Robert Liano

A NASCAR Cup Series champion interviews celebrities while driving at close to 180 mph around Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

On the Gas started as Ryan Blaney’s idea: what if Hot Ones happened in a race car? Tally Hair brought it to me, and with Words+Pictures I built it into a format: four levels that raise the speed and the stakes, from warm-up laps on the oval to tougher questions on the infield road course, ending in the No-Spill Zone, where the guest tries to keep a cup of BODYARMOR from spilling while Ryan throws the car around. Ryan had never hosted a show, so a big part of my job was directing new talent: preparing him to do the research and lead a real conversation while doing the hardest driving of his week, and engineering cameras and microphones that worked inside a race car. The mics were still giving us trouble the night before we shot. BODYARMOR, NASCAR’s official sports drink and Ryan’s longtime sponsor, was built into the show rather than bolted on: the car, the firesuit, the graphics and the No-Spill Zone leaderboard that carries viewers from one episode to the next, with a single six-second read from Ryan instead of commercial breaks.

Season one

• 3.4 million views across four episodes, and 7.5 million across the full campaign
• Two episodes among NASCAR’s five most-watched YouTube videos of 2026
• Guests: Keegan-Michael Key, TheStradman, Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson, Westen Champlin
• Season two is on the way

He doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he hasn’t been in here.

Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson, on whether NASCAR drivers are athletes