Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin - Denny Won't Give One Driver What He Wants

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

It only took thirty minutes for Denny Hamlin's best car of the day to turn into an 18th-place finish.Denny breaks down the corner that changed everything, owns where he went wrong, and explains exactly what he would do differently if he could run it back.Then there’s Carson Hocevar. Denny isn’t giving him the clip he wants, but he has plenty to say about Spire Motorsports, including a blunt assessment of what he thinks is missing inside the organization.Plus, Denny breaks down Sheldon Creed’s Darlington win and Corey Day wrecking the same driver three times in one race. He also dives into Kyle Larson’s gutsy strategy call that nearly won the NASCAR Cup Series race and John Hunter Nemechek leaving Legacy Motor Club.And, of course, there’s a surprisingly heated recap of Denny’s latest rec league basketball loss.The NASCAR Playoffs are underway, and Denny has plenty to say on this week’s Actions Detrimental. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

That's it. You good with that? I'm sure. I'm sure you'll clip it. But I'm not talking about him anymore. All right. I'm not going to give him what he wants. I'll talk about Spire.

You want to talk about Spire. The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. I believe that I've been a competitive view for 20 years. Opinions from tonight's podcast, strictly biased. You're going to hear from my point of view. I'm a fighter. No, you are not. The spoils of victory for Jared Allen.

He's got better luck than Rick and Drake to win. I know, you do. Two trophies missing from your collection, a championship and the most popular driver. Someone told me that their drinking game is when I say for sure. Yeah, and I've already said it. Hey guys, welcome to actions detrimental. If you heard that, that was a pop top by Travis.

He said the beer's been staring at him in the fridge. I open up the fridge and there's a water. Do you hear voices? And it says, open me. There was another, there was, you know, a 16 ounce of lemon bottle. What am I supposed to do? It's all right. It's 2 p.m. on Labor Day.

And if Travis was not here working, that's what he would be doing. That's what you'd be doing. Yeah. Did lots of it yesterday. Well, we had the first race of the chase. Christopher Bell wins at Darlington in the Southern 500. Sheldon Cree wins in the O'Reilly race at Darlington. What do we want to tackle first?

Let's knock out the Sheldon Creed and his O'Reilly win. Yeah, I didn't get, I watched 70% of the race. The part I didn't get to see is at the end. It appeared there was a split of strategies where some cars came and took tires. Others did not. Justin Algar was on the, did not trying to save it for it to happen later in the race. And so there was a clear-cut split of strategies everybody that decided to go. go ahead and take their tires,

ended up finishing in front of everyone that did not. So Justin Algeyer's lead down to seven. It's crazy. He had like a six-race lead. The sport. Probably more. But he's going to be fine. He's going to be the car to beat week in, week out.

In the O'Reilly series, I just think he has way too much of an experience advantage. team advantage, all the things, right? He's too good for, to be denied, I believe. But is there anything to say, and this is different than sticking ball sports, but, like, he hasn't had to have that moment recently. He hasn't had to win in a while. Like, he hasn't had to be, like, on, where some of these guys have just been, like,

every, you know, race has meant something. I think he's been on no matter what. I don't it's hard to argue I mean just eyeballing it over the last 10 weeks I mean you know if he's not finishing well it's because something bad happened like it's it's not performance wise I don't see anyone performing on his level at a consistent basis which is why he had over a 200 point lead well great win for Sheldon creed um Yeah, I thought really kind of dominating the day there. The only kind of noteworthy thing I saw was the Corey Day stuff.

That was interesting. I mean, he really, he wrecked William Swalch three times. Like, didn't, you got him the first, body slam him the first time, clipped him the second time, and then finished him off the third. And it didn't really seem like he acknowledged it that. much afterwards. So, interesting. Like, that was, like, the Corey Day that we had seen, like, from a year ago.

And, you know, they got his car fixed back up enough to where he was able to finish second, be on the right side of the strategy at the end. But that was the only thing that, like, was, for me, at the O'Reilly's race that I was like, man, that's just, you know, what, we're. was he doing kind of moment. Yeah, trying to make enemies doesn't seem like a smart move. Who knows? But you can just definitely see.

There's still some growing to be had there. People make arguments about, you know, the 48 car and who's the right guy, who's the wrong guy that got in that. Like, it clearly shows Corday's got, like, a long way to go to, like, be ready to race on Sundays, in my opinion. That's my opinion. but a great job by uh steward hoss team and sheldon creed on getting a big darlington win he mentioned that how big this race was for him uh in the sense of you know how

how much he wanted this race because he feels like this is a driver's track which which it is yep and he finally i mean someone's already said it but him and christopher bell went on the same weekend two guys who are too fond of second place well see bell is mostly this year of second places, but... Shelton Creed's a career second place guy. That's it. That's it, for sure. C. Bell, on to the Sunday race.

As you mentioned, wins the Southern 500. Yeah, it was apparent to me probably around the first stage, the end of the first stage. He had a car that was coming through the pack and was very, very competitive. So then at that point, it's like, you know, execution. And even still, they didn't have a perfect, executed race in the sense of at stage three when I went to the back same time that he went to the

back-ish not really I think he restarted 12th when I restarted 19th um and so he was able to bust through and get into the top 10 pretty quick after that but um it didn't seem like any of the front guys had like a totally clean um race uh everyone had like the 45 had pit road you know a bad stop you know the 19 ran out of gas lots of little little things here and there 20 had a bad stop yeah somebody was you know some were able to rebound some were not nine had a bad stop too like it is that what set him back he thought they were taking two and they were taking four tires and so he started to drive out when the guys are coming across and so they had to stop and obviously messed it up got you um yeah I mean we we all knew that you know Cbell has

clearly had enough speed to win races this year, but their team got it done when it really mattered the most here at Darlington. So it takes him from how far back? 50 to 12. I mean, that's a big chunk and certainly, you know, that team feels like they don't have any necessarily any weaknesses in the chase. So there'll be contenders and certainly this is a great start of the chase for them. Yeah, I mean, this vaults them right. I mean, they were in contention already, but this puts them very much in contention now going forward. Yeah, I mean, when you can knock off a big chunk in one week, that, you know, and winning does that, you're going to feel pretty good about it. Well, it's winning plus dominant in the stages. Yeah, he got, you know,

would he score 73 overall? Yeah. So he had a all but three, point perfect day. So that'll do it. You do that multiple times. That's, uh, that's big chunks. Yeah, I think the importance of the stage points were a reminder in your performance, because you're still 12 up, but had you not scored, you know, how many stage points you saw? 17? 16, right? Eight and eight. You know, big different day. Sure. All together. Yeah. I mean, that's what the stage points was designed to do is, is, not only reward results but performance, right? And those are two different things sometimes. You'll definitely see cars that sometimes will squeak in, get you a top 10,

but they didn't really run in the top 10. It happened through attrition and whatnot. And what the chase format does, or generally speaking, how they reward points in NASCAR now by rewarding stage points is that it rewards greatness. not just a good finish. You know what I mean? And so we definitely know that you're going to have to have all the above,

you know, to maximize your day. How do you feel about your day? How do you feel about the evening? I mean, not great. Certainly felt like, you know, we had a car that had just gotten good. We, I felt like, I felt like, generally speaking, I was really happy with the direction that we set out before the weekend.

I told you guys in the chat kind of, here's what we're aiming to do and fix. And I thought we got those quite a bit better. And then, you know, we just had a few. The long run is where our pace wasn't great, certainly in the first stage. But then by the second, our long run was actually pretty good. So I thought that we were definitely going to be contenders by the end of the day to challenge for the win. Yeah, it's 649. I tweeted the group that you had went over the radio and said this is the best the car had ever been.

And 30 minutes later. Yeah. So, I mean, a missed opportunity from that standpoint. And so you just, I don't know, it's, it definitely could have been better, definitely could have been a lot worse. You know what I mean? So that's the kind of the, you know, we've been really good all year about having, you know, clean races and running up front. Well, we got the running up front part. We just did, it just wasn't a clean race.

Yeah. Yeah, I've seen a few tweets out there that, you know, are mentioning it's kind of a blessing in a way that a bad day for you is 16 stage points and then a 18th place finish. Like, it could be a lot worse. It could be. But back to we talked about this first race was just like a vibes race, right? The championship would not be won or lost in this first race. But it certainly would just change the way you look at these next nine. Yeah.

And when you look at the finishing order as well, all the contenders are there. They're all there. I mean, I'm convinced that if SVG was in the chase, he would have been running 16. I saw you say that. Is it just the motive? That's just how the race was going. Oh, it just seems like... I don't know. His car was so bad.

You think that? They would go from like last to 16? It was more about just this switch, that once you get into the playoffs of the chase, all of a sudden, all these cars that are in the top 16 are running more or less 1 through 16. I don't know if that actually... Yeah, I know, I know.

I just think that in the past, that would have been more of a thing because, I mean, certainly we've talked about it in the past, when you could build your own cars and whatnot, the chase cars were always had more downforce than the rest of them. They got things through tech that just, you know, did not fly early in the year. It's a little more even nowadays, I would say,

it's more apt to have non-chacers be part of the finishing order, but I would also say Darlington is just, that's the driver's racetrack. that we talked about. And in my mind, the six strongest contenders finished one through six. You know what I mean? So I just, there's nothing really that shocked me about looking at the scoring pile on when I looked up.

Yeah, I guess too, is that Darlington's a driver's racetrack, right? So the top six guys are the best guys in the sport, arguably. And especially right now, right? I mean, in ebbs and flows, you can throw other guys in there. I thought Bubba had a really strong first stage, even second, it faded a little at the end of the second stage, but at the beginning you're thinking,

oh, it's him and Reddick are, you know, the cream in the crop when it comes to long runs. And so it just, they just didn't quite seem to keep up with the changes or the racetrack or what have you. But I think certainly the top six here are your, your challengers, and they finish one through six. Yeah, I mean, they're their guys.

So slow stop there in the third stage? No, and to start the third stage, the pit stop after. Put you back in traffic, which then led to this incident with Michael McDowell. What are you feeling from your perspective in the race when this happened? What I was feeling in the race, I was definitely

I didn't know exactly I knew how it happened but I didn't know to what extent obviously needed to see like from his in car like what did he see to understand a little bit more about

which you know because I only saw it from my perspective right and that is okay clear look in my mirror all right I'm clear by a ways It's, you know, it's not like, you know, it was at the time almost one car length. And so it didn't, I didn't feel like I was like shutting his nose off. And there's lots of slide jobs that can happen to where someone comes in there.

And they, you know, you see it in sprint cars, they really take your nose off. They force you to lift. I didn't think that I did that with McDowell, which is why I said that we were nearly car length clear, you know, almost a car length at our biggest point. and then yeah I had a bobble off of turn four and I knew I had the bobble I just I thought at the time that man that I thought there was enough time for him to react to that bobble it wasn't like I was on his hoodpins right away I thought he had time to react but you know it didn't happen can you pull up the McDowell

car on your computer there like where where is this bobble in the in his um it i i can just tell you from my perspective it was right off a turn four um i don't know if it was a tight moment that i had because is that what causes him to catch to you know to come to your back bumper yeah i mean it was more like a half a car length i was in front of them but but yeah i had uh I went from the bottom to the top, so my angle was not great coming off the corner. So I needed to lift to keep it off the wall, right? Yeah, I just, I don't know. I mean, I certainly felt like, you know, I had some responsibility in it,

being that I did lift off the corner because I had a moment. I just thought that McDowell could have been a little quicker with the trigger of not throttling up as he's seeing I'm getting closer and closer and closer. That's just, you know, given the benefit of the doubt, I don't, you know, I believe I'd earn that from, from him. We've raced in the past, no issues, anything like that, and I try to make sure I, be respectful of my competitors. And, you know, I don't think that he wanted to be part of the story. And, you know, his side of it was that, man, I,

I didn't think you needed to slide me to clear me. I thought you were going to clear me anyway. Obviously, it wasn't what he's telling me. He's not intentional on his part. So, you know, I think my job is to give him the benefit of the doubt as well and say that that's just one of those recent incidents that I put myself probably in a tough spot. Could you have waited to make that move or is there something different that you could have done or would you make that move again? Well, if I knew the result, I wouldn't. No, no, no.

Take the result. Like, would you've... I... Yeah, I mean, listen, I just had a horrendous pit stop. And I thought that my car was good enough to contend for the win. I'm looking, there's a hundred and some laps left. So essentially, we have got two pit stops left. I'm restarting 19.

I got to 16th within like a lap or two. Like, this was a battle for 15th. believe, 14th, 15th. So I'd gotten a chunk pretty soon on the restart. And I look and then, so two laps after the restart, the field, that's when they string out. That's when they start going one by one. So you're trying to get all you can while they're side by side. So I got underneath McDow in the middle of one and two, got under him, like he was running mid track. He was running low in the middle of one and two anyway. I went lower to get position on them. We both were respectful. We both had a checkup moment off of turn two. And at that point, I'm like, yeah, I got to get clear

so I can just move on to the next guy. I don't think Michael had any beliefs that he was like going to hold me off of the long run, right? He's, but he's still trying to maximize his position. He's got someone right behind him. I would have, yes, I would have absolutely just, went ahead and run another corner beside him. Maybe then I get, you know, maybe he lets me go into turn one if I'm still behind him, still beside him coming off of turn four. Maybe he doesn't. But I feel like that's another second of really, really important lap time that I need to,

if I'm going to make my progression towards the front and continue for the win, I got to get, I felt like I needed it in the moment. Absolutely in retrospect, being a Monday morning quarterback, I would say, yeah, just hold your car low there. He's going to come back on the outside. That's fine. We'll just have to, you know, give up a little time here to get around this car. But in the moment, there was no doubt in your mind where it's like, oh, I don't know.

Maybe I'm not. No, because, again, I knew I was clear by a chunk, not by like a nose. You know, you slide someone right across their nose and you ask them to lift. That's a tough ask. I just felt like there was enough space between us to where, even if I did have a bobble moment, he had enough time to react. But again, for all I know, maybe his goal was to push me down the front straight away. And when I had a check up, you know, it got me out of shape.

We'll never know. But I'm done analyzing it for sure, and we've got to just move on. Which incident we want to talk about next here, Travis? You talk about Byron's Day? I think we need to go with the good stuff. The good stuff. what's that you're going to make any go from analyzing himself to analyzing hosvar and Brad yeah uh Carson rec Bradd what else what'd you make of Brad's comments afterwards

uh Brad's comments I would say um he seemed upset and I have no reason to doubt what Brad says but I mean we've heard and seen that before if there's anyone in the field that you would trust to follow through on their words, whereas Brad rank on that list? Great question. Hmm. Trust their word. Now,

trust their word on retaliation? Because that's different. Like I trust Brad's word. No, no, yeah. Not talking about, you know. Yeah, yeah. Trust that he will now go out and do something on the track. Middle of the pack.

Middle of the pack. Yeah. Middle of the pack. But I don't know. That's my thing is we see a lot of drivers talk a big game, but then when it comes time to actually back it up, it's... Yeah, but there's not been a whole lot of times where... What's Brad got to lose?

That's why I think... Like, back to the Corey Day thing, like, pissing off a non-chase driver and someone like Brad who, who owns his own team, like he's not worried, like, it's a bad move. TBD. Yeah. It's just all unfortunate all around because you say

pissing off another chase driver as in Carson's the chase driver, right? Yeah. He just, it's unfortunate. He just feels like he's just, this is just happy go lucky at the moment where it's like

if he finishes 16th in this chase, it's whatever. They don't really care. That's the vibe I get when I hear him talk. You're not going to get anything more for me because I'm not going to give him what he wants.

I'm not going to give him the clip that he wants, period. So you want me to talk about Spire? I'll talk about Spire. Well, I do wonder, like... There's no adults in the room, clearly, in that building. No adults. That's my opinion.

Because how can you honestly think that that's what's best for your company? If you're running a serious organization. I think they're unsurious. Anything else? That's it. That's all I got. You good with that? I'm sure.

I'm sure you'll clip it. But I'm not talking about him anymore. All right. I'm not going to give him what he wants. I'll talk about Spire. You want to talk about Spire? We're good. Go ahead.

Yeah, I bet you are good. Let's move on to Hendrick. You don't know where to go, do you? I don't know where to go. Good day for the five. Good day for the five team. Strong day for the five. Tough day for the 24th year.

What'd you make of the five staying out? Um, you know what? It's what they thought they could do to win. Like, if you look, if you, if you listen to his comments, he says, well, I had these guys in front of me. I'm going to come out on pit road behind them, most likely. So how am I going to pass them in a 25, 30 lap run? That's what they're thinking, which I believe they're correct. I think that it would have been very, very difficult.

equal tires to pass, you know, multiple cars. Now, could they have got a better finish? Maybe. But they deemed the risk of maybe finishing a few spots worse, worth the bonus points of winning. So I think it's a ballsy, but great call on their end to say, we're going for the win, not a great finish. And you're hoping that what? And they still got the good, they still got the good finish. And you're hoping a couple more cars stay out and maybe a couple more cars stay out and maybe a

caution and now you're sitting good. Yeah, all you need then is a, yeah, let's go five, four more laps. Maybe another caution than the field pits again. Now you're in front of them. So there's lots of, there's lots of different variables that could have happened that that would have been beneficial from that call. But it, you know, it worked out the worst that it possibly could have and he still finished fifth.

So, good call, my opinion. And he thought that he was only just a few laps away from maybe the tires equalizing a bit. Yeah, that's what you're hoping, right, is that by the time they get to you, it's the tires of equalized. So if you kind of look at the slope in which these cars lose lap time, the bulk is going to be in the first six to seven laps. and then it's still it's still

what's the word not vertical it's still progressive the amount that you're falling off but it's it goes from let's do it to this camera so here's lap time zero so lot times fast here

slow here so the first six or seven is like this and then after it goes to like that so he's hoping to get to that window of the new tire guys. So now it's like, oh, okay, I can airblock enough to make it happen. So again, I'm confident that was a really good call.

Could have worked out even better. It was very exciting. I thought for a split second there with like 20 to go, I thought just maybe he was going to be able to hold him off because Bell was racing the 54 as well. Truly, once Bell got away from the 54 and then just focus on the five. is when he was reeling him in. Yeah. Yeah, tough day for the 24.

They lose three spots in the chase. And he had a good run going too. Yeah. Right? I mean, I think that I certainly feel like the 24, this was stepping right direction for them. It was as competitive as they've been in a, in a minute, which is what, back half of the top five most of the day.

But for a team like that now, do you like, where's your head out now? Do you feel like you're out of it? No, no, I mean, if you're on the team, no, you don't feel like you're out of it until four races to go and you're 130 back, you know what I mean? And by the way, and if you have to pass like five guys, there's also a thing like in golf where when Scotty Sheffler is lurking in third play, he's six shots back, but he's in third, he only needs two guys to fumble the ball. But if he's six shots back and he's in 15th, there's too many, there's too many guys that

you are counting on to fumble the ball. And so it's like that, like that's when you start to lose hope is when you're 10th thin points four to go with 130 back like you know that there's just you'll be able to gain these chunks on two three four guys but you're not going to do it on eight or nine that makes sense yeah so it's a tough first it's a tough start but you know if they go to st louis and have a 75 point day things could look a lot different. They'd be 50 back. And then next thing you know it,

all right, we're back in this thing. You just never know. It's just so early. What are your takeaways there looking at the chase standings? No surprises. Yeah, I mean, the top seven,

I mean, the Bell, Blaney, Redick, Briscoe, Gipps, Larson. And then there's the gap, which I would agree that that is the gap. And then it's, Ligano, Elliott, Bubba, Busher, Host, Vars,

Synerk, Presbyron. So, like, I think it's, the top six toughest challengers from where they started are there.

It's just a matter of, can someone, like, can Bubba or somebody in that, or Chase Elliott, Ligano, someone, maybe have a big week this week that puts them

in that conversation of now they're in the top six. Other than that, I just don't, I don't know. I just see as like that seventh place where Larson's at is like, those are the consistent guys that you think week in, week out, have got enough speed to make it happen. Do you think that anyone outside the chase wins a race in these final 10? Yeah, Taldega.

Other than Talladega. probably not probably not yeah i i doubt it the talent and then the chases is too much um i mean it's a combination of all all the above but were there any winners left out of the chase SVG SVG SVG okay besides SVG i don't think so right so i mean it could happen like you know josh barry continues to show strong runs, right? So, like, he's putting himself in there. Also, shut up. Why were you saying in the chat?

He made life easy on you early in the race. I think you were trying to put him a lap down or something. He kind of just let you go. I don't think it was a lap down. Maybe not a lap down, but you're passing him, and he didn't put up much of a fight. He's a gentleman racer. I know.

I tweeted out that he's, I'm giving him Denny Brough status, and he liked the tweet. so that's an agreement. He's a denier. I mean, listen, maybe he'll get one of these. I dislike when non-chaise drivers, you know. Well, and not only that, I mean, even amongst the chase drivers, like, you know, Blaney gets to the inside, let him go.

My teammates get to the end. Let them go. Like, those things, I'm very comfortable in saying that those things pay dividends, right? And every time I got the same position on Blaney, boom, he let me go. same thing with Redick and all those guys. We never really fought each other. It's like if you're better, take it. Because I know holding you up, China Airbra,

it's not helping either one of us. And what you do is you allow the next place guy back, you know, into the picture, now you're going to lose multiple positions. So I thought there was a ton of give and take amongst, you know, the front of the field all day. And Barry was part of that discussion, right? And he was up there racing in the top five. Yeah, I mean, I think I might have been in a tired advantage at the time, but yeah, he, he's never given us any trouble.

He's had a hell of a run lately. It's, I believe it's earned him an right. I mean, that's a segue. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's well earned at this point. It's impressive. I guess that segues us to the Josh Barry news that we didn't get to talk about last week. There is no, there is no Josh Barry news. What?

John Hunter. John Hunter. Right. And Riley are the news. Nobody announced anything as far as judgment. Am I just putting that? Do I just watch too many random NASCAR YouTube videos that in my head now I'm... Possibly.

That might be it. Yeah. It's, you know, it appears it's a done deal. But, but yes. John Hunter, you know, is what we thought he had a contract for next year, but legacy wants to go in a different direction. and my guess is they're going to buy them out of that and move on, do something different. And what it appears to be is a ride for Josh Berry.

But nothing's announced yet. Correct. Except for the release of John Hunter. Right. Yeah. Seats open for somebody. I believe it's open for Josh Barry. But I mean, you know, if there's,

anything good that comes out of it is like, I mean, what was Josh going to do, right? It just, I mean, he was on the cusp of like not working. Not having a ride period. Right. Right. And these runs have impressed legacy enough it appears to at least raise an eyebrow. So that's good for the Barry family if that comes out to be true. What I like is if Legacy is in fact bringing them in, they're making a decision strictly on performance, clearly. You don't. Yeah, because Josh shouldn't have any funding with them. You don't cut a driver with a contract,

so now you have to pay that out. Like, most teams aren't doing that because that's just, they can't afford it. Legacy apparently has the money to do it, and they're willing to say, you know what, performance is more important than the money that you're bringing. And I'd like to see more of that. Unfortunately, I get the business, though.

Yep, I believe you said it all there. It is. It's good to see that performance still does matter. And if your legacy, you've got to take the next step to get better. And they feel like this will be the best. Assuming it's Josh Barry, they feel like this is an upgrade for them. And we'll see if that turns out to be true. How are we feeling about looking ahead to St. Louis?

I mean, I guess I feel good about it. I thought that, you know, some of the takeaways for me personally is that, you know, I focused on Darlington. I wanted to work on a couple things. We improved those things. There was no question. So we just didn't get the result to back that up, right? So, but I know that what it does reaffirm is like, stick to the process.

Everything will be fine. And so we'll do the process again this week and hopefully have a good result. Just going into Darlington, we had talked about on the show last week that, you know, you hadn't been great there in a while, but you have been great at St. Louis recently. So it feels like just there's a... Yeah, which is interesting. I mean, I remember the win from last year, but I don't remember years before that. Second and second, right?

Ran second to Cowbush, for sure. Last three years, first, second, second, qualified first, sixth third. That's good. The only time you finished outside the top two is a little spat with Ross Chastain. That's right. And that was also a strong day, if I remember correctly before that. It was so early in the race. Who knows?

But yeah, I mean, I don't know. We're going to prepare like we've never seen the racetrack. So I don't know. Past results, to me, all the results do, you know, the result is one thing. How do you run is really the question. and what you learn from is how you run. And what I knew at Darlington is that, yes, our results were pretty good. They weren't exceptional, but they were good.

But I knew that we never really had a whole lot of race winning capability over the last few years. And I thought that we got that back this time. How do you, does it feel different this year with the chase after the first race compared to previous years with the playoffs? Oh, a ton. A ton different. just because, I mean, you know there's no reset. I don't know. The mental is just a little different, I guess.

When you looked at the standings after the race last night, I'm soon when you got back to the bus or whatever, what's your thoughts? I thought I thought I was third or fourth. Oh, really? Yeah. In the car, that's what you had thought. Yeah.

I mean, especially I get out of the car, right? The first thing I do, I'll look at the pylon. I'm like, oh, fuck. You know, all those guys. You're not on it and they are. Yeah, exactly. So I braced for impact on that one. And I was actually quite okay seeing that like, oh, all right, it's not horrible.

It's not great, but it's not horrible. It's softened the blow a little bit. Yeah. I mean, winning matters. You go win a race and you're going to jump 30 points on any one of these guys. That's right. Um, good finish by Gibbs. Did not have good strong stages.

It's crazy. He only... Well, he had the member. He started in the back. Yeah. Ty Gibbs? Yeah, because of the metric. You crashed last week at Daytona.

You missed out on stage points. Oh, okay. Well, I saw him at the bottom of the pylon. Every time the end of the stage, sure he didn't get one or two? I guess not. He had to got one because he scored 36. You get 35 points for a second.

He only scored one more point than me. Yeah, I guess that those stage points were pretty big. Yeah. I don't know who else. No other really surprises. I thought this was a good race for Blaney in the sense that like, you know, this has been a, this is not like, a track. I don't know. I don't consider like a mile and a half, like all big tire wear tracks.

It doesn't matter the size. Planey's been really good at. But it hasn't, this kind of track has not been their weakness, right? I think we find out, you know, what, what they got when we go to like Vegas, tracks like that. But I thought that they did what they needed to this weekend, 44 point day, uh, finished fourth. Um, I thought they were really good when the, The sun was out, leveled off a little bit at nighttime. I thought, yeah, all those guys did what they needed to do, and everyone probably feels pretty good about where they're at. I think that there's, again, that seven guys that feel still really, really strong about their chances.

Then you got the Lugano's like, I need to go this weekend, score big points, put myself in that conversation. Yeah, Blaney's another guy that had to start towards the back and spend all of stage one trying to get up. up into the top 10 scoring station points. Mm-hmm. Now, if we have qualifying, though, the 16 chase drivers will go last no matter what, right? And then it goes off the metric, like in the order? The metric matters because the metric sets where you go out of those 16, but yes, the chase guys will all qualify in the last last 16. So no matter what, you're still going to be kind of up there.

You're not going to be better. I mean, a rough guess is I'll probably be. 10th to 12th. How important is? Maybe on the more side, more of the 12th side. Because my finish, there was only one chaser

finished worse than me. Is that right? Byron. No. Byron finished worse than you. Who else? What about Busher? Did I beat him?

I beat him. So that's two cars. I definitely am not start, that will qualify before me. Soros. Elliot was, how many, spots ahead. Elliot finished 14th.

14th, but I'm ahead of him and points by 9. That's going to be a close metric. Cendrick, same thing. 14 spots ahead in points, but he's ahead of me by 5. How important? I'm probably going to be 13th. How important is where you go out and qualify? I don't even know what time qualifying is.

Later in the day. it's like 4 o'clock or something ugh not great then because the sun where the sun's just setting a little more yeah yeah just how the solar effect is of yeah it's fine 30 30 practice and qualifying 3 30's practice practice

but that's 3 30 local eastern yeah so that's 2 30 you're almost in the middle of the afternoon oh okay I don't know trav we're gonna give it our best shot we qualify on the pole Pocono being like with a horrible draw. Who knows?

We're going to give it our best shot. Yeah, that's really all I got from Darlington, truthfully. How about you guys? I got a review here from Miss J. Dub 80, L.O.L. The baby's screaming sent my dogs into a tizzy.

Was Drew screaming last week? Yeah, when Denny put him down, he started... Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah. He didn't like that. Oh, no. Also, Denny, big game this weekend. The what? Big game this weekend. Texas?

Yeah. We'll handle them. Also, I told Jerry before you came in, I should have... Appreciate y'all boys. That's what Texans do. I should have known. You'll go get them. I should have known this weekend wasn't going to go well when the outlaw shit the bed.

We didn't play our best. We lost. I mean... They're talking about basketball now. Yeah. We're on, it's, it's hoop group, I'm sorry. Yeah, our team, me, Charlie Ransom, Brandon, who am I missing? Chase, yeah.

We just, we didn't play our best, man, I don't know. And they threw a zone at us, challenging us to shoot. We didn't make our shots when we had, when we had the opportunity. So we'll be prepared next time. I mean, do you think we needed to make personnel changes from what you or you think it was just we played a bad game? I think some players need to know their role and shooting threes for some people is not what I would be doing.

I mean, clearly you weren't focused on yelling at Charlie and you're telling me to be quiet. Like, you guys need to lock in. It appeared you got Charlie in a tizzy. If I could get Charlie in a tizzy, we got some regress. You were throwing the ball on the lake on a few of those passes. I'm not sure where. Well, he was blaming you on one of them.

he looked at me what about the other four and and listen I didn't want to do this on our group chat but how do you let your man give them 30 feet of space to catch the ball

with three seconds to go I like you got to burn every second of the clock and that means when he touches it you're in his you're in it right so I'm not putting the blank

you know we shouldn't have been in that position to begin with we clawed back but that was not charlie even just honest get card your guy tight and i look and back as catch the ball uncontested and just dropped runs right to the three point line and shoots

i'm like wait a minute i i got my hand on my man i'm turned around saying what how do you get that like it should have taken them 10 seconds to get to the three point line but I get it he didn't want a foul, but man, I don't know how he let your man catch the ball that easily because when you do that, he burns no time going right to his spot.

And we got burned on a buzzer-beater. Also, Ransom and Charlie need to go practice free throws. I think they've been pretty solid on that. They weren't Thursday. Just saying. Wow, anyway. This hoop group game was last Thursday. You guys are really erring it out here on Monday.

It's been in your head for a while. I'm going to be game time decision. I got a little neat, full disclosure. I'm making the call now. You're not playing. Yeah, my knee, I tweaked it at the end of the game and it swole up on me. So I might get a sub this week. Jared?

No, Jared's not my sub. We might get an upgrade. Okay, that's a wrap, I think. Right? Yep. All right. Well, we'll see you all after Gateway. Check out Dirtymo Media on Instagram.

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