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In Driver’s Eye with James Hinchcliffe, the six-time INDYCAR winner will bring you inside the mind of a racer while breaking down the nuts and bolts of the sport for fans. I’ve spent a lot of time in this column diving deep into how physically tough motorsports can be. But this sport is just as much, if not even more, a mental contest for drivers at 200 miles an hour. The yips aren’t common. You don’t just forget how to drive a race car quickly. So when a driver experiences a dip in form, it sometimes can be the result of not being in the right place mentally. In the same way, a golfer doesn’t forget how to swing, and a pitcher doesn’t forget how to throw. But sometimes, the space between your ears gets foggy, and it can affect your performance. Just like any sport, INDYCAR drivers have to contend with mistakes in the moment. If you make a mistake and crash out of a race, you have plenty of time to digest what happened, learn from it and eventually move on. When you make a mistake but your race continues, that time isn’t a luxury you have. And unlike hockey, when you can process a mistake over a shift change, or football, when you’re on the bench as the other side takes the field, racing offers no breaks — literal ones aside. So you have to be able to manage the situation in real time. At real speeds. Most drivers are perfectionists and are hyper-competitive. They don’t like making mistakes, and they don’t like losing. They get frustrated when either of those things happen. But when you make a mistake in a race, and you haven’t totaled your car and ruined your day, getting over it has to be instantaneous. If you can’t do that, it tends to snowball. I worked with a mental coach for years, and one of the big things we worked on together was how to get through these exact scenarios. Usually, when a driver lets a single mistake fester, they make more. Driving angry can often make you drive slower. You start trying too hard to overcome the mistake, and it leads to more mistakes, which leads to driving harder, which leads to… well, you see where this is going. Many drivers work with mental coaches to address this. They have different exercises that drivers can do to try and practice this skill. And it is a skill. And it certainly is not the type of work that can be accomplished in a day. It takes lots of time dedicated to this one mental aspect of the sport to master it. One of the biggest challenges with making a mistake on track is the responsibility you feel towards the team. Every driver is acutely aware of the hours and hours that go into preparing and running a successful INDYCAR weekend. When you make a mistake that costs your team a result, you feel terrible for that group. But as we say all the time, racing is a team sport, and teams support each other. Usually, the most supportive group that you will face is your mechanics and engineers. They will throw their arms around you and say, “We’ll get ‘em next time.” The fact of the matter is: every member of that team will make a mistake at some point, and you all have to lift each other up when that happens. For drivers, one of the challenges is that the mistakes are very public. They are on TV and easily identifiable. If a pit member drops a wheel nut on a stop, for example, that’s a mistake that’s noticed but more quickly looked over — and often the person isn’t identified. If an engineer makes a mistake on setup, people may never know. So whether the mistake was big or small, public or hidden, the most important part for any member of that team is to learn from it, let it go, and move on to the next race, pit stop or lap. SOUND LIKE AN INDYCAR EXPERT: SURVIVING THE HEAT Having covered the pure physicality of INDYCAR racing, this past weekend at Mid-Ohio brought to the forefront another factor that can exponentially increase the toll on the body: the heat. Mid-O was a stifling scene on Sunday, and an all-green race — no caution periods to even catch your breath for a few minutes — meant it was as hard a day as the drivers will likely face this year. Physical track, hot conditions, no cautions. And it can get up to 120, 130 degrees inside a cockpit. Knowing that we race in the Midwest in the summer, these hot and humid days have to be expected. So drivers will include an element of heat acclimation into their training. This can come in several different forms. If a driver lives in a warm and humid climate — I am looking at all the Florida residents in the field! — then you can get outside and run or cycle to get your body acclimated to that sort of strain. If you live in milder climates, especially in the winter, that’s not an option, so you have to get creative. One way to do that is to bring your training to a hot climate. It’s not uncommon to set up a bike trainer in a small room with a heater pumping and getting the temperature up into the 90s. Saunas work too. A long, steady ride in those conditions can make the body more comfortable for a two-hour race with four layers of Nomex — intense, flame-resistant fabric, essentially — in a tight cockpit. But as we’ve said, this game is as mental as it is physical, and when the body starts to overheat, your cognitive abilities start to falter. To combat this, some training combines heat with cognitive drills. Bringing an iPad with a purpose-built program designed to test memory, reaction time, hand-eye coordination and more into a sauna after a big workout can partially simulate the conditions of late in a race on a hot day. I’ve done this before — it works! There are things that drivers can do to survive the heat on race day too. Namely, hydration with a detailed plan that starts on a Thursday and is based on the projected weather on Sunday. Of course, there’s race day hydration too. Drivers have a small Camelback that holds about a liter of fluid, making it easily accessible behind the wheel. And then there is the cool suit — a shirt with cooling coils running through it — which gets mixed reviews from drivers. The biggest concern with it being that if the system fails, as happened to Scott McLaughlin at Mid-Ohio, it actually makes you hotter. But some swear by it. I personally used a cool suit on hotter days, but I was always afraid of it failing — which, luckily, never happened to me. At the end of the day, it’s a tough sport that is sometimes run in tough conditions, so you have to train to be prepared for anything. 1 FOR THE ROAD In last week’s column, I talked of the impending move of one of the titans of the sport in Scott Dixon. Now, we know that he is, in fact, headed to McLaren, along with friend and former teammate Felix Rosenqvist to partner with Pato O’Ward. This left open two very attractive rides at Chip Ganassi Racing and Meyer Shank Racing. Christian Lundgaard — whose contract was not renewed to make way for Dixon — is clearly the hottest free agent on the market. He reminded the paddock that with a pole and second place on Sunday. But there are a few other names being thrown around that could make the next few weeks super fascinating from the silly season perspective. Rinus VeeKay has been in great form in the one and a half seasons since being dropped from ECR and running with smaller teams. Those great results in under-resourced programs have certainly made some team owners perk up with interest. Also in the running is the young rookie Caio Collett, who has been impressing with his ability to regularly out pace veteran teammate Santino Ferrucci at AJ Foyt Racing. Will these teams go for a known quantity in VeeKay, or risk the potential big upside of a promising rookie, or perhaps look to Europe or a sidelined veteran to fill the seats? The only sure thing about INDYCAR for 2027 is that the driver lineup will look very different! MORE DRIVER’S EYE:​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports

MIAMI STADIUM — For England fans, this is always the year. Whether it’s a World Cup or a European Championship, they believe in their heart of hearts that their country, the one that invented this sport and then exported it to all the rest, will finally, eventually take its rightful place as champions. Over the last almost 60 years, it just hasn’t happened. But the Three Lions have been getting closer. They were the losing finalists at the last two Euros. And with Saturday’s 2-1 extra-time win over Erling Haaland and Norway, England is back in the World Cup semifinals for the second time in three editions. This time, it doesn’t feel like an outlier. Watching England survive the crucible of Mexico City in last weekend’s thrilling 3-2 victory over World Cup co-host Mexico, it was impossible not to notice the mental fortitude of Thomas Tuchel’s team. And it was the same again on Saturday in South Florida, where Jude Bellingham, Harry Kane and the rest of Tuchel’s stars won another match that was less of a soccer game than a street fight. That hasn’t always been the case for England, who over the last 30-plus years has often performed beneath its talent level. That might be good enough to survive group play consistently or win an early knockout game. Against teams that it isn’t naturally superior to? No chance. There’s a reason England has been eliminated in the World Cup quarterfinals more than any other national team in history. This version of England is different. “The effort, the team spirit, the belief to overcome adversity, to dig in and find ways to win is on the absolutely highest level,” Tuchel said afterward. He’s right. And that’s why England is, realistically, a bona fide World Cup contender at long last. There’s a visceral toughness to this team that, for all its ability, its pampered, high-maintenance predecessors lacked. Call it a willingness to fight for every teammate — even the ones who might represent a hated Premier League rival. That matters more than most think. Argentina isn’t the reigning World Cup champ because it had better players, man for man, than France. Man for man, it didn’t. La Albiceleste won because, time and again, they simply refused to be beaten. That sort of mental strength is rare. Add it to a selfless group that boasts legitimate all-world players like Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane, and damned if Tuchel’s side doesn’t stand its best chance in at least half a century this time around. Facing Switzerland on Wednesday in Atlanta would’ve been easier, to be sure. But beating the best — to be the best — is a rite of passage, a requirement. And the defending champs — Argentina scored twice in extra time in Saturday’s nightcap to set up the semifinal everyone who isn’t English wants to see — are a fitting roadblock to have to somehow overcome. Should England clear that hurdle, it surely won’t fear whoever emerges between France and Spain on the stronger side of the bracket. Especially if, as Tuchel believes, England still has another gear to hit. In his post-match sideline interviews, the German manager raised eyebrows when he said he loved the result if not the performance against Norway. Asked about the exchange, it seemed to catch Bellingham off-guard. “Maybe he doesn’t know what it’s like to play in those conditions,” Bellingham offered. An hour later, during his post-game press conference in the bowels of the arena that the NFL’s Miami Dolphins call home, Tuchel, whose previous experience has been at Chelsea, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and Paris Saint-Germain, provided some additional context. “I’m proud, and I’m happy,” Tuchel said. “But I’m also a football coach, and I also have demands.” He continued: “I think we can play faster and play more clinical. There were unforced errors and technical mistakes in our game … so a lot of things to do better.” If England can clean up those errors and maintain the mentality that has already taken them to the final four for just the fourth time ever, they’ll be as hard an out as the other three nations — Argentina, France and Spain — still standing. England’s fans have been waiting for a chance like this for decades. Now, after surviving the two toughest tests to date, those supporters could be a mere 90 minutes from seeing their team in its first World Cup final since 1966. “They spend well-earned money to come over and support us,” keeper Jordan Pickford said of England’s long-suffering diehards. “All we want to do,” he added, “is pay them back.”​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports

Another knockout game, another 120 minutes, another survival. Argentina beat Switzerland 3-1 in Kansas City on Saturday night, and the scoreline is lying to you — this was agony until the 112th minute, when Julián Álvarez decided to end it himself in stunning fashion. Here are my four takeaways from a quarterfinal that had everything, including a red card we’ll argue about for weeks: 1. Argentina Is The Cat With Nine Lives Let’s do the math on the champions’ knockout run: 120 minutes against Cape Verde, a miraculous comeback from 2-0 down against Egypt, and now 120 more against a Switzerland side that refused to die, even a man down. That’s three straight games where Argentina was thoroughly resistible — and three straight wins. Even Saturday’s early gift, Alexis Mac Allister heading in a Lionel Messi corner after 10 minutes, dissolved into an hour of sweating when Dan Ndoye equalized. Messi’s record scoring streak of nine straight World Cup games? Over. Argentina’s march? Not remotely. They’re unbeaten in 12 World Cup matches and headed to a seventh semifinal. At some point, you stop calling it luck and start calling it what it is: a team that simply refuses to be eliminated, no matter how hard it makes things for itself. 2. The Embolo Red: Harsh, Correct, or Absurd? Here’s the sequence, because you need the full absurdity. Breel Embolo went down theatrically, simulating contact that never came. The referee then booked … Leandro Paredes. Wrong decision as he never made contact with Embolo. That mistaken-identity card triggered the VAR review — and the review found the dive. Second yellow, off you go, Switzerland down to 10 for the final 50-plus minutes of their first quarterfinal since 1954. Was it technically correct? Yes. Embolo dived, and diving on a yellow is a self-inflicted wound that, by the letter of the law, warrants a yellow. But we understand the outrage, too: without the ref booking the wrong man, the simulation never gets reviewed. Right call, brutal path to it. Both things can be true. 3. Julián Álvarez, Finally. And What A Way To Announce It. We’ve spent three weeks asking where Julián Álvarez went. The Atlético Madrid striker flickered without igniting all tournament, while Messi carried the load, and the questions were getting louder by the game. Then came the 112th minute. Ten Swiss players camped behind the ball, Gregor Kobel having the game of his life, extra time slowly edging toward penalties. Álvarez collected it, opened his body, and curled an absolute painting into the top corner. No deflection, no rebound, no fortune — just a strike Kobel could only watch. It was the kind of goal you replay over and over in slow motion with your mouth agape (and comes in incredibly high in the top goals of the tournament.) If that’s the moment Álvarez wakes up, the timing is exquisite. Lautaro Martínez added the third on a breakaway in the 121st, but make no mistake: Álvarez won this game with one of the finishes of the tournament. 4. Wednesday’s Semifinal Will Be Won By Whoever Has Legs Left Pity these two semifinalists. England went to altitude at the Azteca to beat Mexico, then played 120 minutes against Norway in Miami with a heat index of 108 degrees — Jude Bellingham dragging them through with a brace, the winner off an Ørjan Nyland spill. Argentina has now played 240 minutes of extra time in three knockout games. Both teams finished Saturday looking like they’d run a marathon in a sauna, because essentially they had. The football gods have granted one mercy: Wednesday’s semifinal is in Atlanta, under a roof, with air conditioning. So the tactical question becomes brutally simple. Thomas Tuchel’s England is younger in key spots; Argentina has Messi and pedigree, but the older, heavier legs. Recovery, rotation and squad depth will decide this as much as anything drawn on a whiteboard. Whoever’s still sprinting in minute-85 goes to the final.​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports

A historic World Cup rivalry will be renewed on Wednesday, when England and Argentina go head-to-head in the 2026 FIFA World Cup semifinals at Atlanta Stadium. England and Argentina punched their tickets to the semifinals with wins on the final day of quarterfinals on Saturday. Now, the two powerhouses of international soccer will meet at the World Cup for the first time since 2002. Here is everything you need to know about the 2026 FIFA World Cup semifinal between England and Argentina: If there was one word to describe England’s World Cup so far, it would not be “dominant.” In fact, England has only won two of its six matches by more than one goal, and it hasn’t won by more than a single goal since the knockout stage started. And yet, it is set to compete in its fourth-ever World Cup semifinal, in large part due to something past iterations of the team have lacked: mental toughness and desperation. It starts at the top with Thomas Tuchel, who, even after positive results, unapologetically demands more from his team. But it extends to the Three Lions’ leading men, Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham, who have regularly led their teams to wins with their combined seven goals in the knockout stage. Resilient? Lucky? Ordained? Call it what you want; Argentina is just happy to still be here. After a convincing group stage with three multi-goal wins, Argentina has had to fight in every second of the knockout stage to date, narrowly beating Cape Verde, Egypt and most recently Switzerland — all teams it was expected to beat comfortably. Lionel Messi has done his part, scoring a tournament-high eight goals (tied with Kylian Mbappé) and making World Cup history along the way, but his teammates have also done everything in their power to make sure Messi’s last-ever run at the tournament isn’t cut short. That unity has been a hallmark of their tournament to date, and they will need to stay united to beat a determined England side. Key Players If it weren’t for Jude Bellingham, England might not be in the semifinals. The 23-year-old midfielder has been outstanding for the Three Lions in the finals, scoring a brace against Mexico and Norway. He is the first player to score two or more goals in consecutive World Cup knockout stage matches at the same tournament since Diego Maradona in 1986. Bellingham was 15 years old the last time England made a World Cup semifinals. Now, he could be the reason it makes its first final since 1966, which is also the last — and only — time it lifted the trophy. We all know we’ve reached the end of Lionel Messi’s World Cup career. Whether it’s in the semifinal or the final, Messi will play his last-ever match at the tournament next week, closing the book on a historic World Cup career, which includes a title and the all-time records for most goals and assists. Will Messi get his storybook ending and lift the trophy for a second time, or will he bow out against an England team as desperate to reach the mountaintop as he was four years ago? We’ll find out on Wednesday. How To Watch England vs. Argentina​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports