Notes from Off Track (A Thimless One)
Thim is not there (he’s on a plane) and can hear them talking but he can’t say anything in response. They enjoyed this. 🎧
James is hangry and pissed off - Alex told him he was an adult so needed to sort himself out and get food. Was meant to order room service, but no one was answering his calls to order, for 32 whole minutes then they both went on a rant about it, but food should arrive part way through the recording 🍛
He’s in Palm Springs doing an event for CSN Collision Centres, come from Baltimore to look at some safety stuff (James has done a CSN commercial and Alex told him he didn’t like his tyre screech, but it’s apparently Marvin Kirchhoff drove in that section)🧯
Alex likes his new livery, is in Florida - Alex said Christian was ill when they were filming some of the promo stuff (he seems to talk about him fondly) and now he has passed it on to Alex who also sounds sick (he had fevers, sweats and night terrors apparently). I refuse to even entertain the idea of them getting sick any other way. 😷
Alex flew to Miami on Saturday, played golf, had dinner - then on Sunday he went to Palm Meadows training centre to see Castle Run who was sick in November and he has been ill since then so has been kept warm in Florida, and he has returned to his pre-illness abilities 🐎
Went to Sebring (via Cracker Barrel - his new sponsor). Team flew on charter flight from Indy to the airport near Sebring, but it was not very dependable, and their plane was extremely delayed. So they went to play golf again ⛳️
The Sebring test - he was Monday PM and Tuesday AM - so watched the Monday morning session, but it was split up randomly rather than each team always having one car on track (they both think that it was silly idea) 🙄
Some good stuff, some disappointing stuff - ECR are making some of their own stuff this off season, and so that has repercussions. Performance isn’t overall WOW, but he’s still excited to see what the car is like. Said the team’s approach is very different in terms of street course philosophy in comparison to McLaren. A lot of new systems, new people, big upgrades - meant that Alex couldn’t do a lap for the first hour because they were having fuel pressure problems ⛽︎
Fuel flow sensors on the cars this year - haven’t run this on track yet, but it wasn’t that - but with 2 hours to go he hadn’t done any laps (Scott Dixon also hadn’t because of an engine install issue) - only out/ins - found a solution to do some laps with 3/4-1 full tank but they did identify some of the issues and changed everything overnight🕵🏼
Car was fixed for Tuesday and it went a lot better - and he got through some of the stuff they wanted to even if they weren’t the fastest, and he was pretty happy with some of it - then Christian had a hybrid issue in the afternoon 🫠
“I’m gonna be honest with you, it was about as bad a test as a team could have” - this was meant to be the best pre-season tests the team has hand but it ended up… not being. He still seems really positive at being part of a team that “pivot’s quickly” and makes quick changes, so it’s not all bad. He’s realistic but he seems excited to be involved and to see them get good results 🥳
James asked who he thinks is looking good - according to Alex, the 12 (Will), the 10 (Alex), the 26 (Colton), the 9 (Scott), Pato (he was strong and fast, but Alex doesn’t know about the deg). MSR cars looked good because of the technical alliance with CGR - the other people who were fast never backed it up on the second day (Conor, SRR, Dev) - he did say Callum was very good and they were strong in their test 🥰
There’s going to be a new tyre but they didn’t test it 🛞
They both watched the Daytona 500 (Alex, the last 70 laps) - said the end was anti-climatic and the crashes ruin stuff 5️⃣0️⃣0️⃣
