(upbeat music) - Welcome to the week and any car in the Marshall Pro podcast, your listener Q&A show. Ah, spent a roasty and toasty Sunday. That's Sonoma Raceway, my real true home track, the one that I grew up at the most. Obviously Lagoona Seca being the other option there, but also love my time there as a kid, but really did nothing but go to Sonoma Raceway for so, so long and was up there for the velocity, invitational, historic, mashup, super car, drifting, crazy rally event. I don't even know what to call it. There is nothing like it in the US. Put together, I think this is the fifth installment of it and they really do and try and make it like Goodwood, the Goodwood Festival. So yeah, a lot of fun there. Saw a guy, Romagroscha did some in-car video with him. Saw no one's Siegel, which was awesome. Did not see Tony Kanan or Christian Lungard, so failed on those fronts, but yeah, 101 degree peak for a vintage event. Like, you ever wonder how serious you love this stuff? Put it during the off season, no one in theory is supposed to be chilling and then make it over 100 degrees. You really do start to ask yourself, how much do I want to be here? So anyways, I lasted until about three o'clock, blasted back home, captured no joke, starting at about 730 in the morning to about 245, 230 gigabytes of video. Nothing but video, did the helmet cam with Romag driving a 86 Puzio 206 Group B rally car. Got one of my GoPros on the Subaru of America, the Huxter, Hoonigan, Travis Pastrana 1983 Subaru GL, that's phenomenal, I can't wait to post that. And then what else? Oh, realized most of this is sporty car stuff, but our guy Colin Brown, he was there driving a Riley Mark III World Sports Car, one that won the 24 hours a Daytona and 12 hours a Sebring back-to-back in 1996. So did those and then the rest was all just gimbold footage and yeah, 230 gigabytes in, I don't know, five or six hours total. Yeah, that's a lot, y'all. But anyways, getting a little bit of rest on a plane tomorrow morning to Motul Petit Lamont, headed to good old Georgia and then back. And yeah, I don't know how long my off season's gonna last, but in theory, once I get on a flight Sunday evening, that'll be the end of my professional racing season. Then I think might be going to Daytona about two weeks later, maybe, to cover a historic event. Then I think going back to Daytona again, about two weeks later, to cover Imsa homologation testing at Daytona. And then I think flying straight from there to good old Palm Springs, to cover Logan Sargent's first IndyCar test. So yeah, here we are on October 7th and I think I at least have stuff going through November 19th. So pray for me, y'all. I legitimately need your help and prayers. Thanks as always to the great questions you sent in, especially to our pal Jerry Sitteth, who puts all of them together. Did two episodes last week and was hoping that would cover off a lot of items, still have 20 new questions that came in, according to Jeremy about a thousand words worth of questions. Breaking them down here, we'll see how far we get, try and keep this show a little shorter if possible, and then get back to whatever breaks and goes crazy in the world of IndyCar when I get home next week. Question about Michael Jordan and the NASCAR charter lawsuit, Dallas/Ongton Street Race questions, another Michael Andretti question, Yuri Vips coming in here, new steward suggestions, charter questions on entries outside the 500 question about cars, difference between any 500 cars and other cars, and a question about pit stalls at Toronto, and then a couple more maybe, if we have time about hurricanes and hybrids and more stuff about charters. So all great stuff from Jerry leaves us with a funny quote from Mark Twain, who says always do right. That will gratify some of the people and astonish the rest. Thanks, Jerry. Let's take a listen to this real quick, and we'll be right back and roll into your 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, motorsports, and military applications. Visit FAFT Technologies.com. It's PFAFF Technologies.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, Gear, and Goodies, pay a visit to torontomotorsports.com. And finally, we have a new online merchandise home for the podcast, thepruitstore.com. For all the show stickers, models, racing memorabilia, trying to sell, and put towards our fund to buy a house, is now live and rocking. Thepruitstore.com. Open the show with our pal, Oscar, see, love. Great to see you in May. Oscar says so. Michael Jordan wins in court, talking about the charter lawsuit and the France family has to sell assets such as the tracks that it owns or some of. Could it help IndyCar? Ah, I seriously doubt we're ever gonna get anywhere close to that Oscar. So yeah, knowing that it would be very common for one side to ask for full discovery of the others, financials, and just you name it. Since ultimately this is about not just the charter system, but profit sharing and a lot of other things that involve taking a deep dive into one's books and wanting to look at your finances, I can't see how NASCAR and name any other series. IndyCar, I can't think any privately owned, large sporting organization would ever let such a thing happen, so my guess is this will get settled before any of that happens, before the France family would sell anything, et cetera. So I don't see how that could have any influence to help IndyCar. If we're gonna look at some of the other aspects of this as well, could there be any other things to come from the lawsuit that might benefit IndyCar teams with the new charter they've just signed? And the answer is 1,000% no. Why? Really simple. The NASCAR charter system is a true membership style structure. You receive not just benefits, but there is true profit sharing taking place. Those teams in NASCAR, the ones with charters are genuinely in business with NASCAR. That is not the case in IndyCar. None of the teams, I guess other than Team Penske, I guess, but none of the teams in IndyCar with these charters have any business links, ties, revenue coming in. There's nothing promised to them, nothing that they get. They don't have a percentage of the series. They don't receive dividends of this, that or the other. It's not like that in any way. So I cannot think of any angle where what is just starting to happen here in NASCAR with this lawsuit, Oscar, has any influence on anything in IndyCar whatsoever. Jason Hoover says, "Marshall with the addition "of the street race around AT&T Stadium "in Arlington, Texas. "There are any other street races "that could be added to the schedule. "Should we look going back to places we've been? "Wackens Glen, Kentucky or Michigan?" Well, we know that's certainly not a thing we would do is chief excrement officer Mark Miles told, I don't remember which reporter or reporters. They didn't want to go back to old places, which he said while sitting in the paddock at Milwaukee. Denver is the other one that we've heard about for a while as being a possibility that would be a street race, not a dedicated road course or oval. So that's the only other one that I know of that is still a possibility, but who knows? I haven't checked in on that one in a little while. So couldn't tell you, Jason, if the status has changed just 'cause I need to learn about that. Our pal Ken, IndyCar_Ken, says Dallas. People know a lot, maybe too much, about Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys. Says, "I know nothing about Ray Davis, "besides he owns the Rangers and is loaded. "Is this the situation of buddies working together? "Is this Davis wanting the Rangers involved or what?" Does I understand things? Ken, this is a unified Arlington sports and entertainment property production. So this whole area with the Ranger Stadium, Cowboys Stadium, I've never been to either. Again, I'm just going off of what I've read and heard and whatever other restaurant, entertainment, complex type stuff happens to be there. I'm told while these are independent entities that they all work together. So this is what I understand this to be. So expected to learn more about this, hear more from the aforementioned Ray Davis on the, hopefully from him. This being on Tuesday, there's gonna be a major press event there. So hoping we're gonna get to hear from a lot of folks who are centrally involved in making this happen from the Arlington side. Can just share with you maybe a funny thing, maybe not, I don't know. If you are a NFL fan, national football league fan, you might have heard in recent weeks talking about the Dallas Cowboys referred to as America's team, my ass, but they've had a fair amount of shortcomings, one of them being running back. And Jerry Jones asked why they didn't go after the most coveted running back and free agency, or at least one of the two that being Saekwon Barkley and Derek Henry and comments to the effect of couldn't afford them. And I think there was a question maybe prior to that about do you need another elite wide receiver and same kind of response, couldn't afford it? A friend at IndyCar recently say on this exact topic, hey, you heard Jerry's comments about how he can't afford this guy and can't afford that guy? Yeah, well, funnily enough, apparently he can afford to put on an IndyCar race, but he can't afford the players that are gonna help his team be better than they are. So I love it. I shouldn't be snickering too much. I mean, my 49ers are amazing, but yeah, they've also been really good at going to the Super Bowl for the last 10 or 15 years and going home as the second best team in the games. But anyways, at least we've been there in this century Cowboys fans. Hey, we're gonna move on to Vincent Martinez. Says has a track layup in release for the Texas race. No, I would anticipate that would be part of the Tuesday, October 8th reveal. I hope so. It'd be really strange if it wasn't. Lynn, formerly the Spurs fan. MP, the news fair is continuing. Give us great news and topics to talk about. Could we see an announcement for Mexico City coming soon for 2026? That would be a massive note. If so, do you see thermal dropping off as a points race? Moving back to, say, spring training before Saint Pete. Definitely believe Lynn, IndyCar will want to see what thermal puts on. I would expect as well. I don't recall if they said this, but I just expect it to be the case that Penske Entertainment will play a central role in making that event happen. Thermal club folks have no experience doing major sporting events like that, to my knowledge, at least. So I figure IndyCar is gonna be carrying a pretty significant load in everything about how it happens. There are certainly some grand shortcomings from the non-points race. Just the event as a whole. There are some great parts about it as well. Don't get me wrong, but there are also some pretty big, like, ooh, yeah, okay, we can do that a lot better. podium was just part of it. Knowing all that. Need to get through this first championship event there. See what it's like. See what kind of crowd it might draw. See if it's profitable in any way, shape, or form. Before, I think they would consider replacing it to use that spot on the calendar for something else. Also, just in line with that. And back to your main question about Mexico City. Again, I know nothing about anything brewing there whatsoever, but hope that to change and to not be the case, but yeah, if that were to happen for 2026, a lot of work would need to be happening right now to get there. But all that stuff said, let's just keep in mind, if we're looking at not wanting to blow up the schedule by adding a ton of races, and if we had to kill one to go somewhere new, what might get killed, St. Petersburg is going nowhere. Long Beach is going nowhere. Barbara Motorsports Park. Can't imagine that would go anywhere. Indie Grand Prix, that's something IndyCar loves. Super cheap to run. Indie 500, I feel confident in saying that I would stay on the schedule. Detroit's going nowhere. That is a longstanding Penske entertainment promoted event. Road, America is going nowhere. Laguna Seica. There's one to think about. Love one of my two home tracks, but certainly growth has been seen there. Crowd size ticket sales have improved, but still a far cry from being a big impressive showing. So that's the first one running through the existing calendar that jumps out, Lynn, where I go, hmm, if I had to look at which ones might get the axe, Laguna Seica would be pretty close to the top of the list. Next event after that's Mid-Ohio, always strong going nowhere. Iowa, double header right now. That all, I shouldn't say all, but mostly thanks to high V. Have a story coming here, probably, what, Tuesday I'm guessing? Bobby Rahall acknowledging some questions, rumors about things in that regard. So with a great sponsor like high V, which uses a lot of money and its entertainment division to bring big entertainers to make that double header feasible. If that continues at that high level, I could see Iowa continuing as a double header. If that were to be reduced in the financial outlay, would say that might be ripe to go back to a single header. So that could be a, not a dropping of an event, but at least an opening up of a race to be used elsewhere. Toronto, strong, seems like there's almost a annual question. Is it gonna continue what's going on? I think we're good. Gateway, I think we're good, right? Crowds haven't been as amazing as they were first couple of years since we went back, but it seems like it's okay. After Laguna, Portland's the other one that I look at and say ain't what it once was in terms of crowd. Love it, been telling y'all forever, love that place, we'll go back any time I can. Can't feel totally confident though, Lynn, just looking at the crowd size this year, certainly looked down from last year, which looked down. So concerns there, and then to close things off, we have the Milwaukee double header. That's gonna be contracting, right? Just going to a single header, so that's a good thing for next year. And then Nashville, that's going nowhere, that's under a multi-year agreement. So just that quick run through Laguna and Portland, one of the two West Coast stops, ripe for being traded for something else. So yeah, looking forward to finding out more about what IndyCar is gonna do with its schedule, knowing that they don't wanna turn it into a 1920-21 race season. Pale Blue Dot 24, with Michael Andretti stepping back from the team. How do you see this impacting the loyalty of Colton-Herda and Kyle Kirkwood, or even non-drivers who've been with the team for a while? 'Cause I don't know the length of their contracts, but I would think other teams would at least be poking around to gauge interest. I would say don't necessarily tie Colton's loyalty to things to Michael specifically, or Kirk, or Ericsson, or name the wide variety of drivers. That is not said in a critical way towards Michael, not at all. Since Colton came on board, it has really been Dan Taurus, that gainbridge funding of his car, even though the formal business development between Michael and Dan happened a couple of years ago when they created The New Company in Dreddy Global that everything now falls under. Colton's been in and around Taurus for many years, and gotta believe that's rock solid there. Kirkwood, newish to the team, last two years, but Dan's been around, been there since this whole thing was formed. Ericsson's obviously come in in that dynamic, so Michael has some really big fans within the team. Just also sharing that these are professional athletes paid handsomely, even within the team on the crew side, engineering side, you name it, all very fond of Michael, et cetera, et cetera. But Michael's hands-on day-to-day role in recent years has not been insanely frequent. So that's a very different thing than a Ricardo Hunkos, who's seemingly sleeping at his shop or run down the list, a lot of the other teams. Michael Shank is at his shop, Ed Carpenters, at his shop, Larry Foy at it, well, they'll be moving shops here, but anyways, that hasn't been Michael. What you see and know is that beloved guy, everybody's super appreciative of him, but it's Jeff Foreman, team president, I might be getting his title wrong, but it's Rob Edwards, it's Taurus, it's run down the list, a lot of folks who really make up the day-to-day where the most frequent interactions happen. That's why I don't think Michael's stepping back, other than this being a sad sentimental change, is going to actually have any effect on how the team performs. So I think they're good. As for other teams poking around, I mean, Kirkwood's really good, but he signed a multi-year extension last year, I believe. Colton's on a couple more years, at least highest-paid driver in IndyCar. Erickson's in the first year of a couple of year deals. So, I mean, folks can poke, but I don't believe anybody is really free. I think Erickson would in theory be the first one who could be had maybe at the end of 2025. But yeah, I don't think there's a run on drivers, at least, as for crew, possibly, but we've also had to close here. A lot of teams, I would have to assume and already being one of them, signed their crew to multi-year deals with pretty serious non-compete clauses because high caliber talent is so coveted that making sure you lock down your people and make it harder for folks to poach is certainly something that across the board, I think just about every team has really gone hard in that direction here in the last couple of years. Casey Kirkstra, how are you doing, Casey? When reading your article on Eraser about the Indy test, I think later this week for all teams, I didn't see Prema mentioned. They're not testing. That's, man, I try and sneak stuff by a Casey, but you caught me. Yes, when I filed the story, I thought afterwards, I wonder if I need to put in that Prema's not testing because they aren't named, or I wonder if folks will just see that they're not named and go, aha, they aren't testing. But clearly, I should have put something in to say, the thing you don't see is the thing you won't see because there's nothing to see. But yeah, and he says, come to think of it, believe I've heard of them testing a car yet or drivers or whatever, am I wrong? You are not, I have on my list of things to do. It's actually been on my list for a couple of weeks, and I'm just failing to reach out to Angelina Ertsu, who's one of the two or three main team principals there and try and get update from her. She's awesome, but yeah, that's one of the central questions. Hey, when are we going to see you out there testing? And admittedly, I'm a little surprised. We aren't seeing you there for this test. Formula Vips asks, any updates on Yuri Vips to RLL? Thank you. Yuri is signed to RLL as he has been for more than a year, but as for whether he will get elevated to a race seat. Read more about that on Tuesday from Bobby Rayhall, sponsorship, getting their sponsorship for the 45 car that Christian Lungard's vacated. That is top priority for them. And once that gets solved, then signing a driver will certainly be number one thing to get accomplished. Bobby's told us in print that Yuri is certainly on that short list. Renis VK being available is certainly something for them to think about. Linus Lundqvist, certainly someone to think about. Who knows? There might be others out there who could get a nod as well. Dylan Burgess. You said earlier this year it was time for some fresh blood and race control. I happen to agree. Think I have the perfect pair to take over the race-steward positions. Sebastian Bourde and Paul Tracy. Yeah. Yes, the dynamic Denver duo. As long as we can have a full-time camera in there so we can watch them punch each other while adjudicating. So as my question is this, how many million views a week would IndyCar's YouTube page get? And here you go. If they put a camera in front of them while they made their decisions. Best to you, your wife and the cats. Well, thank you, Dylan. Actually just spoke to Seb probably about an hour ago knowing that he and his family live in the greater Tampa area and a crazy hurricane is headed their way. Yeah, just wanna call and see if he was doing okay. Said, yep, did everything he could to prepare and went and jumped in the motorhome motor coach and started driving towards Road Atlanta to get the bleep out of Dodge like so many others. So again, I know this is our weekly IndyCar show but there are a lot of IndyCar folks who live in or around Florida and then plus just all of the so many Florida-based IMSA teams. Imagine season finale is here, championships to be decided and or hopefully good placings for your team at the season finale and needing to board up your home, catch a flight, drive whatever it is, but basically leave, go north to Georgia to do your job and compete at the season finale, the Motel Petit Lamont 10-hour event and hope that your home is not destroyed. It's a, yeah, if that doesn't pull at your heartstrings, I don't know what will. So there's probably 150 to 200 people at least who are having to leave Florida to go to Atlanta to do their job all while not knowing when they're done and they get home. If they're gonna have a home, like it's just, it's insane. So yeah, sorry, I brought the show down here. Magic, max, max. I don't know if we've had a question from you before but if so, I apologize and if not welcome. So it's in your article about the charter announcement you mentioned that the starting cap, meaning the maximum amount of cars allowed to start at each race might be lowered from 27 to 25 in the coming seasons without effectively end extra entries outside the Indy 500. Every team owner I've spoken with has said when IndyCar goes to new cars, new formula expected to be around 2027, look for the charter to drop from 27 to 25. So yes, they're all expecting it, preparing for that to be the case, et cetera. We don't know how that will happen, right? Will someone just get their charters revoked? Again, I don't know the mechanism how that would happen but we're told to expect that. How that would affect entries outside the 500? What I don't know as well is if there's a provision in the charter max that says if we decide to lower this we're going to just remove the option for extra entries and bumping. So I don't know that's something for us to certainly think about though because if for example, the 25 charters we have right now, the 27 total entries with the two non charters from Premma, if we were to see a cap taken from 27 down to 25, what does that mean? As it is, the 25 charter owners have guaranteed entries everywhere. So there's no chance for any of them to be bumped if there were to be extra entries. That's where the allowance of the 26th and 27th non charter cars from Premma gives us what we have. What do they do and however many years down the road if they are when we expect them to say, nope, the cap is no longer 27, it is 25. Would they open up the possibility of bumping of charter entries? If Premma can't buy charters from someone else, like there's some aspect to this that involves either a two car team going away, a two or three car team downsizing to one entry or two, or again, there's some math here that needs to happen to get to 25. I don't fully understand how that would happen in a happier, peaceful way. If Dale coin carpenter, whomcoast fight, again, whomever decides they want to sell, I mean, I'm sure Premma would like to buy, who knows if someone else might step in, but and then that's where two of the 25 go and we're all good and Premma's in. If that were them to be able to buy them, Max, and then cool, we're at 25 and okay, I guess, if that's the cap, there would be no extra entries in theory. But what if a team decided to sell and Premma wasn't the winning bidder? What does IndyCar do then? If they have 25 charters, two of them owned by a new entrant other than Premma, again, maybe that other entrant or potential entrant offers a lot more money. Penske entertainment, they're the ones who make the final decision. Those charters belong to Penske. That's the thing to keep in mind. So while I don't have the exact method of how this would happen, I do know for sure, team Penske, team Penske, Penske entertainment, sorry, Freudian slip or something like that. Penske entertainment final word on charters. Who can come in, who can buy, who can't? It's another interesting thing, right? What if Premma offers 25 million for two charters and someone else offers 50 million, nobody would, but would IndyCar turn down that 50 knowing that they get a cut, they get a percentage of that? And not reward Premma, who's been in for a couple of years and trying to get charters, but hasn't been able to? I don't know, just saying, this feels like it could be a mess. So yeah, there we go. Down to our last couple of questions, before we say farewell for the week, Chaparral 2J, one of my favorite cars. So as apart from the different air packages and differences in car prep, there are any other differences in the cars teams use for Indy 500, as opposed to the rest of the season, the brakes, radiators, so forth, the same. Yeah, for the most part, yeah. The main thing, keeping in mind that not every team has dedicated super speedway cars, use them just at Indy and use other chassis for the rest of the races. Not every team does that, but most of them do. And what's the big difference? I mean, componentry-wise, yeah, there's no really super special change within the bodywork, all the mechanical bits. No real changes there that I can think of, but you have cars from an aerodynamic standpoint that are perfected. It's the same componentry as well, right? There's no like speedway transmission or speedway, something that is manufactured in a different way by a vendor. What you do have though, like the efforts with the dedicated speedway cars that have every little aerodynamic piece perfected, any little imperfections in the tub or bodywork, all blending lines, all marriages between bodywork and the tub or other bits and pieces, smoothed out and made beautiful. Other than that, you do have a nice amount of work that tends to go in to remove mechanical friction. So it's a lot of extra time removing any friction possible in the upright's bearings transmission as well, trying to remove as much friction as possible through the bearings there. Again, these are all the same items purchased from their respective vendors, the Lara X-Track and so on, but there is an extraordinary amount of time spent by teams to really polish and make everything there have as close to no mechanical friction as possible because that friction itself, the mechanical friction, just think of it as mechanical drag, like aerodynamic drag, something that slows the car in a straight line to reduce its acceleration and/or top speed. Same exact dynamic happens with wheel bearings that haven't been optimized and transmissions that haven't been optimized. And you hear it could be as much as one to one and a half miles per hour difference. And as long as these cars have been around with seemingly every area of performance, having been found and utilized, they're so, so close, speed wise at Indianapolis that, yeah, you really cannot afford to not optimize those areas. And as we see every year, there's usually someone who crashes their speedway optimized car leading up towards qualifying, has to go to a backup that usually isn't optimized aerodynamically, mechanically. And whatever speed they were doing before the crash, they roll out and they're almost never as fast. They're almost always a decent amount slower and it's for this exact reason. Leroy Rochester, says I keep hearing that Toronto's pit lane can only hold 27 cars. However, I was watching the 1994 race recently and there were 31 cars in the field. What has changed about the venue to result in the loss of space? Well, pretty straightforward. If you were watching the 1994 event, you would have seen pit lane on the right side of the track and pit lane was super long. And this makes me think you might not have seen the race for the last, what five, seven, something years, if not a little bit longer, where it has been moved to the left side of the track because over on the right, there's been a hotel put up. I believe there's been a historic site that has been set with discovery of some things there. So yeah, the physical movement of pit lane from a long and wide open space to something that is really short and crazy compact on the other side. Um, boy, I love how fast we're getting through the show here. Uh, Craig Yerush got your email, by the way, Craig Apologies. I will respond to that as quickly as I can. This is now the season is over. Did you review the hybrid system of the pros and cons? I haven't seen anything that would make me think Ed Carpenter was wrong when he said it wasn't worth it. Makes racing in the series more expensive, makes cars heavier and handle worse. And as a fan, I don't find it exciting when a driver deploys it. Are the cars faster with it? Will it make Honda stay in the series? Only benefit I can see is fewer yellows as drivers can restart their cars. Yeah, Ed and some others, but Ed was the loudest to complain about things for sure. Let me just work backward on this, Craig. So new thing, makes cars heavier, very true, 105 pounds, makes them handle worse. Yeah, it doesn't make them handle better. Can say that for sure. Don't know if the presentation of harvesting and deployment was integrated as interesting as it could have been in the broadcast. So I get that it might have been a lot of a nothing burger or maybe something with only negatives associated to it. But if I work backwards, I would say, hey, that Nashville Speedway race was pretty damn good. Milwaukee, I thought both of them were really good. Sunday's race was really good. Iowa was dreadful, but we know that was a tire thing, being mismatched with the new pavement. So can't really put that on the hybrid system. Toronto, thought was a pretty darn good race. Gateway was supposed to be terrible, but that was actually really good. Portland was good, not insanely amazing, but polo did some pretty special things there. Will Power won? I, again, I don't know if I thought it was the most amazing race, but Santino was on pole. Like, hey, this is so Mid-Ohio, it's debut. Yeah, wasn't great. So take that and then you take Iowa, which was really bad, but again, I don't blame the hybrid for that so much. And then I think Ed vented right after that, right? Seems to me that got a pretty bad rap early. And since the last seven races of the season were done with the hybrid, Toronto, I thought was really good. Gateway was really good. Portland was kind of neutral. Both Milwaukee's, I thought were good. Nashville is really good. No, that's a lot of ovals, but yeah. I think this was Ed expressing his frustration at the costs, knowing that the team was really in not great financial situation at the time. And again, he's also had a pretty miserable years at Driver and then decided, you know, I'm actually gonna step out of the car. I think you throw in some of that context. His opinions are a thousand percent valid. They're his, I'm not saying he's wrong. I'm just saying that I think if you look at some of the circumstances and add them all up, it might have added a lot of the extra fuel that he poured onto the conversation. Not saying other team owners haven't said privately that they're not exactly in love with going hybrid, but understand this is what the series needs to maintain at least its status quo with its current manufacturers and gives them a better chance of enticing others. So if Toronto, Gateway, Portland, Milwaukee, Nashville, were all duds or just non-compelling races, I'd be a thousand percent in the Ed Carpenter camp, going, yep, kill them with fire, Craig. Get rid of these now. Last item to throw in here. Obviously, Firestone did their best to anticipate how the adding of the 105 pounds of weight, the rear weight distribution shift, they did their best to forecast how the cars would need tires, how those tires would need to react and whatnot from stuff that they did in testing a long time before, they were actually used. Two things to know about this. Looking to 2025, knowing that went to road course, two road courses, a street course, tiny oval, slightly larger oval, slightly larger oval, there's testing this week at Indianapolis, super speedway where Firestone's gonna be really busy with tires there, trying to get a feel for what's best to use and create for next May. Instead of going off of something they started making about a year before in anticipation of going hybrid at the start of the year, which didn't happen. And then dealing with what they had towards the end of the season and finding out in some cases, the tires that they created for the hybrid a long time ago were a great match for the track and some others certainly were not. I'd look at what Firestone's about to do here during the off season, both at Indianapolis. The week after, a couple days after Petite, so I'm forgetting the exact date, but seven or eight days from now, there'll be a pretty significant test at Iowa and it is strictly about tires, right? There's going to be more of this road course testing and so on. I am greatly encouraged, Craig, with the effort being expended by Firestone and IndyCar to try and with this new and significant change, the technological composition of the cars to create tires, having learned across those seven races and needing to get back to Indy, which they've never run on with the final spec of the hybrid, to really try and nail things once we get rolling next year, St. Pete, Long Beach, Barber, et cetera. So that I really do indeed look forward to. And then the other key thing to think about is, IndyCar's contemplating increasing horsepower, maybe extending the duration of the push to pass boost from the energy recovery system. These are some interesting things. So I would not want to take seven races from a 17, 18 event year and say, okay, I am making big proclamations about this. That's why when Ed vented as he did, again, everything he was feeling is very real, I get that, but try not to do, unless it's just an epic failure from the outset and we can all see that everyone goes, this is terrible, stop it now. As those races went on, as we went hybrid, they got better and better and better and Firestone honestly receives not as much praise as they should. There was some really good races here to close the year and that is thanks to them. And those are not on tires, they just made up on the spot. Those were made a long time ago. So imagine an off season where they're really busy, really trying to nail things as best as they can for the rest, or I guess going into next season and knowing that the only big question mark I have is we had two road courses, we had one street course, I'm hoping on the road course side, that's the one area where I do want to learn a little more about off season testing plans, because if they can dial that in, I think we are in really, really, really good shape. So sorry, forgot to turn off my little alarm here. All right, what else do we have here before we say farewell for the week? Dennis Sosek is a hate to even ask this, has it so irrelevant the grand scheme of things? But at the moment, St. Petersburg looks to take a devastating hit from Hurricane Milton, if the damage is so severe that the Grand Prix can't be run, will IndyCar need a replacement to satisfy the TV contract? Yeah, I mean, I would say not just TV contract, Dennis. This is a big and very important event for one of IndyCar's great promoter partners in green savory race promotions. They need to put on an event, that's where they, obviously, generate a lot of their income to be in business and be whole. So yeah, I mean, we can't tell the future, that race is six months away. If really bad things were to happen at the Albert Whitted Airport, that it runs around and the areas in and around there, you would obviously hope that over the next six months, repairs could be done, so folks can get back to living their lives and the area where the circuit is run could also be used, but if not, have seen, whether it's natural disasters or whatever the thing is, the something really bad happened and we need to move the race to another place or possibly move it on the schedule. I mean, that was COVID, right? We need to remove some things, try other things, move things around. I'm very positive that if that were to happen or were to happen in any other place. I mean, I'm living here, born and raised, where earthquakes are always a threat. If something were to happen, I'm sure that they will adapt and do their best. Lyle James, you're gonna close the show. Say, how do you see the charters impacting owners and potential owners interest in buying cars and starting teams to fill out the field at Indy? On one hand, I could see them not wanting to bother since they're effectively locked out of using those cars, anywhere else the rest of the year. On the other hand, I could see teams flocking to Indy since it's the most commercially viable race of the year. They don't have to buy a car or a charter to do it. There are more spots up for grabs at any other race of the year. Yeah, right now we have Dennis Reinbold in his ownership group. Two cars that they ran last season, last May, I should say. Bill Abel has two cars he hopes to enter next year. Am I forgetting others who still show up as one off Indy 500 entries? I mean, that's... So we're in a place, Lyle, where sadly, this isn't really a thing so much anymore. As it is, prior to charters, not really much of a thing. So I am, yes, absolutely concerned about this because the spirit of a Claus and Marshall motorsports wanting to show up and try and make the show, which they did phenomenal. Obviously, Ricardo Hunkos coming in Indy Car is the only entrant to start, right? Hey, what kind of great, amazing things might you do? Run down the list. Meyer Shank Racing coming in, granted. They subcontracted their entry to another team, but the buy a car, have a dream, try and make the Indy 500. I do feel, Lyle, sadly, like that is dying out with age and time. The age and era of the folks who knew that to be a customary thing, a time honored thing, those who still might want to do that. Definitely over 50 years old by now, maybe even 60. You can think of a number of them who had a dream tried and came up short, will Marathi comes to mind as someone who tried and tried and wasn't able to do that. I think more of working with an existing team to run a car for him, but I just think naturally with age and time, this has really dissipated as a big ambition for folks to do. I know that I spoke last year, 2023 at Indy with Justin Mark's track house mentioning he has an ambition to do the Indy 500. Would track house buy a car and do, I don't know. I like that idea, but I doubt that. Hendrick, Rick Hendrick McLaren, cool. Did Hendrick go and bot know? They partnered with Aaron McLaren. That's where I think things are gonna go. I think, I hope for as long as possible, Dennis Reinbold will continue to enter. I know he told me that with being left out in the charter, he's gonna have to seriously think about that. Do I expect him to be there next year? Yeah, how many years after I don't know? Bill Abel, I hope gets to run, but fairly discouraged by what's happened with the charter there. Henry Maluchus expressed a desire to join Indy Car through his HMD Motorsports team, completely given up on that because of charters. Pratt Miller Motorsports told us about wanting to join Indy Car, obviously including the Indy 500. Yeah, no charter, no, they're not even really seriously considering it right now. So we've already seen this have an effect, while of, nah, not really, no thanks. So what's gonna happen? My guess is, in the coming years, we will see those who have a desire to compete in Indy 500 link up with an existing team, hire them to run a car on their behalf, maybe in the rarest of cases, lease a car, all right, dragon speed comes to mind as somewhat recent entrant that did indeed buy their own, ran their own, which is great, but just not a lot of that I can see happening. What I think is gonna be the real norm here is the Indy Car teams, all of them now, no more than three entries, all related to the charter. They still have plenty of cars. So last year, last May, Ganesi was what, five cars? They've got three full time going forward, do I expect to see them potentially add someone for at least a fourth, name some of the other teams. Could I see them realizing that, oh, you know, there is a little more wiggle room and possibly profit now for us to consider maybe those who really weren't in the habit of running extra cars, name a hunkos hauling or whomever, could they be looking at, you know, maybe running a third, that could be a nice way to generate some extra income. So I think we're gonna see primarily Lyle here to close. They were gonna see those full time teams being the ones to actually build out the Indy 500 entry list with extra entries of their own, possibly those in partnership with someone else, Don Cusick or whomever, running a extra entry. I do fear that the days the Dennis Ryan bolds of the world, Indy only specialists and amazing folks. I fear that those days are almost over. All right, y'all, thanks again for all the questions you sent in. Thanks to our pal Jerry Sitteth for putting everything together, our dear partners at FAFT Technologies, the Justice Brothers, tryonamotorsports.com. I'll speak to y'all here in about a week. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
