With Hinch and Buxton

This is, is off track.

Well guys, this is a very, uh, off track version of Off Track mainly because Tim has just spent the last 10 minutes of our recording window talking about things as if he's a little, like, it was like six minutes.

Six minutes. It was too, it was too many minutes, Tim.

It was too many minutes. Okay.

But you know whose fault it is?

It's Will Buxton's Fault because he is a delight to talk to. He is just, you

Welcome to my fake office.

That is kind of super, Like when I first logged on, I was like, oh, nice room Will, is that in the, is that in the new place?

And I'm like, then I saw the outline of you shifting.

I'm like, oh no. Okay. Got it.

So it's a, it is a, as I said, it's, you'll notice it's Thursday and yet Will's here and you're like, oh.

But we do guests on Tuesdays. Will's not a guest.

Will is a guest host this week. I'm a Alex host this week.

Yes, Alex is, is unavailable.

And we decided to bring in Willie B and we're just gonna like, do the exactly what we would do if Alex was here, which is talk complete nonsense about Bull. And, uh,

I also have a baby son that I can bring in, uh, at any random moment.

True. So true. You

Know, that's a good point.

Good times. How's good times?

How's, how's doubting 2.0? Having

Two little ones is tough.

lot. I guess it's 3.0 technically. Yeah, it's

3.0.

Um, but it's, it's two, two little ones at once is Yeah.

It's, it's a lot. But it's great. It's really, really fun.

Um, it's good And it means, obviously, you know, not getting a lot of sleep, which comes Sunday is, is good anyway.

'cause I'm gonna be awake all night Celebrating, uh, Celebr.

Oh, you mean you're gonna stay up to make sure you see Cadillac's livery unveil during the super. Yes.

That's why I'll be watching the Super Bowl.

That's not to watch, not to watch the Seahawks continue.

What could go down as a record breaking, record making season?

Why is it record making? I haven't

been paying attention to football Just statistically, like one of the all time great seasons.

Do I know What's hilarious is I haven't been paying attention to football yet.

I won our fantasy football fox thing this year. Do you

Know what's, what's great for me as well is I had no idea how to play fantasy football and was bottom of the league for the entire season was, you know, bottom of the power rankings all the way through the season.

Finish seventh, no idea how.

Still don't understand it. That's the joy of football.

Nobody gets it. No one understands. But what a

Crazy, what a crazy football season.

You know, like sure.

No one could have predicted the way that this one turned out.

I loved the fact that it was so random every single week.

The pre, pretty much every week at least one team that you expected would have a walkover got demolished.

And I loved that. And it was a great

Season.

I never expected the Hoosiers to win the College Bowl. So, you know,

It's been amazing.

Same Thing. Amazing.

Yeah. So remind,

remind me why, I know you've told me the story.

Remind me why Seahawks?

Why are you, uh, like, 'cause this is not a bandwagon thing.

I know that you've actually been cheering for the Seahawks for a long time.

My, as you drink, as you drink your cough medicine straight out of the bottle, once again, .

Let's go. Uh, this is the story. We'll get to still on

It.

Um, so my aunt, uh, back in the 1970s way before I was born, moved to America.

She immigrated to the States way Before Yeah.

A few years. Um, couple days. Few years. Uh, shut up.

And um, and she lived, she lived up in Seattle?

No, she immigrated to Seattle.

So every year from birth to the age of 16, every birthday and Christmas I was sent Seahawks merch.

So I've been a Seahawks fan for 44, 45 years. Like

There you go.

Yeah. Pretty great. Well, I'm, and

and what's lovely is I've been a Seahawks fan and social media is wonderful and Jim Zo, Jim Zorn, uh, the legend that is Seahawks legend, Jim Zorn.

Um, his daughters were massive F1 fans.

Uh, and they've come over and started watching IndyCar.

'cause 'cause we're doing IndyCar now.

Thank you. By the way. Jim bless him,

has sent me signed shirt.

Oh, that signed Jersey. Absolutely amazing. Um, very cool.

Original quarterback for the Seahawks.

There we go. Thank you. Yes, James, James knew that.

James knew that. Totally. I was, I was wondering if Tim knew

that Tim's not a big sports ball guy, so Well he's coming to something Oh yeah, definitely.

That know more about sports ball then you know more about sports ball.

I, I have to . I love you. Just disappear outta the video.

Sorry. Yes. I, um, I was so yeah, we gotta tell everybody ,

everybody, we were at Media day, so we got to see each other.

We've seen each other a couple times the last few weeks.

'cause we were in LA for the Fox seminar and then, uh, we were at Media Day last week, whatever that was, two weeks, whatever it was.

And, um, and so, so Will was feeling a bit under the weather and he had like a bottle of DayQuil or something sitting on the, on the table in front of us.

And like, I kind of noticed he just took like a quick swig right from the bottle.

I'm like, yeah, fine, whatever, who has a spoon?

But then as the day went on, I looked and the bottle was like, had one eighth left, like the bottle was nearly empty.

And I'm like, oh my God.

Will, what are you, you, you're not supposed to just, you're not supposed to drink the whole thing.

You're just supposed to take like a Yeah.

A teaspoon every couple hours.

Apparently it's bad for your liver .

I don't, I don't know. But you're

Just necking this thing like every hour, like every hour. Take a couple

Sweetss .

I've had a cough for like five weeks now.

Apparently there's like terrible man flu going around the UK at the moment.

And I've had this cough and I'm trying to get rid, I can't get rid of it.

And I didn't know what passes for cough medicine out in America.

So I just had DayQuil, which I was just using to lubricate my throat and uh, and kill my liver apparently.

Mm. And, um, yeah, so good times. Good times.

Hopefully we'll make it to some pee because, you know, either my throat will be okay and my liver won't have packed in and it, it'll be, it'll be good.

Thanks for turning up, uh, and, uh, and being so present on Media Days, Hinch, it was great being in your town and seeing literally nothing of you for the Entire week. .

Well, dude, that is fair. That is fair.

I, again, you know, I'm, what's happening though?

I, I'm in the middle of a big move and that's occupying all of my free time.

Do you moved yet? No, no.

I mean, you, you should recognize this background.

I'm still in the same place. Um, yeah, but they're

Used to be diff you used to be different stuff behind you. Have you shifted

That?

Well, because I, I staged it. I staged it.

It was too crowded before I was told.

So I packed up most of the stuff and just had it, I had Becky tastefully stage it, this the real art to it. There

Is, but this is the, this is the fun thing about our off season was I'd had an offer accepted on a house when we were in Nashville for the last race of the year.

Right. So I'm thinking, great,

I'm gonna be moved house by Christmas.

It's all good, you know, prepped family in Baby Born, it's gonna be, you know, great.

Um, ready for start. And that's,

And at the same time, I had zero interest in moving.

You were literally looking, I believe your exact phrase was something along the lines of, dude, I dunno how you do it.

Like, I'm so glad I'm in a place that I like and I'm not even considering moving at any point in the near future.

Here we are about to start the new season.

Hinch has sold his house, moved his house, started renovations on the new house.

And I still haven't moved into the, I still haven't officially bought the house that I'm supposed to have moved into by now. Like

Yeah.

That's the difference between the American and the British housing market.

Yeah. It's so dumb. Yeah. Yeah.

So dumb. I do, I do feel bad for you.

That's, I don't know how this is and like, 'cause I remember Laura Winter was going through some of the same stuff Yeah.

Selling her place after her Lee bought a place. And like if

We are in, if we are in by the 500, it'll be a miracle.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

What? Yeah, .

Yeah. Yeah. It's that bad. Like it's, that's criminal.

It's just a mess. It's a total mess.

Anyway, um, what, how did, so Alex and I talked a lot about Media Day from, you know, the driver's side and, and I talked a little bit about it from our side, just, you know, it was nice getting a chance to, to talk to everybody, right?

Just yeah. For us to sit there

with each driver for a couple minutes.

What were your sort of big takeaways from Media Day?

Obviously, you know, Paolo serene and just super confident.

I think the difference between last year and this year was a lot of people came in last year with quite a lot kind of bravado and cockiness of like, yeah, Alex is beatable.

And this year those same people came in with a, like, it's gonna be tough, but , you know.

But I think if things go our way then we, then, then we can do it.

I think, I think the biggest one for me, the, the, the real surprise for me were the, were the guys who came in really kind of swinging their, and by that I mean like RAs, are we naming names?

Okay. Yeah. Oh yeah. RAs

Rasmuson and Rossi to a degree.

Like, yeah, ECR think they found something like, I don't know if it's a silver bullet.

I don't know if a silver bullet exists with a car of this age, but they think they found something because Rossi was very, if you, the way in which a driver sits on that very uncomfortable chair that we had, I Thought was that we intentionally put in front of them, Like, is really quite telling because if they're, they're kind of straight up and you know, like they're at a job interview and they're taking it very seriously, even though it's supposed to be an off the record conversation.

You know, there's kind of that there's almost an element of a protection there and they're taking it quite seriously.

The two guys who were just like slumped back in the chair, you know, kind of like feed up on the desk.

Rossie and Rasmussen, particularly Rasmussen.

And, and, and Christian was almost like confident to the point of cocky.

Yeah. We were like,

This is either gonna be great or it's gonna blow up in their face.

Um, so that was, that was really interesting.

I thought, I thought willpower was by far and away the most interesting, uh, individual just to observe his mindset coming into the year.

Because anyone who thinks that there isn't an element of wanting to stick it to Roger and Team Penske, they're dreaming.

Like there is such high motivation there for him.

The 2026 Willpower revenge tour is in full force and it's going to be epic, dude, It's Going to be so good.

It's, it's going to be amazing. Um, do you know,

Do you know what I found interesting too?

'cause sorry, will just on the power subject was he came up in a lot of conversations with other drivers.

Mm. And in this whole, I mean, look, I, I know you

and I, I know where you and I stand on this, right?

We, we don't think will slow down. He won races last year.

Like he was in Victory Lane last year.

Still proved he could do it, but the number of people that, you know, it, it came up.

They're like, I'm really curious to see how Will does.

And, and it wasn't ever like a, yeah, I don't know, like it's a big change or whatever.

Everyone's like, oh, like no Will's gonna win races this year.

Like that's just, that's a foregone, It's just question how many Right.

And that's, he was the highest and, and I think he's the most consistent and the highest performer of the Penske drivers last year for sure.

Um, and obviously, you know, it's come out that he didn't so much get dropped as make his own decision to walk away.

And so I like the fact that this has come, you know, of his own volition and that mm-hmm .

Andretti for him handed him the best opportunity he believed to go and, and get results.

It's the first time that Andretti have had a champion on their books.

In how long? Like a long time. Well, when was the last one,

Ryan?

Since Ryan. Ryan, yeah. 21. Yeah.

So, you know, a good long time.

They've got Zuki on board as well.

Like there's a lot of change there that could open up what's been missing, and let's not forget he's in her's car.

Mm-hmm . That car should have won St. Pete last year.

If it wasn't for the botch pit stop, he would've won St.

Pete hands down.

Like he was ahead of below on the strategy, would've won St.

Pete Power just already.

Look at how many pole positions he has at that track.

Look at how much he loves that circuit. Right? Yeah.

He's the last driver to beat Palo to a title, God dammit.

Like if, if he, Great point.

Imagine he opens up the season bam, debut with Andretti Paul win on St.

Streets to St. Pete.

Like what a start to the season that would be.

And then we're just like, well this is box office, let's go.

The thing I think's important though, to just go back to one thing you said there was left of his own volition, but it was because of how he felt he'd been treated and that he did not deserve that treatment after how loyal he'd been to the team and the success they'd had and all the rest of it.

And, and yes.

So I think all things are true, but it's not just that he like walked away.

No, no, he didn't, he didn't look at Penske and think, I can find better elsewhere.

He knew that the writer was on the wall and didn't like the way that he'd been treated. Right. Through

That. Fair enough process.

Fair enough. And we, you know, and we'd known

because we asked Ma Lucas this time last year, we asked him about the Penske link and the Penske tie in.

It was obvious then, you know, and we were all just waiting for it to, to unfold.

And I think the way in which it did, the way in which it handled, you know, that didn't, that didn't play to somebody of, of Will's experience and the respect that he should have been given.

Um, so he is gone somewhere where he'll get it.

And I, uh, I'm super excited to see what he does with, with this opportunity. It could be great fun.

And then that leads into Ma Lucas nicely.

'cause he was another one that was really fascinating to talk to because Oh, please.

You've got a guy that, you know, the, the bulk of his indie car races have happened with Dale Coin Racing, right?

Yeah. He had two consecutive full seasons there

and then has done this Merry-go-round of, didn't even do a race for McLaren, uh, couple races with Shank, then he did his season with Foyt.

So he's, he's had as many teams as he has had years in the sport, you know, now obviously at Penske.

But the, the point that he made was he, you know, look Dale Co we Know is, is Dale Coy.

They operate the way they do and, and always have.

And we love him for it.

Foyt again had some Penske help, but it's still a team that's been on the lower half for a while and don't have a lot of resource in, in the same way as the Big Four.

But now he's like, I'm at Penske.

He goes, there's just so much stuff that he goes, you can just have whatever you want.

Yeah. Like anything you ask for.

And it's not even just like stuff, it's also like if I ask for a change or if I ask for can we do this?

Like whatever you request is yours.

Well, and I think that's such a fascinating situation for him, But who did we discover was the exemplification of that Scott McLaughlin, who has basically hoovered up everybody that he wanted.

You know, Scott has gone over the off season and has taken complete control of that team.

That's Scott's team now, right?

Because Joseph's left the door open.

Scott's gone in and hoovered up all the people that he wanted, got them all on his car.

He's, he's the number one, you know, and he's taken, he's, he's walked, he's walked into that power vacuum and he's gone, yeah, I'm running this team now.

This is, this is my, and and Lucas even said, Scott's been the one that's reached out and Scott's been the one that's helped.

And you know, Scott's been like this great, you know, big Brother to me bringing me into the team.

Like that's Scott's house now. So

When you say Joseph's left the door open, what, what do you mean by that?

Well, with Will leaving right.

Will was, was quite clearly your kind of defacto team leader there, just in terms of age, experience, you know, everything that he brought to the party.

So when somebody with that much character leaves the organization, and by the way, an organization in Flux, you know, in the midst of a massive period of rebuilding, well, who is going to be the one that steps forward and takes lead of that team as a driver, you know, to become that magnetic personality that binds everyone and draws everyone together and makes people want to come to work in the morning.

You know, you'd think it'd be Joseph, right?

But I think everything we've seen, and certainly what we heard, it appears like Scott's the one who's stepped into that void and said, right, I'm going to, I'm gonna take control of this situation Penske's mind now, which I found fascinating.

Really, really interesting.

He's hungry, man. He's hungry. Yeah.

You know, that's a, that's a driver that came from a world where, you know, he was the defacto, uh, series leader, nevermind team leader, you know, winning championships on the trot, dozens of races a year, different format, schedule, but still, um, this guy wants to win championships.

Yeah. This guy wants to get back to that.

That's what he came from. That's what he knows.

That's what fuels him.

And you know, he's been the top performing Penske guy a few of the years that he's been there, but there's this little problem called Alex Pallo that has stopped him from really mounting a, a championship fight.

And, uh, he's over it.

I think the interesting thing for me is, I, you know, we got into this conversation talking about Lucas, but it's something that you said while we were in, in Indianapolis, was how much Lucas, you know, in his first offering as a Penske driver reminded you of New Garden when he started as Pike driver.

Like the happiness, the eyes wide open, the expectation that was there.

And, you know, let's not forget this is a kid.

He still hasn't won an IndyCar race. Yeah.

You know, and he's driving for the biggest name in the sport.

It's, there's a hell of a lot of pressure.

And I wonder how much of the Penske ISS will weigh on the Lucas's because he's a very, you know, he's a, he's a very likable and a very unique character.

But there's a way you have to be, and a person you have to be when you are in that Penske fold.

So how much does that rub off on him?

And how much do we lose? Yeah.

How much Do we need to lose?

How much does, does, does Little Dave need to, to, you know, kind of be changed in order to turn into this, this race winning machine that they need?

Like, it's a really interesting question to be Big Dave.

To be Big Dave. Yeah, exactly.

Although you can, you can make an argument that like McLaughlin never really got fully Penske ified, although he came in as a champion and in a different series and like, well established.

But like, I, I expected him to like, have the rougher edges kind of sanded down and that never really happened.

Yeah, true. And like,

there's been examples in the past when Montoya came back from his NASCAR stint and, and drove for Penske.

He was still Juan, you know, that was never gonna change.

And I think everybody knew that.

And, and look, I mean, if you talk to David and if you see, I mean, there's even been like jokes made about it online.

Penske do seem like they've taken a half step back on some of that stuff.

And they're kind of allowing drivers to be themselves a bit more, um, still don't think he can show up with a beard, but, you know, in, in other ways, I think they're allowed to kind of be themselves, which is important. Like,

When will he lose his curls?

Then he'll be, you know, when when does he get Well, yeah, if he gets like the buzz cut, that's, that's when we know, that's when we know.

But I said that to power.

I was like, I want you to show up to St.

Pete, which is like a mountain man beard.

You know, it should just because, just because Be so amazing, like in his black suit, dark Power , absolutely dark power. But

Like, you know, but the one thing that that Melaleuca said as well, we were like, you know, how does it feel having this suit on?

And he was like, you know, it is a bit like a superhero suit.

You know, you pull on like the Spider-Man outfit or the Batman costume or whatever, like you are, you're a superhero.

You, you pull that Verizon suit on and you just, it imbues so much of the person who's in it.

And he said, and for me, it's weird because for my whole life I've been looking at willpower wearing this suit, and now I'm wearing it.

And it's, you know, it's a, it's a strange thing What he says my whole life.

He's almost being literal . Yeah.

That's, he's almost, it's almost true.

All of his like conscious and life that he can remember every Life memory he has, will power's been that?

It's it's so true though, man.

Like when you, when you, 'cause like, I, I remember going through kind of a similar transition, right?

So last year, this sounds so stupid.

Last year, Lucas's suit was black and maybe it, it had an AJ Foyt racing logo on it, and maybe it had something else.

I don't even know what was on that car. I don't even remember.

Clarance White and blue for some of the season. Sure.

It was his little white and blue Clance. It

Was just white, it was just whatever.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. There's that blue one.

It looked like everyone else's car.

It looked like Joseph's car. I don't know, whatever.

And then, but like, but it's, it's, it's like, it's, it's piecemealed.

It's patched together. It kind

of feels like an indie lights driver's suit with a couple patches on it, you know?

And then all of a sudden you're wearing this thing that is very curated and very, uh, very intentionally designed and built to appease X contract y sponsor.

You know? And then it, when you put that on,

it feels different.

Like my first IndyCar season, you know, our sponsor logo was, yeah, it was like a patch that was stitched over and like cut in the middle for the zipper and it was just like a stock suit that we bolted some patches onto.

And then all of a sudden, the next year I'm in a bright green and black GoDaddy, like one of the most iconic of the era, you know, looks, it makes a difference.

It brings you, you feel like you've joined the other side of the conversation Yeah.

Of, of being an IndyCar driver.

And Dave's getting into a, to experience that. Now,

While we're talking about logos, um, and placement, can we talk about the new Honda logo? Um, yes. So,

So we established it's a throwback.

Did you, did you, did you know that?

So, okay. It's a, it's, it's a, is it?

Ooh, ooh. Buxton's got, buxton's got feelings on this. So

Here's the thing, right?

Um, clearly all the teams haven't been sent the same PDF, uh, that has the exact specifications of how large the logo needs to be on their suits because they're all different size Suits.

And it looks as though GSI got, got a missive that said their logo needed to be 10 times the size, uh, of every other.

'cause it takes up the whole, um, kind of right breast, uh, of the suit.

Um, okay. Yeah.

Look, it's a throwback to the original, what is it, 1962 logo, something like that.

But it's not, because the h is, is a, it's a very different shape.

It's slightly longer and wider and, and the angles are, are different.

The argument that I had right way, like when we, when we were looking at this is is the Honda logo, and it has changed over the years, but is it strong enough?

Is that h alone strong enough that when you take the shield away, it is as recognizable unless it says Honda underneath it, right.

Take the shield away from the Ferrari logo and that horse is, you know what that is?

No matter, you know where you go, you look at the, at the bow tie, right?

You want the the Chevy Bow tie. Okay.

That is, you know what that is wherever you look at it, the Audi four circles, right?

Great. The h particularly if you are now

changing the design of the H to throw back to something that hasn't been seen on their logo for 60 years, is that well known enough that you can actually get rid, essentially of two major design elements and just expect it to automatically speak to people.

And I'm not sure it does.

I think it's, it's cool, but I, so it automatically shouts Honda to me.

So two, so the two points, one, I like it.

I like the way it looks. I do

think, I think it's a cool logo.

Yeah, it's cool. So, but,

but so to your second point, do we know if this is like a, like a, a conscious long-term rebrand or is this like a one year thing?

Are are we, are we celebrating something this year? What are

They celebrating 80 Years?

Because like until that logo is on the road cars, right?

It's not going to have that effect that you're talking about.

So like, if they were rebranding the whole company and that started showing up on the road cars, yes, in time it would do that.

So I don't know. I don't know what the, why

Are you doing a special logo that has no relevance to anything else? Maybe

They were, maybe they're just a glam up bro.

What's quit hating?

I would at this juncture, like to thank Honda very much for the care package they sent me over the winter of the fine T-shirt.

Yeah, you gorgeous Cashmere hoodie.

It's gorgeous. I Actually wore mine. What level

Of IndyCar media do I need to give you to get care packages?

I liked it so much. I on to my wife and said,

and said, I need another one of these .

And she brought me like a, a beautiful, uh, panaya, uh, like a uh, uh, like an army green, uh, hooded, nice lovely wool jumper thing.

Nice. Really, really nice. Really

Very nice.

I actually was wearing mine.

We interviewed, uh, Dario earlier in the week. Um, I

Saw that And I was, I was wearing that there. How

Cool did Dario's getting back in at St. Pete? I love that.

I, and this is the thing that I said to him was like, it's gonna be so cool for IndyCar fans to get to see him back on track.

'cause like he does the Goodwood stuff and he did the Dubai 24 hour thing, which is cool.

Um, but for him to be back on track at a, you know, a place that's filled with people that know him and love him and support him, it's gonna be super cool to watch. I

Just, I love the video in the intro as well.

It's like, you don't need to introduce who you are, dude. Like everyone knows who you are.

Yeah. ,

I'm Dar Frank Keating. I've, I've won everything. Um, I've

Done some stuff. Maybe you've heard of me.

You may remember me from such victories as .

So, So heading into this season.

Yeah. Uh, there's two things I want to talk about.

One is what people can expect.

I don't even know what we're allowed to say about this, so I want your take, but like, what people can expect from Fox on our side.

What's new, what's different?

I mean, obviously coming into St.

Pete this year is 180 degrees a different situation than it was last year.

So, you know, like before the seminar, I think we were chatting about this before the seminar.

I rewatched the St.

Pete broadcast from last year, and then I rewatched the Nashville broadcast from last year to see where we were and where we, where, you know, how it started and how it's going kind of thing.

Yeah. What we were doing right and wrong and what we fixed

or what still needed to be fixed.

Uh, and it was, it was really fascinating to, to see that sort of, you know, difference.

Yeah. Um, but I know, you know,

at the seminar they were telling us of, of some of the things that we're doing this year.

And I Are we allowed to share some Of the core things?

No. I dunno if we're allowed to say,

Alright, let's just say this then Say warm up is back-up.

Is Back the warm up The warm And there's More of it.

Yes. Actually there's a, there's a cool announcement coming

about warmup, which is exciting.

Yep. So, so that's

Gonna be good.

That's cool. Yes.

There's there's gonna be more stuff. It'll

Be warmer.

It'll be warmer and higher because there'll be more warm, uh, I dunno, whatever.

Um, yeah. Next, I don't know. Cut that .

No, we're leaving that in.

That's a hundred percent stated.

Um, there's gonna be some cool additional like, tech stuff.

Yes. Like we're, we're pushing boundaries on that.

We're adding some stuff.

We are doubling down on some things that we've already been doing. And if Mitch

Gets the camera angles that he wants, then it's gonna be great as well. 'cause um,

Yeah, that's, that's another thing a really Hard on that And that's a cool thing.

That's something that I want people to pay attention to this year because, so Mitch is the director and last year was his first year doing motor sports, not indie car racing. Yeah. First,

First lap of practice in St.

Pete was the first lap of anything he'd cut ever.

Right. And so he comes from a background

of stick and ball sports.

He's done Super bowls, he's done World series, he's done all that sort of stuff.

Right. He's done arena, a lot of arena games.

This is a very different arena. Yes.

And it's a steep learning curve.

And he did a phenomenal job throughout the year. Oh good.

Always getting better. He's he's super analytical.

He's self-critical, you know. Yeah. Almost to a fault.

And you know, he is that perfectionist kind of guy.

But so when you, when you have a racetrack, somebody ahead of time goes and they do their camera design.

So you go and you lay out where all you have x number of cameras.

Yeah. We're gonna put one here, one here.

We're gonna put the jib camera here.

We're gonna have the this here this year.

Whatever, whatever. Yeah. So for last year,

because he was brand new to this, he sort of just defaulted to what had always been done at those circuits by the previous group.

Yeah. So now he's got a year of experience

and he's had a a, a full weekend at each of these racetracks.

He gets to go around and he can tweak some stuff. Well,

'cause he can say, I needed a camera that showed me this angle and it didn't exist last year.

And wouldn't it have been cool if we'd have had this angle?

'cause then we could have shown this much better.

And you know, it's, it's that I think what he did last year was astonishing.

I couldn't imagine, you know, any one of us going and commentating on a ball sport.

Can you imagine doing that?

Oh, even, like, even for me, the transition from F1 to indie car was daunting.

So coming over from baseball and sticking ball sports, by the way.

And you know, he's won sports Emmys for his broadcasts, you know, in that, in, in that field.

Um, but coming over and, and having to do racing, having never done it before, I thought the the speed with which he caught onto everything and got it.

Like properly got it was.

Um, and you know, like there'd be things when when we'd say, and we need more of this and we, we need more of that.

You'd have to explain it in week one.

And then the next time you said it, he knew exactly what you were talking about. And it was just, he's

Yeah.

He's very, very switched on.

Very switched on passionate car guy and has become, I think we've made a racing fan out of him. But, uh, oh,

You can't, you can't do this if you're not.

And he, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so pay, pay,

Pay attention this year to the, it's to the camera angles.

It's gonna be good. You know, and that's,

but that's, it's all part and parcel of, of putting this thing together and selling it, you know, and making people enjoy watching it, um, is how it's presented, how it's laid out.

Um, you know, I've been working on myself massively over the winter to try and improve.

'cause I wasn't where I wanted to be last year.

I think I got closer to it by the end of the season.

But then I went back and I watched everything over the winter and man, I just got, I got books and books of notes and notes and notes and notes of like, don't do this, don't do this, do more of that.

That was cringe. Don't do that again. .

Um, you know, and people would probably know what I'm talking about with those kind of things, but you know, you, you, you, you gotta be critical of it.

And I thought the worst thing was we got to Nashville and I was just like, I just want another, I just want one more.

Yeah. I wanna keep working at it

and I want to keep, you know, keep chipping away to get better.

But, you know, six months old, Have you considered having some more, uh, cough medicine? See if that helps .

Um, here's, here's the Thing.

Like, I don't know if this stuff's getting me drunk, like .

It's, I haven't drunk alcohol, uh, since like mid Ohio or something.

Like seven, seven months now.

This is the, this is the closest thing I I've had to a shot of anything in a, As he takes another cheer, bottoms up, Val, cheers.

Like, so that, that transitions beautifully into what I actually just wanted to ask next and talk about next.

Was, was you basically in the sense of, you know, a year, a year on, right?

Oh, you're going into this now year two. What's different?

How much, like how different do you feel going into 26 than you did to 25 Night and day, night and day different?

You know, I still know I've got a lot to prove, but I feel like I belong a bit more than I did.

And I think that will hopefully, you know, just, just take a bit of the pressure off.

And, and I was very conscious of it from St.

Pete all the way through to Nashville.

There were times I was just trying way too hard to prove that I knew what I was talking about and prove that I belonged and, and get people on side and not to hate me.

'cause I was an outsider coming into their thing, you know?

'cause I didn't wanna be that guy that was like, Hey, you know, .

I kind of wanted people to be like, oh yeah, he knows a <inaudible>.

Um, but I think I probably tried a bit too hard on occasion to, to do that.

So just to have fun, man. You know?

And we have such a laugh. We have such a great

time. And it's

A good group, man. It's, it's a fun group.

It's, it's amazing. And the broadcast that I watched back

that I enjoyed the most were the ones where we had the most fun.

Yeah. And the, the sessions that felt the easiest

for me were always the practice sessions because we were just having a giggle.

You know, we were just having a laugh with it.

So I hope we can bring more of that to our broadcast this year.

Um, because when we are having fun and when we're enjoying it and we are enjoying it, you know, how can you not love doing this job?

Um, then I think everyone at home en enjoys it as well.

Just remembering to stick to my job and not talk over you in Townsend and, and step on what you guys should be doing.

Um, well then I'll Be, well we all do that .

Hope we all have to get better at that.

You mean Townsend and James are so respectful to each other.

not stepping on. You know,

You know what, I didn't have to step in as often as I thought I was going to .

That was good. They were, they were.

Well maybe they'll be less well behaved in year two, but year one.

Yeah, we get along, we get along. See,

Everyone thinks they don't and they fully do get along.

No acs my buddy. I like t Bell a lot, so, okay.

That's in your car. It's coming up.

We've got the Phoenix test coming up. Super excited.

We have, I know you've gotta run because yeah, Tim took up too much time.

But one of the things I wanted to quickly just touch on, because we like to cover everything on this show and we didn't get there fast enough, but I mean, 32nd thoughts on the, the week of shakedown.

Um, oh, in Barcelona for S one.

Okay. Uh, where do we start? The Audi, I hate the paint job.

I think it looks like it's So bad.

Like a team in one country's decided the front half and team the other country decided to back up Uh, the engine, which was maybe what happened. Well

And they had a really difficult first week, apparently.

Bottom of the pile out of everybody. Okay.

The has looks, looks great.

I love the, the design on the has. That's cool. I

Was gonna say, hold on, on the count of three favorite livery.

1, 2, 3. Ha. None of them. Oh ha. Mine ha.

Yeah. Yeah. The house is great.

The house is, the house is a properly brought together house.

It looks, it looks great. I,

When a, when a base white livery is done correctly, it is gorgeous.

Yeah. And we carb had a pretty solid one last year when,

this is when Red Bull did the, like the, the one-off in Japan in, was It in Japan?

Yeah, a couple years ago. Yeah. Yeah.

Love a white liberty. That is,

That is a gorgeous live.

I think that looks great. Um, look,

basic headlines from it are Mercedes, I mean, Bulletproof reliability already working on setup.

Like that's what you want out of a shake down. Absolutely Perfect Run

Race runs.

They've done race runs already.

Everyone's gonna be freaking out because, because they're on it.

They're, they're properly on it.

Um, I think the big, the big sketch, oh, also a Mercedes engine in the back of an Alpine.

They've got a very interesting flappy rear wing.

Um, that looks quite, quite, quite an interesting one.

You know, Williams is the big story.

Um, and is it the end of the world?

Possibly not that they missed the shake down.

You know, you look back half a decade, Williams missed the first few days of testing, then turned up with a car that was slow and was full of illegal parts that if it's, if it's a repeat of that, then heads are gonna roll.

However, let's look back to 2009 where Braun missed the first two tests, turn up to the last test and ended up going and winning both.

It's a great point. That's a great point. You

Can turn up and because it's, And because it's such a big rules change, like if it's ever gonna happen, it's kind of time go Night.

So like it doesn't, you can turn up late if you turn up late with a rocket ship who gives a <inaudible>, right?

Yeah. If you turn up late

and your car is slow, then you've got, then you've gotta answer some questions.

Well, because like talk late and rapid. Great.

Who cares? Uh, uh,

If you, if you look at it just on paper, right?

Like let's ignore certain elements.

But like in a lot of ways, I'd almost rather be Williams than Aston because Aston admitted they started late 'cause their wind tunnel and everything wasn't up, uh, in until April when everyone else started working on the 26 cars in January, they showed up to the test, they got 61 laps, right?

But that 61 laps on the car and the engine in the power unit, right?

Whereas Williams has the benefit of having a Mercedes power unit.

So they, between their three other teams, they got thousands plus lapse done.

Yeah. So like Williams I think is almost in a better po like

61 laps on the, on the car on the chassis.

Is that that big of a handicap compared to, I think the big, the bigger issue is if you are a one, you know, essentially you are, you're a one car team.

So you are a one engine, a one car, one engine team, you know, like you're an Audi, right?

And you've, that's tough.

Got one engine, you are an Aston and you've got the Honda Power Unit.

That's tough, right? For both those

teams, that's really, really tough.

Um, even for Red Bull, you've only got your two teams with the, with the Red Bull Powertrain, Ford, whatever we're calling it powertrain in the back.

That's tough. Um, so Mercedes will obviously come out of

that first week very, very happy.

Um, yes, Ferrari had the, the headline time supposedly, although we don't really know.

Yeah. You know, who knows.

Let's wait until we get to proper testing and see what's what. Alright,

We gotta let you go.

Two quick questions. Will

Lewis Hamilton winner race this year? God, I

Hope so.

Will George Russell be world champion? God,

I hope not.

buddy. Thank you so much for filling in.

Uh, we're stick around everybody.

We're gonna, we're gonna come back for a little bit more, but Will's gotta run.

Uh, appreciate you man. We'll see you in a few weeks. .

Oh, will I love Will.

He's, uh, always a good addition tip. Pretty much. I didn't

Anything.

I didn't know he had a heart out, but I have no regrets.

I like just talking to that guy. , .

Yeah, that was a, that was a funny departure as well.

Yeah, man. So, uh, some, some news we didn't get around to,

uh, obviously the announcement of dc which was, you know, Well, we mentioned it on the show week. I dunno if

We didn't get around to it or if we didn't know right. ?

Well, no, I meant in this last conversation with we Oh yeah, we knew with that.

We didn't know last week when, you know, it came up or at least I didn't know. I don't know what said,

I'll say there were, there were two things I would've said I was certain of last week.

I would've said I was certain that I was gonna go see a rocket launch and I would've said I was certain that I would not see a race in DC this year.

And so I was wrong on both . So ,

Like, so is, was the launch scrubbed 'cause of temperatures?

It's pushed to earliest is March, but then like I'm Alex's guest and it's all race weekends.

Yeah. So unless it gets pushed to April,

there's, that's not gonna happen.

Uh, for, for me, the rocket, it'll still go and like obviously with rockets, just to briefly touch on this, because I know everybody wants to hear about dc These are, these are rules and policies that are written and, and blood and tragedy.

Right? They're going to do everything they can to make sure

that this rocket is going to be launched safely as they should.

So they, they had a, they had a hydrogen leak.

Uh, they had a hydrogen leak in the wet dress.

It was with intolerable limits, but they stopped, they tried to fix it, they kept going, they started again, stopped, fixed it, fully filled it, but then it was still leaking after it was filled.

So they aborted the wet dress with like five and a half minutes left, which sucks.

But obviously they're going to to do things. Yeah. Yes.

As safely as possible.

I mean, you said super morbidly.

I wish they would've taken my schedule into account, um, A little more.

You said it kind of morbidly the way you described it, but it's also just like, dude, it's a lot of time and money has also gone into launching this thing.

Yeah. And uh, but I mean, if you look at

No people history of nasa, like Yes, The Apollo one challenger, like the, these, these, they exist for a reason. I'm

Gonna, dude, I'm gonna look at it the other way though.

I mean, if you look at the history of nasa, their track record is actually pretty impressive.

True. When you compare to other space programs. True.

So, uh, credit to all those people and all the hard work and minus, you know, the few tragedies that that organization has faced.

Anyway, I am bummed for you.

Um, I feel slightly less bad now that I got overlooked because, you know, I'm not, you know, holding the right passport, uh, , but imbued for Hazel, Hazel, Bum, Hazel, Hazel and I, she was a little bummed.

Um, we're still going, we're flying, flying in and outta Orlando.

Uh, we're just gonna make a weekend of it.

Go to Universal Studios, check out Epic universe.

I've never been to Universal in Florida, or at least not in like 30 years.

Great. So yeah, we're just gonna make a weekend of it.

Jealous. Jealous.

I wish I could come, I wish I could be there for that.

I'm pretty sure Disney allows Canadians, but whatever.

Well, we're going, we're gonna Universal, not Disney.

It's the same to me. I feel like it's

all owned by the same people. Uh,

Okay, so DC So yeah, so big announcement and I shock announcement.

I think, uh, coming out this last week, this week, last week, I don't know what date.

It's Tim recently, uh, adding a race to the schedule and adding one in a pretty cool place to go racing it, it, the way it all came about.

Super weird, super bizarre.

But I think fundamentally what I'm focusing on in this whole thing is we've been asking for more races on the calendar.

You look at the races that we've added recently, the likes of, you know, Nashville when it was a street race.

Uh, now we've got Arlington, you know, we're doing Markham this year as a new street race.

This is what fans want.

These, these are events that go well that, uh, are well attended, that put on a good show, a good event over the course of the three day weekend or whatever.

And you know, it's gonna be one of the coolest backdrops to, uh, to, to do it at.

So I hope that it all goes through. I don't know.

I've honestly genuinely not kept up.

I've been pretty busy the last couple days.

I don't know where it actually all stands.

I don't know what executive orders mean.

I don't know if that means it's a done deal or if there's still some things that have to clear it.

Tim, maybe you can answer that part. All I

Know is no idea.

Okay. Alright. So I

Can, can, I'm sorry I can't go back and point to the last race that was done by via executive order.

That's because normally you're good at that stuff.

Just look it up, would you?

That's just never happened. Uh, so I don't

know. ,

I hope it happens and I hope it's something that's, you know, that's not just a one-off, you know, because of the 250th anniversary and all that.

Like, I hope this becomes another staple event in the calendar because again, it's a cool place to go race and for decades to come, you know?

Uh, I, everybody can come out and enjoy a motor race, you know, uh, in the nation's capital.

So we'll see a lot of questions still to come about this whole thing.

Um, logistically I cringe thinking of what goes into making that race happen.

Yeah. I mean, yeah.

I know how disruptive it is when like one member of the executive branch comes to the 500, right?

Like it's a big deal and it stopped.

It complicates logistics significantly.

Bringing everybody from the indie car world to the vicinity of a lot of important people.

The, the only thing I'll say is like there pretty used to it in DC Right?

That's a Good point. Like . That's a good point. .

That's a good point. But like, not,

not not like this though.

Like there's a lot of like sports arenas that they have a good handle on, but like, this is building something, you know, I No, I mean they're used to traffic disruptions and things like that. Oh,

Sorry, Sorry.

Whenever. Oh yeah. No, I don't care about that

Local, any of those members of the executive, No locals bitch about traffic.

Every time there's a street race, I don't really actually care about that, but we'll see. Unless

You're a listener, then we really do care about you, but not anybody else.

Unless you're listening to the show while you're stuck in traffic, then well, You just got more time.

We got a long backlog. We're almost 500 episodes.

That's so insane to me. I'm like kind of upset about that

Actually.

I still weird. Don't have a helmet.

Do you have a Rossi helmet? No.

That, that's why. What? I'm insane.

So why, why, why are you giving me all this flack? Because

Alex isn't here.

Oh, well you had giving me flack when we were interviewing Dario too, when Alex Wasn't here.

I'm, you better give Alex flack next week.

Oh, I do. That's all I'm saying.

I do. That's what I'm saying. Okay, . Alright.

Just making sure. Do you care what year it's from?

I sure don't, Because I'm trying to think of like duplicates that I've got that maybe I could give you. I'll keep working on that.

One goes missing while you're moving.

You know, who really cares? Who would notice?

I would notice Tim . I took photographs

of every single one of them from three different angles and they are all documented and I know exactly what's where.

And yes, I would notice very much so.

But that said, in the new house, I do not have an office like this with like floor to ceiling bookshelves and lots of space to put helmets.

So it's gonna have to be like a rotating cast, you know, a rotating exhibit, I think, which means that there's gonna be a lot sitting in a closet somewhere in the house, which I don't love the idea of.

So maybe it's better I spread them out.

There you go. You can, I'll just put a little sign

that says this helmet is on loan. Yeah,

There you go.

Yeah, I'll put it on low into the Durham Museum.

Yeah. Sorry to get off topic,

but, um, yeah, I, I don't know.

I I think a street race in DC would be cool.

I think that, you know, people have been trying very hard for that.

I will say, when I first saw the announcement last week, I thought, well, that's not gonna happen.

Now. I'm leaning way more

towards, yeah, this is gonna happen.

Like this is, um, it's surprising thing, but I hope for the best.

I think what's important to remember is while the announcement I think was a bit of a surprise to people, the idea was not right.

Like, this has been something that's been talked about behind the scenes for a while.

Like I've, I've heard rumors of this, you know, Time.

I mean, Mark Miles addressed it months ago, Right?

So yes. That, that part is,

I think is the, is the strange part.

But I think I've got, you know, the, I I think people should have confidence in the fact that like, this idea didn't come up last week and we're trying to like, make it happen in a couple months.

This has been an idea that's been on the radar for a while.

And so a lot of that sort of, uh, the due diligence and the, and the work you gotta do on the, on the front end has already been done.

And now they're just, you know, trying to make it happen.

So we'll see.

Are you gonna, I mean it's, I I think I read somewhere that they're gonna make it free to the public.

Like the race is just gonna be open. That's what

I heard. Yeah. That's

Kind of cool. Yeah.

I mean, , that is objectively pretty cool. It's always free

first.

It's always free. Year two will be a expensive ticket.

No, I'm just kidding. But, uh,

yeah, so we'll see how that goes. It's the,

The inverse of Nashville.

It is the inverse of Yes, exactly right.

Speaking of Nashville, um, we'll cover that next week.

We've, uh, we've got our time for the day, so we'll, uh, we'll see you guys in a few days.

This has been off track with Hinch and Rossi Off Track is part of the Sirius XM Sports Podcast Network.

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