RaceSchool.com Podcast hosted by Larry Mason

In our annual feature prior to the Fourth of July holiday on the raceschool.com podcast, we interview CHP officers to get safe driving tips and some insight into what the officers do and look out for while helping to keep motorists safe on the roads. This year, we met up with officers Marissa McIntire and Jordon Church. These two officers represent the CHP with class and professionalism while givi...

Santino Ferrucci is known for not only having a stellar finishing record at the Indy 500, but also having fun with his helmet designs. Some drivers go their entire career with the same helmet design. Ferrucci has multiple designs that he uses every year. For 2026, we caught up with Ferrucci in his AJ Foyt Racing Team transporter at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach where he generously gave of his...

Howdy Holmes raced Indy Cars in the seventies and eighties and then took time off to join his family’s business. After stepping back from his day-to-day duties of the family business, he returned to Indy car racing as a sponsor with Chip Ganassi Racing. If you haven’t seen his Jiffy Mixes sticker on Alex Palou’s race car, take a closer look on the nose and sidepods. If you haven’t heard of Jiffy M...

Marcus Ericsson came from the Formula One world to the NTT INDYCAR SERIES and won the biggest race in the world in 2022 – the Indy 500. He spent a good portion of his career with Chip Ganassi Racing but left for Andretti Global a couple of years ago. Those two years were quite rough for Ericsson as success was hard to come by. However, this year, he earned his first career pole at the Arlington Gr...

Alex Palou has been on a tear in the NTT IndyCar Series ever since he joined Chip Ganassi Racing. He’s won three straight INDYCAR SERIES championships and four of the last five years. To top it off, he won the Indianapolis 500 last year and is currently leading the championship on the strength of four wins already this year including Long Beach and Detroit. We caught up with the champ at the “medi...

Sam Schmidt has had a long and successful career at the top level of auto racing. From humble beginnings riding a mini-bike, to visiting Victory Lane as an Indy car driver, his success has continued as a team owner. The ownership side was instigated after a terrible crash in testing an Indy car at the oval in Orlando, Florida which left him a quadriplegic. His Indy Lights and Indy car team ownersh...

Benjamin Pedersen cut his teeth in motorsports on the open-wheel racing ladder both domestically in F4 and F3 Americas as well as in the UK racing in the British F3 Championship. After multiple race wins and podium finishes he graduated to Indy Lights and then to the NTT IndyCar Series racing full-time for AJ Foyt in 2023. Moving to the LMP2 prototype class the following year in both IMSA and Euro...

Nick Yelloly had a very successful 2026 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. He earned pole position, and along with his teammate Renger van der Zande, also won the race in his Acura ARX-06 IMSA GTP car! Nick took the usual route to sports car racing success. He started in karting as a kid and moved up the open-wheel ladder in Europe competing in Formula Renault, GP3, and GP2. He then switched to sport...

Cary Eisenlohr has been a lifelong car nut and was an athlete in high school when he did his first autocross and got hooked on racing. He’s won some of the biggest races in the country and has raced a variety of cars over the years, including racing SCCA events to get more track time for his professional racing exploits. In this interview at the 2026 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach Press Day, he te...

Jeremy Shaw has been a staple in the motorsports journalism and broadcasting world for over 50 years. He’s also been a major component of helping get young American drivers support via the Team USA scholarship program. We bumped into Shaw at a Vintage Auto Racing Association (VARA) event at Willow Springs International Raceway in March of 2026 where he fills us in on his story. By the way, he’s al...

Tommy Kendall is a legend in SCCA Trans Am racing having set the record of 11 wins in a 13 race season. He’s also won some of the biggest races such as the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring. Additional championships in IMSA has made this Motorsports Hall of Fame inductee an easy choice. Besides being an expert behind the wheel of some of the fastest cars around, Kendall has delighted rac...

Jordan Taylor has won just about every major event in sports car racing including the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, 12 Hours of Sebring, Petit Le Mans and the 24 Hours of Le Mans in addition to winning multiple class championships in Prototypes and GT cars. He’s currently racing in the IMSA GTP class for his dad’s Wayne Taylor Racing Team in one of two Cadillac V-Series. R prototypes.  During the COV...

Gray Newell drives an Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT in the SRO GT America Series. I met Newell at the 50th Anniversary of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach where I was looking at the Aston Martin Valkyrie GTP car. He happened to be standing there in his Aston Martin shirt and I asked him some questions about that car. I also asked him what his role was and he responded that he was a driver for the...

Scott McLaughlin is a three-time champion of the Australian Supercar series and the 2024 Indianapolis 500 polesitter. Since coming from the tin tops to the NTT INDYCAR SERIES, he’s visited Victory Lane seven times, which is super impressive having spent the majority of his racing career learning how to race a completely different car. In this interview in the media bullpen at the 2025 Acura Grand...

Sting Ray Robb has been with three different teams in three seasons in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES. For 2026 he will return with Juncos Hollinger Racing and will be teamed with Rinus VeeKay. In this interview, it was a group of journalists asking questions in the media bullpen at the 2025 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. We managed to get a couple of questions in and I left the other questions roll too...

Rinus VeeKay is a winner in the NTT IINDYCAR SERIES and spent most of his career at Ed Carpenter Racing. After the two parted ways, VeeKay found himself without a ride until about two weeks before the start of the 2025 season when he was picked up by Dale Coyne Racing. We spoke to VeeKay in the media bullpen at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach where he fills us in on his new ride, his quest for...

Brent Nordmann is the principal engineer for HRC Performance Parts and as part of Honda Racing, he showed off the Acura Integra Type S HRC Prototype “proof of concept” car at the 2025 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. We met up with Nordmann there during press day and he was nice enough to give us a walkaround on this stunningly beautiful, track-day focused car. Since this car is not available yet,...

Canadian Robert Wickens not only has the heart of a champion, he’s won multiple championships from karting through the junior open-wheel series. In addition to his success on the open-wheel ladder, he also scored multiple wins and poles while competing in the highly competitive DTM championship from 2013-2017. In 2018, he made his mark known to everyone in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES by winning the pol...

Jason Holt is the director and a chaplain for IndyCar Ministry. He along with the rest of his crew perform their 5-minute “Pit Stop Devotionals” every Sunday morning before each NTT INDYCAR SERIES race. We met up with Holt immediately after this at the 2025 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. He was running late for another meeting but spent a short time with us to let us know what his team does and w...

We interview a lot of race car drivers on this podcast and they always have something interesting to say. A listener asked us if we could interview a race car driver’s parent and get their take on things. Bill Abel is the father of our last interviewee, Jacob Abel. We sat down at lunchtime with Bill during the Thermal Grand Prix weekend and he was kind enough to answer questions and share what it’...

Jacob Abel was a rookie in the 2025 NTT INDYCAR SERIES. In 2024, he finished as champion runner-up with three race wins in the INDY NXT by Firestone Series. At the Thermal Grand Prix weekend, we got to sit down with Abel and ask him how the transition into the Indy car has been, what it’s like working with veteran driver/teammate Rinus VeeKay, and what the challenges are to wearing glasses under t...

Dries Vanthoor had a stellar start to the 2025 IMSA GTP season by winning the pole position for the first three races of the year in his Rahal Letterman Lanigan BMW. The Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona and Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring were grueling endurance contests that led into the 100-minute Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach weekend where we met up with him just after his pole-winning press conference....

John Morton will be inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America on March 10, 2026. This is a fitting place for a driver who started his career working at Carroll Shelby’s shop, went through driver’s school, and eventually would go on to win some of the biggest races in the world including the 24hrs of LeMans, 12hrs of Sebring and more. Although most of his career was spent in sports cars...

Colton Herta is a nine-time winner in the NTT IndyCar Series including the youngest ever at the Circuit of the Americas track in Austin, Texas. He has also dominated events like the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. It was recently announced that he would be leaving his Andretti Global Indy car team and moving on to become the test and reserve driver for the new Cadillac Formula One team. In prepara...

Charmayne Geier has been a fire marshal in racing for more than 20 years, working with both the NTT IndyCar Series and NASCAR.  We practically ran into each other at the Thermal Grand Prix back in March. After our initial meeting, I wanted to make sure that we could get her on the www.raceschool.com podcast for our Women in Motorsports month of September. A subsequent meeting with her at the Acura...