Max Taylor Is the Real Deal
Freddy Media manages an 18-year-old racing phenom named Max Taylor. He's contending for a seat on Andretti's IndyCar team. The only thing standing between him and that seat is winning the IndyNxt series and the data says he can do it.
Max with his father the Friday night before the Indy 500
Max is the son of Michael Taylor, a hedge fund manager out of New York who was the eleventh most profitable trader at Citadel before leaving to become one of the greatest pharmaceutical and medical investors on the Street. Had Michael not been sidelined by an autoimmune disease that left him bedridden for half a decade, he might be a household name. Instead, he's just legendary among quants and money guys.
The apple didn't fall far. Max shares his father's mathematical aptitude. He calculates fuel projections in his head while his coach is still typing them into the computer. He brakes at 170 mph with a precision you only see at the highest levels of motorsport. His track time data doesn't suggest he deserves an IndyCar seat, it demands one.
This weekend, Max was on the headset in pit row with his mentor #28 Kyle Kirkwood, listening in and observing as the race unfolded at 230 miles per hour. He was comfortable among the senior drivers. The Andretti family holds him close like a champion racehorse they think has a real shot at Churchill Downs when he comes of age.
Freddy Media is proud to be part of Team Taylor and even prouder watching a father get so much joy helping his son live out his dream at the highest level of motorsport.
The Indy 500 Is Unlike Anything Else in American Sports
Super Bowls. College football national championships. The Kentucky Derby. NASCAR.
The Indianapolis 500 is bigger than all of them.
350,000 people. And here's what separates it from every other major American sporting event: these people weren't there to be seen. They were there because they love racing.
The weight of Memorial Day was not lost on this crowd. They honored America's fallen soldiers with a sincerity that would have brought pride to gold star families. Multiple F-16 flyovers. Rob Gronkowski in an Apache helicopter at suite level. Curt Cignetti driving the pace car. The crowd sang "America the Beautiful" and meant every word.
The infield was beautiful Americana. Plenty of drunks. Not a single fight. 350,000 patriots.
Is that Gronk?
Even he smiles at the Indy500
Speaking of Patriots and Memorial Day, please support the Dwyer Fire Foundation. Steve Dweyer was my brother’s West Point classmate, and he died in a helicopter crash while his Black Hawk went down while deployed in the Mediterranean in 2023. Steve was an American hero, and the foundation below helps Gold Star Families pay for sports activities like travel baseball and cheer for their kids. Steve left behind a beautiful family, and we should all honor his legacy by supporting the foundation here.
The Hospitality Suite Is Where the Real Race Happens
The hospitality suite was filled with hedge fund managers, CEOs, and fathers of drivers. Every person in that room was making deals. Investing in each other's businesses. Shaking hands on things that would never make a press release. There was one catch: at some point, someone had to agree to help subsidize the $10 million it costs to operate a race car for the season.
Nobody in that room was trying to turn a profit on racing. They were paying for access to a network and something you can actually care about besides business.
Let me put it this way, Roger Penske doesn't have this look on his face standing in front of his Mercedes store in DC. Dealerships were simply the day job he had to do in order to afford chasing glory on the race track.
Legendary car dealer Roger Penske posing in front of his 20 Indy 500 trophies
The Winner Was American Enough for Us
The race was won by a Swede named Rosenqvist. But even the Europeans are American patriots at the 500. He was sponsored by Morgan Wallen's radio, wore a cowboy hat, and had Texas A&M stickers all over his car. American enough to walk out of the racetrack smiling.
This guy won by about 2 feet
The whole weekend was a reminder of something we've always believed: the best business gets done inside communities built around shared obsession. The same way deals get done on the twelfth hole, the racing world is a Trojan horse for dealmaking among people who build and invest in things for a living.
Apparently closest finish ever.
Sammi Cohen Is Doing Something Special
On the talent side, Freddy Media is working with Sammi Cohen on an incredible new project. Details are coming soon, but we're actively looking for B2B tech sponsors who want to be part of it.
Sammi Cohen is the fastest growing B2B media creator on the internet.
Sammi recently sat down with Reid Hoffman and Rick Caruso. Her media lives at the intersection of Wall Street, tech, and culture. Every brand partner we've brought to Sammi has loved working with her.
If you're a B2B tech company looking for a creator who actually speaks your audience's language, reach out.
What Else We're Building
Join the Freddy Media AI/Vibe Coding Community
We quietly launched Freddy Compute, the AI consulting arm of Freddy Media.
The build side: We partner with businesses to design and deploy real AI solutions not slide decks. We've already shipped voice AI for sales and customer service teams and accounting automation for service businesses and car dealerships. The playbook is simple: crack a skill for one customer, then redeploy it for the next. Every build makes the next one faster and cheaper.
Freddy Fiction is the proof of concept. We wrote fictional stories, uploaded them, and built out an entire free AI-powered publishing platform around them. Want to see what Freddy Compute can do? Go read a short story. That whole business exists because we'd rather show people what's possible than tell them.
The education side: We're running cohorts that teach people how to use AI effectively for building software, writing newsletters, managing social media, and developing brand identity. The people signing up are operators who see the wave coming and want to ride it instead of getting buried by it.
If you are interested in learning how to vibe code or have Freddy Media build something for you, please sign up below.
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