Door Bumper Clear - 281. Vegas & Jordan Bianchi: Not Personal, Just Business

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

As the famous saying goes “What happens in Vegas, gets discussed on the show - or at least that's the saying we’re going with. After returning from Vegas, a lonesome Freddie Kraft invites The Athletic’s Motorsports writer Jordan Bianchi to recap everything that went down in Sin City. The two discuss Chase Elliott’s sudden snowboarding injury that sidelined the driver of the 9, who are the top candidates to fill Kevin Harvick’s seat at Stewart Haas Racing, the controversial caution and non-cautions that impacted the end of the race, the Dirty Mo Ultimate experience suite and much more.  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.

This is a production of Dirty Mo Media. I'm going to for broken. I'm making advances. I'm shooting for them. I'm shooting for them. Taking a gap on you. Clear. Yo, what's up, everybody?

I feel like a lone wolf in the studio today. My buddy's T.J. Obviously not feeling well all week. He seen a lot of tweets about, like, did we get TJ too drunk in Vegas? And the answer is, TJ never made it to Vegas. So this cannot be pinned on Brett and I. What's up, Freddie Crafts spotter for Bubble Wallace. As I said, TJ's out.

Brett's working in Orlando this morning. So neither one of them showed up, Casey. Except for me. Hey, guys, Casey, Vote here. Freddie, I'd like to congratulate you for being the only one to show up today. And the only one to really be sober and coherent in the show. since Brett and T.J. don't get credit for that. So I think you tease this out, and only one person guessed who our special guest is this week.

Do you want to do the intro? Yeah, so I teased out, and I thought I made it pretty obvious, but I think I got people up with the ruffle feathers comment at the end of it, because the first two words were the tease, breaking news. From The Athletic, obviously, the writer of, in my opinion, the best article to ever be written on The Athletic was about TBC. and the best dressed guests we've ever had. And honestly, the most fashion forward person I've ever seen in the cup garage,

Mr. Jordan Bianchi's here. What's up, Jua? Thank you. Pleasure. You've got the B team here today. So we'll have to carry it a little bit. I told Jordan at the end of last year, we were just trying to figure out a day. Obviously, we've had Jeff on numerous times, and those shows are all great.

And him and Jeff do a podcast, Jeff Gluck. They do a podcast together. So I knew Jordan would be great on here. And we were talking about last year. I said, you know, you've got to come on DBC sometimes. So then I knew Brett was going to be out. And I knew that if I was here by myself with TJ, I would drive myself crazy. So I was like, I need Jordan's backup.

And then now I've thrown you to completely the wolves where it's just you and I. You've asked me to be on this show one other time. I respectfully declined because it was after Bristol in 2021. And I didn't want to discuss. Oh, that was, yeah. I remember that. Oh, that would have been a good one. We can discuss it now, though.

No, no, that's okay. Still have not discussed that publicly. We'll not discuss it publicly. All right. Well, I know we'll definitely talk about you. you, but I want to hear how Vegas was, I would say, from your perspective, realizing not only was Vegas going on, but you had Formula One started. You have IndyCar, Supercross Saturday Night. I mean, you can't get much better than that, right? Sunday was perfect because the Formula One race started at 10 a.m.

Eastern, and that ran right almost into Indycar race completely. A little bit of, you know, lull there, but you could have launch, and then the IndyCar race ended, and right away, the Fox pre-race show was picking up, going into NASCAR. It was a perfect day for motorsports. It felt kind of like a celebration, right? Like everybody was excited. It wasn't, you know, everybody's in their own camps of this is Formula One or IndyCar. NASCAR is like, this is cool. Everybody's watching different disciplines and getting into it. And people that are into NASCAR were talking about Formula One and IndyCar.

It was a celebration of motorsports yesterday. And that felt really cool to see because you don't always see that. But because of the way the schedule lined up and because Formula One was kicking off a season, because IndyCar was kicking off at season. And because NASCAR was on the West Coast, it just kind of, it came together in a perfect way yesterday. It was a lot of fun. I had like a Memorial Day feel to it on Twitter.

I didn't get to watch much of it because I was headed their track so early. But the only thing that I saw out of the whole deal was that IndyCar wreck. And then the guy came, you can call it Arker Brakes if you want. Was it Santino? No, it wasn't Santino. Somebody told me in the suite it was Santino. I was like, please don't let that be true. It was, I couldn't tell you name it off back.

He was running Peterson. Peterson. I don't know. It was not good. If you haven't seen it, look it up on Twitter. There's a wreck that happens. And then a guy comes in, I don't know, three or four days later and never checks up and just drives through somebody. Sends a guy flying through the air.

It looks like a video game wreck. But yeah, thanks for coming, man. You know, there's some stuff. Obviously, the first thing I want to get into a U, aside from Vegas, like, you know, how, let's just do it. Like, where did you come from? Like, I know we talked about this yesterday. I didn't realize you was such a big hockey fan. Like, where'd you get started?

Where'd you start in journalism? Yeah, so I was born and raised in Minnesota, the Twin Cities area. I've always loved sports. actually went to college for journalism and I wanted to do sports radio and that was my emphasis. And so I started doing sports radio when I got out of school. I had a really nice job and did that for a while and started doing other reporting and stuff. I actually hated writing. I hated writing.

I was terrible at it. But as I was working at the sports radio station, K-fan in Minneapolis, which is a pretty big deal in that neck of the woods, I realized I actually really did like writing. And I started doing it and I discovered that I thought I was pretty good at it. And so I decided I wanted to give up the sports radio part of things because I felt like my career kind of had stagnated and hit a ceiling. and I decided to basically kind of do a 180 and focus on the writing side of things and started doing a bunch of freelance stuff

and covering motorsports and other stick and ball sports and that kind of thing. And just kind of windy road ended up here in Charlotte about four years ago when I started working for the athletic. I mean, the way it's taken off here for you, I feel like I probably is going back three or four years ago. I didn't really know who you were. And now it's like one of my first calls

if I hear about anything that's going on is Jordan. And obviously, you know, we've heard Bianchi Bob. And now let me ask, ask you this. Give me a pronunciation because I say beyond Bianchi. You got it right. I heard every pronounce. Yeah. I've heard I heard Chi and I was like I don't know if it's Chi. So I got a I got a I've been called every name of the book good and bad. So you can call me whatever you want. It won't be offensive. It's okay. Bianchi is the way to pronounce it. Yeah. So I and and and so you got Bianchi bombs that everybody refers to now you've been dropping a lot of breaking news lately. And listen I we kind of do some of

that stuff on here obviously and it's kind of hard to pick and choose what you want to drop what you want to and just where do you come from on that about you know how much information do you need to feel comfortable going forward with the story and and how much do relationships play into whether or not you drop a story well there's a lot to unpack there and one is we never go with anything unless we are 100 percent certain and we have to have multiple sources on it's just not one person has to have two people directly in the know firsthand knowledge of the situation before we'll report it and there are times when we feel comfortable and we probably could go with it but we're like we pull back And we're like, hey, we need to be make sure we need to, you know, dot our eyes, cross our T's and make sure we are absolutely certain on this.

And there are times when we feel really good about it, we could probably run something, but we just don't know if that's how we want to do it. If there's a better angle on this, if you step back from a 30,000 foot perspective, is there a different story here that we're missing? Let's talk about the Kyle Bush thing for a second, right? Like, you know, we kind of knew that Kyle Bush was going to leave Joe Gibbs racing. You could read the T-leys for a long time. We talked to people in that camp, on everybody involved in that situation, and it was obvious, but it's like, okay, if he's going to leave, then where's he going? And that was the big story. And so how do you tie that together?

So you always want to make sure that you have all your facts straight, first and foremost. And I probably say that I've never publicly reported anything that has been wrong. I mean, that's going to probably bite me in the butt one day. But, you know, you never, you want to maintain that. And I feel confident when I report something, it's going to be accurate. And there are some reporters will put things. on social media and they'll float things and that's fun. That's their own prerogative.

I don't do that. There's times where it cost me because they're putting out stuff that I already know and it's like, okay, well, shoot, now everybody knows, right? But we have a different way. And often when we report something, it's like you're going to have a full story with it and that kind of method. It's just not putting something on social media very rarely. Yeah.

And so I know like, listen, I've known we've had conversations about this. You have, you've pissed some people off in the garage with some of the things you have reported. I don't know if you want to get into that. But like, has there ever been anything that you put out there and later maybe regretted saying, maybe I shouldn't have done that? I wouldn't say regret. I think you could say, you know, maybe I would have done it a different way or I could have

approached this a different way. I don't, I stand by everything I reported. I mean, the stories are the stories are. Like, that's my job is to write news and to break news. And, you know, there's a mindset with among some folks in the garage and really the industry of, hey, why are you breaking other people's news? And it's like, that's my job. Like, whether you like it or not, that's what I'm.

I'm paid to do. And there are some people that gets upset. And at the end of the day, I will always go up to people who I have stories on or whatever. And I always give the opportunity. Like, hey, listen, you want to yell at me. You want to scream at me. This is your opportunity to.

I get it. I understand your perspective. Here's my perspective. We're probably not going to agree on this. But at least I'm going to hear you out. And again, if you want to call me names, you can call me any name you want in the book. And that's okay. And it'll stay between us.

Yeah. And I was just going to say, like, I did this a couple of weeks ago before Daytona, you know, we, like Brett and I obviously, you know, talked to, a lot of people and kind of get some of the, you know, maybe driver announcements that are coming out. And we had known that Maya Snyder was going to JGR. So like as a little experiment, I just got on the Coucheracer account and I was like,

I could break an Xfinity driver's news right now if you want me to vote yes or no. And it was literally, I think, like, 5149, no or maybe, you know, like, so you like, you're never going to make everybody happy, but you have a job to do. And you just, I don't know if it was an award or just recognition from the, you know, from, was it from the athletic? No, it's from the Associated Press Sports Editor Award, which is the most prestigious award in sports journalism. Yeah. And I mean, so like you're obviously doing a very good job at your job. So continue doing it. We love it. You're one of the first ones I go to when I hear a rumor. I'm like, hey, what do you got? He never gives it up. Unfortunately for me. But I never give up who I talk to.

Yeah. Oh, that's for sure. Yeah. Never. And that's, and I will say that. That's part of it. Like, if when you develop relationships with people, you can tell me something and you know with 100% uncertainty, I am never going to divulge who I talk to ever. like this just happened what was it Friday Thursday or Friday somebody I got a text from a spotter as like hey I heard chase Elliott broke his leg he's out six weeks and I'm like in this spotter is not somebody that I would consider like in the know or anything and I was like where the hell you getting that from like so I text Jordan I was like you hear anything about chase Elliot being out six weeks he's like wow no not yet not yet like an hour not yet like an hour not yet it was like a hour later and then like an hour not even like it was not even like it was during a practice or something I was like I can go back and look at the timeline but you texted me that and then I was like, okay, and within a minute or two, I had it. I was like, wow, this is actually legit. But that's an example of how that kind of works in the background of, you know, like, we hear a rumor, and then I'll go to Jordan or maybe Bob. Bob's usually pretty good with stuff.

But, yeah, so that's fun, man. Good job. Keep it up. Like, we like to piss people off. I'm sure. Well, how has that impacted the relationships you have, right? You need to obviously know people to be able to get the information. So how has that worked?

It's a very good question. It's a balance. And sometimes those relationships are going to be damaged because if I'm reporting a store in someone and they're not happy with it or they didn't want to get the news out, that's an unfortunate reality of the business. And there's going to, you know, again, you try to do it professionally. You try to do it with respect. And you try to say the acknowledgement of, hey, listen, this is not me trying to ruin anything for you. This is just me doing my job.

And I always quote my favorite movie of all time. Like, this is not personal. This is business. And it's the same way that we get grief on here, and particularly from maybe one race team in particular. But it comes from everybody that, you know, you pick on us, you do this. And I'm like, we're not making up here. Like, if you don't do dumb stuff, there's nothing for us to talk about, you know. And sometimes some of us maybe are in a bad mood one day and do do a little bit of picking.

But like it's the same thing. Like I beat up on Noah forever, you know, on here because he was doing a lot of dumb shit. And he could, yeah, he came to me and said, why do you talk? about me on the show and I was like because you do a lot of dumb stuff I promise you if you stop doing dumb stuff I won't say anything else about it um so you know it's the same kind of you know relationship wise where you constrain relationships by some of the stuff you say on here but you have a job to do and if if we're not if we're just vanilla and nice to everybody all the time nobody's going to listen so uh but moving on to Vegas um I didn't why obviously the race went

pretty well for us uh the race was I felt like a bit of a snoozer probably at home on TV We ran top six to eight all day. Got a good restart at the end. Ended up fourth. Solid day for us. We needed that. But what was it like watching at home? It wasn't the most entertaining race.

I mean, I think it's fair to say. Las Vegas was a disappointment. And I think there's a couple things there. One, intermediate racetracks with this new car, have been sensational. The racing at intermediate tracks, especially mile and a half racetracks, has been phenomenal, largely, across the board.

And now people are excited about intermediate racetracks. It's weird because in the last year or so, it's gone from we want more short tracks to we want more intermediate tracks and so when you look at that the anticipation for Vegas was high and then coming off a Fontana race which was excellent arguably one of the best beginning to end in Fontana history I think people were excited for Las Vegas and the race didn't deliver the last 30 laps or so were okay and you got the cautions late

which kind of set it up for the overtime and that made it entertaining but largely it was pretty uneventful I mean William Byron dominated Kyle Larson took over in the end there and then they got a caution and it hurt him. It just was not a very competitive race. And to me, there was a lot of similarities to Texas. Now, obviously, Texas had the tire issues, which were not good. But yesterday, in terms of the lack of excitement, reminded me of what we saw at Texas. Yeah, I mean, we might have got in the spot on, spot off later.

We can just talk about it now. You know, I think that it was extremely hard to pass yesterday, just being in the race. and I think it was one due to being so cold, so windy, track super gripped up. You don't nest, you don't, I feel like you don't see the bottom be as dominant as it was yesterday. The guys that could haul ass were just rolling the bottom all day long. The Hendrick cars, I don't think they ever came off the bottom, maybe Kyle a couple times. But like typically, you know, Vegas gets kind of hot slick, kind of widens out and you see some good racing. Now we could run all over the place.

But like Bubba said, you know, you just got kind of arrow blocked in. you would have a good restart and end up wherever you ended up. And then you may be able to pass a guy. He might lose one spot, but that's kind of where you ran that section of the run so you pit. And it was just, you know, you could run the top and run about the same lap time, but you were losing a little bit of ground because the guy on the bottom is just taking the shorter way around and run the same lap time.

So, you know, it was just a, it was a weird deal. It's not like a Vegas race we've really ever had before, especially not with this package like you said. So it was, it was a little bit difficult, you know, for me, we were kind of racing all day. so it's hard for me to say, oh, that race is terrible. Because it's kind of, I'm in the event, like, we're moving around trying to make stuff happen. But I can see, like, Byron's checked out. Then there's a big gap to second.

He's got half. We were running, I think, sixth at one point. I looked up, and Byron was a half a track ahead of us. So, you know, I could see where it definitely would be boring, you know, watching at home or, or, you know, I've seen Jeff's poll already this morning was, or swayed to no. It was like a 51% no when I voted. So, you know, it is what it is. and I just, you know, I don't know what else they could do.

I think it was just, really weather-related, I think, is what it was coming down to yesterday. And I hope that's the case. And I don't want to sound the alarm bells. And we talked about this on our podcast, The Tear Down, which was like, okay, I'm willing to kind of give this a mulligan, right? I mean, the weather conditions yesterday, it was windy, it was cold. This wasn't the best conditions conducive for this car on this kind of track. Okay, that's fine. But you go back and you're starting to see, like, the teams kind of assert themselves a bit.

Last year was wide open, right? You had, you know, given week, you didn't know who was going to be up there, and everybody was in the different guys were in the mix. If you go through the last two races, and let's push aside Daytona because it's a Super Speedway, you kind of are starting to see the same group of guys. There isn't that track house this year, Eric Jones popping up and surprising people with good runs.

It's been Daniel Suarez and Ross Justain from Trackhouse. It's been the Hendrick guys. You're just kind of seeing the same group of guys, and I'm kind of curious to see if the teams are starting to figure out this car where they're fine-tuted to a point where the gap between the haves the have-nots is actually growing and not shrinking like it was supposed to you saw yesterday plain and simple you know the top three were the hens your cars pretty much most of the day the next four were the troyd's the most of the day kevin kind of got harvard kind of got sprinkled in there a little

bit brad was in there a little bit maybe swarres and ross was in the top 10 most of the day um but for the most part like yeah like you that you saw the groups you know like it was the chevies the toyotas the Fords were struggling. I don't know if there's a panic button for them or not. But I thought it was really interesting because in years past, especially the 550 package, obviously not the same. You know,

the Penske motto would always be qualified, not that great, and raced really well. And they owned Las Vegas forever. And then this year, they qualify up front. Lugano's on the pole. And I just watched that whole first run that him and Blaney just went backwards the whole time.

Blaney kind of rebounded in Iran, top 10 a little bit. I never saw Legano again until he got wrecked by the six. And, you know, just the Stuart Hoss cars were, I don't, I never, I literally, Kevin was the only one I saw all day. And that's a problem with Stuart Hoss though right now. I mean, it's, you kind of want to separate this between Ford overall, which I think they have their own issues. And then Stuart Hoss. You look at Stuart Hoss right now, it's like Kevin and everyone else. And that's been an ongoing issue with SHR largely for the last year. So Chase Briscoe at times pops up and it's had good runs. Obviously he won Phoenix last year had a great run in the playoffs,

but he disappeared through the summer stretch. And if I'm SHR and I'm looking at this with Kevin Harvick set to retire, like you guys had this conversation last week. Who's going to step in that spot and help elevate this team? Because it's a little worrisome right now. Yeah, you need it. Like we talked about last week, you need an A guy. And Kevin's obviously they're A guy.

You saw it yesterday. Kevin ran top 8 to 10 most of the race when I don't know, Eric was probably 15th to 20th, I would assume, and we were lapping the 14 and the 41 almost at the end of every stage. So, you know, they were, I would say, probably 20th to 25th. So, you know, that's what we talk about. And we say you've got an A-level driver and then you've got kind of everybody else like that. Kevin can kind of carry a substandard car a little bit further than the rest of them guys.

100%. Jordan, with that in mind, who would be your opinion or your pick to replace Harvick next year? I mean, contracts aside. Eric Jones has a multi-year deal with legacy. And I understand that. But we know how contracts work. To me, Eric Jones is a top flight driver. put him in race winning equipment, he is going to get the job done. You do not win the Southern

500 twice without being an excellent race car driver. And I know this is unfortunately reality in NASCAR. Well, sponsorship concerns and does he align with the right sponsors? I don't care. At the end of the day, if I'm SHR and I want a driver in my race car is going to go win races and is going to make me better, who I know if I have in my race car is going to elevate my program, I want Eric Jones. Because I'm looking at the other guys in the contract right now, Chastain, Bell, Larson, Byron, Blaney, Ligano, all of those guys have signed multi-year extensions. They're not going anywhere. Tyler Reddick

jumped over to the Toyota camp. He's not going anywhere. Kyle Bush, who I think SHR should have went after, and they didn't for their own reasons, is now under a multi-year deal. You're not going to get those guys. But with Legacy, I would like to explore whether or not it's an option to buy him out. And I know it's going to cost money.

And maybe it's not even an option. But if I'm at least going to try to get Eric Jones, because if I get him in my race car, I know I've got a guy who can go out and win races. Yeah, that was that was the one did you make that article public? Again, I was not revealing that

that was you, not me. Jordan, I think, pulled a few of a bunch of us. There was a lot of people in the industry. You know, that was my answer. Eric Jones. I felt like Eric Jones gives me Joey Logano vibes.

100% of, he was at Gibbs, won a couple races, maybe didn't do the work, maybe didn't do, you know, didn't put the effort in that he needed to and now realizes that. And, you know, he's making the most

of where he's at. And then, And then I think if he gets another opportunity, he's going to even be a little bit better. So, you know, like Joey is, Joey wasn't a champion at Gibbs. He's a champion now, a two-time champion. But with the organizational changes at Legacy, I mean, wouldn't Eric potentially want to see where it goes, knowing that, you know, Jemmy's behind them now and they have a good structure in place? That's fair.

But I also got to look at the hierarchy of how, where they place in at Chevrolet, right? I mean, they're always going to be behind Hendrick Motorsports. They're probably always going to be behind Trackhouse and R.C. are. So they're going to slot in four over there. That's tough pill. And when yes, the next gen car is supposed to kind of narrow the competitive golf, if you will, a little bit and, you know, create parity. But still, at the end of the day, if I have an opportunity to go join Stuart House Racing, which is an elite organization that doesn't lack for resources or anything else, I'm going to take that opportunity. Well, I also want to hear how the Jardimo Media

experience went since, you know, Freddie, you were the only one who technically survived and was here for your day job. I was only there for about an hour or so, but it was great. I mean, we had, if it wasn't sold out, we must have been close. There was about 60 people there. The thing that gets me every time is the amount of people that come back. You know, I've seen the same people. I think we have one couple that's gone to everyone. I thought the coffees, they, I think, I'm pretty sure they've been to every Dirty Moe experience we've ever had.

So, and we're talking, crossing the country. We go to Vegas. We're in Charlotte. We're in Bristol last year. We're going to have some more this year, obviously. But, I mean, just an unbelievable time. The fans, they got to hear the Columbia story, of course. It just so happened.

I was wearing my Columbia hat when that happened. But, yeah, just unbelievable time. They were sending me videos all race long of everything that was going on down there. I do have to, we need to poll the fans to see if it was any better or worse that they had to deal with Brett the entire race. I mean, I think we already know the answer there's a lot of one. Because there's no telling what went on. there was a lot in years past there was like i saw when we were they were getting the suite ready there would be like you know a bucket of fireball that they were sticking it like in a bucket's got

like 30 fireballs in it maybe or something like that they would stick a by you know fireball and everybody's cooler well yesterday there was cases so i'm concerned about everybody's health today they were putting liquid ivs in the in the in the bags to help out with that but uh you it'd be interesting to hear how it went for the fans after i left and during the race but as always it was great to see everybody we can't we can't stress enough how much you guys mean uh and to see the support we get in those dirty-moe experiences. We hope you enjoyed it. There were some people there.

That was their first race that they've ever been to. So now they're probably a little bit spoiled on the – They probably can't go sit in a grandstand. I would like to see DBC expand this beyond just a suite. And, like, you guys do a thing on Saturday night, and then take everyone on Saturday night. And then on Sunday you've got the sweet experience as well. You can make it like a whole weekend.

The problem with that is half of them wouldn't make it to the suite on Sunday if we did the dirty. Including Brett and Brett. I would pay to be part of this. I just want to witness this. I did take out Jason and bartender Ben. Which, where is Jason? Is he not, was he flying back?

I hear he sucks pretty bad these days. So I don't really know. If Denny's great. Whatever, like, if Denny is great, Jason's on the other end of that spectrum. He's, I don't know, I don't know if he sucks or what he is, but Jason is on the other end of that. Well, it used to be TJ sucks. So I think we should just switch it up. Yeah, we just switch it up to Jason sucks.

But yeah, so they, I took the two of the, him and bartender Ben, we took them out. I took them out on Saturday night. I met them up at the Cosmo and took them out for a couple of drinks. Shrip Club? I did not take them to. I've never, nobody believes me when I say this. I have never been to a strip club in Las Vegas.

Well, where they're Las Vegas. I mean, that's only one. Well, I feel like the only one I've ever begun to is not ever, but the only one I ever go to on a maybe regular basis is the one in Daytona. It's because it stays open an hour later than every other bar.

But the... I'm sitting in this conversation now. Yeah. I'll sit over there. Just be quiet. I want some notes. By my T.J. Amherstation at this point. I don't know. I got some notes from Jeff on what's talked about.

That's fine. That's fine. I will just say I think strip clubs are highly overrated. Yeah, I don't like, like the one in, the one in Daytona is, it used to be a nightclub. Like, it's a huge space. So you really don't even know, like most strip clubs you go in and you're kind of on the stage and there's God knows what going on around you. I have no idea what you're talking about. This place is you can go and like, you don't even really know you're in there except for there's a girl walked by every once in a while. But, yeah, so I took them out. I think Ben got drunk. Jason, I think, was well-versed, and he didn't want to do that again this year because he got drunk last year, which is probably why he sucks. But, yeah, we ran into Dugger.

Dugger made them do about 12 shots. And then Drew was out for a little while, which Drew had a big night the last year with them guys. And he took it a little bit easier this time, too. So they enjoyed themselves. And the suite was, like I said, it was amazing. The girls, thank you to Shana Navarro. and Tina Bullens, they set everything up. They did an amazing job.

They were in there at like 5.30 in the morning on Sunday doing all that, packing all the coolers and setting up to design and stuff. So it was a great job by them. Great time for everybody. I seen Gluck snuck in there. We're going to have to send him a bill for that. Make him do shots. Maybe they did after they left.

I don't know. He had just gotten there as I was leaving. I felt bad for him because he walked in the suite. He had like a parka on because he was probably freezing to death. he was wearing this is this wasn't he wearing something ridiculous and where were we was that LA when I asked him like he had a big heavy coat on it was like a heavy coat in LA and it was like we were in the garage in LA and he's got a big heavy jacket on and he's like it's sweating I'm like why are you wearing a parker like this you look ridiculous he had the same

one on in the suite yesterday so but yeah it was it was amazing and I don't know when we're going to announce the next one I have a feeling Mike has a few ideas up his sleeve so Stay tuned. I'm sure that will be announced soon. Spot on, spot off. Spot off. Spot off. Spot off. It was super fun yesterday to ride around there. I am spot off. Damn. Where did he come from?

Freddie, since you are on top of your game today, spot on, spot off. I've out of notes, by the way, so this is it. I've done. Thankfully, we are at the final topic. Golden goosies. Golden goosies. that we can handle it much more. I thought it was a good race. I don't think a lot of people agreed with you.

I told you we should see a spot-off. I absolutely told you we should skip to. Straight to DBC picks. We should just go shaking. Let's start one idiot right now. Yeah, let's just, I mean, one idiot could probably be a 30-minute segment right now. First topic, Hendrick Mothersports team president, Jeff Andrews says of Chase, it was an accident. Our guys have to go out and live their life.

after Elliot fractured his tibia in a snowboarding accident, and Jordan, I am throwing you into the fire. Spot on, spot off. Spot off. I stay this. If I am a NASCAR team owner, I am protecting my drivers in bubble wrap, and I do not want them to do any extracurricular activities

where they could get hurt. Because I look at the situation with the 9 team right now, and if I'm Napa, all of a sudden, my driver, who I've invested millions in, there's a possibility, maybe it's small, but it's still a possibility now that he's, not going to make the playoffs. He's not going to be able to compete for the championship. That's a frustrating situation. And I understand that drivers have to live their life. And I understand

that they need an outlet to get out and get away from the stress. But there are other ways to do that other than doing extracurricular sports that bring a high risk to it. And I understand that Chase has been doing this for a long time. He's good at snowboarding. He's used to it. I understand all that. But it's still a risk. And it's an unnecessary risk. And this day and age with all of the money and the investment and everything else and everything on his shoulders on the organization, that's put on him, I just cannot justify drivers going out and doing these kind of things. I understand you've got to get away from things. Play golf. Do something else recreational that doesn't put you at a heightened risk to get hurt. Yeah, I'm kind of like, I'm on the fence here. So bad I feel like T.J. You know,

I'm of the opinion. Guys should live their life. I feel like you should put it in the hands. I don't know it needs to be contractual, but I feel like you should put in the hands of the driver to be smart enough to to not put yourself at risk. And do I have a problem with him going snowboarding? Not really. Do I have a problem when I'm going snowboarding the day before practice? Probably less than 24 hours before practice? Maybe.

Now it wouldn't have mattered if he broke his leg on Monday or Tuesday. He's still going to be out. But, you know, I see my stuff, and I'm sure Brett's did too. Twitter, everything blew up with, I guess you got your one idiot for the week. You know, what an idiot. And I don't think, you know, listen, if you love snowboarding, do it in December. That's my thing.

And I get it. The thing that really cracked me up about this literally blew up hundreds of text of tweets and stuff about there's your what an idiot, what an idiot, how could he do this?

The guy ran a midget at the chili bowl. He ran a midget a bunch of times last year with no experience. No experience whatsoever just jumped in a midget and went which I think is one of

the most dangerous forms of racing that we have in this country. And every time I saw him race, there was a lot of, line of people waiting for an autograph. While they were there, were they shouting at him? You're an idiot for doing this because you're jeopardizing your season in the nine card? No.

So if you're going to show up and support him at these dirt races when, you know, he's out there risking just as much to, you know, you can say he's, you know, trying to improve his racecraft. But, I mean, you could just as easily, I mean, there's a reason why JGR basically told Christopher Bell last year, you're done driving midgets after that race in Texas. It's one of the most dangerous forms of racing that we have. And if you're not going to call him an idiot while he's out there running a midget, you can't really call him an idiot for skiing.

And to me, that's the juxtaposition of this is I understand the argument of Kyle Arson and Christopher Bell of saying, hey, I need to go race these midget cars, these sprint cars, because it makes me a better driver on Sundays. I get all that. And I believe there's truth on that. But I also look at it and say, I also need to protect my investment. I do not need you on the sidelines. I need you in that race car on Sundays at 100% because,

we have so much counting on you, whether it's sponsorship, whether it's employees, whatever, we are expecting you to be in that race car 100%. And yeah, if you want to do these things, do it in the off season, right? And you look at other professional athletes and other sports. They have it in their contracts. You can't skydive. You can't ski. You can't snowboard.

You can't do anything that you can potentially get. You can't even ride a motorcycle. And I look at it and say, why do we not have that same standard for race car drivers? And again, I want to see these guys go do other things because I do think it helps motorsports overall. but it brings risk and there's a balance there. And I don't know what that balance is, but when it comes to snowboarding and skiing,

and I keep going back to this example of Tony Stewart when he went off-road dune bugging before the season started and ended up breaking his back. It's like that to me is unnecessary. Like it heightened risk that you don't need to do when you have so much on your shoulders. Yeah. And we talk about on here all the time,

especially like when a guy's retiring or something. There's so many people, so many people that are dependent on Chase Elliott. You know, whether it's his team, the families of his team, his PR people, his management people. You know, there's so many people that are dependent on him, sponsorship-wise, and you put that all at risk. And obviously, you know, we know he's been, and I heard Jeff last night talking about, like, you could fall down the stairs and break your leg. I hate that argument. I feel like it's not the same if you're skiing down a mountain.

There's a heightened risk between, like, walking normally and I slip because I'm a clutz and I fall down the stairs versus I'm going to willingly go strap on a pair of skis or snowboard down a mountain. Like there is a difference there. And yes, you can get hurt, you know, any walk alive. I mean, Carl Edwards, you know, years ago, just was walking and he broke his foot, right? I mean, it happens. Denny Hamlin hurt himself playing basketball. I get all that.

But again, don't put yourself in a situation where there is a greater risk. And I just feel like there's a balance there that needs to be a little bit better. Yeah. And like I said, I think that I think I don't want to see the contracts come out and just, you know, hammer these guys down. I just feel like it's, I see and I think it was Brad that said, like, you know, we don't, we don't have any. restrictions on Christopher

Busher Christopher Busher but we expect kind of you know just a little bit of sensibility of you know maybe the pick the right times and the right things to do. Interestingly enough I did hear the I listened to the tear down last night and I thought your waiver position was

very interesting like listen we can talk about whether or not he's going to get one he's going to get one he's going to get one he's going to get one I believe that NASCAR hands out waivers too easily like I believe that there should be a heightened standard for what constitutes a driver receiving a waiver. And in this instance, and again, I just want to say, Chase Elliott is going to get a waiver. If I was NASCAR, I'm looking at this saying,

wait a second, you did something outside of NASCAR, you did outside something outside of motor sports in general, and you put yourself at risk. Why are we giving you a waiver for something that you decided to do? So I believe that NASCAR should maybe not in every instance like they have been doing hand out waivers. Yeah, I mean, if you're, you're never going to be. to draw the line. Like, you know what I mean? Like, so if all you, instead of saying we're going to give out waivers yes or no, like just say you can't take any weeks off. Because that's all this is, this whole waiver system is designed so that if you've got five wins, you don't want to go to Hawaii in the middle of season. But it's not going to happen because you're contracted to your owner. Your car owner is expecting you

be in that race car. No car owner's going to say, hey, you know what? You got five regular season wins. We'll see you in the playoffs. But at the same time, our off season is what, like two and a half months long. if that, like even if he would break his leg or do whatever earlier, or Kyle Larson running Chili Bowl, it's something where it happened. Like, that doesn't even give enough time to heal because our off season is so short. It depends on when the injury is.

It happens in December. I mean, how severe the injury is. If he's only going to miss, you know, I've heard anywhere from six to 10 weeks, like there's a window there. If it happens in November or December,

he still could be healthy for the Daytona 500. Or he's healthy enough to a point where he could get in the race car and at least started or something at that level. I don't know. I just think the waiver policy is too open and too lax. And I just want to see guys a little bit more tougher standards. I mean, they had the, I can't remember who it was off the top of my head. Maybe it was it Sauter? Somebody got suspended.

Johnny Sauter in 2019 got parked at Iowa for intentionally wrecking, I believe was Austin Hill, got suspended a race and they gave him a- And they still gave him a waiver. Which is crazy. It's like you just did something that was, let's be on, moronic, you intentionally wrecked somebody in a racetrack and you got parked and you got suspended for it. you deserve whatever consequences come your way. Yeah. But yeah, it's just, there is no, has anybody ever been denied a waiver?

Not that I know of. I've heard whispers that it's happened, but nothing I feel comfortable saying publicly, but I do feel like I haven't heard anything. Yeah. End of the day, Chase is getting a waiver, no matter what. I would be shocked.

Yeah, like there's no way he's not getting a waiver. Who do you envision will replace him for the next few weeks? This is you, it's all you. If it was me, it would be Josh Barry. I think you know there's there's there's not many names on the list again if you listen to the tear down I thought they covered it great last night Josh Barry's on the list Jimmy Johnson's on the list you got to make that phone call yeah you got to make that phone call see if he's available if he wants to do it I'm gonna say it's about if he wants to do it or not Corey the joy is another interesting option if you could you know he's in that Chevy camp you may be able to sneak him away from Spire for a couple months that's why that would be a story I mean if that if that was an option I think that's your best option

because there's a guy with experience. I relate this a lot to the Ty Gibbs situation last year, filling in for Kurt Busch. I think Josh is a guy that Chevy has kind of pinpointed that they probably would like to keep in their camp, and he's obviously got a little more potential moving forward than I think a guy like Justin does, Algeyer, because I've seen a lot of people,

why would they, Justin has a couple starts, why would they do that of Josh or Justin? I think it's just, you know, they're trying to get Josh seat time in the next-gen car. There's no secret that, Dale's sniffing around cup ownership. I think if he goes cup racing, Josh is probably towards the top of his list. The guys he'd like to have drive his car.

So, you know, if this is a good opportunity to get Josh six or seven starts, listen, I saw everybody's like, oh, wow, Hendrick 1, 2, 3 yesterday, and Josh is 29. There's no expectations for Josh yesterday. You got thrown to the wolves. If you expected, if anybody expected him to run top 10, it was an unreal expectation. Like, he was just out there yesterday making labs and hopefully he, you know, progresses here in the next few weeks. and they haven't announced he's not

They haven't announced it They're going to make a decision on a Monday And who's going to drive the car And again, you want to look at a driver You know is going to be there Week in week and week out You don't want a rotating cast of drivers You want somebody who the team can get acclimated with

Who is going to give you something on a weekly basis And hopefully if it's Josh Barry He's going to get a little bit more experience And then improving It's going to be interesting to see The Corey the Joy thing is fascinating And this is just pure speculation I don't want to make it sound like we're

You know inside knowledge But like Corey has done a really good job this year There's three straight top 20 finishes. He is a talent, and he's never really been given this opportunity. I do feel like because the Chevy connection there, and there's maybe a little bit of a loose alliance there with the organizations, you could maybe finagle a way to do it. It is not dissimilar from 2015 when Kyle got hurt,

and Joe Gibbs Racing went and got David Reagan away from another Toyota team. It is possible to do this and explore. I'm just saying if the idea is to keep the nine car competitive, and up in owners' points, because they do have the owner's playoff points, you want somebody who has experience and no disrespect to Joshua I think is a talent but he doesn't have the experience

and you look at Ty Gibbs last year or Noah Gregson they hop into these situations they don't have experience it's really hard but you put Corey in that opportunity like top 10 is realistic all of a sudden yeah I mean Corey's done an unbelievable job this year

the team whether it's car speed or Corey himself you know he's stacking pennies as he likes to say but he's done a really good job this year and hopefully maybe Rick still got that letter Corey wrote him a handful of years ago maybe he can pull that out of the drawer But, I mean, again, you mentioned the Jimmy Johnson thing, right?

Like, you go back to 2016, and when Dale got hurt and he couldn't race, who did they end up putting that car? Like a Jeff Gordon, who did not want to race anymore, but because of the contractual sponsorship and everything like that, they had to go down that avenue. I at least pick up the phone call and gauge Jimmy's interest. And it makes sense for Jimmy because Jimmy's going to run more races for his own team moving forward in the year, and this is an opportunity to get more seat time in this next-gen car,

which, you know, it's nothing like anything they've driven before. So, you know, any opportunity to get seat time and some of these different types of racetracks, like you talked about, you know, we got a lot of different kind of racetracks coming up, especially short tracks, which I think kind of lends itself a little bit to Josh too. But, you know, it's going to be interesting. If I was me, you'd be if it's, Chevy's obviously weighing in heavily in this decision. And if Chevy has something pegged for Josh in the future, I think that it's going to be Josh just to make sure we get Josh as much seat time as possible in the next-gen car.

If you're solely worried about performance of the nine car, Corey would be obviously, I think, the best option. But if you're a sponsor like Napa, wouldn't you want them to select somebody who has more experience? If you're a sponsor like Napa, you want them to call Dale Jr. all day, every day until he doesn't answer the phone anymore. Obviously, I don't think that's ever going to happen.

I don't think Dale wants to race as much as they'll need him. But that would be the sponsorship side of it. That's the guy you call 100 times a day. Moving on, Byron and Marsen led a combined total of 200, 39 laps in Sunday's race with the rest of the field only leading 32 laps. It had 13 lead changes overall and for caution. Spot on, spot off. Freddie.

Yeah, I mean, it's spot off. You know, you can't, we talked about it earlier. It's just yesterday's conditions and you hope it's not the car, which the car, I'm not going to blame the car because the track record on the mile and a halfs has been much better than it has in the past. I think it's just as windy as it was, as cold as it was. track super gripped up. We ran lanes consistently more so than we had in the past.

I just think that, you know, it's, it was just, hopefully it's a, you know, abnormality of just let's this one go and see what happens the next one. But hopefully, God, if the next mile and a half is, which mile and a half is Atlanta, that doesn't count. But Kansas is the next, quote, unquote, true mile and a half race track. Hopefully the same team dominates there again. As last year. Yeah, it's last year. Yeah.

But yeah, we'll see. But, you know, I think yesterday was just kind of an outlier and hopefully we get back to normal. But I can't, it was, it was a bit. I looked up there and I'm like, man, they're gone. Like, how are we ever going to touch these guys all day long? Spot off for me because, look, I'm just throwing a shit out. I'm just knocking stuff over. You'll never invite me back.

Spot off for me. And like I said, this wasn't a great race. As great as Fontana was, this was on the opposite end of the spectrum. It wasn't too competitive. You needed a late caution to make things interesting. If Larson wins that. race going away like it looked like he was going to. I think the criticisms or the blowback would probably be even heightened today than it would be otherwise. I just didn't think this was good.

I hope it's the conditions. I hope it's not something with this car. I am a little concerned, though, because I go back to last year in the mile and a half racetracks, Las Vegas and Homestead, the last two we raced at last year, were okay, but they weren't great. Larson and Truix dominated Homestead, right? It wasn't what we typically thought we were going to see and we hadn't seen a mile and a half racetracks throughout the year. Begwis was okay. Now we've got another one. And I'm starting to wonder if the teams are getting the hands on this race car now

and they're figuring it out and we're starting to see a little bit of separation. We're going back to how it was before the next gen car. Yeah. And you've seen like it's, I'm telling you yesterday was, and I hadn't really seen this so much in the past as I did yesterday, it was so hard to pass. Like arrow blocking was such a necessity yesterday. Harvick was doing it.

He was driving us crazy. He wasn't doing anything wrong. He was just blocking, you know, and not like pulling up and, front of us and blocking like just kind of positioning his car in front of us where we're a couple car links back and just taking our air away and we couldn't get around him and then we finally got a little bit of loud traffic got position on him and then we put a half straightaway on him in a lap you saw it with a 24 car he led 175 laps or something yesterday and the beginning of

race he's dominant checked out half a track out he's almost half a straightaway out on larsson they have a bad pit stop he comes out third or fourth and he runs third or fourth until the next caution you know so he there was not like if the 24 was such a dominant race car he drives to the lead. You couldn't do that yesterday. It's just the cars were going the same speed. I looked up and down lap times and I'm like, okay, we're, we're a half a 10th. We're running seventh, but we're running a half 10th off of what the leaders are running. It's just you get out and you kind of get in space and dirty air. You couldn't really move around. You couldn't pass. And it was just because we were, the corner speeds are so high yesterday that there was no, we always talk about on here. Off

throttle time produces great racing because you're having to set up a guy, when are you going to get off throttle? How much break are you going to use? And yesterday we're telling Bubba, like, keep doing everything you can to not go to a zero percent throttle. Like they know what their throttle position is on the dashboard. And like we're like just whatever you can do to not go all the way to zero percent. So that means pretty much everybody's not coming completely out of the throttle. And that's what we're trying to do to keep up. So like that's what that's what hurt the racing yesterday.

And it's just, you know, hopefully like I said, an outlier. But you know, a great car if you put them third or fourth is going to run third or fourth yesterday. And that's just the way it was. NASCAR throws the caution after Eric Amarola hit the wall with four laps to go and opts not to throw a caution on the last lap after a multi-car crash that involved Amundinger, Paris, McDowell Jones, and Kislauski. Jordan, spot on, spot off. Spot on. I was okay with all of this.

You look at the Amarola crash and watching it at home on Fox. Initially, when I saw Amarola hit the wall, they're like, oh, really, that's a caution? Like, that didn't look that bad and he was driving away. but then they showed a longer replay and then it was like oh no he did hit the wall pretty good and there looked to be debris coming off the car so that to me warrants a caution in that situation on the the multi-car crash on the last lap almondinger got teaboned he got hit driver's side and that's concerning but he also drove away so he was very obvious that he was not injured he didn't stop his window net didn't come down and so when he drives away to me okay our biggest concern is him he's driving

away he's fine that doesn't warrant a caution plus it happened on the backstretch i heard a lot of of people could say, well, you know, Daytona and turn one, they had the crash. That wasn't turn one, turn one and turn two. This was on the backstretch. The cars aren't going as faster. There was more room to operate. There wasn't anybody in a situation that you felt they were injured. I was okay with how NASCAR handled the race. Yeah, I've seen a lot of people, a lot of people happy. We always get this. If there's a caution on the last lap, it's 50-50. It's like, it's like kind of how'd your draft kings lineup do on that last restart, you know? But the, you know, the Amarola caution, I think needs to be a caution. Well, a lot of people don't

realize, you know, it's easy hindsight to go, well, damn, he spun out, just brushed the wall, and he continued on down the front stretch. Well, the booth's not watching Eric Amarroll to go around the race crowd. You know, the guy, the tower is watching the entire race and somebody taps him on a shoulder or somebody, a corner spotter goes, turn three, and you look up and there's a car almost completely sideways, smoke coming off of it, heading towards the wall, you're going to hit the caution button. Like, you know, like, so the, I didn't have a problem with it. And you don't know, you see him spinning, you see him, he's not spinning, but, And if he doesn't hit the wall, he's going to spin completely out.

And that's obviously a caution. So he finally gets the fence, and he hits the wall again. You don't know where he's going when he comes off the wall. You know, if we've seen these cars break toe links and front end suspension parts, he could easily hit the wall. What happened was he hit the wall, continued on down the front stretch, dropped a little bit of debris, but continued on maybe if you let the whole situation play out, maybe it didn't need to be a caution.

But in the moment, you don't know that he didn't break a toe link and it's going to come right back down the racetrack and collect five more of the cars. when you look up and see smoke coming off a car and the car's completely sideways, you're going to throw the caution flag, especially in a moment when you probably really want to throw a caution flag because your race has been awful

and you would like a good finish, so maybe the pole is 50-50 instead of 75-25. So they were obviously looking for a caution, and I had no fault with them on that one. The backstretched deal, same thing. I kind of agree with Jordan of, I didn't know that Jordan informed me this more when we got here that Elmer, AJ,

Omnaker. Two names are too close together. Almonddinger drove away. If I didn't, if I had, if, if AJ did not drive away, I would have said that should have been a caution because of the shot he took in the door. And we talk about it all time. The biggest thing is driver safety in those situations. You know, if you see somebody take a hit to the wall in turn, I don't care what lap it is, if the guy hits the fence at Daytona, Vegas, wherever, you want to be able to get the safety workers to him immediate. And that's the big thing.

And that's getting the safety workers there. And the biggest thing with that is, and they go, oh, well, they don't. just send them out there. They can't go until we take the checker. And I say take the checker. I mean, everybody, you know, not just the leader. You know, everybody, and as opposed to the yellow, when the yellow comes out, they can kind of roll immediately because everybody's supposed to be slowing down. And so I, when I saw that hit initially to the drivers, I'm like, oh, maybe they should have through the caution. I didn't realize he drove away. So when you see him drive away, I'm okay with it and let them guys race to the finish. But it's a, it's a coin toss deal on that last lap deal because,

you know, obviously you want to see the good finish, you know, you want to see him to the line, but you also have to be concerned about the driver's safety. And you see a guy take a hit. It's kind of like the one you saw yesterday. He continued on, so that was fine. But, you know, the biggest thing when them cautions come out on the last lap is we've got to get safety workers to them. Obviously, it sucks. We got to throw the yellow and they don't get the race back to the line. But the safety overcomes any kind of on track, you know, performance. 100%. And if he would have been stopped on the racetrack, then you throw that caution and you get the safety team out there, ASAP. but because he was able to drive away, the signal is he's okay, we can continue on.

Well, moving on to topics around Phoenix. NASCAR announces updates to their short track package ahead of their first short track race of the season. The changes include changing the spoiler length to two inches and the removal of three diffuser streaks. And this will result in a 30% reduction of downforce. What do you guys think, Freddie? I mean, spot on. They had to do something. the short track package was awful last year.

They were just getting, and the longer we went on with the same package, it was going to get worse because all we do is get better. Everybody gets better. So you just keep making the box smaller and smaller, and you will see less and less passing. Listen, this is a step in the right direction. We've talked about, you know, less down force, hopefully smaller spoiler, taking them streaks off.

I'm not engineered background enough to know what the difference is. They say 30%, I'll believe them. and just hopefully it promotes better racing because we can't have what we had last year. I'm interested to know, and I don't know if anybody's asked this question, why Bristol and Dover are not included. I'm assuming just banking, concrete. There's just the load on the cars, I would assume. But yeah, I'm spot on. Just let's try something because we can't continue to on what we did last year.

Yeah, spot on with all the exclamation points. Like the road course package and the short track package last year did not work. And those are supposed to be those marquee races that gets fans excited. That's why you've got all these short tracks, or the road courses on there now, that's why you're getting more short tracks. And when you have races consistently, you had Martinsville last year, Richmond, and the road course is like, you can't have that. You've got to figure this out. And when you've got Phoenix hosting the championship race, you've got to have a product on the racetrack that gets people excited. Hopefully the cars are sliding around a little bit, that it's hard to break.

And it's going to be interesting to see if this works, but this is a big test. And they had to do something. You could not go into this year and not do anything. I'm encouraged to see what this does, but I'm also, part of me is like, if this doesn't work, then what? That's the concern. Like this car, we talked about it from day one,

you know, safety concerns aside, this car was designed to, you know, be great on road courses. This was everybody saw, well, this is more of a sports car, it's going to be great on road courses. Well, that's kind of lackluster. Short tracks have been awful. Super Speedway's awful.

Mile and a half yesterday, pretty bad. And that's concerning to me. right? I mean, like, all of a sudden, if yesterday becomes what we kind of see now on intermediate tracks and mile and a half, and if the short track package doesn't work as anticipated, all of a sudden, you're looking at a situation where, wait, wait a second, like the car doesn't work well on road courses and short tracks, which we kind of knew. The fix that we thought was going to work, didn't work. And now we're starting to see this great product on the intermediate tracks going to go the other direction. Then what? Yeah, like you like, and I think you guys talk about last night, Harvick was talking about like keeping teams on our toes. Yeah. The longer you let teams, like the longer the package stays the same, the teams are just going to keep getting better at it.

And we talked about this last year where eventually you're going to see the cream rise to the top and it's kind of going to go back to the balance it was before where the parody is not so much there anymore. And, and we're getting there. So now like, you know, like you saw yesterday at Hendricks 1, 2, 3. Now maybe they just had the fast cars and they just was gripped up best for them and the conditions they were yesterday. But, you know, it's going to be interesting to see moving forward.

I'm just hoping to God we have a good race of Phoenix, which Phoenix. I don't want to judge the package on Phoenix either because since 19-Jame Mary came on here last year and said, we haven't had a good race of Phoenix since 1989. So, you know, like the Phoenix racetrack itself, I don't think, induces itself to great racing. I'm curious about Richmond, though. You've got Coda and Richmond, you know, which is road course and a short track coming up. And that's going to be, I think, a better test than Phoenix is. And to see where things are at, we'll see.

And to go back to your point about the teams getting their hands on this, this offseason was the first time the teams really had their hands wrapped around this car. Because a year ago, they had offseason testing with this car. They hadn't even settled on the rules package yet. They're still figuring this out. Now this car was in their shops for the off season. And I talked to so many different people, engineers, crew chiefs, team people, and they all said the same thing.

Once we get our hands on this, and yes, it's a kit car. quote unquote. And yes, we're in a box and what we can do. But when you put so many smart people and these organizations that have 400, 500 people in their organizations that can get their hands around this car, they're going to find things that is going to be the difference. And there was a little bit of, yeah, last year was about parity. And you saw 19 different winners. But this year, you're going to see, as you said, the cream rise to the top. And I think that is through two races on non-super speedways, because you can't count Daytona. I think it's part of why you haven't really seen. a team kind of come out of nowhere and rise up and do well. Even RCR, and people throw that out there,

they won three races last year on road courses and intermediate tracks. And Austin won in the Super Speedway at Daytona. So, like, they had a lot of speed last year. And it should have won more probably. Reddick should have won five, six races, easy, but they had all sorts of issues. And so them having speed this year is no surprise. We haven't seen that mid-packed team come up and all of a sudden, wait, where did they come from? They've got their, they got their act together. Yeah. To that point, though, do you think there are any changes that NASCAR may look to make mid-season to try and kind of help with that excitement and with the lack of consistency, I guess.

I don't know. I mean, it just depends on where this car is at and what they can do. And I'm always hesitant to go down the technology road because it's just not my forte. And I start saying things that make no sense because I know nothing. I can't even change a tire. Okay. Like, listen, listen, it's not good. I do think NASCAR, the tool, Kevin said that was right is you have to throw teams a curbball.

You can't let them get, I don't want to say complacent. but you can't let them get comfortable with this car and what they know is going to happen and how this is going to react. And you have to continually adjust and maybe throw things away. Maybe it's at time when you go back to how it used to be in the 90s when all of a sudden NASCAR would issue a midweek rules change. And by the way, the Pontiacs are going to have lower spoilers this week

and Ford's going to have a higher spoiler. I don't know if it's something of that nature, but I know NASCAR's got a lot of levers to pull and they're going to have to pull them at some point that this continues. Not early within the next two years, Stuart Haas Racing is a two-part team. You got Harvick retiring. Word is Budboisers out.

You got Amarola retiring. Allegedly, who knows? Gene already almost sponsors one of those cars full time. That pretty much leaves you with a car and a half to two cars of sponsorship. And Ryan Priest, who is an absolute stud in a modified, unproven in cup. I mean, I don't see them cutting back to two cars. I don't think they can contractually. They deal with Ford.

Yeah, I think that they're a four-car team. Like we said, they've got to find some money and find the right guy. And I hope we talk about on here all the time, money over talent, talent over money. Like, dear God, please pick an A-level driver. Don't go get somebody because they bring a checkbook with them. Because if you do, your whole team's going to run in the 20s. But that's the thing with this Anheuser-Busch component that we don't know. And I've heard a lot of talk about Anheuser-Busch being in play.

And I know that other teams have already had contact with them about bringing them over. If Stewart-Haws Racing loses Anheiser-Busch, that is a lot of money. And all of a sudden, you're not just looking at a driver. you're now got to figure out a sponsorship thing. And if you've got Anheuser-Busch still there, it opens up the playbook and you can go out and say, listen, we're going to get the best driver. But if you lose the sponsor,

all of a sudden you may have to look at a different scenario and you look at S-HR, they are not adverse to taking drivers that bring funding with them. And if you lose a sponsor like this, it's just good luck. So if you were S-HR, would you provide more Anheuser-Busch

with more pull on who that driver's bringing is. Honestly, I would go to them and I would have already had the conversation. Yeah, like here, you pick. Who you want. You give me a list of names of who you want in order,

and I'm going to start working my way down that list to getting one of those guys in my car because I don't want to lose your business. You're a great sponsor. You're a great partner. You're spending a lot of money with us. Finding replacement sponsors like that is not easy to do in this environment.

Yeah, I am inviting them into the room and almost letting them make the decision. Yeah, you have to. With Harvick owning a management company, I mean, do you think that he is more involved as well in bringing in that person? It's possible. I mean, there's definitely that component, but if they're already talking to other teams, you've got to wonder where the KHA side of this comes in.

I don't know what idiot is in the booth, but there's no consistency in cautions. A car taps the wall, we throw a caution. The guy obliterates himself on the backstretch, no cautions. It's just bull-b-b-k. They're angry. That guy's draft kings didn't go well. No, he did not. I've seen a buddy of mine that I know Brad Sauccier from the Black Flag podcast.

He tweeted some stuff out about like I hope Eric Amarola has a terrible rest of his night. And I just know that is directly related to some kind of gambling with him. Either he had somebody to finish in the top five that didn't or probably Larson to win. I was going to say he had Larson to win. I guarantee you he had Larson winning. So I just laugh. When I saw that, I'm like, you know, that's probably a majority of the people are just, I'm so pissed about that caution, but it has nothing to do with anything other.

than how it directly reflected them. It's all about my wallet in the bottom line. Exactly. We've seen that. We saw out in years past with like the Chase fans of, you know, if they caught race. Somehow, Chase got screwed at the end of race. It was the worst call in history of the race.

Or if he won, it was okay. But yeah, it's directly related to how it affected you. And again, we've already touched on it. I think both, I think both calls are right. I think safety in this point wasn't compromised. NASCAR did the right thing. And if the 16 had been stranded or apparently had been,

AJ had been hurt or dinged up or. anything like that like that the caution would have been called he wasn't he drove away they made the right decision come on nascar are you kidding me with that last caution two laps to go larson's winning i thought that race itself was great you know it had a lot of different pit strategies going on and i'm just not one of those fans that needs a whole lot of cautions uh for it to be a good race and the fact that they had to throw that caution just because amerola got some smoke on the rear tires when he got loose like he honestly didn't even wait a split second he had it safe and he had it safe But they had to throw the caution out just to make it more interesting.

And they need to stop for the love of God, please. He didn't have it saved. He hit, he hit the wall and it saved him. That was a hard hit, too. It wasn't like Kyle early in the race or some other drivers that just kind of slapped the wall and they kept going. Like, that was a pretty good impact. And the debris could have caused an even larger route.

So they made the right call. And that's the difference. Kyle Busch's car. There wasn't debris coming off it when he hit the wall. There were some other guys. Like, there was debris noticeably coming off the 10 car. Yeah, I have zero issue. I mean, and I know people, people kind of expect us to bash NASCAR, and we will if it's warranted, but I don't.

And usually you are the one that says that they need to be more consistent. Yeah, but I didn't have any issues with yesterday. Especially, and I think especially on top of this, and this, we talk about this, it should never ever play into the decision making. But they were really, really, really, really, probably really, really, really wanting to throw a caution for something. So, but that doesn't make it any less warranted or not. Like, it was, if you look up and I'm telling you, like, spotting, we're doing, we're doing the same. same job that they're doing in the tower. We're watching the race, looking out for accidents. Like if you look up and see if somebody, you know, we'll kind of try to help each other out

and point. Like I pointed, I seen Harrison smoking down the front stretch into turn one in practice the other day. And I pointed to my buddy Herm standing next to me. I'm like, oh, look, and we watched Harrison go in the corner and wreck. You know, that's what they're doing. Somebody's going to point out to them or somebody's going to call on the radio and go turn three. And they look up at turn three and see a car sideways smoking. They're going to hit the button. Like they're not going to wait to see. All right, hang on. Let's see if he comes down here and cleans all these guys out or if he goes in the, like, that's not, like, this is not a situation where

you wait and see. They're like, oh my God, he threw the caution immediately. Good. That's what we want. Like, you want him to wait and see, oh, oh, shit. Now he collected 20 other guys. Maybe we should have threw it sooner. Like, you don't want a Monday morning quarterback. And it just, I look at the situation and to me, and those laps, yes, their hand is like over the button

because there's only a few laps left and you have to be decisive and quick, because if you let it go, something could happen. And to the caller's point about the pitch strategy and stuff, I think that is an overlooked element. I did like that yesterday where we saw that it came down to do you pit for four tires do you pit for two tires do not pit at all i like that decision making in some race tracks it's really easy like you always have to pit some race tracks that you never pit i did like the fact that vegas had an opportunity to have

the window of saying hey we're going to kind of put this in the crew cheese hands i couldn't like we had kind of made we had a plan before the race of everything and we saw last year how how how hendrick worked together to win the race but and we i'm like we're coming we were running sixth or seventh we were we were I think the whole time coming for two tires I think the decision made we were not staying out and we were we were coming whether it was going to be two or four was going to be decided later but we were pitting and I kind of had the feeling that we were going to take two because that was kind of what we saw it worked yesterday and it worked best for us we improved two spots Martin lost five or six you know on the last three started he probably ran lost two or three from where he was running but I could not believe and I think you guys talked about last night like some guys that were running back there like the call league cars or you know Brad. Like, just like if you stay out, you're not going to win the race. No. You know, but you don't know.

And you don't give yourself a shot. Because if the white, if we wreck coming to the white, you might be Martin was still running. He was top three. He was right. He was like second at that point and he was right there. And you know, you don't know. This you give yourself a shot. And if you wreck on the last lap, you're not, you're only running one lap instead of two.

But yeah, I couldn't believe like the guy's just running at the back. Like, what are you doing? Even if you don't, obviously, if you don't win, you're still net gaining 10 spots. You probably leave there with a top 10 finish because Martin lost he went from first to seven. So he lost six spots. You're going to leave there with the top 10 finish, which is better than where you ran. I don't understand for teams that they're really their only way into playoffs is probably by getting a win. Why you don't try to steal one along the way, doing the same pit strategy in that situation as everybody ahead of you, you're not going to pass them.

You've already not been able to pass them in the entire race. Yeah, I feel like if we were running, you know, the kind of our MLO is, you know, track position is obviously a huge thing. If we were, had been running 12th-ish, you know, 10th, 12 yesterday, booty probably comes on and tells me, Freddie, if we can get on the front row, we're staying out, you know, and I don't know. And nobody, like, nobody took that other front row option. You know what I mean? Like Martin was the only one that stayed out.

I can't believe nobody else was like, you know, even our other teammate. I'm surprised they didn't do it, like Redick, you know, they were, they were had speed and. Didn't have track position all day. Yeah, just all the day, you know, couldn't get track position. There's an opportunity, take the front row and roll with it. but there were so many people that I think or even like I don't I don't understand why some teams do the same thing with both of their cars

or multiple you know split them like split them like if you're a colleague pit AJ and have Justin stay out or vice versa whatever or whoever else is back there Brad and Busher like split them up cover your bases yeah see what happens so it was interesting to see but I was expecting more guys to stay up I do too and some people kind of beat up Martin Trux Jr.'s crew chief James Smaller but like no that was for that team

where they're at like them finishing the top 10 you shrug your shoulders at They need to win. They haven't won a points race since 2021. Like, go for it. And track position, if you can get two laps there and you hope that you get a little bit of a buffer. Because if some other cars would have stayed out, they would have had a buffer. He probably gets away enough where no one's going to be able to run him down without another caution. It was, and yeah, James is definitely making that decision based on more people staying.

At least one more. Don't put the 24 on my outside, you know. Yeah, it was interesting. And again, it's really easy to Monday morning quarterback crew chiefs and the calls they make. In this instance, for me, from this perspective, to me, it's the most straightforward thing of, like, we're running 12. We're going to probably finish around 12th if we follow everyone else down pit road. But maybe we can get lucky and maybe get a win.

If not, we're probably going to leave with a top 10 finish, maybe even better. Well, to leave us an audio message 24-7, you know the drill. Just head to anchor.fm. Slash door bumper clear. You'll see the message icon at the top. We'll be sure to play the best ones each week. What an idiot. Well, I think we'd probably have to be able to be able to be able to be.

of a few candidates for the One Idiot segment this week. I think we're just going to pick on our buddies mainly. Go for it. Pretty much. I mean, I didn't see anything on track this week. I guess, again, everybody blew me up about Chase Elliott. I'm not calling Chase Elliott, an idiot. You know, he is not doing anything wrong.

You would hope, you know, what it is what it is there. But I do have to call my good friend, one of my best friends, Brett Griffin and Idiot, just for his actions on Friday when I get a phone call at, I don't even know. Like first of all I text me like hey what are you doing? Let's go. And I'm like, yeah, I got to work today, bud. Like we're not all on this nutrient ag spot on activations plan where we don't have anything to do until the sweets are open. Some of us have jobs.

Yeah, some of us actually have to work. You remember, I don't know. I think nowadays he wishes he was spotting because like this deal here where he doesn't have any responsibilities is really not working out for him so well. But yeah. So when I get the phone call at about two, three o'clock in the afternoon that he's heading to the spirit. and rhino that that's going to that's going to put you right at the top of my list for what is that for uh the spearman rhino is exactly what you it sounds like it is a strip club in Vegas yeah yeah rhino I mean the funny thing was I've seen something like I forget what the hell it was called like

the peppermint hippopotamus or something on a billboard I'm like well there what are they going for um it was literally like the peppermint hippo or so I was like okay is it's like the knockoff it's like the knockoff brand of the spiriam and rhino but yeah so bread is my idea for the week for and then of course I get out of the track out of the truck race that night and he is nowhere to be found probably blacked out sleeping by 8 o'clock at night so thankfully he wasn't around when I got back there but yeah when you're at the strip club it when I've been a strip club maybe at daylight but it's usually not before the sun goes down it's usually like right after the sun comes up so how is he going to feel about you spilling the beans on this I don't care

he's talked enough about me on here I really don't ever care what he says okay very good my it is the week goes my colleague at the athletic Jeff Gluck. He was insistent that I was a madman and I was crazy and I was on this island because I had the audacity to suggest that drivers have a little bit of accountability and that it's okay for teams to say, hey, you can't do this. We don't want to get you hurt. There's too much to jeopardize as the, as people have listened to the episode that we've had of the tear down, it seems like quite a few people are in my side actually and that it's okay to think like, hey, during the season, you've got to pick and choose a little bit on what you can do

in that when you've got a organization of hundreds of employees and sponsors that are paying millions of dollars counting on you, you can't put yourself at risk to do something extracurricular that may take you out of the race car. Jeff will be pumped that you called me at first time. Jeff told me yesterday, I saw Jeff for a couple minutes in the suite and I said, you know, I got, I need some dirt on Jordan, obviously. And he didn't really give me much. There's a lot. He's got to do it. The only one thing that he texted me was funny, I thought, was he told me you hate Christmas. Is that true?

I hate Christmas. Who hates Christmas? It's an awful holiday. Are you the Grinch? I hate Christmas. It's such a stupid holiday. I don't want to like make me go buy a gift for you. Why?

I don't need it. It's a pain in the butt. It's too much stress. I have a huge issue with this. So we'll skip that part. What's your issue? Christmas? Are you kidding me?

That's like the happiest time of the year. No, it's not growing up in my house. It wasn't. It was like World War III every single year. I kid you not. Like my mom, God God bless you, she's going to listen to this and she's going to hate me. My mom,

for 31 days out of the month of December, it was a war path. It was like walking around a minefield and you just knew that something was going to set her off because the tree wasn't right. She was screaming at my dad that the Christmas lights weren't set up on the tree right. You had to buy the perfect gift

and the whole thing about, oh, you don't need it. It's just a gift, just the thought. Not with my parents. No, no, no, no. You've got to make sure you spend enough money to get them the perfect gift. It's a pain in the ass. I hate it.

It's a stupid holiday. Well, my daughter still sing jingle bells during the day. The holiday, the Christmas carolers, the Christmas carolish, don't make me call the police. Get off my property. I do not want to hear it. Well, while we're on the topic of Jeff, I hear, he was mentioning your pretty smooth ladies, man. Is there a Tinder dating app or something that you might be on?

I don't kiss and tell. Oh. I do not kiss and tell. I will say that if you need dating advice, I'm happy to give it to you. If you're on dating apps, copy and paste is the best method. If you're in a conversation with somebody, you're probably in the same conversation with other people. You're going to ask the same questions about, hey, what do you do? What do your interest?

That kind of thing. Why have to sit there and spell everything out the same thing? Just copy and paste. Keep in the file on your phone, boom. We can beg to differ on that one. I'm just glad that I was already with Megan before dating. Oh, it's so much easier now, though. Oh, I know.

That's my. I'm glad I can't. You had to go back to the, you had to go to the bar. You'd be like, you know, you look good. You'd figure out a way to, like, approach some. somebody and you had a game and all this stuff. And like, now,

nowadays, like you grab your phone and boom, two seconds. If you're single in NASCAR and you're on Tinder, like it used to be a game where you'd have to like put like a mile radius of Talladega. I mean, that is a game right there. Just in itself. Highly recommend.

I'm not familiar with any of this stuff. Jordan, what's the best pickup line then? Uh-oh. I don't pick up line. Be nice. Be genuine. Be you.

Complement them. Like ask questions about them. Get to know them. Don't talk about yourself. I would have, Andrew probably needs help. Like this, we should sign you up for the Jordan.

Jordan Bianchi, ladies, man. School of Charming. Just be personal. Just ask questions about them. Get to know them. Copy paste. Copy that too. It is time for the AskDBC question of the week.

Send in your questions on Twitter each week using hashtag AskDBC and we'll keep picking the best ones. So this first one is from Dustin Gene. He asks, what happened between Bubba and Christopher Bell after the race? What was discussed between the two of them on Pit Road? oh, Freddy. Drama. So much drama. We ran side by side for two laps and let somebody catch us,

and they were discussing why they did that. It really wasn't a big deal. We raised each other. It was actually more than that. It was probably three or four laps, but we just, we shouldn't have been racing each other. Bubba felt like we were,

we were passing Christopher. We had caught him from behind. We were passing him, and I felt like, I guess he felt like, but Christopher should have let him go. And we could have, we had probably a five to seven car,

car length gap. on the next car, which was Suarez. And we ran side by side long enough for Suarez to catch us, push us past Bell, and then pass us both. So you would hope in the future now, you know, who's right, who's wrong? Should Bubba have let Christopher go? Like, they ran literally side by side for five laps. So it's hard to say who's at fault. Is this because it's a Toyota thing?

Yeah, like, it's if you're pseudo-teammates, you know, you don't want to, you don't want to hurt each other and then help a guy or a day. different manufacturer catch you from behind. But it wasn't like they were, I don't think Bubba, I didn't even see it, but I'm sure Bubba wasn't like screaming at him or nothing. It was just two of them just saying, you know,

we probably should have done that a little better or figured it out and not let the 99 catch us. But I don't think it was any kind of big deal. This was much to do about nothing. You know, Baba, they had a conversation. But I think it was a clearing of the air. It was just a hey,

next time, let's just think about this a little bit. Christopher, I saw one clip where Christopher's interviewed and he just kind of struggled like that. We just talked about, no big deal. There was no, there's,

There's going to be no carryover from this. I think it's just a matter of perspective of, hey, in this situation, and a race where track position is everything, we both cost ourselves here. Let's just kind of look at the big picture. Completely fair. This next one is from Kate Bach. How much of an impact did the chain-linked fence on the billboards have

on spotters this weekend in Vegas, which I know it was freezing? It wasn't even that cold. I mean, it was cold, but the cold wasn't. It paled in comparison to how bad the wind was. And when they, I didn't even know they were doing it. We never really asked for it. But they, we got out there Sunday after, you know, Saturday was miserable for us. And I'm going to get blamed for saying my job's miserable.

It's not miserable. I love my job. But like I told, I tweeted out like a simulation. If you want to just go ahead and down the road at 40 mile an hour, stick your head out the window of your car and try to keep your eyes open. Let me know how that works out. Like I look like a 10-year-old boy crying because somebody stole my ice cream cone. ice cream cone like just water running out my face because I'm dying to try and keep my eyes open to spot my car where there's just wind is blasting me in the face and uh but I but I could not

believe the different I'm guessing the wind was coming up from from the grandstay I don't know how but like I felt like oh well that great they've covered the bottom half of our bodies but like I'm still going to be glasped in the face of wind never even noticed wind at all until I leaned out over the rail a couple times and I got blasted with wind again I'm like oh wow these these banners are making a huge difference so thank you. Las Vegas Motor Speedway, SMI management, whoever it was that put those things up there, I cannot thank you enough because it made my job. I mean, Saturday, we were getting blown off the rail.

My hat, I had a headset and my hat on it. It was blowing both of them off my head during the race. You know, it was incredible how strong the gusts were. So, you know, just the fact that they took any time to help us out. We appreciate it. They've worked with us a lot and, you know, coolers and everything else, and we just can't appreciate it enough. We should get you some goggles. it sounds like I needed them. I literally needed

to be like I was I don't usually typically use my binoculars a lot at mile and a halfs because you know you kind of want to keep your field of view open I was using them a lot on Saturday just just for the fact of blocking the wind like I just was like literally couldn't see anymore I had to I had to use them because I

like you literally just I mean just get in front of a fan and try to just hold your eyes open while there's just wind blowing in your eyes it's it's not easy to do but again I love my job I'm not quitting I don't think it's miserable by any means. I mean, it was miserable for two hours that day. But I mean, I don't want to get beat up by the job police again. But it was rough.

And I just thank you so much for whoever idea that was. My big takeaway on this is I know what to get you for Christmas now. Yeah, just a pair of goggles. And I think from like previous conversations, you need like a tent over your head. Listen, if they could ever shade would be amazing. Like we've talked about this. And again, you could say like you're. being a bit of a prima donna here but like when we were in Vegas not Vegas Nashville last year it was

118 degrees on the roof and it's a black tar roof and it's pretty miserable and if you could get a little bit of shade I mean if just just go outside in the summertime when it's 90 degrees outside and stand in the sun and then go in the shade and tell me it's not 30 degrees colder you know it's just like it's just the little things like that obviously you know I'm not asking anybody to spend millions of dollars to give us comfort but it would be nice to have some shade somewhere too in the middle of the summer. Do spotters ever use like the, I don't know, like, you know how like the cyclists sometimes wear those like clear goggles, like clear glasses? I know it looks ridiculous. I know it looks ridiculous. Do you see Brexton Bush wearing his like huge? Yeah. I don't, I don't,

I can't spot with sunglasses on. I've tried it. Um, just because the way the binoculars work too, like I can't look through sunglasses and binoculars and I'm not going to be switching. I don't think it would work good with goggles. It's just, you know, it is what it is. Again, it's not that hard of work. It's just, you know, there could be things done to make it a little bit easier. And thank you for them yesterday to help us. We've been telling you for years now that RacingUSA.com is DoorBumper Clearers go-to store for the latest and greatest officially licensed NASCAR merchandise. Minutes after William Byron won the cup race in Vegas, RacingUSA.com was already taking

pre-orders for the racewind die casts and T-shirt. You know, Casey, it can't get any faster than that. Well, that is fast. RacingUSA.com is truly unique. Every product they sell is discounted every day. You are guaranteed the lowest pre-order prices, and your in-stock orders are shipped the very next day. Plus, Casey, you can select from a wide assortment of the newest officially licensed

diacast, apparel, hats, helmets, novelties, and collectibles for the sports most popular drivers, many of which are exclusive to RacingUSA.com. So whenever you want a new hat, t-shirt, diecast, helmet, or novelty to support your favorite driver, shop RacingUSA.com, Google's top-rated store for NASCAR merchandise. Did you guys see that they have a new DBC hat available on the website? I know people have been asking about it. There were a ton of requests for that, so Racing USA clearly took care of.

I know after we had all them shirts, they sold out immediately almost. So these hats, you better jump on there and get them quick. I want one, too. All right, let's move on to DBC picks, and I am thrilled to say that I won two races so far. I won with Bowman finishing third, so I was perfectly fine with that coffee. at the end. I bet. Obviously, you guys didn't go too hot.

So I think we have Brett. A lot of T.J.'s pick too. Demolished. Literally, we'll be picking last. He picked Lugano. T.J. pick Larson. Brett is the ultimate jinx this year. His results are Chandler Smith, D.N.Q.

Larson at Fontana. He blows up like in five laps, 29th. And Lugano 36, only Carter Rick yesterday. It's like, here's the curse right there. He's taking over T.J's job is the curse. Who you got? My pick?

I pick. I feel like Ford's are going to be pretty decent. I'll go with the feature winner from last year, Chase Briscoe. Damn it. That's a good one. I'll pick Harvick. One last win at Phoenix for Harvich. Who did TJ want? Did you get TJ's pick?

Yeah, he picked Larson. Okay. And Brett picked Ligano. No, Brett picked Ligano last week. He can't pick him again. Did he pick Logano last week? He says Vegas. He picked Lugano unless we typed that in wrong.

Oh, yeah. Wait, what? What an idiot? He's probably still drunk. Once again, Brett Griffin is a fucking idiot. Let's do it. Let's double down two times. So then he gets disqualified, right?

Because I got DQed last year. Are we dequeuing him? We're DQing. We're not paying attention. Brett, you're DQed. And picking the same driver two weeks in a row. Yes. I picked one twice in the same year.

He picked him two weeks in a row. I said he's been drunk for four days. So it's not surprising to me. But we're Dkewing. for Phoenix. Blaney. I think Ford's going to be good. Blaney's really good there.

He's never won there before. He's come close. Finish third there last year. It's finished second there in the fall. I like Ryan Blaney get that first win in the year. Perfect. I was trying not to use them. Hopefully it's a good race.

Hopefully this package lends itself to some better racing. Jordan, I cannot thank you enough for coming here and preventing me. Oh, you got some more? What do you got? Oh, yeah. So you've covered quite a few sports. I know. Hockey, motors sports in general.

Every stick and ball sport there is. Right now. Just thinking. Motorsports, who is doing it best when it comes to Formula One, IndyCar, NASCAR, even super cross. I mean, you've got a list. Yeah, I mean, Bob, Bob, to me, Pocrys on the NASCAR side is amazing. I mean, he is the standard. Nate Ryan and Dustin Long are three guys, those three are really I look at of like guys I've always wanted to be in their category of respect, credibility, and the way they write, the way they do their jobs to me is next level. I throw my colleague Jeff Gluck in there.

Even though he's an idiot. He's an idiot. He's an idiot this. I love him to death. He's my big brother. Those are the guys that jump out to me. Were you asking form of racing? That was my second question. I was actually like form of racing. So whether it be NASCAR, but you know, just the sport in general, how they're doing, whether

it be promoting the racetracks they go to, the excitement that they have and broadcasts as well. Oh, for like series and stuff? I think NASCAR's done a really good job, really the last three, four years of kind of shifting. And they realize, you know, look at Chicago, like, hey, we've got to have extracurricular stuff. It's just not about the race. You've got to offer fans more than just cars going in circle. You've got to offer them entertainment throughout. I think NASCAR has done a really good job.

When you go to Formula One races, and I've covered a few Formula One races the last few years, it feels like an event. It feels like a big deal. And the racing itself is what the racing is. It's not the most exciting sometimes, but it still feels like a really cool thing because you look around and there's an excitement level.

And the thing I say is when I was at the clash this year and the Daytona 500, it felt like an event. And NASCAR's done a really good job of turning these races into events. I think there's something. to be said for that. You look at the schedule now on NASCAR. It's 38 races. It's really hard to make everyone feel special. But you've got Daytona. You've got the Chicago Street Course race. I think North Wilkesboro this year is going to be an event. And so you need more of those big things to get excited about because when you go to New Hampshire, you've got to sell that. And how do you sell that?

It's just not having a race at New Hampshire. You've got to have all this other stuff around with it. Interesting. I guess we'll find out. Yep. It'll be fun. But again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You saved my life today. Like I said, I really, I was planning on having to talk to myself with TJ. So I was going to wonder if I wouldn't be able to do this, would just been like the Freddie Craft show today? I don't know. I would have had to get Tiff over here or somebody.

Mike David. I would have let him have Andrews start talking, which is not going to be good for anybody. We would have broke down how you put diesel in your gas car. That's the one thing I'm known for, isn't it? Well, guess what, bud. You started on strong there. You put diesel in your car?

Like, in 2018. Like a long time ago. It's not somebody let go. Yeah. How do you do that? I mean, I'm not a car guy by any means. You can't even get the nozzle in the fucking tank. He was like standing back to try to hold it in there.

He was standing back like firing it in there. I did think it was funny. Just shout out again to the fans. I love them. We were walking, me and Reddick were walking down towards the media center at Vegas, you know, kind of around the garages. And I was going to split off left to go to the tunnel to cross the racetrack. And he was going to go to the media center.

And they have all the. fans that line up outside the media center against that white fence. And there must have been some DBC fans over there. Freddy, you start yelling. And then they're like, Jason. And they're like, Jason, come over here and sign autographs for us. Because obviously talking to Reddick. And he's like, this is not funny anymore.

I was like, well, it's going to keep happening. I'm sorry. But shout out to all the fans. Again, thank you to everybody that came to the Dirty Mo experience. I'm sure we're getting ready to announce the next one. Buy them fast because they sell out quick. I don't even know where it's at. Are we dropping any information on that?

Nope. I got shut down on that. But yeah, it'll be fun. It's a blast yesterday. I hope everybody had a great time. I hear there might be a few live shows coming up. Oh, really? Yeah, I know we've got a couple lined up.

But yeah, thank you again, Jordan. Thanks for coming on. Casey, love you as always. Thank you for showing up. I'm here. I was sorry. I wasn't here last week. I had to alter my travel schedule.

I wouldn't have been here no matter what, even if I took my normal flight home, I would have been flying while the show was going on. So instead I decided to spend a week in Vegas, which is never really a bad thing. Megan must have been thrilled. Megan was, yeah, she's pretty pumped. She probably likes to get rid of me every once in a while. But thank you again, everybody for listening.

We will be back next week, hopefully with all three of us. And again, we'll see you then. See you in Phoenix. If you come out there, say, hey, hopefully this new package works. Have a great week. Take it easy. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Dirty Moe.

You're going to do it. You're going to win it. You're going to win it.