Ep. 79 - NASCAR (San Diego) + IndyCar (Road America) 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 NASCAR's exciting inaugural mission to Naval Base Coronado for a street circuit around the base in San Diego and I recap IndyCar's trip to Road America up in Wisconsin; 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 Tunnel Four Podcast. I'm your host, Will Ernest, here tonight with just myself. Uh got a quick recap episode to talk about, so let's get right into it. I want to talk about IndyCar first. They were at Road America this past weekend. Pulse hitter Alex Pillow. He was looking for his fourth Road America win, but he had to settle for fifth at the end of the day after being busted for speeding on lap 29, which took him out of contention. Alex Pillow, five poles in a row, which is just remarkable uh by itself. But Marcus Armstrong, it looked like he had this race one, but I mean he had a comfortable lead with just a few laps ago looking for his first indie car series win, but suffered mechanical problems with just a few laps ago that took him out. And it looked like Graham Ray Hall would get another road course third place finish after already doing that at Barber and the Indy Road Course earlier this year. But Ray Hall got spun on the last lap by eventual third place finish, Triple Power, which ties his best finish of the year and best finish with Andretti after finishing third on the streets of Arlington back in March. But what does Dave Melukas have to do to score his first indie card run? I mean he's already racked up three second place finishes this year at the Indy Road Course, the Indy 500, and now Road America. Plus he had a third place finish on the pole at Phoenix, but still no victory yet. But somehow, despite suffering front wing damage on lap one, it was Indy Road Course winner Christian Lingard who came all the way from last to first to pick up his second win of the year and win number three of his career. And Lungard only led seven laps in doing so. Malucas second, power third, Kevin Simpson with a season best finish of fourth, and Pillow fifth, as we mentioned. Pillow now leads Malucas by 60 points, Kirkwood by 61 points who finished 10th, and Lungard by 77 with only eight races to go. Our picks and standings, I still lead the points by 224 over Evan, 276 over Bernardo, 285 over Stacy, 305 over Haley, 340 over Noah, and Ethan leads Zane by one point uh over the part-time standings. Our picks, I picked Alex Pelow, started on pole but got busted with the speeding penalties we mentioned, ended up fifth. Evan with Renus VK only managed to 18th place finish. Haley with willpower ended up third. Definitely a little controversial, maybe. I mean, being that willpower wrecked Graham Ray Hall, but no penalty. Um, meanwhile, Joseph Newgarden got penalized and ended up 22nd. So Stacy with Pato Ward ended up 12th, Bernardo with Santino Ferrucci ended up ninth, and Noah with Mick Schumacher ended up 17th, Ethan with Kyle Kirkwood ended up 10th, and Zayn with Marcus Armstrong just so close to his first indie car win, but ended up 24th DNFing with the mechanical feathers. But I want to go to San Diego now. We'll start with the truck series. I mean, it may have been a brand new circuit, the Qualcomm circuit around Naval Ace Coronado in San Diego in California, but this definitely was a classic truck race. Seven cautions in a 53-lap race. Technically it was a 50-lap race, but the last caution pushed the race into overtime. Just normal truck series action. In just his second truck series start and first since 2008 Bristol, Jimmy Johnson led two laps and ran inside the top five for parts of the afternoon. I was pretty impressed. Jimmy Johnson for a small sliver of this race. Actually, I thought he could win this truck race, but he got spun a couple times and lost power in the final stage. Ultimately ended up in 30th. Just kind of tragic. Stage two winner, Parker Kligerman was also in this race. There were a lot of notable names on this truck series race, but not very many of them did all that well. Kligerman ended up down in 18th. Justin Marks was in the 77, too. Just not great. Even though it was a brand new circuit. Chandler Smith was in the catbird seat on the lap 52 overtime restarts. He had the lead, more fuel and fresher tires than teamweight and stage one winner Lane Riggs. But Smith and Caden Honeycutt crashed on the downhill run towards turn two. There was a lot, there was a lot of crashes there around in that same spot. Turn one, downhill to turn two. You'll notice that over the course of the episode. But that crash opened the door up for Daniel Hemrick until he was passing the chicane by Tyler Reef coming to the white flag. And man, poor Tyler Reef. And just his seventh truck series start was just a few corners away from his first win. But he blew the chicane on the last lap, which handed him a 32nd penalty, and ultimately saw him finish down in 19th. But it was Lane Riggs who benefited from Tyler Reefs' mistake to score the dramatic victory for his fourth win on the season, ninth of his career. And this win, it also secures Lane Riggs a sweep on the street courses for this year. As Riggs also won at St. Petersburg back in March when they had a uh not a doubleheader, but they were uh together on the same weekend with IndyCar. Henrick ends up second despite having a tire going down. Cazgarla in third. Landon Lewis with a career best fourth. Ty Majesky rounds out the top five are picks and standings. Evans still has the Truck Series points lead, but his lead's been trimmed up to just 17 points over Stacy, 68 over Bernardo, 104 over Haley, 131 over me, uh 156 over Noah, and Ethan's got a 26-point lead over Zane, and the part-time standings are picks. I picked Gio Ruggiero, ended up 10th. Just he was there, but he never really had winning truck speed. Evan with Jimmy Johnson actually had winning truck speed, but the electrical issues caused him to finish down in 30th. Haley with Ben Rhodes ends up 8th. Stacy picked Chandler Smith, who could should have probably won this truck race, but ends up 22nd after getting spun. Bernardo with Jackson Lee ends up 27th. Noah with Brendan Queen ends up seventh. Good day for the Ram trucks. Justin Haley also finished sixth in this race. So Ram continues to make uh more progress, more steps forward. You know, I've noticed that in the past few weeks they're more in contention with getting top 10 runs now instead of just top 15 runs. Uh Ethan with Caden Honeycutt won the poll but got caught up in that wreck and spin, ends up 23rd. And Zayn with Tyler Ankram ends up 31st, pounded the wall late in the race as well, which took him out of the race. But man, you want to talk about a wild race, the O'Reilly's race. I mean, apparently the O'Reilly series saw the truck race and thought, hmm, how can we make our race even more wild? Or I don't know, I don't know, something like that. For starters, a 60 lap O'Reilly's race took almost five hours to complete, thanks to two red flags that totaled almost an hour of stoppage. The first being a manhole cover that came up on lap one and destroyed the front of Corey Day's car. NASCAR allowed him to repair his car and get his laps back while they fixed the track. Day actually came all the way back to finishing 10th when it was all said and done, and Day was already in a backup car from wrecking earlier in the weekend. And actually, when Corey Day was coming out onto the track, there was a safety truck going backwards on the track that almost hit him, so that would have been a total embarrassment. But the second red flag was for a 23-car pile-up after Sam Mayer got turned into the turn one wall, uh heading down into turn two, you know, that same that same spot once again, but running up front and then just an accordion throughout the rest of the field. But that was a 43-minute red flag since the wall had to be repaired. And during then, a fan jumped two fences to go try and talk with Sheldon Creed, and uh, I guess it was shades of that fan from 2007 that jumped the guardrail to talk to Matt Kensett at Watkins Glenn. But see the difference? This fan jumped a fence on a racetrack that's on an active military base, Naval Base Coronado, and he didn't even get a picture or anything, unlike the fan from 2007 at Watkins Glenn, I got a sign Matt Kensett hat. So yeah. And the San Diego fan got arrested too. I mean, what didn't happen in this race at this point? Oh, yeah, that's right. Jeremy Clements broke Kenny Wallace's all-time O'Reilly starts record with his 548th start, and he finished 15th, so good for him. Completely overshadowed by the rest of this race, but you know, that's pretty Jeremy Clements fashion. But it appeared that Carson Quappel would finally get his first O'Reilly series win and extend Junior Motorsport's absurd road course winning streak to 12 in a row. However, stage two winner Taylor Gray wheelhopped underneath him while battling for the lead with three laps to go in turn 12B, and Quapple had to settle for fourth, but two laps later, however, Gray would get passed on the white flag by stage one winner Austin Hill, who would go on to secure his first road course victory. Finally, Austin Hill is second win of the season after winning the season opener at Daytona's 16th career win and the first victory for Richard Childis Racing since the tragic, unfortunate passing of Kyle Bush last month. Austin Hill burned that car down. He burned the car down so much doing burnouts of by the Kyle Bush uh eight that was painted on the track. Uh he burned the rear tires off and had to get tow truck to victory lane, which it was ironic because the tow truck, uh the the number that was painted on the front of it was the eight. So yeah, but Taylor Grains up second, uh Creed ends up third, Quappel fourth, and Sammy Smith fifth. Sammy Smith and Jesse Love, they both came back from damage in that big wreck to finish fifth and sixth. Of course, not to mention Corey Day coming back from the 400 things he had to deal with and that O'Reilly's race to finish 10th, but our picks and standings. I still lead the O'Reilly's points now by 135 over Stacy, 217 over Haley, 289 over Evan, 310 over Bernardo, 404 over Noah, and Zayn's got a pretty substantial lead over Ethan in the part-time standings, mostly because of um you know, picks-wise. Ethan picked Caruth, ended up just 22nd. Zane ended up picking Josh Pelicki with a solid 16th place. I picked Kwople. I was really thinking Carson Kwople was gonna win this race, but nope. Ends up fourth though, and gets the fastest slap, so that's an extra point for me. Evan with Brent Cruz, um, just oof, I mean, won the poll for the O'Reilly's race, first O'Reilly's poll, and was up front, but then you know, just ends up 31st. Just not not good. Ends up wrecking out. Same thing with Haley with Sam Mayer, who caused the whole big rag, ends up DNFing. I mean, Brent Cruz with two DNFs this weekend because I mean in the cup race, he'd subbed in for Christopher Bell in stage one, and then the gearbox just went boom, so not good there. Stacy with Jesse Love ended up sixth, Bernardo with Patrick Star pulling ended up 20th, Noah with Ryan Ellis ended up 30th, just kind of meh runs. But cup wise, I mean, at least the cup race didn't take five hours, but that doesn't mean it was without its own chaos, you know. Not to mention, I mean, Brent Cruz already with, you know, driver change with Christopher Bell, and then the whole gearbox issue. But the big tipping point was the stage two wreck on lap 32. Connor Zilich and O'Reilly's race winner Austin Hill got together at the front of the field once again at the exit of turn one, heading down till downhill to turn two. Once again. But that wiped them out, along with several other top contenders, including pole winner Shane Van Gisbergen, who came into San Diego having won six of the last seven cup roadcourse races dating back to Mexico City last year. The exception was a second to Tyler Reddick at Coda back in March, which speaking of Reddick, this race boiled down to another battle of Toyotas. It's not the first time we've said that this year, but this time, more specifically, 23-11 Toyotas is late in the race. They were one, two, three. With Reddick leading, Corey Himes second in the part-time 67 entry, and Bubba Wallace in third, who had come all the way back from being two laps down after losing a wheel at the end of stage one, which of course, in true NASCAR fashion, they handed out that penalty today. So, you know, the crew members will get a two-week vacation. But I mean, even Riley Herbst ran up in the top ten late before ultimately finishing eighth, which tied his best career cup finish along with the Daytona 500 back in February. But back to the battle for the lead, Haim was able to run down and pass Reddick late before Reddick tried the crossover move in the turn five, but they made contact that ran them both up out of the groove and Reddick conceded the lead to Haim. Um, he said later that he just didn't feel like that's how he should have raced, let alone his teammate, even though Haim was in the part-time car. But you know, I digress. Reddick ultimately ended up cutting a tire anyways. The next slap while running second, faded from second all the way down to 25th at the finish, which could ultimately honestly decide the regular season championship, but more on that in a second. Corey Haim coasted to his first career cup series victory, just his 13th series start by 10.365 seconds over 2311 teammate Bubba Wallace, giving 2311 their first 1-2 finish in their organization's history. Kyle Larson third, Zane Smith fourth, and A.J. Almendinger Browns out the top five. Haim becomes just the 17th driver since 1981 in the last you know 45 years to win their first Cup Series race in 20 starts or less, joining elite company with other drivers such as Jimmy Johnson, Matt Kenseth, Kevin Harvick, Davy Allison, and Dalen Hart Jr. All five of those drivers either are, or in Harvick's case, soon to be NASCAR Hall of Famers, as Harvick will be inducted in January as part of the class 2027. The other four are already NASCAR Hall of Famers. So pretty good company there. I mean, it's just has chopped that lead way down. And I mean, we got another twist now to think about. Year two of the in-season challenge begins this weekend at Sonoma as well, with additional stops in Chicagoland, Atlanta, aka Echo Park, whatever, North Wilkesboro, and the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis over the next five races. So that will be something to watch as well. Our picks and our standings. I still lead the cup points now by 76 over Haley, 147 over Stacy, 161 over Evan, 187 over Bernardo, 315 over Noah, and uh let me do some math. Ethan leads Zane by 60 points in the part-time wise. I lost 20 points off my point sleeve by picking SVG. He won the poll, but got caught up in that big wreck and nowhere to go. So I end up DNFing in 38th. Evan with Tyler Reddick ends up 25th after cutting the tire from second with two laps to go. Haley with Michael McDowell comes back to finish 10th uh late in this race. Stacy with Chase Elliott ends up 12th. Bernardo with Ross Chastain ends up 7th. Noah with Austin Stendrick ends up 22nd. Ethan with AJ Almeninger ends up 5th, which Almeninger this weekend at Sonoba will make his 500th Cup Series start. So good for him. Zane with Connor Zilich ends up 37th. DNFing also caught up in that big uh stage two wreck. But moving on now, lastly, I want to talk about uh good old hot sauce hurricane segment, aka how Geo Selzi and Carl Snowspar are aka their two nicknames, Hot Sauce and Hurricane. I put them together, you know, because why not? What an eventful weekend for the both of them. I'll start with Giovanni Selzi, who ran four races and four nights this past weekend at Houston Speedway in South Dakota and approved every night, culminating in a fourth place finish last Saturday night in the finale of the Billion Auto Houstet's High Bank Nationals, which paid out $300,000 to event winner David Grabble. $300,000, that's a lot of money. But Carson Hospar, man, qualified second at San Diego and actually had a chance to win late until Heim spun him in the chicane, and of course, well, eventually went on to win the race. Well, Hosbar only finished 19th, but on Tuesday, Hosovar and his spotter Tyler Green hosted an episode of Dale Jr. downloaded right off the bat. It's like as soon as they started the episode, it was like 11 o'clock Eastern time, you know, in North Carolina. But I guess apparently Dale Jr. starts the episode at like 8 o'clock because he was thinking that Hospar would already be done. Because it's like as soon as they started it, Dale was calling and they're just like, Oh, you guys done? And then Host Bar is just like, No, we just started. So, yeah, but they also talked about how Host Bar, if he had won, this was funny, he'd park it in turn seven because he knew there was a gap there, and then he'd just go to the aircraft carry and jump off into the water and have the navy pulling out, you know, you know, cars and hostbar things. But they also talked about the post-race beef between Noah Gregson and Project 91 driver Kevin Magnuson, where Kevin told Noah to F off and uh you know, just typical run-ins. Um, but Hospital also talked about his takes of Reddick's sportsmanship with Haim, you know, conceding the lead, and uh, I don't know. And then his own run-in with Haim that we talked about earlier, which Hospital asked for Haim's number from you know, asked Denny Hamlin, and since Hamlin didn't know what happened, he actually gave Haim's phone number. So we'll see if anything comes about that. But Haim's not running at Sonoma, however, he is running at Chicago land in two weeks, so we'll see if anything comes about that. And wait a minute, Kay Adams, yeah, apparently she was the pace car driver, and since Hospar qualified second on the front row, they were having a little fun before the green flag. I mean, first Sabrina, now Kay Adams. I mean, who has Hospark not talked to at this point? But I mean, it's a great episode, y'all should tune in. I mean, Hosevar just has confidence, like, through the roof. He's got like confidence on steroids. It's like there's people that have high confidence, and then there's Carson Osbar at this point. But we go from the streets of San Diego to Wine Country and Sonoma, California for Cup and O'Reilly's last road course race of the season, and also the start of the in-season challenge, which encompasses the five races on TNT's portion of the calendar. I hope TNT can take a big step forward this year, as last year was kind of a mixed bag performance-wise. In my opinion, when TNT is good, they're as good as Amazon Prime. When they're bad, they're as bad as like Fox. So it's like it's a pretty it's like one end of the spectrum to the other, pretty much, which man, it it sucks that Prime, we won't be back till next year. But I mean Jeff Gluck did sit down with one of the Amazon people talking about hey, maybe Prime could have more races in the future. But of course, the next TV deal doesn't end till like 2031, so we still got a good five years until then. But we'll see, maybe Prime ends up buying out somebody's contract or something. I don't know. I don't even know if that's possible to do, but anyways, N trade, they also reach their halfway point of the season this weekend with the 20th annual summit racing equipment NHRA Nationals from Norwalk, Ohio, and I will be there in true Norwalk fashion. I will have to try some of their ice cream, I will let you know about that. But we'll talk about it next time. But that's all we got for today's episode of the Throttle 4 Podcast. Make sure you tune in and listen and download and watch on Spotify, App Podcast, YouTube, check out the chill photography and Thor 4 podcast, Instagrams, and TikToks. And yeah, that's all we got, and we'll see y'all next time.