And now for something completely different. Here’s an update about the It’s Not the Car podcast that Sam Smith, Jeff Braun, and I goof around on, record, and put out in the world for driving geeks to listen to.
Sam recently posted an update on the show’s Patreon page, and because so many of the readers of Driving Directions also listen to the show (with many of them commenting and sending us emails), I thought I’d share Sam’s message here, as well.
[Plus, anytime I can feature Sam’s writing in anything I do, it’s an honor. He’s brilliant.]Hi Everyone,
Happy New Year! This is Sam from It’s Not the Car, the podcast I host with Ross and Jeff Braun.
For those of you who are regular listeners to our show, and those who are not: We’ve reached the end of the show’s second season—hooray, us! With that in mind, I wanted to share some news on INTC’s future.
Bullet-point summary just below, if you’re in a hurry.
The Basics:
On to business. But first, a picture of Jeff and Bill Riley throwing hands, just because I can.
Happy Birthday, Us!
Time has done that trick again: Somehow, 2025 is done and dusted. Jeff, Ross, and I launched It’s Not the Car on January 9th, 2024, which means we’ve been building this fun little weekly monkey circus for two full years. Hard to believe.
If you’re reading this, that means you like what we’re doing. Just as important, you believe in supporting independent media and you want us to keep going. Thank you!
I’ve said it before, but INTC isn’t for everyone. It’s for people who care deeply about how and why we do what we do at the wheel. If you’re one of the thousands who’ve listened to the show, watched it on YouTube, shared it, bought our silly merch, or even just shouted “IT’S NOT THE CAR!” across a paddock at me, Ross, or Jeff (this happens far more than you’d think) . . . you’re one of us.
I’m a little biased, but you know what? That’s cool as hell.
For now, our little show runs on its own steam. Writing, researching, recording, and producing some 45 one-hour episodes every year takes a nontrivial amount of money and time, and we do it all ourselves. We don’t have sponsors, trust funds, or a rich backer.
In other words, Patreon memberships directly fund the show’s production, and listener recommendations help us grow. We literally couldn’t do this if you weren’t here. Thank you.
It’s Not the Stats and Changes
INTC’s final episode of Season Two went live on December 24th. We released our very first show on January 9th, 2024.
The December 24th show marks our 98th episode. Along the way, It’s Not the Car has consistently charted among the top 5 percent of podcasts globally and in the top 25 automotive podcasts streamed.
To date, the show has racked up more than 700,000 plays on Apple and Spotify combined.
On top of that, a remarkable 80 percent of INTC listeners stick around for the entire episode—20 percent more than the industry average.
I have a Jewish mother, so self-deprecation is in my blood, but even I have to be proud of those numbers. Especially since they came paired to a near-total lack of show promotion, including a YouTube channel that spent much of 2025 on hiatus due to resource constraints.
(By popular demand, the INTC YouTube will return in February. Thanks for letting us know!)
We do as much as we can when it comes to promoting the show and getting to know you guys, but time is always the bottleneck. That’s partly why we’re taking a hiatus for the month of January, and why we’re shifting to a biweekly release schedule—one episode every two weeks—when the show relaunches on February 3rd.
We’ve got some fun surprises in store for 2026. More on that front soon!
Deep Thoughts, a Few Shallow Ones, and a Ferrari
Two years already! How did that happen? What is time, anyway? Are we each just a brain in a jar somewhere, frittering away priceless existence through a smattering of artificial neural signals, our “lives” equal parts synthetic and real, their countless passions and sufferings forever trapped in a liminal zone of faux-chronological narrative populated by everything from Labubu Vespas to Beethoven’s Ninth?
Who knows? Not me. But if we’re each stuck in a jar, at least the goon in charge had the decency to whip up things like the Ferrari 333 SP. I was reminded of that car last week, while slogging through the slow, dull process of filing and archiving old show research onto an external hard drive.
A photo of the 333 all but jumped out of a folder and onto my screen, and in my head, I heard it. That screamy little 65-degree V-12, born in Formula 1.
Naturally, RB and JB have been there. Because of course they have, because they’ve been everywhere. Ross raced a 333 SP professionally for Team Scandia. Jeff engineered the things and learned stuff others couldn’t. (Curious? We did a show on all that.) The closest I’ve come to one of those cars was at Road America a few years ago, during a vintage exhibition. I was walking around the paddock, gnawing on my fourth or fifth bratwurst of the morning, when I saw that unmistakable shape next to a transporter. Decklid off, being serviced, headers and airbox in full peacock.
A mechanic was getting ready to fire the thing up, so I stopped, walked over, and knelt entirely too close to the pipe. Because I wanted to wait for the thing to hurt me.
She was, as they say, a spicy meatball. (Photo: Remi Dargegen/RM Sotheby’s)
That happened, naturally. But it was good. Hearing loss, carcinogens, sure. Doesn’t matter. Worth it. (Unmuffled Ferrari V-12s are like sailboats—time spent with one isn’t subtracted from the end of your life.)
For the record: Ferrari monoxide plus Wisconsin tubemeat tastes like pork and doom. But also: delicious.
Good day, as Cube said. Utterly absurd sound. And the timing was nice. That weekend came at the tail of a pretty terrible stretch of days in my personal life, and in the middle of a particularly difficult summer. But in that paddock, kneeling behind that gearbox, inches from that storied and prehistoric old engine, listening and feeling and breathing and smelling as they blipped and warmed the thing… I felt better than I had in weeks.
Maybe the pipe got me high. Or maybe the little bits of unexpected joy in this life have way more power than we tend to think.
(As my friend Michael Chaffee often says, ¿Por que no los dos?)
Brain in a jar or no, every one of our lives meets neurons a mix of wax and wane, good days and bad. The sine wave there is as natural as breathing, and pretending otherwise is the stuff of dull people and cocktail-party small talk. Necessary, from time to time, but not why we’re here.
2025 was rough for a lot of folks. Personally, my year was far from easy. Over the past 13 months, my immediate family has met health scares, financial strain, and enough concentrated stress to make a veteran cardiologist wince. (Literally, in my case. Fun guy, though; when he saw the look on my face, he made a kind joke to lighten the mood.)
I don’t share all that to complain or ask for pity; it’s just facts. My family is like yours—we’ve met strain like this before, we’ll meet load like it again, and in the end, we’ll be okay. But I spent much of 2025 coming back to the proverbial pipe, trying to take a moment and be grateful for the moment. Predictably, that’s left me thinking, more than ever, on why I do what I do. Which includes the podcast.
With that in mind, as we kick off 2026, I hope you’re each doing alright. If for some reason you’re not okay, I hope you remember that, no matter how things may seem, it is always genuinely okay—necessary, in fact—to talk to the people who care about you. And to lean on the pastimes and people and hobbies and moments that keep you afloat and stable and going, no matter how frivolous those seeming indulgences might appear to others.
Maybe it’s odd to include a notion like that in the year-wrap email for a podcast. It fits, though, because the podcast in question is ours, and INTC has always worn its heart on its sleeve. Whether talking about their failures or successes or even simply how they see culture, Jeff and Ross have only ever been 100 percent open, vulnerable, and thoughtful at the mic. Which has made it easy for me to do more of the same. Which has, in turn, made the show better and more fun and human.
Many of you know that I spent the first 20 years of my career in media, working as a motorsport and automotive journalist and consultant. I helped make magazines and websites and TV shows and YouTube channels, I wore a helmet for work at places like Road & Track and Esquire, and I even wrote a book. (Shameless plug: Amazon category bestseller, critically acclaimed and was big fun to put together, check it out.)
As I often tell people, when I first pitched Ross and Jeff on the show that became INTC, I leaned into an old media truism: If what you want doesn’t exist, make it. In this case, that meant an approachable and honest show that focused on everything I love about racing—the humanity, the stories, the challenge, the sheet metal. Not the cold numbers, not the one-off wing profiles from last week’s F1 race. Not an off-the-cuff racing chat show full of guests, or “bros being bros,” or whatever.
Ross and Jeff are Ross and Jeff, so when the show kicked off, the approachable-honesty bit came easy. I figured it would, because that’s who they are. What I didn’t expect was how introspective and unselfconsciously nerdy the show would get, and how much that approach would prompt people to find us—whether online or in person, at events and races—and inspire them to share their personal struggles and lessons. Especially those struggles that have nothing to do with racing, at least on the surface.
Over the last two years, so many of you have checked in to let us know how much you appreciate the show. How much its attitude and positive approach serves as a welcome distraction from real life, especially when things are difficult.
And so I say it again: same for us.
What’s Next?
Surprises. Stories. Definitely more podcasting. Maybe even a live INTC event or two this year? Who knows? What do you want to see? Let us know.
Ross, Jeff, and I were geeked to meet so many of you in person this year—at track days, at IMSA races, during One Lap of America, at Ross’s Speed Secrets training days at Pineview Run. Not to mention so many other events around the country and in Europe.
If you see one of us somewhere, please keep coming up and saying hi. The INTC community is amazing, and it’s a big part of why we’re taking this brief breather at the start of the year: to reset, to plot next steps, and to keep getting better.
Last but not least, we want to hear what you think. Suggestions, questions, feedback? Hit the comments here, or drop a note anytime: [email protected].
As always, thank you for all the kind words, comments, DMs, and emails you send. We can’t reply to every message, but we read everything we get.
Happy new year, happy travels, happy laps, happy all of it.
Have fun with it!
— Sam
@thatsamsmith
[email protected]