Vincenzo Landino on NASCAR's identity crisis, Cadillac F1's Super Bowl gamble, and Aston Martin's Eight Sleep investment

Venzo is in the reream waiting room. Let's bring him in to the TVP Ultrad. Venenzo, how are you doing?

What's going on?

How are you?

Good to see you.

Welcome back.

Good see just here talking about

car. Oh, this is the Williams Pit Crew. Retro Pit Crew.

That's very nice.

Uh shirt.

I love it. I love it.

That goes around.

Well, thank you for taking the time.

We might have to do a Puma collab.

Give us a

Still waiting for my TVPN. Uh

we'll send it to you. We'll send it.

Aren't we all? Everyone's waiting except for me. [laughter] I John John this morning John this morning was like, "Yeah, it's really cool how how every you know, every Tuesday you wear a new one of one, but we're in the sampling process, so don't worry. We we got a bunch of stuff.

We will be mass producing.

Let's get I want So, we've been talking about Ferrari, but I I wanted your take on the new Johnny IV car.

I hadn't actually seen that video yet.

The luch luch. It's luch John. Luche. [laughter] Light means light in Italian.

Yeah. Break it down. What was your reaction? Do you like it? Is it too iPad like? Does it look like a PS2 peripheral to you? What do you think?

I think I'm I'm I'm with Jordy in this one where I'm like I'm kind of torn. Mhm.

Like I I want to like it for what it is and I think it's it looks cool. It looks great,

but is it is it Ferrari? It

is a little But is electric Ferrari? You know, they're doing a different drivetrain.

Well, that's a whole other that's a whole other issue.

Why not just go full send and change?

It's so funny. Uh cuz cuz uh you know American consumers have broadly rejected EVs even though there are some some that sell well but every American manufacturer like Ferrari is so late to the game. Every American manufacturer has already taken like a multi- tens of billions of dollars worth of write downs already. So they're coming in. So I'm expecting the car to be cool. I'm expecting it to sell well in LA which naturally means [laughter] it will sell terribly in the rest of the country. expecting it to be uh Ferrari's just like known watch F1, right? Like and and decide do you want to daily a Ferrari? I've tried doing that. It's not good. [laughter] Um I expect uh but but the the price point's interesting. The Johnny thing I'm expecting.

Do we know the price point yet? No, I just I think you can assume like it's not going to price like the per song up in the half a million dollar range because you're getting a naturally aspirated V12

and this is like not even

Here's what they got to do. They're they're they're changing the drivetrain. They're changing the UI and all the interior. They got to change the exterior. It's got to look like a cybert truck and it's got to be orange. They say we're we're burning the ships. No, no Ferrari design cues whatsoever. Just complete blank slate. Uh you already frustrated a lot of people. Why not just frustrate 100% of the audience?

Have you Do you do you do you know when they're going to come out with the actual like what the car actually looks like because the render that's been getting shared around is not

released by

I did not see the date on anything.

Um I I the render looks doesn't look impressive.

So I really hope that's not what it's going to look like.

Yeah. Uh, NASCAR. NASCAR broke a what is it? A Guinness World Record for loudest billboard. What's going on? I guess that's a I guess it's a thing. Yeah, they're going

This is the alpha. You got to be making up records that only you can achieve.

Yeah,

correct.

Yeah, they have got a billboard out in Time Square, which it feels like there's so much motorsport stuff happening in Time Square. We had the Cadillac F1 reveal. Aston Martin took out some billboards out there. Um, well, I said some billboards. They had a whole bunch of Times Square uh queued up with their reveal. Their launch was happening.

Uh and then NASCAR did this. But

I I thought was really impressive was the ad they put out. Did you guys see the ad they put out?

The guy in the red truck. The guy in the red truck.

Clint Eastwood's kid. That's Scott Eastwood. Yeah. So

it um it really impressive. So a lot of they had a moment a kind of a Budlight moment too, right? They kind of switched up. Started alienating their

typical base.

Wait, so they switched up on their day ones? [laughter]

They did switch up on their day.

They were They were accused of switching up on their day ones. But But this is

Let's play Let's play the campaign. Uh I just I just dropped it for the team. We can We can watch it together.

We can watch it together.

Little watch party.

Little watch party. I love it.

It's pretty fantastic if you're

Yeah.

If you're into America.

Okay.

One second. So we can be loud.

Here we go.

So we can be free.

We don't come from royalty. We come from bootleggers and barn builders.

Shots fired.

We're about grit. Fights for inches and contacts.

A boat of fairy.

Wait, is Clint Eastwood's son is he an actor or

he's a very famous actor? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's also

I didn't know if he was a NASCAR driver. [laughter]

No, no, no.

There's a YouTuber Cletus. I believe he's in it, too, which a lot of people spotted.

This is great driving. Wow. The sense of speed here is amazing.

This is like

Freeird kicks in.

Yeah.

This is a level above even like uh

watching a movie, a Michael Bay movie or something. Speaking of Michael,

true like true like brand collab here.

This is a NASCAR ad, but it feels like an ad for seven other things.

Oh, I mean it's it's motorsport. You should have a bunch of ads. You should have a bunch [laughter] of logos.

Yeah, stack them up. Stack them up.

Stack them.

Ben Sand.

This is good editing. This editing feels like a vibr. Like it's very like Yeah, it's really like the cuts are so fast.

It's like somebody said, "Give us the most America feeling. trailer you can possibly think of.

That's super cool.

Ben Sand in the YouTube chat still is commenting on Apple. He says, "Carr takes the awkwardness of the Apple Watch and scales it up to a car." [laughter]

Whoever said that is accurate.

That's exactly kind of

Anyway, so so NASCAR switched up on their day ones. They're like, "We're done. We're we're back."

But they're back. They're said we we never forgot the day one. They take some shots at uh

took a media shot at F1, right?

The royalty thing, right?

Yeah. Yeah. We're not here for royalty. You know, we're we're founded by boot bootleggers and barn builders. And so that's kind of that's what sets the whole

How many NASCAR What percentage of NASCAR drivers do you think are if they're taking shots at the European Royalty F1 pipeline? Are is NASCAR a a motorsport where you can be truly self-made, actually just work your way up, or is it just like Americans version of [laughter] royalty? Like your father had an oil and gas company and so you're a NASCAR driver kind of thing.

I mean, somebody put up this this uh graphic and it was like here's all the top players in, you know, uh NASCAR, Bill France, Michael Jordan, Roger Penske, and it's like they're all billionaires.

Yeah. I mean, listen, it's everyone's got their version of royalty, but I think it is a little bit easier to come up in a somewhat of a NASCAR, maybe not at the Cup level, but even at like the Xfinity series, there's the Arca series, which is kind of like their third division. You can come up in those pretty well. You the the bottom line on motorsport is you still need money to race in it. You need significantly less. I don't have the exact figures, but you need significantly less to go through um the na a NASCAR feeder or NASCAR ladder than you do F1. F1 formula racing. It's insane. It's like the numbers are mindboggling. I I had someone on the podcast recently who was telling us like you need $400,000 a year just to even be uh in the Formula series or in the Formula 2 I think it is. And then or formula 3, Formula 2, you already need like almost a million per year. So, if you're not getting out of that soon enough and getting into like a paid F1C,

yeah,

you're like, how how how long can you sustain that without being loaded? I I think we

I think Lando people were running the numbers like Lando's dad spent like 40 million or what getting him to the point where it was like net like

Yeah, we talked to some like indie car guys who where it's basically like they had a family friend who ran an investment company or a law firm and they put up like 20k a year and they're like just put our logo all over it. will go and like take clients to the local race and it's like not a huge investment for some company that's doing well and they get to support like a local hometown hero and so they can actually get racing and then move up.

Uh what are you like NASCAR is doing this in response. They want to are they is this they're threatened by F1 and the popularity F1 has three races in the US now. Do they feel like hey there's a number of people that are going to be just saying well I'll just go to F1. It's got the glitz and the glamour and and maybe they're worried about people not kind of entering the NASCAR world or is this just hey we should do a new campaign. So NASCAR, they they got a new agency or LA late last year, creative agency, and I believe it's 72 and Sony, but don't quote me on that. And

they wanted to just attack this whole thing, right? You've got F1 growing, uh, Indie Car, the massive deal with Fox. Fox took an investment stake in Indie Car and all the broadcast rights. So there's a a massive, uh, thing going on there. IMSA Sports Car Racing, their YouTube channel is about to surpass NASCAR in terms of growth and they're they're growing tremendously off the charts.

Yeah, I couldn't Yeah, I couldn't believe that stat. I was like, the only way this makes sense is

is if NASCAR has just not been paying attention to social media or something. Uh, IMS obviously has like a massive international audience. NASCAR, you know,

very big. Um, but and yeah, even even as like somewhat still I I consider myself a casual viewer of all these things, but like IMS is a lot more exciting to me. You have the battles, you're not just around an oval, right? It uh it's it's very

class racing.

Yeah.

Yeah. They also they made So what I did really well was they worked out a deal with NBC to allow international feed to be completely free on YouTube. Mhm.

So, internationally you can watch if you're outside the US, you can watch it

from flag to flag

uh for free on YouTube.

Very cool.

You know, is that something others are doing? Now, I think NASCAR is tripling down on we're America first. We're going to go all in on America. We saw they've got the Ander race coming up in San Diego.

Uh Anderrol is sponsoring car. Like there's there's a lot of that comeback to hey, we are an America first series. we're going to go all in on America first.

So, they're going to double double, triple, quadruple down on what works for them. Uh, other series are have to do the same thing. And I think that's what they're seeing more than anything is, you know, F1's doing what they're doing. Indie Car is doing what they're doing. IMSO, which is owned by NASCAR, is doing what they're doing. Like, we have to go back and find an identity. We can't just try to be all things to all people. It's just not it's just not going to work. It's not that kind of uh racing. And there's there's so many other flavors of racing now. They're available to everybody. They're so attainable to watch. It's like NASCAR, you need to carve out something. And that's what I think is happening. What is actually happening?

Yeah.

Uh switching gears, uh Aston had their event yesterday. I was excited to see Cognition working with Aston. They got all their enterprise clients. Got to get them got to get them on the paddic. Uh Public of course sticking with with Aston uh for the for for the season as well. Uh what's going on with Cadillac? Uh how how like how would you how would you rate their their whole launch their entire strategy running a Super Bowl ad for a new

Formula 1 team? Very bold. Was that to get was that a to acquire

more advertis

I've got a double take. First of all to go back to Aston Eight. Did you guys see the eightle announcement? They're also

That's right.

So that's a big one because not only are they a partner They are a partner with Aston. Aston uh invested in Eightle. So, it's a little bit of a uh two-way situation there. So, that's a that that was big news today for Cadillac.

Yeah. Lawrence Lawrence Stroll is an investor. So, he's like down to do some equity

equity deals and stuff cuz he's like I got the cash.

That's a thing. That was a thing. As for Cadillac,

they were attempting to reach a new audience that they don't have, right? The US audience. They don't have anybody yet. And I think the Super Bowl ad was aimed at doing that. I don't know the ins and outs of what they were trying to accomplish because it was it felt like a very fast spot and you guys were at the stadium. So I don't know if you saw it but it was it showed up and it felt like it was over really quickly. The longer full spot the one minute that I that you see on social on the stream the next day.

Correct. But during the moment, I had a lot of people text me and say, "Hey, what was that Cadillac thing

because they were pulled in by the JFK speech, which I thought was brilliant, and the moonshot, the whole that was great." But I think if you're watching the game, you don't know it's coming, which a lot of people don't.

Uh they had no idea what was going on. A lot of people that did not know, I was like, you the people I was watching it with, I was like, "Hey, check that out." And they were like, "What happened?" I said, "Oh, well, they're an F, their new F1 team." And they were like, "Oh, that's what that was." So, a lot of people had no idea. So, I'm curious to see if it worked. They had the Times Square activation, which I thought was the better move

in terms of actually getting people like interested because you had this box sitting there thawing out in Time Square for a couple days. So, people had to figure out like inquire what is going on.

It was frozen.

I think that was the the the what it looked like. It looked like it was frozen, then it was thawing right that last minute. So, I I like what they're doing. They ended up with not a lot of sponsors on the car. They used a lot of TWWG's assets. So TWWG AI is like their big primary partner, but TWWG owns the team. So

I didn't know that.

Yeah. I was just expecting for Cadillac to partner with like an Exxon or a Chevron or some, you know, you have a Ramco out there and there's just big oil pockets. A lot of the big tech.

We love big oil, but we also like asset management.

Yeah, there's a lot. What do you have any idea what percentage did did Cadillac retain significant ownership in the team or does TWWG effectively own the entire thing?

It's TWWG Motorsports that runs the whole thing. So, they're basically operating a factory car or GM

under the Cadillac badge with a Ferrari engine if that makes any sense to anybody.

I love it. That's that's F1. Get ready to study. Hit the book.

And that's also probably why they're not they don't have a oil partner yet because they're using Ferrari. So they're they're they have to use shell, I'm guessing.

Sure. Sure. Power unit.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's tricky. Uh really quickly, you did get fact checked on the 72 72 and sunny thing. You were right.

Okay, good.

You were right. Good job. I want to get the Rolex 24 update. How was it? You were there. Uh give us your review,

dude. I mean, the cars are incred like that's to me what cars should sound like. The the Valkyrie was there, the naturally aspirated V12. And in IMSA there is no they don't muffle the the engines which they do they have to in wet in the the World Endurance Championship. So it is full boore like

during the night you hear that thing around the track.

Wow.

I got to sit in the passenger seat of of our friend's Valkyrie and every single corner was oh I'm going to die. I'm going into the wall. Oh okay we made it around. Next corner. Oh I'm going to die. Oh [laughter] we made it around somehow. Coming around. Oh we're going to die. The access people have though at IMSA is really really crazy. I mean there's fans of any like with any ticket can walk through the the garages and there's like a whole pitwalk and so people that just think of F1 as the only thing out there like have no idea. There's wellpriced series to get you into you know into motorsports but there's nothing like Daytona. There's nothing like an endurance race. I had never been to the 24 hours of Daytona. That was my first time there.

Just such a cool event. Whoa. Such a cool event. I mean, people are up the whole time. There's festivities going on, walking through like where all the RVs are. I mean, people are absolute party. It's it's a good time. So, if you ever want to go for a good time, Daytona is a great spot.

What was your experience like? Were you up for 12 of the hours, 18 of the hours? Are you sleepd deprived or is it more like I'm going to the day and then I'll sleep normally and then I'll come back for the day section?

Yeah. Do you really need to catch the fog? This is hours of straight fog. No, fortunately like I didn't have we didn't have anything to do during that. Like we weren't tied to anything. We had gone up to like the spotter stand and the the starter stand. We had done all the things. We were hanging out with the president of IMSA. Um we were in the suite like so we they were taking us around. But then around 11 around midnight it was like all right things are dying out. The fog was coming down. So we actually went back and came back at about 8:00 in the morning. So there was like an 8 hour period. So what 16 hours I was up for for the actual race.

Not too bad. What uh what kind of stories, narratives are you tracking ahead of the Formula 1 season? I know there's been some drama with kind of some of the advancements Mercedes made and other teams pushing back. Can you can you share more on that front?

I'm tracking to see if any of this anything pans out with the Mercedes situation. There was this rumor that I don't believe is going to happen, but a rumor that the Mercedes cars may not like start in Australia, which is not going to happen. It was just interesting that that was being floated around. And I know Red Bull was trying to, you know, garner support. And then Dan Towers today, the CEO of the Cadillac team, he actually said like, "Yeah, we're all like we're all competitors. We're we're banning up against Mercedes because they're they're competition." So obviously if you take out the Mercedes engines, which to me tells me they are just very worried about that engine. It's it must be that good. um they're pushing the FIA to change how they're measuring compression ratio which is like okay, you know, they're really trying to nerf this thing and it it's either an absolute rocket or things going to blow up. Like there's no there's no in between to me with the the Mercedes at this point. Um but you know, Half the Grid runs the Mercedes the Mercedes team runs it, McLaren runs it, Williams runs it. Uh Alpine runs it. So, like you've got you you've you've got a lot of cars that gonna have a rocket ship in it. Um, yeah, of course, if you're Ferrari and your Red Bull and and and anybody else Honda, you're going to be nervous. I'm also curious to see how this Adrian Newui Aston Martin ends up with the Honda power unit. Like, it's a match made in heaven. Honda and Newi. Uh, you've got Alonzo who's been wanting to drive there a lot of experience. So, you know that he's going to put in a good drive if that car is halfway decent. I think I think that car is the one to watch out for, the Aston. I'm really excited to see the Aston.

That's very cool.

Uh do you think Lewis Hamilton is uh locked in during the off season? We saw him at the Super Bowl.

Locked into Kim K. [laughter]

He's keeping up with the Kardashians now. Um

I do blame him though. Do you blame him?

No, he's having fun. He's living his best life.

Dude, you're 40ome years old. You're loaded. Like

I mean he's already been on reality TV with Drive to Survive. What's What's one more show?

Yeah, we're both reality TV stars

essentially. Essentially. Probably more people know him from Drive to Survive than actual F1.

I don't blame him. And if that car is a dog, I could see him checking out sooner rather than later. [laughter]

No, I mean, I'll just be real with you.

Well, we appreciate

Maybe maybe the conspiracy is like F1 is actually doing an, you know, some type of influencer deal with the Kardashians. It's kind of an arranged marriage. like they saw the success of the Travis Kelce Taylor Swift thing. They're like we need a we need we need our own uh T Swift.

Would it shock you? Like would that actually shock you if that was the case?

That'd be great. It' be great.

Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me.

Always good to catch up.

You got the update. We'll have

We'll talk to you soon.

Thanks a lot.

Have a good one.

Cheers.

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