#beadgate

[patito-oward]

one of my favorite pieces of indycar lore is beadgate, also referred to as tubgate, and it is TRULY not talked about enough. in case any of you don’t know, here’s a deep dive into the lore.

to really get the full effect you have to rewind to may of 2021. for anyone who doesn’t know all of the drivers basically live in a lot together in motorhomes for the month of may. rossi returns to his bus one day to see that his golf cart had been put up on blocks, had the wheels taken off, and the wheels were now on top of his motorhome; see below:

so alex, because he’s the most predictable human alive, is furious. he’s determined to find out who did this and get revenge on them. eventually he breaks down sweet baby colton, who originally helped conor with the golf cart on blocks, and colton tells him it was conor.

alex had already narrowed it down to conor, but colton confirmed it. alex even overhears a call between conor and colton where conor is panicking thinking alex is onto them. then alex starts a deliberate plan to get him back and make his life hell. despite being very adamant that he had nothing to do with the golf cart conor is very careful because he knows revenge is coming.

throughout the next week and a half-ish alex tries everything to get conor back. conor is being very careful to lock his bus and car whenever he’s away, and he’s also stopped using his golf cart completely and hidden it somewhere at the speedway. alex is so dedicated to doing this that he finds out who conor was going on a date with that night (because conor was a bit of a whore before his girlfriend), dms the girl on instagram, and gets her in on this prank.

he basically asked her to keep an eye out for his motorhome keys in the car or on him, she says she doesn’t see him, but tells him where they went for dinner. rossi goes to this restaurant, convinces the valet to give him the keys to conor’s car and looks for the keys to his bus, they aren’t there. then, not willing to give up, he goes to conor’s house and breaks in, still can’t find the keys.

finally, he heads back to the speedway and decides he’ll fuck with his golf cart instead, but like i said, conor’s golf cart is MIA. rossi starts a search party for this golf cart, he has everyone he knows, including doug boles (president of ims and conor’s step dad), looking for this golf cart and they can not find it. he calls it off for 2021, but promises that he’s not done yet, and now has a whole year to plan his next prank.

a whole year goes by, it’s may 2022, and because conor is who he is he decides an inflatable hot tub is an absolute need for his motorhome.

he is so proud of himself for this thing and is showing it off to everyone, and the absolutely diabolical alex rossi sits back and laughs maniacally as everything falls into place.

alex does extensive research (as he does on most things) and finds out exactly how many orbeez it would take to fill the hot tub, and on tuesday morning of practice week he sneaks over to conor’s hot tub, and 4 hours later conor goes to show off his hot tub to someone and finds this:

conor is furious and on the hunt for who would’ve done this, he, wrongly, assumed that it was done monday night and therefore couldn’t be alex because alex was with him. the whole week goes by, and he still doesn’t know who it is, until the night of the victory banquet when alex drops this:

anyways this is my favorite thing ever hope you all enjoy as much as i do

[nico-di-genova]

i come to your inbox with Heavily Researched News™ (i listened to off track and did some quick googling) containing info for your 'a lesson in braking' alex.

so, in 2022 there was a huge prank pulled on conor daly on day one of the indy500 (dubbed Beadgate), where someone filled his hot tub with what he estimated was 400,000 orbeez. his top list of suspects were josef newgarden, callum ilott, tony kanaan, colton herta, kyle kirkwood and scott mclaughlin.

in hindsight, daly thought he'd heard some noise outside his trailer

'there was a lot of guilty faces in the paddock this morning, and i can’t figure out which one is the culprit,' daly said. 'it’s a tough scene. i think the primary suspects are the dads of the indycar community, too, because apparently children like to fill up these little fake guns with water balls and shoot them at people.'

newgarden called daly that night 'in a very scared manner' to try to convince daly that he wasn't guilty of the prank. daly suspected callum of being involved 'cause he was hanging out with him a lot as he was looking for the culprit and wondered if callum is keeping himself close to the situation to throw daly off.

callum meanwhile, claimed he’s innocent because he wasn’t prepared for the shenanigans to ensue so quickly. (but as a rookie, he was fully prepared for being pranked himself and had bought supplies to retaliate if that was the case)

ilott said that it was a genius and clever prank and wondered why daly was considering him a prime suspect and why alexander rossi wasn’t being considered at all.

kirkwood said he spent $40 on chlorine and test tubes to keep the hot tub running properly so why would he ruin it?

marco andretti also wondered why nobody was considering rossi, as well as james hinchcliffe.

'I’m so busy worrying about my race car right now, but it is funny to look at on social media,' andretti said. 'hinch has some time on his hands. rossi is always a culprit, isn’t he?'

but rossi claimed to have an alibi 'cause he and hinch was with daly as it happened on monday night, so he couldn't have done it... right?

wrong. guess what?? turns out he really should have listened to callum and andretti 'cause it very much was alex (with the help of sage karam) who filled daly's hot tub with 1.76 million orbeez (which cost him 483 dollars which was almost as much as the hot tub itself btw). he just didn't do it on monday night, he did it on tuesday morning.

and this is how he confessed:

daly's reaction to finding out btw:

and alex explained it all in detail on the 'off track' (don't know which episode, i watched the youtube clip titled 'the hot tub prank') where he claimed to have done legitimate research into how many orbeez it would take to fill a 242 gallon portable hot tub (which is apparently how large daly's hot tub is), which honestly? very believeable to me.

the cherry on top of it all? the way daly found out about the prank to begin with. 'cause daly had guests over and he wanted to show them his brand new hot tub.... cue him lifting the lid on the hot tub and finding 1.75 million orbeez instead of water.

and the reason behind this hilarious prank??? daly did this to rossi TWO YEARS EARLIER in 2020:

so essentially, when it comes to pranking alexander rossi? fuck around and find out.

…so when I said alib Alex breaking the water pump in the fountain at school…where he dumped a fuck ton of soap in there senior year…after researching which brand of soap would produce the most bubbles…I was actually underestimating the lengths he would go to?

Jasmine honest to god this is the best possible Alexander lore dump you could have given me. I am absolutely in tears. What the actual FUCK goes on in his brain??? He plotted, he planned, he did THE MATH to figure out how many fucking orbeez he would need to fill this thing? Because…the wheels were taken off his golf cart TWO YEARS PRIOR??!!

He’s so insane, he’s so absolutely crazy insane. Nearly $500 on orbeez beads…I love him. I opened this ask with absolutely no idea where tf it was going and now I am sitting here laughing so hard I am actually in tears. I can’t get over the image of him researching this. He absolutely was not fucking around.

And not only did he own up to it, he shows the actual receipts. My respect for his commitment is through the roof rn. When people say race car drivers are competitive this is actually what they mean. I am now also a little scared of him and his unwavering resolve to finish what is started.

What I’ve gathered from this is you should probably never engage in a prank war with Alexander Rossi. It is a guaranteed loss and he will decimate you to the point that you are preparing to proudly show off your brand new possession, only to find it has been broken by toxic water balls.