Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin - Phoenix: Tires Wearing, More Horsepower… Old School NASCAR is Back

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Denny Hamlin earns his first top-five finish of the season in Phoenix, but the car still wasn’t as fast as Christopher Bell and Ryan Blaney. Denny explains why they had the best car in November but didn’t have that same speed this time around. He admits he’s checking the points after every race, but he isn’t worried yet because the season is still long. Sunday’s race featured more horsepower, failing tires, and racing that felt like old-school NASCAR. Denny explains why Goodyear isn’t to blame for the tire issues and why the teams may have pushed things too far. The guys also debate the classic strategy question once again: two tires or four? Plus, Denny is happy that “win and you’re in” is gone; they discuss whether Chase Briscoe’s title hopes are already in trouble, preview why Darlington could turn into complete chaos, and Denny reveals he’s going fishing at Celine Dion’s later this week. Real fans wear Dirty Mo. Hit the link and join the crew.👇 https://shop.dirtymomedia.com/ 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.

When he said the call is black for the last run, I looked up. And I said, I said, oh, Travis going to shake his head at this one. I knew, I knew you were going to have an opinion of that, especially when it came out like 12th or 11th. 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 to drink and drink 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 Detramental on location here in Phoenix. Post Phoenix, 26. I'm Denny Hamlin. I drive the Bob's discount furniture car this weekend. Actually had a, had a appearance with them on Saturday. It's quite nice. Jared, you want to introduce yourself? I'm red vest. Jared, red vest number 311. That's track on the weekends. Hey, I go ahead, Travis. You introduce yourself and then I got something down. I'm producer Travis with a camera this week. Hey. Pros of on location

recordings, Trav gets a webcam. Yeah. Denny at that Bob's appearance. I heard a young there was a story of a young fan coming up to you, wanted to throw up the 11th with you. He did.

And I saw him, I saw his knuckles like this when he was holding him down. They were like this and I'm like, surely he's not going to you know, do the birds. And he did. I mean, he was probably, he's Molly's age. I don't know.

Yeah, I felt like, you know, nine-ish, maybe. But I was like, how about I give you these and you do whatever you want to do? So, yeah, that was a, I like it. His parents were just like, well, it's like, all right, that's cool. I like it. He's a good fan. Yeah. What can we do? Yeah.

How's so you guys' morning going out there? You know, I got to sleep in an extra 30 minutes compared to where we've been over the last few days. Bringing the baby out here is just he's going to get up when it's, you know, as soon as there's a crack of sunlight, he's up. he's up so um not ideal but everything's going good we're you know we're we made it we we have a place to stay which is more than what we had on friday night so you know things are things are looking up so i wasn't with you we got to we got to give the listeners this this story so land in london scottesdale late friday you go to the air you go to what your presumed air bn bn is or your rental house.

Yeah. Well, I always do an Airbnb on these, on the Vegas, Phoenix kind of the duo there because it's just, I like to stay out. So I do, I went to, I booked a place and I was like, you know what? I felt like I'd been downgrading our places to stay over the last few years. And I'm like, you know, we've got to get back to where we were. So I reserved this really, really nice place. and I knew it was nice because you had to have a gate code to get in and to like into the street.

Well, we get there and it's like really dark and I'm checking my app and it says, you know, it says booked, reserved, paid, all that. But I was like, man, it's weird. I usually get chicken instructions by now and I looked at my phone like, hey, we're here to check in. just nothing. House is really dark. I hit the ring doorbell camera. Nothing. Finally, this couple comes out and's like,

what are you doing here? We're like, we're here to check in. Like, no, no, you're not. You're not staying here. I said, well, I mean, it says I am. And they're like, well, where did all this stuff comes from. On their front porch was all this baby stuff that we had ordered through the app to be delivered to the house, right? So they're like, well, we were, we're just going to give

away all this baby stuff to our neighbors because, like, we don't know why this stuff is on our front porch. And I'm like, well, I'm just confused. Well, how am I not here if it says I'm just to be here? They're like, well, what's your address? I said, here's the address. Look, isn't this the house that we're in and they were just they were not the friendliest the first five minutes and then I think they understood you know we had kids I think that they saw it just me and Austin on the front porch and we're like who are these kids coming in here trying to you know they think that they VRBOed you know a $500 for the week house and they're like well what'd you pay for this I'm like I told them and they're like oh okay okay

Um, well, you got, you got scammed. I said, well, okay, what do I do now? So we rushed, Austin had a contact out here, um, to one of the rental places. He got in touch with the owner of the rental place. He's like, I got this one place that's still available. So we ran, you know, we had, we sent the family off to go get pizza while we looked around, had a few places and came upon where we're at. I'm in the Casita of the new place. But you ordered through the website, right? Yes. Yes.

I just saw an email from VRBO says, how is your checking experience? Not great. Oh. And now it's just got something for my accountant says, VRBO wants to talk. They want, can you call now? No.

Okay. All right. So that was a non-ideal way to start the trip on Friday. No. Hey, we got a top five out of it on Sunday, though. Sunday was an okay day. Not our magic stuff, not our stuff. I have a question about that.

How does JGR put out some fast cars? Your car last year was fast. It's basically the same temperature, same tires. How do you go from having the, without a doubt, best car in November to a car that's kind of a fifth place car that you had to, you know, do your best with? Yeah. I mean, there's lots of reasons, but to oversimplify it, I think that, you know, we do have additional horsepower. So the speed in which you're entering the corners are different. therefore the amount of brake that you use on corner entry is now different because you've got to get the car slowed down.

This car is still only going to make the certain minimum speed through the middle of the corner. So how you get there is a little different. And also when we were wildly successful last fall, I mean, the teammates take that and they tweak on it and they, you know, feel like they can make it a little better here and there. and then, you know, next to you know, we're where we're at. And, you know, I don't know. I thought that the 20 was better. The 12 was better. Probably better.

But that was it, really. I thought us, we were kind of next in line with the 54. The 19 was strong when he was there. But, you know, I felt comfortable that we were a little better than the 19 and the 15. Not by much, by a little bit. So we were just kind of that next tier. But the 20 was a standout, I thought. You had your shots at the league.

Did you think that if you ever got clean air, that you would be able to hold off the 20 and the 12 and the other cars? I mean, I really, I don't know that I really did have a shot many times. Like every time we were kind of, like we never got to start on the front row. You did once, but it was on two tires. But also late in late in that final stage, you're the first car, you're the first car on four tires on that restart. Bell was beside you, but you had first choice. Well, at that point, you're just, where are the cars going to wash up in turns one and two?

And unfortunately, they washed up in my lane, and he was able to go through on the bottom. So, but the previous restart was the other way around. If you saw, Bell was in front of me when we left Pitt Road. I went around the very outside, got around him and four others. So it's just a crap shoot of trying to figure out the end, which lane's not going to get jumbled up when you have cars with old tires or two tires. But, yeah, I mean, if we would have won yesterday, we would have, we would have to stole it. You know what I mean?

So I think we kind of had a status quo day for what our speed was. When you left the track, though, with the point situation that you acquired, happy leaving the track or just kind of like? What, Jared? This is what I said that same thing last night. We were sitting here on the couch watching the Hornets. I said, oh, you went from wherever you were in points to 12th, and now you're only nine points off fifth.

Yeah. It's whatever. I mean, this is, this is a marathon. Like, I don't know, it's one week. Yeah, where you jump up a lot in one week, but, and you're only, I don't know, what, less than 10 from about fifth or six. So are you not looking at this? standings week to week? I am. No, I definitely am. I mean, on the ride home, I'm looking at the

point standings. So I love it. I mean, truthfully, it's not different. The points standings are not different this year than they were last year other than for the guys that win. The difference is there's no two sets of point standing. So where are you on playoff points? All we're looking at now is regular season. So we see how tight the field is and it will continue to be tight until the next two to three weeks when tracks like Phoenix, what it does is allow people to really stack up big points. So on Super Speedways, the stage points are spread out all over the place because of, you know, cars moving back and forth. And it's hard to get stage points and win races. And so same with road courses. Like even Reddick went out, had to give up a stage just to put himself on a spot to win.

But here's like Phoenix and Vegas and these tracks coming up. up, you're going to see people's winning stages and winning races. And so there's going to be big jumps and points. And so, yeah, I think we earned 15 stage points yesterday. So that's a, that's a status quo, good day for us. Yeah, but aren't you now, you're focused on the points because you want to be in those first three spots, right? You don't think you win the championship come to chase if you're not finished in the top three. That's what I think. I definitely feel as those, the champion will come from there just from the head start they have. But I don't know.

It's been such a long time since we have run the chase, which is 10 weeks for the championship. And by far, the average finishes in the next gen era is higher than what it was back in those days. So maybe you can win it from fourth or fifth. I don't know. But the goal is to get into top three. I think if you get in the top three, you got a real shot. The tear down was talking about it last night And they said that NASCAR like you know

They mock it out and look at past years Basically if six is like the absolute Lowest you can be yeah Yep It's good I think this is this is old school NASCAR Is back you know We got you know

Long points standings here We got a little more horsepower this weekend We've got Tires that are wearing out we're making progress. I had a few emails this week because we touched on the points last week, just asking for a dumbed down version of what this new playoff format is.

So in like 60 seconds, can you give an abbreviated rundown of the point system this year? You run 26 weeks, they add up all the points, and then where are you finishing the points, one through 16 is seated, and you basically get 2,100 points if you're the point leader after 26 weeks, and you'll have 2,000 points if you're 16th. And they're incrementally in between all that spaced out. So the first will have 100 point lead over 16th, and then they run 10 weeks, add up all the points, whatever your total is, it's a champion.

Speaking of the horsepower, this was the first race that we had the additional horsepower, correct? This is the first one. Bowman Gray. I could feel it at Bowman Gray. But I definitely thought that Phoenix is one I could tell as well. The racing was much better. I thought the racing was good. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how it looked on TV.

Again, I haven't kind of downloaded the race and kind of looked at it yet, but I felt within my view that there was passing going on inside of the top five. And that's, you know, it really is hard at that racetrack. We've known Phoenix, remember the whole reason we're moving away from Phoenix is the championship races. Uh, the racing's stale there.

It's not very good. I thought from what I could see, there were comers and goers. And what I liked about it is that if your car was good, your crew chief did a good job, um, putting the right setup in, and you drove it right. you're going to drive to the front, and that's what happened. I'm going to get a little bit out of this light, by the way. Holy cow. On TV watching it, it was entertaining.

There was everything that you could want. Yeah, I agree. What contributed to all these tires going down, notably in the second stage and not really the first stage? It's the teams. We're just pushing it. We certainly know that, the more you lower the air pressure,

the faster you're going to be on the long run. And these teams just keep pushing it. So what they do is they get somewhat comfortable in practice. They run the first run of the race, see where things are. And then all of a sudden they're like, all right, well, let me take another tenth or two out of the tire. And then that's when it's that close.

Did you see Goodyear Racing's Twitter account? I did. I love it. Before we go racing, remember, the recommended tire pressure weren't guesses. They were not guesses. That's right. I love a good troll by a good year. Are you guys a team that pushes it, or is Gail pretty safe when it comes to that?

We don't see many tire blowouts from you when these other guys are. Oh. Is that the announcer jinks, Trave? Did he just, are we going to blow a tire in here this weekend? No, well, now you jinxed it. I could have couched it as a Phoenix thing. You'd now sit going forward. Gosh.

That's not a jinx. I don't believe in jinks. Well, I do. I would say. Or are you just much better at saving stuff? Yeah, I don't know. I definitely think that there's things that you can do as a driver to help the situation, especially early in a run.

but sometimes the anvil just drops on your head. Now, if you're a repeat offender, if it's your team or your driver that keeps blowing tires, and your team is screaming, well, we're not, we're not as low as, you know, it's a combination of things too. It's also, it's not just the air pressure. It's how much camber you're putting with that air pressure.

So if you want to drop your air pressure super, super, super low, just reduce the amount of camber that's in the tire. But then there's a efficiency that you lose actual grip on the short run. So again, it's the fine line. You want the camber for the short run. You want the air pressure for the long run. And you're constantly just battling those two out. How do these new variables at this race affect the two-vers-four tire calls throughout the day?

I didn't think it was that much different, Travis, rolling his eyes, I saw it. You're on camera now. You can't get away. You can't get away from it. I can tell him to edit it out. I knew. How about this? I knew this for a fact.

When he said the call is black for the last run, I looked up. I said, I said, oh, Travis going to shake his head at this one. I knew. I knew you were going to have an opinion. of that, especially when we came out like 12th or 11th. For the record, I actually tweeted, I think four is the call. Yeah. You can't predict the, you can't predict the caution.

I'll be honest with you. I don't think there was a way for us to win the race. That's why I'm just very like, eh, we finish where we finish. Because I didn't see a path to us winning. And it honestly, it got started when, we were third or second and then had that bad pit stop and went to ninth with a hundred to go. That was like, I knew that was, there was going to be really hard to win the race from that point on.

Because the reason I say that is even if, so had we stayed up front, then we got the nerve to go two tires because now we can control the front of the field. but you know when I'm running fifth or six and I take two tires okay well I'm going to restart third whatever it might be like that's not my path to winning if I take four I'm going to restart where I did the 11th or 12th it's just there wasn't a path you had to stay further up front to have the ability to make those bold calls is it also are people overreacting on Adam Stevens and the people that made the four tire call compared to last November

because I don't I don't think it's the same thing because you're racing to win this race where last year is a whole different thing you're racing against three people so people saying Adam Stevens should take two he's got all these other like it's it's not the same in my opinion and he had more laps too right yeah one's a green white checker the other one is you know we 25 we run 10 laps I think you would have 20 to go when you went Yeah, but there was another caution. Yeah, yeah. But I'm saying the first one, I think, was with 20 when they took.

And then it was like, it's not the same. Yeah, if Bell gets a good start, gets a good jump, 20 laps on tires. Now, if it was against anyone but Blaney, I think he's good. But when Blaney chose to take the two, it was like, oh, that'll be a hard one to get around. Anybody else, I think, I think Bell blows by him. Because Blaney was the second best car on the day. Exactly. How fast does Blaney's car have to be for him to have the pit stops that he had and still get up there?

Well, I mean, he's first, he's gifted what he does. You got to give credit to Blaney as well because week in, week out, he is the flagship, you know, Penske car when it comes to speed. saw some good things out of the 22 this weekend. They qualified well on the pole. They were up front, I mean, in the top three to four all day. The guy shuffled there kind of once. They got wrecked when they started getting shuffled. And it was like, I didn't think the 22 was nearly as strong as the 12.

And it kind of showed once he started getting shuffled, it was like, oh, once he loses his track position, I think this could be a free-for-all. And it seemed like, you know, there was aggressive moves going on. But I thought, you know, to get back to the point, Blaney's really, really good. And he's really good personally on these short flat tracks. And his team has got a great setup for him. I think, you know, they said over the last few years

that they've had some crucial tests that have happened, North Forksboro, Loudoun, that they've gotten to do tests and find what, how to hone in on their short track package. So they're good. He's good. He's one of the best in traffic at passing when he does have a fast car. So I knew when I saw him pull off, go down pit road, I'm thinking it's early enough. I remember thinking this is early enough to where he'll be back.

Like if it was a hundred to go, you're not going to see him again. But I knew he had enough time to make it back. And certainly there were enough cautions for him to make it back as well. So it all worked out. Joey was involved in this race. I just said started up front, won the pole, but then was involved in an incident with Ross Chastain. He'd get behind Ross Chastain,

turn Ross into a handful of other cars, ended a few of their day, and then spun out later and collected the pack. Yeah, Joey had a couple of them, but they were, I don't know, they were racing deals. So, I mean, there's contact being made, but I can, just tell you as a driver that there's when you hit the apron when you take the green and we all

see us turn left and we hit that apron our cars are bumping and we're all trying to shoot gaps right we're trying to predict where the person in front of us is going and you know all it takes is two people to zig at the same time and it looks like he kind of hooked Ross there couldn't get off of them and then the other one it seemed like um was it dinger that shot the middle on him. I think it was Dinger that shot the middle on, I think Joey was backpedaling a little bit, and it seemed like he came up when Dinger was there in the middle.

So I don't know, it just, it was a crappy end of their day, but certainly felt like, you know, as, you know, he was one of the contenders when I was looking at the end of the race, he's like, okay, he's out. You know, there was only a couple of cars that I thought would, could challenge us. You know, we're going to be in contention fast enough to actually win the race on speed. And when Joey got taken out, I was like, all right, that's one off the list.

So, I don't know. It just feels like, you know, I don't think there were any surprises from this race, right? I mean, on speed. The guys who are good here, we're good here. Bill, obviously, win over the last Tuesday. Ty Gibbs. Ty Gibbs was better than normal, right? Yeah, yeah.

But everyone else was like, Hendrick cars, I tell you what, Larson, Cliff Daniels, you got to give them credit. They take a 15th place car every Phoenix and finish in the top five with it. Do you all notice that? They're never fast. I try not to notice it. I know. I know you don't. But they just, I watched, Larson did an amazing job on restarts.

of like gaining chunks of spots like two or three caution comes out two or three caution comes out and it was like if it ever just went green like his pace his actual pace was not good um for whatever reason they've struggled to to find the pace they need in the race i thought william byron was less than exciting compared to where he's been there at that track in the past so he was kind of an underperformer compared to what I would say is the status quo Phoenix race. I guess we can talk to Chase Elliott was not good either, right? He was involved in an accident early, right, too? Yeah.

I saw he had like tape on his car or something, so. But it just seemed like Hendrick in general were not as strong as they usually were. And Penske was good. Gibbs was good. That's that's Phoenix for you. So earlier you were talking about, you know, these restarts and hoping that cars and lanes just don't wash up into you. But if Larson's getting such good restarts consistently, is he just better at reading this track and restarts and where guys are going to go? It can't just be a crapshoot, right?

Well, I think a certain amount of that is he's able to carry the car, right? I mean, he's able to get speed. But you can only do so much when your car's not good. So you can be good for a lap or two. When the chaos is going on, you can make moves to gain spots on cars that are faster than you. But after the shuffle ends, after the first two laps of restart, you know, there's no, it's not much going forward from that point. At that point, it's just defend, defend, defend. Let's get a caution.

Let's get some more restarts where I can claw this back or have some good pitch strategy. but I mean, this has been years now where, I mean, I just think about his championship year, right? It was, he was just not strong in that, in that, well, his first championship year. He was not strong at Phoenix, the worst of the four, and found a way to win, right? And then this weekend and last fall, it's just, they grind these Phoenix races out. Obviously, you don't know what's going on with Chevy being your Toyota guy, But should fans, should there be a concern with Chevy of this new body? Or is this just Chevy Phoenix and like give it another week before people start to overreact?

I think it's Chevy Phoenix, truthfully. I don't think it's the body. I think this, you know, they looked maybe a little subpar from where they were last fall. But it's really early in the season. The bodies that they have on the car are better. They did not, they did not bring out a new body that is worse. than what they had before. So it's just, just wait until Vegas.

I think at Vegas, you're going to see, you're going to see the all-around speed of the Chevy's. Speaking of the Chevy's and Team Hendrick, we didn't talk about Alex Bowman last week. He was out this week with Vertigo and Anthony Alfredo filled in for him, who was running top 10 before getting collected in that first incident with the Ghana. Yeah, I mean, a tough, tough ask for Anthony. I mean, he is their SIM driver over there at Hendrick, and he runs so many cup laps.

I mean, he probably has more laps in a cup cars than some of their cup drivers, just simply because of all the SIM laps that he runs on a weekly basis. So tough ass for Anthony, but probably the most qualified to do it based off a very familiar with the team. He probably communicates with the team on the regular of giving them feedback on their setups. But, I mean, struggled like you would think. I don't think that there was anything shocking there. And unfortunately, got caught up in that wreck.

But, yeah, this Alex thing, I don't know. Like, do we know whether last week's, the reason he got out of the car is connected to this week's vertigo or not? or is that not been said they haven't said so it would be just speculation on our part yeah but you'd have to i mean seems like something something yeah may not be the full reason but something right right right right something's connected so i don't know i hope it gets better um man you i i've been there in the sense of having to watch someone else you know listen this is not like you're injured your basketball player, you're injured and you're on the bench and there's a new guy out there in the starting five, the guy is wearing your jersey. You know what I mean? Like, the guy's wearing your jersey

and he wears his hair the same as you did. Like, it's like a clone of you because in a car, you don't see the person, right? You just see the helmet. You just see the gloves. You see the car. and it's like, trust me, it's very weird as a driver seeing someone else in your suit and in your car. It's wild and it's certainly not pleasant. And the points that he gets doesn't go towards you. No, no. I mean, how do we feel about Alex making the playoffs at this point? It's over.

You think it's over? Yeah. I think if you took his. performance over the last, over the regular season, you would say that it's over. If he does, if he comes back and runs better than his, his averages, I think he could make it. If it's normal Alex, he's going to have a very tough time making the playoffs. If it's, if he comes back and he runs up front, which means you got to get a lot of stage points and you, He's going to need to probably win a race, then I think he has a shot,

just simply because a lot of points can be made up. You can't just finish good. He's going to have to run good and finish good, and there's a difference. And you don't have that get-out-jail-free card anymore with winning a race and you're in. You can't win just one race and lock yourself. We were talking about that last night too, right? Like, I was so, I'm like, I'm so happy that's gone. the win and you're in, right?

Because, like, how fair would that be that if, and listen, we are sympathies for Alex in his situation, but what if he missed 10 weeks and then came in here and won the Daytona summer race and, like, got in the playoffs? It just doesn't, that doesn't feel right to me. And so looking at the points now, knowing, like, how awesome. is it that we're looking at one set of points and we know 16th is 16th is 16th. There's nothing else to look at. And so that's, I think that's going to be a dog fight the entire year that I'm really looking

forward to. I'm checking the standings immediately after every race. Like I didn't do that last year. Right, because you knew that it was just TBD. These are the, as they run standings, even though it's after the race, you know that those standings are not real, right? In the sense of, well, somebody wins, then all of a sudden you're going to change your seating. And it's just all that stuff.

So this is much better. Really happy with that. Yeah, you can just look at these now with so much more confidence, whereas last year's fleeting week to week. So we were talking about Bowman and his playoff chances, your teammate, Chase Briscoe's minus 178. To the lead. see to 16th. He's got 47,

16th has got 100, so that's 53. How much? He's only got 20, he's got 47 points. Brad and 16th has 100. Oh, he's fine. Because his medium performance is enough.

But is his championship hopes over? Oh. that's a good question because yeah we're saying that the champion's going to be in the top three hmm he's got to get hot i mean listen if if he goes and he wins two of the next five races and and it's got some top fives and tens in the other ones i think we're talking about look at this charge he just made he's only a hundred out of the points lead i mean so i i a little too early for that

a little too early and Bowman is just for the record so I'll make sure how far is he from the cut from Brad an additional 20 from that Briscoo is he's got 27 points Bowman's got 23 so

77 yeah an extra 24 yeah and and the reason I'm so pessimistic on the Bowman is a we don't you know we're assuming he comes back or we don't know when he's going to come back right

Yeah. And so this is going to just keep getting worse week over week if he can't come back. And then I just think that the 19's overall speed and performance is just a little better than what the 48th is. That's still so wild, though, is that we're asking, is the 19th championship hopes over after four races, toward which were super speedways, a road course and a cut tire, blown tire at Phoenix? And we're like, oh, that's a wrap on his championship hopes. That's just so different from last. I don't think so, but it's going to need to take,

it'll take some work, right? Because if your championship contenders, the guys that are in the top five in the regular season, all of them are going to have five, six really bad weeks. Now, did Chase get his four out all in the, you would think probably not. You know what I mean? the likelihood and the odds are that he's still going to have a few more sprinkled in,

just like everyone else is. That's the downside of having them all right at the beginning of the season is that it looks horrible, but there will be others. Tyler Redick will have five or six really bad finishes. That's just, that's, that's the nature of stock car racing. It just hasn't happened yet, so it looks worse than it actually is. this with this format it feels like if you've been a college football fan over the years not as much now with the playoffs but like in the bcass area you won bad game and your season could be over and that's

what this feels like now is like every week matters yeah and that's what dale junior wanted right when he he he i heard him say on this podcast many times like man i want someone to blow an engine and absolutely hate it you will you'll feel it no doubt anything else you want to touch on from this from this race? Well, just Blaney's outstanding performance, Seabell's outstanding performance is awesome. I just thought the racing in general was very, very good. The combination of the tire, a little bit of extra horsepower. It's definitely a step in the right direction for the short tracks. So I was very pleased to see, you know, while not a huge change, you know, this is, we're getting back in the right direction. I was going to say another solid out in,

outing for 2311 with your especially with your top two. Yeah, they were really good. And Bubba qualifying as poorly as he did, I watched them on the pilot. And they asked, you know, they asked, you know, what are you doing on race day for 2311? All I'm doing is scoreboard watching, truthfully.

Every caution, I'll look and check where all three of my cars are. And I just, I watched the 23, like, chip away the entire race. Like, it was a couple of spots here. two more spots this run, three more spots that run. And he found himself up there, what was he, P2 at one point. And then he did get some damage. I think that slowed his car down a little bit from that big Ross Chastain wreck. But that was a good sign for those guys because 2311, where they have got to get better,

is on the short tracks. That is their only truly Achille. heel that they have versus the the JGR team, I feel like. So it looked like they had some pretty good pace. And I'll tell you, at the beginning of that race, I followed, first, I thought we were going to win because we were, we were making up spots early. And it was like, whoa, we're good. But we were following Reddick, who I thought also was really good.

And then it just seemed like we maintained a little bit of our pace a little bit better than what he did. And so, yeah, that's just kind of what we had. How hopeful should we be looking ahead to short tracks, considering the racing here at Phoenix was definitely better than it's been in the past. Is it going to get even better at tracks like Martinsville? Or it seems like Phoenix is always kind of so-so,

whereas these other tracks are better than Phoenix. It's going to be a small incremental change. Again, not the small change. you know, what was the racing truly better this time around? Was it 10% maybe? I mean, 15, but it's something. And so I think you'll see that same change at other racetracks. One thing I will tell you is that heads up on Darlington,

you want to see some cars out of control. Here in a few weeks, these cars with essentially little to no underbody, because we're now going to the short track aerodynamic package for Darlington. These cars are out of control. And so we are going to be, I'm predicting four seconds of fall off. It might be more. It's just the cars with the underbody taken off and that simple diffuser, just even on new tires,

absolutely out of control. So it's going to be a wildcard race. Who does that benefit the guys? Whoever guess is right. You've got nothing else from the cup race. You've got Justin Allgaier win Xfinity on Saturday. Birds are chirping there now, Jared. They are.

Justin stole this one. I thought, Jesse kind of dominated the race, but the speed was in the J.R.M. I thought Sammy Smith was actually really fast. He had some great speed. Byron didn't show me, didn't run as good as I thought he would, but, you know, it's difficult to go in there and just do these one-offs and go really run extremely well.

But a little disappointed with Byron, Algar, again, chipped away, capitalized on other's mistakes. He had some good restart. the JGR cars I don't know they're they just seem off I don't know what's going on with JGR's Xfinity but it's just they're not win they don't win races like they used to win the speed is not great the JRM cars just seem to have the speed right now but from the weekend itself Jesse

love was to stand out to me and my eyes. Didn't finish it, but, you know, he had really good short run speed, but, man, his, his driving style to go through three and four is tough on the tires. And so, um, I think that eventually kind of caught up to him. Did you take in any of the IndyCar double header this weekend? I did not. Um, again, I had, uh, I had an appearance. kind of during the IndyCar race and then I had to go back to the racetrack, do some work. So I caught exactly zero laps at the IndyCar race.

But it was, the atmosphere was cool. I really liked the feeling of like two Premier series being at the same track. I just, man, there were a lot of fans that left after the Indycar race. I can't believe they didn't stay for the Xfinity. But I'm thinking about it as a fan too. As a, well, not as a fan, as a human. Asking me to sit in the stands for eight hours probably is a very, very tough ask.

Yeah, I mean, it was, it's, what are we in March? It's March and Phoenix. It was like 90 degrees in the sunny. Yeah. It's hot. Yep. But it was cool. I wish that, I mean, I don't know how possible.

possible it is, but it'd be nice if you could have these types of crossover weekends three to four times throughout the year. I don't know where the NASCAR IndyCar schedule would line up perfectly all that well. But yeah, it was it was cool having both series at the track. And I think there's more that you can do with that to two sports. Yeah. I'd like to see it more. And I, yeah, I personally want to be able to get immersed in it a little bit more. like have a Saturday where I don't have an appearance and whatnot.

So I can, you know, because I would have been out on the grid. I wanted to see how they pre-race. I wanted to check out the cars. You know, I haven't checked out the cars in quite some time. Really, the only time I actually got up close and kind of, you know, in depth with the cars is when I was touring around race shops looking for design ideas to build 2311. I went to, you know, Andretti. I went to

Ray Hall and a handful of others I went to McLaren, Ero McClaren as well and it was it was all interesting stuff so yeah I hope they do it again I really do Some off track news here from earlier

in the week Coletus McFarland now re-seen in the O'Reilly series RCR starting and what's that track down North Carolina we were talking about last night. I'm blankingham.

Rockingham? Yeah. Man, that's going to be that'll be a challenge for him. I guess most of the talk has been should he

be able to do this, right? Is that the most of the conversation? Yes. Should he be able to just go run a few laps and say, check, approved, right? Are we? Are we talking about the system?

Or we talking about him? Because I think this is kind of two different things. I think the real discussion should be about the approval process and not about Cletus, in my opinion. Yeah. I would agree with that. I think that Cletus, without a doubt, has an effect on viewership. I think he, without a doubt, has an effect on, um,

bringing eyeballs to the sport that maybe wouldn't be paying attention otherwise. I don't know what's right. Well, I'll say this. I think that our approval process should be more tough than what it is. I think that there's a certain standards that we need to hold to ourselves, certainly in the CUP series. Now, he hasn't, we haven't gone there yet, but like, is that where this is going? Right? I mean, I watched.

Cletus has been ultimately one of the most humble people. When I hear him do his serious interviews, like with Dale Jr. and whatnot, like, he is very humble when it comes to these opportunities that he's getting. But I watched him in that truck race at Daytona, and I'm, I truthfully, he was out of control for all 12 of the laps before he wrecked. You could just see, I could see it. I know the sport. I know what's in control and out of control. And I was like, oh, man, this is not going to end well. And, you know, should guys that are running full time for points, for champions,

have to be, could be potentially, you know, affected if he ends up spinning to the right and wiping out half the field versus going to the left and only wiping himself out. Like, I just don't know whether we certainly got to hold ourselves to a high standard or higher standard. I think the approval process in NASCAR is probably need some work. it needs to be more stringent. I think if you made the approval process more stringent, people would hire more off of talent than they would dollars, because sometimes you can't just buy your way into the ride.

So then what are the people going to do? They're like, well, I don't have anyone to buy this ride. Well, let me figure out who can actually go run the best then. You know what I mean? So it forced the car owners to make those decisions. Now, it would be tough on the car owners because then they don't have anyone to support their business. So this is a very, very tough slippery slope that we're in. But I really caution NASCAR on letting this get too far.

Like, I'm telling you an Xfinity car at Rockingham, he's going to run Xfinity at Rockingham, right? Mm-hmm. I don't know. I don't see how, hopefully he could just not be part of the story. That's the goal. I think that would be part of the goal is just, Cleet just go out there, run some laps, enjoy yourself, have fun, get your content. It's, he's good. He's a great guy. I just, that is the deep end. That is the deep end going to a track like that. And even super speedways, listen, all the old drivers, all the one, everyone loves super speedways because it's as a driver so much easier. Well, you just hold the gas down. You don't have to use the brake.

You don't need as much talent to run on super speedways. But it is still dangerous. And we saw on that truck race, like, you get some cars buffering or trucks buffering around you next to you. next to you know, your car's, you're going to have to have some car control. And the lack of experience makes it really tough. And what I saw was that Cleezus, as a driver, was just a little behind on all of his corrections. Like when the truck would start getting loose, you would see he'd make a correction, but it was like late. And then it was, everything was just late. And the reason that it's late is that over time, when you get more and more seat experience, driving cars on the edge, you then find the edge.

Then you know when that edge is about to happen so you make corrections before the car actually makes movements. That's what keeps us in control at all times. And that's what the greatest NASCAR drivers were gifted at, is that knowing to make a correction way before the car even moved lines, that's how they can drive faster than everyone else. and you see like amateurs out on the street right a lot of wrecks that happen on the street is that someone will veer off the side of the road and you see the dash camera they'll they'll be lazy this way they're late they're just behind they don't know how to correct it to get it back in line because they're they're reacting to their vehicle moving versus predicting what's going to happen next and that's what the great race car drivers do and what cleetus is up against is being one of those guys guys not understanding what the car is about to do in certain situations. So he's always behind on his on his inputs. But that will get better with time. The more track, the more track time he gets,

the more races he gets to run, the better he will be at that. And I think that he's gotten better. From the first race he was, ran, I think last year to even, you know, the Arca race that I saw at Daytona this year, he was better. He was no doubt better. So I think he needs to just keep on his path, get you some more short track experience, intermediate experience at some lower levels. And then I think that we won't have this discussion

about whether he should or shouldn't be part of NASCAR's top three series. That's my concern is right now it's a three race deal, one this year and two races next year. you go in the car for once but then you don't do it again for a year all the things that you learned are now gone again well and I heard Harvick actually brought up a decent

point on this is that he is now by signing this he's going to have access to a simulator so that might that because now he signed with a team that that has one with a manufacturer that has one so he he potentially could get a lot more seat time

now that he's up high enough in the ranks. So again, nothing still beats on track experience. But hopefully you'll have some more simulator time with that. Yeah. So is he going to, how much of a factor is that simulator time going to be between this year and next year? I mean, it might be a factor, yes, but I'm telling you nothing, And nothing is like the feel in your ass as you're going around a racetrack and feeling the edge of the car.

You're feeling the right front tire in your right hand. You feel the right rear tire in your right butt cheek. It's just that's how we drive. We've been doing this for decades and decades. That's how I feel the edge. And so that's something that will just. take years and years and years to get good at. It's why you see some of the best drivers start really, really young.

They're finding the edge in every kind of different discipline that they're in. And so, you know, kids like Keel and Harvich that come up, I mean, they're going to be exceptional, really, really hard to beat because they know where the edge is. They're going to have so much more experience than the 25-year-old me, 20 years ago. It'll be exciting to see. That's for sure. That'll be during the April 4th.

That's the Cup series off week, Easter off week. The next Vindigo is Rockingham. You have any plans out here this week, Denny? Besides this fishing tournament that I'm holding for you and Charlie? Yeah. So why don't you, well, since you're holding it, I mean, you want to recap to the fans, but how we're going to decide this thing?

Okay. Well, we're going to go to Celine Dion's pond. Why do you all keep calling it Celine Dion's pond? I call it Riley's said it was. I call it Riley Herps's pond. Oh, Riley Herps calls it Celine Dion. Or Noah Gregson's pond. Because Celine Dion sounds better.

That's true. It's this pawn. Is it because her house is like right there? Yeah, it sounds cooler of Celine Dion's pot. Because she's got more number one hits and they have victories. So we're going to go with Celine. Yeah. Oh, gosh, Rob.

off the top rope. So, yeah, there is a pond that is, if you remember from my social media last year. Last year, like I was hauling in some hogs. Basically, this pond was stocked for these residents, and these residents, they're not, which, they're not into fishing. So these fish do not see many lures. in that pond. So when they see a lure in there, they just jump on it.

And so we caught a lot, a lot of fish there last year. And so Jared's saying, I think we've all agreed, handshake deal on, it's the amount of weight of the five biggest fish, just like a normal bass tournament. And we're each going to have our own scale, though, But are we going to have something? We got to have an official person beside us when we're waiting. Well, yes.

That's why Nico stayed out here. He's going to be on you or Charlie, and then I'll be on the other. Okay. It's both going to be miced up. They'll both have gopros, wherever they want to put them, head, chest, shoulders, wherever. And they'll have a camera on you. And I think this pond's perfect because you can set a time, whatever you want it to be, two hours, three hours, four hours.

You're going to catch fish in that. window. Yeah. So there will be some action. I think three hours is a very fair amount of time. Question. Yeah. Do you have to bring the fish in yourself for it to count?

They're only going to bring it in themselves because I'm not bringing in for them. Yes. Yes, you do. Travis. Just get on the record. I've made it very clear. No one else touches my fish. All right.

Two rules, I can't help. I can't help. that I can't help that Chris dove down to the bow of the boat to pick up the fish out of the water as I'm reeling a man. Like, that's not, I didn't tell them to do that. But that was like two of the 13 fish that I caught.

But Travis, that that's also on me because if I wasn't filming in point five, you probably don't see Chris in the bottom right corner of the frame. And if I'm locked in on, you know, one-time Zoom, you just don't see Chris. then you get, and you see the bigger fish, you know, so. All right. I also have another request.

I want to use my platform here, Travis. Okay. This will be out later today. This is Monday evening. If you're in Phoenix, hopefully you'll get this, this afternoon. Hit me up in my DMs, Phoenicians.

Is that what Phoenix people are called Phoenicians? I don't think so. No. It sounds right. I think it is. I need, we're, we are looking for some bass in the Scottsdale area. Area, it can be Phoenix, Paradise Valley. We're looking for, like, do you guys have a spot where we can go that you know that the fish are? I hear like the canals good, but like, we're looking like for a golf course, big golf course pond.

I hear that if you sneak out at night, there's bass in these golf course ponds. I don't know if that's true or not. I need the locals to steer me in the right direction of where are we going to find some fish here in this area? So hit me up in my DMs. What about you, Jared? What's the granola going to do out here? You've got some mountains to hike? Yes, actually.

Yes, Travis. I brought out my, I brought out my tent So I think I'm going to So you know what's interesting is We'll let him finish that Is that Jordan asked she said

Where's your tent? He's like, it's I've got I'll be carrying it with me She's like, how are you going to carry that? He's like, it fits in my backpack Like it's tiny Right? Yeah, yeah

Everything fit in my suitcase I got my climbing But you can't hike with your suitcase, can you? Well, no. I'll put it all, hang it from my backpack. So I'm trying to go out. I don't know if it'll be tonight. They've got to look at the weather.

I see it's going to rain maybe tonight. But starting tomorrow, at the very least, we're going to go camping here in Scotts. So what do you do? Do you just go on a GPS map and say, we're going to start here and just, we're going to start walking from this point on? Okay. Well, out here in the west. there's a lot of land called borough of land management BLM land which is not owned by anybody or it's owned by the government and given to the people anyway it's just free land so you can just

roll up on this land pitch a tent and do whatever you want so that's what we're going to look for here in the greater greater Phoenix area I'm sure there's some of this a little north of like the cave creek area when you get to a camping point where you drop me a pin so I can kind of to see like just generally where you're at absolutely absolutely all right i just want to see like where where you end up where do you land yeah that's the goal is it is it just you or you nico where you are going to do nico and i are going to go and then on wednesday i think we're going to drive up to to Vegas you're going to fly up there on thursday we'll meet you up there's a good drive yeah yeah i like that drive so i will drop you a pin i will i will i will collect some some photos and video show

show you how it worked. Your kids were interested. Molly said she would be totally down. I would love to sleep with coyotes and stuff. Molly wouldn't care. Molly would try to pet the coyotes. You know hers. She loves all animals. Doesn't matter how mean they are. Yeah. We were leaving. I drove them home from JP's baby shower the other night and walking down the street. And Molly goes, all my nemeses are around. I was like, who are your nemesis, Molly? She's like, all these cactuses. That's right.

From last year, poor Austin went out there and stuck himself with cactus so she'd feel better. Could Jared and I live a more different lifestyle? No. No. No. I want nothing to do with a hike.

I want nothing to do with endless. I'm in between. Like, I enjoy the, I get what he'd like. loves about it. Like, I, I don't love it, but, like, I would like it in very, very small doses. Yes. Yeah.

It's just, like, a little challenging. It's, like, challenging enough that it's a little uncomfortable and it, like, forces you to go out of your element, but not so uncomfortable that it's just, like, not fun, you know? Yeah. All right. Well, I don't have anything else. We got Vegas coming out. It's another test.

you know, hopefully we'll get a little better result than what we had this week. Well, we'll see what we got. You get 61 there. You got 60 there, maybe you get 61. I know, which is interesting because we had really kind of fallen off. When I say we fall off the map, that means like we're not, we're not in the top five. We're top 10. We just weren't very good there for the few races before the last fall race.

And then all of a sudden we, I mean, we hit it really well. So hopefully we do that again. All right, well, that's all I got. We'll see you all next week.