Ep. 70 - NASCAR (Watkins Glen) + IndyCar (Indianapolis RC) Recap

About the Podcast: The Throttle to the Floor Podcast is a motorsports podcast where me (William Earnest) and Evan Sager co-host and sit down with guests each week to talk about what is happening in the world of NASCAR, IndyCar, and NHRA plus we take frequent looks at other racing under the motorsports umbrella.

About the Episode: On this episode of the Throttle to the Floor Podcast, I recap a wild weekend at Watkins Glen with all three of NASCAR's top series; and I also recap IndyCar's kickoff to the month of May with the race on Indianapolis Motor Speedway's infield road course; listen, watch, and download episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

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Hey y'all, welcome to today's episode of the Thor Floor Podcast. I'm your host, Will Ernest, here tonight. Uh, just myself got a crazy weekend to unpack, so let's get into it. Uh, I want to touch on some other things. First, the NASCAR Cup series, they will hold a Goodyear tire test on Tuesday and Wednesday at Iowa Speedway, my home track. Uh, Austin Dillon for Chevy, Noah Gregson for Ford, and current series points leader Tyler Reddick for Toyota will participate in the Goodyear tire test. Also, uh, shout out to some other motorsports this past week. Casey Kane winning his first World of the Outlaws race at William Scrooge Speedway in Pennsylvania. It only took him 29 years to get it done, you know, going through team ownership in the sprint car world, and then of course his NASCAR driving days. But it's great, great to see over in the sprint car world. And in the Monster Energy uh Supercross series, the Monster Energy Supercross Championship finally goes to Ken Roxam for the first time in his 13th season. He becomes the oldest Supercross champion at 32 years old, so lots of triumph there, and uh there's there's lots of it on on this episode, but more on that later. IndyCar. Oh IndyCar had a very wild race. We talked about not getting too distracted about the the glory and the prestige of the Indy 500 back on the previous episode on Friday. No disrespect to the Indianapolis 500, of course, but at the same time, as we talked about last Friday, the Indianapolis Road Course is still a points paying championship event, and it counts towards the championship. So he definitely didn't want to get too insanely distracted, and clear clearly, we it sure seemed like everybody did. There were plenty of big wrecks, including lap one, turn one, uh Paddle Award got spun around and ended up causing a multi-car pile up there. And Felix Rosenquest, he he took flight for a second off the wheel of uh Kevin Simpson's car. But man, Ed Carmen to racing, I mean ECR, just what a brutal afternoon. Both Christian Raveson and Alexander Rossi had mechanical photos that saw them finish in the last two positions, 24th and 25th, on Saturday. Rossi in particular had his hybrid engine shut off right on the front stretch, and other cars zoomed past at 170 miles an hour before the caution was finally displayed. I mean, what was indie car officiating doing up there? And also, do we really need the hybrid system? Since all the time it seems that it just causes more problems rather than fix them. But sadly, that is not the last time we will talk about uh officiating or I guess television also uh screw-ups. There's a lot of screw-ups uh this weekend, this past weekend, so stay tuned for that. But as everything cycled out, all the chaos, it was Christian Lingard who made a late pass on Dave Malucas to score the victory. It's Lingard's second career win, his first win with McLaren after his first win came almost three years ago at Toronto in July of 2023. So long win the streak snap there. Malucas comes home second after leading the most lattice of 27. Graham Rayhall, man, second third place podium finish in the last three races. Good for him. Uh Joseph Newgarden fourth, and pull sitter Alex Pelot comes home in fifth looking for another Indianapolis Roadcourse victory, just got off a pit strategy and was still able to drive up to fifth, but that's about all he could do. But now IndyCar, uh, they can they can finally fully focus their prep on the 110th Indianapolis 500, which is May 24th, uh Memorial Day weekend, but opening practice will be tomorrow, May 12th. So lots of lots of work on tap for them, but our picks and our standings, I lead Bernardo by 143, Evan by 152, Stacy by 156, Haley by 192, and Noah by 226. So lar large indie car lead. I have I pick Scott Dixon. He got caught up in that lap one, uh turn one mayhem, but still managed to come back to finish sixth. Uh Evan with Pada Ward, not not as lucky, down in 18th after getting spun, which started that big wreck in the first place. Uh Haley with Will Power. Will Power Uh I don't really know how to describe his weekend. His qualifying was absolutely garbage. Started dead last, but then kind of flipped the strategy and uh led 15 laps, you know, during the race, and then after it all cycled out, ends up right in the middle and finishes in 13th. So very roller coaster afternoon for willpower, especially since qualifying was actually that morning, being that it was rained out from Friday. But Stacy with Joseph Newgarden ends up fourth, just another solid day, solid day for Penskey. Well, except for Scott McLaughlin, who was Bernardo's pick, who ended up 16th. But otherwise, the other two Penske cars being Lucas and Newgarden ended up in the top five there. So Penske had an alright day at their own track. So yeah. And Noah with Marcus Erickson ended up 22nd. Andretti, man, just what is what is going on with Andretti? I mean, Kyle Kirk would finish ninth, but he was kind of a no-show after uh a terribly slow pit stop, which Andretti seems to be known to do lately. Will Power had his roller coaster right, and then Marcus Erickson just ends up with another mechanical failure. We talked about the mechanical failures uh from last year on the preview episode last week, and it seems like they were plenty of those again as well, uh this past weekend, but uh not good. Anyways, time to jump over to the other road course, Watkins Glen, up in upstate New York. We'll start with the truck series. It seems like out of the gate that this was Brent Cruz's race to lose. He led practice, won the poll, led 19 laps, but he lost control midway through and ended up finishing seventh. Uh, you will hear a similar version of that in the O'Reilly's race when we get to there. Um Brent Cruz, man, just solid, solid, solid road course racing. Just could not capitalize, could not capitalize on a victory. Uh Daniel Henrick, he won stage one on strategy, and then there was Connor Zilich. Zilich, he won stage two and led the most laps on the day with 28, which it seems like it was his race to lose. Then it looked like Gio Rogero could get the win until NASCAR claimed he jumped the restart, which sent him to the back when Rogero ultimately finished in 15th. NASCAR later apologized for making that call after the race. But yeah, another terrible officiating call. Just put it on the board. First, it was IndyCarr not throwing the caution for like 12 business days, with Alexander Rossi sitting right on the front stretch, right at the yard of bricks, right in front of the flagstand. Just like, what are you doing? And then that officiating call. But I mean, it wasn't all bad for Tricon Garage, I guess, as Caden Honeycutt took the lead on an overtime restart and led two laps, the final two laps, the two laps that counted, to score his maiden truck series victory. Actually, you know what? Let's just talk about Caden Honeycutt for a second. Caden Honeycutt. I I personally believe that he put together one of the greatest 36 hour stretches that you will see by any driver, uh, pretty much ever. First, he won the Arca race at Watkins Glen before getting his first truck win later that same day. Then he flew back to North Carolina on Saturday for the car store event at Ace Speedway and swept that, winning the pro lay model and the lay model stock car features in commanding fashion. So if you're counting at home, that's four races Caden Honeycutt entered in two days, and he won all four of them. Too bad is beer shotgunning tradition that he said he would do. Uh, it needs some work. It needs some work very badly. You would think four victories in two days he can nail it, but not really. He needs a class with Caitlin Larson on that. But otherwise, dream weekend for Caden Honeycutt. Zilich, after leading the most laps, comes up short in second, and Shane Ban Gisbergen also came up short in third. But don't worry, they got they got their own time in the spotlight. Don't worry about that. Uh Henrick parlays a stage one win into a fourth place finish, and Chandler Smith rounds up the top five. But one more thing before we move on. Ram. Ram trucks career day at Watkins Glenn. His colleague continues to get better with the Ram truck program. Four of their five trucks finished in the top 12 positions. Highlighted by AJ Almendinger finishing sixth in the 25 Ram free agent truck. And Minnie Tyrell, first career top 10 with an eighth place finish. That that deserves a golf clap. Good job, Minnie Tyrell. Um plus Brendan Butterby and Queen now sits 13th in points, only 17 points out of the truck series, Chase. So great, great to see out of Ram right now as they continue to build their program. But our picks and standings in the truck series, trucks, man. The the points battle has tightened up quite a bit. Stacy still leads, but by only 17 points over Evan, 22 over Bernardo, 112 over Noah, 127 over me, and 130 over Haley. But I picked Gio Ruggiero, man. It looked like he was gonna finish top five or win or something, but that penalty, that that penalty that shouldn't have been a penalty, and NASCAR apologized for after the race. The thing is, is they ran multiple caution laps, so like you could have just gave Ruggiero's position back and made amends there, but no, you have to wait till the end of the race to do that. Evan with Lane Riggs uh finished down in 21st, but still scored a lot of points, despite finishing 21st, which is how Evan was able to close that points gap pretty tight there. Haley with Tyler Ankram, just a pedestrian, 17th place finished. Actually, all of us finished pretty pretty pedestrian, anyways. Stacy, the big reason why her points lead was so narrow is Ben Rhodes finishing 32nd after blowing a transmission, somehow fixed the transmission, but it didn't really do all that much. Only finished 32nd, getting five points. So that is that is why Stacy's truck series lead has magically just disappeared over these last couple weeks. Bernardo uh with Tyler Reef ended up 14th, ironically, ends up the best of our picks. And Noah with Grant Engfinger DNFs in 33rd, so tough deal for Noah. You'd think Noah could uh make up some ground in the points, but ends up losing some ground due to the DNF. But in the O'Reilly series, yet again, just like the truck series race, it seems like out of the gate, this was Brent Cruz's race to lose. He led practice. After qualifying was rained out, he started fourth, and he led 32 laps, which was the most, uh, on route to a stage one win and a second place finish in stage two. But again, the race got away from him in the final stage. This time, while making his final pit stop, his car caught fire, but he still settled for a sixth place finish. Brent Cruz is hot, he's in the chase cutoff now, despite running four less races than everybody else, because it was before he turned 18. So, I mean, now that he turned 18, he can run all the big tracks uh over 1.25 miles in length, but before that he missed four races due to that, and even then he's still in the top 12 in points in the chase cutoff, despite running four less races than everybody else. But I did not realize Brent Cruz was that high. I did not realize he was so high, his car would catch on fire, but okay. Um, Connor Zelda and Shane Van Gisbergen yet again another running at the Watkins Glenn O'Reilly series race, this time on pit road. And while it was not nearly as serious as the crash that completely took SVG out of the race last year, it still took him out of contention to win with uh serious right front or no left front damage. Sorry, pit road's all backwards, uh left front damage as SVG led seven laps but ended up settling for a eighth place finish. Once again, another car ended up demolishing some grass and did some rough landscaping. This time, Sheldon Creed, who got forced off of the track in the bus stop and just popped a wheelie in the grass before the carousel. It did not help that the grass was soaking wet due to the rain that had already existed all weekend leading up to them, which thank goodness NASCAR made the right choice and decided, yeah, let's move Watkins Glen back to September and into the chase next year. That was that was the right call. I'm glad. Watkins Glen in May up in upstate New York. It it's rain, it's mud season, and clearly, clearly that showed that. But late in the race, it was Jesse Love. He was trying to conserve and hang on over the last 13 laps while Zilich charged all the way from 5th at 10 and a half seconds back. But Zilich was in second with six to go, and he got the got in the grass and tore his car up in the bus stop, and it looked like Jesse Love was gonna hang on, but then last corner, turn seven, last lap, Zilich. He didn't even need to use the bumper. Whether or not Zilich would have actually used the bumper is something that we will never know because Jesse Love locked up the right front tire and completely overdrove the corner, handing Zilich the victory. As Connor Zilich gets his 13th career O'Reilly series victory, second of the year after winning at Bristol last month. So third straight O'Reilly's win at the Glen, and he completes his redemption arc in victory lane uh extra safely after last year's scary tumble where he fell off his car in victory lane, broke his collarbone, but yeah, uh climbed out of the roof hatch, sat on the car, or put his window net in the car before climbing out very safely. Even uh Justin Marks had a mattress underneath the car very, very safely. OSHA approved. Well, uh, I don't know if I go that far, but close enough. Very very safe. Good job, Connor Zelich. Very safe. No broken collarbone this time. You made it to the cup race. Good job, good job, Connor Zilich. Uh, too bad you didn't do all well, okay. You did okay in the cup race, but unfortunate flat tire towards the end. We'll talk more about that later. Um, Jesse Love ends up second. Just Jesse Love, you would have managed to hold off Connor Zilich had you not overdrove turn seven. You you conserved your fuel and your tires for the most part. You did everything right. You forced Zilich to push too hard and end up in a mistake when he uh got into the grass uh exiting the bus stop with six to go. You did basically almost everything, right? And then you overdrove the last corner of the last lap and lost the race. Man, just tough deal there. Taylor Gray finishes third, Ross Chassing, another solid uh road course run in the O'Reilly series. It seems like he's very likely to do that for some reason. Ends up fourth, and Brandon Jones completes the top five are picks and standings. Uh I still lead in O'Reilly's points. Uh another slight extension of my points lead. I lead Stacy by 90 points, uh, Haley by 197, Evan by 205, Bernardo by 231, and Noah by 289. I guess I say slight extension on my points lead. It's a large points lead. Uh I picked SVG. He ended up eighth with seven laps. Like, I didn't really think that SVG could win. He didn't really have a winning car all afternoon, but it seems like he had a third to fifth place car, and then the pit road damage kind of screwed him over, but he still finished eighth, so eighth is eighth. Evan with Justin Olgar ends up 10th, just a solid day. Started on the front row due to qualifying being canceled. That that's about it. Well, I guess he won a stage two. Haley with uh Austin Hill ends up 11th. Just another quiet day for Austin Hill. I don't know what it is. I mean it's weird. It's like we're used to Austin Hill just causing chaos and always being in everybody's business, and then it's just now we're getting quiet Austin Hill. Whether that's a good or a bad thing, uh that that's that's up for time to tell, I guess. Stacy with Sammy Smith ends up 16th, just I don't know, just another pedestrian day, a lot of pedestrian days. Same thing with Bernardo with Brendan Poole in the 18th, just a quiet day, not a bad day, just a quiet day. And Noah with Brandon Jones, the best of our picks, ends up in fifth. For like a split second, it looked like Brandon Jones could win this race, and that was evaporated immediately. Um, but still a solid fifth place finish. Getting into the cup series, I mean, once again, I mean, it it's like night and day difference. The O'Reilly series continues to be the best racing product, coupled with barely any mistakes production-wise and broadcast-wise, but too bad we cannot say the same about the cup series and fox. I mean, thank goodness that after the after this weekend's uh this upcoming weekend's All-Star Weekend at Dover that we finally get into the prime portion of the schedule. But I mean, gosh, Fox missed action, terrible calls. We had pretty we pretty much had it all multiple incidents, probably should have, or at the very least, could have been cautions, but race control didn't do anything. Kathleen Leg spin off of Josh Belicki, exiting the bus stop, the dust-ups we saw with Carson Husbar and Josh Barry, Bubba Wallace and Christopher Bell, which they got into a heated discussion post-race that Fox didn't show either, because it's Fox, and most egregiously, the Cody Ware wreck where uh where he got sent into the wall in turn six and bent and pretty much broke the thing. Yet NASCAR decided, yeah, let's keep it green, and Cody Ware continues to just pace around the track at a snail's pace because his car is broken in like 17 different pieces, and the wall's broken. But I mean, it he almost ended up causing more carnage, but like no caution. And it's like NASCAR as the sanctioning body for this sport. What you need, what you should have done, if if we're gonna if we're gonna do over this situation, what you should have done is throw the caution, fix the ball, or at least make sure the wall is good to protect the safety of one the competitors and two the fans in the infield. Because you don't really need a car going in the infield like it's uh what was it nine nineteen I believe it was nineteen ninety-four with Mark Martin and Taladega ending up in the infield damn near going through a guardrail and ending up in a fence. But I mean, just if a car can if a car can hit that spot in the wall and break the wall, it could happen again, and you don't really need a car in the infield, in in the campground area, so just stop trying to compromise the safety of the sport. I mean, trust me, this is not the first time, NASCAR. You've done this plenty of other times, we know. But a lot of those wrecks that we mentioned earlier, all the all the dust-ups, particularly down in turn one, that seems like where it always happened, which I guess it makes sense because you had all the constricted space on track with the with the tire packs down in turn one and on the exit of turn five, you know, the carousel. I feel like the the wall, the retaining wall, if you will, of tires and stuff, uh at the exit of the carousel. I felt like that that was fine. I feel like turn ones should not exist, especially since turn one, like no longer do we really see guys like go all the way out there on the on the runoff, anyways, and now it's like there's tires in the way, so it's like if there's a brake failure down in turn one, it's like you're more likely to hit the pack of tires than anything. But I don't know, just I feel like the tire packs in turn one should not exist almost like they're not necessary anymore. I mean, you know, 10 years ago, yeah, you saw plenty of guys use that runoff all the time, but now it's like we don't really use it all that much. So I don't know if the tires in turn one are very necessary, but turn five exiting the carousel, yeah, yeah. That's pretty important. You don't really need Austin Hill wrecking, guys, uh, again, but uh NAS Carn Fox. Terrible camera work. You missed pretty much just about all those wrecks that we mentioned, but they really made sure to get a good they really made sure to get a good angle on the the the tent that flew all the way from the campground onto the track in turn four at the exit of the S's, which brought out a debris caution. That pretty much sums up this weird weekend in a nutshell, doesn't it? Yeah, let's send a let's blow a tent onto the track. That's not that great. That's not that great of a deal. But while this race was not as bad as last year, it wasn't as boring as last year. Uh SVG still dominated much of this race from the poll. 74 of the 100 laps, but late in this race, it got very interesting. Um, what was interesting was under the last caution of the day at lap 60 for Joey Logano's entire carcass coming off, most of the field elected to pit, but SVG, Michael McDowell, and Tyler Reddick, they did not pit, which it looked like that was going to screw them over. But they all pitted under green later, and they used their fresh rubber and just their cars being so fast, and the fact that the final 40 laps were a green flag run. They all charged back from outside the top 20 to all finish inside the top five at the end of the day. SVG in particular came out 24th, 29 seconds back with 24 laps to go, and made up that gap in just 17 laps to take the lead, and eventually the win away from Ty Gibbs with seven laps to go. Connor Zilich, as we uh foreshadowed to earlier, he ran alright. He was up there towards the top 10, but then he pulled a Jesse Love and smoked his tire too hard, which caused it to go flat, and then Zilich had to pit and ended up in 20th, which sucks. But he got the fastest lap, so whooped he do consolation prize of an extra singular point in the championship standings. Does not matter. Zilich is not making the chase, not even close. It's a miracle at this point if he finishes like top 30 in the points. He he continues to struggle this year in Cup. Trackhouse did better as a team, but I still think Spire is the second best Chevy team right now. And speaking of the top dog, the top dog at Chevy, what happened to Hendrick Motorsports? Hendrick, they finished 23rd, 24th, 25th, and 36th with Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Alex Bowman, and William Byron. Byron was the only Hendrick car that even had a little bit of speed, but he got turned around pretty early and busted a toe link, which left him multiple laps down and led to that 36th place finish. Elliott and Bowman were coming off a great momentum as they both had back-to-back top fives, including Elliott's win the prior week at Texas, but that led to absolutely nothing. And Larson, the defending series champion, has now reached a full year-long winless streak in the Cup Series, which is crazy until you remember that him and Logano, the 2024 champ, both have winless streaks of over a year now, which is wild to think about in its own right. So yeah, the last two cup series champions have both not won a race in over a year. Do you put that up to Larson and Logano not being as competitive, not as fast, not having winning speed, or do you put it up to the next gen car? I think it's a little bit of blame of both, but I don't know. Hendrick and Penske have both looked slow to start the year. I mean, Hendrik is slipping. I mean, Elliot's really the only car, the only Hendri car with any winning speed right now, as he has two wins already. But from an organ or organizational standpoint, Hendrick needs help. Penske also needs help, and a lot of teams need help, but Hendrik Hendrik needs help if they want to contend. Because Toyota is still the top dog as of right now. They are still the top dog. They've won a bunch of the races. I mean, they've won. Let me let me think here. They've won seven of the 12 races. And then with SVG's win at Watkins Glenn this past weekend, Chevy now has four wins. Ford still has the one from Pliny at Phoenix. But man, Hendrick needs some help. And Track House coming into this weekend, they needed help too. And yeah, yeah, they got some. You had Chastain win stage one until he got off strategy into the back. And Zilich ran good all day until his flat tire and whatnot. But you know what? SPG had that incredible comeback after pit stops to score the victory. First win of the year, second win of Watkins Glenn, which it comes back to back. He won there last year. His seventh career win and SVG, he now jumps back into the chase in the 16th and final chase spot. Six points to the good over Chase Briscoe as we head into the all-star break at Dover next week. Michael McDowell, despite also pitting late, drives all the way back up to finish second. Ty Gibbs still hangs on to finish third. Briscoe in fourth. That's right, Chase Briscoe finished fourth, yet falls out of the chase, at least as of right now. And Tyler Raddock also comes back late after pitting to round out the top five and extend his massive points lead to 129 points over second place Denny Hamlin, who at the Glen could only muster up a 16th place finish. Man, 129 points. To think in the next gen era, I mean that's something that's like almost unheard of. I mean, like it pretty it pretty much isn't heard of. Tyler Reddick's insane start just continues. I mean, we are we are 12 races and we are a third of the way through the season. We're almost halfway through the regular season, you know, heading towards the chase, and yet Reddick still has like a damn near two race lead in the point standings. Man, just Tyler Reddick is going to probably win this championship unless somebody can step up and challenge him and give him a run for his money. Or, you know, Reddick falls off a cliff, which is also possible. We've seen it. At first, I thought Chase Elliott had a chance to kind of get up there and be in contention. You know, he's got two wins, he won at Texas, but then Watkins Glenn just laid an egg, did nothing. So I don't know. We'll see. We'll see if anybody can even challenge Reddick. We'll see if anybody can get in Reddick's zip code over the next handful of weeks. But honestly, I mean, he's ran good at Charlotte, and you know, Nashville has been kind of okay, so maybe somebody could gain some ground there. But then Michigan, man, he won there two years ago. So for all we know, I mean, I predicted that Reddick would have eight wins by the time we got to Chicagoland in July. I don't know if he's gonna get to eight wins, but maybe maybe six. Maybe six is more realistic. I'm not sure. Watch how he goes out and claims another three wins by uh Chicagoland in July to end up making my initial prediction right. Who knows? But the SVG's win is also the first time the 97 car has won a race since Kirkbush's win at Richmond in the fall of 2005. So cool little fact to note there, but our picks and standings. Uh I lead Haley, but uh my lead my lead has chopped up, has been chopped up like some fresh Bucky's brisket. Shout out Bucky's, even though I'm not sponsored in any way. Um Haley has chopped down her points gap down to just 37. So I lead Haley by 37 points, Stacy by 117, Evan by 162, Bernardo by 166, and Noah by 262. Noah's just in the basement cellar in just about everything, except the truck series, just like how I lead everything, except the truck series. Uh slight correlation there, I guess. I picked Tyler Redick, who ended up fifth. I really thought that Reddick and McDowell and SVG were all gonna end up screwed over that pit strategy, but you know what? It worked out, and it worked out for Evan, who picked Michael Mendell to finish second, and it really worked out for Haley, who picked SVG, won the race, uh, you know, led 74 laps, as we mentioned from the poll, most laps led. Haley is the big winner, and that sucks for me because my points lead has shribled down to almost nothing. So that's right. If you're keeping track at home, Haley has now won back-to-back races. I mean, there was there was that four-race stretch from uh what was it? Martins, it was Martinsville, Bristol, um, Kansas, and Talladega, where I finished second, first, second, first. And then I had a bad run with Chastain 26th at Texas, Haley won. And then, even despite finishing fifth of the Glen, Haley wins again, and I shot my points lead uh down to almost nothing. So not great there. Stacy ended up picking Hamlin, who pretty much was a no-show all week, ends up with a pedestrian 16th place finish. Hamlin, I mean, only had the one road course win, which came at Watkins Glen 10 years ago. We are a long way from 10 years ago for sure. Bernardo ended up picking Christopher Bell. Bell was running okay, but then got into some beef with Bubba Wallace, which again, Fox did not show. Fox coverage is terrible. Ends up 21st and no with Noah Gregson, started way down in 35th, ends up right behind Bell in 22nd. But I real quick before this episode gets wrapped up, I want to test out a new segment, brand new segment. Uh I'm not sure about all the details yet, but at least for now, I'm gonna call it House Hosevar, which, if you're wondering, exact is exactly uh what it sounds like. What did Carson Hosovar do? So here it goes. Hosovar, well, he ran the truck race, and obviously the cup race this past weekend at Watkins Glen. At first he ran good in both, and it did not end well in either of them. He ran seventh in truck practice and 10th in qualifying before getting spun into the wall and DNF'd in 30th uh late in the truck race, and then despite running second in practice and 11th in qualifying for cup, he was pretty off of strategy for a lot of the cup race before absolutely dumping Josh Barry late, which as mentioned Fox also missed that wreck. Fox is so bad. They they need some serious help. I've always told myself, I'm like, Mike Joy, I I love Mike Joy, great guy, but Mike Joy needs to um it needs it needs to be like what CBS did with Ken Squire. It's like move Ken Squire away from the main broadcast booth and have him be like the studio host for a few years and then retire. Mike Joy needs to be in that exact same role. And I feel like I feel like me personally, Clint Boyer needs to get out of the booth. I feel like Harvick is fine to keep for now, because like Harvick when when Harvick's on it, he's on it, but when he's not, he's pretty bad. Um, and I think some of that rubs off from Clint Boyer, which is kind of why I want him out of the booth. But I feel like Rick Allen needs to get back in the booth. He's done some other broadcast work here on the side, but I feel like Rick Allen deserves to be in a booth calling NASCAR races, and I think Fox is a good home for him. And I mean, I've I met him a couple years ago at the Kyle Petty charity, right? Which just wrapped up um a couple days ago, but I feel like Rick Allen should get um another role in in the broadcast booths, so we'll we'll see what Fox does. Fox, take notes, but most importantly, Fox, fix your camera angles. It was good that you fixed your graphics and like got rid of the superhero graphics, those were bad, but like you still have a ton of work to do. You are still the worst uh broadcast media coverage of NASCAR. You need to fix these problems, anyways. Uh Hosevar, after dumping Josh Barry late, which Fox didn't cover, ends up in 28th place. Earlier today, Hospar also tested his dirt late model, like he said he would. Uh some track in North Carolina, which that that seemed to go well. I I sure hope so after his spin and unfortunate evening at Spoon River Speedway in Illinois last Wednesday night, which I was there. That was pretty rough. Uh, and he started streaming and running Crown Vicks at the Freedom Factory right before I started recording this episode. So good to see that he's getting some enjoyment there. But we've got we've got another weekend in the books, man. We're one third of the way through the season already. Big preview episode coming up on Friday with NASCAR All-Star Weekend at Dover. Truck series, O'Reilly series are running points races. The Cup Series is the All-Star Race, the Exhibition All-Star Race, where all you want is to hold that big one million dollar check. So we'll see who holds it. Christopher Bell won the All-Star Race last year, but granted that was at North Wilkesboro. This is the first time that Dover has hosted the All-Star Race. This is also the first time since 1991, the year before uh, you know, Charlotte, you know, back when they used to host the All-Star Race, installed lights and you know, one one hot night and a whole deal. But it's the first time in 35 years that the All-Star Race has been in the daytime, which I get it, Dover doesn't have lights, but why is the All-Star Race at 1 o'clock p.m. Eastern? That's 12, you know, high noon here, you know, in Central Time. So I'm not sure why they did that, but uh yeah. And we also got NHRA in Chicago in town this weekend, which me and Evan will be at in person uh covering all that, but we'll preview all that on Friday. But that's all we got for tonight's episode of the Throttle 4 Podcast. Uh make sure you tune in and listen and watch and download on Spotify app podcast YouTube. Check out the chill photography and throttle for podcasts, Instagrams, and TikToks, and comment below. Let me know if that host bar segment should still be a thing. Let me know. But uh that's all we got for tonight's episode, and we'll see y'all on Friday.