Door Bumper Clear - 156 - You're Five-Wide!

Episode Date: October 21, 2019

After a wild playoff weekend at Kansas, Brett Griffin, TJ Majors, Casey Boat, and Jason Schultz react to tempers flaring on Saturday, Cup Series eliminations and heading to Martinsville. After an eventful Xfinity Series race at Kansas, the guys discuss Garrett Smithley and the leaders crashing and Tyler Reddick vs Cole Custer. Both spotters had intense races on Sunday as Joey Logano crashed late and barely avoided elimination while Clint Bowyer failed to advance. They discuss their performances plus Chase Elliott edging out Brad Keselowski for the final Round of 8 spot, Denny Hamlin letting Jimmie Johnson get his lap back and the ARCA cars qualifying faster than the Cup cars. Plus, the gang shares the latest silly season moves and scary freak injuries. Want more DBC? Check out and subscribe to the new DBC YouTube channel! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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app or go to anchor.fm.fm. to get started. That's an C-H-O-R.fm. to get started. Welcome to door bumper clear. I'm Jason Schultz and Brett T.J. and Casey have returned from an action-pack weekend at Kansas with plenty of storylines to cover. They'll discuss Chase Elliott beating out Brad Kessalowski to advance the round of eight. Geert Smithlee and the leaders crashing the X-Pen series race, the latest silly season news, and much more.

Let's get started. That's T.J. Majors. This is Brent Rittman. Get ready. Be ready. Be ready. Give me what you got here. New leader. I'll watch out for this guy. White flag.

Ready. Hi. Hello. Clear. Bring home. Free light. Coming to the line. Door.

Butter. Clear. Who! Hey, everybody. I'm T.J. Majors and I'm bundled up. Why ain't bundled up? In 75 degree weather. Because when I left this morning, it was freezing outside when I took the girls to school.

I ran it at 7.30 in shorts and a T-shirt. I was cold this morning, so I really care. It was big. It was 55. You're from Buffalo or somewhere up there. You're a bigger dude. Brett Griffin, Spotter, Clint Boyer did Ross Chastain. This weekend in Martinsville, I've only got to do Clint Boyer.

Hmm. No truck? No truck. I'm retired from truck. I got Benjamin Rhodes in the trucks. You retired for good from the trucks? I'm done. For 2019?

No. No. For indefinitely. Really? Which means not forever, possibly. but it means 99% forever. Why is that? Forever, ever.

Trucks are fun. Maybe Natalie Duck or gets a spotter. Yeah, maybe Natalie. I own a truck. It's an awesome truck. Well, on that note, how was Kansas, guys? Well, who are you? You didn't even say who you are.

Sorry. I feel like I don't even need an introduction. Oh, you're that. You're global now. You're this global brand. Well, normally we just, like, you guys say something dumb and then we just keep talking about that. How many? shows you've missed in the beginning of the year?

Me? Wait, wait, what is this me stuff? Yeah, you? Look, who's... Yeah, but he introduced himself. You're supposed to say, hey, I'm Casey Hames. We have producer Jason Shultz in the studio. Hey, guys, I'm Casey Boat.

See, all the more reason you need to introduce yourself. I don't even know who you are. Okay, I'm sorry. I will... Oh, you haven't seen her photos? I saw her swimming with pigs. It was, it was fun. Do you kiss one?

No. No? You don't know where they've been. Oh, my gosh. They're nice, though. In the ocean. You don't know where they've been. Where have those pigs been?

I wish we had the camera to zoom in on your face. Where have those pigs been? I don't know. They were rescued from Hurricane Katrina. Okay. What do you think they came from a farm in Europe or something? I don't know. Why are you?

Like, seriously, we're starting off the show with you picking on me. Hey, guys, I'm Casey Boe. We have producer Jason in the house way behind us here. How many vacation days do you get a year? Oh, my gosh. It seems to be a lot of vacation. Now, when do you talk to your boss? Vacation days?

I thought this was like honeymoon pictures coming back out because you just went on a vacation. It was my friend's bachelorette party. Okay. That didn't answer the question. You just went to another island like two weeks ago. No, I didn't. Yes, you did. I went to a dirt track.

You were at some resort. Is Ohio an island? Yeah, you were at a resort. You were at a resort. What? Yeah, she was at a resort, not even a month ago. I went to Atlanta's. No, this was something different.

I went to. Anguilla. See, that's not a normal place. And that was in June. That's not in Ohio either. Well, you just said a few weeks ago, the only places I've been to are dirt tracks and NASCAR. So you go on a vacation every five months? No, it just happens to be the year.

Normally, I don't go on any vacations. But it was a basketball party. She's had a great year for vacations. Nashville, Anguilla, the Atlantis. The four seasons, wherever that was. Where was that? That was Iniguela. Okay.

Then you go to like Myrtle Beach or Charleston too at some point? Nope. No. Probably next week. Not that many vacations. Probably next week though. Next week. Do you ever work?

I'm on vacation. Okay. Yeah. And I'm not talking about like the, I got a conference call in a little bit. That's not really. That is work. Work, work. What are you thinking that I do?

Anyways. You guys are just busy. You guys are just bitter because you've had a pretty sucky Kansas, right? Kansas. Sorry, you call me out. I'm going to call you out. Kansas. Kansas, Kansas.

Kansas didn't suck. I like Kansas. How about, I feel like T.J. I don't know if it sucked. I mean, I left there still alive for the championship. But it was very stressful. I mean, I've got to ask you this. Like, obviously there was a restart late.

was behind you, you're clearly trying to be conscious of a lot of things you ended up getting wreck after that wreck. If you had not been able to start your car and finish, would you have been knocked out of the playoff at that point? Probably. Yeah, I would say we probably would. So the two was out, the nine was the last guy in, so that would have put you out and put the two back in. I think you needed to finish like top 10 is what I saw somewhere. Well, that would have been a lot because when in that first stage made it a lot. He made the rest of the day. So after that wreck that you were in,

what, I know obviously with Brad being on the bubble too, were there any team conversations between you guys and the two? What was that like? Most of it was since Brad had, Brad, we had them stage. We had a stage win and a seventh in the second stage. So that really gave us a good buffer. Enough of a buffer where all we need to do is basically finish. And we could have been in the mid-teens,

which is we should be able to do that pretty easily. Um, when that, when that happened, we just tried to control our own destiny, not get up there in the middle of the pack and on a restart whenever they could wreck and wipe you out and be done. We kind of, we kind of took it easy on the next to last restart, knowing that we still had like a, we still had like a 13 point buffer at that point. So, and, you know, the two was going to beat us by five, six spots probably at that point, which isn't, that's not going to change anything with all, you know, so worst case scenario happened. We come off a four and we. we're kind of near the back and we're just going low. There's some stuff happening out by the wall. Next thing you know, these guys all hang hard lefts.

Like they don't get, hey, there's a car there. But they're just reacting to what's going on. I haven't watched a replay of it. But it looked, some of them look like they were being overly cautious of what was going on on the outside of the track and just hung out.

And we're there. So, of course, if it hits you just right, you spin through the inside. And luckily, Luckily our car, it didn't hit it in a manner where it hurt it any more than it did. It didn't really even hurt it all. It hurt the door a little bit. We had to pull the fender out and continued on.

So luckily, the guys did a great job minimizing the time we lost, getting everything fixed, and we got back out there and finished decent still. I thought we were done when we were sliding through the grass. I thought we were done. When you get hit in the door like that or around the front tire, most of the time it's your most of the time it's terminal when you break you're going to break a suspension piece something's going to happen and you're not going to be able to continue so um when we got hit

like that i was like not to mention the grass can be catastrophic i also thought when we were sliding through i'm like okay this grass might just dig in here at some point and it had rained a little bit the um saturday morning so i'm like i wasn't sure how wet the grass was and i didn't know if it was going to dig in and rip the nose off the car or something but whenever i saw i start sliding through the grass i'm like this is it You know, but fortunately we were able to get going again, and we needed to make up a few spots at the end there because Brad actually had pretty good position. And Chase was in really good position to make an attempt at winning that race. And if Chase won that race, that was going to be really bad for us.

So we needed to make up a few spots and try to get to Brad. And I don't know exactly what happened to Brad. I don't know if you went back and looked at it. I did actually go back and look at it. The last restart, it looked to me, man, like he was super, super, super. tight. He couldn't make up any ground on anybody. And if anybody was on his right-hand side, it really looked like he would lose the nose and have to get out of gas. And literally, T.J., everybody drove by him. Like, the 21, the three, like, I think at one point I was kind of in front of him,

but he just simply, his car wasn't up to standards. He couldn't race with those guys. But I'll say this. I don't know what the fans on TV thought, you know, or the fans watching on TV thought. but restarts yesterday were the wildest I've ever spotted in my life because there were several restarts, not one restart, several restarts where I said five white. And you could get a run off the bottom, you could get a run off the top. Like it was absolutely insane that the stage that TJ won, he restarted behind me. I was on the front row on the bottom. Obviously you want to have the top, but I was on the front row on the bottom.

T.J's behind me. A hole opened up behind the 12 car there. T.J. was able to get up, which gave him a lot more momentum on exit. But we went through one and two, three wide. And as the second we started coming off the banking, Kyle Busch crammed it under me, four wide, I'm no more saying four wide. If somebody sticks it underneath Kyle Busch, and I'm saying five wide, the restarts were absolutely insane. Yeah, that restart, we were able to carry that momentum and get on the outside of the 12, just past the middle of one and two. I think we got close enough. to where, you know, we broke the plane of the quarter panel and we were able to get up beside him. And when he did that, he started running us up. And I thought it was actually going to let you get clear on the bottom. I almost did, man. Like, I mean, I'm telling you, I was two feet from getting clear.

He hung a left and came down there and slowed you down. And that let us start free rolling up there a little bit. And we didn't get clear until right before the entry of turning three, though. And that was like, I think I was calling three inside at that point. It's nuts. It was pretty wild. Restarts were definitely wild there. for sure. But very stressful day.

Our cars ran around each other a lot of the day. We did. I think you were faster for the first part of a run. And then as the run later into the runs, we kind of drove, we pulled away a little bit. But yeah, we, it's a tough race. Very tough race. Saturday, you were off, man.

Did you watch that at Svinity Race? I did watch the Svini race. Freaking awesome. One of the best races I've ever seen. The length of the race was amazing just over two hours. Those guys were wheeling it. They were so loose off. obviously more horsepower than the cup cars have i don't know man for me like that rules package is what cup needs to be running i that's one of the best mile and a half races i've ever watched yeah i don't know if it's necessarily i the bodies have a lot to do with it as well um the bodies you know they

got less less downforce than us yep yeah and you can less downforce more motor more entertaining so you can see guys actually what i like about that is guys can drive in there and you can take the air off a guy's car still, and you can tell when he gets there because it frees the guy up, and it creates a passing opportunity. Now a guy can drive, you could be running the bottom. I could drive all the way up behind you in a cup car,

and I'm going to have to hit you to even begin anything to happen. To disrupt the handling. And that might even hurt me more than it hurts you at that point. Kill your momentum. In the Xfinity cars, they get close to each other, and man, them back ends, it takes the air off that spoiler and those guys start catching it,

which I think it's so fun to watch it, place like that, especially when you got a guy like, you know, a briscoe or Redick, somebody that's sideways up against the wall already and you get within a half of car length of them and start freeing them up a little bit more and they're catching it. It's exciting to watch. It's fun. Anything else in Kansas? Here's a good Freddie craft saying, since Freddie had such a tough weekend. Freddy's favorite saying is it's fun to have fun. That is true. I don't think Freddie have much fun on Saturday. I don't think so. It's not fun to not have fun. Maybe I'm on Sunday either. This wheel fell off.

Yeah, that was, I was like, poor Freddie. If you guys ever get a chance to talk to Freddy, just tell him he's great, honestly. Anytime you are on the racetrack and your wheel is going faster than your car, it's a bad day. You have a problem. Yeah. Like a major problem.

Like one that's probably not going to be overcome. Probably not. The wheel almost knocked TJ out of the playoffs. Yeah, that will. I kind of started all that. I was going to say it's only a couple points out because it was going so fast. Yeah, yeah. The wheel was digging.

The wheel was going to make up some ground. I mean, this is, look, I work for the Wood Brothers. I love those guys. But I'll never forget that time that David Pearson pitted for four tires. I think he was at Atlanta. I'm sure I could YouTube it or Google it. And he barely got off pit road and all four tires fell off the car. So it's just, I mean, look, the human element is a big thing.

Obviously, Bubba's issue yesterday wasn't necessarily a human element thing. But yeah, anytime your wheels are going faster than you are, he going. You know what this reminds me if we haven't had any air gun issues in a long time. No, I wonder what happened. I don't know. That's not been an issue at all. Probably heard you guys complain about it every week. I think the guys building the airguns started building the truck engines. Anyways, shall we spot on, spot off?

Spot on, spot off. He's spot off. Spot on you like it. Spot off, you don't like it, and you say one either way. First topic, Garrett Smithley involved in a wreck between leaders Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe in the Xfinity series race. Oh, Brett. You are like waiting to talk.

I didn't even know if this would make the show. It was such a non-topic yesterday in the garage, in the cup garage. I walked into the cup garage, and all anybody wanted to talk about was Garrett Smithley and Freddie Craft. What I don't understand, though, I was talking to Kevin Hamlin, you know, after the scenario that happened with Freddie and Garrett, like, why didn't Freddie get his own mixtape and on YouTube thing? Like, oh, Kevin got with Miss Natalie Decker. Obviously, man, spot off. Garrett Smithley was in the way. he was very unaware of what was going on.

Freddie had told him getting into three the leaders were coming. He had told him to hold the bottom. Either Garrett didn't hear him or Garrett wasn't paying attention. And Garrett obviously washed up in front of the leaders. Obviously, Garrett got on TV and said Freddie normally does a good job, but he didn't do a good job today. Freddie then obviously got upset because he knew he had told him some information. The crew chief confirmed to the driver that the information that Freddie said,

was delivered, and so Freddie has now resigned from spotting for Garrett Smithley. That's what happened. Spot off on that whole scenario. Unfortunately for Garrett, this is the second big time. And look, I like Garrett Smithley. He honestly is a really sweet, cool guy. He's awesome. And I like his girlfriend, Keeley. She shares the same name as my middle daughter, Keeley. But, Garrett, you got to be. If I'm driving down the interstate, every so often, I'm checking all my mirrors just in case I have to make a lane change. Case you're next to Garrett? Just in case.

But it's his responsibility to be aware. It's the spotter's responsibility to help that scenario. And it's unfortunate that it'll end it this way. What do you think, T.J.? I'm spot off. This can't happen. Not at that. I mean, when you get the Xfinity series or the Cup level, that's even the truck series,

man. When you get to the national levels, this can't. happen. This even, this shouldn't even happen in ARCA. There's so many guys, you know, that are different pace in ARCA. This shouldn't even happen there. But definitely not the Xfinny series. And I haven't heard, all as I heard was Garrett's interview. I haven't heard a recording or whatever. I don't know what Freddie said. I would like to think that Freddie gave him enough info, but sometimes, you know, I mean, these guys forget, you got to remember these guys are driving the cars and you might, I guess maybe in Garrett's situation, you just, you're in the, you're in the

same you're just, I don't know, when you're riding lap. He said they were on a 70 lap tires, just riding around. Well, that's the thing. That's the thing for me. And obviously, you and I are fortunate that we spot for fast cars, but we both, T.J. and I have been in wreck race cars where you're way off the pace. And the driver knows he's off the pace. The spotter knows he's off the pace. And I hate to tell Garrett this, but it may surprise him, but everything that's in your mirror, it's catching you. You're not outrunning anything out there. Yeah. And I can see like when you get so spread out like that, you might go a handful of laps without having anything. So you're just kind of comfortable riding.

Maybe you zone out a little bit. And, you know, I can tell you this. There's been plenty of times when I've told the driver, hey, make sure you do this. And then the lap later, the guy's like, you know, hey, we're pitting this lap. And then that lap later, hey, we're pitting? Yeah, I just told you we're pitting, you know? So those drivers tend to forget. So that's why you always, I always try to tell my driver numerous times.

even when I tell them if we're pitting, if we're pitting off turn two under yellow, you've got to tell them again in three. Tell them again in four. You know, you can never give them too much info like that. And I don't know if, to me, this thing, they probably, Freddie probably just told him, look, leaders are coming running the top,

stay in the bottom here, whatever, and then they went into three, and then, I don't know, if Garrett started thinking about something or something happened, he looked at something else and just kind of forgot what Freddie said, and you didn't say, you know what I mean? So I didn't hear his interview. But Joel Edmunds rides with me to the racetrack.

He spots for Eric Amarola on Sunday morning. And he's like, man, Garrett came out of the care center and said, yeah, he's hated for those guys. He wasn't even sure who it was. Yeah. Did he say that? Are you serious? Yeah, he didn't even know who he wrecked. Yeah, he said he didn't know who it was.

So, yeah. Well, I mean, I think there's lessons that can be learned from all sides on this. First of all, you know, Garrett needs to know when you're off the pace and guys were on the top, just leave room. Just leave a lane. You know, like I said, I haven't heard Freddy's audio or whatever, but, you know, and Freddie, when you're working with cars, don't ever get comfortable. Don't ever get comfortable because you don't know what that guy, you don't know if he's going to forget or something, and that can happen.

Then you're in that situation. There's been drivers that I've spotted for that don't want a lot of audio chatter, radio chatter, and they don't want you to talk to them in the corner. They have their nuances, right? With Clint, I don't have to worry about that. With Elliot, I never had to worry about that. But there are times when you feel like you're probably talking too much and you're being super freaking redundant. And it's annoying for us to have to do that. I don't know how Garrett is to

spot for. But some guys will tell you to shut up. Literally. They'll say shut up. Yeah. And you know, I'm talking too much. Yeah. I think when you have a younger driver, you don't give them the chance. You know, hey, this is how it's going to be. I'm not letting, you know, I'm kind of trying to teach you here a little bit or this is what we're trying to do. Your car owner can't afford to tear up cars or something like that. So I'm going to be extra extra cautious with you out there to be sure. I thought Kyle Larson had the best comment on Twitter. It was after it all had been said and done and Kyle Larson was like, I'm sitting here

watching Kyle Busch's Twitter like and he had some new popcorn because obviously Kyle and Garrett had a major run in and that was when Kyle said, guys, I never even won a late model race. So tough, tough break. Bad situation. That is a bad situation. Another Xfinity Series topic. Tyler Reddick and Cole Custer fight following Saturday's Xfinity Series race.

Spot on, spot off, TJ. I mean, it really wasn't a fight. I'm spot on because this is what we need. This is what this is exciting. I was glued to it watching it. I was just going to see what happened next. Spot on for two young guys that are possibly going cup racing next year. Who knows?

A little rivalry is never bad. So these guys might say everything is okay by next week, but it's going to be in the back of their heads. And if they get to racing again, who knows? I'm not saying they're going to go there and destroy each other, But this is good. I mean, Tyler is an aggressive young driver. Cole's obviously fast and aggressive now, too.

So I like seeing two fast guys kind of run, you know. And I didn't see anything. I didn't see anything that Tyler did wrong. Tyler got on his left rear and kept pushing him up and up and up to the point that Cole ran out of room. Well, I only watched it live, but that's what I saw. Yeah, I mean, but that's a way to pass. That's what you do to somebody.

It's late in the race. You're going for the win. You're not going to give that guy an extra foot. you're not if Tyler drove him all the way to the wall and then hit him then I would say there's an issue but Tyler obviously didn't hit him didn't and Cole hit the wall and Tyler didn't hit him so Tyler obviously left him enough room Cole could have lifted a little earlier than that but they're trying to win no guys at that at that how many laps are left it was in the right like towards end it was like yeah so they're gonna that's that's what happens at the end of the race if that's lap 20 of the race they probably don't even get close to that scenario I'm 1,000% spot on for this I think it's awesome I'll say this, I was at Dover, and Casey and I found this midget wrestling ring, and it would be the perfect size for these two guys to go out. Were you in it? I was not in it. Did you have your mandana? They were micro wrestling.

These two guys might actually be shorter than the midgets were, but it would be freaking awesome to get these guys in the ring and let them go at it. Here's probably what happened, though. Man, if I'm Tyler Reddick, I remember Cole Custer tackling John Hunter and Imich at that road course. So when he's coming over toward Mr. Reddick, I'm sure Mr. Reddick was like, hey, what's Goldberg getting ready to do to me? And when he put his hand on him, they locked up, man. I didn't see any punches thrown. I saw these guys fall into the ground. I saw some six foot eight jack men in there who, man, that's too big.

You guys need to get away. We need like five foot ten guys breaking this thing up. But man, I think it's awesome. I think it speaks to the intensity of the playoffs and the intensity to which these guys are racing. Yeah. These are two good race car drivers, too. This is the product of the playoffs. I mean, without a doubt.

If it was, I think Trace Briscoe said it, if this was a normal race, I don't think it would be, I mean, not as much. You know how you know it wasn't a normal race? The guy who Rex every week won. Stephen Wallace. I'm sorry, Brandon Jones won the race. Yeah. That guy's, he spent a lot of money to get that win. 134 races.

Been in a lot of organizations. So multiply 134 times $150,000. That's how much that trophy cost. How many seasons is 134 in Xfinity? Sorry. Like five? Jason. Is that like five?

Yeah, I mean, five times three is 150. So yeah, that's five years. Yeah. Well, I'm excited for him. I think he's a super nice guy, and I was totally fine with him winning. Atrition, you know, that was the thing that bit me, you know, at the end of the race. I was texting Chris Rice about this earlier this morning. We had the fourth or fifth best car there, and had we been more patient, we probably

could have backed ourselves into a position to be able to contend for the win, but Ross was loose off four, caught it a few times, finally lost it. He reminds me so much, and I spotted for Greg Biffle. and Xfinity for a lot of races back in the day when he ran that Kleenex car when he took over for Randy LaJoy and we won a lot of races and Greg was balls to the wall every single corner and spotting for Ross was the same thing like we were on restarts we were animals and we'd go up there and get the top four kind of ride there right but Ross wreck the car and I'm thinking man if we don't wreck that car we got a chance to win this race because all the top guys read it custer briscoe

bell they took each other out that's why sometimes you got to let the race Come to you. This is probably going to play in a Ross. This is something Ross is probably going to have to work on next year if he's going to be a championship contender. He's going to have to be okay with a fourth place car and see what happens. He'll win a lot of races if he learns how to do that. Right. Let it come to him.

You don't have the winning car every week, but you can still win with the fourth place car a lot. Shout out to Chris Lambert, who spotted the winning car on Saturday and the winning car on Sunday. Really hard for a spotter to have an opportunity unless you spot it for Cowboys when Kyle was running all those races. It's really hard for a spotter to have that opportunity to sweep the weekend. So, congrats to Chris Lambert. Big fan of his man. I said in my athletic article, he's not a guy that I'd want to have to be, man. He left home one morning, left his baby boy and his wife at home,

and they were killed that day in a head-on collision. He lost them both, and last week was the anniversary of that loss. And, man, just personally, a guy really look up to in terms of how he handles himself and a big, big weekend for him to kind of, you know, professionally shine on a week that personally he was having some tough times. Yeah, for sure. Spot on, spot off. Kyle Bush says if you are not in control of the last restart, then you don't have a chance to win.

Brett. I mean, I think any green-white checker scenario, that probably is going to ring pretty true. And if you do have control of it and you can't win, that's probably on you. You know, when you have a longer run, things have the opportunity to play out a little bit differently. but on a two-lap race. I mean, you're talking, there's three miles to go and you have the lead. I would hope that you wouldn't screw that up and you would win. So, yeah, he's right.

I don't know what he, what he, I don't know, T.J., what could he possibly mean, other than that here? I don't know. I mean, we won from third on a greenway checker. So, I mean, it can be done. Yeah. So, I mean, I know what he's saying. You're in, Kyle didn't win, so there's a reason.

This is just another reason for it. But, I mean, you're the leader. You've earned the right to control that race. A thousand percent. Denny was probably going to win that race. The cost shouldn't come out anyway. Yeah, Kyle's going to finish third or whatever he's running because Chase had run by him. But there was an opportunity there.

There's just two really good guys, three really good guys around you that are good. And you don't know what's going to happen. And, I mean, it's just a good race. I mean, you're not guaranteed. You should not be guaranteed a win from third anyway or wherever he was restarted. The leader should always have an advantage. And to me, I wasn't, I don't know, man. It was pretty close.

One more, another lap, Chase was going to make. it really interesting. But Chase was on four tires, wasn't he? Yeah, he was. But I mean, still, we were on old tires, one from third, and they didn't get all, you know what I mean? So you just never know how it's going to play out. I can tell you this, this restart here is more exciting than it would be, you know, a handful of years ago when we all go to one and it really get spread out big.

Now, man, we're going, when's the last time you've seen NASCAR, you know, a cup cars go that many wide down a Baxter into turn of three after we've taken the green. It's nuts. How can you get more competitive than that? It's nuts. And here's the other thing that people don't really talk about or maybe TV does, since I got so many brainiacs up there telling people at home what they need to think.

I'm totally kidding. But our fenders, I was talking to my engineer about this this weekend. Our fenders don't have any clearance. Everything is built so freaking tight. When you're saying four wide, if somebody touches, you're going to get a tire up and you're going to have to pit. Like, it can literally ruin your day. So to watch those guys be so aggressive.

and so accurate because five wide TJ should mean we're going to wreck. Five wide is, that's, I don't want to do that. How do you describe five wide? Somebody asked me that and I said, well, it depends on where you're at in the five wide.

And those guys have a feel of where they're at on the track for when you tell them you have to have a really creative way of telling them, like, hey, you're five wide, you know, three inside, one outside. Like you better know what you're getting ready to say beforehand. It's hard to say.

describe, though. Very hard. I mean, you look at Suarez late in the race yesterday. Raines was doing everything he could to tell Daniel the situation he was in, and Suarez just came up and wrecked himself. I know how that is. Vegas? To your point, it's extremely hard to give all that info.

It is. It is. You have to mentally be ready to give it before you have to give it, because if you don't, you look at it and you get shocked and you came tall. There's some people struggle giving that much info that quick. And it's just, that's part of this package. kind of evolved into this and it's not just the clear, you know, five back. We used to be able to say hold your line when we couldn't tell.

Nakey even say that. That ain't enough info. No, there's just run. The runs are massive too sometimes. So, yeah, it's a handful. Next topic. Chase Elliott races his way into the round of eight. And Brad Kislovsky, Alex Bowman, William Byron, and Clint Boyer are out.

Spot on, Spot off, TJ. I mean, spot on. That's the way the race played out. Everybody raced hard, and that's where you ended up. I didn't see none of these guys were caught up in wrecks, right? No. I mean, none of these guys got caught up in something that wasn't their own doing, kind of. So that's all you can, as far as Chase guys, it's all you can go and do is hope to control your own destiny.

And I saw that happen with all these guys. and I mean that's all you can hope for yeah I'm spot off obviously because the 14 car didn't transfer and you look at this thing and it's like wow 300 guys and the 14 are the ones that almost didn't make it obviously Chase went up there and passed Brad Keselowski Chase was able to do that because of stage racing you know Jason sent me a text earlier that Chase was able to get what was it Jason 15 stage points to Brad's 5

16 to 5 16 to 5 so I mean that's what set him up to be able to go out at the end of the race, make the pit call to get him in position to be able to drive by them guys. And that's what he did. You know, when I look at this thing, though, it's just crazy hard to imagine that, you know, like from Clint's perspective, what gets you in the chase or playoff and what continues to push you along is having a lot of stage points and winning races. And we failed to do both of those this year, especially at times where I thought we could possibly, you know, win a race. you know, we'd end up second, or a chance we'd have to get points. We'd end up not getting any points. Yesterday was a prime example.

We restart second to end the stage, and we ended up freaking 20th with no points. T.J. restarts behind me, he wins the stage. Like, we didn't capitalize as a team on stage points, and we obviously didn't win races. And you can't really expect to go deep into this playoff if you can't do those two things well. Yeah, and Brad, I mean, for Chase, he was very lucky that Brad was very uncharacteristic yesterday. in the beginning of that race, I saw Brad up there in second or third or something looking good, and then they kind of lost track position a little bit as it went on and couldn't get it back. So, you know, that's, you know, Chase has been pretty lucky.

Look at the roval. I mean, you crash into the wall head on, then you win the race. I know. I know. Crazy. That doesn't happen. So, you know, but you got to be good, too. So, I don't know.

It's just, you know, there was a lot of things that went in favor like that. He had a solid room. You're in the playoff, right? Why don't think Chase was in until... He wasn't in until the next to last caution. Exactly. And that was going to be... I mean, everybody was good until that point.

Chase was three points out on that next to last restart. And he capitalized on the last two restarts, gaining enough spots to put him in, and Brad lost enough to... Let me ask you this, now that you're in it. Okay, you're obviously still in it, rather. Yeah. We're for it now. Which one would you rather have had in it to race against?

Would you rather be racing against the nine, or would you rather be racing against the nine, or would you rather be racing against the two? I mean, Brad's a title contender. I mean, to me, I think I'd rather race the nine. Did you a favor? I agree. I was talking to Josh Williams. He and I yesterday were side by side.

And I was like, man, if I'm Denny Hamlin or I'm whoever, I would rather race Chase Elliott in this championship than I would, Brad Casloskey's, because Brad gets hot. Brad's a wheelman. Brad's one of the guys. Chase isn't. I'm not taking anything away from Chase Elliott by saying that, But just looking at history and how good of a guy, experience and former champion,

like Brad's a guy I wouldn't want. He's won, three in a row numerous times. So he can, you know, him and Kevin and Kyle, they can get on these hot streaks. And, man, he could win two or three or three in a row. You never know. There's guys that can do it, and he's one of them. There's one guy I want to see in the final four, no matter what. And that's Kyle Larson, because we've all talked about how well he is at running the fence.

and yesterday he was ripping the top he's a guy that from a entertainment perspective i want to see him in this final four i want to see him get the homestead and see what he can do given the fact that that that that you know the way that track is configured the way they run around there man i think he adds an exciting element if he's there last year the championship brace will be a homestead too so maybe his best shot well it was a very busy week of silly season with clint boyer remaining at the 14 Ricky Stenhouse to the 37 and Harrison Burton to the 20 car. This says that's why I just looked. I thought he resigned.

This says he resigned. Do I need to know something here? I didn't say it. That's why I said remaining. I definitely meant it to say it where Clint Boy resides to the 14. Resigned. Aren't you doing college? This straight-A student in there.

Ricky Stenhouse to the 37, Harrison Burton to the 20 Xfinity car. I think did they announce the Riley Hempstil? No. Yeah. Well, apparently, yep, there you go. Oh, I thought they already announced that. I think I didn't see that. I thought it's Brandon Jones, Riley Herps, Harrison Burton full-time at Gibbs next year.

I don't think they said that. Oh, well, maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, it's a busy week of silly season. You know, obviously it's going to be good for some people. Brian Patty also got released from Rouse I saw last week. It's going to be good for some people, bad for some people. I can tell you when you're on the bad side, it's not any fun. I can tell you this, though, it's not over.

You know, the driver pieces and over, the crew chiefs. piece sitting over and the spider piece sitting over. Silly season got started late. It's going to keep right on going and it may even be after homestead before some of these things play out. There is nothing about Riley Herbs going to anywhere yet. Oops. I may be wrong on that though. I just heard it. It's not like I have a source. I don't even know who if Riley came walking in this door I wouldn't even know who yet. So does that mean you spot for Clint? I don't know yet. They haven't said anything to me about spotting for anybody. So my contract is up at Stewart House racing and I would hope that they would want me to come back but nobody's told me that yet. So no matter what,

you'll announce it on the show, right? If I get a job, Casey, it'd be nice to have something to announce. What am I going to announce? I don't have a job? Resigned. I resigned and resigned. Mr. 4.0 in there. I didn't say I had a 4.0 at this point in the semester. I'm not really trying anymore. I just want to graduate and get a job. I can play basketball. I just want a job. I don't care about 4.0s anymore. Anyways, do we, uh, any other rumors? besides your royally deal any other rumors you're hearing i'm sure that's out i didn't see anything i just hope it's right now that i've said it because i'm like an idiot if it doesn't happen well this wouldn't be the first time i think there'll be there's definitely going to be a lot of spotter change

yeah yeah a lot so a couple big ones yeah there's definitely some couple fast guys are getting playoff contenders yeah yeah can't wait you guys yeah i'll hear about it soon maybe tj'll tell you all next week maybe you'll tell them you seem to be on a roll right now. Well, one in a row. Is that a streak? T.J., is this the time for you? Are you changing? I'm not. I'm still under contract. Well, just making sure. I'm still under contract. My contract is up. It was a three-year deal. It was an amazing three years. And I need a new contract. Greg Zippodalee, if you're listening. Let's take a break and see what's coming up this week on the Dale Jr. Download. Listen up. When you're done listening to Door Bumper Clear, go listen and subscribe to my podcast,

the Dale Jr. Download. This week, the greatest ambassador our sport has ever known. The seven-time champion, the king, Richard Petty, joins the show. Plus, catch us on TV Tuesday at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern on NBC Sports Network, the Dell Junior Download, available on major podcast platforms. Del Jr. Down. Dirty boat. What is Offerpad? We're the new way homes are sold. We're your online home buyer. Offerpad is the modern selling solution with a human touch that lets you skip all. the traditional headaches. Selling to OfferPad means no showings, you pick your closing day, and we'll even move you locally for free. Go to Offerpad.com, enter basic information about your home,

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Check them out Offerpad.com today. Let's go into Fastlane. Three racing questions. One off-the-wall question. 30 seconds to respond to each. Only 30 seconds. How are you going to start? Some talking about.

Good luck. Fast lane. First question on Fast Lane. According to Racing Insights, no top 10 starters finished inside the top 10 for only the third time since 1972. What caused such a drastic difference between the top qualifiers and racers this weekend? Right. Obviously, you got incidents on pit road.

You have incidents that happen on the racetrack. That certainly can eliminate people. We also know that some cars are more trimmed out than others. When you look at David Reagan and Michael McDowell qualifying in the top 10, those are guys that are very unlikely to finish in the top 10. So I would just say that the guys that are really going for the downforce builds, obviously Ryan Blaney was up there with a really fast car qualified up front. But overall, it's like you look at Truex every week.

You look at Lugano every week. Those guys qualify in the teens and low 20s, they dropped a rag, and here they come. So I think some of us are body builds. Yeah, that's, so the biggest deal to this is the package, the 2019 package. You know, you got a choice. Do you go for speed, you know, straight line speed, maybe get out front and try to hold the lead? Or do you go for handling? Do you want your car to turn, but you'll have the train, you'll have clean track.

You know, if you got, if you're trimmed out, you plan to have clean track and try to keep it. But it's just preference. Some drivers can drive one pack one way better than the other. And I don't know, everybody, every driver has their different theories to it and strategies for it. I mean, you look at RCR, they've qualified extremely well a lot of times this year. And the time that Clint qualified on the poll, I don't know if we got lap the first stage, but we came damn near close. So I think, you know, what TJ said, you're looking for that balance of downforce versus, you know, low drag. Like it just depends on which angle the team is going.

And I mean, even within the organization, one team may go a different way trying to learn something. Where was that? Vegas? Yeah, Vegas. Yeah. We qualified 23rd. Yeah, and you took the lead. Like 35. 30-something.

Yeah. Next topic. Hamlin slowed and let Jimmy Johnson get his lap back at the end of Stage 2 on Sunday, stating that he was just being a nice guy. I can never have too many friends on track. is this a smart move by Hamlin or something he shouldn't be concerned about. T.J. It's probably a smart move.

Danny's probably going to need a break from Jimmy at some point the next four or five races or something or down the road. It could be even further down the road. And, you know, you always want to help when you can. You know, at that point, Denny had a really good buffer. He didn't need to win that race, but he did. He had a good buffer. He was pretty much locked in without blowing a motor or something like that. So Denny has some wisdom.

little room to do stuff like that. You know, if Denny was in one of our positions, he's not going to be doing that. You're going to be getting everything you can. You know, you got to. You have to. You don't know how everything is going to play out. Yeah, I mean, to me, Denny Hamlin and Mark Martin are the two best drivers in NASCAR that have never won a Cup Series championship.

And I think Denny may change that this year. I mean, he certainly has won a lot of races. It's obvious those Toyotas are fast. And Denny, like TJ just said, I mean, at some point, he may need Jimmy to give him a little room and Jimmy's a guy that kind of races you like you race him the way Tony Stewart used to race. So, you know, there was a point yesterday where Clint was racing Joey Lugano and Clint was like, I sure hope this guy doesn't need a favor for me later, you know, because obviously we're racing each other extremely hard.

But to T.J's point, every spot mattered where you were on the racetrack matters, where the restarts could happen, where you come down pit road. If a caution comes out matters, like you have to know when to be greedy and you have to know when to play give and take. Yeah, I don't like, you know, to me, to me, to me. me if the rolls are reversed you're going to do the same thing there there's no way like you can't you can't sit there to be racing a guy for a 10th 9th 10th something like that knowing that you're single digit points away from making the next round or not and be like okay well i'm going to give this guy he's not

you got to go you got to get everything you can get right now and you know one point i don't know how close it got but when you're down to single digit points anything you don't have a cushion no cushion so you know i don't i don't like particularly hearing that but i because we're in them man. I don't expect you to give it to me. It's just how it is. So Denny's mad at Joey, but he's happy with Jimmy. That's what we learned. I guess Denny tweeted after the Garrett Smithley incident

because Clint tweeted something along lines of. A guy that's four laps down needs to know what the hell is going on around him. And Denny tweeted it, retweeted it, and he said, how about a guy 24 laps down, which was obviously a little bit of a jabbit, Joey, which is awesome. I love that stuff. Oh, in two of the last three Martinsville playoff races, the winner has gone on to take the championship

with Jimmy in 2016 and Joey Lugano last year. Who has the best shot to win on Sunday and go on to take the title? Brett. Jason, did you come up with this stat or did you get this from somewhere? No, I found it because I was at the 2016 race, Jimmy won, and I was at the one Likano one last year. So you came up with this stat on your own? Yes, correct.

Wow. This is impressive. I don't put my work in school. I put my work into the show. now. Clearly with your spelling. Don't resign. Don't resign. I'm sorry, we want you to resign with the show.

I bet his own podcast has a lot of stats. You think so? A lot of good. He saves all the good stuff. That's a really, really good question. Man, we saw how fast, all these playoff guys are going to be hard to beat there. But, I mean, I don't, I don't know, man. Toyota's just got something right now going on.

It's going to be hard to beat those guys. Yeah, I mean, I look at the top eight right now, And I don't see a weak link, man. I don't see a weakness with anybody. And I look at them, all them guys can win. But I look down and look at the guys that have won there before and know how to take care of their car for, you know, it's a long race. It's 500 laps.

And there's a lot that can go on in 500 laps. So I think, you know, going there, I like our chances because Brad dominated the spring race there, right? Like, I mean, he dominated it. So hopefully we can take some of that there and go. But man, look at them. How do you pick one out of that group? Yeah, I know. I want to see Kevin Harvitt do well.

Obviously, he's part of Steerhaust Racing. But if you said pick the guy that's going to do what Jason just said, that's going to win both of these things, which is a championship and Martinsville, Denny Hamill is a hell of a short track driver. Off the wall question. Freak injuries trended on Twitter over the weekend with one guy saying he broke his finger leaving the bathroom and someone burning their chest while ironing their shirt. I don't even know how that happens.

I would hope not. What is the most freak injury you've experienced, TJ? I don't know. Should we talk about the truck race last week? What happened? Now you have to talk about it. Well, the guy ripped his finger off. Oh, yeah, forgot about that.

A tire changer. Yeah. Joe Slingerlin ripped his finger out. His ring finger. He went to stand up and go around the truck. He was changing tires and his ring was, his finger was already gone. He didn't even know it.

Yeah, he finished his stop before he realized it. And they never found his finger. No, I think they saw the ring or something fly off. They couldn't find his finger though, which means it probably got ran over. Poor finger. You know how bad that hurt that finger? Did you get run over like that? I don't know.

I don't think the finger knows because they can't ask it. That is definitely a freak injury. So what's your most freak injury? Oh, man. I would probably say. I was maybe nine, ten years old, and I was in this field catching grasshoppers playing in the woods, stuff like that. It's already off to a bastard, I know. And I see this gigantic grasshopper.

I'm like, oh, I got to catch that. So I cut my hands, and I go to, like, fall down and, like, lean down and catch it. Well, there's a rusty nail sticking up, and it goes right into my knee. It's in the field, and it was sticking up just right. The nail went straight into my knee. Had you had a tetanus shot before this? Probably. I had stitches and stuff all the time.

So I stand up and there's this old rusty nail sticking about that far out of my knee. And yeah, so I hobbled back to my house and this woman was doing, there was like some sort of Tupperware party going on. So I beat on the door and this woman comes out and she's like, oh my gosh, she grabs onto it and yanks it out. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. So free ride in the ambulance. to the hospital. Got a tetan shot. It's not free.

Well, yeah. Well, it's free if you don't have insurance. It probably wasn't free then. So if you voted for Hillary, it's free. So I rode there. Don't you take that out either, Jason. I think the worst part about it was about, you know, I didn't move off the couch and it stiffened up real bad.

And then like about four or five days later, my dad's like, you got to walk. It ain't going to do it. It's not going to work and do anything until you free until you start walking a little bit. Oh my gosh. That hurts so bad. But yeah, there's nothing good about a. nail sticking out of your knee. Both of my injuries involved my butt.

I knew that one was coming. So we were in high school and we played basketball at this gym and it was called Angeles, which is between Pagelan and MacBee when you're driving like from here to Myrtle Beach right. To drive from here to Darlington. It's called MacB. I'm from South Carolina. There is no A in there.

It doesn't matter. It's MacB. Is it McDonald's or McDonald's? Oh. It's McDonald's. That's MC. There's no M-C. Yeah, but see, you guys, y'all think it's Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but it's Lancaster, South Carolina.

You Yankees don't understand how we talk. No, we just know English. We're at this gym, and this gym had nine and a half foot basketball goals on each end, right? So we're a bunch of white kids that want to be able to dunk. So what do we do? We go play basketball at this gym where white men can't jump, but we can still dunk. So we go play, and I go up to block a dunk. The kid's name was Clint Patterson, six foot five, like he's a monster.

He didn't want to play college ball. It's a bad idea for you already. So I'm up. Dude, I had leaps back then. I had up. So I get up and I'm trying to swat the ball and he hits me with his body. Well, this used to be like a, what do you call them things where like there's a stage in there? You know what I'm talking about?

Auditorium. It was an auditorium. It was a gym or it served as both. Yeah, we had one of them. So as I went up and as he hit me, I hit the bottom on my spinal cord, the very bottom of my butt. On the edge of the stage. On the edge of the stage. And it literally, I thought I was going to vomit.

It hurts so bad. And it sent just chills over my whole body. I immediately get up. I basically lay on my side to drive home. I walk in the house, tell mom what happened. We go to the emergency room. They x-rayed and had broken off the end of my tailbone. And that thing hurt for a very, very long time.

But there was nothing they could do. And obviously, we all know about the incident where I jumped off the top of the boat and broke my ass. It's like a rib injury, man. Every time you move, you feel it. Yeah. I broke my ribs, no skiing in Utah one time. But I would say the basketball injury was kind of freak, man. Who lands on the end of a stage with a butt? Jason, when we play?

Yeah, Jason, is your freak accident when you went to go sick? I don't want to talk about it. Casey, you got any freaking injuries? Yes, actually, I almost got my finger chopped off in an elevator. Like old elevator. Why? How do you do that? You know, because I lived in Chicago, and they have a lot of old, like, these basically really old buildings and I was going to my friend's house and I closed the apartment. It's like a walk-up, yeah, apartment I guess. But their elevator is really old. You have to

like close one door, then close the cage. And so I closed the cage and the elevator still in work or like something got stuck. And so I went to, my friend was right next to me and she opened it and she didn't realize that my finger was in it. So like part of it. So like part of the and my finger, like, got chopped off. Did you break a finger? It was broken, too. So, yeah, that... I broke that finger that never got it fixed.

Oh, I can tell. Yeah, I didn't want to wait at the emergency room. I'm playing football, never got to fix. Yeah, I didn't want to mess with it. It hurt. It hurts on it. Remember our buddy Tim Dugger? He sings that song.

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that you forget about even happens, and then you look at it on pristineauction.com. You can go get this merchandise, this memorabilia. What event were you in? I wasn't in an event. Marathon. I actually had a, man, I had a, this is the first time I'd ever taken a narcotic, right? So I had a, I had a wisdom tooth that was infected.

So we drive to Decatur, Atlanta, and I had to go to the dentist, and the dentist gave me some kind of a pain pill. And I drank a pain pill. And then I drank a, I'm sorry, I ate a pain pill. I drank a beer, and then a bird, on my shoulder as we were walking into the baseball game. And I don't even barely remember being at the baseball game. So don't ever mix Dennis visits with beer with birds. It's a bad idea. But yeah, no, I wasn't actually in a sport.

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Addison Johnson asks, do Spiders also focus on the point situation, or do they just focus on what's in front of them? Brett. Yes, we do. You know, the more information we have, the more information can provide. Our fan vision is up to date with live scoring on the points as they run, which is extremely critical. There are times when you need to tune it out, and there are times when you need to know exactly what's going on. If you're Brad Keselowski at the end of that race yesterday and or Chase Elliott, you want to know exactly what you need to do to be able to get back in. And for us, if we have that information or the crew chief has that information, I mean, look, if it's first down and nine, you know how many yards you got to get to get a first down, another first

down like so so you want to know what you're up against yeah for sure you I don't think there's a playoff car that didn't know what their scenario was at some point you're always aware of it what's going on as we were banking stage points I knew our situation was getting better and better but it only takes one it only takes one corner for two guys to get in front of you and next thing you know you're sliding through the grass and everything's reset and you're right down there on the cutoff again and you're not you know you kind of got to wait for everyone to cross the line look at it and be like okay, what's this person's outlook now? Well, he's looking really good.

He's probably going to win or finish top three. So that's going to be tough. And then, I don't know, you're always aware of it, especially as the cutoff races come down to the end, like you're aware of it. At Dover, we were aware of it. We just tried to get every point we could. You go to the next race, you get a solid run, and then you go to the next one. That's when the cutoff races are when you really know what you've got to do.

Next one is from Larry Spiegel I. Did you ever think that you'd see the day when the ARCA series would qualify faster than the Cup series? T.J. I don't know if I ever saw that coming, but, you know, with the way the package is and the way the roles have been done to keep the playing field's close. You know, I don't, I guess I never saw it coming, but, you know, I think the racing is really good in the Cup series. people seem to be entertained. So, I mean, I'm okay with it. Man, ARCA isn't even our triple A equivalent, our double A equivalent, our single A equivalent.

To me, this is almost like have a major league play on a field where the fence is 250 foot and then having your single A guys play on a field that's 300 foot. I mean, when you look at an ARCA pole speed, it's 180 miles an hour versus, which is faster than your premier series. I don't know how anybody can look at that and not have a problem with it from a marketing standpoint because I think there are a lot of things that make these guys superheroes in our minds. Number one, it's their ability to go so fast. So now all of a sudden a guy driving an arc of cars going faster than a guy in a cup car. Like to me, this is just a wow factor and it's something that NASCAR needs to look at and

NASCAR needs to fix it. Obviously, they're not going to be able to speed our cars up much more than they already are and given how much downforce we have and the horsepower packages that we have. But on paper, I mean, I'm sorry, this is just. just common sense to me that the NFL is going to go to, or the NBA is going to go to a half-court rule, but we're going to let high school keep playing full court. Like, this is a problem that needs to be fixed.

Slow the other series down so that we don't even have to keep having this conversation because racers in their minds want to go fast, and whoever goes the fastest is the best, and ARCA is not the best. So why are they going the fastest? No. I mean, I will say this to ARCA. When you were moving up the ranks, you know, ARCA was, kind of the stepping stone that you wanted to go to first.

Now, most skip ARCA and go right to trucks or something. Because it's a million bucks to run eight decent tracks. Yeah, and there's not... I mean, I honestly think they're scheduled to line up better with ours too, but it doesn't line up quite as much anymore. No. It's just harder to do, and I don't know. Next one...

NASCAR owns ARCA. They do now. They do now. They can fix this problem. Well, they're working on next year. They're going to have the K&NN and ARCA series combined. We used to go to Kansas and we qualified. fly in the 190s.

Like we're 20 miles per hour slower, and ARCA is the same as they were. So do something to slow their cars down. Put something on the roof to give them more drag. Like, there is an easy fix to this so we don't have to have this conversation with people. But you've got to look at the Archer races. They're not very, the competitiveness is. No, but the pole speed is what this guy's asking about.

He's right. But, I mean, you can, do you want a faster speed or do you want a competitive race? He can ask himself that. As a racer, he wants to see who can go the fastest in right now. Arca is going faster than we are. We'll go watch drag races. Tim underscore Allen underscore 19. What are the advantages and disadvantages of spotting Xfinity or trucks during the weekend?

Do spotters learn anything for the cup race similar to drivers learning by driving in other series? T.J. Absolutely. You can learn. You might see a wreck happen in a spot you've never seen before, and it might play in might play in the next time you spot a race you see that happen you have more of a flow for whenever how the races go where the lines move stuff like that you have a little bit of sense like that and I mean the more the better the more games you play and the more experience you're going to

be in any sport really it's not like it's not like a spotter's going to get injured not going to pull a hamstring or something no but uh I mean any knowledge you can build on resarts restart lanes and stuff like that is always beneficial in my opinion. I think for Young Spotters, there's a huge advantage to it because to TJ said you're getting the reps, right? And you're out there seeing the lines and whatnot.

You know, as long as I've been doing it, I can watch the race on TV and learn the same things that I need to learn for Sunday. The only thing that I'm not going to necessarily hear is what the driver is fighting and what changes are happening. You know, having work with Ross Chastain on Saturday and seeing what his car is fighting,

I'm able to pass along some of that information to, you know, know, Buga, Clint's crew chief and Clint as well. That's why when you look at Penske, they only let their Cupspotters spot for their Xfinity cars, and they compensate those guys for not being able to go out and get an Xfinity job because they don't want them to be able to work with two different teams, right? Not everybody takes that approach. Spotters for a lot of us were independent contractors, were not employees.

But I can watch a race on TV and learn exact same things that I need to learn for Sunday, but certainly working them helps me as well. I mean, TJ hadn't worked a lot of Xfinity races in the last few years, and I think you're still doing just fine on the cup side. Yeah, I still like to do them when I can whenever Joey runs and stuff. It always, especially when it's your driver in the Xfinity race, that always makes it. That always just gives you a little bit more to build off of.

I'll tell you this, there's a lot of weekends when you do all three series that by the time the cup race rolls around, Casey, that you're literally sick of being on the roof because you've done two truck practices, two Xfinity practices, a lot of times three cup practices, then you'll throw in potentially having to do one, two, three qualifying sessions. Boom, the cup race gets there.

And you're almost like, I'm sick of being on this roof. I look at Talladega. I went down there, did a couple practices. I was off on Saturday. I couldn't wait. I slammed my five-hour energy right before the race started. I couldn't wait for that race to get going.

I was excited to be on the roof, excited to plate race. So sometimes, man, it's almost like you're fresher by not being up there all three days. Yeah, and we have access to, a lot of video and stuff too like he says there's numerous different ways to watch a race replay now and there's probably

how many races in are we? 32 32 or more than that right it's 30 well there's 36 real ones plus two fake ones I mean I've watched probably 40 replays maybe 50 replays of races this year from you know our previous races to what happened in the race here

and there's ways you prepare yourself this time of year it helps us because we've got data, right? When we rolled into this new package, we rolled into Atlanta, Phoenix, those places. We didn't know what it was going to race like. Us going to watch an old Atlanta race, we're going to do us a damn bit of good. Now we can go back and watch these races that are up and coming, not necessarily a Martinsville, right, but more so the Texas Phoenix homesteads, not homestead, but we can rewatching Atlanta, learn something there. More applicable than when you start a new package, it's a clean slate. Like, I literally showed up to Daytona for the 500, and I didn't watch one

single race because I played a lot of plate races out in my head. We didn't know what the package was going to be like. So the last thing I want to do is think I know what it's going to do. Like I want to learn while I'm there. And literally during that weekend, you're watching every single lap you can watch. Yeah. And there's, uh, you definitely, there was a few times this year where I was like, this is wasting my time.

What am I, what can I watch this weekend and get ready for this? And there wasn't anything. No. We could let, we could let Schultz spot over next year if we race like that again. We do the restarts, then we'll hand him a headset. Green flag. Who gets the offer pad? I love them.

Everyone gets one. And then we have a DBC review from Apple Podcasts. Fans says, haven't been into NASCAR for years. Thanks to this podcast, my love is returning. Enjoy the insight of the two spotters. I now not only follow my drivers, but the two drivers of the podcasters. Keep it up. So send me a message on Twitter at Hey, Jason Schultz,

and we'll get your address and get you a t-shirt as well. Yeah, t-shirts are going to be a little delayed. We've got a little bit of a construction problem in the Griffin House. So give me a couple weeks before we ship more out. Did you, you know the Apple and the NFL, have one thing in common? What? Chargers both suck. I saw that tweet.

That's funny. Oh, championship four picks. Championship four. We got eight to pick from. I'll go first because T.J. always takes a while anyway. Plus, we know he's got to pick the 22, just like I got to pick four. So I want to see Kyle Larson in this thing. I really do.

Kevin Harbick, unfortunately, Kyle Bush somehow or another still has the points lead, despite the fact that he hasn't been worth the in the playoff for the most part. Look, he's had a couple of races where he ran really good, but overall, there's no way he should have a 35-point lead over Ryan Blaney who just won two races ago. Come on, man, these points, they've got to figure that out. I'll take Kevin Harvick. I'll take Kyle Larson. You ranted so much you forgot what you're going to say.

Take Denny Hamlin and Martin Trex, Jr. What about you, T.J.? 18, 19, 22, 4. Same as last year then. Yes. Nice. Well, anything you guys want to raise about? Let's talk about this real quick.

All right, so four guys are going to be moving up, and four guys are going to be eliminated. Do you think, how many guys do you think will get in on points versus wins? Like, do you think, you know, Denny Hamlin wins all three of these races and then three guys get in on points? Like, how many guys do you think are going to get in points? I think you got, I think two on wins and two on points. Two and two. All right. Yeah.

All right. That's fair. It's only three races, so. So you think one guy's going to win two? I think there's a very good possibility that one guy could win two of them. Yeah. You know, I think, I don't know. I mean, I look at Martinsville and, like you said, I looked at this list and anybody could win there.

Oh, man. I mean, I got to. to say the the favorites to me are probably um 11 22 4 right off the bat but the nines can be quick there the 12 has been fast there the 42 shown some speed there um but i think denny and joey and martin are two of the and kevin are the better short track drivers of that group so two and two is a good number then you go to texas and who knows yeah i mean i really don't know i mean it's It's going to be tough, man. Somebody crazy.

Remember that year Kyle Larson passed out doing an autograph session at Martinsville? He didn't get to race the next day? Was he a rookie that year, or so was that the second year? I don't remember that. I just remember, man, we were at the track and you start hearing rumors, which our whole sport is one big rumor. It seems like, man, Kyle Larson passed out doing an autograph session. You're like, there ain't no way. And then boom, you're like, next thing you know, yep, that's what happened.

Martyrville is awesome. He produces some of the best racing of the year. Remember Kevin Harvick? He, who was it, got suspended and Kenny Wallace had to drive their car? Was it Harvick for parking his truck at the back of the NASCAR hauler where the officials couldn't go in and out of the door? Yeah, maybe. I think it was. He was at RCR, right?

And he got mad in a truck race and he just literally crammed his truck into the back door of the NASCAR hauler. And they kicked him out for a week. I swear I thought it was Harvard. I think it, that sounds like. Kenny Wallace came in to drive the car. Well. Yeah. Martinsville creates drama.

And just imagine next year it's going to be the end. of a stage of what you call it. It's going to be an elimination race. Just like Daytona, right? It'll be fun to watch. Holla. Oh my gosh. Well, anything else you guys want to rant about?

No. That's a great mood. It's all we do right here is work. Casey, me and you are the only two that have day jobs. You know, Jason, do you have a day job? Do you do anything other than this podcast? This podcast, come back all week, do videos, go to school. That's my job.

He's busy. I'm telling you, taking care of kids at home, is harder than a day job. Are you going to eat a hot dog this weekend? I'm not, I mean, I don't mind them, but I'm just not one of the ones that count the hot dogs. I like to eat one just because I do, just because of the legacy of the-

They're not bad, and they're only two bucks, man. Whether you're not buy a hot dog for $2. I mean, they're not great. They're not bad. Have you ever soaked them in water? The bun? No, the hot dog. They blow up.

Soak them in water and take them out, and then the whole thing is pink. Yeah, the pink hot dog. Not appealing. Who does that anyway? Why are you doing science projects with the hot dogs? I didn't do it. You can't just go around putting wieners in water.

That's a terrible idea. We need to end the show. I got to go. I have a meeting. What kind of meeting? For work. All right. Hey, listen, this is going to be a crazy race.

Martinsville is one of my favorite tracks to go to. We got an easy schedule. I work 9 to 1 on Saturday, and then the Cox play at 4, and then the big race on Sunday. So you drive them back and forth? Yep. I'll have truck practice on Friday, truck race,

Cup, truck race Saturday, and Cup Race Sunday. Yeah, same. Well, be sure to keep commenting. Leave us some feedback, good feedback only. And we'll keep sending T-shirts. You can't have negative feedback to a perfect show, Casey. This is true. Thanks for listening to you peeps out there.

Have a good week, guys. We out, Hala. See you. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.