Door Bumper Clear - 363 - Martinsville with Mark Martin: If They Can't Play Nice, Take them Off The Schedule

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

NASCAR Hall of Famer Mark Martin joins Freddie Kraft, Tommy Baldwin, and Karsyn Elledge on Door Bumper Clear this week. The group unpacks the action from Martinsville, including: Sammy Smith's late race dive bomb move on the last lap, should NASCAR let drivers fight it out after the race, Tommy's son Luke's Truck Series debut, Steve Phelps promoted to NASCAR Chairman, and more. Plus, the Sh*t Show Hall Of Fame earns its first unanimous winner and fans call in with their strong reactions after the weekend. Timestamps::47 Mark Martin Joins The Show21:46 Spot On/Spot Off45:51 Reaction Theatre53:37 Ask DBC55:31 Sh*t Show Hall Of FameDirty Mo Media is launching a new e-commerce merch line! They’ve got some awesome Door Bumper Clear merch on the site. Visit shop.dirtymomedia.com to check out all the new stuff.Want more DBC? Check out and subscribe to the new DBC YouTube channel! 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 Dirty Mode Media. Should we just go back to being assholes? Yeah, that's what we are, right? Let's continue being an asshole. I am probably closer to Tommy than anybody else in this board. What the fuck are you talking about? I think the two of you definitely have being assholes covered. Who can really be a bitch when they want to be a bitch?

That was the first person to come to mind. I try to stay calm. Here's what pisses me off about that. What is that supposed to be? Exactly what I said. Who are you? Who are you? Well, fuck it.

I guess we'll just go back to being ourselves. Yeah, we'll buckle up because you might get you feeling so. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to Door Bumper Clear after eventful weekend in Martinsville. How was your day, Thomas? It was eventful. Yeah. Yeah, very eventful.

Eventful weekend, yeah. But all good. Yeah, all good. Carson. Also. Sorry I kept you out too late last night. I apologize. Yeah.

If I sound like shit, it's Freddy's fault. We also had an eventful weekend Just an hour so down the road We raced Wade County So I was glad to get back to the racetrack And I'm jazzed about our guests today Mark Martin Mark how we doing?

I'm doing good It's a pleasure to be with you guys I'm excited about the show today We've been we've had this circled on our calendar For quite a while We've been trying to work out the logistics Of doing one of these remote shows And you were definitely the first one on the list

When we were going to do it So we're really happy to have you What's going on man Where are you at? been doing um i'm in arkansas um i've got my work out in this morning and uh i'm at the shop now it's a full-time job fixing stuff that i break and tear up i keep myself really busy and never run out of something to do because i'm always tearing something up uh but uh yeah just uh just hanging out and uh watching you guys and i just it's such a pleasure to be on the show with

you guys. I want to say, Carson, that thank you for holding down the rep of the chip off the old block. Total badass. You are a chip off the old block, and it's good to see what you're doing. And of course, Tommy, man, I wish we would have got to work together. You know, I was put on a mission

to hire a crew chief by Jack, so I went and recruited you and uh jack said well he gets paid too much but that's who i want you said go get who i want and uh so it didn't happen sure it would have been fun you would have really been something else there in uh roush racing at the time because what i want you know what i needed was someone that would stand up and fight and uh you definitely fit that as he's proved recently Exactly Thank you, buddy I mean obviously Mark

I see you on social media all the time Obviously you still follow very closely The sport I'm sure you're watching every week I mean where do you think we're at these days In the state of the sport really I don't know You know there's different aspects of it What I try to do is be a voice

For the classic race fan The race fans that I see See I go Still you know I'm going to Wisconsin and May and signing autographs and hanging out with the late model. I'm a late model asphalt guy. And so even though I'm a bigger fan of the late model dirt cars, my career was built on late model asphalt racing.

And so I go to the racetrack. I see these fans and I try to speak for them. And obviously they're pretty frustrated with, the state of things and I try to be, you know, their voice. But I also, you know, like I said this weekend over, you know, on X, man, I feel sorry. I'm critical of NASCAR a lot of times, but I'm also feel really sorry for them too because they're often put in terrible positions where any decision they make is going to be,

you know, is a losing, is a losing proposition. They're going to lose with somebody. So I hate that part of it. You know, it is entertaining, I think, a lot. And, you know, we've seen some epic, epic racing. And we've seen some that we don't call racing as classic race fans. Yeah, for sure. I mean, me and Tommy talked about this a couple weeks ago on here.

You know, you kind of set the mold of the guy that would, you know, listen, I'll let you go now because I'll get you back later. I'm not worried about that. Now, obviously, we've done a 180 now where we're arrow blocking the hell out of each other every damn lap. I mean, what's that like for you to watch? I know it drives Tommy crazy. Is it frustrating for you as it is for him? Well, it really is. And I don't completely understand. I'm out of touch. Tommy's closer to the garage than I am. So I admit that I don't understand certain things but I don't understand why we deal with so much dirty air if it isn't downforce. Like, you know, my car in 1990, you know, it made the best car I had made zero in the front.

No lift because most of the cars made lift with the grill open for racing. Of course, qualifying it was loose as hell made downforce. but it made 250 pounds of rear downforce. If somebody drove up behind you and got close, you would get loose and slide up the racetrack. You didn't have to use the bumper. All those things were great. When we started making more downforce,

figuring out how to make more down force, one of the complaints was from the competition, and I'm not going to name any names, was we're aerotype behind other cars. We need more down force. We need more front. down force and I'm like no I don't think that's what we need and so we went from 250 pounds of down force to 2000 the last year I raced the car I drove you know at

Michael Walker brace and made 2,000 pounds of down force that's wrong I mean I'm sorry I don't know now I can't get a straight answer for what the cars on the race to cup cars make today but obviously something's wrong and one of my thoughts about This under-body stuff is it came at the same time. It was a good thought. There were sound thought process behind it. But F-1 tried it the same year that the cup guys tried making downforce on the under side of the car, thinking that that would not be affected by the car in front as much.

Well, it didn't work. It didn't work for F-1, and it doesn't, you know, this car, today is worse, you know, than ever for dirty air. And I don't know why that is. If you're not making downforce, which I don't know how much these cup cars make, maybe Tommy does. I don't know, but... Yeah, I mean, it's not as much as when you drove, but it's still more than when you drove when there was zero downforce in the front. I mean, I think you know the deal, Mark, the more front down force you have, and when you get behind somebody, the least downforce you're end up having. So the worst the car is, right? So as we've gradually built downforce into the cars

and we lose it, we lose it, right? We don't have anything. When you didn't have anything, there was nothing to race against. So that definitely has changed our sport a lot. And, you know, on top of the wider tires now, and, you know, the more grip we have, you compile all those things together, and we're in the situation that we have right now. And I think that leads us into the weekend, this weekend. There's no downforce this week. Let's not, yeah, yeah, yeah. Downforce had nothing to do with Saturday's events. I was talking, there was some force behind some of that shit in Saturday, but not, maybe not

down force. But just talking about even the cup race on Sunday, just again, kind of, I thought we took a step backwards from where I thought we had a good race in the fall, and this was kind of, I thought it was closer what the spring race was last year, where, you know, not a lot of passing, hard to pass. You see guys staying out on 50-lap old tires and winning the stage still, and I just feel like that's, you know, I hate, I didn't, it was for a short track, you don't want to see that. You need to fall off.

You need the, you know, you just, the racing is just suffering with this car, that package. The shifting is, I think, really hurting it because you really, there's no more mistakes. You can make a mistake. You just drop, you just downshift and take off again. So, you know, I don't know. I mean, Mark, could you ever imagine shifting, you know, whatever, twice a lap in Martin's ville back in your day? No, I did a lot of complaining about shifting at Poconos.

I know it had been done before, but it wasn't done regularly at Pocono. Jack came up with the idea to do it, and I grasped through it, and of course we did it, and then people could hear it, the competition could hear it, and pretty soon everybody was doing that. But I can't imagine doing it at Martinsville, but, you know, I think, you know, the arrow-blocking thing, that's part of what you do. And to play the devil's advocate, all the things that we're seeing on the racetrack right now are a product of our environment,

some of which we can't change. As racing evolves and improves, you have to make more rules because the racers are supposed to get around the rules or work in the gray area. So you make more and more and more and more. rules and as you do that then the cars get closer to each other in speed and I that's another thing I never agreed with back when I was driving when they you

know when when NASCAR talked about wanting to make it more like letting everybody see your shot bill that pissed me off because we busted a gut we tested and we tested and we tested and we came up with something that worked better and now it's show and tell every weekend And it's like, no, you don't want everybody's car to be the same speed. If you do, you won't have your Dale Earnhardt that has a bad pit stop and restarts 20th and drives to the front. That's when fans go crazy. I don't care what you say.

A non-organic side-by-side race is not nearly as exciting as an organic, faster car driving up through the field. and so I you know I just I think that there should be a discrepancy and speed that's why you guys and all of us pray so much for war out racetracks

and tire give up because that's that's real racing comers and goers and even though I thought yesterday I saw the poll Jeff Gluck's poll saying that you know most a lot of

half the fans don't think yesterday you know yesterday was a good race I thought it was a good race I thought it was a good race. I voted yes, it was a good race. It could have been better, but I thought it was good. I want to see, you know, I want to see racing not side by side. People stuck together side by side, especially like we saw the first three races of the year where, you know, they're running half throttle and saving fuel and three wide. That just doesn't do anything for me. Yeah. Speaking of sharing information, I'm going to ask you this because I'm pretty sure I know where you

How do you feel about these guys getting to see each other's data? You know, how would you have felt back if they started sharing your data back in the 90s? Oh, man. You know, I'm so dumb. I had to learn what I was doing because I didn't even know what I was doing. But, yeah, I hate that. It makes me wonder if Gisberg is, that's part of what's happened to him is, everybody has seen what he was doing on road courses and so his secret's out and you know it's just

it's horrible i mean what we're going for we as an industry not Tommy and I but you know what NASCAR is going for now is is entertainment and it may be entertaining to see cars you know running side by side or, you know, or, you know, having this parody. But with this parity, a 20th place car that gets out in front might lead till the next pit stop. And that's not what I want to see. I want to see somebody who dominates the race and shows domination.

And, oh, by the way, stumbles every once in a while and has to come from the middle of the pack back to the front. To me, that's exciting. Yeah, I mean, to your point before you, All the cars are the same now. Now you're giving everybody information. You're making all the drivers the same. So where are you looking for your discrepancy and speed?

Or, you know, like if everybody's the same, that's why we struggle to pass each other. Yeah, I mean, I think by lap 260, 270, everybody, but all but two cars were on a lead lap still at Martinsville, which is unheard of. And look, we've raced stage races there before. That had nothing to do with it. They're usually lapping cars in the first stage, getting to about 32nd, 31st and the first stage. There was none of that yesterday. You know, the only two cars were not the two full-time cars that struggled a little bit. The rest of us were on the lead lap all the way through stage three.

And, man, that's how are you going to, like you say, how are you going to, you know, Ryan Priest was running 30th to 20th. third, the whole race, they got him in position, finished seventh. He had a good car, but he needed the clean air, the cleaner air, a good restart to get him to that position. Then once it fanned out, nobody was going to pass him because it only took eight to ten laps of hard race. And once the green came out, then everything settled. And that was it yesterday.

I mean, it's, you know, I just think, again, it's a lot of tire related on the short tracks. I think we proved that a little bit at Phoenix. I understand that they have to do a lot of work to make the tires softer now back in Ohio, spend a lot of money to get to the next step probably. But I think everyone's going to have to lean in and keep working on that. Mark, how do you feel about the race at Phoenix? Obviously, we had the two different options for tires. How do you feel about that at other places?

Would you like to see that? I mean, I thought it made the racing better at Phoenix. I shouldn't say better. More entertaining. But would you like to see that adopted other places where these teams have a couple sets of softer tires to put on at some point? Absolutely. My biggest thing

is about that is I want more than two sets. I would rather see almost more like half and half. You have to be so stingy with your two sets that it makes it more difficult. I would rather, you know, I would rather

see more than two sets. I'd love to see it. there again, Goodyear's put in a horrible situation. I've got to defend them. You know, they're being forced to build a worst tire. Well, we did it. That was our fault back when we, you know, we did it. We caused that issue.

I mean, it's not, was not Goodyear's fault. We did it because we didn't completely understand what was going on. We did, we did understand, but we knew that we had to go, overboard to have the car handling better. So that's on the competitors. But unfortunately, on Monday, Goodyear is the one that had to hear about it. They were the ones that had to deal with it through their normal customers, right? Through their Goodyear stores and through people trying to buy the tires.

So, yeah, they're in a really tough predicament of what they have to do financially, right, on both sides, on the consumer side and on the racing side. So that's on us, right? But we have to understand now that we can probably back that up because all the cameras are controlled now, right? There's rules. We have to go through the Hawkeye and we have to go through the chassis machine. We're only allowed a certain amount of camber now. And the camera gains are a lot different than they used to be. So we can't do what we did back in when you were racing anymore.

So you know the deal. The tires are the thing that are touching the ground. They're the ones that are going to make the grip or no grip based off anything. downforce, no downforce anything. We need to keep working on the tires. Yeah, and you know what? I would like to hear Carson's take, you know, on all of that as well, you know, because I like to know different people's perspectives.

I enjoy X because I hear a lot of different viewpoints on all those things. But, Carson, what do you think? You know, honestly, this year is the first time I've ever been involved in a conversation. about tires, to be honest with you, because we deal with some issues on the car store side of things with codes and sets matching and all that stuff. So, I mean, I'm still getting pretty educated on the NASCAR side of things. I do think having an option at Martinsville would have made it a lot more entertaining from our perspective at home. But, I mean, as far as the rest of it, I still probably have a lot to learn. That's cool that you bring up the tire codes and stuff. As Tommy said,

tires are everything. Tires were everything. And, you know, they were almost my life. They had the codes, what you're speaking of is like they would, it tells what year, what week, what month, you know, or what week the tires were built all the way back in the 70s. And this is an interesting tidbit. In 1978, the 19th week, Firestone 50s. 51s were different than every other week. A 20th week and a 17th week, 51, would both grain. And when I figured out, I was just 19 years old, when I figured out that you could run those tires, those instead of the harder compound, I called all over the U.S. I bought every 19th week 51 there was.

And Rusty Wallace and I went on a tour, and I took a U-Haul full of me. 19th week 51's with me. So we had a good time, but, you know, just an interesting tidbit. There's a lot more to tires than the race fans really know. The biggest thing on the short track is the shift worker. That's the big, always was the biggest thing for us. Once we found the guy, whether he worked at midnight or he worked at 6 a.m. shift,

once we found that guy and that tire worked, we looked for that guy in that tire truck. and there was a code that still is today that if you can find it, that's the shift guy. That's the guy that's building the tire. I mean, you know, I don't know if most people know, but all of our tires are handmade. I mean, you've been to Goodyear and Hoosier. You've watched these guys put these tires together. They're not made all by a machine. We still make them, you know, by hand, most of them by hand.

So they have a lot to do with it. Hey, it's Dale Jr. And for the latest DBC gear, we need you to go to shop. Dot dirtymo Media.com. We've got plenty of options and we're adding new stuff all the time. Shop.dirtymomedia.com. Before we get to spot on, spot off, Carson,

Mark, I don't know if you got to see this. The biggest news of last week, I think, especially on social media, was Tommy became a Muppet. Did you get a chance to see Tommy as a Muppet? You can see it right behind him here. You're on in the studio. Now we have it, well, not framed yet.

That's right there. Look. That was freaking awesome, man. I had a ball on X last. week, man, between, you know, everybody playing the meme of him, you know, with his headset flying off. All right, that's enough. That's enough. You did this to yourself, Tom.

Okay. I feel like you've probably seen that a time or two before that, Mark. That's why I wanted him to be my crew chief. I wanted somebody to fight for me. Fight for you and with you. That's all for Tommy. Yeah. All right.

Let's get into a little bit of spot on, spot off. We've got some. Wait, we got more. What do you want to talk about? What do you want to talk about? What about... This is the third week in a row. You've cut me off going into spot-on-spot-off.

I can see today. You skipped... What about Luke's stuff? We're going to... We're talking about Luke and spot-on-spot-off. Oh, that's in race recap. We're talking about Luke and spot-on, spot-off. All right, let's go.

We'll get to it. I promise. Permission to proceed? Go ahead. All right. Spot on. Spot on. Did you want to go first on this one?

I think he's a whiny bit. That's what I think. Send it Why me Topic number one After the race Sammy Smith said I am not proud of that

But you absolutely have to do that When asked about his last lab dumping Of Taylor Gray In the Xfinity race Saturday night I already know where you guys are going to go on this But spot on spot off Freddie You absolutely had to do that He said

Yeah No the fuck you don't What I mean like No you actually could to just finish second, you could have qualified for the next dash for the cash race. You could have not tore up to a Dale's cars in the process and cost Dale another $100 when you wrecked all guy.

That's the other thing. At the end of his other quote, he said, if I was just going to accept and finish second, that wasn't going to sit well with me. And I'm like, how does that not sit better with you than crashing? It's one thing if, like, you're on the guy's bumper and you go in there and try to move him up the racetrack. We've seen that done a thousand times. But Mark, I mean, the other night, he was two or three car legs back getting into three

and just, I mean, he had no prayer making that corner. or without running into that kid. No, and, you know, I want to be a Sammy fan. I really do. And I thought I was well on my way until that happened. I do really appreciate his honesty afterwards. It takes balls to say what he said. And I respect that.

I don't respect. I don't know all the history and I don't know more than what I saw in television. and unfairly this is how this goes if you are a gray fan which I was pulling for him to win so I didn't like him getting moved then when he softly barely moved

Sammy this is all I saw was a very unfair like I'm going to get you back for moving me there may be more to the story I don't know but it was a it was a horrible look we're in a day and age where, you know, moving people is the norm. I want a great win. You know, I, you know, so it's not fair for me to bash anybody.

But I do bring up the fact that he was honest as he could be. It didn't seem logical that the things he said didn't seem logic to me, but there may be a lot more to the backstory than I know that, you know, made that more. It looked like he just got mad and just went berserk down in the corner. It was a lot, it was, you know, a lot like the Austin Dillon deal, except Sammy didn't win. I mean, if you're going to do that, you need to win. I don't think he would have won at the end of the day. And I just, I don't know, man. Sammy moved Gray out before that last caution. And Gray did a really good job, very professional job of getting pass.

passing him back and could have did a lot of things as he was passing him, but chose not to, raced him as a professional. And it's a shame that as a race car driver, your thought process and your mind doesn't go, okay, he got me. He raced me the proper way, and I'm going to finish second. And those are the things that pissed me off. And you've seen it the whole race, that race was a total shit show. I mean, is that nominated as a shit show?

Absolutely. There was six or seven drivers that I, it's completely embarrassing the way they carry themselves that whole race. And they caused, you know, they caused an embarrassment to our sport of NASCAR. And to be the second tier series and to have these guys drive like that and race like that is absolutely horrible. I'm, you know, I'm old school just like you. I don't believe in any of that. I believe in if you're fast enough, to pass him, you pass him, you try your best you can, if there's a little moving around on both guys. And, you know, I can't stress enough that Denny Hamlin Chase Elliott fight at Bowman Gray and how they handled that situation for the lead and how they respected each other while they were running into each other and giving each other a split second to get back straightened up because, hey, maybe they did not really mean that. Okay, I'm going to stop for a second and do that. That's the way you're supposed to race. And the way these guys, throughout the whole field.

I mean, there was guys sending people from two cars back slamming into him and wrecking the guy that's three positions, four positions ahead of him and looking like an angel. And it's just, you know, it just, I don't know, I don't understand. And, you know, I don't know, Mark, if it starts, well, I know where it starts.

It starts in those legend cars and, you know, starts at the summer shootout, them guys that just run into each other getting in the corner. and just an embarrassment, man. It's just bad. Bad look. I'd like to add to that, too, Tommy.

You know, go back to Cota and Christopher Bell. You know, what he did aborting that attempt to pass Kyle Busch was really special. That really changed me from a neutral guy toward Bell to a fan. You raced hard. and there's something to be said for respect. What fan didn't enjoy, you know, the respect and hard racing that went on, you know, at Cota, for example. And, you know, that's, that's, you know, that's just, we need to see more of that. Yeah, I told Tommy last night, you know, I think it's time to take the kids' toys away.

The kids can't play together. They take them off the schedule. Take Martinsville off the schedule. They've showed you for year after year. that they can't race there. This is what they do every year. Obviously, it's not going to happen because NASCAR's entertaining for them. And I don't want to see it happen.

But I'd rather see, I'd rather not see the race than we see what we saw on Saturday night. So, like, if the kids can't play nice together, take their toys away. Like, that's the end of it for me, I think. You know, it's just a joke what we saw the other night. Mark, just to finish up on Martinsville, one thing I did want to ask you about, how do you feel about winning and winning your end? Because that's where this is coming from. You know, I think that's a lot of that stems from, you know, you see an opportunity

to take a win. and, you know, obviously guys do it better than others, but, you know, winning your in is what causes a lot of this mayhem, especially in the fall race when it's, you know, they're going to the final four. How do you feel about that winning your end rule? I don't like, I personally don't like the whole point system. I don't like it.

I think it should be a full season. And I think there's some tweaks to the old classic point system that could be made. But for me, you know, a champion is much. more legitimate if he consistently runs well all year long and I think that there's another way to put emphasis on winning if you win a race you should be celebrated by everyone in the sport as a badass period winning a race shouldn't be a ticket to to the championship it should be that you be beat everybody in the hardest form of racing in the world.

That's what it should be. And I know a lot of classic fans, you know, feel the same way about that. Now, would, you know, would it be as entertaining? I don't know. I just think that the integrity of the sport is more important than entertainment. And if you lose some viewers over that, then you lose some viewers. But you build, you know, the classic race fan. They watch the pre-race show, the entire race, and the post-race show.

They sat down after church, they came in after church, and watched the race with their kids. That's the race fans, that's the core race fans, that has been, to a great degree, abandoned with where we've taken this sport. They've been abandoned for someone who watches sports. First of all, playoffs, we don't play. There ain't no play. It shouldn't be called playoffs. in my opinion. Number one.

Number two, overtime. You should call it something else. I don't know. We're not ball sports. But ball sports people that flip over and watch the end of the Martinsville Xfinity race, they'll keep watching because they want to see that.

But the classic race fan might turn that off. And that's where we're at right now. The sport is catering to the non-race fan to click on TV and stay on there because we've got these gimmicks. I agree. Clint Boyer says if NASCAR is going to say respect will fix it, then they will need to get those security guards out of the way

so they can learn respect. Spot on. Hell yeah. Let's do it. If the drivers are going to do that, let's fight, let's get it over with it. Let's knock each other out and let's move on. Whoever's going to knock that guy out, not going to mess with anymore. Let's do it.

The other night, those two guys were two guys. that wanted to fight that didn't want to fight. Did you see that? That's the way the world, it's so, our world is so soft right now because everyone is so afraid of, of the personal look

and, you know, the outlash of the people, you know, the social media keyboard-fingered people. And like, that's why I don't care. You know,

I'm going to be passionate as I possibly can. I've worked my ass off in a sport to do what I've done and all the accomplished and unaccomplishments that I've done. Look, we all worked really hard. Mark knows more than anybody.

He's grown up. I've seen old pictures of him. He was a mess getting in that race car because he worked day and night and winning races and doing the things. We all worked very hard for how we are and what we got to right now. And these kids, they didn't.

These kids do not work on their cars. They have not been brought up to work on their cars. They don't do anything on these race cars. They have no care in the world on treating these cars or the people that work on them, all these hours and all the things that they do. And it's a complete embarrassment. So NASCAR, open it up.

If they're going to do it, let them fight, let them knock each other out, and let's get on with it. Amen. Yeah, I don't think we had anything. Got anything else, Freddie? Do you want to fight? I do, I will say, I think if Taylor, I think Taylor Gray would have beat the shit.

I mean, I think he wanted to. like one of them arguments. Sammy didn't want to fight. That was like one of them arguments here and I were like, we're just going to make sure there's three or four people between us and we're just going to yell and point. Like, no, it's like, if that was me coming around the corner, I would have been like sneaking around the corner and trying to punch somebody. I wouldn't have been on the other end of Taylor. No.

And listen, shout out to Taylor. We talked about it. I mean, he ran an amazing race. He deserved to win and obviously it got robbed for him. And the really unfortunate thing is, so Tony Hirschman spots for him. He spots for Ty Gibbs. He spots for Corey Heim. and he's just had a string of bad luck for the last month.

And I went down... Let's not be upset for Tony. He's had a really good run. Between his brother and Kyle, let's not feel bad about Tony Hershey. But like, literally, I went down there with 50 to go, and I'm like, you realize you're going to get run over before this race is over.

Like, just the way your month is going, like, you know you're going to get wrecked. And he's like, oh, I know. He's like, I know. Sammy's going to be the one that does it. Like, this was like 50 or 60 laps to go. It's just, you know it's coming. Like, it's such that it drove me crazy there night.

end of the day. Somebody needs to get their ass beat. All right. Exactly. Moving on. There were only two legitimate green flag passes for the lead down from 12 in this race last year. Spot on, spot off. Freddie.

Obviously spot off. You know, it's just like I said, I thought the fall race was pretty good last year. You know, I thought we were trending in the right direction when we, you know, we got that softer tire. And I thought the last fall race was much better than the spring. And then we go back this year and I don't know, maybe it's temperature related. I don't know. It was warm. You know, so the tires.

react, you know, we saw it at Bristol, you know, like the tires react much differently. Mark talked about just the difference in, you know, codes and tires, you know, just tires themselves, but then you factor in the weather and it's going to make for different stuff. So, you know, I thought the race this year, this was much like the spring race last year, just super hard to pass. I mean, we stayed out on the one stage because, like, we saw the 21 stay out and, and we was kind of mid-pack or worse. He stays out and then, you know, leads the whole rest of that stage or, you know, stays up front. And then, you know, we did the same thing. Danny stayed in front of us. I think 53-lap tires stayed out and won the stage driving away. Chase was the only one that

made any kind of progress on tires, and that would have been unheard of years ago. I mean, the guy staying out on 50-lap old tires would have got ran over. So it's just, you know, I hated to see it on Sunday, and I was hoping we were trending in the right direction. Like I said before, I think we took a step backwards this week. Yeah, I think Martinsville is probably going to be the toughest place to fix because they're at their limit of everything where we are right now on the tires and the technology. I just again the only other thing that might fix it is more horsepower right something to spin the tires and where you know going the corner a little bit harder use a little bit more breakthrough of the things that need to be done to the cars to wear the tire out so maybe we can add a little you know Mark you can you can add to that maybe I agree with the yeah I agree with the horsepower thing you know because like you say it's going to be harder in the rear tires taking off harder on the front tires going in to the corner of the corner of the front tires going in to the corner of the corner of I you know I'm different than a lot of race fans I didn't have a problem with Denny Hamlin leading over 200 laps I don't understand why you can't give them more

horsepower because you're trying to entice another manufacturer in if another manufacturer wants to come and play ball they need to be able to make seven or 800 horsepower Toyota did it you know they got they came in and they developed to the point where where they could do it. I'm not opposed. I think it'd be good for the sport to have another manufacturer. I think Toyota's been fantastic for motor sports, and I'm so appreciative for what they've done.

I would like to see another manufacturer, but I don't think holding up our product on that account, you know, it makes any sense. Yeah, I think that's, we said this a couple years ago on here. Like Toyota got into our sport because our sport was badass and they wanted to be a part of it. Now you're, now you're trying to dumb the sports. down to bring, you know, entice other people to come in. Like, just make your sport the best it can be and that'll, they'll want to get in, you know? It just seems like we're trying to move backwards towards them instead of making them come up to us.

All right. Spot on. By the way, shout out. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off again. Oh, my God. I'm just going to do this all show. Shat, do you guys see who won the race Sunday? I don't know if you, that guy's great. Danny Hamlin.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, look. I can't believe that's what you just cut me off for. You know, and Mark touched on it over the years when Denny Hamman's right there. There's nobody going to beat him. I mean, he's just really, really good there.

I mean, end the story. He's the old, he's the new Jeff Gordon, you know, back when he was, I'm going to say it, spot on there. And, you know, and there was Darrell Walshup and Rusty Wallace back in your stuff. You hit it every now and then. That was probably for a short track driver, that was pretty difficult. You didn't have much luck there, did you? No, I say all the time that I hated that place.

didn't run good. Matt shows me all the time in black and white that I did. But, you know, it's a tough place. And one of the reasons why you guys said it's going to be the toughest racetrack to make better, it's because you're threading a needle. There's no, you can't slide out in the corner and go higher or swing out, you know, it's so confined that, you know, there's not a lot, you don't have a lot of room to do things. And for me, if I needed to go faster, I just got a handful of steering wheel.

You can't do that at Martinsville. It can go worse if you get a handful of steering wheel and start over-driving it. So, yeah, it is quite the challenge because it's so, the corners are so sharp. Yep, exactly. Permission to proceed once again. All right. Actually, I'm just kidding. All right, spot on, spot off. Tommy's blood pressure stayed 126 over 73. the entire duration of Luke's truck debut on Friday night. He's got a, he's, Freddie was sitting next. I think Freddy got hired as my security guard or something because he didn't keep,

he kept, he was right there through the whole time. He's babysitting. Yeah, we got locked into her, to the media room there, whatever room we were in. Old scorers room. This old scorers room. And, yeah, I can say spot on. Tommy did much, much better than I thought he was going to do. Like, there was only one.

time we might have got up and rearranged some furniture when Luke and the only time Tommy got Tommy the only time he actually got angry was when Luke was making mistakes. So even like, even when Luke got spun out. I mean, he might have slapped the table one time or something like that, but it wasn't, he never got mad and yelled at Jay Garcia. It was Jay Garcia that spun him. He never got mad. It was just when Luke would make a mistake or, you know, and Luke did, I thought, an unbelievable job. I don't want you to be the one to say it. I'll say it for you. He did a really good job, obviously, fastest in practice. A couple, I mean, he was going to run top five easily. Maybe when them guys start wrecking at the end, he's probably in position to win the race or at least be racing for it.

And, you know, obviously it gets turned around. But he did a great job of past a lot of trucks. I mean, I talked to him yesterday. A couple small little mistakes of just inexperienced, like going the wrong way when they stack up a little bit. But, I mean, I thought he did a really, really good job. I'm sure you got to watch it, Mark. Oh, yeah. I was, you know, I'm sure Tommy was really proud. The thing that you want to see, you want to see it all and you want it all. but the biggest thing you want to see is speed. You know, that's the hardest thing to find, you know, when you're a racer. And if you've got speed instantly, then the rest of it will come in time for sure,

and it will come really fast. And you know a thing or two about being fast as in practice. I feel like you were a fastest in practice every damn where we went for a while, first car out right to the top of the board and never came down. I don't know. That was my thing. I would have loved to have had qualifying with zero practice. That would have been so much fun.

That was right in my wheelhouse. I loved the thrill of not knowing if you were going to make it or not. And I loved qualifying for that very reason. I usually drove faster than I thought I could make it and was always trembling after my qualifying lap. So I loved qualifying. I had a lot of good fortune. drive a lot of fast cars. Mark's the biggest

proponent of horsepower because he was always 30, 40 down, right? We were. What do you think of us qualifying wide open a couple weeks ago at a mile and a half Vegas? Of course, you know what I think of that. Heck, even

even Harvick, you know, had to bash that. No, we, you know, gosh, we've got six races. now on the schedule where you do that and you race that way. I used to think four was too many, but now we've got six, and I hate that, and I get what we're doing. I get what they're doing.

But I just, that formula is not for me. I want them to have to let off the gas enough that the guy that grabs a handful of steering wheel can make a difference. And if you're running wide open or even near wide open, it just brings everybody together. And it gets back to what Tom and I were discussing about everybody being almost equal. That's not what you want. I mean, sure, the 20th place, Kai can win, maybe. He has a better chance than otherwise.

But that's good for the sport once in a while. It's not good for the sport all the time. Agreed. All right. last one. Some news over the weekend. NASCAR names Steve Phelps, its first ever commissioner, and promotes COO Steve O'Donnell to president. Spot on, spot off. Tommy. Steve Phelps deserves everything that's coming to him. He works really hard. I don't even know the chain of order of all these different names of who you are. But, you know, I know Steve,

Steve's been in this, doing this for a long time, and he's been part of a lot of negotiations and a lot of growth in our sport. And yeah, kudos to him. and NASCAR for recognizing how good he is. And, you know, Steve obviously keeps... Steve's always been up there, right? He always floats around there. And he's, again, another guy that's been integral part of NASCAR's growth and everything we've been seeing lately. So, yeah, good moves on both part.

I think, you know, like I said, those guys, they get a lot of respect from all of us in the garage and on the business side. And, you know, I know Steve has personally helped me a lot. has flown in on his own accord on some meetings with me and some sponsors to try to help. So, yeah, he's a racer's guy, both him and Steve, and they deserve it. Yeah, he, I mean, there's been numerous times where Steve has come up on the roof before the race and walked down the whole line, shook every spotter's hand. You know, thanks for coming.

Did you need anything? Whatever you need, you know, let me know. So obviously, great guy. Personally, I would rather just see Mark Martin be named a commissioner. Because after today's show, I think he's got some good ideas. He can fix some stuff. We might need him as a race director. Maybe he should help Kip a little bit.

I was going to say, I'm going to invite Mark out one weekend. With a late model, yeah. Late model land and help us fix a few things. No, you know what? We need you on the smart tour. Yeah, we can, we can, Hoots does the smart tour, the modified smart tour. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and, you know, he was old back then.

Now he's, now he's old and can't see what he's doing now. So, yeah, we might need your help. Yeah, but there's one thing about it. I'm sure he's very confident. Oh, yeah. Even if they're wrong. Always has been. Yeah.

What's got you fired up? What's got me fired up? Well, lots of things per usual, but how about Chris Wright top 10 in the Xfinity race? That's how big of a shit show that was. That Chris Wright pulled off a top 10, ninth actually. Yeah, I don't even, I don't, still don't even know what car he dryers or number he drives. Okay, and I text you, I told, what happened? He told me to park it.

I told you to park your guy because he was involved and he was getting bounced around. He's like, hold on because. I said we're at 27th. We still got a shot to win. And where'd you end up? Six, yeah. So that's all he wrote. Luke and I were, we were in Rhode Island at the time after, you know, watching the whole thing while we're eating.

And Luke's, Luke's looking at me just shaking his head because, you know, he's like, I cannot believe. We restarted 27th with like 29 laps to go and finish 6th. And we didn't, I mean, I don't even know if we passed anybody. It's just all restarts running each other, guys running each other over. Just hook the curb and let them get out of your way. Xfinity race shit show. It was brutal. Rough.

All right. It's time for reaction theater where fans can call in and voice their opinions from this weekend's race. We've got nine calls today. You were really apprehensive saying that. I don't know if you've been paying attention. I don't know if you've seen what's happened to me. Can we get a little confidence in this? I don't know if you've been here the last couple weeks.

I've been a little rough for me. Well, you had a good resume today. Yeah, the resume, we'll take that. We'll take that over some of the creepy shit we've got otherwise. A live reading of the children's classic Thomas and the tow truck driver. Was after a wreck at South Boston Speedway down in the pits. Here comes Tom Ball when a walking. A check on a driver after a hard wreck.

I think the left rear went down, passes his lips. So fuck yourself, a response was returned. A common, northern conversation endured. Great he shirt buddies, common knocking. Next thing you know, a tow truck driver and Tom are rocking. Down goes Tom and it took hold in all. But not for long, not for long at all. Back up, pop Tom, headset, ready to be fired.

A thought in his head. Dare do I toss it? only to be followed by a thought of the cost of it. 250 apiece, I can't bear the thought of it. Tom Hustin, he pus, his neck dane is bulging. One big breath in to declare, Pat enough of you, motherfuckers. Avatable great shirt for members, including big doofus disperse.

The legend, Tom Baldwin, again, emerges unhurt. The end. Emerges Unhurst. Just publish it tomorrow. Yeah, that's so awesome. Kevin Hughes wanted me to ask you, when the last time you paid for a headset was, because when I was talking about that.

Well, I finally got a new one after 18 years. I walked in there this winter. I threw it on his desk, and I was like, come on, man. Can I finally get a new one? It was green, moldy. Ew. Oh, yeah. And I think he felt bad for me.

He probably did. I would. Hey, I was in my suite over at Martinsville, and the guy's next to me sounds something along the lines of, I'm getting real time, you want to fucking sick. Maybe they were able to see us. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

So is there some sort of like monetary prize for the shit show Hall of Fame? Because apparently the Infinity drivers think there is. They're all fucking rubble brushing to get to the front of the line. There has to be a prize. There's no other reason to be that stupid. Yeah, forget D.HB. We got to figure something out, yeah, for the... There needs to, like what, the end of the year.

Yeah, we need to have a... Well, maybe not. Maybe people do that more, but, yeah. We'll get to the drawing board. on that. Soft tires and a short track. Denny back in Victory Lane, I guess he likes soft and short, just like my old lady. I literally don't even like it.

Oh, Lord. Oh, man. Now we got combo callers. That's pretty good. People are stepping it up. My God, I'm sitting here in the parking lot waiting to leave. It's where to God. Richard Childress out here playing fucking bumper cars with these damn people must have hit four or five people trying to leave the damn parking lot.

He passed me on the way home last night. I was in my pickup and he was in his brand new Corvette it looked like. And I was like, I wonder how he'd feel if I just hung her right here and just drove into his door. He probably would have got out and beat my ass right there. We all park on top of the hill there and get out pretty quickly. And sometimes you've got to be a little rough in traffic. Well, did you see this last week? Did you see what you did last week?

Richard, Richard drove into the, one of the JGR guys. Allegedly. Well, no, I think there was, looking at the car, there was nothing alleged about it. Allegedly to Richard. Allegedly it was Richard, yeah. Yeah, it happens. Renting, you know, well, I don't, was that his personal vehicle? I would assume they were both rental cars.

Over the years, um, our rent-a-car agencies have taken a beaten with us. Mostly happens on the way to the airport on Sunday. Yeah. That's the, that race is usually more entertaining than the one that was in. We've had to drag-a-car. as that at a ditch to get to the airport. You remember those guys that one van wrecked going out of the tunnel at Indy? Did you see?

I'm sure you were there. Like, these guys hit hard. I don't know what the hell they were doing, but they ended up like up on top of a barricade and buried into a tunnel. Oh, Gail Davis from Bill Davis racing, I got yelled at a couple of times. I had to take a hit. Three quarters of time it was Bill's fault, and I had to take the hit. Right.

Sure. Nothing has ever been here. No, this was always, Bill's. He was pretty rough on the render cars. It was fun. We go to Daytona. That's not real racing. Now we're at Martinsville.

This isn't real racing either. I don't think the problem is the cars, not the package, the tires, the arrows. None of that. The problem is the fucking drivers. Drivers drive like fucking bullshit all the time. You can have a great finish, have something natural, but no. Some dumb fuck has to come from

nine miles back, knocks him do that other way, then wrecked a whole fucking field. True. Yeah, well, it's hard to argue with him. I don't think he was a Sammy Smith fan the other night. And I hate it because I like Sammy. Like, Sammy's a good kid. I mean, we worked.

I don't, like, listen, I know Sammy's that we're harping on, but it wasn't just him, yeah. More than Sammy. I mean. The whole race. Yeah, I mean. And early. And, like, for nothing, mid-pack, like, what are you doing?

I mean, the kids, the guys, the kids that were doing it all had good cars. Yeah. Right? I mean, they're all top teams. I mean, come on. I just want to give a huge shout out to Mrs. Wallace because last year she led Bubba Wallace stick his french fry and her McFlurry. And who's running top five this year?

I truly have no words. Do you think that had something to do with it, Freddie? What are we doing? Yeah. But, Freddie, I mean, he brings up a good point. Do you think that had something to do with it, or we have this new crew chief driver combination. I think there's a lot of,

I think the crew chief obviously is helping. Obviously, the cars are super fast. Everything's really regimented with Charles radio-wise. Everything's great. Not the Spotter, right? Spotter's the same idiot that's always been there, so you can't really have, there's nothing there. But, I mean, but listen, Bubba is just in a different place.

You know, like you said last week, you know, it's just, it's a mindset thing, you know, and it's like even when we had bad days, it was, there was a lot of positives in those bad days. So there's nothing really, you know, I'm sure we're, I mean, we're going to hit. You never stay high too high, you know, too long. And there's going to be some low point at some point this year where we're in my struggle. You know, everybody goes through it. Like we've been talking about the 54 is going through it.

He had a really good run yesterday. Kind of got turned around. I think he was going to have a top 10 run. Got turned around there. I think he still came back in top 12 or something like that. But, you know, it's this sport, man. It's ups and downs and it's how you handle them. And I think he's just doing a really good job of kind of staying up right now.

And it's showing on the racetrack. That was it. That was it. Big Flurries. Thanks for you. Yesterday was, so we, yesterday was Amanda and John's birthday. Amanda, Bubba's wife and my brother.

So John won, I'm sorry, Bubba won on Megan's birthday when we're in Daytona. So I said, hey, you know, you won on Meg's birthday. Why don't you keep the streak rolling? So we finished third and he had to apologize to his wife.

Yeah, but it's John's birthday. Every day. Every day. It's like Christmas for John. I don't even know where John is. I don't have no idea if he's home. I don't know where John's at. I mean, you're like, we're going to come celebrate John's birthday.

I'm like, for what? Every day's his birthday. To leave an audio message. 24-7, you can call our number 704, 802-9572, and we will play the, we'll play the best ones each week on the show, so make them good. All right, it's time for AskDBC. You can send in your questions on X each week using hashtag AskDBC. And this week, Dee Jansen 8 would like to know a MLB game is being played at Bristol this

year, so I was curious what your favorite sports crossovers are. So like, for example, you know, NASCAR racing at the Coliseum, NHL, Winter Club, classics, they play them in like football and baseball stadiums, anything like that. I'm going to go, I think I'm going to go to the, which is going to be interesting, but the Rangers are playing the New Year's Day winter class outside this year, but it's in Miami. So I don't know how that's going to work. Like, I feel like Miami is not exactly what you think of when you think about outside and ice. When did you say it is?

It's on January 1st or around January. Does it get cold enough in Miami for that? I mean, obviously they're, they're, making, they're keeping the ice cold or the ground cold. Like, I don't know how they're going to do this in Miami. I feel like it's a bad idea. Interesting vibe. You might have to go just to see.

I'm going, yeah. I'm going to go. I think so. I haven't bought tickets or anything, but I'm planning on it. You got any time? No, I mean, I think it's pretty cool. I'm interesting to see the layout when it's all done because, you know, those guys do a really good job of putting on a show.

Yeah, the atmosphere. I mean, the football game was incredible there. And the way the infield is laid out, you know, all the dips and, you know, drains and all the things. It's going to be real interesting how they, you know, I'm sure they, you know, they're going to have to worry about drainage. You're going to have to do everything,

you know, level it out. So it's, I'm sure it's going to be a big project, but I'm sure when it's done it's going to be a classic. I bet that it'll be fun too, because, like, hockey games already have a fantastic atmosphere and it being, like, outdoors in Miami, it might be trouble. That's a bad idea.

But I'm going to do it anyway. Why not? All right. Moving along. Shit Show Hall of Fame. we've obviously got a super obvious nominee for this week. But last week, the Archieme testing with the lack of safety equipment took the win from Thomas and the tow truck driver,

which is kind of surprising. Yeah, that's unfortunate. I mean, it's not surprising because that was the dumbest thing I saw last week. Well, it was pretty stupid, but. What do you got, Tom? Who do you want to be a shit show this week? The whole Xfinity race. Just the whole Xfinity series?

The whole Xfinity race. Do we even give anybody a option this week? Do we just let him know? That's it, man. That's it. I mean, we had a couple short track. Another pace truck, tow truck flipped over, I think, right?

We got something on there. Really? Yeah, another. Where did this tow truck flip over? Right here. This guy blew up, and I think this guy over here, he was really in a rush here. He was already on fire.

We missed that. He blew up, and he did a good job stopping so we wouldn't get oil over there. Here's a guy. Holy shit. Yeah. He was in a rush. So now, instead of worrying about the guy getting burned up, they were worried about the truck driver.

Yeah. And yeah. And this guy, this is, I think, in New Zealand. That was a little bit of shit show. We got a street stock flying through a fence. I mean, like, Duke's a Hazard style. Hey, and that's, by the way, when you hear your local track announcer tell you not to stand next to the fence, that's why. That's what they don't do that.

Yeah, good thing nobody got hurt there. Yeah, I mean, there's people right there that down there in Land. They were just watching going, holy shit. Is that your New Zealand accent? Yeah, holy shit. I don't think that was it. You don't think so? I don't know.

So, I mean, I guess that's really I mean, really, I think we just get it. I think we just go ahead and lock it in into the Hall of Fame already. Oh, this guy, he's... Oh, the high limit official that fell. Oh, man, that's so dangerous. I'm glad the guys were staying low in a sprint coach.

He tripped over a... He had like a corn or something. Look at him. He was like... What was he doing? He's like... Who is that? It might as... Just the way he's like hopping up.

Is he? I don't know what has wrapped in. I think he was trying to do. to unstrap himself. I don't know. I mean, any other week, any other week that might have been a shit show, but there's nothing topping Xfinity. Nothing will, nothing top.

Donald, just put like Xfinity, Xfinity, like it's just three, you know, like just three. Yeah. Yeah. I would say remember to go vote, but you really don't have to this week. Read votes. Go vote. Go to the social page.

Go vote. Just so we see which one of the Xfinity options wins. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. DBC picks for the first. time, I think, right? One of our guests. Second time. What is going on here? Hey, Tom, thanks for coming. Yeah. Our guests, so Mark, we have a new fun twist to it this year where our, wait

what? Yeah, let him try. We can try. We'll have to have to stop. You get to pick with us. So, you'll just pick, we'll have to, I guess, tell them which ones. But you pick last. You got to McMurray won. The guest, the guest, uh, the guest won last week. So now you got, you got to go last. McMurray one with Denny Hamlin. I, how did I finish with an 11th place finish? This is ridiculous. Where did I end up? Where are we at? Where are we at? I. I It was in second, so. No, you, Tommy, yeah, Tommy's P2. Where are we going?

I love that. We're going to Darlington. Darlington. All right. I will take at Darlington, I'll take Chase Elliott. Oh, all right. Let's see. I am going to, I'm going to take last year's winner, Chase Briscoe.

Chase Briscoe. Chase Briscoe won there last year? Didn't he? I think you did. I think you're right. You won the Southern 500? Right before the playoffs, yeah. Yeah.

Might be a bold choice. Thomas, who you're going? I'm going to go at Chastain. Ross Chastain. Mark, who you want? We'll tell you if he's available. I'm going to go with Ryan Priest. He's available.

He's available. And he's on a roll, man. That kid, obviously, Ryan's one of our good. I mean, drove Tommy's car for a long time, or on and off for a long time, I should say. A good friend of ours. He's on a role. And that's just a guy, I feel like that's a guy you connect with a lot, Mark.

The guy works on his own stuff. Obviously, over a rosh now. Like, just somebody you can really make a connection with. yeah yeah one guy that i would i tell tommy about this before we got on here one guy that i i always get a chuckle out of and it's like i felt like you guys are almost like the odd couple uh jimmy blewitt is somebody that i worked with for a long time and i feel like anytime jimmy post something i always see the fire emoji come out of mark either mark comments or likes it or something and it's always i'm like how do you know mark he's like i don't really know him he just

i guess he just likes my post i guess he's something He's special I'm a big fan of his That's what we call him He's a little laid up right now He had some stomach issues He's probably have to sit this whole year out I think

But he's ready to get back after it I can promise you that much He's now he's got his boy racing And his nephew He's gonna take them to Wall Stadium this year And run Sunday James ran the other night At a bridge port

A dirt modified To Egypt right Oh to Egypt sorry yeah And you know he did well So that's that's his That's his deal for this year And he'll be back next year I'm sure

Ready to go I know Mark, you mentioned Matt. How is Matt doing these days? Where's he at? He's in Arkansas as well. He's doing really good. He's just pretty well slammed with, he's as a historian and the curator of all our old stuff. He's got JR 10, our chassis, 10th car we built at Rouches, got our first win, Jack and my first win.

It's being restored. and getting it running and working on the book. We're moving along on the book. We're three, almost three and a half years in on it, probably have a year left before. It's all done, but he's working hard to make sure that that goes well. So he's handling the merchandise, markmarkinarchive.com. or check out.

He's doing the Instagram Mark Martin Archive on Instagram as well. So he's staying busy. We've got a busy schedule in front of us and go on to Madison, Wisconsin, and May to sign autographs, and then I'm going up to Wisconsin International in June.

Then we're going out to Monterey for Laguna Seca, the IROC race, that's going to be out there. And that's going to be a big time. And so we've got a lot of stuff kind of scheduled out this summer. Got our whole summer laid out. We're going to also head up to the northeast toward Tommy's old stomping grounds. We're going to go up and...

Lim Rock, right? To Rhode Island. Rhode Island. And then we're going up to Bentley, Warren's place, of course. Bentley is actually Matt's best friend. And, yeah, I don't know if they... Matt's best friends are all in their 80s. It's kind of strange, but he and Bentley are big feet, you know, and I'm just, I love Bentley.

We have so much fun. Who doesn't love Bentley, Warren? He's a legend, and his bar up there is just as much legendary. I love, I've been there one time, and I need to go, I need to go more because it's great hanging out with him. It's great hearing all the stories. It's great to, you know, he's got that place pretty well set up. It's a whole, it's a big place and it's got different areas of different venues, I would say.

You know, one is like the groupies and then one is like the racers and then one is concerts going on. So there's a lot of stuff that Bentley does at his place. Yeah, I can't wait myself to get back up there. Did you say the groupies? Groupies. Okay. Groupies. I was just checking.

I just making sure that I heard that correctly. You ever been up there? I've never been to the bar. Groupies. Oh, man. Carson, how was the Cars tour this week before we get out of here? It was solid. Minnie Tyrell won on Saturday night, which I was glad to see.

Many and his family, they're great people. They work super hard to get to the racetrack. A lot of family businesses, and that's kind of what helps him get there. And he's been close to it, too. I mean, all year, last year he was really fast. So I was glad to see that for many. It's always a fun victory lane when it's one of your pals. I saw, he led every lap, right?

Yep, every single lap. I'm not familiar with Minnie's background. Is that his name? His real name is, Timmy, Tyrell is his fault. He's a junior, right? Timothy. Imagine if I was called Minnie, Minnie Tommy? Yeah, and so.

Muppet Tommy and something out. He's a short king, so that's why I think they started calling him Minnie. Yeah, he runs good. He runs good. I think Landon Huffman got screwed. Yeah. I think he did not deserve to get put in the back, but the rules rule, I guess.

You know, he was a legitimate second place. I could see Mark nodding his head. I think he agrees with you. And, you know, especially, you know, and I was talking to Kip yesterday in Martinsville, you know, I asked him, I said, you know, the guy basically came over the radio and said, man, that was me.

I came down on Landon. And I asked Kip, I said, in the short track world, I seen it at Hickory, I thought once, that they have a roof tap rule. If a guy knows he caused that wreck, if he pulls up at the start finish line and taps his roof,

that means it was his fault. And Kip was like, man, I wish that we could possibly do that type of stuff. But a rule has to be a rule, man. And everyone has to understand that. If the cars are involved, I guess the rule is you can explain it better. Yeah, I mean, it's basically if you're, whether you're the car that stops on the racetrack or not, if you were involved in causing it or touch the car that stopped or whatever, you are involved, which at a place like Wake County, too, it's difficult, right?

because you're at a bullring and they are beating and banging. But yeah, that's kind of why we came to that rule is it just had to be black and white. And it was getting a little bit messy there last year, right around Orange County. Yeah. Hell, the pace car almost got spun out on a lot. Yeah, we about Aspect the pace car multiple times this weekend. It's a tight place, man. Little sketchy.

There was one time I was like, oh. Yeah, well, he had to go because he almost got beat the restart before because of lagging a little bit, so he had to go. He played that right, Minnie. He did good. I watched, I've watched that race as well, and yeah, I was, you know, there again. I was kind of, you know, a fan of Landon Huffman, and, you know, that was, you know, that's a tough pill to swallow, but like Carson says, a rule needs to be a rule. Once you start having judgment calls, you know, it opens up a whole can of worms. But it is disappointing, but it is disappointing, because, you know, somebody can run, you can be going down the straightway and somebody run all over you and, you know, cut right across your car or your front end and you wind up in the bat.

But I get that, you know, and it does help police, you know, what we saw on Saturday, you know, at Martinsville. I know what police is it better. Good old ass kicking. Yeah. That would be best. Right? Right. I mean, a lot of people after the race were commenting that. They want NASCAR to do something. They want NASCAR to make calls about this. Do we want to open that box?

Because I feel like where do you draw the line now? I think these guys are going to handle themselves, no? I agree. I don't want, yeah, I came in defense of NASCAR. I don't want them to have to, you know, police ethics. That's a tough, you know, that's a tough stop to be in. Right? Like the kids are talking about.

Yeah, I mean, they should already have that. They're in the top three series of, of the, sport and in the world of racing, they should already have that figured out. They should not be running into each other. It's a joke, man. That's why the Cars Tour has that rule so that they learn it while they're with us and then when they get there. Yeah, but, you know, the Cars Tour is... Oh. It's careful. She'll hit you. No, no, it's a tough series because, again, it's a low horsepower division, right? And them guys are on it. There's 15 guys that run within a tenth of each other and they lean on each other hard and it's the hardest cleanest racing that you see in that

in the short track division because those because of the horsepower and because of the handling those guys lean on each other more than any other division or series that I see that that can take it um but i don't man i just think it starts at an early age mark i think it's implanted in their brain and it's they everyone tells them it's okay and don't worry about it they the dads pat him on the back and go you know instead of yelling at them and trying to teach them the right thing and it gives these kids a green light to keep doing it on the way out up and it's either a good ass kicking or get someone get reprimanded you know 50 points or 100,000 dollars or whatever they still don't have to pay it right the team pays it the driver doesn't right so what do they learn

I don't, I just... Yeah, I think the only rule NASCAR should make about that is letting them... Still 126 over 702. The only rule NASCAR should make about that is letting them fight. Let them fight, yeah. You know, it's only going to happen a couple times.

Yeah, right? Once you see, you're going to get punched in the face. As soon as you see, there's a beaten, one of them's going to get a beaten. It's only going to happen two or three times. Then it's going to stop because people are going to go, you know what? I don't really want to be part of that.

Or I don't want to get a beaten, right? So not many people mess with Austin Hill anymore for some reason. No. Right. He handled his business. Right. I mean, but it still doesn't give him a green light of doing what he did the other. I know he won.

He was still rough. He was. He still caused problems too. Everybody did. I don't think there's anybody innocent in that whole race. No. Maybe Taylor Gregg. Taylor Gregg might have been the only person that was innocent.

And he deserved to win that race and he got screwed. Poor guy was a sit and duck. Before we take off. He wasn't a sit and duck. Well, leading with the. He was full car. What I'm saying leading at Martinsville in this day and era. Unfortunately, in the Dave's Finney series, that's a sitting back.

You're fucked. You're fucked. You're fucked. Shit show. Before we take off, I want to give a couple shoutouts. One, to a friend of mine and Tommy's Tom Ryan retired this week. My dad's best friend growing up, so I've known Tommy literally my entire life. And I know he was, I think Thursday was his last day.

He was in Hendrick. He might have been at Hendrick when you were there. I don't know if you know Tom at all, Mark. But just an unbelievable fabricator. But a great guy. So shout out. him and then thinking about our buddy Joel Edmonds he lost his dad Wayne over the weekend so just give a shout out to him and we're thinking about him hopefully we get him back in here eventually this year we need

we need a we need a we need a joel episode in our life but uh mark thank you for jumping in here man I know we kind of put you last minute on the spot but man I really really appreciate you jumping in and hanging out with us today thanks man it's good to see you thank you man it was fun to be with you guys you guys are a good time thanks buddy thanks brother have a good one see you man all right well awesome to have Mark Martin jump on I mean damn living legend of our sport. And obviously, it was nice to see you guys, as always. I saw a lot of you this weekend.

Yeah, I know. I had to keep an eye on you. I was worried about you. I was making sure that 126 over 72 stayed intact. Stayed locked. I was proud of you. Thanks for joining. We will see everybody in Darlington this weekend.

Looking forward to another great race. Tommy, what do you, the kids got going on? I know your weekend got ruined last weekend with a lot of rain. Yeah, but there was no rain. Yeah, no rain. You're not bitter about it. that. I'm a little bitter. I'm a little pissed off. Because the race got canceled on Thursday.

On Sunday. Yeah, Thursday for Sunday, up in Thompson. And, yeah, we had to make a quick trip back and forth to Thompson on Saturday. The race is rescheduled for this Saturday, but unfortunately we race Orange County with the Smart Tour both kids do this weekend. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I might come join you guys at Orange County. We don't have any race in this weekend. I don't know if I can deal with you that long. Why? Come on.

It'll be like a DBC field trip. I don't know what the hell is going on over here. Last night we get to the bar last night, and Carson's like, look, these kids are in my house. Yeah. Yeah, I get to the bar to meet Freddie and Tommy, and I open my phone,

and Jack and Luke send me a Snapchat. They're just walking around my living room. Hey, this is nice. Love this lamp. I'm like, what the fuck are you doing in my house? And I'm not there. Who knows? Kids these days.

All right. All right. Thanks for joining everybody. We'll see you next week. We're out. See you. out Dirtymo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.