Door Bumper Clear - 292. North Wilkesboro & Fox Sports' Artie Kempner: Freddie's Gone Missing

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

All-star weekend from North Wilkesboro is over and Door Bumper Clear (minus Freddie Kraft) returns to break down the action and is joined by NASCAR on FOX Coordinating Director, Artie Kempner, to talk about playing college football at the University of Florida, how he got into TV, directing The Masters, and founding Autism Speaks.In Spot Off, Spot Off, the table discusses why they don’t think Justin Marks needs to rein in Ross Chastain as much as people think, how the Next Gen car handled the old North Wilkesboro surface, their thoughts on potentially repaving the track, and whether or not Kyle Larson’s “ass-whooping” can be considered a good race. Plus, Artie answers some questions from some FOX Sports personalities in Ask DBC 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.

Let's try to call. Are you recording yet, Andrew? I am. All right, let's try to call Freddie. See his status. Hey, you're pretty pretty crazy. Is that a ring? So if you wonder where Freddy's at, it's...

Should we leave him a message? You should just be the whole podcast until he gets here. Freddy, you're a piece of shit. Where are you at? This is Columbia all over again. Following is a production of Dirtymoan Media. Door, bumper, clear. Clear by two.

Pretty shallow entry. Door, bumper, clear. Hey, everybody, I'm T.J. Majors. Spotted a bunch of late models this week, a truck, and a cup car. Let's be wasting my time, giving out the numbers. You were busy. That's busy week, but I didn't know how to wear a sunblock. I'll tell you that much.

You were busy at a great racetrack, man. Brett Griffin, Spotter for Chandler Smith, Collegraising this past weekend. I would kick this to Freddy, but he ain't here. So I'll kick it to our... If you see him anywhere, please send him to the studio. Yeah, the last known image of Freddie was about nine hours ago. And he does not look sober. What was he on?

Twitter? Yes. Is that the picture he sent him to me? Yeah. That's the last known image. He didn't even ask if he could take my picture. And then he started tweeting responses to a ton of people. Oh, nice.

Well, Casey, I'll let you kick this thing to work. I don't know. I'll act like Freddy and say. Well, I just want to first shout out the birthday boy here. So I got to tell you guys, before I introduce our awesome guests, Artie Kempner, I went to the tweet up yesterday, and I'm guessing there were thousands of people there. It was packed, and they all sang me happy birthday. But it wasn't your birthday. It wasn't my birthday. But it was in a day. I'm not going to see it today. Hey, it's your birthday week. That's what Casey goes by. So without, birthday month, I'd be fine with you. Without further ado, I got to kick it to my good friend who I met over 20 years ago, thanks to the Sadler family. And obviously at some point, I would have ran it to you. anyway. My good friend Artie Kempner for the Fox Sports.

Howdy, how you doing, brother? I'm doing great. It's really neat to be here. I actually listened to your podcast. Well, I know. That's how you ended up on here because you text me and corrected me on something that was said on the show, which we won't talk about. But you were like, Brett, TV doesn't do this. We do this. And I'm like, okay, would you love to come on our show?

Because I didn't know you listened to the show. Do you have any pull with the shoes deal when they do it backwards? Okay. The answer is yes. I do. So we did change it. Did you guys remember when we changed it? No, I haven't looked at it.

We changed it and then all of a sudden, I don't know, I think the graphics operator forgot that. We changed it and all of a sudden it was back to where it was. And Clint keeps going, what are we doing that for? I go, I'm not sure. So sometimes they even know I'm in charge. Apparently I'm not in charge. You'll have that.

I work on that. One thing I didn't know about Artie before we invited him on the show is obviously you have an amazing career in journalism. You were one of the first directors to join Fox in 1994. I was 19 years old, I think, in 1994, already not trying to date you here. But you play college football at Florida. Yeah, I used to be much taller. So, yeah, I weighed like 235 pounds.

What did you play? What position? I was an outside linebacker. I like to run into things back then, and television actually was the best way for me to run into things as well. That's how you did it. Sports television. So where did you go to? high school? I grew up on Long Island in New York. Freddie's not here. That's where he grew up.

I know Freddy's in New York. He had his Giants hat on, like everybody in my family. So, yeah, I have an affinity for Freddie if we ever do find him. Believe it or not, I think he'll show up. I believe he will as well. So you went to high school in Long Island. How'd you end up in Florida? I went down there to play football and pursue my journalism career. Yeah. Did they recruit you to play ball? Yeah, but lightly. Who was coaching that? Doug Dickie at first, and then I paid for Charlie Pell, which was give him hell, pal. Give him hell, pal.

Yeah, we did all right. We went 010 and 1 in 79, and then we went to two straight bowl games when I was there. Wow, that's fun. Yeah, it was really fun, especially to two bowl games. The O 10 and 1, not so much. No, that wouldn't be a great year. No. Hey, you still got to go to a really great school for football.

I did. Actually, it's a school I probably couldn't get into now because the academics are way higher than what I was there. So you probably have, and listen, we've had a lot of guests on this show. I mean, I'm talking Dale Jr. Who? Dale Jr. Oh, the Piper. Yeah, I've heard of him.

Blake Shelton. I've heard of him. Yeah, yeah. We've never had a guest with a job that's actually important, though. So you're still going to keep that streak going? No, no, no. You're changing the streak. Me?

Right? I mean, we've never had a guess this is important. Or you are the first one. Well, I'd like to say that can really call the shots, but I think we all know that. Yeah, your role's a little different. Like, he's actually got a real job. Yeah, you actually could actually make decisions and stuff. I think you're making a lot more out of this.

I mean, the hardest part of Dale Jr.'s day is what he's going to eat for lunch. I mean, you know that. I understand that. I was around him back when you started. Go ahead and cut that out, guys. The hardest part of his day used to be what time was he going to get up. Well, yeah. And then he had to hire people to get him up.

TJ, am I lying? No, that's... How many time do you think Mike Davis had to go in the bus and wake Dale Jr. up to start his professional workday? Hundreds of times. Yeah, I'm not going to answer that question. It's hundreds of times. I couldn't hear you.

I know he missed a lot of TV shoots. He missed a lot of everything. We'll blame that on Mike Davis. Hey, let's move on from Dale Jr. But he had. Before you guys all lose your job. No, we're good. Oh, we've been way worse.

He did text me back this week, which tells me he's mad at me this week. He tells me a boat anyway. He texts me right back, so he must be mad. He's totally mad at me. But you literally have an important job, obviously, not only in the world of sports, but in the world in general. So tell me how do you get to be the lead director. Tell me a little bit about what it takes to get from playing football at Florida

to becoming the lead director for Fox Sports. Well, I think it's kind of a little crazy ride. I mean, the reason I'm in sports television is because I love sports. I mean, I didn't love TV. I do now, but I love sports. and I just didn't want to stop playing. I always tell people I ran out of ability at Florida. I saw what real football players looked like and how they played.

And then I just wanted to pursue some type of career in sports. I was going to be a coach. I actually coach high school football now. Do you really? Yeah, I do. My father-in-law, my brother-in-law. You look like a coach. I used to wear those bike shorts, those tight bike shorts when I was in college.

I figured I could make a career wearing them. So anyway, I literally bumped in a team. TV in a lot of ways. I helped out on a big swim meet that CBS did in 1982. And I walked into the TV truck. They let me come in. And it was like, okay, I want to do what that guy's doing. I didn't know what that guy was doing, but he was the director. And I literally have pursued that career from that time on. And I love it just as much now as I did when I started, you know, working in 1982. So 1982, where did you start at? Because obviously you didn't start at the top. No, I did not start to. I was a runner, a gopher, and a researcher.

So I started there, and I, I'm from New York, so it was kind of easy to move back to New York. I kind of talked my way into getting a job, kind of pursued it pretty heavily. I was very persistent. I stood up at CBS and kind of snuck my way in, started talking to some people. And, you know, if you show up enough times, people think you work there. Yeah. So I was doing, you know, I was a runner. I was running, if somebody needed a coffee, I got coffee. Somebody needed some information.

Somebody needed some research for Internet. Yeah, I was going to say, back then you had to actually go. Yeah, you had to go find stuff. Right, books and all that. So you know what an encyclopedia is. I do know an encyclopedia is. A lot of our listeners probably don't. Oh, yeah.

The Dewey Decimal System, things like that. Yeah, all the big stuff that's important now. So you're a researcher. I was a researcher. Then what do you get into next? Researcher, and then I become a broadcast associate, which is that first rung on the ladder for sports, you know, in our world of TV. And then you're doing the graphics.

And it's really, you're producing the graphics for the show. So the producer and the director kind of running, you know, they run the show. I always tell people, the producer's the head coach and the director's the quarterback. So the producer has a vision of what they want to do, and the director's kind of carrying out that vision. And when you're the BA, you are responsible for the graphics. And it's harder to get graphics up than it is to cut pictures. You know, to change your picture. So it was a great experience.

I loved doing it. I love research in it. I loved the games. I love the action, the intensity, a sense of urgency. And it was like, okay, I found my calling in a lot of ways. So I've been so fortunate. You know, that I kind of found this and I kind of fell into it in a lot of ways. What all sports have you covered?

I've basically covered everything but baseball and soccer. Wow. I've never done baseball because when Fox got baseball, I was wrapped up in Of course, NFL, and then we were doing the NHL hockey back then. Yeah. So, and then we got NASCAR, you know, we basically bought the NASCAR package in 2000, and that started my career in NASCAR. But I have done NASCAR starting in the 80s with CBS.

Like, my first 500 was 85. Wow, that's been fun. Yeah, it was unbelievable. No restrictor play. Yeah. The first time I walked on the track, guys, I walked out onto the concourse, and they were practicing, and those cars were coming into, a tryover and I thought they were on, it looked like they were on rails because they wanted a crash.

Yeah, but they didn't. And then they didn't. Yeah. And they were going like 210. Then I think Bill's, I think Bill's time was like 209 and change. Yeah, his record was 212 with Talladega. Yeah. At 209, I thought of Daytona and it was like, oh, man, it's so freaking cool. But I used to go to dirt track, Freeport Speedway with Next Town over from where I grew up. We would go there once a month. So I've always kind of love racing. David Pearson's my favorite drive. Same here. South Carolina guy. Yeah. Yeah, Silver Fox. Silver Fox drove that mercury, 21 pirulator, and I, like, I watched that stuff. So were you, like, a dirt modified guy back then?

I wouldn't know the difference between, like, all the stuff that you've driven. I had no idea what that was. I went to the dirt track, and it was fun. I just enjoyed the show. I did. You should go to Millbridge. We don't have any. We're down to one race track on Long Island.

They used to have, like, 35 or 40 of them. Really? Riverhead. Is that the only one left? Riverhead's the only one left. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's unfortunate because it's such a cool experience to do it. I mean, here in the Carolinas, you've got options. We do. We do have a lot of options. We do have a lot of options. And as we saw in North Brooksboro, people love their wasting down here. Yeah. And that's one of the coolest deals I've ever done. So you've done, you came in 2001. So tell me this. Transition me here. You left CBS for Fox. When you were at CBS, what was your job? And when you got to Fox, what was your job? So I had started directing in about 1987. I had directed the U.S. Open tennis on cable. Holy cow. Yeah. And then I kind of started moving up the ladder. I worked with great teams and great people. That's part of the thing that draws you, the TV of me, is that I'm 64 years old and I still play on a team.

Think about that. You know, it's the greatest thing going. And we have an incredible team in NASCAR. But at CBS, I started doing all sports. We did everything back then. We had the basketball tournament. We had the NBA. We had just gotten baseball.

besides the NFL and college football. So you talk about a sports junkie, I had it all. Plus, we always had the Daytona 500. We always did one of the Talladegas. We always did Michigan. And then we actually did the Detroit Grand Prix. Wow. Yeah.

So I got a chance to either AD those shows or start directing. And then one of the things I almost didn't leave CBS for was I had started directing the Masters with Frank Cherkinian. Oh, my gosh. who was the golf guru of all time, production guy. And I had directed the last two Masters when the Fox thing happened. It was like, NFL? Yeah. Masters.

And it's like, the NFL, there's a whole year of games, you know, 18 games back then. The Masters is one event. How much time does that take to prepare for, though, the one event? Like, when do you start? Well, the Masters, like the Daytona 500, you start months out. And it's not just a techno setup. It's like production noise.

What are you going to do? The interesting stories you're going to tell. You know, what year is this? What's the anniversaries? Who's important? So you're always kind of thinking about that. We do this for every race, by the way, in every event we do. But when you're doing the Daytona 500 or an event like the Masters, you're out on it much earlier in the program.

Yeah. What it tell, I mean, tell us what that looks like, too. I don't think people will realize that there are so many components, whether it be media buys and priorities from NASCAR. Like, tell us what that's like. preparing for a race each week or really event? Well I think NASCAR is probably the most challenging because you have you know you have safety issues so you can only put cameras in certain places because of that now that preparation starts you know that started in 2000 and we've kind of built off that you know that resume it's like

you're a crew chief and you're keeping your book on everything like every like I was working on before you guys got here I was working on my like debrief for this North Wilkesboro how do you do it better but you're always kind of working on, okay, editorially, what can you do? What are the interesting stories? Technically, what can you do? What's new and unique, right? And it's never about a toy, a technical toy. It's always about a technical tool. What's going to bring the event closer to the viewer? Make it more intimate. You know, you want to touch it. One of the first things we did in 2001 was we created what I called a robo ring around the track. It used to be two robotic cameras.

Okay. Right. Well, we put six or eight, depending on the length of the track on each, on each thing. So we could cover an entire lap low, right, and see it and feel it, you know, and part of that was the sound. Yeah. We enhanced the audio, and that's one of the things that Fox has always been kind of prioritized, right, from day one to football. We're going to put more microphones out there to make people kind of feel the game. Yeah. Right? Feel the sport. When those cars went through, when you hear crank it up, I mean, it does kind of,

it does kind of bring your system up a little bit. Yeah, for sure. I have had friends put in Dobey systems back in the day when Dobey was a big deal. Oh, yeah, I remember that. They put in six. I got a 5.1 system. It's freaking awesome. Yeah.

My base is killing it. So that's. So I'm going to go out on a limb right here. Like how many guys or gals in your line of work have directed all of these major sporting events that you've directed? Oh, I'm just really lucky. I've directed some kind of. I was cracking open. I was listening last week. And you had Jesse, Jesse on. Jesse Love. Jesse Love. He's born in 2005. I did the Daytona 500, Jeff won.

Yeah. Gordon won. I did the Super Bowl that Eagles lost to the Patriots. I was there for that. Jacksonville. You were there? Yes. I was there. That was my first Super Bowl. Yes. And I think it was the fifth year anniversary of my vasectomy. So it was a really big year for me. I got to tell you a quick story about that Super Bowl. The day before that Super Bowl, Fox did a special at the 17th hole at Sawgrass. At Sawgrass, yeah. Okay. Well, Elliot and I were part of the deal.

It was a golfer, a baseball player, and a NASCAR driver. And they paired Elliot. I think they paired him with Greg Maddox, and I don't remember the golfer. It might have been even like an Arnold Palmer, somebody crazy. Well, Elliot and I went out the night before. We ended up on Jeff Gordon's boat, which before that, we were at the Playboy party, before that we were at the Maxim party and muscles you remember muscles

oh I know muscles the muscles worked for me before everybody worked for him muscles would not let us get out of the van he said you two smell like you look like you're gonna sleep in this van for two hours and sober up before we let you out so that was my first real dealings with Fox and somehow another

Ellie and I didn't we didn't lose our job out of this thing but no that was my first Super Bowl so you've got to get nervous at some point in this career path that you've got what's your most nervous moment because it's got to be a super A day 20500, a debut of NASCAR on Fox. It's got to be something.

Okay, so it is a Super Bowl, but it's not anything that you would kind of imagine. I've told this story before. If I ever wrote a book, and I'd have to spend time actually writing to write a book, this would be one of the chapters, and it would be shoot the effing blind kids. It would be chaptered. So we had a deal that had been orchestrated by our chairman, David Hill, who was a brilliant, who was a brilliant innovator. And it was bringing the floor.

Florida School of the Blind and Deaf together with Alicia Keys and a tape recorded deal of Ray Charles. So Ray had been dead for quite some time. And we had to kind of mix the tape recorded deal with Alicia and the young children from the Florida school. And they were awesome. Well, I was kind of getting rehearsing this on a Friday. And we went through two rehearsals and it looked really beautiful. And all of a sudden the truck door, bam. open and there's my boss. He's a little profane and he says to me, shoot the fucking

kids. I go, what? He goes, I set this up for you to show the blind kids. I said, I'm showing all the kids. What are you talking about? And he kind of was lodging a feed that wasn't the feed that we were doing. Oh boy. And that sent me into a tizzy. Panic. Because this doesn't matter for the game, but it matters to him. So I don't know if you folks understand. I think we all do. You have the audience of one, right? We may have six million viewers on a race, but if my boss is watching,

he's got something that he wants to see, I even have a boss. You better put it on. We're going to put that on. That's going to priority one. So I literally sweat it out. Like, I had the Super Bowl to do, and I literally sweat it out.

I mean, Saturday night, I was up till 2.30 in the morning going through every second of that shoot. And it's not something I do naturally. I don't do music stuff. I'm a sports guy. Right. And now I am kind of, I'm going to get this right or I'm going to lose my job.

Well, we do that thing. Then the first Super Bowl director and all the guys who tell you whether it's Rich Rousseau, Drew Escoff, all the guys that have done Mike Arnold, the worst part of the Super Bowl is the 30 minutes leading up to the game. It's the pomp and circumstance. It's kind of cool. The players come out and you're all, but then you've got, you know, you've got the Walter Payton Man of the Year award. You've got this.

you've got the anthem, you've got all these things. That's the stuff that makes me sweat. I bet on the anthem every year. So if you ever have any insight into that. I totally have insight into that. I cannot believe you are moronically bet on the anthem. Over or under? I get it.

I get it. But I would never do it. Anyway, this is that heads up. I'm sorry to start to board you guys. But we finished up. She finishes the performance, Alicia. It's all gone perfectly. the door kind of swings up and he actually can hear it.

When he comes in, he goes, that was freaking awesome. And he walked out the door and it was the last time I heard from him all day. That was perfect. And then we did the Super Bowl. That was the most nervous I've ever been. Of all sports, of every event. That is insane. That is insane.

Wow. The Super Bowl itself didn't, because that's what you do for a living. Look, you guys have worked with the best drivers in the world. I worked with Clint for a while. That's right. You're right. they may have butterflies. They might have butterflies, but they're not nervous.

Yeah. You know, I always think about that. When you're watching your favorite golfer, and he's got 242 yards, and he's got a 4-iron, and you're going, oh, God, that's so hard to do. I've got a 4-in. I can't hit a 4-end. Well, he can. Yeah.

Right? So when I do these jobs, first of all, I've got the greatest crew in the world. So if I screw it up, the camera guys are still going to be great. So even if I just close my eyes and shout out numbers, it's going to live. look good on Fox because we have the best team in the world. They do. You guys know them. I mean, you know, you know Drano, you know Nelson, you know Steve Zajac, you know Pony. These guys are the legends of the business. You know, I get a lot of, you know, credit. Production gets way too much credit. But the technical teams that we have, that's what makes you go. The operations

teams, you know that. I mean, you guys are part of that. You know, you. Same thing for us, man. It's the crew guys. It's the pit crews. It's the spotters. The spotters are a big part of that. It's like you guys are part of a team like I am and it's like so cool to do it. I feel like we're a little luckier because I mean the mechanics and them guys and the engineers are ones to do all the work. The truck drivers. Truck driver get that thing to the track. Hardest working guy in motorsports. What can't a truck driver do?

Typically they can cook better than anybody. Right? They can take care of the truck. They know how everything works. I mean, I've always liked to have, I'd like to have a truck driver work for me. They know all the parts on there. They know everything's at. It's clean.

They're organized. Unbelievable. It takes a special. special person. And if you drive somebody's motor coach, that's even more difficult. And how about how they park? I mean, try parking in like Bristol or North Wilkesburg. Anywhere. That's insane. So tight. So you just set us up for a great segue. So I met Artie a very long time ago. And the reason I got to know him so well is because of Hermie and Elliot Sadler. And Hermie's niece, Haley, is autistic. Artie has a son that's autistic. We started doing a lot of things together for the Autism Society of Dover, for autism, for all kinds of things.

things. So I know that your son is a big inspiration to you. And I know that that is probably your biggest, one of your biggest passions in life. Well, it is my biggest passion. It's my family. You know, I would say, Ethan is my son. He's 28 years old. Wow. That makes me feel even older than I felt before I got here. Yeah. Well, how old's Haley now? She's got to be 20, 22? No, she's like 24, 29. Is she? Yeah. Man, time flies. So, um, we bonded the, the Sathers and I, you know, bonded and then through Brett, you know, got to know you, through autism. And we were really trying to do a bunch of things back then. And that was, you know, almost 20 years ago.

It was 20 years ago. Awareness was not there. Advocacy was not there in the same way. Autism speaks didn't even exist yet. So we had done our thing, Autism Society of Delaware, which is now just Autism, Delaware. And we were kind of working on things. Well, the Fox people were so supportive of the things we were doing, guys, that they allowed us to kind of go national in a lot of ways. They let our announcers wear our autism

awareness pins. They would do a thing. April, we just kind of blew it out. You blew it out. And we started doing the drive for autism, which all the drivers would come to back then. It was spectacular. I mean, we had one year 32 drivers. I mean, you can't get 32 drivers to do anything but a cup race. No, no. You had guys come that didn't even play golf. No, they didn't play golf. They hung out. They bought their own foursums. Yeah. Jimmy won because he bought his own forso and bought four ringers with him. It was great. Johnson and then he did the same thing jones said well jimmy's doing i'll do it he goes i'm going to buy a for some so not only did they show up but they spent money and donated to our

made it a good deal and i'm telling you this thing raised hundreds of thousands of dollars we've raised over six million dollars into 22 years we've now i know you've done a ton like you're a compcast me champion so we've seen the work that you do tell us what your organization does to help those affected or so when we started the organization uh in 98 we're actually in our 25th anniversary year. It was in our house and right out of our little study office. And we started growing it. And we actually put in addition on the house

to add a bigger office because we had two people working in our house every day. It was all volunteer to start. And then in 2002, we kind of took a big step. And I can tell you now, we have over 100 employees. We serve almost 200 individuals with autism every day. Adults, my son is one of the beneficiaries of this program. It's been spectacular.

And, you know, we could not have done it without the support of the NASCAR family. Yeah. Really. I mean, people say that stuff, but it's real. I mean, they came out. So we raised all this money on the golf tournament. We had all this awareness. It really impacted so many families.

You know, Ray Everingham and I have had a friendship for years throughout. Yeah, yeah. You know, and talking about things. And it's really been something special, which I remember once saying, My wife says, I guess if I had to make a choice, I would leave football before NASCAR because NASCAR means so much to autism Delaware and to the autism community. And like, that's kind of a crazy deal. I love every sport, but if I would have had to make a choice, it would have been NASCAR,

which wouldn't be a bad deal. I mean, the thing is, and like you said, the drivers have done their part, but sponsors have painted their race cars to celebrate this and raise awareness. It was something special to see that. And look, I believe when you see cars, like the Shriners car was last week, that stuff is great. I mean, I always tell people, pick a charitable organization that you want to support that's close to you. Or pick something and just get yourself involved in. Look, I'd love it to be autism anytime, but it should be something.

It really will make people's lives better. It will make your lives more richer, I would say. I can do this with you all day. This could be an eight-hour podcast, but I'm not. The last thing I'm going to ask you, the goofy stuff. The last thing I'm going to ask you before we kick this thing off is I am told that you have a special kind of chair that you sit on to direct these NASCAR broadcasts. It's not so special. I sit on a big exercise ball.

And people go, why do you sit on a big exercise? I don't know what that is because look at me. What do you mean an exercise ball? Yeah, something you've never saw. So I had, I'm old. So I had my knees replaced because of, you know, way too much fun playing sports. I had my news replaced in 2017, and I went back to work. Matter of fact, the first thing I did was the truck race in Pocono.

Okay. I had both of my news replaced 16 days later I was in a truck. Wow. So I talked to the doctor, and he was concerned that, you know, just sitting for a long period of time. I said, what if I get an exercise ball? He goes, will you fall off of it? I go, no, I'm an athlete. I'm not falling off my exercise ball.

So I sit on a big gray exercise ball with my big butt hanging out. So you're just rolling around. bouncing around. I do roll around and bounce around, Brett. I do. I'm an energetic guy. Here I thought Freddie was on the roof for the races. Oh, man, I love it.

Well, listen, we're going to get into the guts of this show. I'm so happy you're here. I'm so happy you text me to correct me about something that we said on here that was in Craig, which has never happened before. We've never been wrong on this show. You're the first person to ever point that out. Thank you, and I appreciate that.

I work in television. We are never wrong. And actually, I have to ask. So you probably see a time. ton of good and bad feedback from the show or from your shows on Twitter and social media. No, Casey, I don't. Because you just ignore it. I don't.

I do not partake in social media. Now, I understand why social media is very important to the sport, but I just stay away from it. That's brilliant. I think it can be toxic. I tell certain of our announcers, we don't have to address every criticism. Like if you go into a bar and somebody, most people won't say, hey, I don't like what you do.

Right. That rarely happens. It usually leads to a fight. So why do we have to have a verbal fight on some social media platform? It's for other people to do. I get the feedback I need to get. I'm not, I don't ignore things. And listen, the bottom line is we're always trying to do right by the fan.

If you know anything about Fox NASCAR, the people that work there from top to bottom are passionate about racing. I mean, that's the difference. That's our secret sauce and why we do great broadcasts, because everybody's engaged. Everybody owns it. Everybody's on that team and they really care. So when you have that going for you, you can get criticized, you know, take it in, but don't go crazy. Yeah. We've been telling you for years now that Racing USA.com is Dormor-Ber-Clear's go-to store for the latest and greatest.

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driver. Shop, racingUSA.com. Google's top-rated store for NASCAR merchandise. Spot on, spot off. Spot off. Spot on. Spot all. It was super fun yesterday to ride around there. I am spot off. Damn.

Where did he come from? First topic. Justin Mark's shares on Series XM, Ross Chastain has some things he's got to clean up. We today started the process of more aggressively handling that. Artie. Yep. I love Ross Chastain.

I love everything about Ross Chastain. I don't have to drive against him on the track. but if I was a driver, I would probably drive like Ross Chastain. I'm going to race you from lap one. They dropped the rag, as Clint would say, until Checkers. If you don't like how I do, you can race harder against me. There was a guy that drove this car. It's a black car.

You guys are very young, but you might remember it. It was the three car. Yeah. Yeah. Rookie of the year, 1979. Yeah, and he, by the way, wrecked a lot of people. And he got in their way. they got in his way, he took care of it in his terms.

I'm not comparing Ross Chastain and Dale Earnhardt, but when you have somebody that drives it like he stole it, you got to just kind of get behind him. And by the way, in North Wilkesboro, when he got introduced, there were very, very few booze, and there were a whole lot of cheers. So we know what the racing community likes. Drivers might not like it. Mr. Hendrick might not like it, but we like it on TV for sure.

I love that. Hey, did you, I'm telling you, when they, You need to be on TV instead of telling people what to do on TV. No, because my mouth will get me in trouble, Brett. We're almost crossed the line already. All right. The people, the amount of cheers Ross got, like the amount, even if, even the booze, he got more than, he was in the top five or six drivers of how loud they cheered or booed for you.

And that's, that's saying something in my opinion. Well, you know, we want people to cheer and boo. we want you to be passionate rivalries everything in this sport this sport was built on rivalries let's look at the people that the drivers that the fans have hated right the three car

Darrell Walter Darrell Waltz Rusty Wallace yeah right rubber neck all the nicknames I had just go through all the great drivers they most of them all went through that time I mean not everybody was David Pearson who could just somehow drive around you without you even knowing he was there right right it was subtle not everybody was Richard

Petty when they deem you the king, you really can't root against the king. Right. Right. They, off with your head. Don't they behead people for that? They do. So, yeah. You talk about all the other drives that have come through. I mean, Jeff Gordon, pretty much hated by a lot of people. Oh, California guy invades our southern sport. Are you kidding me? Yeah, we hated it. We let him in there. We let him in. Jimmy Johnson, two vanilla. Yeah. Now, he didn't crash out enough people, right? And he didn't get in any fights. But, you know, he was, he was the, he had to race against. They kicked everybody's ass.

Yeah. And you kind of look at what this sport is. This sport is about Black Hat's White House booze and cheers, right? That's what it's about. That's what every sport is, engagement. That's what we try to do. We try not to be melodramatic when we do our dream. We just try to see what you're seeing out there and bring you a little closer to the action.

And Ross Chastain takes you to the action. Here's my thing on this. All right. We're in North Wilkesboro. North Wilkesboro, regardless of what you thought about the racing, was a tribute to our hardcore blue-collar fan and family that grew up in the 80s and 90s, loving racing. I went to my first race in North Wiltsboro, 1979 as a four-year-old kid. I went to my last race there as a teenager in the 80s, and I'm telling you right now,

that's what this generation of racing and racers loved is guys like Ross Chastain. So, of course, he got a bunch of cheers, because that's how they grew up. Here's what he's missing, Artie. He's missing the wins. and the winds will come. I think what Justin's got to figure out a way to do is rein in the wrecking and wrecking of other people and let his talent show.

Because he has the talent, he's lacking the finesse. And Justin made the statement, I think, an exact statement, but basically said we can't wreck ourselves. Right, right? Right. You're not looking to wreck other people, but you can't wreck yourself. And he's cost himself some opportunities.

As many opportunities he's cost Kyle Larson, he's cost himself as much. So, yeah, Ross has got to be. to work on that. Hey, risk reward. Yeah. Right? You can't just take the risk every time. And that's something that every young driver knows. Darrell Waldrop tells a great story about

Jeff Gordon's first time that Jeff raced and Darrell basically told Rick he's wrecked every, he's just about wrecked everything out there. He goes, this boy is not going to make it. Yeah, well, he ended up doing okay. And I think Ross will too. Yeah. He's just

got to, you know, he's got to hone in on his talents. I mean, he's a hell of a driver, but Sometimes he's just out there. But I don't want to put a muzzle, a racing muzzle on Ross Chastain because he's going to bring the field up, right? They're going to race harder against him. Because they're going to have to. Yeah. You ain't going to beat him racing with me.

Nope. I'm spot off for it, though. I think you let Ross be Ross and maybe have this conversation behind, you know, hey, just keep racing how you are, but you need to finish. We need the finishes still. But I think you just let Ross keep being Ross. I mean, he's handled it. I don't think he could have handled anything he's done so far,

any better than what he has. As far as somebody grabbing on to him, he handled that, somebody pushed him around the track, he handled that, and I think it's entertaining. He's a blue-collar watermelon farmer. Fifth generation. He knows what hard work is, right? Not to take away from anybody else,

but this guy has worked to get there. Like his fingernails had been dirty. Both on and off track. I mean, on track, too, he's never, he didn't have the best ride in the other series either. I was up there with his dad on Wednesday doing the late model, doing late muscle up with Del Jr. And I was standing there talking to his dad.

I'm like, hey, I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but I wouldn't rate the green car tonight. You let that one go? I'm like, I'm like, hey, I just wouldn't wreck the green car. That's a sundrop car. I'd leave the sundrop car alone. I saw a lot of sundrop t-shirts. Oh, they're on Saturday.

There's so many. It's freaking unbelievable. He is the Pied Piper, man. He does something. You follow it. Oh, moving on. The truck series race had 12 cautions compared to the Cup race's single natural caution. Spot on, spot off, Brett.

I'm spot on for how amazing the truck race was. And listen, I'm spot on for how great. I'm telling you, yesterday and all weekend, for that matter, I was there Friday, Sunday. It was like we were at Disney World. This was the happiest place on Earth on this particular weekend of the year for people who love race cars and racing and the legacy and where it came from. The cup race, listen, there are guys in a sport that have spoke out, and Casey tells me all the time, Marty. It's not what I say. It's how I say it.

I don't know how she would want me to say this. The short track package is garbage. And it's not the racetrack's fault. It's not the driver's fault. They've got to fix the package. I mean, we saw tire fall off. We didn't see great racing in the truck race. I mean, we didn't see it in the cup race.

We did in the truck race. We did in the open. Maybe it was because it was during the day. I don't know. But for whatever reason. And listen, I am on social media. I love social media. And I sent out a tweet.

This was one of the greatest weekends I've ever been a part of. And man, the tweets were this was a snooze fest. The racing sucked. And I don't know how we fix that. I'm spot on for everything to happen at North Wilkesboro all weekend. And I'm apologetic to some degree for what ended up being what a lot of people perceive as bad racing. Well, here's a difference between the trucks and the cup, and you guys know this. The cup drivers are the best drivers in the world, period.

Totally. Now, you drive that racetrack, and they had a few laps, right, that they had. So they got a chance to practice, and they ran the heat races. But these guys are so damn good that they don't wreck. You know, when the truck drivers, the truck guys, they're young or whatever they are, they're good drivers, but you tell the difference. That racetrack is challenging. I mean, it's freaking hills.

It is. You know, Darrell was telling us, because Darrell worked, Walchip worked with us this week. And he was telling the story the first time he got out there. And he said, I'm going into one. He goes, I can't stay off the wall. I can't stay off the wall. And I go into three, he says, I can be full throttle through three. Uphill.

Right? Exactly. And I think it was Jake Elder who was working with. I can't remember. I don't think it was junior at the time. He said, you do know you're going downhill into one and uphill into three. And he goes, no, I did. So this is how good these guys are They're going downhill to one

But they're not wrecking Did you see the Larson line that he started? I mean he's up You know he's always been right He's always on the outside wall He and Reddick just running that outside He is running so far on that inside wall I thought he was going to clip it a few times

That was... Noah took care of that for him He showed us what not to do When you're running the inside wall Oh my gosh Yeah you got a part of that No you're right I mean his inside line was completely nuts

And he learned it in a truck race. Of course he did. And that was why he ran a truck race. That's why William Byron ran a truck race. I mean, look, these guys strategically do that. And that's why they're running more short track stuff and running more of the different series just so they get more seat time. And that's something we should actually talk about is the iraicing compared to prepping with real race cars on real race tracks, which is one of the things we don't have in NASCAR now. TJ, when Larson was running the apron in the truck versus a cup car, the cup car for him didn't look violent. When I saw other guys go in there on in-car cameras that already was providing us, dude, it was violent inside a race car. So I've studied this a lot there, especially in the cup stuff. There was an angle that they figured out,

Christopher Bell figured out into the cup race off a turn two. He figured out how to get down onto the flat off a turn two and grip up like the trucks were without having, the big because I had Brad do it and the first time we did it I saw the whole car rock and shake and I figured out the guys that were behind if you will go back and watch everyone the 20 passes or the last 20 30 laps of race they start doing that and they figure out where he found a spot to turn down to where it just wouldn't you know mess it up but the trucks man everybody was down there on the I mean it it was exciting but I'm the car cars are the cup cars were some

of them were bottoming out too much. Well, there's a... Oh, yeah, the fuser and stuff hits. And there's a big, exactly, but it's a big transition. Like, people, it's not a smooth transition. I walked over there and looked at it. Right. So you know it's a fucking huge transition. They're hitting a bump, but they're somehow keeping

it exactly where they want to go, which is what makes these fucking cup drivers great. Jeff Gluck's Twitter poll right now, it says, was North Wilkesboro a good race, and it's still 50-50. And I wish there was a poll that could, you can categorize the on-track portion, the overall,

weekends. Listen, there's not, Casey to your point, you're making a great point. There's not one person that went to that race track yesterday that wishes they wouldn't win. It was beautiful weather. It was amazing pre-race. It was so nostalgic. I mean, I saw people in their 20s dress like they were in 1970. Like we talk about throwback weekend. People were celebrating the rebirth. And I'll give Marcus Smith, listen, Bruton Smith helped change this sport. He helped take us from small town USA to major markets in this country when he did things like closing North Wilkesboro and going to Dallas, Texas, right? Big deal. But what his son has done with Oroval, what his son has done with North Wilkesboro, what he's trying to do with Nashville,

like Marcus deserves a lot of credit as a marketer for what he's done, because he's transitioned us to some degree to new grounds, right? He's taking us back, but he's taking us forward. Marcus has a vision. He cares so much. His dad cared. His dad was a great businessman, and he had a vision as well. Marcus's vision is how can we get back but move it forward, which is a very, it's very difficult to do that. It is. You can try to do it, but you can't go back

to the 80s and 90s, you know, and just say, oh, we're going to do it that way. That's not going to work in this day and age. But what he's been able to do is kind of figure out ways to bring things back, kind of mix in old school with new school, take the technology, you know, and he's also a great

promoter, which is what the sports been missing for a little bit, I think. The SMI does such a spectacular job promoting. I mean, if you spend any time with Marcus's team and Jessica Fickensure, Mike Birch and Kevin Camper and Greg Walter, you know these people are passionate about racing. They are so passionate about it. And what new ideas can we bring forward?

But they also want to keep the integrity of the old school. And that's important. And that's what you saw in North Wilkesboro, by the way. You saw families coming to the race. You saw a lot of kids. It gives me so much. It makes my heart grow. to see all the kids and the families that were there because we miss that sometimes.

This is the greatest family sport that you can go to. I mean, I can remember my buddy the first time I took him to a race. And I started doing it. He goes, I kind of like NASCAR. He took his son and he had to go to the bathroom. And it's like, you didn't want to the son. And the people next to him said, we'll take care of them. And they'd been sitting there talking.

Right. And that's NASCAR. I say this all the time. You can take an RV to a racetrack. You can set up everything that you own in front of it. nobody will even take a beer out of your cooler it is the best people in the world at these nascar races honest integrity like what you said it's it's good people and and we saw a lot of that this week yeah i walked through the souvenir deal i actually cut out and walked beside one of

them and stopped walking between them because it was so packed we couldn't get anything that said north wokesboro we went out and looked yeah and i was like i almost wanted to pull the stringo i almost texted marcus can you find me something do you save me that black sweatshirt because it's freaking awesome and I want to wear it everywhere. I have not been to a souvenir trailer since 1999. And listen to me, as a kid, as a teenager, as a college student, I went to the souvenir trucks every time I went to the racetrack. I had to charge it on my discover card because I was broke his sht. But this weekend, I got two shot glasses from North Wilkesboro. There you go. Yeah. Because it was special. By the way, you know, the big shout out as well

with everybody who's named, Steve Swift, if you guys know him, he is the track. Swiftie, the track guru. I mean, this is the guy that changed Atlanta. He has these visions. He does the hard work. I mean, he is at the track at 5 a.m. And I think he left at like 2 a.m. on Saturday. And this is the kind of work ethic and intelligence that goes into it because he works smart.

He works hard. And the people around him love the guy. And that whole team, and Jessica Fickenscher's other, top to bottom, that group. And the biggest shout out to Terry Parsons. Because without Terry, this event's not happening. She's the one that kept the North Wilkesboro dream alive and in the community because she lives in that community and she didn't let it die. And thankfully, this is something that we've got to move forward.

How are they going to move forward? That's the interesting thing as we look at it. I would love to see a cup race, but I don't want to see Kyle Larson win by 10 seconds. Yeah, I mean, the Holly Farms 400 back in the day. I mean, there were guys that lapped the field, essentially. I remember watching Neil Bonnet run there, and I don't know if he won the race, but it was like he's walking the dog is what we called it, and basically he was lapping everybody.

So, I mean, that is short track racing. It comes to some of the older tires of slick racetrack, all the things that we saw yesterday. But I'm telling you, one of the greatest weekends of my life professionally was going to that racetrack. I did enjoy it. Even with Kyle Larson whooping everybody, I thought it was. He got out of car and said that was an old-school ass whipping.

Yeah, that's our, I mean, and he told the truth. Yeah, I mean, that's, and I'm okay with that. They were better. I mean, that's the way it should be, right? He had the most emotion in Victory Lane all weekend that he's ever had in Victory Lane in NASCAR. I'm not, listen, when he got out of the chili bowl, you could, didn't want it.

You could tell he was excited. This is the most excited I've seen him in NASCAR, winning. He's, uh, I saw him Friday night. I was over at Boyer's compound. Oh, yeah. And Jr. did stop by with Amy and Marcus. And I saw Colin, I got a chance to chat with him a little bit. and he is, he's got more energy than I've ever seen.

Now, he hangs around a lot with Boyer, so maybe some of that Boyer energy is kind of rubbing off on him. Yeah. But yeah, there was a genuine, I just kicked the field's ass. I mean, it was the same with the entire field every interview. I mean, no matter how well they did it or how well they did or didn't do. Like, they were all excited to be there, which is something that we haven't seen in a really long time.

Yeah. And on that note, what did you guys think with obviously Larson dominated, but with tire strategy, do you feel as though there should have been a different tire? Do you feel as though something should have changed from that aspect? Like the format? Like the last hundred laps, you can only change tires one time. And we, I kind of didn't like that idea because if the caution came out, that's what gave the guys in the beginning, the edge. That's how the top five really happened, like bubbing all them guys.

There's, I think, three of the top five took tires there that first time. And when it goes green like that, it just paid off. but the second stage, the second hunter laps, you only get one set and we had two lay in there. It had been nice to know that if you get a caution, you can maybe make them make a decision. Do I want to maybe pit here, stay out? That's what made it interesting in the beginning. The guys in the bat could pit and drive up through there. But if everyone's on the same strategy, I don't know.

I would have liked to see it. Obviously have more cautions to create more strategies and more restarts and more side-by-side. but I would I'd like to see a Xveni car race around there that would be crazy Oh that would be nuts Oh it'd be so fun

And I'll say this about the facility Because we We're quick to criticize on here already I don't know if you know that I think life in general We're quick to criticize Yeah We have given a lot of tracks

A lot of crap About fan experience Wi-Fi And all weekend long When I was inside the gates of that race track With a sold-out crowd my phone worked amazingly well. So if you are a track promoter or a track owner, I don't want to hear any more excuses about why my God-Blessed phone doesn't work.

Because if you can make it work in the middle of Wilkes County, which is one of the most beautiful settings of a racetrack, I saw some of your white shots yesterday. If you can make it work in the middle of Wilkes County, you can make my phone work anywhere. This place, this was a home run to me. There was Wi-Fi. All the amenities were there.

Food trucks. The food trucks were awesome, by the way. Not all the concerts. There's always things going on, man. And it's like, I don't know how everyone's worried about traffic. We have not heard a thing about somebody being stuck in traffic. Not a thing. There was no traffic on those freeways I saw on the broadcast.

Five days of racing. One pot hole I saw. They fixed that quickly. Like the track prep was amazing. Yeah, the track didn't come apart. All these people worried about that, which I didn't get on that bandwagon. And it worked out fine. So I'm all for going back there, man.

The only thing I would change is the Spotter stand. Now that needed help. That was very precarious. That was very, did you get up on it? You should have climbed up on it. You should climb up there. It's my life for you guys. Come on.

There were three Harbor Freight Ratchet straps holding it down. We were good. Look, the biggest problem with the spotter stand is, and there were a lot of problems. The people on it? No, no. Yes. No, listen, that's every week. Let's get an update on Freddie, not here.

When we get to the Coke 600, that's the problem. But literally, when you get up there, you have so many blind spots in three and four. Like whatever happened with Michael McDowell and Justin Haley and Ty Gibbs, we have no idea. We didn't see the beginning of it at all. We didn't see the beginning. We barely caught the end. And the thing is, and listen, some spotters like Freddie were very vocal about how bad it sucked. He was right.

Freddy was right. It sucked. The location sucked. It was at the lowest point of the racetrack. You just said it. You're going downhill into one. Where was the spotter stand? It was in one.

You're going uphill in the three. Where should you have put the spotter stand? Probably in three. And so it was a miss from the beginning. Obviously, it was a low-budget, makeshift scaffold. I mean, I wouldn't hang sheet rock from that goddamn thing in my house. Well, I think you've got to realize what were the priorities. And it wasn't, and those priorities were fan experience.

They didn't forget exactly. Revenue. Yep. Spotter stand don't make money. Well, also just getting everything together in that short period of time. I was there in December. There was nothing there. They were still in demo mode.

So even our cameras, you know, look, we pay a lot of money. Yeah, a lot. And they'd listen, but they could only do so much. So our cameras were not high enough either. If you see, there was a lot of block. There was not one camera. It wasn't like Indianapolis, but it wasn't like one camera that could follow the car around and see the bottom of the car.

So we were in the same place. They're going to work on that now. A facility like that, it's not like you can build it up another 40 feet, right? Make your life. I'm not getting on that thing if it goes. No. If he goes in, listen,

it was doing this. I brought up Steve Swift. I bet you Steve Swift will come up with a plan. 100%. And you guys will end up in a better place and you'll be able to see. You might be on the back stretch looking across, but if that's what it takes, they'll figure it out.

30 year old me would have lost my mind because I want to be able to do my job to the best of my ability. I've said it before. I want somewhere to park, somewhere to pee and I want to be able to see. And they did the parking. They did the pee in. And we just,

we don't want a blind spot, Artie. Like, it'd be like you as a TV guy where there's a point on the racetrack where the cars are out there and you can't see it and you can't capture it and you can't tell that story and it pisses you off. And again, 30-year-old me, I'd have lost my mind, 48-year-old me now. I'm like, eh, it is what it is. I got to deal with it and I'm going to do the job best I can. I'm going to go home. But you're right.

They're going to fix it. They'll find out a better solution. Like I'm saying, when you're putting everything together and even, like, we're a priority, but how much could they do for us? Right. They're going to work through that. And that's part of like year one, you're always going to come out with a long list of stuff you can do much better. And I bet you Steve Swift and Jessica Fickenscher and Marcus Smith's list are a lot longer than our lists. Right.

Right. And they're going to address those things. And they care. And that's what you want. You want people that care about everybody and the whole experience, not just a fan experience, but how did it look at home, right? How did the guys that were working with the teams look? You guys, right? How was the garage area?

All that stuff. I mean, I'm just amazed at what it did look like. Everything outside of the spotter stand was a legit home run. There you go. Which makes this podcast better because you guys can be about something. We got to have something to f*** about it. There's still time. That's a perfect segue into the next topic.

Spot on, spot off. Market Smith says he would lean towards not repaving until we absolutely have to. T.J. Spot on spot off. I mean, I'm for it. I'm leaning towards the same thing. I don't think it needs a repave right now. I mean, I don't spot off for, you know, I've spot on for his comments saying that we don't need to do anything with it because we saw great races Wednesday.

We saw great races Saturday. Even the open was dicey, you know, just because you put the best guys out there and you don't see a bunch of wrecks. That's not a bad race. I mean, one guy, if this, Brett mentioned earlier back in the day, guys won by laps. But this guy had a huge lead, but hey, he came and whooped everybody. I mean, just, that's how it goes sometimes. It's the first time at a facility, too. So I don't, if we were to be going back there next year or, you know, later this year,

I anticipate the competition closing up even more. Everybody's been there one time. Everybody's going to make an adjustment. The competition will get closer and closer. It's kind of always like that. But look, I'm okay with it. A guy showed up. Somebody was going to do this probably.

Somebody's going to hit the setup just right. And they did. They called the pitch strategy right. They got tires, got no. And cautions, there weren't, you know, there weren't no cautious to bunch everybody up. And Kyle was able to just drive through them. Yeah, I was saying, I came, I saw, I kicked ass. That's what he did.

I'm fine with it. It's an all-star race, right? The best is supposed to win. And Kyle, it's not like Kyle has never won the race before, right? Yeah, I had a conversation last night with somebody already, I think you'll appreciate. And it was a spotter now, former driver, Brandon Merrinals. And I said, you know, I feel like Kyle races so much that when he gets in any race he doesn't feel any pressure at all.

Like he's in the seat right now more than any other driver in the field. And so when he's running literally sometimes five races, six races a weekend, not even counting heat races. Oh, not a weekend, but a week. And this guy, when he buckles in, like he doesn't get frustrated. He's able to keep his patience. He has more finesse than any driver in the field. And when I look back at Kyle Bush, when he was dominating, what was he doing?

He was running three to four races a weekend, and now he's running one, maybe two, and he's not the Kyle Busch we used to see. Like, is that helping us see this guy be so great? Well, you've got to be in the car to get better. You can talk about simulators, and simulators can help you kind of, I guess. Now, I don't do this for a living. I just listen to what I think smart people say, and simulator racing is not the same. You guys have done it.

You guys have irisaged. That's not the same. It's not the same. And you can say the car is a feel and this and that. But you know that you have to practice to get good at anything. Football players can these AR, you know, they have the AR goggles, like the quarterback can read, you know, can read now and watch the screen. It's all BS because when real bodies are coming at you, you are definitely, you don't hurt you. Right.

Walls don't hurt on the same. And by the way, when you hit a wall in an eye racing, you just reboot and start racing again. You can race differently in eye racing, right? So I don't think the simulator stuff is helping drivers get better. I think it's just an excuse now for not being able to test and be able to run. You know, what Kyle's doing and what other guys are doing now is driving more. You're just driving in a car more. So Kyle Larson, it seems to me, has the most confidence of anybody in the garage right now for a good reason.

First of all, he's an unbelievably talented driver. And you remember when he first came up? Yes. I mean, he had no money. No. He just drove his way to a ride. Yeah. Right?

So he's got this gift. And then he practices that gift. You know, it's like any great player. They practice that more than anybody else. Anybody. In any great sport, they practice harder. They might have an ability. You look at any sport.

Wayne Gretzky was the hardest practicer. LeBron James and Michael Jordan, the hardest practiser. Right? You look at Peyton Manning, the hardest practicer. Right. Any of these guys that are great, Kyle Larson is the hardest practicer. And that makes a difference in any sport. I was going to say what, you know, with Sim stuff now, like I will say if you go to, like when we go to Chicago, I promise you that Sim's going to help guys learn that track. And I will say with the lower amount of practice, you know, we don't get much practice now at these places most of the time 20 minutes or whatever. So, you know, anything these guys can do to knock, make that first lap on the track, just knocked to rust off, you know, the first lap on the track, be a couple tense better because they're more familiar with it. And I think a lot of people, I

I mean, it's getting closer to set up stuff, too, because we don't get the test anymore. So you're testing changes and you're trying to develop stuff like that. But as far as the seat of the pants feel, Carl Larson's, you know, by far getting the most seat of the pants feel of anybody. And it doesn't hurt for sure. I think Sim helps engineering more than it helps drivers. I think the drivers are overused in terms of- New facilities. I think it helps the drivers a lot.

It does. But I'm going to tell you what right now. You could give me A.J. Amadinger at Chicago Street course with zero SIM time. and I think he goes out there in his top five the first lap on a racetrack. But that's his background, though. I mean... I'm just arguing the fact that you said it helps them. I agree with you.

It helps them line of sight, road, you know, eye things, but I don't think it helps them see the pants at all. That's timing. That's the one. Like we talked about, I said about the quarterbacks who they are, you can learn about timing. Mike Tyson said, you can go in there with a hell of a fight, hell of a plan, and once you get punched in the mouth,

everything changes. Exactly. I mean, that was, I think on the broadcast they mentioned, And that was Kyle Larson's 199 different track he's raced on. Yeah. So Chicago will be his 200th. I mean, that says something.

The all-star race is the all-star race for a reason, right? If somebody else won that just by some chance, because of the format one, you know people would be completing. If Ross Chastain doesn't keep wrecking Kyle Arson, he's probably got three more wins this year. He's the fastest guy out there. As you Cliftonia, it'll tell you.

He'll tell you that. By the way, Casey, we've got over a month until Chicago. It could be like 210 tracks by the time we get there. Who the heck knows what Kyle, where he's racing over the next time. You bring up a good point. Chicago, brand new racetrack. What kind of scouting and prep takes place from your side and Fox Sports's side to get ready

to be able to cover that? Because we just talked about spotters in about a 30-foot gap where we can't see the racetrack. How do you get ready for something like what's about to happen there? I think it's probably the hardest thing that I, any production and technical team has done in NASCAR. Wow. Yeah, I would say the challenges of doing a street course are just incredible

because everything, you have to build everything out. I mean, it's just like the NASCAR, the people that are creating the track, right, for NASCAR. I mean, that is a daunting task, right? So now you've got to figure out how to cover it. If you watch, you know, I watch F1 every week. When you watch the street courses at F1, you're making like 28, cuts just to cover the cars. I mean, 20 different pictures, right?

You've got to go, and say it in order, from 1 to 28 in a minute and 42 seconds. That's a, you know, you're talking about 1002 seconds. That's a cut every 3.7 seconds. Wow. If you think about that. So it's like, boom, and boom, and boom. Well, you've got to get the cameras there. And can they see those things?

So doing this street course and everything that goes into it is a daunting task. Now, you know, the NBC folks, you know, Sean Owens is a, a hell of a director and that team is really good. But it's going to be, I think, the hardest thing that anybody from... Wow. That's a big statement. ...is done. Yeah.

I think. Yeah, but I mean, you got to, like you said, how good the team is, I'm sure it's going to be the coverage. I mean, you guys aren't going to have a spot on that track. You can't cover. Oh, yeah. They're going to... We're going to rely on your guys a lot.

Yeah, they're going to do a good job, except for the fact, it's really hard to get to that point. And it's year one, right? Well, you know, hopefully they're going to have practice on Friday. You know, if I'm a director. I want to practice. I want to get as many reps as possible. I hope they could run they run 200 laps on Friday and 200 laps on Saturday. So on Sunday I know where I'm going and when I'm going to be going there. It takes you how many meetings and hours to try to be

perfect for that three to four hour window? You're never going to be perfect. So don't even look at that. But you're trying. You're trying to be great. I always say people, I'm not about perfect. I'm trying to be great all the time. You know, and that's what. what you're looking for. It's like playing a sport. Yeah, I don't want to throw an interception, but sometimes I'm going to throw a tight window. Right.

Right? Well, and I tell, I say this analogy to people all the time. TJ will appreciate this. If I'm a quarterback, right, and I throw an interception. We're losing. In the first quarter,

I can throw a football further than you can and more accurate than you can. Oh, I don't know how you should. Right now. But if I'm a quarterback and I throw an interception in the first quarter, I got the rest of the game to get better. As a spotter, if we screw up

and we wreck our race car in the first third of the race, our race is over. Like we don't, we as a sport, and this isn't about spotters, we as a sport, if we screw up, if we're Noah Graxon, we go in there and hit that inside wall yesterday and the All-Star open, even though you got voted in the All-Star, you're done. Yeah. Like, our sport is harder to recover from big mistakes.

No, you're absolutely right, because there is not right. There is no second chance once that car's, you know, basically back in the garage. Yeah. That's over. And that's what, that's what racing is. I mean, you make a triple bogey on number one in a golf tournament. It's okay. you're good.

Yeah. You know, you can lose a golf tournament in the first round, right? You can't win it. Right. You can be out of a race

in lap one. In the first lap one. And gone. Yeah, and that's the thing like, I mean, if a tire changer it leaves a wheel loose

and it busts brake lines and all those things, I mean, there are circumstances in our career, and our sport that are so hard to overcome when you mess up.

I think NASCAR and racing in general is so much more technical and there are so many more things that can happen. Yeah. It seems that in any other sport and those are the challenges that you know that you all face and that's why when you see teams that have this great success it's great planning and it's you know maybe in that well it's kind of about

perfection when you that car leaves that garage right to get on that grid everything has to be perfect yeah right when it's not you see it right like how embarrassing is it when you run out and all of a sudden somebody didn't connect a line or a hose oh yeah and like and they're like what how the hell did you forget to do that Well, it doesn't happen very often, but when it does happen, it could literally end your day, before your day starts. So there's a lot of pressure there. But going back to what you asked me about, when I make a mistake, it sits with me. And, you know, I'll be able to get on like a quarterback.

I threw the interception. But after the race, that's all I usually can think about. Yeah, that night, it's hard to sleep. You know, we ruined it. I ruined part of the show. It might have been lap seven, but what the hell was I doing there? And tell us what you're doing during the race. You're telling us which camera is hot.

You're moving a lot of parts and pieces. Yeah, but a lot of, I always tell people when you come in a truck and, you know, you guys can come in if you want when you're not working. It's awesome. You ever been in there? It is so cool. I haven't been a TV truck in a long time. It's awesome.

I did a long time ago, but. Yeah. We can, we can bring you in there. I'm coming to St. Louis. When are you guys done? How much long as Fox got broadcast? We go all the way through Sonoma. So St.

Okay. I'm coming to see you, St. Louis. Come and hang out a little bit. But what you'll see is this great team effort. You know, you've got Pam Miller is our coordinated producer. It's brilliant. Been around forever. Forever.

She knows more about racing than anybody. She did this incredible doc documentary on North Wilkesboro. You guys have to watch it. It's spectacular. She just, she digs in on stuff, but she's a great live producer as well. Chuck McDonald's, our lead producer. He's new to us. And Chuck was out here in year one when we did NASCAR 2001.

He was our BA, the graphics guy. Wow. And then he was a pre-race producer, and then he got the lead on college football. Super smart guy, great collaborative worker. And he lets everybody do their thing. But when there's a decision to make, he's ready to make the right decision. Right. Then we've got Eric Mandia, who's back in our – he's our pit producer,

and Rich Gross is our associate director. So all five of us and the technical director, Goose, Bob Gooseley, we're all working together to kind of make – now that's just in the truck. Yeah. Right? And then you've got all the camera guys out there. You've got all our replay people, our graphics people, our engineering people.

You know, you've watched the handheld guys work and sprint the stuff. I mean, this is what it takes to be good. Yeah. Right? So to put all those moving parts together and, like, say, throw the perfect out and be really, really good or great every week, that's what you're trying to do. And by the way, being great is making that viewer happy. Yeah. Engaging with that viewer.

Well, I'm going to tell you what made a lot of viewers happy yesterday. Darrell Walter. It was good to see him back, right? Dude. I love that guy. I love that man. He taught me when I would sit with him in 2001 when we started, and I would just pepper them with questions.

I just want to know everything. And not just about how much they cheated with Junior. And he said, first thing says, Artie, we never cheated. We just worked the system. And I always remember that. Nobody cheats. In NASCAR, you just worked the system. Yeah, absolutely.

I agree with it. Everybody does it. But Daryl taught me so much about racing. I enjoy just spending time with him talking about life in general. And it was great to have them up there. And great to have Larry. That's where I think our sport is so hard is when I watch college football and I watch it religiously, it's my favorite sport to consume when I'm not racing.

And every time I tune in, there are different people on television. So it's hard to get tired of the boogity, boogety, buggy-bugity. But in our world, you got 18 weeks-ish of boogety-boogie-boogie. what people finally were like, I don't want to hear boogie, boogie, boogie anymore. Those same people yesterday were like, damn, it's good to see Darrell Walter. That's life. That's life. Isn't it life? It is. We get tired of the same. Yeah.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's just the way it is. Boogity, boogity, boogiety, put NASCAR. I'm not going to say, ever say, put NASCAR on the map, but for a lot of places, it did. It did. It put it on the map. It, you know, when we came that Fox, and this is just being on a network, okay? What ESPN did was great with TNNN.

was doing was great TBS and you know all the different people that were carrying NASCAR at the time and all four networks were carrying as well you had a different kind of world what when Fox was able to kind of an NBC able to come in and when NASCAR put that all together it changed the dynamic because now we're on a network almost every week and people were introduced to it and we're introduced to the time when we had you know terrific characters you know Jeff was dominant oh yeah Tony was you know remarkable. Rusty was still there. You know, you had some rivalries, you had things, and people were responding to that. Corporate America was responding to that. Kind of caught lightning in a

bottle, but there was some preparation that went with it with NASCAR and Bill France Jr. And seeing that, and Bruton Smith, seeing what was possible. And we brought NASCAR to a broader audience just being on a network week in and week out. And I think we're always looking at how can we recreate that in a different way like we talked about earlier with Marcus. You know, we want to bring it back, but also move it forward. You know, that first Daytona that we did, I went back and looked at the numbers because you guys talk about ratings there once in a while, so I need to check you out, Brett. So the highest rated NASCAR race of all time when we took over was the 1979 Daytona 500.

Wow. Yeah. When there were three channels, by the way. There were three channels, and snow was everywhere on the United States that day. Yeah. And getting that race off was a monumental, just a monumental effort by a lot of people, because in this day and age, it might have been rained out. But Big Bill got, he got that race going.

And CBS had this broad audience. So people were introduced to NASCAR in 1979. That was the highest rated race until our Daytona in 2001. Holy cow. Which is one of the great events and one of the most tragic events. And one of the worst, yeah. When people ask me what is like most memorable thing, It's going to be the fact that my favorite driver was killed in the first race,

that first Daytona 500 race we did. I didn't, you know, I had forgotten that that was your first year, first race. First big race. We had done the duels and all. But it did create this unbelievable tsunami of interest. And we carried over that interest for years and built the sport up. And then inevitably, as things do, they just don't go up forever. Right.

And we did. We took a little bit of a dip and things in the economy hurt us, but we're still driving and trying to get back, you know, get people back and get people interested. It's a more diverse world now from media, as you guys know. Oh, yeah. I mean, like this podcast didn't exist in 2001. No, never even been thought of. The choices that young people have now and what they do. And we have to figure out a way to kind of engage with those young people.

It's not going to come in mass, but it can come in business. building something and having good plans. I think we have a really great plan of flocks. I'm hoping that when this contract deal gets sorted that we'll be back for another, you know, 10 years or more, I want to keep doing this until they literally have to pull me out of the truck and I'm still going to sneak back in there and take over. I was just about to ask that question. What, you know, obviously there's a lot of conversations between teams, NASCAR, even just comments overall about what the future looks like and such as, streaming possibilities. What do you envision or what do you think should happen for the sport

to continue to move forward? What do I think should happen? I work for Fox Sports. Well, obviously that. If I had my choice, we would have every race. Right. Right. But what's the reality. I think what NASCAR is doing right now is looking at the options. And I'm not to sound political, you know, politically correct, but you know, that's what they have to do right now. Look, we love what we do at Fox. We want to keep this sport. We think this sport is not sure. that's valuable, but we're passionate about it. It's good for business. You know, what you pay ends up, you know, what you pay and what you make ends up being

the decision maker with anything that, you know, you do in the business world. I think that NASCAR has been a really good investment for us over the past 23 years, and I'm hoping that. 23. Yeah. You can't believe that, can you? Wow. No, I can't.

Think about me. I'm a lot older. But when you look at what the marketplace is, I'm hoping that the marketplace takes us back. Fox Sports for the first half of the season at least. Let's move on to the DBCA made where we chat about what's going on in the dirt world. Well, I guess already you mentioned, I mean local dirt track racing. The only thing I know about dirt track racing is that Kyle Larson's really good at it. Christopher Bell's apparently really good at it.

Alex Bowman may have had an issue with it. So that's my durrance. I work in television, so I know more than anybody, but I'm I know nothing about dirt racer. Here's what I'm going to tell you about dirt racing for me this week, and I love Clint Boyer to death. But if I had to hear him say one more time on the broadcast yesterday, that this track races like a dirt track and want to pull what hair I have left out of my head out,

the car was never yawed out on the right rear. As a guy who grew up dirt racing, Clint Boyer should have had more sense than to say, the reason Kyle Arson is so good here. Let me tell you something, Clint. Kyle Arson is good. every where we go. It's his best friend. It is his best friend.

They're family buddies right now. You know, I'll tell you this about that. I'll use a Clint term. If the juice is worth to squeeze, I won't comment on Clint's comments. Because he'd probably listen and go, man, Artie, what the hell you laying me out like that for? Come on, dude.

His favorite team's the banana hammocks, too, right? Clint loves to argue. He loves to pick another side. I got to tell you the best thing about Clint, I don't know if the best thing is that we have this meeting trailer and he's always about, he's like Freddie, but he does show up. He's always about two minutes late for the production meeting and we hear him 50 yards before we see him.

Yeah, yeah. Because you're in a little trailer with no real acoustics. And you hear him coming. Yeah. You hear him coming. And you can see his brain bouncing off the walls. But he just loves racing. Yeah.

You know, just understand this. You might not agree what he says. The guy loves racing. He's passionate. He does his heart. He's in he's into it. You know, sometimes, yeah, sometimes Chuck and I want to strangle him, but, you know, we want to strangle down sometimes.

It doesn't mean we don't love what they're doing most of the time. I mean, that's, that's the world. How much longer have those meetings become ever since Clint joined with how distracted he gets? We actually have what we have, I think what we put on in one of those kind of invisible collars where he gets shocked and we don't need. That's what you need. Yeah. Fair.

We've taught him to wait until the meeting's over to get into. to the weeds and he's doing a great job. So the meetings are actually shorter than they've ever been, but then we debrief after the meeting and dig in. His dad, we call him pops. Literally the whole world calls him pops.

He loves racing as much as Clint does. And he's why Clint has that big affinity for loving racing and Clint loves all forms of racing. But I'm going to tell you something, man, if you have a five-minute conversation with Clint Boyer, he could be a promoter, he could be a TV guy, he could be a driver, he wants to be entrenched in all the things that lift the sport up. I believe that. Yeah. And like me, he's an

expert in everything. So if we just listen, if we just listen to both of us, this is why we get along so well and sometimes get into it. He wants to shoot this wide. I go, well, if I shoot it wide, then we can do that. But if I shoot it tight, don't you want to see that? He goes, well, I need it wide when I need it wide. I need a tight when I need a tight. I go, okay, let me just jump into your head, which is something nobody should ever try to do. All right, well, back to the dirt world. Sorry. No, you are all good. And speaking of Clint, you can always catch cash at Millbridge on DirtVision weekly.

So that's definitely something you want to check out. I think he won, like last week, Corso? A few weeks ago, yeah. He did. He won his first race. Yeah. Well, for those of you who are playing the Millbridge drinking game, don't forget to get your drink ready because we have two nights of Milbridge racing tomorrow night and Wednesday.

Nice. You can catch on Dirt Vision or if you're in town for the Charlotte Race. be sure to check us out. I've heard a lot of people ask if you guys are coming, so I don't know. This week? Yes, tomorrow Wednesday. Is Colt McKinney running out there this week? If he's running, I might come all Tuesday.

I've actually thought about that. Or the fact that Chloe will be there, why don't you just come? Well, Chloe is going to be with her boyfriend. Whatever. Don't forget to check that out. I mean, just on Tuesday, Dirt Vision has a pack schedule. We've got Millbridge, Extreme Outlaws, and Microos. So you'll see us there.

worth about late models at state line, Jackson Motherplex, and Beaver Dam Racing just on Tuesday. So that broadcast, I mean, you definitely want to check out DerVision. I watched a little bit of Dirt Vision the other night. I believe I was watching Marion Center Speedway, which you probably have never heard of. I've never heard of that one.

Yeah, and my dad used to race there on Sunday nights when I was about six years old, five, six years old. So that was cool to get on there. They were on late models there, one of the series was running. But it was cool to see go back. I mean, I think Dave Blaney won a sprint car race

a couple weeks ago. Was that last week, didn't he? Yes, I think we talked about that. Sharon, I think. And then Johnny Shots went two for two. Yep. In Ohio. Isn't Sharon their home track?

Blanerville's. They own it? Well, that's their Blaney's home track. Yeah. Yeah. Did you, did you, are you from upstate New York? It's where I grew up, but my family was from Western Pennsylvania.

So my dad racing at Lernerville and stuff in the mid-80s and stuff. That's where I spent most of my time as a kid. So then we moved to New York and became a Bill's fan, the only team from New York. You're not going to get any argument from me. Well, I think they play this year as well. I can't remember if they do or they don't. But, yeah, Western Pennsylvania, a lot of dirt racing there for me. That's great.

I was wondering what your background is you drove, right? I did drive, but I didn't drive until I was in New York, and I ran. mostly asphalt tracks in western New York, central New York, and then moved down here and ran nine street stock races at Concord in a street stock that we built Junior Motors' first race car, I guess, right? Were you Chance 2 or JRM? What were you considered? No, J.R.M. Chance 2 was running their own deal. Okay.

This is like J.R.M., all, everything. Ran nine races there and then went to Daytona and Goody's Dash series car. You want to talk about a speed difference? That's a big... What year is that? O3. O3. I might have directed that Goody's Dash race. Maybe. It was rain shortened. Shane Mills by crew chief.

Oh, yeah. I definitely directed that race. Yeah, it got shortened by rain. It was actually rain delayed, I think, too. If it moved on the Daytona Speedway, I'd actually directed it back then. Yeah, we ran Charlotte the night of the All-Star race, too, which was a lot of fun. Oh, I remember that one really well. There was a lot of big wrecks in that race. Yeah. Well, that was basically detainte, what do we call it, the Daytona Dash? It was with Daytona Crash Series. Yeah, I usually called them Morgan Donor races.

I used to make fun of it. I would say it's the Griffin Funeral Home 500. Oh, gosh. Don't kid about this stuff on racing, man. I know, and it's a joke. Thankfully, thankfully, I did enjoy that. We've been very healthy. We have been blessed.

Del Arnard, we say this on here. Del Arnard's saved. So many lives. So many lives. Jeff Gordon's dead, Texas. Yeah. Elliot of Pocono, Mexico. We can keep going through.

We can keep going. More than anybody who ever think of. Yeah, a million percent. Let's move on the reaction theater. Then about two years ago after an Knoxville race that the truck series ran, it's about the same message. It's not North Wilkesboro's fault that the cup car sucks. Hell yeah, Kyle Larson for winning the race.

But to be honest, I wouldn't have cared whoever won because it was cool as hell that we're back at North Wilkesboro. NASCAR, fix the damn Jen. it's terrible this guy's got the same filter I have Casey I can tell I literally thought it was it was you without a different accent Oh he has called in He calls in his own show

Yeah yeah doesn't surprise me He just misses us when he's not here Yeah And that's it now we don't comment on that No I'm tickled I thought it's funny Yeah I mean we're happy You already made that point We can move on

Can you imagine paying good money to go to that race, the most celebrated NASCAR race of the season, planning a vacation around that disaster. Does that be? My parents who were in their 80s. My mom can't walk up a flight of stairs, and I would rather watch her try to jump rope than to sit through that race one more time. I would rather in my hands and clap for a dancing monkey than to watch that race again.

Why is Tyler Reddick in a car with a beast on the hood? A beast. That's like Ross Chastain driving a car with a pee sign on the hood. Tyler Reddick can't see over the steering wheel unless he's sitting on a box of phone books. Oh, that's me. And in the words of my wife, who won the race today? Kyle Larson, babe. That guy's pretty good.

I'm pretty sure he was peeing. That's the longest pee ever. That's probably what Freddy's going to do when he wakes up. Exactly. If he hasn't already done it without waking up. So that was interesting. Do you think you wrote it out before he said it? I think they definitely think through what they're going to say.

That was thought out because he was... Something you and me have never done. Never done. No, no. Okay. I don't know if it works for him, though. The fact that he talked about Tyler Reddick probably has Casey fuming because that's her. She used to have a, I don't know what you call it, man crush on Christopher Bell.

Now she's on this Tyler Redick kid. Because Chloe and Chloe and, uh, Bo are dating. Are they? Yeah, that's why they're so sweet. It's a Milbridge thing. Have you guys started planning a wedding? Casey has already, I'm sure. She takes amazing wedding photos.

It'd be like Romeo and Juliet. Married at 14. Casey's wedding wedding right there in case you were wondering. Amazing wedding photos are everywhere. If you want to see some photos, I can go out. Thank God she had a kid so we could stop watching. I'm glad we have cameras so we can put the photos up. Thanks.

That's good. Is there more? Oh, yeah. Oh, much more, huh? Two more. Two more. Young money, good old-fashioned ass for him. Spank's that ass.

Damn, I wish that some shit could have went green. the whole way. I would have loved to see just how far he could have lapped. Sad, I didn't get to see his lady. Chug a beer like she told Michael Walter if she was going to. She did. But furthermore, did anybody catch that when he was at the flag stand getting the flag, the dude hanging on the fence wanting to hand him a beer? And when Kyle actually takes it and you look at it, it's a fucking twisted tea. Why the hell would you hand Kyle Larson a twisted tea? And I think he looked at it.

Like, what? Grow a damn sick. Get a real damn beer. I did notice it was a yellow can. I don't like the alcohol shame people,

but if you're a dude and you're handing a badass race car driver or something, don't hand him a twisted tea. Was it Schultz? It might have been

Jason Schultz. Maybe Jason was in the crowd. Good Lord. Oh, man. Listen, Caitlin chugged the beer. She did. She did a great job. She was prepared

to do it. Yeah. That was very impressive. Now, it did take her a little bit, but she had a game plan going into that. Yeah. And we probably should have done a whole series on that. She had a hundred, she had a hundred forty-five laps to plan for it. She did.

I think Fox should do a segment, and you got to record this thing before race day, but you guys need to do a segment on shotgun of a beer. And listen, I've shotgun beers with Clint Boyer before. We need Clint and Caitlin in a shotgun off. Yeah. Can we do that, or is that not doable? No. So I'm going to say no.

You can do it. Yeah, yeah. You could do it. I can't beat her. I'd like to say, I'd like to say yes, but I know the answer is no. Okay. Okay. Yeah, it's a bad idea.

We work with grownups. It's definitely a bad idea. We work with grownups. Yeah. Like grown up people. Grownups. Yeah. Okay.

Unlike me. And probably me. But you're making a grown-up decision. I'm like Peter Pan. I'm never going to grow up. Well, I just, I think Caitlin's persona is amazing. She had on the Winston Cup hat. She brought it.

She brought it. She brought it. She brought North Wilkesboro. She did it. She did it. People may not know this. That is Brad Sweet's sister. So she grew up racing.

Like, all she knows is racing. Way taller. Well, if you were. She's way taller and Brad. And she's beautiful. And Brad's not beautiful. Oh, come on, man. He's not.

I wouldn't say it. I don't judge. than men. And she is so nice and so cool to be around. Just the fact that she would do that on the broadcast, like that's, that's amazing. One more.

It's racing grassroots. Ain't no crapshoots in this all-starrofare. When it was kicked back in 1996, it was the last race I thought we'd see there. To my surprise, it's now been revived. Northwell exposed. Roe is here

Now Mark to Smith if you're catching my drift Bringing back next year I got friends in Wilkes County where the moonshine flows And the beers are plenty and there's racing all day Oh that speedway I'm not big on all-star races when you have it here and my favorite place Oh, I got friends

in wheels county That was nice cigars to call in That's pretty good I thought he's pretty busy these days I met a guy this weekend That writes some songs for the show So yeah It's pretty cool

I've been a lot of people this weekend That's what we need, Artie We need a brand anthem for Fox's broadcast And we need one of our callers and our people To write it and record A little ditty for us Yeah, a little ditty. Diddy?

Little ditty. We didn't even comment. That was a pretty good ditty. Yeah. You know? He just threw that together. He worked hard on that. We have a lot of talented.

Of the four calls, that's the hardest working call. I don't know. That one that was thought out with when he was peeing was pretty good. I was trying to figure out what is, you know, I guess that was what it was. He either has a really big fish tank or he was peeing. Oh, all right. Well, let's move. Don't forget you can also send in your message preferably when you're

you're not going to the bathroom. Just head to anchor.fm slash door over clear. You'll see the message icon. Don't be cheating, Artie. Oh, okay. And we'll keep playing the best ones each week. Moving on to AskDBC. And I know typically we will take fan questions

using hashtag AskDBC. So keep doing that. But this week, we took a little bit of a different spin and had a few of your friends already send in some questions. I have friends. Fake friends. Okay, fake friends, that's fine.

People who pay. People I pay. Yeah. We reached out to some of your high profile folks that work with you, like Caitlin Vincey, Jamie McMurray, et cetera, and said, hey, if you could, and I got to say this before we get in this segment. When I reached out of Caitlin, the first thing she said back to me was, I am so jealous. I've always wanted to interview Artie.

No way. I'm telling you, that's the first thing she said back. And then she sent me like 70. seven questions and Casey and I went through them. That's because she's a professional interviewer. She is, yeah. So we'll let Casey kick this thing off. Yes, the first one is from Caitlin. What sporting event that you directed will you remember forever?

No. There's a lot. I mean, 2001 Daytona 500 is big. And the first Super Bowl I did and the first Masters I did. So it's not one. And it's like, I have three kids, so I have three events. They're all your favorite. That's great.

And listen, the Daytona 500 you referenced. obviously has a lot of tragedy to it, but it also has Michael Waltrip winning his first ever cup race, obviously first ever dates on a 500. What Dale Earnhardt envisioned when he hired Michael to come to work for him. Now Michael is on your team and has been for a long time. What's your relationship like with Michael? Well, first of all, I'll tell you, I'm going to actually get chills when you started talking about that. I really did just now because it was just an incredible.

It was just an incredible thing. You talk about when you're elation and tragedy all within. in like a second. That's what it experienced. I knew that Dale was dead pretty much when I saw Schrader. And I also saw Michael in Victory Lane. I saw Junior in Victory Lane and just saw all this stuff happening independent of each other. And yeah, it was amazing. Now Michael is the nicest person I think I know. He is really just a wonderful and nice person. Anyone said to me, He goes, Artie, Artie, is somebody telling him that Michael Waltrip was mean to them? They're lying.

And it is. Michael is just such an easygoing guy. He'll do whatever you need to do. He, but he works at it. He knows it. You know, he works on all three series, you know, so he keeps up on everything that's going on. I love the fact that he's been successful, you know, even though after, you know, Michael Walter Bracey, he had to close down and all the, you know, the hard work that went into that.

and then it kind of ended. Now he's just doing great. So I love working with Michael, and I love Michael, period. Yeah, same for me, man. He's done so much for me in my career. He's, the first two drivers I started with was Ellie and Michael. And what great guys. And Michael is, he's an awesome guy.

So I got the next question. It's from our buddy, Hermie Sadler. And he told me about a weekend where you guys were roommates on his bus and you had a plumbing issue. Well, I don't, let's make it. I wasn't a roommate on Hermie's bus. I just was a guest that wouldn't leave. You were a permanent fixture.

I was a permanent fixture, and you know why, but back in the early 2000s, and most of you guys don't remember this, you couldn't get to the track. Forget about leaving the track. You couldn't get to the track, sometimes on Saturday. So, Hermie and I had, you know,

created this bond through autism, and I was selling it. I'd love to stay a track. You could stay with me, Audit. Audit just stay with me. And I stayed with the Sadler. I stay with Hermie probably more than half the races. And sometimes with Angie and at the time, the two girls before the third girl was born.

It was already on the couch and the four or five Saddlers back in the bedroom. So my first time staying, I may have not understood how our motor coach toilet worked. I think that might be what Hermey is probably referencing. there was not a good smell and there wasn't Hermie had to do a lot of things that he hadn't planned on So he had to clean up your . He had to clean up a . I love it, I love it.

Well, TJ is going to go next and the guy that he's got a question from is the Pied Piper. Yeah, so next year. Who's it from, T.J. Dale Jr. Next year, points race. 400 laps or all-star again at Wilkesboro. So I would love, I would love to see a Thursday night before Easter, North Wilkesboro

Cup Race. And that's what I'd like to see. For points? I'm down. Now that's just me. I think it would be so awesome. A standalone. Everybody gets there one day, one day shoot, and, you know, it saves the holiday, which is really important,

and it gets us back to North Wilkesboro for a race. That's just my thing. It doesn't come from Fox. It doesn't come from anybody. That's just something I'd love to do. But there's, you know, there's math and money that has to go into that. Lots of that. Yeah.

Well, since we're still missing Freddie over here, I'll go ahead and ask this question, which is from Jamie Mack. Biggest changes you've ever liked or disliked in NASCAR over the last 20 plus years. Well, I don't comment on the cars and the technology. I guess maybe I shouldn't because I don't know anything about it really. I do hate the fact that the cars are all the same. I mean, I loved when the Monte Carlo looked like the Monte Carlo and everybody drove the different cars. They were stock cars back then.

But that kind of, that era kind of went. I hated the 2007 car. Yeah, with the wing. The wing. I mean, I just hated because what I always thought, A stock car was not a racing car. We built a race car. We built a stock car and we made it fast.

Right? So that's what I love about NASCAR and stock car racing. And that changed. And there's a lot of reasons why it changed and I don't really understand the technical reasons. But wouldn't you love to see those real makes and models out there like in the old days? The old days, like you talk about 12 or 13 different cars being out on the track.

I'm talking about the 60s. Yeah. You know, and it was cool. And I love the Ford Chevy, you know, the battles. You know, you were a Ford guy. You were a Chevy guy. Motor City battles. Right.

I mean, it was big. And that little Dilbert, the cartoon guy, would be peeing on top of the Ford if they were Chevy guy. All then stickers. Right. Yeah. So. What we need now is a Ross character pissing on stuff. Well, I'm sure it's out there.

I'm sure it is. If it's you, Colin. Yeah. But that's the thing. I just wish that the cars look different. You're right. And I guess I'm going to take it a step further and ask you a question. And this is about TV, again, not about the cars in terms of what they are specifically.

But these bodies are so damn durable. Does it piss you off when you see guys just banging the things and they don't have to pit to fix it anymore? Like from a production standpoint, not from the technical standpoint of making the body. I personally don't like a common body like we've got, a one-piece body that's durable. Do you wish that we had more drama when guys make contact? Yeah. But I also, what I don't, what I hated is when a car came out with had no chance to do anything but run a lap or two and was running for points in those times. And they just, they weren't like there's going to be slow cars, but then there was crap. Yeah. You know, and the car was beat to hell. Yeah. Right. And it didn't belong in the racetrack. So I don't miss that at all. But yeah, you see a guy, you know, really smack the wall hard. Sometimes it's rear end to front end and they're still driving. Yeah. I mean, Michael McDowell.

Yesterday was dog tracking. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's, look, technology is important. And they tried it out with the, write the Xfinity cards first. And it saves people a lot of money. This sport, one of the biggest issues the sport has is it costs a lot of money, you know, to put one guy in one race car. Yeah.

You know, it's costing you $20 plus million a year to field a competitive car. Right. Like, so, you know, we're asking. so many different things of the different areas of people. Yeah, we want a sturdy car, stable car, so we don't have to replace these cars. You know, we don't have to build for 32 cars for a season. And then we're kind of criticizing them for, oh, this car's too damn durable. So which way do we want it?

Right. Sometimes we want durability? Sometimes we don't. We don't, yeah. Okay? What we do need is cautions. We do need cautions. We need more cautions because when the fields get backed up and they got a bunch together,

you get great racing. Yeah. And there was some good racing, by the way. we haven't talked about that in the back of the field. Kyle just checked out because he was just damn better than everybody was. And the car was better than everyone. They just found that magic sauce between Cliff and him. But there was some good racing that was going on.

You know, a caution bunch of up the field would have really helped us. Maybe next year we should run a little bit more of heat type stuff. I mean, I'm talking about knockout heat stuff. Right. And you'll come out there and... So you like that idea as a TV guy. Run some knockout races. I love my personal opinion, not this point of anybody else, is that I would love some knockout races, but I want second chance and I even want third chance.

Because I want our stars to have a chance to make sure they're in the main. Here's what I had in my brain yesterday. I want to still pay a million bucks to the winter, but I want to pay $100,000 to the guy who passes the most cars. I think that's a great idea. But now, you also have to do quality passes, because when you start adding up those passes, if you're outside, you know, if you keep dropping back and passing people. Like, I can't beat Larson, right? I can't, so I'm going to just keep dropping to the back and then just run it to the front? Yeah.

Okay. So you also have to count the dropbacks. Right. Okay. You're talking about the guy that starts the deepest impact, you know what I mean? Like, not Larson. I mean, legit, whoever passes the most cars, because guess what that incentivizes him to do is a place like North Worthboro? Move them.

Move them. That's what you want. That's what short track racing has always been. Move them. And I think people tried to move people. Is that an event? that we could experiment with like package-wise too like maybe we find a different you know maybe we talked about last week run what you brought a bigger motor bring some different stuff one thing

that i saw is this isn't you can't move a guy and they can't i've seen many guys i've seen them make contact next to the corner and back everything that i've grown up watching racing if you make contact with back of that car it's going to wiggle that guy it does nothing but shoot this guy off this corner and that's how these guys who get to each other in the middle. The only way to move a guy now is to overdrive the entry and get on them on entry and shove them out of the way. You can't, I saw Chase Briscoe worked the back of Lugano's bumper for lap after lap in the middle of the corner.

Every time he would hit him, and knock him away. And in the truck or Xfini car, that is not going to happen like that. If you bump that guy in front of you, it's going to, he's not going to be able throttle up. So let me ask you guys, because I don't, I don't know the answers to this. Like the rear diffuser and everything, the weight of that rear end now,

is that heavier than the weight has ever been comparatively? And does that mean that that's why they can't, that that bump really projects them? I don't think it's just, I don't think it's a rear weight thing. It's just a car stock. It's a sports car now. We're this far off the ground, everywhere we go.

And they got, we have more tire than we ever have and less motor. And you guys always talk about, and this is what, once again, I'm outside of my, really in my sphere of understanding. I live in that world. But more horsepower would be, would create more racing because it would set the better drivers of heart. Well, they got to have less, I think they got to have less grip.

Less grip, more horse power. Yeah, because, yeah. Put them on the edge. Like whenever the, like, I always believe this, we talk about this a lot in TV. If the drivers are complaining about something, we need to keep it. If the drivers are happy, we need to get rid of it. And I don't mean that to criticize them. No, I get it.

Look, they want to be comfortable. They want to be damn comfortable. This is what I do. Oh, yeah. They're also selfish. But they're selfish because this is what they do. We all want to be comfortable in our lives. But what makes racing great is when you can deal with the discomfort of what's around you.

And the better racers deal with the discomfort. You make them too comfortable, it ends up not being as good racing. You know, no grip, you know, hot day, right? A lot of horsepower. That's what I want, yeah. And I always think, I think the cars, I don't think they should even know what the package is. I think they should get there on Sunday and this is the package

and all guys figure it out. Surprise. Right? Yeah. Surprise. This is what we got this week. On that topic of trying something new, I know NASCAR again tested out those what-weather tires.

What did you think of that? I thought it was awesome. Same. I thought it was the greatest. Yes. It's the unknown. Oh, we have a little known now that we can do that. Yep.

And this is what Marcus and I were talking about. This is what the all-star race sometimes it brings to you. It brought the shootout stop. restarts to NASCAR, which is now, you know, this is what makes it really cool. Yeah. Right. Instead of having those lapers on the outside, yeah. Yeah. It was crazy back then. But this is what makes it really cool. You saw something and it worked. And listen, credit NASCAR, credit Juson for, you know, just on Hamilton, for getting, you know, for

those guys up there agreeing, hey, we're going to, we're going to do this. We're doing this. Elton Sawyer, we're going to do it. It's not a rain tire. It's a wet weather package. And it worked. and those tires were soft and they had a race on them and they had a deal with that and it was really cool. Here's when I bought into the whole wet weather tire thingy is when we were at the roval and it was an absolute downpour and we watched those guys go out there and get on the oval portion of the track hauling ass. And I was like, man, if we can go out here and run 140 plus miles an hour at Charlotte Motor Speedway through turns two and down the backstretch, there's no reason that our audience on TV and our audience in person shouldn't be able to see a race when it's wet.

And that's what they've done. It was fun. It was fun. It was great. It'd be hard to run an oval and rain like that, but they did a, I think what they're doing with the rain tires, putting them on. And I almost wish we would just race on the rain tires and to dry it because they're on top of the track. They're sketchy a little bit, and they're a handful. And maybe that, you know, look, Goodyear has such a contrast in what they're trying to do.

Always, yeah. And that's the biggest problem. I mean, you can't always just blame Goodyear or blame NASCAR. Sometimes it's just like, this is business. Like, Goodyear doesn't want their tires going to crap. No. And what I always, what I was talked about with our guys is like, when we see a tire shredding, we need to talk about, Goodyear said the recommended air pressure is no less than 20, 14 pounds or whatever hell it is.

They started that car at six. You know, remember California. This is human air. Exactly. They're trying something. So they paid the price. It's not Goodyear's paying the price. And I think sometimes people are a little bit,

I think you're living your own little world, and you think that everybody is looking at this world going, you're not going to sell as many tires. But if we talk about the fact that this is what the crew chiefs are doing, this is what the engineers are telling them to do. We're going to start at six pounds of air pressure, and it'll build up, and then at lap 22, we're right on the sweet spot.

If people understand that a little bit, then I don't think Goodyear takes as much heat. And listen, good year, they're trying to sell tires to the consumer. Last thing they want is a tire quote blowing because they don't want people to fear blowing a tire if they're a consumer putting it on their passenger car. And to your point, I am for a soft tire. Our cars have way too much down for us, too little horsepower. And Goodyear has probably the hardest job of anybody with these corner speeds being higher than they've ever freaking been with this particular style of car. And oh, by the way, let's go to a track that haven't been paved since the 80s.

Yeah. 81, I think, was when they said. It's not just tire pressure either. Like, Matt, we all know that. that camber in the right front makes a turn. It's everything that engineers say. It's faster. And they get that, and the crux is going,

this is how you're going to get fast when you need to be fast. Right? And, you know, the technology and the, I would tell you, the human horsepower mentality goes into setting these cars up now, it's just remarkable to me. Yeah. How much goes into it. I don't think people really understand how many people are working on

making this car go fast and doing the right thing. things. And I'm amazed at the technology that NASCAR has. And maybe that's one of the problems is that, you know, back in the day, we run carburetors and manifolds and we're not getting into that indie car stuff. We're not getting into that Formula One crap. We're just going to be old school driving. Right. Right. Some of that, and then all of a sudden, engineers are here, and they're telling you what to do. Yeah. Like I was Darrell and Rusty when you talk to them. I mean, they were making changes. You guys remember? Oh, they would tell you what you're doing in my car. Yeah. Well, you know, that was rusty, you know, back at the end, he wanted to make this change.

The energy would go, no, that won't work. Yeah. And the engineer was right. Right. But once the engineers take over, the sport becomes a little different. Yeah. We're a lot different. A lot different now.

Yeah. What an idiot. It's time for What an Idiot. And I think our number one contender is the guy who can't defend himself because he's not here. Yeah, Freddie's definitely an idiot. I really wanted to give my, What an Idiot to the Crum family up in Hickrie. It's on my list. I got multiples this week.

I did two this week, but I really want to get to the Crumb family for just being idiots. But I'm going to actually give it to the guy who may have the best tanning secrets in all of NASCAR. And what I'm going to ask of him is at the end of the show, when we take our picture, I would love for him to take his hat off and his shirt. And I don't know about his pants. I don't know what his legs look like. But our producer, Andrew Curlin. What are your intentions, Brett?

Andrew Curlin is burnt to a legit crisp. He threw that baby all on. He thought he was a 16-year-old on the beach. What the f***ed did you put on? Nothing? That was the problem. What day did this happen? Saturday.

Saturday. So it's been two days. So it was overcast. If y'all were there on Saturday for most of the day, I'm like, all right, I'm going to be okay. And then I go in the infield and the cross-over gate closes. I can't get to my sunscreen in the car. And then the sky just over there. Because there's no sunscreen in the infield.

This is also. You know, I probably should have... I'm going to tell you what it looks like you found as a Tannenbatte. I'm... I know some people if next time you can just text me. I'll get them. I'll get to the Fox Featherlight. Jamie will help you out.

You know, he put diesel in his dad's gas power car, right? No, come on. You didn't know that? He's doing a racing podcast and he did that? What generation are you considered to be? I'm curious. There's no letter for him. Gen Z?

Gen Z? Are you a Gen Z? Gen Z? Are you a Gen Z, really? Oh, you can't even... You know how hard. you have to work to get that in there? Like, it doesn't even fit. It doesn't fit.

No. Right. There's a reason it doesn't fit. And it's green, by the way. Yeah, yeah. Well, I learned that lesson for sure. I definitely. Mike hired him.

Just see. Before the sunburn, though. Yeah, but after the fuel. Andrew, congratulations. You're my, what an idiot. Artie, do you have any idiots for your week? Oh, come on. I'm here myself, so.

How the hell did I do this, right? True. I did this because I like I enjoy Brett a lot I always have well there's your idiot comment of the day I know and I wanted to meet TJ and Freddie in person because here's why I'm here I didn't tell you guys this is why I came today Freddie and thank you once again for honoring me with your presence is that you know for years we use your voices on television sometimes for entertainment value especially you you could be a little funnier TJ when I go it's hard you need to It's hard for me to get like that. When I go to spot races, I am... You're in it. You have to give them credit, though. Post-Pensky, TJ is way more fun.

Okay. Bottom line is, we've been using your voices for years, and it's great stuff. I think that's one of the things that sets NASCAR apart and racing apart is you get the radio communication, which is usually very serious stuff that you guys are doing and really interesting stuff. When you guys are talking about other people's lines and just laying that stuff out for those guys. Then you realize that this is like a team effort.

It's really cool. Yeah, the driver's got the, he's got the wheel, but he doesn't know that line worked until you told him that line worked. So I really appreciate that so much in the broadcast that we get a chance to kind of eavesdrop on you guys and use that. I was very fortunate in my career already to spot for Elliot, who I had a tremendous relationship with. He's like a brother to me, Jeff Burton,

who I had known when I started spotting for him for over a decade. And then obviously Clint, who was somebody before I started a spot for him. We went on vacations together, went to bike week at Myrtle Beach. So when I put my headset on, it was just like talking to you right now. It wasn't like I've got to lock in and go into character and be this guy. Like it was like, I've got a job to do. And you being a football guy, I've always looked at spotting as I'm an offensive coordinator in this particular part of the game. And the offensive coordinator has a job to do. And I take that job very serious. Safety first and competition second. Because the last thing I want my guy to do

was wreck. And the first thing I want my guy to do is haul ass. So what can I do to keep him in a moment, keep him safe, keep him hauling ass. But at the same time, if we're under caution or something stupid happens, my personality is to say it like I see it. So I appreciate you saying that because I can tell you, I personally love watching and hearing radioactive unless my name is on the screen. And then I'm like, oh, what did I say? Because I just never know. I love radioactive Tuesday. I watch, You know, I watched The Hub, and Tuesday, of course, is my favorite day to watch The Hub. And I always wanted to be interesting. I want to see who was funny.

I want to see, I want to hear the good stuff. And radioactive is one of the great things. And we can access that stuff, you know, live. Yeah. And we're trying to do it. We're actually working on the technology that Radioactive kind of uses because they have time to break it down. But we've got this technology that we're working on, which does kind of do the readout, like Formula One has. Wow.

Yeah. So it's not. perfected yet. It's still a little bit of a science experiment, but I would love to be able to do more of it. Look, Clint, you shouldn't be listening to this or Mike or anybody else in the booth, but it would be cool to just do a race with natural sound. Right. And you do need some. I will be cool, especially a short race. But right, not, you know, and, you know, by the way, short races, maybe on Saturdays we have short races with cup guys. We'll sprint stuff like they're doing at F1 now. Just get the crowd out there to see these guys race a little bit. But doing the radio and listening to you guys work

is really a lot of fun. My favorite Clint Boyer conversation we ever had under caution over the radio is, I don't know what happened, but a Kenny Rogers song, I don't know if I started singing it or if it was on the PA system or whatever, and we started talking about Kenny Rogers. And then we started talking about islands in the street with Dolly Parton. And I asked Clint, point bike, I said, man, do you think they ever did it? And So we were talking about Kenny and Dolly and making Whoopie. Remember that love show? What was that?

Was it Love Connection? Love connection. Okay. Chuck Willer. Yeah, Chuck Wooler. They're talking about whoop. I was like, you think Kenny and Dolly ever, like, did it? Jeez. I'm up there trying to figure who's got what sets of tires left and who's on different strategies.

I said you're over here. Well, you never work with Boyer. True. If we had kept it serious with him, we'd have been in big trouble. I will say that we did have, when I was with Dell Jr. We had, we had our own little system. you'll hear me say like I used to say one bar that meant like the rail skins one no no that was the pizza delivery okay um if I said hey the pizza just got delivered it means I saw that they that watched it at one but uh no we had a

system of you know the if you went by us and you hit us in the door you'd be one bar like your cell phone signal it's not very good oh okay yeah we were like hey outside one bar that means give that guy a little bit more room right so yeah we had a system who is your way to say hold on That's what you had. Oh, yeah. You one bar? One bar. If somebody got into us and he got, you know.

I want to know who a one bar was. Oh, there was a handful. No, I want to know a name of a one bar. I don't want you to be a wimp right here. Like, I want you to lay it out there. Probably Clint Boyer. Who's a one bar? I mean, it's just people you didn't want to be beside that.

I mean, back then it was probably like Sam Hornish. Okay. All right. But I mean, in an indie car, Sam Hornish should drive around you in a heartbeat. But it was an indie car. No, it was not an indie car. People have tried that. One guy's been successful.

Yeah, it was a Bad ass Stewart. Yes. It's a lot hard to drive these cars and it is to drive anything else. Absolutely. Yep, it is. We're getting ready to see,

you know, obviously this weekend coming up. I'm surprised Brett hasn't said anything about it yet. TJ, your turn, what an idiot. My bad, sorry, we'll get there. I got three of them. Oh, wow. Well, the Hickory fight is ridiculous. That's, you know, that, from what I saw on track

didn't, never use your car as a weapon like that. Like there's a difference between me brushing, you know, I brush you into the wall a little bit, you send me up there. And it wasn't even like a bad. It was just like a nudge. Didn't even like mess them up bad. And then the right hook really makes me mad on the front missing it and then actually putting other people involved in the wreck that weren't even a part of it. Then the whole thing on the spotter stand where one guy walks up and just blindsides another guy, breaks his nose, swells his eye shut, then starts kicking him when he's on the ground. these people should probably be suspended from all the racetracks that they try to go to or arrested arrested so um there's just no

i get it you know a tempers flare but there's a line and using your race car like that as a as a weapon and tore up your own car more than you tore up the other car up that's the big that's already worse um just no place in it for that and i know i know i know landing a little bit i know i know his dad and i raced against as dad many times in a dash series. Really good guy. But that's just short track racing. There was nothing there that I saw that deserved a guy to get his nose broke, his eyes well shut, and a tore-up race car.

So that's my first, what an idiot. My second one was Freddie for getting kind of stuck in the racetrack with the gates. I don't know if you guys knew that or not. Oh. Truck race stuff. We're getting ready to like roll off for the truck race and there's no Freddie. Well, apparently he was stuck inside the racetrack. So, wow.

Yeah. Now, I'll tell you that last week when you introduced him, right, when he introduced himself, he said, spotter for Bubba Wallace and the Cup series and for the truck series, well, that's right, I spotted for Bubba. He forgot what he had done on Saturday now. Yeah, he just forgot. The Saturday, I guess, was that far away. Yeah.

So it doesn't surprise me what's happening. No, he got up there super late. So, and then, obviously, Freddie for, completely throwing away his obligations this morning of his other part-time job. So, and then the individual, behind the spotter stand, there's a row of Port-a-Johns. I'm sure you saw him there. Yeah. Somebody went into the first one and not to use the restroom for the restroom, but went in there to blow a motor.

And that's probably, is that not the last place you'd want to go? Yeah, you should blow a motor outside. There's nothing but like weeds and stuff out back. I don't know how you go in there and blow a motor. Like, well, like, that's not the ideal place. And they didn't even make it into the area where you should have thrown up, too. It was like everywhere. I don't know that this was going to include gastrointestinal distress as well as.

Well, people would open the door to go in there and be like violent. Oh, no, not going. Just what we needed. It was definitely violent. Well, I think that's a perfect time to move on to DVC picks. Congratulations, Brett. You won a race. It didn't even count.

Yep. Picking Kyle Larson. You guys gave me first pick. I picked the best driver in the world. Well, you've had a first pick. You've been successful. You realize you had a first pick a lot right now because you have basically. Yep.

I'm a head of Freddie. I'm not a last year. And last year, you used to make fun of me for how much I was losing it. Did you give him credit for that? What? You gave him credit for the win? For the win, yeah. He won't.

We won't be doing it's five years. Damn. It's his third all-star win too. You gave him first. You give him first pick with a whole open roster. So? If I don't know, not I'd have thrown the previous race away. He clearly needed it.

Oh, I would say Freddie goes first. Are we going to pick for Freddie? Freddy's, he's done. Freddy gets in. He's D&S. You want me to pick for Freddie? No, no. I picked Josh Bylicky.

There you go. That's who he's got. Perfect. That is. I like. You did I do like that. I do like that idea. There should be some sort of repercussions for not.

We are. Nothing personal about Josh, because I think he's, You know, he's racing hard every week. Yeah. You should pick up for Freddie. You should pick somebody who's not racing. T.J. Oh, the 600, huh?

That is where you're going. Artie, who would you take if you could pick anybody in a field? Nope. Kyle Larson. Solid choice. I'm kind of surprised by that. Really? Totally.

T.J. I'm getting there. You chill. Wait, Brett. Who did you pick? He didn't pick you. I go last I won last week That's right, that's right

Be nice Monday's right My sunburn's f***ed your brain up Really did He's had a lot of speed lately Probably before I know This is a long race It's taking you a long time to pick too

And this guy knows how to work his way forward No matter where he qualifies He did it at Darlington And if he would have he almost won at Darlington So I'm going to go at the closer I'm going to Kevin Harvick That's a good pick Boy he didn't want to put

those rain tires on this weekend. He did not. I think he was quite articulate about that. He did a good job of explaining he didn't want to do that. I will take a big underdog here. Kyle Larson. Thanks, Artie. Wow, that's cool.

You got Larson left. You get to pick Larson third. Wow, that's the steal. Strategy. I'm going to go with, I'm laying up right here because I'm picking last. Don't make excuse. It's just make a pick. I am, but I was looking at somebody.

I'm going to go with Ricky Stenhouse. Junior. Junior, junior. Junior, junior. Who wrecked himself yesterday. I'm saving him for the plates if I can. Yeah. If he's there.

Oh, well, thank you. As always, Artie. Code 600, Artie, longest race of the year. Oh, yeah. What do you do to stay awake during that thing? It's never a problem to stay awake, Brett. I get jazzed up. Yeah.

Yeah. Roger Pence. being checked up. For a complete 20 for our race, he can do the 600. That's amazing that he can do that. What's your favorite part about the 600? I know.

What's your favorite part about the 600 already? My favorite part about the 600? I guess the problem, the whole setup to it, I think it's really cool. I love it. When the choppers come down, those guys come repelling out of there.

I mean, I don't love, as I always say about the 600, because 500 wasn't enough. I do enjoy the weekend a lot. I think it's really cool. I always like to remind people that Memorial Day is a commemorative day, not a happy celebration day. And I think it's a really important thing,

and I think for NASCAR, especially of all the sports. And I think it's really important. One of the greatest days in racing. Oh, I love waking up and having a race, and I love then watching another race. I've got to fit meetings and stuff in between them, and I'm always trying to figure out, exactly when I should have those meetings, which is the different schedule than the other.

The track plays it, the ND-500 on the big screen as well. It's going on. I mean, I look at Memorial Day as, and this is easy for me to say because I didn't serve, but when people say Happy Memorial Day, some people get upset. And I basically rationalize that as they didn't sacrifice their lives for us to be sad. And they gave all, and we need to appreciate that. And we're able to do what we do on Memorial Day here in the United States of America, run the Coca-Cola 600 because of that sacrifice.

protect our freedom. One of the coolest things ever said to me. You'll appreciate this. I was at San Antonio, Texas, where they bring all the guys in for the United States Air Force when they basically sign up and enlist and to go through Basic, right? And a general walked in, a three-star general, and he said, if our skies are not safe, neither are we. What you guys do in the motorsports world to help us recruit young men and women to come join the United States Air Force is important to our freedom. And so when I look at the sponsorship of the United States and back in the day, the Army car, Del Jr. had National Guard for a while. I literally, like, it's easy for fans to look at that and go, man, why would you put our military on the side of a race car? Well, they did it to recruit

talented men and women because when you bring a race car to a high school, what a kids want to do? They want to look at it. It gives a recruiter an opportunity to have a conversation with those young people and ultimately come in and protect our freedom. So I look at Memorial Day as a special day of the year. like you said, but I do appreciate the racing. I would love to go to Monaco if I were rich. I would love to direct the Indy 500 and the Coke in one day. God. So, like, that almost happened because we were in the bidding for indie.

Against ABC, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I walked into, actually, the last All-Star game that was played at the Old Yankee Stadium. And my boss, aforementioned David Hill, looked at me, he goes, Audi, you were almost going to direct the Indy 500 and the Coke 600. And I said, what happened? He goes, I told Tony George we weren't interested.

He didn't say it that way. But basically he said Tony George wasn't, he wasn't interested. He used other words. And I go, well, that bums me out. He goes, to f-fucking break. Well, there's been drivers that do the double. I don't know if a spotter's ever done the double. That'd be cool.

I don't think so. You've got to have that plane thing. Yeah. Larson's supposed to run it next year, right? Yes. So in theory, his spotter should be able to do the double. Who spots for Lars? Tyler Mon.

Oh, okay. Yeah. I should know that, right? There is a, I did have a group of fans message me, and it's, there's like three or four of them that are doing the Indy 500. They're going and getting a little four-seater plane that, I guess one of them has, and they're flying to Charlotte to make the 600. Nice.

Can I get on that? That's awesome. That's a cool deal. I thought it was pretty key. He asked me if I haven't know anybody's ever done, and I said I don't, I have never heard of anybody doing that. But that's pretty cool. Happy a Coca-Cola 600, Indy-500, Monaco, GP week. Just don't drink until you get to this.

Hey, don't forget about Drivers-only. Drivers-only. Drivers-only Xfinity race. We got Joey and Kevin. Oh, that's always a cool broadcast. It's always great. And these guys are so good. Blaney, I mean, Bubba, I'm pumped.

I'm actually directed. I don't usually direct the Xfinity races, but I'm going to direct, and Pam's going to produce. You bring up Bubba's name. I want to talk about this for a minute. He was caught flipping the camera off yesterday. And I want to tell you guys... Was he flipping the camera off? No, he wasn't flipping the camera off.

That's what I want to talk about. Freddie was supposed to talk about it, but clearly he's not here to talk. So Bubba was in the process of... Listen, the guy just ran a race. The guy just finished second. He's bombed. Most of the race, his second place would be great. Not when the winner wins a million bucks and you win $7,500.

It sucks. Okay, so he gets out of the car and he's trying to basically just chill out. Well, his PR guy is in the background behind the camera, basically making the motion. of get your collar corrected so that we can have all of our brands displayed for this interview. And listen, there's a lot of hand signals

that go on between guys at the racetrack. But when his PR guy was trying to tell him or PR gal, I don't know his PR people, when they were trying to tell him basically arrange yourself to be appropriated for this interview, he took the time to hold his middle finger up to basically say,

fuck off, I'm ready. I just ran a race. I'm mad. And that's Bubba's personality. People, listen, don't, If you want to hate Bubba Wallace, that's okay. If you want to love Bubba Wallace, that's okay. I said last night, if I were Bubba Wallace, I would call Vince McMahon today, and I would fly to Connecticut, Bristol, Connecticut, and I would say, put me through 48 hours. Is that where it is?

Yeah. Okay. Put me through four. Bristol's where ESPN is. Put me through 48 hours of training of how to be a heel. Because we're to the point to where Bubba is our biggest heel in NASCAR. But listen, this middle finger was not toward the camera guy. It wasn't toward Fox Sports.

It wasn't toward the fan base. It was toward his PR person. It was a funny dit. It was. Exactly. So let it go. Let it go. It was just a caught in a moment thing.

It wasn't like he was. I flip you all all the time. You flip me off all the time. Hey, in my first podcast, can I end this? Yeah, please. Okay, because I have to run to the restroom as soon as we're over. Is that how we usually finish this? Yeah.

We can't. I will jump over the table. Yeah. Thank you for coming. Oh, thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun because I got a chance to talk. Well, you've got a chance to talk. You never have a microphone or a camera on.

I don't deserve a microphone. I got smart people that talk on here. I love you, buddy. Thank you for coming. Yeah, thank you for coming on. See you guys. We're out. Have a great week.

Yep. See you. At Millbridge. An all new episode of Speak Street is out now. Be sure to hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and never miss another Speed Street episode. This bit of bad assery was bad assery. It was made by Dirty Moe Media. Dirty Mo!