Hi Mike

An automotive/motorsport writer, a race engineer, and a driver coach walk into a bar...

What do they talk about?

A brand new podcast!

We’ve been working on this for a bit, and I’m really excited to share it with you. Is this new show about racing? Of course! But also so much more.

From the "official" description:


It’s Not the Car is a podcast about motorsport—triumphs, screwups, yesterday, today, and how we think and work under pressure. Ross Bentley is a former IndyCar driver and an internationally renowned performance coach and author. Jeff Braun is a globetrotting race engineer whose cars have won championships. Sam Smith is an award-winning journalist and a former executive editor of Road & Track magazine. Together, they pull apart the emotion that can come from raw metal and the murky unknowns of the human brain at speed.

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.


You may already recognize Jeff as my co-host from the No Dumb Questions podcast that we've being doing for the past year-and-a-bit, as well as from the Speed Secrets webinars we’ve worked on together. Jeff is one of my oldest (not in age) friends in racing. He’s also the father of two wonderful people—Colin Braun, one of the best drivers in the world, and Travis Braun, an award-winning film and TV writer. I can’t get enough of Jeff’s knowledge and way of looking at life in motorsport, and I could basically talk to him forever.



Sam, on the other hand, was responsible (or is that irresponsible?) for getting me involved in writing for Road & Track years ago. He’s a racer and a great writer, but he’s also one of the funniest and best storytellers I know. Talking to Sam is another one of my favorite things to do, so I wasn’t surprised when I introduced him to Jeff and the two immediately got along great.

Maybe it was karma or some other mysterious force of nature that led Sam, Jeff, and me to our first conversation last summer about what really matters in motorsport. Whatever the reason, that talk led to another one, and another after that, and then this new podcast.

We've had an absolute blast recording the first few episodes, and I’d love to hear what you think. There are two ways to check out the show:
1.      Head to YouTube, where you can see all the funny faces we make at each other: https://youtu.be/iyxvT48eSag
2.      Search for It’s Not the Car on your favorite podcast platform: Spotify, Stitcher, Apple, some new one I haven’t heard of yet, etc.

A new episode will be released every Tuesday until... well, until we discover no one is listening (we hope that doesn't happen), we run out of things to talk about (very unlikely), or we get distracted by something else. (Squirrel? Driving something? Or even just Sam taking an old typewriter apart, because he does weird stuff like that for fun? Anything’s possible.)

What you might be thinking:
•      Does the world really need another podcast? No, it does not—it needs more thoughtful podcasts, and that's what we're aiming for.
•      Will every episode be like this one? We’ll keep things fresh with rotating formats and an endless well of topics. Some shows will trigger fond memories (or shivers). Others will focus on what’s happening in racing right now, take you behind the scenes, teach you or share secrets. All the stuff that drives drivers to… drive!

Today's episode of It’s Not the Car is titled "The Indy 500 is Harder Than You Think.” (Click here to listen to it right now!)

Here’s the official episode description:


Science, drama, and 200-mph dogfights: The world’s most famous race is so much more than two and a half hours of left turns. Sam, Ross, and Jeff use the story of Alexander Rossi’s landmark 2016 Indy 500 win—he coasted over the line with an empty tank—to highlight everything that makes the 500 great.

Related Trivia: Jeff has engineered cars at Indy. Ross nearly died there in 1993. Sam once stood inches from T