Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin - Martinsville: 11 Against The World

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

It had been almost a year since his last win, but Denny Hamlin was back in Victory Lane on Sunday in Martinsville. Denny and his co-host, Jared Allen, are joined by IMSA pit crew member and motorsports writer Bozi Tatarevic. 5:50 Denny’s new approach and learning from Martin Truex Jr.14:00 Tire management and Denny’s one request for Goodyear25:00 How Denny’s pit crew performed and what his jackman does different from others40:00 Why teams are having so many loose wheels50:00 Austin Cindric starting to get a reputation for wrecking drivers54:40 Denny talks about what his win meant1:05:00 Sam Mayer, Austin Hill, Sammy Smith and others driving with no respect Dirty Mo Media is launching a new e-commerce merch line! They’ve got some awesome Actions Detrimental merch on the site. Visit shop.dirtymomedia.com to check out all the new stuff. For more Actions Detrimental content: https://www.youtube.com/@ActionsDetrimental Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Austin Hill, Sam Mayer, Sammy Smith, all drove like assholes. The following is a production of Dirtymo Media. I believe that I've been a competitive 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. This 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 post-Martinville Speedway, where we turn back the clocks. Should that be the title? Yes.

I don't have a mic or phone today. Oh, you don't have a mic? No mic for Trad today. Damn, that sucks because someone at the track this weekend said, a new segment idea. You just give Travis five minutes at the beginning. of every episode to bitch about what every wants. I feel bad now that I took his mic.

Well, hey, in case you all don't know, we have a guest here. You may have heard this voice before, and I'm going to butcher it so bad, you'll have no idea. But Bozzi Tataravitch, no, that's not. That's okay. It's pretty close. We'll go with it. Don't let them off the hook that easy.

Try it again. All right. Bozzi Tataravich. Okay. That's good. That's good. Make a progress. A little better?

Yeah, it's like 70% of what Jared does, so we'll let it pass. Okay. Well, he's a writer for motorsport.com, road and track, and race car engineering. And also, pick crew member are the Vassar Sullivan, Lexus team, and Emsa. So welcome to the show. We have a lot of dialogue that we have with you outside of the show and whatnot. So it's exciting to have you on. I appreciate your guys inviting me out.

It's fun to be here. Yeah, definitely feel like it's great to have your insight, and you've always been kind of well in tuned with what goes on at the racetrack being a part of it now yourself. And how long have you been in racing? Actually, not that long. So maybe eight or nine years. I originally just started as a car enthusiast with street cars and just picked this up around 2016 or 17 and kind of just chased what I found interesting.

Yeah. Well, it's awesome to have you. And you got some great insight. I've read a bunch of your articles and whatnot. It's been fantastic. So, well, you just went to the Vassar Sullivan shop and was like, can I change a tire? And they said, sure. Well, kind of, yeah.

So I picked up that gig during COVID. So they had trouble getting guys and I heard about it. So I just sent an email. I was like, hey, I'll come, you know, just let me give me a weekend and try out. I'll do it for peanuts just, you know, to prove myself. And I did a one off race. And they're like, hey, you want to do one more? And then they're like, you want a year-long contract and just built up from there.

That's awesome. Well, we had some races this weekend at the Martinsville Speedway. First, we had the truck race. We had Daniel Hemrick winning. You know, that was, if you would have said before the race that it was going to, Daniel Hemrick would win, I'd say, not really a surprise. Christianeckis won that race last year, pretty much dominated. But this race certainly was dominated by, once again,

Corey Hime just was lights out, you know, fast. And I worked with him a little bit in the Sim just for a few minutes during the week and, you know, kind of, you know, gave him an idea of like what I liked at a Martinsville track. And, you know, he's kind of been stuck in that same, you know, well, we've been pretty good but not the best. And, you know, whatever they had dialed up this week was fantastic. And Corey looked like he was heading to another victory.

but unfortunately, you know, some innocent contact, I'd say, thereby Honeycut, you know, cut his left for your tire. And man, that's been the story of his season. But give him Rick his flowers. He's a great guy. It's great to see him back in Victory Lane. I think it's only his second NASCAR win, right? So, yeah, championship and this truck race. Yeah. And so it's, it was great to see him land on his feet as well. You know, Daniel works really, really hard at this. And, you know, even though he doesn't have. have the wins. He's been such a solid race car driver his entire career. So he's with a great team. You've got his first one this season. My guess is it probably won't be his last. I just realize you meant land on his feet in the truck series, not on the backflip on the on the on the all the

above, all the above. In the Xfinity race, we had Austin Hill is the winner. Do we even talk about the Xfinity race now or later? Just get it out of the way. What do you? Oh, he wants to talk about later. All right. So, well, Austin Hill, let's talk about the winners and losers first. Austin Hill is on my list of winners and losers.

But we'll get into that at a later time. Cup race, we won. We won. That makes it a lot easier. Hey, guys, guess what? Lulu is finally not cursed. It's her first win. Travis asked that this morning.

He says, this Lulu's first win. And I was like, I don't think so. But yeah, you haven't won that fucking year. It's been a minute. Close to it. It felt like an eternity. But, you know, we've had some close calls. Obviously, even this year, leading the last lap of Daytona 500,

leading into turn three at Phoenix on the last lap. But, you know, finally good to, not have a close one and this one was not necessarily close. What did you, you said that you changed your approach to this race. The team changed the approach to this race. What, I don't know, what was different about this versus, you know, the last handful of next-gen-gen Martinsville races? You know, I just, I have to work a lot harder now to, you know, continue to be on top of my game. it's so close that the margins are so small, especially in the next gen era. I used to say that winning 10, 12 years ago when I was racing Jimmy and Jeff was so much easier than what it is now.

A lot of it is because our technique was just better than everyone else's. And I saw it when I was driving around everyone else. We would approach the racetrack a little differently. And obviously the minute kind of SMT can. came out and all of our proprietary information and data started to, you know, that all the drivers got to see it. They got to see what these guys were doing. And then we've just morphed our style into that, into where everyone's driving really, really similar now. And they're all driving really, really similar cars. And so it's, the margins are small. You just look at the lap times,

right? From first to 25th, I mean, it's, we're all within a tenth or so. I mean, it's just not much. And so where are you going to find the edges? And so I went through a transition where Truex was, you know, consistently beating me at Martinsville about six, seven years ago. And so I said, all right, well, I really got to figure out why. And so I studied and I studied and I looked. And there was a moment where we had a rain delay early in the race. And he had just went around me. And at that time, I was like, man, my car is pretty good. So why is he better? And so I was, I logged on SMT. I looked at it and was like, okay, when we go back green,

I'm going to drive my car like that. And let me just see what happens. And we went back green. I drove it like that. And immediately I said, whoa, I'm going to need something different out of my car to do this. Like it's, you know, it wasn't faster for me. I was driving the car to its max capability for what I'd, the area I had sent my team down, you know,

because here's my driving style. I'm going to drive it like this. I need the car to work a certain way to adapt to my style. Martin had a different style, and so he needed something different out of his car. And so, Shannon Spake, I just spoke with her, and she actually brought this up. She's like, isn't it like going through a swing change in golf? And I was like, that's actually a perfect analogy because it just takes time. Because what I realized in that moment is this way is faster, but not with the car that I've got.

So I've got to change what I tell the team I need to adapt to this different style of driving. And so it's a constant evolution. And when they change tires and they change arrow, what you want to do to make speed continues to change with it. And yesterday was just one of those things where it all came together and it was perfect. Hey, this is Dale Jr. And for the latest actions detrimental gear, go to shop. Dot dirtymomedia.com.

We've got plenty of options for you. We're adding new stuff all the time. That's shop.dardymomedia.com. So is everyone chasing the same thing? Is every driver chasing the same thing, no? Mostly, yes. But, you know, again, it comes down to, and I think yesterday it was probably a good example of it.

Those had the pit crews keep them up front for most of the day. That was a key. Certainly it was in our position. The 20 car made up positions on people. pit road that kept getting his track position better and better because i thought you know once he started falling i was like man he wasn't good in practice yesterday um where's it going to kind of land um but they they got his car better overnight and then his pit crew just kept you know continuing to keep him up front on pit road so can you elaborate on because i listened to bubba's interview after the race

bubba finished third and he said that he was you know he's happy with the result but he was disappointed or frustrated because he didn't, when he got out of the car, he didn't know what he could tell the team. Like, what did he need to be better than you? Isn't it just a matter of, well, this is what Denny did. So like make my car like Denny's and drive like Denny. And then, yeah, I mean, they'll be, they'll be able to access where his deficits were compared to me and break that down. But, you know, at that point, then he has a decision to make, do, well, if I need to, to make more speed on corner exit. Well, where am I, I have to sacrifice something else somewhere.

You know, you're not just, well, I'm not just, you can't just put the throttle down and get more speed on exit. Like, it's, it's an approach thing. Maybe you need to slow up your center a little bit more. Maybe things like that. So I think that all that kind of plays a factor in. It's the constant whirl that we're going in every race check that we go to trying to get better. It's a big equation.

It's a big puzzle. And part of it is his experience. So yesterday I was sitting in turn three watching and you could see cars coming and going and you know as tire temperatures built up you could see cars start to get looser and I saw Deni get loose quite a few times but I could see him start to adapt. But there are also other cars that maybe they looked at his you know his lines in practice or whatever else and try to replicate that and then they got to a point where they were really just killing their tires and that's kind of that big puzzle of like you could see his lines and the team could try to you know

figure out what, you know, set up his car has and try to replicate it. But then it's all about that driving style and being able to adapt. And, you know, he was able to handle a car that was driving like that and, you know, keep it going in the long run where somebody else will burn up their tires and just start falling backwards. How does it work in IMSA? I mean, do, do you all have some sort of data sharing or anything like that? Or is it nothing at all? It's basically, if you're watching somebody else, if you have, you know, your own resources to see it from a distance, that's it. but everybody's telemetry is private, and we get, you know, 30 or 40 or 50 channels versus five and, you know, a NASCAR.

Right, yeah. So you have more onboard telemetry. So the driver can kind of break down. Now, if he has teammates, well, then I'm guessing you guys can compare that. Sure, sure. That's up to the teams to share. So for us, you know, we have, you know, two Lexus, RCFGT3s at Astor Sullivan Racing. And, you know, the engineers obviously have IM and a bunch of data sharing.

and then, you know, Lexus has some resources from us through TRD, so they all talk to each other, but that's a choice between the teams. So if, you know, if there were multiple people from our OEM, we might talk to them, maybe not if they're from another team, but that's your choice. There's nothing that's being forced to be shared. Yeah, that's somewhat kind of how it is in the Cup series, right? With Toyota, obviously 2311 and JGR has a very tight alliance, so we share pretty much everything where, you know, legacy is a little bit more on an island.

want to be independent so they don't have the ability to share in technical information car setups you know air pressures all those things right um they can see SMT um but again and then they can try to draw up their own analytics based off of that channel those channels that come out but it's uh it certainly makes it more difficult to measure yourself when you don't have someone outside the organization that you can measure yourself with so when you're watching this ratio just Bozzie, can you see with, you know, the naked eye when you're down there in turn three or wherever you're watching from, like, oh, I see what Denny's doing. He's going to be tough to be. I see that Chase may be making up ground here at the end of stage two, but he's not going to be able to pass him.

I mean, I can see to an extent. So I'm using, you know, my mind as a mechanic of like, all right, this is what the car is doing. This is how it's moving around. And you can see, you know, how the front of the car moves, how the rear of the car moves. And a lot of it, in the Cups series, at least, is just about those tire temperatures. And, Once you cycle those tires, you kind of kill them. So that's what I'm watching. If you can turn without sliding your tires, whether that's front or rear, that means that you can keep your tires to last longer and retain that track position.

So I could see that. And then obviously, I'll look at stats and I'll look at lap time data and I'll map lap data over 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 laps and look at what people are doing. And then I can see trends and what's happening and kind of put all those pieces together to in my mind build up what I believe is going to happen. And that's why I'll often end up in the pit stall watching the pick crew of the eventual winner or the top two or three because I've seen the trend throughout the race and kind of have an expectation of what's going to happen. Yeah. And to get even more technical with it, right, is that the basic fundamentals of race car, you know, setting up a race car is you want to saturate the axles evenly, right? I mean, that's where you're going to get the most speed out of the car. Now, the difference is what drivers can handle you maximizing the axles the best.

And I think Max for Stappen in F1, it's been wildly said many, many times about he's able to saturate the rear of his car more than others. So he's able to get more maximum grip out of his car because he can drive his car looser. So when his car goes into a slide, it's essentially a four-wheel slide versus most people, I can, include myself in this, like my car's a little bit tighter. Now, on the bigger tracks, shorter tracks, I like my car is looser. But generally speaking, you want to be able to go into the corner and work both front and rear tires evenly. And that will optimize the speed of your car. But very, very, very few drivers can handle that. It's really hard. You can do it when you're all by yourself, but in a racing condition, it makes it extremely hard to run your cars as free as what the computer would say is the

fastest. Did that play a big role yesterday into why in these new next gen stats? I don't know if they're even called next gen stats, but I just said that. Next gen stats, you were best on the long run and the short run. Does your tire conservation play into that? I don't know. I think I've always said that I think that the driver in the car has a 50-50 shared responsibility. And, long runs. I think that certainly the team can build a car that is faster in the short run and worse on the long run. And the driver can do things that can make his car faster in a long run by pushing it, pushing those tire attempts early. But he's going to pay the price in the long run. And what I've said many times is what I like about this tire in general is that you have a choice

to make. You can push it in the short run. And And I think there was a time there late in the race where Christopher Bell was like, I need to get this lead like now. And at that point, I'm just like, I'm just going to keep you right there. And then, you know, let him try to use his stuff up and then I'll just, you know, walk away later on. And so I made a distinct, you know, once I knew that the race, we were not going to be coming back for tires.

You know, once we got inside 60, 70 to go, it's like you're not pitting for tires anymore at that point. So I know how long I've got to go on the set of tires. I just made the distinct choice at that point to, okay, this is how I'm going to approach it. Even if it gets by me, I don't want to do that, but I feel like this is the best way to optimize this race run. So at any point while you were leading your 267 laps, were you concerned about someone passing you? And if they passed you, you were not going to get back to the lead? Yeah, I mean, certainly there was some good challenges from the nine and the 20.

late 23 was pretty close a few times as well but I don't know I just I felt as though once I got in control of the race and you heard Chase Lowe to talk about this post race quite a bit you certainly can dictate a pace a lot easier than when you have to chase someone because you do have to use up your stuff more to try to get around people and so it's much easier and it's why you see the field according at that racetrack where when I catch the back of the pack Everyone just comes right to me because at that point, I'm in dirty air. Now I've got to use up my stuff to try to get around them and the field just comes to you. So Martinsville's been that kind of track for the last few years now and it's definitely a chess match.

So do you want to get to the lap traffic quicker or later? I want to wait as long as possible to get them. That way because, and you probably see it in lap times, there's a point where these tires do take a shit, but it takes a long, long time. And if I had one request, right, from the good of your tires, which I think have been so much better this year, and we hate to nitpick it. But the light switch needs to go off a little bit sooner because the race runs just aren't quite long enough. Like it's right when the lap times really start to deviate is right when we pit. And it's right when a caution comes out or the end of a stage. And it's like, man, you need that light switch to go off a little sooner.

then you'll see some big variation lap times, which then creates tons of passing. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's the issue that the Xfinity race had to an extent because they had so many cautions. So I know we'll get into that a little bit later, but it's a good example here because they had so many cautions come up. The tires like never really had an opportunity to wear because some of the runs were only like 15, 18, 20 laps. So that's why you never saw guys like spread out. You didn't see a bunch of cars go a lap down because the tires never had an opportunity to wear. And that's where these skill sets. come into play is if you're on lap 75 on you know the same set of tires you'll have one guy that's

just sliding around losing it while another person's you know six or seven tens faster because they can handle it yeah go ahead did the tires wear yesterday i mean it looked like it on my face on the side of the car i get it the rubber is coming off of the tire yes um the difficult job that good year has that though is that if they went there and they said say it rained overnight and they tested tomorrow, they would run that same tire. I bet you that thing would cord in 40 laps if there's only a couple cars out there. But yet, Fox did a really good job of kind of showing the racetrack and the transition that it was going through and how black it was getting.

Again, we've talked about it on the show a lot. It fills in the pores of that racetrack. And then the tire wear just dramatically goes down during the race versus what we have in practice and what we have in testing. So it would take a giant leap of faith for Goodyear to say, you know, go to a tire test and say, all right, we're going to run this tire that wears out in 20 laps and just trust that when it gets to the race, that thing is not going to, it's going to wear half as much. And so even in practice, I felt as though about lap 40 was like the light switch for me to where it was like,

oh man, I really started dropping lap time and the tire started getting hot and wearing out. out. In the race, I mean, I ended the race and still felt like I had more to go, more in reserve. And so it's just the cup races and all those cars on the track really, you know, make that tire wear go away, which is why we're pushing for more and more aggressive compounds to make this thing to where, you know, do I love that cars were able to be 40 laps on tires and we all pitted and nobody was able to pass them? No, we want tires to really, really matter. But it's just this is a step in the right direction. I'd just like to see another little step to increase it.

So what about the option tire? I think this is the option tire. I believe this was the softer option from last year. Yeah. So it's what we ran in, it's what we ran as far as I know. I could be miss speaking here. It's what we ran last fall. And it's also the option tire that we ran at Phoenix.

in the spring of this year, which will be most likely our championship tire for the final race. So just at Martinsville here, it would need to be a little softer to get the optimal. Yeah. And we saw it, again, at Phoenix as well.

In practice, it was like that option tire was good for 25 laps, and then it would start to cross. And it was like, oh, it's worse. But in the race, it was like 50 laps before it really took a shit. So it was like, man, it's just, it's such a hard job for, for Goodyear to get it perfectly right. And they're definitely going in the right direction. And it's helping. It's just,

cautions are saving some guys that are, they're about to really fall in these situations. That's the thing with these tires and the compounds is, it's, again, just like the car, it's a big puzzle. So it's not only the compound and how the tire performs, Goodyear obviously has to look at the tire and say, hey, in this worst case scenario, we don't want the tire to cord, we don't want, you know, tires falling apart on TV. But you also have like these secondary effects like you saw last fall where the tire gummed up so much that it sent a chunk of, chunk of rubber into the engine bay and jam the linkage for the throttle.

That's right. And that's like the secondary risks that Goodyear has to consider in addition to all the performance stuff because the cup cars don't have fender liners in the front because they can't have fender liners in the front due to the aeroblance of the car. because if they did, it would cause the cars to be able to flip more easily. So that's like just one example of what Goodyear engineers are considering before they ever do this stuff because it's wide open in the fenders. So you have stuff just flying into the engine bay.

And just like your face was last night, all that stuff is sticking parts in the engine that could block a throttle linkage or cause a fire or anything else. So they have to consider all these pieces. So them being careful and going softer, you know, in small grades is why they're doing that. Yeah, Taylor picked up a chunk of rubber at the end of last night. I think it was in turn too, and she, like, was throwing it at me. So, yeah, I guess that that is a hazard, right? I didn't you have a chunk of rubber in the car recently?

Well, I noticed going down straightaways that there would be large chunks, and it would knock the, like my hood flaps would pop up because I guess these chunks of rubber were hitting the bottom of my hood. And I thought I was blowing a tire, like, multiple times. going down the straightaway because both hood flaps would just like pop up but it was just a big chunk that was going up through the hood of the car yeah I mean we saw it after the burnout it call fire so I mean it that is kind of the secondary risk to you have in tires that wear but it's certainly better for the on track product do you want to see them keep going

softer or do you want to see races where they have option tires I mean I personally you know know, if I'm biased, I'm going to say I'd rather just see them softer. I think concentrating on left side wear would really be beneficial. As far as I understand, though, that Goodyear is nearly at its peak of being able to create a softer tire, right? I think they have something going on with their process. And there's a bigger picture of this where I think they have like some sort of union thing to where these tires have to be handmade,

where the street tires are machine made. So that's kind of a general thing among racing tires, I would say, is that it's a very niche industry. So you have streetcar tires that get produced with these robots and all these other things. But race car tires, no matter if it's an MSA or Indy car or NASCAR, it's a small portion of their business. So a lot of the stuff, the molds and things,

you know, have been made, you know, to last multiple years because they have to make that stuff make sense financially. And we know what tires cost and all of these series. So, you know, there's definitely an expense there. So for them, you know, to go past a certain, you know, extent of what they've studied, they may have to redesign all their equipment. So it's not just, you know, taking a different rubber mixture. It's like, well, we might have to redesign this machine. Yep. Because it'll stick to this stuff that we have now and we need this fancier material, so it doesn't stick to that. Yeah. That's so many things. For sure, because I know that there's just so much more to it than what us, you know, Monday

quarterbacks can talk about to say, oh, just make a softer tire. I've been told it's not that easy. And again, I think it's what you're saying is that there might be some retooling that has to be done, things like that on the good year side to actually do it. So, yeah, hopefully we can get it. And this is, you know, the type of thing I'd love to see us implement a little bit more on mile and a halfs as well. given our mile and a half program is pretty good with the next gen car. But, you know, I think, you know, everyone deserves credit in the industry to getting us to this point where when we started with the next gen car and they were putting on mold, you know, they were putting on compounds that they had with Gen 6.

It was not even close. Tires weren't wearing at all because, you know, the loads of this car is not nearly of what it was in the Gen 6 car. So you need load to push down on the tire, to saturate it to then wear it. And if you don't have the load, it's just going to skip across the racetrack. And so it's worse in traffic. It's worse everywhere. So, yeah, we're doing the best of what we have right now and certainly continuing to get better. Are you the best driver at Martinsville again?

I mean, how are you going to ask me that? Just no open any question. I mean. Travis over there pumping his fist. I don't know. He thinks so. This guy on Twitter is just the biggest. You're the best, Trauma.

You're the best. The guy rides and dies with this team, no doubt. I mean, days like yesterday when you have a car that is that good, it makes it feel like you're invincible and certainly gives you a lot of confidence. And I said it post-race in the media center that, winning a race and dominating a race both gives you the same credit on the stat sheet it shows the same but it does not do the same thing to your confidence and when you dominate a race it's like we whipped their ass nobody was even close and now it gives me dramatic confidence that i don't have to

you know every fall i spend weeks and weeks studying the spring Martinsville to figure out, man, why did I get beat again? Like, what, what is it? And and I keep picking apart little things. And I've, you know, I've really worked with the team this week to say, here's what I think I need. Can we, can we fix that? It might not be the right direction, but I think this is what it needs. And it feels gratifying to see it play out on the racetrack that way. So for me, I think this saves a ton of work for me when it comes to preparing for this race in the fall, knowing that that puzzle that Bozzi talks about, we figured out that puzzle, right?

Now, things will change between now and then, but it's, you know, you're going to have weather conditions, all those things. Maybe you don't qualify as well. How is that really going to be in 20th, right? Like, all those things matter in the course of, you know, of a weekend to determine your result, but it certainly is a great baseline to start with. and that I can work off of to refine it for the fall. Does Chris Gale's involvement now in your racing career,

did that play a role into figuring out this puzzle better than last year? I certainly think that it's got some influence. I heard the engineers talking about post-race that he did have quite a bit of influence on this setup and kind of looking at some of the parameters in which we look and approach a short track. you know, maybe he's got a few things, you know, that he looks at and says, well, this has been, you know, when I've had success here, this has been the most important thing or that has been the most important thing where every team over time when they find successes, they try to determine that is what made us best. And each crew chief will just say something different likely. So I think no doubt he probably had quite a bit of fingerprints on this. And again, I think it was a total team. effort from everyone on the 11 car to get us a car that in my mind is dominant as I've had there in quite some time. Now that Chris Gabehart is overseeing all of, you know, I guess

overseeing all of the race team at JGR. Yes. Is his knowledge of this race getting applied to the other JGR cars? Is that why Christopher Bell was as good as he was? You know, the Toyota's overall were good in this race. Yeah, that was encouraging to see. You know, because last fall, we were the only good Toyota. Everyone else was not good at all. And, you know, and again, I've always thought that I should be able to run top five in reverse at that track. It's not that easy.

Trust me, I just talked about how it's not that easy. But it's just my approach, I feel like it's just, that's my floor at this racetrack. but you know to have it to where your all your cars are up front and and and dominating then it says that the general team approach is the right thing now did the 11 to 20 and the 23 have the same setup i don't even think close i think we were all which tells you that's there's something else that we really seem to have you know hit that it that was better for all of us and so I think that there's a lot of things that play into it, but it's good to see all Toyota's running well

because it tells you that our box is maybe bigger than what we thought it was. Bozzi, I talked to you a little bit. I think it was in stage two. You're watching the pit stop. What did you see from Denny's pit crew throughout the state? You know how important is that those guys keep this car up front with track position.

That's that big part of that other 50% that Danny mentioned is your pick crew has to keep you out front. So no matter how good you are, how good your car is, if your pick crew loses, you know, a few tents, you can go from first to sixth. And now your setup that's built to running clean air sucks back here because you're just struggling and killing those tires. And the big thing here, I think, with all the JGR pick crews and 2311 pick crews is their jack moves this year, they've just made so much improvement on that. And that's, I think. Their jack moves? Yeah.

So the next big frontier is the jackman and what he can do. Because the changes were really tapped out by the equipment because the wheel guns are spec. You can only do tire on, tire off in so many seconds. But that transition across the car is where the time is made. So they're relying on the jackman. And then he's jackman, Joel, yesterday I watched them. And when he comes across the car, he does a behind the back move where he picks up the jack as he drops the right side with his left hand, throws the jack behind his back as he's starting

to run across the front of the car, grabs it with his right hand. and the way he grabs it, it turns the handle automatically. So the way the jacks work is you turn the handle to the left to drop the car and you turn it to the right to build pressure to be able to jack it up. So he is dropping the car. He starts running. He's throwing the jack. While he's throwing the jack, he's retightening it.

So when he gets over to the left side, he can immediately go to jacking without having to turn the handle at all. And he's doing this so tightly that I actually saw a picture, the Toyota Gazoo Racing account on Instagram posted where Joel is coming around the car and you can see his hip is almost touching the headlight on the car. So this is how tight the stuff is going. But what you see there is if you look at the other cars, you'll see the jackman run across and you'll see the front changer step back to let the jackman run in front and then go to the tire. Here, Joel actually beats the front changer across the car so the front changer never has to stop.

So Austin just goes in there straight on the tire, and by the time that tires off, the car's already almost ready to come down. Like, it's incredible to just watch all the little pieces come together. And that's, I think that, you know, that movement there and practicing that further will probably produce a pit stop in the seven second range at some point this year. So you're saying that this move is not a move that every Jackman in the garage is doing. No, so some of the Hendrick teams did something similar, but not quite as fast last fall. And I think the Gibbs guys and 2311 guys develop some stuff over the winter. And it's interesting because they're doing similar moves, but even the Gibbs and the 2311 Jackman have slightly different intricacies of how they run across the front of the car and what they do.

And it's like just saw the last race I went to was Atlanta. And now I'm here. So it's been two or three races, whatever, you know, long it's been. And just between those two races, I've seen them fine-tune these moves. So that's how significant this stuff is. And the thing is, is that they're not only doing it one time during the race. They're doing it every single stop. So, you know, Denny's pit crew, the 23-11, number 23 pit crew has really been also standout.

Like, they're just averaging pit stops in the eight-second range for the whole race now, where, you know, there's, and that's separating a lot of the groups where you have the front of the field now that's averaging eights, where an eight, you know, two or three years ago at Richmond, the 18 or 19 crew set the record at an 8-86. and now like you know the 23 crew two weeks ago did an 822 like it just keeps getting more and more aggressive it's it's insane like how fast these guys are moving what what do you think the tap what is the absolute tap out i mean what do you feel like two years for now where we where are we going to be i mean is it well that's that's that's that's interesting question so i'll i'll say that i think the stops will get to maybe a seven eight or seven nine i think is where the physics will

allow it right how fast they're moving but i'm also in to see if NASCAR wants to get their hands on the jacks eventually. Because I feel like that might be coming if these gaps start to grow because the wheel guns are spec, the jacks are kind of the big thing that teams can build on their own or buy off the shelf. So JGR, you know, builds their own, Hendrik builds their own, 2311, buys an off the shelf unit. And obviously it's not a huge difference, but the way the jacks move, the way the cars go up,

like the interesting thing right now is that Hendrick probably. Their jacks lift the car more quickly than the JGR jacks, but because the JGR Jackmen are doing this move, they're making up the difference. So if the JGR Jacks developed to go up as fast as the Hendrik Jacks, that's where those sevens, I think, will come. So the question is if NASCAR allows the jacks to be an open item that the teams can build, I think 7-8, 7-9 is the limit.

If they say, hey, we have a spec jack, then we might be getting close to tapping out the time we can get from them. I mean, I know nothing about a jack, by the way. I've never touched one. I mean, we're both, you know, I, I know, knew about 85% of what he was saying, but still he's got enough information and knows enough to like, you know, what you see on pit road is you just see a pit stop, right? A car go in, car go out. And while you're explaining this, you know, Travis is shaking his head. It's just like, this is the difference, right?

These are the tenths of a second that make a difference whether we go out first or second. And whether I go out first or second is the difference on whether I get to set the. pace or I've got to chase and it's a major major difference in your your finishing result week in week out and what feels good to me right now is that I you know I feel like I'm doing my job for my pit crew you know in all the things that I need to do and they're knocking it out of the park and we're gaining positions each time and that's a very confident feeling and we know I've had times where you know it's not felt that way and I've had a lot of rough goes at it on pit road but This group is meshed together.

Like you mentioned, that the Jackman has such a big role in it. I agree that we're nearly tapped out on changer time because of the equipment. And really, that transition and that Jackman, I get to see it every pit stop. You know, I can see the Jackman and his motions and all that stuff. And it's just like, holy crap, that is athletic. I mean, it's just these guys are specimen and they continue to refine. their footwork, where their body position is, how they hang tires. And would you say that, you know, kind of, and I heard this brought up, I forget who it was, maybe it was Steve LaTard and

Jeff Burton post race, but they said, you know, it's probably why we're seeing loose wheels as well, because if you see, a lot of times we'll drop jacks and they're not even checking to see if it, they're just going off of sound or rhythm of, well, the lugs should be tight at this point and they drop it because we're all fighting for that time where when we had six men, the jackman just could concentrate on, you know, looking down, looking to see the changes are done and dropping it. Now he's hanging tires. You know, his heads turned sometimes when, when they're dropping the jack. Like it's, you know, do you think that that's contributing to some of the loose wheels that we're having? Absolutely. If you're a jackman and you're looking back to the other wheel,

you've already lost on that, on that pit cycle. So, uh, human reaction time for like, an average person is maybe two-tenths of a second, elite athletes or maybe like 0.15. So even if we consider that 0.15, if you look at one tire, then look at the other tire, that's three-tenths of a second you've already lost before the car can go down. And the pit stops, like you and Bubba thinking it was the second stop, literally the exact same timing. So it was 8-8, I think, for both of them, if I remember correctly. So if you add 3-10th there, not only is he getting out in front of you, but 4 or 5

other cars will probably get out in front of you. And that's the thing. and that's a good point about not having an extra carrier is the jackman really can't check any of the tires if you're going to do a quick stop he just has to rely on the sound but when you're on a yellow flag cycle there's dozens of wheelguns going off around you

so even that sound can kind of be defeating so the jackman if you watch any given pit stop like on the right side you know he'll jack the car up grab the tire hang it and as the tire is being hung he's not holding it to the car he's literally turning around to start that move we discussed. So the car is dropping basically within half a second

of him hanging the tire. Where like in Imza, because we have longer pit stops, like when I carry and hang a tire, I'll hang a tire and make sure it's pushed in as my change is going on because we have plenty of time just based on the rules there. In NASCAR, that's not a possibility and that speed, when people ask

me why don't you have loose wheels in Imza, which does happen occasionally and there's so many loose wheels in NASCAR and I tell them it's literally just the speed. Like we can take our time. I can hang a tire and if it doesn't hit the pins just right, I can push it back. Is it because fueling is slower? Yeah.

So on our side, we have minimum refuel times. So in the GTD Pro class where, you know, our Lexus races, a full fill is 40 seconds. So for us, we practice pit stops for basically the partial fills, the end of race restarts and stuff like that is where we practice the tire changes, where we shine. But like during a standard full fill pit stop, like, you know, on a standard full stint, like we'll change the tires, do a tear off. Like I've done like full adjustments to the car before the fueler is done. So that's just the nature of,

that's the nature of trying to equalize everything, which I don't necessarily agree with. Just because we're faster on tires than a bunch of our competitors. I would like us to be able to see, you know, just go on tires. But when it gets to the end of the race or like these street races that are short, that's where we get to shine. And that's how we've won in the past of like, we only need eight seconds worth of fuel.

Let's send this tire change. But in NASCAR, that scenario happens, basically every single pit stop. So you don't have time to think. If you think you've already lost on pit road, and I think it's also risk analysis. So the left side wheels being lost is typically a case of carrier or jackman hangs the tire,

and the changer goes in, and maybe it's not right on the pins, which the drive pins are these pieces on the back that basically line up the wheel with the hub and the brake. And it's not perfectly on there, and he has to, you know, hit the gun twice. well the jackman doesn't have time to look or listen to that so he's ripping the jack you're taking off because you're going on the jack drop that's right and that's you know so that's why these things happen but there are also opportunities to take a moment so yesterday SVG had a loose wheel and that's what i would consider outside of a typical scenario so his loose wheel was on the right rear and any time there's a right side wheel that's loose i look at it as a process error versus just pure speed so if you're on the right side and you're going in with the wheel if you're a changer and you're you're a changer and you're you

doesn't feel just right i would stop especially if you're on a green flag pit cycle because you're not going to lose that many stops because of the field spread correct you're not you know you're not you're not you're not going to risk losing 10 spots you're just going to lose you know a second or two yeah so you might lose one or two spots and the risk reward there is like on a you know green flag stop just take it easy and that's kind of going back to our pit stops the same approach we take if we know that we're on a full fill we can rip a 13 second stop if we need to but we can do a 16 second stop on a full fill if the spread out. Like, there's no need for us to rush and make mistakes if there's time. And so the right sides, I don't excuse that as much on the speed because you can see if it's not

going on as well, then you just need to stop, you know, ticks the wheel, redo it. You lose a second, lose two spots, it's fine versus going on vacation for two weeks and, you know, being held for two labs. There's just too much risk with it. But my explanation every time is just pure speed. Like the human brain can't react as quickly as these guys are moving now. So you're saying the Jackman can slow down if he sees that... Well, it's up to the changer. Yeah, it's up to the changer. So if you're on the outside, like we saw yesterday with SVG on the right rear,

and you go on with the wheel gun and something doesn't feel right, if you don't run to the other side, the Jackman's not going to see you have a tire off. So the Jackman doesn't have a tire to hang, so he's not going to set the car down. So, you know, the Jackman controls the launch of the car, but the Jackman won't drop the car until that inside rear has changed, and until the rear change of returns, that's not going to happen. So I understand what could have happened is likely the wheel nut didn't go on fully straight. So it'll go on and the wheelgun will feel like it's torched.

So the very best changers go by feel. No matter if you have the wheelguns here or if you have the censored wheel guns in Formula One or whatever else it is, it's all about feel. Because the sensor, even if you have a sensor like they do in Formula One, it won't light up enough as what your hands will feel. And that's the same thing for me. if I go around the car, carry a tire and hang it on the car, I can tell you within half a second, whether it hit the pins or not, because it's just, you know, you just learn that muscle memory in that field. So are the pit crew guys aware of this?

So like when, when Denny comes in, he pits from first and he's got four lap cars between him and second and the guy in second can't get to your bumper before entering pit road, right? Are the pit crew guys aware that we might have a half a second more to work with here, one second more to work with here that it's more beneficial to make sure we get this right then it depends so if you're coming in under yellow then you're just all out but if you're coming in under green the experience will tell you that hey you know we're going to have a little bit of room to work with here and that's that's the thing is getting that extra information at least from my perspective doesn't ever really help me like i'm going to go and do my pit stop the way i think is the best i can do it if you know

giving me extra information or some kind of outside pressure is really not going to motivate me to, you know, go faster or do something different. And I think that's, that's the key to kind of being an elite pick crew guy is that you have to be able to just let everything get blurred out. So there's stuff happening around you all the time and you just have to straight laser focused on your task. And you just got to do that and react if you need to react. But all the outside stuff, like when I go over the wall, like one of the things that we actually discussed recently was, you know, I have a Woop Band, so we monitor like heart rate and stuff like that. Like my heart heart rate actually is higher being told that we're 10 away from pitting than when I actually go over

the wall. Because once I get on the wall, it just completely calms down and goes basically like my resting heart rate. And then after the stop, it obviously goes up just from running around with tires, but that's the thing. Like an elite pick crew member is just, there's nothing else that exists. It's just you and the car in an empty room is kind of where your mindset is. Before we move on with the pickers area, one more question. Because the way you're talking about this really emphasizes is how athletic these crew guys are. And was it a few weeks ago, NASCAR teams were at the NFL

Combine scouting players. Are athletes, do you know? Are athletes in other sports NFL prospects aware of how much athleticism is needed to pit a cup car or any car in that matter? Absolutely. And I mean, I think it's getting bigger and bigger now. Last year I was at Phoenix and there were, you know,

like agents and people walking around and one of the NASCAR people's like, hey, you know, he can tell you about pit stuff. And this guy's like, yeah, I'm, you know, an interface between athletes that are looking for something, you know, as they move on from, you know, the NFL or MBA or whatever into a second career, whether that's coaching or doing something else. And we heard there's stuff happening here. So I think the exposure to it is growing bigger. But I also think that the pit crew component and the publicity of it, I think deserves a lot more than it gets right now. And that's kind of been, you know, my personal project. But unfortunately, you know, it just takes time for that stuff to build up and for teams, you know, know, PR and marketing departments to trust letting these guys out in the wild. But I think that highlighting pick crew members, uh, even more will bring these types of people in and help recruitment efforts even more. Yeah. I think for the average fan is so hard to, to see and, right. And pick apart this stuff when they're watching from the stands or even on TV.

It's crazy what makes the difference. And it's, and it's just small little things for each person. And their importance and their role of, you know, that car's result is, is down to the their job. And so it's great for you to highlight that. Certainly these guys are, you know, they deserve their flowers. And it's great that, you know, that you kind of educate the, the fans on what these little intricate things are that makes the difference. And so that's really cool. And, you know, we did have some other stuff that happened during the race. We have a few incidences, which one, we got lap 71 with Chris Busher. I think that was, he came up on somebody right Gregson right yeah on Noah um not clear for sure uh no that was Carson it was Carson and

and busher first and then busher um later on the race there was kind of a checkup Noah got really pissed I saw during that that caution flag um but you know there was a big stack up Buster just didn't, you know, he was like a half a second late to reacting to it and kind of ramped up on the side of Noah's car and destroyed it. So Buster definitely had a tough race from where they qualified. Didn't really perform that great during the race. But a couple others, lap 298, we had a caution for Gibbs. That was Tyler Reddick. I watched that one.

And it looked like Tyler, you know, kind of jammed into a hole. that was definitely going to close. Like when I saw, it looked like he was playing defense to Austin Dillon more than trying to make a move on Ty Gibbs at the time. I looked at it and the 45 came off the corner and he was trying to clear. He was really driving into turn one really fast to try to get back to the bottom. And at that point, he got to the bottom. Gibbs has got probably two car links to him.

So he's thinking, I can just arc out this, you know, dime in this corner like I usually am. Well, then as he's coming down the racetrack on turn two, 45 sticks it in there, spins out Gibbs. So definitely Tyler's fault on that one. I saw you went and talked to him after the race. You know, good to kind of get that cleared up and whatnot. And so what other ones do we have? We had, oh, Cendrick and Herps. You know, as a car owner, I'm not.

not liking, you know, Austin Cendrick spinning out, um, Riley Herps and it's, it's starting to get on my nerves a little bit, uh, that Austin Cendrick seems to be losing his mind a little bit more than usual. And I can only say that because I did give him a lot of credit early in this year on his, you know, super speedway driving and being smart inside the race car. But he's starting to be a report. Pete offender, in my opinion. When things aren't going his way, he's wrecking guys.

And so I don't know how NASCAR will look at this. It's different because it's not a right rear hook. It was essentially kind of a left rear. I don't know whether the hook, but just kind of shove into the corner. NASCAR probably will view it as a racing incident. But anyone with any driving experience would say that he got pissed. he got squeezed and he wrecked the 35 so and and i was trying to figure out like who who closed the gap and the 35 came off the wall a little bit more than he probably should have but they also

the 16 there was no room for three cars like between the three of them the two out the inside and the outside guy they didn't leave enough room for cindricks so cindric i think was going to hold his line but the they just squeezed him and he felt like it was more evidently on Riley's fault than than dingers but this is just a you know Cendrick's getting a couple close ones here where you know NASCAR needs to start taking you know habitual behavior into account um it happened with Austin Dillon at Gateway a year or so ago I think you right reared him um we had the tie Dylan thing this year and now this

And so it's not looking good. And Cendrick needs to clean that up. And this is also just a product of where you're racing, right? Like you're deep in the field, these situations occur. When I went back and watched the race, it was crazy to see, you know, I was up front all race. So, you know, my car was obviously a lot cleaner, but the cars were beat to shit back there. I mean, they are just, it's just crazy how much they're running into each other. And I get it.

Everyone's grinding because, you know, the leaders are going to be on you in 40, 50 laps. And so everyone's trying to get all they can. But yikes, it is rough back there. That's one of the things I noticed standing in turn three is like you guys up front, you know, cars were decently clean. But then once you started getting deeper into the field, as they passed by, I could see a lot of them a gap between their hood and the louvers, which means that they've been smashing into people. And they're like from like 15th on back, there were a bunch of cars where you could see that gap where they had smashed into somebody. some point. Yeah, it seems like if there's a gap between the hood and whatever else you talked about, it means you ran into a guy pretty hard. Absolutely. Well, I mean, that pretty much covers the

stuff on the cup side. Well, we got to talk about what? We got to always talk about the winner. Okay. What do you want to say? I don't know. We won. 55. It's awesome. Rusty Wallace got his 55 at that track. It was his last win. I don't plan on this being my last. But, all right, Well, we can start there. It seemed like you did silence some doubters, new, new sponsor, new crew chief, Denny's in his 40s. Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty selfish in the sense of like, you know, when they say, what does it mean to you? And I always think about, well, how does it mean to me in my accomplishments? And certainly winning 10 years ago at that track, you know, being that big of a gap, it's not like we were.

we've been crap for the last 10 years. We've just always been right there on the cusp and just didn't do it. But it's super gratifying for that standpoint. But this is probably one of the very few wins that, like, I was more happy for my crew chief, Chris Gale. And I think that, you know, he's had, we talked about a tough go, having to have these young guys and, you know, try to help mentor them, also crew chief them and also help the engineers. that's a tough job when you have a young driver and you're trying to figure out, you know,

what's the best way to build the car, to optimize speed, but yet make it to where they can drive it. Like, it's hard to do. And so I think I've tried really this year to make his job as easy as possible by just straight giving him whatever information he needs to make the car the best it can. And, you know, certainly I wanted to do it more to silence his doubters more than necessarily mine. Yeah, I think that's what the talk on social media has been, right? Like there's been doubt in if Chris Gale can win with you. And I don't know, you've run well this year. Obviously, could have won Phoenix, nearly won another Daytona 500.

It's like you've been there, but it's also just been like, I don't know, is it going to happen? Yeah. I can't say that. I wasn't worried too. I mean, I was in a comfortable situation with Chris Gavehart, and I thought he was the end for me when it comes to crew chiefs. but JGR had you know different ideas and um obviously in the moment I was pretty shook about it and I was like you know well I don't want to start all over like I'm I'm too old I don't want to start all over and so um I sucked it up and said well I'm going to do the best that I can I'm not going to

waste the last years of my career um you know pissing and moaning about this I'm just going to be a professional and do I everything I can to make sure this works out and And if me, I said it before the year started, like, okay, well, was it me or Chris? You know, what is, you know, what was it, right? And I think it was a truthfully, a combination of both. I think he made me better in a lot of aspects. And I took a lot of that into my mentality with Chris Gale now. But I think we both had a big role in our success over the years.

And now I'm just, I'm excited to build that new relationship and new achievements with someone else. It seems like Gabe Hart also took a lot of gratification and seeing you win with Chris Gale yesterday. Yeah, he did. And certainly, you know, I appreciated the nice comments that he said about it. And he wanted to win a grandfather clock with me really bad. And we worked really, really hard to make that happen. It just never did for various reasons. But absolutely, it was gratifying.

I know for him to see the team that he helped build, you know, and the mindset and the things that we work on see it to come to fruition. So you have six of these things now. And as you said before on this show, that you don't even know where half of them are. So, I mean, I know where most of them are. There's a couple that are unaccounted for, but yeah. Before we move on, let's talk about the origin story of the 11 against the world flag.

Yeah, so I don't think the Fox guys knew kind of where I thought they, right right it was uh they were like what in the hell but it was a fan gave me this uh they gave it to me um before the race and obviously it came from uh i mentioned it a few of my friends that uh are huge ohio state fans it you know that was kind of ohio state's mantra was you know Ohio against the world and so we carried around this flag to all of the college football games that we went to and it's what got us on ESPN like i was so excited that like you know we're got this flag and, you know, it was kind of our thing. Like when we didn't have the flag, I told Charlie, I felt, I felt naked without this flag.

And when Jack Sawyer took, took this flag in the national championship game, I'm like, damn it, we got to have another one. We didn't get another one, but we did have a fan. And the guy says, hey, by the way, Travis, he says, it pains me to give you this because I'm a Penn State fan. He says, but I am. And so it was awesome to see him give me that. And I just knew that if we won the race, I wanted to, I kind of wanted to shake it. And so it wasn't anything other than a nice gesture that a fan gave me to say, you know,

good job and, you know, kind of play into the Denny Hamlin against the fans type of mantra that we've been got going on. But it feels like that's also kind of dead now. I feel like the fans cheered more. They did. It was definitely a balance towards the other end. Because like I know most races, like your driver intro, I don't even have. have to be looking at that direction. Like I'm talking to crew guys before the race and I can hear

just based on the booze. But yesterday after the race was like light booze. I would say it was 40% booze, 60% cheer, which is like a huge balance based on what I've seen in the past. But that's what makes me so excited is those that, because it was a lot of booze in pre-race, right, during the intros. But like, what do you got to boo now? Like, I just beat your favorite driver again. And it, and it killed me not to say it. But, but, I don't know. It's just, that's what I love is being able to silence those people and just give them the old. What is your dad?

It's nine, nighttime. What did your dad think of it? He was good. He was good. He didn't say anything to me. He called when we were Victory Lane. He just said, make sure you bring me the flag and sign it and put 55th win on there. So I'll make sure I did that.

The actual flag. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The wind flag, not the against the world. Yeah, no, he didn't care about that one for sure. Yeah, it's certainly. I feel like the sentiment towards you is changing a bit. Just because after the race, me, you're signed autographs for everyone waiting outside turn four.

Someone walked away and they're like, he changed me. I got to admit it. I'm a fan now. Jared, we got to be real, though. If I would have finished second or third or bumped,

you know, Larson or Chase Elliott, I mean, I would have had the golf cart ride to the motorhome lot saying, you fucking suck. I think, I think this show has changed the perspective a lot. because I look at social media and just to get a gauge for everybody.

I think that I see very often, I was like, I really hated you on track, but now I listen to you talk about, you know, whatever on action is detrimental. So now I like you as a host. And then eventually some of them you'll see like, I kind of like you as a driver now too. I mean, that's, that's, I think a huge thing being open like this that brings people in. Yeah, and it's fair, right. I mean, everyone, when you have a fandom towards a certain driver, you don't have a responsibility like anyone else, right?

And if that driver beats your guy or maybe knocks them out of the way, like I've done a few times, a few people, I understand where all that comes from. And so I'm willing to take it and understand that, you know, there's a role in that in our sport. And certainly it's, I feel like it's played into what feeds my inner passion and competition in my soul. So I appreciate the fans and their reaction, good or bad to it.

So I think the personality is appreciated. Yeah. Well, the last thing is the X-Finity race. I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on it. But I just, I think I pretty much said in some tweets what I thought about it and that it was horrible. And, you know, I can only speak to what I am as a car. I can speak to what I am as a fan. I can speak to what I am as a car owner.

And I can tell you, I'm not impressed. Austin Hill, Sam Mayer, Sammy Smith, all drove like assholes. And it's my job to be as subjective as I am as I can be on this show. And I said, you know, at the time, good thing I'm not in the booth, I'd be fired for calling these guys. guys out. And let me be clear on that. I think Parker Klerman did a good job to be as fair as he could, but yet as truthful as he could, even after Sammy Smith did his interview, he was like, yeah, I don't agree with that. And so that's really well done by Parker to, you know, hold these guys accountable because I believe in my heart of hearts, there's only a few things that you can do

to really change this. And it's sad to say, I think public, shame. is maybe some of it, like not saying, hey, that's not impressive to me. You know, I own some cars in the Cup series. Have you ever think I'm going to look at you as, you know, that just because you wipe the guy out in one, no, that doesn't impress me at all. So it just shows me immaturity. You know, there's been multiple opportunities for, for these guys to, get to the finish in a somewhat respectful way, we're not expecting these guys not to make contact. We're not expecting them to, you know,

not try to get the guy out of the groove. But coming from two or three car lengths back to wreck someone is just the most unimpressive thing I've seen. And beyond that, and the reason I've got to call these three guys out, and there was many other, and I just don't have time to break it all down. but Austin Hill managed to wreck someone that was four car links in front of him. Like, I'm sorry, but giving the excuse that, well, it just got in too deep and I wheel hopped, there's no way you misjudge the corner that far to wreck a car that far in front of you.

You got in back of someone and then you kept shoving. That's the problem I had with what Austin Hill did through the race. Now, he won the race. congratulations to him again not impressed you know he he didn't do anything wrong at the end of the race let's be clear on that he he won it fair and square he didn't knock anyone out of the way really to do it he deserves to win the race on that but i just there were moves in the race that were just so unimpressive to me and it one of them it took his teammate out was jesse love he was an innocent bystander to austin hill shoving in the back of somebody and just not letting off same thing for sam

mayor um he got on the back of christianekus and just wouldn't get off of him like if you're on someone's bunker it's not and if you choose to not let off you are fine you're saying i'm good with me just i'm good with you wrecking so i don't lose one position here and that is just total lack of respect and i'm i'm tired of hearing these guys say that uh well they would have done it to me it doesn't fly anymore. Taylor Gray at the end of the race, I just don't see anything he did wrong. The 8 shoved him out of the groove

and he shoved the 8 out of the groove. Again, he didn't drive in, knock him. Like, he did the same thing he got done to him. And I think both of the moves were fair. What Sammy Smith did originally to Taylor Gray, I deem that okay. Do I love it that he shoved him? Like he just got him and shoved him.

It's essentially kind of what I was trying to do with Chase Elliott back in 2017. Only back then I did it way too hard. Yeah, I spun him out there, right? I was trying to just shove him up the racetrack so I can get under him and misjudged it. And so that's on me. But it's, I have to try to do my job here and call these guys out for just driving. like idiots and these three just topped the list for me on Saturday and so um i hated to see it uh taylor gray really deserved to win the race he didn't um i think he's considering the last couple years at

that race track he he's probably handled it as good as he possibly could um but i also you know i hear some people talking about what do you do about it and it's like if you can't let us play it on the racetrack, you know, because, you know, when I tried to do it with Ross a few years ago, I got, you know, penalized because of what I said on the show saying, yeah, of course I took him up to the fence. Look what he's done to me over the last few years. What, if you're going to say it's self-policing, you got to let himself police it. Or in this instance, I truly believe NASCAR needs to step in and not on the tick-ie-tax stuff. I'm saying use your eyes and your brains and anybody could call what we saw. There were three incidents in particular. The 21 when he

ended up wrecking the guys way up in front of him. The one where Sam Mayer just flat out would not get off the back of the, the Echus one, and then at the end of the race, those are three easy penalties that are not even debatable, right? We're not going to get into tiki-tack stuff, but my opinion, Bozzi, is that if you penalize once, it at least gives these guys, you, a little bit of a pause to say, if I send that guy to the back, if I'm Sam there and I see that Christian Eckers is about to spin, I know I'm about to have to go back there with them. And more than likely, you know, you face the repercussions then.

We saw it in the truck races last year. There was a couple of track races where I think they held trucks for doing egregious stuff. So I think that's a good example of it. And nobody wants them to have to get into these balls and strikes calls, but these are not balls and strikes. These are pitches to the head. and that's when you get ejected, right? These are not balls and strikes.

This is egregious going after the batter type of scenarios. It's flagrant stuff. And that's the thing is the Xfinity series is one of my favorite racing series to watch. Just because the cars are so cool, the racing is so good. I have kind of a bucket list of stuff, and that's like an Xfinity car is still something I have on my list that I want to work on if I have an opportunity because it looks so cool and so fun. So for me, like Saturday, I'll typically stay after a race.

talk to engineers, mechanics, just to figure out, like, what they did, why stuff's interesting. But I just left because I was like, all the good cars, all the stuff, all the people that executed, they got wrecked in the last lap. And that's what's so disappointing. And for me, like, I look at it sometimes not just from that perspective, but just dollars and cents. Like, an Xfinity body costs $10,000. And they treated like a shopping bag, basically. And then, you know, people are talking about costs and expenses and we need to reduce crew members.

and all these other things. I was like, no, I was like, teach these guys some lessons. If they're not wrecking $10,000 bodies every weekend, you'll have a lot more money to pay mechanics and engineers and won't have to do all these roster games and all this other stuff. Like, it's just extremely disappointing to see such a cool platform misused in such a way and to see people knocked out for no reason. I mean, you guys race an MSA?

What if someone cleans someone out in the final lap, like cleans them out? I mean, there's penalties for everything. So, I'm just interesting because MES is kind of loosened. up their stance. Obviously, MSSAS part of NASCAR, and I think some of that's flowing our way.

So previously, a lot of stuff got called. Now, less and less stuff is getting called. And that's our sister car, the number 12 Lexus, the last race at Sebring, Jack Hawksworth, he was leading.

It was like two laps to go, and one of the Mercedes just came and just punted him in the rear. And we're like, this has had to, because he, like, he punted him so far that he went like off across a curb

and then had to come back. And no, they were like, no, this is just racing instead. And so they're trying to loosen stuff up, but most cases, if you do have an avoidable contact penalty, you'll either get a warning if it's a first one or if it's repeatable. You'll get a drive-through or something to that regard, which will usually kill your race. So I think stuff like that, to an extent, if you could see it with your naked eye that something's very egregious, hold them for a lap or make them do a drive-through or something to that effect, so they'll learn their lesson because they're obviously not going to learn anything from financial penalties or this other stuff because they'll just, you know, they'll keep throwing money. yet and it doesn't teach them anything. Yeah, I mean, I don't understand what's so hard about making the call because even in the cars tour rates, they have it, right? You, you spin someone out and it

looks like you could have not done that to put you the back. And that is your, that is the one thing that will keep you from just cleaning someone out because you're like, you know, there's no reward to doing it, right? Where I think what happens is the higher you get up in the NASCAR series, the looser the rules become. And so it's very interesting that it works that way. But even in our local short tracks, they implement the black flag for reasons. And we have that flag for a reason.

So it's my opinion. We need to use it in egregious situations. And there's not many tracks where you're going to have to officiate this, right? I'm not going to say it's a Martinsville only thing, but it's really the short tracks. Yeah, Bristol maybe and stuff like that. Yeah, there's just some tracks where it's there. But again, I think that it just takes one or two calls and it's going to just calm all this down quite a bit.

We saw it in the clash. Like I've said for many years when the L.A. clash was getting out of hand. I was like, just calls one person for rough driving and it will calm the field down. And so I had some dialogue with Elton hopefully. He agreed that, you know, Saturday was definitely too far. and hopefully they do something about it in the future. Because we want to see, you know, guys, you know, be taught the right way to race. I'll use Sam as an example, but over the summer he had said that he was pissed off

that he wasn't in the running for more cup rides. Which is understandable from a results perspective. But you're saying that because no matter how many times you win, if you drive like this, it resets. It does not impress us. I can only speak for 23 and 11. but it doesn't impress me for absolute certain. And so it just shows me the level of immaturity

and says that kid's got a long way to go. Now, which sucks because I've also given Sam his flowers on races that he's won. And it was like, I think Sam Mayer has gone through one of the biggest transitions of racecraft. Now, this was a bad example of it, but over the last three years, I think he went from someone I was,

like he'll never make it like he's just not good enough to wow maybe he is and maybe he's hitting this he's starting to win road courses he's competing on the intermediates like he really has taken a step in the last few years that has been impressive um but it's moments like this where it's like let's reset this now he's got to start all over again so it's unfortunate but they got a lot of talent they just it is you know what we saw this weekend was just immaturity things got to get cleaned up and I think that putting the hammer down on a few people like you said

will do that very quickly like anything else talking to them like you're going to go talk to somebody and he'll be like yeah yeah sure and then walk off five minutes later and still do the same thing talking does nothing but if you you know make him sit out a lap or like I tweeted this and I know it's a little extreme

but my thought is if somebody does something really bad egregious at the end of the race make them start the next race from pit lane and I assure you that it's not going to happen from anybody again if you're starting a lap down basically like it and it needs to whatever the penalties are it needs to happen like then right i i don't like that we're taking days to you know what's naskar going to do like there again there should be someone in the tower with the power to say nope that ain't going to work to the back or whatever it is sit on pit lane for a lap that's um you got to empower the

person that's running race control to use their eyes and brain to make, make, you know, shots to the head calls. That's the one thing I like about imso officiating, because as soon as something is potentially an issue, like seconds later, you'll hear this incident is under review, maybe 30 seconds to a minute later, they'll call it. They'll say, okay, it's clear, or we're giving this person a penalty. They give them about a minute to argue their case over I.M. And then you got to go do your drive-through or whatever else. And I like that process because it's transatlantic. transparent. It's consistent. And I know that when I've made mistakes that have caused a penalty, I knew exactly what to expect because, all right, I messed up. I let this tire go. I know my guy's

going to have to do a drive-through now because that's the case. But it's not like, oh, well, maybe if they feel this way or that way. No, like it's, this gets announced, it's available to everybody. And you can hear it, you can see it. And that's it. And fans have access to, you know, see and listen to all of that. And I think consistency, I know some things are subjective, but consistency, even if you have subjective calls occasionally, will help fans to accept it more, and we'll teach these guys, hey, this is not acceptable. Yeah.

And like Denny said, you probably only need one to make it work, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, that pretty much wraps up the weekend. You got a review. You want to read there? I got a review here from Kentucky Kent. Sorry, Kent. I'm assuming he's a Kentucky fan.

You have a great podcast, even though I am a Joey Logano fan. I was told by my friend to check out your podcast, and ever since I have been, ever since I have been hooked. I also find myself following you more on the track on race day. Listening to the podcast has opened my eyes to see what kind of person and driver you are. Good luck this year. I hope one day you can hold that championship trophy like you deserve. I bet Kentucky Kent loves the fact that his driver's got three championships and I've got

since we had a rivalry over some time of our careers. But thank you for that review. Appreciate it. This weekend coming up, we got the next race is at Darlington Throwback Weekend. I'm throwing back to Carl Edwards. That sport clip's scheme was fantastic. Got a lot of great reviews there online. I'm looking forward to that.

This race is on FS1, right? 3 p.m. So make sure you're all tuned into that. Hopefully we can go back to back. That would be awesome. And people want to know, can you, will you do a backslip if you would? Not a chance. I would break my neck.

I would, I'm trying to think, if I started, you know, straight up, I maybe would get to here. I'd probably break my back because I probably couldn't even get to where I crushed my head. I just, I'm not flexible anymore. I just, I don't have the power. It wouldn't happen. It's just way too much risk. Way too much risk. And not happening.

So I appreciate y'all guys tuning in and we'll see you next week.