2026 Competition Update with John Probst

[Music] Welcome everybody to another edition of NASCAR's Holler Talk. I am NASCAR's Mike Ford. joined as always by Amanda Ellis. Amanda, how are you? Welcome back. Happy Easter. Happy Bladed. How's everything going? It is going great. I'm glad to be back from a brief vacation and ready to talk some racing. Hell yeah. And also joined as always by Nate Ryan, Nate. I think you had off this weekend, right? Pretty much, yeah. I got sick, which is why I sound a little froggy, so I apologize for that. But yeah, good to be back talking racing. Sure got on the beach like Amanda and everybody else in NASCAR. We didn't get the memo for it, apparently. Probably. Yeah, no, no. Pale is ever. I am. So we have a little bit of rocking ham up, duty to do. Not much. The meat of this episode, I think for all those fans out there, all listeners out there will be an interview with John Probe's who is NASCAR's Chief Racing Development Officer and what that title essentially means is he's the competition leader. So every part and piece under NASCAR every everything from R&D and safety to competition to racing operations, all falls under John. And we get into a lot of interesting topics talking about the 2026 season, the rules packages, the art and science of racing, the tires. And then some news nuggets to be honest. So we will have an update on the clearest McFarland approval process and then the fuel savings at Super Speedway specifically with Taladega, which is only what two and a half weeks away. And so we have we'll have some news there. So hopefully you hang on and listen to that interview with some really good stuff from John. It was his first time on hauler talk, certainly not his last time. So please stay tuned for that interview. But in the immediacy, we'll kick it over to Nate to finish off some rocking ham chatter, which which I think will be pretty pretty short. Yeah, we just got a couple of leftovers for it. Actually, we've got one that we would have done in the episode before rocking him if we had tape one, but we didn't we were off. So this comes from a long time listener that some people may have heard of his name is Bob Pokerous. And he had asked me before rocking him after Martin's bill, if I could ask you guys, why were there no rain tires at rocking him when rain tires were available at Phoenix in New Hampshire, being at NASCAR's now using rain tires on short tracks or tracks that are like mile and shorter. Why no rain tires were rocking him. Yeah, it was it was more of a speed and load situation. We didn't really have a chance to test out the rain tires there. And so we opted not to go with that. So but a really good question and one that we are going to to look at for the future. I think this is one where we may if if we go back in 2027 and beyond, very well could have rain tires there. I need to get with their great partners at good year racing on that one. But it was one of those where it was a little bit too big of a track with higher speeds, higher loads. Now we haven't really experienced that type that type of racing with the with the rain tires. So not total comfort level from a safety perspective. But but I wanted to say this is going to be the case forever and ever. I could see us looking into it and maybe as soon as next year I have rain tires there. Well fortunately they weren't needed anyway at rock man. No ink limit whether to speak of that I know of. So no interruption for rain. But it did rain on the parade of some O'Reilly auto parts teams. As I I glanced up actually somebody sent me a screenshot from practice of O'Reilly auto parts that rocked me into the way and more than a dozen teams trucks. Yeah, we're issues are always a truck series truck series. I totally out of myself is not having watched rocking him practice. But okay truck series more than a dozen 10 minute pennies to teams for inspection failures at rocking him. So they were docked practice time and so what was the low down on all that and is that somewhat unusual because I don't feel like that's happened as often maybe in cup where teams have sat out a certain specified period of time. Yep, it doesn't it doesn't happen in cup. It doesn't happen in O'Reilly. So this is it's kind of flown under the radar. We did talk a little bit about it in the in the preseason R&D center briefing and I think in the preseason maybe one of the preseason Hall or talks to but maybe not. So this is a Crestman truck series specific deterrent penalty if you will. It's not an official you know it doesn't go into any penalty reports. There's no points deductions. But we started this practice in the middle of 2025. Seth Kramlock the the NASCAR Crestman truck series managing director had noticed that the inspection success rate last year was not really where we wanted to be. A lot of teams were failing first time through and if you if you fail the first time through in any series truck series or rally or cup there is no penalty. But if you fail the second time that's when it starts kicking in. So what what happens is you have teams that are really pushing the envelope and and just taking sort of that gimme that Mulligan and that first one through. But then that what happens is start stacking up you'll have a lot of two timers it delays the process and then all of a sudden you're pushing up against practice and it just it just becomes overall problematic. So what you start doing is if you fail first time through in two events in a row you get a 10 minute practice penalty. Fail three events in a row you get a 20 minutes practice penalty. If you fail four plus events in a row you're not allowed to practice. So in this case in Rockingham as you saw several teams had two events in a row with first time failures and so they got that 10 minute practice penalty and that's just in trucks. It's really just a way for try to to clean up that process a little bit and have teams unload ready to ready to practice. So yeah that's pretty much it pretty clean race at Rockingham. I guess we did have a a DQ of sorts is a 38 truck had a DQ. I don't think there's much to talk about there after a race the top five cars go through heights and weights and and they were too low I believe. So pretty pretty black and white penalty there so they did not appeal. They had a deadline of one day afternoon did not did not appeal so we'll move forward to Bristol for the truck series on Friday night which should be a really good show. They always put on a good show at the high banks of Bristol. So that's it for Rockingham and now we'll go to our interview with the NASCAR Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Development Officer John Probst. Enjoy it. I think you'll learn a lot. Okay we have a guest this week and you know we joke in Hallertalk and how we are super buttoned up in NASCAR's hottest new podcast Hallertalk and it's really the must stop must listen to competition podcasts at NASCAR. So if you're asking yourself you know how often have they had the competition leader on Hallertalk they've been doing it for a year and a half probably I don't know half a dozen times probably the answer is zero but that ends today we have NASCAR Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Development Officer John Probst with us to go over all the competition nuggets and fun stuff a little state of the competition and here he is right now John welcome finally to the show. Thank you Mike. I'm getting to think I should have made fun of you there and the early going kind of held a grudge on me there for a little bit but I'm glad to finally be on the hottest new podcast in NASCAR. Hey the pleasure is all on this side of the table my friend so so John let's let's start with the little foundational thing since this is your first time I think you know you've been you've been in the media a bunch and like I said John is the competition leader as Chief Racing Development Officer he manages everything from the sporting competition side the R&D center side the racing operation side so his purview is is over all that the safety side but let's go back before your NASCAR career John give us a little bit of a bite size cliff notes version of your resume where where were you before NASCAR in those many years and how many how long have you been in the sport too. Yeah well I'm going to date myself here a little bit but graduated from Penn State 1994 with a mechanical engineering degree and a passion for racing was fortunate enough to get hired by Ford right out of college and went up there and was lucky enough to find a lot of the right mentors you know early on in my career and spent 12 years at Ford probably a 11 of them in racing and everything from Formula One to drag racing to some you know you know, grass reshracing with the midget and silver crown cars. Ultimately, got to do some Formula One for three and a half seasons with Ford. And at the sort of my tail end of my career at Ford was fortunate enough to start getting involved with Rausch through a lot of the Ford programs that we had going on with them at the time. It was fortunate enough to win a championship with Kurt Busch and Matt Kenzith at the time. And then Red Bull came into the sport with Toyota into the cup side of the sport in 2007. And I was fortunate enough to find myself with the opportunity to move from Michigan down to North Carolina in 2006. And it then kind of here in the Carolinas on the team side since 2006 through 2016. And then now been almost 10 years with NASCAR. Awesome. Well, thank you, John. So now let's get back, let's get into this sort of nitty gritty of what all the fans want to know about it. And that's what they tune into this podcast and tune into each NASCAR race for. And that's the competition. So 2026, I would say, is was a pretty big step being stoned year or a big step departure from what used to happen. You got the new chase, you got the new rules package, you got the new horse level, a horse power level. So we've seen the new horse power level now at Coda, Phoenix, Darlington and Martinsville in the first seven races, new arrow and horse power levels at Darlington. Give us your overview of how the first seven races have played out sort of a state of the competition from your seat, John. Yeah, I think that when you look at it as a whole, you'd have to say the state of competition is very good in NASCAR Pup series. There's obvious opportunities to get better when you look at individual races. But I think that, you know, by and large, I think it illustrates that there really is no single silver bullet that just magically addresses all the ills of whatever particular track you want to insert. And I think that certainly the added horse power has gotten really good feedback from our drivers. I believe our fans like it as well. But I think that, you know, it also shows that you can't just, you know, dial the horse power up and fix all your problems. It truly is a package. You know, we continue to work with good year, with good success on, you know, creating tires that wear more and fall off more. That's an area that, you know, we keep focusing on. The increased horse power certainly is something that will wear the tires, you know, more than they would with the old package, you know, the less down force also, again, slipping and sliding on the track or all things that just work the tires harder. And I think that, you know, we'll continue to address all fronts, be it horse power, you know, be it aerodynamics, all of that. We'll always be looking at that. The tires will always be something that we're working on. So I would say that when you look at all the stats on average, we're very happy with how the season has gone this year. When you look at a lot of the stats that we pay particular attention to, they're all in, you know, top three of all time kind of, of levels. So we're very happy with where we're at. But like I say, we're, we're pleased, but never satisfied. So we'll continue to listen to our fans, we meet with our drivers regularly and just try to address their concerns, you know, in a pretty measured sense because it's, it's a lot easier, you know, to mess it up than it is to make it incrementally better. And our goal is to incrementally make it better over time so that, you know, we put the best product out there in the world for our fans to watch and see and enjoy. John, obviously we joke that Ford pretty much got himself fired because he's had everybody who's worked for you on this podcast before you joined us. So, but in saying that, we sort of did have you on Hallertock, the three of us, me, you and Ford, and that we talked before Darlington and had like a Hallertock type podcast about the 2026 rules and about what it would mean for Darlington in terms of tire wear and aerodynamics. So I wanted to kind of follow up on that because people can see what your quotes were in the associate press story they ripped before the Darlington race, but essentially you were talking about how you were balancing entertainment and competition, you know, making sure that the fans are happy with what they see on track, but also making sure that the teams feel as if there's that integrity on the competitive side as well. You know, you talked about your background. Obviously, I don't think you really had a lot of sanctioning body experience before you came to NASCAR. It was mostly on the team side, the manufacturer side, the OEM side. So I'm sure you're more used to that side. You know, what are those sort of determining factors? How do you think Darlington went? What are those determining factors for deciding if you guys are in the right place in terms of, you know, the rules package and the impact it's having on the race? Yes, certainly. I would say maybe it was a Hallertock light. You know, we didn't have a man to there. So we'll just give Ford like half credit for that. Anything, you know, any time that, you know, we make changes to the package, you know, there's, and you had mentioned it, there's that balance of entertainment and competition. And I think that there are, you know, there are times when from the competitor side, you try and plan out every detail of the weekend. And generally for us, the more information that we provide the competitors, the more they're able to plan the entire weekend out. And I think that when we have instances where that's very predictable, a lot of times, or oftentimes, let's say those tend to not be events that are, you know, ranked very highly by our Fane Council in that when you go in and you exactly know how everything's going to unfold and you're actually good at doing that. And that is how it unfolds. The race gets like a predictable feel to it. And I know that as a competitor, you like that because you're feeling control of the situation. And I think that when we have events that throw curveballs to the competitors, be it more horsepower or the result of the more horsepower say it be, you know, more wear that may be inaccessible what they had thought that they were going to have for the weekend, that I think that's when you actually see like an event unfold. And the fans can appreciate a lot of the engineering that goes into it, watching it unfold in real time versus somewhat prior to the event and it just unfolding as expected. So I think that when we throw new elements at an event, be it a new tire, more horsepower, less down force or whatever else would be a potential change to a package going into a weekend. I think that the better we are to make that a little bit unpredictable, the better the show for our fans. But it is a fine line and sometimes one that's more art than science. If you go too far and we create, you know, the proverbial shit show, then in that case, like we probably went too far on the side of entertainment and we probably lost a little bit of the sport. So I can say it sometimes is more art than science that we want to make it appear and, you know, some of that we get better with time, but some of it, frankly, there are so many variables to include there. It gets pretty hard to predict that like right down to, you know, as the sign out is it not out? Is the track hot? Is it not? Is it rain and did it rain the night before? Was there, you know, other series on track before us? So more art than science, Nate, but certainly something that, you know, personifies at least for us why we try to take small steps and not big wax at it when making changes to the product. John, you obviously were going to Bristol this weekend and you mentioned, you know, the art of keeping teams on their toes and trying not to get too predictable in, you know, how we run races or just kind of how races play out. Obviously, good year is bringing a new tire this weekend. Can you just talk a little bit about that process, but also just what that process looks like in general and how close we work with good year on a, you know, weekly basis? Yeah, sure. I think that you hit it on the head there. We do have a completely new left side tire compounding construction heading into the weekend. Mostly out of a tire test we had back in November. And when you look at, you know, how do we formulate tires and plans going into a weekend? It certainly starts with good year and our drivers and listening to the feedback that the drivers have after every event we meet with good year on a weekly basis after every event through view. All three races for the weekend, assuming all three are in action that weekend. And I think that. You know, some of that is instilling the confidence in good year that we are all after this for the betterment of the sport together. And you know, that includes all the stakeholders. And I think that a lot of times we'll give good year the confidence that they need to get pretty aggressive with the tires. And I think that we've seen them get very aggressive. If you look at, you know, kind of that almost, you know, hairline, you know, temperature sensitivity that we had at Bristol a few years back. And then going back essentially with the exact same tire and actually building rubber up on the track, you can see exactly how aggressive they're willing to get. But I think that, you know, they only do that because they know that the appetite from the fans and from the competitors and from all the stakeholders for that matter is such that we want to try things and we want to see how they work. And sometimes those experiments unfold in real life in front of millions of fans. And we're willing to take those risks because we've all kind of put our hands in and said, we're willing to do this for the sake of, you know, making the sport better. And putting on a better product. Now back to the art part of this, right? It's, it's, it's a lot of times. You know, as an engineer, as an engineer, you hate to admit sometimes that, you know, there is a little bit of fate in some of the stuff that we do. You know, if you look at the temperature swings that our races happen over in the different weather, we could be, if you look at Bowman Gray just this year, there was freezing temperatures at night and a lot of people don't know, but a lot of the tires have to be stored indoors when it gets that cold. And they have to be heated and they can be damaged if, if, you know, just from bouncing them around, you know, when they're not even on a car, if it's cold enough, you'll damage the tire. They're that sensitive. So there are a lot of things that you try to plan for and you make assumptions on, but just given the span of temperatures that we could have over the course of a weekend or across our schedule throughout the season, make it that there's, there's a lot of science. Don't get me wrong. We have the smartest engineers in the world working on these cars, but there is also a little bit of fate that comes in and, you know, I think that when we're all working together and we're doing it as an industry, there's a lot of risks that we're willing to take for the sake of a good product for our fans. So that is the preview for the most upcoming race in Bristol, a little bit further down the line, but I know we've been working on this for a number of months now is in San Diego and the Naval Base Coronado really looking forward to getting there really exciting is going to be a first time event. John, how is that how is that planning coming along? Do we have a final course layout and how are you feeling about that race course and showing up there in the middle of June? We're super excited to go out there. I know Ben Kennedy and his whole team have been working hard on getting us to new venues and certainly going to Coronado is the icing on the cake so far for us. I think that any time that we're able to perform, you know, in 250th year of our country in front of our, you know, our fighting forces on Coronado, it's really special. And I think that we've had multiple trips out there so far. We have had not just NASCAR trips out there. We've had industry people out there at this point and we've had drivers running various versions of this course for months now back into, you know, last year, you know, hats off to SVG and syndicate bell, Byron, drivers like that have been working with Jerry Caproff here at the R&D Center to finalize the race. We've been working with the R&D Center to finalize the course layout. I can report that, you know, we do have a final course layout at this point that will require some paving of the track. There are areas of it particularly like turn four where we have to do some work there. Some tracks that they used to load the aircraft carriers that are probably a little bit problematic for the cars, but certainly something that will be unique to that race track, something that we will have to sort of mitigate. You're not going to get rid of the tracks that they use to load aircraft carriers. So we're just not going to do that. So there will be a little bit of, you know, we'll mitigate what we can, but there will be some, the drivers will have to deal with some unique features. That of course like that will throw at us, but certainly, you know, it's an honor for us to go out there and race in June. All right, John. So over the last, what, three, four years, I can think of three tracks that weren't tracks that we raced on. Los Angeles, Chicago, and now San Diego, and you haven't, we haven't completed San Diego yet. But in the lead up to San Diego, maybe you can sort of answer this, rank from lowest to highest, what has been the hardest to get through? Well, it'd be tough to put San Diego on it because we haven't actually done a whole lot out there yet. Probably what comes to mind for me, and they all are unique, right? Because they all have a different little, um, wrinkle to them. But for me, the hardest one to get through was the call. Oh, really? I would have guessed Chicago. Well, I will get to that. I mean, both of them involved the same thing, right? We had a lot of rain. And if you look at the Coliseum, we went in there with learning new terms, weather terms, like atmospheric river and things like that. You know, I, I have never heard of that before, but you know, we're sitting there on a Saturday and all you're hearing about is how this atmospheric river is going to come through and you might not race until Wednesday, right? So then you're sitting there. We know we're not going to be able to race until Wednesday at the earliest. And here it is on a Saturday. And it was like, hey, can we race on Saturday? So I throw that one up there because I'm not aware of any time in our history where we've moved to race forward. I mean, normally for weather, we're moving it back. And I think in those, those situations, you know, like you never know, you hope you make the right decision. And, and then you see like on Wednesday when they're able to actually get equipment on that track to start tearing it apart. I'm not so sure we wouldn't have been able to race just given how much rain had come down and things of that nature like compromising potentially now. I'm not saying we would have, but that track was not in good shape from all the rain that had happened and that's, you know, a complete pave of a football field to go racing. Chicago, like you had mentioned again, has it had its own unique challenges, you know, like I think early on there we had, you know, record settings, rains that came through there. And that's when we learn like silly little lessons like you got to cut the in the Jersey barrier. You got to cut out the little holes for the forklifts, not because the forklifts need to get in, but because the water needed to get out. So like you just learn a lot of little things that seem obvious after they happen, but like on the front end or things that you would never, you know, imagine. Basically Chicago very unique right your downtown. So you're dealing more with like people flow and car flow, whereas when you're at the call, see him, we were, you know, cars and people moving in and out is what they do. So I'd say they're all unique. I think that when you look to San Diego. I think one of the things I look forward to the most there is you know, when you meet there like Captain Jacobi is the base commander. Like they are super pumped to have us there. And I know like in our trip out there, you know, he promised us the three best flyovers in the history of NASCAR. Because you know, everywhere else that we race, it's controlled by the FAA. Well, when we race at Coronado, you know, Captain Jacobi controls the airspace. We promised us the three best flyovers. So I can't wait to get out there and see the good racing. We're going to put on, but also I want to see the three flyovers. I can't have had some pretty good flyovers in our day. So excited for that to. I've kind of fallen up on Ford's question then, John, knowing what you've done there, what you know, the Coliseum, you're racing an Olympic venue inside and then have this threat of, you know, cataclysmic weather conditions, you guys get through that Chicago, you're racing on the streets of the windy city downtown 50 million dollar track that you just built from scratch. And it just it worked. Does that give you some confidence then going to San Diego, knowing you guys have been through that and knowing now you got to worry about, you know, the aircraft carriers are loading here. That's going to affect the track here. I don't know, the F16s or whatever they land here. So you can't have turned for there. I know race, there was always have to be resourceful to some extent, but it seems like you guys have gone through a lot with Chicago and with the Coliseum to be ready for San Diego. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that when you go through the building of a track at the Coliseum and then sort of morphing of a racing circuit into a city street, sort of layout that it does give us the confidence to get more aggressive and to try things. And I think that in a lot of ways, the base as far as, you know, challenges that we've faced in the past. is just more of the same at a different facility, if you will. We've certainly got the paving experience to pave anything in the world if we wanted to. And then with the three seasons or the three races we did at Chicago, we've obviously gotten very familiar in how to put up temporary street circuits, which is largely what we'll be doing at the base. But as you pointed out, there are parts of that base that will be racing on tarmac, runways, streets that are in their concrete asphalt. So that track will probably have more different aspects to it than any track we've ever raced on, including like we had mentioned, railroad tracks. And there are a few other transition areas and like turn six that all have some pretty big dips that I'm sure we'll get out there. No, there'll be some curve balls that we have to hit like that that's just part of our our normal grind. But I think that you know, once we get everybody at the track and we get kind of into the grind of our normal race weekend that one thing that our our industry has shown is that once we're on site and you know, we're kind of into our normal grind that we we can adapt as well as anyone and we can we can get through a weekend and put on a really good show. Another new track this season, but not new to NASCAR, what's what's old is new again in this case, Chicago land speedway coming back online in the Cup series for the first time since 2019. I saw there was news of a tire test. I think it's two weeks from today. Good year tire test at Chicago land speedway back at that track. What can you tell us John about preparations there? I know we've seen some photos. Obviously they that it pretty much sat dormant for for five or six years and now it's it's coming back to NASCAR's premier circuit. So how are preparations going on that front? Yeah, certainly Chicago land for us, you know, as you'd mentioned sat dormant for quite a while. We've sent, you know, our advanced team out there to look over the track surface and the facilities in general. And, you know, we're pleased to find out that the track surface itself, it actually weathered pretty well. There are there's no major repaves needed for that track. There'll be some track bond put in here and there to patch up some some minor issues with the track surface. But we're actually pretty pleased with, you know, how we found the track surface, the racing surface itself. There, there will obviously be, you know, some painting and cleaning up and things of that nature, some garage work going on and some retro fitting of the sweets. But pretty pleased with how the track weathered over time and, you know, we'll go back there and, you know, this current packages has had some pretty good racing at Kansas. Chicago is a bit of a, a sister, if you will, to Kansas. So we're, we're pretty, pretty pumped up. We think that'll be a really good show. All right, John, maybe one of the questions that everyone does seem to have right now, at least from from our fan base, would be an update on Cletus McFarlane. Obviously he ran this past weekend in Rockingham and there's some conversation on, you know, if he would be approved to run Talladega later this month. And I was just wondering if you had an update on that that we can share. Yeah, certainly I'd start off by saying, you know, we're all huge Cletus fans. We all watch his videos. Certainly very appreciative of everything he's done in our sport and we'll continue to do in our sport. You know, when you look at just sort of the process that we go through. And when a driver comes to NASCAR and they want to get approved through our three national series, most of the time it's with the ultimate goal of racing and cup, but not always. We have a driver committee that goes through and looks at their resume and then sets forth in front of that may driver plan that it shows them how to get from point A to point B. And I think that right now when you look at Cletus, he's done some archer races. He's done one truck race. And then obviously this weekend, the O'Reilly start. And I think that he is approved right now, O'Reilly series short track, which means he's good for all of our truck. And then O'Reilly up through the short tracks. Right now we are in a we'd like to see more out of Cletus in the short tracks. And as of right now, we're not saying no to Taladega, but that there is there is more that we would like to see out of Cletus before we would approve him for Taladega coming up here in a couple weeks. Another topic heading to Taladega, John, obviously stage lengths and few mileage at the super speedways Daytona and Taladega has been a big topic. And I'm looking at that anything new in terms of Taladega in terms of stages or how you guys are going to approach this is as you know you guys are always looking at ways to kind of make sure that it's in entertain race like you said for fans watching the Taladega race. Yeah, certainly when we listen, we talked to our fans every week. So we hear what they're saying. There's certainly a lot of feedback from the fans that don't always like to see some of the three wide fuel saving that happens mostly at Taladega and Daytona. And I think that coming out of Daytona, we have been working hand in hand with a lot of our race teams trying to largely break into like two categories, things that we could do. Things like rules around pit stops or stage lengths or things of that nature, the other being in a technical bucket, which would mean car changes, spoiler power levels, things of that nature. You know, as we went through all of our options, you know, not just with NASCAR, but as I mentioned before, even with the teams, there's a there's a little bit of reluctance to just make wholesale changes to any of the technical stuff in the middle of the season for fear of the unintended consequences. So when you look at what's in the sporting bucket, these are things like the stage lengths and the order of the stage lengths. If you look at generally how a lot of our speedways were laid out, it was a short stage, a short stage and then a long stage to the end. Going into Talladega, we're going to flip that and adjust the lengths of the final two stages such that we are confident that the last two stages are short enough to be made without a fuel stop. It could be interesting as well in that first stage, the length of it, if there's some that try to do it on one stop versus some that try to do it on two. We think that if there are some that decide to do it on two, they may drag the group that would try to do it on one along with them to where they won't be able to do it and once so it's got some some potential there for some pretty interesting strategies. When it comes to car changes, we will likely right now plan to have a test in Daytona in January, kind of how we used to do it in the past, where we'll go down there and try some different power levels and spoilers and maybe some other car type things to see what we can do there to to mitigate it further. It's important to point out that this is a tool now that the teams know and this is not something that I think is ever going to go away because these guys will look for every possible advantage that they can get and that's reasonable on their end. So I think that what we can do is just take steps to mitigate that and I think that looking at the sporting stuff that we can do quick and get a read on it this year and then look at some car things next year is our best chance for success there back to stepping through the process and methodical way, making sure we don't upset anything in the process because it's very possible that you you know you air quote fix. The the fuel mileage racing in we end up with single file racing on the top or the bottom and then we've just basically shifted the concern from our fans from fuel mileage to what will be perceived as a poor or package because they're all in a single line but a lot of times they're just they're burning laps to get to the you know. For the money lapse if you will right that's what we see a couple of follow ups there because obviously graced us with some interesting nuggets the Daytona test is that going to be prior to the Rolex 24 kind of way used to be like preseason thunder I think you guys used to call it like prior to Rolex January Daytona so well ahead of the 500. Yeah we'll get that in as early as we can we'll have to work obviously with Frank Keller her and the crew there Daytona to get some times that that will work for everyone but yeah I would anticipate that it would be very similar to how we've done that in the past. And given the fact that we'll be trying you know some pretty significant car stuff we'd probably do those and organized groups like we've done in the past where run package a for this amount of time package a out see what it looks like run package B. And so on and so forth and we'll develop that here as the season goes on and we'll work with our race teams. in our engine builders for that matter, 'cause all these folks will be important parts of pulling this off. - Got it. And in terms of the stage lengths, you said that the goal would be stage lengths shorter than the fuel run for those last two stages at Talladega. Is that unusual, John? You guys usually try to make the stages at least the length of a fuel run is a kind of a different step for you there? - Yeah, there's no fixed formula for that. And I think that Scott Miller here at the R&D Center works a lot with some of the strategists on the race team side. To, we try to have a couple stages of just kind of all out racing and then there's somewhere strategy could come into play. Just to try and have a little bit of everything for our fans, there's some that like to see the straight up racing and then there's some also that like the strategy that comes into play. So we try to mix and match that into every race. Now obviously as natural caution's fall, all of that gets jumbled sometimes as soon as we throw the green flag, but the intention is to try and mix that in on the front end. Knowing that what they used to say, like everybody has a plan till you get punched into face, like it's kind of like one of those things. We all have a plan till we throw the green flag. But yeah, that's the intention on the front end anyway. All right, I know boxing fan Mike Ford love that Mike tights to reference just now, but everybody has a plan for the fantastic. I just have one more before Mike Ford rips the mic out of my hand before I get his book in trouble, but I just have one more. John, because you're now in the NASCAR extended podcast universe as we call it, one of the topics in the NASCAR extended podcast universe recently has been the length of the yellows between stages, the stage break, break cautions. I believe it was Danny Hamlin who was talking about this post Martin's bill saying that those need to be shortened up. I know this is not a new discussion at all in my mind in NASCAR. I mean, when you guys started stages in 2017, like I think the intent of stage break yellows was to give your TV partners a chance to run commercials and to kind of just take a little bit of a natural break. So I know it's always part of it, but are you guys looking at that? I just want to give you a chance to address that. Is there a desire to kind of shorten? I know you guys can't eliminate stage break yellows. I wouldn't think, but is there a desire to shorten the length of those cautions between stages? The short answer is yes. I think that when you look at why we implemented a lot of the stage breaks was to maximize the amount of green flag coverage that we had on television. And so the intentions were good. I think over time what we've seen is the execution of that is something that we want to work with our broadcast partners to find ways to shorten that. And I think that we have some events coming up here in the future that we want to try some things a little bit different. But when you look at sort of that sequence of capturing the end of the stage, then going to break, then covering the pit stops, going back to break, and then wanting to cover the shoes, that kind of locks us into a certain cadence that generally works OK. But when you look at Martin'sville this weekend, when the yellow comes out with three or something like that to go in the stage, you're kind of forced to ride it out. So I think what we're looking to do there is just find creative ways to get the broadcasters the time they need to show the commercials. At the end of the day, they are paying debills. So I mean, you do want to show the commercials, but that we want to find creative ways to kind of find a win-win there and get them the time that they need for the commercials, but then also find the time to show as much of the green flag racing as we possibly can. That is something, like I said, we are going to try some things different in a couple of events coming up. We do track that pretty regularly. Well, we track it as a matter of fact every week. How much time is spent in yellow for stage breaks, natural yellows, and then also obviously green flag running. So it is a metric that we track. So it's one that we can obviously work on to improve. We'll continue to work with the industry to make that as good as we possibly can. All right, John. Well, this has been very enlightening. I hope your first appearance will not be your last. I asked you a ranking question. Do you have a ranking of favorite to least favorite Hallertalk hosts? Yeah. Well, it's going to be Amanda's my favorite, right? And then Nate, and then Mike, you're like, I don't know. You kind of barely adequate. On the marginal side of adequate, maybe? OK. I'll take that. I'll take that. All right. I just want to make sure I'm not writing it again for another-- [LAUGHTER] Making strategies work too. [INTERPOSING VOICES] Awesome. Well, John, I really appreciate the time. And thanks for all the news and information. We'll definitely have you back sooner than 18 months. Good luck this week in Bristol. We'll see you out there and have a great rest of the day. But-- All right. Have a good one. Thank you all. All right. Thank you for listening to another episode of Hallertalk. I hope you enjoyed our interview with John Forbes. Obviously, someone we work with here day to day at the NASCAR R&D Center. And grateful that he finally agreed to come on. And hopefully, we'll be able to have him on again soon. As always, thank you for listening, rating, and reviewing the podcast. And we look forward to talking to you next week. We'll be able to break down Bristol and see what happens with the new "Good Your Tire" and all the things. So we'll see you next week.