Speaker 1: This is, is off track.
Speaker 2: Is that why you just didn't text us back?
Trying to plan the Tuesday episode this
Speaker 3: Week?
Um, I was in bed. Uh, because let me tell you something.
Jet lag with a newborn is a real
<inaudible> Speaker 1: .
I don't understand, I
don't understand either of those things.
Please explain, uh,
Speaker 3: What, what bed is.
I understand why you don't know what that is, James,
because you again, are gallivanting the world.
Uh, Tim knows exactly what that is
because he just got out of it. I,
Speaker 2: I just clearly got out of the shower. My hair is
Speaker 3: Still very wet.
Did you just get out of bed?
Speaker 2: Why are you showering? No, I was, uh,
I'm painting some walls in my apartment
and I I didn't do it all that carefully. Do you have
Speaker 3: This skillset to paint?
Speaker 1: That seems like a risky endeavor. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I sure don't. Do Speaker 1: You know the three Ps of painting?
Speaker 2: Hmm. Primer paint and pajamas
Speaker 1: Not being are three. A single one.
Speaker 3: Hmm. Well then why Speaker 2: Am I wearing these?
Speaker 1: I, I don't know. Dirty socks.
I'm not, I'm, yeah, I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker 3: You shouldn't paint if you watch your floors .
Speaker 2: Well, there was just a little bit
of painter's tape on that sock.
Speaker 3: Okay. Painter. Anyways. Um, hi guys. Wait,
Speaker 2: What are the three pieces of painting now? I feel like
Speaker 1: Preparation.
Preparation and preparation.
Speaker 2: I like mine more. Speaker 1: Hmm. Yeah.
That's why your apartment walls look like <inaudible>.
Speaker 2: Not yet. Well, one of 'em does.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The one that you painted.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It looks okay. I
Speaker 3: Feel like there's only one wall in your apartment
that can be accessible.
Speaker 2: I'm starting off and Speaker 3: That's the walls going
up upstairs.
Speaker 2: I'm starting in little sections.
Speaker 1: Why is your hair wet for having
Speaker 2: Painted?
I just got outta the shower
'cause I got a little paint on me . Oh.
Speaker 1: Because the painting not going great,
so we had to shower.
Got it. Got
Speaker 2: It.
I did, I painted a door last week
and I got a little bit of white paint in my hair
and it took forever to come out.
But then it just looked like I had little streaks of gray
and it was like, no, no, no.
It's because I, it's because I'm a mess.
It's not because I'm older. It's .
Speaker 1: Do you have any gray hairs yet? I do not.
Speaker 3: I do. Speaker 1: I'm still counting the ones on my beard. Yeah.
You got a couple up here? I got a few in the beard now.
Speaker 3: I got the, I got the side. The side ones going.
Speaker 1: The side ones going. I don't have
Speaker 3: Any up here.
Speaker 1: Do you think if you grew your beard out,
you'd see more in your beard?
Because I feel like for guys it starts like down here
first a lot of the times.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I dunno.
No, because I let it, I let, I let it get fairly long
and there's no gray in it.
But I do, every single time I go and get a haircut.
'cause they wrap you on the black like sheet thing.
Um, it's like more and more gray and less
and less black on there. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: Huh, .
Speaker 3: This is fun. This is a fun reminder every five
weeks. Speaker 1: .
Yeah. Yeah. Well
Speaker 2: My grandpa Bert didn't go gray until he was like 91.
So I'm hoping I got that. I don't think you're
Speaker 3: Gonna make pal. That works.
Speaker 2: That's fair. That's how that works. So was never gray.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Speaker 1: I, uh, I had a very lengthy discussion.
I won't say argument, I'll say discussion
with my father-in-law last week.
Who, who thinks he's still blonde?
Um, I gotta tell you. Super. He's, he's super gray.
Like he's, he's like white
in like the sideburn region, right.
Kind of up to the ear. And he is like, yeah.
And then he's like, I'm gray here,
and then I'm blonde on top.
I was like, no pal. You're gray gray here
and you're white here.
Like you're, you're gray on top
and you're like, like bleach white here.
But he, he's holding on to hope that he's, he's still,
he's still kind of black and he's got hair.
He is got like a good head of hair for a 75-year-old dude.
But it's the majority not the color he thinks it is.
Speaker 3: The majority of my gray hairs came while he was giving his
wedding speech during that time period. .
Speaker 1: So like four years, it's still happening. Yeah. Yeah.
So you're still collecting grays. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Terrific. Um, okay, so wait, so, so how, how ,
I'm just laughing at the name you have on your screen,
but hopefully people can't see.
But , how is, so you're with,
you're in England. You're in England now,
Speaker 3: And you're Speaker 1: In England currently with Kelly and Ben.
Uh, also known as Ken.
That's their, like, that's their celebrity couple
Speaker 3: Name. Interesting. Did
Speaker 2: You bring little Ben to Big Ben? Well,
Speaker 3: We haven't gotten, so we're,
we're out in the country right now.
Um, kind of just relaxing with the sheep
and, uh, enjoying some nice meals
and catching up on sleep as best we can with a newborn.
Um, we're going to Paris tomorrow. And
Speaker 1: What, you're already going, you just got
to England like yesterday?
Speaker 3: No, we got to England on, we left on Sunday.
So we got to England Monday morning.
Uh, so we're gonna Paris Thursday. It's away.
It's it's Wednesday night. Wednesday. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know where I am
Speaker 2: Alex.
We're actually, it's okay. I think it's Thursday for you.
Speaker 3: It's Wednesday. It's 6:30 PM Speaker 2: I meant for James.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's super Thursday for me.
It's, it's 1:30 AM on Thursday
Speaker 2: Morning.
Yeah. Is this our first time doing this in,
in a different day? We're all
Speaker 3: Three.
I didn't Bali on
Speaker 2: My honeymoon like two days.
We're in different, but yeah, we're all three
in different continents. we're
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. That might be a first.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We've got two hemispheres covered.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: We're, we're killing it guys. So sorry.
But No, wait. So before you go to par, wait, how long,
so why such a short trip?
Ting? Why go to Parrot if you're already over?
How has Ben on the flight? Let's start there. We
Speaker 2: Need to reboot him, Speaker 3: Ben,
Speaker 1: On the plane. It's a travel podcast
Speaker 3: Was, uh, fantastic.
So it was a night flight.
So we, we set ourselves up for success.
Um, I will say it was booked, um,
with an hour and 10 minute connection in Chicago from
Speaker 1: Indie.
It's just tight.
Speaker 3: Well, it's Speaker 1: Not with a kid.
Speaker 3: It's not, um, I tell you what's tight, uh,
when your flight from India
to Chicago is delayed by 50 minutes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That makes it tight. Then
Speaker 3: It became tight.
Um, so we were running through basically Kelly,
we made a very smart executive decision to, instead
of gate checking, leave Kelly behind the stroller,
we checked his stroller in Indie.
'cause we knew it was gonna be tight
and we knew it was probably gonna get delayed more.
'cause planes don't, it initially started
as I was delayed 20 minutes,
but we're like, that's not how flights work.
Right. So we were, she strapped into her chest
and I had both bags in my
backpack and it was like, all right.
It's like fortunately only one section of gates over,
they closed the door in eight minutes.
If we run, it's like a five minute run. So done.
We'll get there easy.
Um, the problem was, she, she couldn't run that fast.
Not because she couldn't run fast,
but with the way Ben wasn't the carrier,
he was like almost bouncing out.
So she had to like push his head down while running to just
to like lock him into place.
And we got there
and the, the, the, the gate agent was, it's like
Speaker 1: A mass damper but without a top on it. ,
right? You're like, no, no, thank that
Speaker 3: for, for a little human.
Um, the, the gate agent was like, oh my God,
you guys actually made it.
And we were like, yeah, it wasn't fun.
He was like, I am beyond impressed.
So they obviously were tracking inbound passengers
and connections and they, they had written us off.
Anyways, so that was that little adventure.
Um, got him on the plane.
He slept four out of seven hours.
Uh, nice. That's not bad. Not bad.
Four, four and a half outta seven hours.
Which was, which was great. Obviously.
Um, you know, we're 15 minutes from landing.
It's been everyone to your seats for the past 15 minutes.
And he, uh, himself.
Oh, so that, I mean, as you would expect, um,
um, so you deal with that.
So he's got a good comedic sense of timing. Right? Right.
Speaker 1: So wait, when you say you deal with that,
do you mean in the sense that like, yeah, you put up
with the smell until you land
and then can go change 'em? No.
Speaker 3: Or like, like Speaker 1: I don't care.
You changed him on the coffee table in front of the
Speaker 3: No, no.
Kelly just got up and was like, my kid pooped sue me. Wow.
The flight attendant was like, okay, be quick.
So it was, they were very nice about it.
They didn't, they were, they were very understanding. Yeah.
So we landed, we, we drove out to, uh, the part
of the country called the Cowa.
Mm. And we've been here for, for three days.
Um, have had some amazing food
and checked out the little villages.
We're going to Paris tomorrow just for a night.
Um, Kelly's never been.
And we're just gonna tick the box since it's
so easy to get there with the train.
And then we'll be in London for five days following that. So
Speaker 1: Oh, you're like doing a day Speaker 2: Trip to London. In London.
Speaker 3: We're doing like a, like, like a night trip.
Speaker 1: A single night trip. Speaker 2: You guys have dinner plans yet?
Speaker 3: No. It's hard to make dinner plans
with a board. So just I know a
Speaker 2: Good restaurant I could recommend
Speaker 3: We have send it,
but we have just,
we've learned I'm very schedule pro schedule. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: You're schedule oriented kind of guy.
Speaker 3: We've learned that you just can't do that. So you gotta
Speaker 1: Just go with the Speaker 3: Flow.
We were gonna have a, like a nice dinner tonight.
We're not doing that. Mm. Um,
because we had a really nice lunch that was late
'cause we were late and we ate lunch at two today.
And so yeah, it's fine. Everything's great.
Tremendous having a great time. Tremendous.
Speaker 1: Yes. Love that for all of you. Hmm. Um, excited.
I'm, yeah, it's, it's, it's gonna be an interesting
single day adventure to Paris and then back. But, uh,
Speaker 3: Why, why do you think
that's interesting? It's a train ride.
Speaker 1: No, I know. It just, it's the, it's the act
of like moving hotels for one night to then just move back
to the same country you were in.
Look, I get it. I I've moved a lot
of hotels since I left my house the last time.
I haven't been to my house in a while,
guys. It's been a minute.
Speaker 2: I just sent you the dinner recommendation.
It was one of, uh, so Hemingway
and Fitzgerald's favorite places.
Speaker 3: Cool. I got it. Um, so yes, , James, you, you are,
you are in and outta hotels.
Um, why don't you catch us up on
where you've been since back who?
Speaker 1: Well, um, I'm in,
Speaker 3: You're in Singapore. I'm
Speaker 1: In Where did come from?
I'm Singapore. Thank you. Yep. Where did you come from?
Where'd you go? I'm in Singapore. I came to Singapore from
Speaker 3: Florence.
Speaker 1: Exactly right. Uh, I, I, yeah, so I left, I left Florence,
I don't know, I mean earlier today,
but yesterday I'm not, I don't know.
I I left Florence recently. Um, why
Speaker 3: Were you in Florence?
Was this re rejoining the Dalton family?
Speaker 1: Let your own trip Go back. Yeah. Okay.
Let's, let's, let's run it back. So, um, is that just gonna
Speaker 3: Be forever?
Are they just, are they just gonna travel
Europe for the rest of time? The
Speaker 1: Office, the whole family.
We're all just, we're just, we've all sold our homes. He's
Speaker 3: Nomad now.
Speaker 1: We're just nomads. The Swiss family hit books. Yeah.
Each have one suitcase. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Swiss. Speaker 1: Ironically, we haven't made this room yet,
but it's on the, it's on the list.
Um, no, we don't, we don't do that.
Uh, but so, so Baku, Baku went to Baku
and then I left Baku and I went to Florence.
And the reason I went to Florence is
because, uh, I needed to be close to Maje
because I got to do my little drive in a form
of the one car on Friday.
Last Friday. You did get to do that.
We need to talk about that. It did get do.
Let's talk about it. Yes.
Um, so yeah, I mean, we kind of talked about it ahead
of time and kind of tease it a bit,
but, uh, ha very generously agreed
to allow me to pilot one of their TPC cars.
TPC of course, testing previous cars, as long
as it's a 2-year-old car
or more, you have at this point unlimited miles.
That's kind of changing. Or maybe it's already changed.
I don't know either way. Um, as a bit of a feature
for F1 tv, I commentate on F1.
I've never driven an F1 car.
So the idea was to give me that opportunity.
And what was sort of cool was the day was shared
with Rojan Rojan, who
the last time he drove an F1 car, it tried
to oven roast him in, you know, where that was Bahrain.
And after his accident, you know, he missed his last,
what would've been his last race in F1, uh,
the following week in Abu Dhabi.
And then Mercedes had said, Hey,
we're we're gonna give you a test
to let you get back in an F1 car just to, you know, so
that wasn't your last experience, but then COVID
and complications.
And that never ended up happening.
And so, uh, the, the team principal at
Hao had put together this day where
Roman was gonna get in the car.
And uh, my good friend who's the comms manager there,
Stuart Morrison, was like, well, if we split the day,
we can kind of do a twofer.
And we got Rohan in the car to kind of get back into F1
and finish a few laps that he didn't get to do post, uh,
you know, post his accident.
And then I got the chance
to sample F1 machinery for the first time.
And it was, it was such a weird day, man, because,
and we sort of chat about this, it rained the entire time,
like it was a miserable day at the racetrack.
Mam, jello was an incredible racetrack in
an incredible part of the world.
Um, so scenic so beautiful,
but it poured rain all day long.
And, uh, Roman was in the car first
and he did a bunch of running all in the wet.
And something I learned about TPC testing, Alex,
which you'll find as frustrating as I did,
is they do not let you purchase intermediate tires.
So you can have full wets or slicks.
Now, anybody that follows Formula One closely,
at least for the last few years, will know that
any conditions that require the full wet are usually
too wet to even go racing.
So while in a one or two car test,
'cause there were a few other cars there doing some pelli
testing with only a few cars on track, you know,
maybe you could get away with it as long
as there's not a lot of standing water.
But fundamentally the extreme white only comes out when it's
really too wet to run at all.
Once it dries out enough, you'd go to an enter
because the wet degrades too much.
Well enters weren't an option.
So all of his running around it does it dude.
And there's some other things that happen that like,
just, I'm like, oh my God.
Even here, even in the pinnacle of motor sports, some
of this stuff happens.
Red Bull had a whole situation with their program, which was
comical, I will tell you offline.
But we, you know, we're there
amp pan around all day in the wet,
it was time to switch over.
So I got my first taste of F1 machinery in the wet,
and then it started to dry.
And Alex, as you know,
and this is where, look, Tim, very interested in this story,
very, very, very invested.
There is just, look as you know, you know
how impressive a Formula one car is you
raced in Formula One.
You can also acknowledge that regardless of
how good a car is,
if you are driving on rain tires full wets
on a nearly dry
track, a car's terrible.
Like there's no car.
It doesn't matter how good the car is, there's just nothing
that can compensate for that combination Sure.
Of a full at tire. On a nearly dry track.
So like, my first run was kind of in wet conditions,
and even then I was , I was blown away at
how late you could break in the wet in an F1 car,
like absolutely blown away.
And then the next like three runs
were all on full wet tires on a drying track,
and it was getting progressively worse.
So like, it just felt terrible.
Like the braking was again, still pretty impressive
and the acceleration is kind of what you'd expect it to be.
But I wasn't getting a sense of like that
the downforce and the ability, the capabilities
of an F1 car, you know, and then it was drying up.
And so after my last run on the wets, they're like,
all right, just, just key up the radio
and give us a little bit of an insight
around the lap about how dry it is.
So I'm driving around at, you know,
a hundred kilometers an hour
and explaining what I see on the track.
And I was like, like if it was me, if this was Indy car
and this was me, I'd be like, a hundred percent,
let's throw some slicks on and let's give it a whirl.
But this isn't my world. You guys have to make that call.
And so he went in the garage, sat for a bit, and I heard
after the fact that all the engineers were saying like,
well, yeah, of course he's gonna say it's dry,
but like, we have no idea if it's actually dry.
But then the other two cars that were there threw on slicks,
they went out and they stayed out for a run.
And so the guys were like,
all right, I guess it's good enough.
And we were like counting down the minutes to the end
of the test day, thank God in Italy they run
until six o'clock, not five o'clock.
And so they threw on slicks for the last run.
And dude, like
I, it's ridiculous.
And I, I I, I think the first thing I text you was just
dude, and you wrote back LOLI know, like , it's .
It's, I I have always appreciated
and respected the fact that you raced in that category.
But now like having sampled,
however briefly what those cars are capable of.
Mm-hmm . My thoughts of you running around suzuka,
my thoughts of you running around Singapore are like, it is
so impressive what those things are capable of
and what those drivers have to do.
Speaker 3: Did you get the, um,
the feeling like you were driving on glass?
Speaker 1: So what's interesting is this generation of car
with how stiff they have
to run 'em in the ground effects and all that.
The bumps were
so much more prominent on slicks than on wet tires.
Like on wet tires. There's just
so much more give you felt like a little bump
and it kind of felt like an Indy car.
And then bumps that you didn't think were really
bumps, they put the slicks on.
You're like, like, oh man, that actually kind of hurts.
Like I get why those tracks have to be.
So Bill your table smooth for those cars right now in this,
this current iteration 'cause
Speaker 3: Ing so stiff when, when George
and Lewis a a, a couple years ago
and the Mercedes were complaining about their backs from the
purposing, you could relate. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah, I can, I can understand.
Like, I didn't have, like,
they've obviously come a long way.
They don't have really the purposing anymore mm-hmm .
But if I thought about the one little,
there's a bump, right?
Kind of by pit in on the front stray at ma.
And when you hit it in the wet, you kind
of like felt a little bit when you hit in the dry,
it was like d and you're like, you know, hitting the limiter
and like fall shifting and stuff.
And so I was like, man, if I could definitely see
that if you got into a pattern
of the car just doing this down the straight,
that would be very uncomfortable.
I could 100% see that.
But the how late you could break into corners
and the entry speed
with which you could just throw it in there
and then for like, probably more than anything, the combined
traction on exits was ridiculous.
Like, it was, it was ridiculous.
It doesn't make any sense that you could be
that fast in the middle of a corner still turning
maj like you're still halfway through the corner
and just start feeding the throttle in with no regard
for anything about an over stream.
It just goes, it just goes and, oh man. Ridiculous.
Ridiculous. Yeah, it was so much fun.
I'm gutted that I only got one
run on the slicks, but I'm, that really sucks.
Also so fortunate that I got that one run on the slicks,
it's such a weird sort of position to be in,
but just, uh, the way the thing performs, how it,
how it works, the way it works, um, it's hard
to not kinda leave that experience with just a,
a whole new level of appreciation for what the guys
that are really good in that series do.
Speaker 3: Do you find though, that like, it, there's such a far
separation from every other category of car, not, um,
forget the performance aspect of it,
but just like the build quality and how nice it is to drive?
Yeah. Like that's the thing that blows my mind.
You can, you can drive a well-balanced IndyCar,
you can drive a well-balanced prototype.
You can drive a well-balanced GT three and all this stuff.
And they're, they're nice to drive for the most part,
but it is a completely different planet to
what a Formula one car is.
And it's just, it's, it's amazing the distance
that they have on literally everything else.
Speaker 1: It's, it's hard to kind of explain this to people
that haven't driven multiple types of race cars.
Right? But the, the, the closest thing I can say is
that the, and this, I dunno if this term makes any sense
or is really relevant.
There's just, there's no slop in anything mm-hmm . Right?
Like, it's, it's a weird word to use when
Speaker 3: You release the clutch for the first time, you're like,
oh my God, that's how it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: Right? And like the brake pedal, the throttle pedal,
the steering inputs, there's just, there's no slop,
there's no margin, right?
Like everything was built to the, within the nth degree
of tolerance of what it needs to do.
And so it just does it all so well.
And you know, like I, I didn't, I mean, I got
very limited dry running and so trying to push the limits
and the fast stuff, but under like, just the way
that compared to a wet tire in a dry
track, you know what that's like, right?
The whole thing sort of slides around,
it moves on top of the tire or whatever.
Then once you put the slicks on,
the thing is just so responsive.
Like it's unbelievable.
And the fast section like six through nine at Magel,
like trying to comprehend what this thing was capable of
and I was nowhere near the limit of the car was unreal.
The, and the braking, like the,
the brake system is so efficient.
Like you, you don't have to hit the pedal anywhere near
as hard as you do in IndyCar.
Yeah, true. Like, even though you're going so fast
and you have so much down force
and so much braking capability, the physical effort
through the pedal, right?
So I'm not talking about whatever pressure translates
to the brake system and, and how all that stuff works.
I'm talking about how hard as a driver you hit the pedal,
it was a fraction of what you have to, like in any car,
you're like, here we go.
And you like, as hard
as you physically can into the brake pedal
with your left leg and trying to slow this thing down
and the F1 car you just like ,
you just like, just breathe on it.
It's like, ugh, stopping so fast. It
Speaker 3: Helps though.
It helps though when you breathe on it though,
you've already got like four longitudinal G helping you.
Yeah. like put pressure
Speaker 1: On the back, just lifting off the throttle. It's like,
Speaker 3: Yeah.
It's like, oh
Speaker 1: Yeah.
It's, uh, so yeah, incredible
Speaker 3: Experience takes on a whole new meaning.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable. So much fun, such a cool opportunity.
Can't thank, uh, Haas and, and and MoneyGram
and everybody who let that happen.
AO and Stew and, and everybody Dom. Um, yeah.
What a day man, what a day.
And again, I was bummed it wasn't dry the whole day,
but I'm hoping that maybe
at some point I can weasel my way into another one and, uh,
and do, I was like, well the 26 cars are so different,
we're gonna have to do it again with a 26 car
to really get a good understanding of it.
All right.
Speaker 2: So it's a, I'm gonna put the ask out if anybody listens
to this has like a vast car collection
and you have an F1 car from any year.
Yes. Will you let me drive it like five?
I would love to drive it five feet.
No, I just wanna like nudge it a little bit.
I just want it so that all three
of us can say we've driven an F1 car.
I don't need to drive it far.
I just need to like, right, like five feet.
Speaker 1: But right now, just right now
we can all say we've driven an F1 car
and raced in the Indy 500. So
Speaker 2: Okay.
Baby steps, we'll burn that bridge when we get to it.
Um, yeah, I would just like to put it out. I don't know.
You know, I feel like I have some friends
that maybe have an old F1 car.
Probably not. I mean, but
Speaker 1: Mario has one.
Speaker 2: Oh, does he? Okay. Yeah, I was gonna say no, it's in car.
Just putting the ask out there. Yeah.
I don't think any, any of any
of our multimillionaire listeners
that just have like a huge car collection
and are down for a down for a laugh.
Speaker 1: I mean, if Zach Brown listens to this,
he's got a bunch of old F1 cars.
Speaker 3: Well, Tim, have you done anything? Cool.
Speaker 2: You know what? I have some racing to cover.
Um, Hazel had her first cross country track
or cross country meet of the season yesterday.
She did the, uh, she did the two miler
and uh, she had a, a 2046.
So, you know, just under six mile per hour pace. James,
Speaker 3: Do you remember when Tim was training
and then ran a half marathon?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do. I do. Speaker 2: I should do that again.
Speaker 3: Whatever happened. Whatever happened to that guy.
Speaker 1: I know Speaker 2: I ran along with Hazel for some of it
and then one of the refs was like,
Hey, you can't do that. What?
Speaker 3: Why? Speaker 2: He's like, you're trying
to like help her set her pace.
I was like, nah, I'm trying to get pictures of my daughter.
It's dumb GI guarantee you I'm not gonna run two miles.
Speaker 1: I don't like that ref. Yes. Do you call
Speaker 2: Refs in cross country? I dunno.
Speaker 1: Whatever man. Whatever that guy was, I don't like him. Guy
Speaker 3: With a flag. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh, so now I'm in, uh, Singapore.
It's, it's the Grand Prix weekend here.
But I had an interesting experience flying
in as a travel podcast.
You'll appreciate that as a pilot. You'll appreciate this.
So flying again, second time this year on a 7 47,
which again, I'm still shocked they're in existence,
but whatever, 7 47 coming into
Singapore, gliding in nicely.
And I'm like, like we're just hovering.
Like we're at that point we're like, we're just hovering
above the ground and you're just waiting for 'em to kind
of pull the throttle back to just get the,
get the wheels down, whatever.
And I'm like, man, a lot of, a lot
of airport has gone by in the window.
Like we're, this must be a long runway
and then the rear wheels touch.
And I was like, all right, I guess we're good.
And then no sooner do the rear wheels touch.
Does the guy just absolutely Matt the throttle and pull out
and we do a touch and go
and have to pull off, pull up again.
'cause there was just a massive tailwind that the guy was,
he was like zero throttle
and just, we were just not falling.
And so we had to go and we did a touch
and go into 7 47, which I thought was kind of fun.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't think that'd be that fun.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure he was panicking a little bit,
but I thought it was kind of cool.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, what's the worst that can happen?
What's, what's funny, what's funny about jets,
well passenger jets is, um, you would think,
well they are 100 per,
they're 99% more capable than general aviation propeller
airplanes in all conditions except one.
And that's go around really?
Um, because not, not
because, um, they're lacking thrust and lift
and capability and performance and everything.
But there's such a, there's such a delay in terms
of when they like go full juice right
to the turbine spinning up
to them actually generating thrust
to then creating enough thrust
and such to relift off and everything.
I bet from the time he decided to go around
to the time you were in the air was a solid,
like pushing 10 seconds.
Whereas on a prop plane you just hammer it
and it like sorts itself out.
'cause it's immediate throttle
and immediate propeller thing in
your back in the air. That is,
Speaker 1: That is so interesting because I
Speaker 3: Prefer not knowing Speaker 1: That IKI kind of thought that was
sort of how it worked.
Mm-hmm . In the sense
that I didn't think the throttle response was
like super immediate.
Oh, no, no.
But I remember thinking like, I was floored that as soon
as it felt like from in the plane, they made the decision
to go back up.
It was ama it was, I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe
how quickly that thing accelerated.
I mean, it's a jumbo jet. No.
Speaker 3: So they would've gone, it's massive gone.
They would've gone like from 40%, let's call it to a hundred
and then they would've been watching like the, the revs.
It's not revs, but the revs go up
and it would've been building, it would've been like ball.
Speaker 1: It's almost like, it's almost like they made
that commitment before we even touched the rear wheels down.
But we were still like, ah, we've committed to this.
And he is just kinda like wheeling the thing.
Yeah, because the front never touched.
Yeah, that's like wheeling up the runways.
Speaker 3: Wind, wind shear is a really bad thing for jets.
Um, and they've got wor they've got weather systems
and now will have a warning
and the planes have a wind shear detection in it
because passenger jet have crashed on arrival
with nothing wrong with them
because the wind will go from being a headwind to a tailwind
as you're dropping through an altitude layer.
And because of this phenomenon of a turbine engine,
it can't recover fast enough.
Whereas when you're in a,
Speaker 2: When you're a plane, this's fun.
This is cool to know all this. Now
Speaker 3: When you're being a non-urban plane,
wind shear doesn't really matter.
It'll be bumpy or whatever,
but if you had to get out of it, like I said,
there's an instant kind
of climb out performance whereas on a jet there
isn't. So sorry
Speaker 2: You say climax performance Speaker 3: Clx out, but also,
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Speaker 2: That's what I
Speaker 1: Heard.
What would you tell about climax performance?
Speaker 2: Okay guys, we had a comment on our YouTube
that I sent you guys yesterday complaining about us spending
too long talking about soup.
And he was very clear that that's not why he's here.
Uh, he's here to listen to us talk racing.
So any good soups lately?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I don't like soup,
so I gotta say no on that.
It's a no from me dog.
Speaker 3: Was this Brad from Brownsburg or Avon or
Speaker 2: Whoever?
I was somebody on the thing. I sent it to you guys. Hmm.
I feel like out, out of anger for that, I went
and had a french onion soup at the farmer's market just
to like have some soup to talk about
Speaker 1: My, what Speaker 2: Are our feelings? Burn
Speaker 1: Your mouth.
My in-laws had a french onion soup in Italy that was
the thickest meatiest french onion soup I've ever seen.
It was a meal by the time their mains came,
they just packed 'em up and took 'em home
because the french onion soup
Speaker 2: Pool. That sounds like a good
Speaker 1: Meal.
I mean, if you liked soup, it sounded like a nice program.
Uh, it's not my thing, so I wasn't all about it.
But yeah, they, there's a great french onion soup meal meal
at a little Italian restaurant in,
I don't know, somewhere Italy.
Anyway, uh, that's,
that's all the soup talk we have time for
Speaker 2: Alex, you don't have any soup? No soup to talk about.
Speaker 1: So in the actual racing world, uh, there was some news,
uh, that has emerged.
First and foremost, Dennis Hauger, who won the Indie Lights
slash Next championship, uh,
within Dre this year is confirmed
with Delco racing, which is great.
I mean, another example of, you know,
a young driver coming out of, uh, Indy next
and getting straight into the big show full season, uh,
as well as an andretti technical partnership with them.
So clearly still some ties between Hauger
and the Andretti Squad.
Um, which is cool, man, I'm excited, I'm excited to see
what he can do behind the wheel of an IndyCar
because I feel like in the last, you know,
10 years we've seen some drivers come outta lights that
were dominant in lights
and kind of struggled with the transition up.
And I feel like we've seen some drivers
that were decent in lights,
but maybe not the complete headline sort of guys
that got into the big cars
and like something just sort of clicked
and we saw some really good performances.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Um, who knows, who knows?
I'm, I'm glad that, you know,
we've talked a lot about this show
or a lot on this show about the road to Indy.
Um, a lot of our guests have talked about the road to Indy
and, and what an amazing program it is
and how it's unlike anything else on the planet really.
Um, and there was a couple years there where, you know,
it was really successful in getting guys from let's say
carts to lights, but then the step from lights
to Indy car, it wasn't really happening.
And it seems that the past couple years, you know, the guys
that have won the Lights Championship have gotten the
opportunities in IndyCar
and it's really making the road to Indy the complete pathway
that it was set out to be.
So credit to everyone, um, involved in that
for making that what it is.
Because it would've been really sad if someone like Hager
after the performances that he had in 2025 wasn't able
to make the step for, you know, reason X, Y, and Z.
So that's great. The technical partnership thing.
You know, I think, I'm not saying this
because I'm, I'm driving for a team that doesn't have one.
Um, because I had the same opinion at McLaren
and quite frankly I had the same opinion at Andretti.
The technical partnerships are getting a little annoying,
um, because I just, I I don't, I don't know, I don't know
what it is benefiting, um, aside from, well, I know exactly
what is benefiting, it's benefiting one guy's bank account
and it's benefiting another team's performance.
But in terms of the series, you know,
Speaker 1: Formula One, it seem like two pretty
Speaker 3: Good things has the Formula One has, you know, kind
of a, a stance on this.
The, the Toroso Red Bull relationship has always
been in a gray area.
Um, the hos Ferrari relationship was always a
little bit in a gray area.
I just, I I'm, what do you think about it, James?
Like, it, it seems that it's getting a little bit
outta hand, um,
because now quite frankly, you've got
quite can askia with a B team.
You've got Penske with the B team,
you've got Andretti with the B team.
So you've got the three, the three heavy hitter teams all
with subsidiary teams.
Is that a good thing?
Is that a bad thing
or is that a thing that is completely irrelevant from
someone that is commentating on the series
and for our fan base,
Speaker 1: Et cetera?
That is a great question.
That is a, that's a very good question.
I guess I, let me, let me answer it
by countering with a question.
In saying that, do you think that
technical partnerships, Allah, Anasi
and Shank, Ella Penske
and Foyt Ella, uh, Andretti and,
and Dale Coin, do you think that they have a
massive, or let's call it,
let's not let's call it a meaningful, um,
impact on the, you know, I not to use the term in like a,
in a bad way, but like the, in the B team's performance.
Do you, do you think that it's to the point where
those teams are performing at a level that they would
otherwise not be without that technical partnership?
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's certainly allowing
those teams to do that, yes.
Um, I don't think there's any evidence contrary to that.
Um, and,
and where, where, it's weird for me,
and this is coming from a non-competitor standpoint.
This is me taking a step back saying I'm not driving against
said cars, is, there was a very clear
direction from IndyCar in terms of the future of the series
of having teams that brought, um,
a certain level of quality
and commitment to the championship.
Um, and they were rewarded with a charter, right?
We've seen the rumors that have come out
regarding Prema as of late.
Um, and you know,
there are potential future in the series all kind
of being linked to, to big spend
for not any really guarantee of anything
because you don't have a charter, right?
Because we've talked about the charter
and the value of a race team without a charter is purely
just the equipment that you have,
which is whatever the value of that equipment is.
It could be 10 cents on the dollar,
it could be 20 cents on dollar or whatever.
It's right. So IndyCar took a very hard
and fast stance that we wanna have 27 charters,
we wanna have it limited to three charters per team,
and we want it to be about the quality of the teams
and the people that have been
here through the thick and thin.
We wanna reward them for that.
I'm just wondering, by making it so
that the big teams are having now
an influence on the small teams
or on a select amount of small teams, is that really
bringing the best organizations into the field
for these charter programs?
That's my only question because, you know, I,
and I'm speaking only from, I don't know
how the current systems are set up.
I, all I know is that when the technical partnership existed
between Andretti and Shank, you know, all of those engineers
and such were Andretti employees, right?
Those weren't actually Shank engineers,
they were Shank mechanics,
but they were, they were Andretti employees, right?
So that,
that IP is still being kept in house at Andretti.
So when Andretti decides to leave,
if Shank doesn't find another suitable replacement,
which they did in GSI Shank is is going to take, its,
you would imagine a step down, right?
Because even though they've been in the championship
for the past two or three years,
they haven't been developing their own
stuff and their own things.
You know, we've, we've heard about the Foy relationship,
if it were to end all of the good stuff
that was brought over would go away, right?
It's not like you, you pay, you know,
for the technical support for a year
and then that's, you know, IP that you get to keep,
you're just basically renting the services
of that big team, right?
So that's, that's my only caveat to it is is is it really
bringing up all of the teams into the level that
that IndyCar is wanting?
Speaker 1: So your argument, you, sorry, your position on it is more
that those teams are so beholden to the whim
of the, the A teams in terms of whether
or not that they continue on those partnerships
that it's not really bringing the team to a higher level.
Speaker 3: My my my only point is,
and it's just an argument, right, is you've got Prema,
right, who is invested, a huge amount of capital
has brought in people from overseas has really tried to
figure out how to go IndyCar racing
and make Indy cars go fast.
And that's a very hard thing
to do from the European way of racing.
We saw it with Carlin, we saw the struggle that that was,
we've seen it in the past, right?
And Prema was no exception, albeit for going on pole
for the Indianapolis 500.
So Prema, if they were to leave the championship, let's say,
and if they were to leave the championship
because they weren't able to have a charter
and have a guarantee of a future
earnings in the sport, right?
Let's say those things happened and it was
because there was a team that was existing
and they were basically renting performance.
Is that, is that right?
Is my only question because Primo went about,
and I'm not saying there's a right or a wrong way.
I'm saying they went about it to the traditional way, right?
And are not being guaranteed or rewarded anything.
Meanwhile, teams are going about it the non-traditional way.
It's the very efficient way.
If I was a team owner, I'd probably do the exact same thing
because hundred percent.
If I could spend X amount of millions of dollars
and have instant performance
with another team's 15 years developed
ip, of course I'm gonna do that.
But is that, is that really elevating the championship?
Speaker 1: So the, the two points I'll make,
and again, not necessarily in support or or opposition to,
but it's just the two sort of points
to I think keep in consideration anything that
condenses the field from a performance standpoint is good
for the sport globally, right?
Because you're increasing competition.
So if you've got Dale coin racing
that is normally a second off the pace of Andretti
and now all of a sudden with the same equipment, you know,
sorry, with some shared engineering prowess Yeah.
We bring that down to four-tenths
that brings more people into the mix
and essentially in theory makes the
racing tighter and better.
So you could argue that that helps the championship in a
global sense, right?
From the, the, the prema example is a good one in terms
of the charter program.
But I think the caveat to
that is you've got a team like Dale who
maybe doesn't have the, the resources
or has never had the resource that Prema did getting going,
but has put in, you know, 35 years
or whatever of, of blood sweat, tears
and cash into the series.
So fine, he's now trying to increase the performance
of his team through this per the rules currently totally
legitimate way.
Are you saying that he's not as, uh,
deserving of a charter because he is doing that?
When you look at the fact that he's put in 35 years
of being in the series versus prema
that's shown up in year one.
No. Spent a bunch of money. Sure.
But are they more deserving than a guy
that's been here for three decades?
Speaker 3: That's a, that's a no, and that's a very valid point.
I, I would say my only then rebuttal to that is Dale,
this partnership is alleged to be only one car
and it's only alleged to be the Hogger car
because Dennis is under some sort of
further longer term relationship
Speaker 1: Umbrella agreements you have Speaker 3: No idea about, right?
Right. So you're gonna have, you're gonna have one car
that is adding to the competition
and then you're gonna have another car,
which in theory will be quite a bit different.
And so for whatever driver that gets in that car, whether
that's um, a guy that finished second place in indie lights
or third place IND lights or someone from App
two or wherever, right?
In the sports cars, whoever
Speaker 1: Former F1 guy Speaker 3: That's gonna, that,
that's not a really good situation to have
because then you're having a rookie, right?
Having all of this support of a bigger team
and in under the same umbrella you're having a rookie
that can have very, um,
drastically different fortunes
because they're with the original
Dale Coin racing team, right?
Which in some, in, in some respects is phenomenal.
Like you look at what they did this year,
they beat me in the championship.
So it's not saying anything against Dale Quinn racing.
All I'm saying is you're, we're starting
to really muddy the waters here in terms of
teams aren't allowed
to have more than three charters per the rules.
So what they are now doing is they're basically buying
cars at other teams.
They're not even doing it
for whole teams and having whole B teams.
They're just buying individual cars to place their drivers
because they don't wanna lose them.
But it's under different umbrellas and branding
and it's just, it's getting,
I feel like it's heading in a direction that gets messy
and does hurt the integrity
of the whole system that was designed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't, I don't disagree with that.
I think for me, the one thing that is glaringly, you know,
standout in this is that having a different number
of cars allowed in the field than charters seems
fundamentally flawed.
It's, it's different in NASCAR when teams and,
or sorry, I guess tracks can accommodate more than
what the charter number is,
but like if we just went to 26 charters
and only 26 cars allowed
to enter any given race,
we'd eliminate some of that problem.
You could tackle the technical partnerships a different way,
but like having 25 charters,
but allowing 27 cars to show up to a race
and start a race so you could potentially have 29 cars show
up, but only 27 start, but only 25 have charter.
That whole thing seems so convoluted and messy to me.
I think we should pick 26, make it 26 charters,
26 cars chart every race outside Indy
and let's actually create some value
to owning one of those charters.
'cause right now you can spend all this money like Prima did
without any guarantee
that you're gonna be in races if someone else shows out.
Like the whole thing just seems a little bit, you know,
this isn't the, this isn't the days
of like usac when it's run what you brung
and everybody shows up
and tries to make the field like we're not there anymore.
Hi Kelly. And I just, I dunno, I just, I just,
I still think it seems flawed for us
with the current landscape of any car
to have different numbers of charters
or whatever they're called and potential
starters, you know what I mean? But yeah, say
Speaker 3: Yeah, I, I just, yeah, I, to end on this, I just think
that the, it was always cool,
it was always really cool in IndyCar.
It, the IndyCar I grew up watching
was the Dale coin stories, right?
Of this semi's barbecue, underperforming, underfunded,
car boy Scouts of America car, whatever, right?
They would show up and,
and every once in a while would smack it on the podium
or would win a race or would do
Speaker 1: Whatever.
Justin Wilson in a Dale Cohen car beating Ryan Briscoe
and Aki Watkins Glen.
Speaker 3: Exactly. And now,
and now for the most part, that ex exists.
That doesn't exist. I mean ob so
because truly now there is Juncos, Hollinger,
ECR, Ray Hall
and McLaren, those are the only teams left in the
championship that are independent.
Everyone else is all linked up together.
So it's, you don't have the same, in my mind,
storylines that can develop.
And it's just a little bit, it's a little weird,
but maybe that's just the future of the series.
Maybe at one point everyone's gonna be linked up
and that'll be what we have.
Juncos and McLaren did try and do a, a thing
but didn't really work out too well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's more of a commercially
Yeah, you're right, you're right.
Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting.
It'd be interesting if it was kind of positioned
that those sort of technical partnerships
can't exist anymore.
I wouldn't necessarily be against that.
'cause yeah, I think that's kind of the,
the nature of the sport.
Um, but like you say, that's a good thing, good place to end
because we are over time now.
So, uh, thanks for listening.
We'll cover Nashville next week
and, um, have fun in England slash paris slash England
and I'll have fun in Singapore
slash Singapore slash Singapore.
And Tim, you know, whatever. Have fun or don't.
I don't really. I don't really care. Happy
Speaker 3: Birthday, Larry.
I'll say that. You're
Speaker 1: Larry, Speaker 3: Happy birthday, Larry.
Speaker 1: Oh, happy birthday, Larry. Yeah, that's, that's good news.
Happy birthday to Larry. Appreciate your pal.
Speaker 4: This has been off track with Hinch and Rossi.
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