If someone offered you a chance to drive one of the fastest race cars on earth, would you do it?

The catch: If you screw up, your boss will shut down your office and fire you and everyone you work with.

Also, you have the entire Indianapolis Motor Speedway to yourself and McLaren-Mercedes people are watching and judging and SERIOUSLY JUST RELAX ALREADY.

Once, Sam belted into a 2007 McLaren MP4-22 Formula 1 car. With the tiny deafening V-8 and the anti-stall and the goofy hand clutch. The car blew his mind, but quietly. He wrote about the day for Road & Track. And in this episode, he is peppered with questions about all of it.

This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. We call this ep’s framework “Sam Tells a Story.”

Ross and Jeff couldn’t make this one, so Sam is joined here by INTC friend and former R&T staffer Kyle Kinard. Kyle is smart and funny, and he was at Indy for that test.

Related Trivia: Kinard’s nickname at R&T was “Kinardi,” after former IndyCar driver Alex Zanardi. The backstory is not ours to share, but it does involve—coincidence alert!—a McLaren and significant personal clenching.

Car magazines, y’all! It’s a weird gig.

This episode was produced by Mike Perlman.

**

Support It’s Not the Car:

Contribute on Patreon ⁠⁠www.patreon.com/notthecar⁠⁠

**

Topic suggestions, feedback, questions? Let us know what you think!

⁠⁠INTCPod@gmail.com⁠⁠

**

Check out Sam's new book!

⁠⁠⁠Smithology: Thoughts, Travels, and Semi-Plausible Car Writing, 2003–2023⁠⁠⁠

**

Where to find us:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/intcpod⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/j.v.braun/⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/rossbentley/⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/thatsamsmith/⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/INTCpod⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://rossbentley.substack.com/⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://speedsecrets.com/⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/Drivercoach⁠⁠

**

ABOUT THE SHOW:

It’s Not the Car is a podcast about people and speed. We tell racing stories and leave out the boring parts.

Ross Bentley is a former IndyCar driver and a world-renowned performance coach and author. Jeff Braun is a champion race engineer. Sam Smith is an award-winning writer and a former executive editor of Road & Track magazine. Together, we explore the emotion at the heart of the machine.

We don’t love racing for the nuts and bolts—we love it for what it asks of the bag of meat at the wheel.

New episodes every Tuesday.

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

Today’s focus is . . . Formula 1 drivers! What makes one better than another?

Mistakes, for one thing. No room for error in the big leagues. Unless you’re Lance Stroll, in which case, well . . . his pops owns the team, so . . .

UGH, DAD, I TOLD YOU, I CLEANED MY ROOM ALREADY BUT THEN DANNY RIC CAME IN AND MESSED IT UP IT’S ALL HIS FAULT.

This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. For this episode, we’re borrowing the No Dumb Questions framework from Ross’s old “Speed Secrets” podcast.

Related Trivia: This is our 25th episode! NDQ normally lives on this show’s Patreon (link below), but we felt like celebrating.

This episode was produced by Mike Perlman. Jeff, Ross, and Sam are not his dads; that would be nepotism. Or the 1987 Touchstone Pictures film “Three Men and a Baby,” which starred Tom Selleck, Ted Danson, and Steve Guttenberg.

Jeff would definitely be the Danson character in that scenario. Or maybe that’s Ross? Sam is probably Selleck, but only because he’s dreaming now, Selleck had a rad mustache in that flick and Sam has never been able to grow a proper lip rug. The one time he tried, he ended up looking like a cross between Pablo Escobar and a child hobo.

(No one here is *ever* the Guttenberg.)

**

Support It’s Not the Car:

Contribute on Patreon ⁠⁠www.patreon.com/notthecar⁠⁠

**

Topic suggestions, feedback, questions? Let us know what you think!

⁠⁠INTCPod@gmail.com⁠⁠

**

Check out Sam's new book!

⁠⁠⁠Smithology: Thoughts, Travels, and Semi-Plausible Car Writing, 2003–2023⁠⁠⁠

**

Where to find us:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/intcpod⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/j.v.braun/⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/rossbentley/⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/thatsamsmith/⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/INTCpod⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://rossbentley.substack.com/⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://speedsecrets.com/⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/Drivercoach⁠⁠

**

ABOUT THE SHOW:

It’s Not the Car is a podcast about people and speed. We tell racing stories and leave out the boring parts.

Ross Bentley is a former IndyCar driver and a world-renowned performance coach and author. Jeff Braun is a champion race engineer. Sam Smith is an award-winning journalist and a former executive editor of Road & Track magazine. Together, we explore the emotion at the heart of the machine.

We don’t love racing for the nuts and bolts—we love it for what it asks of the bag of meat at the wheel.

New episodes every Tuesday.

Everything you always wanted to know about a sliding car but were too cool / afraid / busy paying for a chunk of Armco to ask.

Okay, maybe not *everything*.

Popular questions not addressed herein: Why is a slide? Who I win track day? Is them car better have more dinner-roll stiffness?

Have you ever really *looked* at your hands?

This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. This episode’s format is called “Instant Expert.” Know squat about the topic? Pull up a chair, we’ll bring you up to speed. Expert already? Pull up a chair anyway, it’s chill, you’re among friends, we got stories.

And none of us have ever, ever made a mistake in a race car and we are all perfect and know everything why do you ask?

Related Trivia: Sam usually says some stuff here, but he threw out his back two days ago while washing his wife’s VW and the prescription painkillers have him even more of a gibberbot than usual. Also please feel free to make jokes about the kind of person who might injure themselves while… washing a car.

Scrippy drugs ain’t hurt his writes ability though, gsgflippa fruppo see if I don’t!

This episode was produced by Mike Perlman.

**

Support It’s Not the Car:

Contribute on Patreon ⁠⁠www.patreon.com/notthecar⁠⁠

**

Topic suggestions, feedback, questions? Let us know what you think!

⁠⁠INTCPod@gmail.com⁠⁠

**

Check out Sam's new book!

⁠⁠⁠Smithology: Thoughts, Travels, and Semi-Plausible Car Writing, 2003–2023⁠⁠⁠

**

Where to find us:

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/intcpod⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/j.v.braun/⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/rossbentley/⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/thatsamsmith/⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/INTCpod⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://rossbentley.substack.com/⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://speedsecrets.com/⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/Drivercoach⁠⁠

**

ABOUT THE SHOW:

It’s Not the Car is a podcast about people and speed. We tell racing stories and leave out the boring parts.

Ross Bentley is a former IndyCar driver and a world-renowned performance coach and author. Jeff Braun is a champion race engineer. Sam Smith is an award-winning journalist and a former executive editor of Road & Track magazine. Together, we explore the emotion at the heart of the machine.

We don’t love racing for the nuts and bolts—we love it for what it asks of the bag of meat at the wheel.

New episodes every Tuesday.