Welcome to the Athletics Motor Sports podcast, The Tear Down.

I'm Jordan Bianchi, motor sports writer here at the Athletic, co-host of this podcast,

normally joined by Jeff Gluck, my colleague.

Jeff is on leave, as we've discussed before.

And this week, as co-host, I welcome Zach Albert from nascar.com.

Zach, thanks for joining us here on the tear down.

Yeah, absolutely, Jordan.

I appreciate you having me.

You know, just happy to keep the seat warm for Jeff here.

You know, wish him and his family well as, you know, they welcome their little one to the family.

So, yeah, just happy to keep the, like I said, keep the seat warm for him and stand in.

And I hope not to let him down with his appearance.

Oh, no, no.

Trust me.

I let him down every week and he usually lets me know it,

so we're more than five. No worries at all. Yeah, ideally we should be having this conversation

at the sheets and Ridgeway right off of the road as we kind of go back down toward North Carolina.

So that's also a Martinsville tradition for those who don't know it.

It's funny.

I was actually thinking of you yesterday on my way to Martinsville Speedway where this race was actually supposed to be on a Saturday night.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature, I have determined just hates NASCAR because the list of races that have been interrupted over the last year and change is pretty

lengthy.

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