Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin - Enter The Chat, NASCAR

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

Denny Hamlin's Super Bowl bets paid off, but one commercial had him freaking out (6:10). Should NASCAR penalize drivers who wreck drivers on purpose (12:50)? Kyle Busch and Joey Logano have beef (18:04). Strategy when racing at Daytona, what to expect with 20 laps left and why the race will be different than qualifying (23:28). Will NASCAR and the teams come to an agreement on a revenue split (42:42)? Plus, Ask Denny questions that include DH's Final Four drivers, 23XI pit crews and wrecking rental cars (59:11). Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The following is a production of Dirtymoe Media. We're going to just keep racing hard until we get the respect back from these guys. They don't think straightly. I'm going to have to do a little bit more donuts. I'm not done yet. He's just a hack. It's just an absolute hack. Just putting another coin in the deposit box.

What was fatable? I said the F word. Not have meaningless guys in the back wreck. I mean, I don't know what they're doing, crashing with a couple laps to go. Thank you for that. First check, by the way, I got a set of rims for my truck and a plasma TV. What do you think? Did he get him?

That is the truth. He had nothing. Welcome back to action detrimental. We're on episode two. They didn't fire us after week. That's good news, right? No racing this week, but we got plenty to talk about. A lot of stuff going on in the world today.

First, hey, by the way, they shot down. Was it a UFO? I mean, you're kind of a... Yeah, I didn't see it. Honestly, the past week after the China spy balloon, I feel like everything is just that. It just felt like it was fine. We're good.

Well, I saw everything with the China spy balloon, right? And then two days later, they shoot down something else. I feel like that kind of just got wrapped up into the China spy balloon for me, so I didn't pay any attention to it. Yeah. I guess they're saying it's some circular, unidentified object. We could have... aliens. You don't believe in aliens? Like, you sound surprised. I'm a skeptic, I guess. You don't think

that there's another form of life out there? Oh, no, I definitely do. But I think it's like a rodent under the earth and Mars. Oh, okay. I don't. Well, I guess I'm saying I'm not really sure that there's another intelligence out there. But I mean, surely there, I guess there could be, right? I mean, surely there 100% is. There's just so. much. And you think they're touring the U.S.? Well, I don't know about that, but it's possible. I think if there are aliens out there and they're touring the U.S., then they're just here amongst us, and we don't know. Like Elon Musk could be an alien, right? And all right? Yeah. No, I get it for sure. I saw where he actually tweeted he was like, you know, oh, it's just my friends or something

coming to the editor. So, yeah, that was crazy. So, yeah. That was crazy. So, yeah they shot down the spy balloon after uh it came down well it it toured the u.s first yeah then once it left our airspace just about they they took it down and then now there's this thing uh that they shot down and they said it's like minus 40 something degrees in alaska so there i'm a tough time getting uh where this thing is uh was was flying around so i mean i guess they did acknowledge UFOs years ago yeah and the government many years ago. So, I mean, I guess, I don't know.

I'm just one of those people that, like, has to see it to believe it. I just, I'm, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I guess. I like to see proof, but. Right. Well, so I think the thing with the whole UFO discussion is that for years, UFO was just a, to us, was just a synonym for alien, right? But UFO is just, they don't know what it is. So years ago when they declassified that information that pilots had seen this UFO, right?

UFO sounds like alien, but it just means they don't know what it was. Like it could have been anything. It's an unidentified flying object, right? But not necessarily an alien. It doesn't mean that it has to be someone steering the ship. No, I mean it doesn't necessarily mean like an ET like creature flying around. They just don't know what it was. All right, Jared.

If we don't move on, people are going to tune out really quickly. We are a racing podcast, sort of. Till now. Till now. So, Super Bowl is last night. Yep. Thoughts on that? Great game until the last minute and 45 seconds.

Oh, gosh. Are we going to really hinge this whole game on this one play? It was. You don't think so? Okay, so I see that everyone's just like, oh, you can't call holding. that situation, you can't decide the game on that. The game was decided when they let them get down to the 10-yard line to begin with. They still had to go down. So they were going to score something,

a field goal or a touchdown. Do you agree with that? I think they were going to get a field goal. Okay. They had no timeouts left in a minute 50 to go. Yep. If that call doesn't happen, it's just fourth down, they got to go on. So no, well, I take that back. Maybe they did have a timeout. Still, a game-winning drive, it would have been tough. I think it would have been tough on the Eagles to win regardless of that call. But I was just, what a great game. 35, 35, two minutes to go. Awesome, just awesome. My friends, Greg Fernelli, he's, you know, owned Stockcar Steele, SRI. He's a crazy nut Kansas City fan, very similar to Boyer. I think all of them are nuts by the way. And by the way, I knew the Eagles were completely

when they were greasing the poles downtown so the people couldn't climb them after. Like, you can't. Well, they're doing that regardless of the outcome. They're either going to blow up the city because they win or they're going to blow up the city because they lose. That's a great point. So they have to do it regardless. Yeah. That's a great point. I mean, listen, Philly fans are certainly passionate about their sports. That's for sure. But when I saw them like greasing the polls, I'm thinking, oh, that's just bad juju. You just can't assume you're going to, you're going to, you know, You know, they're the state.

They assume anything, right? Right. And, you know, just like we put salt on our roads if it's under 45 degrees, right? Just because we want to prepare. But, yeah, I thought it was an awesome game. Jalen Hertz and that team played great. I do want to clear something up for the people. I said I was backing the Eagles.

I said that based off of the fact that I assumed that the public would be on Kansas City. That was wrong. The public was on the Eagles. The public was on the Eagles. So I did not place any Super Bowl bets until about two hours before the game. I had someone in Vegas that I know pretty well. He is a professional handicapper slash better. And he gave me the information that I should be taking the over on the points.

That felt really good to cash that ticket. What were the points? 51. So we cashed that ticket early in the first quarter. or in the fourth quarter. That was my big bet. And then secondary, I'm like, well, I got to put one on the team. So I go on.

There's a website to go on. I kind of look at some stats, look at some matchups and stuff. And I'm like, Eagles look better on paper. No question. But I just liked Patrick Mahomes' experience on that stage. And so I took Kansas City. And it's because most of the public, 62% was, on the Eagles.

So this is all probably stuff that they've covered on Dirty Mo Doe with Steve LaTart before the weekend. But I took Kansas... Hopefully Dirty Modo had the right choices. Oh, their lock, by the way, was the over on the anthem. Boy, it wasn't a lock. Like, I mean, it was close. So I actually took the under on the anthem to be under two minutes, two seconds,

and a half. I think the official time was 201.1.5. So I had one second to spare. And then we're all arguing last night at my friend's house about, is it from when they strike the guitar or is it from when they first start singing? Because there are definitely two things. So I think if you had over two minutes on the anthem, you won. If you had under 202 and a half, you won.

And there are a lot of the books lines, We're right in between there. So to clear it up, I won. I won. One big? One good? We did well, Jared. We did well.

I mean, you've been with me in Vegas. I mean, I have, I've been with me. I'm in the group chat. I know how well. That's right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I always kind of equated to like, hey, did, you know, did we win a Corolla or did we win, you know, Do we win?

You know, maybe a new LX SUV. You know, let's just buy cars for the whole family. Let's just have a fleet. So it was a good night. That was awesome. I loved the Super Bowl is such a great event. A lot of people come to it. Speaking of which, holy, can we not talk about this?

Who changed the channel in the middle of the To Be commercial at the end? I cannot believe that they allowed. The TV network allowed a commercial to be aired where it looked like someone was flipping the channel. We were freaking the fuck out that somebody downstairs was turning on smart TV. And next thing you know, we're grabbing remotes hitting buttons. And we turned our own TV off. We turned it to a separate input because we thought someone was with the TV. But it was just the commercial.

Yeah, I was so. And it's in the fourth quarter. And it's like, holy shit, this is the pivotal part of the game. and they aired a commercial that made it look like someone was changing the channel. Yeah. I was watching, I was home watching the Super Bowl. So I'm sitting on the couch. The two controllers for the TV are over here.

And I'm just, you know, put it on my phone. And I hear it go back to the game, which is actually not the game, right? It goes back to Greg Olson. And the tuby thing cuts in. And it catches my attention immediately. I'm like, you're looking around. I'm like, where's a remote? Yeah.

I didn't sit on it. They're over here. You got to understand. I have PTSD because my daughter. shut off my screens when I was racing eye racing. So like I'm sitting here, you know, ready to yell at somebody for sure. But oh my gosh. I mean, great commercial, right?

Because it, we're all talking about it. A. But B, man, the network could not have liked people grabbing the remotes trying to change channels in the middle of the fourth quarter. So it is very cool. But wow, it scared the shit to me for sure. That kind of covers the... Now we're going to be a racing board. I guess we're going to talk about racing at some point, right?

So, yeah, I mean, there's some all-season stuff. Well, hold on, before we talk about any other news, I do want to go back to the clash. Because at the time that we podcasted last week, and we talked about it, I hadn't actually seen the race first. Yeah. Because, A, first you got to get sleep, and I didn't get any of that. I was feeling awful. I am feeling better, by the way. I had I had some major issues.

I'm not really sure. I got tested for COVID flu strep. My youngest daughter had strep. I thought maybe that was it. But coming to find out, they took my car apart and they said the door foam started to burn. So I'm sure that that played a pretty big role in what I was feeling. But then I had some, you know, it's not to get too much to TMI, but I had some GI issues in my stomach. and so I was on the toilet for most of the week,

and it only happened. Like, I told you I'd never had heartburn before until New Year's this year. I'm like, you know, asking one, what's this burning in my throat? Yeah, and they're like, that's heartburn, but I'm like, oh, that sucks. And then I had, I guess this week, like, indigestion issues where, like, my stomach, at 3 o'clock in the morning, I'm thinking I've got to go to the hospital. My stomach's going to explode. And I ate nothing.

I dropped six pounds from Monday. You can't include the race, right? Because we talk about how much weight we lose during races. But I'm saying after the race from that point to now I lost six pounds just because of I couldn't eat all week. I was feeling really bad. So I am better now, though. I'm back and ready to go to Daytona.

So we're about to start this season. It's going to be pretty exciting. Pong, clash. Oh, flash. Yeah. Yeah, I hadn't watched the class. You're really good with these tangents. I know, I get going, and it's tough for me to stop.

This is where I need you. I need you, Jared. All right. Well, stop, stop. You got to go back to the clash. Okay, and I'll talk about the clash. So I went back and watch the clash, and I'm like, wow. At first I said after the race immediately, you probably saw on Twitter, I said, well, you can't penalize these guys, I reckon, because they would just, all of us would be penalized.

I go back on that. I think the DBC guys got it right when they said, you got to penalize the first couple that are just absolutely egregious crashing of people. If you do that, it stops the next 20 events from happening. And you can tell from NASCAR, some of those wrecks, you can tell when someone's egregious, they lay into whoever they're laying into. They don't attempt to slow down. They don't attempt to give the person a chance to collect it.

They just pile drive them into whoever's in front of them and say, whatever happens happens. I watched the 14. I'm not shi-you. I watched him, like, just drive in and make no attempt to even make the corner multiple times. I saw this, by the way, at the Indy Roadcourse as well. I mean, there's something that Chase is doing where he's just given no regard to, like, anybody that's in front of him.

And he's just saying, fuck you, A. and the consequences. And it's like, that just kind of rubs me a little bit wrong. And I'm like, man, they need to just stop that bullshit first. And if they can do that, then I think the rest of these events don't happen. You have a much cleaner race. So you want the tower throwing flag. Yes.

Go to the back. You go to the back. You call an egregious crash. You go to the back. Don't you think that's going to get a little, little. No, because you can tell when it's a racing deal. Listen, there. was probably 85% of the wrecks that happened. See, I'm exaggerating. 60% of the wrecks that happened

was from egregious competitors just going in there and paying no regard. They watch somebody run into someone else and they said, all right, I'm going to up the stakes and just go ahead. I saw it's okay, so I'm just going to go ahead and do it now. So again, I think if you stop it from the beginning because if you go to the back, you're not making it back to the front. But surely that's a product of this track because you don't see that as much everywhere else. You don't know. You maybe see a little bit on the road course restarts. You do see it there.

We saw it in any road. We saw it a bunch on the road course restarts. You can see it. It is plain as day. If I was a race fan that had no idea about racing, I would say he intentionally wrecked that person. And then you see other ones where it's like, yeah. he got into him, he meant to get into him, but he gave the guy a chance.

Some of these guys don't give any of them a chance. And so I think that NASCAR needs to enter the chat. Well, what's wrong with drivers just dealing with this themselves? If Kyle is upset with Joey and the way he raced him, then race him like that in three weeks down the road. I would not want to see NASCAR get in the business of throwing flags, tiki-tack calls, like at the end of the Super Bowl. That's not tiki-tech. Did you see the New Orleans Saints a few years ago? Well, you're going back to the pastus notorious call.

Tackled him before the ball even was within 10 yards. That's egregious. I'm not talking about the hold at the end of the Super Bowl, where it's like, eh, did he tug the jersey? Did he not? I'm talking about tackling somebody before they get off the line. Just driving into the back corner. Yes, egregious.

I still think if Chase Briscoe takes you out, then. Yeah, I agree that I should just take him out. Eventually, it's not going to be worth the reward. I get it. I get it. I just, I think, like Harvick at the end, like he was so pissed. But it started two cars back because somebody refused to let off the gas when there was a corner to be had. So I just think that NASCAR needs to enter the chat on this one.

I just think that it's not like they're going to black flag 10 people during the race because I think the first two that get the hammer on it. and say, okay, hey, we're not going to put up with this today. The field takes notice and they stop it. Are you throwing a flag now with three laps to go and Joey punts William Byron into the wall at Darlington? Is that a flag? Or is that okay? Because no, William kept going. I mean, no.

That was racing for the win. And God, I hate people. But it was intentional? Was 100% intentional. That's evident. It was 100% intentional. Yeah. But if the wall wasn't there, he was just going to knock him up the track.

But the wall was there. So it kind of kept them in track and he still finished the race. That's just different. It didn't cause a caution. If you, again, in short track racing, racing, if you crash someone and it causes a caution, they got the penalty because they ended up crash and they're in the back. And you're going to join them back there. What a great opportunity for you to bust their ass right back.

They're right back with you on the caution. Yeah. And by the way, ooh, spicy, salty. Yeah. The Ligano and Kyle Bush comments. I guess, you know, Kyle's calling him two-faced. Joey's saying, yeah, no shit, I'm two-faced. I admit it. Joey owned it.

It made me, if I'm a fan of Joey's, that makes me like Joey even more. Yeah, I mean, I think that Joey's being honest and saying, yeah, I am two-faced. And here's how I do it. On the racetrack, I don't search out. friends. My biggest thing he says is I'd rather be on the track than off the track. That's an honest way to be. And I think what we're seeing here is a clash of personalities because what Joey kind of, I don't know if he was insinuating or he was flat out saying that well, Kyle, you're, you might be a nice guy on the track and you don't wreck people, but you're

in a little off the track. Is that what you gather from that? I didn't pick that up at all. But that's interesting. I didn't get that at all. Yeah, I mean, listen, I've been teammates with both of these guys. I can't really speak to their personal lives that much. I do interact with both of them on and off the track. I think that you're seeing a clash of personalities. Because I would say this. Joey admittedly says that, yeah, I am that on the racetrack.

I'm that guy. I would agree with that. And I also would agree with the fact that Kyle is not that guy on the track. I think he is one of the most fair racers I've raced against. I mean, it's interesting because he kind of puts himself as the black hat kind of guy, but he's not really on the racetrack. He really isn't. I think he's very fair.

He races people hard, but super fair. Joey, probably less fair at times, more selfish, which that's fine. That works for him. And then, so they're clashing right then on the track. and off the track, I would somewhat agree that they are different there as well. I think that I'm not going to go Kyle Bush's complete full-blown, but I'll say that he's abrasive. You know, he's a little different in that aspect than Joey.

You see Joey, he does a lot of good deeds outside the racetrack. I don't know if he's just trying to get that karma back, you know, but they're clashing. They're clashing. And I get it because I feel as though me and Joey's style clashed over the years because of that. We same kind of way. I felt like I've been fair for the most part and he's less. And so that clashes on the track.

That's what makes for rivalries. That's what makes for good competition. So not saying one is right or wrong. But yeah, it was interesting. They definitely got personal in their post race. How do you interact? Like, Kyle was mad that Joey told him good luck before the race, right? So you always have this bullpen area before driver intros

where all the drivers are chatting it up and they all look like their best buds, right? How are you handling that area with your rivals, right? Are you, do you think it's okay to go up to whoever and be like, you know, good luck? And then you race them like a dirt bag on the racetrack. Yeah, I think me and Lugano do that. honestly, I talk to Lugano as regular as anybody off the racetrack but I know that as soon as they throw the green

and there's been many times that I'll speak with him about racing or safety or something with the drivers council before the race but I'm not making believe that like oh we're best friends now. I know on the racetrack we're going to race cut throat. That's just the way that we are. I mean that's just the way

our rivalry has always been. So you don't take, if a guy wrecks you, you don't take that personally off the race track. I do not. Okay. Clearly, Kyle does. That's what I got out of that. I believe that Kyle is kind of a conspiracy theorist in the sense of like he thinks everyone's out to get him. That's not true, obviously.

But I think he's just always had that chip of like, you know, it's him against the world. and I don't believe it. I don't know if that's what he needs to fire himself up, but certainly I think that that's his mentality. Are there any other guys, though, that are kind of like Joey in that sense, that they're very nice off the racetrack, but then when they get on it,

they're the opposite? The driver of the one. The driver of the one? Yeah. Okay. I won't say names. Yeah, so, wow, that's kind of going back and rehashing that salty little exchange between those.

It was good. It was good. the fact that it was good and junior said this on the download is that throw all these guys in a blender right stir them all up and then let's go to detona and start the season no doubt i think it's great if the clash does anything well it's it's that that's my biggest takeaway it does it really does and i i think that you know the clash got so much criticism over the last week about you know the venue the type of racing all that but it did create some storylines which is good um we we've got some great storylines going into this year. You know, there's, you know, some competition things that are different. I'm excited about it.

I think that Daytona, just our biggest race, is just awesome. I'm so excited to go to Daytona this week. For many reasons, obviously, my success there has been awesome. And the run that we've been on in the 500 for the last 10 to 12 years has been amazing. So I always look forward going there. It's just, it is like the Super Bowl for us. and it feels that way. What is it like, from your perspective,

opening this season with your Super Bowl versus... Yeah, that's what's interesting, right? Is that our biggest race is our first race. I like it and I don't like it. I like it because it is big. I like it because it does build an audience that you can see lingers for weeks after. So it's good for TV in that sense.

But to be the very first race, I'm not really sure. Does it need to be the very first race? I feel like if it's not the first, then it has to be the last. I don't think you get the same... You're talking about the signing a championship at Daytona? No, no, no, no, no.

I didn't say that. I'm just saying the magnitude of the race. You can't put the Daytona 500 in the middle of April. I don't think it has the same... The Masters is? Sure, but there's a lot of people who don't watch golf and just watch the Masters, right? I don't know. That probably didn't help my argument because there's probably a lot of people that don't watch racing that just watch the Daytona 500.

Well, that's a fact. For sure. I guess my answer would just be indifferent. Indifferent, right? Certainly, it still has its prestige, and I think it would have its prestige no matter when it was, because it is the Daytona 500. I like it more at the beginning of the season. That's fair. And I assume that I would if it was in the middle of the NASCAR season. That's a fair argument for sure. 18th year, though, you said you're still excited about going there. Yeah. I am. I just enjoy what it takes to be successful there.

Luck? Luck's a factor. No question about it. The arguments on Twitter every time we get into the Daytona 500 is that it's more luck than skill. Sure. You can luck up a win at Daytona. One, you're not going to luck into two. You're not going to luck into three.

That's for sure. We've seen some one-off winners, first-time winners for the Daytona 500. We saw it last year, Austin Sindrick. So it is possible because there is so much carnage, so many crashes at that racetrack, you can see a surprise winner for that race, which we have. You consistently, if there were no crashes, you could pretty much predict the top five, in my opinion. if there were no crashes there were no crashes

I can tell you he's going to be running top five on the green white checker or at the end okay next Sunday there's no crashes who's running top five see why are you going to do that well you just you're

I could predict the top five if there's no crashes so go ahead wow okay top five no crashes uh myself are these in no particular order

no particular order Ryan Blaine William Byron, Joey Lugano. I'm missing one, right? Yeah, you got four. I wasn't adding people, by the way. I'm just trying to buy myself some time. Brad Kosalski.

So how are you coming up with these? What are the factors in play? Just their awareness of the draft, their decision-making in the pack, strength of teams that might be, that might hurt Brad slightly, although they had a strong speedway. But overall, Brad has been a successful super speedway.

Which I think Ford is going to be the teams to beat based off of the new bodies that are out this year. They'll be the teams to beat in qualifying. So, yeah, that'll be my top five, for sure. I think that when you look at how strong Penske's been on those super super super speedways, a lot of it is because of how well they work together. but they also, you can tell they talk a lot, you can tell that they have the same technique. So they go into a film session, they talk about what they're looking for and things like that.

So, I mean, I hate LF Bub off because he really, I'm telling you, I've said it in media for the last year, he took a step of something I saw from Daytona 1 to Daytona 2 last year that made him a top-tier elite Super Speedway. racer. He was always good. He made those bold flashy moves like McMurray for so many years. But getting to the front and staying in the front take two different techniques. And I think he finally got both of them starting at Daytona two last year. So Bubba is my honorable mention guy. It's interesting that you have Joey on that list, but also yourself on that list, considering your racing styles at these types of tracks are drastically different. It is. But I think that respect each other on these type of racetracks,

we actually work with each other more than we do not on speedways. Believe it or not, you don't see it much on TV, but we do, let's just say we use each other. We use each other. We're not trying to help the other person,

but we certainly are using each other to maintain our track position up front. And listen, I've been at a manufacturer disadvantage for, most of my career, especially since we've been competitive on the super speedways for forever, right? And a lot of that is because of these, you know, alliances where, you know, essentially back in 2016 when the first real manufacturer alliance happened on a super speedway is when the Toyota's got

together, we ran in practice, we saw how fast our cars were together and said, well, our lifetimes are so fast, they're not going to be able to pass us. So we chose to run the bottom. So we did, and we dominated the race. Since then, you saw all the other manufacturers say, okay, well, we're just going to run in a line and basically finish this thing out. So I've been against the odds and against the numbers for a lot of this,

so it makes it tough. So Lugano and his team do a good job of staying up front. They usually do. But individually, I've seen at times when Lugano's showed a little – What's the word when you become? Vensible. Not invincible. He's vencible when he doesn't have his teammates for sure.

So, you know, these manufacturer alliances that you're going to see and you're going to hear a lot on TV for the first few days. We talk about duels. They all go away, in my opinion, with 20 laps to go because I just feel like these guys get selfish as they should. Whoever's the fifth Ford in line or Chevy in line is not quite. going to be fine with just pushing those other forwards, especially or Chevys that are not their teammates to a victory. They're not okay with that. And that's typically where I have excelled, is that letting these guys get selfish at the end of the day, and then I capitalize. And I need Rex to thin out the field to even the numbers for me slightly. But like Joey's a guy who's

super aggressive in his driving strategy. You would agree, right? At least it's, sure. Yeah. Yeah. And you at Super Speedways, I would say you're very passive. I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that. I would say that my moves are not flashy for sure. You're not making blocks left and right. No. That's kind of what I always, yes.

My thing with blocks is like I believe my mentality is live to see the checkered. There's no one block that has to be made at any time. I made no block on Ryan Newman entering turn three on the final lap because if I block him 90% chance we wreck. Okay, that leaves me a 10% chance we don't wreck. Out of that 10% I'm probably going to get past anyway and then I've lost all my momentum by trying to block. So now my chances of winning are like 2%, 1%.

I knew letting him go with his huge run. A, I was going to have still a shot. I saw he was getting pushed by the 12th. I'm like, well, there's a chance I could win because these two wreck each other coming to the line. And there's really no pressure from anyone coming in third at the time. So I'm like, that's a chance I could win. And that's a pretty good chance.

There's a lot of wrecks coming to the checker. And then it is, you know, when Blaney backs up to me and I reattached to him really quick, I'm like, oh, this is not over. And I think I'm going to win. I really did. Coming off four, I'm like, I've got the momentum. I'm pushing the 12.

I'm probably going to win. And I'm like, as soon as the 12 shot to the bottom, I'm like, they're going to crash. I just have to not be in it. I just knew that there was going to be a big, big block by the 6, which there was. And yeah, I mean, listen, was it luck that like the 6 came up the racetrack and I barely cleared? That was luck. but then my immediate reaction is I saw where the 12 was.

I went down to side-draft them as hard as I could right before the line and got them. So luck is a factor in this week's race. There's no question, but that is a mat. That's about 20% of your outcome. The rest is execution and skill set. I mean, to be fair, there's luck involved in every race, right? You need other cautions to fall when they do to not hurt you. It is.

I mean, but it is more of a factor in super speedway racing because other people dictate more oftentimes than not. Are you going to be in this wreck? Your competitors dictate that, not yourself. So that's where this weekend is tough. They're tough to really predict. Can you specify who the guys that you want to be racing around in those situations versus the guys you don't want to be around? Whoever's the worst super speedway racer? That's who I want to race against.

No, well, you said that your competitors are dictating your luck. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. So you're in a pack, right? No question. Okay, no question. You've seen me so many years, right? Like, be somewhere in the top five and I just bail.

I turn left, go to the apron, and I let off. So is that because of the drivers you are around or the overall energy of the pack? Both. Both. It's a factor in who's up there and what am I seeing, right? How aggressive are they being? How experienced are they? Do I trust them?

And if the answer is no, then I bail, typically. But what's tough about this next gen car? You can't get back up there. You cannot get back up there as easy as you could be for. The three-wide racing, this car has so much drag in it. and for those, you know, not, you know, tuning into this podcast, learning about NASCAR, drag is basically how fast your car can go in the air. There's a ratio here that's slipping my mind, but it's terminal velocity.

So it's how much horsepower does your car have versus how much drag it has. And drag is basically the spoiler that's on the back of our car causes drag. That's what slows our car down. The drag is on this car so high that you cannot pull out into a third lane unless you have at least, at least, six to seven cars committed to that lane. So the pictures we've seen of three and four wide at Daytona, I'd temper people's expectations.

I think we're going to see two lanes, log jam, yo-yo effect, all race long, because that's just the way this car drives. Which is why I said last year, let's not neglect our super speedway package. does need work as well. So when you pull out, and now that you can't get back to the front as easily,

how many laps do you think you need to get back there? Like, can you pull out for stage one and two? Two fuel runs. You need two fuel runs. You need two pitchers. No shit. That's a lot, right? So you need a lot.

It just takes a long time. I mean, we won Talladega in 2000, 21 and I was 29th or 26 on the first green white checker. You will not do that with the next shin. You're just not going to happen. A lot of it is because, you know, for people to understand, well, why don't you just take out drag?

They're trying to slow our cars down. They don't want to slow us down with more of a restrictor plate because the engine guys apparently want one engine package for all racetracks. So what they do is they keep us at 600 horsepower or whatever we are on these short tracks and intermediates. And they just put a bigger spoiler on it to slow us down. So cost cutting. What we're doing is just all about cost cutting, honestly. And what we really need is a car with a little bit less drag.

You can take a little horsepower down with it to keep the speeds down. Any time a car lists out to ground or gets in the fence, That's the bad thing. And NASCAR usually kind of reacts heavily by, let's just slow down more and more and more. So, yeah, and by the way, the dragger the cars are, the faster they're going to run in a pack, and the slower they'll run by themselves.

So you're going to see a big disparity in qualifying times versus Super Speedway times, which, by the way, cost cutting. I was going to say that's a good segue to the next. We got no practice. Still got no practice for Daytona. might as well just suck it up and realize there's no politic and that's going to change that we have no practice. However, I did see that ARCA has got quite a few practices. Trucks have practice and Xfinity have practice. Cup drivers is too good. They don't need it. We're too good. Too good.

Don't need it. So yeah, I guess we're just going to go down there and wing it, you know. It sucks because we're blowing a storyline. We're blowing a story line. We're blowing a chance to have a storyline by having no practice. And I know why. I asked the question to NASCAR. They said, well, it's because you teams said to us, we didn't, we don't need practice on super three ways. And I said, I agree, but not for our biggest race of the year. This is, you know, crazy. So hopefully they make an adjustment next year. I think they will. I think there'll be enough pressure. I mean, you know the track wants it for sure. It's not like we're down there for 13 days or 10 days. days like we used to be. I mean, we're already going in there just three or four, you know,

four days before the race. So NASCAR give us some practice back. I think it's a good storyline. Let's just get our bearings back. Some of these guys getting in cars for the first time for qualifying that sketchy, though I have no practice before they go to a duel. So we don't know how our cars are going to drive. A lot of unknowns. So I was just curious. If Pastrana, Travis Pastrana qualifies on speed in your car. You just let him loose in the duels? I guess you kind of have to, right, for him to get racing experience? Uh, no. No? No. Did I mention these cars are 300 grand? I know. And we have one backup car for all three teams. So no, the answer is no. I used to get so mad at Joe because I always practiced in practice and Joe get so mad at me.

I never, you know Joe is mad when his top lip starts quivering. I mean, you can see it, right? And so in 2019, he gave us orders. I think it was more of like a request than an order to no practice. I don't want you guys tearing up cars during practice. It just, it costs too much money and it doesn't give us enough reward. And my argument to Joe is that, well, Joe, how are you expecting me to make the game-winning play if I don't practice? I have to practice.

I have to put myself in practice in positions to go out there and make that three wide move that I did off of turn four in 2016. I need reps. You cannot expect me to be great with no reps. And he's like, tough. Like nobody else is practicing, so we're not going to practice. Well, I practice sort of. I'm like, let me just get in the back of this pack.

And I did. And somebody way up front crashed. And I'm checking up. I'm good. I'm like, I'm not a part of this. And someone plows into me from behind him, and it destroys my car. Joe pulled me in a motorhome and ripped me a new ass like you would not believe.

I mean, I've never heard him say this. Because Joe, listen, he is not a guy. He's not going to nickel and dime you. But he says to me, you're paying for that car. I said, what do you mean? He's like, I told you I didn't want practice. And you went out there and defied me. and you practice and you wrecked.

And so you were going to pay for that car. I said, okay, yes, sir, got it. And then I won the race. And I never forget in Victory Lane. He's like, hey, you know, don't worry about that car. We're good. I said, thanks, show.

I appreciate it. I'll buy your steak and shake afterwards. So, yeah, certainly the car owners, I mean, the two practices we are going to have, by the way, no one's going to run. on Friday and Saturday after the duels. Once we get dual practice or the race going, the two practices we have are meaningless.

You're going to see people, so the engine builders are going to change the valve springs and their engines most likely. And so we're just going to get a few laps on our engines to make sure there's no leaks. And then we're going to pull it in. And then there's going to be maybe practice on Saturday where you might see 12 cars.

most likely it's ones that are really bad off on speed. Maybe some people go out there and try to do single car runs to learn how to get faster and qualifying for future Super Speedway races, but the schedule is just kind of backwards. We have practices when we shouldn't, and we don't have practices probably when we should. So that's enough of me about the schedule. I'm not going to get anywhere with it right now.

Well, I was going to use the cost cutting to segue into another talking point in which we have, which is the Sports Business Journal, article that maybe you can about. For people who don't know if you want to give us the background on all of this. All right. So I'm pretend like no one on this podcast

has ever heard anything about the disputes that are going on between the teams and NASCAR. So there was a major, a very big front page article on the sports business journal about the teams and NASCAR's talks are heating

up. Heating up as in they're contentious, heating up as in there's a disagreement on the revenue share. Jared, let me be honest with you. I need to be sensitive a little bit. So I'm only going to share what's kind of public information that you can probably read upon in this article or others. I thought that Adam Stern did a very good and a very fair job on this article. I was asked for many quotes. I did not put any quotes on the record that I can remember in this article, but we talk

offline every now and then. But it basically, the teams, right, have asked for, you know, roughly double what the average is that they get now. It's not because the owners are filthy, greedy pigs. It is because the landscape of our sport has changed over the last few decades. And when we race 38 times a year, it becomes very tough for us to cut any more than what we've already cut. We are at 23-11, 70-something employees, so very lean. People like Hendrick Motorsports, 500 employees. Joe Gibbs Racing has cut back to probably low 400, maybe high. 300 now. Again, they have four, you know, four car teams versus our two, but someone like track house, for instance, is probably 150, 140 employees somewhere in that range. So we're

significantly less. Sponsorship, we're okay. We're probably not as, in as good as shape as what we were our first couple years, but we were throwing some curveballs, right? You know, you look at that and we're trying to figure out, given the schedule, how are we able to cut anymore? You know, the biggest part of what we spend is on labor. And what we pay our people was what we pay them. I mentioned on Twitter the other day that, you know, we pay, you know, probably better overtime than anyone else, any other teams that are out there. So we do our employees right. We do what's fair.

We feel like for them. but ever since COVID, you know, things have really changed and it's tough for some of these people that really have been flocking to NASCAR for so many years to want to flock to NASCAR to be part of the sport because they can make probably just as much being home half the time. And when you look at the schedule on which we put these guys through, it's very hard for, they're going to have to love racing to want to be part of it, given the pay and the time that it takes on on someone's family. So we can't pay our people anymore,

and we've been paying them about the same for a very long time. And then the schedule. I mean, we're not a manufacturing facility at 2311. We have to get most of our parts and pieces through Joe Gibbs Racing. And for those you don't know, we can't just buy everything off the shelf. There's over 300 parts that JGR manufactures that is on that race car. that is not off the shelf, which is why it cost, you know, the car initially is supposed to cost about 250 grand. Add in all those parts that we have to get manufactured from JGR to put on

our cars. Over 300 parts and over 300 grand easily, easily. So cars cost what they cost. The travel is what it is. We can't negotiate our hotel rooms. The labor is what it is. the tires cost what they cost, there's nowhere else for the teams to cut. Okay? And so what the difference is and while we have said that the teams need more share of the revenue is because sponsorship over the last decade or so

has gone down. There's been several reasons for that. One, we had a big recession at the end of 0809, right? That was a big turning point. And then other sports... properties have ramped up how they advertise as well. You see patches now on all the other sports franchises, Jersey sponsorships for soccer clubs,

patches for basketball. I'm surprised football hasn't even gone there. But there's, like, I think if you want to be a sponsor in sports, you have about 3,000 choices you can choose from now. That number is so much more than used to. social media. That's also been a big change, right? People are changing how they spend money

because of social media. Now you can target. They know that you like something. They target you and they can search that ad out because you set it on your phone and that thing is listening to you 24-7, right? So they can target you and they can get to their audience that way versus just saying, okay, well, the NASCAR crowd is such and such type and so that's where we're going to spend our So again, that's the negatives. The positives of it is that sponsorship in our sport is that you get an experience unlike any other. You cannot get as close to the athletes in any other sport than you can in NASCAR. You cannot be in the locker room.

You can't be in our pre-race meetings like you are in NASCAR. You can't get an autograph from your favorite player before or after like you can in NASCAR. the access is unmatched. That is our advantage. That's something that people continue to want to spend in our sport for is that type of access. And, you know, certainly I know FedEx sees tons and tons of return from entertaining VIPs and customers and prospective customers at the racetrack through suites and chalais and things like that. they have found the return and found, you know, what works for them in this sport. Beyond just the eyeballs of the stickers being on the cars, right?

We're essentially, these teams now are marketing platform. We spend so much on social and digital to give our teams or I'm using sponsors returns on their value. But that number has gone down over time. And we're trying to find kind of a floor of where that is. So we have come to NASCAR. Let's circle back now. We're asking them for roughly double of what we were getting because we're not able to fill the gaps that we used to with sponsorship. So that's why you've seen championship teams go out of business.

Like that should never happen, right? And so we want to create a stable business, one that isn't reliant as much on sponsorship. that's what the teams play and is, is that if NASCAR, if you invest in us, you've invested in your tracks, you've invested in your entertainment, please invest in us because we are the product and you will get your biggest return on value as if your teams are healthy. F1 said it, they publicly said it in an article that we came with the mentality that we're going to invest in our product and our teams. And we're going to get a return on that

because the healthier they are, the better our sport is. I believe that that is the correct model for NASCAR. And so with us only sharing in 25% of the TV-only revenue, there's never really been any sort of reward for us going out and selling more tickets because we don't see any of ticket sales any of the parking in that. DBC really covers that pretty well.

Obviously, the teams went public at the end of last year. about their, you know, how displeased they were with kind of what NASCAR's offer was to them. I will say, though, in the latest developments that I've learned, I believe that we will get a deal done. I believe that NASCAR and the teams are in a better spot now than they were two weeks ago. I believe that there's still a ton to iron out. Every fan I see on Twitter hates the charter system. People, the charters have to be, they have to be permanent. Absolutely have to be permanent.

Why would anyone spend any money on a franchise knowing that franchise can be taken away? There is no value in a franchise if it can just be pulled at any moment that they say, no, sorry, we don't want to renew the charter deal. That makes our franchise values worth nothing. So we have to make the charters permanent. The charter system is a good. good system. I don't care what any fan says because they don't know

what that does. It gives us some sort of security that we're going to be racing each and every week. Yes, it does hamper teams from expanding. I know our team, we would love to be three cars one day, but we have to go out and buy another charter.

That's going to come at a cost. But that's a good thing. We want it to cost money to enter the sport. We do because that builds our franchise value. If you look at NBA teams, their values just have keep going up and up and up. And so we have to make the charters per minute to give us some sort of security that our investment in the sport is going to be long term. That way, if someone from New York wants to come invest in our sport and spend money in a team, that's a good thing. That's a good thing that they're investing in the sport because the teams will spin it activating at racetracks, having nicer fan experiences for people in the garage.

The teams will spin it in a very responsible way. And unfortunately, we have cut so much. It's the grass, right? Our grass was nice and green and long 10 to 12 years ago. And we've cut it. And we've cut it and we've cut it. And now we're to the dead grass and almost to the dirt. There is no more cutting that the teams can do to save money.

So we know what it costs to go race a competitive car. We just need more revenue share to do that. and I believe, and I'm very optimistic, that the teams in NASCAR will get a deal done. The deal that you want, or are compromised between the two? I think it's going to have to take some compromise on both sides. I really do. But I think the teams in NASCAR were miles apart,

and I think that they both have made legitimate arguments. I think that, again, and I've said it many times, the leadership of Steve Phelps is very valuable in our sport. And he has a story to tell to the France family of why investing in the teams is the right play. And I think he's doing a good job of sending the message that we have explained to him of why that investing in us is the right thing to do. And I think that we're in a better place now than we've been in a very long time. Can you share the argument, a brief argument from the other side as to why NASCAR may want something different than what the teams want? Because what they will say is that we own racetracks.

Their argument, let's give them their side of the, let's let their side speak now, right? And I'm going to speak for them because I have the mic. They're going to say is that we have a lot to invest in the sport. We own race tracks. Those racetracks cost a lot of money to run. their sports don't have the overhead of racetracks. What they've seen, what we're starting to see, though, is from places like the LA Coliseum that do we really need to go, do we need to race at these fixed racetracks?

Or are we just going to go, there's a lot of great racetracks out there. Austin, nor SMI or NASCAR owns that track. They just go rent it for the weekend. So, yeah, Koda. So we don't have to go back to these racetracks that have been around for forever. Now, NASCAR took out a big loan, I guess, to make these tracks private. SMI did as well. And that took an investment on their part to take these tracks private so they can have flexibility and schedules and whatnot.

It does cost money to be in NASCAR, right? They have a lot of officials. They got a lot of big buildings, right? and so they have overhead as well but it's you know I their their franchise profits are high and so we just feel like there's a fair share there's a balance there but their arguments is that these racetracks cost money it costs money to run them and we own them and we have all that liability and so that's why we teams cannot afford to give you what you think your fair share as. And so we say, well, we need some sort of compromise because it can't be the 75-25 split

that we currently have. All other forms of sports share on all the revenue. We only share in a small piece of the pie in one source. And that's, we need to, we need to get all of our interest aligned. You know, the more we're aligned, the more that we're going to grow the sport together. And again, I'm more positive than ever that that will happen. This deal ends at the end of 24, the current deal ends at the end of 24. When do you think we come to a close to an agreement on a new deal? Well, NASCAR's exclusive negotiating window with the TV, our current partners in Fox and NBC has started now. It was February 1st. So I think that they've already talked money, probably. with those that group and then they'll make a decision after discussions with them.

I think there's a certain period time window months that happens that then they say okay they either want to take this to bidding with some outside people that are interested or they decide to renew with those guys at a new number and so I think within probably six months we'll kind of know where we're NASCAR lands on this. Okay. So does that number then, for people who don't know, does that number, NASCAR strikes a deal with whoever the TV partner is going to be, or multiple TV partners, they get that number, and then you make a deal with NASCAR on how that's shared?

No, I think NASCAR has to make a deal with us first. I don't see how you go out and get the most money from a TV partner if you don't have your house in order. It's kind of a weird way to say it, but certainly that's going to play a factor. No TV partner wants any interruption in service whatsoever. Describe that with a definition however you will, but they don't want any interruption in service. And with the teams publicly saying that they weren't happy with the deal, that could throw up

red flags for TV. And so they, I think NASCAR is more inclined to get a deal done with the teams. that way, hey, they're happy. Here's what assets they can bring to the table. How can we maximize this deal? Got it. But we asked some fans on Twitter if they had any questions for you.

And of course, everyone. This ought to be interesting, right? Everyone has questions for me. Everyone has questions. I went through and picked a couple of my favorites. All right. So first up, who is in your final four this year? Oh, final four.

Yep. I'm going to go with Kyle Larson, Joey Lugano, D.H. and William Byron. Okay. Any of those jump off the page at you as, wow, why did you pick? Well, no, not Larson, Joey, or you. That would be a new career best season for William Byron if he reaches the Final Four. Yeah.

I believe that I told Rod Moskowitz, my agent at Pro Sport Management, that I thought William Byron last year, I told him, I says, I think William Byron will scare the final four. I says he's going to make it to the round of eight, and he's going to scare the final four. He ain't going to make it, but it's going to be close. And he's like, oh, wow, really?

I was like, yeah, I do. I think that he's ready to take that jump. And so, you know, I think that William quietly puts himself in the final four. Yeah, you've been high on him for a couple of years. I do remember, I guess it would have been 2020 or early 2021. You would say, I think this is going to be a good year for William. The next season is going to be a good year, which was last season.

And it's crazy because he won the spring Martinsville race, but he went radio silent for like 20 weeks last year where he might have had like a top 10 or something like that. And then, but yeah, then he got, you know, hotter towards the end of the year. So I think that, yeah, I am. I'm high on Byron's long-term talent, and I think that he's obviously got a great team with him. Top three Speedway Racers you've raced against.

Ooh, oh, so hard, so hard. All right, we already covered who I think the top five are currently that are raised. All right, so in the past, anyone I've ever raced against, right? Yeah. All right, Dale Jr. That's an easy one. I think no one's going to leave him off the list of the top Super Spooey Racers of the last 20, 30 years. He learned so much from his dad. I know that's so cliche, but you watch Dale was so far ahead of his time when you go back and watch these Super Spooeyway races. The way he used the car behind him to go forward, the car beside him to go forward. Dale Jr. did that even before the field started catching on, even, decades later. Tony Stewart. Tony Stewart is someone that I paid attention to quite a bit and realized that that guy, once he gets a run, he knows how to bounce that run from one car to the next car to the next car and keep a run going for two straight consecutive laps. If you look at like

my last half a lap at Daytona 500, 2016, when I went from fourth or fifth to winning, I had a run and it started off a turn two and I was using the cars beside me and the car behind me to keep that run going and it never stopped until I got to start finish line so Tony really really really did a good job of finding pockets of air and using that to propel his car and it's that was special that was special to watch him and then uh my third and final that I've raced against. You know, this is really close, really, really close between Joey and Brad,

but I'm going to give the nod to Brad because I thought he accomplished a lot on Super Speedways before he really had a ton of teammate help. So I'll put him in my Mount Rushmore of current Super Speedway racers. and a guy that, based on skill set alone, forget the equipment he's in, he's a top three in the last two decades on Super Threeways. Okay, let's just expand on that because there's four faces on Mount Rushmore.

So that was your top three. Add one more. That's good info. All right, well, then I'm adding Joey. Okay. I'm adding joy to it then. And by the way, Ryan Blaney is really close to overtaking. Joey, like, they're close.

They really are close. Ryan does a really good job of using run. He's like, Ryan Blaney is to me the modern Jamie McMurray at Super Speedway Racing. I think he's aggressive. He does make flashy moves, but he's also very smart at times

and finds a way to finish up front. So Ryan's trining up on the, uh, the four-man rock. So if he wins a 500, we're going to have to chisel. Change Joey's face, chisel a little bit to fit Ryan.

I'm going to have to add some hair. Yeah. Because Joey's got new hair now. It's true. It looks good. It's thick. It's thick. I'm wondering, I'm wondering, like,

is, like, thick as his hair is. And by the way, let me just say this. It took balls for Joey to talk about, hey, I've had these issues, and I did something about it. and like if you look at him now, yes, he took some age off of himself. For sure, right? I mean, you were mentioning it on the plane.

I think it looks good. You're like, dude, guy looks good. And I'm like, he just looks different to me. It looks different. But yeah, it took balls for him to go out there and now be like, hey, look at my full head of hair, everyone. Yeah. He looks different for sure. Props to him. Cudos.

With the subtle updates to each manufacturer in 2023, how do you see each team fairing to start the season? All right. So this hasn't got as much pub that I would expect it gets. So basically when we started the next gen car, all the manufacturers had to submit a car for their body build. and it had to fall in a box. Okay? Now that box was supposed to be really, really tight where all the manufacturers had close to the same downforce

and very close to the same drag numbers. So drag is basically how fast you go on the straightaway, downforce is how fast you're going to go in the corners. And they all had to be in a really, really tight box. Well, they submitted them before we started cutting holes in windshields and fixing the driver heat issues from last year. So when we started testing and the driver started, complaining about all the heat.

NASCAR had to make a lot of adjustments to the actual car to kill the heat. What happened is the Toyota's body took a shit when that happened. You know, we were in the box and we were all close with Ford and Chevy. For whatever reason, when they cut the spoiler down, because, you know, we had high down force, we were going to have really low power, high down force on intermediates. We built our body around a bigger spoiler. And so when NASCAR changed the rule a month before the season to cut the spoiler in half or less,

it was a, oh, shit. I wonder if we're still in the box because we lost a ton of speed at these tests. And we're like, man, what the heck is going on with our cars? It's just not as fast. And so, NASCAR or Toyota and all the other manufacturers agree to resubmit their post-adjustment body sometime in the spring of last year. And when they retested them,

the Toyota was far outside the box and downforce. In other words, not to the good. Not to the good at all. We were at a huge deficit. The Ford had the most downforce, and you saw them have to make adjustments to their front nose to get them back in the box and then Chevy was just kind of a very good mix of both.

So the Chevy had the most optimized body of any of the cars last year. Just off of if everyone's motor was the same, everyone had the same setup, the Chevy was going to run the fastest, just simply because of the downforce and drag ratio that they have. So with Toyota being so far outside the box, NASCAR said to Toyota that, okay, we admit you guys are off we will allow you to make an adjustment for next year but we're going to need everyone to resubmit based off of our where we're at with our spoiler package and all that stuff right

so we resubmitted Chevy resubmitted Ford resubmitted this year they are all back in the box now am i going to pretend that we are the best no we are still not the best The Chevy still has a small advantage on the drag and downforce levels, but it's a lot smaller than it was. I mentioned the Ford's. I think we're going to be fast in Super Speedways because their drag numbers have been reduced in the offseason. So I think they're going to be very fast on probably the intermediates and the high-speed tracks this year. We saw them really excel on short tracks last year. I think that intermediates, you're going to see the Fords and super speedways.

The Fords are going to be ones to beat for the pole. So other than that, everyone's in a very tight box. I think the Fords and the Toyotas are very similar from the data I've seen. Chevy still just are the best by just a smidgen over everyone. So I think the competition will be a little better this year. I think that, you know, again, we had a lot of winners last year. I don't think that that happens this year. I think the winners, I think I publicly said about 13 to 14 last week on this show.

So I think that that number gets reduced, but I think that there's more parity on the types of tracks. Like road courses, you just could say the Toyota's, forget it. None of us are going to run worth of shit on road courses because our, you know, the way our era was, it was just really, really bad on road courses. Hopefully that is fixed a little bit with this resubmission. So long-winded to that answer, but I think overall, more parity is going to be the story this year. So as a driver and a team owner trying to win races,

you feel more comfortable this year with where Toyota's out? I do. I do. I think that we were at a huge disadvantage last year. It's amazing we, as a manufacturer, won as many races, and as a team that we won last year with the deficit that we had. Another change going in 20203 is that your race team, 2311,

is now or now has its own pit crew for Bubba and Tyler Reddick. There was NBC Sports article that came out last week talking about how as a team you were approaching this differently. I'm just curious if you could. Yeah, so our different approach is this, right?

Is that, you know, there was a lot made publicly last year about, you know, how struggling our pit crews were. Listen, it was a struggle on our 11 team. It was a struggle on the 19 at some point of the year, the 20 at some point of the year. It was a struggle for everyone, really, except for the 18 car

who had the most rock-solid pit crew for the entire year. So we did reshuffle. The 11 car will have the 19 team from last year. I think 20 is going to remain the same. The 18 team, who was my team at the end of last year, will now be on the 54. And then Martin gets to you. the 11?

Martin gets No, the 11 is now on the 54. You said the 18 is on the 54. The 18 team sorry is on Martin's team. Okay? And then my first team from last year

for the first three quarters of the year will be on the 54. I think they're all going to be better. There's obviously been some big changes within the JGR pick crews. So we made this decision many, many months ago, probably six months ago

that we were going to do our own pick cruise and I wouldn't take that decision back and I think that Joe Gibbs racing has tremendous facilities that we use as well but I I could not afford for the my two cars to be the fifth and six best team I've invested way too much money in this team for us to get the fifth pick the six pick of the draft right like we we needed to we weren't going to be able to be better unless we had, we picked our own guys, right? So we just recruiting outside the JGR camp and we also, uh,

recruiting inside the JGR camp and came up with our two teams. Now, they are mostly filled with, uh, veterans and experience because we feel like that's important when it comes to racing. Um, you know,

some of these young guys are super, super fast, but they lack reps and mistakes happen because you don't have reps. I mentioned the reps earlier in the podcast. So I just think that we are taking a different. approach. Now, are we going to be the fastest pit crew every single weekend? Probably not, but we set realistic goals for our pit crews, and that is keep us in the race. Our drivers are our quarterbacks. Keep the ball in their hand. I need you to be the offensive linemen who give our quarterback time to

make a pass, time to, you know, for our running back to run the ball in. Like, you're a supporting cast. You're in the game for two minutes of a two and a half three hour event, I need you to just maintain for us there. Like, keep us in the game. It's so hard to pass nowadays. Your pit crew is your supporting cast. I don't need you to win me a race. My driver will do that. My engineers back at the shop will do that. My fast race cars will do that. I need you just keep me in it. So our mentality was if you can get us within a 10th of the 8th fastest pit crew on any given weekend, that's going to keep us in the game. We're going to maintain our position most times than not on pit road,

and we're going to optimize our results because of that, and that's where we set our goals. Yeah, there was a quote in the article, I think it was from Shipplet, Josh Sheplet, the pit crew coach, that if you had four stops, three of them were nine seconds stops or some of the fastest stops, but then the last stop was 13, 14 seconds. and the data shows that it's an overall net loss.

Yes. On position. Yeah, he explained that to us too, right? Is that if you had a team that ran 10 seconds, 10 seconds, 10 seconds, 10 seconds, 10 seconds, 10 seconds. And there's a team that ran 908, 9, 9, 9, 6, and 12, 5. I don't have the math quickly in my head, but there was one that's probably going to be a little quicker, which is the one that ran faster. But that 112, 5, you lost more positions

than that team that went 10-0 all day long. So I think that there's just a mentality there that we're going for to reach consistency and that I believe will be the best net result on track. And lastly, from these Twitter questions, this one I found and I thought it was funny and it was a good question to end on that's not on your sheet.

someone had heard through the grapevine that you got a Darlington stripe on your rental going through the Daytona tunnel a few years ago and just wanted to know if you could clarify that. They need to widen the tunnels at Daytona.

The tunnels are too narrow. It's too narrow. Poor guys over there having to write down every single time that I threw out the bomb. My mom is not going to be happy hearing all these beeps. Oh, I know. She just covers her ears. but she's on the bus

every time you swear Denny I know so the Daytona Tunnel listen I think once I do I text and drive yes I usually do it though

when I'm running under 10 miles per hour so in parking lots you know in stoplights slowing down for stoplights don't do it at speed

don't do it at speed or at all yeah or at all but a few but maybe let's just call it four years ago I don't think it was four years ago

because I was in the... Jared, it's my story. Okay, go ahead. You're going to have to let me tell this. Go ahead. Four years ago, I walked outside and there was a Darlington stripe down the right side of the rental.

And I'm like, what happened? Jordan says to me, she's like, I'm sorry. I couldn't see over the steering wheel. It's really tight. And I just, I hit the guardrail. And I'm like, how does that happen? I don't understand how that happens.

Let's fast forward two years later. I did it. I did the same thing. I right-sided. I mean, I peeled the door open on the right side of my rental, but I was texting while it happened. And it's just narrow. It's just narrow.

And so I peeled the right side door off of my car. So Corey LaJoy told that story, ratted me out. And it's true. I'm afraid to say. I've peeled two right sides off to my rental cars at Daytona. Chip, fix your racetrack, wide in the tunnel. See you in Daytona. Yeah, so looking forward to it.

Thank everyone for tuning in this week. We're about to start the season, so we're going to have some great commentary after the Daytona 500. Can't wait to talk about it next Monday, and we'll have a lot for you. But, man, it seems like we covered a lot here on the off week, right? We had plenty to talk about it. Yeah, longer than last week. Yep, thank everyone for tuning in.

Jared, why don't you give us the little tags on the follows and rate and all that stuff? Yep, if you made it this far, please rate review. Give us a number on wherever you get podcast, Spotify, Apple. And then you can follow us on all of our socials. Dirty Mo Media is at Dirty Mo Media. My social is at Denny Hamlin and at Jared D. Allen. And Denny's. Yeah, Jared.

Yeah, those are you didn't. tune in last week, Jared, you know, his social media, he's got my social media on his phone as well. So careful with your DMs, people out there. Yeah, so at Denny Hamlin for me, at Jared D. Allen for my co-host. So we'll see y'all next week. Check out Dirtymo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.