"jay penske" Discussed on The BOB & TOM Show Free Podcast
"And then we get to phase three and I'm able to go flat all the way around. And we're running like two 17s, two 18s with race down force on. I was like, we've got a strong car. Right. That's got to feel good. So that made qualifying kind of go poof out of my head. I think we can, I think we got that pretty solid. The real pain in the butt is going to be racing or driving traffic. Yeah. And that's one of my questions. When you really don't have your single car team, there's not, you know, you're not Alex Palo with Scott Dixon sitting next to you going, this is what you should think about. Are there other drivers or maybe past drivers that you've reached out to, to try and get advice on what you ought to do on race day? Yeah. I mean, Spencer Piggott, he's my spotter in turn one. Okay. He's done this race many times. So, I mean, even going into tomorrow morning, I'm going to be getting with him and going through all the video from Monday, which was my first day running in traffic, which I think we got a good car. It's just, I need to figure out the whole, it's just a certain skill and a certain mentality. You got to go about it. And they even told me, he's like, just get it out of your head that the car is ever going to feel good because it's just not, and he's like, and when we start this race, you're going to get like three laps where you might be able to do something. And then you're just going to sit in a train and hope you don't burn your tires off and save fuel. So he's like, you're just going to have to hope lady luck and strategy kind of help follow your way. And I was like, well, that's not that bad of a mentality to go into the race. It makes it, I guess, less stressful on the driver when you know that everybody else is struggling just as hard as you are. Nobody has a quote unquote good car. Everybody's just got their own problems. Everybody's just slightly better than the other. Like it's just, unless you're in the top two cars, those top two, three, if you only have one or two cars in front of you, the dirty air doesn't feel bad at all. It's the second you get four plus in the second starting to where I'm at and have 27 cars in front of you. It's going to be a nightmare for the first like first set of tires or two. But I mean, we're excited this group that he put together. They're all veterans of the 500 or every crew member engineer, engineering staff is stout. I mean, they put together, we went into qualifying so confident and just kind of put it together. That's great. Well, I'm the actor of the group. So we've been asking everybody who plays you in the movie if you had to choose. Hmm, that's a hard one. I'm, I'm really not sure. All right. It's just too much to pick from. I know there's a lot. I mean, let's see, let's see. He's a handsome man. You could be like, don't take offense, but he looks a little bit like a younger you, like high school age. So I'm going to play you when you win in the at 40. That's going to be me, but we'll pick the younger version of you. You're racing for Jay Penske. Taylor lot. Taylor lot. Yeah, I've heard that one before. I've heard there's there's an Xfinity driver, uh, curry. And somebody came and ran up to me from the Chevy team and make it like, has anybody told you, you look exactly like him? I was like, I don't even know what he looks like. And they showed me a picture. I was like, oh, man, that is my brother. That's not bad. I've gotten a few different ones, like at the racing schools and stuff like that. They'll be like, you look just like this person. I've gotten a few of them. So man. All right. Well, good. Well, I'm, I'm putting my hand in. I'll let you guys take that. Yeah, please. So tell us about your career path here, like coming up to IndyCar. What are some highlights that you had and how did you know you wanted to be a race car driver? I mean, I guess it all started with kind of my dad at first. He, he grew up. He graduated out of high school out of the south side here. And he's been coming to the 500 with his, with his parents, my grandparents since I believe the seventies or maybe even late sixties. So it's always kind of been in the blood, like being a race fan. And I mean, my first 500 when I was, when I was three. And I believe that was like what? Scott Dixon and Tony Kanaan and Elio's first 500 type thing. I knew it would be insultingly recent. So it was, I mean, we still have pictures from it that we keep putting up and stuff like that. It's crazy. That is wild. And, and you're racing with all those. My parents moved to Florida before I was ever born. And when I was, I think two, two or three years old, four years old, I was really into those hot wheels, cars, boxes and cases, like all those cases and cases. And it was like, my mom had drove past like a dirt oval go -kart track and they're like, he likes racing so much. Why don't you get him a go -kart and, and see if he likes it. And there's a little dirt track over here. My dad was like, nope, I grew up in Indianapolis. If he's racing, he's racing on asphalt and got me a go -kart from Comet Cart Sales, which is out of Newcastle. I believe here is theirs, their deal. And he put it together in the garage, started out four years old. You can't race until you're five. So four years old, I'm just going up and down the street where they'd stand on each side. Just a little menace on the street. Yeah. To be honest, I carting all the way up until I was about 10 or 11 was more or less a hobby.
