But the

Rest of the field is within Three.

The rest of percent of the field is within a couple percent, right?

Yeah. So if you're able to find, let's say it's 10%,

you're able to find half of what he has, you're going to make a very big impact on your standings at the end of the year.

Um, so I think in, in some ways it's a little bit of a relief.

'cause it's not like, it's not like there's six guys doing that, right.

It's, it's one individual.

So it gives you a little bit of like motivation of like, I gotta, if I can figure this out before the next guy, like we're in, we're in with a pretty good shot of things.

So that's the way I look at it.

Um, but yeah, I mean, you, you can't say anything negative about him because not only we, we, we say this a lot.

He's Scott 2.0 in the sense that he does everything

that Scott does and executes it to such a high level regardless of where he starts on the grid.

But at the same time, he is one of the nicest human beings.

You're gonna come across the paddock, such a guy.

And so it's just like, you can't root against him.

Like when he wins all the time, you're like, man, good for him. Yeah.

Yeah. You're not mad, you're not upset about it. No, no.

Uh, great family man. Lovely wife, lovely child.

You know, he's, he's a great dad, he's a great husband.

He's great to just chat, to catch a, you know, go catch a meal with whatever.

He is just awesome. I mean, he is good at everything.

So it is very, it's in every way. He Dixon 2.0. Mm-hmm.

Um, so as someone like knowing you how I know you and knowing how you work and how you go about racing, right?

You're seeing this guy doing all these things and you have this belief, this theory, this understanding that if you can even just find that couple of percent towards what he's getting, that's gonna put you above the rest of the field too.

What are you seeing, like what's the one thing that you think he does better than anybody else?

Because I know that we talk about how there's no kind of flaws in his game right now, but is there one element that is that much more than something else?

Or is it just that half a percent in 20 different things that gives them this 10% jump on the field?

I don't, I don't have an answer to that because like, I'm not, I can't see everything that he does.

Um, I'm kind of with you, right?

I can just see on the outside kind of the, the execution that he has and, and we've all all talked about his tire management and his pace, especially on the harder tire, right?

But I sat with Felix in an autograph session once, uh, it was mid Ohio.

And I was like, what's it like, what's it like to look at his data?

Like is it, is there anything that's like, oh my God, that's the best break shape I've ever seen, or that's the smoothest theory I've ever seen.

And he's like, no.

Um, all of the fundamental technique is very good as you would expect, but it's not, it's not unattainable.

Like, it's not like he sees a break shape and he is like, I could never replicate that.

He said it's, it is the most infuriating thing.

And I believe him, like mid Ohio, a pretty technical track with a vast variety of corners, right?

You've got high speed, slow speed, braking zones, transitions, elevation, combined.

Combined all of it. And he said, dude, I am just the,

the time Delta is just a straight diagonal .

So I'm not faster than him in a, I'm not faster in a single corner.

And it's not that I'm far off, I'm a couple hundreds off. Yeah.

And he is not taking big chunks.

Maybe even maybe a 10th, whatever, but I'm not, I'm not miles away.

But he said, I'm not beating him in a single corner.

And he is like, I've never had in my entire career a teammate that is able to do that to me.

And Felix, we all know his single at pace is exceptional.

Um, and he said just the majority of the time, it's just everywhere.

So it's not, he's able just to extract that little bit more at all times that everyone else can't do.

Um, and he said what's what's also impressive is like you would think someone with that, you, you look at him and he is quite soft spoken and you, you know that he's very precise and you, Townsend talks about it all the time.

He's the surgeon, right? Like he's, he's, he uses every inch

of track and he's, he's not often making mistakes, but you would kind of equate that to someone who maybe is not that good in the high speed, right.

Or the, the super high commitment or that sort of thing.

And Felix was like, that's the other thing.

Like he has massive <inaudible> too .

So he, he also, he also shifts it in the high speed and like, I don't really beat him there either.

It's like, cool, , sick. That's

So funny.

It's like, if you want look at a speech trace, right?

Mm-hmm. You know, it goes up and down for those, you know,

it kinda like zigzags up and down.

Yeah. It's like there's no big separations.

It's just his is just above your line the whole way.

It's just barely above it.

But it's just like traced just above it. How is that?

Oh dude, I, I, you Can't even look at like, okay, if I just focus on this section, like I'll be as good as This, right?

Yes. Yes. I gotta break later in this corner

and carry a bit more speed here and I got it.

It's like, nope. You gotta do everything

exactly how you're doing it.

Just half a percent better at all times. Yeah, yeah.

Oh man, it's, yeah. It's, that's a tough situation to be in.

That's a tough situation to be in.

But like for the first time in this point system to have a, a championship locked up with two full weekends to go by.

I think we already mentioned this one by I think four races to go.

He had already scored, I think it was within eight points of what total mm-hmm .

Points. He scored to win the championship last year

and had already scored more than what second place in the championship.

Got with four rounds still to go. Mm-hmm .

It's um, you know, eight races on the season.

We've got two left. He could tie AJ

and announcer for most wins in a season 'cause he is won on short ovals.

Do I think that's gonna happen? I don't, I don't know.

You know, I think it's gonna be very hard to win the next two for anybody.

Those are, those races are so tough to predict.

And there's a lot of guys that are very exceptional at those types of tracks when you, you know, you look at the places where he's super dominant.

Road courses are the bread and butter.

Obviously he's pulled out some good results in street circuits as well.

But yeah, those ones I think are gonna be interesting.

But credit credit's due, man.

I think we're watching, uh, you know, we're watching greatness.

We're watching history be made. I, I went on a, uh, uh,

fellow podcast, the Red Flags podcast last week and the guys asked me, they're like, you know, do you think you could cut it in F1?

And I was like, yeah, absolutely.

They're like, how do you think you would do?

So I said, well, against who?

Like, gimme a, gimme a car to put him in.

And, and they said, okay, so what if you put him in, in the Carlos Science Williams beside Alex Alban?

How do you think he'd do? And my point was, I was like,

well, I think they'd be good teammates.

'cause Alban's a very like technical like, detail oriented guy.

I know Polo's the same way.

Like he really loves diving into the data deep and whatever.

So I was like, year one, he learns the tires and the tracks.

Year two, he beats Alba More often than not this got picked up by some by by motorsport.com, some news outlet.

And the, uh, the internet has opinions, has thoughts. Mm.

But I would love to know that's your Take for the internet, Right?

Uh, especially the F1 group.

They're, they're, uh, they're strongly opinioned fan base.

But what do you think if you put him in a Williams, what do you think he'd stack up?

Yeah, that's a weird comparison because I don't, I, I think Alban's good, but I don't think he's, he's exceptional.

Um, when you look at some of the guys that you could have chosen to put him up against.

Um, so yeah, I think you're absolutely right.

You know, the Pelli Tire is incredibly unique.

However, it would suit his driving style almost immediately.

So then the big thing would be learning the tracks to which he would only know a couple and a completely different way of approaching a race weekend, which he would figure out.

'cause he is a smart person. Mm-hmm .

But it's, it's, it's a complete 180 to anything IndyCar is.

Um, so yeah, I, I agree completely with the sentiment that the first year he would have some flashes where he was brilliant and the second year he would, he would dispose of him pretty quickly.

I think that's a different conversation when you put him up against Charles mm-hmm .

That's a different conversation when you put him up against George Max, you know, the, the elites in F1, because while we know what he's doing here is kind of unheard of, I think it's unfair to say that if you put a Charles, a Lewis, a max, a George in a 10 car at Cani and give them a couple years that they wouldn't be doing a similar thing.

Um, you know, I think there's, there's, there's drivers that are just on a different, on a different level.

And I think he, Alex is one of those, but I do think there's a couple of those in F1 as well.

So I'm not, yeah, I wouldn't say he's gonna go over there and be a world champion.

Oh. But I definitely think against your Albans, your glees,

your whatevers, he would, he would've the upper hand.

The the other thing that you see a lot of in those comments, whatever you talk about guys going in into card F1 or whatever, and one of the things that a lot of people focus on is like, oh well, you know, he was in Europe and he was in the junior categories and he wasn't good enough so he had to leave.

And it's just like, I know that these are just people on the internet who dunno what they're talking about, but it's like, let, let us try to explain to you why that doesn't actually translate the way you think it does.

The teams in the junior categories are very different.

There's good teams, there's bad teams, there are drivers that were pretty average in the junior categories that are doing very well.

At the high level. There are drivers

that were exceptional in the junior categories and are bang average at the top.

And so that does not tell the whole story.

It's like Tom Brady was drafted 199th, he ended up being pretty good at football.

I take a lot of issue when people are like, oh well yeah, he, he was no good in F three and he couldn't even podium in F two.

It's like, that's just not the whole story guys.

And like, we make these, these assessments knowing a little bit about motor sports, knowing a little bit about driving race cars, looking at what it is he's doing exceptionally well in IndyCar and knowing kind of what skill sets translate and, and translate to performance in F1.

And there's a reason that we are saying this.

This is not just like us, you know, big up our boy 'cause we're IndyCar guys.

I genuinely think he would be very, very good for all those reasons that we just said.

Anyway, I I so do digress.

Good. Good job to him. Good job to kanai.

I think just to close that out, you know, you talk about what he did compared to even himself last year.

Um, you know, I think that's a testament to the organization.

Um, you know, because I, I would find it hard to believe that he himself as a driver improved that much in an off season.

But I think Anasi, you know, clearly found a, a more complete package that that allowed them to be successful at a wider variety of places.

And they delivered the more often than not so huge credit to, to all the men and women there.

Um, last week we also cut short a topic that we need to talk about.

And that is, uh, of, of all wheel power, will it p and and kind of the, the situation that he finds himself in.

You know, I gave my quick thoughts on it at the end of last week's episode.

If you haven't heard that go, go check it out.

But James, I'd be very interested to hear A, what your thoughts are, B how they got into this situation, they being Penske, and see what the best roadmap out of it for both Will and Penske would be.

Great series of questions, my friend.

So my, I think my opinion is very, very similar to yours.

I have, and you know, I, I am as surprised as everybody that Penske's in this position will, is still performing at a very high level and is now the only Penske driver of won race this year.

Now that's not all on those guys.

That's, that's not a shot at Joseph for Scott, that is just a fact.

He's the highest guy in the championship, not a shot at the other two.

Just a fact. Everyone's had their fair share

of bad luck, a across all three.

Like they, that as a team, they've got more DNFs than anybody.

I think Joseph and Scott both have five a piece, which is insane when we talk about, you know, lapse completed being one of the big indicators of championship success.

I think Will's got three, something like that.

But then you look at a, a race like Port, right?

Qualified very well did the strategy just right, executed what he needed to during the cycles.

And then under immense pressure in the, the back half of the race, the last 20 laps dealing with lap traffic, dealing with cars behind it didn't put a foot wrong.

So, you know, he has proven without a doubt in my mind that he's still incredibly capable.

And, and this is not a shot at, at Lucas at all, but it's like, if, if the thought was, you know, he was the next guy and he was gonna be better than Will, I don't think we've seen a performance outta him that makes you think he's gonna be better.

David's got a lot of talent.

David's got a long future in this sport.

He's got a lot of potential, whether it's the environment there at Foyt, the car, the whatever he hasn't shown, you know, he's had a couple of strong races this year, but he hasn't had the kind of consistent pace and performance that you would look at and be like, oh, we should put this guy into a Penske car tomorrow.

Again, not to say he doesn't deserve to be there at some point, but when you're comparing up against one of the most successful drivers in the history of the sport, it's a tough one to sort of reconcile in your head, why are we here, dude, your guess is as good as mine.

Um, it's, it's kind of sounds like there was some maybe deal done with David before, like the season even started maybe at some point last year.

Like who knows? The, there's gonna be so much speculation on

that side of things and hopefully one day, you know, will writes a book or something and it all comes out.

But it's, it is a peculiar one, you know, a lot of, a lot of rumors that this was somehow a Tim Cindrich initiated thing and that certain people don't necessarily want keep it going with Tim no longer, you know, part of the program.

That's pure speculation.

I have no idea if that's true or not.

That's just something I've heard kick around the paddock.

And then in terms of how do we get outta here, where do we go from here for both?

I don't know. I mean, if, if you believe the rumors,

like nothing's obviously been confirmed, will has said publicly that, you know, he's not, he's been told that he's not hearing anything official until after Nashville, which is nuts because that gives him no time to go find another ride, right?

Like, that's one of the hardest things.

Most of these IndyCar contracts have a date by which you can't start talking to other teams, right?

But that's usually like June 1st.

So like you get through May and then, then you can kind of start, especially with the season as short as it is now.

So to have a guy on the hook until September after the season's done is a very bizarre move.

And I don't think his showing will the respect that he deserves.

But, you know, maybe it's a ploy too, because they know he's good, their steel is going through whether they want it to or not, they don't actually want him in a good car because that's one more guy they gotta beat next year.

I don't, I don't know if there is a way out of this for Penske, because, you know, as I've always said, you don't hide good news, right?

You don't hold, you don't hold back good news.

And because they're waiting so long to say anything, it, my gut feeling is that it's done.

And so their, their bet is made as far as Penske goes, the bigger question is then where's will go?

What, what does, will do at this point? I don't know.

I dunno what your thoughts are on that.

I, I have, I have a few thoughts, none of which can be shared on the podcast, but I I think it's, it's a, it's a really strange, it's a really strange situation because I, and I mentioned this on, on last week's episode, any other driver that has won, well, if we were looking at 20, 24, right?

Any other driver that had won three races and was the only driver in contention to win the championship going into the final race, even though it was a long shot, but mathematically possible would've had a deal done, or at least some sort of idea of what that deal was gonna look like.

And he, he didn't have either of those things.

So that's, that for me is, I, I can't quite wrap my head around it.

It's very, very strange. And if I'm will, um,

and again, we're on a, on the speculation train, but after, after all of this, and maybe it's not speculation because there's been a couple, there's been a couple quotes that he's had where it's like, who says the decision isn't up to me?

Let's say, let's say that the powers that be at, at, at Penske Racing team, Penske, Penske Corp, whatever, decide, all right, we, we resolved whatever situation we got ourselves into.

Come on back. If you're a driver, let's,

let's just take this example out of it.

You're any sports person for any team in any league, and you've been kind of strung along for that period of time and been forced to kind of perform under that undue pressure and have to tolerate all of the questions and the media and all of the, the presumptions that go along with that.

Would you really want to just walk back into that door?

I don't know. Maybe, maybe

because at the end of the day, that is the most successful team on the grid and he knows he has his best shot, um, to be competitive and successful there.

So maybe, and you swallow your pride sort of situation and, and you take what they give you.

But at what point do you not do that?

And that, I don't know, you, You, you could argue that there's a, there's been a level of disrespect now that you would just out of, out of bitterness, not want.

'cause it's like you weren't wanted, you weren't good enough. Right? That's

My point. Yeah.

Right. And so, yeah. But, so

I think he's in a unique situation because Will's got nothing to prove to anybody, right?

He's in the top five all time wins.

He is the top all time qualifier.

He's got a 502 championships willpower could retire tomorrow and it's a hall of fame career.

And no one looks at Willpower's career with, uh oh.

What if, you know, so he kind of has the freedom to tell a team of that caliber if he feels he's been mistreated to pound sand.

And if he just loves going IndyCar racing, yes, he might be accepting that he's not gonna have the same opportunity to win as much.

But at the same time, that's what's cool about IndyCar racing is everybody can win most years.

Thanks Polo. But minus 25,

but yeah, minus 25, what is Well this outlier, this doesn't count.

Yeah. Yeah. But so he, he, he kind of does have that,

that power, which I think is awesome.

And I mean, I would love nothing more than to hear, you know, years down the road.

He's like, yeah, no. And you know,

on September 4th they called me and said, all right, let's do it.

And he's just like, no, absolutely not.

You got, i I have no interest in working with this group anymore.

Yeah, it'd be, it'd be such a cool story. Um, so yeah, man.

Okay, so let's say for whatever reason he's not at Penske, whether it's his choice, it's their choice, whatever.

Um, 'cause again, I dunno if you, if you kind of picked, I dunno if you wa you probably didn't watch the race, uh, from Portland, but his interview, his victory, yeah, I had a great career. Yeah,

Yeah.

And like thanked, it was nice.

It was so nice working with all the people.

Like, it, it sounded very past tense esque. Yes.

So again, I, I don't think they had good news.

I don't think he's going back my opinion. Where's he go?

If your willpower and Pence's not an option, where do you, like, where do you wanna end up?

Well, I mean, Dixon's going to coin.

He could take his seat. Great point.

Well, James, he could Preem Dixon going to co It's, It's a pretty easy, pretty easy answer.

You wanna end up at Canas. Andretti?

Okay. What are the,

what are the realistic prospects of those things happening?

This is motor supports, dude. A hundred percent, 80%.

I mean, realistic, I don't know, but like, could it happen?

Absolutely. Like Yeah,

Anything's possible, I suppose.

I mean, I mean, I'd throw McLaren in there as well. Obviously.

I think that one's harder. Why?

That one's harder, one's harder.

Um, well obviously the, I I can't talk about it. ,

I can't because there's one car that's not performed at the level of the other two.

Right. There may be some other

elements that are involved there.

Fine. You know, I know that MSR was one of the teams

that was talked about a lot, but it was just announced that Armstrong's going back, congrats to Marcus, uh, at MSR.

Good job. They'll be back together in 26.

Ray Hall's kind of seems to be the lead candidate in terms of, you know, possibilities.

No one really knows the details of Deb's deal, man.

For all we know Graham's, like Graham's kind of threatened to retire a couple times already.

Mm mm-hmm . Um, okay, how about this,

how about this possibility is if, if Ma Lucas is going to Penske, there's an open seat of Foy.

He's a big GM guy.

He is, he's raced, you know, with Chevy for a long time.

There's still, I mean, maybe that technical partnership continues and that's kind of like the, the parting gift to Will is, hey, you go into the Foyt car, we continue supporting it from an engineering standpoint.

Maybe that's a possibility. I dunno if it's what you want,

But that, I think that I think is the most logical solution.

But I don't, I don't think this, I don't think the sequence of events that are gonna unfold in the next two months are gonna be logical.

That's my, yeah. That's just my guess.

Yeah. If Only there was a name to show

that it's like illogical, I guess.

Like it was silly, like a silly period of time. Hmm.

Almost like, like almost like a, an entire season of the sport that was dedicated to the silliness of, Of driver.

Look, I think, I think we're good. I think silly period

of time has a ring to it and I think that's what people are gonna use. I don't think we need to keep going.

I that sounds a little too simplified, but like silly period of time involving driver movement is probably a little more just so that we know what we're talking about.

Just so it's more Yeah. Okay.

I get that. That makes sense.

Yeah. Silly period of time could just be like

at the zoo , you Know? That's true. That's

True.

Whatever. Yeah. Well that's great. Um, the zoo would

Be silly.

Alice, did you know that you have a phenomenal finishing record at Milwaukee?

A hundred percent. Are You super

excited about going to Milwaukee?

I am. I, um, that was one of those tracks where I,

I was told by you, by Old Man Hunter Ray, by a lot of people that like, man, I wish you were around when we raced in Milwaukee.

And then it came back and I went to the test there in like, June of, of last year and I was like, these guys are probably full of and it takes a lot, as we know, it takes quite a bit to impress me, .

Um, and I did, I did my first run.

I was like, hell yeah, this place is bitching .

Um, and, and it, it raced.

Not only is it awesome to drive, like it's awesome to do a cute qualifying lap there.

Um, it raced excellent last year, both races, which is a little bit of a rarity on Doubleheaders because usually, you know, a lot of improvements are made to the cars between race one, race two, and people are kind of more dialed in, so there's less separation.

But because there was so much tired egg and, um, there is two line or two lanes that open up, there's three, um, at times it, it made for an awesome race, uh, which probably means, you know, it'll be a different tire and we won't get the same thing.

But here's hoping don't do that.

Don't, don't ruin that for us.

Are you like, are you bummed that it's only a, a single header now? Yeah, only a single race.

Yeah. I'm super bummed. Yeah.

Like what? Yeah.

Yeah. If only there was another doubleheader we could

have traded it for anyways.

Um, uh, the, the fan turnout, the fairgrounds, like I loved last year how outside the grandstands, like all the concessions that are usually a part of the state fair were open and it just made it a really cool and nice environment to be a part of.

Mm-hmm . And, and all the fans that asked for so many years

to go back to Milwaukee showed up.

They were treated to two awesome races.

Um, it seems as though, from what I've heard, ticket sales or eclipsing that of last year.

So yeah, I mean, it should be another fantastic weekend and, and super pumped for it. I don't like

This positivity. You be negative about

something. ,

I already threw my negative thing in there. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Tim, you're still here.

Anyway, there, it's, you know, we, there was, there was a call to action.

I was like, Hey, don't complain about Milwaukee not being on the schedule and then don't show up.

You guys showed up. We had fans that bought tickets

and didn't even show up just to support the race.

Again, shout out, appreciate that.

I believe she's actually coming this year, which is great.

And, and the fans, you guys drank Milwaukee out a beer, which was impressive.

Like the, the grounds actually ran out of alcohol, which is so Wisconsin, and I absolutely love that.

So, uh, I'm, I'm super excited to get back.

Great place to have, you know, a race near the end of the season.

And then dude, we're like, we're two away, like two weeks from now, two Weeks away. I know

You're on, you're on temporary leave. ,

you're on six month, uh, what's, what's the word?

It's so dumb. What, what's that word?

When you kinda get put on, you're on, uh, word maternity leave.

No, no, no, no, no. When you fur, it's you like a professor,

you get furloughed or No, I'm Talking.

Gets to the professor when you're trying to get, um, Oh, Tenured oriented tenure. No, it's,

It's a no no.

I'm talking about furloughed when you're not really sabba, but you're not unemployed.

Sabbatical. Sabbatical is a good one too. Sabbatical. Yeah.

Either way you're gonna have a lot of spare time on your hands.

It's gonna be, I can't believe this season's almost done.

I can't believe we're August 19th and it's almost done.

I five episodes of Off Track a week during The offseason.

I absolutely hate it. I love it. I think it's, it's so dumb.

But we can talk about that for the seven months that we have to talk about it.

Let's do it. In the meantime,

I'll see you in Milwaukee Powell.

I hope you're able to continue your wonderful streak and I think it's like your best finishing average track.

So let's keep that going.

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