It's Not the Car

Warning: This one’s for the nerds. And us! Because we are nerds. 

(Perhaps you hadn’t noticed? In which case, bless you, my sweet summer child.)

This episode has everything: Corvettes! Math! A man named Brendan wearing a hat for hours! Plus, 45 minutes of into-the-weeds nerdy explainer on the strange logic of a winning pro race strategy!

INTC co-host Jeff Braun just wrapped his third season as comp director for an IMSA Corvette team. For the third year in a row, that team has won IMSA’s Bob Akin Award, the “championship within a...

How do you build a racing school from scratch? INTC co-host Ross Bentley has done it multiple times—and he famously helped start Washington State’s world-renowned DirtFish Rally School.

This episode has everything: Whales. Islands. Subarus. The philosophy of teaching and culture. Plus a small coastal race track accessible mostly by ferry. 

We talk about how the best coaches in the world deal with egos and beginners, why the words “slow down" are counterproductive on a race track, and how the best coaching move is sometimes just distraction. Plus, there’s a lightning round and an In...

You’re not scared. Right?

Tom Roberts is a driver coach, an aerobatic pilot, a racer, a Buddhist, a former dentist, and a student of fear at the wheel. 

His new book, From Fear to Flow: Transform Your Ego and Uncover the Life You Were Meant to Live, unpacks the relationship between fear and peak human performance.

(Spoiler: It’s complicated.)

FUN FACT: For the last decade, Tom and INTC co-host Ross Bentley have taken a small group of driving students to the Nürburgring—probably the single most intimidating race track on...

Big announcement in this one, kids! No spoilers! Especially not having to do with the one and only Roger Penske, no sir!

This is one of our rare “chat” shows—Jeff, Ross, and Sam gone full chill hang. With this one, they're together on the mic for the first time in months, catching up after a long summer. 

(We almost never do this, but you guys have asked for it, so it’s a pleasure!)

Timestamps:

02:57 – “One Night Only” — Jeff’s Son Wrote a Hollywood Movie!

05:53 – Ross Goes Full Nürburgring Recap

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This summer, for the first time in 15 years, IndyCar unveiled a new chassis. The Dallara IR-28 has a chance to change everything about the world’s fastest wheel-to-wheel racing. And when the car takes its first green flag in 2028, maybe it will.

Paul Pfanner founded RACER magazine in the early 1990s and bloomed that brand into the media empire it is today.

Ten years ago, IndyCar management asked Pfanner and a few other visionaries to help dream up what the next IndyCar could be. The car that group proposed is not the IR-28—but that, Paul...

This episode is about how racing sucks you in—even (or perhaps especially) if it’s tied to your day job. And never more than with endurance racing.

Last month, BFGoodrich invited Ross and Sam to co-drive a Porsche Boxster in a ChampCar enduro weekend at VIR. 

A lot happened. Way too much! Chiefly, though, our two co-hosts chatted with some smart people. They talked about why everyone from track-day junkies to moonlighting pros bothers to go amateur endurance racing—and why this quirky little corner of the sport has never been larger or more success...

Balázs Remenyik is a professional sim racer and the official simulator development driver for the Citroën Formula E team. He’s also chief instructor at the Speed Secrets Sim Racer Academy, where INTC co-host Ross Bentley is founder and head coach.

Sam and Balázs talked earlier this year—Sam called him up to get a pro sim driver’s insight into the topics discussed on this week’s main-feed show.

This is one of the world’s best sim racers walking through the basics of digital driving. On top of that, Balász talks about...

Some love it, some hate it. You’re probably doing at least part of it wrong, even if you’re good at it. 

Twenty years ago, INTC co-host Ross Bentley was a beta tester for the original version of iRacing, the world’s largest online racing sim. Today, he’s logged thousands of hours of sim coaching for “real" race drivers both pro and amateur. And he’s learned a lot along the way.

This started as a simple 101-level chat between Sam and Ross about sim technique. By the end of the show, they’d gone down the...

Once, Ashley Baily was a pastry chef. Now she’s the 26-year-old, Daytona-winning tire chief for an IMSA Corvette team. Landing that leap took guts, passion, and five years of working two demanding jobs at once.

(Plus cake. There was a silly amount of cake.)

Want a job in pro racing? If you're ready to knuckle down and work like hell, it’s closer than you think. This episode is the latest installment in our HOW I GOT HERE series—a dive into just what it takes to land a career in professional motorsport. We asked...

INTC’s Jeff Braun had to do it. Just a few weeks ago, only a few hours into that epic race, with a car still fast and healthy.

The 24 Hours of Le Mans. A GT3 Corvette. Months of fighting just to make the grid. Maybe you’d make the same decision—pull into the garage, start packing for home. Maybe you’d double down, scarf a bucket of croissants, have the guys strap in and send it. We’re all different.

INTC co-host Jeff Braun has spent decades in pro road racing. He’s won Daytona, Seb...

LIVE from a Porsche Club of America weekend at Grattan Raceway on June 13, 2026!

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Want the INTC gang to come to *your* event and tape a show? Drop a line – ⁠[email protected]⁠ !

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Two weeks ago, Ross and Sam went to a PCA track weekend to coach, tell stories on a podcast, and hang out. This is the stories bit — Saturday night, live from the paddock, a series of definitely plausible tales from our hosts' long careers in motorsport and car journalism.

PLUS: Audience questions, tangents, and Sam has candy (for some re...

It’s another mythbusting episode! Ten classic racing myths, ten rapid-fire shoot-downs, no prisoners whatsoever.

Your answers, as always, come from INTC’s resident paddock veterans: Jeff Braun is a champion IMSA engineer with time in IndyCar and NASCAR. Ross Bentley is a former IndyCar driver and sports-car champion turned world-renowned performance coach and author. 

This show changes format every episode, because squirrel. This format is a new one—we call it “THE FASTEST LISTICLE IN SPORTS.”

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FREE 115-page BFGoodrich High-Performance Driving Guide written by Ross Bentley:

https://www.bfgoodricht...

Why are some drivers fast in everything? What makes a person quick in Miatas but not Mustangs—or vice versa?

How do the pros wrap their heads around big jumps in speed, power, and risk?

This is show about many things. Precision. Restraint. A Corvette Z06 walloping into the climbing esses at VIR. That feeling you get when everything is right and nothing is wrong, at least not anything important, and you are up on the tire and the sky is awash in blue.

“Being shot out of a cannon will always be bett...

Our favorite race cars—the ones that stick out, from all the stuff we’ve driven.

This is an episode about many things. Love. Hate. Jeff’s mouse-filled Triumph Spitfire. The 1970s BMW IMSA factory team car that Sam rode all lock-stop-drift-slappy down the Corkscrew at Laguna Seca.

It is also an episode about the time they told Ross he was going to die, sideways, on the banking at Daytona. 

(Spoiler alert: He didn’t.)

(Spoiler alert part II: His hands were shaking and the car was terrifying, but he went and hung...

This is what: Three races into 2026, the FIA is trying to fix what it broke. Because everyone hates it.

(Ross goes on a rant in this one! Ross *never* goes on rants!)

Here’s a joke: A former IndyCar driver and a former Road & Track editor walk into a bar. When they walk out, they never want to hear the words “megajoule” or “superclipping” again.

(Okay, it’s not a joke. Gag me with a kilowatt spoon.)

F1 changed much for 2026: new car dimensions and weights; new powerplant configurations; updated aero; narrower tir...

We call this "Take Your Podshow to Work Day." Three stories of weird days on the racing job—one from each of our hosts.

Once, Sam had the chance to drive a 230-mph Le Mans prototype—a factory-owned Porsche 917K!—and he said no. Why? It’s complicated!

Once, Jeff won the 24 Hours of Daytona in 28 hours. The whole thing was such a big deal that Mario Andretti got kinda feathered up and tweeted out an opinion about it. Why? Also complicated!

And! Last but not least, we have Ross, the former IndyCar and spor...

Ten years ago, INTC's Jeff Braun helped a Japanese carmaker go IMSA racing with a 180-mph diesel prototype. The car was cool. More than 700 lb-ft of torque at 2800 rpm. Gobs of potential.

Also: It blew up every five minutes.

(An exaggeration, of course. No race car blows up every five minutes, even an underfunded, production-based coal-roller cranking around Daytona. That would be silly.)

(It was probably more like ten minutes.)

Mazda's diesel Le Mans prototypes of 2014 and 2015 were one of the most admirable, ambitious, and ill-fated efforts in American motorsport. Jeff...

The short answer? Use, abuse, and every way but loose. (But sometimes also loose.)

This podshow has three hosts. One of them, Jeff Braun, has won Sebring, Daytona, and multiple sports-car championships.

From Indy to Le Mans and beyond, Jeff has seen race cars fail in strange and funny ways. And when you ask Jeff to dish the goods, he dishes goods.

(For the record, we love asking.)

This show changes format weekly, because squirrel. We call this format “JEFF TELLS A STORY.”

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IN THIS EP: How *do* r...

Jeff's Daytona 2026 Pit-Wall RECAP: With special guest—and Jeff Braun co-worker—Andrew Wojteczko, of AWA Racing and IMSA Corvette team 13 Autosport!

January 2025: Against towering odds, Andrew, INTC's Jeff, and the rest of the AWA gang win the 24 Hours of Daytona.

January ’26: The same team hits Daytona again. They do everything right, they feel great about all of it, and then everything goes wrong. Parts break that shouldn’t. The car handles all spooky and no one can suss why. There is a fire big enough to land the team on TV. (And not in the fun way...

If you do nothing else, listen to the beginning of this episode. The first few minutes. Maybe with a large drink in your hand.

A tiny town in upstate New York. A dapper man with glasses, a dream, and a Duesenberg he didn’t need. One of the greatest—and nuttiest—moments in the history of American racing. And that’s how stateside sports-car racing went big time.

This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. This episode is our monthly deep dive into an epic moment from racing history. 

In this case, that means t...

We’re back! INTC’s third season starts… now! 

Are we celebrating by going full nerd with this one? Does Alex Palou wear Labubu pajamas? Did Sam have a dream last week where Ross and Jeff heckled him from the audience like Statler and Waldorf from The Muppets?

(The answers, respectively: yes; definitely yes; and dear lord, it was deeply weird but also oddly delightful, yes.)

You asked for it: This is an episode about books! Racing books, to be specific—the ones that changed our lives. And naturally, Sam decided to turn it into a...

And that’s the end of Season Two! INTC will return on February 3rd, 2026, to kick off our third season!

We're gonna close out 2025 with one of the greatest stories in racing: The time two British legends went on an all-night drinking bender, then jumped into a 150-mph Jaguar and won the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The summer of 1953. A night of brandy, cognac, pink gins.

When Tony Rolt started the race, his co-driver, Duncan Hamilton, was on the pit wall nursing a brandy.

Before that point, their lives had been un...

You asked for it! This is the first episode of a new series where we unpack just what it takes to get a job in pro racing.

Charlie Ping is a pro engineer. Over the last 20 years, his career has spanned IndyCar, sports cars, and the Australian Supercars Championship. He helped develop Acura's LMP1 and LMP2 prototypes, and he developed and led the manufacturer track-testing program for Chevrolet's IndyCar aero kits.

These days, Charlie works alongside INTC co-host Jeff Braun at Toronto’s 13 Motorsports, where he helps run a Corvette Z06 GT3.R in IMSA’s GT...

Full episode on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/november-bonus-144929992

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NDQ is our listener Q&A series! Have questions about performance driving, race engineering, setup, or anything else? Hit us up: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

There are no dumb questions in racing… but there might be some dumb answers.

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ANSWERED THIS MONTH:

//2:30 – How do pro drivers in long endurance races get by without sleeping?  

// 19:50 – How should you think about the beginning of braking as entry speeds change?

// 35:30 – How do you stop overthinking behind the wheel?

// 38:20 – How can you improv...

Off-topic show! Back by popular demand. No intro or announcements on this one—we dive straight in.

***TOPICS:

What Ross found when he tore down the engine from his Lotus Elan — Jeff's tale of French sports-car drivers meeting North Carolina NASCAR spotters — The summer coaching adventures of Ross and Sam — How the phrase “hot foam around your butt” relates to Jeff’s IMSA-champion son Colin — Ross going thunderstorm rogue at Sebring — and more!

***PLUS:

Spotter theory, race-strategy nuance, and how the art of getting faster has changed in the last 30 years!

Thirty years ago, one of the world's greatest drivers was forced to run most of an F1 race with only fifth gear.

Somehow, he finished second.

The 1994 Spanish Grand Prix is widely thought of as Michael Schumacher’s greatest race. His gearbox was stuck in fifth. His team assumed his engine was minutes from blowing. And yet, because he was Michael Schumacher—one of the most successful and complex individuals to ever take a flag—he never stopped trying to make something from nothing.

This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. This episode...

**Want more listener Q&As like this? Patreon members get bonus episodes! Link below!**

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

Ross Bentley is a former IndyCar driver, a bestselling author, and a world-renowned performance coach. Jeff Braun is a champion race engineer. Ask about racing, performance driving, engineering, car setup, or anything else: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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ANSWERED THIS WEEK: How pro drivers get up to speed so quickly — What Ross learned from coaching Patrick Demps...

“I just want to see motorsport be as awesome as it can possibly be… can we make this more meaningful? So there’s more to care about?”

When J.R. Hildebrand says racing is broken, people listen. A few weeks ago, Hildebrand unveiled a discussion project called Blackbird 66. Maybe, he says, the future of motorsport lies in a hella-sexy 1000-horse Indy car with zero downforce. 

Twist my arm.

Hildebrand: 2011 Indy 500 Rookie of the Year, drives a 1960 Cadillac named Rosie. He last hit INTC on Episode 72, when he talked about running a Winston Cup car in th...

How did Ross and a young Kimi Räikkönen end up sharing a fancy London apartment? After 20 years of testing fast cars for a living, which one still makes Sam misty? What really went wrong with Ross’s IndyCar career?

Answers to these questions—and more!—in this episode. Probably! Yes!

Every so often, INTC does a listener Q+A show. We call that format “NO DUMB QUESTIONS.” This isn’t that. This is Ross and Sam running a weird almost-gameshow and answering uncomfy questions from each other under pressure. 

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IN THIS EP: Ro...

Jimmy Kite crashed four times—four!—trying to qualify for the 1998 Indy 500. The story of how he finally made the show holds bad luck and trashed cars but also a hidden concussion, a giant fireball, an airborne gearbox, and a fat dose of can-do spirit. 

Plus: INTC co-host Jeff Braun! Jeff was Kite’s chief engineer that year. So we brought Jimmy onto the show and asked him and Jeff to tell the whole tale.

Kite was a 22-year-old sprint-car kid from Missouri who came up on dirt and had just been crowned 1997 USAC Silver Crown R...

We’ve driven nearly all of ’em. Nearly every road model, plus some great race cars and extended family—a 934 and 935, a Daytona-winning Sixties 2.0-liter, a Rothmans 962, some 959s and RSRs, even Jerry Seinfeld’s 1964 “Butzi” shorty.

Why do people love (and hate) the Porsche 911? Are the good ones worth the money? Can a reasonable person grow to love a great 911 if they don't like the things to begin with?

Cliché questions. We hit them, then go deeper: What do you learn strapping into all that unobtainium?

Ross and Sam have some rare wheel hours w...

IndyCar is a gnarly old series, and 2025 was one of the sport’s gnarliest seasons. So we asked the one and only Marshall Pruett to break it all down—own the mic, spit Palou truth, don’t hold back.

(That’s Pruett's secret—he never holds back.)

Select Pruett bona fides: decades of paddock reporting for RACER, ESPN, and Road & Track. Hosts the Marshall Pruett Podcast, which you should totally check out. Also, he’s on a first-name basis with Chip Ganassi’s lawyer.

Select IndyCar gnar, 2025: Scandals! Lawsuits! Chevrolet and Penske face-plants! Plus a mild-ma...

Picture it: Your scrappy little pro race team has a rough 2024. The next year, out of nowhere, you win Daytona. Then the whole gang takes its first trip to Le Mans and lands a killer finish.

The rest of Jeff Braun's 2025 IMSA season was, to quote Jeff, “not that.”

This one’s a doozy: First, we’ve got INTC co-host Jeff sharing what he learned in IMSA this year. (Jeff helps run a Corvette in the GTD class, remember.) Second, we’ve got Sam, who made way too much coffee on tape day. He's a little rap...

More than 150 corners. Twelve point nine miles. History out the wazoo, big fun, big challenge to drive quickly. The Nürburgring Nordschleife is basically the world’s greatest race track.

Wanna go? Of course you do! How convenient—Ross just got back from there! In this episode, he and Sam discuss that trip, why Ross takes a small group of clients and friends to the Ring every year, and why Sam has had many opportunities to visit the place for work and kept saying no.

(Hint: It may be because Sam is a romantic doofus.)

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Little ditty... 'bout a race and a Speedway! Two Indy names, growin’ up in the heartland. Race gonna make the front page of the Indy Star? Speedway gonna something something… uh... museum... race... car!

Yeah, sure, that makes sense! Don't tell me if it doesn't?

The story of the first Indy 500 holds a lot of things—death, sand, smoke, around a million blown tires—but it does not hold John Mellencamp lyrics. Still, I hear Mellencamp in my head every time I meet Indiana, so that’s what I'm puttin' here.

(If you squint, th...

Remember the time you almost died because your hotted-up old Camarobird got all loose and stabby up at Dead Man’s Cul de Sac? Or maybe it was Turn 45 at Laguna Merrica. Either way, there you were, boppin’ along like a lap-wreckered Versteppy, when you nearly bought the farm.

“She handled like trash that day,” you told the cops/the race steward/that fry cook at Burger Queen. “No idea why.” And the gathered crowd sighed—who hasn’t been there?

Few automotive terms are as misunderstood as “handling.” What does it mean? Can “good” or “bad” handling be mea...

INTC is on a short break, so we're dishing up an encore presentation of some of our favorite stories! This show originally aired in June of 2024.

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Once, a long time ago, a brave man went to a beach and tried to drive faster than anyone ever had. He did not survive. This is his story. 

This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. This episode is our monthly deep dive into an epic moment from racing history.

In this case, that means the story of Welshman John Parry-Thomas and the 180-mph stac...

While the INTC gang is on a short break, we're dishing up an encore presentation of some of our favorite stories! This episode originally aired in April of 2024.

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Once, in the 1990s, an Italian carmaker hadn’t gone sports-car racing in 20 years. Maybe they were too busy figuring out new ways to make a 348 catch fire or something. Then some influential folks made a few expressive hand gestures and the Italians agreed to do it—but just this once, and then you gotta vaffanculo, alright?

Hold onto your butts: Today, we tell the story...

INTC is on a short break, so we're dishing up an encore presentation of some of our favorite stories! This episode originally aired August 13, 2024. Guts, hot-rodders, and the legendary Carroll Shelby—it's a good one!

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In the summer of 1965, a V-8-powered love song from California dethroned Ferrari, shut up the haters, and won America its first FIA manufacturer’s road-racing championship. 

Naturally, almost no one here noticed.

The Californian car was a gutsy experiment from a 28-year-old ex-GM designer named Pete Brock. Their story holds bootstraps, napkin math, and one badas...

The perfect race driver doesn't exist. But great drivers *try* to be perfect.

How? We'll tell you! In the form of a spicy excerpt from “Ultimate Speed Secrets," the best-selling performance book by INTC co-host Ross Bentley!

(Bonus: Saucy stories from Ross's coaching past!)

(Disclaimer: Said excerpt and stories may be neither spicy nor saucy!)

This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. We call this format “INTC BOOK CLUB.” Think of it as a strange but unexpectedly entertaining audiobook that you bought by accident at a random truck stop long before po...