Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin - Bristol: A Happy Accident

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

It's a victory episode as Denny Hamlin wins at Bristol. Denny got lucky at the end of stage 1 when he blew a tire. What he learned from that blown tire that helped him the rest of the race. Did anyone have an idea the tires would wear the way they did? Denny's plea to Goodyear and whoever created this tire. Was the tire the issue or was it something else? Why today proved more off throttle time is a good thing. There's no need to make and changes to this tire. What happened on the final green flag pit stops. Denny kindly moved Bubba Wallace out of the way. Ryan Blaney vs Ross Chastain heating up. Erik Jones and Chase Briscoe finally have each other's numbers. And Denny did it again21+ and present in NC. First online real money wager only. $10 Deposit req. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire 7 days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at fanduel.com/sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 877-718-5543 or visit morethanagame.nc.gov.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I have this plea to whoever was responsible for the mixture of the good year tires. Don't try to cover it up. Okay, whoever's in charge a good year needs to go and say, okay, we're not firing anyone. We just want to know what happened. That because I believe this could be the biggest teaching moment in the history of NASCAR. The following is a production of Dirtymo Media. Hey guys, welcome to action's detrimental post-Based. Bristol a few hours ago.

Boy, what did we just see? We see a trophy. I got a boo-boo on my finger, too. The sword's real. The sword is real. Yeah, we got a dub. Let's go. Two in a row at Bristol. For us, in the 11 car, I am Denny Hamlin. Driver of that 11 and Co-Whorner, 2311 for Bois.

Tyler Reddick. My esteemed co-host, Mr. Jared Allen. Red Vest 311. That just doesn't even sound right anymore, right? Well, I got asked to sign a couple autographs today and I put like 560 under and they had said they don't get. Why are you putting 560? I was like well I don't know. I thought that was the I thought that was the you know what I was going by. It's like MJ wearing 45. Right. Right. So speaking of autographs, Jared, I saw someone tweet, uh, you don't carry sharp. piece? No. No, no, no. You got to fix that. I mean, do you pretty much get asked for an autograph every week now? No, no, no. Jared. Maybe one. Okay.

I mean, where do we start? I mean, we have a list here, but where do we start, Jared? Travis is like, well, how do you want this episode to go? I said, let's just turn these mics on and start figuring out. It's just like the race. We're just going to figure this out on the, fly. So do you want to get into the, I mean, the truck race? I think you got to do the spring, the spring cleaning. You got to just, we got to knock these out. Even though we're super excited to talk about what we just saw in the cup race, we got to do. Yeah, we're not going to stop. We're not going to do it at the end. We've got to get our commercial buys in now, right? Exactly. Okay. We want to go commercial free at the end of this.

race at the end of this podcast. All right. That's the dirty mode to figure out. All right. So the truck race, we had no Xfinity truck race. Christian Echus won. I don't think there was any big shocker there, considering the speed that he had last year in that race. He didn't win for different reasons. But he held off one of the best in Kyle Busch. You know, there at the end, Kyle was making a hell of a charge on him for sure. But, you know, between Christian and that truck, they just looked phenomenal all weekend, and they just dominated. So I don't know how much more you can say to that other than they got the race win that they probably should have had in the fall of last year.

Yeah, it's got to feel good, though, if your Christian Eck is to beat Kyle Busch. Yeah. Kyle's on a bit of a cold streak, and he's letting those young fellers whip up on him. Yeah, he even said, yeah, this is just not. not getting the results I used to get. I've got to figure this thing out. You know, so it can go two ways. You know, we always, back in the day when Kyle would run all these Xfinity races,

you know, this is when Gibbs cars and Xfinity, it's still really good, right? But they were just really head and shoulders above the competition. He would always run all those Xfinity races and, you know, what is that for? And he's just like, ah, just big, you know, big confidence boosts, right? He just keeps that confidence up that he's a winner. And so it can go two ways. When you go down to the lower series and he don't win,

then it's like, yeah, maybe I need to work on some things, get a little better here and there. But I think he's had some truck troubles. I talked to him during driver intros, and he said he's just had some bad handling trucks over the last few weeks, but still good enough to compete for wins, just not actually get them.

Yeah, well, a little bit's changed for him, right? Like, the trucks have changed a little bit now that he's not, he doesn't have KBM anymore, I would imagine, or it's all the same. Yeah, I think it's a lot of the same guys. I think it's very similar to when Justin Marks bought Chip Canassi, it was pretty much most of the employees stayed there and was part of the new transition. So I think it's a lot of the same guys. I'm sure there's some new ones in there as well.

Shout out to Kyle, though, that 20 minutes he did with Pat McAfee this week was very funny. You know what I thought was funnier? His hair, he kind of had a something about Mary hair. He did. You know, when she put the hair gel in? Yeah. I had some of those vibes. Jared's looking up.

When you see it, when you see it, you'll see it. I've never seen this movie. What? No, no, no. wait a minute no i've never seen the movie oh no never seen no no no how old are you jared 29 oh it's disappointing yeah i think that's your homework for the week yeah yeah anyway just look up i see it something about mary hair i see it and then it's it's it's it's it's it's a it's it's a it's a it was a bad angle it just it was too the camera was too low for kyle but i thought he listen i thought

Kyle did a great job on the show representing the NASCAR brand. They were talking a little smack about Formula One and some other stuff, but it was cool to see some NASCAR presence on that show. We had some beef in the truck race. We did. Nick Sanchez and Sturt Frieson. I'm a Stewart Friesen fan. I like Stewart Friesen.

I do. I think he's in the wrong here, though. just because I thought I thought Sanchez had said a great point and that was that we crashed because I was there like if I wasn't there then we don't crash but I'm there

Stewart so you know and so I think Nicholas said what he needed to say and that was hey I was on the outside I had got to run off the top it's up to you know a lot of that too is you don't know kind of the spotter situation is are they on the spotter's really got to be on top of it at Bristol when someone is running a higher line they're going to get a massive run off the corner and if you're running the low line it's up to your spotter

to tell you hey this person's you know they're running the top coming with a big run leave room like you know because if you choose to shut that off then there's you're telling the top guide, you must hit the brakes or run in the back of me because I'm just going to come on up. But Nick already established that he was beside Stewart, I thought. I mean, as a driver, I'm thinking, well, that's clearly Stewart's reason's fault.

But you don't also know was he told Nick is coming with a huge run on the top, you know, leave room. My guess is probably not. But that's just kind of the growing pains of, you know, spotter driver relationship. Anyway, I think that that, it was kind of a clashing of worlds there where, you know, obviously Stewart probably thought, hey, you know, come on, let's cut me a break here. You're only beside me by a couple of feet, and it was two feet.

But, I mean, you can't ask really the guy that went to the top to get a run to stop and check up. So no, no punch is thrown, even though the picture looked like. it, right? No, I think he just got a hold of his collar. I think he just, yeah. Just, he shook him. Right.

One thing we're learning, though, is that Nick Sanchez is not backing down from these veteran truck drivers. Yeah, nor should he. I don't know. I think that Kraftin at the Daga thing was just mad at him because he raced him hard or something like that. I'm not even really sure. But, I mean, that's, I don't know.

haven't seen really where Sanchez has been in the wrong too much yet. So we're going to give him the benefit of the doubt and give him the nod on was probably in the right in this situation for sure. I think the first thing we need to point out about this Bristol race is what we kind of just mentioned is that it is no longer on dirt. We move back to the concrete and I think it's safe to say that that was a move for the best. I mean, from my perspective, you know, this is where you need it, Travis have on the very bottom all opinions from tonight's podcast are strictly biased they are not factual um you're going to hear

it from my point of view this is under the certain window it doesn't count right like it's so close to the race still that we can just yeah you know what actually when i got my fine last year from the phoenix thing they said it's because you know your podcast is the next day you had a you know When people admit wrecking others, it's okay in the moment. We started this on Sunday night. We're good. So we're good. So, so no bleeps, no nothing.

Let's just, let's just get into this. There's a few other things we probably should note, right? I'm just so excited to talk about what the hell just happened. I mean, it was just, my adrenaline is still pumping. It's midnight, folks, on. Denny time, down in the basement. So, okay, you guys got on there, Phoenix rating, 4 million viewers up 20%. That's really good.

Good to see our ratings doing well. I think, you know, this was kind of, we're riding the wave, obviously. We had some good momentum from Daytona. Atlanta was obviously a fantastic finish. Then we get into Vegas. thought it was a good race. We didn't know who was going to win to the last lap there. Then we go to Phoenix where, you know, my opinion was, what more do you want?

I mean, we had, there was no one ever pulled away with a lead, and we had great passing throughout for the lead. Again, it's, from my point of view, it's just an opinion, and there's many other opinions about that. The door bumper clear guys was like, Phoenix just sucks and the racing sucked. So we clearly are all over the board and got it covered in every way possible. But I think generally speaking, we've got some good momentum with the ratings.

Now we are starting to get into, this is where you also have to have an asterisk, is that we're getting into the non-Chace L8 races from last year. So if you remember the ratings declined 10% on average last year when Chase is not in the race, so we should see a bump regardless of that. But the 20% that tells me it's 10% better. But read the next line though. Now, read the next line. Which is that last year NASCAR had four races,

but there were 4 million viewers during the entire year. Daytona, Chicago is all four. Talladega Fontana. And this year, so far, all four have been over 4 million viewers. Yep. And it's because the races have been compelling. But there's also been a different marketing approach this year. It's also last year Phoenix went up against Selection Sunday.

This year, I'm curious to see what the numbers are because this race went up against the player championship, which was really good at the end and Selection Sunday. So if this one's up, you know, then that's a really good news for NASCAR. Yeah. So would it be safe to say compare these numbers to what last week's numbers? were because you're saying that what happened last year happened last week's during last week's race. Correct. It happened this week instead. Yeah.

So we should be up 10%. Yeah. And if we are, then that's a good thing. Then that's, then that cancels out the Chase Elliott dip. So anyway, it'll be interesting to see. Again, I log on a social media to, I, I, I, uh, I, I wanted to get a feel for where were the people on this? So I did my media session after the race.

We'll get into the race. But after the race, I had my media session, then had like a little roundtable discussion with Bob Hockris, Kelly Crandall, and Jordan Bianchi, because I was like, what are the people saying? Like, maybe we came in here and we just painted a very, rosy picture about, man, you know, tire management, the drivers back in the seat, you know, able to really make, you know, the difference. And then, but I didn't know whether the drivers

were just trashing it or not. I mean, this could go one of two ways, right? You had the Indy debacle from many, many years ago where the tough part about that is the tires just blew out. Like there was no warning. The difference today, was that you had a warning. If they blew out, you did not heed to the warning that they were about to blow out. And what was the warning? So your car would just drop grip dramatically.

And in my mind, I guess I'll go into it. I was very fortunate to blow a tire in the first stage at the very end. I was leading with six to go in the first stage. I finished 15th. That is crazy. So what happened is with six to go, all of a sudden my car was like, holy shit, the right rear is falling off. Like it was just, I had no grip at all. So I was going in the corner, just wrecking, just spinning out.

Well, there's six to go left in the stage. So I need to limp it around and I tried to limp it and I found that I really got two more laps out of the car and then it blew. So that's where I think I was very fortunate to understand, okay, that's my gas light. But that doesn't sound. You know, that's in the car that, hey, you're getting low on fuel. When I noticed my car, the light switch, I think Kevin Harvick killed it today. I'll rewatch the race as quick as I could. He killed it in explaining the light switch going off.

And it was. It was like you had grip and then all of a sudden, when your tires hit court, nothing. You had nothing and you had to just slow way, way down to not wreck. So if there were blown tires, it's because you ignored the warning of

that it was giving you. Right, but that doesn't, to me, to the, you know, the race fan doesn't know much of anything about these tires. Is that sounds to me like when you get that warning, you're at the end of the tire's life. Yes. It's about to go

to air. Is there is there something though earlier that you're sensing like okay I'm running these too hard I need to back it down earlier

you know then you don't know you don't know until right then like right when it happens now as a driver

you know when you're pushing it you know and just FYI I really wasn't saving much that first stage when I

because I didn't know I had no indication tires we're going to wear out until mine actually wore out. I think I was one of the very first to actually drop anchor. Kyle was actually first. Yes. We were the first ones to totally drop anchor and was like, oh, these tires are going to wear out. The weight is over, NASCAR fans. Fandul, America's number one sports book is officially live in North Carolina.

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backslash sportsbook gambling problem call 877717-185543 or visit more than a game.ncc.gov Reddick didn't give you any sort of idea that it might be because after that first Byron gets the caution Redick stays out, doesn't take any tires and then he

immediately. That was later. Oh, okay. Yeah, so that was in between that whole second stage. I think that was second stage. I'm not sure. No, I don't know. No, that was first. You're right. You're right. No, because he got wrecked. You know, he wasn't just limping around. He got shuffled out of the lead

and wrecked the next corner. So, So that was, I mean, I'll be honest, that was a bit of a head scratcher when they stayed out. But I never really saw them drop. So we were the first. Like Kyle and myself, so immediately I'm thinking, okay, I'm just going to run this line up here and save my tires and not push it too hard. But I was still, I could tell, you know, I was still getting after a little bit, pretty much the whole run. And then six laps ago, which was lap 40 on tires, my car just stopped. stopped making corners.

And I tried to get to the end of the stage, and it blew out, luckily, right when a cowbush spun out. Yep. So, it would cause a caution. Yeah, we were the first two that gave the warning to the field. Um, you better slow down. Now why, first of all, was this a surprise? The tire wear?

No. Well, it was a surprise going into the weekend. Yes. Um, so you had a feeling, we had a practice that. this was going to be the case in the race. Yes, we had an indication after practice.

After 30 laps of practice, the tires were balled. Martin came over to me, Ty came over to me and says, you know, what the hell is going on? Like, this is the weirdest thing. Like, you know, we, everyone set up their cars to probably be just like they were in the fall or work on them, make them better. And the track was a second slower.

It was nuts. I just couldn't believe it. And I'm like, well, maybe it's just that the resin just doesn't have grip. And there's just no grip down there. And that's why we are just so much slower is that we don't have PJ1 this time. But everyone thought, hey, once we get all the cars out there, get some heat going, we're going to rubber in the track. It's going to get better. And it just never rubbered in.

And so. Well, you said on Saturday at qualifying, you. you thought someone peed in the Goodyear rubber mixture. I am more convinced of that now than ever. That I had this plea to whoever was responsible for the mixture of the Goodyear tires. Don't try to cover it up. Okay. Whoever's in charge a Goodyear needs to go and say,

okay, we're not firing anyone. We just want to know what happened. that because I believe this could be the biggest teaching moment in the history of NASCAR whatever they changed in that chemical mixture so when they're making rubber it's they're just they're making it right it's it's a formula of this and that and this and that and they can put little things in it to make it wear now they told me at a Texas tire test there's something we can put in it that will accelerate tire wear somebody knocked over the bottle into the mixture.

But you got to get somebody there to admit, or maybe it was just an accident, I don't know, but we need to find out what was different from that tire in the fall to that tire today. So we're not, we didn't run any of the last year's tires, right? Those tires were used up and gone. they made a new batch, Goodyear made a new batch of tires at the beginning of this year for this Bristol race. But when they made this mixture, someone peed in it.

And it, it, are you, is that a euphemism for something? Or are you, they, they put something in there that they were not supposed to. Or they put too much of something in this mixture that screwed it all up. Okay. were you confused the whole weekend when I said someone peeped in that? I just thought it was something random that you were saying. Yeah, that's funny, I guess. No, I'm just saying we were trying to point fingers that it's the resin, it's this,

and it's like, no, there's some, they mix, there's something with the mixture of this rubber that is not the same as what they brought before. And we need to identify what it is because we just need to put a slightly lower Right. To me it seemed like a happy accident after all. A happy accident. Yes. So I have a question though. So the extra tires that were given were from last year though.

Really? So somebody tweeted, wait, the 22 has old tires. And Bob said, sounds like the extra set of tires they were given were made last year and not used. Same tire code just a little, quote, older. Well, that opens up. Because on the radio, they told the guy. another like from last year. Hmm.

Unbefuddled. If that is the case, then it's a track temperature issue. I did see that the outside temperature of the last two Bristol races were 70 degrees because they were all night races. It's the first time us being back at Bristol in the spring in four years.

So it was cooler. Now, I will tell you this. I mean, we're trying to figure this out on the fly here in the middle of this podcast. I'm just, you've got to try to draw conclusions of, okay, well, that's not it. That's not it. The thing is, is that the middle of the track was untreated. It didn't matter if you had PJ1 on it before. Resin now.

It didn't matter. If you ran the middle of the track, it clearly was worse. on tire wear and that was untreated. So let's throw out, it's not the resin. If what you're saying is true that the extra set of tires, now here's the only thing, the 11 car never put on the extra set of tires. There might have been some that put on, but I think there was a lot of the field that had another set of tires left.

So were they actually even in use, Travis? This is my question. So if we still had courting problems with tires definitely, definitely made for the fall race of last year, then it's a track temperature problem. And what I will tell you is that Martinsville is another concrete track that refuses to take rubber unless it's at least 65 degrees outside. It was 60 today. 70 degrees, that track will be black as asphalt.

The tires, it gets hot, the surface gets hot, and it just, and it just, it allows the pores of the racetrack to be filled. The reason that the lower line was better on tires is it was filled with all this crap that they've sprayed on it and powdered on it and rubber that we've run on. That's why it was better on tires. You go to the middle lane, it was, it was like this sheet of paper, just white. so the pores were not filling in. One thing that maybe... I have a quote from Greg Stucker. It's the same tire combination from 2023.

Obviously, the difference is the resin, he said. That's it. I know that's... Again, he's saying that in the... The race is still going on. Yeah, this was mid-race. Man, there's so much to talk about. It's...

Okay. But you're... But we need to find out. were any of the tires manufactured in a different time in place than what the ones we had on this weekend. If they were on, if they had older tires, some

people put them on, they still wore out. It is a track temperature problem. The tire did not match the track at this correct temperature. Well, that should be an easy answer to find, right? You just Yeah, I mean, I'm sure by the time this podcast come, I mean,

when this podcast comes out, a team, some teams will say if they did run old tires and they still wore out, they'll say, hey, yes, we did, and they wore out. So then you have to take away that it's the track because the center of the track is the same as it always has been. There's never been any resident or PJ1 in the middle of the track. That is a stagnant.

One major change is the temperature. The temperature. So how do you replicate that going forward to other tracks? How do you take what we had today and maybe dial it back just a little bit and replicate it going forward if the variable here is the track temperature.

How do you account for that going forward as we move in in summer months? I think that if what our thesis is is that this was a temperature problem and hey, how about this? Like going off in the head? Is this on camera

when Denny like points? his finger has that there's nob on it. Sorry. We got to get to that at some point too. Is that the track took a in practice between the first group and the second group.

The first group was in, the track was way more in sunlight. Way more. The track was much hotter. They ran, I saw guys run 40, 50 laps. Now, their tires may have been somewhat worn.

They were worn. But it was nothing like group two. Group two definitely had a cooler race track and it was a shi-should show because we were all scratching our heads. What the hell is going on? But you would think that the rubber's already in the track, but it's a concrete track and the rubber gets pulled up

whenever their car is going slow. The answer is I don't know. I think what I caution and I know I loved seeing Propps's quotes saying that was probably the best short track races I've ever seen. That makes me like take a breath and say, oh, good. Like, at least they're not like, this is unacceptable. We're going to fix it. I'm sure they're not going to not do anything, but the slightest change will take us right back to where we were. I mean, what today proved is that we've complained about horsepower, horsepower, horsepower, horsepower. The reason we want

horsepower people is because it creates off throttle time. It creates an opportunity for the best drivers to go out there and manhandle their car and change their line and really be a factor in their finish because there's more braking, more off throttle time, more rolling time, more cracking the throttle where before we've had, and I think Chase Elliott summed this up perfectly to Bob Pockris and his media availability. She just says, we've all been forced to drive the same. We have no power, so we drive in really deep, we slam on the brakes, then we slam back on the gas. And since we have no power, we have to run right around the bottom and no one's able to venture anywhere else because that's just the shortest distance.

And that's the box we've been put in, is to just be all the same. If you create bigger horsepower, then you've got these, you wear the tires out. And when you wear the tires out, you see cars that or two seconds slower than others. So this may be a little simpler change than the horsepower because they asked me in media, do you need horsepower now? I said not if we had the tire we had today. No, you didn't want to touch the gas.

So it's just, it's a riddle where it's proving, it's definitely proving what the drivers have been asking for, which is more off throttle time. I've been in the sport for 20 years, We keep asking for it. They keep reducing the off throttle time, and the passing becomes more and more difficult. But that is because in the head offices down in Daytona

and the headquarters, they want more cars to be on the screen at one time. They want you to believe that that car could pass that car. They don't care if they actually do. They just want you to be on the edge of your seat of maybe, you'll get them. Maybe you won't. I've definitely been told that, that they just want more cars on the screen. I know. Jared, I get it. No, I was just going to say, did they watch today's race?

Because there were multiple times during this race where so-and-so had asked me, like, oh, do you think this guy's going to win? It's like, I don't know. I just saw that guy lead the race for 10 laps and then drop to 8th. And then that guy, Denny crashed and then go back to 30th and then drive to 8th. Like, you have no idea who's going to win. No idea. and even, you know, watching the race back.

And I'm sitting there thinking, oh, my gosh, I'm going to blow the tires off this thing. I was watching myself go through the, go through the lap cars. And I'm like, God, dang, you know, I'm just driving way more aggressively than everyone else. But it just hung on. It hung on. Right. You could watch those last 50 laps. We didn't know.

Is the 11th light switch going to go off like a light and then the 19? But I think at the end of the race, if you look at our lap times, they drop like a rock the last four laps. Our cars turned off, as Kevin Harvick says, the same lap. They turned off together. So as I was slowing down, he was slowing down too because we had nothing left. But it was crazy. It was so crazy. So I have a question.

You talked about there. You might change the tire. But couldn't they leave the tire the same knowing that the teams now have this information and it will adjust. So keep the tire the same and let the teams do what they do best. Yes. These teams are smarter than the people that put on the race and probably the people that build the tires.

They figure it out. They will. They would come back with different setups. The drivers would have different mentalities. They would know, hey, my gas lights coming on. I got a pit. Well, you saw that from stage one to the end of the race, right? you cut a tire in stage one and you didn't cut a tire the rest of the day.

So clearly you learned something from that. I did. But I listened to the warning or I felt the warning the car gave me. And that is when it stopped gripping the racetrack, I came on the radio, told my crew chief, I'm out of time. I'm going to blow one. He says, all right, come now. So we listened to the warnings it was giving us and we didn't put ourselves in that super bad spot.

Right. But I think what Travis is getting is you learned off of that from one time, right? You didn't need to go through it more than once. Once was enough for you to learn that, hey, this is what we have to do. If you, if the car stayed in Bristol tonight and they told the teams, you're free to change whatever you want, we're going to run another, we're going to run 100 laps tomorrow. They would, they would make it a long time. I don't know how long if it was 50 laps, but it seemed like the number where you just couldn't go any further than 50 today.

It would be 80 tomorrow. I mean, it would. Because the teams will get in their simulations, and they'll figure it out and say, okay, we're going to adjust this, we're going to adjust that. The pace is different. Let's do this. Let's do that.

And the drivers are going to say, okay, I can't go balls out right from the get-go. I got to manage. It would just naturally fix itself. Naturally. What I want to know though now is that we saw this Bristol product. We saw this great product at Bristol. To me it seems like there's two ways to recreate this going forward.

Either you have the perfect tire compound like you had as a happy accident today, more or less, or you add more horsepower to the car. Which one likely leads to... Even if they added, say, 100 horsepower to the car, you wouldn't see what you saw today. Like, in normal conditions. It wasn't going to wear the tires out that much. It would at a Martinsville, Richmond's, things like that. It would improve the racing at all those tracks.

And when I personally advocate for more horsepower, I'm saying leave the mile and a half stuff alone if you want. If you want to add some there, great. If not, that's okay too. but it's the short tracks. The short tracks have needed work with this next gen, and it's no secret. It's because we have a bigger tire and we have less horsepower than we've ever had

and we have shifting, and they're just never going to create an aerodynamic package that is going to fix the short tracks. You have to do it with grip on the tire or you have to do it with horsepower in the engine. And today made that case, sign, sealed, delivered. that is the reason why. But we left last week's episode

and you were hammering on the horsepower front and the first hunter laps of this race, I'm watching it being like, oh boy. Because we've been asking Goodyear for a billion years to wear the tires out. Right. We finally got it. Right.

I'm watching this race and I'm thinking, okay, when we record this podcast it's going to be all about, that's why we need more horseback. That's why we need a horse power, which still the case. It's one or the other, yes. Yes.

But now are you more confident that you can recreate this tire compound that you don't necessarily need the horseback? because we can't even figure out right now what the hell happened. We don't know. I was convinced that it was somebody, one of the chemists messed up the mixture. I was convinced of that on Saturday. As soon as I drove, came in, drove again, this tire is not the same.

It's definitely not the same. But you guys are telling me, and I'm using your words, that someone else put on tires manufactured last year, And if that's the case, then there's clearly a track temperature thing that made this happen. The one thing we don't know, though, is Lagano put those tires on. We don't know who else and or if those tires wore out. Yeah, we don't know. How close were you to blowing a tire and that last green flag caution?

Did your mental light go on that you got to go pit now? The green flag when everyone was pitting under green. Yeah, the last one. Yes, I was able to go a longer distance than others. I'd managed my tires to a certain degree. I knew that we had X amount of laps in the race. If I divide that into two, how long do I need to go on tires? I managed it off of that.

When I saw others really struggling much quicker than what I was, and I still was maintaining pace, I'm like, oh, this is a good thing. That will allow me to go longer to then shorten up my last. run and that may that way I can be more aggressive in the last run but I went all the way until my right front had no rubber left on it and I said I have to pit he says okay see you in a minute so I mean that's pretty much how it went is that I made sure that we pitted and didn't roll around the racetrack half speed for three laps once we had one corner where we're off speed we just pitted right away but we did that because

others had already started pitting. The reason that these drivers and these teams, they don't want to stay out there running quarter speed, you know, 20 second laps, but they don't want to pit and then a caution come out for someone else who stays out. So everyone's trying not to be the first to pit road. They're just like, okay, somebody please blow a tire

so we can salvage this. And I don't have to come to pit road to lose two laps. So everyone is actually probably pretty happy that that green flag cycle actually happened. Were you surprised at that green flag cycle happened? Because dodging cars out there, it was crazy. You're thinking there's 40 of us out here, surely. Surely someone.

But NASCAR was awesome job letting the race go. There was no need for a caution. Yes, there were slow cars up at the wall. Yeah. Down here. But there was no reason to throw a caution. And they didn't. And it led to,

a great finish of, you know, between us and the 19 of who's, who's going to last here. Yeah, well, you heard on your radio multiple times, you know, car this, car that, still green, still green, still green. Yeah. And it was just never, hey, caution's out. Thank goodness for sure. But, I mean, we were in a good spot. I think we had enough, even if we had a short sprint, I liked, I liked my car, you know, from lap 1 to lap 50, whenever it was, however long I could go. but really i mean i just hope that we use this as a learning moment and we apply this somehow

to other short tracks because i think it is just absolute can be an absolute game changer to uh get naskar you were not going to fix the short tracks with aerodynamics stop it stop it it's either horsepower or tires you have to do one or the other Well, we go to Richmond next week. How? Two weeks. Two weeks. Co-to next week. Richmond, week after that. I feel like you're going to go to that short track now,

expecting to have similar results to what you had today. We're not. I think that's a different, it's a different tire, I believe. So we're not, it's still going to be a tire-ware thing. You're going to hear a lot about can't pass just because we're, it's just, you just run barely fast enough there to where aerodynamics does matter, a little bit. But, man, holy

it's just, my mind is just running now of like how can we use this to be better in the long run. Like, this was a happy mistake. What was going through your mind there? I think 13

Turex passes you and then you kind of gave Bub a little, hello I'm here. Get out of the way. Yeah, I mean, he was multiple laps down at the time. anyway and I I mean I it's a really crucial part of the race and I actually had a corner where I thought my right front was out of grip um I missed the bottom in turn three true X got beside me and my car went dead straight and when it went dead straight I'm like oh crap like that's not good it's it's we're going to have major issues and we're not even 10 laps to go in this race so there's no way

I'm going to make it. While I go in the next corner, I'm like, oh, I do have grip. Okay, that scared me because the 19 went around me and at that point I'm like, okay, there's 10 to go. I still can't get crazy by pushing it. So I just was like, I'm just going to ship it here on the outside. There's clearly cars on the bottom of the racetrack that are bottling things up and I just wanted to roll the outside. I knew that yes, I'm going to wear out tires, but like, this is for the win. And I've got to go and the 19 he was trying to go but we kept getting jammed up on the bottom so i decided just go middle there that 23 was in my way had to get had to get him out of there and there was somebody else as well that was like i'd hit him down the straightaway to let him know like hey there's two cars

racing the side of the side for the lead here i don't know how many laps you are down but get the hell out of the way so it was um it was it was a crazy fun race i mean it's again you're going to hear it from my perspective and i and i read a lot of the driver's quotes as well it looks like even the guys that did not have good races were like, I mean, it was fun. He's like, you know, if we had to do this all over again, we would certainly do a lot of things different to change our result. But man, that was different. And so I just enjoyed all the teams, all the drivers getting thrown a loop like that. That was just, that was just crazy. when you're leading true x are you like what's your mindset in that moment are you knowing that

he's going to have to drive hard to pass you right and that these tires only have so much are you like baiting him into driving harder yeah yes somewhat but you're not going to trick martin i mean he's just too good uh you're not going to trick him into you know doing something he he knows he's too disciplined to fall into that trap. So I think at that point, I wasn't really playing any games with him. I was just trying to run the best lap I possibly could, each lap while saving tires. And there is an art to it. I'm not going to tell you how I manage lap time and tire management,

because there are certain things that you can do inside the car that you absolutely can still make good lap time while being easy on the tires. but that's just yeah it's he's good at it obviously Brad he finished third I mean he had the three oldest guys run one two three there's probably not you know that's not a coincidence

how did you see other guys the lap traffic racing you at the end of the race it was fine I mean everyone was just trying to manage their own race it was it was one of the very few it was almost like Darlington where everyone's just kind of racing the track. Now this is back when the old

Darlington before they repaved it. But it was, you're racing the track. You really were. You just, were just trying to hold your line, you know, not get past, but run fast enough to stay in front, but not wear out your tires. And then whoever wanted to make passes,

but just go to the high line, make a pass, and then try to get down low again. It was a chess game. It really was for 500 laps. Were you at any point when you, the few times that you were in the back and you made your runs hit up front that you're going to be pushing a little too hard and you were going to get that or did you feel comfortable enough? After I blew through the tires in the first stage, I had a pretty good indication of what I did wrong that I could correct for the rest of the race that would make me not wear those tires out. So the kind of the adjustments I made as a driver, I was confident that I could still, I had no worries about, you know,

know, restarting 30th there in the second stage and making it back to the front. Like, I, I knew that we were good enough to do that for sure. So when they said that they were going to give the extra set of tires, were you kind of like, you guys didn't use it, were you kind of like, I hope they don't give them out? No, because you don't want to see it get too crazy. We're all running out there, you know, wrecking. I mean, literally, we were running three seconds off the pace at the end of these races compared to what we usually run it at Bristol.

I mean, even on TV I could see like, wow, we are creeping around the race track. But no, they needed to give us the extra tires for sure. I mean, they kind of managed it out and saw that, okay, we feel like if we can get these guys to go 50 laps on a set of tires, and that's probably a good barometer or base to go off of, and they added tires accordingly. Now, again, we still had another set left, but we also chose to not take new tires at the end of the second stage. had an extra set anyway. How much of this race win is a credit to you managing the tires versus your car just being really good? And I ask that because I feel like in the majority of races you watch, you can kind of tell, oh, you know, that guy's got a really good car, right? He's going to drive

to the thing. He's got a great car. But in this one now, you watch it back, it's like, well, you know, your car was obviously was good, but like how much is a credit to the tire management? It's, you know, I think it's 50-50. because if the balance is off of my car, it's going to wear one of the tires more, the right front or the right rear, depending on the balance. My car was very well balanced.

So whenever you have a car that's, say it's pushing, right? So the right front, it's not turning. That tires taking more of the brunt of trying to make the corner than the other. So it will wear out faster. Mine being evenly balanced, It made the load of the right front and the right rear the same, therefore they wore about the same. And what I liked seeing was on that Green Flag pit stop that I came in with 50 to go. The cords on the right front and the right rear looked the same, right?

So that's a good balanced car that was not one side was worn more than the other. Is it safe to say now that the Toyoers are just going to perform very well at short tracks this year? I mean, that's jumping the gun a little bit for sure because this race was certainly an anomaly. I mean, you can't, again, you cannot ignore the fact that the Gibbs cars were up front for the bulk of the day. Seabell lost his tires late in the race. Ty Gibbs, same thing. They just pushed it too hard too early. But they were all learning moments for everyone.

Everyone is thinking about if I had to do this again, what would I do differently? but certainly it's not all driver because you've got my teammates that were certainly up there as well. I think also you said Gaypart with the call on taking tires when like the first pit stop, you lost two spots and you took four tires compared to people taking two, and your pit crew was 909 on the first stop and 9.19, I know on the second one. Yeah, my team is just on it when it comes to that right now. We're in a really, really good place. as long as I continue to do a decent job,

you know, I think that we can win a lot of races this year. We obviously, you know, count in the clash, got two wins down for six. You know, I said to many friends and family, this will be a big year for us. Today's race at Bristol had a track record 54 lead changes. You always like commenting on this. You know what the bad thing is?

It was pretty much legit. It wasn't because there was crazy. amount of green flag green flag pit cycles that you know where people stay out now you had you know probably three or four leaders change hands when during the during the cycles of the green flag run

but a lot of it was just cat and mouse this guy this guy this guy you know and at one point of the race they mentioned it on TV they actually mentioned it was tie was actually Kyle Larson we were side by side for the lead they didn't show much of it. But I came on the radio and said, go to Kyle Larson's spotter and ask him,

is he good just blocking the track here? Let's just run side by side, really slow, and keep everyone stacked up behind us. And my spotter says that his spotter gave us the nod on, yeah, we're good doing that. Well, he was on the bottom. He was in the better lane. And eventually I wore my stuff out running up the racetrack.

It was fun, us just kind of running really slow side by side doing the Mike Ford stat passes. But I knew it was going to be a crazy number of passes. No telling how many green flag passes that that race had. It just, we've never seen anything like this, not in my day. Why were there so many lead changes, though? Because if you get out to the lead, until you hit lap traffic, you have your choice of the lane you want to run, right? Because the leader sets a pace in which he likes to run and he feels comfortable.

So many times during that race, if I led and I had Ty Gibbs behind me, he was beating my rear bumper off and I'm just like, well, go. If you want to go, go right ahead. And he'd blow by me on the outside and then he'd go. And then I'd watch him. And I'd watch them. And I'm like, just a matter of time. So the lead changes were.

weren't necessarily because the, you know, the car behind you is passing you as better. It's more of a strategic play. Yeah, I mean, I'd like to control the race from the front. I don't want to be second or third, but I was not willing to run the pace, which he was forcing me to run. But what about other guys during the race? For instance, early in the race, you see Chase Elliott drive from fourth to the lead, and then five laps later drops back to fourth.

During that short stint of those four or five laps that he made the charge of the front, He wore the tires out too much. He might have slipped them two hard times, and that was it. They were done. Was that you being strategic? When it was Gibbs, one, two, three, four, you were first and then dropped out, and you got passed and you popped back in at 30s. I just wanted to run a certain pace.

That was all. I mean, there was not really, my position I thought was irrelevant at the time. Sure, I would have loved to have the lead, but I just, I didn't care really. I just was about pace. That's all it was about for me was pace and feel. Don't wear out the tires. Do what I need to do to make speed, driving this certain way,

and still saving tires. And that's what paid off for me in the long run. You didn't have any famous sound bites after this one? I didn't, no. I thought that the fans had mixed reviews. I wouldn't say that they were. were overwhelmingly. Apparently they booed everybody at introductions, according to Twitter.

Whereas the Tennessee fans just grumpy? Elliot got booed. Apparently, like Kendrick drivers got booed today. Tennessee woke up, chose violence, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, it was fine. You know, I'm still adhering to my dad's wishes of not saying it. So I was fine just kind of, you know, reminding them number one.

I was hoping you'd cut a new promo. I know, I know. And national probably wish me too, too also. But for another day, it ain't going to be our last win. I can tell you that. We did have a little drama, though, out there today. Where? Blaney does not want to be asked about Ross Chastain right now.

Why? He was asked because Frost got into him today a little bit. he was asked about it and Blaney says I'm tired of you asking me Ross questions no thank you and then walked off so is he mad at the reporter or is he mad that Ross got into him again

I wonder I'd say yes okay yeah I came over the radio at one point today or yeah one point today and was like tell Blaney like he's got to give me a little room like I was fine letting him go

but he just coming off the corner wouldn't give me much room and we kept making contact. I'm like, hey man, I don't want to spin that. I don't want to spin them out, but he does know him on the inside, right? So we just kept cutting down on the left rear and I kept, I kept knocking him up the trap because he kept coming down the bottom lane when I was there. But, I mean, those were two guys that fight hard for every inch. So you're going to, you're probably going to have that. That drama is ongoing, but it seems like the Eric Jones, Chase Briscoe, has.

reached its conclusion. Yeah, once they got the proper numbers. Yeah. Apparently, Chase Briscoe got a new number? Eric Jones got a new number? One of the two. One of the two got a new number. The other one did not have.

You should check that. Make sure that you got both their numbers up to date. I did. I got one from Josh Berry today. It was an unknown number. He says, hey, this is Josh. Got your number from Dale. My aunt's sorry about getting any.

I was like, yeah, man, we're all good. Good job this weekend. It's after a win. You're like, I'm good. I'm good. We're good. It's all good. No, hey, let's give props.

Josh Berry. He had a good weekend. Qualified well, ran up towards the front. He was one of the unfortunate guys that had to pit like the earliest in that last Green flag sequence. So he had, I think he had to go to like 70 laps on tires or something crazy. What are you people doing here? I didn't realize we have an audience here. And Ron, where did you get?

marshmallows. Oh, he raids my marshmallows. He goes in my pantry and he saw all my big marshmallows. You know, throw me one? All right. Well, let's wrap this up so we can proceed. Yeah. We got some more notes down here at the bottom. I know, we got notes. What did you think

of the Trekside Live today? It was good. It was a lot of people. I mean, they have Kenny Wallace and John Roberts doing it. They used to do the old speed channel. trackside live on like Friday nights at the racetrack they rile up the fans it's great i mean Kenny i'm a huge

kenny wallis fan listening to his stuff he's got a great um Kenny wallis show on youtube as well uh you can tune in listen to his reactions here and there uh but he's uh yeah he does a great job getting the crowd going and i thought that uh it was one of the more interesting i think that Q&A went about like the race did just totally off the rails we found the guy who threw the cucumber at me last fall. At least you found a guy who claimed that he was the guy through the cucumber.

Yes, because he says he's in the back. He's got a Kyle Larson hat on, Kyle Larson shirt on, and he's got two cucumber and he's holding him up. And they were like, wait a minute, who is that? And the guy runs to the front and he's like, just set the record straight. I wasn't throwing it at you.

but here's his story. His story is that he was giving me the cucumbers. He says, because what do you get when you win? I said, a checkered flag. He said, what else? I says, he's like, a sword. You get a sword. I was giving you cucumbers so you could dice them up.

And I says, this sounds like a person trying out to incriminate themselves and get them kicked out of this race. But evidently, he came bearing two new cucumbers. and he said he would throw them again. And now it's a thing with Bristol. They had me dicing up cucumbers in the middle of Victory Lane. Is that how you cut yourself? It's not. It's going to be funny because it's not funny.

But yeah, this thing, I just grabbed something in the car wrong when I was getting out. Oh, is it true that you did it again today at the race? Oh, absolutely. It felt amazing. I mean What I liked about it Is the car wasn't stopped I was able to do it under caution

But I'm not kidding you It went from the beginning of the caution To the end I just kept going Hold up How did you know that I've got sources Yeah

Am I not allowed to have him No I think Andrew Might have been Eavesdropping in Victory Lane That's possible Yeah So all right Do you got anything else

You want to... I've got a couple of... That we should get into? I got a couple of dear Denny's here for you. Okay. First one, what's the feeling being in Victory Lane celebrating with your daughters or tonight, your daughter? Yeah, there's only one. Jordan and Taylor went up to New York for a girls weekend.

They're visiting just a couple of cool spots, and they want to do that for spring break. So it's me and Molly's weekend together, and we... Yeah, it was cool with her. She was just, she's just so good. She's really good by herself. You know, when she has the influence of Taylor, she gets a little skewed sometimes. And she loves her mom so much.

You know, she gets a little whiny around mom. But, man, when it's just us, she's amazing. So she was really happy. The, we didn't quite catch a leprechaun. She was really adamant on catching a leprechaun. So she built a lepercon trap. We took it to the racetrack. And we didn't catch one there, but the leprechaun did leave us some gold trails that I said maybe was clues that there would be more at the house.

So when they came back to the house, the leprechaun clearly came to my house because he did a lot of mischief things in the bathroom and in the kitchen. And he left your little gift basket saying, sorry I missed you. You were in Bristol, but maybe you'll catch me next time. Maybe he's the reason for the win. Irish luck. It was a lucky day. It was a lucky day. Yep.

Well, I don't have anything else. Make sure, hey, by the way, folks, if you don't mind rating and reviewing and following wherever we get your podcast, we'd really appreciate it. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube. Our YouTube channel is growing rapidly. So thank you for tuning into that. Review from Everett Thomas here. and they say, I've been a Chase fan

since I've started and hated Denny, but this show has converted me. That reminds me of a, I think it was a quote tweet or maybe an Instagram comment I saw tonight someone had said, man, I missed the old days. It felt like just six months ago, Danny would get out of the car.

Everyone would boo him, maybe throw a vegetable or two. Yeah, it was, I was, I'd be lying if I wasn't thinking during my cool down lap, like, how am I going to provoke these fans? How am I going to just dig into them a little bit? But I just felt happy. I just felt happy today.

So certainly a rewarding win. I mentioned in the media center that I can't think of another win recently that I felt this much a part of. Is that because of the tire management? Because of the role that I had to have in the result. So who knows if we'll ever have, this again I think the odds are stacked against us there's always a reaction whenever something like this happens but just try to get good year and NASCAR to just take a

breath here figure out what happened and naturally the teams will come back better next time if nothing changes at all so I think it being a fall the summer race or you know towards it's in September right that this race is it's going to be warmer. I think it's going to be warmer than what it was here, so it naturally, I think, will get better. So we'll see what they do. Hopefully nothing.

Or maybe just tweak it slightly. But how can we bring this to the other short tracks? It would save. It would absolutely say we would be done talking about packages and horsepower if they had this kind of tired every short track. September 21st. Yeah, so it's going to be warmer.

Does this, though, this is required testing at different tracks to recreate this? or now that you know... If they know what they did. I'm not convinced that they know what they did. So you're going to have to... Upper management of Goodyear will have to go to all the employees and say, you're not in trouble, but I need to know the truth.

What happened? In fact, you should probably get a raise. I should probably give you a raise. Yes. Finders fee. $500 for anyone with a tip or clue to tell us, what just happened this weekend. Speaking of, we never addressed that on the podcast,

that you did find the trophy from the Milwaukee Mile of that Xfinity race win. I did. Yep. We said that there was a finder's fee on the podcast, and we never addressed it. You did find that trophy. We did.

It was given to me. Evidently it was at their headquarters of Rockwell Automation, who was my sponsor back in Xfinity back in the day. They had it at their headquarters. So. Case closed. Done. And they're rich. I'm not giving them.

no money. All right, well, we'll see y'all next weekend after Coda. Let's keep this big Mo going. Check out Dirty Mo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.