Oilpressure

I have gotten a few e-mails and questions in the comment section, asking if there will be a May episode of One Take Only this year, where my good friend John McLallen and I would sit in my backyard and aimlessly ramble on about IndyCar and the Indianapolis 500. Although some will be glad to hear it, I am sorry to say that there will not be – not this year anyway.

No, John and I are not in the middle of another three-year spat, like we were from 2019 to 2022 where he would not speak to me. I still haven’t figured that one out. Instead, John retired from his day job over the winter – and he and his wife have sold their home in Nashville and moved away. He’s not that far, less than two hours – but when I sent him a text in April asking if he wanted to drive to Nashville to record an episode, I got a resounding No. Maybe next year, after I have retired from my day job at the end of this year, I can convince him to come to town where he wouldn’t have to deal with rush hour traffic.

So, instead of the banter between John and me that many found amusing – you are stuck with my good friend Paul Dalbey and me actually talking racing instead of the foolishness that John and I discussed.

Paul is still technically an IndyCar blogger, although he hasn’t posted anything to his site (Fieldof33.com) in almost two years. He started that site in 2019, and Susan even designed his logo (although she didn’t design mine…hmmm), before that, he was one of a couple of others that founded More Front Wing in 2010. Prior to that he was with Planet IRL – remember that one?

I first met Paul in the IMS Media Center in May of 2010. I was 51 and he was 29. You wouldn’t think two opinionated guys with that much difference in age would not get along at all. But for whatever reason, we hit it off and became good friends quickly. We have visited his home in Illinois, and he and his wife have visited ours in Nashville. Even in the offseason, hardly a week goes by when we don’t text or talk – mostly about IndyCar racing, but not always. But one thing hasn’t changed – we are both still very opinionated and often disagree.

One thing is for certain, however – we both love the Indianapolis 500. We both went to our first race at an early age, I was six and he was seven; and it has been a big part of each of our lives since a very young age.

John grew up attending the Indianapolis 500, also. In fact, he went in 1964 – a year before I did. John and I started One Take Only in 2011. When he decided to stop talking to me in 2019, Paul and I decided to do a virtual videoblog together and call it Two Sites Unite, uniting our two websites.

It may not have the wit and banter that One Take Only did, but there is some good hard-core IndyCar talk in each one.

In this episode, we discuss Robert Shwartzman winning the pole for Sunday’s Indianapolis 500. We also weigh in on the latest scandal involving Team Penske and two of their drivers getting moved to the back row. Unfortunately, this was recorded before yesterday’s announcement that Team Penske had parted ways with Tim Cindric, Ron Ruzewski and Kyle Moyer. Lastly, we make our picks for Sunday’s race.

If you want to relive previous episodes of One Take Only or Two Sites Unite (although I don’t know why in the world anyone would want to), they are all archived on this site. Simply find each one listed under “Pages” on the top right-hand side of the home page.

My apologies in advance.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on May 22, 2025 at 4:04 am and is filed under Indianapolis 500. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.