Daytona 500 2026 Recap: Celtic's Miracle Comeback Win

Podcasting from Studio 2520, somewhere, somewhere near Akron, Ohio, bringing you all the latest talk in motorsport and soccer. This is Tackling the Chicane.

All right, special thanks to the band once again. I don't remember their name, but, um, on staff as per usual. Um, we got a pretty loaded agenda for this time around. Um, I would say sort of the headliners coming from the Scottish Premiership, a pretty, uh, drastic turn of events I would say in Scotland is that pretty historic title race develops and continues as we, uh, believe it or not, uh, come close to the end of February already, uh, a month I think we both will welcome passing because March really kind of kicks things off in terms of motorsports here and and springtime in Ohio, which is always nice. Uh, so we're gonna get into that.

Some pretty, I would say, crazy events taking place in Scotland. Um, before that though, I wanted to touch on the Daytona 500, which was ran last weekend as we record, last Sunday, um, to, to little to no hiccups, which I was sort of surprised by. They did have to move the start time up by an hour to 1:30 Eastern as opposed to 2:30, but other than that, we didn't have weather, uh, affecting the race for the first time in quite a while, it seems. Uh, and Tyler Reddick ends up getting the victory in, of course, how it usually ends up being a last lap incident. Uh, just wanted to kind of hear your thoughts generally on that event, if anything stuck out to you there.

Um, not particularly, just the, the length of it. For one thing, I guess.

Um, again, I, as you said, there, there really wasn't anything of any noteworthy consequence that I can think of. I don't recall any controversial moves or, or anything like that, unless, unless you do, unless you have something. Um, I don't know. I— this— I should know better after all these years that, you know, a guy who— well, I won't say he came out of nowhere, but he sort of came out of nowhere. Yeah, I mean, with, with draft tracks, it really doesn't matter until it matters, basically, which at Daytona with such a long lap, it ends up basically just being if you're in the mix on the last lap, you have the chance to win.

He led no laps previously, which again, that's kind of just how it goes. You can't really be surprised by anything. I was happy to see Chase Elliott into the wall as a, as a hater of Hendrick. But, um, yeah, I mean, I think the the result is what it is, as Daytona tends to be. Um, very rarely are we rewarding the best driver on the day at that race, um, who you could make an argument was Bubba Wallace, who led quite a bit of the race, especially late into Stage 3.

He took the Stage 2 win. Um, points, let's remember, are kind of a big deal now. Not that they weren't before, but even more so a big deal with the new playoff— well, I guess lack thereof playoff— with the new championship format, the Chase. Uh, it is no longer win and you're in to a playoff mechanism like it was for the past few years. So gathering points, having a good points day is, is of utmost importance now.

So you have, you know, guys like Bubba Wallace winning Stage 2, that becomes a pretty big deal because you get a decent points payout for doing so. Um, and finishing in the top 10 is a big deal now. Did he end up 10th? He ended up 10th. Um, I've never seen his name listed as D. Wallace.

Darrell. Oh, I thought Bubba was his you know, that's what, what they— everyone called him. So yeah, I don't know if— I guess he would officially be listed as, as D. Wallace, uh, Darryl Wallace. But, um, yeah, I mean, overall the race I think kind of was what it was. Not particularly— nothing crazy happened.

You did have your big one in late stage 2, I believe, but nothing No controversy. Kind of a shame that Ryan Blaney got taken out. I think he had a pretty strong car.

But there was, there was one, that one big wreck that took out about 7 or 8, looks like. Yeah. Maybe more. Yeah. 3, 4, 5, 6, 9.

9 cars got taken out in that. One being Jimmy Johnson, who has no business being behind the wheel of a race car. Yeah, I didn't even realize he was in the race until he wrecked. Yeah. Um, yeah, well, that's just— that's Carvana trying to get on TV, which at one point I think he has some stake in that company, but I would imagine he still does.

I mean, he ran that in IndyCar his 2 amazing years in the series, so Uh, yeah, not, not a whole lot to report from that race. Always, you know, decent entertainment, um, so can't complain. Seemed like it was relatively full grandstands. I think officially a sellout. Of course, we know that can be pretty easily manipulated.

Yeah, there seemed to be a lot of people there.

Um, but I mean, this, this isn't a typical NASCAR race. This is a destination for people. Yeah. Number one, because it's the first thing that you can do in the middle of the winter. And secondly, it's in Daytona.

So there's a lot of people that show up for this race that this will be the one— this will be the only race they go to all year, probably. And maybe the only one that they watch too. Yeah, I'm interested, uh, just now, so I'm gonna pull it up. The TV rating, um, for this year: ratings jump 11%, most watched since 2023. It's interesting.

An average of 7.489 million viewers watch the race on Fox, making it the most watched since 2023. 2023. Viewership peaked at 9 million during its conclusion. And the reason I wanted to do that was because last year the Indy 500 was the most watched race on American television in 2025. Um, so I wanted to compare those numbers, uh, just to see, because I'm curious.

The 2025 Indianapolis 500 drew approximately 7.05 to 7.1 million viewers on Fox, which was a 40% increase from the 2024 race, which had that huge rain delay you'll of course remember. So I guess to retain that crown, you have to— gonna have to find about 400,000 more eyeballs, which May or may not happen. I think it's interesting, especially these 2 races. It's— there's some luck involved with viewership. Yeah.

What is the weather doing? How long have people had to be inside? What are— what else is on TV at that time, barring the Winter Olympics, which, you know, people will turn off after— what, you can't— you can only watch it for so many hours a day. Yeah. And, and really, how much crossover between the NASCAR fandom and people watching the Olympics are there?

I, I don't know. I guess the, the Daytona 500 sort of transcends the, the core NASCAR fan base, but, um, I think honestly that 1:30 start time probably helped them out quite a bit. Kind of that midday, ain't shit else to watch. Yeah, except it didn't feel like it. When did it actually green flag?

Like 2:10. Okay, I must have turned it on at noon because it felt like I was watching for hours and hours before— yeah, the flag dropped. Yeah, uh, Bart Simpson taking us to green. I don't— I get it's the 800th episode of The Simpsons.

I don't— they're coming up on 40 years, I think. 38, something like that. Wasn't it '88 or '89? Yeah. Regardless, I don't even know if— is it— I haven't watched an episode of that show since probably 1996, like a new episode.

Yeah, so I clearly— it still pulls ratings. Yeah, I mean, it's not to go on a tangent, but I, you know, Family Guy has been on for 25+ years now, so yeah, apparently that there's still an audience for that. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, they're gonna get to the point where the people who do the voices are either gonna die or switch them out or something. Yeah, I don't know.

Of course, AI could probably be your friend a little bit at some point, I suppose. I, I thought it was a little silly. Yeah, but it was— that's fine. Whatever. I mean, yeah.

Uh, yeah, it went off without a hitch, which is kind of rare for the Daytona 500 these days. I feel like there's always rain. Now at the end it looked like it was— rain was coming, so I think it was a good thing that race did not go into a million overtimes. That's another thing, there were not the, the cacophony of overtimes that you would usually expect, which I think was kind of a welcome change from how it usually goes. Well, there There's a fine line between interesting racing and— I agree, I don't like when they can't get a restart without another wreck, and that's happened a lot of years.

I don't know, it might speak to the way the car is set up, it might speak to the drivers. Knows, or it could just be one of those things where this is just the way it went. Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, they kept it green even though there was that wreck on the last lap, which was nice to see that they didn't just— they let them finish to the line, and that changed the winner of the race because of that, which I think everyone wants to see them racing to the finish. No one likes a caution and checkered finish.

So really not a whole lot to, to complain about with this year's rendition. We'll see if they can continue the momentum this season into Atlanta for this week, which is another draft-style track. Um, and then I believe they're at COTA the week after, Duramax GP. Yeah, is that, is that, uh, I don't know what they're calling Atlanta or— no, uh, the COTA is the Duramax GP. AutoTrader 400 is— okay, Atlanta.

Well, it's— they're calling it Echo Park Speedway, which must be the renamed Atlanta. Yeah, which since that's been repaved, uh, or redeveloped a few years ago, is basically just another draft-style restrictor plate race. But, uh, it'll be interesting, I think. Um, we did have some, some IndyCar tests happening this week in Phoenix. We're, believe it or not, um, just about a week away from the first weekend of the season in St. Petersburg.

Uh, which is kind of hard to believe. I guess we're seeing the end of the winter offseason. Did you say one week or two or— uh, it should— I believe it is March 1st is the first race of the year in St. Petersburg. Uh, so that would mean the first practice would be the 27th of Feb. Oh, so next week, Friday. Yeah, a week from this, from from tomorrow.

Yeah. Well, that's good. Can't get any worse unless it snows again, which it might— is supposed to do on Sunday. Yeah. And Monday.

But hopefully not anything like what happened before. No, I don't think we're looking at Snowmageddon Part 2 by any means. Plus, most of the other stuff has melted finally, which is nice. Uh, yeah, and we are not that far out from F1 kicking off, uh, I think the weekend after IndyCar starts, um, March, March 7th. Yeah, so practice— the practices will start on the 5th, qualifying 7th, and the race on the 7th.

It is Australia. Yeah, so it's weird. The Saturday night at 11 PM Eastern time, right? Which qualifying at midnight on the 7th our time. Yeah, so it's a full day, but yeah, they're calling it the same date.

It is the same day technically speaking, so that'll be fun. And then right, they're actually doing a back-to-back With the Chinese GP, the second race of the year, taking place the next weekend, March 15th. That's just a 3 AM start time Eastern, uh, if you wanna either stay up super late or wake up super early, or like sane people, probably just watch it recorded, uh, on Apple TV, which is new for this year. Which kind of reminds me on air that we gotta get that sorted. Yeah, um, yeah, I, I don't know what, uh, I'm sure it's like any, anything else.

Yeah, I mean, it takes 5 minutes, but I don't know anything about their rules though. Are we, are you going to be able to, yeah, to watch it from your Apple TV for MLS before it is not, they are not like a Netflix. They're not super stringent, I don't believe. I think you can have like 6 people watching or something. Um, so that'll be new.

We'll see if that affects anything on our end in terms of how they present the race. I don't know if there will even really be any mention of Apple TV on broadcast. Probably not. I wouldn't think so. I'm pretty sure it's just the sky broadcast, which is gonna be awesome.

Uh, I say sarcastically. I was looking, looking for a graphic on F1's Instagram page that was interesting. I saw it the other day and now it seems to have disappeared. So, well, they only post 78 times a day, so— oh yeah, maybe I didn't scroll down far enough. Probably not.

Um, Let's see if I can chase it down as well.

It's, it's just a power unit manufacturer. How many teams are running? Oh, I remember that. Yeah. We could probably— I already found it.

You did? I think. No, never mind. That was a different graphic about, uh, who they think is gonna nail the regulations by a fan vote. Okay, who powers who?

I found it. Uh, Mercedes power units, obviously Mercedes, McLaren, Alpine, which is new for this year, and Williams. Ferrari power units Ferrari, Haas, and the new Cadillac team. The officially, uh, named Red Bull Ford Powertrains. Red Bull and RB.

Aston Martin will be running a Honda power unit, and Audi will be running an Audi bespoke power unit. Yeah, so I The one thing I, I noticed was Honda is just one, has only one car that they're powering this year.

Um, and it'll be interesting to see the, what the relationship between Ford and Red Bull ends up being because it was Honda Red Bull. And Honda has a lot of experience with these power units. Um, I'm not sure about how much experience Ford has, maybe zero. And I don't even know what exactly Ford is bringing to the table. Well, it has to be money and badging, but I mean, it, they have to have some piece or part of the development of it.

And/or the— people don't realize that you don't just throw it in the car and, and then the engine manufacturer walks away. They're at every race. Yeah, but I feel like Red Bull's team of, you know, hundreds of people would probably have most of the development figured out. I can't imagine they're bringing in a ton of people from Ford, like make us a power unit, you know. I, I don't know.

I don't know what the, the detail of that relationship, because we have seen historically a lot of times manufacturers will just kind of, you know, it's mostly just a badge on something. Um, so I'm not really sure.

Um, according to the eye in the sky, it's— they have 5 dedicated engineers directly embedded within the Red Bull Powertrains facility in Milton Keynes, the UK, for the Formula 2026, or for 2026 Formula 1 project. While this number of on-site staff— I can't talk today, and I, I haven't had a drink in 6 days, so that's not the reason.

Um, the number of on-site staff is small, represents a targeted technical partnership focusing on the development of the powertrain. So there you go. So 5 people basically, pretty much, out of 400 people that probably work for that team, right? Okay, well, I don't know, that doesn't sound like a whole lot of Ford action in there, but what do I know? I guess if they're like lead engineers, that would be pretty important.

Yeah, I— it'll be interesting to see. Red Bull doesn't strike me as, uh, an organization that, that would take a huge risk and put a piece of shit on track, but you never know. Definitely not. I do know Ford's badging is slapped all over their new cars. Yeah, I kind of like that.

Yeah, yes indeed. So we are not very far from all sorts of stuff, uh, getting going on track. Uh, just 2 weeks away from F1, or yeah, 2 weeks because Feb is a short month, but, um, 1 week basically from IndyCar taking place. Um, if you were not in the know, Chevrolet and Honda both signed multi-year extensions to be, uh, engine suppliers for the series, which is a pretty big deal because Uh, you might remember that Honda was doing some posturing the past couple years about threatening to leave the series, which again is mostly probably corporate kind of— you gotta do it, especially when contracts are about to be due. Uh, but it is good to, to have 2 manufacturers locked in for the know, at least the foreseeable future.

Yeah. And let's remember, we're only 2 years away from a completely new, uh, engine, completely new chassis, you know, completely new regulations in IndyCar. So that is going to be something coming down the pipe soon. Yeah. Um, we'll have to— I'll have to keep an eye out for the annual Um, predictions.

I would think it, if it hasn't been out already, that it will be very shortly. And that's usually something that we pilfer from F1's website and then make our predictions, seal the papers in somewhere in an envelope for a year, and then pull them out at the end of the season. So have to look, have to keep an eye out to see where, where if and when those come out. So we'll do that as well. Well, I'll be doing my, my rankings that I do anyways, which last year you'll remember were randomly kind of good, which kind of surprised me.

And, uh, will I be able to predict the champion again? Because I, I don't even remember predicting Lando to win it, but I did. Yeah, it was written down.

Well, so maybe I'm an oracle. There you go. All right, well, I think that does it for motorsports unless there's something else on your mind. No. Okay, well, I think we can go ahead and shift into the world of soccer, and it is going to be, uh, pretty heavily Scotland-based for this episode.

We had an FA Cup weekend in England which really did not offer any sort of major storylines. Uh, it was kind of disappointingly so that all the teams you'd expect to win did. Uh, but luckily Scotland offered some twists and turns in this pretty historic title race. I think, um, Man, I mean, it's, it's really kind of hard to, to split these 3 teams from, you know, who, who is the, the true, uh, leader, who is maybe a fraudulent perhaps. I really couldn't call it if you made me do it.

Um, I guess we can start Celtic here if, if that's cool with you. Uh, a tricky, ended up being very tricky away trip to Rugby Park against Kilmarnock. And in what is sort of becoming the new norm for the Celtic team, starts off very rocky and takes a pretty heroic effort to get back into it. Yeah.

There, what I had, when you, My first note is that they're under pretty intense fire early. That's never a good sign for this team.

And Kilmarnock would go on to score the first goal in the 21st minute.

Tyrese John-Jules. Yeah. Hell of a name there. Yeah. TJJ.

And he was, You would see him a lot in this particular contest. So yeah, right off the rip, 1-0 Kilmarnock. So I can't figure out why this keeps happening. Celtic have conceded first in the past 4 or 5 matches that they've played.

I don't know what it— why is— I can't figure out why it's such a tale of two halves or tale of the last 10 minutes every single match. I think it does speak a little bit to the fact that there's a lot of new signings that some of them have not gelled, but the squad is, is just not that good, and teams can kind of figure out how to how to cause problems against them. And they do. And I, you know, I guess it's credit to them that they keep rescuing these wins. But at some point the bubble bursts and I think it could be ugly if that does happen.

Yeah. I mean, it, it's difficult enough to come back from 2-0 in this league. But when you constantly, when you keep putting yourself in that position, and in some cases, you know, maybe it's 3 goals that you're down by the end of the first half. One of these times, and it's not going to turn out that well. Yeah.

Kilmarnock would go on to score just 7 minutes later. A nice header from Hugel. 2-0, and then basically I don't recall much after that in the first half. Probably some attempts here and there. Yeah, it was, you know, 2-0.

Celtic weren't looking incredibly dangerous throughout the first half. A few decent attempts here and there. That Kilmarnock did well not to concede with. Um, this was not sort of your what has recently been happening where the, you know, the team, the opposing team has had a decent amount of the ball or had created a ton of big chances. I mean, Kilmarnock, you know, only create one big chance statistically speaking, 17 total shots, but Celtic again, you know, put themselves in this hole and have to rescue all 3 points, which, spoiler alert, they end up doing.

But it takes sort of a heroic last-minute winner to do that. Uh, Tenecte, the 56th minute, gets a goal back for Celtic. One of the better strikes of the season that I recall, way outside the box. Yeah, in a rare A rare good moment, honest to God, for Sebastian Tenecky, who otherwise has done very little in his time here with the club. Yeah, and a needed goal because as the— as time ticks away in the second half of these games, it starts to get, uh, more and more nervy.

Um, so A needed goal and a good strike. Yeah. Goals always kind of breed goals in this series as well. And at least in my opinion, they do. So not quite 10 minutes, probably 8 minutes or so later off of a throw-in, Benjamin Negrent.

Yep, equalizer, which that made everybody feel quite a bit better. Yeah, I don't know, did you watch this at home? I did. I did not watch it live because I was actually running during this, trying to get a run in before the race.

Um, but man, I mean, I don't know how— again, the overarching point here is how much longer does Celtic get away with this type of performance because I feel like eventually that luck is going to run out. Well, we'll find out. I mean, I think you're, if you look at the table, I'm not going to, I think there, if you shuffle the top 2 teams, I think that it's going to be the end of the That's going to be the table at the end of this campaign. It's going to be Rangers, Hearts, Celtic. Okay.

I just don't think Celtic can get their shit together in order to— they're definitely— I definitely don't think that they're going to win the league just based on the way that they've been playing. Now, as you said, We've seen Hearts take a massive shit before. They don't seem like that team this year. No, but they've, they've stumbled and bumbled a little bit, which is to be expected in, in February. We'll get to that, that game against Rangers.

But yeah, I mean, there's only so many times in a season where you're going to score that 90-plus-7-minute winner, which, you know, thank God Araujo is able to do that with 45 seconds to go. This, this was a miracle game. Yeah, I mean, essentially 99% of the time this ends up a 2-2 draw. Yeah, and, and we would be ruing the opportunity to, to get some points, some much-needed points. But first off, Legendary celebration, uh, from Araujo goes into the stands.

Yeah, which I wouldn't recommend as a professional football player to do, right? That's the first time I've ever seen it, I think. But I think, you know, passion does, does cloud judgment sometimes. Not that anything bad happened, but no, he got a yellow card. Yeah, yeah.

But I mean, you would imagine there's some boozed-up fans in there. I don't know what the hell's they're going to do. I don't know. I guess players from the NFL used to leap into the front row. True.

Very true. But you don't see it in this league ever, or at least I have never seen it. So Araujo is on loan. You'll have to recall from Bournemouth. There is an option to buy.

Feels like that's a pretty easy, just pay the fucking money come the summer. Deal. Uh, I think he's been one of our best players, very reliable at the right back position. Um, and Celtic have a lot of players on loan that we're gonna have to figure out what the hell we're gonna do with. But going back, domestically speaking, the midweek last week Celtic win with a 90th minute plus 1 winner— remember in the Scottish Cup they were basically out until a 90 plus 7 equalizer from Junior Adamu, um, to win that.

Um, I don't think the luck is going to run dry. We play Hibernian Sunday at home. That's going to be a pretty stern test. Um, looking at the fixture list for Celtic, these next 2 to 3 weeks are pretty much the make-or-break point of this season.

Um, depending on how it goes, we're okay. So we're out of Europe at this point, basically. We lost 4-1 to Stuttgart of Germany today, and we have to go away to their house next week. That— we're 3 goals down, so that's the end of that. Um, You can argue that maybe that's a good thing because we can focus only on Scotland now.

But yeah, I mean, embarrassed today. Horrible performance. Kasper Schmeichel is— if I have to come on here and talk about him starting again, I would be incredibly pissed off. So what happened between this year and last year? Because he was— I would call him one of the better keepers.

Yeah, um, I think it's— he's 39. I think age becomes a factor, and sometimes it comes on quick. He just can't make any type of save. If he has to dive anywhere, he's not making the save. He costed Celtic 2 goals, and I'm not talking about— whoops, um, I'm not talking about he should have done better, but I'm saying like Statistically, he costed Celtic 2 goals today, um, which is not really acceptable.

And fucking with my headphones, and we're back.

Um, just goals or balls that are coming right to him, he's not making saves. They fly right by him. He can't dive. Reaction time seems to be horrible. I mean, he's just finished.

He's finished. Yeah, he might be hurt too. I mean, I don't know, he's probably nursing some sort of injury. Who's our— who is our backup keeper? Uh, Vijayami Sinisalo, who has featured a few times this season, a lot in the Scottish Cup.

I think you just gotta ride him until the end of the year, even if he's— he cannot be There's no way he can be any worse. I just, I, he can't be worse. I don't, I don't know what else has to happen for, for that change to be made in the lineup. I don't know. I don't know.

So listen to this fixture list from now until March 14th and tell me how you think this is going to go. Get shellacked today in Europe, so that's pretty much a lost cause. You have Hibernian at home on Sunday, then you go Thursday, travel to Germany to play a match. You'll probably end up playing the kids there. I mean, you're out, you're out of that competition.

Then that Sunday, so 72 hours later, not even, you are playing Rangers away in the league. So at Ibrox, obviously that doesn't need to be hyped up any more than it will be. Then the Wednesday following the midweek, you are away to Aberdeen. Then you play Rangers again at Rangers again in the Scottish Cup. Wow.

And the cherry on top is 4th place Motherwell at home. Uh, the week after. Yeah, that's gonna be tough. So we're looking— I mean, if let's say worst case scenario we lose to Rangers in both those games, so you're then out of the Cup, so that trophy is gone. Then you are— you would be 3 points back on Rangers, and we don't know what Hearts would be doing at that time.

That's, you know, that it becomes there's only so many games left and it becomes an increasing challenge to try and claw back into this thing. Uh, but on the other hand, I guess if you win both of those games, you know, you might be looking all right. That would be the best case scenario, obviously, and a miracle. Yeah, I mean, especially away. Do you, do you really see them winning Both of those games?

Certainly not. I'll take one. One. I'll take a draw. Yeah, I would take a draw in the league and whatever the fuck— whatever happens in the cup at this point, that's kind of the least of our concerns, right?

Um, yeah, if we could just draw and kind of as you were. Now Hearts are playing Falkirk next, which is going to be a stern test, but you know, they've kind of made it through this period of incredibly hard fixtures. They have Falkirk, Aberdeen, Kilmarnock, Dundee. So not exactly the pride and joy of the league. Um, I don't know, it becomes very interesting here in the month of March as this season develops.

Let's, uh, hit this Hearts-Rangers game to close things down. Probably one of the— I would say one of the better matches of this season. Obviously, you know, Ibrox was rocking. That was always going to be the case, packed out. Um, but you know, Hearts don't end up winning this, but they, they still are taking the game to these teams.

Rangers in this one. Just happened to be on the short end this time. Yeah, I mean, they definitely were present.

They scored the first goal pretty fairly early at 16th minute. Not anything, you know, lightning fast.

Braga to Mark Leonard.

Just a pretty textbook Goal. Hearts goes up 1-0. Yeah, uh, I felt like maybe that would be sort of a gut punch to Rangers. You know, the place was rocking. If we get this win, we can get back into this title fight.

And it seemed like they had sucked the energy out of Ibrox Hearts with that goal. That would not be the case because just 3 minutes later, Rangers equalize with a sort of a I think what you would call pinball in the box. Yeah. 3 shots in succession. Yeah.

Ends up later being ruled as an own goal. But basically after the second defense there, the keeper had, he was just so discombobulated that there was no way he could save that. He makes 2 saves. Right. 2 pretty good saves.

Then it, I believe, comes off the post. The crossbar in the Hearts defender, uh, Steinbender tries to clear it and it's one of those things where he rushes it and shanks it into his own net. Right. But I mean, yeah, that's just the nature, the nature of that type of when, once things are happening in the box like that. An own goal isn't— it's not as bad as if you struck the ball.

Yeah, you know, it just basically bounced off of him. There's more egregious own goals that I've seen in my time. That was— you can kind of see what had transpired there. Hearts do well not to sort of let that completely take the life out of their— out of this match and their efforts. Uh, Braga, who assisted the first one, Uh, would not go quietly in this, in this match with a great strike in the 30th minute to make it 2-1.

And when that went in, I, I thought to myself, okay, if they can just take a lead into the half— kind of a classic coaching cliché— but if we can just take a lead into the half, regroup, come out in the second half, defend our lead, and, you know, maybe we can get something out of this. Of course, that would not be what happened. No. Um, Braga's header in the 30th was pretty impressive, by the way. Um, but just 9 short minutes later, um, the Rangers would score to equalize.

And the, the, the gentleman who scored the goal, Chermiti. Yes, Yusuf Chermiti. Um, we would see him again. This would be one of his better matches in blue, right? Um, 21 years old from Portugal.

The hilarious thing is I had seen Rangers fans complaining about him online like the week before, but I guess that's the nature of the business. Yeah, well, after this match they should shut up. Yeah, so he gets one of a couple— well, more than a couple goals, a threesome of goals. Starting in the 39th minute, it's 2-2, and we take that into halftime. Uh, not horribly egregious for— from a Hearts perspective in terms of, you know, still definitely in it.

You want to be the next one to strike. And starting in that second half, they had a couple decent chances And even throughout the second half before we get kind of the finisher, but they just didn't take them. And Rangers, credit to them, very quick counter-attack style goals, and suddenly, you know, you're down. Chermiti gets one in the 57th minute, and it felt like once Hearts were down a goal, it was going to be hard for them to come back. Yeah.

And that was another nice header.

So 3 goals and 3 very distinctly different patterns of scoring, I guess. Yeah. So that shows the fact that he's got some, what do you want to call it? He's got a good amount of skills, I guess. Yeah.

I mean, his skill set is is, yeah, you know, it's wide. So, uh, yeah, that was the 57th minute. And then, uh, that carries to the 90th minute where, um, you know, that's basically the end of the game plus 4. And I don't exactly remember how this one got set up, but he scores again. Yeah, um, just sort of a defensive error from Hearts, which I guess sounds obvious with a goal, but that is what happened.

Tremidi does well to slot it home and put the game on ice, as they say. 4-2 to Rangers in this one. It feels like a very important result for both teams involved. Hearts Their lead is essentially gone. I think if Celtic win against, uh, Hibs and Hearts lose, then they would be tied on points.

But if Celtic right now win their game in hand against Aberdeen, they would be tied, assuming both teams win on the weekend. Rangers feel weirdly, even though they are not, uh, top of the league, feel like the best team in the league right now. If I were to call it. I think I kind of agree with you that if I were to call the league, I would probably put Rangers top at the moment. Um, I don't know how I feel about Hearts right now.

They're obviously still a very good team, but they have to be careful. I think they have to win against Falkirk or you can pretty much kiss their title chance goodbye. Uh, that is, uh, Saturday at 10. They have to win that. They have to beat the teams below them in the table, um, outside of the Old Firm to really keep this alive.

Um, because Celtic— now we'll see if it continues, but they keep kind of finding a way to win. Um, of course that's going to come to a head against Rangers March 1st in And I, I feel like if Celtic lose that match against Rangers, it's, it's going to be difficult for them to, to come back in the league. I think a Rangers win would give them a lot of confidence, and probably you'd start see them dispatching the other teams in the league. I think confidence is just so much of what runs soccer. Especially over a long league campaign.

And if Rangers beat Celtic, I feel like they'll kick on and probably win the league. So that's where I'm at with it. Yeah, I don't disagree. Although anything can happen, it's still pretty tight at the top. And with that schedule coming up for Celtic, if they get lucky and go on a run, everything changes.

Yeah, I think destiny's still in Celtic's hands, but on the other hand, you can, you can mess up said destiny and it becomes quite difficult. So at the weekend in Scotland, we have got, uh, the televised match, I believe, is St. Mirren and Motherwell, who Motherwell have been sort of a sleeper down there in 4th place, um, but kind of— they're kind of lurking in the shadows of the top 3. If they continue to string wins together, who knows. Um, and then Livingston-Rangers, 10 AM Sunday, is another televised match, which Rangers will probably win that pretty easily. Yeah, but yeah.

Those are always, well, you could, you could watch it for the first 25 or 30 minutes and, and sort of get a feeling for if it's going to be something that you need to continue to watch or not. Yeah. For a number of reasons. Yeah. So we'll see in the Premier League.

Obviously they were off this weekend with the FA Cup. Arsenal had a midweek fixture against Wolves. Um, which they drew. So that's 2 draws in a row for them. If Man City win their game in hand, they're only 2 points behind, and starts to feel like maybe we're seeing a repeat of some years gone by where Arsenal lead the league for basically the whole season only to lose it late in the year.

Uh, so that is going to be something to pay attention to as we get down to the business end of the season. Huge match Sunday, Tottenham-Arsenal. Um, that'll almost certainly be something we keep an eye on on the show. Tottenham languishing in 16th. I mean, they're, they're in a relegation fight.

Yeah, that's a shame. Yeah, which would be absolutely insane if they got relegated. Um, you seriously cannot rule it out right now. So, uh, how the mighty have fallen, uh, with, with Tottenham in years, in these past couple years. Uh, so keep an eye on that match Sunday.

That has a lot of interesting plot lines. Involved. And of course, we will continue to monitor the Scottish Premiership title race, which continues to feed, uh, us with plenty of content. And next time out, it'll be just a couple days till the IndyCar season starts, which is a very welcomed sight for this program. So I think that Does it for this episode?

Yeah. Yep. Um, looking forward to the next couple because, uh, well, you know, we'll actually have some racing to talk about. Not that soccer isn't fun, but we like to do both here. So, uh, looking forward to that for sure.

Indeed. All right. Well, I think you can hit the music and take us away.

For executive producer Richard Tanaka, this has been Tackling the Chicane, Studio 2520, copyright 2026. We'll see you next time.