(upbeat music) Welcome to the Marshall Pro Podcast for your week in any car listener, Q and A, recording this on a toasty Tuesday evening. It is a little bit past 7.30 p.m. And I just checked and it is still 83 degrees outside. Heat warnings throughout the Bay Area. Toasty last weekend, it's gonna get even hotter, going to be triple digits in the North and South Bay. Heading up Thursday for Thursday and Friday to Sears Point, also known as Sonoma Raceway for the fifth edition of the Velocity Invitational Historic Racing Event. Spoke with our guys, Romag Rochelle, here a couple days ago about it. He'll be there. He's a featured person attending. And McLaren as well, sending IndyCar folks, not everybody. Last year it was pretty amazing. Huge collaboration between McLaren Formula One team and Velocity Invitational had seven or eight F1 cars, I think, ranging from 1969 through 2008. Pato, Drove, Lewis Hamilton, I think his last race winner for McLaren, Tony Kanan got to drive the car of his friend, mentor and hero, Airton Senna, 91, Lotus MP46, V12 powered. Honda, oh boy, that was amazing. So this year, not that. Not as big as that by any means. Not sending any cars actually from McLaren, be it F1, IndyCar, you name it. But we will have young Antoine Kanan there. We'll have local product, Nolan Segal. And then one of the more interesting team debuts, we'll have Christian Lundgaard showing up for the very first time in a official McLaren capacity at a historic event in the off season in Northern California. But look forward to seeing all of them. And we'll definitely be planning to catch up with our guy Tony Kanan about his new and elevated role within the era McLaren team. He's VP to the team principle. I mean, he's, there are a number of folks there and I'm not exactly sure how the org chart lays out. But I can tell you that he is the person right next to the guy who runs the team now officially that being Gavin Ward. So catch up with Tony about that this weekend. Try and do a little bit of in-car stuff if possible. The velocity folks have arranged for three McLaren indie cars from the 1970s for those three knuckleheads to drive. So anyways, we'll see what we can do. Gonna head up Thursday, stay over Friday and then come home. It runs through the weekend, but I am off next Tuesday for the rest of the week and into early the following for emphasis season finale Motul Petit Lamont at Road Atlanta. So short week next week. So I'm gonna shorten up my time at Velocity Invitational. Let's do this real quick. Pay our respects to those makes show possible. We'll come right back, get into the show. Time to say a big thank you to our show partners on the Marshall Pruitt podcast, starting with FAFT Technologies. Build to print composites manufacturing company. They're specializing in medium to large scale automotive, motor sports and military applications. Visit FAFTechologies.com. It's PFAFFtechnologies.com to learn more about their services and how they can benefit your business. Next, it's the Justice Brothers. Makers of premium additives, lubricants and cleaners and servicing the automotive and motorsports industries for more than 85 years. The victories in all the biggest North American motor races, including the Indianapolis 500, the 24 hours a day tona, the Justice Brothers products are truly race proven. Learn about their vast history and range of offerings at justicebrothers.com. If you're fond of awesome motor racing collectibles, including FAFT Motorsports McLaren Guillotine's, pay a visit to torontomotorsports.com. And finally, you have a new online merchandise home for the podcast, thepruitstore.com. All the show stickers, models, racing memory of Bieliam trying to sell and put towards our fun to buy a house is now live and rocking. Thepruitstore.com. So finished up last week, we had towards end of the week, our seventh chemo round. So we're meant to do scanning today, basically the report card. For those of you who aren't familiar with cancer, obviously you go and attack it with chemotherapy and other things as well. And after whichever duration is recommended to try by your oncologist, you go and have effectively a full body scan in those scans, look in the areas where the cancer is known to be and possibly some others. And that imagery tells you whether you still got some to defeat or if you're all clear or whatever it might be. And yeah, after being put through the ringer and trying to make all this happen from a administrative standpoint, we ended up having to push this. So been a strange day, unable to get that done as planned, but nonetheless, here we are, rocket enrolling, my wife, Shebrell, doing as well as can be. So got all that going on. And before we dive into your questions, I'll put together by our friend, Jerry Suddeth. Oh, since our last episode. Yeah, I don't know about you, but I'm now looking at Fridays during the off season as days you just might want to not wake up, stay in bed, stay into the covers. Don't look at your phone, don't look at your social feeds. The first Friday during the off season to our collective surprise learned Rina's VK after being, I guess, under the strong impression that he was returning informed that no, he's out. Following Friday, broken by Sportico, highly reputable sports business website, we learned that Michael Andretti is really not much of a part of Andretti Global anymore. We don't have the details of whether he was bought out, whether he maintained some sort of ownership stake. We don't know any of the financials, but we do know that he's gone from being co-owner, right? Daniel Taurus, CEO, Group 1001, Gainbridge being one of their big properties. Huge investment from Guggenheim Partners, right? Taurus is spoken of, rightfully so is the point person. Big investment going on there, but this all really triggered from years ago, Mark Walter, the CEO of Guggenheim Partners, Walter owns, I think does he almost completely outright own the Los Angeles Dodgers owns, I forget which league, but a large and important soccer/football team in the UK. A man who is significant ownership in major sports properties, he's the person understood all along, really the top tier person saying, yeah, let's do this. Taurus coming into the Andretti family, 2018 partnership there sponsoring Zach Veach, one of the great feel-good stories, the possibilities of what could become within Andretti, auto-sport as it was known, this Mark Walter, and then I don't know exactly where Taurus fits within or fitted within the organizational structure there, but Walter being at the top, but Taurus being the person for sure, the main day-to-day connected person with the team, with Michael Andretti about everything they're doing, be it the existing programs, IndyCar, Formula E, Indiana XT, huge ambitions to get into F1, plus also buying Wayne Taylor racing. Taurus has really been the central figure from that whole financial services group that's gotten involved, taking whatever ownership stake in Andretti, auto-sport/ Andretti Global, the new company that they founded a couple of years ago as the parent company over everything. (sighs) Don't know how much was sold to those who not named Michael Andretti, have heard, might've been a case of Michael selling the rest, get into a little bit of this here, and with the time of the questions that came in, this was just before all this kicked off last Friday, but yeah, that's two Fridays in a row, the first two Fridays of the off-season (chuckles) where it's like, "Oh boy, what's happening this Friday?" So, I don't know about y'all, but I am buckled up for something wild, so I will see if and what happens there, but on the Andretti front, there's a lot more that we don't know than we do know. Things we can share that you may have read, this is being positioned by the team, by Michael Andre, by Daniel Taurus, this is being positioned as a voluntary, almost happy thing, right? Hey, strategic change, Michael's gonna stay on as a special advisor, in a brand ambassador, in his own team, which again, yeah, just sharing a little bit of background here. So, the thing that we've heard for a while, I know I've heard, no other reporters have, all has not been super happy between Andretti and Taurus, allegedly. I'm not in those meetings, I don't think any of us outside of the team or any IndyCar team owners meetings, charter meetings, none of us, at least on the reporting side, sat there and seen any of whatever alleged discord taking place, but just sharing that the belief that there is, and has been some sort of brewing tensions, these are the things that get told to us by those in their immediate orbit, et cetera, et cetera. So, just sharing that the, huh, not sure if this is working out as smoothly as hoped, clearly Daniel Taurus has been the P1 within that organization, right? Not only from a financial might in stake standpoint, knowing that through Taurus, this entire F1 program is being initiated, funded, you name it, massive expenditure there. Two out of the three IndyCar programs are funded through Group 1001 with the Gainbridge property on Colton-Hurtis car, the Delaware Life on Marcus Erickson's car, right? Those are both Group 1001 things, the money being spent to operate, not in every way, but in many ways though, come through Andretti's partner. Can tell you that within the paddock, and it has often been said in a slightly derisive manner, Taurus has been referred to by other team owners, team principals, you name it, as Michael's boss. And the actions and behaviors, words said, things done in and around the paddock within those owners and team principals left, not all of them, but enough of them who shared their opinions that yes, the days of Michael being fully in charge of his team, fully running his team, making all the decisions, those days are gone. And so that doesn't have to be a bad thing, just a very different thing than what I think any of us originally anticipated when we learned about this new investment partnership and whatnot that they called this. Two things here to close on this before to get into your questions. Does the fact that this might not be all super happy, sunshine and ice cream and puppy dogs and whatnot, that this might not be how it's being presented? 'Cause again, there's a pretty concerted effort to present this in a very ggosh and golly kind of way. Now really, to be honest, how they got to this place where Michael is effectively not really involved in the team makes me sad like Michael. Wanna see him around a lot. Don't know if it's a final thing, true thing or not, but it does sound like we're gonna be seeing a lot less of Michael, maybe a lot less. I don't think that's good in any way, at least in IndyCar, knowing his legacy, et cetera, but does the, what led to this quote, ah, I'm gonna write off into the sunset kind of thing. Whether that's truly just a happy decision, he woke up and made a few months ago and this is what we're seeing or if it was something else, does it really matter? No, it doesn't, to be honest. Maybe interested to try and get to the truth. 'Cause I can tell you, sure it doesn't feel like that's what is being presented, but ultimately a change has been made. That is now factual and so there's everything prior to last Friday and now more importantly, everything that is happening moving forward after last Friday. So looking at what this is today and where it might go, how this might change things, couple things here to share. As I understand it, as I see things from the insight I've gained from others, I cannot find the negative in the operational side of Michael Andrei being unwelded from the team. Forget the optics, forget the back story and what just truly, hey, the team is going forward minus Michael basically. What does this mean as we looked at 2025? I cannot find a single thing that says, oh boy, falling apart, everything's headed downward spiral. Seeing maybe the opposite, actually. Friday afternoon evening, after the statement from the team was distributed to us, Michael through the communications team, sent a note to all employees, it effectively was the statement that came out a few hours earlier with a little bit of items tacked onto the top and bottom. Wasn't a whole lot there, to be honest, but there at least was an effort for Michael to connect with all of the people within the organization of which there are many to try and tell them, hey, more about what's happening, it's gonna be coming your way, but everything's good. And as I do understand things, a true sense of calm, we're gonna be fine. Everything is fine. Nothing changes about our plans going forward was shared with the greater Indreddy Global Organization. Shop floor to you name it, every level. So I know that part to be true as well. So what does a Michael and Dreddy list and Dreddy Global look like from a, hey, we're going racing? How could this affect the on-track product? I just don't see how it actually sets them back in any way. On the IndyCar side, folks who made them run incredibly well and surged towards the end of the season, all gonna be there helping them to surge, believe that they're making an even greater investment on the engineering and R&D side. That's really where teams level up during the off season. That team leveled up really made big headway this past season, still a pretty big gap to overcome, but that's continuing. They're gonna make another step, deeper commitment to go even farther and maybe truly vie for a championship from the outset. IndyCar side, to my knowledge, all rock solid. There's a question of sponsorship on the 27 car. Mentioned the 26 and the 28 are funded by Group 1001 slash Game Bridge and Delaware Life within Towers' family of businesses that he oversees. I've been hearing for a little while that AutoNation, there's a decent question mark about whether they are going to continue in motor sports as a whole. For nothing about this being specific to Andretti or any of the other teams in whatever form of racing they're involved with, I don't pretend to know all those series and teams, but have just been hearing for a little while that AutoNation might be reconsidering, whether they're going to stay fully committed to motor racing as a place to promote their business or look to another sport or somewhere else. Don't have an answer on that yet, but if and by chance we do have a change there, unless the Andretti team, which admittedly has not been super phenomenal in finding truly independent sponsors for a little while, has a company cooked up? Could that be three, all three Indy cars? Being funded by Tower slash Group 1001 in their products. It's possible, keep your eye open on that possibility, knowing that budgets for a highly competitive team are now in the 10 to 11 million, could even be a little bit more per year, 12. That could be a 30 to 35ish million dollar a year, three car operating budget needed to be provided, but budgets already being provided for two, so that's why I don't see if there's a need to stretch to three, that being a massive change for them. Indy car side though, I am feeling really confident, don't think this change is a thing. Indy next, slash NXT, slash lights. I feel like we're talking similar things. This is really the only area where I'm a little bit concerned about the change here, Michael, his long time. Right hand, left hand, every hand man, JF Thurman, I think title wise, as president, maybe Indredi, I apologize, but right up there, he's been with Michael legitimately for like 40 years, maybe longer, since the beginning of Michael's open wheel racing days. JF, really huge, huge driver of the Junior Open Wheel racing teams that Indredi has run over the years. Michael as well, Michael's been just a massive proponent of what we call today the USF championships when they're involved there, now in Indy next. So could Michael saying, hey, we gotta run this person really gonna get in the middle of making that happen? Don't know if his change in status will limit his ability to have influence there, but as long as JF is involved, I feel like that should be okay, but that's the one area where a question marks stood out. Formula E, I don't foresee any changes there. That's run by the most excellent Roger Griffiths. I believe I read however long ago, a couple months ago that they have a powertrain extension with Porsche. So, I mean, they won the championship what a year ago, Formula E, so that all seems like it's gonna be just fine, the IMPS program, right? So they bought Wayne Taylor racing almost two years ago in that first season together in 2023. I know that Indredi Global tried to be significantly involved in that, as I have understood things, there was a decision during the off season. We're pretty good at doing this. We've been doing this at a high level for a long time. Maybe we just kind of go back to letting us run the thing and teams been very competitive. I think things have just been far more smooth for them. So on the imps aside with the Wayne Taylor racing team that Indredi Global owns, been operating this year as I understand it, fairly autonomous thing. And so there's the Cadillac factory deal, something we could dive into a little bit here, by the way, going into a lot more about this stuff that I'd initially planned, but hey, in theory that's why you tune in. And thank you, by the way. So this thing about Indredi trying to align everything under General Motors, wherever possible, right? Hey, they've been using Honda engines for a good while. Wanna switch over to Chevy as soon as they can, right? And hey, in IMSA, I wanna try to align there, right? They're currently running Acura's factory IMSA GTP program. They're gonna be handing that back to Myershank Racing here starting in 2025 and then going back to Cadillac. And that's proof and evidence of this Indredi Global initiative to align with General Motors, wherever they can, all because they're trying to go to Formula One with Cadillac. I won't say no to that having some roots of truthiness to it. I may have written that and said that before that. Yeah, I definitely think this is part of that initiative. I've revised my view on this lately. I think this might be just more of the resumption of a longstanding relationship between Wayne Taylor and General Motors. They ran, they were one of the leading championship-winning Cadillac/GM teams in IMSA through what, I think, the 2020 season. There was a little bit of time where they used some forward power back in the Daytona prototype days, but basically since like 2004, when Wayne Taylor Racing, SunTrust Racing, run by Riley Technologies. It's all under General Motors' brand. Then when Wayne Taylor Racing was formed by itself, independent of Riley, I think in 2007, almost every single year, GM, for sure. So I look at this as more of a Taylor GM thing, getting back with their band than anything else. Not saying there aren't also some added benefits to that from the Andretti angle, but I just have reason to believe this was not a Michael Andretti-triggered thing, and I'm still trying to get some confirmation on that, but that's my hunch. All that stuff aside though, there's one other big program to consider, and that's the Formula One deal that they're trying to do. Where does all this fall? It's full steam ahead. Nothing has changed. That was full steam ahead prior to this Friday bombshell and continues to be full steam ahead. So the part that I'm really trying to figure out is the Cadillac GM angle. 'Cause I've had a couple of folks tell me this. If you remember, if you happen to catch it, the beginning-ish of September, there was the announcement that Wayne Taylor Racing would be moving from Acura back to GM/catalac in IMSA. The team, since it was purchased, starting in January, 2023, Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti. I think originally it was with Andretti Global. They just shortened that to with Andretti, call it W-T-R-A, and looking at the press release, both from Cadillac and then separately from Wayne Taylor Racing, the Andretti was dropped, dropped by both. And there was no mention of the reason why. And normally when you have a name change in a press release, a significant one, you get some sort of explanation. There's a sentence in there saying something. There was nothing. And so that is what stood out to a lot of folks. Hey, it just says in Cadalax and the team's Wayne Taylor Racing. No with Andretti, no mention of Andretti anywhere in the body of anything. Only in the boilerplate at the bottom, the proverbial fine print of the W-T-R press release, did it say, and I'm paraphrasing, but Wayne Taylor Racing is part of Andretti Global. And so that led to me calling both Wayne and also Rob Edwards, chief operating officer of Andretti, to say, what's going on? Both told me the same story. Well, GM just wanted to simplify things. And there is this long history between Wayne and GM and they just want this to be kind of streamline the relationship that everybody knows and has known for a long time. So we're just gonna go with W-T-R, Wayne Taylor Racing. Oh, okay, got it. It's a free country, right? People can tell you things. As long as you're not a federal agent, you don't have to tell the truth when I asked a question. So yeah, okay, I'll take that face value, I guess. We'll see, but seems strange, don't really understand why, but this is a, okay. I've had a couple of folks tell me this, folks that I know who have deep roots and backgrounds, recent backgrounds in Formula One. Tell me, keep an eye out. Don't be surprised if we see Cadillac wanting to move forward with more of a Cadillac racing factory F1 effort than a Andredi Global With Cadillac type effort. And as it's been told to me or the supposition has been shared allegedly from those who've given their take. Something along the lines of General Motors/Cadillac wanting to move ahead without Michael and slash the Andretes directly involved. Is that true? Couldn't tell you. Might come as a surprise, but Andredi Team's not exactly talking about such things right now. Um, but going forward minus some key name, folks who've been in the media a lot for many years, I think, and again, I could be wrong 'cause it was three, four, however many years ago, but I think we broke the story on Racer. It feels like maybe, I don't know, July, August, September. I don't even remember. It was at 2021, 2020, something. But it'd been hearing about an ambition by Michael to make it to Formula One and spoke to them about it and he confirmed it. Like, wow, that's awesome. So wrote that story, filed it. And at least from a public awareness standpoint, seemed to recall things really kicking off again, four years ago, however many, but a good long while. And I just mentioned that, the timeline here, because although things have quieted down a lot recently, there's been a lot of bombastic things said, stuff that I have often agreed with said by Michael or his dad, but that appear to have seriously rankled folks at the FIA Formula One, Liberty Media, you name it. Some of this build up to the point to where General Motors said, hey, you know what, we're still interested in doing this. We want to do this, but maybe we need to modify some of the players involved. I can't tell you if that's accurate or not. I can just tell you that a number of folks who know they're F1, pretty good, come from F1, that's the story they're telling me that they've heard that a revised program leaning more heavily on Cadillac racing, F1 as a constructor, but with Andretti Global, the team, not necessarily the name of the person who formerly owned and controlled the team, but obviously, Group 1001, Taurus, his investments on a personal level, massively important for their F1 ambitions. With all that General Motors has going on, their grand ambitions of going fully electric, I believe, what is it, by 2035, the economy being tight right now? Again, I could be wrong, but this sure does not seem like the time for General Motors to say, we're gonna pour in 100% of our own money to make an F1 program happen. The sizable, if not majority underwriting of this on the Andretti Global side sure seems to be something that really needs to continue. Will we learn at some point in time that this desired entry into Formula One, the change in naming in IMSA, possibly the change in Michael's ownership/leadership status within the team has all changed because of something General Motors has wanted to have happen in order for this relationship to continue? I don't know, but I just can tell you that has been alleged by a couple of folks to me. So I've got my eye on that. So I think since we're talking IndyCar, more than anything else on the show, I don't foresee this being any kind of thing that holds a Colton Herda, Kyle Kirkwood, or Marcus Erickson back from vying for championship next year, take the momentum that they have, take the commitment, recommitment, if that's the way to put it given to the staff here in the midst of this change and we'll miss seeing Michael to whatever percentage or degree, but I don't think this is something that we need to worry about because the major financial horsepower behind Andretti Global, to my knowledge, unchanged in terms of going backwards, maybe actually even improved. All right, let's dive into your questions here. I'll put together by our pal Jerry Syth once again and gonna fire through as many as I can and try and keep this show two an hour or so. And I'll probably just put out more calls for questions here, maybe tomorrow, who knows? See if I can get another show done before the end of the week. We've got a lot of time to fill y'all. Corey Johnson says for the first time my wife joined her IndyCar Fantasy Racing League and won the entire thing in her first year, a lot of trash talking of late and my final punishment was to admit publicly that she's better than me. Well, doing that on the podcast here and opening the show, I mean, we're full service, full service show here, Corey. So happy we, the only thing you failed to do here is to share your wife's name. So for the next episode, need you to write in, give us her full name and not just as your master and lord and intellectual superior, but we need a proper title for her because just calling her queen, that doesn't, that's not good enough. She is lord and master of something. And so need her full name to celebrate her appropriately for deciding to keep you. Next month is our, I think what 19th wedding anniversary. And as my wife, Shabrel tells me on our anniversary so far, well, guess I will decide to re-up your lease for one more year. So the fact that your wife, despite having someone who's clearly inferior, decides to continue to up her annual lease of you, we think it could change. Yeah, you need to send through full name in the proper honorarium for me to read for her. Also says it was good to see you at the Battle of Bricks. Yes, indeed. Love me some. Imsa at Indianapolis. Cody Douglas, this is Marshall. Best of wishes to you and your family. Thank you. He says, you did not mention Prema as a possible landing spot for Renis VK when going over paying seats. Is this due to the spot being for paying drivers? Or is it already filled and to be announced? As I understand and I think wrote a little while ago, maybe probably in a racer mailbag, something like that, hearing for a while that super highly great driver, Robert Schwartzman has been telling folks, he has a full season Indy car deal. And it's not with any of the other teams that I can think of the few that have remaining opportunities. So I have only understood that to be Prema, also worth noting that when he tested for Ganasi two years ago, was it a year or two ago, he was chaperone to the test and back from the test by Angelina Urtsu, she and her partner Renee Rosanna, they are Prema racing, run it, et cetera, et cetera. So Robert with the solid Prema background in European open wheel racing. Yeah, a lot like family in the same way that Calamilot happens to be. So haven't announced them yet, but that's what I'm expecting. And if it's not him, I'll be very surprised. Directly to your question of Renus, not that I know of in terms of Prema or any other team. The timing of this is just something that not fantastic. So you've got Ray Hall, possibility. You've got Hunkos, maybe, it's about it. There's really two paying seats left. So that being the first, the 45 car that Christian Lengard has vacated, and then the 77 that our guy, Romain Groschano, drove last season. As I was last told, so this was end of last week, I think about a week after he learned he was truly out of work. Obviously he's called, agents called everybody, and I'm hoping there's some positive developments to follow, but I don't know if he jumped to the top of anybody's free agent list for those who had paying opportunities to offer. So someone smart at a minimum, we'll put him in a car for the Indy 500, I really hope, but unless something really nice happens that I'm unaware of at the moment, I think Renus might be in for a long upcoming year. Our pal JJ Goerler says, "You mentioned Peter Rossi "going around the paddock trying to sell the sun Alexander "and his client Stingray Rob as a two pack." (laughs) Yes. Are you aware of cases where that's happened before and especially where a team said yes, question mark? No. I am aware of situations where a manager has had multiple drivers at a team. Gennasi comes to mind. Stephanie O'Honson, Scott Dixon being his long standing client, Steph being a driver manager, among many other things, and also his guy Felix Rosenquist, being there, those being things, with our guy, Steph negotiating on their behalf to make not only Dixie's annual continuations there, but also Felix's opportunity there happened. But no, the buy one, get one free. All right, now the one's free. Let one pay you a lot and then pay the other a lot. Yeah, not aware of that happening. Not saying it has never happened, just doesn't come to mind JJ. Shauna Oakwood, MP. Everyone is excited about Logan Sargent testing for Myershank Racing. But we all know there's no seat there for 2025. Will other teams be allowed to see his data? And use that to evaluate him if they are still looking to fill seats in November? Let's cover that off. And then you got another question here. No, absolutely not. When they go test, they will spend half the day letting him get comfortable with the car, get up to speed at the track because he's super professional. He will watch lots of onboard video of Thermal Club. The team will send him onboard, share data, I'm sure, get him fully coached up and ready, but still gonna take a little while, right? New car, new tire, new engine, new this, new track, right? Give him the morning for the most part to get settled. Towards the end of the morning, heading into whatever the lunchtime break might be. Just on days like this, first days, whether it's a guy coming out of F1 or a Indiana XT driver, tend to give them time, not overwhelm them, usually let them climb out of the car at least once, just it's a break of rhythm more than anything. Sitting in the car, I'm super focused, I'm locked into this competitive mindset and environment and like, okay, no, hey, we're just gonna break the routine, just hop out, go to the bathroom, grab a snack, whatever it is, we're gonna go under the setup pad, do a little thing, we'll roll back out, this again, be in the morning, just a common thing. Talk about stuff, hey, what do you think? What does it do, what do you like, what don't you like? Anything's we could change to your liking and so. Probably won't spend too much time with him out of the car, but that's not an uncommon thing. Go back out and then towards the end of the morning, try and push a little bit more, try and get a little bit more aggressive. Go into lunch, come back, and then the afternoon is where things really start to get a little more hardcore. And that is where I would expect the team, and possibly Honda, you ask about engines as well here in just a sec, but that's where the team will often say, okay, hey, we got some ideas, we're here for an evaluation day, we're evaluating you, but we'd also like you to evaluate some things. Hey, we've got a couple new damper builds, we've got some setup idea, whatever it might be. And we're gonna want you to do some A to B testing, right? Here's version A, here's version B. What do you like, what don't you like? Hopefully you don't have to go back to A again to give them another comparison, but that's where the real information in the feel will come in. The crew, engineers, Shank himself, whomever leadership there on the radio, they'll be watching, listening, observing, talking maybe over the radio. They'll get a feel for him, working style, feel for his approach, quickness in general, all those things will happen. Get a little more serious in the afternoon and off you go. But the data, that's all for the team. There's nothing about this test about them trying to give other teams data so they can look through it and decide if he's someone might want to hire. That's the equivalent of handing another team your playbook, not something they would consider doing. I know some folks have been a little bit curious why even bother testing a guy, if you know that you don't have a seat for them, right? Did that today, yesterday? Yeah, yesterday at Barbara Motorsports Park with Ganesi and Felipe drug events, they got nothing for them. Used in evaluation day, got a feel for them. They really liked, really liked the guy. If an opportunity were to open up in the future, I think they got their eyes on someone if that could happen here sometime in the future. Jamie Chadwick, she did her first test, same day at Barbara with Andreddy. They have nothing for her. Very much about her learning about herself in the car, whether she's capable of attacking that steering wheel to get the most out of the car in the high speed corners, nothing to do with talent. She's got all the talent in the world, just she is tiny, needs to add more muscle to be able to fully attack and extract maximum performance from the car, didn't know how much. So educational day for sure for her. But yeah, two drivers testing on Monday, no seats, nothing open at those teams, same with Shank. So why, why would they do this? Couple reasons, by the November 19th date where this is happening at Thermal Club, by the way, Dale Cohen told me they're likely to test, didn't say who, but test someone there on that same date, which I think I'm going to end up going down on. That's our wedding anniversary. So I'm still trying to figure that part out, but be deep enough along into the off season to where nothing is happening in IndyCar by that point. Hey, that's a good hit, right? That's a good media hit. Formula One driver, popular, looking at future opportunities, Liberty Media owns 30% of Myershank Racing. So, right, hey, there's a lot of cool linkage here for this to make sense to happen with this team. Promotes back nicely on F1, promotes nicely for Myershank Racing. Myershank told me I knew Sergeant had a following, right? Anybody driving in Formula One has a following, said I had no idea it was this big until the test stories started to come out. And so that's one thing to think about, hey, quiet off season. This is going to get a lot of attention. Other item as well? Hey, they've got Felix Rosenkvis sign for more years, he's going nowhere. Got Marcus Armstrong there, right? Don't know how long that contract is, but at least a one year with a team option for another I'm guessing. Is this something where, who knows? The team looking to 2026, again, not sure, but would not be the worst thing to get to know Logan at least for a day in Southern California and see how he goes and chalk that up to good information gain that could be used in the future to the team's benefit. I'm aware the team and the sergeants have circled each other a little bit in recent years. I think before Logan went to F1, but so I don't know if I'd put this Shawna as something that's just totally random. Got a phone call out of left field and hey, let's go test. Feels like there's a couple of things here, knowing each other for a little while, plus the good media hit for both. Some things that could come from this in the years ahead. Last thing you ask is about, how much do the engine manufacturers have to do with teams setting up tests to evaluate new talent? None in IndyCar, to my knowledge, not unless a Chevrolet or a Honda has a development driver they want to get a feel for, or someone that they are employing in a adjacent series that they think might be worth a look in IndyCar. We had Ricky Taylor test here. What year two ago, more years ago, but tested with Penske, that was more of a Penske thing, wanting to get a look at him to consider him. They did that IndyCar test, but they wanted to get a look at him, thinking about him for their former Acura Factory DPI program. There's been a couple little tests and possibilities here and there, but I know on the Chevy side, other than maybe NASCAR Cup drivers, I can't think of anybody in their hemisphere that they have where they would say, hey, we would love for a Chevy powered IndyCar team to test them so we can see if maybe they'd be a fit for IndyCar, right? Nothing to do with a Kyle Larson, otherwise that's a one off Indy 500, not running Kyle at Mid-Ohio or whatever, but no one I can think of that fits a bill there. And I think for those that I believe are under contract in some way to Honda Racing Corporation, they're dedicated to sports car stuff, or they already have them kind of in their factory family and IndyCar, and there's really nothing I can think of development-wise there. So anyways, not really a thing here that I can think of for quite a while. Thank you again, Shauna. Chris Koleiwig says MP with the FBI visiting Ray Hall at him in Lannigan Racing. Does this put their hopes of getting more competitive even farther away? What about attracting driver talent? I can't imagine a visit from Johnny Law gets a driver free agent's excited. Oh, my friend, let me tell you the opposite is true. On the driver's side? No, I mean, here's the thing. There are more drivers wanting to compete in IndyCar than there are seats available. And that's a positive thing. ROL has one seat, the 30 car driven this past season by Pitro Fittipaldi. Haven't decided what's gonna happen there. The exact number, financial, right? The amount of millions that sponsors come with on the Pitro side don't know that number, but again, I think I've mentioned here, believed to be 3 million, maybe even be a little bit more. The five hour energy folks that came on and were really a bigger involvement with Pitro and the team from May onwards here that that's a really good thing could be an increase there. So might tip things in holding on to Pitro. But if not, the team obviously has a lot of improving to do to come back to your point there, but of the massive number of either free agents, F2 drivers, IndyNEXT, NXT, Lights, whatever people. Oh boy, if they had an opportunity to pay to drive that car, they would. And then with the car that Lungard's vacated where in theory, Rahal will continue paying/hiring somebody, yeah, FBI, not FBI, that's one of those things that folks kind of sort of don't care about. And I mean, what came to mind here is this. We see what happens a lot of times in other sports where there's some sort of law involvement with the team or a player and while it tends to staying and hang around for a little while and not necessarily be the best thing from a reputation standpoint, most of those players go back to playing even if it's for a new team because they're too good and or can offer something that's too valuable to ignore. We don't know what all this is gonna be about with RLL. We don't know where all this is gonna end up. Of course, this would be something where any driver, any sponsor, any, anything would be asking hard questions, hey, what is going on? If we sign up with you or are we gonna risk, what level of risk is there? Of course, folks are gonna think about that. I just don't see Chris how this truly leads free agents, those, especially those with funding to say, nope, I'm going to ignore one of the very few ways for me to get into the series. Other side of this from a engineering standpoint is really great mechanics, great pit stops, great drivers, what makes one team better than the other, usually it is how quickly their car goes compared to the others. And this is an area I've written about ad nauseum, I think spoken about a ton, so I won't waste anyone's time doing it here yet again, but the engineering side of RLL has been the biggest issue, lots of turnover, lots of change, it's another way of saying, constant, in-constantness, it is just constant change, no foundation where you go, hey, here two, three years and a go, years in a row, same people, same everything, we're building and getting higher and getting better, the instability has been the big liability. Will this make it any easier to attract top talent to address those issues? No, it's not gonna make it any easier, but assuming their budget is still in place and good, they can probably pay folks a little bit extra to get them in the building. So last thing on this, separate from the FBI appearance, the team has indeed struggled to recruit the game-changing engineering personnel to take them to that next level. They've got a lot of young talent, high talent, just not veteran, veteran, engineering talent. That's where a lot of the turnover has happened or retirements are similar. It's in the ability to recruit some of those more veteran leaders to bring really good ideas, really good practices and whatnot to elevate that side of the team that existed and was not really being resolved prior to all this. Great question about, will this make it harder? It can't make it any easier, but I'm hoping they're able to get the folks in they need to amplify those who they already have 'cause this was just not a great year for them in any way as I say things that are really obvious. Down to the last handful of questions here, go through them as quickly as I can. Ed Roberts, how do the sponsored co-owners work within the bounds of the charter system? I'll admit that I don't fully understand the question here. How does this differ from an arrow or a target team branding, say pre-charter? Can they sell their stake in the team assuming a 25% cut goes to Penske? I don't fully understand this, Ed, and it's probably just me being dumb, or I'm sure it's just me being dumb. So maybe you could expand on the, like the sponsored co-owners, I don't know what that means. So don't hesitate to fire this back in and just take pity on me with a deeper explanation of who you're referring to. Right-turn lover, how you doing? I still don't get how Dale Cooney tends to make money out of the charter unless the team rents the charter from owners, maybe you can enlighten me, et cetera, et cetera. Dale would like to find investors in the charter. So with the way the structure is set, those who've received the charters, he's received two. When it comes time for him to decide, "Hey, I'm gonna cash out of IndyCar, I'm done." He can sell those charters and for whatever they might go for on the open market, if Penske Entertainment says yes, thumbs up, he will take whatever amount of money that is. We do know that Penske takes money on the sales side and from the receipt side. So there'll certainly be a cut that goes to Penske, but Dale's not looking to sell. Dale's probably gonna wanna do this with his wife, Gail, for about as long as possible. And so his thought was, well, why wait? Maybe I can find investors who want to buy into the charters themselves. So I'm not selling a stake in my team, own that 100%, but hey, do you wanna be a 50% or whatever percent owner of the charter, the entry for my number 18 car? Well, cool. What number might that be? Millions, I'm sure, but I don't know how many millions, but what does that get that person? Does it get them half the car in terms of selling sponsorship? If that's what they're looking to do, maybe that's a way for the investor to turn a profit other than waiting and cashing out years, however long down the road. And hopefully there being a rise in value for them to profit from, or could it be whatever that number is negotiated with Dale to be co-owner of the charter for one or both of the entries in that person or that company selling sponsorship and getting whatever half the space on the car, 100%, well, again, whatever they might negotiate, and that's where they profit and take money back right away, right? Hey, cool. X% of the sponsorship that I bring in place on my part of the car, sure. Obviously the team's got to have an operating budget, so whatever percentage of that sponsorship I bring will go to you to run the car, but I'm also, we are also gonna take a cut. So maybe they take annual cuts from money brought in from sponsors and whenever they wanna cash out, take that money and Dale basically still owns whatever percentage, maybe he gets a percentage of that sale as well, seems to me like there's a variety of ways one could take money out now instead of waiting to sell once you're done. Michael Everson, Zach Brown's white paper couple weeks ago struck a court among fans of the many ideas he floated, particularly the commercial marketing related ones. There've been any serious discussions with Penske Entertainment about including them. I need to circle back with Zach to see if he's heard anything there. I know that most of the discussions are held with Mark Miles and there we go. Need to check in with him sometime soon here, so I will try and remember to ask this, but yeah. Penske Entertainment is not particularly good at receiving advice and acting upon advice. So not saying they can't or won't, it's just not an area they've demonstrated as a real strength at TASMO 99. So what's the point for Prima to try and compete for leader circles if they aren't eligible for them since they're a non charter team? Well, the leader circle was created, I think 2005 or so as a way to share prize money. Most teams, although they want to get the leader circles because it helps reduce how much they have to find each year to run their cars. It's not the reason Chip Ganassi racing doesn't compete in IndyCar because of leader circles. I realize that they get them, granted, not for two out of their five cars last season. But that's not why teams compete. Teams race because they like to race. So yeah, Prima is coming to IndyCar because they want to race in IndyCar. Charter's that's they're self-funded. So that money doesn't really mean anything to them. So I would just say realign the reason you believe teams compete. It has nothing to do with leader circle. It's about succeeding and winning just like any other individual athlete in the solo sport or any of those in a team-based sport. Todd Murray, so as replacing the Nashville street course with the Speedway, it's the second best decision of the season behind the return to Milwaukee. So why on earth do we have these crash fest, turd bag, street races like Detroit and Nashville, et cetera, while they're perfectly good actual racetracks right around the corner? Given the caliber races put on this year at Milwaukee and Nashville, why not dump Detroit and return to Michigan international? Well, there's only one slight issue here, Todd. That is the Detroit Grand Prix is owned and promoted by Penske Entertainment. Yeah, yeah, as it has been for decades. So yeah, on the topic of them listening to advice and actually acting upon it, look, I love Michigan. I've been there in a while, but man, yeah, I'm with you. That place is crazy, phenomenal, huge, right? And boy, I don't know how many folks we put in the grandstands with that many seats to fill. Oh boy, yeah, it wouldn't look good. But yeah, if we could just overcome the part where Penske actually, that's their next to the 8500, but that's been their marquee event they've put on for a super long time. If we can get past that, I think we're okay. Ed Joris wondering if there's any intention for IndyCar to have an event in the Northeast. They keep telling us it's important and I keep hoping that we hear a, and we're gonna go and race at this place to make those words have actual meaning from them. Eric Franklin, closing stint in the ovals are great races. Glad to see it. Have you seen anything from Firestone or IndyCar about what testing is gonna be like this off-season to try and make road and street courses more competitive with the hybrid systems in place? I mean, yeah, I do need to whip up an overdue story here on off-season testing and whatnot. What we, how many races did we do with the hybrid, terms of events? I guess not so much concerned about individual races, but what? Mid-Ohio, Iowa, Toronto, Gateway, Portland, Milwaukee, so what, seven events? Mid-Ohio, first race, brand new race using this technology. It wasn't the most amazing race in the world. I'm not super concerned about that. Toronto, obviously there's decent amount of crashes there, but I thought it was a fairly entertaining race between the crashes. So I don't know if I'd put that one down as a bad one. And then what we had, Portland, with, hey, willpower, right? Like, hey, nice job. Santino Farrucci on pole, like, yeah, we kind of turned the championship into real competition at Portland. So was it the most exciting race I've ever seen? No, wasn't, but I think the mindset I would apply, or at least I am applying, maybe it's worth considering, is of those seven races we did with hybrid power trains, two of them were on natural train road courses, where admittedly, I don't know if they have reputations as being crazy pass-fests in the pre-hybrid era and then Toronto, which I thought was pretty entertaining. So we don't have a lot of races to draw from here. I would love for there to be some sort of more intensive testing to find perfect tire solutions at every track, but yeah, the street track's pretty hard just 'cause I can't really test on street courses, but I don't know if there's going to be any extra emphasis on more just to try and come up with something extremely better just because we didn't have a crazy amount of sample sizes. So it's another way of saying you tend to need to have a better idea what was going on and what wasn't happening and all the areas you need to improve in order to go and improve them. I just don't know if there was enough of a sample size to come out of the season across those three events to say, okay, we got the full playbook of everything we need to go and address. So I don't know if we're gonna get what you're looking for. And I think many folks are maybe hoping for. Where should we go to close the show? Lance Snyder asking, following the FIA, should IndyCar or SmackDown drivers for swearing? Et cetera, et cetera. No, not unless you wanna get yelled at by fans. Riley Stricker wondering if RLL would benefit from downsizing to two entries, knowing what they need from a financial standpoint. I don't think so. Also, they have three charters that they've received. So I think it's kind of a, if you don't use it, you lose it scenario. So I wouldn't suggest that. EWJ 2001, what's the reasoning for the three driver limit per car in the charter system? Seems like a restriction that is not needed and seems like something more likely to hurt teams and to help them obviously coin this year comes to mind. As I'm told, Roger Penske absolutely hated the look of the spin the wheel of who's gonna drive the coin car situation this past season. And so it was killed with fire. Flying Brian, pit crews can win and lose races. Are they rewarded when the team wins? The way things work for, I think most all teams, the percentages change, but tend to have prize money from the season. Obviously a victory has granted you don't get a ton of prize money since most of that goes to the team through the leader circle, but victories do bring more prize money than not. You win a pit stop competition, you get this accolade or that, whatever. That all tends to get put into a pool that then gets shared with whatever percentage the individual crew member has negotiated at the end of the season, kind of end of season, end of year bonus. So the answer, unless there are any teams that are no longer doing that, which would be really strange, is yes. I think we're going to say farewell to the episode. Mark Sleeosis, JJ Harvey, JJ Hernandez. Lynn, formerly the Spurs fan. Some others, Lord Thike. I got to as many as I felt like we can this week, but Jerry, if you like any of those, carry those over to the next episode. But thank you all for listening in. Try and get another episode out this week. And other than that, big thanks as well to the Justice Brothers, to FAFT Technologies, and to torontosports.com. We'll speak to y'all here very soon. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
