April 11, 2025 • 37 mins
On an all-new iRacing Downshift, the boys take a look at some of the most exciting parts of the 2025 Season 2 build, look at a busy eSports scene that includes this weekend's Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup finale and multiple eNASCAR series, and share how you can compete alongside NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series star Rajah Caruth later this month.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
This week on the I Racing Down Shift, we recapped
the biggest features from the season two bill. We've got
our latest Esports Championship updates, and learn how to race
with NASCAR star Rajah Caru.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
All this and more so, strap in.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Welcome to the I Racing down Ship.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
Tommy Hos, Greg West, I'm back with the boys, Kevin,
Bobba and Chris Leoni. We have a we have a mediocle, okay,
chef for you today. I'm not I don't know that
I'm really ready to go.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Great, just gonna softballed in like that.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
Wow, I'm I mean, we did our pre production meeting,
and by pre production meeting, Kevin and I have walked
in with coffee, like, hey, should we talk about this
outline that neither one of us.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Have read that Chris puts a guy I knew, but
you guys didn't reach a great format.
Speaker 5 (00:57):
That's a great format fort APA in sixty two episodes,
best format.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Okay, this is the format I've been using and Greg,
you complained about it three or four episodes ago. All
what all I did different was bold one, two, three
and four.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Yeah, that and that makes a huge difference. Do you
know how old Kevin, is I have.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
To wear glasses and readers on top of the pla.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, first corner of the podcast and we're already firewall deep.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
And then what about Sean? You know, yeah, what about Sean?
Speaker 5 (01:26):
Hey?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Sean?
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Sean, Hey Sean bringing in that was awkward story of
my life too.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
What have we been up to, Leoni?
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Let's see wrapped up another season of Rookie Pro two
light for me?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
So been back on the SIM.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I think I was somewhere in the top seventy five
in points.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
So not that's our biggest dirt road series.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
There's a joke here about that. Go but yeah, hey
it's the top ninety.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
How many we haven't that season last? Fifteen sixteen thousand?
Not bad, it's not bad.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
I have no idea, but that would be a great number.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
Somebody that looks at the stats on a daily basis. Yeah, well,
don't they say about statistics? You can make them say
whatever you want.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well, then I won the title.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Congrats to me there you are, well everything about it,
mister Bobbitt.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
What have I been doing? Liverpool? I've been watching I've
been watching Liverpool like they don't want to win this thing.
They want to string it along. You know, I don't
know what's going on. I mean, obviously they're out of
the tournaments, which is, you know, the most important thing
is winning the Premier League and I'm still feeling pretty confident.
But man, they just don't want to wrap it up.
(02:42):
They want to string I don't know, Arsenal fans along
or something like that. I don't know. Is this controversial
now that we're no no no, no, no no no,
And you know you have a Spurs hat on, so
you know they're not They're not anywhere. Yeah. Yeah, So
but I'm you know, Liverpool. I feel like they're going
to get it done. But it's a few more weeks
before it's wrapped up. And you know, to Chris's story,
(03:04):
you know, I've been racing the M two again, so
big fan of that.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
The story I'm waiting for.
Speaker 5 (03:08):
But I'm but I'm not in the top seventy five
like Chris was.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Kevin, did you have any difficulties or distractions during your
race yesterday that may have, you know, been interesting to
our views.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
I guess we could bring that. Yeah, man, I feel
like we should just remind members, like especially in a
rookie level race, accidents happen most of the time. There's contact,
it's an accident. The guy that missed his breaking point
by you know, fifty isn't trying to ruin your race
and his race. So I don't know. He might be
(03:40):
a he might be a rookie. He might have made
a mistake. I would just remind people to like take
a breath before you hit the mic and start whatever,
Like it's an accident. Move on, Like I almost had
to pull over to eject somebody from the race, and
I don't like to do that, you know, but like
just relax.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
You could of just turn their chat.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
I could have done that, but I but I was
having a good run, so.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
It's hard to do it in r Like I'm like,
as this guy's and F and f F and you're like.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
If I get wrecked and I'm in the pits, then
it's easier for me to But I was having a
good run. I was in fourth. I'm like, oh, this
is pretty good for me. So but anyway, things calm down.
I just I just want to remind people, like generally
it's an accident, Like people aren't out to get each
other and like ruin their race to right that doesn't
make any sense.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
It's almost like we're all amateurs.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
Imagine that.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Although I mean, what.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
Was the storyline from from Suzukah that you know good
amount of the F one drivers now are obviously using.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
I racing all of them.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Yeah, pretty much. So we got one of them going
and it's turned one. Suzuka a drs opened because he's
like I tried it the same and then but Barman
but a sweet little line out of the last corner
and hugging it tight and and finding some time until
he walled it. Uh, this is funny watching the F
one guys try the sim racing moves and finding some success.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yeah, it's great teaching some of the old folks some
new tricks. I think.
Speaker 5 (05:06):
Yeah, so what about you? What have you been up to.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I've been trying this like healthy thing. It's weird. You
saw me eat a salad at lunch.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
I did, and I thought something was wrong with running
a little bit one salad in two weeks does not
make you.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Very nice.
Speaker 5 (05:24):
That's also true.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
No, it's been good for you trying to you know,
spring cleaning, but also.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
You know it's almost off season. It's almost absolutely there
was frost on my window this morning. It wasn't online,
so I'm not that's a delayed you know, tea off time.
If there's frost, I didn't get it.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
They didn't get a notification, but definitely got.
Speaker 5 (05:43):
Not that I had a t time book today, but
it would have been nice.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
You know, we had this work thing.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
Yeah, I had to come in and do the podcast.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
It's important right and early.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
But other than that, Mini stocks it's fun. It's just
goofy fun, it really is. And actually some really.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Good where's the best race you've had in that car?
Speaker 4 (06:03):
I like Charlotte actually because yeah, yeah, yeah, you end
up four wide and the TV down the backstretch and you're.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Just like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
Nice, but you can hold it flat and so I'll
have to give that a go.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
It's it's goofy fun nice. So ten out of ten
recommend and we have Sean.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Hey, Sean, I'm here, he's here. He had the muty.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
But uh, all right, well let's get into it. We
touched on this last time, but now we've got had
a chance to digest.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
A little bit. Season two build in full swing.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
We had some good amount of new content ARCA cars Portland,
watching some indie cars run in Portland. I was feeling
pretty nostalgic the updated Legends car and the NASCAR refresh.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I think we have I think we kind of nailed
this build. The guys, the folks.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Driving ARCA are having a ball. That's obviously the biggest
one out of all of these.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
This build got me to fall in love with the
Legends car.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
That has never been my car.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
You know that, because every time we did what Simkana,
Legends was that car for a long time. I've pushed
it into two wheel drive, and now I might give
it back and say, hey, just put the wet tires
in the Legends because it drives amazing, because.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Chris can't drive anything the way that was supposed to
be driven. By the way, I'm starting week thirteen.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Next week.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
I'll call you.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
And getting ahead. We're gonna talk about future in a moment.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
But all of this is the NASCAR refresh, the tracks,
but in conjunction with the new lighting engine.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
I was watching the Cochraz the.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
Other night and I was like, Wow, it looks fantastic,
it looks good.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
I'm absolutely blown away. You always can tell it's funny
when you work, especially you know, for a sim company.
You see any SIM game and you know by the
look the color palette what game it is, what game
it is?
Speaker 3 (07:52):
And I'm watching the Coke series and I was like,
this looks real like this.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
If at a glance, if this was on, like say
at a restaurant or whatever, and I glanced up, I
would have thought I was watching Nascars and that was
pretty cool. It's not just because I'm being a homer.
I'm super excited about that, Kevin. You wrote something down.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
I'm making notes for later. It has nothing to do
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Before we get two sidetracked.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
And I also want to say my favorite part of
that NASCAR refresh being able to drive in the victory
lane in Bristol.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Isn't that so cool?
Speaker 2 (08:21):
So much fun?
Speaker 3 (08:22):
And everybody's doing it?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (08:24):
Do you have to win the race to be able
to do that? No, of course not.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
How do you think I did it well?
Speaker 5 (08:29):
Well?
Speaker 1 (08:30):
In fairness, I actually jumped the ramp and of course
it didn't go great. But Chris using content the way,
Wait me jumping a rally car.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
No been to Oxford recently, not yet.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
But I'll go back. I'll go back with yes too
soon now, all.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Right, let's get into the new features. We're seeing a
lot of feedback on this stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
This is one of those things that's a quality of
life issue, but it's been a massive update. Is the
updated UI.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
The series page there's if you haven't taken a look
and like scrolled down, there is so much more, so
much more information.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
There are a lot of cool information.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
If you're data nerd like we are, you know, it's
the heat map of when you know timeslots are the
strength of fields, you know, looking at the delta the
times you know what you can kind of expect and
find out whether you're up to pace. This is all
stuff that you've been able to find through a variety
of third party apps. We really consolidated it down and
I think it is a mass improvement.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Agreed, Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
I mean it looks beautiful. Shout out to the UI
guys for how they've laid it out. To me, it's
very intuitive, very easy to read, you know, being able
to being able to see just kind of heat maps,
be able to play my day a little bit around.
Oh I really want to race, you know, but I
want to I want to have a strong field and
challenge myself you know, having that information.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Is huge and pro two lights. Sometimes that's hard to find.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
So that's good information for you to have eight pm
Eastern a few hours after that. Yeah, exactly, it's good
information to have.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Let's see here, we've talked about the new lighting engine.
We don't need to get back into that g CP
and L and P two tires.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
This one.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
I had my spidy sense tingling because we had a
car that was on rails and let's be honest, probably
not the most realistic thing ever. And we are going
to take something that a lot of people were still
enjoying if it wasn't realistic, and making it notably harder
by banking making it realistic. But it seems like the
community really has accepted.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
It, and we did it just before Sebring, right.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah, we like to keep it interesting.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
One of the biggest events of the year.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
So fifteen thousand of our friends all good, that's all good.
Speaker 5 (10:30):
I feel like it's we've made great progress. I think
it's a solid change, right. I mean, I think the
communities generally reacted pretty well. Right. I think everybody agrees
it is challenging. On Lap one, it is challenging. But
if you talk to any real world GTP driver, and
there are many that we've talked to, it's tough for
those guys and they're pros.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
They're pros.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
What's you know, we can't say just for a variety
of reasons the people that jumped in and helped out
with that, but it's a pretty cool list.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
It is, like, and it was funny how how things
have changed so much since COVID.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
We have pro teams and pro drivers reaching out to
us because they're using I Racing a training tool, like
getting ready for Sebring.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
And like, well, what can we do to help out?
Speaker 4 (11:14):
And you know, putting hours and hours into you know,
helping us to these cars and it shows. I mean,
I think we I think we're really happy before we
came down. We're working on the hybrid update right now.
You know that's targeting June. No no guarantees there, but
it's something that is actively being worked on. I sat
a meeting on it yesterday and yeah, a lot of
good stuff to come to continue. You know, anything involving
(11:35):
IMSA is A is a big.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Priority for us.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Let's talk about adaptive AI Kevin, Oh, that that's me.
I thought it was cris No, you said you were
going to talk.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Oh okay, well, Adaptive AI is out as of was
it this week, last week's patch, last week's patch. I've
lost track of time. But yeah, no, it's super cool basically,
I mean I don't have to explain the whole feature,
but it will learn how you're driving or follow how
you're driving and adapt adjust all right, so that it'll
(12:06):
be more competitive throughout the session. I know we've got
more stuff planned for that in the future, but you
guys should totally check it out. Works in single sessions currently,
but I think that'll expand on down the road.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Yeah, we're trying to do that for June as well.
We'll see if we get there. But I just our
AI was is I think our AI is some of
the best in the business, if not the best. Is
it easy to set up?
Speaker 5 (12:28):
Absolutely? I think I was gonna say that's that was
the one knock is that it's we have so many
knobs you can turn. It's like, oh, well, I don't
know where to and I know that I've done this
and I've set up a race, and I'm like, I
pick a range because I'm not really sure and the
range wasn't always right, like it was either too easy
or too hard. You know, this helps you get it right.
(12:49):
So I think that's that's what people need. Right. A
lot of times if you're running an AI race, it's
because you don't have a lot of time. You don't
have you know, the schedule isn't working for you or whatever.
You're limited on a time. This makes it easier or
jump in and have a very competitive race.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
And excuse me more to come.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
As far as the AI development, we've we've come out
and said we are working on a proper career man.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Now that's a big project, that is it.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
There'll be steps in between there.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
Yeah, and so it's like the little things you know,
for the next season we're looking at making. We have
all these baked in AI seasons now if you haven't
checked them out, try them out. The first off, the
cover art on all of them is incredibly cool. Larry
and Alex nailed that. But right now, as it stood,
with the current tech, we we had to you couldn't
pick your car. We had to pick the car for you.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Well, when you have you know, all these cars and IMSA,
that makes it a little bit difficult.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
We're going to have that tech. We're actively working on
it now. I think it'll be ready for June, and
so we're gonna be able to expand the number of
pre baked in AI rosters. I heard a stat yesterday
it was really cool in the marketing meeting. Seventeen percent
of all hostess sessions are now including AI you know,
supplementing a lot of league stuff. You don't have to
go and find thirty friends to go race?
Speaker 5 (13:57):
Can you?
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And four budgets?
Speaker 5 (13:59):
Good because I don't thirty?
Speaker 4 (14:02):
True, that's not it's actually not you. Kevin's like the
biggest social butterfly are doing empty Nest correctly, like.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
They're always busy doing something.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
But all right, I want to I want to pop, Oh, Chris,
sorry we missed item five. Here AI cars and opponent's
paint schemes.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Which is your project?
Speaker 5 (14:21):
It is?
Speaker 1 (14:22):
I did put a new AI car just because I
want to shout out Greg. I'm sure you approved getting
the I R one finally.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yeah, that was hard.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
That was so hard.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
That took nine months.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
But but I mean to be honest and obviously that
that hasn't been one of the most popular vehicles on
the sim those who love it love it, and everybody
else just has other things that they like. So having
that car on AI amazing, and especially with the adaptive
AI to be able to dial it in have.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
A competitive race.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
So if you're one of those people like me who
loves that car, you can run it now whenever you
want and feel good about it.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
Nice. But yeah, the.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Opponent paint schemes, We've done a lot of work within there.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
To be honest, you you should get some credit on this.
You've done a lot.
Speaker 6 (15:05):
You should get all the credit.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
No, No, Jamie and Dean have been huge on that
project and given me what I need to execute the vision.
And I can't thank both of those guys enough for
all the work that they've done. But yeah, if you
spot generate an AI roster. We had a database at
one point that had a handful of different options, and
it didn't really have a lot of fleshing out to it.
(15:28):
It didn't really have number fonts, it didn't really have
you know, and really a lot of this was just
kind of adding table, you know, columns to the table,
but just being able to flush it out and then
being able to add more sponsors, all of which you
can choose in the paint booth. We've got some great
companies that have come on board. Kevin I Andarelli helped
out with Holly MoMA, Weld jumped on board k One,
a bunch of these other brands that have jumped in
(15:51):
and have offered up their sponsors. So you're gonna have
a more realistic looking opponent experience.
Speaker 5 (15:56):
Yeah. The benefit of this is that when you do
this kind of random AI roster it the cars look
better like you.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
No more hot, pink, brown and red like the colors make.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
Sense for the sponsors. It's a It's a small thing,
but it makes a huge difference when you're driving around.
Like you wouldn't think it would matter that much, but
it really does.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
It's one of those things that once you see it,
you can't unsee it.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Yeah. Yeah, No, that's so absolutely on that.
Speaker 7 (16:22):
I saw my AI driver in the SIM the other
night and you raced against yourself. Well yeah, it was
in a session that we were running and the colors
are right, my font was right. Yeah, Unfortunately the sponsor.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
How was your skill level? Did you win?
Speaker 6 (16:39):
I get complaints regularly into friends.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
See I can't say it the one the one thing
that I've got to ask for in the next update
is in the driver roster. I need my skill level
to be baked in at zero because until that happens, we're.
Speaker 5 (16:52):
Not totally right. We can do it needs to be authentic.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
We have needs to be authentic.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
We have the power to do so.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
All right, all right, we're going off scre We're ready
to go off script. We are to go off script.
I got a couple things I want.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
To say about this. Is we're in section two. We're
not going to the section three. We're going to two
point five.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Is that, well, we were going to two point We're
going to the thing that you guys discussed in the
production meeting that you weren't there for.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
Well, you got to call the production meeting intuition we
have have we not had a production meeting. No, so
we're probably gonna yes.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
All right, two point six, take it away.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
All right.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
I just want to touch on we're in full swing
of our special series. We have a ton of series
that run.
Speaker 5 (17:35):
I forgot where we're going to talk about because it's.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Chris didn't read my mind. We got a bunch of
series that run throughout the year.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
We kind of touched on this last time, but the
Norbergreen Durance Championship that runs throughout the year at the
Nurburgen very similar to VLN. Expanded car counts this season
as well, just like IMSA, A lot of cars racing.
Speaker 5 (17:55):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
For those of you that are asking questions about the.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Nurber Green twenty four by the way, and the cars
are going to race, look at the NEC roster, they're
exactly the same.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Nothing's gonna change there. Creventik back on board this year.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
We've got four to twelve hour races and we're capping
it off with a twenty four hour race at Barcelona
at the end of the year, which mimics.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
What they're doing in real life.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
Nice awesome.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
We updated the series to include the GT threes. Yeah,
we got GT three' GT fours and Porsche Cup.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Nice So that one's a fun one.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
IndyCar I Racing Series is kicked off that it's full
length IndyCar races and obviously the Grand Prix Tour as.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Well with the full length Formula One style races.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
So we got a lot of opportunity to go racing
by yourself with friends, their team and solo. And we
have one I want to debut. We have something new
hot off the press, breaking news.
Speaker 5 (18:47):
I don't remember what it is.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
It's because it's it's really not it doesn't really yuck
or yum or yuck or whatever it is. Okay, So
we're gonna for next season, we're bringing in the Production
Endurance Challenge.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
For you PCC lunatics that love that series so much.
Speaker 5 (19:02):
You can stop emailing Greg now it's coming top.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
For the record, we already had it designed before the
forum thread last week that blew up and just kind
of hammered home the point.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
That we should do this.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
But we're gonna do weekly two hour races that follow
the PCC schedule next season.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Can be done with a team or solo. We just
want you to go. Many have three time slots. I
do not have the specific time.
Speaker 5 (19:25):
We're trying to hit multiple time zones and all that.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Global equity of availability.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
Wow, I like it. Yeah, so three major regions Thoday, Saturday, Sunday.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
You know that's the thing.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
We're gonna talk about time slots here for a little
bit so I can just put the paper down. You know,
people are always talking about like, well, I want to
do some endurance racing, but why do we do that
during the week, we can do it to like seven pm.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
I'm like, in what time zone? Right, We've got twenty
four time zones to deal with.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
You want people to start racing seven pm year time
works for you, but not the other twenty three time zone.
So consolidating these endurance races down is something that we're
you know, we're pretty much forced to do. We have
played around with doing some stuff during the week. Some
of these, like the NIS Style Series. Obviously Grand Prix
Tour runs during the week, I runs during the week.
Those are you know, still short by endurance race standards.
(20:13):
But to do true endurance racing during the week is
really not something that the data says we're gonna be
able to fill a field and give the experience that
people have come to expect. When you think of four hour,
six hour, twelve hour whatever races and I racing, you
think of a thousand entries, you know, a ton of splits,
and that's a it's a big event and that's.
Speaker 5 (20:31):
What we want.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
We don't want it to just kind of just kind
of flounder. So that's why we focus around the weekends.
We hear you, I would love it if we could
find some time warp that allowed us to do Thursday
night endurance racing. Please somebody let me know, get your
flux capacitor out and tell me how it works. But
that is why we focus our endurance racing on the weekends.
It's not perfect for everybody, but it's the best solution
(20:52):
currently available to us.
Speaker 5 (20:54):
So on that note, we have slots.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
We've fired up a lot of people on time slots.
So we introduced a bunch of changes this season to
frequency of races.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
If you have looked at the forms or read it,
you're aware of it.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
The big thing just to put in the back of
your mind for this discussion is I Racing has grown massively.
We have over three hundred thousand active members at any
given time on the service, whereas you know, four years
ago it was one hundred thousand. Now people are saying, well,
you're adding all these series. We have added a lot
of series, but we haven't tripled the number of series
we have. One thing we've not done though, is increased
(21:32):
time slots, and the data shows we can actually improve
especially the lower level racing by by having more time slots.
Are there some consequences to that that we're working through. Yeah, absolutely,
we're seeing maybe less diverse strength of fields at the
rookie level. Then you have to ask yourself, you know,
what's the purpose of rookie racing? Is it just so
(21:55):
anybody can just go down there and race for free?
I mean, we love that, we want people racing, but
it's also a nono experience, and we want people to
not have to sit around for a half hour an hour,
want people to be able to get on track. And
so we're watching this very close. Yes, I was telling
Kevin early and this is the really nerdy way of
looking at it. But it's it's economics. The market's figuring
itself out right now. As far as yes, we are
(22:18):
seeing the increase in participation, especially the popular rookie series
m X five participations almost doubled.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
It was already our most popular series on the service.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
We're still averaging eleven splits every fifteen minutes. We want
the quality of the racing to remain high, but we
also wanted to give the opportunity for people to not
have to just sit around and wait. So that's we're
trying some stuff, are we Is it going to be perfect?
Absolutely not, but we are willing to try some things. Also,
we don't have an e ego in this. If it's
not working, we may walk.
Speaker 5 (22:47):
Absolutely we have power.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
And we you know, some of these timeslot changes we
were more of an experiment. You know.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
You look at the what we're doing with the eighty
seven cars going for every two hours to every hour,
and now that is something we've received a time feedback on.
You know, has it had the intended impact over the
first few weeks the season, probably not going to be honest,
but we got to see it through to the end
of the season, and we're going to do that, and
then we're going to look at the data as we
go through a broad range of tracks. You've got to
get through Daytona and Talladega. But then you look at
(23:16):
the IndyCar Oval series. You know, same kind of thing,
B level okay, popularity, it's not a top.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Tier series for us. We've seen an increase yep. And
so you're you know, what.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
Communities are going to adopt this, how they're going to
adapt and as they figure out how it works. It's
something we have to give it time and a lot
of times it's not even just a couple of weeks
or maybe not even a season. Really you need probably
a couple of seasons to let things play out. If
it's really bad, obviously we look at walking it back,
but we're probably gonna hold onto some of this stuff.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
It makes sense to try things, right, So the end
goal is to make the service better for everybody, right,
and if we do nothing, then it just stays the
way it is. But it makes sense to try things.
And some of them work, some of them don't, some
of them tweaks. I mean, that's the nature of any business.
It's trying to grow and trying to make the product
better for the customers.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Yeah, and it's but and to be really clear, we're
not just strictly looking at numbers and saying, oh, this
this is the way it is. You know, there's a
subjective aspect of this. The racing is emotional. There is
the quality of racing, and that's at the heart of
what we do at I Racing, and so we're we're
looking at that as well. So please keep giving feedback.
There's been a ton of good information. I would say
(24:27):
the vast majority of the feedback's been productive. Some of
it's been pretty standard form stuff, but you know, we're
used to that. But yeah, let your voice be heard,
and don't think it's falling on deaf ears. We're absolutely
looking at it and we're going to continue to try stuff.
That's that's the good stuff. Stagnation is death. We are
going to try to adapt and evolve as we.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Continue to get more racers. And uh yeah, so that's
my soapbox, that's my ted talk. Thank you for coming
and uh yeah, back to you, Kevin.
Speaker 5 (24:55):
Oh it's my turn.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Sure he wrote something down.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
Oh well, no, wait to section three yet we can
be Okay, go to esports, let's go to the sports sports.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Let's go to esports and our esports correspondent Kevin Bobbitt
of Courts.
Speaker 5 (25:09):
The tag Tag Hire Esports Supercup comes to an end
this season this weekend. It's the finale, race number seven
at Lama. Always a good race, what a what a
cool track. Right last week was a really cool race.
First time we had a rain race. So obviously we've
had rain in the service for a while, but that
(25:30):
was super cool, uh to see you know, it really
changed the dynamic, right, I mean we have some of
the top top drivers in the service and you can
see that when you have conditions like that, you know,
mistakes are made. You can out break yourself all these things.
You know, it really added a cool dynamic fund race.
Cooper Webster's leading. I think that looking pretty good. But
(25:53):
but it's not wrapped up. Anything can happen. There's a
sprint and a main race, so lot's going on there.
The All Star Series wraps up. Looks like Casey Kerwin's
probably got that in the bag, but we'll see. Stranger
things could happen. Maybe there'll be a big penalty.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Probably not, but yeah, Kevin, just just throw throw black flag.
You have the technology.
Speaker 5 (26:12):
I have to throw a few. But but final races
this Saturday. What time? Oh you even wrote it down
for me, three pm Eastern, nineteen GMP. So check it out.
It's on all of our channels. It's on the Porsche channels.
I know there's a lot of racing in the real
world this weekend too, but it's a nice break. We do.
(26:34):
You know that the team does a great job. Sean
will be part of the broadcast right.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Now, Yes, I will.
Speaker 6 (26:40):
The Porsch nine sixty three. The All Stars would be driving.
Speaker 5 (26:43):
Oh yeah, the nine.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Sixty three, Sean with the tidbits.
Speaker 5 (26:47):
Thank you for coming. So so that'll that'll mix things up,
because yeah, channeling.
Speaker 6 (26:50):
Cool to watch that car roaring around that track.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
That Lama, that'll be awesome.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
All Stars started too, by the way, that's right.
Speaker 5 (26:56):
So so check it out, all right, NASCAR, who's.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Got NASCAR Coca Cola I Racing Series?
Speaker 5 (27:03):
Ding Ding ding ding?
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Oh did you hit the button? Did I get a ding?
Speaker 6 (27:07):
Okay, if you want a ding, I can put it
next time.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Your best judgement.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
I thought you reached over to hit a button. I
was like, do we have it on the soundboard? You know,
the people that just started losing to this just stopped soon?
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Oh, Chris Nascar, all right, first segment of the season
is up. That just finished up at Rockingham, which, like
we talked about, new lighting model looked fantastic, great looking broadcast,
longer race, so we had some pit strategy in there.
Tucker Minter ends up taking the victory for William byron Esports.
He joined the playoff grid alongside Steven Wilson, who's got
three of those wins for Spire and uh, Colin Keister,
(27:46):
who got that other victory in Vegas for some guy.
Speaker 5 (27:48):
I know.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
You guys told me I'm not allowed to talk about
it unless I get you T shirts and they're still
in the works.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
Okay, well there we go.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
I'm being respectful, Jim Beaver.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
I'll say it.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
You can ahead.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
We're allowed to say.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
I want my T shirt.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
That's the wan my T shirt.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Zach Novak, past series champion, ends up winning the segment
one title over Tucker Minter. So he's got five playoff
points if he can make it into that place.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Yeah, yeah, it is.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
I just read it different.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
Yeah, I'm the one that goes off script. Okay, only me.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
I uh well, next race, Talladega, April twenty second, eight
pm East.
Speaker 6 (28:27):
I have heard us.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
I have heard some rumors about who the guest is
going to be, but I don't know if we've I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
I don't think we've announced to it.
Speaker 5 (28:33):
So it's going to be a good one, breaking news
that we can't share.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Yeah, okay, so all.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Right, it's going to be one of the biggest guests.
Speaker 5 (28:39):
Of the year. I think is Sean going to be Sean?
Speaker 3 (28:46):
I want to throw a wrench into things.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
This might be controversial and Kevin might make us edit
this out. At the end of fantastic I want to
talk about NASCAR format. We changed things up. We had
a longer race. There's been a lot of discussion about this,
a lot. This is a hot button topic on Twitter.
Speaker 5 (29:00):
Now I'm rolling my eyes, but no, it's I think
it's it's it's.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
The interesting thing to talk about because it's it's this
fine line.
Speaker 5 (29:08):
Right.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
We know shorter races hold viewers, like we get a
lot of views that way, the drivers want the longer races.
We obviously want something that's a good product. I mean, Kevin,
can we talk about you know, just try this.
Speaker 5 (29:20):
It's a balancing act, right, We got to we got
to find the right race for the competitors and the
right race for the viewers, right, because sponsors matter, right,
and sponsors are looking at views and all this. So
it's there's no right, there's no perfect answer, right. So
I think we've had a couple of different formats, uh
for NASCAR, Coca Cola E Racing Series, Right, we did.
(29:40):
He doesn't get a day, Yeah, I don't get a day.
That's okay. So I think mixing things up is a
good thing.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
I think it's a great example though we're trying things.
We're going to try things, and that's we're going to
continue to try to move the product forward, our broadcast forward,
our our e sports forward as a.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Whole, and you know, give us a little bit of grace.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
Maybe we should try something new for the podcast. What
would that be?
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Some people.
Speaker 5 (30:07):
Talent know how to do a podcast.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Hey, Tony, don't get any ideas.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
It was cool though, to have that kind of throwback
of a format. Come at a throwback of a racetrack
in rocking. I will say that to have the long
put that together. But I guess yeah, no, I mean
to me, I like it. Yeah, if we had to
throw back paint schemes.
Speaker 6 (30:25):
I mean there were there were, there were several.
Speaker 5 (30:28):
Apparently you didn't watch the race.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Let me see Hyak Eraser JB E and I know
that Blake McCandless for j R M had the throwback.
Speaker 5 (30:38):
Segment in the race broadcast where we highlighted the throw miss.
I know it's on late for you.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
I'm an old man at nine o'clock us sleep, all right.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
Moving on to this is actually of all of our sports,
this one has become my favorite because it's starting to
really take take flight e ASCAR College I Racing Series.
This one is, you know, conceptually the I guess the
maybe uninformed viewer is like, what's the difference, But instead
of just racing for a team or whatever, you're racing
for your school and you're trying to get some scholarship.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
And that last race to set the championship grid in
Charlotte had a hell of a photo finish Connor Irashak
over Steven Wilson and Parker White.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
That's a big win.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Those are Coke champions that you're beating, and Connor's a
rookie in the Coke Series right now, so that's going
to be a confidence builder for sure the series moving forward.
But the interesting thing about this college series, you do
have some Coke Series guys that crossover that do both.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
Because you know they're still in there in college.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
But you have a lot of other drivers, really competitive guys,
some guys who have been on the road to pro ladder,
some guys who haven't been as well. You know, so
you've got this really what you might consider an eclectic
mix if you kind of watch some of the other
esports series. But we got twenty five of them sept
for the season finale. That's going to be back in
the ex Findy Cars. This series flips between X Findy
cars and the trucks. They're going to be backing those
(32:02):
Xfindy cars. Homestead, April fifteenth, eight pm Eastern. There's sixty
thousand dollars in scholarships on the line for this series,
and there's a ten thousand on the line for the champion,
So it's a good way to pay for your education.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
I know I'm trying to get my son to do this,
but he's not good enough in this eligible He's also
not eligible, but I could certainly use a scholarship mone it.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
One hundred percent. Not to mention that we've got a
new season coming this fall. Some of the details are
still going to be shared down the road, but this
series is going to move to Wednesdays at seven pm
Eastern starting in the fall, and we're going to have
some format changes that are going to be announced in
the future, so stay tuned.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Nice hashtag soon.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
I mean, this series started out, as you know, it
almost felt like, oh, let's do a little something, you
know that's similar to coke, but get some college kids involved.
But it's really grown in the last few years and
turned into something cool, like said great, I.
Speaker 4 (32:55):
Feel like that the ceiling on This is a lot
higher than we ever anticipated. I think they're starting, especially
with some of the educational institutional support. Like it is,
it's some big money in college sports.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
It's grown organically. Yeah, and that's the big thing that's
you know, you can't force a property to grow beyond
what it's going to be.
Speaker 6 (33:14):
Well, I mean we have the big schools competing. Yeah,
the Ohio State, Oh you, I mean it's okay, silence.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
If you'd mentioned any others.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Kevin and I we're not on video me and Kevin
has got but others.
Speaker 7 (33:33):
Penn State has been a regular, Kansas has been a regular.
Stephen Wilson is in Iowa, Kansas.
Speaker 5 (33:39):
And maybe this is a sort of an American thing,
but like college or university's pride is you know, if
you go to the one of those schools or went
to one of those schools, you follow them. It's it's
a thing, right, I mean, it's it has a built
in fan base. Like we just finished March Madness, which
we probably can't talk about on this at this gigantic
(34:02):
basketball tournament in the United States, and it is it's huge,
Like all of a sudden, all of America becomes basketball
fans which is weird.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
I watched basketball for one month, but super fun.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
And and if if your college or university made it
to the show, you're in it like you're you're super
excited about it.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Well that's the thing the Cinderella Stories. I mean, Connors
from you know, not a school that any of us
would think of. It's certainly not a D one football school,
you know, I think it was the what University of Calgary?
Speaker 6 (34:33):
I know it is a Canadian.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Yeah, it's a Canadian. You know, it's a Canadian school.
You've got D three schools sometimes getting represented in this.
You know, you've got every level of university and that's
really cool.
Speaker 5 (34:45):
Yeah, that's really cool.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
All right. Moving on to three D racing with Rajah
Stem Invitational, Chris, So.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
You got a little bit of time to throw down
your time attack laps. They're going through April fourteen, Raja
has taken the trucks at Charlotte. The top twenty five
eligible drivers in this are going to be able to
race with Raja on Charlotte and Atlanta in the trucks.
April twenty third, a PM Eastern.
Speaker 5 (35:12):
Were we doing a quick background on why we're doing something? Yeah, Yeah,
I'm sorry for those that don't know who Raja is.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Chris, Yeah, Raja Nascar.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
It is the Craftsman Truck Series again now right, because
I know it's a few different It's had a few
different names. Raja is one of our top up and
coming kind of homegrown drivers. He started on the SIM.
He's made his way up through the real world. He
is a Truck Series race winner. He's competing with Spire.
You know, he's one of the top drivers.
Speaker 5 (35:37):
Saw his cast truck at Target last week. I was
pretty excited about it.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Eat also just worth saying, Raja good dude, Yeah right,
really good. I can't call him kid anymore. He was
a good kid, but I'm gonna he's grown up a
little bit since then. Enough, but easy to root for.
Speaker 5 (35:55):
He's a big time supporter of I Racing, just naturally,
Like you know, he just likes what we do. We
like what he does. And he's doing this cool STEM program, so.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Yeah, it's not to like and this curriculum put together.
We're involved with this. Microsoft is involved with this. General
Motors is involved with this. It's a virtual STEM program
for students age thirteen to fifteen. It's a single day
program It includes physics, vehicle mechanics, AI driven race strategies,
just all sorts of different STEM learning experiences to bring
(36:26):
you up to speed on a motorsports and see.
Speaker 5 (36:28):
How you to have a career. Like it's one thing
to talk to your kids about, Oh you should go
into STEM, you should go into sciences, this and that. Well,
you know, a kid that age may not understand what
that means. It's like, oh, that just means I got
to take a bunch of hard math and physics classes.
But this kind of points them in like this is
the sort of career you might be able to have.
This is how you could use those things. It's like,
oh that makes sense. So pretty cool initiative.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
That's all I have on the outline.
Speaker 5 (36:54):
Did we don't have a No, we have a section
for it, says sign off.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Sign off. Thanks for listening to this episode the I
Racing Downship.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
And anywhere else. Chris has put this thing for sound
guys Shawn, Kevin, Bobby, and Chris Leoni. I am Greg West.
We'll see you on the track
This week on the I Racing Down Shift, we recapped
the biggest features from the season two bill. We've got
our latest Esports Championship updates, and learn how to race
with NASCAR star Rajah Caru.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
All this and more so, strap in.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Welcome to the I Racing down Ship.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
Tommy Hos, Greg West, I'm back with the boys, Kevin,
Bobba and Chris Leoni. We have a we have a mediocle, okay,
chef for you today. I'm not I don't know that
I'm really ready to go.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Great, just gonna softballed in like that.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
Wow, I'm I mean, we did our pre production meeting,
and by pre production meeting, Kevin and I have walked
in with coffee, like, hey, should we talk about this
outline that neither one of us.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Have read that Chris puts a guy I knew, but
you guys didn't reach a great format.
Speaker 5 (00:57):
That's a great format fort APA in sixty two episodes,
best format.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Okay, this is the format I've been using and Greg,
you complained about it three or four episodes ago. All
what all I did different was bold one, two, three
and four.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Yeah, that and that makes a huge difference. Do you
know how old Kevin, is I have.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
To wear glasses and readers on top of the pla.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, first corner of the podcast and we're already firewall deep.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
And then what about Sean? You know, yeah, what about Sean?
Speaker 5 (01:26):
Hey?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Sean?
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Sean, Hey Sean bringing in that was awkward story of
my life too.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
What have we been up to, Leoni?
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Let's see wrapped up another season of Rookie Pro two
light for me?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
So been back on the SIM.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I think I was somewhere in the top seventy five
in points.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
So not that's our biggest dirt road series.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
There's a joke here about that. Go but yeah, hey
it's the top ninety.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
How many we haven't that season last? Fifteen sixteen thousand?
Not bad, it's not bad.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
I have no idea, but that would be a great number.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
Somebody that looks at the stats on a daily basis. Yeah, well,
don't they say about statistics? You can make them say
whatever you want.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well, then I won the title.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Congrats to me there you are, well everything about it,
mister Bobbitt.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
What have I been doing? Liverpool? I've been watching I've
been watching Liverpool like they don't want to win this thing.
They want to string it along. You know, I don't
know what's going on. I mean, obviously they're out of
the tournaments, which is, you know, the most important thing
is winning the Premier League and I'm still feeling pretty confident.
But man, they just don't want to wrap it up.
(02:42):
They want to string I don't know, Arsenal fans along
or something like that. I don't know. Is this controversial
now that we're no no no, no, no no no,
And you know you have a Spurs hat on, so
you know they're not They're not anywhere. Yeah. Yeah, So
but I'm you know, Liverpool. I feel like they're going
to get it done. But it's a few more weeks
before it's wrapped up. And you know, to Chris's story,
(03:04):
you know, I've been racing the M two again, so
big fan of that.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
The story I'm waiting for.
Speaker 5 (03:08):
But I'm but I'm not in the top seventy five
like Chris was.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Kevin, did you have any difficulties or distractions during your
race yesterday that may have, you know, been interesting to
our views.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
I guess we could bring that. Yeah, man, I feel
like we should just remind members, like especially in a
rookie level race, accidents happen most of the time. There's contact,
it's an accident. The guy that missed his breaking point
by you know, fifty isn't trying to ruin your race
and his race. So I don't know. He might be
(03:40):
a he might be a rookie. He might have made
a mistake. I would just remind people to like take
a breath before you hit the mic and start whatever,
Like it's an accident. Move on, Like I almost had
to pull over to eject somebody from the race, and
I don't like to do that, you know, but like
just relax.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
You could of just turn their chat.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
I could have done that, but I but I was
having a good run, so.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
It's hard to do it in r Like I'm like,
as this guy's and F and f F and you're like.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
If I get wrecked and I'm in the pits, then
it's easier for me to But I was having a
good run. I was in fourth. I'm like, oh, this
is pretty good for me. So but anyway, things calm down.
I just I just want to remind people, like generally
it's an accident, Like people aren't out to get each
other and like ruin their race to right that doesn't
make any sense.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
It's almost like we're all amateurs.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
Imagine that.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Although I mean, what.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
Was the storyline from from Suzukah that you know good
amount of the F one drivers now are obviously using.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
I racing all of them.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Yeah, pretty much. So we got one of them going
and it's turned one. Suzuka a drs opened because he's
like I tried it the same and then but Barman
but a sweet little line out of the last corner
and hugging it tight and and finding some time until
he walled it. Uh, this is funny watching the F
one guys try the sim racing moves and finding some success.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yeah, it's great teaching some of the old folks some
new tricks. I think.
Speaker 5 (05:06):
Yeah, so what about you? What have you been up to.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I've been trying this like healthy thing. It's weird. You
saw me eat a salad at lunch.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
I did, and I thought something was wrong with running
a little bit one salad in two weeks does not
make you.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Very nice.
Speaker 5 (05:24):
That's also true.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
No, it's been good for you trying to you know,
spring cleaning, but also.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
You know it's almost off season. It's almost absolutely there
was frost on my window this morning. It wasn't online,
so I'm not that's a delayed you know, tea off time.
If there's frost, I didn't get it.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
They didn't get a notification, but definitely got.
Speaker 5 (05:43):
Not that I had a t time book today, but
it would have been nice.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
You know, we had this work thing.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
Yeah, I had to come in and do the podcast.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
It's important right and early.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
But other than that, Mini stocks it's fun. It's just
goofy fun, it really is. And actually some really.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Good where's the best race you've had in that car?
Speaker 4 (06:03):
I like Charlotte actually because yeah, yeah, yeah, you end
up four wide and the TV down the backstretch and you're.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Just like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
Nice, but you can hold it flat and so I'll
have to give that a go.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
It's it's goofy fun nice. So ten out of ten
recommend and we have Sean.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Hey, Sean, I'm here, he's here. He had the muty.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
But uh, all right, well let's get into it. We
touched on this last time, but now we've got had
a chance to digest.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
A little bit. Season two build in full swing.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
We had some good amount of new content ARCA cars Portland,
watching some indie cars run in Portland. I was feeling
pretty nostalgic the updated Legends car and the NASCAR refresh.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
I think we have I think we kind of nailed
this build. The guys, the folks.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Driving ARCA are having a ball. That's obviously the biggest
one out of all of these.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
This build got me to fall in love with the
Legends car.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
That has never been my car.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
You know that, because every time we did what Simkana,
Legends was that car for a long time. I've pushed
it into two wheel drive, and now I might give
it back and say, hey, just put the wet tires
in the Legends because it drives amazing, because.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Chris can't drive anything the way that was supposed to
be driven. By the way, I'm starting week thirteen.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Next week.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
I'll call you.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
And getting ahead. We're gonna talk about future in a moment.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
But all of this is the NASCAR refresh, the tracks,
but in conjunction with the new lighting engine.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
I was watching the Cochraz the.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
Other night and I was like, Wow, it looks fantastic,
it looks good.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
I'm absolutely blown away. You always can tell it's funny
when you work, especially you know, for a sim company.
You see any SIM game and you know by the
look the color palette what game it is, what game
it is?
Speaker 3 (07:52):
And I'm watching the Coke series and I was like,
this looks real like this.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
If at a glance, if this was on, like say
at a restaurant or whatever, and I glanced up, I
would have thought I was watching Nascars and that was
pretty cool. It's not just because I'm being a homer.
I'm super excited about that, Kevin. You wrote something down.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
I'm making notes for later. It has nothing to do
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Before we get two sidetracked.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
And I also want to say my favorite part of
that NASCAR refresh being able to drive in the victory
lane in Bristol.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Isn't that so cool?
Speaker 2 (08:21):
So much fun?
Speaker 3 (08:22):
And everybody's doing it?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (08:24):
Do you have to win the race to be able
to do that? No, of course not.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
How do you think I did it well?
Speaker 5 (08:29):
Well?
Speaker 1 (08:30):
In fairness, I actually jumped the ramp and of course
it didn't go great. But Chris using content the way,
Wait me jumping a rally car.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
No been to Oxford recently, not yet.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
But I'll go back. I'll go back with yes too
soon now, all.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Right, let's get into the new features. We're seeing a
lot of feedback on this stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
This is one of those things that's a quality of
life issue, but it's been a massive update. Is the
updated UI.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
The series page there's if you haven't taken a look
and like scrolled down, there is so much more, so
much more information.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
There are a lot of cool information.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
If you're data nerd like we are, you know, it's
the heat map of when you know timeslots are the
strength of fields, you know, looking at the delta the
times you know what you can kind of expect and
find out whether you're up to pace. This is all
stuff that you've been able to find through a variety
of third party apps. We really consolidated it down and
I think it is a mass improvement.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Agreed, Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
I mean it looks beautiful. Shout out to the UI
guys for how they've laid it out. To me, it's
very intuitive, very easy to read, you know, being able
to being able to see just kind of heat maps,
be able to play my day a little bit around.
Oh I really want to race, you know, but I
want to I want to have a strong field and
challenge myself you know, having that information.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Is huge and pro two lights. Sometimes that's hard to find.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
So that's good information for you to have eight pm
Eastern a few hours after that. Yeah, exactly, it's good
information to have.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Let's see here, we've talked about the new lighting engine.
We don't need to get back into that g CP
and L and P two tires.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
This one.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
I had my spidy sense tingling because we had a
car that was on rails and let's be honest, probably
not the most realistic thing ever. And we are going
to take something that a lot of people were still
enjoying if it wasn't realistic, and making it notably harder
by banking making it realistic. But it seems like the
community really has accepted.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
It, and we did it just before Sebring, right.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah, we like to keep it interesting.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
One of the biggest events of the year.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
So fifteen thousand of our friends all good, that's all good.
Speaker 5 (10:30):
I feel like it's we've made great progress. I think
it's a solid change, right. I mean, I think the
communities generally reacted pretty well. Right. I think everybody agrees
it is challenging. On Lap one, it is challenging. But
if you talk to any real world GTP driver, and
there are many that we've talked to, it's tough for
those guys and they're pros.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
They're pros.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
What's you know, we can't say just for a variety
of reasons the people that jumped in and helped out
with that, but it's a pretty cool list.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
It is, like, and it was funny how how things
have changed so much since COVID.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
We have pro teams and pro drivers reaching out to
us because they're using I Racing a training tool, like
getting ready for Sebring.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
And like, well, what can we do to help out?
Speaker 4 (11:14):
And you know, putting hours and hours into you know,
helping us to these cars and it shows. I mean,
I think we I think we're really happy before we
came down. We're working on the hybrid update right now.
You know that's targeting June. No no guarantees there, but
it's something that is actively being worked on. I sat
a meeting on it yesterday and yeah, a lot of
good stuff to come to continue. You know, anything involving
(11:35):
IMSA is A is a big.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Priority for us.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Let's talk about adaptive AI Kevin, Oh, that that's me.
I thought it was cris No, you said you were
going to talk.
Speaker 5 (11:45):
Oh okay, well, Adaptive AI is out as of was
it this week, last week's patch, last week's patch. I've
lost track of time. But yeah, no, it's super cool basically,
I mean I don't have to explain the whole feature,
but it will learn how you're driving or follow how
you're driving and adapt adjust all right, so that it'll
(12:06):
be more competitive throughout the session. I know we've got
more stuff planned for that in the future, but you
guys should totally check it out. Works in single sessions currently,
but I think that'll expand on down the road.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Yeah, we're trying to do that for June as well.
We'll see if we get there. But I just our
AI was is I think our AI is some of
the best in the business, if not the best. Is
it easy to set up?
Speaker 5 (12:28):
Absolutely? I think I was gonna say that's that was
the one knock is that it's we have so many
knobs you can turn. It's like, oh, well, I don't
know where to and I know that I've done this
and I've set up a race, and I'm like, I
pick a range because I'm not really sure and the
range wasn't always right, like it was either too easy
or too hard. You know, this helps you get it right.
(12:49):
So I think that's that's what people need. Right. A
lot of times if you're running an AI race, it's
because you don't have a lot of time. You don't
have you know, the schedule isn't working for you or whatever.
You're limited on a time. This makes it easier or
jump in and have a very competitive race.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
And excuse me more to come.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
As far as the AI development, we've we've come out
and said we are working on a proper career man.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Now that's a big project, that is it.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
There'll be steps in between there.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
Yeah, and so it's like the little things you know,
for the next season we're looking at making. We have
all these baked in AI seasons now if you haven't
checked them out, try them out. The first off, the
cover art on all of them is incredibly cool. Larry
and Alex nailed that. But right now, as it stood,
with the current tech, we we had to you couldn't
pick your car. We had to pick the car for you.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Well, when you have you know, all these cars and IMSA,
that makes it a little bit difficult.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
We're going to have that tech. We're actively working on
it now. I think it'll be ready for June, and
so we're gonna be able to expand the number of
pre baked in AI rosters. I heard a stat yesterday
it was really cool in the marketing meeting. Seventeen percent
of all hostess sessions are now including AI you know,
supplementing a lot of league stuff. You don't have to
go and find thirty friends to go race?
Speaker 5 (13:57):
Can you?
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And four budgets?
Speaker 5 (13:59):
Good because I don't thirty?
Speaker 4 (14:02):
True, that's not it's actually not you. Kevin's like the
biggest social butterfly are doing empty Nest correctly, like.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
They're always busy doing something.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
But all right, I want to I want to pop, Oh, Chris,
sorry we missed item five. Here AI cars and opponent's
paint schemes.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Which is your project?
Speaker 5 (14:21):
It is?
Speaker 1 (14:22):
I did put a new AI car just because I
want to shout out Greg. I'm sure you approved getting
the I R one finally.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yeah, that was hard.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
That was so hard.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
That took nine months.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
But but I mean to be honest and obviously that
that hasn't been one of the most popular vehicles on
the sim those who love it love it, and everybody
else just has other things that they like. So having
that car on AI amazing, and especially with the adaptive
AI to be able to dial it in have.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
A competitive race.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
So if you're one of those people like me who
loves that car, you can run it now whenever you
want and feel good about it.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
Nice. But yeah, the.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Opponent paint schemes, We've done a lot of work within there.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
To be honest, you you should get some credit on this.
You've done a lot.
Speaker 6 (15:05):
You should get all the credit.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
No, No, Jamie and Dean have been huge on that
project and given me what I need to execute the vision.
And I can't thank both of those guys enough for
all the work that they've done. But yeah, if you
spot generate an AI roster. We had a database at
one point that had a handful of different options, and
it didn't really have a lot of fleshing out to it.
(15:28):
It didn't really have number fonts, it didn't really have
you know, and really a lot of this was just
kind of adding table, you know, columns to the table,
but just being able to flush it out and then
being able to add more sponsors, all of which you
can choose in the paint booth. We've got some great
companies that have come on board. Kevin I Andarelli helped
out with Holly MoMA, Weld jumped on board k One,
a bunch of these other brands that have jumped in
(15:51):
and have offered up their sponsors. So you're gonna have
a more realistic looking opponent experience.
Speaker 5 (15:56):
Yeah. The benefit of this is that when you do
this kind of random AI roster it the cars look
better like you.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
No more hot, pink, brown and red like the colors make.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
Sense for the sponsors. It's a It's a small thing,
but it makes a huge difference when you're driving around.
Like you wouldn't think it would matter that much, but
it really does.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
It's one of those things that once you see it,
you can't unsee it.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Yeah. Yeah, No, that's so absolutely on that.
Speaker 7 (16:22):
I saw my AI driver in the SIM the other
night and you raced against yourself. Well yeah, it was
in a session that we were running and the colors
are right, my font was right. Yeah, Unfortunately the sponsor.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
How was your skill level? Did you win?
Speaker 6 (16:39):
I get complaints regularly into friends.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
See I can't say it the one the one thing
that I've got to ask for in the next update
is in the driver roster. I need my skill level
to be baked in at zero because until that happens, we're.
Speaker 5 (16:52):
Not totally right. We can do it needs to be authentic.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
We have needs to be authentic.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
We have the power to do so.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
All right, all right, we're going off scre We're ready
to go off script. We are to go off script.
I got a couple things I want.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
To say about this. Is we're in section two. We're
not going to the section three. We're going to two
point five.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Is that, well, we were going to two point We're
going to the thing that you guys discussed in the
production meeting that you weren't there for.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
Well, you got to call the production meeting intuition we
have have we not had a production meeting. No, so
we're probably gonna yes.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
All right, two point six, take it away.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
All right.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
I just want to touch on we're in full swing
of our special series. We have a ton of series
that run.
Speaker 5 (17:35):
I forgot where we're going to talk about because it's.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Chris didn't read my mind. We got a bunch of
series that run throughout the year.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
We kind of touched on this last time, but the
Norbergreen Durance Championship that runs throughout the year at the
Nurburgen very similar to VLN. Expanded car counts this season
as well, just like IMSA, A lot of cars racing.
Speaker 5 (17:55):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
For those of you that are asking questions about the.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Nurber Green twenty four by the way, and the cars
are going to race, look at the NEC roster, they're
exactly the same.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Nothing's gonna change there. Creventik back on board this year.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
We've got four to twelve hour races and we're capping
it off with a twenty four hour race at Barcelona
at the end of the year, which mimics.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
What they're doing in real life.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
Nice awesome.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
We updated the series to include the GT threes. Yeah,
we got GT three' GT fours and Porsche Cup.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Nice So that one's a fun one.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
IndyCar I Racing Series is kicked off that it's full
length IndyCar races and obviously the Grand Prix Tour as.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Well with the full length Formula One style races.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
So we got a lot of opportunity to go racing
by yourself with friends, their team and solo. And we
have one I want to debut. We have something new
hot off the press, breaking news.
Speaker 5 (18:47):
I don't remember what it is.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
It's because it's it's really not it doesn't really yuck
or yum or yuck or whatever it is. Okay, So
we're gonna for next season, we're bringing in the Production
Endurance Challenge.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
For you PCC lunatics that love that series so much.
Speaker 5 (19:02):
You can stop emailing Greg now it's coming top.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
For the record, we already had it designed before the
forum thread last week that blew up and just kind
of hammered home the point.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
That we should do this.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
But we're gonna do weekly two hour races that follow
the PCC schedule next season.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Can be done with a team or solo. We just
want you to go. Many have three time slots. I
do not have the specific time.
Speaker 5 (19:25):
We're trying to hit multiple time zones and all that.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Global equity of availability.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
Wow, I like it. Yeah, so three major regions Thoday, Saturday, Sunday.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
You know that's the thing.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
We're gonna talk about time slots here for a little
bit so I can just put the paper down. You know,
people are always talking about like, well, I want to
do some endurance racing, but why do we do that
during the week, we can do it to like seven pm.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
I'm like, in what time zone? Right, We've got twenty
four time zones to deal with.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
You want people to start racing seven pm year time
works for you, but not the other twenty three time zone.
So consolidating these endurance races down is something that we're
you know, we're pretty much forced to do. We have
played around with doing some stuff during the week. Some
of these, like the NIS Style Series. Obviously Grand Prix
Tour runs during the week, I runs during the week.
Those are you know, still short by endurance race standards.
(20:13):
But to do true endurance racing during the week is
really not something that the data says we're gonna be
able to fill a field and give the experience that
people have come to expect. When you think of four hour,
six hour, twelve hour whatever races and I racing, you
think of a thousand entries, you know, a ton of splits,
and that's a it's a big event and that's.
Speaker 5 (20:31):
What we want.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
We don't want it to just kind of just kind
of flounder. So that's why we focus around the weekends.
We hear you, I would love it if we could
find some time warp that allowed us to do Thursday
night endurance racing. Please somebody let me know, get your
flux capacitor out and tell me how it works. But
that is why we focus our endurance racing on the weekends.
It's not perfect for everybody, but it's the best solution
(20:52):
currently available to us.
Speaker 5 (20:54):
So on that note, we have slots.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
We've fired up a lot of people on time slots.
So we introduced a bunch of changes this season to
frequency of races.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
If you have looked at the forms or read it,
you're aware of it.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
The big thing just to put in the back of
your mind for this discussion is I Racing has grown massively.
We have over three hundred thousand active members at any
given time on the service, whereas you know, four years
ago it was one hundred thousand. Now people are saying, well,
you're adding all these series. We have added a lot
of series, but we haven't tripled the number of series
we have. One thing we've not done though, is increased
(21:32):
time slots, and the data shows we can actually improve
especially the lower level racing by by having more time slots.
Are there some consequences to that that we're working through. Yeah, absolutely,
we're seeing maybe less diverse strength of fields at the
rookie level. Then you have to ask yourself, you know,
what's the purpose of rookie racing? Is it just so
(21:55):
anybody can just go down there and race for free?
I mean, we love that, we want people racing, but
it's also a nono experience, and we want people to
not have to sit around for a half hour an hour,
want people to be able to get on track. And
so we're watching this very close. Yes, I was telling
Kevin early and this is the really nerdy way of
looking at it. But it's it's economics. The market's figuring
itself out right now. As far as yes, we are
(22:18):
seeing the increase in participation, especially the popular rookie series
m X five participations almost doubled.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
It was already our most popular series on the service.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
We're still averaging eleven splits every fifteen minutes. We want
the quality of the racing to remain high, but we
also wanted to give the opportunity for people to not
have to just sit around and wait. So that's we're
trying some stuff, are we Is it going to be perfect?
Absolutely not, but we are willing to try some things. Also,
we don't have an e ego in this. If it's
not working, we may walk.
Speaker 5 (22:47):
Absolutely we have power.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
And we you know, some of these timeslot changes we
were more of an experiment. You know.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
You look at the what we're doing with the eighty
seven cars going for every two hours to every hour,
and now that is something we've received a time feedback on.
You know, has it had the intended impact over the
first few weeks the season, probably not going to be honest,
but we got to see it through to the end
of the season, and we're going to do that, and
then we're going to look at the data as we
go through a broad range of tracks. You've got to
get through Daytona and Talladega. But then you look at
(23:16):
the IndyCar Oval series. You know, same kind of thing,
B level okay, popularity, it's not a top.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Tier series for us. We've seen an increase yep. And
so you're you know, what.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
Communities are going to adopt this, how they're going to
adapt and as they figure out how it works. It's
something we have to give it time and a lot
of times it's not even just a couple of weeks
or maybe not even a season. Really you need probably
a couple of seasons to let things play out. If
it's really bad, obviously we look at walking it back,
but we're probably gonna hold onto some of this stuff.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
It makes sense to try things, right, So the end
goal is to make the service better for everybody, right,
and if we do nothing, then it just stays the
way it is. But it makes sense to try things.
And some of them work, some of them don't, some
of them tweaks. I mean, that's the nature of any business.
It's trying to grow and trying to make the product
better for the customers.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Yeah, and it's but and to be really clear, we're
not just strictly looking at numbers and saying, oh, this
this is the way it is. You know, there's a
subjective aspect of this. The racing is emotional. There is
the quality of racing, and that's at the heart of
what we do at I Racing, and so we're we're
looking at that as well. So please keep giving feedback.
There's been a ton of good information. I would say
(24:27):
the vast majority of the feedback's been productive. Some of
it's been pretty standard form stuff, but you know, we're
used to that. But yeah, let your voice be heard,
and don't think it's falling on deaf ears. We're absolutely
looking at it and we're going to continue to try stuff.
That's that's the good stuff. Stagnation is death. We are
going to try to adapt and evolve as we.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Continue to get more racers. And uh yeah, so that's
my soapbox, that's my ted talk. Thank you for coming
and uh yeah, back to you, Kevin.
Speaker 5 (24:55):
Oh it's my turn.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Sure he wrote something down.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
Oh well, no, wait to section three yet we can
be Okay, go to esports, let's go to the sports sports.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Let's go to esports and our esports correspondent Kevin Bobbitt
of Courts.
Speaker 5 (25:09):
The tag Tag Hire Esports Supercup comes to an end
this season this weekend. It's the finale, race number seven
at Lama. Always a good race, what a what a
cool track. Right last week was a really cool race.
First time we had a rain race. So obviously we've
had rain in the service for a while, but that
(25:30):
was super cool, uh to see you know, it really
changed the dynamic, right, I mean we have some of
the top top drivers in the service and you can
see that when you have conditions like that, you know,
mistakes are made. You can out break yourself all these things.
You know, it really added a cool dynamic fund race.
Cooper Webster's leading. I think that looking pretty good. But
(25:53):
but it's not wrapped up. Anything can happen. There's a
sprint and a main race, so lot's going on there.
The All Star Series wraps up. Looks like Casey Kerwin's
probably got that in the bag, but we'll see. Stranger
things could happen. Maybe there'll be a big penalty.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Probably not, but yeah, Kevin, just just throw throw black flag.
You have the technology.
Speaker 5 (26:12):
I have to throw a few. But but final races
this Saturday. What time? Oh you even wrote it down
for me, three pm Eastern, nineteen GMP. So check it out.
It's on all of our channels. It's on the Porsche channels.
I know there's a lot of racing in the real
world this weekend too, but it's a nice break. We do.
(26:34):
You know that the team does a great job. Sean
will be part of the broadcast right.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Now, Yes, I will.
Speaker 6 (26:40):
The Porsch nine sixty three. The All Stars would be driving.
Speaker 5 (26:43):
Oh yeah, the nine.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Sixty three, Sean with the tidbits.
Speaker 5 (26:47):
Thank you for coming. So so that'll that'll mix things up,
because yeah, channeling.
Speaker 6 (26:50):
Cool to watch that car roaring around that track.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
That Lama, that'll be awesome.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
All Stars started too, by the way, that's right.
Speaker 5 (26:56):
So so check it out, all right, NASCAR, who's.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Got NASCAR Coca Cola I Racing Series?
Speaker 5 (27:03):
Ding Ding ding ding?
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Oh did you hit the button? Did I get a ding?
Speaker 6 (27:07):
Okay, if you want a ding, I can put it
next time.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Your best judgement.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
I thought you reached over to hit a button. I
was like, do we have it on the soundboard? You know,
the people that just started losing to this just stopped soon?
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Oh, Chris Nascar, all right, first segment of the season
is up. That just finished up at Rockingham, which, like
we talked about, new lighting model looked fantastic, great looking broadcast,
longer race, so we had some pit strategy in there.
Tucker Minter ends up taking the victory for William byron Esports.
He joined the playoff grid alongside Steven Wilson, who's got
three of those wins for Spire and uh, Colin Keister,
(27:46):
who got that other victory in Vegas for some guy.
Speaker 5 (27:48):
I know.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
You guys told me I'm not allowed to talk about
it unless I get you T shirts and they're still
in the works.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
Okay, well there we go.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
I'm being respectful, Jim Beaver.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
I'll say it.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
You can ahead.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
We're allowed to say.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
I want my T shirt.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
That's the wan my T shirt.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Zach Novak, past series champion, ends up winning the segment
one title over Tucker Minter. So he's got five playoff
points if he can make it into that place.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Yeah, yeah, it is.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
I just read it different.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
Yeah, I'm the one that goes off script. Okay, only me.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
I uh well, next race, Talladega, April twenty second, eight
pm East.
Speaker 6 (28:27):
I have heard us.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
I have heard some rumors about who the guest is
going to be, but I don't know if we've I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
I don't think we've announced to it.
Speaker 5 (28:33):
So it's going to be a good one, breaking news
that we can't share.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Yeah, okay, so all.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Right, it's going to be one of the biggest guests.
Speaker 5 (28:39):
Of the year. I think is Sean going to be Sean?
Speaker 3 (28:46):
I want to throw a wrench into things.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
This might be controversial and Kevin might make us edit
this out. At the end of fantastic I want to
talk about NASCAR format. We changed things up. We had
a longer race. There's been a lot of discussion about this,
a lot. This is a hot button topic on Twitter.
Speaker 5 (29:00):
Now I'm rolling my eyes, but no, it's I think
it's it's it's.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
The interesting thing to talk about because it's it's this
fine line.
Speaker 5 (29:08):
Right.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
We know shorter races hold viewers, like we get a
lot of views that way, the drivers want the longer races.
We obviously want something that's a good product. I mean, Kevin,
can we talk about you know, just try this.
Speaker 5 (29:20):
It's a balancing act, right, We got to we got
to find the right race for the competitors and the
right race for the viewers, right, because sponsors matter, right,
and sponsors are looking at views and all this. So
it's there's no right, there's no perfect answer, right. So
I think we've had a couple of different formats, uh
for NASCAR, Coca Cola E Racing Series, Right, we did.
(29:40):
He doesn't get a day, Yeah, I don't get a day.
That's okay. So I think mixing things up is a
good thing.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
I think it's a great example though we're trying things.
We're going to try things, and that's we're going to
continue to try to move the product forward, our broadcast forward,
our our e sports forward as a.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Whole, and you know, give us a little bit of grace.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
Maybe we should try something new for the podcast. What
would that be?
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Some people.
Speaker 5 (30:07):
Talent know how to do a podcast.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Hey, Tony, don't get any ideas.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
It was cool though, to have that kind of throwback
of a format. Come at a throwback of a racetrack
in rocking. I will say that to have the long
put that together. But I guess yeah, no, I mean
to me, I like it. Yeah, if we had to
throw back paint schemes.
Speaker 6 (30:25):
I mean there were there were, there were several.
Speaker 5 (30:28):
Apparently you didn't watch the race.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Let me see Hyak Eraser JB E and I know
that Blake McCandless for j R M had the throwback.
Speaker 5 (30:38):
Segment in the race broadcast where we highlighted the throw miss.
I know it's on late for you.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
I'm an old man at nine o'clock us sleep, all right.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
Moving on to this is actually of all of our sports,
this one has become my favorite because it's starting to
really take take flight e ASCAR College I Racing Series.
This one is, you know, conceptually the I guess the
maybe uninformed viewer is like, what's the difference, But instead
of just racing for a team or whatever, you're racing
for your school and you're trying to get some scholarship.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
And that last race to set the championship grid in
Charlotte had a hell of a photo finish Connor Irashak
over Steven Wilson and Parker White.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
That's a big win.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Those are Coke champions that you're beating, and Connor's a
rookie in the Coke Series right now, so that's going
to be a confidence builder for sure the series moving forward.
But the interesting thing about this college series, you do
have some Coke Series guys that crossover that do both.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
Because you know they're still in there in college.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
But you have a lot of other drivers, really competitive guys,
some guys who have been on the road to pro ladder,
some guys who haven't been as well. You know, so
you've got this really what you might consider an eclectic
mix if you kind of watch some of the other
esports series. But we got twenty five of them sept
for the season finale. That's going to be back in
the ex Findy Cars. This series flips between X Findy
cars and the trucks. They're going to be backing those
(32:02):
Xfindy cars. Homestead, April fifteenth, eight pm Eastern. There's sixty
thousand dollars in scholarships on the line for this series,
and there's a ten thousand on the line for the champion,
So it's a good way to pay for your education.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
I know I'm trying to get my son to do this,
but he's not good enough in this eligible He's also
not eligible, but I could certainly use a scholarship mone it.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
One hundred percent. Not to mention that we've got a
new season coming this fall. Some of the details are
still going to be shared down the road, but this
series is going to move to Wednesdays at seven pm
Eastern starting in the fall, and we're going to have
some format changes that are going to be announced in
the future, so stay tuned.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Nice hashtag soon.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
I mean, this series started out, as you know, it
almost felt like, oh, let's do a little something, you
know that's similar to coke, but get some college kids involved.
But it's really grown in the last few years and
turned into something cool, like said great, I.
Speaker 4 (32:55):
Feel like that the ceiling on This is a lot
higher than we ever anticipated. I think they're starting, especially
with some of the educational institutional support. Like it is,
it's some big money in college sports.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
It's grown organically. Yeah, and that's the big thing that's
you know, you can't force a property to grow beyond
what it's going to be.
Speaker 6 (33:14):
Well, I mean we have the big schools competing. Yeah,
the Ohio State, Oh you, I mean it's okay, silence.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
If you'd mentioned any others.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Kevin and I we're not on video me and Kevin
has got but others.
Speaker 7 (33:33):
Penn State has been a regular, Kansas has been a regular.
Stephen Wilson is in Iowa, Kansas.
Speaker 5 (33:39):
And maybe this is a sort of an American thing,
but like college or university's pride is you know, if
you go to the one of those schools or went
to one of those schools, you follow them. It's it's
a thing, right, I mean, it's it has a built
in fan base. Like we just finished March Madness, which
we probably can't talk about on this at this gigantic
(34:02):
basketball tournament in the United States, and it is it's huge,
Like all of a sudden, all of America becomes basketball
fans which is weird.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
I watched basketball for one month, but super fun.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
And and if if your college or university made it
to the show, you're in it like you're you're super
excited about it.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Well that's the thing the Cinderella Stories. I mean, Connors
from you know, not a school that any of us
would think of. It's certainly not a D one football school,
you know, I think it was the what University of Calgary?
Speaker 6 (34:33):
I know it is a Canadian.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Yeah, it's a Canadian. You know, it's a Canadian school.
You've got D three schools sometimes getting represented in this.
You know, you've got every level of university and that's
really cool.
Speaker 5 (34:45):
Yeah, that's really cool.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
All right. Moving on to three D racing with Rajah
Stem Invitational, Chris, So.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
You got a little bit of time to throw down
your time attack laps. They're going through April fourteen, Raja
has taken the trucks at Charlotte. The top twenty five
eligible drivers in this are going to be able to
race with Raja on Charlotte and Atlanta in the trucks.
April twenty third, a PM Eastern.
Speaker 5 (35:12):
Were we doing a quick background on why we're doing something? Yeah, Yeah,
I'm sorry for those that don't know who Raja is.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Chris, Yeah, Raja Nascar.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
It is the Craftsman Truck Series again now right, because
I know it's a few different It's had a few
different names. Raja is one of our top up and
coming kind of homegrown drivers. He started on the SIM.
He's made his way up through the real world. He
is a Truck Series race winner. He's competing with Spire.
You know, he's one of the top drivers.
Speaker 5 (35:37):
Saw his cast truck at Target last week. I was
pretty excited about it.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Eat also just worth saying, Raja good dude, Yeah right,
really good. I can't call him kid anymore. He was
a good kid, but I'm gonna he's grown up a
little bit since then. Enough, but easy to root for.
Speaker 5 (35:55):
He's a big time supporter of I Racing, just naturally,
Like you know, he just likes what we do. We
like what he does. And he's doing this cool STEM program, so.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Yeah, it's not to like and this curriculum put together.
We're involved with this. Microsoft is involved with this. General
Motors is involved with this. It's a virtual STEM program
for students age thirteen to fifteen. It's a single day
program It includes physics, vehicle mechanics, AI driven race strategies,
just all sorts of different STEM learning experiences to bring
(36:26):
you up to speed on a motorsports and see.
Speaker 5 (36:28):
How you to have a career. Like it's one thing
to talk to your kids about, Oh you should go
into STEM, you should go into sciences, this and that. Well,
you know, a kid that age may not understand what
that means. It's like, oh, that just means I got
to take a bunch of hard math and physics classes.
But this kind of points them in like this is
the sort of career you might be able to have.
This is how you could use those things. It's like,
oh that makes sense. So pretty cool initiative.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
That's all I have on the outline.
Speaker 5 (36:54):
Did we don't have a No, we have a section
for it, says sign off.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Sign off. Thanks for listening to this episode the I
Racing Downship.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
And anywhere else. Chris has put this thing for sound
guys Shawn, Kevin, Bobby, and Chris Leoni. I am Greg West.
We'll see you on the track
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!