I'm not going to go into a lot of detail as to what's caused what's happened specifically. However, the pressure is on, as it has been. Quietly, I've held my problems to myself regarding what's going on, but I think I have to put something out there so people understand why things are suddenly changing. For eight months, "we" put our faith in someone who has shown unreliability and lack of prioritization in many key times. And those times add up especially when we missed our very first deadline. That should have been an indication that we were on a sinking ship. We jumped ahead with the 2015 Indy 500, and we stayed ahead for the most part up until Homestead. Mexico was an out of our hands issue because of the audio, and we missed Motegi by a day because we failed to schedule based on it being Sunday in Japan and not for us. Things derailed massively after Homestead. No straight answers for what happened there. I had asked at several different occasions for both Barber and Kentucky on when we could record, and because I was left unanswered, we missed several crucial times that we could have jumped back ahead and should have. We recorded Kentucky the weekend of, and were really late with when that race came out, and we really had no excuse. Mid-Ohio we did the weekend of, but we really didn't have much editing to do. Nothing happened in that race. Angel had even made life easier by deliberately clearing out a weekend for us to record Indy and Michigan and possibly Belle Isle. That was the intended purpose, and asides from Indy, we had nothing to show for it. We focused on the GTPFS Daytona race, which crashed and left that series with nothing to show when in the same amount of time we could have recorded Michigan as first planned and not have been in a crunch after Indy. Indy came out, and for some reason, we didn't record when we should have. And we never restarted. Now, I hate to be that guy, but I have to draw the line and say that you can't just skip out on a job you started mid way. But that's exactly what he did. Tuesday I was informed that he had quit. And for the next day, I was rushing my ass off trying to find people that could possibly jump in. I know how important this is to Angel first off. When she says that this is "the only thing [she's] ever been truly proud of", and she has a lot to be proud of, I know what is expected, and so did he. I also know how much people look forward to the broadcasts and watching the entertainment we provide. I enjoy doing it. It's always been the highlight of my weekend. And because of that, I feel extremely horrible for knowing that because of someone else, I have let down a lot of people and caused disappointment. Now that I have more say, I hope that it won't be so common any more. We will be back this year, either with the same crew or with new crew. We will be back by Road America if not sooner. If I do not hear anything from him by June 7th, I move on and I personally close that door myself. For the longest time, we had no plan B, so we had to settle. Now that I have a plan B and C lined up, I do not have to use the patience Angel has been blessing him with for over 8 months. And I won't. You all deserve entertainment. You deserve answers, and you deserve the respect to know that there's someone on the team that simply doesn't care anymore and it isn't me. I've already secured a nice future for the Trucks and I have a good option as backup if things don't fix themselves soon.
I urge everyone to be a little more patient until June 7th. At midnight, I'll have the answers I need or lack there of to go accordingly. I want to thank Angel for giving me the ability to put more of my care and effort into the things I love the most; racing, and commentating. We'll see where we go.
Another thing I should address. I have been notified that there are people interested in commentating. Because of the precarious situation we have going on, I will not be considering guest commentators this year until we have the situation figured out better. Next year will be different because of the FICA 1,000km of Daytona (spoiler, get ready m80s), VRR IndyCar and Trucks, and stuff. But I have no intention of jumping to the 2017 prep train until I know what I want to see next year as far as the base crew goes. If I had my way, Trucks would have 1 crew of a recorder/commentator, a sole commentator, and an editor, while IndyCar would have two crews. And that's what I want to set up if the best possible outcome happens. Hopefully we get that, because as I said before, you as fans and participants deserve it, and Angel deserves it because let's face it, she's done a damn great job building this empire on her own and deserves the ability to sit back and relax for a bit.
Talk to you all soon,
Clayton