Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin - This Was Like Gen 5 Racing

Episode Date: August 17, 2025

Denny Hamlin and his co-host Jared Allen are back after a frustrating race Saturday night at Richmond to cover:1:00 Denny has a new hobby 7:00 Could the All-Star Race be moving to Dover?11:30 Corey Heim gets another win in the Truck Series14:00 Denny responds to Mamba Smith's tweet about what the Championship should be about20:00 Richmond had a great race and shoutout to Goodyear29:45 The 11 team had plenty of mistakes34:45 Austin Dillon gets redemption38:20 Should SMT Data be available to every team?44:00 William Byron wins the Regular Season Championship. 2nd place is still up for grabs48:00 Could Tyler Reddick or Alex Bowman get knocked out of the Playoffs? Dirty Mo Media has a new e-commerce merch line! They’ve got some awesome Actions Detrimental merch on the site. Visit shop.dirtymomedia.com to check out all the new stuff.For more Actions Detrimental content: https://www.youtube.com/@ActionsDetrimental FanDuel Disclaimer: Must be 21+ and present in select states (for Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino) or 18+ and present in D.C. First online real money wager only. $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable bonus bets which expire 7 days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut, or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit GamblingHelpLineMA.org or call [phone] for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 1-877-8HOPE-NY or text HOPENY in New York. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Speaking of Kyle Bush, I was going to text him and I was going to say, are you okay? We were under caution and I felt boom. I'm like, what the hell? I guess he was warming his tires up and just door slam the shit to me. He was in everything last night. He is hitting everything. The following is a production of Dirtymo Media. I believe that I've been a competitive for 20 years.

Opinions from tonight's podcast, strictly biased. You're going to hear from my point of view. I'm a fighter. No, you are not. The spoils a victory for Jared Allen. He's got better luck to drink and drink to win. I know, you do. Two trophies missing from your collection.

The championship and the most popular driver. Someone told me that their drinking game is when I say for sure. Yeah, and I've already said it. Hey guys, welcome to actions detrimental. I'm Denny Hamlin. Drive the progressive Toyota from this past weekend at Richmond International Raceway. We're here on a off Sunday, right in the middle of the day, just enough to mess up Travis's drinking day. You can get after it after this.

I got a drink here. Oh, you got one. Yeah. Good. Jared, you can go climb trees or whatever you want to do after this. Have you slept? Yeah. Uh, I got in an hour. What? I went fishing at 4 a.m. Well, that's not true. I went to the boat to then organize my tackle, to then rig up my lines, to then go fishing at six. Why didn't you go home and get some sleep first? Well, I tried, but I laid in bed and I couldn't fall asleep

because I was thinking about my fishing rods. And I was thinking about, you know, which ones I'm going to rig with which lines. And I was just like, you know what? I need to just get there and do it. I don't know how many open races the 11 has next year, but Bass Pro if you're listening. This is apparently your guy

It's agitating I didn't get any bites this morning though No I didn't take that back I didn't get any fish I got bites no fish Just man it's just this is this time of the year It's really hard Where'd you go? Just kind of near

You can't give out where he went Yeah you can't It's not catching anything I wouldn't go there if I was anybody else the southern end of like our island here the southern end of that kind of near um i'm scoping out i'm scoping out the area where there and i'm talking to people were there dots on your no i on your radar there is on yeah there's there's waypoints on an sd card but i can't get the SD card as SD card to load into the GPS quite yet.

So I have to do it where I look at this, this map, and then I look at my GPS garment on the, on the, um, boat. And then I'm trying to like, okay, then I, I just pointed there and then I shoot. For those who don't know, if you haven't seen Denny Social, you got a new, new bass boat. I did. You've gone all in on this fishing thing. It went from just like a little evening hobby to, too. That's what he said told me, Travis, when you signed the paperwork for this bass boy.

He said, well, there's in and there's all in. All right. I'm only one speed. All gas, no brakes. I've caught more off the dock than I have the boat, but I haven't had the boat that long. It's early days. It's early. And the conditions, I'm telling you, these conditions are horrible.

It's August fishing is not easy. How are you liking the boat? It's great. I love the boat. Yeah, excited about that. I had it customized by those guys at Bassboro that did an amazing job at it. I'm learning it. I mean, it's got so much technology on it now.

I mean, you can basically see, well, you can. You can see your bait going into the water, splashing into the water, falling right towards the fish. You can see it. And yet. No fish. They're just not hungry right now. I guess it's not the season for them to be aggressive. So right now they're just looking at it and saying,

you're not fool of me, sucker. In a few months, though, I'm going to be hungry and I'm going to bite that thing. I guess. All right. Well, that was it for that. My hoop group teams 0 and 2. They stink. You filled in this week.

I did. You should have just. stuck with who you were drafted by in the first place. Smitty? Yeah. I don't know what that team looks like, but my gosh, your team stinks. What about our team stinks? It just can't score.

And I understand your number one player was out. I understand that. Yeah, we can't score. I get it, but we did score 60. We're usually a winning score is 60 to 70. However, we gave up 105. I locked down my guy. you I you um we scored the same amount of points Jared we did how often do you play basketball

that's embarrassed once a once a hoop groups he said when called the this guy has got energy wow I mean you're hopping around like a kangaroo that's all I'm good for I scored two points on a real nice put back got the offensive board put it back up I don't think my feet touched the ground between the shot and the rebound and then then I had one air ball and I cockered one layup. I did cocker a layup. Yeah. But I don't know that they can call coakers on six rounders or not.

Like they're supposed to miss. And he's a fillet. Yeah. I'm just a... You filled it for Cush. I filled in for Cush. He did more than... He still has a sore neck.

From where he slept wrong. Okay. He thought he... I'm sorry. Anyway, well, episode two was out. If you can go check that out on the hoop group's Instagram. It's quite entertaining. I don't know.

I don't know what to say about my team. We're the average shows. We were below average this week. I'm just going to continue. I can't shoot any worse. When you're ofer from three point land, it can't get any worse. So all I can say is to also be fair, the strength of schedule is not on your guy's side. I think the two teams you've played to start the season aren't the two best teams in the league.

I would agree with that. But, you know, we've got to beat them at some point if we're going to win it. You're not going to. Well, I, maybe the captain's got something up asleep. In all honesty, Travis, I told Denny this yesterday or whatever day it was on the ride of the track. I was like, well, on any given day, you know, if you got your star player back, you guys score 20 more points. Alex Presley is not going to hit 43s again, which is how they got to 100. He hit a hoop group record 12 threes.

So then at that point were banked in. Like it. Yeah, but when you're hot, but he got shooters touch. He scored 48. I think four points shy of the record. I think 52. JP got 50 a 50 burger once and then maybe chip. I had 50.

He had a big night one night. So, I mean, everybody scored on us. So it's not like it was that impressive. Off track news and related to NASCAR, the All-Star race potentially moving to Dover? Question mark? Surely they can't be talking about replacing Dover's point race, right? All-Star race could move to Dover, North Wilkesboro would get a points race.

Yeah, you'd think that. addition to, but I mean, we had such a great fan turnout when it was a 120 degree. It was like being on the sun. Is it realistic? That track doesn't have lights. Is it realistic to put in temporary lights? Well, I feel like it would be very Marcus Smith of him to be like, we're putting him temporary lights.

And that's what the spectacle is going to be is to have the first overnight race. I don't know. I'm just a bit bawling, but it's. you just never know. I just hope there's no way they can be going from two races to none, no point races at Dover. It just, yeah, the fan turnout's been good there.

I don't know why you would do that. And then you got to put up temporary lighting, I guess, I mean, surely it won't run it in the middle of the day in July. Right. You would think about it. Who knows? I mean, again, the 10th floor is just not,

I don't know. Hopefully they're not thinking this one all the way through, but this is not the best choice. Dover is just not an all-star type of racetrack. You know, it's going to be, that track is one where it needs rubber on the racetrack to then widen out and then you can start making passes. But that doesn't happen until 30, 40 laps into a run.

And the All-Star race is made up of short runs. and so there's just not going to be any passing. Can I ask a crazy question? Yeah. Why not just have a points race in North Oxford and not have the all-star race? Hallelujah. Praise Jesus.

I agree with you. Why are we so hung up on we need an all-star race? Every league is struggling with their all-star event currently. Ours is no exception to that. so if anything i think you know yeah i don't i don't know i'd be uneducated when it comes to what is the regular season average for a game and then what is your all-star game like i feel like our all-stars probably kind of on par with whatever a normal race would be and maybe that's better than

the league average um but man how about why don't just give the damn teams a week off Like, they are running us through the grinder. It is a grind trying to get to the racetrack every single weekend. Like, definitely would enjoy another break. And I just don't see the need and, like, trying to force this personally. Well, apparently the schedule is coming soon. That might be on our list of talking points for next week, potentially. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, some of the schedule stuff, you've seen kind of, it's slowly leaking. out. This is typical each year kind of the, you know, the weeks leading up, well, they're leaking this track is in, this track is out. So, you know, they've said Iowa is in limbo. What else is one? Chicago land, no Chicago. San Diego's in. You know, I don't know. it's it's interesting how it all kind of works but it's i can i can assure you one thing for certain as much as we you know we i don't know that we but they talk about like collaboration NASCAR doesn't collaborate at all with the teams drivers or anyone on schedule that that's their whole thing we have nothing to do with it no input no nothing so whatever it is it's

what they came up with. Let's lead our Richmond discussion from this weekend with the truck race. Corey Hime is your winner. However, this race was dominated by Ty Majeski. Yeah, it was. It was Ty's race to win. And I thought he was, you know, kind of looked like the short track Ty Majeski that we had seen for the last few years. And then they kind of had that little air pressure gate. they had some valves and their tires I think that was leaking them down a little bit they corrected that lost a little bit of their luster

and then now it looked like they were back to where they were before Corey I thought it was like a third place truck I thought Lane Riggs is a little bit better but it seemed like the 11th just got better and better as the night went on didn't make any mistakes obviously

races are all about execution now and then unfortunately for tie I think it looked like there was um rear in grease or some kind of oil on the racetrack mcrafton goes in there slips up hits him spend some out so interesting it actually wasn't a terrible break for him because of the pit cycle was in the middle of pit cycling I think he still came out second like after that whole cycle after being spun and wrecked and all that stuff still ended up second restarting second on the final restart. So it just looked like, you know, if you looked at his right rear quarter panel, it was flared out quite a bit.

That's usually really good on like a cup car, but those trucks got so much drag in them, so much side force anyway that that probably slowed that truck down and probably made it quite a bit tighter than it was in previous runs. And the 11 got better. So they just had nothing for them. and Hime time takes his seventh win in the season. 65 playoff points. What is amazing and is that he's still only got a 25% chance to win the championship. It's not about the best driver, Denny.

That's what I hear. That's what I hear. I did see that quote. I did respond to it this morning. It sounded like it came right off like a talk. Read it for people. It's like a cue card talking point for the industry. The point is to, he says, Mama Smith, he's on Harvick's podcast.

I think he's the chief hype officer. He says, the point isn't to crown the best driver. It's to crown the best team who executed the best when the pressure was at its highest and the lights were the brightest. well um okay i mean okay let's just let's just throw a hypothetical my prediction is corey hymn probably has 10 wins by the time we get to phoenix okay someone that is in the final four um

could likely have one win two win something like that if cori hein goes and gets a flat tire, just like Joe, just like Joe Lugano did in practice, gets a flat tire right fronts at, um, in the first part of the race. Did, did he not perform when the lights were brightest? No. Under that theory, he's like, no, it's, he just didn't perform when the pressure was on. Bull, got unlucky. We have luck involved in our sport, more so than any other sports. So That argument doesn't hold any weight, hardly at all, just simply because, and again, the ratio on the comments to likes is speaking for itself. But it's just, I don't know, I've seen that this whole, when the lights are bright,

the pressure, like that seems like it's a company talking point that, you know, PR is pushing to, this is what we're going to say when it comes to, crowning a champion. But realistically, I think the fan base has kind of had enough of it. They understand it a little bit better. You know, I mean, this weekend at Daytona, just think about it, you know, when we talk about the format in general, nothing against Cody Ware, but he has no top fives. I don't know if he has any top tens this year. But Cody Ware could eliminate Alex Bowman or Tyler Reddick from the playoffs by winning Daytona. So everything that Tyler Reddick and Alex Bowman did for the first 25 races can be eliminated

by what happened on a green-white checkered on the 26th race by someone in the mid-30s and points. Like, could you imagine? And we're supposed to just be cool. That sounds fair. like the fan base is over it. Yeah, they've had enough and I don't, it just doesn't make sense. It's like saying like Ohio State season should have been over last year, Michigan beat

and Michigan gets in and Ohio State doesn't because they performed on like at the end of the, no. Right. That's a great example actually. Right. Michigan was having a terrible season last year. They won a big game, but that doesn't just allow you to play for a championship. No.

I'd love to hear what Harvard Castle. to say who won 10 and didn't make it to the championship. Yeah, well, I have publicly said on this podcast, I've defended Harvick to the, you know, to the intth that like he deserved to be in the final four that race that year he won 10 races. That was ridiculous that he did not get to be in the final four because of, you know, circumstances, you know, some of it was performance during that three race. He had some bad luck, but like, I just,

I just can't imagine a system where a 10 race guy doesn't get a chance to race for a championship and someone else does. Also, as we talked about on last week's podcast, a week before that, that this is likely still the format for the next season. I heard Chris Gabehart talking this past weekend. I don't know what he was talking about. And he's like, you know, when you realize you're going in the wrong direction, you can either say, all right, I'm going to turn around now. or I'll go a little ways and I'll turn around and it's just a longer road back. That's such a gay barque. That's perfect.

You know what I mean? Yeah. There's no wrong time to make a right decision, right? It's like if you know something's wrong with the next gen car. Now again, that probably needs a little more time so that's probably not fair. But like, that's something that it's going to take resources and teams. This is just a rule. These guys change rules by the week.

Yeah, the format doesn't cost anything. Yeah. Do the right thing sooner than later, would be my suggestion. Is that don't just say, well, I'll take the next exit. Well, you can turn around right here. No, I just, I don't feel like turning around right now. And now you've added six minutes to your commute. You just, it's just the road back is a little longer, a little tougher.

Hopefully you don't lose some people in the middle of that road back. We can't, we can't be, you know, thinking everything is rosy right now. It's, it's, and I don't think it gets better over the next few months, folks. Well, one thing that was rosy is we did have a good race at Richmond last night. Right? Hmm? I said we had a good race at Richmond last night. Absolutely.

we did it was good to see a great short track race some great tire fall off thank you good year for bringing a tire that had over two to two and a half seconds of fall off fantastic 84% yes that's great deserving very very deserving in that especially you know you know richmond richmond was kind of one of the very first short tracks that was getting the uh oh man this is kind of boring type type of feel, right? Jared's Donne has had big time. And like it's good to see that like, okay, yeah, the tires do matter, right? And I think the fans on TV and in the stands, they got to see drivers make moves and passes.

And I'm actually quite surprised that Mike Ford hasn't come out with some sort of stats saying like, yeah, last night was blank, blank, blank, you know, best passing green flag passes. it was 29,684 passes or something like that during the course of the race because I thought it was a good race. I can speak about this because I participate in the race. I drive the cars. I know how difficult it is to pass this race versus the previous versus the previous versus 10 years ago. First 20 years ago. I know because I did it.

this was more like generation oh I don't want to over a step here Generation 5 cup car where it was like after about 15, 20 laps you could make passes on people like the speed started to separate enough to create the passes where when they had the harder tire

last year I mean you would just you had to sit behind somebody until 30 to 40 laps and then hell you're going to be pitting in 15 laps so the window of passes it was really really small last year if you look at the lines of ranks and positions everyone just is stagnant and then right before the pit there's some changing of positions then people start pitting this one was more like a little stagnant at the beginning to be expected everyone's got a lot of grip because the tire's got a lot of grip and then all of a sudden people start passing and it's like that's what we wanted to see. And so that puts it back into the driver's hand. And hopefully this is

something that, and this will be our Loudoun tire as well. So something to look forward to there. It seems like they're trying to make this our standard short track tire because I believe it is the same as Martinsville now Richmond, Loudon. I'm sure there's another in there. But we've softened up the tires. It's really a good thing. I hear drivers complaining about how many sets you guys had. Did the number help with the race? Or do you think if you had more, would it actually made it better? I can see both sides of that argument.

It did put you in a very, very tough spot. And we saw the field all but two cars decided to split the first stage. Just 16 to 9. Yeah, yeah. The reason is, is the number showed that it was quite a bit faster, which it turned out to be, I think, Priest ended up 14th, somewhere in that range. at the end of the first stage. But, you know, had there been other cautions here and there,

which there was, they were able to use those tires, make it back up. Turns out Priest's car wasn't very good. So there was a time in stage two, maybe three. When were we getting all those burst of yellows? I feel like that was, who cares? It doesn't matter when it is. We all had, everyone had to stay out because of, you know, the tire allotment. I do think one more set would be the right number, just simply because then it

would allow the field to have more options. Obviously, you would like to see the ability for them to pit once in stage one, the option to pit twice or three times in the second stage, and then the option to pit twice or three times in the third stage. What that would do is, create varying strategies. And you would see, you know, tons of passes simply because I think the field, three quarters would be on one strategy. A quarter would probably be on the other and trying to figure out which is the right one. But it would just create more passing, more opportunities for strategy to be a factor in the

race where everyone was kind of on the same tires all night. So it really didn't play a factor. Is it possible to bottle up the ingredients from last night and just like, push them away and then for the foreseeable future just bring it back out and that we can just check off Richmond every year as a good race you want to watch this one you want to attend this one yeah that's what we hope I mean man I mean it broke my heart that they they lost one of their dates you know it was a good crowd turnout you know it's so interesting because Richmond is always one of our top five cities that people watch us. It's one of the higher rated cities. It's always like

Greensboro, Richmond, Indy, something like that is kind of our top five. But they didn't come to the track. The track president there, she's doing a good job of kind of getting the fan sentiment back. And certainly it seems as though, you know, people are, you know, responding to the one date, right? I mean, let's be honest, it doesn't matter what sporting event you go to. It costs money to go there and when you have the option, you know, to have multiple times to go, what happens is usually is you skip the first, I'll go get the next one. And then something comes up in the next one, you don't end up going at all. So, you know, as a sports person for me, I know when something comes into town once, that is my opportunity. Block it off. Don't plan anything else

because I don't have another option, right? So I think that there's something to that. And it's seems like the tracks with one date it is um it's it's it's working out for them um i think it's another example that we have too many races in our schedule um we're just oversaturated the market it's just you know we're we're we're trying to come up with new tracks and things like that but it's just i think you're i am like i am certain of a framework of a of a of a sanctioned body slash league and it's like how would it be run how many races would there be and it's certainly not 36 um or 38 or actually racing in so i just think that there's something to making the people want it instead of just always giving it to them whenever they want it you know back to the tires

Joey Lugano used the 51's qualifying scuffs. Should that be allowed where teams can go to another team and say, hey, can you buy your tires off of you? I don't have an opinion on that one way or another. But my question is, if the rule is you must, so you must make a qualifying attempt on a set of tires if you transfer. So did the 51 just run a set short? Yeah, they just ran a set short for the race. Well, they didn't have their, their qualifying tires.

Oh, I wonder how much Penske paid them for that. I mean, they obviously paid them. Yeah. Rick Ware obviously took it. I just, yeah. So I guess there's a rule that you do have to make a qualifying attempt if you, if you choose to transfer over. So if you, what that does is it keeps you from having an extra set of fresh. Correct. We, We've seen in the Xfinity series and other series over time, this is years ago. When people knew that they had to start in the back anyway, they would just not even make a run,

actually have fresher tires and drive straight to the front because people would start on their qualifying tires. Now, we don't start on our qualifying tires anymore, but it keeps them from starting in the back being an advantage. So it sounds like the 22 wanted that, you know, the same set of tires as everyone else. so he had to buy the tires off the 51 and then the 51 just hey sorry here's a check and you're going to have to be one set short yeah but do I have a problem with it I don't know I mean as long as there's someone in the field willing to

sell it I you know I don't think it's you know certainly the issue that they had in practice it didn't appear that it was their fault they had a flat tire it was bad luck you know just ran over something Should they have been penalized by having one less set? They had to start in a rear anyway. Should they have to start with one less set of tires? I don't think so. So I think it's probably the most fair way to do it. Up until this big wreck that you were caught up in, despite many mistakes on pit road,

the 11 car was able to go to the back and come forward, go to the back, come forward. Pit road was terrible. and I was, I'm including myself on that. Where did you speed before or after the pit stop? Right at Alex Bowman's pit stop, pit stop. Was that before you got to your stall or after? After. Were you?

I was too low. I cut the radius slightly too short. Were you rushing knowing that you had a slow pit stop? Maybe, maybe, but I think, yeah, I just, you know, there's these, these pit roads have a radius, right? Anyone that has a curve to it? So if you, when we do our pit road roll before the race, if you see us a lap before we go green to start the race, you all see us go down pit road. Well, what we're doing then is calibrating.

Are the lights that are on our dash correct for running pit road speed? And then the teams kind of get your numbers to see, okay, are you under the speed limit or not? Where do they have room to either go faster, need to slow down. So it's a way for us to calibrate. When we typically do that, we're to the far right. So out near at the end of pit wall. Well, what happened more than likely was that I left my pit stall,

didn't go all the way out to the right. When you cut the inside of the track a little shorter, your distance is shorter. So even if you run the same amount of lights and RPMs, your speed will show faster. So 45 miles per hour on the very outside versus 45 miles per hour on the very inside while you're still under the speed limit

it changes the time and it will register a faster mile per hour the lower you are. When you know you have a slow pit stop, do you lose focus for a brief second? I mean, I like to think not, but it's very possible. It's very possible. I certainly was so frustrated.

it because I knew that I knew right off the bat we had a race winning car. Usually I know within about five laps in the race, like is it doing the things I need? I noticed very quickly that, you know, again, I was at the time racing around guys that I didn't end up being the best on that night. But it doesn't matter to me. It's about the feel for me. about times it's not about positioning or anything and i still thought we were going to be fine and then we got i don't know if you could see from the tv could you see the damage that we had i mean you could

see yourself in the wreck like i you couldn't see the damage though it was bad no yeah it was bad it popped it jacked the whole front end up it it center punched the nose right at the uh at the uh at the uh raider inlet so it and then it it messed up all kinds of things lots and lots of things on TV when your team initially came over the radio after I feel like the sentiment I got was like oh it's not that bad but it's like it looked bad yeah I thought it still had decent capability but we did you know we had lost our edge no doubt about it we became pedestrian at that point we were just another car now you know again I can get around the place so I feel like I can make up a little bit but I mean we were just kind of 10th place at that point which we ended up so it was unfortunate

man I just yeah we had it we had a rough day on pit road no doubt about it each stop you know it was something different really every time and so you'll have that but this is one I thought that if we can control the race we would freaking lead I think even said in the radio we easily could have been leading 300 laps yeah it's just It had everything that it needed. My car had everything it needed to dominate the race. But one mistake at the very beginning, and you'll just never to be seen again, you know. But I was actually happy about how well I was able to move forward.

Again, testament to the tires and drop off and all that stuff. Like I was like, damn, this isn't over. Like I got to, you know, 12th, 13th pretty quickly. and then I got in the wreck and it was like so just darn it man I hate letting these types of weekends

get away ugh there's not so many left uh Austin Dylan doesn't let this one get away he's your winner

redemption from last year yeah I mean well earned victory there by Austin and RCR and his whole team man I mean it was redemption in every single way I just don't know else to put it other than

you know you did it the right way no controversy they were trying to run them down at the end just couldn't quite get there I saw the 48 in their team they were kind of him and hawn about you know some people holding them up but you know I guess one of the cars that was holding him up was the guy that he wrecked at Nashville

So, I mean, that's part of the deposits and withdrawals that we talk about all the time that, like, usually when you get into someone and it makes a bad date for them, that's not a, it's not a free incident. Like, it usually comes back sometime, you know, it's that inopportune time. Remember where I was talking about Carson? Like, man, you're really going to be in chance to win a race. And someone that you got into is going to say, nope, you're not, I'm not going to let you win today. Who are we referring to? who was it the the four oh greggson yeah and so you know whether whether it was intentional or not it's just you know it's they felt like it was but then there were some other chevys they didn't like how the

chevies were driving i mean poor hendrick just doesn't get any support i yeah i i i shivvy's uh in case you didn't see in Martinsville last year. I think, I don't think they have an issue with helping each other out. And also like SVG was running that high line all night. Yeah. Yeah. And Jesse Love, they got on the radio and said, don't wreck, I don't blame him. Your car's leading. And the last thing you want is a wreck and waste money and then lose the race. And he's not a full-time cup driver. it would have been interesting but still it's you know you would either way you would have you know kind of well allison wasn't a bubble driver he was 26 or 27th and points or something going into this weekend um yeah you would have had someone unexpected either way

you would have someone unexpected winning this race i i don't think that anyone pencils in alex bowman is someone that's going to go win richmond even though he has one richmond beat me on a green-white checkered a few years ago. Yeah, I just, I thought it was a great performance by the three team. They executed well. They picked up right where they left off. Like, even in practice, I thought they were, you know, still strong. And so, you know, they took whatever setup they had last year and they just refined it a little bit and made a little bit better and got another W. Isn't that easy? You can just take a setup that worked last year and plug it into the car. Yeah, I mean, there hasn't been a whole lot of development.

I talked about it in the media center a little bit that there's just not this between last year and this year there hasn't been really any significant rule changes to the car itself and so if you ended up hitting on something last year you probably are that's probably going to be your baseline and you're going to tweak small things from that point so yeah speaking of SVG his best career finish on an oval ties his best career finish on Oval 14th, but he credited you with, you know, studying you and your habits around this track, but it seemed like he was doing his own thing out there.

He was. That's cool to see that, you know, usually when you're trying to learn, you just kind of, well, I just got to run behind everyone else and kind of figure this thing out, and he figured out pretty quickly that I'm just going to go somewhere else. So it's very innovative of him. I hadn't seen that line around that race.

track in quite some time. I was actually quite paranoid of it chewing up the tires. Like usually when you run on cool asphalt, clean asphalt like that, it will chew up the tires quicker than what it will be if you run down on the bottom. But he was making it work well. How much would it help the racing

if other teams didn't have access to SMT? It certainly would create a disparity of speed between the drivers. No doubt about it. You know, I thought for the longest time I had a great advantage at Martinsville, Richmond, those tracks, and that kind of went away. But I also used it to my advantage as well. Like I wasn't as good on mile and a halfs until I got to study my teammate Kyle Busch's data.

Speaking of Kyle Busch, I was going to text him and I was going to say, are you okay? It was so weird. We were under caution and, like, I felt boom. I'm like, what the hell? I guess he was warming his tires up and, just door slam the shit of me. He was in everything last night.

He is hitting everything. He ran into us under caution. It's unintentional, obviously. And then down the backstretch, we didn't really talk about the big wreck, but I don't know. Text him right now, say, are you okay? And see, we got 15 minutes left this.

Well, I wanted to be genuine about it. Like, you know, hey, bud, how you doing? Doing okay? He just, he just, wiped out a few cars and then the nine was coming by and he clipped him on the way out. I don't know, man. It's tough to say. It's just, it doesn't, it just doesn't, it just doesn't, I don't know. It doesn't look right. I'm pretty sure in the odd is audio, like, he isn't told about the nine until like the last second. Yeah, you can't. I mean, at that point, he's just getting clear of the, the mayhem. And then it looked like, you know,

Chase was side by side with someone else. He couldn't go any lower. And the eight just came down the track and just clipped him. Just watching the onboard camera, the wreck is over. It was over. It was over. No doubt. Until it wasn't.

I don't know. What were we talking about? SMT data. Like if just the SMT, yeah. So I got better by, you know, following Kyle Bush's I don't care calling your teammate. He made me better on the mile and a halfs. I made him better on the short tracks.

I think I'm confident of that. I'm okay with the teammates sharing, but I think everyone being able to see everybody's. Yeah, I don't know. How do you put that genie back in the bottle? So if just hypothetically, if the show it off, I guess, you just don't share. If the range between the best driver and the worst driver is here, right,

without SMT data, but where, and then you include SMT data, how much closer does it bring you? Hold your hands out. All right, so that's from best to worst with no SMT. Yep. Okay, bring them in slightly.

A little more, a little more, right there. Right about there. Right about there. So it doesn't do that, but it, you've got to be watching on YouTube, folks, if you want to see what we're talking about. It takes probably 25% of the gap away.

I would estimate. What's the pro of SMT? I don't know. SVG can get better on an Oval by watching you, but what does that do for the fan? It doesn't do anything for the fan. I'm not sure. I mean, the fan can't see it.

The SMT to the fan is invisible. Right. It seems like it's just making it. It's called OTT now. NASCAR took it over. They're the ones getting paid for it. Well, like Twitter. I'm still calling it SMT.

Yeah. I think they kicked SMT, the curb. But yeah, the fans, it only helps the drivers. I guess it's a double-edged sword. I mean, I remember when we were talking about it and they brought it to us and said, you know, this is what we're thinking about doing. It was a thing with the top drivers about,

you're going to give away my proprietary information. Like, that's the only stuff that should be shared within our team. Like, you shouldn't be giving it. out, you know, all my data to other teams, that doesn't seem right. But I don't know. Some other notes from last night, William Byron locks up the regular season championship. Thanks to that, Chase Elliott rec. He is your regular season champion. Fifteen extra bonus points. Yeah, deserving too. I mean, he's just, I think about each weekend, like, who's going to be the most consistent Hendrick Carr? And he's the guy, right? I mean,

I get, when I say consistent, I mean, not necessarily on average finish. Who's consistently going to be in the top five speed each and every week, right? They're just clean every week. Yeah, well, they had a rough stretch for about a month and a half to two months. Like they're just now kind of getting back on the horse. But I just felt like, generally speaking, it's, you know, the sample size is right. You crowned your correct regular season champion And the 24 game got off to an amazing hot start

Was not only consistent but fast Yeah, they didn't win as many races as others But they just were always in the top five top three And so you know me and Larson went through a time stubbing our toes Chase made his run at the regular season By just knocking down a lot of I think a win or so, a winner two. He has had one win or two.

Byron? Two. No. Elliot one. He's got that one win, but he was not knocking the door more consistently. And so it tightened everything up. And now it's no longer tight for the lead. It's tight for second.

Look, I could leave Daytona second or sixth than points, and it's only 23 points difference. And so you know, we're back. battling for 10 bonus points. So second gets 10, but third gets 8, 7, 6, 5. So this is a 5-point swing. It's like another win, whether you're on the high end or the bad end of this. That's the thing I didn't like is there was no, they didn't present in the trophy. Like, we need to celebrate this regular season championship. I don't know that they expected. And you can't bring the trophy there? I don't. That's the 10th story. I mean, the NHL carries a Stanley Cup round

if it's available to be won it's at the race that's at the game like I mean they'll do all the all this next week yeah they'll do it next week well I want it now you're not wrong I think when you win it you should be given it

at that moment I don't I don't disagree that like if it comes next week like he's already celebrated that right internally you know and what a weight off of shoulders for this weekend. Man, he gets to race free. Like there's where even me, I'm, I'm in the middle of this and I'm like, I got to, I got to stay close to this guy. I don't want to, you know.

Yeah, how do you, how do you juggle this at Daytona of all places? I don't know. It's, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I just need to go try to win the race and do whatever I can to win, because that means as much as anything. and then wherever the chips fall, they fall. But let's just get this playoff underway. I feel like it's too tight with too many drivers'ry to try to actually worry about that. You just have to go on race. I think you're right on that.

You've got to just let it flow. Let it flow naturally. I mean, you came close to winning. The first race. Daytona? Yeah. I know. Half a lap.

Son of a God. another point battle is down at the bubble while reddick is plus 89 and bowman is plus 60 to the cut line if there's a surprise winner and reddick was to get in a wreck or there's still an opportunity here for bowman there's a hypothetical that someone with zero top fives and zero top tens could win a race and eliminate tyler reddick or alex bowman yeah i don't think that's like a very crazy high hypothetical. Reddick is seventh in points, Bowman is ninth in points. It's a 50% chance, really. Yeah, we knew, you know, just a few years ago with all the winners that we ended up having, was it Martin Truex that missed

the playoffs being like third in points? Like, holy cow. This is how you know. You've got to turn around sooner than later. So if you're Reddick, do you have a strategy for this race? Are you trying to hang out towards the rear and avoid these wrecks? And hopefully

maybe Bowman doesn't, like, get a bunch stage points? Uh-uh. I don't know what the strategy is. I think the strategy is just try to, you got to think if he can get, as he's 29, if he can somehow force Bowman to get at least 40, that's going to be

really hard to do. So he would need 11, 15 to 11 to like, that's a very moderate finish. That's mid-20s. that's essentially finishing the race you know what I mean that's just I think if you finish

he gets in what will cause you to lose more sleep you may be falling from third or second in the points to finishing 6th after Daytona or Redick not making the playoffs Reddick not making the playoffs

just just just because I care about wins that, you know, whatever happens this playoff, it happens, it's whatever. I want wins. I want at least a couple more before the year's over with. That's my only personal goals for the new year. What's going on with this 45?

They won the regular season last year, and now, I mean, granted, they're fifth in points, so it's not as bad when you put it in that way, but zero wins. I don't think they've really had a complete race. Yeah, it just haven't put it together. you know the speed's been okay i don't think the speed's been as good as what it was last year now company-wide i don't know you've got you know bubba's definitely performing better than he was last year so did the cars get better or did bubba get better riley is just it's too hard to tell because of the inexperience someone asked like did it adding a third car did it pull resources away

No, it did not. It added resources. Gotcha. So, I don't know, it's just a, it's a 40, it seems like a 45 thing. You know, I don't know that it's a company thing because the 23 is certainly having another, another career year. Like every year is a new, new bar. Yeah, picked up an additional playoff point last night, too, if he has eight now, which is obviously more than he's ever entered the playoffs with.

Yeah. What else we got from Richmond? It was cool to see. I don't know if this is the case every year since you've been in the Cup series, but I feel like your fanfare at Richmond continues to go like this. Yeah, I went to the Toyota. What do they call that? Stage appearance?

Toyota stage appearance. Yeah, but they call that area something. Oh, we don't know. Anyway, Toyota has a big activation outside of each. The Midway. I know, but they call it. Remember, you know, at Daytona, they called the inside there, the Toyota Injector. You know, but I don't know, they call that something.

It was, yes, tons of 11 gear. I loved seeing it, and they were rowdy. They were rowdy. Really happy to see that. Love that out of my Virginia people. Jameson's first trip back home? It was. had all my brothers and sisters there.

They got to, you know, some of them got to meet them for the first time. That was awesome. Most of them still live in Virginia. One sister lives here. So, yeah, it was a good, you know, I wish I had a better result. I actually, I actually planned on winning that race. I felt it from when I woke up on Sunday, Saturday. Saturday.

Is this one going to eat at you all day? Or like being a, it was a Saturday race? I can let it go much easier than I used to be able to let it go. Just because, you know, well, clock's going. We've got another race coming up. You got to prepare for that one. Is this like, maybe we got all our fuckups out of the way in one race? I hope so.

I hope so. My God. This is the most. This is where certainly execution is going to really matters in the playoffs. And, you know, with us having our, many playoff points that we're going to end up with, you know, just you can't have a horrendous round one. You got to really start ramping up your performance in round two and so on and so forth. What do you mean you planned on winning it? I just felt, I felt in practice. Car did what I needed

it to do. I looked at, well, who's my competition? Where are they starting? Well, that means they're probably going to have to pass me at some point. And I just didn't think they were. Not as long as everything was straight up. And I just, I don't know. I have feelings on certain days where it's like, you know, my mom always asked me, how's your car? What do I always say? I said, not bad. You keep it so close to that. You keep it so close to the chest. But what did I say? You didn't hear me. I said, it's good. It's good. Good. Right. But your car's always good. There's a difference in not bad and good. And haven't you said like if you're good in practice and you're good in qualifying?

It's probably a good sign. Yeah. It's probably a good sign. Because usually we're not a, we're not a practice team for sure. So if you get asked that question going forward. If you hear me say my car is good, it's definitely good. If I say not bad, it's, I'll let you know. I'll let you know after the first five to ten last. I had a good feeling of that I didn't even ask you because I was like, he was good in practice, going to call. I don't need to ask him because I thought about it was like, how's the car.

He's like, nope, we're not even going to put it out there. I went back and looked at all your tweets. You're funny, Trave. I love it. You do kind of, I appreciate it because it lets me know where your head's at, where your emotions are at during the race. Yeah. I like it.

Also, like PSA to any of the new followers. where can they follow you at Travis Rockold No that's not right At T Rockold Oh at T Rockold You don't even know your name On Twitter it's Travis Rockhold Oh it is?

Yeah Oh okay I'm thinking of his Instagram But like any of the new followers That have joined since the season started That weren't around for college football They think that this race stuff is bad They're gonna have to mute you on two weeks You have to buckle in or mute

Travis lives and dies by every play on the field. People think I'm critical of the 11 team. No way. Nowhere close. Wasn't it Nashville where he said, I'll go have a talk with a talk with Gay Park. What was it about? Putting gas in the car.

Oh, he's like, can we put some fucking gas in the car? Stop running my boy out. Tweet from last night, hey, Gail, do some motivation. Oh, it was a. get this 11 team into gear or something like that. Yeah, I need to wake up. We got to wake up. We got to wake up.

It was something different every time. Can't be having this. Not come playoff time. Get out of the way now. Well, it wasn't all on them because I was going to have to go to the backup. It appeared I was going to have to go back anyway because I sped. But, you know, again, we talk about the, was it in my psyche that, you know, I just had an 18 second pit stop and, you know, I'm trying to get everything.

I can everywhere else and I sped, but I don't know. That's on me. I didn't think I played the play any different because of the results of the pit stop. I got a review here from Ryan 71517. Am I a fan of Denny the driver? Absolutely not. Am I a fan of Denny the podcaster? Yes.

This show has become required listening if you want to keep up with the current happenings in the NASCAR world. Good job, Denny. You've made me half a fan here. and begrudgingly so. Well, I appreciate that. Jared, I saw you sign some autographs. A lot.

You did. I know. A lot of the hats that I got at the Toyota area had your signature on it first. Have you worked on your signature, Jared? No, frankly, I got to, do you ever sign something, like struggle to sign it? It just seems like you guys, all the drivers, like, you have such a flow to signing an autograph. I'll get like a t-shirt and like it won't come off right away and then the signatures. Can I give a, can I give a suggestion to fans?

I know it's probably to you makes the most sense and you think it's the easiest. Shirts are by far the easiest, hardest thing for us to sign because it moves. It pulls and it pulls and the pin tip, it sticks on it and the next thing you know the signature gets all screwed up. Now some of these guys' signatures is so horrible. it really wouldn't matter. But I try to make mine somewhat legible. And it really kind of depends on the time. Like, there's a Denny Hamlin autograph session signature.

And then there's one where one more, one more, one more, one more. You know, where it's like I take out one of the ends and the M at a Hamlet. Like I just, I take out a letter or two from the full name when I'm signing. and so it's just shirts are hard especially if they're on no no on's easier than off you got to have like something behind it right yeah but then people try to put the cardboard behind it and it just it just pulls if i'm telling me the tip just doesn't if you want a good autograph don't do it on a t-shirt a hat or a card is you're going to get the best signature out of me with a card.

Second best signature will come on a hat. Third will come on a shirt. Yeah, you signed two people's arms this weekend. So potentially tattoos. She said she's getting a tattoo. And what sucked is when I went to do the D, it, I missed, do you see me trying to fill it back in? Dale talked about that last week about signing skin.

Yeah. What do you say? How it's hard because it's like, it's either, you know, sweaty or whatever. and he's like people want signatures. He'd like, I'd rather sign like a piece of paper and then you take that to get it, you know, put on you and then tattooed. Hmm.

If you're going to get it tattooed. Yeah. Because that's how they essentially kind of do tattoos anyway, right? They just kind of trace. Create a stencil kind of. Yeah. But it's cooler if you get your arm signed and then you go take it to the tattoo artist.

Yeah, because I guess they say if they put it on, like they don't want it to be perfect. They want it to be however you did it. Right. So in five years from now, when someone's like, oh, why is that D and that name on your arm messed up? Well, Denny screwed up the autograph when he signed my arm. And now I'm stuck. I was sweaty and he tried to fill in the rest of his D. And then there's a story that it was at this race. And if you won and it's... If you're getting your signature tattooed on you, it's got to be a story behind it.

Yeah. So... All right. Well, thanks for all the Richmond fans. Thanks for everyone for tuning in this week. And we'll see you at the Daytona.