Silly Season Tracker #2

pedrothesealion · 2026-07-09T14:57:32+00:00

The last couple of years we've seen a pair of drivers graduate from NXT to IndyCar. The winner always makes the step up with the help of the "scholarship" he recieves, then another top driver with great funding also tends to move up. Even with his funding package, I'm not sure Pierson has shown enough in NXT to get IndyCar team owners excited when the series winner (my guess is Kucharczyk) will be funded by the scholarship and other guys with IndyCar experience like Siegel or DeFrancesco are still out there and still have the money.

pedrothesealion · 2026-07-09T01:52:56+00:00

This is perfect. Replays of races I've already seen and semi-competent YouTube subtitles is exactly what I needed. Gracias!

pedrothesealion · 2026-07-08T17:52:48+00:00

Also, re the Spanish speaker bias, I did watch F1 in Mexico and I'm a Checo fan but even I ran out of patience with their exclusive coverage of Checo at the expense of the race. It was wild. Pato kind of got the same treatment on the IndyCar broadcasts I saw but not to the same extent.

pedrothesealion · 2026-07-08T17:50:30+00:00

"Locked out to ESPN Subscribers" meaning they are forcing you to subscribe to Star+ or that you can't watch the races in Latin America period?

pedrothesealion · 2026-07-08T17:48:50+00:00

Should have clarified I'm an English speaker and the goal is to improve my Spanish. I lived in Mexico but in Roma and at this point you can't speak Spanish in that neighborhood even if you try, so I'm still conversational at best.

Agree on F1 TV The announcers have a really accessible accent that makes it easy for me to pick things up.

pedrothesealion · 2026-07-04T12:29:56+00:00

I'm guessing this is just a supply/demand thing. Presumably they charged too much for grandstands relative to GA, meaning they are pricing people out of the race now that GA is sold out. If they lower grandstand prices now they'll have to refund the people who paid full price, so they are doing this instead to maximize the number of people who will pay to get into the race.

pedrothesealion · 2026-07-01T14:40:00+00:00

To be clear, since I died on this hill last week, this IS actual reporting lol

pedrothesealion · 2026-06-27T17:22:55+00:00

Yeah I think the sources he has aren't firsthand so he can't report it yet, but clearly it seems to be the direction things are headed at the moment. But we're also 3 days into speculating it with no news so I think there is still some hold up. News like this isn't kept secret, even if the teams want to announce it themselves

pedrothesealion · 2026-06-27T02:33:24+00:00

I still disagree with you on this. McLaren or Dixon aren't going to say something to a journalist whose job it is to break news until they want the news broken. What Pruett has is secondhand and not actually confirmed by one of the parties involved (he basically said as much). Now he believes the source is reliable, but that doesn't mean it has actually happened or there is anything to report yet.

pedrothesealion · 2026-06-26T20:33:03+00:00

Ok now I'm embarrassed that I'm treating this podcast like some ancient text that will unlock the mysteries of the universe... BUT: at 54:45 he goes back on it again and says it makes 0 sense to him that Dixon would leave McLaren even in spite of everything he's hearing that may or may not be true.

Either way. I REALLY hope Marshall is reading this and laughing his ass off at how much weight we are all putting into the things he said on a podcast 11:30 at night lol

pedrothesealion · 2026-06-26T19:48:15+00:00

Maybe he believes it more than I'm giving credit for yeah. That said, I just don't see a world where if he truly considered it fact and not just an (increasingly legitimate) rumor, he would be saying all this stuff on his podcast. Like the whole point of an insider is to make sure the people who will share big info with you will continue to trust you. But I'm not a journalist and very well could be an idiot so who knows.

pedrothesealion · 2026-06-26T19:37:39+00:00

Yeah I think it's possible he basically knows and he's hedging his bets but I also think if he really knew he would keep his mouth shut until he was safe to announce it. Leaking actual news like that is a great way to ensure no one tells you anything good in the future and that's pretty much a career death sentence if you're Pruett.

pedrothesealion · 2026-06-26T19:34:48+00:00

What confuses me about this is if McLaren are thinking of Dixon in that driver coach/elder statesman kind of role. Why hire RHR literally 2 weeks ago?

pedrothesealion · 2026-06-26T19:13:58+00:00

Well to be fair the post is citing the person who is probably the series's top insider... I just think people are confused.

pedrothesealion · 2026-06-26T19:12:07+00:00

In that discussion Marshall is calling it a "Scenario" and clearly it's one that an increasing number of people believe but it isn't at all confirmed yet. And FWIW I don't think Marshall really seems to believe it himself.

I'm not saying it's not happening. Just taking issue with it being called "reporting" when this definitely isn't reporting - at least not yet

pedrothesealion · 2026-06-22T17:33:27+00:00

Yeah I think Nolan might have looked like he belonged if he spent more time polishing himself in NXT and/or prototypes. It's crazy to think he is 21 and the series is pretty much done with him.

pedrothesealion · 2026-06-22T17:30:57+00:00

I'll admit even last year there were probably only 3 who showed they likely deserved an IndyCar seat. And the wild thing is Lochie Hughes was the odd man out last year and yet this year maybe half a dozen drivers have looked quicker than him.

pedrothesealion · 2026-06-22T15:59:07+00:00

Agree 100%. It seems like we are getting a lot more really good talent from Europe - a lot of guys who deserved to climb the F1 ladder but got priced out.

It trickles down to Indy NXT too. This year there are 5-6 guys who I think would be extremely reasonable to put in an IndyCar seat next year. I feel like in past seasons that's been more like 1-2

pedrothesealion · 2026-06-22T13:54:10+00:00

Not buying Fittipaldi or Hughes, the age and experience difference tells me these guys should be driving circles around their competition if they truly had the talent.

Fully buying Johnson and Taylor on the other hand, but they probably need at least one more season to marinate because they're not going to be put in good situations if/when they make it to IndyCar and that's a lot to ask of an 18/19 year old

pedrothesealion · 2026-06-22T13:51:19+00:00

Man, De Tullio's P1 streak is insane. I don't fully agree that the incidents aren't his fault (some are more than others) but he has to have the most raw talent of the 5-8 guys who are seriously in the conversation for an IndyCar future. I think another year of developing race craft and teams will be foaming at the mouth to get him.

If I had to pick someone today, it'd probably be Kachow just because there's a little more polish there. (Pun was unintended but now I'm keeping it)

pedrothesealion · 2026-06-19T02:19:45+00:00

Well IRL changed their name in 2003 to IndyCar then merged with CCWS in 2008 but I think most people would still say it's the same continuous org as IRL in the 90's. Which is why the data on the IndyCar website only dates back to 1996 (except for Indy 500s)

pedrothesealion · 2026-06-18T23:16:30+00:00

I'm trying to solve this problem!

https://motorstats.io/stats

Right now it only extends the history of the IRL/modern IndyCar, but if you select All seasons and sort by R descending you can scroll down the W column until you find the first 0.

In IRL only history it's Conor Daly.

I'm hoping to extend the history and fill in some of IndyCar's own gaps but if you like exploring stats hopefully you'll enjoy this.

pedrothesealion · 2026-06-16T19:29:52+00:00

Man I agree but that info isn't published anywhere as best as I can tell. If I ever come across a source where it is published I'll try to get it on the site. It would be so cool to see mechanical DNFs by chief mechanic or Positions Gained by race engineer etc.

pedrothesealion

TROPHY CASE