Door Bumper Clear - 317 - The Clash: Right Call, Wrong Place

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

TJ Majors, Brett Griffin, Freddie Kraft, and Casey Boat are back from LA for another season of DBC. Even with a shortened weekend, tempers flared at the Clash between Joey Logano and Ty Gibbs. Plus, our preseason preview will get you ready for the upcoming 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season. And don't forget to hit up the Reaction Theatre hotline after each race to give us your thoughts on all the action (704)-802-9572.Check out the new DBC YouTube page to watch all your favorite clips, anytime, anywhere! https://www.youtube.com/@DoorBumperClear 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.

The following is a production of Dirtymoe Media. Still good. By one. No number dry, man. It'll come to you. Fall asleep on the gate out back. Keep up in top. Here.

T-7. Tep a bottom three. Bottle three-wise. Go, go, go, go, go. Bopper, clear. Still there. Bumper, bumper, clear, clear, clear. Hey, everybody.

I'm T.J. Majors, spotter of the six cup car this weekend. It's a lighthouse this weekend. Yeah, I mean, he's kind of here. here. What's up, Freddie Crafts, spotted for Bubble Wallace this weekend. Good to be back here. I'd say, TJ, usually I got Brett on my right, and the TJ's on my, my wide right,

is it too soon to say wide right? Very wide. Sorry, but now we have Brett live from, are you, I'm assuming you're in Orlando, Florida, is that true? Disney World has me held captive. Mickey Mouse will not let me leave this place. I want to get out of here just as bad as y'all want me to be there, trust me.

Yeah, man, I was down here, watch race from down here and I was glad you guys got it in man I was worried about y'all for a little while yeah uh we'll get to that in a minute what's like Casey how are you hey guys Casey boat here first show of the 24 24 season 24 season um and I would say the season has started off with a real bang yeah thank God thank God we have breaking news in the clash world of they moved they did something unprecedented which I seen people getting crap up to Bob Pockris and and Jeff Glove and Jordan, who everybody else

about using the same word unprecedented, but it was. Yeah, it was. Maybe you didn't even know what the word of precedent. I mean, but NASCAR has never,

ever moved to race up an entire day to get us the hell out of there and thank God they did. That might have been my favorite tweet of the season so far when Bob had to come back and be like,

I don't know what else you want me to say. My favorite Bob is, my favorite Bob is that. That's my favorite. Damn. Brett, I heard you had something you wanted to tweet, but you're saving for the show

about the race being moved up. Do we need to start that now? Well, I mean, look, I mean, look, NASCAR, they didn't really have a, they didn't really have a choice here. But I was disagreeing with some people saying, if we don't run the race now, we're going to have to cancel it. NASCAR has, in my lifetime, never canceled a race. Now, we postponed a few, even postponed one from September all the way to Thanksgiving weekend, but we've never not been able to run a race. So could they have stuck around there and done it on Wednesday or Thursday? Yes, would that have been ideal? Absolutely not. Not with all you guys have trying to get ready for

for Daytona, but man, just watching this race in general, I was a big fan of this race moving to L.A. for year one. I mean, all three of us were there. We talked about it on this show how, how great the vibe was, how great the energy was, how we saw new fans in the stands. And for whatever reason, the buzzkill kind of come in last year. And obviously this year, with the weather and everything else, it was a complete buzzkill. So watching that thing on TV, man, I was really missing the good old clash from Daytona. And we, We've seen races leave places before. I mean, we saw Darlington Luzza Southern 500.

We saw North Westboro close down for 40 years, and we see NASCAR come back and make it right. I really hope when they revisit what to do with this race, they put it back where it started, which is in Daytona with pole sitters. And man, that Guadalajara and Mexico City rumor that I saw y'all floating around, God bless y'all and have fun. I ain't going down there. You know, I think that something that a lot of people didn't realize when NASCAR made this decision was, you know, and I didn't know about it until we got up on the, I say the roof up in the top of the grandstands, the spot. Supposedly the rumor was floating around that we had to be out of there by Tuesday.

If we didn't race Tuesday, we were done because either won the city or, you know, I don't know if something was going out of the Coliseum or what the rumor I heard was Fox simply had to get at, break all their stuff down, get out of there in time to leave and get to Daytona or the Super Bowl and set up. So, you know, if you're looking at it now, I don't know what the weather's like now. I know it rained all day yesterday. It's probably still raining there now. you know if you don't get in tomorrow now we've wasted three days out there just to cancel the event so you know it is what it is and i don't know i get it you know i've seen uh nick pain had a friend that

somebody that he reached out to him and text him um and they were upset because they were flying out friday night for the race on saturday i'm sorry Friday night for the race on when the hell do we race sunday night yeah we race Saturday we're supposed to race Sunday night but you know he was upset because he had law he was probably going to have to eat or eat a chunk of the $1,100 flight that he had Well, I think that's still better than flying out there. Now you've got an extended room, you know, how many nights, three nights maybe as long. We might be there to Wednesday. And by the way, good luck getting a room because the Grammys were in town.

And I know our team was going to have to move over an hour away. So now you're going to have to do that, pay, you know, ridiculous fees if you stay downtown. So, I mean, I get it. It sucks that you had to, you missed the opportunity. But overall in general, like Brett said, I don't think NASCAR had a choice. This is a decision they had to make. Yeah. So, Brett, you know, you were very vocal about this when.

Saturday, they originally closed the grandstands for fans. And then Ben Kennedy, you know, they did the right thing. They opened the grandstands up, made it free. Obviously, the buzz on Twitter was how empty the grandstands were. Like, what, you know, what do you think the penalty is, you know, when fans realizing, like, hey, we can come for free, watch the race on Saturday. why didn't they show up? That's a great question.

And we boast that LA is our number one market. And if we can't get a free ticket to people, I mean, that's, Casey, that's going to be the million dollar question for me. That's why I said what I said a minute ago. You know, we saw some of the vibe from year one to year two go down. I know ticket sales were down. This year I've heard they were down even more. Obviously, we didn't get to see that on Sunday because we didn't race on the right day.

But I just think it's run us course here. I think if the L.A. market is this important to us, as NASCAR says it is, then run a race that is not an exhibition race, run a true race. Because listen, man, Fontana, we sold out that place. And then we went through a run where nobody was there. And then at the end of Fontana's lifespan, people were back coming to the racetrack. I mean, we would get in traffic. We would stand in line at the elevators.

And for whatever reason, this L.A. market buzz is gone. And I don't know how you get it back. but if LA is so important, we got to figure out a way to have a race that means something. We can't have, you know, the colleague racing teams and Joe Gibbs racing teams. And listen, RFK the last couple of years late, that's a really long ways to go to not even have a chance to race. And teams are not selling this for a premium dollar. This is not a big inventory item where sponsors are dying to come be a part of this. Most of the sponsorship that you see on these cars for this race are tied to a bigger package that they're buying,

where they're buying 10 or 12 cup primaries and they get this, the clash, you know, season kickoff as part of the deal. A lot of teams lose a lot of money to go out there. To not even get a chance to race, I'm not for it. I think you should know in advance what's going to set you up to make the race. And in this situation, they didn't.

They got out there and it completely changed. But if you're a chartered member, you're required to go to this race. You cannot not go. So you basically have to sign up to lose $50,000 to $100,000, $100,000 per team. That's a lot of money. Definitely a long way to go to have a race like that where there's so many people going home.

I've always been a big fan of the clash being at Daytona and it being strictly an exclusive event. You either win a poll or you're a past winner. If you're a past winner, I think those guys were in it for their entirety of their driving career. But, man, it was like something that you earned. You know, there was guys, I remember hearing some drivers talk about it. Like it meant something to them if you were in the clash. just a little bit of because you did something to earn it. You would see these guys get out of the car on pit road after their qualifying lab

and boast about, hey, well, now we're locked into class for next year. The only problem I have with Daytona is, for one, this package sucks at plate races, or drafting tracks, whatever hell you want to call them now. I enjoy it. Two, the last races at the clash sucked at Daytona. But I think that's because we had pit stops. You know, like everybody kind of rode around to the pit stop. Then we all pit in different groups came out.

We were all spread out. The race got spread out. And unless you got a late caution, it never really got racy. So I think if you're all about like a race, ideally. Yeah, ideally, I think perfect, you know, world, the clash is at Daytona with a package that works. And it's a 25 lap race. You know, it's just because there's, you know, there's no reason to have a clash where we just ride around forever. You know what I mean?

Because that's what it got to. You know, right around single mile to the pit stop. We'd all pit. Then the fuel would be spread out. And if we didn't get a caution, that's how it. ran. There has to be urgency. Yeah. So you've got to make it, you know, just make it a 25 lap dash where these guys can't just ride around and hope to survive. And, and, and unfortunately, we need a better package because I don't think it's a package, you know, right now you're not going to do

anything. It's going to get too wide. I would sacrifice, I would sacrifice the package being where it's at right now and still have the clash there because these guys are still good enough that you're still going to see the best of the best go out there and race. I'd rather see that than I would a pit stop race or anything else or a clash at like a L.A. or something. I just disagree that. I think that if we had a 25 lap clash now, the front row wouldn't change the whole time unless we got cautions or pit stops. See, I think it would be, I think it would change a little. I think you can't get a third line going.

So how do you break them two up? But with a short race, I do think there are things will, I think things will be a little bit. There will be more urgency to get there. So you can see a third line. We saw a third line a little bit. a little bit in some other tracks. The only time we see a third line of these plate races now is when people are saving fuel. That's the only time we see a third line coming to play.

At the end of that race last year, when everybody was gun-ho, I made the mistake of, at Daytona, too, I made the mistake of, you know, here comes a little top line coming. I got up like we normally would. And every year past when the package was a little better, and normally that line would go. Once everybody starts pushing and then bottom two lanes, the third lane cannot, you know, it can't, you know, maintain its distance with the top of bottom two. I would rather deal with that than I would any of the other options that you had right there. That racing was, you know, I don't know.

Like you said, you can't go across the country. You can't go across the country and send 13 cars on. You know what I mean? There's got to be a better plan there or some kind of, obviously they're in a buying this week, but the last chance race, I don't know, whatever. But I agree that you can't. You can't convince me that you couldn't make time for a 50 lap last chance qualifier race and the cost and lapse count.

And then you go out there with the guys that didn't make it and give them an opportunity to actually get a race in, in their equipment before the season starts, because that's what everybody else is getting. But back to you guys' point, you know, the thing that used to really get me excited about the clash in Daytona is it got me excited for the Daytona 500, whether I was working with a driver that was in that race or not in that race.

We had gone down. We had practiced for the Daytona 500. We were going to qualify the next day, and we would watch the clash on that Saturday night. And if you were a driver in that race, great. If you weren't, the drivers were standing on top of haulers or up on the spotter stand watching the race. And we were getting pumped up because we knew what was coming next week, the duels of Daytona 500. I don't know that we successfully created a lot of buzz for the Daytona 500 by doing what we just did. And that was one of the things that was going through my mind sitting at that bar is, man, I got excited about going to L.A.

I got excited about working at the LA Coliseum. We watched a complete show that year. I mean, me and Freddie and our friend Doug was we were elbowing each other going to watch this guy. He's getting ready to die-bomb this guy and spin him out. I mean, like, it was a complete disaster. But I think it's just run his course three years later, and they're trying to figure out what to do. And to me, man, you're trying to get a new fan. We're going to go to Mexico City where we've already been in Guadalajara.

I really hope that rumor that Jeff Gluck and Bianchi put out there was not true because man I do I think that is the exact opposite way we need to be going yeah I think two two things like going back to your 50 lap LCCI idea in theory yes it's perfect you know you could probably have squeezed it in but god forbid if we did that and that because it was raining by the time I got to the airport oh yeah and that's an hour later because I've you know flutts around afterwards but if god forbid we run that 50 laper and then we don't get the race in now now we'd be the first ones on here going you guys are the biggest idiots in the world because we should have just got the race in all well too bad you didn't make it but but but but but but we didn't make it but but but but but But to your other point about the clash, it also gave you an opportunity to know who was going to be the guys to beat that week, I feel like. You know, you would see guys in the clash and you go, oh, that guy's got speed. You know, there'd be times where people would talk about, you know, was he going to run his clash car in the 500 now or whatever, you know? So, but, you know, that was just something else you'd lead into going, oh, look, you know, the, you know, I remember the years Brad would win, you know, all the Dan Penske's cars are good again, you know, whatever. But, I just, I love the, I always love the idea of starting the week and day, starting the season in Daytona, whether it was. two weeks where you used to go for two weeks or even when they moved it back and we were only

there for like a week with a clash on Sunday and then leading it to everything else during the week. I still think the exclusivity of the clash being of the guys that have earned it. And even if even if there is a lot of fall leader, that's still going to be a race that we're going to watch. You know what I mean? Like in like Brett said it. T. Jay's right. T.J's a hundred percent right. To get in the clash, you had to win a poll the previous year or you had to be a champion. To get into the All-Star race, you had to win a race or be a champion. And when we look back at those clash lineups, I mean, that was guys literally hanging it out, doing everything they could to sit on a poll to be in that event. And then, you know, Sprint got involved, TV got involved. We need

to feel to be bigger. Let's make everybody that made the chase last year, they automatically get a berk. Like we made it way too complicated. I said we go back to our origin and do exactly what TJ said. Make it exclusive, make it a lead. You are either a poll center or a champion if you're in this race. All the rest of you guys, tough shit. Back to guys who maybe had a great night, not so great night.

Obviously, the DNQ drivers were very much a surprise. But, you know, looking at a Chase Burscoa, Kyle Busch, Blaney, no surprise, having a great day. And then also, like, a Ross Chastain who really struggled.

Is that a surprise for you looking at this track? I mean, looking at great. I got a question for y'all about Ross Chastain. Oh, here we go. I thought we couldn't, I thought we couldn't wreck people intentionally anymore. If we did, like we got five, it was suspended and all kind of stuff. Who do you recognize? Remember drivers have been coming on and lying saying they didn't

mean to wreck. We watched priests do it last year. We watched other guys do it. And Ross basically said, yeah, I'm in direct how Redic. He ran in the back of me and he made me mad. Like, which, which way are we going this year? And I'm not talking. I'm not M.F. and Ross here. I'm saying, which way are we going to do this as a sanctioning body? Are we going to let these guys wreck each other on purpose and admit it? Or are we going to do what we've been doing, which is wreck them on purpose and to us. Which one are we doing? Well, they got a day. They don't announce stuff till tomorrow, right? So now maybe you can talk them in. We have to drop this podcast early

so you can talk them into throwing Ross into jail. I just want to know what they're doing. I'm also glad that Ross is still on the don't give a f***er, right? But which one is in its fans are we watching for? Ross was beeping his horn at me trying to pull into the damn parking lot yesterday. He was his, he don't give a he was started early.

But, yeah, I mean, you talk about, and one of the things that like I want to touch on, which I don't even know if it's, I think I seen a tweet about it today, so it must be some kind of common knowledge. The decision that the 12 and the 20 teams made to run... 19. The 19 do it also? They ran scuffs. Yeah.

Some of these guys ran scuffs in that qualifying session. And, you know, obviously the 20 was top five pretty much all day in practice and then goes and misses the race. The 12 has to use the Champions provisional. And I just don't know the thought process there because obviously I know the idea was we were all running our best laps the last. couple laps of each session. Yeah.

But then you noticed, you know, when you went out, like, I noticed the first group, the first time we went out, the rotation of practice groups, we all ran our fastest lap, the last lap of the race, a last lap of that session pretty much within the last five, you know, a couple minutes. But then when we came back for the second round of qualifying, I'm assuming we all had the same tires on. Did they get extra tire? Did they get tires for both rounds?

Yeah. Oh, I'll say. So they were the same tires. So I guess you're just hoping that that carries over. I assume there was the same tires, but that was wrong. as usual. But, you know, I mean, that's a hell of a risk to take. But I get it, you know, you're running your best laps the last lap, but it just seemed like it took forever to get going.

Well, that's why they pulled in. You saw some of them pull in in practice. Yes, you know how they're trying to save. Yes, they put 10 laps on tires and they came in. But yeah, that was a risky call. There's a risky call. And it burned them. You know, the 20 went home because of it.

I was, we were up there watching and I was texting with Brett at the same time. You know, you're looking at the guys on the cut line or who's like, you know, there's six cars in that last group and who were the guys that are the bottom six. and you're like, oh, the 19's going to be in trouble because he's three from the bottom and this one. And you're counting the cars, you're like, well, the 12 is going to get in easy, the 20's going to get in easy. The 17 should be pretty good. And then none of them guys make it.

The 12 gets a provisional, and you're like, holy cow, what the hell happened there? Eric Jones, I mean, all of them. There was a lot of good guys that went home. Suarez was another one that you don't expect. You know, there's some of them that you expected, but, you know, there was a group that you're like, wow, what the hell happened here?

I noticed a lot of them were in the second session. Did that make much of a difference? I wouldn't say it. a lot. We're in the second. A lot of more in that very last session. That very last session never went out. So I think it got better for the first three and then it fell off after that because I think we caught it right on the downfall. Like we were the first group where it started getting because no one ran faster after us. Yeah. Yeah. We were, we were the fourth group out of six. So I think we were pretty good. Our last, our last lap was our best lap. We were in your group?

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you were in our practice group. I don't remember if you were in our qualifying group. Were you in the second group or the second group? second group of qualifying. Yeah, so we were the same one. Yeah. Yeah. I think, which I don't know where the hell.

Brad was like probably one of the bottom three slowest cars on the track for practice. And then just go ahead and pulled. Did you cut through the infield or something? I would must have, yeah. And then we go to 13th on the board. I'm like, okay. But then I looked at the cars that were after us in the other groups and I'm like, that's still going to be pretty rough.

And then nobody beat us. So, but looking back, Casey, who had a really good day. I would say from where we were, I'm going to say from practice. if you were to say here and said, Freddie, are they going to finish top eight? He'd say no. I'd say, yeah, that'd be the first eight on the plane. Yeah. So, but to finish eighth, I think, you know, I was coming out there with that is pretty damn good.

Shout up to Justin Haley, man. That's what I was in a race to say Justin Haley. Obviously, he didn't get the finish that he wanted, but, man, to go out there and practice well, qualify well, run top seven, top eight. I mean, dude, hats off to him and what they've already done and require racing. short amount of time. Now, the question becomes is what happens when we get to these big tracks because that's a place where the driver may be able to make up a little bit more of a difference. When we get to Daytona, if he qualifies a second, second and a half off pole, it means they got a lot of work to do on their restricting plate stuff. But these next two weeks

will be, it'll be fun to watch him because he's a good draft or too, Freddie, right? We've both been teammates with him. I've obviously spotted for him. He is a sleeper going into these next two weeks on your fantasy guys. For sure. And, you know, I talked to, because I was worried. I saw they had speed. I mean, he qualified in the top 10, I think, locked in, you know, right there in his group. And then obviously he was decent. He started having some troubles probably just before halfway, maybe he started backing up a little bit. And then he kind of maintained, I don't know, 10, 12th it seemed like for a good portion of the race. And then he blew up. So I took the outside of a restart and he couldn't get down. He lost a lot of track

to just on one restart. But other than that, he was, I mean, he really solid run. Yeah, I was, but I was worried when I seen him blow up. Like, is this what the trend's going to be like, all right, now you're going to run better. You're going to have a little bit of speed, but now durability becomes an issue. And is this a product of, you know, Rick Ware stuff or what? Because I didn't know what happened. I just, I'm not sure what happened. And I talked to him after the race and he said, they blew an engine and it was a, you know, Rousch, you know, Plan A engine is just, you know, one of those things that happens. So, you know, hopefully that going forward, like Brett said, he should be, you know, they're obviously going to be in the race. They'll qualify.

Hopefully you see some speed and qualifying. And then Justin can get up there and play around everybody a little bit, but yeah, it was awesome to see him do that. And I'll tell you who I think had, he didn't have the result he wanted, but somebody that had the, I think the best night was Ty Gibbs. Ty Gibbs was a missile. You know, if he doesn't blow the entry on 10 to go restart, he's dominating that race. You know, he would fall back a little bit. And then every time I looked up, everybody was in a pack except, you know, the 54 was gone. So, you know, that might be a foreshadowing things to come. I think Ty's starting to come on at the end of last year. And you might see some really good things at him this year because that kid's got, he's very talented,

He's got a lot of speed, and you know, you still see some, we'll talk about later, I'm sure, with Joey, but, you know, you still see some tendencies of, you know, maybe making mistakes here and there, but he's got plenty of speed to get it done. I noticed that whenever, you know, Denny got around him, he was going to get back around Denny, but he made mistakes. And instead of driving at a 9 out of 10, he was driving in an 11 out of 10, and he got loose into 1, I think, and slid up the racetrack, and that was it from there. But he was fast, really fast and just still needs the,

a little bit of just keep your, you know, stay calm, you know, finesse. And, but other than that, he was, he had a really great weekend. Yeah. Shout out to Journeymo Media family member, Denny Hamlin on the Clash win. Of course, I'm curious to see how many times he'll say that he beat his favorite, our friend's favorite driver. We're going to have to come up with a new line. Yeah. I mean, that was cool at Bristol.

I think it was, I think it was kind of changed. All 21 of them. Talk to your boss. We're going to start something new there. But I hope that's not like, I know he's got like a new t-shirt coming out or something. I hope that's not that. I didn't, Danny Hamlin had the best quote I've maybe ever heard in NASCAR history on the opening of the Netflix show.

And I'm going to paraphrase it. But he basically said, I can walk onto a golf course and I can burdy a hole that Jordan Speed, you know, doesn't burdier. I can walk into a gym and make a three-pointer that Michael Jordan misses. But under no circumstances, any other athlete from our sport. or any other athlete outside of our sport going to ever get in my race car and go faster. And I think when I have a tough time, you know, explaining to people what NASCAR is

and what NASCAR drivers are, I think I'm going to use that quote from now on because he hit the nail on the head. They're hitting an athlete in any other sport that's going to come in and get in his car and go faster. So it's cool to see him featured. Obviously, I've known Denny a very long time. Cool to see him featured in that Netflix piece.

I felt like him and Joy Lugano were awesome ambassadors for our sport. You know, I look back, and this was an unfortunate situation, but we became the biggest we've ever been when Dale Earnhard died in 2001. It made Dale Jr. Elvis Presley overnight. I mean, TJ was around him far more than I were,

but man, we went to steak and shaking Daytona Beach on an off week, and all the kitchen employees were on their cell phones, calling their buddies. By the time we left there, there was three, 400 people there to see Dale Jr., because that's how big the sport was. Dale Jarrett was on every UPS commercial in the country. I feel like this is another opportunity for us to kind of downshift and get a lot of momentum because if we keep talking about wanting to do things for new fans, well, man,

being top 10 in Netflix, it's certainly going to do that. I mean, look what it did to F1 here in America. So I don't know how they take and bottle that up and figure out how to grow it from there. But Casey, I'm sure you've seen some of the promos if you haven't seen the whole show. That show is very, very well done. I know there's some back and forth. Obviously, the show is doing great for the sport. I know fans are a little frustrated with who it might focus on. I think we've seen a few tweets on why they've only focused on certain drivers.

What do you guys think about that? I think that's the new fan. I think that's the whole advantage to the new fan, right? If we've got an existing fan that's upset that their driver isn't on there, that's okay. They're still watching it. What we really are after here, though, is the new fan and expose them to, you know, how great our sport is, how our athletes are, how they treat each other, how they race each other. So I don't have a problem with a fan being upset his favorite driver isn't on there.

The reality is getting the championship conversation and your guy will be on there because that's who to me, and I'm only two episodes in, that's to me who it looks like they're highlighting, Freddie. Yeah, you know, well, you know, there's going to be guys a year by the time you get done with it here in a couple weeks. The, you know, there's not, there's some guys that kind of get left out completely. And, you know, I think that obviously you're going to focus on certain guys. And you're going to see how it goes like the beginning part of it like you've already seen two episodes.

So it kind of focuses the first episode is on Bubba and some of the guys that are on the bubble trying to race into Daytona. But at the same time, Denny even talked about it on the podcast he did right after the release of the show. He knew what this show was going to be. So not only did he grant unprecedented access to himself, he did it to his race team. And I mean, them guys followed us around for weeks, you know. And they were in meetings. They were in the meetings right before the race. And I'm sure they had an understanding with the race team that,

listen, if there's something we want you to stop filming, we're going to stop. But up until then, you have unprecedented access that I've never seen before with. I mean, even we did, I've done two shows with Bubba back with Petty Days and back when we did the first

Netflix show where they weren't in any of these meetings. You know, they were, I mean, they were in a couple of comp meetings, but they weren't like they were with the Netflix guys at the track in your face. And that was just, and I know Brad had said that that wasn't an option to them.

Well, obviously you can't cover everybody like that. You know, if you're going all these meetings, I don't know how many film crews you got. So if you're doing all 2311 stuff, you can't do both or whatnot. But you see throughout the show that the teams that open their doors to them were the ones that they kind of focused on. They got a lot of access to Danny and them guys. And, I mean, you look at Danny. They're in Molly's bedroom at one point. You know, I don't think you're going to be in Rick Hendrick's daughter's bedroom or, you know what I mean?

So, you know, Danny was the one that opened his doors to them and was willing to grant them unlimited access. And I'm sure other guys would have done it, but I'm sure there's other ones. You know, I'm sure Hendrick Motorsports is probably a little more guarded with what they had going on. I'm sure that I feel like that offer was probably extended to them. You know, because these are the guys, you could see that one interview with Bell, they're like, you know, they kind of made a list of the guys that we thought we might have to focus on that were going to transfer to the top eight. And Bell says, I guess I wasn't in that plan. And they were like, no, no, you weren't.

But, you know, Bell ended up making the final four. So I think it's a, you know, you got to play that because you don't know going into it. They don't know. It wasn't a NASCAR production. It was a Netflix production. And them guys were kind of learning as they go, I think, and they kind of took the direction of, all right, this is getting good traction.

This is getting good traction. This is what we're going to run with. And they did. All right, guys, I got to jump. I got to go to the airport. Y'all have a good show. I'll see you in two weeks after the Daytona 500. See you guys.

You'll be safe. Yeah. Go ahead. Big Alas in your land. Holla. Yeah, that's exactly what I need to. Go straight to big owls. I'll text you.

See you, brother. Later. Well, moving on to some more preseason top. obviously qualifying tweaks were something that was discussed. What do you guys think of the news and the changes that they're being made? I think so first of all, something had to be done, I think, in my opinion. I don't know where TJ stands on this, but it seemed to me it swayed both ways. Group A was at a pretty big disadvantage in round one because it always seemed like the guy that qualified sixth would end up starting, I don't know, outside the top 15 for sure.

and it would be worse at some places he would be behind everybody in the second group I remember like Richmond was one of them that was a big sway and it's just time of day and track temperature and whatnot but then you'd have it swing back the other way where the group two guys would be at a disadvantage

in the second round because they had just come off the track and the tires didn't have the same time to cool down as the guys in group one which that's still going to be in play for the group for that but this at least lines it up to where if you're the first guy out in the group, you know, whatever, you know, then you're going to be the first guy out. You know, you're going to be the starting 11th or 12th, whatever it is, and so on and so forth. So I, you know, it's probably not perfect yet, but I think they took a step

in the right direction and how to do something. Yeah, definitely probably levels it a little bit. At least makes the damage not as bad because there's definitely, we were in group one a lot in the beginning last year. It was hard. Like you have to, you have to, like we'd claw our way out of it a little while, you know, quite a bit. And as soon as you lose momentum, it's really hard to stop it and get it pointed back in the right direction. So I think this will help. Yeah, I mean, to your point, that would be almost, I mean, it'd be a seven to ten position swing if you finish fifth in practice, the qualifying or six, you know, because you'd be

50, you're locked in the top 10. No matter what happens, you're locked in the top 10. If that whole second group goes fast and you, it doesn't matter, you still got the same opportunity to qualify with them again in a round two. But if you're, if you're six, that you're at the mercy of everybody else in that second group to where if the whole thing beat you're going to end up, you're going to end up outside the top 20. So, you know, you had to do something just to make it fair. And I think in a perfect world, I understand we do it for broadcasting, but like just let's get rid of the groups and just qualify. Like have your metrics and line it up like that, go backwards. You know, the lowest guy starts out

first, a little fastest guy goes last, whatever it is, and just qualify. Like one group be done with it. I wasn't even against the random draw. I wasn't even against a random draw because, like I said, I mean, you can have, you can get wrecked. You know, some guy can miss pit road and hit you and flatten your tire and wreck you. And then now you're kind of screwed for the next week. And it's hard to get back out of that hole, you know. So, and I also think some sort of, you know, I mean, random is random, right?

I mean. That's how they did this week. How can you be upset at a random draw? It's just how it is. You're going to say some guys are luckier than others, but it is luck at that point, right? Like, and it also might shuffle things around a little bit where you do get the oddball guy that has a really good, you know, has a good call one weekend and maybe a good car there for once. And it does. Then you've got another new pulse hitter.

Yep. You know, so, but definitely a step in the right direction. And I think just to reiterate for those who are not aware, the new order is that those who do not advance from Group A will, to determine outside row for starting positions 11 through 40 and then from group B will be the inside right yeah correct and I think I've seen some people at question why that is um the usually the highest matrix guy the best matrix guy whatever you want to call it is in the second group so that's why somebody's like why is group A line in the outside group B the inside usually the the guy that would have the highest number of the best guy from the week before is in group two so that's why that

row sits the inside line and and vice versa so I've seen some people think that thought that might have been backwards it's kind of backwards when we go out like the last guy on track in round one to be the best guy so so that's why it's like it's set up that way so that makes sense okay cool um and and another thing to know obviously toy with them for have new uh cars or new i think it's bumpers right new i have new cars yeah new cars going into 2024 um do you see a change in how they run compared to chevi which obviously they won 37 of 72 races. Do you see a difference there? Yeah, I mean, I think that...

They didn't make them worse. Yeah, they're not going to go out there. You know, I think they're basically redesigns, completely redesigns. Ford might have went to an all different car. I don't remember what model they used before, but now they got that dark horse Mustang. Yeah. So I think that the people at Toyota are pretty optimistic about, I mean, they think that we've made ourselves better.

You're hoping you're making yourself better. You're not going to make changes like this and anticipate being any worse. so and I think we were consistently very fast or they were they were consistently very fast last year all the toyotas across the board so you know that's one thing the fords needed to step up I think they won the championship they won every damn championship last year but they didn't show consistent speed I think throughout the year so they're hoping to see a little more consistent speed across the board they were really good at short tracks last year mile and a half so I felt like they needed to gain a little bit of speed they think they will now and Chevy who knows you know they they did not the the problem I think with Chevy was the car went away, right? Didn't the model they use?

Yeah, they've got to figure out what car they're going to run. So they have to figure out what they're going to do for a new model before they can redesign their car. So now they're kind of stuck in limbo for a year. And, you know, they're going to be fine. But I think that they're not, if everybody takes a little step forward, it doesn't take much as close as these cars are now.

If everybody takes a little step forward, they could be caught chasing themselves for a little bit of the year. So we'll see what happens there. But yeah, hopefully I think Toyota is very optimistic that they've made improvements. I'm sure Ford is feeling the same way, and Chevy's going to have to maybe play a little catch-up if they don't get any better. Well, for those listening,

be sure to stay tuned to Dirtymoe media socials because we're going to start a new segment where we can do a weekly fan vote on the best paint scheme for each race, starting with the Day 21 of 500. So be sure to stay tuned for that. You'll see it on Twitter, and we will share our thoughts following day.

Vote for the 20th day. We have bad ass paint scheme. That's why I didn't ask you who the favorite I was going to say, if you asked us, it'd be the 23 to 6, Brett would pull something out of his ass. You got to include your apparel. Yeah, yeah. And the whole team, ambiance, whatever.

Let's move on to spot on, spot off. Spot on spot off. Spot off. Spot off. Spot off. It was super fun yesterday to ride her out there. I am spot off. Damn.

Where did he come from? First topic. The Clash Racing Project. product exceeded expectations. Exceeded. T.J. I am spot off on exceeded. Just don't.

I didn't think the race was terrible. It was exactly what I thought it was going to be. Some guys are fast. Some guys hit each other out of the way. There's a little bit of drama at the end. It had everything that I would say I expected in that race. I can't say that it exceeded my expectations. But unique event, glad NASCAR made all the right calls to get that race in.

so yeah i mean NASCAR exceeded my expectations NASCAR NASCAR well exceeded by expectation booty probably asked me two or three times is like his day will they move this up to today and I was like man no way they've never done it I can't ever see it happening yeah

and booty's like I'm just going to keep willing it into existence so then they finally announced and he's like I told you I told you which thank God for the one thing that came the best thing that came out of the Netflix series was that people got to meet Booty Barker on a more personal level because he is the star of that show I don't care what you say who they follow what driver he didn't like If you didn't like seeing booty all the time, you can go to hell for all.

I got you beat because whenever I heard it, the first call I make is to, who do you think I called? Right when I heard it. Brad's is he even get home? Definitely wasn't a drag. Oh, Dale? No. Brad? No, I called Herm.

Oh, yeah. And I'm like, uh, Herm. Yeah, what are you doing? Oh, just getting ready at a hotel. I'm like, Herm, it's, uh, you might want to get here. So I bailed. I ran back to the hotel because about noon, I think we heard that it might happen. And I think they announced it at 1230.

and so I was heading back to my hotel to get my bags and Herm called me he's like what the hell's going on TJ just said they're racing today I said yeah I think so I said actually they just moved practice up a half hour so I gotta hurry up but he must ask me five times are you kidding with me? No herb

well I would understand why he would ask you oh yeah probably they need a Netflix show to follow him so the racing at the clash it sucks like it's it's the same reason I hate Bowman Gray racing like you're just driving around crashing to each other and then see who wins

but you know the the the product on the track behind sixth is a minefield TJ can tell you we were all back there just you're just bouncing off each that's why when we got turned around I think they played it on TV Bubba's like I'm in f*** it mode now I'm just going to run through the back everybody because we got dumped we didn't I mean Bowman kind of launched Tyler in us I was gonna say did Bubba think Tyler erect him now before he was done spinning I was like I was a 48 shoved him in there but I mean at the same time the 48 didn't do anything wrong like you just you just That's all it is.

Like you're on restarts. Bubba's like this thing's like ice on a restart. Like you're just sliding until you hit something. Then you take off and go the other way. So it's, I don't know. It just, it is what it is.

It's kind of a gimmick. It's kind of a spectacle. If that's what we're going for, great. But, atmosphere is pretty cool. Yeah, I mean,

obviously this year is a little down. But I mean, listen, I know people were complaining about the crowd. For announcing that we're racing in two hours, I thought the crowd was pretty good. You know what I mean? I don't understand this part.

I don't understand why, oh, well, looks empty. Like I thought there was actually a fair amount of people there for the day that it was supposed to be. And everyone's like, well, it was free. But really, what were we supposed to do that day? Yeah, it was free. It was free. We told you two hours ago that practice starts at 2.30. It's 1230 out there. It was practice starts at 2.30. We race a five. So yeah, you got five hours to change all your plans for the day and figure out how to get to the Coliseum. Yeah, I don't understand what people are all expecting with that. Like, you know, it's, it's everything got like moved up so fast. And everyone, like, what we, what we were going to? do on Saturday though. Saturday's schedule was pretty relaxed. We were going to qualify and then run those heat races, right? It was so relaxed. They weren't even going to let people in to begin with. Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know. I think people need to chill on that, especially the weather there was not very good. No, it was cold. It was cold. It wasn't like a nice

hot day where, oh, let's go watch this at the call us the end of the day. Yeah, it was, you know, so I was, I thought it was fine. I just think, I, I mean, it's a gimmick and it is a gimmick. It just sucks up to go across the country, send 13 cars home, and then the racing, you know, even in the front, the racing is just kind of, at any point, if you just want to move a guy and it's too easy. I mean, it is just, it's a gimmick. You can just drive in there and smash a guy or the guy three rows back and drive in there and smash you and him and move him. So it's just, it's a gimmick, it's a spectacle. If that's what we're going for for this to attract new fans, I'm all for it. But that's what it is. You can't go there expecting to see a good race.

What do you guys think of this prediction? Amongst the Cup Series rookies this season, Zane Smith will outperform Josh Barry and Carson Hosevar. Spot on, spot off, TJ. I am also spot off on this. I think that's going to be tough to do. And, you know, I do think that I think Josh Berry will end up putting some solid races together. And I think Hosefar last year, he exceeded my expectations when he got in another car. So I think out of the group there, I think Hostvar will be, you know, if he can just not overstep at some points in the race, realize that I'm running 12th, I need to finish 12th and not try to run 6 with it. He can have some good runs. And I know Rodney will get that four.

You know, Josh is a good race driver, and he'll, you know, him working with Rodney, I think they'll be able to put some really solid races together as well. Yeah. I'm spot off for Zane outperforming these guys. And for reasons to your point, Rodney, for one, I think, is the biggest factor that weighs in Josh's favor. Josh also has the most cup experience. He's got 12 races against the other guys, I think, eight or nine. But Rodney always seemed to squeeze a little bit more out of that four car

than everything else in that stable over there. Whether that was Kevin or Rodney, we'll find out now. But, you know, that four car always seemed to outperform everything over there. and then you know Zane these guys are all very talented you're kind of splitting hairs here I don't think one's gonna go out and dominate over the other one I don't think any of these guys make the playoffs

unless they get a win at one of these drafting tracks or something like that but you know Zane he didn't impress me as much as Hosevar did last year you know what I mean Hosevar turned heads he had them flashes of running in the top 15 with a spire car where you never really saw that

out of Zane not as much not as frequently I felt like it's out of Hosevar even the 42 Yeah. He had flashes. So, yeah, well, that's what I was meant. So then, you know, now you flip it to, you know, Hosevar and the biggest trouble I think Hosevar is going to have is people are going to race the shit to him

because they want to see how he reacts. They know he has, if you took a pole in the garage, I don't think he has the respect to many drivers right now, just because of the stuff that he's been through in the truck series and some of the moves he's made over there. You know, I think a lot of these guys, you know, you've got the new guy coming in. these guys try to get that guy under control right away.

And until he earns their respect on the Cup series, these guys are going to race him really hard. So he may have some difficulties with that. But, yeah, and I think Josh just, you know, has a little bit more consistencies. And I think they, you know, Rodney will have that car, maybe a hair faster than what the Spire car will be, the Spire and Trackhouse car.

Josh shut out the best average out of these guys. Yeah, I think so. So Zane is a Spire car, right? Just Trackhouse, like, support. I think I like help like some of the spotters, the trackhouse spotter. I think the crew chiefs of crew chief from Strackhouse. But yeah, I think Zane, I think Josh is just a little bit more consistent. But I don't think any of these guys walk away from the other ones.

Spot on, spot off. Austin Cindrick is the biggest driver on the hot seat for the 2024 season. Freddie. He's definitely on the hot seat. I don't think he's on the hottest seat. I think that Harrison Burton probably has to fit that mold. You can't have four top 10 finishes in 73 races in that equipment and expect to keep your job. I was honestly a little surprised that he was able to keep his job for this year.

So if he's going to have to do, he's going to have to step up in a big way this year if he wants to continue on in that 21 car into the future. But listen, you talk about Austin, like how his seat is hot, T.J. Like, you know, Tim Centric, obviously, I don't know what his title is over there. I know he basically runs the IndyCar program, it seems like. So that's obviously Austin's dad. He's a legacy guy at Penske. That car is the legacy car at Penske. I feel like the two is the flagship.

How long can they continue to underperform? When you go out there this week, they don't make the race. They were towards the bottom or at the bottom of the list, both practices. Yeah. You know, that car had five top ten finishes last year when Joey and Blaney had like 17 and 18. How long can that continue? I know your legacy over there. how long can that continue before Roger has to step in and make a decision?

Yeah. So ever since the 500, it's been downhill. Yeah. And even what bothers me about it is the places where I look at, I'm like, okay, who's going to be tough this week? His name's kind of left the list of the road courses. Yeah. And we've went to a lot of road courses and, you know, just he used to be a factor up there.

I mean, even in an extra car sometimes, he was a top five guy. and now it's it's hard for him to even excel there so definitely the seat's definitely you know getting hot there and you know it it can change in a heartbeat though you know you could come out of you know i'm not saying a daytona a good run Daytona wouldn't wouldn't help it much but coming out of Daytona with a quiet top 10 and that's a springboard to the beginning of the season you know just getting some consistency going if he can start knocking off some time top tens and then some top fives. That changes the whole narrative with it.

So definitely some hot seats right there. I feel like, and I don't have the stats to back this up, but I feel like, you know, if you take these two guys, and there's other guys on this list that have hot seats that are in prominent rides, but I'll get to in a minute. But, you know, Harrison came out the first year was pretty bad. You know, like he was towards the back every week. And I think you saw some improvement last year.

And I think that little bit of improvement is what kept him in the ride this year. I almost feel like Austin Cindrick. has taken a little bit of step back. Like I felt like he was a little more consistent and ran a little bit better his rookie year versus how he did last year. I felt like last year they were kind of, they were really not very good.

So, you know, I think he's going to be fine, obviously, for next year. I don't think you'll see him getting replaced, but how long is that, how long is that string going to play out before you've really got to step up and perform? And I know, I mean, I like Allison a lot. Every time I've seen him, you know, we've had chat about racing or whatever.

And Doug over there, Spotton is one of my best friends. but you're going to have to step up at some point. I'm sure they realize that. But getting at other guys, listen, if Daniel Suarez is a name that could potentially be on a hot seat, especially if you see a good season out of Zane, you see a good season at SVG, there's two guys. I don't know how many charters, track houses planning on having, but right now they got two. By then, they might have 10.

Right now they've got two, and they've got four drivers with guys coming through the ranks behind them, like Conor Zillage. you know so you know that's a seat that Ross is Ross is locked in you know he's been a top round of eight guy around a 12 guy that's going to be their guy for a while he's their guy you know you sign this long term Bush deal it seems like so he's their guy if Daniel doesn't pick it up and start performing

and these other guys come in and start running well like Zane and SVG that seat gets a lot hotter this year if he doesn't perform so you know those are a couple guys to look for this year and hopefully they all perform because I like all these guys I want them to stick around but some people got to go to make room for new guys and that's what happens in the sport. Back to some clash topics. In an interview with Front Stretch,

Ty Gibbs said he's just mad that I ran him up after he and Joey Lugano had a heated discussion following the clash. Do you guys think Lugano overreacted? I'll start with you, T.J. No, I don't think Joey overreacted. I think, I mean, there's running a guy up and there's running a guy up, and he probably went to the worst stage of that that you could do. There's been a little bit of history here from last year. They got into it at Martinsville.

I think, you know, there was some run-ins before that. And I think it, you know, then Martinsville happened and everything kind of all got worked out after that to where they were on the same page with stuff. And then I just don't think this is what, like you didn't, like I said, there's a, like I said, there's a running a guy up. And then like Joey lost like, when I looked up there, he was all up against the wall, dropping back, like, rose. And I don't think that sits well with a lot. lot of people. And I can tell you this, if somebody did a Ty Gibbs, his reaction probably would have been even worse, you know, so I've seen Ty overreact way worse than this already. So, and I just don't think this is something you want to, your car's already super fast. I mean, you're probably

the fastest car there. I just don't think it's the right time to, you know, poke the bear already again. Like, you're getting ready to go into this long season again. And this is for a, for a, for a a novel, what do you call this event? Like a one-off. Yeah. I mean, what? It's an exhibition race. And I just don't know if it's the right time for that.

So hopefully, yeah, I mean, it was entertaining. Yeah. I don't think Joey overreacted. Obviously, I'd be upset if I was him. One thing that puzzled me, which I wasn't expecting. I talked about the Bubba on the radio, was I was fully expecting both Joey to choose the bottom behind Ty and ship his ass. Yeah.

That's kind of what I would just expect that of. Joey. And I was surprised when he took the top. I was like, well, that's different. And I don't, listen, Ty made a mistake. I don't think Ty, I think Ty tried to get in there and maybe take his lane away, but I don't think he intended to run him so high that Danny passed both of them on the bottom. So, you know, I think Ty made a mistake. We talked about how difficult it was to get tires to grip up on restarts. You know, Joey, what compounded Joey's issue was Ty runs him to the damn woodshed there. And then he's got to check up. And Blaney gets in the back of him and knocks him out of shape. And that's what just compounded the situation for

Joey. So he's frustrated. He ran top two or three all night long and was in position to win the race. I was surprised by his decision to choose the bottom there because, or top there, because you see you came out with the lead and won the race, the guy that chose the bottom behind the 54. But yeah, I don't think it's, I don't think Joey overreacted by any means, but yeah, to TJ's point, this is some history. They carried over from Martinsville last year, which Martinsville was a product of things that happened. I can't remember if it was Vegas or Kansas. I remember them racing each other hard somewhere. Yeah. So they, you know, it is what it is. I don't think either guy was, I don't think Ty did it on purpose.

I don't think he meant to take him that high. And I don't think Joey's overreacting for being upset that that costs him a chance of winning the race. My problem with it is, is, you know, Ty, you know, probably could have been a little bit better about his answer and been more respectful in the media to it too. Because Joey's going to go back and see the reactions, right? He's going to go back and see what Ty says. So if Ty's like, you know what, yeah, I just got in there really hard, man. I don't want to get into him. We were having a great race.

Give him some respect on the way. Now he's just like, nah, he's just mad at him. And I think that's a product of also who it is. You know, I mean, I think if he goes in there and he runs any Kyle Bush up like that, you know, maybe not Kyle might be a bad example because of his history of Gibbs. But, you know, somebody else, other than the guy that you've been having run-ins with at the end of last year, maybe you played a little bit differently. But this guy's already, you've already made this guy.

I don't think he cares. But you've made this guy mad enough where he's actually taking you out of a race. I don't think he cares. do it again. Knowing Ty, I feel like Ty's like a little bulldog. He doesn't care. Like if Joey wants to take him out of race,

then Ty's going to take him out. You know, it's going to go tit for tat all year long, which is dumb. But I think that, you know, if you have no love loss, you're not going to come out and go, you know,

kind of hold a hand of all. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do it. You know, that's what he told Joey. And to Ty's point, like I was standing there because I was standing there talking above it when this went down.

And Ty tried to take it in the hauler and take it away from all the media. And Joey wouldn't let him get in there. Joey wanted to do this out in front of everybody for whatever reason. So, you know, it is what it is, and these guys are probably going to go back and forth, race each other hard, but hopefully they're smart enough to realize they're both going to be up front all every week. They're both going to be competing for wins.

And just if you want to go to war, you're just going to hurt each other. So, you know, hopefully they're both a little smarter about it, and moving forward just race each other a little bit better. Let's move on to Reaction Theater. Jim from Seattle. The racing sucked. Plain and simple. It wasn't impressive.

It was boring. Fell asleep. It was part of it. Nothing to see. Went back and rewatched it just to make sure. But, yeah, nothing. Boring. Track is too small.

Cars are too big. For that size track, they need to find a better place. I think Jim's still asleep. Yeah. Jim sounds like a really exciting guy. he he uh listen i i don't know disagree with i think i don't think it wasn't it wasn't boring i don't think it was kind of no it was kind of exciting if you were watching a midpack sitting in the stands area where we where me and freddie were standing there was always something going on yeah for sure and

i don't know how that played on tv dude if you would have had an in-car camera or something which i think there might have been on like mcdow and rickie sandhouse and them guys you'd have had a hell of a time yeah like my race is super exciting because we passed the whole field twice so We were having a hell of a time. But, you know, I don't know how much that got shown on TV. So that's, I don't know who watched it here. So I did watch a little bit of the, I did watch a little bit of it yesterday. Man, the cameras are so clear and everything looks so good.

But God, they're zooming in. Like, I can see the details in the headlights. Really? Yeah. That's the problem. When you zoom in like that, you lose all sensation of speed. Yeah, it was, it was harder to see some of those moments that we knew happen. But I will say, you know, for things like Stenhouse and.

McDowell. Like, they did go back to it to it to, but you shouldn't have to go back to it that much. I mean, you should be, like, to me, the thing was just zoomed in. This is just my opinion on it. Like, I couldn't, I knew what was going on in the race at that point. Like, I knew what I was looking for. And I'm like, oh, it's happening back there. And you're trying to look, you're looking at the corner of the screen because you can only see two cars right here. Yeah. And I don't know. It just, like, you can't, you can't see enough at one time. We'll have to call Artie. See what Ardy's. See what Ardy's going to be. He's probably still not talking to me because I didn't show up that day.

how was harvick i thought he did great i thought him and clint work really well together which is you know he's a natural like it it works well i i am excited to see what he does the rest of the season or that fox tamper i mean i feel like he's going to bring is clint's crazy i don't know if anybody else has noticed that and he's kind of like a you know bull in a china shop just bouncing off the walls so hopefully i think that kevin will bring a lot more of the technical analytical side of things to hopefully maybe combat Clint's wildness. Yeah. But hopefully they were able to play well off each other.

He has that dry humor, which I think... Oh, the two of them are probably a disaster together. It's so funny. Like he, the dry humor, you know, if you know Kevin, like it shines through on the broadcast, which I think will shine even more. Yeah, I think Kevin will be a really solid addition. I've been fortunate enough to fly with him a little bit here lately. And he's a funny dude, really funny dude.

He's straight out of the seat. So he's going to be very knowledgeable about how the cars are and what's going on and stuff. He's the first one, right? He's going to be the first broadcaster that's driven this car, like full-time broadcaster that's driven this car. Yes, I think so. You know, because the guys on the NBC aren't, you know, so that'll be interesting. Hey, this is Tommy. I just want to say that I don't like the fact that they had all 36 teams there

and then told a bunch of them to go home because of the fucking rain the next day. Why they just let all 36 teams race? There ain't nobody show up to that shit to watch it anyway, and they said the tickets were free. And nobody was there. I don't get it. You, Joey Lagano. Has he seen what that track looks like?

Hey, Tommy, I got a news for you, buddy. 36 cars out there was going to be really ugly. A bit of demo derby. It looked like one of them in DURO. Oh, my God. It would have been. Why don't we to start on three wide? Last one running wins.

Yeah. No, yeah, 36 wasn't an option. And listen, like I get it. I've seen some people complaining about, you know, not getting a chance to race or whatnot. That wasn't the plan. You know, the plan was everybody was going to get a chance to raise. Everybody was going to get a last chance race.

Everybody was going to have opportunities and the weather ruined it. That NASCAR, this isn't NASCAR's fault. They had to do the best they had, you know, work with what they had. They had a TV window that they could use on Saturday night for heat races that they had set aside for heat races that now you could use for the race and let's get the hell out of there so we're not still there. I still there for two more days probably. I just don't think people think about the what all goes on and putting these events

on. Like with the, you know, there is an emergency. There's a lot of, they had to evacuate some homes and stuff out there. Like, there's a, there's a lot going on out there right now. The people that had to work at the racetrack, the emergency people, they have to attend to people that having real emergencies right now. Like, this is not important right now. And then you have, you know, the other, the TV thing. Like, there's other scheduling stuff going on. We have arguably probably the biggest sporting event in the, in, you know, our country, right? Coming up. Yeah. Super Bowl. Yeah, and they have to prepare for that.

So, and that stuff, that coverage starts, what, this week? I'm sure, yeah. Yeah, like it starts today. All the media stuff starts like today. So there's a lot more to it. And it's not only that, like, I don't know what's playing for the Coliseum this coming weekend. Maybe they got something else coming up. I think I heard that this Coliseum was clear, but it's also a liability, right?

Like, you keep all these teams. Well, that too. You've got all of us. You've got people. You've got planes. There's so much more than just making a call, like, what this, like, what this, like, what But I understand the frustration from fans, but I do think that on the other side of it, there's way more... Let me tell you some. NASCAR took a beating doing this.

You walked around that track the other day. I can't tell you how many coolers I walked by that were full of drinks, full of food that's never getting sold this week because we're not having a race, you know? Or, you know, just, just... Concerts. Yeah, concerts. They had to. I'm sure they ate that concert. I'm sure they had to.

You know, they've lost their ass doing this this way, but they had to do. do it because we had to get out of it. You know what? I also like could have told that Brett about this, but we were supposed to have the MGK concert. Well, I heard that got scratched because of time. Yeah. I mean, not because of him, but because of they wanted to make sure they got the race in. Yeah. Like it, you know, and listen, somebody said like they worded the tweet terribly where it said something about fan safety. The fan safety got, they said it was like the way they announced at the racetrack was due to scheduling changes for fan safety, which they're talking about Saturday and Sunday and forward. You know, the schedule just got

blown up because of the rain. That's all there is to it. It's kind of, the NASCAR did the best thing they could to get us out of it. I'm sure they hated to do this. Yeah. They've lost a shitload of money, but, you know, it is what it is and that's what you had to do. Yeah. Yeah, I don't, I don't think, honestly, I don't think NASCAR gets enough credit for the Chicago. And honestly, they've been very proactive here lately on, you know, scheduling changes, doing what they can. I think they've done a great job. You know, Chicago, we had a record amount of rainfall. This was, this was, this was predicted to be a record amount of rainfall in like L.A. or whatever. I saw videos, some of the people I followed from my other podcasts live out there and it's

there, there's, the roads are flooded. They can't drive. They can't move out there right now. So, I mean, they did the right thing. Yeah. And then you got the Grammys in town, which is a whole other show on itself. Yeah, like I promise you that guy, whatever his name was that just called in. I promise you he wasn't thinking about how you guys are even going to have a place to stay. Yeah. I was going to have a probably, I would say, we were going to stay at the Ontario Mall, which is where we stay for Fontana. Yeah. So that is probably in the morning a two-hour drive to the race track. With that L.A.

with the traffic on Tuesday. Oh, my gosh. You know, and that's, you know, it is what it is. You got to go to work. But that's just another thing that, you know, with the Grammys in town, you couldn't get rooms on Sunday night. So now teams are going to have to scramble for that. You know, it's just, it was by far the massive win for NASCAR and what they did there

to get us to hell out of there. Yeah. And put a race on. And have a race on. And have a, and be smart enough to realize I've got a window here where I was going to run these heat races. We can get this whole race. in that window and utilize the thing's going to be on TV.

Yeah. You know, it's just... I don't know how many phone calls they've had to make and lying something with that. You know, ideally, I think ideally you would like to have seen that call made maybe the day before instead of a couple hours before, but you don't know whether change is great. You know, weather could change in an instant. And it did get worse. Yeah, it got worse.

And, but, you know, it is what it is. They did, at that moment, they made the best call possible. Yeah. I thought they made the right decision. I just, I think the theater of Los Angeles and the clash is, uh, you know, it is, uh, kind of run its course. I think that we have a lot of people that like to go back and forth about where it should be

and where it should not be. But I think the argument nowadays of the rec-fest cautions happening at Daytona and just carrying a bunch of shit up, quite frankly, still applies to LA. Some people like to see it on short tracks where they think it's more controlled

and some people hate to see it on the Super Speedways. But overall right decision on moving to race up. But product, it seems as if everybody has kind of gotten over it, but that's just a famous perspective on that. I agree. That's a good call. A little bit of common sense, sir.

Yeah, I mean, that's not common on this show. One out of three. But I appreciate that call, and he's right. And I think he's right about L.A. You know, I think L.A. I think L.A.'s run its course, and we have to move it. And I'm sure we'll discuss here in a minute where we're going to move it to. Well, shout out to everyone who called in this week.

And don't forget. And listen, people complain about Reaction Theater lately that's gone downhill. and we have a new producer Jay Smith who is here today with us and Andrew's bothering him I don't know what he's doing here but Yeah you threw it right into the fire We had I did

I did give him the reaction theater phone number To call me on And he didn't leave a message either What an asshole But we had 26 calls this week Which is not a lot We need better we need more calls The better calls we get

The better content we can perform So this part's up to you guys We need better content for reaction Theatheater Asked VC questions Send this stuff in because we can't make it up We don't want to make it up This is my favorite part of the show.

I know it's Brett's favorite part of the show, but we can't do it without better calls. And I know poor Jay, the other 23 that we didn't listen to were probably a nightmare because that's usually what some of them are. And one day maybe we'll put... Jay, it's okay to put like the worst one in there too.

Yeah, every once in a while. Yeah, you can throw the worst one of the week in there too. But we need more. We need... Back in the day, we used to have 50, 75 calls. So the more we get, the better it's going to be and step up and make this stuff great because this is easily my favorite show.

I think it'll get better after we get better. Oh, yeah. As we get going, it gets better. But I'm just saying this is my favorite part of the show and we can't do it without your help. So call in, send to ask DBC questions, and let's move on to that. You know what Brett's favorite part of the show

probably was before that? Probably not being here. The Bojang was before. Well, on that note, welcome Jay and Andrew you suck. Who? I don't even know anybody named Andrew anymore. Dale Jr. took our producer.

Thank God. I was ready to get rid of him anyway. Oh, I wasn't. I think a great idea is if you guys see these guys at the track, I mean, this is the perfect time to call in reaction theater while you see them there. I've done that before. I've been on reaction theater because somebody called at a bar one night with me.

I did meet a handful of fans of the track that randomly, it was a couple of their first race, and it was actually right before they made the schedule change, and it was one of them's first race, and he was getting ready. He was really excited, and big fans of the show. Yeah, some guy, somebody stopped me on the way I was heading up Herm, and somebody yelled at me something about it.

He said Joey Lugano eats corn the long way. I don't know what that means. I guess I never seen. I've never seen anybody do that. Okay. He had a sign that said that at Atlanta, and I remember that. Oh, I remember that. That was him?

He yelled it to me. He's like, I'm the guy from Atlanta. And he said, I don't know what that means, but I guess we'll have to maybe Google that. And, and. Shout out to everyone that I, uh, yep, yep. Everyone that I met at Chili Bowl that came up to me. Oh, my gosh. We weren't getting into this, uh, Chili Boer Millbridge at some point.

I wasn't saying it. Oh, my gosh. But there were some really cool. fans at Chili Bowl that like the pumpkin carver that card the logo the guy that said that TJ sucks and then Brett and then Brett said that Brett said that Brett said that Brett said that Brett said that he leave me off the list at least no one guy said that you needed to come to a race and I can't remember what it was come to one of the local races but either way really cool group of people I think I might make my chili bowl return next year oh may the odds be

ever in your favor um But yeah, really, offseason was filled with DBC fans. Let's move on to Ask DBC. Oh, actually, sorry, I should probably send in the new number, our number. To leave an audio message whenever you guys would like, call our number 7.04, 802, 9572. Jay, that is not Freddy's number. Jay, change my contact info. That's not a little.

Yeah, I'll have to, I'll have to update that after that. And of course, you can send in some questions for us using hashtag AskDBC on Twitter or X or whatever it's called now. This first one we've talked a lot about today is from Lena. If you could host the clash at any track, which one would it be and why? Freddie. Yeah, so I said Perfect World, Daytona, 25 Lapper, with the package that works, I think is the best option possible. But as of right now, we don't have that option because I don't need to package. is great. So,

wait, I got an idea. Okay, good. Do the clash at Daytona with a totally random package

that isn't that what we're going to run in the 500. Yeah, I'm good with that. I mean, I wouldn't have to,

I shouldn't have to build a new car. No, but like something, big motor. Big motor. No spoiler. Something different.

Huge spoiler. Whatever it is. Something different. Just something completely different that makes it a unique product. Yeah, and hopefully it makes it

where we can race. But, yeah. But my perfect world would be a 25 lap shootout at Daytona, get it done with Tuesday afternoon, whatever, whenever you want to do it, sometime between Sunday and Sunday. Right now, I think your best option is. Run it Wednesday night, I don't care. Yeah, whenever. But right now I think your best option, if this is what we're doing, this is what we want to do, this spectacle to draw new fans, I'm good with it.

I think you do, you have two options. You follow the Super Bowl every year. Wherever the Super Bowl is at, that's where we're going to race a week before. every city we go to the Super Bowl has a major college stadium somewhere nearby that we can do the same exact thing I think or you take it international your only caveat to that is I don't want to see this on a road course I think if you're doing this to draw fans in you're not going to get new fans by watching us run a road course race no so it has to be this put this racetrack in a stadium everywhere we go has a major stadium where we can do this every major city in the world I don't know about Guadalajara but Mexico city I'm sure has some kind of soccer

stadium or some kind of they played football They have a hole in there right. They have ovals down there. Yeah, I mean, anywhere, but I'm just saying, but I'm just saying like, I don't know how, what, you know, what the infrastructure is around there. But this has to be, if you're, if you're doing this, I would take this track out of the Coliseum, yeah, and put it at Arizona State, you know, I think, where's the the hell's Super Bowl this year? Las Vegas.

Surely there's got to be a stadium out there somewhere we can play, whether it's UNLV or something we can go to. Dude, there's a bowl ring right next to the big track. Yeah, you go there. You know, whatever, whatever it is, but just follow. if we want to stay up here, follow. the Super Bowl every year. Wherever we go, follow the Super Bowl.

If there's a short track, great. If not, build one in the local college stadium like we did this year. That was I thought was great about the first year was that was where the Super Bowl was. We were at there and the Super Bowl was out there and so far. But now, you know, or if we take it international, but I just don't want to, I don't want to go. If we're going to Mexico City next year, which full transparency was, something funny that happened on Twitter the other day, I was on the plane getting ready to take off for California.

And we had just talked to, we had just talked to, we had just talked to, somebody i was talking somebody in the lobby about are we done going to california like is this run its course and i was like man i hope so and then adam stern tweeted i think we're going to mexico city or guadalajara and i was like well shit i'd rather go back to l a la if that's the case and it has nothing to do with race or xenophobia or whatever else it was from the fact that everybody that went to mexico city for the last race there which was probably 15 20 years ago had a miserable experience they were locked in their rooms you couldn't leave unless you're taking a shuttle somewhere you know it just wasn't a good place to hang out like i when i

I go to a racetrack, I'd usually go out and have dinner or go to a bar and hang out. Like, if you can't do that in an area, like, I don't want to be there. It has nothing to do with feeling safe or whatnot. Like, if I'm under some kind of restriction, I know somebody just went there for a race recently two weeks ago that said that they, you know, they probably didn't. I was like, I knew this is potentially coming up at some point. Like, we're going to go to Mexico City. So I asked them, how was the atmosphere? How was it? And they're like, well, it wasn't great. You know, it was, it was okay. I wouldn't have gone anywhere by myself. And then that person ended up in the hospital for a couple days because of something they,

ate. Like I didn't have that concern when I was in, when I was in LA this week. Can I eat this? Can I drink this water? So that's, I don't care about what the people are. My concern is the overall fan experience and if I'm not going to enjoy myself being there, I feel like everybody's not going to enjoy themselves being there.

So it was kind of tongue-in-cheek of like I think I'd rather go, and I think if you pulled the garage, I think it would sway heavily in the favor if you said, would you like to go back to the L.A. Coliseum or would you like to go to Guala to Mexico to run the clash next year? What would that vote look like? I'm going to L.A.

Yeah. And it's got nothing to do with anything other than the fan experience or my personal experience at each place. But the funny part was I tweeted that and then I flew for six hours and I landed and poor Brett was getting demolished because I think people were remembering some of his wild Chicago takes. And they just assumed it was him and they were calling him all kind of names

and I thought it was hysterical. And then he had a tweet that he didn't tweet. So full disclosure, it was me. But it has nothing to do. I don't care. I don't mind I don't mind leaving the country. I don't mind going anywhere in the world. world, but as long as it's a good experience, and we're going to get out, have fun, enjoy the area,

and somebody that wants us to be there. Yeah, I agree. I got a lot to say about that. Yeah. Clearly. I mean, listen, and listen, if that's the case, if you're not going to do that, if we're going to go to a road course, the best, if you're, if that's, and that's just like we talked about, that's not going to be the best racing product.

That's going to be exciting for people that have never seen a race before. I remember that first year we went to people, when we were running into each other and wrecking every five minutes, people were on their feet. Every pass in a heat race, that place was on their feet. jumping up and down because they've never seen it before. We talked about that first year was like 40% new fans or something like that. They had never seen like that before, so they were getting excited about it.

Take that to somewhere else. It's not going to be a great race, but it's going to be a spectacle maybe draw new fans in. If you're just looking for the best race, let's go to Charlotte. Charlotte's going to put on a great race. It's going to be a mile and a half track. That's what this package is for. If guys don't make the race, first of all, you don't have to send 13 guys home. We can all race there. But if you

do want to trim the field down and send guys home, they're going home. They're going home an hour from the race track. They're not sitting in, you know, damn, call and Legacy, out of their four cars, they had one make the race, and they landed at 10 o'clock last night because they didn't make the race. They had to load all their shit. Then they sat there yesterday because the president flew in and they got locked in the airport for six hours or something like that. So now they're there for an extra, a whole extra day. Didn't even make the race. So now, you know, you go to Charlotte. Don't qualify. You go home. Look at home. It's an hour

away. Well, I guess we'll find out about 2025 soon enough. Hopefully. This next one is from Bryce. we talked a little bit about this earlier, how much of an effect will the new Ford and Toyota bodies have on drafting and working together in Daytona? Freddie. I think looking at, I don't know, I wasn't involved in any conversations that went on signing the car, but looking at the front of the Camry now, it looks to me like we should be able to push better.

I don't know, we'll see next week how that plays out, but I think that was a big advantage the Ford's had in the last couple of years. was they were able, their cars lined up better and pushed each other better and could stay kind of connected, which was a huge deal with this package. So I think that going into it, I'm optimistic, that our cars will be able to push better, and hopefully that comes to fruition. Yeah, I don't think it's going to look at the fort. I don't know if it's going to change that much. Yeah, I mean, and it doesn't have to. I think you guys were.

I mean, as long as they went back to what they would have. I think most of our changes are at other parts, not the very center of the nose where that would be, where that would be. be a factor. But like I said, you never know. We will find out soon enough. I know one guy that will find out if it's going to push good or not. That's probably my guy. Yeah, you're a guy for sure. So, last one is from Mike. Expectations for Spire Motorsports after the huge investment. T.J. I mean, from the stuff that they've done, you got to, you got to think they're trying to make a pretty big step here. I mean, you don't do what they've done. and spend the money they have without expecting some,

there's got to be some, expectations got to be kind of high for, in my opinion, over there. But, man, it's going to be hard. It's going to be super hard. We talked about it on here before. You can't just easily make a five-position jump in this sport, you know. And people are like, you know, what does it tell? You know, if you look at the caliber of drivers,

just go from a guy that runs 20th every week to a guy that runs 15th every week, is a big jump in that's, you know, that's a guy that's just outside the playoff versus a playoff guy. Yeah. And, and that jump is gigantic. And it's going to take time. You're not just going to go from where they are to putting all three cars in the playoffs or even really having all three cars in contention to make the playoffs. That's just an unrealistic expectation. I think that they would hope to get one in. I think, you know, it's hard to say. Corey's probably their best opportunity just for the fact of, you know, he can be a little more consistent at times.

And I think he's getting better at being consistent. That was one of the big knocks on his career early was not being consistent. I think he runs a little better consistently now. I still don't see any of their cars making the playoffs this year unless they pop a win off somewhere. But you never know. They could surprise us. They are definitely taking the necessary steps to make this happen.

We criticize teams on here before about, you know, teams like Rick Ware Racing who have taken necessary steps now to improve their program. Spire now doing that. Brett used to joke around. Spire had three charters and didn't own a race car. You know, they were, you know, lease cars or lease the charters out. And, you know, so they're definitely doing exactly what they need to do to get better. And now it's just the process of how can they get better and how much of a step.

They're going to take a step forward issue. There's no doubt about that. It's just how much of a step forward. It's like the step we took last year? Yeah. I don't, you can't, we won't go. That'll be hard to repeat. Something that I think might hamstring aspire a little bit is the fact that Chevy is in this limbo year of

the Ford and Toyotas are expecting to get a little bit better, and they're kind of staying the same. Maybe I'm sort of small improvements somewhere, but that might hurt them a little bit, maybe moving forward next year when they get a new car and we don't, you know, whatever the plans are, you know, they may take a bigger step, but that could hamstring them a little bit this year

of taking a much bigger step. All right, let's kick off, what an idiot. What an idiot. Boy, I forgot about this segment. I know. I was going to tell you today. I should probably come up early. I'm trying to think of what I might have saw this week.

I mean, it could be off season. I'll tell you. You want to, you want to get it. Oh, there are some good ones in the off season. I'll feed you an idiot. One idiot if you want to call him an idiot because I can't do it. Did you see the guy that got the lead in the race with 10 to go just below the corner every lap for the following 10 laps?

Like brakes locked up, sliding. You got that won the race? Yeah, the left front of the last 10 laps of the race. I told Gabe Hart in the airport. I said that car must have been unbelievable because that son of a bit missed every corner for the last eight lapses. I think he flat spotted it once. Yeah.

And then it just kept going back to the same spot. But I don't know if there's much load on that left front. You know what I mean? I was laughing my ass laugh because he would, he literally, he got to leave from Ty and then locked the brakes up every corner. And then eventually like TJ said, eventually after you do it for like two or three corners, it's just finding that same spot. Yeah, it goes that spot.

But it was so funny to watch. Yeah, that was a, I mean, he just got, like, like, dude, just stop. And it was funny. There was some, I think there was a handful of things in the offseason, though, that some things happened to the chili bowl that were probably a little idioteworthy. Oh, God. Every year now, I mean, we've got to hold these kids' hand, I guess, and make sure safety equipment's all.

Yeah, that was probably my, I don't know who it was or how it happened. I don't even know. I can't remember who the driver was, but I've seen, it was, seen a helmet flying off. Like, you can have his helmet that cinched on. That's, God, that's rule number one. Yeah, that's scary. I don't know. I got, I got, so I'll have, I got one for sure,

and maybe an honorable mention for you. For sure, the Andretti F1 deal, like, we didn't see this invitation to this F1 meeting because it went to our spam folder. Like, this is the best we can do. Like, that's the excuse for coming with here. You know, I don't know if anybody has any backstory, but from what I read, you know, they obviously got rejected. for their bid, which is sucks for America, you know, like Americans writ motorsports.

But then it came out that, you know, Formula One invited them to this meeting about, you know, going over this and they never responded. And then they, they, Antredi came back with, we didn't respond because we never saw the email who's in our spam folder. Like, how the fuck does that happen at this level? But you would think like, hundreds of millions of dollars on the line here. But yeah, but there has to be more than one email that gets sent out. I'm just talking off of what I know.

But like, do you not think there's a phone call? I'll be like, hey, we noticed you guys haven't responded to this email. We're just checking to make sure. Yeah. And then I don't know what happened at SRX. Like, I know, I don't know. I don't want to call anybody an idiot. But this deal went down pretty bad for me.

But let the bad taste in my mouth where you have, you make a schedule. You have tracks. You tell your tracks that you're going to to start selling tickets to these events around Christmas times. They have, they have, you know, these tracks are selling tickets as a Christmas holiday package, whatever, you know, because they got the. go ahead from SRX to do it. And then we get to, you know, a couple months out of the season starting, whatever, a handful of

months out. And they just shut the series down. You know, somebody like, you know, Thunder Road came to mind right away because they really got hosed. They didn't get the race. They had, they did a lot of infrastructure there to have this race. They laid out a lot of money, you know, last year to get the race. And then the race got canceled because of weather and flooding.

And now, like, the caveat was, all right, we'll come back next year. And, you know, we'll just do that. And now they're never coming. back. So now you're out all this money and they had to refund the fans last year when the ticket sales, you know, so I mean, that's a, that's a tough deal. And, you know, it's not, it's not, nobody's an idiot. But did the, the, the, the, that was just a bad business practice, in my opinion, left a bad taste of my mouth where you kind of left these tracks out to dry when you probably knew or had it, should have had an idea, maybe to hold off a little bit on ticket sales

and whatnot. I just blame Paul Tracy. Yeah. I don't know your shit. All right. DBC picks for Daytona. Well, I have my pick if you would like me to go. You'd go first, Casey. Have that. I'll take Riley. Riley Herbst. You were in a hurry to do that. Had it planned, guys. What an idiot. Somebody fed or that one, for sure. I don't know what you're talking about. I just plan ahead. I mean, you don't want to win the race. It's literally Daytona. Anybody could win. Hey, listen, Riley was fast. Yeah, he did a race shop. I'm not saying that, but you think you would go if you, the object is to win the race. Well, look at the last. look at the last three 500 winners, right? I know the guys like Cindrick.

And Riley is well at Super Speedways. So you think Riley is going to win. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to qualifying results, not race results. It's anybody. Just let's say, you know. All right, who's going next?

You want to go, TJ? No, you go ahead. I got to look at a list here first. Who are we going to give Brett? Should we just pick for him? Some. Kaz Grawla. Is he raising?

J. Almendinger. He would probably pick Justin. and Haley. He probably would. He probably would. Maybe I should pick him just so you can't. Oh my God. That'd be good.

Are we laying up or what? I'm picking Justin Haley. I knew you could do that. That's a good pick. Oh, man. That's not a layup either. I kick in draft. He's going to want a lot of break races.

You're laying up. I mean, if you made me pick the bet, which we can't bet, but if you may bet that win the race, no, I wouldn't pick a Jesse Haley. So it's like an alley-up type thing. Yeah, I'm hoping he gets a solid top 10 and you guys all wreck. Oh.

Who? What? Brett picked Haley. Yeah, but Brett's not here. Brett doesn't pick. He's not, he doesn't pick before me. Yeah. Not by last year's rules.

You got that list still? He won Haley? He can have Haley. Let me see your list. He can have Haley. Since we're all like laying up here. He can have Haley. I'll take

I'll take Riggie Stenhouse. Oh, all right. So he was on my list, but I will. go with Ryan Preece. That's a good pick. I like Ryan.

Hopefully he keeps it on all fours this year. Yeah. That's good. Good picks. Casey, you made a pick, right? I did. So, is Justin, I mean, is Riley locked in? Yeah, he's in the Rick Ware car, right?

I think he's locked in. So moving on to Daytona, now, what can fans expect as we watch the race? Kind of the same thing. we saw last year I don't think there's any changes to the package right just the cars are a little different

but you know the Ford and Toyota cards are a little different yeah you're going to see a lot of guys look for each other to have been working with each other we're going to see the same thing we've seen at these last couple play races where fuel is gold and saving fuel will be the prerogative of most of the teams because you want to no matter what happens all day long

you are setting up yourself to put in the least amount of fuel on the last pit stop. So whenever that comes, that's basically become the entire race, the last two races of whoever can cycle to the front stays there usually because we can't really get a third line going. Patience becomes now more of a virtue than anything

because I tried to be aggressive last year above it in traffic and it just hurt us. So, you know, guy like Danny, Danny was behind us. We started futzing around trying to, you know, pull up in front of the third lane and go forward. And I think Danny ended up like third at the second Daytona, And we ended up, I don't even know, somewhere in teens or 20s. So it's, but the, the biggest thing you'll see throughout the race is guys topping off when you don't expect it maybe or saving fuel.

If you see us three wide, that means somebody's saving fuel somewhere, consistently three wide. So do you see a lot of that, you know. And we'll know who it is. Yeah, the S&T data is very clear of, you know, and you'll see guys like late, if there's a gap between guys, that means the guy behind that guy is not running 100% throttle. Yeah. Like they just feed me that information from the box because they can watch SMT. Yeah, the engineers watch that stuff for us. They can see the guy behind me going.

He's only running 80% throttle. So that means our line's not going to have any energy. We're not going to be moving forward because guys in our line are saving fuel. So you might as well stay put. Or if somebody is coming up top with the momentum and they are pushing, you can get with them and jump everybody in that line. So that's a lot of that. It's just become a lot of fuel saving. Yeah, the only thing I can say that, Freddie, is that this year at Daytona is a little bit different.

If it's hot for the race, it's going to be there. I think there's definitely an opportunity to be more three-wide, legit, because if guys can't hold the bottom and they're fighting their cars, it's going to be, it's tough there. You have big lifts. You have big lifts on the exit of four if it's hot and slick. So I think, you know, it could be, it could be a lot more racy than the last, you know, than, like, Talladega was.

Well, you hope, I hope so. I really do. I just, it's just what this thing, but I don't love this package. It almost, you can't really be as aggressive as, you know, you just, I mean, you're a great plate spotter. you know you could be you could if you fell to the back you had no concern because you knew whether it was you or the guy you were working with you could get back up there and right now like if you get shuffled to the back with 20 to go it's yeah it's hard it's hard to get back

there yeah um so it is what it is and that's what you can be looking for you need help yeah yeah what um we have i don't know i don't know uh can you say everything you're responding for yet uh yeah well i mean i mean as up right now i'm just going to do uh I'll have Bailey Curry all year at Nice Motorsports and the trucks, which should be a lot of fun. He had a lot of, um, he was pretty quick at the end of last year, and, uh, he's got a full year this year. So looking forward to working with him. He's young and, and, um, hungry to run good. So, and it looks like I'm probably going to be doing anywhere from 10 to 15 races with J.R.M. Whatever they decide on their fifth car. So I'll be able to clear Dell Jr. in, you know, stuff.

He probably hasn't announced what he's running yet. Arka, you know, Arka Daytona? Oh, yeah, I'll have the Andy Jay. Andy Jay, the gambler. Gambler Classic winner. He's had a pretty good offseason. Probably who you have. I am going to spot for obviously Bubba.

I am going to spot for Kyle Sieg in Xfinity. Unfortunately, I found out pretty late in the offseason that I didn't have an Xfinity gig. So luckily Kyle still had an opening. So I'm going to spot for him this year. And I'm going to do Ty Dillon in the trucks at the Rackley War Truck. Willie Allen and them guys call me up a couple weeks ago So all that stuff

I'm actually believe or not I'm going to do the Raker race at Daytona. Oh. I'm actually not doing the exonerated at Daytona and I'm excited about it. I was, I'm really excited. Billy Vennarini had called me a couple months ago and asked about doing a handful of arca races

and I was like, no, I'm just not interested anymore. I am going to spot for Justin Bonsonior who's obviously a very good friend of mine. I saw that. He's running for Rhett. I don't even know what the hell. The trailer is here for. trailers right here. I backed up to it. Mark Reds been a friend of mine for a long time.

So Justin call me. I spot it for Justin back when he was probably, I don't know, 15, 16 years old, a riverhead. And I've just been really good friends with his family for a really long time. So if anybody was going to get me to leave the hotel to go do Arka Racing, it's going to be Justin. So hopefully we'll have a good run with that. And hopefully everything goes well out there. I'm looking forward to working with Ty and the guys at Rackley. Is Brett still couch racer? I can't tell you exactly what Brett's doing. Brett's going to spot this year.

He's going to spot a handful of cup races. Yeah, he's going to be actually primary at a couple ovals and stuff, too. He's got a deal worked out where I think it's, I don't know, maybe eight races, something like that with a fairly prominent team that's going to run, I guess, an extra car somewhere. So he's going to do some of that stuff. And then I'm sure he'll be maybe back up spotter at road course or something. He was trying to get me to get him on the second deal over there, but I think he was just looking for sneakers.

Probably. Same. Well, Denny's got enough. Yeah. No shit. Six hours, Jared said it took him to take pictures of that. I hope they paid him extra for that. You know what I should give one idiot to?

Whoever picked out Jared's, what do we call that? Bib, can we call that a bib for Jared? Five-12. Like, you're one number off from being perfect. If it was 5-11, those are his two drivers. You know, he kisses Kyle's ass all the time. And then obviously he's up to any's ass. So, you know, that would have been just a perfect deal and you miss it by one number.

Well, whoever is listening, if you make that decision, make sure you change it. Change it up for Daytona. You still have time. I know I saw a few tweets. asking where to go in Daytona, obviously Oyster Pub. Yeah, we'll probably be there. Which I'm usually there all week, and I'm only going down Wednesday. It's the first time in probably literally 20 years.

I'm not going to New Smyrna. Maybe I'll live tweet the Xenna race. Maybe I ought to sit on the roof and live tweet it. That way it doesn't annoy you. Tap me on the shoulder. Like, hey, what are you doing there? Why did you make that room? Yeah, I'll be like the roof, the roof tweeter.

But, yeah, we usually have, oyster pub's fun for us. We always end up there at some point. That whole area right there at his oyster pub. There's a Cody ugly bar. There's another bar down the street from that. You can't go wrong in that area. I mean, you can.

Go to the garlic to eat. Go to the garden in New Severna. That's good. The brickyards back open. Brick yards back open, yeah. I've heard it's the same as it was I heard. So go there. I found another restaurant there.

It's called the Orman Garage. It's a little bit north, but it's really nice. Like a little brewery type thing, got really good food. Well, I'm sure you can find these guys there at some point. It's a nice place. We don't go to nice places. No, that is true. Big Al's.

Pretty much sums it up. Apparently, Chad goes there for lunch like every day. So I don't really, I don't want to know. Big house is great. Big Alas has got good food. I mean, I agree, but there's something going on. I'm going to call him. What times he go to lunch?

He's in Ocala for the week. There's no off season. So my career is in Ocala. He bounces around between there and scores. I don't want to know. Anyways, good buffet. Thank you all for listening to the first show of 2024.

I know the best is yet to come. have a great week. Hopefully I'm late for the show after Daytona. That's what I said. We're working on a pretty cool guest for Daytona. Brett has already asked to move the show later. Does Brett not know that we record at 9, 930s on Monday? Brett,

talk shit about everybody that flew commercial for years because he was easily just jumping on a team plane. And now he's living in the world of having to fly commercial on Saturday night or Monday morning. All the other guys make it home before. I still fly commercial. and make it in time for the show. I think he's just lazy with it.

He is. Well, no, it's not lazy. It's the fact that he wants to go out after and he's not going to get up early enough to make it here on time. Exactly. There we go. That's not lazy.

That's just Brett being stupid. Yeah. All right. Well, hopefully Daytona's good. What else do I talk about? We can keep going. Can somebody have lunch delivered? Yeah, no kidding.

All right, I got a date. We got to go. See ya. Have a good week. See you. Check out Dirty Moe Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok. and Instagram.