Tonight, we sift through the rubble after the mayhem that went down at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. Alexander Rossi, super aggressive in qualifying and super smooth during the race, dominated the weekend, but newcomers Ed Jones and Zach Veach also yield impressive results. Ryan Hunter-Reay has a race he’d rather forget, and Bourdais makes the pass of the decade. Lastly, we wish John “Bon voyage!” as he gets set to head to the Barber Motorsport Park for next weekend’s IndyCar and Mazda Road to Indy races. We’d also like to extend a warm welcome to photographer extraordinaire, the Reverend of the Church of All Things Racy Goodness, Scott James. Scott joins us as our West Coast photographer and will be at Sonoma for us this year, and we thank him for his willingness to share his amazing talent with us.

Tonight, we look at the winners and losers from the Desert Diamond West Valley Casino Phoenix Grand Prix. There were a lot of questions headed into this weekend. How did the new universal aero kit do? How did the rookies fare in what for many of them was their first oval race? Did anyone show up to watch? We also look forward to the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach this coming weekend, the second race in a three-week stretch of back-to-back racing.

Tonight, we take a look back at the testing results from the IMS Road Course, and why the Oval Test was postponed. Familiar faces are coming back to the IndyCar circus as Reynard begins experimenting with the new universal aero kit, and Jay Howard announces that he’s back with Schmidt Peterson for the 500. The Desert Diamond West Valley Casino Phoenix Grand Prix is this weekend, and we speculate on how the 2018 iteration of the DW12 will perform during its first oval race.

Tonight we’re going to cover the Mazda Road to Indy! All three rungs were at St. Petersburg and each had two races: USF2000, Pro Mazda, and Indy Lights. There’s a whole bunch of new faces in all three branches and we also see several drivers graduating from one rung to the next. The Mazda Road to Indy is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, graduating drivers from one level to the next on their way to the IndyCar series. We also talk about Simon Pagenaud’s retirement plans, the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood, and the recently announced 2019 broadcast deal. On balance it sounds like a great move for IndyCar, but a lot of questions still remain about the practice and qualifying sessions coverage, and the international deal is yet to be finalized.

Wow! St. Pete is behind us and we’re still going on about who hit who. What’s done is done, and there’s nothing left but to pontificate wildly about what is, what was, and what could have been.

This week we preview the 2018 Verizon IndyCar Series season opener on the streets of St. Petersburg, FL. Joining the IndyCars are all three of the Mazda Road to Indy junior formula series and the Pirelli World Challenge. It’s going to be a very busy weekend! Leading into the weekend, we’ve had a flurry of last minute driver announcements for the Mazda Road to Indy, One driver into the wild blue yonder, and changes to the Holmatro INDYCAR Safety Team. We take a look at who is where and what to expect from this weekend’s racing action. It’s gonna be fun in the sun!

We’re only three weeks away from the season openers for the Verizon IndyCar Series and the entire Mazda Road to Indy program at St. Petersburg, FL. IndyCar has been testing down at Phoenix, and is experimenting with a windscreen solution to the cockpit intrusion problem, a very different solution than Formula 1’s halo system. The Mazda Road to Indy grids are starting to fill, but only very slowly. We’re hoping for a late surge of team and driver announcements in the coming weeks.

Today on The Parc Ferme’s Cambered Corner we have pleasure of welcoming the SCCA’s Director of Marketing and Experiential Programs, Heyward Wagner, to talk about the recent revival of experience-driven events at race tracks around the country and specifically the renewal of the SCCA Time Trials program and the continuation of Track Night in America. Track Night in America is an experiential program started in 2015 as a low-cost way to bring car enthusiasts to race tracks across the United States and experience what it's like to drive at speed on a proper road course. Since it's inception, it has proven wildly popular, drawing from a much larger demographic than those who would typically dive into full-fledged, wheel-to-wheel road racing. Given the success of the Track Night in America program, the Heyward Wagner's SCCA Experiential Programs team has revived the Time Trials program, what was formally known as Solo I. We talk with Heyward about the origins and impetus for both the Track Night in America and the Time Trials programs.

Tonight we will look at the latest driver speculation around Dale Coyne Racing, discuss how IndyCar drivers did down in Daytona at IMSA’s headline event, the Rolex 24, we look at IndyCar’s criteria for a title sponsor and what it might imply for the future of the series.

After a very rough fall for all of us, we have the band back together and we’re ready to start waxing poetically about the upcoming 2018 Verizon IndyCar Series season. There’s been some major shake-ups among many of the teams. Some changes were expected, some were not. Happy New Year!