Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin - Ross is Involved...Again

Episode Date: May 2, 2023

Denny Hamlin reacts to Alex Bowman's injury and whether or not drivers should be racing in non-Cup races. The Denny Hamlin Bracket Challenge is happening (8:30). A record was a set at an escape room over the weekend (17:55). Ross Chastain once again caused a wreck (34:40). What happened with the pit stops for the 11 car (44:00). And, #DearDenny (54:40) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I don't know if there's any consolation prize to you, but if you didn't have your 25 points taken away a few weeks ago, you would be 30 points right now. Well, we did, so that doesn't matter, Jared. Oh, such a cool little stat. All right. The following is a production of Dirty Moe Media. What's up, guys? Welcome to Accident's detrimental. This is Dover.

Excited to have you all listening in. I've got a week to talk about. We've got some all-s-tracked news. We've got some on-track news that we're going to cover from the race. We just had it today. We're shooting here on Monday night. We'll have this thing for you on first thing on Tuesday. So, yeah, so it was a rainy weekend in Dover.

Well, let's go back first to end of last week. Alex Bowman was racing his sprint car and got injured. Seems like he's got a compression fracture. of his spine, same thing that I had as well. I was actually wondering why Dale Jr. was asking me how long I was out during my injury a few hours before. He was just like, hey, just wondering like how long were you out? Oh, he asked you before the news came out? Yeah. And I didn't understand why. And I was like, and for some reason, I was like, I think it was a couple weeks or a couple months. And I look back and it was only like four or five races.

But yeah, it was, you know, there's not a, honestly, not a whole lot of pain. I didn't have a whole lot of pain post. Like once they got me all in my back brace and everything, I was okay. But man, the pain was awful when it actually happened. But it looked like it probably happened when the back of the car, the very last tumble that you saw and the back wheels were kind of off. you know, off the car and it kind of lands flat right there on its bottom. That probably is what caused that to happen. But very unfortunate.

It obviously brought up a lot of debate over, you know, these guys doing extracurricular activities. You know, I don't know. I'm just, of course, the first thing I did is text Ricky and Kyle. It's just like, you know, do you have to be doing this? Like, you know, I know it makes you happy and you love it, but you know what will also make you really happy is providing for your family for generations. Like that, you know, and I only say that as a friend, right? And then Kyle's like, yeah, but this, but that.

And, you know, and I heard him say during the media this week, like, you know, he feels like he's escaped death more in a NASCAR cup car than he has in a sprint car. but you know i i try to explain to him that like well it's the it's an odds thing right i mean the more you do something that is risky and you've gotten away with it for such a long time eventually the odds catch up and Kyle you know when i watch him dirt race he is a very aggressive guy and you saw it during the bristol dirt race where you know i talked about well he he a lot of times slides up and just kind of expects you know he puts you in a position where you need to check up or else y'all are going to make contact he he makes a lot of bold moves that if someone doesn't calculate it just right like it could cause him tumbling and i only say it is like a friend

of his and rickies is like you know i know this is such a passion of yours and and you give back to the community uh but you know joe and he's got a different policy on on sprint car racing for sure obviously c bell's not allowed to do it um you know a lot of his reasoning is that Listen, I've got hundreds of employees here that are counting on you to be the leader of our team. And, you know, I don't know. At the end, I don't know where I stand on it. I've been back and forth on it. I remember saying that when Chase got hurt, if this is what he needs to do to be mentally healthy, you know, take a break, then that's fine, right? the only difference, I guess I could say. And then Kyle brought up, well, you've blown both your ACLs.

You've got both shoulders that are knocked off and you got to get surgery on one. Like you do things that get you injured. And I said to Kyle, yeah, but basketball is not going to kill me, right? Like it's not going to lead to something terminally where I can't do my job anymore, right? So I don't know. You know, it's a tough thing. Obviously Hendrick said that they're not going to really change anything. and that's fine, right?

But certainly from a friend's perspective, I hate to see, I don't like to see anyone get hurt. No one likes to see, you know, this injury for Alex, a guy that struggled with injuries over the last 12 months. I've mostly had some concussions last year in the cup car, and then, man, he got the tough end of the injury here in the sprint cars. So wishing Alex, well, hopefully he'll be back soon. I'm guessing probably going to be around that four to five week,

maybe longer. It just kind of depends on the severity of it. Yeah, I thought it was interesting listening to Kyle and Brad Sweet Talk last week on their podcast. I'm going to paraphrase Brad here, and I hope I'm correct. And what I'm saying, he mentioned that in the sprint car world or maybe just in the dirt world as a whole, because it's very grassroots. And, you know, there's a lot of sprint car racing, right?

It's not just the world to outlaws versus NASCAR. NASCAR is always making improvements to the car and safety. In the grand scheme of things, you know, from 20 years ago, there's always these improvements made. And in the sprint car world, all that happens a lot slower. Yeah, that's fair. I mean, I think that I talk to those dirt guys a little bit about, you know, the safety. I'm like, well, what does change, right? Right.

The sprint cars look the same as they did 20 years ago, right? But they said that there are advancements, you know, there's extra bars that they've added in. You know, I think that they feel like wing sprint cars are the, safer of the necessary evil because the wing they feel like helps the crutch zone of the car where you have like USAC cars with no wings on top they just when they hit flush on the top it usually does some pretty good hard damage and they've also said too that well in this guys when when he died or this person died they didn't have the proper safety you know there was bars that we have that they don't have and so again it is it's probably a little looser uh when it comes

to um safety and and then whatnot than what we have in the cup cars that are pretty much mandatory whenever something better comes out i did hear something cool that um they said that casey canes got like like these shock absorbers on his seat which that actually makes you know very good sense uh to me um that in those in that instance where you know he's got you know so a could pushing. And I always thought in the cup cars we should have something like that as well where, I mean, our seats are so rigid that can we get a little give in the seat, you know, forward and aft and side to side, you know, maybe some thick rubber grommets or something, something that can allow us to move just a little bit, something else to absorb because

our cars are so rigid. We know that. Yeah. I guess you're kind of lucky as a team owner for 2311 racing, Bubba and Tyler don't do too much racing outside of the Cup series. But do you have any rules or like have you gone over anything with them as far as extracurricular stuff? We haven't. No, we, you know, I think that if you have a driver that, you know, has a history of doing these things or wants to do them, you have those conversations around contract time. Yeah. But, you know, I think Bubba or Tyler, the only thing we have, you have, you. have in there is like go running a, I don't know, Arka car, Xfinity car, truck, you know, we have to, we have to approve all that stuff.

But again, the safety, we feel a little bit more comfortable when it's something that we're controlling for sure. Got it. Got it, got it. So last week, we came up with an idea about a summer bracket and that kind of took off on social media. And, man, it got a lot of. got a lot of attention for sure.

One of the first texts I got was from Marcus Smith. He's like, all right, let's talk. You know, this is intriguing to me. And then a couple of NASCAR executives as well saying, hey, we like this idea. We're going to circle the wagons here and see. And the first thing I said, well, good luck. You know, getting everyone there to agree. But it seems like, you know, if I had to predict, I don't, they're definitely not doing

anything like this year. I would say it's less than a 20% next year. They're talking about, well, if we did something like this, maybe it would be best for... Oh, less than 20% next year. Yeah, probably. I don't know if it's a money thing or not, but, I mean, again, they could get somebody to sponsor this thing in two seconds, and it could...

They need to look at it sooner than later for sure, in my opinion. I think it's a very good thing. Just simply from the social interaction of people, you know, hey, we create our own bracket series. You know, we're taking the rules in which you've set out and we've created our own contest. And so it was cool to see that, how much momentum it got and how excited people were to think about this head to head. It was very similar to the direct TV bracket that happened probably 10, 12 years ago. But it's a little different than that. Which we have an exciting announcement. Oh, by the way,

for those who did participate and start their bracket tournament this week, there were six upsets of higher seeds beating lower seeds. Suarez, out. Kyle Busch, out.

Who beat these guys? Why did you ask me that? I don't know. Going to have to look it up. Oh. Oh, I had it. Swera is out Kyle Bush is out Ricky Stenhouse is out

Kyle Larson's out Joey Lugano is out Chase Briscoe is out and not an upset by numbers but this one was a coin toss with Chase Elliott and Ross Chastain

Chase Elliott is out and most of the brackets that people sent me had Kyle Larson winning and so boom your bracket is busted but we have good news Jared

do you want to announce it Sure. And while I'm announcing it, you can look up the standings before today so I can figure out who beat those guys. Yeah. Yeah. So over the next five weeks, Dirty Mo Media will be hosting a head-to-head single elimination tournament based on finishing position. So pretty much this bracket. We're going to start this weekend coming up. Correct. This weekend's racing Kansas. So anyone can enter. You go on to DirtyMod Media.com. There's a whole bracket there. put in your email and it's interactive so you can select your

I just saw the interface to it it's really really cool very easy it's going to prompt you to basically say pick which one of these drivers then it moves on to the next matchup

pick one of the two drivers move on and then it'll move you to the next round next round your bracket will be filled out it's all going to be live and so I want to just like how you would do for March Madness right

you pick your picks in the first round you'll guess points based on you know the weight of those, right? So first round is 10 points, second round is 20 points, third round is 40 points, and so forth. So, yeah, we don't mean to poo-poo on anyone's

already started bracket, but since we talked about this last week, there is a grand prize, and we're going to give you a shout out here on the podcast as well. We'll update the standings as it goes, and I noticed that when we were kind of

setting this up, it was very important that we're going to have to, we're weighing each round, right, because there'll be so many people that have the same amount of correct picks. So each round, like, so for the first round, you'll get 10 points per correct pick, then it's 20 for the next round, 30 for the next, and so on, so forth. So everyone join in. Let's, uh, I will, you know, I, I said that I was going to post my bracket, but I knew this was coming, so I didn't do it for this weekend. It's unfortunate for me, because the racetracks were really good for me over the next five weeks. But if I make it to the finals,

It's Sonoma. But I'll be honest with you. If we go to pit road, I'm not sure we're going to make it to the finals. We'll get to that later. But yeah, so we're going to start that. It's going to come out sometime on Tuesday. Encourage you all, you can check it out on Dirty Mo Media's, Instagram, Twitter, all that.

Let's join in. Let's play fun game. This should be cool. Yeah, and track's coming up. So first round is Kansas. second round will be Darlington. That'll be a good one just with the way the racing is at Darlington. North Wilkesboro, we've got the All-Star race following Darlington's stuff. Oh, well, you can't do that. Yeah, okay. Right. I was just pointing out the, hey, the all-star race.

Yeah, yeah, skip out at North Wilkesboro. Then you got the Coke 600, St. Louis, and as you said, the championship in this bracket will be at Sonoma, which will just be super interesting on its own. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, it would be interesting. I think the, and we will reseed them. Is that correct, Travis? No. No, we're not, I'm sorry. We're not receding from last, we are starting from the point standings now though, right?

Yes, yes. Okay, yep. So all the numbers and all the matchups that you saw last week? So it's irrelevant, irrelevant. We don't need to go through it because it'll take way too much. We will post what the matchups are. Get your opinions. Download it, click it, submit it, win prizes.

What was the driver's reaction? So I got a few DMs from guys saying, dude, this is awesome. I'd be so amped for this. Now, I don't know if they're amped about the money or just knowing that it's a head-to-head, them versus someone else. But this is a layup. This is something that certainly, you know, I thought about too. It doesn't, it's not a gimmick in the sense of where you're changing the format, you're producing, you know, nothing changes in the race.

We're all still racing for regular season points, bonus points for the playoffs, all that stuff. This just adds another storyline to it, right? Where Fox is going to come in, or NBC is going to come in and say, hey, just a FYI, we've got a hell of a head-to-head here for 16th place between the eight-seed and the, you know,

the 22-seeds. So I think it just adds more storylines that makes it a little bit more compelling. And so I'm excited about it. Yeah, it gives you way more to look at and talk about on the broadcast in these three-hour race windows when you've got battle for

20th and 21st. That matters, right? That matters. That matters. So, yeah, we had a rainy weekend in Dover itself. I was surprised that we got the practice in that we did. But yeah,

it was a long weekend in that sense. The Xfinity race, Brian Truax got his very first win in the Xfinity series. I love watching Big Brother be so happy for a little brother. Everyone's happy for Ryan, right? I mean, he's, he's grinded and he's really tried hard to make his place in the sport. He works really hard for Joe Gibbs Racing doing some simulator work for us.

But then on top of that, you know, obviously Martin really pushes for him to get his opportunity here in the Xfinity series, and then he goes and wins the race, you know, dominate the race, really. And then to see Martin with his phone out, I mean, Mr. Anti-Ssocial Network, like, you know, got his video out. And, you know, it's just really cool to see that family. And sweeping the weekends, just, I mean, wow, they couldn't ask for a better weekend. So really happy for the whole True X family. Yeah, and Ryan, you said a guy that was trying to make his mark. He's also someone who's not running a full-time schedule, right?

So his opportunities in this 19 car are limited and you've got to make the most of it. Yeah, it puts so much pressure on you as a driver because you know that like, and that's why you saw him when he didn't have a great run or he got in a wreck or something in one of the, you know, a handful of races he's got. He's like, he's extra bummed because he's like, well, there isn't a next week, right? I got to wait another month to do this again. So for him to get a win, certainly it is very cool. good for him and hopefully it leads to more opportunities for him.

You just never know. Obviously, funding is such a big part of rides nowadays. And so you want to see guys make it on merit and you're seeing, you know, obviously with some rumors going around about Josh Berry, you're seeing guys that, you know, are making it the old-fashioned way still able to do it as long as they perform. So it's good to see. How did you spend your rainy weekend in Dover? Well, we didn't do much.

I mean, you wake up on Sunday, right? And I mean, I feel like you got to wake up as if you're going to race, but you know you're probably not going to race. Right. I slept in a lot, you know, as much as I could. But, you know, you can hear the rain. You know that you're not going anywhere. The first thing I do is I hear the rain in my room and my bus is as dark as it gets. like I have it frigid, 66 degrees.

There's no window in the back there, right? There is, but I black it out. So I have the shades all the way down. I'm a cold. I love sleeping in the cold. So if I had it my way, I would sleep between 64, 65 degrees. But unfortunately, I can't always have it that low. So it's pitch black.

I hear the rain. First thing I do is grab my phone, look at the radar, and I'm like, this is not going to happen. And then luckily, NASCAR pulled the plug pretty early to allow some of these team guys to go back home. I talked with you debating, like, should I go back home? Actually, the weather looks pretty good in Charlotte. But I've done this before, and it's just like by the time you load up, go home, you get here, you spend a few hours relaxing. You go to bed, then you got to wake up early in the morning to go back to the race check.

It's just not worth the travel. So first thing you did was group text. A bunch of us is like, found an escape room. So we went. I wasn't overly impressed with that one. It had too many things to it where like, okay, you're the flashlight guy. I'm the power guy who can. Each person had an ability.

If you had eight players, every person had an ability, right? And one player was able to kill another player for five minutes. and then it gives you an answer. Like, I'm more about the puzzles, right, than I am that just, well, the tricks. So, yeah. But we did get our name on the. Yeah, we set the weekly record. Yeah, it's still something.

Yeah, I don't know how many people go through their weekly, but Hamlin and the vest. I should have been Denny when I was. Oh, that's right. Denny and the vest. Yeah. Of all the people who've been concerned. assistant in our group because we've done like three or four of these how would you power rank um their ability so so you got me let's we can add larson to the list because he's yeah handful

we can add austin to the list i'll be honest with austin is more useful than i would think nothing against austin but he's an austin's uh guy that uh is you always see him in any uh promo where i'm in a in a fight or something austin's always in the picture he also works with me me and tie now. So he's in the promo at Martinsville pulling Ty away from Sam Mayer. But Austin, yeah, he's more useful than I thought for sure. Certainly I think that, you know, you've got so much experience. I don't think I'm very good at all.

Yeah, I don't think I'm very good at all. But, you know, there's just few things if you can contribute. There was a few members that were just kind of chilling and not doing much the whole time. That's just what happens by default. these things. Yeah. So you got to have somebody willing to take the bull by the horns, though, and like, okay, everyone, stay in order of the steps. Let's not get out of order because you start getting out of order, you're, you'll never going to figure it out. But you get an hour to get out the escape room. This one was about, uh, Nicola Tesla. Yeah. And how do you turn the power back on

this room? Blah, blah, blah. It was not very high on my list. No, I agree. Of the, of the handful that we did, I think that one was at the bottom, if not towards the bottom, for sure. Yeah. Well, we did actually have a race today. We finally, so we rained out yesterday. We, I woke up a nice sunny day here on Monday. I love the Hasbullah Instagram and Twitter post you did. I just, I laugh every time.

I love them. And so I wish I could meet them. But, yeah. I thought that was funny. And then we go and we have a race. And so what he posted was basically a list of wins on Monday. And I think I had four wins on Monday. Do you remember them?

I think I have four Daytona wins. Yeah, I think a couple of them are Daytona. But no, I don't remember all of them. I think one of them's Martinsville so that I'm just missing one. So two Daytona's a Martinsville and something else. And I really liked my chances today, especially after the first couple runs where I clearly had the fastest car. But unfortunately, we just didn't do a good job, you know, executing on pit road and just lost a lot of spots. We actually had one very good pit stop, though, early in the day.

The first one. Yeah, the first one was like we went from like eighth to fifth or something like that. And I was like, oh, hey, we do that with how fast my car is. we got something, but it just went way downhill from there. And each stop was, we bled a little bit. So, or a lot, I should say. But it was good to see, you know, there was a lot of talk about tire wear. Was it going to be a concern after practice?

There was, it's interesting. You see when Eric Jones spun the dust coming off of the tires. So instead of it laying black marks on the track as he slid across. This is in practice on Saturday. There was no black marks. It was just the rubber turned to dust. And I believe that's a lot of what our tire issues are, you know, with building with the tire that we really, really need to compete

and make the racing super good, is that, you know, there's been new laws that have come into effect that has, you know, taken away some of the ingredients, some of the chemicals that goodier use to build tires for decades and decades, you know, because of environmental reasons and whatnot. So it really went through a transition probably about 10 years ago where all the sudden we were, we would come in after practice, and instead of there being clumps of rubber underneath the hood of the car and it's sticking to everything, it was just dust, that the tire was powder that was all over the car.

And we're just like, what is this dust, right? And so, unfortunately, that's what we have now. And so it makes it harder to rubber in tracks. It makes it harder to build a tire that lays rubber. And, you know, the tread goes down and also gets rid of heat and energy, but also falls off. Like, it's very hard to build the tires that we used to have just because of laws that Goodears handcuffed by. So I just think that we were obviously concerned we could only run about 13, 15 laps in practice before everyone's right front or right rear was just shredded. But this is what I was talking about last week.

We're talking about Goodyear needs to feel super nervous leaving a tire test. Will this tire make it or not? Because we saw we went 60-some laps on the race on Sunday or Monday today and never had an issue at all. So that just tells you how much rubbering in a racetrack matters to tire wear. And what do you see? The win to race? 50 some lap left side tires. So it's just they just don't wear as much as they used to because of that and the rubber in the racetrack.

So I'm curious. Go back to Saturday and practice or you had guys spinning out and whatnot. Is that because there's no rubber on the racetrack? No, I think that. So I noticed most of the wrecks were in turns three and four. I think that's probably their right rear shock bottoming out. So basically they go into the corner and if the speed that they simulated is slower than what it actually is in real life. And they go out there and since the track is green, it's faster.

They drive in the corner deeper. Their car has more travel, which means it gets down closer to the concrete. Well, the shock bottoms out. and so the right rear load or the right rear spring goes to an infinite number that is so high that it just spins the car out. It's just, it's rock solid. So they lose control and it looks like the guys

that spun out, some of them, you saw their car bouncing and they spun out. So it's just kind of a weird thing like that. So it wasn't actually tires at all? No, I don't think it was, it definitely wasn't tires, that's for sure. But yeah, it was, I thought that today's race was good. We had the intermediate package, even though it was a one-mile track. I didn't notice

really a difference in the intermediate to this package, the intermediate package, which reminded me, shoot, I had an idea for these packages that I wanted to talk about this week, but I'm not totally prepared, so we'll talk about it next week. But I'll say this. This just goes back to show that like the spoiler, there's more too than just cutting spoiler off. And so from the intermediate package to the short track package, the spoiler, I don't know, I'm guessing here, but it's probably three or four inches shorter. Well, I mean, think about the big box of the back of a car, right?

From the top of the spoiler to the ground. That is an area in which our cars are not getting much flow if you're behind it. So if you cut off an inch or two of the spoiler, like the actual amount of size that you're cutting down is not that much. So, which makes sense of why we're not really. feeling that big of a change in the short track package. Now, there's stuff going on underneath that is changing as well. But I thought that the racing was fine. Now, again, I had a really fast car, so I was able to pass. Now, if you had a mediocre car, maybe passing was extremely

difficult. But it looked like the track was rubbering up and it started to widen out. And this car really actually performs pretty well on tracks that are very wide, where you can escape the car in front of you in the corner. So wherever he goes, you're going to going to go the opposite direction to get some clear air on your car, then you use the draft on the straightaway because these cars have so much drag in them, there is a little bit of a draft effect that you get. So I thought the racing was fine. I didn't see anything that was kind of out of the ordinary from any other Dover race that we've

had. Dover race, and this is something that I was thinking about while watching part of this race, is that because there was no qualifying on Saturday, right? And the metrics set the starting lineup for Sunday that the good cars were not necessarily at the front. So therefore you did have more action on track because Kyle Larson, for example, was a good car. He started mid-pack and was able to drive to the front.

You started 13th in front of the mid-pack and were able to drive to the front. Kyle was started on the pole. 100%. He might not have been the best car. No, he wasn't. He was terrible in practice. I mean, he was terrible.

Both RCR cars were not good. Speaking of not good, both legacy cars were last and second to last. One of them didn't finish the race. Yeah. You know, I don't know what's going on at Legacy for sure, but they are not performing nearly like we thought they were. Certainly, they've taken a step back from where they were last year. Noah has just not been, it's been non-existent. Again, you never know what's going on.

You know, why is, and even Eric has taken a huge step back in performance from last year to this year. So there's something I don't really know. All we know is their performance has fallen off a cliff dramatically. So hopefully they get that hemmed up and we'll see. But I think there are probably big changes there coming pretty soon. So back on this qualifying topic, how no qualifying actually led to perhaps a better race. Yeah, I think that the randomness of the starting grid certainly causes, you know, movement in the field. Also, we didn't get a lot of useful practice.

So people didn't dial in their cars. And I'll talk about that when we're talking about my day, is that, you know, you can't make mistakes at the middle. to end of the race because everyone starts to get their car dialed in. So if you have a bad pit stop, it better be early because if it happens late, you cannot make it up because everyone has got their car pretty much dialed as good as it can for that weekend without taken to the garage and overhauling it. So the field does get better. The field gets tighter as the race goes on.

I think if you probably looked at the lap times of the leader to the 20th place guy for the first two runs, let's just say on a lap by a lap basis, it's four-tenths difference, maybe a half a second. By the end of the race, it's probably only two, three-tenths between first and 20th. So the field tightens up and it gets better because they make adjustments to their car. So that's why it's so important to control the race on pit road

because you can't afford to just bleed spots every time and expect to just make it up because passing becomes more difficult. Why would, did you not have any means? meaningful practice when you when you well because the track was totally green we're the first cars to hit the racetrack on Saturday so it was it was a slight mist anyway but the track never rubbered up I think some of the reasons the temperature was overcast the temperature was cooler there was a mist and you had car that you didn't have all 36 cars out there at one time heating up the racetrack

to then melt the rubber to then put it to the racetrack so the track was just as clean at the end of practice as it was start of practice. And we and the 11 team even knew that it was like, we're not learning much here. We were in 13 laps and we just said, all right, we're right front starting to show a little cord here. So screw it. We're not going to learn anything. This is going to be a total different racetrack tomorrow. Let's just stick to our notes. And hopefully we end up, you know, where we think we were. And for the most part of the race, we were. So when you do have that, right, you have then competition caution. in the race. So today, for example, a competition caution was on lap 20.

When you know that that's coming, is there a strategy to the first 20 laps of the race? Are you running harder or something to try to, I don't know, wear the tires as much as you can? Yeah, so you do. You do, well, I push harder, certainly to start the race because you know that you're about to take these tires off in 20 laps, right? So the wear is going to be the maximum that it will all day in that first 20-lap run. He said that our tires look pretty good, which is pretty common. We're usually not as hard on tires anyway as others. But generally, it's just the tire where it gets a little bit better from there. So me, I started 13th.

I think I made my way to 8th or 9th, something like that on that first 20-lap run. I mean, I was able to just kind of weave through cars at will. And I was like, man, this is last year all over again. Let's just not this up. And last year, I thought we had the fastest car by a mile. I didn't think we had the field covered this time like that. I thought the competition caught up. But I still thought that we had one of the best, if not the best cars out there.

But again, it's all about execution. Yeah. So let's get to the race as a whole here. We had some drama to start this one off with, a friend of yours, Ross Chastain, getting into the back of Brennan Pool, which spins him out, sends him up the track in turn one, and then collects Kyle Larson, who's coming around the outside. Both these guys had, yeah. Yeah, did you? Yeah, I mean, I saw it.

Obviously, you guys do a good job. You know, I don't have always time to completely rewatch the race all the way back, but I get the highlights and get the quotes and whatnot before I go on air here. Obviously, Brendan Poole was pissed, Kyle Larson was pissed. I don't know. I mean, to me it looked very similar to the incident with me and JJ at Richmond. I mean, it looked pretty much identical. The only difference really is kind of the habitual part of it, right? Is that, you know, Ross is involved again.

And he's just not going to get the benefit of the doubt. So simply because of, you know, the habitual. wrecking, right? And so what's interesting is like he never, and I saw someone else talk about this, is that he never really gets the end of any of these contacts, right? It's always just someone else going, spinning, and it ends their day,

and he just goes about his own business and keeps going. There's only two fixes to this, right? I mean, honestly, you know, for me, you know, I chose to get back at them multiple times, and then finally, you know, one thing I'll say about Rosto, is he doesn't mind you getting back at them. So why people in the field don't just do it?

I don't understand because, you know, after Pocono, you know, he crashed in the wall there and he says, well, I deserve that and probably a little more. And then after Phoenix, he comes up and says, well, I probably deserve that. Like, he's not, he's not oblivious to knowing that he's, you know, he's owed one, right? So, but the problem is, is that I think these drivers are a little apprehensive to like, well, can I make it obvious? Because is an ASC are going to come down on me? You're like, you know, I can't, I can't admit it in the public. I, you know, it's just a tough balance. So one, I'm getting back to this. One or two things has to happen, right? Either the, the competitors have to just say,

I am, I am, I am, when I get my chance, I'm going to get back at them and now I'm just going to say I made a mistake. That's one way, right? Or NASCAR will have to step in and say, like, with Hosevar and say, all right, we've had enough of it. Like, you do this every week. And I'm not saying he does it every week, but, you know, Hosevar didn't do, you know, right rear people every week, but he just did it enough times where it's like, all right, well, enough of that. Like, you got to go to the back. And so that's the only two scenarios in which this kind of gets rectified because otherwise, you know, I don't know that much is going to change in his mind of, you know, it's, you know, the juice is worth the squeeze probably from his perspective because he's never really got caught up in any

of these incidences. It's always been someone else's day that's gotten ruined and no one has really done anything back. So if you don't do anything back, then, you know, and you haven't socked them in the nose. Now you'll get 15K. Maybe it's worth that. I probably would have paid 15K and not gotten 25 points in 50 grand. That probably was a better scenario. But still, it's just, there's rules that I think guys are a little apprehensive of like, how do you handle this? They want us to self-belice, but you can't self-police.

No one knows where the rules are. I find it very ironic that, yes, right? Over the last couple of years, Ross has seemingly never had to pay for any of his actions on track. But it's very ironic that today he's running down Truex for the lead. Was he running him down? I didn't see. He was. He was catching Truex. Truex then passes Larson, who's a lap car now.

And Larson just seemingly accidentally was running the same line as Ross, right? So this gap between Ross and Truex grows. But then two laps later, Truex hits lap traffic again, and Ross is just back on his bumper. So, like, that effect that Larson had in between that battle was nullified two laps later because Ross was back to the same. Well, it wasn't nullified, right? Because Ross would have been there sooner. and maybe we had time to work them over, right? So you just never know.

He lost a couple laps in the... Yeah, yeah. And every lap's critical when it comes to trying to pass someone late in a run or whatever. It just was funny that he was... He got into, I don't know, three-tenths or something, and then it went back to a second half, and then he was back to three-tenths here.

Interesting. I need to go back and watch it for sure. But it's, you know, I thought that certainly... Those were the three best cars it seemed like through the day. I thought I had the best car early. Then the 19 came on strong. Then the one made a strategy call on one of the stages to take two tires. He held his track position much better than like, well, I think Kyle Bush stayed out and he ended up getting lapped in 30 laps.

But yeah, the one certainly was very good at the end of the race, no doubt about it. The 19 was very good. We were good. but yeah it was just it was going to be shape up to be a pretty interesting race um between them but but yeah it's you know i i think that you know to to put a button on the ross thing i think that you know unfortunately sometimes for him you know because of the history you're not going to get the benefit of the doubt like when it comes to like the daga stuff right i thought for sure well you know my feeling about daga was that you know the 42 moved up

the racetrack and Ross filled a hole and then the hole closed right i didn't see that really necessarily on ross um but it you're always going to have the spotlight on you um but it it seems like you know it's something that his team embraces and they like it i don't know if they like it if it gets returned back to um but the drivers just have to they have to do something or else it will continue because you can't just keep taking it taking it um and from what i've seen he's been very fair when you do give it back to them. So I just think that, you know, I don't think NASCAR is ever going to step in. I don't know that they necessarily think it's a bad thing from their perspective. It gives them a storyline, a robbery. So it's up to the drivers.

You came over the radio, I believe it was the end of stage one when you were still good in the race and said something to the effect of thanking your crew chief for whatever he found here at Dover because for the majority of your career, you've hated this place, right? What has Chris found that's made you like this track? I don't know what it is, but certainly it started from the very first time I started working with Chris Gavehart and the team. Him and Sam, the lead engineer and Ryan, second engineer. They just really have come up with a setup that even through Generation 6 to now the next gen, they found something that I like at that racetrack.

They found a balance that is home. It's our blankie that we always go back to like whenever in doubt, we're going back to this type balance because I like it. And so whatever it is, it's just really turned the corner. I spent 13, 14 years at that racetrack just scratching my head, not understanding. That's what I'm wondering. How can you spend 15 years studying a track and not find it? You know, I did a little bit of self-reflection as well.

I started working all my craft at that racetrack as well. I started approaching the racetrack a little different. differently. So what that meant was that I looked at film. I studied some of the best drivers at the racetrack and I said, well, okay, if I have to drive it this way, I'm going to need something different out of my car. So team, work on making my car better here because I have to drive it differently and work around that. And so we just started working on getting similar and fine-tuning it. And so I did. It's one of, man, I don't know if I'm going to say it's one of my favorite tracks, but it's one that I really get excited to, and unfortunately we only go there once a year now.

But yeah, I appreciate how tough it is. It is definitely a physically tough track. I am worn the f*** out right now. My back is killing me. But I do. It's just, it's a very technical track that I think that, you know, some of the best drivers really show up at, which is why you see Jimmy Johnson when they're 10, 10, 12 times, whatever he did. Do your teammates take some of this, too? Does it help your teammates at this track? Well, I mean, my teammates were some of the, you know, the flagship guys that I looked at and studied was Martin Truaxe and Cobblish. And I just tried to figure, you know, since I knew what equipment they were in,

I used that as my tools. Well, it's very hard to compare cars that, well, it's a little easier now in next gen era. But back in Gen 6 area, it was so hard to compare myself with a Hendrick car or a Roush car, whatever it might be, because who knows how their car is built. They got a whole different chassis.

Some things are not possible because of physics and how my car works versus theirs. But now in next scenario where everyone has the same parts and pieces, it's just about setup, really, and simulation and driver. I feel like you can compare other organizations a little bit easier. So late in this race, we have a caution. It brings everyone to Pit Road. Martin Truex, who is leading the race, decides to take two tires. Chastain takes four tires. and then after the race in his post-race comments,

Martin's crew chief had mentioned that they took two tires because they knew that taking two was going to keep them in the lead and controlling the restart. Yeah, they didn't have a whole lot of faith that if they went four tires against Ross's four tires, on pit road they were going to lose the lead is what they... And listen, by the numbers, that's probably true. Ross has got one of the best pit crews on pit road.

He has for the last couple of years. you know one of the things that really didn't get said enough is that William Byron's team that's why they're up front so much they hold serve like 90 some percent of the time that they come in first or second they're coming out there and if they're fifth or six they're coming out on the front row like they track position is so important in our game that they are just riding the coattails a lot of times of that pick crew and that just keeps putting them up front more and more and more where on the flip side of it, right? I have the opposite problem where

pick stop comes or yellow fly comes out and I just hold my head and I'm like how many are we going to lose? Like, it's just part of it, right? It's, you know, that's the nature of the game, right? If someone's come in and gaining two spots, someone's probably losing two spots. Yeah, no doubt. And so

you know, there's, I think that there's probably five or six really, really reliable pick crew guys, pick crew teams where you know that they're up front, they're probably not going to make a mistake. They're going to hold serve most of the time, 80, 90% of the time they're going to hold serve. And then there's kind of the rest, everyone else, right? So it's just

really hard to win. It's hard to win, which is why early in the race, you know, Fox is playing my in-car of me, you know, telling Christopher Bell get the out of the way. A lot of that was because I was so frustrated that I just went from damn near winning the stage and I'm all over William to beat him in the stage and then I come out eighth in the next pit stop and I'm like so then I passed a couple guys I ran Christopher Bell down and I'm like he's sliding up and a little bit in the mid corner and I'm jamming my nose in there mid corner to like hey I'm here and he would come down and like he's just trying to keep his position I was just vending at the time but I was I wasn't as mad at him as I was just at the scenario why am I back here again and I got to go make another three

wide move. I've got to pass the same damn race cars again that I just passed, which is why I'm leading the series by a billion on quality passes, evidently, per NASCAR. So it's not a stat you want to lead because it just means you're passing the same cars over and over and over again. But listen, we're going to work it out. I mean, I've had really good pit crews throughout my career. The last couple of years have certainly been a very rough patch for us. I don't. I don't don't know how many races we've lost by just not being able to control the race. That is, come in first, come out first. Or just come out second or third.

Just not these big catastrophic failures that are, you know, 20 seconds. You know, when we're leading at Richmond in 20 seconds like that, it's just you can't overcome it. Like, you just can't overcome it. And then thank God there were only eight cars on the lead lap because the last stop, we would have been, if there was 26 on lead lap we would have finished in the 20s again chopper would have been pissed so so i mean listen it's it's a team sport and we're going to win together and lose together i guarantee you those guys are at the race shop first thing when you're hearing this podcast i can assure you are pick crew guys are at the race shop working on it they're going to find what it is that that

you know can make us better make us more consistent we got better in the playoffs Now, we did do a pick-cru swap in the playoffs. But now, so for those don't know, so I have really Truex's, most of Truex's team from last year. Truex has the 18 team that I had in the playoffs from last year, if I'm right. And the 54 has your original team. My original team from the beginning of last year. And the 20 has found their match. magic sauce and they've been probably the most consistent of all the pit crews at JGR

over the last probably 10 months or so. So they've got theirs kind of hemmed up and worked out. I think, you know, we just got some work to do for sure on ours, but we'll get it fixed and, you know, I got faith in them. These guys, again, these are the same guys that knocked off. I don't know what that pit stop was on the first one, but it had to be in the low nines. So they're definitely capable. There's just little itty-bitty things, and it doesn't take much to just send one of these pit stops off the rails. Before we button this up, you had referenced old-style pit stops in your post-race comments. For those that don't know, what is the difference between old style and the new style besides just one lug verse five.

So JGR, it was a big to do last year. They came out with their own style of pit stop, right, where both right-side changers come around the front of the car. So it allows, by the data, it gets the engagement on the right rear hub quicker. Instead of the person having to wait on the car to stop, he runs around, engages the right rear tire on the pit stop. They're already sitting there waiting for me to come to a stop. Bam, they hit it. And so there's a time gain there.

The problem with what we found with the JGR-style pit stops, where both come around the front and then the front changer goes. around and is now the left rear changer when they get to the left side is that you've got hoses being thrown all over the place there's just more you know let's just pretend that there's 16 things that can go wrong in the old style stop where one comes around the front one comes around the back with the jgr stop while it has the potential in the top end to be faster on speed it probably had 25 things that could go wrong in a pit stop. It just, there was just more things that could throw, throw it off the rails. And so when it was right, it was right. There was many races last

year where we, and our, the way we were doing pit stops was kicking ass. And then all of a sudden, we'd have ones that were just awful and then we'd go to the back of the pack. So you just can't have that. And so when we hired our own pit crew members at 2311 this year, we decided we're going to go, it's obviously been proven that the old style, while less risky, teams are still doing it at a very fast pace. Let's just take a little bit of risk out here by going back to the old style. The problem with that is we've been practicing the other style for a year. So now we're behind. And so it's going to take a little time, I think. Now, again, some of the issues that I had today isn't related to reps and that it's it's it's equipment it's you know human error on buttons or whatever it might be right

it's not has nothing to do with which side you ran around the race car it but to get our speed faster which we still need to do that by the way uh through our whole organization it's going to take time because we're a year behind everyone on just practice on just reps yeah yeah well before we move on from that I guess I don't know if there's any consolation prize to you, but if you didn't have your 25 points taken away a few weeks ago, you would be 30 points right now. Well, we did, so that doesn't matter, Jared. Well, such a cool little stat.

All right. It proves that you're running well, right? So, listen, we do need a button up. We gave props to Ryan Truex and the Truex family, but Martin, he broke a long, winless drought. Now, he's a guy that, you know, has been in position over the last year to, you know, I'm not going to say his performance has not gone down in the sense of like their results. They've had more bad races than you've seen him have his entire time at Joe Gibbs

racing. But they've also lost their fair share that they probably should have won over the last year or so. But it was great to see him and James finish the deal off and get the win today. I know it means a lot to Martin. It means a lot. lot to James and that whole 19 team. Those are great dudes over there. I talk to a lot of them anytime we are parked near each other on the starting grid. So,

really happy for them, and we get to hang a banner at JGR tomorrow before the comp meetings, which is always good. It's just unfortunate. It's not the 11 this week, but, you know, I guess we can say we went back hot. I mean, two top fives

in the last three weeks. You can't define me. the way, since I said that, like, those are only two top fives, I think, for the year. So we've obviously run way better, but we've had issues that I've been speaking of all year long that have really kept us from getting our best position. But I said we were hot, not white hot, but hot. Richmond or Martinsville, probably should have won that one, didn't do it. And then cooled off a little bit at Talladega, even though we ran up for an all race. so I said we were lukewarm.

I'm going to put us back in the hot category after this week. You got two good tracks coming. You got Kansas, which you obviously have had a lot of success. We're going to have to be 2311. Apparently. Yeah, well, I mean, I feel like you could do something about that if you really wanted to. I know what they got for sure. But yeah, it's a fun one.

I'm really happy at least Joe Gibbs Racing got it for sure. but yeah I'm excited about these next few weeks and especially now I've got something looking forward to Travis, why don't you find out while you're sitting over there Who am I going to be a match up with next week? Justin Haley?

Justin Haley. All right, I got the... Dear Danny We've got some questions that we want to ask Dare Danning We need answers and we need him fast We tried to ask Junior But his answers were lame

And with DBC, it was more of the sun Now we're caught on you Because you're our only hope This ain't the race track So maybe you won't choke Dear Denny Moving on to this week's Dear Denny

First question I got for you Is with Chase's return There's been a lot of conversation About star power in the sport So who do you think could do more For creating that? NASCAR, the teams, or the drivers themselves Ooh, who's responsible?

Who's responsible? for the star power. Yep. Yeah, I mean, what made it so different back in the day is that, you know, NASCAR was, you know, it was super high on the, when you look at all the major sports, right, it was football than NASCAR, right? And it didn't get consumed by social media quite as much. So you had to tune in.

You had to go to the race to watch and see what happened. I think we were probably more accepted by other mainstream media back then. When you had Dale Earnhardt Jr. being in music videos and Jeff Gordon hosting Saturday Night Live. People on Twitter just don't understand like, well, why don't they do that? Why don't we have a dokey series on Netflix? Well, because they haven't said yes. Not NASCAR. They'd love for all that stuff to happen.

but the platforms have to accept us. And so you've got to be more relevant in the sports world, in my opinion. So I don't know who's necessarily at fault for that. I mean, certainly, you know, we talked about this regarding my penalty. You're kind of harnessing some personality here a little bit. And so that's not a good thing. You see some crazy things that some athletes say when they're football players, NBA players or whatever, and, you know, they just, they kind of embrace it, right?

Where it's just a little different in NASCAR. It is more corporate, right? You know, I'm responsible for representing hundreds of thousands of FedEx associates week in, week out, so I can't go act in a fool, right? So it's just different, right? If all of our cars were blank and all of our costs were covered by NASCAR and teams could just pick whoever they wanted to drive their race cars based off of personality and talent and all that stuff, you probably would see more star power. But it's just different now because we have to represent

big companies, right? And we have to, you know, they don't like to be on the left side of the road or the right side of the road. They like to ride right in the middle, right? They don't want you to get too far one way or another. So it's just different. And anytime you have to look out and be, you know, a representative for a company, you probably aren't going to show your true colors quite as much, which, I mean, as big as FedEx is, that's what I love about them, is they've never held me back from being myself, right? I mean, sometimes they roll their eyes at me. I get the old eye roll from Catherine Flea at FedEx when I say something silly or do something dumb. But in the end, they've had my back, and they've had my back for all 18 years of my career.

And so it's just, but some companies aren't like that. They're not all like that. So that's why you get some of these drivers, little apprehensive, to speak out on sensitive subjects. And so I don't know how to fix it, really. I think that certainly some of the promotion they put behind Chase Elliott was big. We saw some good ratings last week. I thought that was going to be the first true week of how do we compare?

Because people were talking about the 16% bump from where we were the week before. Martinsville, well, that was on Masters weekend. And it was on a Saturday. The race is on a Saturday versus a Sunday. That's apples and oranges. You can't even compare. But Sunday last week at Dago was the first real comparison where it was like, oh, okay, we are regaining some traction. here. So I don't know. I don't know what the right thing is, but it certainly is going to have to

come from promotion and getting on bigger platforms. To follow up on that, do you think, let's say, how do I want to word this? Do you think like just pushing more playtime on things, adds more to our play? Like, for example, your Domino's commercial last year. Like, why do you think that that took off in the way it did? Like, you still hear people say, hey, Hamill and I like your PJs. It seemed like when it came out, it seemed just such a... Because Domino's spent $72 million on that commercial. $72 million. The more you get.

They played that commercial over 30,000 times. It was the most played commercial on all networks. I'm talking about from oxygen network to freaking NBC. see like they played it everywhere it played over 30,000 times and spent 72 million pushing that but it was an initiative that they were pushing that Domino's

was pushing for the curbside delivery right so that's you know that's where they in Domino people don't know Domino's more of a technology company than a pizza company they're just a tech they're a technology company that makes pizzas like they're very into

you know how they spend their money to grow their brand. I learned that from, you know, watching, you know, Wall Street and CNBC quite a bit about listening to Jim Kramer talk about Domino's all the time. But it is. It's very interesting how they do their business. And you're thinking, well, how in the world did they get a return $72 million for what they spend on that ad? I don't know. I don't know if they did or not. But certainly it seems like it's been successful for them because they keep doing it. Yeah. Add it to your star power a little bit. Second question I got, can you dig deeper into the intricacies of a narrow versus wide pit road

and how that affects everything going on? They talked about a lot today that Dover is a narrow pit road. Yeah, Dover, Martinsville, certainly it's not a, so you always try to optimize pit road the most you can, and that is running all your green lights all the way down pit road, right? What happens is, is that when you pit maybe early on pit road, and I had this problem at Martinsville when I pitted early on pit road. Well, I'm coming out of my box and the 26th place guy is coming into his box and he's right in front of me. So I have to check up, let him into his box. And then when I pull out, I'm driving down pit road and you can't run too wide because then there's no room for anyone to get out of their pit stall. So everyone that comes out of their pit stall

from that point on, you do have to let them in a little bit. Like you're just kind of, all right, Let's get back to a single file here because we can't run two by two because then somebody's going to come out of here and just squish us into the wall. So, you know, it's interesting because F1 has mandated this is the width. Racetracks, you've got to figure it out. Like, this is the way it's going to be. But at NASCAR racetracks, they can sometimes be 100 foot wide or they could be 10 foot wide, it seems like. So there's no real standard in which we have. And even the pit boxes themselves can range from.

you know, a car length plus a quarter car or a half car, to some of them are like two and a half three cars in length, like three times the size. So it's very different and a lot of it depends on the size of the racetrack. And so we don't have specific set standards for pit road wits or anything, which is very surprising considering, I mean, the first thing we're going to hit is a crew member, right, probably on the right side of a car if we do make contact. And we see some close calls before and even contact. So the wider the pit road, the more room for air we have there. Lastly, what actor would play you in a movie? Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I would probably Tom Cruise. That's what my boat would be. I don't know. I don't

saying i'm like him by any means or look like him but i i just you think of days of thunder and i think of tom cruise um you know my my favorite actor of all times denzil yeah i mean he's you know denzil's one and tom hanks is one a so it's very very close for me i was i did have time in the bus to watch a few other movies uh during the rain delays but yeah i just feel like uh i'm gonna go with Tom Cruise. Not a bad choice. Yeah. I could see it.

Kansas this weekend, we talked about that a little bit. You have any off-track plans between now and... Oh, when you have a race on Monday, how does that... It screws everything up. Yeah. Screws everything up. Now, you know, I've got a very, very full week. I'm actually going tomorrow, which is going to be today when you hear this,

down in Charlotte going to do a event with Rory Macquarie at the Putterian, South Charlotte. So they're in town. Obviously, the PGA's in town for Quill Hall of this weekend. So me and Rory are going to do a little event. Have you ever met him before? I have not. That's not true.

I have at Michael's course during our member member tournament. So it's so cool. So fairly recently. Yeah. Yeah. So he ended up shooting like 10 under or something like that on the final day. But I'm looking at, you know, when you have a golf course, Private like Michael's surely there's, you know, everyone on there's an A-lister, right?

My name kind of sticks out like a sore thumb in my opinion. But like you see all these PGA Tour pros that are on the member-member tournament, Dustin Johnson, Roy McElroyd, Justin Thomas, Ricky Fowler, all these guys. It's just crazy to see their names and it's like, you mean I have to beat them? Like, how am I supposed to do that? Luckily, it's handicapped. So I probably get like 20-some shots against them because I'm, a five or six handicap.

But yeah, I have met him there. He's way smaller than you think, way shorter, but he's got some build to him. But people say that about me all the time when they see me in person, like, oh, I thought you looked way bigger. And I agree on TV. I look like I'm 6, 390 pounds when in actuality,

I'm 511.5, 160. Yeah. No, Rory's, I've been to a few PGA events. Rory is definitely a guy. when you see him hit the golf ball in person, notably off the team, it's like, stupid. Oh, that's why he's good. Yeah, no doubt. It's amazing the power that they get out of being that small.

Usually you would think, you know, with golfers, the more size they have, the more they're going to have winding up that club for clubbed speed. But he is a, man, he's good. That'll be interesting. I don't know what competition we're doing, but. Putting, apparently. Pudding? I think that'd be a good guess anyway. Yeah.

I don't know. The way I see this is right is that there's only upside for me. No matter what it is, right? Like there is going to be a putt. I'm going to make that he is going to miss. But he will never run a lap faster than me around a racetrack ever, ever. So it's not equal. I always said that about our sport.

It's the one sport. No other athlete will be able to come in and beat us in any way capacity. Zero. but there might be a three-pointer that I might hit that, you know, playing horse that Michael Jordan might miss, right? There's that chance. It's a legitimate chance. But no one will ever get in a race car run faster than me around a racetrack if you're in another sport. So that's what makes our sport unique. Anything else you want to add to this before we wrap it up?

No, looking forward to Kansas. I got a busy week. I'm traveling all over the place. I got the event with Rory. Then we're going up to D.C. on Wednesday and then I'm going up to Pennsylvania on Thursday. So putting some miles on the old plane

this week. So going to be a busy one. Look forward to talking to y'all next week and make sure you give us a follow. Jared at Dirtymo Media on across all social medias. You can follow him at Denny Hamlin across all socials and me at Jared D. Allen.

Please sign off here. Don't forget to like, share, follow all that stuff with this podcast. See y'all next week. See ya. Check out Dirtymo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.