Tonight on Trackside, Kevin Lee and Curt Cavin check in from all over the country. Curt and producer Josh are in Indianapolis while Kevin is in sunny Florida at Sebring Raceway. Then, Kevin and Curt discuss the upcoming docuseries leading up to the Indianapolis 500 in partnership with the CW and VICE Media. We discuss the six-part series called “100 Days to Indy” and what kind of audience and reach the series is trying to have. Which drivers should the series focus on? The conversation goes deep into the potential content, could it push controversy and how it will impact teams.
Then, Kevin and Curt discuss the marketing budget and strategy of IndyCar and the series being more aggressive in its approach moving forward. That leads to a conversation about the reports that a group of drivers sent letters to the highest ranking management at IndyCar in a push for more marketing. To round out the first hour, Kevin and Curt answer Twitter questions and get into news and notes of the day.
In the second hour, the legendary broadcaster Paul Page joins the show to discuss his book, Hello, I’m Paul Page: It’s Race Day in Indianapolis. Curt and the 27-year Indy 500 broadcaster discuss the project of the book and how he constructed it. Page talks about the stories he tells in the book and which ones he got to tell at length for the first time publicly. The broadcast booth at IMS used to be situated in a manner that Page couldn’t see the finish line and he tells the story of calling one of Al Unser Jr’s wins in the early 1990s. The longtime broadcaster tells more stories about how complex broadcasting is at a place as big as IMS and some of the work he’s the most proud of. Then, Page details why he wanted Mario Andretti to write the foreword in his book. It’s a brilliant 30 minutes with a great storyteller.
To round out the show, Kevin and Curt discuss the return of Thursday Night Thunder in SRX, other driver news and what we missed during the show.
