It's Not the Car

Debrief alert! INTC co-host Jeff Braun helped run a GT3 Corvette at the 24 Hours of Le Mans this year. To a top-ten finish!

In his day job, Jeff is comp director for an IMSA team. Baptiste Viala is a 25-year-old engineer who works with him. June marked Jeff's sixth time running a car at Le Mans and Baptiste's first.

Two cool cats. And they have surprisingly different angles on the same trip to France.

This show’s format rotate...

For July Fourth, an American tale: Big ambition! A mutant Camaro! A crashed mutant Camaro! Success! Failure! Wisconsin!

Plus: a NASCAR man, in France, with his name on his boots.

(Gave proof, through the night, that our flag was still there.)

This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. This episode is our semi-regular deep dive into an epic moment from racing history. 

In this case, that means the time in 1981 that NASCAR lege...

Laguna Seca. Nineteen privately owned Mazdas. And one man, lapping each of those cars for Road & Track, quietly losing his mind.

Car magazines: It’s a weird gig.

In this episode, Sam relives one of the more unhinged story pitches of his career: A nonstop weekend wrangling 19 wildly different Miatas. Modded and stock. V-8 swaps and K-swaps. Turbo four-cylinders that made everything from hamster power to some 360 hp at the wheels. ...

Corner by corner, inch by inch, with one of the greatest tracks in the world.

Do Ross and Sam use this episode to dissect their love for the pavement of Road America? Does a Wisconsin bear pope eat beer cheese in the Kettle Moraine woods?

(The answer is yes, for the record. Yes to both.)

Welcome to the Upper Midwest, cats and kittens. You will learn where the apexes are, if you don’t already know. But that’s the least interesting par...

“They were all standing in front of our big Kenworth, the truck, this monster big American machine. They could have cared less about the Ferrari. They were like… the *truck* is awesome.”

That right there is an actual quote from this episode, about actual French people meeting an actual Kenworth tractor-trailer.

(Sacré bleu, good buddy!)

This episode was supposed to be on another topic and led by Sam. Then Sam got sick and lost his voi...

Just what happens behind the scenes at a big-league pro sports-car race?

Answer: Everything! And in this extra-special, audiobook-style INTC, you get… a whole lot of it!

Jeff Braun and Sam Smith are two of this show's three hosts. Jeff is also competition director for the IMSA GTD Corvettes of AWA Racing. Last summer, Sam and Jeff met up for the IMSA race at Virginia International Raceway. Jeff and AWA were running a car—and Sam ...

A race engineer, a driver coach, and a journalist walk into a bar on Memorial Day.

“Ow,” says the journalist.

(Figures. The other two were smart enough to use the door.)

Is this an episode where we break down and analyze this year’s Indy 500 and Monaco Grand Prix? Indeed! Did we do this exact same thing last year? Indeed! 

This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. We call this format “Ripped From the Headlines.”

CLARIFICATIO...

Not always. But often. It’s one of the many mysteries of motorsport. 

Here now, a dive into some of those mysteries! Starring a champion race engineer—Jeff!—and a recovering motorsport journalist—Sam!

Some racing mysteries are fun. Some are frustrating. Regardless, if they’re in this episode, we don’t have answers for them, and we probably never will.

This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. We call this format “IT’S NOT T...

Free Bonus Episode! What's it like to spend a whole week and thousands of miles with someone you barely know? Ever tried that while barely sleeping, while lapping nearly a dozen race tracks at speed, while trying not to lose your mind?

Welcome to spectacle—the event, the 40-year tradition—that is One Lap of America.

Ross is an ambassador for BFGoodrich. A while back, his friends at BFG called and asked if he wanted to run this ye...

This episode holds... Death! Glory! Men in great hats! But also Enzo Ferrari, Ferdinand Porsche, 160-mph race cars, and an entire regiment of the Nazi army. 

Oh, and: One of history's greatest drivers eats a ham.

Oh, and: Hitler.

Hold onto your butts, y’all—this one’s a doozy.

This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. This episode is our semi-regular deep dive into an epic moment from racing history. In this case, that m...

Landing a job as a pro race driver takes talent, hard work, and a truckload of money.

Or sometimes just money. And some people do it for giggles, as a hobby. (You know, like knitting! Just with more Senna inspo quotes.)

This show changes formats weekly, because squirrel. We call this ep's format “MY LIFE WITH.” It’s where an INTC host tells the story of how they came to understand a complex racing topic over their working life. 

I...

It’s another “No Dumb Questions!” You email to ask, we sit down to answer. There are no dumb questions in racing … but there might be some dumb answers.

In this episode, we take questions from only one listener.

Spoiler: That listener is Sam!

This was supposed to be a fun little exercise where Sam asked Ross and Jeff random racing questions. Then Sam got a “rager” (his word) case of Covid and was barely able to talk. So he asked Ross ...

Do you remember your worst day in racing?

Of course you do. How could you forget?

Jeff, Sam, and Ross: three hosts, three hugely different people, three lifetimes in and around motorsport. And in this episode, the stories of three very different bad days at the track—in parenting (Jeff), in desperation (Sam), and in the realization that a dream is gone and not coming back (Ross).

Racing is like any other part of life: It’s not about w...

Race tracks. The road. Fast cars. Slow ones. What do they have in common? Simple: If you're willing to use your noggin-brain, you can figure them out. 

Maybe.

How do you get used to a new car at speed? What does it want, what does it need? What do *you* need? Can you turn the whole process into a repeatable, trustworthy routine? Of course you can! The question is… how?

This show changes format weekly, because squirrel. We call thi...

Why do we push ourselves? What makes you put yourself out there and try?

Why is that trying so easy for some and so hard for others?

How much does belief matter with all this? How much is it relevant to driving around in circles, or human performance, or doing the best you can with anything, especially given the limited resources each of us has on tap, as a person? 

Why do those resources rarely feel like enough—even when they so clea...

What does a championship-winning IMSA engineer and team director want from a race car? What does he *need* from it? Should those qualities match up? How much race could a race car race if a race car could race cars?

So many questions. We definitely answer the first two. Maybe also the last one. (Maybe.)

A good race engineer blends the art of the possible with the science of the probable. INTC co-host Jeff Braun has been perfecting th...

They had a shot at winning, you know? You always have a shot! Even though sometimes you don’t. This is what happens when… well, when you try very hard and it doesn’t happen.

Jeff was on the wall with Toronto’s AWA Racing, helping that spunky little team’s Corvettes go faster. (Fresh off their Daytona win!) Ross was focused on LMP2 and his driver there and coaching his heart out. 

Everybody had heart on the table. And then…

Well, you’l...

The first answer? Money, of course. The second answer? Also money.

The third answer, in case you’re wondering: also also money! But we don’t care about those answers! We care about how, if you work hard and maybe get lucky… you might not *need* the money. (Much.)

Ross is a former IndyCar ’shoe and a pro driver coach who has trained thousands of racers. Jeff is a pro engineer who’s helped countless teams chase wins, and he raised an I...

“A mythbusting episode,” Ross suggested. “Great idea!” Sam and Jeff said.

Then we blinked, and we had gone off-topic again, taped an entire show about 19th-century American cultural hegemony. What a corker! More specifically, we had taped a show about the life and times of a long-dead American statesman who also happened to be a strong supporter of the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution, a.k.a. Prohibition.

Naw—that’s a...