Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin - Short Tracks: If We Do Nothing, Nothing Will Change

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

Denny Hamlin and Jared Allen are back breaking down a forgettable weekend at Martinsville. Denny discusses what triggered his Twitter beef with Marcus Smith (8:09), his frustrations with track reinvestment, and what needs to be done regarding tires and short-track racing in NASCAR (12:58). Plus, Jared asks Denny about the 11 team's decision to pit before the overtime restart, and how William Byron could pass when everyone else could not (52:18). Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is not going to be a rose color glasses show today. I'm sorry about that, but we will be as honest as we can be. Following is a production of dirty-mo media. Hey guys, welcome to Action's Determinal Post-Richman weekend. No, that was last weekend. It's Martinsville. God, I'm trying to live in the past. I'm trying to live in the past.

I like weekends we win. Not ones where we finish 11th. Welcome to Action's detrimental Post-Martinsville weekend. It was a forgettable weekend. I was about to say that. It was a forgettable weekend. No wonder why you messed that up. Yeah.

Your shirt. What do you got there? This is the Smiths. All right. What percentage of our audience do you think know who the Smiths are? This is a good question because I always think that the percentage should be pretty high. Because Morrissey is a very prominent figure in Europe, in the UK. Which makes me think, in the music.

scene music sense that a lot of people would recognize the Smiths but i don't think they do can you give me a 15 second education or is it is it going to be an austin story it'll be an austin story okay maybe if you know you know if you know you know if you know i like that appreciate that yeah well um we did some off track stuff we had to walk with frank to tank this week uh from barstool that was fun uh the toughest part about that was uh the ride up with me you Austin and Ty to the racetrack. And Austin trying to tell

his story of who Frank the tank was. Ty Gibbs has not ever seen Forrest Gump. I know. We're taking aback here. And then Austin trying to explain, you know, the shoes we're going to give Frank the tank is the Forrest Gump shoes.

Ty also doesn't know who Frank is. Right. So Austin's like explaining the story about you're going to give Frank these shoes. and how in Forrest Gump, Forrest Gump walks or runs across the country. So now Ty thinks that Frank just now walks across the country. But then Ty kind of just made it worse because he's asking, instead of just saying, okay, cool, he's asking Austin more questions.

And it was just very painful. It was a painful ride up to Martin'sville because anyone who knows Austin Peyton, his stories are a bit long-winded. He's definitely a Peyton. His dad was the same way. His dad worked for me for quite a while here at the house. And so, man, it was, that's why I asked about your shirt to write this all back up. You're like, hey, can't tell me what is the Smith?

And you're like, no, it's going to be an awesome story. We ain't got that kind of time. So, yeah, we walked around the racetrack with Frank from Barstool. That was awesome. I'm a big fan of Barstores. Barstool guys, Large and Spider, they're awesome. They come to most of the races. They have their own podcast.

Rubbins Racing, if you want to check that out, those guys are really doing a good job. And then Frank, you know, if you follow Barstool Sports's social, you know, he's a big part of their content creation. So, you know, the guy loses his mind whenever his favorite team loses. And it's just he's a very passionate person. He talks really fast. It's, I mean, what else can you say about Frank? He's awesome. Are there any takeaways you had from the second half of that conversation?

This video, by the way, it'll be out, I think, in a month or two. Okay. Frank walks, it'll be out on YouTube. I know the first half of this conversation from what I heard was mostly you talking about Martinsville and your racing history. But then when you got into Ask Frank some questions, so you asked him about the dolphins and Tua. Are there anything that he said on the second half of your walk that really really? really sticks out in your mind. No, I mean, just some of the questions I asked is that, hey, you know, because, you know, he's,

you put it. And by the way, you took a dig at me at the caption. Jared posted the caption of you needed another sports team to let him down. I mean, come on, Jared. You shouldn't have said that, though, because you had a bunch of people saying, you know, Denny has the, you know, he's so aware he has the best captions and all of NASCAR. And then someone was like, you know, asteric emoji. No, his PR guy probably wrote this for him.

And I wanted to give you the credit. I wasn't going to. Well, I appreciate that. But you can at least admit handle Bible that I do dig myself in comments 99% of the time. 100%. I'm very aware. I don't need Marcus Smith to tell me I don't have a championship three times. That joke was told three times in a row.

Right. We're going to get to that. And by the way, no Travis. this week we have a fill-in what's up Alex Tim's oh you hear that you hear that voice sounds familiar doesn't it yeah dirty mo-dow Alex oh yeah uh filling in for um master's week Travis is it because he goes to the masters right every week every year every year and lucky dog have you ever been to the master's yeah you have right yeah yeah I caddied for bubble Watson in the par three the year he won the masters um so yeah that's my claim to fame that's awesome he let me hit the final

shot. Yeah, it was really fun. I did, I did hit the green, which is good news. That's a big goal. Yeah, but man, what a spectacle that is. I just, I went there that one time, that one day, but it was just amazing to go around there. So, so I guess, is our race going to be directly up against the Masters on Sunday? Probably. I think so, yeah. I think so. Yeah. Foul around, yeah. Okay.

All right. Well, what else do you want to talk about? Let's talk about the Marcus Smith Twitter beef. All right. Because you kind of transition into that. Yeah. I guess back to the... I'll keep it so much short and sweet.

I think we've set our piece on it. I obviously, I said during media this weekend that, you know, some of the things I said were probably regrettable for sure. It didn't need to get as personal as it did. And yes, I do admit that the frustrations certainly stem from. A lot of it stems from, you know, the negotiations or the lack of negotiations going on right now between NASCAR and the teams. You know, my beef kind of with the SMI stuff is actually the opposite beef that I would have

with NASCAR. I think that while I don't like necessarily the chunk of the pie that they take from the teams or what have you or the chunk of the pie that they give to the teams relative to who puts on the show, nobody goes to a racetrack and watches an empty racetrack. They go to watch the stars, the cars, and the teams. while I have a beef with that for certain and you know ISC which is NASCAR own tracks and SMI which is Smith owned tracks you know kind of share the schedule I think it's like 6040 what I have said is that at least ISC has reinvested the money that they've taken it back into the tracks

you look at you know if you want to talk about the positives you know if you've been to to a race at Richmond, Talladega, Daytona, Phoenix, Michigan, over the last 15 years. You'd seen great upgrades to garages, hospitality areas, fan experience areas. It's just they've really done a good job. And then on top of that, all those tracks I just listed also all got repaves in the last 15 years. and they've just done an absolute phenomenal job. You can't say anything but positive about it. I think I was around when, yeah, it was.

It was early in my career, but when they repaved Talladega, the pavers got a standing ovation at the driver's meeting. That was one of the, I mean, I couldn't believe it. I drove on the track and I'm like, oh my God, this is incredible. Whoever did this job, because Talahoga used to be pretty bumpy,

had an old worn out surface. You know, it was, it needed to be redone because if it ever rained, we'd never get on the track again because of weepers and stuff. But, you know, typically, you know, you, you know, in all those repaves, I think that what they did, NASCAR,

is kind of take it all the way down to the dirt, regrade the dirt, compact the dirt, then put the, you know, a large layer of asphalt, down and I can't think of any of those tracks now there are there might be some small patches here and there that have been created over time through where that has happened with on-track incidents you know when we wreck a car like we dig into the track and it could cause things like that but I can't think of any of those all fans I left out Kansas Kansas is also on that list of

being they got redone built a casino right outside of turn two you see in the whole area around just grew up quite a bit. But the positives is, you know, a lot of these tracks, especially the ones that NASCAR own has done a fabulous job of really making, you know, keeping these tracks up to date. Because our fans just definitely expect more from the fan experience than what they used to, right? I mean, to ask your fans that just sit in aluminum bleachers for four hours, it's a very, very, very tough ask, but they've got enough going on around the racetrack to keep you entertained. So hats off to them. They've done a great job. And on the flip side of it, you know, my separate

frustrations with SMIs, I don't feel like that investment's really been made on their part. And surely you can combat that with, well, they did the roval. Okay. I think the roval's been played out now for a few years. I think everyone in the industry and probably fans would rather have us back on the Oval at this point. It was because the Oval Racing was so stagnant. So, you know, they took it upon themselves to do the Roval. You could say, well, they brought back North Worksboro. Well, COVID brought back North Worksboro.

They used COVID funds, so they got a bunch of money from the government to do that. So I make, they've always owned North Worksboro, but they finally, you know, put the investment back in it. So that was good to see. And, you know, I'm sure there's more to the story for sure. We could probably list off a lot of things that they've done in a positive manner. They redid Atlanta. But I look at these tracks and I say, okay, well, let's look at the last three to four paving jobs that SMI has done. And they've had to put patches on the track before we've even had our race cars on it.

And so I'm like, well, clearly, you know, you've got different content. tractors doing the paving at Sonoma and Marcus said this he's like well we got different pavers at sonoma than we did at north worksboro and i didn't even know north worksboro had a problem and so i'm like well that might be your problem is you don't have any communication with your people that but yes it did have problems and it and it probably will in the future um so it it's frustrating because you know we know that they're taking a bulk of and whenever we go to an smy track they're taking the bulk of the money from from the TV revenue and I know personally how much that I've invested in 2311 I would venture to guarantee you that 2311 has invested more in the sport than I as than SMI has invested in the last 10 years

and we've done it in four years just just one team has invested more in the sport so there's a problem there especially when we get roughly you know half of what what they get on any given weekend these companies in NASCAR you guys don't get like there's the right word for an audit like you can see how much money that you're reinvesting in the sport besides just you know obviously the picture of Sonoma and the track doesn't look good on on Twitter but other than you know public perception and seeing you know seeing is believing it can you see like do these companies reveal how much money they're reinvesting they do not reveal it no it's a secret that, you know, we, again, this goes back to my frustration, but to be a little bit more transparent with you and everyone listening is that, you know, NASCAR asked us to open up our books before, once we were doing these contract negotiations with them and the RTA is probably going to cringe right now listening, but like we opened up our books and said, here's what our costs are. You know, this is, this is what we need to survive. You need to, you know, give us back

what it costs for us to do this. That is a fair ask is for you to cover our cost to put on this show for you. And they won't do that. They refuse to do that.

And so that makes it very, very hard for the race teams. And it's why these race teams swim upstream and why you've seen a championship team a few years ago go out of business. So that's That's why it's very important to reinvest in the teams because the teams will give that back

in the sense of, you know, we'll do more hospitality. There's a lot more things we can do to reinvest that money back into the sport. But, you know, we've really just put an emphasis over the last few years on just cutting, cutting this, cutting that, cutting this. And what we've done is cut content, correct? We're not on racetrack as much. We've got 20 minutes of practice. And I heard Brad.

it bugs me a little bit that Brad's like, oh, we just need to have more practice. It's not going to cost us anymore. Well, that's not true. That sounds like someone has never had to make a cash call before with his race team. You'll have to buy quite a bit more. We'd have to come to the racetrack earlier, more than likely. That's an extra night of hotel rooms. I know for a fact, Joe Gibbs Racing saves significant money when we cut practice.

but we would be more than happy 2311 would be more than happy to go back to full practice and qualifying if we just got our damn expenses covered but we were not it all falls on us the engine bills would go up because we can only run these engines so many laps and so you can have an hour of practice but I guarantee the engine builders would say okay the way they're built you only can run them for these 20-minute practices in these two races. Beyond that, we got to redo our engines because I can't have you out there running, you know, 100 laps at Kansas on a practice day. Like the engine bills will go up. So we would see costs. I think it's not factual to say that adding practice and qualifying full weekend like we used to have would not incur some costs.

So we've cut content, and that is never, never good. The teams and the drivers are are the content. And so it's just part of a bigger beef I have with the whole situation. And when you ask, he says, well, why aren't we, you know, have they opened their books to see what they're investing? I think probably they have between SMI and NASCAR, they probably are a little more transparent with each other, more than they're transparent with us. So, you know, they came to all, when I, to circle this back around, is we came to them

because they said, what is your expenses? And we laid it all out. And we had all these. You say we. That's you and the race teams? The race teams had four or five, you know, um, representatives on their financial side say,

compare note to say, what is everyone really spending, right? To, to make this show happen. Right. Because we needed to create a, a case for NASCAR and show them why our business is, is what it is.

And so, um, we came back and said, here's the number. and their offer to us falls way, way short of that, which then puts tons of pressure back on us to then have to sell tons of sponsorship just to break even. But, you know, when people also ask, well, why don't, you know, this whole Marcus thing,

why don't you just say it to them in person? I did. I went to lunch with Marcus. And so when I try to explain to him that, well, here's why we have these struggles, Marcus, here's our numbers. and when he asked me, well, what do you think we make? I says, I can estimate. He's like, I said, but why are you being so secretive about it?

I don't understand. Why can't you be as transparent as what we've been back to you guys in NASCAR about our cost? Why is it all so secretive all the time? It's secretive because it's a big number. They make a lot of money. And so that's where my frustration stems from. And it's why I got triggered. You know, when I saw that picture of Sonoma because I'm like, I'm no paving guy.

Plenty of paving guys chimed in on what they saw. And all of it was that they didn't spend the money. They didn't do it right. And so why aren't you investing to do it right? You know, that's, that was my problem with it. And it stems obviously from other stuff. So I definitely shouldn't have chimed in. guess I don't know. I mean, sometimes you need to get people talking about something to get change.

I don't, I certainly regret the personal stuff for sure, but it's just very agitating as someone who has invested a lot of money in this sport over the last four years to see how these three parties, NASCAR, the tracks and the teams, how it's just frustrating to see how it's all run. Do you think positive change comes from these Twitter feuds? Because now, you know, media picks up on it and starts writing stories about it. Now fans begin talking about, as you just said, do you think positive change ultimately will come from this and more in the future? Yeah, I think positive change will happen. Yes.

You know, their argument will be, well, it's a negative, you're talking negative about something. and so that's not a positive that the overall fans sentiment you better strap in for the rest of the show then i imagine with the racetrack yeah i mean this is 100 this is not this is not going to be a rose color glasses show today i'm sorry about that but we will be as honest as we can be uh i feel like i've given credit to nascar and and others that have deserved it a lot over the last few episodes and when I have my conversations with Steve Phelps and say, listen, 80% of my podcasts are going to be very good for you. And there's going to be 20% that you're just going to have to be, you know, you guys are the big boys. You are the league.

Sometimes the league, you know, needs to be called on a few things. And so it's, we had a tough weekend. I had a tough week, I guess, when you kind of look at the stuff with Marcus. yeah, we needed to move on from it as quick as we could. I'm glad. I think it's pretty much done now, but yeah, it's a, hopefully we get, you know, we hold these tracks to a little bit higher standard than what we've been held of them, holding them to because certainly, you know, I don't think that when you look at Atlanta,

like we had to repave Atlanta off the turn two, I think multiple times before we even got to the track. there was a bump that the cars would go airborne and it was like dang they i mean they actually reprofiled the whole track so how did that happen um i don't know it's uh you know sonoma's got an issue north worksboro does did and will have an issue in the future um yeah it's three in a row ultimately when just to wrap this up when you have these track paving issues doesn't it now just going to cost more money to go back and fix it than it may have to initially do it, you know, like ISC has and go to the ground instead of just paving over the top? Yes, you would think if they have to go redo it. I saw, you know, where Sonoma, they had, they had to put patches in turns

two, three, seven, eleven. Like, how much does that affect the, how much does that affect the racing? It's just a bad look for the sport. It's a new sense. It's a new sense. It's a new since and when you got a sports car series, they're waiting to get on track because you're waiting for the track to be paved. Like, that's, I don't know. That's just a bad look. You know, it's, you know, things like the,

things like this, whether you like it or not, it affects fan sentiment of your track. And when you look at Kentucky, we used to go to Kentucky, there was a traffic debacle the very first year, people couldn't even get into the track before the race started. And what happened? It lost a date.

Nashville. It was a traffic debacle the first year. And you just, you can't, you keep drawing all these parallels to, well, how does that happen? And it's happening at under, under the watch of this group. And it's like, well, what, how can we stop that? How can we improve that? And I just, I want to see some improvement. We expect some improvement.

We should expect it. And, you know, I just, you know, we had Bristol. We threw dirt on Bristol. Texas is just, you know, it needs to be completely redone. I don't know how you fix Texas at this point. But, you know, there's been a few wins, I guess, if you really want to tally up the score. but it's been, in my eyes, more L's than W's, for sure, on the risk that they've taken. We're going to Texas next week, and honestly, it feels, I feel like we should be excited to move

on from a short track for a mile and a half because the short track product outside of Bristol in recent weeks has not been not been the best. It is not. And I mean, we have on this list, right, we have our trucks, you know, whether, Christian Eckus, Ark Infinity, Eric Amarola, or a cup, William Byron, but I think

we can't just continue to ignore the short tracks. I actually saw some really good content from the guys at the tear down. I had listened in on the way home yesterday, driving home,

just listening to what they had to say on it. And, you know, I, what we've seen is that when fans really loved the Eric Estep asked actually Jeff Gluck tweeted it out, hey, this guy puts out really good content each and every week. He had like a save short tracks, save the short tracks.

And I couldn't agree more that we have to make sure that we keep the racing good at the most important tracks to us. And I think the short tracks are the most important thing to NASCAR racing. And so we made some knee-jerk reactions back, you know, or five years ago that, you know, we saw a few crazy green, white, checkered finishes at road courses, and we said, we just need more road courses. That's what we want. And NASCAR answered those requests, and they started putting more road courses on the schedule. Unfortunately, with the next-gen car, it poses a challenge to the road courses. While it handles great by itself,

you know, when I remember driving the next gen for the very first time at Charlotte, it was, I was like, man, this thing handles road courses great. The problem is it handles great for everyone. And they're all the same. So we've certainly made the road courses and the short tracks challenging with this next-gen car. How do we, I don't know how we back that train up because I think what NASCAR's goal with this car has been is for parity. They've, they've, they've, publicly said we want parity. I'm clapping my hands because it's been achieved.

100% parity has been achieved in NASCAR in the sense of everything is the same. You've made the drivers the same. You've made the cars the same. And now everyone runs the same speed. But now what?

These are the unintended consequences that you have with parity. Is no one is going to be able to pass. And you Twitter trolls that come at me and say, well, William Byron passed, it took him 400 f***ing laps. And he needed some pit cycles and things to happen. We couldn't even pass Austin Dillon for 50 or 60 laps. The last car on the racetrack, we could not pass him at the end of stage two. So here's the problem. And I, and I, And I need someone to answer this, is that if your goal is parity and everyone, all the cars to be the same, how do you think passing will happen?

Do they think that one driver can overcome the dirty air that the car in front of them is creating or whatever it might be? I have to assume that was the initial thought, right? Okay. that okay that's a fair thought let's just pretend that the top you know the stars of our sport the superstars we have done it you cannot overcome that you want to know why because a few years ago we also made a decision as a sanctioned body to share each other's data so what happens when you create a car that's a kit car all the parts are the same all everything that's the same. What has happened since 2021 when we created the next gen car? Well, what has happened is the

teams have gotten smarter. They've learned from race to race to race to race. What makes this car go better? We've all morphed each other into the same setup now because the data spits out the same information probably for the most part to the teams of how the next gen wants to operate. it once operated this platform this that and the other so now when we used to go in 2021 the results were man we had all these different winners and everything yeah because teams were out to left field they didn't know the car yet so you would have a team a dark horse team you know hit it one weekend and win that's those days are over those days are done you're going to have the same eight to nine guys win every week from here on out it's just

because they've got the most resources, they got the best pit crews, they got the best drivers. That's okay, I guess, but what happens is what you've seen over the last two weeks. If you've got the same cars, you've now shared the information,

the proprietary information that I used to have as a driver at short tracks, that got shared across the field. So what do they do? Everyone went to work and says, well, I'm going to copy that. So now you've not only created,

a next gen of cars, you've created a next gen of drivers that all drive the same because it's clear the optimum way to drive it. So how are you going to create passing? You will not. We can't even at the end of that race. I was trying my damnedest to knock Austin Cendrick out of the way. He was holding me up. Bad. I don't know how many lapsed down he was, maybe one, maybe two. Anyway, he was lapsed down in the middle of guys battling for a race win i couldn't get to him knock him out of the way i'm trying to knock this guy up the race track can't do it can't reach him so instead i have to just sit behind them and let the let the laps just go away and so that is a problem that's why we don't have the cautions the wrecks anything that we used to have from back in the day we can't even reach

the bumper of the cars. It's the racing needs to be fixed. There's, I just, I'm not saying anything that no one is not going to be saying this entire week and they've already said it. I'm sure the DBC guys will have issues with it. Certainly the tear down and the media have voiced their opinion already on it and I agree with them.

If we sit back and do nothing, then shame on us. We deserve whatever. is coming to us in the long run. But how many times can you say that? Because we have this conversation every Martinsville race. We had it last year after this Martin's voice. We had the race before that. But here we are a year later and it's still the same product.

Well, you would argue, and let me be the counterpoint to that, is that if you're NASCAR, you're going to say, well, we gave you a little different tire and we gave you a little different error pack. But it seems like anytime we have this conversation, the answer is always, well, we'll give you a little bit of different tire. but the result end up ultimately is the same. Until we get a tire that's drastically different from anything else, i.e. Bristol, the product is relatively the same.

It's relatively the same because you're not until you make a horsepower or tire or shifting change, you will have the same result. You're right. We keep tinkering with aerodynamics. I'm sorry, we're running 45 miles an hour in the middle of Martinsville. It's not aerodynamics. It's a horsepower to tire ratio. And until we get that through our thick skulls,

it will remain the same. But it will have to come from the high ups at NASCAR to say, fine. We're done. We've seen what parody looks like. We don't like it. Because that's why you have no wrecks. We can't even get near each other.

It's just a conveyor belt. And you saw it. I thought Clint and, and Harvick did a great job explaining it. As soon as we catch the back of the field, it's just going to cord in everyone back towards the front. Now, if NASCAR wants that and say, hey, look, yeah, we held up the leader to let second, third, fourth, fifth,

run right behind them. Well, that's all they're going to do is run right behind them. It's what we did at Richmond. Truex got held up by lap cars that he was over three-tenths faster then. But as soon as he caught him, he ran their speed because we can't go anywhere. We cannot overcome it. And there's not enough fall off.

I mean, I was running practice and saying, my fastest lap was a 20.20. Okay. When I left practice running 50-something laps, my last lap was a 20-55. Three and a half tenths? We'll never pass. Never.

It just keeps getting worse. It used to be seconds. And now we've tightened it all up where the left side tires don't even get me started good ears so far off on left side tires and i have a solution that i think could fix it i've thought about this you're peeing it no NASCAR has their own next-gen car it's one that they originally started with right you need to get NASCAR and their team this should not fall on the teams to pay for fixing this get NASCAR's car get Dale Jr. and get him to go to Richmond

and get him to go to Martinsville and test tires. And you don't run, he gets to pick out the tire that we run. It'd be great publicity. This is Dale Jr.'s tire. Let's see how it does. I think he would sign up in two seconds to go out there

because he's angry about the tire as much as I am. He brings it up just as much as I do. But we clearly are missing the mark. Goodier is missing the mark and we clearly know that having a tire that falls off we've seen it. Bristol gave us the evidence that says

this is better. Now, did it need to go to that extreme? No. But we damn sure shouldn't have a car leading the race with 180 laps on his left side tires. That is ridiculous. So are you assuming that they have the ability

to make this perfect tire? They do because we know they have the ability because they have a wet weather tire that is phenomenal that does wear out. If we ran that wet weather tire on dry, which we did at North Worksboro, I watched the lap times. I was sitting in my during, I guess we had heats, right, at North Worksboro. I was watching with the track when it dried out and we had the wet weather tires, the lap times where everyone's run the same because they had a lot of grip. and then all of a sudden, the disparity in time between fast cars, slow cars was huge. And we had crazy amount of passing going on. And then we put on the slicks and it was over.

We had single file racing from there on out. So we know that they have the chemical recipe to build us a soft tire. It's in the wet weather tire. You have got to soften this tire up dramatically, way out of your comfort zone. because the reason our tires are so hard is you need to understand how we got here. We got here because we created these mixtures of the rubber for the tire based off of the Gen 6 car. The Gen 6 car, we were running on coal-bound springs and all these things that put tremendous

load in the car, in the tire itself. So we would run our cars really, really, really stiff to keep the, Aero platform, correct, but it would take a beating on the tires. And then so we would start blowing tires. And NASCAR then reacted by stiffening up sidewalls, stiffening up the rubber on the car itself. And then the racing was like, oh, you took all the tire fall off away. What happened?

Well, they stiffened everything up because we were blowing tires because of the setups we were putting in the car. It wasn't their problem. It was the team's problem. and if they changed nothing back in the day, the teams would have figured out, I can't do that anymore. I can't keep jacking camber into the car.

I'm going to blow a tire, which is why I said if we did nothing going back to Bristol, the teams would make adjustments because nobody wants to be the first to blow a tire, but we would make the proper adjustments to make it right. So we got here through the Gen 6 car, and I just think, and I don't think I know,

This gen 7 next gen car does not have nearly have the load that the other car had. So that hard rock rubber compound that you took from Gen 6 to Gen 7, it doesn't work because these cars are not pushing. We've also taken downforce away. Downforce pushes down on the tire. It makes it wear. And so I think one of the reasons that the short track is, have probably taken a step back from the old package that we had last year is that they took

downforce away downforce while i agree with the general the general reason behind doing this it creates less tireware if you have less downforce so they needed to greatly soften the tire up a because of the less loads that next gen has and b because we've taken even more downforce from the car than what it had before. So we've got to get together. NASCAR and Goodyear need to get together. They need to get a separate driver, so on it's not even in the series.

Go out there and test. And they need to wear tires out. What I can't wrap my head around is you say they have the ability to create these tire. I feel like they clearly don't. Or if they don't, they have a reason why they're purposely not.

I can't be because they want people to watch this race and then go to their local tire to be like, give me a Goodyear tire because Joey Lagano, led the race on 180 lap left side tires. It can't be because they want people to see that the tires don't wear, so they go put them on their production car. That can't be it because no one's doing that.

No one's going to the store and buying good year tires. I agree. They don't wear out in an ice car race. No one cares. I agree. So I don't know. I feel like they just don't have the ability because why else would you not fix it? You might be right.

I don't know. The Bristol stuff, they don't know how they got there. So that was clearly a happy accident. Could the north, you cite the North Wilkesburg. rain tire. Maybe that was an accident too. All points valid. You are correct. I would say that maybe they don't. I don't know. I mean, I know that Formula One

each weekend has an option, right? Soft, medium hard. Tire. And they decide what's the best tire for them. Tell me why we can't do the same. It certainly maybe would create passing because if you gave us some soft options, maybe two sets of soft options for the race this weekend. Clearly, I know that it's not going to last, but how long do I think the run's really going to be? Screw it. I'm going to put them on this run, because I need to get my track position.

I'm going to motor through the field, and then if I wear the tires out, I'm just, I'm going to hope for a caution. At least that would create some passing, but everyone's on the same tire. And everyone drives the same, and all the cars are the same. How do we think passing is going to happen?

It doesn't. Could you, you, you mentioned that all teams are sharing data now. That's all teams across the sport, right? So you have the Hendrick data. I can see how their drivers are approaching how they are driving. They're driving technique, right. If you eliminated that, would you create less parity if you did not have that information? You would create less parity amongst the drivers, yeah.

Their own individual styles would come out. But I also would say that, you know, the reason I got better over the last. for years is I've morphed my style into someone else's. I mean, I have. When Kyle Bush was a teammate of ours and he was beating the crap out of me every mile and a half and I was beating the crap out of him every short track. We just switched each other. He took on my style as short tracks. I took on his style mile and a halfs. Then we became the same. Right. So as a fan, I don't want you to get better at that. And I don't want him to get better at that. Right. I want y'all to be the way you were. I want him to be very good this one thing and you'd be very good at the other thing because then it creates more

racing I guess right is now that all these drivers are simulating common sense but it's not what NASCAR wanted but I think that that parody worked initially when the next gen car first was introduced we had all these random winners and it's like oh you know the 34 team is is run up in the top 10 like they've never done that before when you didn't have qualifying that first bit of of COVID um you know you You had certain teams that were excelling or other teams. Because we didn't understand the next gen car. And what I'm telling you is over time,

we've now all figured out. Right. We need a great question marks. The puzzle has been exposed onto what is the best way to run this next gen car at all these tracks. And we've morphed our setups more than likely into a very tight box. And so, and it's just going to get worse.

It is not going to get better. We're just going to continue because nothing. is changing, right? Unless they change something, all of our setups will continue to just get closer and closer and closer and closer. And the drivers will get more educated and get closer and closer and closer and we're going to have like what we had. The closest finish from front to back that we've ever seen. Well, congratulations because your leader can't pass last place. And when he can't pass last place, forget cautions. NASCAR is going to have to get creative with how they threw caution. want to hear you complain that

Kyle Bush touched the wall on NASCAR threw a caution. They know they're not going to get any other opportunities to throw a caution. So they got to, they have to throw it. Because they know we're not going to run into each other. We can't get close enough to run into each other. It's,

I know. I know. I just wish, I don't know what I wish. I'm, I'm pissing up a rope. It just, I know that you know i if we do nothing nothing will change and so i i don't know what they're willing to do who's the who's the person that presses the button today or next week or in a month from now that says we're going to do something who who who's who's that person well ultimately you know you've got

you're running this sport you've got steve phelps steve o'donnell um steve o'donnell came from the competition side, I guess probably Propes has his position now. I think I could be wrong on that. So, you know, Steve's taking on, Steve O'Donnell's taking a bigger role within the company. So I'm not sure how much he presses the buttons, but they all have to get approval, I think, from Jim on, you know, major changes or things like that, because Jim has, when Jim has a vision, he goes to these guys and says, here's what I want. And they say, okay, we'll figure out how to get that done. So I don't know whether there's ever pushed back to say, hey, let's think about the negatives that could come from this, right? What are the unintended

consequences of having the cars all the same? What's the unintended consequences of drivers sharing their data. We're seeing it now. And it's exposed. And while you 100% have accomplished the goal of parity, we have to give them a round applause. They did it. They did it.

We need to back some of this up now because it's hurting our product. There's no question about it. Yesterday was a hard watch, hard watch. I just listened to the tear down. and this podcast and everyone else say we we need to do this if we don't do this then you know shame on us if we don't do this but jeff gluck's not going to be the one to do anything i'm not going to be the one to do anything but keep saying we so i'm just curious of who has to make that decision and if the decision isn't made or this racing doesn't get better who should be the one that has

responsibility on why the racing doesn't get better i don't think it's my place to call out any one individual person at NASCAR, but it's going to be someone collective. I think that you're going to have to get them to acknowledge that this is not acceptable. We've hurt short track racing in NASCAR our roots. This is our roots of racing. It's why you see most of the highlights that they show when they're showing a promotional video is far before the next gen car. It's going to take some humility. on NASCAR's part to say, all right, well, we've seen this now. Let's, we agree that we should probably make some changes. Because I think that if you do nothing, nothing will change.

It will continue to get worse. And then you have to, you have to be willing to deal with the consequences of your racing product not being quite as good. And that's going to cost everyone money. Well, perhaps this show will be listened to. and change will be made. You seem to be pretty influential in the racing because I saw more emphasis on explaining restarts

yesterday than ever before. I'm getting ready to go practice. And Dave Moody was behind my pit stall. And he came up to me and he gave me $5. And I says, what's this for? He says, hot dog. He says, I just want to make sure you're compensated for all the content you created for us this week.

He's like, it's a dollar a day. I know it's very small, but God forsaken, all they wanted to do was talk about you and these rickin restarts for five straight days on Sirius XM. And I said, I appreciate it. I'll take that $5. I put it in my pocket. And so I said, actually, Dave, I was listening to him. Me and Jordan were on our way to pick up the kids on Friday after.

I guess they have a thing called free free speech Friday. And that's still all people could talk about was restarts. And Denny jumped to restart. It's like, hey, guys, I acknowledged on Monday that I jumped to restart. I kind of went through it in detail on the restarts. So, yeah, I mean, certainly that was the, the topic of last week. We've talked about it at nauseam,

but I think that I was surprised, actually, that NASCAR did not bring it up in a driver's meeting, that, hey, we're going to be looking at that. I think it's just they probably didn't need to, but I think they needed to, just to put it on record that, hey, if we call you on this and you do the same thing that the 11 did at Richmond,

you're going to get black flagged. I think we saw that through, them reviewing a lot of restarts through the weekend. So, no doubt the drivers know that NASCAR's looking at it. They'd be crazy to do, you know, to even go remotely near the beginning of the box and which is why we saw a lot of guys going later on Sunday. You saw that the advantage was taken away by going later. I restarted once.

Not always. Not always, but I went later in the box and I lost my advantage. I lost the lead to Chase Elliott during that time because what happens is what is the accordion, right? So it looks like I'm like break checking the field, but I'm not. I'm just running a steady state speed. What happens is the field is pretty spread through three and four. And this is what was happening at Richmond as well, is that you got the first few rows, they're somewhat tight, but the back starts coming towards the front.

And it's an accordion. they start smushing towards the front and if I don't go and they thought I was going to go, they start stacking up. And so I just wait. I'm like, I'm going to wait another 50, 100 feet and then I'll go. And then that just causes a big kind of stack up. So,

and what happens in that stack up is sometimes the fourth place guy would, will give the second place guy a push forward and they'll end up taking off, you know, pretty much with you. So it's why going early. is typically an advantage. Beyond just the obvious things, I always found that if you just go late, you're opening yourself up to, you know,

not getting the best of restarts. You're going to have everyone right on top of you. And then on top of that, you're likely to cause a stack up well deep into the field and nobody wants the responsibility of being responsible for a huge pile-up. Why? It's just a bad, just a shit look.

On you? on the leader? Yeah, I mean, maybe I'm just thinking too much about the grand scheme of things but yeah. I think you're thinking

if that was me, right? You wouldn't mind it? I would want that. I would want that. I think I, well, because then it's like,

all right, you guys should probably not be doing what you're trying to do. Yeah, that wouldn't happen. That's true. Stop trying to get

to one up me, you know? Yeah, you're probably right on that. But I think that it's just we've seen historically that when you go early your,

of retaining that lead is much higher. I'm glad we're definitely going to move on from the restarts. That was last week's topic, and it's in the past now. I'm going to jump to the end of this race since much didn't happen for the first three quarters. William Byron comes down pit road first on that last green flag pit cycle, and then he's able to take the lead on the track. I guess he kind of reversed the one to four positions because you were leading, you pitted two laps after him, he pitted first, two laps before you. And then the nine and the five were in between you all in second and third.

You went to fourth, William went to first. Can you explain how that situation took place? Well, I have to correct something in when I got interviewed after the race, I said that we had got jumped by, I think I didn't race around William, much because when I came out on pit road he was ahead of me that's not true yeah he passed me um of course i'm very much caught up in you know what i'm doing who i'm racing and whatnot but when i came off pit road it was obvious i was battling the nine for the race lead at that point i went to make a move on the outside of the nine and then the 47 had me boxed in and i got passed by two of the other hinder cars the five and the 24 i think the 24 first the

then the five, and then the 24 went and passed the nine a little bit later than that. So, yeah, I think that it's very difficult. Chris Gabehart's in a difficult spot because we are the leader, right? I think we had a little over a second and a half lead, something like that, the 24 pits, the five and the nine pit, and then we pit it. It's not like we stayed out much later. And by the way, it's not like the speed we were running was way off of what new tires were. It's not like another track that's got a second or a second and a half of falloff,

like Richmond where you were gaining huge chunks. But it was three, four tenths, right? So if William Byron was two seconds behind going into pit lane, which he was probably right around that number, maybe two seconds, he had two lap advantage on the track. So let's just pretend that's four. tense on new tires. I think it was more because I was stuck behind Brad during that time. So let's realistically say it's a half a second a lap that he gained. That's one second.

And then we had a little bit slower stop, which is about a second. And then I probably didn't do the best job getting on and off pit road. That's some time as well. And what does that equal? It equals coming out right next to the lead, right? Instead of the gap that I had before. but that that it was more on me to put myself in a position where I didn't expose myself to get passed by those other two when I was battling the nine there I thought that if I could have single filed out behind the nine I definitely would have been good enough to hold off the 24 although he was better he got better as the day went he was really good the first stage mediocre the second and really good the third.

So it's a big assumption to me to say, oh, I would have just been able to hold off the 24. He was strong. He was strong. You got to give them credit that they peaked at the right time during the race. But I felt pretty confident that I could have gotten around the nine in the long run. I say that because I had passed them in the long run multiple times throughout the day. and so I probably didn't I probably was a little too relaxed in letting those other guys get around me thinking I'm just I'm just going to go around them in the long run I'm just going to single off file out here and I'll get around them knowing that man it's only 80 laps ago I should have fought really hard to to hold them off were you assuming the other two hender cars the five and the 24 would run like

the nine did on the longer because like you said yeah the the run yeah previously on that restart the start of stage three chase beat you on the restart and then 80 laps later you passed him and then drove out to a two second lead right and the reason i passed him is he eventually caught lap cars right i i was he he drove out there a straightaway lead he caught lap cars and couldn't pass any of them and so that let me catch back up to him and then make the move on him so I did. I think I just if I had to do it all over again, I just would have had a more sense of an urgency to

I came out of pit lane side by side for the lead. Fight for it right now. Fight right now for that lead. And I just didn't. I took for granted that we were just going to yeah, I got it in the long run before I'll get it again. So I think that's probably on me more than anything for sure. So after reviewing this race, William won the race because he was the best car at the end of it, not because of he made a decision to pit two laps before you. That's all kind of here or there. Yeah, I think so. I think really the best car,

best car, best driver won yesterday. I believe that. He, I mean, he was battling me at the end of stage one pretty hard. He was better than I was. He drove from 18th to battle me for seventh the eighth in the stage. So he he was good. He was strong. And so you have to give credit to someone that you know has

had his hot and cold moments at Martinsville but when he was when he's on he was he was on big like he was in 2021 just lights out. We had a caution with two laps to go. John Hunter blows a break break blows up. What's the term for that?

Blue a rotor. Blue a rotor. I think that's what he did. I'm not sure. Caution comes out with two to go. You decide to take four tires. I assume hoping that other cars come behind you on pit road and they ultimately did not. Yeah, I mean, you know, Chris even said after the race, he's like, oh, just, he's like, that was just not the right choice, just simply because where are you going to go, right?

It's barely a two-lane track as it is. and you just know it's going to get stacked up. But our thought process is that, and we talked, I mean, we talked it a lot during the caution. I don't know if you heard our radio, but we were just going back and forth about, man, here's the pros of it, here's the cons of it. I'm like, realistically, I know I will not,

I'm not going to win the race from outside row to. More than likely what happens is that the inside row starts pushing each other and they knocked themselves up into me and I end up going backwards from here. And then if we don't pit and I'm in that fourth, so I'm not going to win. And most likely if I think five or six cars pit,

they are going to bull their way. They're going to just drive in and just keep bumper caring cars until they get them up out of the groove. And I was going to be the recipient more than likely of that last two laps. So we're thinking you know what we're running fourth um if we pit and drag five or six with us there's only 13 on

the lead lap i could maybe restart fifth and maybe i got a shot if if these guys slide up into each other i got new tires i could in two laps i could do it not even close i mean we did it back in 2010 but clearly racing on short tracks was a different thing that it is is now. 2010, they brought it up on the turnaround and they're like, yeah, but then he did this because they pitted way back then.

And yeah, we restarted 9th with six laps to go, I believe it was, and won the race. Now, we needed, there was one caution that happened, but the new tires that we had back in 2010,

you could, I mean, I went three wide bottom, top, just passing the shit out of guys. We, should have known that when Joey Lugano stayed out on 100 lap left side tires, that this was just not going to, it wasn't going to work. And so we wish we could do it all over again, just taking the double, you know, getting a top five on Martinsville, that's a double. It's not a bad day, for sure. We didn't. We tried to swing for the fences and try to get a win somehow, some way.

It wasn't, didn't work out. Does that mean that every other car team on the track was just resigned to this is where I'm going to finish. We don't really have a shot to win this. Yeah. We're just going to finish fifth. Yeah, that just showed how much track position mattered. And that's what, you know, that's what we had. And so, you know, really the stars of our sport is just whoever's got track position.

Really, so I think the stars of our sport are the crew chiefs. You know, when I look at, you know, Paul Wolf's decision to leave Joey Lugano out there, he's the star. Joey's driving it, but he was the star. He was the one that made the bold call to, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to keep my driver out front at all cost. I think clean airs means more than these tires that don't wear out.

And he was right. Well, if the crew chiefs are the stars of this show, that means Rudy Fugel must be a superstar because now William Byron has 11 wins the most by any driver since the start of 2022. What do you want me to say? I said it a few weeks ago when he won. I'm thoroughly impressed with William Byron.

You know, he's just a very, very good driver. I don't know what else to say. And Rudy Fugel is just a very, very good crew chief. You know, I definitely, you know, I said congrats to Chad Knause. He was walking by when they were all celebrating. And when we got out of the car, there was a few Hendrick executives. you know, not far from us and they were all hugging each other. You saw how much this meant to that organization.

Now, to run one, two, three, boy, that's icing on the cake. We knew that a hinder car was going to be very tough to beat this weekend. How you put an extra emphasis on it, I'm really not sure. I mean, surely they put an emphasis on it in the fall race last year, you know, to get the final four, but the results were bad, but man, they figured something out for sure and all their cars performed great. And so I think, you know, Alex Bowman kind of was a few cars of track position away from, you know, possibly making it one, two, three, four. But man, what more could they have asked for? They had all those employees and friends there. And I saw a lot of people giving Fox a bunch of crap

to, you know, Fox about, you know, the love of fest for Hendrick, but, I mean, this is an organization that's given so much to NASCAR and the community. Let them have, let them have their day. I mean, they deserved it. This was a, I know a big thing for, you know, Rick and Linda have just given so much to our sport. The whole Hendrick family, you know that the drivers all wanted to win that race for them. William just was the guy that made it click at the right time. But they had a strong showing by all their cars. I think, you know, Larson dominated stage one, for the most part.

Chase dominated stage two. And then William dominated stage three. So they had the perfect weekend. And you just have to, you know, take your hat off, congratulate them. And then you try to go to work to try to beat. him next time. As a team owner, do you, can you put more into one week than another week? I don't think. I mean, you can, but I don't know. These storylines have a crazy way of working themselves out, right? And so I know for a while there was always a conspiracy theorist over

like who wins the poll for the Daytona 500s, whoever the biggest name was or the storyline that that typically did it. I don't know about any of that stuff, but I know that these cars are basically the same. I mean, so I don't know what else you could do. I don't know that anyone spent more simulator time or maybe ran more simulation models.

I'm not really sure. It's tough to speculate on any of that, but I mean, if you're able to put, just say, I'm going to put more emphasis on a race and go run one, two, three, you would think that they would do it every week. Every week, right?

So I just think that the stars aligned really well formed. Yeah, and obviously Team Hendricks has been very good to start this. Yeah, I mean, they've won there 28 times, now 29. So it's not like they just pulled a rabbit out of the hat that was, you know, no one saw this coming. Like, we all saw this coming. It took, it took me 300 laps walking through the Martinsville Tunnel. they had up pictures of all of Hendricks wins in the tunnel and walking through them.

Did he anybody have a mustache? Get a mustache drawn on them? No, nothing was written on the tunnel walls. But it took me 300 laps to realize that that was just Hendrick wins because I'm looking like, wow, Jeff Gordon, Jeff Gordon, Jeff Gordon, wow. Hendricks won here like every single race, you know, back to back to back to back to back. And it took me a minute to realize they were just Hendrick wins because your picture was not in there at all. Yeah.

Not in the Martinsville speech. Speedway Hall of theme. But nonetheless, Hendrick has obviously been very good at Martinsville in their 40-year history. Yep. And it's a special track to them for multiple reasons, right? They had triumph there. They've had tragedy there, which is why as competitors, while I'm pissed that I didn't beat them, I'm also like, good for you guys, you know, because I know that this meant a lot

to them. Yeah, that too makes me wish that it could get this racing figure out at Martin'sville because the crowd and everything is just so good there. If the racing was good, this would be a must-see event. I know it. And yet now we're talking about, let's take a date from Richmond or let's take a date from Martin's Hill. God, no, don't do that.

Don't do that. We overreacted by adding more road courses because you had a few crazy green-white checkered finishes. Don't fix the damn racing. Don't take it away from the tracks that mean a lot to our community. We skipped over at the start of this show, the truck race and the Xfinny race. Just want to give a shout out to Christian Eckus. He won the truck race on Friday.

Man, they are on it. It seems like Christian Eckus, you know, I don't know what improvements maybe they've made to their program or their trucks in the offseason. but it seems like almost like they're the new Corey Hine. The stats are staggering. Two wins, obviously six races,

two wins, and 306 laps lead, which is three times more than Ty Majeski, the only other guy that has more than 100, which is 117. Yeah, I mean,

he's certainly on the short tracks. He won Bristol as well. But it's, it goes to, it's more than that. Like, I'm just, as a race fan, when I watched the truck series, he just seems like he's up front more.

And so there's, he's getting better, or the team got better or both. And so, you know, you would think that he's putting himself in that Corey Hymn category of, like, the next guys that are coming down the pipeline that you better keep an eye out on. And then on Saturday, Eric Amarola, Wednesday, Xfini race for JGR, and team Toyota. Yeah, big win for him. Yeah, I can't tell you. And you saw the emotion from Eric after the race,

and he had his kids there, and you just saw how much that win meant to him. And he says, you know, listen, I've won cup races and all this other stuff, but like this one means just as much. And so he's taken on kind of an advisory role, mentoring some of these young guys at JGR. He's in our cup debrief to every month.

Monday. So he's certainly kind of in tune with the whole JGR program. And it's good to see him getting a handful of races. I think he's running like 15 or something like that this year for JGR on that 20 car. And he's steadily getting better and better. Like at the beginning of the year, I probably held too high a standard that, oh, he's just going to, you know, a cup guy getting a JGR Xfinity car. He's just, he's going to win every chance he gets. But it's taking a little bit of time and he's starting to get used to these cars again. And his performance, I thought at Richmond, he was, you know, the best car times. Chandler Smith, you know, was a little better at the end.

But then now he wins this race. So this is two races in a row. He's been a top two cars. So hats off to Eric and that whole 20 team. Great to see them get that victory. Man, the shit show that it usually happens at the end of those races. It's like at Martinsville, it gets down to the end of a truck race or an Xfinity race. and there's a caution inside 10 to go.

It's just like, oh, here it goes. We're just going to look like idiots. Well, when he picked the outside on one of those restarts, like, no, no, no, what do you, you know. You're going to get moved. I was thinking the whole time, oh, well, they're just going to do a teammate restart. The teammate restart means that clearly I thought

that they had talked to Chandler Smith and said, hey, so you can come out of this ordeal second, you restart on the bottom. I'll restart on the top, and when we get off turn two, let me in. That's how I thought it was going to happen. I didn't realize they were racing each other. Yeah, that was a ballsy, but probably not the right move. Luckily, it all worked out, and Eric ended up winning, but yikes, I didn't know whether

they had agreed to something. I assume they agreed to something because no way you would take the outside line in that situation knowing that likely what's going to happen is third place is going to punt the hell out of the inside guy into you but shoo ha they got a bad finish out of that that would have been a oh man regrettable choice for sure but it all worked out and eric got his first win in exfinity in some time he did win the exanoma race in that uh i think it was like a rs s car um a ryan Seed car a couple years ago. So great to see them, you know, excelling. And I think Eric really likes his role at GGR right now. I saw Connor Zilich won a Cars Tour race at Hickory. Man, that kid's

good. I mean, so I hear. So we hear. But I mean, I can tell you, that's hard to do. Like, what he's accomplished is very, very hard to do. So I saw that. I'm always kind of got one eye always kind of looking at the cars tour to see you know who's running well there cars and quaple let's give him a nod as well this is two straight weeks where dale junior has put a short track ace in that 88 car and did he finish top five fourth awesome that's just so awesome to see it's and it shows like if you can these short track guys can get their chance they perform and they perform great. And so I loved seeing it

and I loved that Dale Jr's investing in these guys and giving them a chance. And if it leads to something in the future, great. And maybe the strategy is, hey, he's going to show that they can run well one time and then he can work maybe with sponsors to say, hey, why don't we get this guy half a season next year or something?

And so maybe that's his strategy to all, to giving these guys that. shop and not to go off on another 30 minute long tangent here at near at the end of this episode but if you had the money situation between the teams and NASCAR better in favor of the teams you could hire these guys yes to race full time right where you're going with it yes because you wouldn't have to sell sponsorship just to put them in a car correct to keep your ass yes that's that's part of building superstars in our sport is always putting the best talent behind the wheel that you think will win you races in a championship and unfortunately our feeder

series is if they're up front it's 80% drivers that are paying to be there that's just not that's that you will reap long-term negative if you if you're if you have to run your business that way and it's but unfortunately it is the way because of the our expenses are not covered if we had our expensive covered, we would just always hire the best driver at all cost because we knew that we would get rewarded through prize money and other things like that. So you're right. Credit to Dale for doing that here and there at the short tracks. He continues to give back to the sport well beyond what he's obligated to. He's just, you can't say enough about what him and Kelly are doing. I got a review here from Anonymous. It says, warning, this podcast makes NASCAR fans

like Denny Hamlin. Once you start listening to this podcast, you'll begin to realize Denny is a likable guy, and you'll find yourself rooting for him on race day. From Anonymous. I appreciate that, Anonymous. Yeah, thank you. I'm trying to give back.

I'm not doing nearly as much as Dale Jr.'s doing, but it's fun for me to come down and talk about this stuff. And, you know, while this podcast that you've listened two over the last hour and 10 minutes or so has not been all rose colored glasses and as as many would say about one of my best friends Greg Fernelli have toxic positivity today's episode was not it but hopefully it can spark some conversations on how we can make things better because i believe in our sport in the long term i believe that we we always make changes when things are obvious that We need to make changes, and hopefully we do not go back to Martinsville this fall with what we just had.

Let's get it fixed. Who do you have tonight in the national championship? It just depends. We talk in spreads. We talking, right, Tim's? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

If we're talking spreads, Yukon has covered the last two tournaments every game. So that's like that's like 12 straight games then yeah just saying I don't think they cover tonight I think they win what is what is the the spread six and a half six and a half you don't think they cover six and a half I get it they've run like a buzz throw saw through everyone but they're facing the second best team yeah but it's really just edie that's it you're not wrong definitely not wrong. I in the 23, the only bracket I filled out for the 2311 employee bracket, I had Purdue, I had Purdue winning the championship. I think that's a dead ticket, but the spread, I just think they keep it close just simply because when you're going for a championship and trust,

trust me on this. When you're going for a championship, you just, everyone's as a player and these are kids and some of them I mean I understand some of them were there last year you chest are a little tighter you puck her a little bit more and and you're like do you shoot that shot that like it's different than playing pickup basketball

if I play pickup basketball oh man I can shoot the lights out of it but we get in our leagues on Thursday night here at the house and it's like I don't want to waste this you know I'm not the best percentage guy let me just pass it off to the best percentage guy. And then, you know, my scoring gets cut in half because I'm just less apprehensive

because I know this is when it really counts. You know, and so I just think that you just play tighter a little bit in the championship, which I think compacts the final score into being tighter. That's just my theory. I don't know if it's right or wrong. I can get on board with that, yeah. I think you also want to root for a closer game, too.

You don't want to watch kind of a 70-point blowout. I mean, surely the refs might, you know, hold it tight. Yeah. Maybe hold the whistle at the end. Yeah. On the final restart? So put me down, Tim's, as Purdue plus six and a half. I got it.

Okay. I'll go against you. I'll go nine and six and a half, Yukon. All right. All right, 20 bucks? 20 bucks. Bet. All right.

So that's my pick, Purdue. I think Yukon wins the game. I think they're just far too talented all around. There you have ridiculous amount of depth. My agent from pro sport, Rod Moskowitz, huge Yukon guy. He's been telling me all year, oh, just no one's stopping Yukon. We're so deep. And I'm like, you get to see it firsthand.

These guys are incredible. So I'm excited to watch it tonight. And that's pretty much it. Going to Texas next week. never thought we'd say who thank God but before we close out I have to do my due diligence

to my fellow red vesters last Thursday was the now red vest go cart race the biannual red vest go cart race I was with you we were shooting some content for Logitech

so I did not participate but congratulations to Tyler Deering who did win I think there was a 19 car field so and you did what how did you do

I didn't participate It was Thursday night. I was with you. What was I doing Thursday night? We were shooting stuff for Logitech. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Well, shoot, that stinks.

I usually love making fun of you for performing terribly. Yeah, I think I would have performed better. Some of the best cars, best drivers were not there. Oh, wow. Scheduling conflicts? Or they're just too good? They're like, you guys are no competition. Maybe a little bit of both.

I mean, the red vesters have, I mean, they're, They're starting to get some talent in the go-karting field. It seems like these guys are starting to get pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, some guys just do it a lot. You know, like Corey of the Joy's brother Casey is pretty good. And we kind of kind of have to give him the date, you know, like, hey, I forgot to mention to you.

We're racing on Thursday night if you can make it. It's usually, ah, I can't make it. It's like, that was the point. Yeah. You know. Well, I mean, Logitech, to Seth Wye's got some cool new stuff coming out. So we were doing a photo shoot with me, Bob. and Alfredo, right?

You guys, so you were working all... I saw on your social media, someone was riding the simulator across Hambright. Yeah, we picked it up from the race shop. Because my... 2311's not far from Clutch Studios. It's like literally a stone sewer away.

So you guys had the simulator in the back of the pickup truck and someone was sitting in the simulator. Yeah, I said, Nico get in the send make sure it doesn't fall out. Awesome. All right, well, tune in next week after Texas, and we'll see you guys later.

Check out Dirtymo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.