Door Bumper Clear - Chris Lambert: What Sets Denny Apart & Why Spotting Wins Ain't "Easy"

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

Fresh off a tripleheader weekend of ARCA, Trucks, and Cup at The Tricky Triangle, DBC is back in the studio – once again praising the domination of Denny Hamlin and the No. 11 after his third straight win from the pole. On this episode, Chris Lambert – spotter for the No. 11 of Denny Hamlin – joins the show as a guest to talk about what’s made the No. 11 team so strong in 2026, his journey into spotting at NASCAR’s top level, and his thoughts on all the hot topics from this past weekend. Also, the group notes that NASCAR had tech trailers parked at the track in Pocono – front and center - but the No. 11 and No. 45 were not taken for testing. Plus, Jimmie Johnson does a drunk interview at Le Mans, Legacy is starting to contend for wins, and everyone has plenty of questions about how this weekend will go in San Diego. Everything wraps up with Reaction Theatre, S*** Show HOF, and Ask DBC. Want more DBC? Check out and subscribe to the new DBC YouTube channel! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, what's up everybody. Welcome back to Doorpupapa Clear. I'm Freddie Crafts, spotter for Bubba Wallace and Dean Thompson this week. Tommy, how are you today, sir? Good morning. I'm doing well. Yeah. Yeah.

Good day today. So far. So far today. Charlie yet. So far. So far. It hasn't been, nobody's, none of the kids have ruined it or anything? Not yet.

Carson, how are you today? I'm great. We, uh, cars door is back this weekend. And it was our minis mission weekend with all the kids. So it's one of your favorites. Great vibes. Yep. Nothing could piss me off on the racetrack because.

Anyone. What? He won, and Minnie won. He had a great restart. He did. He had to work for that one. I'll give it to him. That's good.

That's fun. Speaking of work, this guy hasn't had to do any in the last three weeks. I've just been out front telling this guy he's clear by 20, if you like. Spotter of the number 11 Toyota, Chris Lambert. Welcome back. I don't know, third or fourth trip for you. Yeah, third or fourth for sure. But happy to be back and good time to come.

Yeah. Yeah, I kind of had a feeling that, like, when I asked you last week, I said, well, obviously they've rattled off two wins, so it's already a good time to come. And where now we're going, I don't know, would you call that his best racetrack? I mean, statistically at least. For sure.

But yeah, talk about, I mean. And one thing we're not, we're going to guarantee is the motherfucker ain't going to win next week. It's not going to make a four to a row. No, he is not. So I just want to finish. That's the goal. Just finish.

Talk about like, you know, obviously you guys have had speed for as long as you've been over there. and it was actually surprising me to find out he's never done this before. But just talk about what has to fall in place? Because again, you've had speed all year even this year. But what has to fall in a place for you guys to just rattle off three wins in a row? Execution, really. I mean, we were talking about it yesterday, Denny and I,

and we should have probably won all the intermediate track races this year if you go back to Texas, go back to Charlotte. We've had the speed or the best car. It seems like the most speed at those tracks. and either an ill-time caution or the rain came at Charlotte when we were under the seven for the lead, the late. So situations have come up that we haven't been able to put it together. But I feel like yesterday as a whole, yeah, we had a good car, but strategy fell in place, the cautions fell at the right time, and really good restarts.

But it's fun to watch. I mean, he's obviously one of the best to ever do it, but he's on a heater right now that I've never seen. a month, 15 years. Yeah, and talk about that because, you know, I think before last season, we all heard the news Gabe Hart was going to move to competition director. You're going to get Chris Gale as a crew chief. Obviously, you guys had a solid year last year. Probably should have won the championship, you know, untimely caution.

But, you know, now it seems like everything, you know, it was surprising for me when Gabe Hart's like, I think these guys are going to struggle because I knew how close Danny and Gabe Hart were. You know, how has that transition been? And obviously, you guys are fired on all cylinders right now. Yeah, it's been different. I mean, the good thing I think about Gail, if you're going to give him his props, is he walked into a situation with the 11 car and our processes each week and did not try to change anything.

He just gave his input and changed, you know, ideas more so than processes. So it allowed us to continue to do our job the way we have been doing it that was obviously working. And then he would interject here or there and give his little input about maybe we should try this or maybe we should try that. and it's obviously made it's made the team better I feel like but in race adjustments I feel like it's where we're really really good

then he can tell him what he needs and between him and Bowers and the two engineers they go to work and they can pinpoint exactly what he needs and if you look at our speed throughout the race we get better and better as we go yeah and talk about like it's funny because you see we were all aware

with different drivers across the board the amount of work that Denny puts in, week in, week out, day and day out, it seems like, to just continue to get better. Somebody even at the top of his game, I guarantee is right now probably doing something stupid studying, something coming up for, we're probably on the Sim or wherever,

Megan Labs sat, you know, San Diego right now, but just his work, I think, and how much that relates on track. Yeah, I mean, obviously, it's been well documented the amount of work he puts in, but, I mean, even yesterday morning, he was in the Sim for two hours. Just going back and scaling the tire.

This is what I felt in practice. This is the grip level that I felt I had versus what pre-race we felt like we had. And he'll do the same thing today. He'll go into Sim. He'll post Pocono with the grip level he felt like he had at the end of the race versus what he had at the start of the race. So when we start next year's prep, it's there. But it's nonstop.

I mean, it makes my job easier for me with him because he's a 21-year veteran and been doing this, and he knows what he needs to look at. but the thing I like about is he goes into our one note and he puts in little notes about driving techniques and this that and the other that has changed over the last year or so and I can remind him throughout the practice or qualifying the race these little things that he might not have looked at going in because he's looking at the data but it just helps he he knows what he needs and he knows what he needs to look at and he knows what's important and we all just do our part to try and keep everything together yeah so just so we don't

kiss his ass the entire show. I did want to switch gears. This is the Denny show for a little bit. It's going to be today. I did want to switch gears one minute. Obviously, we've been good friends for a long time. I'm really close to your family. Your son's getting into spotting.

Cameron, what's that been like for you? I know, like, we talk about a lot on the roof, and we kind of go back and watch some of his races or watch him live if we can sometimes. But how cool is that for you to see him getting involved with the sport? It's really cool. I mean, it's definitely a proud dad moment because he's what he wanted to do. he had an opportunity to go play some small college baseball. Told his mom he didn't want to go and broke her heart, obviously,

because she wanted to continue to watch him play. And that's where she was, I was on the road working. They were at the ball field. I mean, that's just how it worked every weekend. And so it broke her heart. But he wanted to get into this. And I told him, I wanted to try to steer him toward 2311, Shippie and those guys that 2311 with the pit crew,

go change tires. You're an athlete. You got it everything you need to do, you know, hand and eye coordination and all that. He tried it for probably 8. or nine months and realized that these are grown men that have been in college and he's just an 18 year old kid that weighs 140 pounds. And he'd done well with what he was doing, but he's like that I really want to spot. And thankfully, through connections of growing up and racing throughout

the years, Kendall Sellers today, Hey, performance had an opportunity for him to come working the shop, learn the cars, learn what it takes. And I actually trusted him with this $100,000 race car, right? So he got the opportunity. He was white as a ghost the first time at Florence. ever spotted and I was actually there and but he's progressed he's working with Caden Honeycutt now on the late model side and the pro side and he was actually at Florence this past weekend with Kendall working with the Cassidy Keith girl and the limited late model and he's getting his name out there he's getting phone calls he gets the opportunity to go work every weekend somewhere it seems like and the feedback that I

have got from the guys is he's progressing very nicely and he's actually going to be with me again in San Diego this weekend as a third spotter. So it's definitely a proud bad moment. Yeah, I was trying to recruit him last year to be the third spotter. For this year, I was like, hey, if you're not going to use them, I'm going to probably try to use them on my car if we can. And then Lambert decided he was going to use him.

I got screwed on that deal. I mean, I don't understand. I think he's got some pull. It's like I put the idea in his head, I think, or something. I don't know what happened there. But yeah, let's talk about this weekend, obviously. Great race for you guys win the race. But it wasn't, it wasn't all easy.

I mean, there was multiple times, and I feel like Poconos like this, Tommy, where you lose, at some point in the race, you're going to lose your track position. You know, Danny dominated that for, ran the guys down and then took one in the first stage, drove away at the end. But then, you know, the field, some guys flipped, some guys didn't. So now you lose track position and you got to battle your way back, right? But it always seemed that they are, they had it figured out. I mean, if you seen, if you look at the overall pitcher and what was going on, how long those guys were going to have to stop for fuel, versus how long you were going to have to stop for fuel, where you guys were at, There was never, I don't think, an oh shit moment for you guys

because from up top watching, you guys were already one step ahead of the 19 and the 42 to 43 and them guys, you knew exactly what it was. And look, I seen him get to a point and stop, right? He got to a point and just like, okay, I don't have to worry about it because I'm in that time frame of knowing I'm going to come out ahead of these guys or be right with them. So, and then those guys took off a little bit, right?

Those three, four guys took off a little bit, and the nine, and you guys had to go a little bit because it was getting to the point that if they pitted, they were going to come out ahead of you. And they did, right? But it was fun to watch because there was a little, there was some playing around right there, right? It was some serious, you know, guessing of what, you know, what needed to be done there. But overall, I mean, look, I was up top. I was watching, I was paying attention what you had going on. You had all your notes going up, especially on the restarts, you know, watching what was going on, reading your one note.

I didn't read it. I seen what you would. He was reading the shit out of it. No, I was in a really good spot yesterday to watch what all the spotters were really looking at, you know, and I paid attention. And you had the most, some guy paid attention just to the SMT and watched that. You were more worried about reading past history notes and restart. positions and doing all those type of things. So all the spotters, you don't do nothing, you know, but, you know, but,

fair, but he knows. He knows, but, but the way, the way it all played out, it's just like, yeah, I mean, you guys were never in trouble, so to speak. No, we weren't. I mean, we had a plan going in that this is our A plan, and if the race goes seamlessly, this is what we're going to do or what we're going to try and do. And then we had a B plan that if guys were cautious, fall at certain times that opens it up for different strategies then we're going to do this but it

played out pretty much the way we wanted it to um the main goal for us starting the race was either the five or us whoever got out into the lead try and run as hard as you can to build the gap so where you have a limited number of guys that can jump you at the end of the stage one and um only six jumped us so we decided we were going to come with two to go if if we thought we were going to more than that but it worked out so we won the stage and then we started seventh and got a pretty bad restart that first time. He got in there and landed tight, and it took off on him, and we lost a few spots.

But he learned from that, and we learned from that. And it went to stage two where we drove back to a pretty good situation and caution come out when it did. Got really good restarts. Went from, I guess, we finished ninth, the end of stage two. Yeah, you were like eighth to fourth, all of one lap or something. Correct.

The caution before that got us to where we could pit and get to our flip lap, right? So a lot of guys had to flip 15 laps before they end of the stage two, where we could go to the flip lap and then do it. And then we had more guys pit at the end of the stage than we thought we were going to. So we restarted sixth. And from there, he just had really good restarts, jumped two or three, jumped one or two, and then took the lead. And tried to build as big a gap as we could to, we knew guys were going to need more fuel than we did. But we weren't counting on the 45 being as fast as he was a team. Yeah, where did he come?

I mean, he did a really good job once staying. out and clocking off some fast times. I mean, to be able to not lose when he pitted, right? I mean, all the guys who ran long, I mean, they lost straightaways, right, because of how slow they were going. And I thought the same thing about the 45. I wasn't paying attention how fast he was going when he was leading and when he was running up front. And all of a sudden, he pitted. And I was like, holy cow, he's going to be a problem, you know, for these guys coming up. was there a lot of talk from you guys of what was going on once that happened or are you guys just didn't have even so i kept on the lap times i asked when when he when we peeled off and pitted and he stayed out i'm like

is our gap okay to him being able to jump us by taking two or something and gail was like no we're fine we're here so we just managed our you know we fell back to the 24 just managing our tires right i felt like we got let him get too close because then your one corner getting held up and he's there right But I kept an eye on the 45 after he pitted just watching his lap times. We were more concerned about the 20. Once we learned with 25 to go, he was going to try and go to the end. So then we're trying to push Denny to get there, get there, get there. Because if a caution comes out with 10 to go and he's still a leader,

do you pit, do you not pit? That kind of situation. Does it allow him to save enough to make it to the end? So we tried to push Denny to get there. But the 45, if we're taking the white flag and I'm like, don't let up. I mean, the 45 has just passed the 24 and he's two seconds back and eight tenths of a second better than us per lap. So, but it worked out. Thankfully, the traffic he had to come through, held him up enough just to let us go.

Yeah, I wasn't sure how much you were pacing your size. I was looking at a lot times and I'm like, I don't know how much he's saving, but he better quit if he's got any left in the time. Well, I mean, you guys had to be careful for the caution, right? Because you had to give yourself an opportunity, are we going to pit or not? I mean, you wear your stuff out. You're like, he's going to come over there goes, guys, I don't have any. anything left. We're going to have to pit. But, you know, when you guys were behind the 24 or ahead of the 24, I've seen the gap. I'm like, I know how fast he's been compared to the 24 the whole

race. He's just saving. But it's like, you guys are all doing the math to your competitor at that point, right? Who's running well? Who's got a chance? Who's doing, you know, the guys that jumped you, that jumped you. You weren't really worried about them, right? Because they weren't as fast as you guys. So who were you, like, when you got into, let's say, the middle of the second stage, who were you guys most worried about? Who were you guys, like, keying off of anybody? Not really anybody in particular. You know, you just looked at guys that had the amount of fuel. You know, our plan was to try and start stage three with only needing X amount of fuel. So we pitted and took, when we green flag stopped into stage two coming to our flip lap,

We actually held him and took more fuel than anybody else. We had like a 14 second pit stop because we waited on fuel, which set us up for short fill at the end, right? Where a lot of guys, the 42, 43, they didn't wait on fuel. So we planned for stage three starting as full as we could be and best track positions as we could have and then not needing to do but one can when we did stop. So that was the plan.

So it wasn't really anybody in particular just running your own race, man, our own race. Tommy, talk about that because we talk about a lot lot about taking fuel. It's become kind of the name of the name of the game as far as strategy goes. You know, we're talking about basically one can versus two cans, right? And that's just slowing the pit stop down after you take one can, right? So like I feel like every race we go to now, especially places like this, places like Michigan, you know, you're basing your whole race around just trying to put one can in at the end where it's, you know at some point in the race you need to probably fill it. So how do you like, how do you break that up? Is it just situationally based

of where you're running at that moment, track position-wise, you know, when should we do this? Can we just risk it to later? Because obviously, if you're going to put a little more and you want to do it under green, and are you just hoping to keep kicking that can down the road and hope to get to that green flag stop, or is it just, all right, this is an opportunity? We can fill it here and then hope for the best later. Yeah, I mean, it's both. I mean, it all depends on where you're running. I mean, if you're in the high 20s, low 30s and you need to get into cleaner air, you need to just put enough fuel in to get you to the next stop, right?

I mean, we all know one about we're getting, the race is laid out for all of us, pretty much, hopefully when everything comes into play, right? Once you figure out your fuel mileage and your tires and what's going on, and mostly everybody after practice really understands where you're at from that point. So the plan is laid out, like Chris said. I mean, you have A, B, and C plans, right? for especially the top running cars because you, you know, most of the time you mark out your opponents, right? You figure out who you're really going to race against and what you're going to do.

Then you got to all of a sudden think about the guys that gamble, right? The crew chiefs that gamble, right? The sparks of the world, right? Those type of guys. 71, right? I mean, yeah, he's the, that guy can, whatever playbook we got, you might as well rip it up because he's got a totally different thought process. But, you know, Travis, a lot of.

of times it works, right? And they run well. So it's like, you have to look out for those guys. You got to see where they're running and what they did. I mean, you have to think about all this. And these guys are thinking about it all. I know people bitched about, I saw Gluck's Poll was about 65% this morning. Was that low? Poconos. Yeah, because it's a, like, it's a boring race to watch, you know, but it's one of my favorite races. See, I didn't think so, though. Because, I mean, it's just, it's not very racy. But, like, if you're like, if you're like, it's a lot. I mean, you grew up racing. We all grew up racing.

So, like, for me, I love it because what you talked about, you could sit back there and just watch 10 different strategies play out at one time. And you don't know exactly what's going to work out. A caution throws a wrench into everybody's plans at some point. You know, but for me, like, people can shit on Pocono because they say the racing's not great. But it's one of my favorite races. I mean, I mean, it's just full of strategy. I mean, it's just like a road course. I mean, you know, it's the same as a road course, really, everything that we got to do.

But yeah, that's why I always tell everybody you have to go to the races to really appreciate, watch the race in person, really appreciate how everybody is racing, not just the two or three guys that the TV folks are focusing on all the time, right? It's just the amount of things that go on. I mean, there is one point, and you were in the middle of it, most of the, from 28th to 33rd, those seven, eight cars, 20th to 30, it was a madhouse. you guys were creating a lot of it but it was a madhouse

that must have been when we wrecked Joey yeah yeah yeah and to me the players changed back there because guys caution come out guys would pit and then you had different guys

going to the back but yeah 54 man I he had a really good car and what happened what was that long pit stop I think the right rear tire was

yeah they had to yeah it was they're going to fall off so they had to come back in and then his green flag stop at the end he was going to jump a few guys and he slid through his box

watching Herschman come unglued for that was pretty fun. I didn't see his hands flop. Oh, they were flying. For me, Pocono, obviously you've got to have car speed, car potential, right? But last year we got hung up behind the 19 who was saving and we could not pass him and we were going as hard as we could go. If we would have got in front of them, we would have driven away by a long ways. But for me, if you listened to our secondary channel yesterday,

it was more about filling Gail in on the 9s on pit road. He did not wait on fuel. the five's on pit road. He did not wait on field. Just letting him know those guys play so we could try and set our play up. Are we going to continue the path we were down? Are we going to adjust to what they're doing or what? And we actually had enough of a buffer there that when we green flag stopped it in this stage two, we filled it and lost a few positions to those guys who didn't wait on fuel. But then obviously in stage three, we had less time on pit road and it worked out. So it's, for me it's fun because you're more

involved, you're helping the crew chief understand what guys are doing and everything else because that comes into play more than just pure car speed. Yeah, that's what I think, like the point you want to get across about Pocono is especially like you said, Tommy, being there because I'm assuming TV, you know, John Hunter's up there leading, they did a great job. Again, both legacy cars

really fast again. Everett Jones in the top 16 we called it, again, we called it last week. You said it last week. And I'm a little depressed at Bubba because I figured him being here, he probably should have won, but he wrecked again. Yeah, yeah, we didn't have a good weekend. But, you know, but you know, but I feel like TV in that moment's probably showing John Hunter lead the race, which is a great story.

They should be doing that. But there's so much shit going on behind the scenes of that. You know, the race is actually being decided, you know, probably a half a lot behind that. You know what I mean? I want to give TV their flowers, though, because they do, the prime broadcast specifically does a really good job at explaining, like, the strategy side of thing. Steve does an incredible job. And so, like, me, I think I was entertained by it. Like, I didn't think it was a bad race. but I was more interested in that stuff.

He is the best. Yeah. He does a really good job. Explaining what is going on, laying out the whole race, because he did it, right? And he understands it. I mean, he just, you know, he's good, man. I rode down the elevator after the Michigan race with Junior in Lattart and Elton Sawyer and a few of those guys.

And, of course, Steve sees me. And he's like, well, you're not to screw it up again, right? Yeah. And, but then he starts going into talking about the plan. And he's like, yeah, I had laid out. showed me his notes. He had it laid out everything that we did going into the race. He had already prepped for, planned for, and had it in his notes to look for.

And obviously, when you sit on top of the pit box for a Hendrit Motorsports all those years, work with the drivers he worked with. He's in tune with everything. But he puts them to work behind the scenes that makes that that broadcast, I feel like the best there is. It is. Is it one more week? Yeah, I think they do San Diego. And then it goes to T&T.

I thought they only made one really stupid decision yesterday of the whole broadcast. What were you doing? talking about turn one, just the difficulty spotting from there to see turn one, which let's talk about something, because we've got him bookended, I think. What's it like spotting next to Timofield? Well, you never end up where you're supposed to be. Because as the race goes on and the green flag continues,

you continually get pushed one way or the other, right? I mean, caution comes out. I look down and I'm three feet from my tape marking, in my iPad, so I need to be three feet the other way, but Timmy just keeps pushing us down. And then the chicken wing. I mean, thankfully, I'm on the right good side of it. You're on the bad side of it. But it's all you're going to look at is his elbow.

Timmy gets up there with his binoculars. And like most of us, like we'll get binoculars up and we kind of keep our elbows tucked in. Timmy is as wide as he can get leaned over the rail. You're trying to. Over the years, I've decided that it's easier for me to look underneath between his little hole right. because I can't see around them. Did you guys have anybody in turn one? No.

No. We did for the first time. I felt that it was a plus. For the first time ever, we had somebody in. You don't know what he could see. And I... They did a really good job of keying off each other from... They knew exactly.

Who was it? You know? A kid that we have spotting for the late model did an awesome job. But him and... It was like they never lost a sentence after he stopped. It was like the first time I was like, okay, that was worth it. that was probably the first time that I've seen it because it the flow is phenomenal. I just, and Lambert, I don't know if you agree.

This is why I talked about this yesterday on the broadcast too. But for me, it's, first of all, the changeover point is a concern. Just because, you know, right where you change over is where they usually end up the big fan out of five, six wide. And then the problem with turn one for me is we're really low. We're really close to the racetrack. Them guys are lower, closer to the racetrack. And I think they still have the same depth issues getting in the one that we do because they're not all the way down in one. They are, you know, still probably towards the end of the pit road.

So, you know, I don't know, you know, for me, it's like I talked about this yesterday, there was a point a couple years ago, a handful years ago now where Stenhouse just drove in the back of Casey with a flat because them guys got their crossovers mixed up and nobody said anything. And or something to that effect. But, you know, so for me, it's just not worth it. I don't know. Did you ever try it? So I myself have been down there. Now, granted, it was 22, 23 years ago when I was first starting at this level.

But Jeremy Brickhouse, that was spotting for Martin at the time. I was doing the Xfinity car, O'Reilly's car for them back then. And I stayed over a few races. I actually went under the old scoring tower at Phoenix, if you remember on what was the front stretch, backstretched now. And same thing. You're so low, your angles are terrible, your sight lines are terrible. but I actually went down there at Pocono probably 22 years ago,

and I told you, I'm like, I cannot help you. I mean, once they fan out, you don't know where you are. It's sort of like turn one at Cotto and they come up to hill, and all you see is ruse and you lose them. So I'm not a fan of it. As long as the driver I'm working with understands the situation. And with the cameras now, I feel like Denny's really good of being aware of what's going on around him.

But it is tough when you're buried 23rd, 24th in the field, and you fan out five or six wide, how do you call it? until they turn into the corner, you're not sure whether they're there or not. But I just, Denny's one of those less voices on the radio, less chatter, the better. So he understands what he's up against, and we just do it with just one. So you basically, you just throw out facts. There's no jibba jabber, right? Nothing.

If I'm unsure, I'm going to stay still there. You know what I mean? And if he wants to clear himself off his left side mirror or the camera thing. But you guys fully understand that. He knows that you're going to say, do you say it with a different tone of voice? I don't. Okay. And early on, I would tell him, you know, can't tell. And he's like, don't tell me can't tell. Just if you're unsure, the last thing that you were sure about continue to say that, and I'll make my decision based off what I see. And he puts a little piece of tape on his mirror that gives him two foot.

And I'll be giving a secret. Off the rear quarter, off the rear bumper cover. And he knows if what he sees is within that range, then he's clear. If not, then he's not clear. But he has a really good understanding of where he's at and what he can do. so it works out for us. Finney or Riley race, whatever it's called. I sat on the pole. I thought you had a pretty good race going pit stop penalty to kind of derailed things for you guys.

We did. They got us for interference call. I guess the right front tire rode into the 45s pit box, equipment interference, and that derailed it. And you know how it is there. It's so hard to pass with the air in those cars.

So we do some strategy and good race car. got back to 8th, but we probably should have ran top 5 easily. Yeah. Yeah, Dean O had a good day. Both Sam Hunt cars, I think, finished in the top 15. It might be the first time all year that that's happened. But that's poor 24 cars,

been on a run of bad luck for a while. But yeah, Dean kind of just, we started in the back because we had to make some changes of the car after practice. So we had to go to the back, didn't qualify. And he just did a really good job of just kind of getting there. Just kidding there. There's Dean Thompson.

Yeah, it's like, but that's what you got to do You know what I mean? If you can just run top 15 all day, stay on the lead lap, you're going to find yourself with a chance of the top 10 at the end of these races almost every week.

So he did a good job. Algeyer wins again. Weird. Who do you ever guess that? It's the Justin Denny's show. Cruzey ran well. Cruz did run really well.

I was surprised at this. I think we talked about me and you talked about this on the plane that he didn't run the Arca race. Before. I mean, you think that's just somebody willing to pay to run the archer race versus

that's my thought I actually brought it up to you I'm like I don't understand why Gio is running it and Brent's not when he hasn't been there before and um Apparently he didn't need to

no I mean the kids just exceptional talent we all know it but I think it would have helped him just getting aligned with seeing the racetrack understanding at speed you know the cars are completely different but I feel like it would have just helped him

and and obviously he did not need it but it didn't make sense to me going into the weekend yeah yeah One o'clock start time. Hallelujah. Thank you.

How long are you there afterwards? I don't know how long you stay, Victor Lane. But Bob started tweeting that it was starting to sprinkle a little bit. It started raining. I went to Victor Lane and made it to the truck and it started sprinkling. And I stayed until they went through heights and they went through the OSS. Just making sure. Not that you've been to swanified there.

Did they put it in the black trailer? They did not put hours. That car did not go in the black trailer? Reddick. P1 and P2 did not go. So the 45 and the 11, who everybody wants obviously to go to. No, Reddick went. Oh, he didn't.

Well, Bob tweeted Reddick and John Hunter went. They took two from each manufacturer. 54 went. Oh, 54 went. So the 54 and the John Hunter went for us. I know the 7 went. I'm not sure. I watched them load up as I was leaving.

But the 45 and 11, who obviously is the two that everybody wants taken to the NASCAR did not go. Tommy, how funny is it when them black trailers show up? You know, like... They didn't hide it either. No, they didn't hide it. You just got to go find it. Somebody, a friend of ours, that's one of his missions on Saturday afternoon. He disappears and he goes to try to see if he can find that trail.

They had them. They had them front and center this week. Do you see where they were parked this week? They were just right. But, I mean, how funny is it to watch some of the, like, comp directors and stuff? They see them black trailers roll up and they're like, oh, shit. And they even said it on the NASCAR channel, they said, the wind tunnel truck, and I'm like, oh, boy, they're going to the wind tunnel, not the chassis

dino. Right. They've got this brand new state of art dino engine dino, chassis dino that they've been dying to want to take these cars and go do. So I was like, oh, they might be dino and some engines. They did that last week. They did it? I was told they took four last week.

Okay, I didn't see the haul of the last week. Yeah. It was front and center this week. Yeah, I was told they took one from each engine builder after Michigan is what I was told. Okay. And then they took, obviously, two from East Manufacture for Wind Tunnel this week. It's the middle of year. Just so everybody knows they do it this time of year.

Every year. We haven't heard numbers from last week, but obviously Blaney is not happy with what he has, obviously, right? He said he was getting outdriven down the straightaway yesterday. What else we got from this week? Josh Barry out of the 21. We kind of hinted at this at the live show. I don't think it's a surprise. I don't know that it's very fair because,

Obviously, all the Ford are struggling right now, but they just seem to be... Yeah, who's decision, though? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think it'll be kept quiet because that's the Josh Berry and Wood Brothers of the world, right? They won't. But I'm not sure whose decision. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see.

I think everybody's going to love the new driver. So what else? What else we go? What are you laughing at? San Diego. Let's talk about San Diego for a second. I see on here that Justin Mark's going to drive the 77 truck, which that's fun to see him get back in there.

But let's talk about the unknowns of San Diego. Because going into this still, you and I have no idea what we can see, what we can't see. Are you going early on Thursday? I'm going tomorrow. Oh, you really? Yeah. And then we'll try to get on there as soon as we can to, because it's obviously a naval base. You can't just go whenever you want.

So I'm going to try to get on there probably early. I can. I don't know when that's going to be. to just kind of try to see, get an idea of what I can see, what my other guys can see, because we're going to have at least three other guys aside for myself, maybe a fourth other guy. So it's just going to be interesting to see because we have an idea what we can see, but nobody really knows. We're trying to base it off of kind of high racing.

I don't think we're going to get home until noon on Monday. It's going to be a while. So we better resched this show a little bit later. But, yeah, I mean, talk about, like, we don't have any idea, right? No, we, I mean, we have the comms. we had from NASCAR, but nothing as far as actual visual lines. I was studying it yesterday. I was, yeah.

I'm like, wait a second. It's only a bridge, one bridge and a ferry. Yeah, take you a ferry. How are we going to get in and out on weekend? We're taking bus. We're taking buses. Are you guys busing in or are you got rental cars? Rent the car.

Yeah, we're busing in and out. Shit, this may be like Mexico 2.9. Honestly, Mexico might have been easier. What else we get? I know based off of some of the I race and stuff that we saw, even if you're on the 5th turn 15 grandstand, depending on which side of the building your own is what you can see, right? So it's like it sounds like we're going to need eight foot ladders

to be able to get high enough to see both sides of it. But I don't know. I'm out on eight foot ladder. I was going to say you better put a harness on or something. I mean, sitting in Sim last week, I really don't think there's much you guys are going to be able to do any way of how fast things will happen. Yeah, I think it's going to be one of them

deals like it's going to be similar to Chicago where we're kind of there to make sure the track don't get blocked. You know, like just try to not let you guy pile into a wreck. It's worse than Chicago. I mean, it's going to, I'm excited, right? New place, though. I mean, let's enjoy it.

I think it'll be fun. Regardless, it would be cool. I just hope the fans go into it with an open mind that it's an event, right? It's not about the on-track product. Yes, that's what we're there for. but the overall experience, 250 years of our country and being on a naval base,

and it's one of the most well-known places in our country as far as the armed forces. So I'm excited to go there. I don't think we're going to be any help, but I'm excited for the experience. Yeah, it will be really cool. Bracket challenge is back. I was actually just talking about this yesterday.

The bracket's set after yesterday, it starts in Sonoma. Ryan Priest won Twitter yesterday. This guy, he tweets like walking in. Oh, priest versus van Gisberg. Which at Sonoma? If you haven't seen it, he's like a little video of a guy, SpongeBob or, I don't know. Ty Dillon.

Ty Dillon against Denny again. Oh, man. Yeah. What do you say? We're cooked. It cooked. Yeah, we're cooked. Yeah, we don't need to make picks here.

We'll do that next week. But, yeah, it was some interesting matchups. Almondinger versus Briscoe is going to be a good one. We got a bad draw against McDowell at a road course. You got a bad draw against Ty Dillon. Yeah, thank you. Us against anybody is a bad draw. It'll be fun.

It's going to be. I like the fact that we're doing it off points and not that finished stuff that we did last year. I think it's easier to understand. But yeah, it's going to be fun for sure. Before we get into Spot On Spot Off, I know we mentioned Dirty Mo Live from San Diego coming up on the NASCAR experience state.

on Friday and Saturday. Now we've got some more confirmed details about that. Friday, June 19th, Dirty MoLy, presented by the U.S. Navy, will be at the NASCAR Experience stage at 1045 with Ryan Blaney headlining. Freddie, are they going to let you guys get on stage? Blaney, is this going to be after practice

because you think his head's going to be spinning still? I don't know, man. I think it's before practice. For his sake, we hope. Yeah, we're going through inspection. This place is rough. It's going to be fun to watch these guys try to navigate it.

Yeah, but yeah, I guess we're going to get on stage Saturday. I think TJ and I are going to join Dale for DJD live, which is always fun. Arby's U.S. Navy, two of our favorite partners. But we'll be on there 5.30 p.m. I believe that's after the O'Reilly race. Yep, Victory Lane stage for that one. Yeah, so it'll be a lot of fun for that. But it's always any of our live stuff we do, anywhere, if you see us pop up, not just us, but any 30-mo shows.

Like, we like to have a blast, and every one of these live shows is tons of fun. Two shows? Two shows this weekend. One weekend. Yeah. Are you recognizing that? Tommy's the two shows? Two shows?

One weekend. Get there or check it out from home. Get there early, everybody. Yeah, apparently. It's going to be packed. Get there early. But the good news is, is if you cannot make it there this weekend, you can check it out from home on Dirtymo Media's YouTube channel and wherever you get your podcast. So hope you guys have a blast out there.

Don't get stuck in traffic. 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?

All right. We're going to start spot-on, spot off the same exact way we started BS. Topic number one. Ditty's great. Spot on, spot off. Spot off. He said... Must not be paid.

Well, it's actually payday. I just got paid, but he can still kiss my ass. He said F me, NF, the world champion New York Knicks. I don't know if anybody caught that this week. What fan is he? I think he was just bitching about the Knicks. How could you complain? How can anybody in the world complain about the Knicks up there?

53 years we haven't won a championship. Yeah, but how they did it, man. It was fun. But now I did get paid today, but yeah, we're talking about, like, just like. And that hat's very dusty. You haven't had that. I blew this. It is dusty.

I see it. I blew the dust off this. You haven't had that on in years. No, probably since Ewing was playing. I can't believe it still fits. May neither of my head so. damn big. But yeah, I mean, I'll let you go because obviously I've sat down here for a while. He's pretty good that he's paid me this long. But just on the racetrack right now, is he, I mean,

have you seen him better than he is right now? Honestly, no. You know, just his thought process, the way he approaches things. It's changed every my 15 years with him on and off the racetrack. You know, when he had his little girls, he matured a lot. When he got 2311, he matured even more. And the way he approaches things and looks at things, he's better than he ever. has been and hopefully he doesn't slow down for at least another year and a half so we can get 27 together and um but i mean there's still some aggravating things that happen throughout the race on the weekends or from the radio that like initial starts uh that is that is the main goal right now what did you say what did you say when he did that a couple weeks ago uh he just off the

radio he had his hands up like hers now what did you say on the radio nothing nothing he could So he jumped, you were like... He was speechless. Then you went to two on Gail and said... Well, you don't want to ever say it on. You don't ever say it because somehow maybe they don't penalize him. That was going to get a penalty 10 times out of 10. I waited until they called the penalty.

And then I went on Channel 2 and I'm like, I don't know what that was, but that was even close. And Gail was as dumbfounded as I was. But I just threw my hands up about not my iPad off the spotter stand at Nashville. And normally if you go back, even when... where the control car, he'll fire and then I'll say green, green, green or whatever. I didn't say it until the actual flag threw out. So it was as Paul's there before. Five minutes.

Correct. It seemed like it. Green, green, clear by five. He said he wasn't the one looked in the mirror. Man, I got a good start. You think? And then yesterday, Gail laughed because I actually told Denny, I'm like, all right, get everything ready.

We'll go blue down. It'll be on you. In the zone. That's exactly what I said, in the zone. Just to make sure he understood. Good. Tommy, 64 wins yesterday. Does he get to 70 before the end of the year? It's got some, how many more strong places? All of them except for the next two.

Yeah, really. I mean, that's what I'm saying. I mean, like, he can win more restrictive plate races if he really wants to, right? And he just, like, he's points racing there a little bit, maybe. But everywhere else, Miami, Chicago, Martinsville, I mean, come on, Richmond. Yeah, he can get close. I mean, I think he can get close. I think we can possibly get there. The Super Speedway stuff now for us, what made us and Freddie is well aware as well, because we had the same mindset.

The old cars were selfish. We didn't need, depending on anybody. We used guys as we needed it and got through the field. But with this car, you can't do that. So it's created a different. mindset for us that we're still trying to to get through it and figure out what we need to be and where we need to be at certain times. But Toyota's as a whole, we've gotten better.

I feel like it working together and trying to figure that out. But take away these two weekends coming up and the Daytona, Atlanta, and Talladega, and I feel like we can go in anywhere. When speaking about the severity of Christopher Bell's wreck at Michigan, William Byron, says the car took it, but I think that wreck was caused because of the nature of this car. Spot on, spot off. Yeah, I think it had something to do with it for sure, but you've seen those angle wrecks happen before, right? And people have gotten hurt, right?

And with all the cars, right? I mean, but I will tell you, I went over to David Green on Saturday morning and thanked them for being an asshole to everybody in inspection, right? And to making sure everything is good because it takes people like that to make sure our cars are safe and our safe. the equipment as well and all the people behind the scenes. I mean, I've been involved in a lot of those meetings over the years with those people and what they do. It's incredible the amount of effort that these guys put in going to Nebraska, you know, trying to get cars donated so they can go do stuff, crash tests and do things. It's just, it never, they don't stop. That is a full-time team that is constantly working on keeping our drivers safe in the race. And I think,

yes it was probably caused by that um you know some of it but the wreck happened yes but he's alive it was the biggest hit ever recorded in in NASCAR racing ever um and he was leading a race with three to go right well yeah yeah before that yeah um he it's it's 63 gs is what the registered hit was which is insane uh we're having a completely different conversation if this is 20 years ago or 25 years ago now I guess um and but the way you're talking about Tommy also we got we got we got to stress that that trickles down everywhere that's short tracks that's everywhere I know some of this shit is expensive I know not every racetrack cracks down on it not every series cracks down on it but if you're not doing everything you can to be as safe as you possibly can be in the car

you're an idiot yeah you know what I mean like you're one of the biggest idiots you because yeah I wish we had more education for the short trek. I wish Randy and I could do that every year that we did 20 after my dad passed away a couple times a year and going to, you know, I'm just saying what we did and have other smarter people do it. But, you know, Randy, you know, knows a lot. But what I'm saying is educate these people because I've seen some crazy stuff, right? Some of it's insane. Some things that, like, holy cow, I mean, it just. But Lambert, like, just to talk about, well, the way I take this quote from William was, you know, obviously Chase did nothing wrong.

You know what I mean? But we have to race so hard right now because essentially at the end of these races, every inch matters. You know what I mean? And every block we can throw and everything else, but obviously this was not that situation. But, you know, we're racing so hard right now because of the car and it's your struggles to pass with this car. You know, you can't give an inch because you might not get it back, you know, especially at the end of the race like this was, You know, this is just a situation where they're both pushing as hard as they can. Chase hits that bump at the bottom of three and four. And split second later, they're in the fence.

I mean, you agree with William? This is just a product of how hard you've got to drive this car and how much on edge you have to be at all times, especially at the end of these races. I think so. I mean, when I saw this quote from the media scrim, I'm like 100%. I agree with it. And, you know, we have this discussion a lot.

You know, we have to race like assholes right now. You know what I mean? To air a block and take guns. lines away. And when I seen it bottom out and get on the left rear, it looked like to me and just stepped, you know what I mean? I feel like that's just the product of this car. We're running so down on the earth and there's very little travel on these things. And when you do travel them to the extent that you hit a bump and travel, it's going to come back down and just send you, you know what I mean? Well, it's hitting the left rear. It's hitting the stop and the shock.

And we, you know, NASCAR did bring up before the, I think the All-Star race this year. But it was, unfortunately, it was at the last minute. A day before or something, two days before we were getting ready to go. They wanted to try to remove these bump stops, the stops in the shocks, which is about 40, 50,000ths of an inch to be removed. You got a lot of pushback because it was two days thing. And you're also going to get a lot of pushback. from these teams that have figured out.

There's probably a little more travel than other teams before it hits the bump, you know, that stop. Allegedly. Allegedly. And people like us, we're like, yeah, pull them out because that makes everybody even because then you have to run enough spring and enough height to stay off the ground, right? But that changes a lot of things. I mean, that goes so deep into the technology of the simulation and all the things that

have to be changed. and it's like you can't throw that at us two days before. Give it to us to work on a little bit. Set a date down the road a little bit. You know, pick another test for us. Please, go do something. Allow us to go test a little bit and try all these couple things to try to make our racing better because it could be better.

It could eventually be better. It could even up the field a little bit more and make it worse. We don't know, right? But, yeah, it definitely hit the stop. seen it places like Dover in qualifying or in practice, you know, stuff off of four. Get a little loose, you overcorrect a little bit, dumps on that left rear and poof, you're done, you know. It's just, it's pretty dangerous, but.

I mean, I think that's what happened us yesterday or Saturday in qualifying. Like as soon as you can see Bozzi did a really good job of like a slow-mo video he posted on X where you see. Was it in a tunnel? In the tunnel, yeah. As soon as we got a little too low in the tunnel, it's just, it's bottomed out and we were along for the ride at that point that's similar,

same as host of our, I assume. But yeah, it was, it's, I think that just, just this car, you just is what we have right now.

You have to race as hard as you could possibly race. And that's a good thing. That's what you want. I can tell you that, watching that live and then watching the replay and in slow mo, like it, it knocked a breath out of me. You know what I mean?

It's just as a spotter, obviously safety is still our number one goal. When you see somebody hit like that, it, It knocked the breath out of me. It took me back to Ryan Newman and Daytona 500 in 2020. That's how I felt. You know what I mean?

So thankfully, he was able to get out and walk away. Okay. The only person who can beat Justin Algar for the O'Reilly Championship is Justin Algar. Spot on, spot on. And the points reset. Yeah. But I'm just saying, like, it's insane. Even with the points reset, this guy's got a 250-point lead.

Yeah, but not when a points resets. What's the two? He's got a 25. One mistake. He started a team. He started at zero 17 weeks ago. He's up 250. Okay.

All right. All right. Or not even 17. I think it's, yeah, maybe it is 17 for them. Okay. Got me. But, I mean, your 250 point lead, he can go on vacation for three weeks, come back and still be the point leader. If Jesse Love maxes out his points.

If Jesse averages what he's been averaging, which is 35 points. He can take a month off. If he can. A month off. Yeah. But if Jesse's been averaging 35. points, which is a good, that's what you get for second place without stage points. That's good.

He could take seven weeks off and still come back and be the point leader. If Jesse just average continues his average. So like it's ridiculous. The run that these guys are on right now. And he's just so consistent. But we have seen Lambert. We've seen this in the past with Justin. I mean, the race he won the championship.

How many pocket penalties did he have? My God. When I tell you, I thought there was absolutely no way that we were coming out of there with it. because of all of the attrition during the day. I was like, it's not us. It's not us. We've seen him be his own worst enemy at times. Maybe sometimes taking the lane he shouldn't get himself wrecked or penalties like that.

You know, how do you, how do you, has he overcome this? Is the points make it a little bit easier now? I feel like, I mean, obviously he has the ability to dial it back some, but his, his goal or his problem, in my opinion, is it's 110% every lap, every corner, every race. practice qualifying race. He doesn't dial it back. You know, I'm not seeing that in the race as much, though. I've seen a little calmer, like Texas and, you know, those type of places that he's, he's letting those kids go out and wear the stuff out, and he's just sitting.

And all of a sudden, next thing you know, he's going right around it because it's easy to pass him at that point, right? It is. And his stuff's so good. On Saturday, I was walking by Eddie DeHunt, who spots for him, obviously, and I'm like, good luck today. And he said, well, I just got the, I just got the speech about keep me calm. Help me understand where I need to be and this, that and the other.

And that's easier said than done a lot of times. But I'm spot on. I feel like that Justin will obviously, he's the odds-on favorite to go win the thing. And it'll take him having some bad luck or some mistakes on his part for somebody to beat him. But I also think you better keep you eye on Brent Cruz. I was just going to say that, yeah. I think Cruz, if you look at where he is in points right now, the amount of races that he's run and give him the opportunity to go back to some of these for a second time. once he figures out what he needs

the start of a run versus the end of the run and he gets all that figured out and he gets more comfortable he's going to be a I think he's going to be the strong contender that doesn't have

he's got more to learn I mean I see I've watching that race the other day there was like a 10 lap stretch that he was out of control around Connor

right they were fighting for his position they had to go to the front and he got it in front of him then he just for it was about 10 laps he would just I mean you can see him loose and driving way over his head. Way over he said.

He calmed down, right? Which he didn't, where are the place where Bristol. Bristol. Right? He did the same thing, right? Got to a point and it was like unraveled for a little bit, right? Yeah.

That's the things that are going to get him in trouble this year. Sometimes it takes a winter. I don't know what it happens there, but it takes that winter for all that stuff to just get out of your system and get back into it. But look, man, kids are good. I mean, he's got. a lot of potential. He's just got to finish. He's got to get himself more in those positions to be able to get calmer, right,

and do the things that he needs to do. But yeah, I'm 100%. He's going to be a threat. Do you think with Justin, do you think that the less stress of a three-race round and a one-race championship helps him, right? I mean, because now there's not, you have a nine-race stretch to where you know, if I just go perform like I've been performing, I'm going to be okay, where you don't have, you know, you don't kick off with a, there's a plate race in there or some wild card race that could potentially derail you. You know, you have enough time now where even if I have a misstep or even if I have a bad race or get myself tore up, I have eight more races to make up this ground.

And he's got a lot of strong races, especially you think about, I mean, Phoenix is one of his best places, right? But Miami, right? It's going to take a veteran, right, to probably during that pressure with the points to beat the track, right? because you're going to have to race the track. And Corey Day's not done either, right? I think Corey and Brent, you know, I think those guys are going to be the ones that right now

they're overstepping their boundaries, right? They're doing it, making the mistakes that all the kids are making, right? They're all making those mistakes. But they're going to get to the point that they're going to understand their limit. Then they're going to understand how the races unfold, right? And then understand what racetrack they're racing. And then it's going to be a problem for Justin, because he's got all that figured out, right?

And he already knows all this stuff. If you think about it, probably Jesse Love is probably the only one with the mindset that Justin has, right? With all those kids, right? With everybody going on. He's probably the second to Justin in that series of the mindset and the focus and everything that needs to be on. Because he's been through it already, right? He's lived it. He's a champion, right?

So look at all the kids, man. And they are learning right now. And unfortunately, Corey stepped out right away first lap. With the best car. Yeah, he had a really good car. But obviously it was a little on the free side. Right. But, you know, it just, again, lap one, man.

Yeah, exactly. I did want to talk about Tommy, the cut line. We're going to talk about the cut line in a cup series in a minute here. But the cut line in O'Reilly is just as exciting. you look at right now from I think the big story for me is Retzloff You know can he hang on? He should be higher

I wish he's running better That he should be in a Where is he? It's yeah He should be like seven Right Stage points I think You know

It affected a lot But you look at Retzloff's 10th I think everybody above Retzloff is pretty safe Mayor's got enough speed I think he can hang on Retzloff's safe I think Cruz is going to be safe

I'm sorry Redsoff's not safe The top eight Yeah the top eight have Yeah They've been there before, right? And Mayor, I think,'s got enough speed, enough experience where I would consider

him, as long as he doesn't do anything stupid, he's going to have, he'll be okay. I think Cruz is okay. So then you start talking about, I think you're talking about Retzloff, Swalich, Taylor Gray, and Raja, for four guys for two spots. It's going to come down. I talked to Raja this morning. He's running

the 32, I think he said, at Chicago and Indian. Then he's in the 88, the rest of the time, which will help him a lot. But, I mean, this is going to be a battle, I think, where can Retzloff hold off these bigger teams, you know, and the thing for me is seven races, I think, to their cut off. Four of them are kind of wild card races. There's two drafting tracks, two road courses. You know, it's going to be hard to, it's going to be hard for those, you know, smaller teams to compete with these guys. But I mean,

Lambert, do you have a, you have, I mean, don't be a home or here and just pick the two JGR cars. But, but, you know, do you think Retzloff can hang on? I think off of speed, yes, I think he can. You know, he's had some unfortunate stuff happen to him. I think the eight car maybe here got into him this past weekend and caused some issues for him. But if you look at his own track performance speed-wise and what they're able to control, I feel like he has the ability to hang on and get in there. He's just really good.

And I feel like he outdrives his equipment a lot of times. But then, you know, you throw in the road courses. And I don't know. I mean, I feel like that, that it's going to come down to, I feel like it's going to town. Raja took that 32 car this past weekend and finished eighth with it. I mean, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's no slouch. I sent him a text last night.

He sent me a text yesterday. Congratulate me. And I sent back to say, hey, just so you know, that was very impressive with what you've done. You stayed within yourself. You didn't try and do too much with it. And look what happened. You know what I mean? So I don't know.

It's going to be interesting. in coming down the stretch because I feel like that there's there's really good tracks for certain guys but I don't know that I don't know that it'll turn out the way we think it's Tommy is it to come down to like getting lucky or unlucky at these plate races probably yeah oh I mean even this weekend even this weekend and maybe the carnage it's going to be a lot of stuff happening man and and I think what Austin Hill is the only one he's allowed to do to double so all these guys it just, which was going in blind, man. Which was the right call, by the way.

If anybody had any problem with that, that was the absolutely right call. Yeah, I mean, they didn't have a choice right on this one. But I don't know. I think, I mean, which one has the most road course experience? Sallowich, right? Solich. Swalwich, yes. Solich.

No, William does, right? He does all the TTA-2 courses. So I think he's probably going to have the, and he's in a really good car on the plate races. So I think looking at him, if he doesn't make any mistakes, he's in, I think. And then I think it's between probably, I think it's between Parker and Taylor. I agree. I think Taylor's probably got the most speed in this group, but they can't buy a break this year. I don't know.

Some of it's their own doing. Some of it's other people. But I'm buddies with Taylor. I'm pulling for him. But same with Raja. You know, Raja is somebody that you talked about, like you talk about with Brent and day, all the speed in the world. just have to harness it sometimes

sometimes again we saw it at Dover with Jesse you know sometimes you just got to figure out how to pull those reins back a little bit you know how much would he kill to have I don't know how many points he gave up that day battling for the lead but you know how much would he kill to have those points back right now

so you know just every once in a while you just got to figure out especially in a battle like this like how are you going to figure out yeah like he said right if if he goes back and watches Pocono in the 32 car and then takes a race previous race that he in the 88

that he made a mistake and just watch the whole race play out and then go, okay, where do you think you would have finished that race if you race the way you did on Saturday, right? That's the only way these kids are going to learn, right? You've got to, like, you can tell these kids anything you want. They're not going to listen, right? They just need to see it in front of them and go, wow. I think they listen.

They just don't, they're one thing. Once they put that helmet on, they cannot process. Their eyes get big. That chin strap, right? And I feel like that's where... Yes. I feel like that's where they can get help from us, you know, is pulling the reins back and trying to keep them out of situations like that

when you see it starting to happen. But I told Roger yesterday, I said, you know, that was more impressive what you did at Pocono into 32 than anything you've done in the 88. You know what I mean? Because you're expected to go in in the 88. But you shouldn't put that expectation on yourself because you haven't won yet.

Just take what the car give you and you'll end up, I promise the top two or three. So... Yep. Last one. The new points. format has made drivers less aggressive spot on spot off, Freddie? I don't know where that's happened.

Who thought it? Who come up with that? One of those producers come up with that? You did? Jesus. Yeah, I don't see that anywhere I'm racing. I don't know about you. You don't notice my notes.

I've got notes for all of them, but that one. Because I could not figure out what that meant. You know, I think it's so crazy, especially this points format, you know, you almost have to be more aggressive because wins means so much. You know, we talked about this early in the year when they were, they were put on the show sheet like after Tyler, I think won three or four, whatever was, three in a row there. And they're like, nobody's going to catch Redick. And I'm like, this points format, 150 points is nothing, you know, like Redick ran second

yesterday and lost 31 or 32 points, I think it was, to Denny. You know, Danny made up, I think, over 100 points in the last three weeks. So when you win, you know, you have, you know, you have, you know, know it's a 76 point max and then if the guy finishes second that's 35 points so if you go out and win every stage and win the race you're making up 30 40 points at a clip on him and then 50 or more on guys that are you know behind him so it's I think that we're going to see a lot of flip-flopping but I mean for me it seems almost more aggressive now than ever nobody's nobody's just happy to run back and third or fourth and go oh we're having a good points yeah I feel like it's across the board

the further you go back the more aggressive it is like comedy I was talking earlier you get back in the Hornets nest. And E.J., Eric Jones, actually made comments about how much easier it is to race up front at Michigan and those places versus fighting for your life every lap back there 20th to 25th. I know I haven't seen any less aggressive because even though you win, you're talking about Xfinity or rallies right now, you know, Taylor's won a race, but he's not guaranteed in, you know what I mean? So he's having to fight for everything that he has. Williams won a race.

He's not guaranteed in, you know what I mean? So every race means something, every position, every lap means something. versus, oh, I've won, I'm guaranteed. It doesn't matter to me. In the cup, though, I mean, it seems like, and you've been on both sides this year of running up front and being in the Hornets Nest. You've been, you know, up front most of the time. But it's like what Eric Jones means is when you're running in the top 10, top 12,

you don't have to worry about other people around you anymore because it's just enough split out that now the team is just working on strategy, right? Now the team is just working on getting to the next stage or the next pit stop, making the car better. When you're in the back, you don't know what to do to make the car better. It's like the car is just junk. I can't not do anything. I just, I can't do anything. So the race, that's why it's a hornet's nest between 23rd and 33rd all the time because they can't get out of their own way because you can't do nothing because you're just fighting for your life.

And there's where most of the, most of the wrecks are not on restarts, but during the race, right? Yeah, yesterday. I mean, yesterday we were talking about, you know, we short pit that last run. And we're not short pit, but we were like on the front side of it at least. And those guys are running along. And I'm watching lap times. And I'm going, holy shit, we're making up like a second a lap on Bell. And he was like one of the guys that was half straight away in front of us or so when we pit.

And I'm like, man, we're going to, we had clean air. We pit into a hole where we knew we had clean air, which is important there. and I'm like, well, we're going to be, we're going to be way ahead of some of these guys that are running long. And we're running like 53, 20s, 30s, and we're hauling ass. And then we run down a group of like three guys, 5420s. And I'm like, we just slowed down a second. And now Bell's faster than we are because he's in clean air because everybody around him pit. And I'm like, well, fuck.

You know what I mean? But it's just like once you get in that little hornet's nest, you can't go anywhere. Like your car tightens up a number or two. And it's just, oh, shit, now we're stuck again. But yeah, it's, it's, but I mean, the only thing I'd notice this year is everybody's faster. It seems like, or at least they're harder to pass. Yeah. Even every field, Xfinity or O'Reilly Cup, no matter where you're at, it's hard to pass.

It's no, there's no, we started 38th yesterday and I'm like, what do we want to be at the end of the first stage? And we're like 30th, we hope, you know, like, because we know it's going to be that challenge. That's about where you ended up too. Yeah, we ended up like 28. You know what I mean? It's like that that's a good start. You know, then we can hopefully maybe get five. more the next run, you know, and then if we're in the top 20, we can race from there.

But it's, you know, and we were kind of heading there and then got tore up, obviously. But yeah, it's once you get back there, it's just, you're trying to get small gains. Hey, everybody, this is Dale Jr. And for the latest DBC gear, go to shop.dirtymomedia.com. We've added some new shirts. There's one called win or lose. We're drinking booze. Everything seems to be about drinking here at Dirtymo Media.

Go check it out now. DBC fans It's time to read. Hey, it is time for reaction theater where fans can call in and voice their opinions from this weekend's race. Dalton, how we,

how we doing this week? We actually had a pretty good amount of good ones. Hell yeah. Hey man, Carson Ellic. I watched you at Dominion this weekend run around like a mad woman. The cars tour is fucking awesome.

Go 12. Go 12. Holy fuck. Amazon Prime has that fucking wide lens getting Freddy's sad ass on there for an interview. Accurate. The camera adds at least 100 pounds. They interviewed you on the broadcast?

Yeah. Live at that. In the beginning of the race. Oh, that's... The spotters had to get out of the way. That must have been why I didn't see it. Yeah. They had it roped off for him. Yeah.

Chris Lambert. Jesus Christ, you must be getting bored sitting up in that spotting's in. Fucking leading all these races and shit. God damn. I don't know whether to be pissed. off for happy for Denny. And you can be pissed off. But that's a perfect point.

You are not relaxed, right? Because to be in that position and to be able to have the pressure of staying in that position of what, not position of leading, but dominating in the last month or month and a half. How long has it been? Yeah, three weeks. But I mean, it's even, it's all year.

It's speed-wise. But like how, the thing that I don't think people get is, and maybe you don't think the way I think. But, you know, if we're out front, like I remember Kansas, we were out front leading the race, and you're just like, what's going to happen? Correct. Something, what's going to fuck us up here? You know, like something's going to happen.

That's what you've got to be prepared for. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, what are the next steps if this happened? That happened. This happened. Again, when you're in the back, you just hold on for your life, hoping before you get to the stage of the congen. You know, it's a whole other mindset.

When you have that big lead, you know, you're out there, like Michigan's a good example. You never think it's going to run green to the end. Like, you're just like, I know something's going to happen here. Look, and it always happens. Pocono, right? There's been a lot of wrecks there, but you know what? Chance of rain, started a race.

The drivers are not dumb in their minds. Yeah, we're going to get to halfway. We're going to get the halfway. We're not staying until Monday. And in the race, oh, my God, hardly any wrecks. Which, talk about that. We essentially, I mean, we could. But we really could not afford to stay to Monday as an industry, right?

No. I mean, that was a lot of the, obviously, shout out to prime. Thank God we could have moving up. as far as we didn't. They were talking about moving it up now. And listen, they were talking about moving it up more, you know, because there was talks about going as early as 11 that I heard.

But, I mean, we had to get out of there yesterday because of everything we got going on this week. Trucks leave today to go to San Diego. I mean, we just, a lot of work to be done today. Yeah, our trucks leave tonight. Yep. I know from his comment there, though, it's like I got to pitch your lane.

Everybody's congratulating another race that I didn't screw it up because there's so much that we, that we lead our crew chiefs down with what we see that if I try and tell him or I tell him something that wrong. Correct. He can make a wrong adjustment or wrong decision or whatever. But it's definitely been way easier being out front than it is. Start of Michigan where I was buried back there and didn't go anywhere.

So I do not envy the guys that are back there every week trying to fight. So thanks. Yeah, thank you. Look, I don't know about Briscoe's theory of leaving one sock. on while you sleep. But I was always taught that if you leave two socks on while you're bumping the uglies, your kid is going to come out as a boy. Did you?

You probably didn't say any of this. Those, those idiots. Those idiots. Again, Briscoe and Gregson went on another podcast and convinced these football players that They asked that they had any like superstitions. They said every driver sleeps with a sock on their right foot because it takes care of their gas pedal foot. And they hook, line and sinker.

These guys are like, oh, wow, that's cool. You know, like, and they never broke character. Did you see the guy that tweeted me and you and said that his kid saw the clip and he woke up and there his kid was sleeping in one sock in the RV the next morning? I mean, nobody, these two should not be allowed to hang out together. They are full of shit. Just remember that always. Is there going to be a T-shirt for that? You can't trust them.

I don't know. Maybe. No, maybe they should make socks. Just one. Not a pair. It's just sell one sock. I want royalties off that idea. Speaking of Noah.

Amazing and Noah Gregson keeps posting pictures of his feet. Maybe he can use it on a gas pedal once in a while. Oh, my God. Did you see that? I don't know what he was doing. He went on a tear for like two days. He's posting his toes. Maybe he was trying to soft launch his next career path.

Yeah, I don't. He is something. That was a really funny exchange, though, with that person that DM. him that he shared. Yeah, I was. I'm sure you can find pictures of it if you haven't seen it already somewhere. Carson Oathar is an absolute moron. This man drove his ass from Pocono two and a half hours all the way to Manhattan

thinking that there was an NBA finals game tonight. He even bought a ticket. Unbelievable. I'm not buying that story. I think he was messing with people. I think he was torturing people. and credit to him because hook line and sinker

he's got a couple of them but yeah that was I think that was all bullshit that was definitely not the dumbest thing he did this weekend I watched him wiped that poor guy out at Berlin and then parked it

well you know he was worried about he was worried about the right front might have come apart Tom or he didn't want to scratch his car because of the next race it's sickening

he did such a good job up until that point racing them guys too I mean just rowing the outside and just got to a point that guys put pressure on him unraveled. Well, Majeski, Majesky was better than he was at that point.

Majeski just drove by him and that guy, you know, he put out a thing like, oh, that guy was blocking me. No, he didn't block him. It was just running his line. Bullshit. I don't know why everyone's complaining about the length of these cautions. Hell, I was able to get lucky with the old lady for a Denny Hamlin stage win. Still had 17 minutes to spare before we got back racing.

If you didn't like stage cautions this week, way till next week 3.4 miles everybody but that's going to be we need the drivers if any of the drivers still listen to this show keep your heads on straight don't wreck anything please because this phrase

could be forever if you do choice man it's scary it's so rough man all right this is my last one and there's one call every week that just leaves me speechless and this is it the one huh what the fun Derek

you got baba no you you got for freddie Freddy and T.J. out there on the track kissing. Derek, you ought to be ashamed to know yourself. Who is Derek? There's no idea.

What the fuck? Oh, I know what he's talking about. He's talking about Neeland, spotting for the 33. 33, squeeze them guys in the fence. Joey clipped us, or according to Brad, we drove through the back of Joey, clipped us and turned us in front of Brad.

and then Brad hit us. Y'all were on the track. Kissing. So we were kissing. I could decipher drunk. Yeah. You're good at it. I speak fluent.

I speak fluent drunk. Yeah. Yeah. Man, that was, when I got to the plane yesterday, I had a text from Bub. You figured that out from living in mass tape.

I got a text from Bubba and it just said, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And it was a picture of the tweet from Bob, with Brad saying we plowed through the back of the 22, which we were a car length behind the 22, and unfortunately he clipped us. I don't know. I'm assuming it was bad info from TJ.

I'm just going to guess because we know TJ gives terrible info. He wasn't in a good mood yesterday. To leave an audio message 247, you can call our number at 704, 802-9572, and Freddie will decipher your drunk words each week on the show. Shit Show Hall of Fame. I believe it sounds like Jimmy Johnson might have had some fun. Tommy, have you seen this yet?

No. Oh, it's great. I saw this clip. Somebody sent him yesterday as a shit show. And I was looking, I thought I had no sound. I was on a plane. So I'm looking at this, the sound is going to be the best part about the video. But the fact that this guy is freaking out about, I don't know what he's lost, but he's checking every pocket.

He is. He lost his phone. Bazzing out about something. But the best part of this clip is the audio. I don't know if we probably can't play this audio on the podcast because it's, copyrighted, but Jimmy's hammered. Like, that is a, that is, that is, that is,

that is, what was his alter you go there? Jimmy Jammy Jam. That was Jimmy Jam. That was Jimmy Jam and let me tell you, he's a lot, Jimmy Jam's a lot of fun. All right. When that's happening, it's fun because that some bitch can make you laugh. He made us laugh just now. He made us laugh just now. Doing that. But yeah, but still my very part of that clip is also the guy

just losing his mind. He's just frantically looking. through his pockets. And then you got this four other guy just housing a banana. I tweeted this last night. I said, what's this got looking for? And everybody tweeted his banana. Because the other guy. Because the other guy stole it.

Well, I hope Jimmy's had some Tylenol and electrolytes since then. Time to move on to AskDBC. These questions are submitted by our fans in advance. With 10 races left until the chase begins, where you guys kind of add on what you think might be biggest surprises, disappointments, maybe, you know, guys that make it in, guys that don't. Where are we feeling like we're out on the cup side? I mean, there's a handful of guys.

I think Suarez has to take the cake as the biggest surprise, right? I mean, he's sitting now eighth in points. I don't think anybody would even put him into playoffs. I mean, you put it maybe a fringe playoff guy coming into the year, and here he is sitting well inside the top 10, pretty decent cushion back to the playoffs. cut line of about 100 points now, it looks like, almost. So, you know, that's, for me, that's the biggest surprise. But Tommy, like, what do you look at, looking at that list?

Yeah, I mean, I'm, Ross is probably the biggest disappointment, right? I mean, because how much of a fighter he is, you would, you would just. He'd have been a playoff guy for, I think everybody going into the year. Yeah, I mean, I think he's a disappointment. I think Eric Jones is a surprise now. They're coming on at the right time, held on in the beginning. And now they're really fast. But again, we have a lot of tracks that he's not very good at, right?

So we'll see what happens there. And I know we talked about the O'Reilly's points in that area, but it's just as tough of what going on. I'm going to make you pick here in a minute, but I want to talk about surprises first. I'm going to let you pick the last three guys in. Oh, man. But what stands out to you when you look at these standings?

You guys both nailed my two. Preseason, I would have said Suarez is my biggest surprise, just knowing where that car was last year. knowing where he was last year. He was 28th in points at his point last year, and obviously now he's eighth and has won a race, and he's contending every week. And after we got started, Eric Jones was one of my other surprises,

even though he's only seven spots better than he was last year at his time in points. He's 60-some points higher than he was, obviously trending in the right direction. And I think people don't give Eric the credit for how good if a race car driver he really is. You know, he sort of got pushed out at Gibbs when he lost his ride there and he's made a good home where he is, but I think that that team

as a whole is going to start surprising everybody on a weekly basis. Yeah, I look at, you know, for surprises, we'd obviously, I think Eric and Daniel would probably stand out the most. But there's other guys. A.J., I mean, to be 21st in points, but the lack of information they have is incredibly no information, essentially.

You know, that's really impressive. And we talk about them week in, week out, Stan House. The fact that they're sitting ahead of I mean, he's ahead of Rosson points. Like, comparing what they have versus what trackhouse has, you know, I mean, those guys are really exceeding expectations, I got to think. They are. And, you know, again, Magic Mike and Ricky, they do a very good job managing their race only, right? I mean, Ricky got off the plane yesterday and we'll walk into the thing.

I said, how was your day? It's like, man, it was okay at times, right? It was like, I'm a half a second, like you talked about. I'm a half a second faster than the 35. and whoever I get to him, I can't do nothing with him. It's aggravating. I'm like, yeah, but you guys, yeah, had a good day, right? Yeah, him, like you said, AJ, I would, you know, with everything that's going on with Spire,

I'm a little disappointed McDowell because he is kind of is the leader of that whole deal. The one big change I think they made that really helped the seven car was back and down on Sparks. job titles, everything that he was doing at Spire. Now he's just concentrating on crew chiefing, which I think helped that car and probably would have helped that car with the other two drivers that were in it before him, but he had just so much on his plate that he really probably couldn't concentrate on how hard a crew chief's job is right now. So I think that's what's really helping Suarez. Because Josevar, we knew from last year he was going to be in there if he don't screw up because he's fast all the time. Sucks about priest the last month because he was heading in the right direction, everything he was doing from last year leading.

Now, now he's just taking a dump, man. It's just terrible what's happening there. And hopefully he can rebound. But if you look at the cutoff line now where, I mean, you're looking from, I mean, obviously we're not safe. Bubba's not, you know, we're 30-something up. But, you know, it's going to be tight. And I think the next two weeks you're going to flip this thing on its head. Because SVG is going to skyrocket.

He's going to go, we assume, he performs like he has been performing. He's going to get to the top 10 or close to it at least. Then it's going to be how much does he bleed back from there. But, I mean, for me, like, if I was picking three guys right now, you mentioned Priests, I feel like he's, like there's, I think, looking at speed right now SVG I think gets in because he's going to build such a gap on the cut line the next

two weeks and he's not going to bleed as much as he has in the past because we've seen the last month or so he's been much better on ovals. Yeah but if something happens like yesterday yeah I mean shit could happen but you know just based on speed the thing that worries me I want to put Eric in there and I think he has a speed

again he's a buddy of mine I want to see him do well and I want to see him make this playoff because he deserves it but he's going to bleed the next two weeks a little bit. And now when you bleed the next two weeks, now we go to Chicago and you're going to be digging your way out of group two, group one qualifying.

Group one practice, early qualifying probably. You know, now can you regain the momentum you've got right now? And that's what helped, that's what helped Shane for a couple weeks after the road course, right? He got into the second group of qualifying, qualified up front, ran up front and they can do their own thing. Now they're back

and they're struggling again because they gradually worked their way back into... They're going to reset. But if you look, Freddie, I mean, really the only guy in that block of the points that really is a pretty good road racer is Cindrick. Right? Yeah.

So, and, you know... And listen, like you just mentioned, him, McDowell's going to make up ground here. He's going to make up ground the next two weeks, and he's going to close this gap, I think, as long as they perform like they do, Lambert. I mean, he's one of the best road racers out there. So now if he puts himself back in the mix and then has the speed that the 7 and 77 have, he's right back in the mix as well I mean there's for me like what I think

I'm going to pick SVG and Eric to be the first two spots and then you're splitting hairs between I think it's going to come down to Cendrick Priests and McDowell I wanted to put Brad in there but he said that dumb shit outside the car carerset yesterday so I'm like to qualify him

today Keselowski but we're going to short tracks a lot of short tracks coming up you know Iowa's the Wilkesboro Loudon I think that kind of leans in Ryan's favor a little bit where he can, because Ryan's had speed, he just keeps getting fucked essentially the last month.

Yeah, but the last three, four, five weeks he hasn't been as an organization. They haven't been as strong as they were in the beginning of the year. Yeah, I mean, it's like I'm also looking at who's going to bleed, like is host of our going to bleed big the next two weeks? I just don't see him bleed that much. Like who else is going to bleed? Eric is going to struggle. Eric is going to bleed.

Take a shot every time they say bleed. Yeah. Bubba's, I mean, we're not going to. I mean, Bubba has gotten much better, but we're not going to be able to hold Shane off. No. You know what I mean? Like, so it's just going to be,

how close can you stay to these guys? So when we get back to Oval Racing. Execution, no mistakes. Man, is going to help that block. Who would you pick if you had to pick three of these guys? Looking at it earlier, I felt like that SPG is obviously going to take a huge bump up next two. weeks. He's going to be hard even if he bleeds. There you go. Even if he loses something for the final

eight weeks. I feel like he's going to be in a good spot. I actually had SPG, Eric, and Cendrick as my three. And I don't think it changes, honestly. McDow is one of the outliers because of the two road courses and Pris, obviously, with his short track stuff. I just don't know that you can trust the teams that are around them right now. Honestly, I think the drivers are capable, but I'm not trusting what I see speedwise out of both of them. Yeah, I mean, I agree. For me, for me, Like Cynchrick is so hard because he is never flashy, but he figures out a way to get a good enough finish. You know what I mean?

Like he finishes those 15th. And that's, you know, if you can, it's not, it's. And he's going to be good on the road courses. Yeah. And Atlanta and Daytona he's going to be good on. And we, we haven't even talked about Lugano being a disappointment. Yeah. Where should he be?

Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, the Ford's right now are struggling. and they got to figure it up but we're going to these short tracks they've been better I feel like they've in the past at least

that's kind of where they've turned it around and made up some of the ground so you know it's it's going to be fun to watch because it's going to be fun to see how high SVG gets and then how much does he have to give back if at all because we've thought about how much better he is and then how many guys can struggle on the road courses and then kind of climb

their way back up so it'll be fun to watch over these next three or four weeks for sure I know it's been talked about by you guys but I was looking to stuff last night do we and I think I know your your thoughts process from watching the show but I feel like the metric is killing a lot of these guys from working their way out I don't feel like you should be penalized next week for what happened this week right and I know that's been on your things forever but I think that we should do a blind draw or something like that are you shitting me no a blind draw fuck you in a blind draw take the pill I mean I just feel like and and this is coming from someone who obviously has been went out last the last several weeks and I've started on the poll. with the metric of a few of these places when it's rained out. But I just, I think you would see more passing, more parity if guys had to go out at

different times compared to different, you know, other guys. That's just my thought process. I feel like the racing would be better. I think the racing would be better because there's going to be guys that qualify at some places 10, 15 spots worse than they should. But then like, it just feels like an unearned penalty to me. You know what I mean? For, you know, if say it's you and say it's you.

it's a place, I mean, what would you say one of the most, like some place like Richmond, there's like a place that's really temperature sensitive so where you know that it's going to be 10, 15 spots different, whether you go out earlier or late. And now you're forfeiting a lot of stage points. You're for because you're not going to get there. And these guys that just got a better draw than you are going to qualify where they should qualify. And they're going to run the top 10. So like, I don't know that it needs to be what it is.

You know, I think you could base it off of practice. again, then we start talking about spending money because we're going to be starting making mock runs in practice and, you know, there's going to be, you know, more attention on practice. But I don't know. I think it's fine. I think it's fine. I mean, I don't think it's going to be more money. We can't do anything. I mean, we go, we don't, except for places like Pocono, there's not many places we go much faster than race trim, right? So, I mean, the guys that are faster in practice should start last and qualifying, right? I mean, you know, go last and qualifying. I mean, it's just don't, don't hurt last week's last week, right? Why do I have to pay a price or anybody

pay a price because we sucked last week for this week? Or get caught up in somebody else's that's the issue. But if some things happened and I think hopefully might happen, it's going to change a little bit next year. But I still think it should go off practice. the speeds. I mean, no matter what. I mean, some guys, you know, you're going to, some guys are going to be comfortable race trim all the time in practice and still end up fourth to 12th in practice and have a good spot to go out. The back guys are going to work on qualifying a little bit more, which might allow them to qualify better and race better, right? Or they might race worse because they didn't practice, but put that on us, right? Put the weak on us. Not, oh, you know what? You're in detention.

you're in detention because you messed up last week. I feel like we're like 12 years old here, you know? I mean, that's how I spent my month of May. You know, we were just in other people's shit. And we were going out in the last 10 cars of practice every week and qualifying like shit, well, guess what happens then? You're getting up in other people's shit because you qualify in the back. So it's just, it's, yeah, I agree that I don't love it.

If you had me, if you asked me to pick a blind draw in the metric, I'm going to take the metric because I think you should earn your spot, not so much just be lucky or not. But I would sign up 100% for based off practice. Do all drivers pick their own team of spotters for road courses or like how does No, only the drivers really have anything to do with it really, unless they got some family members or something. I know Kurt Bush had a buddy that he would bring everywhere that would be one of the guys. But yeah, we talked about it.

It's usually I screwed up for a while. I mean, I'm still screwed up if these guys want to do it. But like you find really good guys to do it. you know, usually go pluck some out of the modified or the lay model ranks or ARCA or whatever it is. Well, then I, like a couple years ago, I had Nick Payne and Brent Wins. Those are my two second or third guys.

Well, now they're both fucking primary guys. I lost one to Reddick and won the Tommy's team. And so then I replaced, you know, so now I've got Brett Castorline, who's a modified guy. I don't think really, he's got his own life, his own career. I don't think he really wants to move down and do this full time. He's capable. They're both capable.

But Cody Jordan is a guy we're trying to work into the fold of, we're going to get him to be doing it some, you know, more often now. But yeah, I mean, we've had guys that, like, you almost don't want to pick guys that are too good because you know you're going to lose them at some point. But, yeah, for you, like, obviously you're hoping to only have Cam for a year or two. Hopefully we can get him a deal somewhere. But, you know, the drivers, it's just kind of a rotating, like a lot of times you guys pick guys out of the shop essentially sometimes. Yeah, so Steve D'Souza handles most of our stuff for us and puts it together for a cup and O'Rallies and ARCA. But thankfully, I've had Al D'Ruso, who was a full-time.

spotter for JTG back at Marcus Ambrose and that group for years and years and years. And he's a realtor around the area now. So he's not looking to get into it full time, but he does a really, really good job at managing where I need to put him and helping Denny with situations. And then we use Mike Instrom. We call him T-dub. He moved down here from New York with wheels. Mike Wilder years ago.

And he's been, he's our main guy in the shop as far as keeping car flow and what needs to be worked on into the system. And then I've got Cam as my fourth guy now. But once you find good guys, I've been blessed to have good guys, really good guys that are not going anywhere. And guys aren't trying to take them. But our group's been together for probably eight or nine years now other than Cam. And hopefully we can keep this group together. We got to tell them.

So T-dub, they call them T-dub, right? So we were all, I don't think we ever overlapped it to ES Motorsports. But so Mike Wheeler, who kind of is one of the higher ups at 23-11 now, Mikey Yingsstrom, they worked. They were crew chief and car chief. for whatever you want to call T-dub at at a T-S well they moved down together so what do you think T-dub stands for training wheels training wheels so but I've known I know Mikey a long time his family and my I grew up at the bruntzzi their family got wheels and training wheels yeah wheels and training wheels

but yeah he grew up around the brun-housel so he's been around forever okay um and then obviously so we all kind of came from the same area but I always thought it was funny when I got down here they're like that's T-dub I'm like T-dub that's name's Mikey and they're like no no that's training wheels I'm like, oh, damn. And that's what I'm calling. All right. Let's go to DBC Picks. The guest won last week.

Riley. Son of a bitch, three in a row. Yeah. Wow. Damn, Bubbin Riley won. Those two of you. Just put a pick together. Who goes last?

Me. I go. Oh, who goes first? I go first. Where are we going? San Diego. San Diego. San Diego.

I'm going to. Take A. J. Almendam. Because I don't, I can't, I've already used SVG. I go, I'm going to do McDowell. You know, I think I'm just going to go with, I'll take SVG. Why not?

Oh, you got him still? Son of a bitch. I already used him up. You don't have him. Where I do? He's the last one on the list, SVG. No, he's cruel. Oh, I'm looking at Carson's.

Oh, shit. guests who you got we sold all the road course guys yeah well you can punt you can just help the guest out take uh there's a couple good ones there are and i was i was going leaning toward macdow and Tommy obviously took that one for me so as much as i want to see his his season turn around and i feel like that he'll go there with a lot of speed i'm going to go zillich all right that's a good pick that's a good pick yeah that is a good pick. All right.

Weekend winners. Oh, shit. I forgot about this. I have a long list of winners. I have some. I have some pavement stuff. Yeah, do you go? Start rent them off.

If you don't. I got a screenshot. Somebody sent me a text. That's a DM. And it starts off with Hey Carson. Oh. And I meant to send it to you and I can't remember. I don't know where I put it now.

But go ahead. Was it weekend winters or was it? It was weekend. Oh, okay. Ty Majewski won the Money in the Bank, 150 at Berlin. Anderson was David Roberts Race 1, Zach Franks, race 2

Oxford, Mike Rowe Rowe sent me Mike Rowe is 185 years old In parentheses it says Guys been racing since I was a kid I think it was his 156th win At Oxford which is I mean he's been racing Tommy forever

You know He's got great great grandkids Wow Dominion Mini Tiro won the car store race Chris Donnelly won race one and Aaron Donnelly won race two. Father and son, right? Yes, I believe so.

Somebody sent me that one. Yep. And then Hickory Motor Speedway was Billy Snodgrass, Florence, Casey Kelly. Sobo, Peyton Sellers, not much of a surprise there. Pulaski County, I can't say this last name, I don't think. Carl Budzvski. Yep, close enough. Yeah, good job, Carl Bud. And then Five Flagg, Stephen Nassie, Friday and Saturday Twin 100s. And then Bossman Kevin Harvick got it done on the Cars Tour West. Carson, all this stuff I'm about the list you can see on Flow. And if you haven't seen it on Flow, you could go to FlowSports.

Dot link slash door bumper clear to sign up and get 15% off. High Limit was racing this week. And Rico won the Eagle Nationals Tuesday night. Tanner Holmes got his first career win at Shelby County. Good race. Yep. Majiski, we talked about. He was on there.

Stafford. Sammy Anderson won her first SK Light race. That looked like a fun race at the end. They were battled. I want to. I want to congratulate the second place guy of running her clean and the way you're supposed to race. I mean, he was faster. Well, she was half a second faster than him down a straightaway for some reason.

I don't know why. And he was half a second faster than her in the corner. So it kind of evened out. But congratulations. I don't even know who it was, but I watched it. I didn't have sound. I didn't have the sound. But kudos to him for racing clean.

Josh Wood won the late model race. Shout out to my boy Roger Turbish. won his first race in I think seven years. Poor guy's been snake pity starting the poll like the last four weeks over there and just keeps getting tore up. But he overcame that. He won the same night. He is the biggest Knicks fan, I know.

So the fact that he won the modified race and the Knicks won the championship in the same night. It was really cool. And they got a TV in the trail, so I'm sure they, there was a party in the in the, in the pit area. The old fancy farmer, Dave Brigatti won the lay model race. Alan Peterson won the figure eight race. My buddy Short Round, Chris Lanski, won street stocks.

Jimmy Laird won the Blunderbust race. Bowman Gray, Bert Myers got his 105th win over there, Slate won the second race, so that's cool. They got to split again. Nate, Zach Orr and Nate Gregg split the sportsman races. Brad Lewis won the street stocks.

Brandon Brendle and Christian Bowers won the stadium stocks. Bobby Pierce won a great race at Muskie. Bobby Pierce is on it right now as far as. That was fun. Did you watch that? I watched the musky race. Yeah, that was the beginning of that race. I like, did you see in the beginning when they were doing the

team thing, right? Two lap thing. That was fun. King of the Hill. Yeah. Indiana Midger Week this week, I think it's Indiana, right? We run through those real quick. Hayden Ryan Bullhorn Circle City.

Carter Sarf, I think that was his first USAC win. He won Paragon. Justin Grant won Lincoln Park. CV won Bloomington. Grant came back on Hopstad. The sprint car portions. Ricky Lewis won Paragon. Jaden Rogers won Lincoln Park.

Jordan Kinzer won Bloomington. Justin Sanders, another Narc win. Jet Barnes, first 410 win, 15-year-old. That's going to be a name, I think, you hear. Especially in the dirt world. won. He didn't, did he win a, he did, Chili Bowl. He was on the podium. Did he win his pre-Land night? Did he lock in or win his pre-Line or something? He did really, really well, actually, I remember that. That's where he kind of got on my reader. Obviously, he's hooked up with the Swindells there, so he's going to run well.

Dominic Gordon won again, 4-10s. They're still running. I didn't see what they, who, I saw it was on last night, I didn't see you won. Will Armitage, IRA sprint winner. Tom Berry Jr. won the modified race in Marshalltown. Craig Mince won Attica. You mentioned Kevin Harvick. Craig Satterley won at Lincoln. Andy J. won the, did you see this? The whole story. I mean, shit they get into. I saw you had the oil pan off after practice. His R.C. Sportsman raised in Wyoming.

He put out a post. Can anyone help me? I'm trying to fix a problem. Next thing you know, victory. Doug Hammaker won his first time in Port Royal. Some random ones here. Gio won the Archer race.

Shout out to Lainty Bice. Is it Bucy, Bice? Lainty Bice won the poll for that race. That was really cool. Ran really well, ran top five all race. She has all year. Yeah.

She's running really well. Eddie McCarthy won the Garden State Classic. Michael Carrow won their big legend car race. Hirschman won the tri-track race at Waterford, surprise, surprise, Brent Marks won the World Outlaw race. Bobby Pierce again won Friday. Tyler Herb, they split the wins. Tommy, we want to talk about this one a little bit.

Landon Thrashor won the Young Lions race. I think it was Tuesday night. It was a great race. Brexton led most of the way. I think I was texting Lambert. I text Hirschman, like, hey, you guys got to get this on. Brexton's leading. Probably jinx the poor kid.

but what I didn't love, and I think you did too, the kid, Landon did a good job and it got out and got booed, and I know it's sentimental, but I mean, the kid did everything, right? I'm social media and the fan. It's just a disgrace of, you know, that kid did everything right.

He made a professional pass. He didn't junk them getting in the corner, and he won the race pretty clean, right? As clean as you can do, and those legend cars are doing what you did. And, you know, and again, the class of Breck to send out a post, right, on going over that race and what a good job the kid did and passing

him and stuff. First class there, first class that kid winning that race and how he did it. Didn't shove him out of the way. You know, obviously, his little games being played there. He went in high. He baited Brexton a little bit to look in the mirror probably a little bit. Brexton just slowed down just a little bit, one did it. Gave him a little tap after the center of the corner, not in the center of the corner, not going in the corner, got him a little cocked up a little bit, and drove underneath them like you're supposed to. Just the way racing is supposed to be done. And I criticize those races all the time away those kids race,

but that was a great pass. Yeah, I mean, I know you turned it on. We were all cheering for Brexton. Yeah, of course. But the kid did not deserve any of the Haiti got for that move. And I was actually talking to the TV as it was going on, like, don't move him, don't move him. And when Brexton missed the bottom and got up the race right, he just did exactly what he should have done.

and I was still hoping Brexton could run into three and stay on the outside of him and make a race of it, but the kid done nothing wrong in my opinion. And listen, Brexton, to his credit, didn't, you know, a lot of times,

especially in that Legend Cars deal there, you know, you get that little shot and then you just kind of either overdrive the next corner and take yourself out or you go in there and clean the guy out because he moved you, he stayed composed, he got back in line in second place,

finished second, like all the credit in the world of those two kids. He is going to be fun to watch growing up. And he's going to win plenty of races. Like, I know he didn't win that one. I know we're all cheering for him. But we all, I mean, I want to cheer for everybody, right, to race like that. Let's cheer for the good racing, right?

I mean, it doesn't. Well, we've cheered for him even before what happened with Kyle, right? Absolutely. You've watched these kids from imp that grow up. And obviously, you know, Keelan's going to be one, Wyatt's going to be one that had the name that is circling them. And they're under so much of a microscope. Oh, yeah.

To do it the way they do it, it's impressive. But Brexton has really, really impressed me with handling, everything that he's handled in the last week now. Shout out. Another Landon, Landon Salamito one again at Seekong, funny story. You know this because of the Salamito family. So they came down. They were going to run, he ran to shootout last week.

All three of them. All three of them. Landon, Brody, Timmy got his ass kicked by a bunch of 10-year-olds in the Ledge car. But so they came down last week. They were going to plan on kind of doing the double-headers. Like there's some weeks they run Monday and Tuesday. And of course, they come out of week one, Landon's leading to points in his class.

and they're like, yeah, we're going to come down tomorrow. Like, we're going to stay. Landon's coming for sure. I think they're driving out right now. I think they're staying at the house. I don't know if they are or not because we're leaving tomorrow. So I said, I said, if he's like, because they can leave the car down. Actually, Landon, Thrasher's dad, Tristan, I believe his name is, is helping them out.

He said, just leave the car here and let Landon come in and out. They got two cars. Sean's got about six of them now, I think. Yeah, it's hit them. But, you know, so they were like, just leave the car here. we'll take care of it. He can come in. I was like, hey, he can always fly in, send him down. He can stay with us and go over there, race, and we'll send him back.

Let's see you in the next couple weeks with these guys. But, you know, it is. Once you lead the points, now you're like, I can't, I can't not go back. So hopefully they run well. I think they run, they practice tonight and they run tomorrow night. Timmy's coming to, I think, of course. But yeah, so they got their bit hard. Shout out, Brayton Scott, Billy Scott's son.

He won the other night over there as well. Mike Rowe, you talked about 174 years old. Jake Sheridan won the Petersburg. Dylan Westbrook got his 100 360 sprint win. Zach Sees won $10,000 in Natural Bridge. Zach Brown won in a backup cartway County, Prince George, Canada. Those are the winners there.

Somebody's getting between. That guy came up to me. He goes, what do I need to send these? I got to Canada races. I got to tell you guys about. Nathan Linfit, Matt Berry You, Brett McCumber, must be Dave's cousin. And Brandon Verrick, I'm sorry,

butchered all those. A couple father and sons I've seen this. weekend. You talked about the Donnelly's winning at Dominion. We saw Cam and Nick Penitsky. Sorry again at Cedar Lake. One thing I didn't want to talk about, I got this,

I've got this last week, too, and I didn't mention it. Ricky Craven took over a racetrack up in Maine. And I've heard nothing but good things about it. They said it used to be Speedway 95. The Bar Harbor guys that sponsor Matt got involved with. It's now called Speedway. Speedway presented by Bar Harbor Bank and Trust.

They wanted to call it Ricky Craven Speedway. way I think Ricky said absolutely not. But, I mean, how cool is that to see somebody like Ricky put the time and money into an effort just into reviving a racetrack? Yeah, it's what he's done in the last six months has been awesome. And the way he promoted, that place was packed. That was a rain out. It rained out.

And supposedly he got all the drivers together and asked them what they wanted to do. And they decided to run that race the other day. And it was a great race. Watching all the practice stuff, it seemed like outside groove, outside. And that short kid. I'm not sure if he's a kid anymore. DJ, he's probably my age, I would say. He did a great job passing for the lead there.

Yeah, DJ Shaw did win the Hunter Lapper. Gabe Brown won the ACT race at Star. John Mc Kennedy won the Super Race of Star. He had a great weekend. He won Friday at Lee. Talk about John? Yeah, an MRS-modified race, finished second at Hirschman and the Tri-Track

and won the Super Modified race. So he had a really good weekend, John. That's good. Shout to Brad Babb won the 350 Super Race. Bobby Stimmons had a huge lead. There's no truth. The rumor that he slipped on his own puke and gave up the lead. He said he got caught with a red flag and then just couldn't fire off.

But I love giving him shit. Tillman Heuer won at Langley. He's got a cool, I don't know what it's called. It's an doural car of four cylinder, but it's wrapped like the old flamed Jeff Gordon's paint schemes. That's really cool. What else we got here? Austin Reeves, our buddy in the Crown Vic from Pensacola.

He won again. I think it's number four or five for him. Ashton Winger won Hunt the Front races at Magnolia this weekend. Hell Tour, which I don't know if you know what Hell Tour is. Hell Tour is. I mean, how many races is? It's like a month straight or something. It's basically like 30 races in a month or something crazy like that. Dirt Modifies.

Like Super Late Models. Oh, Dirt Modifines. I'm sorry. Like Nick Hoffman and MGO go do it. Yeah. And I think the late models, it's late models. And the modifies are with them. Yeah. Because of the ones I got, Jason Fager won, Shannon Babb and the original Squirrel. Brian Shirley, he won as well. So that was that weekend, this weekend of them. Bobby Betancourt won a Pearsock race at Seacock.

And I wanted to give a shout out to our buddy Howie Brody and Danny Grannon. They're going up in the Riverhead Wall of Fame. I know Howie's been a good friend of yours for a long time. So it's cool. Cool to see them guys getting recognition that this well deserved for them. Yeah, other than that, you got any racing going on this week? Hey, you know who else one?

The motherfucking Carolina Hurricanes. Did that? They didn't win last night. Yeah. I was enjoying the overs last night They never hit the over for me Didn't even get close last You hit all week though on the overs

Except for this one right You were in good shape all week It was fun to I mean Like if you're gonna watch a game I'm not gonna watch a game And hope nobody scores You know so I was like I'll just bet I don't want to bet on either team

But every time you hit Yeah it was every game The last one was it Yeah you had to do it The other night I was pissed off Because we were talking about And it was it was tied I pushed essentially

It was tied And they pulled the goal It was like three minutes So there's no goalie And nobody could score. I'm like, the son's a bitch. I need one more goal to win this bet. But yeah, so, but yeah, it was fun.

And shout out to the Knicks, obviously. Thank God for that. It's going to be cool to see the parade going down. The Canyon of Heroes back in New York. But, yeah, so no racing. Just San Diego. That's going to be enough this week. Carson, where are you doing on?

Nothing. We are cars off till North Wilkesboro. So I'll just be tuned in to San Diego. I got anything coming up? Nope. They're in Pennsylvania right now. Living life, hanging out. He's riding four-wheels around doing whatever.

So. Kids got it made, man. Lambert, you got, I mean, what are you going after? Thursday? Thursday morning. Thursday morning on the O'Rallies playing. So hopefully get on, on property at some point Thursday and just scope out everything. See what the hell's going on.

The track walks very early. It's early. Friday. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to be. I'll be fine. He won't be home.

I'll get up early. I'll be fine. I got another. You'll already have been not going for a run. Man, this is going to be, the next week's going to be pretty interesting. I will say, I mean, we can talk about a little bit. Good chance I probably won't be here for a couple weeks.

I got to kind of do some stuff, take care of my beat up vocal cords a little bit. So I'm probably going to take a couple weeks off of this. A couple, maybe some races, we'll see. Just try to just try to get better. Doctors told me I can't do anything. They said, don't drink, don't talk, and stay out of loud places. Those are your three favorite.

That's, um, that's, that's, Freddie. I sent the meme. I'm like, this is going to be a problem. This is going to be a problem. Thoughts and prayers. So, uh, hopefully, hopefully just a little bit of rest. If I was, I take off this weekend in San Diego. You're going to be talking way too much.

Well, no, I probably won't, I don't see him at all. So it's just going to be easy week. We'll see what it goes from there. But, uh, yeah, I'm just going to try to rest up, take care of it. And hopefully with a little rest, it clears itself up. We won't want to go any further than that. But, yeah. So anyway.

Which means you just get me and Tommy. Yeah, we'll see. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. We'll find somebody to sit in this chair. We wouldn't do that to you. We'll have some guests. But yeah.

But so that's it for this weekend. What's Cam doing? Cam racing. We're going to go with you. That's right. Cam's with me. Yeah. We're going to find some,

maybe some baseball games. Is Padres in town this weekend? I haven't looked. Yeah. I don't take you guys. Not going to be much time, man. I'll be there for two days. Oh, yeah.

Early. Early. We had rental cars. So we're trying to figure out parking and everything else. But yeah, it's going to be an interesting weekend. It's going to be. You think we spend more time under green or under yellow? Under yellow.

Yeah. I think it's going to be an extremely long, long, long, week. We're not getting home until noon Monday. Keep saying that. I'm telling you. It'll be fun. Anyway, thank you guys for listening again. Hopefully I'll be here next week if this just magically clears itself up.

If not, we'll have something fun planning for you guys. And we will see you then. We're out. Bye. Check out Dirty Mo Media on Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok. Thank you.