Formula One World Championship Limited

It's gonna be hotter in Madrid tomorrow, so, uh, uh, you know, they, uh, yeah.

Formula 1 is going on, by the way, now in, in here in Madrid.

Yeah.

So it's the f-

... starts late in the afternoon.

Again, g- [laughs] great timing.

[laughs] I guess the, I guess it's also because of the conflict with the Formula 1 and stuff, but man, starting a stage-

[laughs]

But if

I was an F1 driver...

I wouldn't be like, well, the Austin Grand Prix, like I actually needed to be in fucking Central Park for me to be fucking seen because that's where I'm specifically.

I need to be on 73rd off 2nd Avenue for me to be fucking seen.

comfortable or not.

We'll do Formula One in a

second, but we're obviously staying in Madrid with Mario Bonvoy this weekend and they very kindly gave me, you and Betty, Betty's not here today, she'll be back tomorrow.

If you're about to talk about the fan...

Right, so Lando Norris.

Yes, Lando Norris.

Formula One.

He crept up

And it's like, you get along in life and you'd be like, I was a nerd, too.

I was like, you know, model cars, you know, I love F1.

I mean, I'm not saying like everybody that's into it is like that.

But it's nothing wrong with being a nugget.

We talked about it last hour with Jeff when he was on with us, so I'll take you in a different direction.

But I'm not sure if you had the opportunity to engage in the Great American State Fair that ran for 16 days in Washington, D.C. this summer, or the more recent Freedom 250 Grand Prix that was in the nation's capital, I think August 22nd and 23rd, the weekend.

Well, really what I would enjoy hearing is how they perhaps helped boost tourism to D.C. And as the federal government has really cracked down on crime and worked on beautifying the city, Has it improved things for locals and visitors coming to your hotel and just D.C. in general?

Yeah, really good questions.

Freedom 250 was a huge success for the city, especially because typically in the summer it is our slow season.

And so Freedom 250, the various events, the Great American State Fair, the Grand Prix, the actual July 4th celebration did great things in terms of uplift.

It actually competed with those cities that hosted FIFA events.

So, not the same dollar amount, but percentage year-over-year increase was in the low to mid-20s, summer over summer, because of all the Freedom 250 events, which was fantastic.

They just ran the cars.

in red with the black nose which is i guess a symbol of grief and all the drivers they just wore just the regular race suits that's it they took everything off with sponsor support and they ran the grand prix just fully undressed it was wild i just learned about that yesterday i didn't hear it i didn't catch it i didn't watch for formula one but it's that's a really cool thing to do you know so

yeah i'm not a big formula one guy i mean i i'll watch but i you know i've never been big into it um it's always

like nascar as a kid a lot more crashes yeah

Yeah, I was more a NASCAR guy, too.

Actually, the kids were asking me that day.

My daughter's like, what's F1 stand for? I'm like, Formula One.

Okay, what's that stand for? I don't know.

Good for, I think... obviously commercial premises sports bars that kind of stuff but yeah no

it's also little things like I found myself like obviously we started doing like this podcast we started doing the gaming podcast again earlier this year and like when the World Cup was on or like at the weekend when the Grand Prix was on I quite often find myself like with the football or the Grand Prix on whilst playing a game on my handheld on my ROG and Um, we're like, obviously with this, you know, Vincent had the video showed four boxes.

So, you know, you could have, you could have, you know, the premier league football on one, you could have the F one on the other.

You could be playing a game in the other one.

NASCAR motorsports history.

You know, try to branch out into like rally racing and F1 every once in a while.

And of course, you have these other, like, you made this great video about sumo, the world's oldest professional sport, which I watched and thoroughly enjoyed as the Japanophile actual samurai that I am.

I was like, finally, someone's talking about my culture.

In 2012, I get to a period of my life now where I'm pre having children.

I'm with my partner at the time and realize that actually there's a sort of a position here in life whereby, you know, we would get footballers and, you know, very wealthy Formula One owners call it, shall we say, without naming names.

And there was a ring us on, you know, on a Sunday night and say that, you know, their fish is dying and get over here and sort it out.

And it was quite stressful.