Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin - Not Enough To Catch Blaney

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Denny Hamlin is back from Nashville after making his 700th career start and coming in third place on Sunday. He and co-host Jared Allen cover 2:00 Rajah Caruth gets a win and is trying out for Hoop Group league11:45 Decision to run long before pitting in the final stage15:00 Why drivers could only run the bottom lane at the end of the race22:45 What went wrong with Denny’s car as the race progressed24:30 Taking 2 tires was the game-changing moment for Ryan Blaney26:15 Carson Hocevar wrecked Ricky Stenhouse Jr.32:25 Corey Heim was having a solid day until a rookie mistake36:25 What NASCAR got wrong with the mid-season tournament43:36 Denny was uncomfortable on Sunday with no air or water45:35 750 horsepower is “on the table” for short tracks this season47:20 Chris Buescher gets penalty reduced; AJ Allmendinger punished on Sunday51:00 Jim France was looking to fund a Cup Car for a race at Sonoma 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 FanDuel Disclaimer: Must be 21+ and present in select states (for Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino) or 18+ and present in D.C. First online real money wager only. $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable bonus bets which expire 7 days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut, or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit GamblingHelpLineMA.org or call [phone] for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 1-877-8HOPE-NY or text HOPENY in New York. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ricky Stenhouse will absolutely wreck Carson Host for sometime in the near future. That's just a fact. 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.

The spoils of victory for Jared Allen. He's got better luck than Rick and Drake to win. I know. you do two trophies missing from your collection a championship and the most popular driver someone told me that their drinking game is when i say for sure yeah and i've already said it hey guys welcome to actions detrimental i'm getting home on driver the progressive toyota this past weekend at nashville super speedway i wonder why they call it super speedway because it's bigger than the other nashville track and you need to separate them somehow good point well good point

Um, yeah, Trav made the impromptu visit. Put you in one of those fire drills right before the flight. I said you got 10 minutes. 10 minutes from right now. And we're going to take off as you get there. Luckily for you on the way of the airport, when I was on the way of the airport, I realized I forgot my bag and had to turn around and go home. So you actually had more time.

So we told you, just grab your cleanest OSU shirt. and didn't bring one. No, it was your shirt this weekend. I just noticed that. Just a Topanga shirt. Yeah. Hey, it was a hit on Saturday night. Oh, man.

All right. Well, we had some on-track action this past weekend. We had all three series at Nashville. We had Raja Carruth winning the truck race. Thoughts, takeaways from that? I mean, he... I thought that was an excellent drive. I only saw the last 20, 30 last.

of it and I mean he had a rearview mirror full of Corey Heim. Yeah it was it was kind of the first one of the first weekends that I thought Corey was a little vulnerable to the competition. I thought Lane Riggs for the most part had the fastest

truck but they I think they got sent back kind of a bad pit stop or something yeah they couldn't get their right front wheel off on their pit stops and so he just he struggled battling back from seventh or eighth or so on that last stop.

Corey was good, not as dominant as what we've seen in the past. And Raja's pick crew got him out P1, and he just rocketed it off and took off, and then played defense once Corey got closed. And so great win for Raja. He actually came here and did a little hoop group tryout. Yeah, yeah, he did. This is probably a few months ago.

we have a pretty long waiting list for our hoop group to get in our league. So we wanted to check out the new talent, right? And, you know, in our league, we're not looking for great talent. Right. So we're looking for solid people that bring something to the table. Hey, are you going to go out and have a, have a beer with us after? That was going to me my question, because I've seen some of the people playing. I'm like, what's the level to make the team?

Will you bring something to group me? Like, will you, you know, make that? fun and entertaining. You know, like we're looking for a, it's a, like a good vibes guy sometimes, not just. Oh, absolutely. Good vibes guy is what we're looking for in Hoop's, Hoop Group. So can you overperform in your tryout? Can you like make too many layups, too many shots and be like, you're just actually too good?

Yes. Yes. So you got to say that. Now, hold on. Can you make too many layups? I think that's probably a stretch. Like, it's okay if you make layups. Now, if you come in and dunk, it's over.

Your tryouts over. Has anybody ever not allowed in because they were too good? Yes. We have a few that, you know, are friends of ours, but it just, it would be no fun watching them play. Like being on their team, it would just be like, all right, what do you want me to do? Go stay in the corner? Okay, great.

I'll get out of your way. Like, you know, we want it to be, in our games, Travis, you've been there, Jared. They're competitive and wildly entertaining because it's when someone goes for the game winning layup, you just don't know if it's going to go in or not, right? I mean, that's part of the entertainment of it. Shout out to Coker. Coker got a Coker. Coker, you're my guy. So, yeah, he came, you know, he brought his dad, I think his dad was a Hooper at some point.

But Raja fit right in. He was just not good enough to be perfect for the league. Not good enough. Well, like... The whole package. Yeah. Yeah, he had all the intangibles and skill set that we were looking for. But the list was long.

We just wanted to get our eye on them. Make sure if we put them on the sub list, that's kind of your transition. is you go from, you know, hey, I want to play to, all right, we'll put you on the sub list. And that way we can kind of see what you got. But we have a lot of guys that have been in it for many, many years now. And so they get first priority of coming in and out. But he was fun and loved playing with him. He's a great kid.

He's very inquisitive on, you know, how he can get better. And, yeah, it's great to see that he's getting the success in trucks that he was hoping. to get. And it's not been easy. Like I, I think that he's ran, you know, pretty good, you know, kind of right around there with his teammates for the most part. Not standoutish, not not lagging. And so he's been kind of right on par for where I think that, you know, that organization is and they have these flashes on mile and a halfs where they're really good. So, yeah, just a great win for him. Yeah, back to the hoop group thing real quick. The more I think about it, I'm sitting here,

think about you talk about the hoop group. It's like the Savannah bananas. Yes. You got to be able to play baseball, but then you also got to be able to, like, argue with the refs a little bit, and like just be... Now you're getting it.

When it's country theme not, you've got to show up in. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, like when we had country night, we brought a horse in, we wanted the players to ride in on the horse into the gym. You got to be willing to get here

45 minutes early and some jean shorts and cut off. 45 minutes early and stay one hour late because you go to big owls after the games are over and have a beer and talk about, you know, coering the final layup. Anyway, yes, good drive for Roger. I was very impressed watching that. I thought Corey Heim was ultimately going to get to him and it just seemed like he made every move. And he did.

And he had one chance and Roger kind of ran him up in the fuzz and that was it for Corey. He just wasn't strong enough to make another charge at him. Xfinity on Sunday, Justin Algeyer. Yeah. Saturday. Saturday. Did he, did Justin announce he was going to retire? I don't think so.

I feel like if he did that, we wouldn't be questioning. I, um, I, um, Travis is is moving the thumbs quickly right now. But I, was it Kenny Wallace? Maybe with his morning coffee, Kenny or whatever, said, talking about putting the old guys out to pasture, talking about Justin Algeyer is still winning races, but he's kind of the back of all the promos now for the Xenity series. And he said he was going to retire at the end of next year.

Is that right? I don't know where Kenny got that from, but yeah, either way, another great win for Justin. He beat his teammates that had the same cars as him, when I'm a cup guy and Ross Chastain. And so, yeah, it's just another very impressive win by Justin. He's just, you know, dominating that series in speed, week in, week out. He's got a 92 point lead right now.

Does he really? Yeah. Wow. I think Corey's got like 120 or 30. It's still, he'll have a 200 point lead. 122. I mean, that's, he could, I think there's six. races left in the truck series before their playoffs, he could take the last four off, I think.

Pretty close to it by time. And still finish P1 points. It's still P1, yeah. That's just that shows the gap. And no, it's absolutely crazy. There's a decent chance he's not going to win the championship. There's under this format. 75% chance he's not going to win the championship.

Right, under this format. It's just yikes. All right. Cup race, Ryan Blaney. dare we say dominates the last second half of the race? I'll tell you, I thought that my eyebrows got raised when he stayed out or he took two tires. And I was behind him and I was like on four tires and I was like, we're the same speed. His tires are a little worse than mine and we're running the same speed.

So I thought that, you know, there was indications from practice that he was really good in the long run. He was substantially faster in the very, very long run than all the cars he was in. But, you know, you kind of don't know. Is that a group A thing? Group B, you know, he was in Group A because of a bad finish at Charlotte. So, you know, it didn't have all the heavy hitters in it that the Group B did. So, you know, and then when we ran, we had very similar. long run speed in practice and so I thought well maybe it was just that well when we got into the

race once we got past that threshold of about 35 laps on tires he just he took off he was just his it seemed like the field slowed down if um when you look at the lap times we all just took a took a jump up like we all just you know lost three or four tenths and the next thing you know we all lost a half a second and Ryan just kind of stayed on the trend of losing a hundredth a lap where we were losing you know quite a bit more so he just was substantially faster that kind of gave me the the warning that just you know he's going to be tough to beat and all the pincolk cars really were pretty strong I thought you know Cindrick when they stayed out there they showed some strength uh Joe Lugano had a really good run um fourth um a legit force as in like you

He was kind of right there with us at the end. So it's just overall they kind of silenced the critics from last week where they really, really struggled. Was there any moment where you thought that you could get around him and get back to the lead and control the race? I thought there was an opportunity in the second to last run of the race. So entering the last stage, I guess there's about 120 laps left. at that point, I restarted six in line or something like that, but I passed everyone to get back to second pretty quickly. And at that point, I'm five links behind Blaney and stayed five links for like the next 20, 30 laps. It was like, I mean, our lap times were just back forth, back and forth, back and forth.

and then all of a sudden my car i'm starting starting to get a little free starting to lose a little overall grip and he's just edging away edge in way like a car length of lap and and then by the end of that run which is why you saw us go long there um he had pulled out to you know a few seconds worth of lead and at that time our team is is thinking well if we stay if i was able to stay within five car lengths of them then I think it's okay let's race him on pit road let's race him to pit road let's race him on pit road and maybe we can get past them in the exchange on pit road but when he pulled out to that that lead that kind of put us in a spot where okay we can't just pit when he pits we're going to come out that same distance behind give or take one second or so

so we're not going to leapfrog them so let's just go long here and then we have an opportunity of an eight-lap window by by pitting eight laps longer we have that ability then for a caution to come out in that eight laps or if a caution comes out in the next 30 laps no we're not pitting for tires or you know we're not pitting anymore the tires are not falling off any significant amount So we're all going to stay out, but now I'll get to line up side by side with them with eight lap fresher tires. So that was our thinking, which was fully, it was a good risk reward for us. It was Chris Gale going for an opportunity to win the race and willing to give up second place, which we did. You know, we're going to finish third or fourth.

You know, worse we finish fourth at the 22, you know, leaps ahead of us in that cycle as well. but we had a big enough gap on him that leaving me out there wasn't totally detrimental. So I thought it was a good gamble to try to switch something up on the 12 because at that point, I thought he was a little stronger. Yeah. Did you think that you had any chance of getting to him on the tire difference there? I thought no way. Eight seconds back and then got to three.

Yeah, I thought there was no way, but I saw the traffic he was in and the rate that I was catching him. And what was interesting is I was catching him way faster than I was catching Carson. I don't know when Carson pitted on that last sequence, but it took me 15, 20 laps just to get to Carson back to second. And at that point, there was a key moment in the racetrack, and Gluck talked about this because I mentioned it after the race. That track went through a very, very interesting and weird transatlantic.

position at the end where it pinned us all to the bottom. So what happens is, is, you know, we, this happens at tire test a lot, is that when you go and you do testing with three or four cars, they all run one lane, one lane around the racetrack. And if you get out of that lane, it's like riding on ice because essentially what happens is the tire turns to this dust material, right? It doesn't, it doesn't chunk up in rubber like. like the old Goodyear tires used to do. This one has just, it's just like a, the rubber turns into the finest cheese grater type dust that you could imagine.

Well, as we make corners around the racetrack, the dust, you know, it goes from where that lane is that you're racing, the dust starts collecting about a half a car width wider than the lane you're running. So just imagine like the air or whatever the car is just pushing that dust to the right. Well, evidently, when cars came out from their green flag sequence on the last, you know, with 50 to go, everybody went right to the bottom. And what that ended up doing is that it created this dust on the racetrack from the middle lane all the way of the top. And then when people would go up there to make a pass or whatever, they'd realize, whoa, way less, this is way less, group up here. When really all that needed to happen is you needed about five to six cars

running up there to keep that thing cleaned off. Keep the dust out of the, out of the next lane in the next lane. And on restarts, that's why you can see that we run two and three wide is that when we go under caution, we're cleaning up all the rubber, all the dust that's on the track that might be up high or in the middle. We clean that all off. And then as the tire start wearing, then it's wherever this cars are running for the most part then the next lane up on the right is the one that's got the dust in it and you really can't see it too much on TV

it's filling in the pores of the racetrack well I came out so late in that run that I realized pretty quickly I cannot move off the bottom I mean I'm approaching much slower cars but I can't the minute I try to

just go a little bit to the right of them. I'm in this fuzz, this dust, and I lose a half a second. So me, just like the rest of the 38 guys, pinned ourselves all the way to the bottom, and nobody could move that final run. There was only three cars up there cleaning off the top lane. The 48 that had damage, the 66 that was slow in the 44.

Those are the only three that were running up there, and that wasn't enough to overcome the other 35. cars that was throwing the dust in that second lane. So with that being said, is it actually important in these races to have, you know, five to eight cars who are considerably off the pace that are cleaning second lines for you guys? It did. It would have at Nashville. It certainly would have made a difference in passing.

And that's, you know, where I think people were going to judge this race in the gluck pole. And, you know, it's, I thought for the first part of the race, the racing was good. man, I don't know what was up with the tire that, I mean, we just had no fall off whatsoever. You could run your fastest lap on lap 15 or something. We got to put more grip or softer compound at that racetrack to get some fall off because that is why the racing was so good at the end of the stages. And so I think people are going to view this race maybe critically. because once we got to the last 80-90 laps,

I mean, there just wasn't much passing. And really there wasn't much passing until 50 laps into a run. That's when we got to the end of the stage one, stage two, where there was actually a battle between me and the 12 and the 24 and the 45, 19, is that it took 60 laps on tires for them to actually start falling.

off. And so we need that process to happen sooner, so we have that racing for the entire run, not just at the very, very end right before we're about to stop. Which, sorry, which is, that's the thing with like the Martinsville tire and the

Phoenix tire is that they're soft enough, but they don't really, you don't start to see the disparity in car speed throughout the field. Like, if you look at all of our lap times, right, and you see the graphs in the bus, they're all right there on top of each other.

And then at the very end of the runs, you'll start to see, you know, cars are running slow. Their lines are up here. Cars are running fast. Their lines are down here. And you start to see this disparity. That's when all the passing happens. You just, you got to get that happening sooner.

So we have passing throughout a run. Because right now, I mean, at Nashville, I didn't even try to pass the 19 for 30 laps. because I just knew I'm not going to be able there's not enough speed between the two of our cars for me to go up there and challenge them

I'm just going to go up there burn up my shit and then somebody's going to come catch me so it's just it needs to happen sooner and back to your point all I was doing is confirming

you're right that that's why you need slow cars in the field is to keep this thing cleaned up a little bit what did I ask you Danny on what you thought the good race poll would be 63%

That's what I think. Sitting at 67 right now. That's right between Jeff and Jordan. That's right between them. I think Jordan had 71. 64 and 71. I think that's probably a fair number. Do you want these tires to consistently

keep falling off? Just keep falling off, which you've got to have tire wear to do that. Right now it seemed like heat was the biggest issue in the Nashville tire. Once you got it to a certain temperature, that's when it would start falling off. But you've got to have rubber falling off of it.

You know, you've got to have, you know, the tire needs to wear out. Yeah. Does the Nashville's track surface have something to do with this? Like, what's the difference between concrete and asphalt? Well, they can build a tire. We know that they're capable building tires that, and they tried.

They put a new left side on. this week for Nashville that had more grip, but it just didn't wear out. Like it just gave us all extra grip and we all ran faster, but it didn't, it didn't wear out. And I was very optimistic that, oh, good, we're going to have a softer left side. It's going to wear out. It's going to create disparity in speed of cars, but it just never did. It just made us faster throughout the entire run. and it not till the last 10 laps of a run right before you're out of gas,

that it start to split the field and show who was good, who was not. You said you were losing rear grip. Was that with the change in going to night or what was up with your car? A little bit of both. I thought that we'd certainly lost the balance of our car as the night went on. You know, pit road is so cut throat nowadays and, you know, trying to get fuel in the car. like, you know, to put in, you know, to make a bigger adjustment, you know, you got to put a wedge

in. And, you know, the teams just don't, are trying not to do that at all costs just because it does slow the pit stop down. But I feel like that's probably what we needed to, to make our car, you know, to keep up with the racetrack and how it was changing through the night. But we, you know, we just, I think the 12 was really good. And I think that we lost a little bit of our luster. from earlier in the race. And in order to pass him, you've got to be considerably better, right? Yeah, especially if it's all pinned to the bottom. I mean, good luck.

But, you know, he was enough better than us in the long run. I'm not sure a wedge wrench would have fixed it. But it would have been interesting to see. But I just thought that he was so much better than everyone else, especially in the long run. because, I mean, I was giving it all I had behind them. When the two of us kind of pulled away from the pack there in that final stage, I mean, that's what I had.

I mean, there was nothing. I wasn't leaving anything left in the tank. I wanted to stay close enough to him to give my team an opportunity to maybe jump him on pit road or something. But as that last 15, 10 laps of the run went on, he just pulled away and solidified his win. The big, the other train point was the two tires that they chose, is that this an advantage of you need track position so you can roll a dice whereas if you're the leader like you're not going to roll a dice with that move?

Yeah. Yeah. So that's, you know, that's the advantage of having tires that don't fall off much. It does open up strategy a little bit, but it just becomes more of a track position type race. So yeah, we don't, as we're up front, you know, most of the day, we're not going to put two tires on it. There's no advantage for us to gain track position. So we don't need the two tires. We'd rather have four. and then that opens up possibilities for two, maybe if you have a quick caution or something like that. So I think when you're not up front, it's an option for you. And I think that they expose pretty quickly that track position superseded any kind of tire advantage that you might have.

Does your team recognize that though? Like when you're a car that's up front, you're going to come down and put four tires on no matter what. But does Gail recognize that, hey, this 12 car or whoever might just throw two on? and now all of a sudden we're going to lose control of this race? I think that they consider it, but I think they're banking on that we're strong, and we're showing enough strong speed that if we had what we thought was the best car at the beginning of the race,

you put us on four right behind the guys that hadn't, it was not alerting them, you know, while they're running wherever they're running, you know, eighth, tenth, I don't even know. He was seventh, I think. Okay, so if they're running there, It's not jumping off the page at them that, you know, if that guy gets out front, he might be, you know, way fat. No, I think they're just thinking, let's just keep four tires on the fastest car and see what happens.

Carson Hosevar and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. made some contact on lap 106. Hosevar sent Ricky up in the wall, ended his day. But some disagreements, it seems like, on what could have been done to avoid this? Yeah, I didn't quite understand. Carson's reasoning for saying that he thought maybe Ricky could have given him a break because of the run he had. That's an interesting take. He ran into the back of Ricky, so he wasn't ever inside of Ricky that I could tell.

And Ricky was ahead of him and was making a normal arc into the corner. so Ricky would have had no opportunity to even if even if he wanted to give the 77 the bottom lane which you don't want to do nobody's giving anyone anything I that he didn't give it you know Ricky's spotter a chance nothing because he just dove it in there and said I think there might be a hole no there wasn't oh oh oh well like I just think that that's I think the Amazon guys described this perfectly. Like when I listened to the post race, I thought they just did a phenomenal job of saying, you know, and Carl said he's like, eventually there'll be a price. You're going to be running really well.

And these guys are just not, you know, and Ricky will be, you can take this to the book. Ricky Stenhouse will absolutely wreck Carson Host for sometime in the near future. That's just a fact. I would, I'd put this week,

salary on it. I'm not kidding you. He, you know, he ain't going to punch him in the face, but he will absolutely wreck him. But, you know, because Ricky's that kind of guy that he's going to feed into what people say. He's going to get him. And, you know, he'll just suddenly, he'll make sure you know, if you're Carson, just know that it's coming. So don't, you know, don't be surprised. We've got some road courses coming up too. Yeah, but road courses, whatever. Like, you want to do it when it hurts them.

Like when it hurts their feelings, if you're running 20th, it's like, eh, you know, you know, we were going to finish 15th today, but instead we got crashed. It's just, it's coming. There's, I have, there's nothing I'm more confident of right now other than Jordan having a baby and Ricky wrecking Carson. I just feel as though that's inevitable.

I don't think that there's anything that Carson will say. And especially, this is where Amazon did a really good job of their analysts. I shouldn't say. Their analysts said, Carson had an opportunity to be empathetic to Ricky Stenhouse, who he just wrecked in an interview. And he chose not to and say, well, you know, he could have got me a break, I guess. It's like, hold on, this guy is wrecked on the trailer and you're telling him he should have cut you a break.

It just, it's going to come back to him. And I know we've said this a billion times. Listen, Carson hasn't done anything to me yet that has been egregious, but I guarantee you I will get him. If he does, I'm going to get him because he has gotten a lot of people and they haven't done anything about it. And you, you know, we saw with Ross eventually I was like, oh, I'm done. I'm done screwing around with this guy and I'm going to have to do something. And even to this day, I feel like, God, I didn't do enough. But it was, it was enough to get the point across and it was enough to

then get some meaningful dialogue between us to where like, man, where are we at? How can we, when's this going to stop? You know? And so at that point, you know, while it, you may think it's cool to be the tough guy and you want to just put on this persona of someone that's, was one of the most popular drivers in our sport because he was an intimidator. You're, you're not that guy. And so you just, this is a different type of racing nowadays. Um, you just, this is, It's not the best strategy, especially as good as he's running. And, and again, he hasn't done anything to me. I actually was very complimentary of him at Charlotte.

I thought when he was racing me and William, I was expecting. And like my spotter, he's like, the 77s around. Just be careful. Right. But even after this race, you guys finished second and third. You got out of the car, gave him a thumbs up. I thought he did a great. I mean, I didn't see that he ricked rec.

He, I said that wrong. I said it wrong. It's not what I meant. It's not what I meant. I didn't see that he wrecked Ricky. It's just they go together. It's, it's, it's, they just go together. And so I didn't know, but I know that once he's been up front, I haven't seen him do anything.

yet that's been like really stupid. He usually does that stuff when he's in the middle of the pack, not really at the front. But again, we can sit here and talk about it at all, but it's up to the drivers to self-police it, and I'm very, very confident that Ricky will self-police this one.

Hey, it's Dale Jr. Did you know that we've got brand new merch from our Star, Stripes, and Beers Collection available now? We've got tanks, teas, beach towels, and more just in time for summer. check it all out at shop.dirtymomedia.com. What about Corey Heim's Day?

I didn't get to see it much. P-13 until you had the mistake. Yeah, that's one that you just... I guarantee you, Corey wishes he had back because it's like... It's just not worth it. I don't know if the spotter's calling clear or not. The spotter told him Brad was out there.

He did. Corey said he thought he had it and didn't. Yeah, I just... I trust it. spotter. They got a better view of it than you do and if they're continuing, you know, spotters try to cut things really, really close, but usually if they're saying they're there, they're there, you know, and yeah, you just got to, you got to trust them a little bit more. And I know everyone wants to cut it so closely, but I'm looking there. He's in the dominant lane. The six is not

going to go back by him more than likely. Just run a good one and two on the bottom. You'll, you'll clear. Certainly, I bet he wishes he had it back. But last year he drove to the top, I think 11. He drove to 11th from the back before he got, I think he got spun at the end of that race. He was part of the whole five overtime massacre at the end. So another great run by him. And really the whole 2311 group, I thought everyone, you know, Bubba battled back.

the 45 had issues and they were able to battle back to a top 10. So it was good. I thought all the cars had very capable speed. Riley, I think, finished in the low 20s, which is kind of better than what his average has been. And he's slowly but surely getting better. And I think he's shown over the last few weeks he's got, his speed is getting a little bit better. Speaking of which, yeah, Shane, right? Is that where you're going?

No, it wasn't. Where are you going? I was going to say, speaking of battling back, like, I know it was a dominant race by Blaney, but a lot of drivers that finished in the top 10 had issues and were able to fight their way back and get into, you know, top 10 finishes. Travis's favorite driver. Who's that? Kyle Larson.

I said that facetious. Yeah. He's not Travis's his favorite driver. So we're in the bus and Kyle was caught up in that, I think the Bowman, Crackson, Rec. And I just go like, hell yes or something. And they all look and they go, what? I go, Larson's in that. They're like, I'm celebrating if he does bad.

I have one driver that I root for. I don't think we need to ask. Jared, though. Is it because you see him as like competition? He's a competition out of the way. Not because you dislike him. You're just like, well, that's a good car. That's a competitor out.

Yeah. I get that. That's fair. You're allowed to do that. Yeah, it's just, there were some good days, some good guys that battled back, some solid finishes by drivers,

especially with that long Green Flag run, it kind of, you know, you started to see, you know, Kyle Larson battled back to the top 10, I believe it was. Did he have damage, or did he just kind of get in a bunch of stuff? I think he got in a much stuff,

and then he was caught up in that wreck, but no true damage. But Bell also, Bell wasn't wrecked? You know what's so interesting about Bell, I think every time that he gets in a wreck, he ends up faster after the wreck. And it's usually when he has rear damage. So I don't know what they do to fix it, but they seem to make his car faster.

Nobody wants their car torn up, so it's not like it. But they never really do enough damage to slow his car down. I remember, gosh, maybe it was it, Texas a few years ago, and he had some rear damage. It was significant, but he just kept going as fast as he was before. This race solidified the top 32 drivers who are locked in now for the real bracket challenge that will begin in a few weeks. We were shooting the shit about this before the show started, and we don't really like how this locks the driver's in, right? You want to do it by points? Absolutely.

to explain to our listeners. So the bracket challenge is going to start during the T&T portion of our schedule, which happens in three weeks. We've got three more prime races. Right. So these last three races on prime, it will be seeding, you know,

they're going to take your finishes and seed you. Well, that's not the right way. I understand why they did it, but I didn't think they, thought this through, that now you're going to have two sets of standings, a seating and a point. And if you go by points, we have a great enough sample size now that you can create what is a favorite and what is an upset. Where if let's just let's just pretend I had I finished

last for the next three weeks. So I'll be the 30 second seed and like, I don't know, just throw out a name. Uh, Byron. No, he's saying like, like, like, like, so, at the back. Who barely got in? Michael McDowell. Okay, Michael McDow could be the number one

seed, now I'm going to be the lowest seat. Yeah. Well, how are you going to promote that there's an upset here?

And the problem is they're not. The TV people who have a brain are going to say, well, Denny's going to be favored at, let's just say Dover.

Dene's going to be favored at Dover versus McDowell. And people are going to look and say, why is he, why would he be favored? He's the 32nd seat. The other guy is the number one seat.

It's because you shrunk the sample size up to three races. And it's just they needed to do by points, make it very simple. And, and. Now that right there is the biggest, is the biggest detriment to it all, right? Because the bracket challenge has, I think it still does, an opportunity to bring non-NASCAR people into like the NASCAR world

through maybe betting or whatever. Correct. You see Michael McDowell, the one seat. Yeah, but your casuals who haven't been watching doesn't know that the 11, the 24, the 5, the 20, those are the real favorites. Those are the real one, two, three, four seeds. Not whoever just runs good in these couple races.

And it's not runs good. Like they could, you know, anything could happen. You could have Byron blow two straight engines and next he knows he's a 30 C. Yes, now you got odds that the... They f***ed that up. that's not the way this was supposed to go. We literally handed them a perfect.

They just, they didn't think this through for sure. And they could have used these next three races to just like show the standings and use that to promote it. Yes. And then you truly then have to where anybody between seeds one and 16, there are the favorites over the 17 through 32 because there's, been 12 you know 13 races that show that's why that that is a favorite and that's an underdog Travis is not too late Dale's involved in this it's going to twit it's going to the ship sailed on

this season yeah it's going to disorganize the bracket so much that it's going to cause it's just going to cause too many false narratives there was enough narratives to be had on this but oh my gosh Did you see the 30 seed beat the second seed this week? Yeah, but like in real points, the 30 seed is second in points, and the second seed is 30th in points. It's not really an upset. There's been some media members saying that if they seem like the, they feel like the drivers don't care.

Do you think it's just because they don't know how it's going to go in? As it started, yeah. Once that starts, they'll care. Yes, that's what I believe. I believe that you will get buying from the drivers. I think they do care about, you know, the money side of it. and the pride of it. I do think that this is going to create some great opportunities for TV to tune in on a battle for 18th that they normally would not care about.

And trust me, those two drivers will know who they're matched up against. I think once the driver... If we go to a road course, suddenly, I'm telling you, I think, I'm going to tell Gayle, beat that guy. You know, we... I ain't going to win. I just got to beat that guy. I just want to beat that guy. You know, where we think, well, maybe we'll stay out and get three stage points here.

Hell no, I want to do whatever I got here to beat that guy. So, we're going to care. Once the drivers are reminded in a few weeks that this is for real, and they're racing for some real money and not a couple tumblers from the closet, they'll be into it. But no SVG. No SVG, and that's key. and I mean I think that the two, the races that they have on the bracket,

I don't know. They just... Atlanta, Chicago, Sonoma, Dover, N.D. I get it. It sucks for me, and I'm way biased on this, so take this with a grain of salt. But you're going to see more likely battles, if you put it on a normal oval,

where road courses, we're going to get so strung out, these guys probably won't have an opportunity to really, battle each other down to the finish because they're in a head-to-head. Like on an oval, the track's only so big. You're always going to have restarts right next to the person. I just think that it's, I don't know, I wish I was in charge of this thing, but I'm not. And I don't want that responsibility. Oh, we got anything else on Nashville before we move on to some off-track news?

Not really. A third consecutive sellout of Nashville. great job by the promotion team there at that track. Did a great job. Had great weather. That really, really matters when it comes down to it. And not only that, but you've got to create a fun atmosphere as well. So everything seemed to be good there.

Is traffic still a pain in the ass there? It seemed like it based on... Yeah, there's just not many avenues in and out. luckily for us and I saw that that Jeff was mentioned that like drivers

got the hell out of that as soon as the race was over like everyone jetted we did have we did like have this back road to the airport that they had blocked off for us but typically what

the reason that drivers will haul ass out of race tracks is where is tracks where traffic is horrible they're trying to beat the fans to their cars. Speaking of your race, though, how hot was it for you?

Because your water... I got hot. Your water system broke and... I had nothing. So I don't wear cool suits normally unless it's like blistering hot. So no cool suit. I had no water. I had no helmet fan.

So I didn't have any aspects of cooling or drinking for... I lost my drink probably 150. 50 laps in. You lost your drink? Yeah, so I run this camelback system, but it was like the vent was clogged. I gave up on it, but they would just toss a little water bottle in at the pit stop, but that didn't last very long at all. And then my helmet hose fell off again.

It fell off during practice, fell off during race. So I lost all aspects of cooling. So the last part of the race, really the last hundred, I had to run my visor up just to get some sort of air. I got hot. We could see you staring again. Could you? They said my eyes are crazy. They are.

I have a crazy eyes. Sorry. That's how I focus on the track. I don't know. I probably have always done it ever since I was a kid. Once you get into a way of concentrating or looking or whatever, you know, that's my resting space for driving. I think it's kind of cool, especially with the visor up, you could see better to just show like how intense, like, you have to be as a drive. and like you could see your eyes glanced down and then back up real fast and just I think it shows

just what you guys are dealing with. A lot of stuff going on, no doubt about it. And yeah, it's it that that camera POV was you know certainly in my face. And so you could see it's probably not my best look. But it's it does give a good perspective of kind of what you know how I'm focused, where I'm focused and the intensity of going out there and driving. 750 horsepower is quote-unquote on the table per Alton Sawyer. You know, I mentioned it in the media center, and I heard a lot of drivers say, well, that's not enough. I think we need to just take whatever they're willing to give us and shut up and move on. Because six, it will absolutely be better than 670, which we currently have.

Is it going to be the total game changer? It will not, but there's no question. It will make it better. I don't know it could be 5% better. It could be 10% better. It will create more tire fall off. It will create where setups will matter more, and it will create where drivers matter more.

And again, it could be 5%, it could be 10, but it's better than the, let's say today is 0%. It would be better than what we have right now. So I am advocating for the engine builders to give us all that they can economically. You know, there's going to be a number where they say, okay, we don't have to change a lot in our engines if we stay under blank horsepower. That's the number that they're going to give us, truthfully. I just hope it's as much as they can, you know, 800 would be, okay. I know it's just 50 more than 750, but it's still a little bit more, right?

And so I just think that it sounds like 750 is kind of where they're going to go back to, which is an absolute win for the fans. It's a win for the drivers. While it's a small win, it's still in the right direction, so we don't need a poo on it. Chris Bushers' L1 penalty to the 17 team. has been reduced. Now just 30 championship driver in team points. It was 60.

Crew chief serves to race suspension, reduced to 75,000, cut in half, more or less. Yeah, they reduced it. And I think the explanation that the appeals panel said is that it wasn't truly defined how much they could alter it. Like, something like that. I think that they put out a statement saying,

the reason we reduced it is because the rulebook was a little ambiguous on how much you could mess with it. And, you know, so they said they definitely did something they shouldn't. It's just we don't know to what egregious extent they did. Speaking of getting caught, Almondinger got this car got pulled back into tech before. How often does that happen where the NASCAR C-E? are, and they pull you back in. Yeah. Every now and then.

You know, what they're, what I love about the spin of all this stuff is like, I listen to, maybe media members talk about, well, yeah, there was no real intent there. Listen, everyone, when you get caught doing something, you absolutely have intent. You have an intent to make your car faster. It might make it a hundredth faster or a tenth, there's always intent. The RFK cars, it's not like, oh, we just made a terrible mistake. It was a process. No, there's always intent.

And when you go through inspection at Nashville, you then the team is trying to, make their car better after tech because tech's over with you know until until post race you know that the major tech so NASCAR officials then are watching you as you are rolling it when you're done through tech and you rolled out the pit road there's a minute or two where NASCAR officials are keeping an eye on are you fiddling with this thing after we just looked it over and they got caught fiddling. That's the basic premise of it. And what they were trying to do was make their car faster.

There's no other explanation. They can try to spend it any way they want, but they tried to mess with their car after it was inspection. Obviously, they messed with it in an area that was illegal. Are teams fiddling

often after inspection? And then this is just one that got caught, but like maybe a lot. Don't get caught? Yes. I don't know how much. I don't know how often. But it wasn't anything that it was like, oh my God, did you see what they did? That's not the reaction because it's like, okay, they got caught.

Right. After being around AP for the weekend, my conspiracy in me thinks that maybe Almonddinger's team did it last week at Charlotte, similar tracks. And they were fast. I said it You said it The last bit in off-track news We have Is that Jim France was looking to

Put one of his Emsa drivers in a spire car for Sonoma So more or less Fun day a race car Trying to do it with Hendrick Originally Originally right They can't fill five cars

Yeah So then it was going to be, I think, a Hendrick-inspire collaboration. What I kind of understand is that, hey, we can't do it, but they can, and we have a relationship with them. I mean, I really can't speak on this because obviously the lawsuit and lawyers are very, very sensitive to this stuff right now. And anything that you can and will be said will be used against you in the court of law. So I don't know. I can tell you as a carner, I fought very, very hardly

and opposed the fact that the France family could own charters. I think that is just wildly conflict of interest, and we saw it come to a head in IndyCar, right? But the difference is that you heard Roger Penske say, we're going to get out of competition. I think we need to get a third party to do that. I think that's the right step to do.

Rogers trying to do the right thing. I think, you know, when you own the series, the track, and a team, that is just way too much. There should be laws against it, truthfully. And, you know, you're doing this, you know, you do it because you say you love the sport or whatever it might be. It's just too much. I think regardless of whether intent is behind it or not, I just believe that it's, it's, it's a bad look and you're not going to stop and I think the tear down talked about this really well

that you're just not going to stop the narrative of like well did that caution help them or not like you just it's just not the right thing to do and so I was heavily heavily heavily opposed to this but they just pushed it on through but it doesn't seem like it's going to happen now so and it shouldn't it shouldn't happen now shouldn't happen in the future anything like that. So yeah, it just, again, but it just draws so many questions, just why'd they go back to Chevrolet?

Why'd they go back to Hendrick again? Like, it's just showing too much, Travis, what's the word? It's bad optics. It's favoritism. It keeps going. It looks that way that like, how can you not perceive favoritism

when you keep going back to the same manufacturer? same team over and over to partner with. It just looks bad. Got to stop it. Anything else this week? What do you got going on now that you're on baby watch for the foreseeable future? I'm on schedule right now. My work week is exactly as it has been until, you know, we have the fire drill.

You can't pull the, I'm busy, I got a baby card yet. I could do that. I could call for maternity leave, I think, especially nowadays. I could pull that card, but I'm not going to, I'm a worker. I'm just glad we got the podcast and I was weird. Everyone's asking me if you're going to race. I'm like, what about the podcast guys? I know.

And if Ryan Cherich's was our filling or what? Maybe. We had the old adjustable belts in this week. So, luckily we didn't need them and hopefully we won't need them next week. How's Molly and Taylor? Are they ready? They're all ready. Ready to go.

Who's more excited? Molly. Not even close. Not close. Taylor's still worried if she's going to share a name of some sort with her brother. I know. Taylor cares about everything that is not important. I got a review here from Get Motivated 1994.

Still can't find it in myself. to cheer for you on Sundays, but I love the podcast. I've been listening for the past year or so, and I'm always interested to hear your take. Yeah, we'll appreciate that. Hey, one thing that I did notice is that, obviously I got booed pretty heavily in intros. That's not anything new.

But when I did the big screen interview, the guy, did you hear this, see this? So he was like, you know, he was talking about, you know, good luck in the race. You know, you got your 700th here. and you got a baby coming. He's like, come on, folks, let's hear it for Denny and everything he's got going on.

And there was a big cheer. And I was like, oh, thank you. Like, even if you booed me in the intros, like you still acknowledge the moment that, you know, this is going to be a big couple days. And, you know, it was. It meant a lot to me to hear those cheers. And I appreciate those that did that in the stands

when they said that. I think there's way more people now booing you because it's fun and you're like the guy to boo versus people like actually like disliking you, you know? Yeah. A couple of years ago, I think it was different. But I think now it's changed. What does 700 career starts mean to you? You know, what it, you know what the most proud thing I am of the 700 starts is that in my 7th, I had a chance to win. And I guess, you know, I, you know, was able to tie Jeff Gordon in the best finish for someone with 700 starts. He finished third. I ended up finishing third.

But still being able to win after 700, which is three years, or which is 20 years basically of racing. That means a lot. You know, usually by this time, you know, the performance starts to, to go. away and um you know usually you're at the tail tail end and when i say the tail end it's like your performance is tailing off and i just don't feel that way i feel as strong as ever and i really wanted to win on 700 um will i be around to see 800 i don't think so um i think that that's probably closing i don't know we'll see we'll see but i it should I've got to stay at this current level. The minute I feel like it's slipping, I'm out of here.

Well, so like, there's got to be some intentionality to that, right, that you're still competitive on Start 700. Like, you're not waking up every day. I mean, like, well, I hope I'm still good today, right? Like, you're putting in work to be competitive at 700. Like, what is the one thing that you look at? You're like, man, I'm really glad I've stuck to this or like, I don't know. it's a good question

for Tom Brady to play as long as he did he looks back at his preparation and all that right I think my best attribute is still willing to learn even 20 years in every time I go back to her track

I'm going to go race at Michigan this weekend right and it's probably going to be my 30 something start there I'm going to go there with some sort of knowledge this weekend that I didn't

know the previous 34 times I was there. Like I'm going to learn something this week that I'm going to go there with a new approach, a new mindset, a new technique, something that I hadn't done before. And so it's just continually to want to learn. I definitely feel like I'm a student of the game. I learn from the best. There's a lot of really great drivers out there, both, older and younger that I watch and I learn from and continue to hone my craft after.

You know, if I see they're better than me at a certain track and they're consistently better than me, I'm studying it and I'm figuring out how can I adapt my style to be more like that? I'm not going to copy it, but I'm going to take something from that and add it to my repertoire of driving. So I just, that's what I love about it and why I think I've had success for so long, is that I'm always learning and I love the process that it takes to be good at it. Well, that's one thing I found interesting yesterday being around you is before the race, you're studying and you're like, man, my restarts last year.

And like you were folks, like hours before and you're working on, you know, how to get better for the race coming up and your restarts when you had the lead were phenomenal. Yeah. I'm not sure what our retention rate was this week. You were number two on restarts. Yeah, I felt pretty strong with them. Yeah, I learned some things. That was part of the things I came to Nashville with a mindset of like,

okay, if I go back to there with one of the fastest cars again, how could I improve? Now, last year I was going to win the race. If it didn't go 30 laps over in overtime, I was going to win the race. But there's still, like, how can I dominate? How can I lead more laps? How can I give myself more of a buffer to winning the race? Give myself a greater percentage chance of winning.

And that is, well, don't cough up for spots on restart, you know, because then it took me another 80 laps to get those back. All those things is, you know, when I came into the weekend looking at of that, even though I was fast. And it's very easy, I think, as a driver and this team, to just look at your result and say, oh, well, we won the race this weekend. We're all good.

We go back there. We should win again. No, no, no. I changed my approach. The team changes approach with every time we go back, we're fine-tuning. Correction, you're 8th on a restart, but still good. Which is better than my average. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a good anecdote, Travis. We were sitting on the bus yesterday, and Jordan called you to wish you good luck, and the phone rang. And at the same time, you were like, oh, no. And then when you hung up, Austin was like, what was wrong? You're like, my restarts last year sucked. Like, oh, had nothing to do with, you know, that this phone call might be about having.

I'm working to the very last minute. You're in the bus every week. Until I have to go out there, I mean, they're knocking on the door where we got to go. Austin said like 20 times, hey, we got to go. Yeah. I just always am focused on it. Remember, leave a five-star review on Apple. If you listen on Spotify, leave a comment.

And then on YouTube, hit the subscribe button and also leave a comment next week. We're at Michigan, 2 p.m. Eastern on Prime. We said it last week. And at the time, I didn't get to rewatch the Charlotte race before we came in here. But I saw enough. I did rewatch it. and then I saw quite a bit of the highlights. Amazon Prime is just doing a absolutely fantastic job.

And some of it is their production, but they are investing in our sport beyond just putting it on their network. That is the difference that I've seen with them is that, yes, their on-air talent is exceptional from the people they have sitting there, Corey LaJoy, Carl Edwards, Daniel Trotta, like them at the,

at the table or the fans there, the studio. Like, they're just doing a really, really, really good job. And so thank you to Prime for not only investing in the media rights deal, but also investing in the sport beyond that and pushing it and spending the money to put on a professional production. So thank you.