Door Bumper Clear - Kurt Busch & Kaden Honeycutt: Imaginary Friends, Weekend of Wins & Brother Kyle

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

Wipe the mud off your boots and come on in, Watkins Glen campers. We’ve got a packed episode of DBC this week with TWO guests in the house – Truck Series winner Kaden Honeycutt, and NASCAR Hall of Famer Kurt Busch. After a wet n’ wild weekend up north at Watkins Glen, the gang breaks down all of the chaos and controversy from the Truck race – including a penalty to Freddie’s team that NASCAR rescinded just a little too late. Oops. Kurt Busch opens up about his view of the Preece/Gibbs and Kyle Busch/Nemecheck incident at Texas, and why he’s not afraid to say NASCAR got it wrong. He also dives into plenty of stories from his racing career about penalties, rivalries, and the lessons that helped shape him as the years went on. Kaden Honeycutt gets signed up for beer shotgunning school, and talks his amazing weekend winning ARCA, Trucks, and both CARS Tour races at Ace Speedway. Buckle up for another fun episode of Door, Bumper, Clear. While you're here - go pick some merch from our new "Zero To Freedom" line at shop.dirtymomedia.com Want more DBC? Check out and subscribe to the new DBC YouTube channel! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. What if we left all the spotters out of everything? That's a terrible idea. What page are we on? Why you cursed that? This is why I'm just you cursing to me. I think he's a whiny. That's what I think.

Next thing you know, I got no fire suit on. Grouty nation fans are getting lucky tonight. What's up everybody? Welcome back to Doorb Upper Clear. I'm Freddie Craftspotter for Bubba Wallace, Dean Thompson and Gio Riziro this week. We got a full table day, Tom. What's going on?

What are you got going on here? I leave one time a couple weeks ago. Now the table's full. I'm trying to put so many people to the table that you don't have to come back anymore. It's probably because you don't have much to talk about it because all you shit finished last this week. I think somebody sent me a message on Twitter that I averaged like a 27th place. Yeah, you did good. It was up on the restart.

Yeah, we'll get into that. Didn't clear the guy, right? And broke the guy's transmission. Broke the transmission. It was a hell of a week at Watkinsman. Carson, how are you today? I'm good. I spent my weekend. I saw one of our guests quite a bit this weekend in Victory Lane at the Cars Tour. So I'm excited to hear more about it today. Joining us today, we actually have two guests. First, NASCAR Royalty. Now Hall of Famer, Kurt Bush. How are you, sir?

I'm good, my friend. Good to see you guys. Good to be on the show with you. Kurt, what's been going up, man? I haven't seen you around much. I mean, I've seen you out West Coast trip a couple times. But, I mean, what do you been up to lately? It's been pretty chill. Just doing different things. I was helping Monster with things in Miami, F1. I went out to San Diego to help with things at the naval base with NASCAR. I actually checked out the track a little bit. Here we go. Buckle up, Buttercup. The track is going to be wild. Did you help design it? No, we're out there just combing through some of the sections where you cross over like a railway that has to stay. It's a shipping railway.

There's concrete that's been poured. There's old asphalt. Fresh asphalt. It's going to be. be pretty cool on just the raw uniqueness of that. Talk about the Hall of Fame. Obviously, January, you were inducted to the Hall of Fame. I mean, obviously, career highlight, but I mean, how important was that to you in your career to get at that level? It's been a blessing, like the full cherry on top, and then just the full circle of working hard as a blue-collar kid out of Vegas, you know, and having a dream and just going after it. And, you know, over the years with different teams, yeah, there's some bumps in the road. But, you know, the way that I was able to persevere. and the longevity.

There's only a few guys that get into 20 years of racing, 20 years plus, two decades, and being able to win in 21 of the 23 years. I was out on the track. I mean, it's that it came around full circle, just hanging with the Wood brothers and the Lubbani's, you know, Kenseth showed up in Canales and just the rivals, but also the legends.

And now I'm in that big room at the Hall of Fame. So it's been pretty special. Yeah. Mr. Honeycutt. The fuck you've been up to you. Do you anything fun this week? Not much. Jesus.

Like, I'm done now this is Honeycutt. Way to go, bro. Every clip I turned on, he was talking some shit, man. Were you? Was I? Yeah. I don't know if I remember.

For anybody that maybe slept under a rock all weekend, Caden Honeycutt is now joining us. He won every race he entered this weekend. Perfect four for four. First guy to ever sweep the two cars to her races. I mean, Like just take us through your weekend somehow.

Man, it's a, I don't know if you can ever, if I could ever do something like this again. I know Sam Mayer was the last one that did the ARCA and the truck sweep. I think at Bristol and 20. But yeah, that was really awesome. The ARCA race helped me out a ton for the truck. Just be able to go from that race for the next work on the stuff. I struggled in qualifying for the truck and just worked on it, got some things better in turn one and the S's I needed to work on.

And then the truck race was really well. as soon as I got behind Zilich in the second stage and I had the same paces as I really knew I could actually win the race. I really never thought about that going to a road course because it's not really what I'm really good at. That was probably, I think, my seventh road course I've done. But yeah, that was really awesome. And then, you know, whenever we had the penalty and just working our way forward, I knew we had a great truck, especially when we got to Shane. I was actually going to pass Shane on speed. I was like, holy crap, this is like the best road course guys ever.

And I'm actually doing okay here. but yeah I had some good overtime starts and was able to pull off that truck win and then I stayed up till probably four I stayed up with plat and my buddies back at the house and we we had fun we talked about it and got two or three hours of sleep and went over the car stir and won those both and that was uh those are two really hard races I don't know that definitely did not come very easy for sure that took everything out of my system to win those two that's cool it's like old school dick trickle yeah the race was 200 laps he only needed 200 hours of sleep. He was a 500

lapper. He needed five hours. The only thing is he didn't have a briefcase. You know, his briefcase, you know, it was in his briefcase. He had a cigarette. Underware and cigarettes. That's what Trickle had. I think the only thing that didn't go your way this weekend, we have to talk about this, is your celebrations. We've got to work on. Like,

the shotguning of beer, we might have to send you to shotgun school with Caitlin Larson. For real. Well, and then he almost fell off the car in Victory Lane and the late in the lay model stock. Yeah. I almost pulled a counter. I audibly gas, So I was like not, that's the second time you've fallen off of your car. I know.

My balance is not great. I've been working on that. But that part when I got out, that was every ounce of energy I had left. Yeah. I got to stand up. I almost fell off the car. I was going to ask, like, I remember in the, towards the, you know, when we started getting into it after the adrenaline had probably worn off, like, what did that feel like after, like, okay, it was all said and done? It was all over.

And I know you were pretty whoop. So, like, what was that like once all the adrenaline and the hype were all? Yeah, it was whenever I drove the stock back to tech and then I sat in that chair and I was just staring at the car and I was just like, man, like I've tried so hard to pull off that double in the carsters so many years. I've been so close a couple of times. And honestly, I think the really cool part about that is a lay-mile stock pretty much me and Kenneth's team now. I've been joined the ownership of it and we take a lot of pride and we work really, really hard on to bring in the program up because it's not. not just me driving. We have a driver Matthew that's in it. So I'm doing the best I possibly can. Me, Josh, and Kenneth are doing the best we can on making our equipment better so that way we can

have him perform at the best level too. So, and then, you know, we weren't there for two or three days like most of the guys were. I mean, I was there on Tuesday, but we were there for a couple hours. You asphalt people in your testing. Yeah. So, and when we came back Saturday, and we honestly kind of struggled a little bit, I was kind of concerned and we made great adjustments. I just worked really hard on it. And we ended up in both Victoria Lane. That was really awesome. It was an impressive weekend. Kurt, before we go to Warkins, Glenn, I wanted to talk to you about, kind of like State of the Union NASCAR-wise,

you've seen so many different iterations of these cars and different generations of cars. Where do you think we're at right now with this car now? Obviously, I think, I mean, Steve O'Donnell sat in that chair a couple weeks ago and said there's challenges with this car that they have to fix. I think we saw a little bit of that yesterday. It was super hard to pass. But, like, you drove this car. Where do you?

Super hard to pass. SVG. Well, okay. Sorry. It was super hard to pass for everybody else Except for that guy But there was times yesterday Where we were just in a line

Everybody split by one car lane riding around But I mean Just talk about this car And what you're seeing on the racetrack For somebody that's done this for 125 years like you said Yeah I mean how long is this show I mean we've got two hours

We've got so much time to talk about this You know the car to me That's one issue I think what really started things Called the mid-20 teens Data sharing data sharing. Like there were teams and programs that were scraping information where other teams didn't know that. And what I'm getting at is steering trace, breaking trace, throttle, all of the essentials on how you would learn from as a young driver, now that everyone has the same data.

Everyone's looking at the same thing. Everyone has live breaking data or shift points, fuel mileage mapping. Like, when I learned that our team at 2311, we could check on what Hendrick was running for their throttle position in 2022 with this next gen car at Daytona. I'm like, really, it's gone this far. They know live on what throttle position they have. And it's too much. Everyone has the same information. So what do you do when everyone has the same speed? Everyone's the same speed.

Right. And it's hard to pass. And you're now starting to see like, like yesterday, I was happy for my brother to have a decent race. but there is. He's locked with Austin Dillon. You know, like the teen cars were almost like locked together on where they were, other than the trackhouse cars. Yeah.

You know, with SVG, he's not human right now. You know, it's a different being. Yeah. But I, you know, my new Chastain would have a good day because he was able to have that data sharing and learning from SVG, you know. So it's pretty wild. I mean, the car, it's just, it's too locked down in certain ways. I'd like to see more open rules, more creativity, different things for short tracks,

different things for super speedways. But then you get into the cost portion of it for the owner. So who knows? There's just so many different ways we can look at this. But at the end of the day, we're seeing a lot of cool restarts. We're seeing good battles and rivalries brewing, you know, some good contact, but also some good racing as well. But it's not the best.

Yeah, you talked about it. I mean, we essentially, the idea of this car is parity. So you've made all the cars the same. you share all this data, you're making the drivers the same. Where do you expect to see the difference in how we're going to pass each other if we're all doing the same day? Back in the day, you would stand on top of the truck, right? Tommy, and you'd see it with a stopwatch. You'd see it with the eyeball on where Mark Martin would beat me or where Rusty Wallace was quicker than that guy.

And you'd have to learn from looking at it and then maybe scrape up a VHS tape. I know I'm getting old now, right? Pull up the DVR and go review it. but you didn't have like the full on tablet to show you everything. Yeah. Yesterday I think was the first time I can ever remember at Watkins Glen. It was like ninth to 30 second. They were all on the front straight away after 15 laps.

Yeah. After 15 laps. I was like. There was the first stage we kind of stayed out trying to hope to get a couple stage points at the end. We were running, I don't know, 20th or so. And we ended up like getting passed for a 10th off of seven. And we cycled to the back, I don't know, 30 second or something. like that we restarted and I'm like, I don't know how we're going to go anywhere.

You know, like we were just like we were just, we were at the back of this pack and like, like you said, the guy in the top 10 was in the one and we were just off of seven. That whole group that pitted never got past 24th. Yeah. Like the four car was 32nd before all that. He was sitting 24th. Nobody passed them. I was like, man, this was going to be all strategy today.

Yeah, I saw, I think somewhere the 400 cars were 22nd to 26. They were, yeah, they struggled. I mean, obviously, Byron was decent, but he got in a wreck. So whoever's data their copying was wrong. Okay, guys, they're making the data for everybody else. So I'm, right. Kurt, is SVG the best road racer we've ever seen in NASCAR? Hands down.

I've never seen anything like this. Yeah, he hit this next-gen car perfectly, though. With the Australian V8 supercars, they're kind of like an Xfinity version or an O'Reilly series version of our next-gen cars. And he's a three-time champion down in Australia. and the way that those cars drive with independent rear suspension, the travel is a bit limited, similar to the next-gen car.

And those guys down there are beasts. I mean, they're animals and the way they race. I mean, Marcus Ambrose came into Cup and eventually won what, two-road, two-road course races? Took them a while. It took them a while, right? And then Montoya, you know, he won a couple road course races. But SVG to come in right there at that moment to win that Chicago street race, I was in awe.

And now to see this, I mean, he's a Hall of Famer already in my mind. I mean, he has seven wins. 60 races, 62 races or something. Yeah, his percentage is pretty good. Yeah. So, I mean, hopefully he doesn't figure out the Oval. I got something bad to tell you he is already.

Yeah. I've been sniffing it. He's already getting there. You know, I was just in awe yesterday. And listen, he's hard to beat at every road course race, ever. But when you factor in heavy tire wear, It just gets me. It's just like, at one point yesterday, we pit, we short pit with Tyler.

And I look at the, and I'm like, all right, good, we're like by ourselves, like us and Tyler on our own straightaway. Nobody's around us. And I'm like, okay, here's where we make up time on these guys and we're going to hopefully jump them when they pit. And I look down and we probably had, I don't know, 10, 12 lap better tires. And SVG was still fucking faster than we were. He ran the fastest at the point at lap 80 or something. He ran the fastest lap of the race with 20 lap old tires. I remember that.

20 lap old tires. He's like he just sat there. and waited. It was insane. When he had to go to distance himself to get ready for the pit stop. Yeah. Caden, you talked about racing against him

on Saturday or Friday in the truck. Like, is there anything you see in the truck where you're following him around? Like, holy shit. Like, I'm just never going to touch this guy. Yeah, he is, obviously, he's really good in the break zones. You know, when Kurt brought up the SMT stuff,

I think what's interesting about our series is we don't actually have a full-blown telemetry basis. Yeah, you have more of a GPS. Yeah, it's all. math. So I think that's also what separates trucks too from Cup is like we see more spread out. Like I can't go back from Corey's stuff and go copy it. I have to do it in the Sim and I have to go actually do it in real life. And there's things different from the real life to the Sims right too.

So I think that's where it's a good difference from truck to the cup is. But from what I've seen, from what I saw on Friday, I don't think Shane had anything crazy as far as the truck aspect. I think he was really good in the break zones and the bus stop being consistent with, you know, being tight to the right and then jumping the curbs consistently on a really good basis. He was really good at wrapping the carousel and putting people in bad spots because he was really good at getting to the right rear and pushing them up and having a good run off the carousel. And I think those were his biggest assets during the cup race too. I feel like you watch him and he's just never out of control. You know what I mean? He's always straight.

And you see like somebody yesterday like in the middle of race, I think. I figured he was standing next to me. They're like, oh, I think Zilwich has got something for him. I go, no, he doesn't. Like, he's just sitting, he's just biting his time waiting, taking care of tire. Well, you know, I remember, I forget what race it was, but I remember McDowell was second, which he had a great day yesterday too. But McDowell was second, or it may even have been leading, and he's driving the shit out of it.

Sideways, off the curbs. And then SVG's sitting there, and somebody's like, oh, McDowell might have something for him. I'm like, no, he's just fucking with us at this point. And, Kurt, how frustrating is that when you know, like this, I'm driving the hell out of this thing, and this guy is just out there. He's going to go by me anytime he wants. He's got like three fingers lifted up off the wheel, like just cruising. Yeah, it's just making a sandwich down the back straight away.

I seen his hand out halfway. On the last lap? Was he waving? I think he was waving to the head. He was going to the asses when his arm out there. Might have been an Aussie fire. He was waving or he needed some air or what that was like Tim Richmond style, baby. I think they said on TV like when he had come back out from that last stop that, like,

their projection was like lap two would be if he could have gotten early in two to go till he could have gotten back to the lead. And then, I mean, it was it was way before that. And like, by the time he was doing his burnouts, I mean, there were still people that were in their cars. 29 seconds, he met up. Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, and like, I think a lot of those guys were saving fuel, too, because I saw

three or four of them run out. I had to start finishing. Yeah. Um, you know, again, as a racer, you think in your mind, okay, I'm running for second today. And he has to make a mistake. But he is now past those mistakes as far as speeding on pit road or passing too soon before the line.

or pit crew is very steady for him. Like, they're done making those mistakes. That's what makes him so tough. And that's what I was getting ready to say. Kudos to that team, the crew chief, because they have executed every race, right? I mean, they could have made mistakes, just like Kurt said, in any of those races.

Yeah, getting too amped up, like, just our chance to win. Yeah, this is easy, right? But you know what? Heads down, let's execute. This is one we need to pit. This is one. They stuck to their guns. They did the opposite of most, most,

most of us did, you know, twice, I think, yesterday, right? And it's easier when you have... Because it's that much speed. It's easier to control your own destiny when, yes, like when you said, when you have your own speed, but you still got to execute, right? You still have to pit and go, all right, he's going to take the lead with two to go based off lap times and speed, like you said, looking at all the data to fall up. And we were falling off, what, five, six seconds at, you know, we run 77, 78 second laps there

at the end of a run. So all that calculations. all the stuff going in. And again, it's live, right? This is going on live. The crew chief's got to think about all this, and the engineers, you know, look at the data, seeing what's going on,

going off past history, you know, all the data that's to them during the week of looking of, like, all right, if you're 14 seconds back, like, and you're three seconds fast to the guy, this is the lap you got to pit, right? And they did it, right? So kudos to the whole team. Yeah, and I think that just plays into his driving style

where he knows, as long as I don't fuck up. Like, I, I'm going to beat these guys at the end. And I mean, he put on a clinic there at the end. I do think we just need to throw a comp caution now about five laps outside the last fuel window to make the race exciting, though, right? Let these guys all pit. Half of us stay out and let's see who can catch each other again. Leave SVG out on old tires and see what he does.

It didn't matter. We saw that on Saturday and Sunday, you know, where it was Connor on Saturday where he pit and Jesse stayed out. He's trying to stretch fuel. God bless Jesse. I wanted to go like hug him somewhere after I saw that before interview where he was basically in tears talking about you know he just overshot the last corner but he said it perfect in his interview man

he just said you know I'm so much so ready physically and but my mental my mental capacity broke down at that point and it's just like that's what happens man and like you guys talk about Kurt like how hard is it first of all it's his best friend that's running him down from behind you know you race with your brother on numerous occasions for wins you know, how hard is it to stay mentally locked in and not like let you affect who's catching you at this point? And like, I mean, he had the win if he just executes turn seven, I think.

And but he makes a mistake right there. I mean, like you said, it was all mental. You got to have that confidence. You got to know what you've done to prepare for that moment. You've got to know that this is this guy, this race, whether it's the tires, one guy's older or fresher. He just needed a better game plan to execute. I'm pretty sure he drove into the bus stop. I did see that replay.

I drove in kind of like a wuss on that last lap, but you're going to be nervous leading. Years ago, I raced Robbie Gordon there for a win, and on the last lap, I knew he was coming. I knew he was going to just laundart me into the bus stop, and I positioned it where I just caught him just right, where he doored me instead of hitting me in the tail. Like, if he had hit me in the tail, I'd have been spun around and done. So it just worked out where you position yourself in defense sometimes to make a play. And if I had the wheel to drive Love's car there going through six and seven, you don't look in the mirror and you actually come in short on seven and get the car stopped in just a quick moment to mess up Zillage's timing.

Yeah, just throw him off. That way Zillage isn't going to just run in there and dump him. That way he's off, and then you get a nice run to the finish. Yeah, but that's why you're a hall of finger. You got to come up with those game plan. So look at all that thought process that you thought on that going down that straightaway, after the S is, right, that thought process that came into, as you're leading, It's the end of the race.

You wore out. You thought about all that at that time. You didn't think about that while you were in the motorhome. No, I didn't want up playing Spy Hunter. You know, he dropped the smoke screen. You dropped the oil. You're throwing wrenches out. You're just kind of getting the other guy's mind.

Like, what's he doing. And that's kind of what Jesse said, his mental capacity. He lost his mental awareness at that point, right? And it's just like, is he going to probably make that mistake again? Probably not. Nope. But he's got work to do in that issue, right? in that part of his racing, right?

He's got everything else, right? And, listen, that kid works hard, man. I just felt so bad for him. But Conner did a great job, of course. Didn't, didn't. Of course, he has to fuck up Victory Lane again. He doesn't fall off the car this time, but he had to get towed to Victory Lane

because he blew the rear tires off the car. Justin bought his couch cushion. Was that from the Moto? I thought maybe it was a new sponsor deal that they put in. Oh, yeah. No, Conner said that was off the couch and the bus. If you guys had anything like that in Victory Lane, either one of you, like,

where you just, like, maybe of really embarrassed, like Connor obviously fell off the car last year. Like, has that either happened to either one of you guys? I've witnessed two of them. Yeah, I did it at Wilkesboro in the pro race.

I got so much water thrown on me and I was on the window net. The window net is a killer. If you don't get that window net back in. The shoes I had had to been five years old, so they had no longer than them. I remember Doug fell off the car because of the window net at Stafford,

Kobe when he won the SRX race. Yeah, but Kurt, no, any embarrassing victory? I remember what race it was, but a champagne bottle. I go get the cork off and it just, I'm like, wow, I need a lot of it from that. Exfinity or O'Reilly Race, I'll tell you who had a good day with Sheldon Creek. He had a poor guy.

SpaceX was a while ago, man. I didn't, like, Dean, obviously, you didn't see a replay right away, and Dean was, we were right behind him. And we, you know, I hear, you know, bus stop spotters like, oh, you know, we got a wreck over here. Yellow's probably going to come out. Yellow comes out and Dean's just like, wait, do you see that fucking replay? And it's your, like, two minutes later I see just Sheldon flying through the bus stop.

That's two weeks in a row, right? Justin Haley with the truck, Texas, right? Yeah. That went bad. I don't know. I guess did Allgaier get into him? I didn't. Somebody said that Allgaar kind of got on the curb.

Yeah. They were racing. It wasn't like, dirty. Yeah. But yeah, poor Sheldon wrecked. He got on the curb in practice when it was still a little slick. Yeah. Busted his ass over there in one.

And then comes back and not. He knocked the tail. off there and then obviously. And he was going to have a good day. I can't believe they finished the race. I don't know how it didn't knock the radiator out of it. Like, it was impressive. After the day he had, he's like, I'm finishing this.

I don't care. What else? We have truck race. I don't want to talk about the truck race, but go ahead. I know you don't. Who won the truck race? Anybody know? I want to hear this for me because I haven't heard about it.

We'll get to our race later, I think, in the spot on, spot off. But yeah, I mean, talking. about your race because obviously you have to battle back at the end there from a pit, was it a commitment line violation? Yeah, so we were trying to flip stage two. I know what Scott was trying to do. I was kind of confused at the moment, but I looked back. I was like, oh, I understand what he was doing. But yeah, I missed it, I think by half a truck to the line, whenever Connor had got to the two to go, so then the light came out. Oh, so you were, you didn't hit the commitment line. You just didn't get to

the light in time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That still exists. I got busted on that trying to pit years ago and lights green when I went by it, but the line is about 100 yards up. I think that's exactly a lot of things go on in that 100 yards. It's still that way? That's pathetic. NASCAR needs to fix that. But so, I mean, just talk about the second half of the reason. So it wasn't driver air. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thank you all right. Blame Scott. Was hop along there this week? Was he like?

Hop a little. Yes, he was. He was. Thank God. He got down into a scooter and he drove into victory lane. Adam had a drug him. Well, the guy was like, I'm about to close this. And he's like, you might want to wait. There's a guy on a scooter coming. That's the coachee. And he was like, Scott's still pushing around on the other. Yeah, Scott, I don't know what the hell he did, but he's tore himself up pretty good.

Yeah, he has a motorbike. But yeah, so he just battle, I mean, just kind of methodically picked your way off. Obviously, we had a lot of restarts at the end of that race, and that probably helped a little bit. Yeah, for sure. You know, whenever we had started in the back of the third stage, I was like, you know, we didn't, unfortunately, didn't get any stage points because of the the strategy or run and we were trying to obviously plan to win the race. And once that had happened, I was like, all right, well, the worst thing we can do is tear

this thing up running 20th. At least we can, the mindset I had is pass every person, either a lap at a time or however how long it took. Make sure we just don't get wrecked because there's, Mike, there's going to be a caution. I just don't know when it's going to be. But if we can make our way forward and the truck still has four corners on it, don't get wrecked coming back to the green on the stage. I knew we had a chance at it, at least to,

to get it at least not, maybe not when, but a good day if it had went green the rest of the time, because there were still a bunch of strategy. I mean, there was people short on gas. I know Connor ran out of gas coming across the finish line. I sputtered coming up through the yeses. So if it had actually gone green, we had probably had seen a lot of people run out of gas. So the caution is actually saved quite a bit of them for sure. But yeah, it just, whenever the caution had come out, we had chosen to stay out.

I think I had a row or two buffered a tire, so I was kind of concerned about that. but we didn't put down a lot of rubber and didn't fall off a lot, so that wasn't really a huge deal. So whenever the restarts are coming by, I just wanted to pick the right lanes, make sure to stay out of the tire barriers into one. And if we had come out the other side after turn one, I knew we could gain spots,

and we ended up gaining a spot or two after every restart, and eventually just happened to be on the front row, which is a little bit controversial to you. When Connor took the left again, what did you say to yourself? Well, I said to myself, I was like, yeah. It's like, man, I'm one an idiot, but also like, I understand what he was doing because for whatever reason, heat cycles for us were really bad on the bottom coming off of seven. If you go back and watch some of the resarts, we were sliding.

Oh, the whole bottom line actually slid up to the top because of how bad we spun them. I don't think it was because of tire prep or anything like that. I think it was just the way the tire was when it was cold because it was 50 degrees outside. So that was kind of difficult. We were all trying to save fuel and keeps tires running at the same time. That's a hard thing to do. But I think for him, he thought that if he had a better drive off of seven with the launch, because if you went later in the restart zone on the top, it was better because it boggs down the bottom lane.

And, you know, you don't get the great run off of seven. So I understand what he was trying to do for sure. But I think on overtime restart, it's really risky to do that because I think if it's been somebody else besides me, I think someone would just ran them in the tire bearers and just said, oh, that's suck. for you and ran on. But for me, like, you know, we were three wide going into seven. AJ had my right rear a little bit, so I tried to leave him a little bit of room. And then when I got to Connor, I mean, we barely, I mean, I don't even think I nicked him. I think it was barely a bit of contact. Then he got a little bit free off the Rommel strip,

and it was all from there. Kurt, you ever given somebody the inside lane? Back up real quick. Dude, to have that poise and what you thought after that penalty, hey, we're in the back. Now we're just going to grab spots where we can. didn't blow up Kirk Bush style or Kyle Bush style. I got screwed it on a penalty. You looked at it like, I need to protect my truck. And if I have four corners still left on it, there might be a top 10. There might be a top five. That's what helped you get all the way back up. If we can come find some video and audio of Kurt blowing up at that position, it's easy. It's easy to find that. Let's put that in the show.

Exactly right after he said that. 2006, Wachens Glen. You can see my crew chief, Roy McCauley, kicking tires around like there's soccer balls. That's cool, man. You did that and then have a game plan right there at the end to execute. Good job. Yeah, just, you know, and points matter a lot, right? So, like, you know, being the points later, too, you can't lose points. Like, I can't be like, oh, my gosh, now I'm just going to drive the hell out of it and, you know, finish 20th or whatever.

You know, it matters a lot. Every race does. Yeah, I mean, Kurt, you, like, talk about the points, you know, different formats. Obviously, you race through this chase format a lot. You won your championship in the old, you know, whatever, what do you call that? Dinosaurs. Yeah. What year was that, by the way?

2004. What year were you born? 03. Yeah. I was one. And I'm 22 now. Oh, is that the naval base in Coronado? And this kid goes, wait, you were in the Sharpie car?

I go, yeah, 04, 05. He goes, oh, I was born in 05. Yeah, that explains why I don't remember. No, I like this system because you have the regular season. And you see who the ballers are, and then maybe there's still a few guys playing possum. once the playoffs really do start. There'll be 16 guys. Trucks are 12.

10 guys. 10 guys. Yeah, 10. And there's always going to be those one surprises, I think. But then to run for 10 weeks straight, if this is Watkins Glenn and it's in the playoffs, which it will be next year, you've got to work your way through those bad moments

and just get the points you can and get those average finishes. Yeah. To talk about Watkins gone to the playoffs, I think they had to announce that this week, so the whole infield did not revolt. I wanted to ask, Was the mess and the camping mess? Was it as bad as it looked?

Yeah, there was so many people. So many drivers. I know Parker had posting on X that he was stuck. There was a ton of people that were stuck. And then the people that were disconnected from their trailers, them trying to get out was the whole front of it. And the sides were completely covered in mud because they couldn't, they were just spinning the tires.

And that was, I mean, like, I thought, I mean, there's a couple of mornings that rained a little bit. But, like, the weather for the races was nice. Like, I mean, it was a little, I mean, it was 50s or 60s. So it was a little chilly maybe. but like sun was out. The weather wasn't bad, but the grounds were just not ready for that. Still winter.

Did it snow? That's what I said. It did it snow. Month ago. It snowed Friday morning. Did it snow? It snow. You swore it was going to snow.

It flurried Saturday morning. Three snowflakes. Yeah, well, whenever we had Archer practice and we were like, oh my gosh. He's still drunk. No, he wasn't drunk. No, no, no. He's left in sleep this week. Don't listen to him.

But no, when we took the green on Friday morning for Arca, and it was rain. I was kind of concerned that it was like black ice because... I can't believe they let you guys go out there. No, not so much you, but they put Archer out in rain tires? Yes, sir. Oh, my God. I went out there.

I ran the most last. Fuck it. Well, yeah. I ran about 12. You I'm not so worried about. The back half of the Archer field does not need to be out there in the dry, let alone the rain. The tweet that Dirty Moe quoted this week, and it was that graphic of like all the

of the ARCA people in their regular blue collar jobs. And they're like, this is the most... the business is the best way to explain the ARCA series to anybody. It's wild. Talk about how that ARCA deal came together. Yeah, so whenever, I know HFR had the ARCA car, they had bought out the HRA stuff and the Tory things. So it came with the car.

Al Henke bought out. Yes. Not all. I mean, not. Yeah. Al got it all. And I had talked to HFR about, you know, using the car for the Watkins Glen race.

and I was like, you know, I really didn't have a ton of funding to go and do that. And then Jimmy and them had let me permission to use it. So I brought it over to Bruce Cook. Hell, Bruce put it all together, set it up. Hell, it had a bunch of the brakes. And, I mean, it had pretty much everything still on it. It was all the small stuff like fuel cell, seat, motor, all the stuff that it takes to actually run it. So, yeah, thanks to Mohawk, Al Hanky was a huge reason why I got to do that.

So he has a really great race car. I think he says it's average finish. He's either first or second. Max driving. Yeah, Max driving. Yeah, so it's a very, very good car. Tommy, talk about Alford. I mean, Al's just, I mean, you saw his name on the Mohawk.

You saw Mohawk on Preece's car on Sunday. I was at Cadens on Friday. I mean, Al's just been around forever and so supportive of everybody in the sport. I mean, the things he does behind the scenes to help a lot of people is incredible. And he doesn't, like, he's not never in the line. Like, you hardly even know he was there. You know, the only reason why I knew he was there. Friday as I seen him, we were flying in and he was driving.

I'm like, what is the hell doing here? I didn't even know, right? And all of a sudden, he wanted him all. I said, that's some bitch. He never stops, right? He does not. So, I mean, he lives in Connecticut. He drove home every night.

I'm like, Al. He does it everywhere. They have hotels. I'm like, ow. He goes, yeah, I do have a room right at my race. You know, he owns Weed Sport Speedway. He's like, yeah, I do have a room right there. I guess I could go there.

I'm like, he's like, he'll drive the floor. I'm like, Al, you own a plane. get on the fucking plane I mean what are you doing you know he drives everywhere he's crazy he drives here he's a hundred years old

he's more stronger than we are and he just don't care you know and he's just God he's amazing I mean what he does for our family and obviously he's helped you a ton and help the Christopher's and I mean you can go on

and on and on and what he does and people don't even know a quarter of the stuff he does trust me so yeah I mean I think again testament to Al you on their Friday and win that race, you know. And I don't think without that Raker race, I would have been in as good as much.

Exactly. That's my point. I'm trying to get to. Yeah. And we talk about how I was on Priest's car. And speaking of Old Priest this week, he gets a little, he gets a little slap on the wrist from NASCAR. Not that we have anybody in the room that's ever said anything done on the radio. Should we ask him first? Do we like, are we glad this wasn't? Yeah.

You know, I don't think what he did on the racetrack, like warranted a penalty, but the fact that he said he was going to do it, I think, Kurt, is it was the problem here. Well, that's the problem of the problem. NASCAR shouldn't go off of what someone says on the radio. They should be able to still look at the eyeball, like the eyeball test. What my brother did to John Hunter was the same exact thing. And there could have been maybe one or two words. Now you're in like a courtroom.

You may have or you could have. Like you change one little word in a sentence. But to have priests penalized, and not my brother, I mean, I have no problem saying it. There's one coming for Kyle tomorrow. But they both should have been in the same doghouse.

It should have been one of, either penalized both or not penalize either one. There was an all-star race where, I think it was Dale Jr. one or Newman one. And I needed a yellow. So I wrecked Robbie Gordon, late race.

And I didn't say anything. But the yellow came out. We got another set of tires. And I still wasn't quick enough to catch. I think it was the year junior one. It's like 02. Anyway, I was on a radio show Tuesday afterwards. I can't remember what show it was.

Could have been just like 106.5, you know, downtown. And I was just a little like, you know, off guard or as early morning. I said, oh, yeah, I wrecked him. I was just looking for a yellow because I needed one more shot. I wanted one more shot. On Wednesday, NASCAR issued me a $100,000 penalty, docked point. even though it was the All-Star race, and then Richard Chilmast wanted to fight.

Richard Chilis won't fight you by Friday. Back then, you were in the shit house everywhere. I mean, let's face it. You were fucking up left and right back then. This is where you don't defend yourself. Just admit it. Yeah. No, it was a fun time to be thrown into NASCAR.

The good old boy South existed, I think. Late 90s, early 2000s. Not saying that I was a West Coast guy where I was, but coming in, the veterans, the veterans did not like it. And Michael Walter told me a story early in the early 2000s. He goes, son, none of us got a shot until we were 35 years old in this series because the owners didn't want kids playing with their cars. You had to prove your worth. You had to work in the shops. You had to work your way up with low-budget rides.

and here I am 21 years old, starting 10th at Dover in my first ever cup race. Like, I got this. But I was not ready to be a professional race car driver with everything else. That goes on all the other hats that you have to wear and all the other sponsor obligations and political things. And then the older drivers, they did make it hell on the young guys. It was rough, man. I'd get dumped a bunch of times after doing nothing wrong.

And then, of course, I'd lip off, and then I'd get dumped again. You and Jimmy, you guys go to lunch once a month still, right? Yeah, we still checking in. You and Spencer? Yeah, it's great. I came up with this theory. That's what we should have had Jimmy and him. No.

I saw Jimmy still crying to Dale Jr. a while back. I figured it out. I wrecked Dale Jr. His rookie campaign in 2000 at Rockingham by accident. The closing rate. I had fresh tires. Guys had older tires. I bet Junior Nation was on your ass.

Dale Sr. was the next week. That race was hell, right? There was footage of him for like 30 laps at Homestead the next week. Like, you wrecked my son, he's running for rookie of the year. Kenseth ended up with rookie of the year. Like, it was that close in 2000. And Senior just was not happy with me at all. And I really honestly believe over the years when I heard stories,

we're senior and the gang, like, all you guys would go up to Spencer's junkyard and go run cop cars and beat each other up, Demo Derby style. I think Senior really had good control over Spencer, like made him an enforcer type guy. Like Wayne Gretzky is one of the greatest in hockey. But he needs.

Why? Because he had his enforcer dude come over there and be like, dude, you did me wrong. You don't do Wayne. You don't do Wayne room. I think Spencer was on me because Senior wanted me to calm down. Honestly believe that. And I wish I could have talked it over with Senior,

but I still need to circle back around with Dale Jr. And learn about it. But, you know, those are the lessons. You still haven't talked to Junior about it? Well, no, I mean, Junior and I've talked to. I'm a hundred to talk about it. But no, it's where you got to learn on some of those things. And I see Priests and my brother in the same box,

but NASCAR handles it the way they want it. They want to handle it. So, Priests, let's go back a little bit. Priests have had interactions with drivers and has come out and said, isn't he from your neck of the woods? Oh, yeah. He has come out of the big. You guys are pretty tough and mean up there.

As he has raced throughout his whole career, he has said, I am going to race you as you race me. And that's always been his saying, and that's always been his motto, right? I mean, he's like, he's not going to put up with your shit. If you're going to run into him, he is going to run into you back a little bit harder. I mean, that's a priest. He's kept saying it. He's kept saying, and he's kept saying it.

It's still happening, right? It still happened. In his eyes, it happened. All of a sudden, he just snapped, right? He just said one extra thing wrong besides saying that. And that's what ended up getting him in trouble. But I look at priests And the way I would race him

Or digest his Who he is in his DNA He's a Northeast modified guy And he don't cross those guys wrong They will come out Have you seen the bumpers on them thing? Gosh. You should try A perfect example

You should try the Loudon race man Loudrace is the most fun We have all year pretty much But I'm just I'm only have one concern for Ryan And it's you know He appeals his penalty obviously They're going to hear it

I assume this sometime this week the last time somebody did this was Byron and they gave him his points back but I think they essentially doubled as fine. If that happens, I might have to start cleaning the spare bedroom. If he goes from 50 grand to 100 grand... He's got enough toys in that garage. He's going to have to sell a couple things.

He's going to be called out. Hey, Al. He's going to have to sell that new late model that he bought that he's never going to race. Gosh, that's such a nice car. Isn't it? Oh, my gosh. Somebody's got three bodies on it since it's been brand new because he wants to make it and he's never going to race it.

That car will sit there for two years. you watch. There was a driver yesterday I said I didn't call inside on a certain incident. Old John Hunter came from about three rows back to wipe us out in the turn one, which is not unlike John Hunter.

I was going to say, shocker. I feel bad because we weren't that good yesterday pace-wise, but Charles called the amazing race, and we were going to run top 10 or 12, I think, and just got turned around. It was one of those deals where AJ was on fresher rubber. He caught both

John Hunter was behind us. He caught us. He was just, he was faster than we were. And he caught us. Couldn't get around us for a lap. AJ caught the two of us. AJ passed us off of seven. Or he was getting past us into one. He got a good run off of seven. And I told Bub, I said, yeah, here's 16. He's going to be inside in one. You got a gap, three-car gap back to the 42.

I said, he's going to wedge it in there. Just be ready for it. And unfortunately, he wedged it way in there. We caught that. But what was the deal after the race? With Bell? So everybody's like, why was Bubba mad at Bell? Bubba was not mad at Bell. Bell was mad at Bubba.

And it stemmed kind of from that incident where we got dumped into one or turned around in a one, however you want to see it inside. We got going again. Obviously, older tires just spun. Bell ended up right behind us or Riley ended up right behind us and Bell was behind him. And Bubba just was obviously pretty upset at that point of the race. Our race just got ruined. And he just didn't give them guys room. I mean, he was just racing.

I mean, he didn't wreck anybody. didn't door anybody. I've seen the one guy Steve, whatever his name is, it just continues to guess what happened. And like, it's a bunch of shit that's not even remotely true. But yeah, Bell was just mad because he caught us and couldn't get around us for a lap or two. Bubba was kind of throwing blocks. And if you look at the point standing, I think we're separated by maybe one or two points, Bell and Bubba. So listen, after you haven't got to notice already, Bubba's going to race the fuck out of everybody. And he's an asshole usually. And sorry, but he's never going to change. He's just elbows out after he got spun. And he's mad and

whatever. And Bell and Bubba have gone back and forth a little bit over the last couple of years. It's two probably really frustrated guys. Bell's had a fucking miserable month. Bubba obviously is mad in the moment. And just, I think it just came to a head at that point. I saw where somebody, that guy retweet a video where they were mad. They're coming to pit road. And they last minute abort, well, we're just staying out no matter what. So we drive by him and they abort and tried to go drive back to their spot. And I'm like, no, you don't get that spot back. You didn't maintain gosh car speed. And they flipped out about that. So maybe it started there with them. Oh, I'd seen that.

I know you're talking about it was. It was a commitment line deal again. Yeah, like he did. He was like going to come, going to come. So he's following the line down the commitment line to the commitment line. And right before the line, he darts back out to stay out. But we had gone by him and whoever was behind us was almost past him. And then he tried to drive back up to like second or third wherever we were running.

And I'm like, nah, I don't think that's going to fly. But the rule is you got to maintain caution car speed. If you don't, you got to go where you blend. And that's the call NASCAR made, which was the right call. I don't know why they were so upset about it. But yeah, I mean, that deal, everybody's like, what the hell is that about? I'm like nothing, really. I think he was just mad.

I think they're just both mad is all it was. All right, before we do get into Spot On Spot Off, though, I wanted to remind everybody about JARM fan day coming up on May 21st, right here at JARM. Dirty Mo Media and Sirius XM will be putting on a handful of shows that day presented by Arby's, starting with Larry Mack and Daniel Trot at 9 a.m. And at 11 a.m., they will kick off Dirty Moe live with a crew of some serious misfits, Kenny Wallace, Mike Davis,

and two surprise guests from our upcoming Dirty Mo Media Project. and then following that at noon will be Bless Your Heart. Live with Dale and Amy Earnhardt and the best was saved for last, of course, with Door Bumper Clear at 1 o'clock and we will have Jordan Bianchi joining us. So come hang out with us,

and we would love to see everyone out and join the day with us. 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 DirtyMov Media. Go check it out now. 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. Spot on, spot off. Topic one. The caution flag should have flown for Cody Ware's incident with a handful of laps to go. Spot on, spot off.

I mean, he broke the fucking wall. I didn't see that. Oh my gosh. You see that? It looked like a yard sale. Yeah. I, you know, in NASCAR's defense, I could, I saw them, it was him and Barry, I think totally separate incidents, got spun. Barry went left and Cody went right.

And he just, for us, from the spotter stand, which is the same point of view that the tower has, he just disappeared behind the trees. So I didn't know where he went, if he spun, if he's stuck in the gravel over there, if he's in the grass, where he's at. And Charles was like, Pitt, pit, pit, pit, and I'm like, well, we're in the S's. So I'll pit when we come back around if he's, I don't know if he's still in me sitting there. and afterwards everybody's like, why the hell wasn't that a caution? I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like, I saw the guy spin out.

I don't know. He never stopped. Yeah. And then I'm like, I saw the video and I haven't stopped moving that. Holy shit, yeah. And NASCAR can't see over there. I mean, there's nobody going to go well. They got to have cameras over there.

I think he broke the wall. No, not with nine to go or whatever it was. Once you see that impact, that's got to be a fucking yellow flag, right? I mean, like, even if he's driving around. I've lost. I mean, he hit and he kept rolling. I mean, he come down pit road. I'm like, holy shit.

Yeah. I mean, you know. So he kept rolling. All right. So that's why they didn't throw the yellow. Right. But in my mind, we're so smart and stupid that these cars have black boxes in them. And they need to trigger a yellow when a car has a 15G impact or 20. We all need to come up with that number. I've seen where they dispatch ambulances at Talladega for someone just spinning out and not hitting anything. Then I've seen people clobber the wall and we stay green. It's still so inconsistent.

And you don't know, like, Kurt, I mean, I hate to bring this up. You're the perfect person to talk to because you don't know how a hit can affect somebody. Your hit in qualifying at Pocono didn't look like you didn't look at it. Oh, holy shit. But obviously it took its toll, you know. And this guy, I mean, literally broke the wall and we just continued racing. I didn't know the wall broke. Yeah.

I mean, I got a picture of it last night. That's what I'm saying. Everything looks different to the eye. But if we have data and we have the ability to pull it up, let's go to a. trigger. And I mean, they have been, they, we've seen it. We saw it start in Daytona, and they have been trying to leave it green. You know, we saw the caution that was it Kansas or Vegas, wherever it was, where you spun out in front of Cody spun out in front of the leaders, and they kind of instantly threw it and it cost any race. But, you know, when you see that impact, even if he's, even if

he continues on, he's rolling around the racetrack, once you see that impact, which they have to see it, because they have cameras over there. That's where the restart zone is. They have to have seen how hard he hit the wall. You have to put the yellow out just to make sure this guy's okay. He's out now he's out on the racetrack. I mean, he kept rolling, but I tell you, he coming down, pit row is like, holy shit. I would have liked to see it be a caution just to, I mean, just to make sure Cody's okay. Even though he's out there driving around, I know a lot of our drivers and they're all stupid.

Like, they don't care. They're not going to voluntarily, you know, just pull over and something's wrong. So, like, I wish that was a caution. And I don't, like, aside from how the race was affected by it, it needs to be a yellow when you see somebody hit the wall that hard. All right, SVG will have to sweep the remaining two road course races in the regular season to make the Chase. Spot on, spot off. Where is he in point?

He is right now, I think he's 16th. He's right on it. He's going to be, I mean, obviously, he needs, yes. The spot of races to land. We're, I think we're 12 in. Not quite halfway, but behind him, Chase Briscoe, playoff contender. Lugano, playoff contender. Chastain, usually playoff contender.

He's got a lineup of guys. They're going to perform on ovals. I don't think it's going to be enough, to be honest with you. Spot on for the question. He has to go do what he did yesterday, which I think 76 is a max points day. He had 68 yesterday. He has to do that again because 68 will gain you. I don't even know.

Obviously, we had a terrible day. So he gained a shitload of points on us. But like if a guy, a playoff contender like that, he's going to gain 40 points on that guy probably if he gets 60 and 70 point days. So he has to build that cushion. and then has to perform on the ovals. Like that's going to be, and he doesn't have to win. He doesn't have to run top 10, Caden. We talked about it.

You know, he's getting better. We've seen progress on the ovals. But he has to go out on average, probably like a 15th place finish, to maintain that gap he's going to build at these road courses. Yeah, and honestly, I think if whenever trackouts finds the speed, which I know they're working really hard, every team works hard when they're struggling.

But I think SVG is going to definitely win the road courses at the end. But if he just keeps on the track where he has been, I mean, he's floated around the 7th. 18th, 18th to 16th mark since started Daytona. So if he just stays consistent in the top 15, top 20, he's going to find himself in it. Yeah, the biggest thing for him, the biggest thing for him is, like, he doesn't get a lot of stage points, and that hurts. I mean, like, we see the stage points kind of rule the world in this format.

You know, you see how many points you're getting for stage points, and if the extra 15 for the win, like. Who's got the most now, Freddie? Who's got the most stage points? I would say probably, yeah, I would say Danny probably has it. I mean, I don't think he got any yesterday. last time I think I saw it he was leading because he's just been a machine as far as being laps and stuff.

Reddick surprisingly was he was, I mean he was top five obviously because he's running so well but he wouldn't, you would have instantly he would be leading but I don't think he was Bubba's actually got a lot. We have, we've struggled the last month so we don't, we've lost that. We were in a top five. I'm sure we're in the top ten now. But yeah, I would say it's probably daddy. But I mean, that's just and I, Kurt, how do you feel about State, I again?

Like, hate to bring up the fact you've been around for 100 years. But, you know, stays around when it's when the change. But stage points, to me, I talked about this with Blaney when he was here, they reward you for running well all day because back in 04, whatever, you could run well all day below a motor and you get nothing to show for it where if you run, if you got the fastest car, you win both stages. At least you're going home with 20 points. It's whatever the system is.

If you don't like it, you're already hurting yourself. You have to absorb it and figure out the best rhythm for it. Qualify good, you're going to usually get that first stage. You're going to get some decent points. Road courses are different because you're always looking to flip the same. stage. I mean, right now, Redick has five wins, but no stage wins. You know, Danny has three stage points. But he has the most stage points. Well, I think Danny has the most stage points. So either way, it's the average running. I'd like to see the stage points.

Redick, Redick has 96 and Denny has, it's on the screen. Oh, there it is. Yeah. No one. I'm like, fuck does he know? How did Honeycock? I know. I was like, he was spout and off statistics. He was like, you must really keep up with this stuff. No. Blaney's another one that's up there. He's actually second. Arson's got 91. Yeah. So it's part of the game. You've got to grab the points when you can.

And then there's tracks where you know you might not run so well at, like SVG. So whatever it is to maximize the day. Yeah. I mean, there was years where guys got in the playoffs towards the cutoff, and they were average in 16th place. That's what it took to get in. But things changed. I mean, back in the day, shoot, Tony Stewart, he wouldn't even wake up until a lap 350. Yeah.

He's just riding around in the back hole And then like, where did Stewart come from? There it is. Another checkered flag. Tony Stewart. It just depends how you set it up for the weekend. If Brent Cruz races in the O'Reilly series full-time in 2027, he will be the championship favorite.

Tommy, what do you think? I think he's got a little more work to do. I don't think there's... Is this for next year? Yeah. I think he'll be a... Oh, for 27. Yeah.

maybe 28. I think he's just, he hasn't been all the racetracks yet, right? He hasn't, I don't know yet. Is he going to win the championship eventually? Absolutely. Especially even the stuff he's in, but, man, he's got to keep working, right? He's getting himself in really good positions to take advantage of the last three, four weeks. Is he in the playoffs?

Yeah, he's in now. Yeah. So. His buddy's got to get higher than what he is, which he will. Yeah. If I was saying spot off to this, it's only because I think he may be close to the favorite for 2026. The way he's running. You know what I mean? Allgaier's the favorite. Like all guys built. I don't even know. It's like 180 point lead at this point. But I said on here a couple weeks ago, I said, you know, I think Allgaier's going to lock the championship up before Homestead.

I was wrong. I think I spoke too soon because I think I think Cruz and Day are going to give him a hell of a run for his money. Like the two of them have come on lately, you know, and fast everywhere. Like, it's just... I don't want all of us to say it to him. Like, I want him to keep working, right? I want, you know, Brent's over the house. I want you to keep working. I'm not going to tell...

I don't want people that... I don't want shit to get in that kid's head, right? Like, keep working. You got here because you work hard, right? That's why you're in this position. Don't let everybody tell you what you're going to do. You know, that's my biggest thing on somebody like him. You know, Connor already understands with the cup stuff.

He knows it's... You know, he knows it's a learning curve of what he has to do. It sucks that he couldn't take advantage of yesterday because that's his wheelhouse, right? And he got a flat at the end. And he probably ended up second or third. You know, if he finished a race, again, different strategy. Who knows if he did the same thing with SVG.

But, yeah, I mean, it's hard. I hate giving these kids the prompts. Yeah, you're going to do this. You're going to do it. No, keep working, man. keep working. It's what's going to make you. Kurt, you've seen guys come and go. What are like traits you look at a race car driver or guys that pop up on your radar? Is it guys that just go out there and win races all the time?

Or is it somebody you see that go, you know, obviously Brent's driving great stuff. But I remember talking about Caden on here probably two years ago when he was driving Tyler Young's truck and getting good finishes. And I'm like, that kid is special because he's taking lesser equipment and running really well with it. Like what are traits you seeing drivers that make him pop, like, yours kind of perk up and go, oh, this kid's pretty fucking good. One of the old school ways to look at people is you show up at a big late model race, you know, a car's tour race and you see what equipment they're running with. You know, if some kid is out there with the open trailer and the parents, you know, barely scraping tires and getting the car to the tech inspection line and then they run good, those are the kind of kids that you want to keep an eye on.

Then you get like cup level stuff. I mean, heck, Tony Stewart was just raw speed. Like he would tell Zipadeli, cars lose, cars tight, and he'd be good. on in two minutes after a debrief session. And then he'd show back up Sunday and just wax everybody after running sprint car stuff. You know, Kenseth was always a really methodical thinker throughout the race. He would almost call the crew chiefs like Robbie Reiser and him, like Kenzeth would know when to pit and when to do two tires.

And he just did different things. So there's different ways to become a champion. But some of it is just the same old thing. You show up early, you stay late. Just work hard and you eat, sleep, and drink it all the time. Whether it's Sim stuff, whether it's tape, just everything that you can do. That's, like, people would ask me early on, like, what's your hobbies? I'm like, I don't have hobbies.

Race cars, right? That's the same thing. I don't know. Yeah. We're doing a hobby for a living. Yeah. Right? In my eyes, right?

I mean, we're lucky. Caden, you're part of this new group that's coming up. You know, there's a handful of you guys that are really lighting a world on fire right now. How do you guys race around each other? How do you compare yourself to each other? When you're on the racetrack, are you comparing yourself to Brent or Zillich or Corey? Like, how do you race around these guys?

Really, just race the guys around me that we race on a weekly basis are usually the same people. You know, I figured the championship contenders this year was going to be front row against us, me, GEO, and Tanner. And those are really the only guys I thought about because Spire doesn't have any full-time people. Some of the guys don't, the really good teams don't have full. the time guys. I figured it's really just me,

Gio front row and Tanner just you know, I figured whenever we're racing the cup guys like Texas as an example when Carson had ran me so far out of the gear in three and four I either made a decision to lift and finish or destroy the truck and finish 30th after having a great day. So I've been having those situations and thinking about them like how to handle them when it comes to the cup guys.

But it is good to run against them. I've been I've learned a lot. It's going to make you better. It has. And you know, learning the day. differences on how to win races and how to finish fourth or fifth is huge. So yeah, it's been, it's been really good. You know, and we've grown up together. Me, Lane grew up in the same series together. So like we've raced each other hard always, but we also don't wreck each other. So, but yeah, I mean, I've raced with Chandler back in ARCA when ARCA was extremely competitive back in 2018. I raced against Ty Gibbs too back in that time. So, I mean, yeah, we've raced each other

for a long time. I really just didn't realize it until now. But yeah, which just if I was on as we race each other respectfully but hard and don't kill each other, it's really not that big of it. Yeah, and we talked about last week, Brent was on the top five run. I think he ended up six on Saturday, so that maybe broke his top five streak. But I mean,

he was averaging like a six-place finish if he'd wipe out the one Rockingham race. And Kurt talked about earlier how these young kids, what's Brent? 19, 18? Yeah, I mean, you think of 19. He's 18. He's just turned 18. He's just getting in these cars. And, you know, listen, like, I think if I told people in January,

Brent Cruz is going to be the guy that replaces Danny Hamlin. They would have all laughed at me. And now they're looking at it and going, oh, shit. Like that's going to happen. It's a good chance. I think that would be, if Danny sticks to that timeline, which again, I still don't believe, he's going to stick to that timeline of retiring after next year. He's led almost 700 laps this year.

I mean, I'm still not buying it. But if he does get out of the car after next year, I think Brent is the, and listen, I talk about Corey Day. You know, I know, like, you know, talking about silly seasons, kind of ramping up. Now you hear a lot of shit. you know I would have thought Corey Day was a year away from getting in the 48 car

or at least getting a chance to get in a 48 car. I think that there's some serious conversations of whether he might get in that car next year now. And I don't... I don't like that. You don't like that? Just too soon, you think? Yeah.

I just don't know why you, like, if you have a seat and you got a guy that you think is talented enough, Kurt, why would he not get in the car? And that's with the Gen 7 car. You want to get him in as quick as you can. Because there's nothing compares. They should be running him four or five races this year. then in an open car, right? Jack Rausch took me straight from trucks to cup because he says,

I want you to make mistakes at the cup level and not run the O'Reilly series, not run the Bush series back then. I'm like, okay, it means we're going to be wrecking a lot of stuff. But yes, you want to get there as quick as you can in a sense. I mean, heck, my nephew, Brexton Bush, he's turning 11 next week. He has more laps as an 11-year-old than I did before I got the cup. That's the younger generation is ripping laps all the time dirt, asphalt. It's insane. Why it is somewhere different every weekend doing something different. It's crazy. The kids, they're absorbing it way quicker and way stronger than the generations before. I feel like when I was growing up, you went go car racing. And now I feel like

the people that went go car racing are like super late model racing at the same age. It's like 12, 13 years old, just jump in a super and go haul ass. And it's like, holy shit. But yeah, but that's maybe you just sink or swim, I think, right? Like you just get in it and figure it out. Yeah, I think it's just the laps that all you have. Not you all, but the kids have. Well, he gets in anything. He possibly carries everything. I mean, he runs forward this weekend.

You run a, man. What was that? Yeah, it's a, it's taught a Florida modified. So, like, back in, like, 2008 was the super late model motors. You can actually run in those things. You can run over 650 horsepower if you want. I choose not to because it's an eight-inch tire. And it's a slick.

What's a Florida model? So you've seen an alligator in the trunk. Yeah. You see the Newsomirder. They're kind of like, they're kind of like Emca-style bodies. They've got. really nice in the last three, four years when they first started. Are those the ones with all the shit sticking off of them?

No, no, no, no, no. Thank God not. But Stickler was the guy that had a really good body style that era was. And we've gotten John Howell and BMF, actually, he's done a really good job at copying that. But yeah, it's a really, honestly, I really love that car. It's extremely a car, hard to drive. Like, it's on eight-inch tire. It's got a ton of horsepower.

And when I get a chance to run it, I'm running it because it's throttle control means a lot. So especially when you move up to a Raleys and Cup, like you can't just flat foot it like you can in the truck. So eventually you've got to learn something when it comes. I got to get. Yeah. What? That's it?

That's all you got. You got to get? I'm got to get. All right. Last one. The restart penalty is handed out in the truck race. We're too close to call. I know you guys have been dying to chat about this one.

Well, the first one happened on the initial start. Cruz jumped the fucking start. They're starting to race. And they just, I don't know if they gave a warning or just said it's okay. He got away with that one. Ross was not close. Ross took off way too soon. Geo, listen, so

we're leading to race. I told him 100 times. They said, don't go too soon. Don't go too soon. They're calling penalties. They're calling it tight today, whatever. So from the spotter stand, and again, from the tower, you can't see the restart zone. You can see the tail end of it, but you can't see the restart zone. So I don't know. Like, we go when the yellow comes right out

immediately. So I think maybe that was when Hosevar got turned on the front stretch. So the yellow comes out immediately. And we make half a lap, And our crew chief Jeff Stankowitz is like, we got a penalty for jumping to restart. I was like, you got to be fucking kidding me. Like, I just told this kid 100 times

how to jump to restart? How do you jump to restart? So I tell Gio, instantly, Gio's like, Gio was a little more colorful than I'm going to be. Can you reiterate that? Yeah. There was a lot of Fs and I was trying to key the button up old push style. Yeah, yeah, I was going to say push style.

Just hold the button down so they can't hear you. Then I finally, like, at some point I was like, Gio, please just stop fucking talking. But so he's, MF in the tower and MF and everybody else, but he said, immediately he said somebody, the guy behind me hit me and kind of knocked me into the box and then I took off.

And I'm like, whatever, this kid's just, you know, I don't know, I can't see it, I didn't see it. So we make a lap, two laps. We're coming to the green, we're coming to one to go. And Stankowitz is like, well, if we're going to the back, we might as well come put tires on it and try to salvage

our day, get a couple spots at the end. So now we're rolling around and we're in the like six coming to pit road, because I know going to want to go in the bus stop and they finally show a replay and this is two and a half laps later whatever it is and I'm like now I come fucking unglued because I see the replay and I'm like wait a minute we didn't jump

to fucking stop yeah but that's why you go the four laps well it was it was under yellow we're just riding around yeah you still you still fight I mean you I mean like you were fighting but now I have we have essentially 10 seconds to decide what we're doing and I'm like Jeff we didn't jump to restart

like you got to talk to them like but now I'm like what do you want to do and He's like, man, they're never going to fucking change their minds. You can fight all he want. Have you ever won an appeal live at the track? No. Come on, I talk to me. It gets way worse.

So we pit, put tires on. And we come out and I'm like, all right, yeah, you're right. Just pit. They're never going to overturn it. They'll never admit they were wrong. So we pit. We put tires on. We come around.

They choose up there. We're penalty cars, so we don't choose. We're coming to green through the carousel and they send them a message on their little chat. We're rescinding your penalty, but we can't give you your spot back. because you came and put tires on. And I'm like... Well, you wouldn't have fucking put tires on if you wouldn't have got the middle thing. Now my blood pressure went way higher than 127 over 72 because I'm like, you have to be

fucking kidding me. And after the race, they were just like, hey, we're really sorry. And I'm like, well, that fixes everything. Yeah, that's stuff. No, I don't envy them in that scenario either. You're like, we fucked up, but we also can't do anything about it at this point. Jeff's like, if you would have just extended it, he goes, I would have came, put the old tires back on.

Like, I would have done anything you wanted me to do to get my penalty back, you know, but I was just, it's like, I don't know. Obviously, we should have stayed out and just kind of punted for the end of the race and not being able to maybe pass those guys. But it's like, you're never expecting them to take their penalty back, right? One of my favorite penalties I got was I was leading at Phoenix, and the pit road is a bend off of turn two to come on to pit road. Is this 2016?

No, this is like dinosaur years. Oh, my God. I remember. Yeah, yeah. You were leading the race with Jimmy at Phoenix, no? Yeah. Well, that's another penalty. There's a lot of penalties.

I don't know if you know. That fucker's got a lot of penalties. Do we know who holds the record for most national? The one in Phoenix, again, later on, what I'm getting at is I pass the pace car, and yet the pace car is going to now be at 55, and pit road speeds, 45. It's going to go back behind me, and there's no start-finish line until way down there. They penalized me. I got to go to the back.

About four weeks later, they come up with a new rule. It's okay to pass the pace car at pit roads that bend, like Martinsville, Phoenix, maybe St. Louis. I'm like, that's incredible. That's a car boost rule. How many rules are you created? Phoenix, there's now on the initial start, the second place guy can beat the leader now on the initial start. Back in the day, it was the leader had to cross the line first. Jimmy Johnson had the poll that day.

I'm outside pole. it was kind of drizzling but not we should have been green anyway Johnson launches and then like he just checks up and I get hit from behind and now I'm trying to check up and I end up still crossing the line ahead of Johnson and I get penalized

and that was a race for the cutoff to get to Homestead to be in the final four 2015 because it was Jeff Gordon's year because they definitely needed him in the final four they would just hand of them if he didn't make it So all race long, just had to work my way back up. Basically, it was heads up between me and Harvick as teammates that I needed to be three positions ahead of Harvick at the end of that race. And I ended up finishing two behind him.

So I missed the final four by five points. Would you, I almost, I felt like I was talking about this. And then they changed the rule about, you know, next year. It's okay for second place to be the leader. They called GEO and the crew chief in there. And they're like, hey, we're really sorry. At that point, I would just rather you stick to your guns and make a bad call than tell me we fucked up and I'm sorry about it. You know, like, just say

Because can they ever repay you? You don't ever expect to repay. Like, I was just, you know, and I was fine. You know, I was like, I can't see it, so I don't know. And then once I saw it, I'm trying to calm Gio down. And then I see the replay. And now I'm on channel two. Now you're pissed.

Now I'm screaming at Jeff on channel two. Like, Gio is on one. And I'm like, this is ridiculous. And then I just about calm down. And he's like, hey, they just waived the penalty. And I'm like, please tell me. Back to the channel one. Yeah. We never even told Gio until after the race is over.

because I'm like, he would have come on gluten and probably wrecked the field at that point. Yeah, he would have been dangerous. But yeah, it was, it was, I don't know. That's tough. It's kind of a joke. Yeah. C-Cong boys need to send a crew to the trail this week. It was funny because, so I'm doing the button.

You know, he's, he's, F you, F, you, mother, effort. And I'm like, like, just trying to break it up. And finally, I'm like, hey, I said, just, you curse all you want, please don't push the button. So then he's just, I don't, I'm like, please stop. And then finally was like, gee, stop fucking talking. And as he said,

the guy walks up to me, he's like, 17 driver to the hauler. And I'm like, all right, yep. So I tell him. And then afterwards, I'm like,

you're going to the hauler, but it's going to be for a different reason this time. Like, they're going to be apologizing to you by the time you get there. It's probably one of the few that have gotten that courtesy.

All right, DBC fans, it's time to react. Watch the race. It is now time for reaction theater where fans can call in and voice their opinions from this weekend's race.

And this reaction theater segment is brought to you by Charlotte Motor Speedway and the Coca-Cola 600. I can get in on the action this Memorial Day weekend and purchase your race tickets at Charlotte Motorspeedway.com. Hi, this message is for Tommy. Tommy, I heard how much you love being a grandfather. And after seeing Luke perform at the anthem, I was wondering if you wanted another grandbaby. And then I'll be sure to make it to the next modified race.

Jesus. Where did that come from? Who knew that singing was going to have that effect on it? As bad as that singing was it. It wasn't the race car driving. That's about the bad ass car. The only thing he's done well in the last fucking six months is sing the national anthem. And well is a stretch even.

That's still better than it was our track performance. Fair enough. I'll do anything to get him luck. I tell you what, Freddy. You might not be the sharpest crayon in the pack, but I think if this whole spot and thing doesn't work out, you can make a hell of a run on Jeffrey with the same. speed that you were hitting that button to cover

up whatever the fuck geo was going to that. I think me and Jeff were both fucking wearing it up. I learned it. You know what I learned it from was Hirschman when he spotted for Kyle. That's where I learned that move from. It's just hold the button down. Don't let anybody hear what he's saying. That's actually pretty clever. I've not

heard that till right now and then I'll come in and Luke's watching all those old things. Just screaming. The radioactives? I say you're watching Kurt again? He goes, yep. probably get a thumb ward too yeah I got a callus on there probably from here

man damn Caden honey nut cheerio I just found the cars tour on flow racing on road to do tonight I've heard about it on DBC forever watch out NASCAR that's a good fucking show

Laf's a bitch Trident lap's that that guy's another name to be paint Traden paint Lapsavich And fucking look at Caden Honeycut Go and nice work Luke that battle was awesome

God I love the cars tour What a great weekend of racing Thanks for watching the cars tour That I love that Yeah honey nut Cheerios Honey Nut Cheerios and trade You should go out for them for a sponsor I can't

How'd you get in here with your head as big as it is now Why did you come from anyway Oh yeah your head's too big for your bridges That's it That's all day conversation I liked your response Yeah I just had my take on it. But no, to the Honey Nutteros thing, I've actually been called Honey Nutts since I've been

eight. All my baseball coaches, my football coaches, it's been a thing for a while. So I've thought about going about Honey Nutteros, but I've never seen it on a car. Yeah. It's weird. Everybody calls Curt Honey Nut, too. It's just a race thing. No, they didn't call them Honey Nut. Sweet, honey, honey, no, they didn't call you sweet either. Sour? I don't feel any better about Zillet sliding down the windshield and on this. the hood than I do about him getting out through the window. I vote we use the joggle ice

to get him out after every win. Like a claw machine, you just pick him up out of the room. The claw, yeah. He's dangerous. He is a good-law. Well, I ain't much better either. Yeah, you're not.

You're stuck to driving. Yeah. Get out slowly. I mean, it's tough driving, right? It's tough. It's tough. It's tough. You're on the gas. You're on the gas. Like Stephen A. Smith said that we're not athletes, man. I mean, we're a bit worn out after these races. Especially after four and being up all night, too.

We have giraffe legs, is what I'm getting at. We're like big a giraffe legs when we get out. Yeah. It's been a long time that I can remember somebody winning four races in one weekend. Yeah. That's awesome, man. Incredible. Well, I thought I was going to get my

Kyle Busch top five hand stuff tonight, but I prematurely celebrated. Not the only thing I do prematurely. Jesus. So Kyle's on here at some point, last year and Routy Nation, we found out, is their love life depends on Kyle's results. Like, we had a slew of phone calls. Like, they're not getting late if he was.

I will not sleep with me unless you win. And they are, they're in time. They're in hard times right now. We had a good couple 20 years, but these last two, not so good. We started trading off like five legend car wins is one, one couple. We tried to help. We're trying to find poker chips out of. I agree.

This message is for Kurt Bush back in, I think it was two, 2006 or 7, I stood in line at Dover Motor Speedway to get your autograph, and this dude in front of me spit on you, and you called him a fucking pussy. And it's the coolest moment ever. So I still rep with KB, the original KB, Kurt F in Bush, baby. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. No way. Did you really?

Are you serious? Maybe I don't quite remember it, but Dover is a rough neighborhood. The Philly region Dover, you know Upstate New York It shows you how much shit Kurt's been through in his life Where he don't remember some guy Spitting on him at a fucking driver's like

Well, maybe it wasn't the only time That's what I'm saying, like It wasn't even a driver It was a fan, I mean a fan That's what I get for doing an autograph session It is Oh my gosh, that is wild Especially in 06 or 07 probably

I think I would have flipped the table over Oh man Must have been expensive fan. Especially in that area. Yeah. See it. Oh, man.

I'm glad he's a fan then. Yeah, at least I've won. He won one fan. I still got one. To leave an audio message 24-7, you can call our number at 704-802-9-572, and we'll play the best ones each week on the show. And thanks again to our friends at Charlotte Motor Speedway for bringing us that reaction theater segment.

This Memorial Day weekend, your can't miss destination is America's home for racing. The Coca-Cola 600 roars to life Sunday May 24th with NASCAR's biggest stars dueling for a crown jewel victory, but the fun starts way before the green flag. Every ticket gets you access to a rocking pre-race concert featuring country music legend Brad Paisley, and that is only part of the unforgettable race day experience. Fans can enjoy live music, driver autograph sessions, interactive displays, family-friendly fun, and a spectacular America 250 salute for honoring the red, white, and blue. Then as the sun goes down, feel the intensity rise as 600 miles of NASCAR Cup series actions

lights up the night with high energy battle for Speedway supremacy. Bring the family, bring the crew, and be ready for the party. Get your Coca-Cola 600 tickets today at Charlotte Motorspeedway.com. Shit show Hall of Fame. What kind of shit shows did you guys see this weekend? Man, there was two really big wrecks. One was at Jennerstown. The driver's name was Chris Brink.

All these drivers were okay, thankfully. Hung throttle, I assume, hits the wall, kind of climbs. over the wall, goes out of the ballpark. The other one looked way, J.R. Fitzpatrick at, where was that at? The Wasso? Yeah. That was, when I saw the picture of the car before I saw the video, I was like,

man, this guy is really got to be hurt. And then you watch the video, and it's even sickening to watch. But luckily, he was okay. So those were the two scary ones. I think the one shit show, I don't know who from NASCAR went over to IndyCar to run their race control. But did you see that this week? I was going to bring that up.

somebody ran out of gas, right? Rossi. Yeah, it was Rossi. Yeah. Runs out of gas stops at the start finish line. I mean, dead stop at a gas, not going to move, but they're in a middle of a pit cycle. So they just throw a local caution, which the flag stand is throwing yellow, but it's a local yo. So they're racing their asses off.

And he's just parked on the front straightaway. Like, so then he just gets out while they're still green. And then I think when he got out, they finally threw the yellow. But it's like, same thing. Like they're just trying to get through the pit cycle. Like we saw a handful of years ago, like, Bisher was staying out and there's a tire sitting in the infield. They would not throw the yellow until Bisher pit.

But, yeah, like, again, like, what the hell are you doing? Like, a caution is a caution no matter when it comes out. Right. Luck is luck. And if you get unlucky, sorry. They're going way faster than what we were at least 540 miles. It just parked on the frustrating. It's like, yeah.

I mean, what was the plan? Like, it's a local yellow. Well, you can't go out and get them. Like, you're like, drive a truck. for everybody to pit and then they'll send a push truck. Yeah. Anything. What else was just,

I saw Creed's Day was probably a shit show. The tent I saw on the broadcast, so it was just flying through there. It was weird because it was almost like a little mini tornado. Yeah. And like you saw it like it was like kind of right behind the care center. And all of a sudden you just see all this shit go flying straight up in the air. So I told our spotter over in the S is.

I'm like, Cody, let me know if any of that shit lands on the racetrack because it's just, I mean, it was high. It was just. Through the air. Yeah. And then. And he's like, oh, yeah, it's on the track now, and they put the yellow out immediately. Thank God.

But, yeah, that was something. You see the video of the Dust Devil Storm? Like, it actually formed and it looked like a legit tornado. Really? Well, yeah. I saw some guys on the roof were like, there's a fucking tornado. I'm like, okay, it's not a tornado. But it looks like one, probably.

Yeah, that was all, I... Go ahead. Go ahead. How do you get parked at a road course for minimum speed? Like, that's hard to do. Somebody did it this week. I won't mention any names, but somebody did it this. week. To that somebody's

credit that she was having electrical problems. The car was brab, brab, bha, bha, it was all day? Yes, since they unloaded. She didn't have a chance from the beginning. He or she did not have a chance from the beginning. If it was running good, they didn't have much of the chance. No, but still

she had a reason. Copy. Well, there was, and listen, to that person's credit, somebody else almost got parked on Saturday. Whoever was driving the 53, I don't know who it was. was way, way off the pace also and almost got a minimum speed penalty, which is impressive at a road course.

I don't know how you, that's, it's, how you get approved and then end up getting a minimum speed penalty, eight laps into a race is beyond me. But it is what it is, I guess. Yeah, so I don't know what else, that was it, right? So I would say I'll send you the videos, Elijah, but it's, I would say those two big wrecks,

got to be shit show, the indie, no caution. I saw somebody else, Ty Williams, went out of the ballpark at Kansas State Fairgrounds and a sprint car. Caden fell off the door or almost fell off the almost illishish. Yeah, that was very close. Yeah, I don't know.

It would be any of course. And or how shotgunning a beer hasn't done. That should be. I'm not a beer guy. I know, but that was the first time I was just done it. I said the film, I'm like, I didn't think Caden was that big a drinker. He's like, he's not.

I was like, well, that's shotgun on a beer. It's an interesting choice for. But did he even shotgun at the right way? So, no, he pokes a hole in the bottom, then drinks out of the top. You're supposed to drink out of the hole. I couldn't do it. You couldn't have the hole.

You couldn't have a hole. I couldn't do it. Call up Caitlin Larson. Yeah. Caitlin, California, we're going to use you. I think I'm going to change it.

Fight it and then you use your thumb to push the wire. Don't bite it. I can't bite it. You're tripping to. Duh. Cut his finger. Your wife will kill us. Oh, she will absolutely will.

You're going to be on more shit. I think I might just change it up and say I will go have one with the fingers. Yeah. That's a good. I like that. I like that's a good. Like, just go and have it down. They make sure the gates open.

Man, I couldn't go get in it. You couldn't get a walking's going. And then the flagman sitting there going, just climb up here. I looked at him. I'm like, you're out of your mind. Absolutely not. I'm not going to die. I know Zilcher got hurt last year, but you don't want someone dead.

Yeah. Not the place. All right. Well, you can check out those nominees in our YouTube description. And don't forget to vote on Dirtyymo Media's X profile. All right. Time to move on to Ask DBC. These questions are submitted by our fans.

So apologies in advance. Kurt, the last time the number 97 sat on the poll was homestead in 2004. When you won the Cup Series championship, what do you remember from that weekend? Aw, I mean, that was the championship run. That's when the year, the focus, the execution, back then we used to be able to test wherever we wanted, like for five test sessions. It wasn't just a good year tire test. So we saved all of our tests for the final 10 weeks. We went to Martinsville about 10 days prior.

We went to Darlington 10 days prior. Went to all these tracks. And just to execute all the way through that playoff run. Our plan was to show up like a possum when the playoffs started. And we were like seventh or eighth in points all year. You know, the 10 guys got in back then. And then the first playoff race was Loudon. We won it and didn't look back.

And then to get to Homestead, we were getting nervous. Like my points lead, we blew an engine at Atlanta. and the points lead had kind of dwindled down to basically what it is in today's format, three points. So I had a three point lead on Johnson and like a five point lead on Gordon. And what I remember vividly the most, yeah, the wheel broke and it came apart. I missed the end of pit road somehow some way. We reset in the back and just kind of worked our way back up. One thing I remember, though, was there was a late caution and we couldn't quite make it on fuel.

It was too far of a stretch. And Jimmy Fending, the crew chief's like, we can't make it. We can't make it. We're going to have to pit again. I said, if Gordon and Johnson pit, we're coming in with him. We're all either going to go back up to the top five together or we're all going to run out together. And sure enough, they pitted, we pitted, and we all worked our way back up through. Just one car at a time.

And I just kept watching Johnson, Gordon, and just passing cars. And I don't even know who I was passing, don't know when or how. I just had to keep watching. to be within two positions of Johnson. That's what I remember the most about that day, and it all ended up unfolding to where we won that championship. How'd you get that tire to fall off at the perfect time? Right.

When that thing was vibrating, it wasn't because a loose wheel from a pit stop. It wasn't because the tire was coming apart because of excessive wear. It was this little guy on my shoulder's like, you're a pussy. You're not ready to win this. There's a vibration. You got a pit. And this guy over here's like, dude just go for it man just go for it there's nothing wrong you're ready for this moment go for it

no we can't do this that's the shit that's what's in his head right there that's perfect kerbush right there no man then i'm asking all the people in the car because i always had imaginary friends hey everything's good back there finally finally everyone's seeing the real curfuss and i know no there'll be a dude in the right rear oh hey man how bad i scrape that fender oh you're fine keep digging there's no tire rope No, it was fun. But what's cool? I can tell this funny story about the 97.

When I left Rouse Racing, for different reasons, one of them was they stiffed me with the bill in New York at the banquet to pay for dinner for all the crew guys. That was one of the reasons. But the team retired the number 97, kind of like an FU on the way out. And when Jamie McMurray took over, it was car number 26. It's kind of cool. The 97 sat dormant for all these years. and I feel like that's kind of my number in the Hall of Fame. That's my vibe.

And I'm so proud of SVG for bringing a band. He's running it now because that was his childhood number. It's cool, though, the 97-sat dormant for years. And that's a cool question to have on the show. And can you tell us the story of how the cougar car scheme happened? Oh, the cougar, yeah. So I was running with James Finch. God bless him.

And James Finch, one of the most awesome guys, like the Mohawk team guy, right? He would do anything for you to have fun. and the way that we had a charity program that weekend at Talladega, and I was going through it. Like we weren't really rounding up sponsors when I was running with Finch. We had a few early in the year, and then things were starting to fizzle out. And I'm like, hey, man, can I just run a paint scheme for our military and have the Cougar car at Talladega because Talladega Nights?

And he was going through it in the movie, right? I mean, Will Ferrell's working his way back up, trying to find his mojo. and he had to learn how to drive with a cougar in the car. That's what his dad taught him to do. NASCAR let me run with a stuffed cougar in the car. Really? Yeah. Yeah, it was on the down bar right next to the oil tank.

A stuffed animal. Like, could have got a little hot, could have caught off fire. I had a cougar in the car. Another friend in there. Just add to the rest of them. I was chatting with him. Yeah. Another friend.

Caden, I had a couple questions for you. They got sent in by Cameron Lamar. who I had the unfortunate ability to sit on the plane with yesterday. He wants to know who is a better spotter him or his dad. Oh, my God. No, he said, you much rather deal with him than Chris, I would say, right? Yeah. I mean, I don't know.

I absolutely love his dad. Chris did an amazing job for me at HFR last year. And hell, even after the season was over, he came and spot me at South Boston for the crush 250 that we won together. And I thought that was really awesome because, like, he's a cup guy. And he just ran 38 weeks at the year. And he just went and just, well, yeah, I'll go run. We'll go run late ball race together.

He's an idiot. I was like, wow. I was pretty surprised by that. He could have taken the weekend off easily. But yeah, Cameron, he is very close to what he sounds like as far as the way his deliverance and the way he makes statements to me as a driver. We had won at Carraway a couple weeks ago with him. That was my first race together.

but yeah he he does a really good job i just like after this year and the years to come he he's going to be just like him yeah um they did want me to ask you is there a strange chicken superstition we have to talk yeah don't have it on race day no chicken on no chicken on race day i guess what and you can attest to this right now my guys do uh my 11 team goes and have chick-fil-a for breakfast every morning i do not well guess what they didn't have at walking in the new york right of them none of them well there's there's probably there's probably a chick flay there and

nothing. And the proofs in the pudding. I mean, I've been trying to tell them for an entire year. This is going to work out great. This is stupid. It's going to work out great when you get to cup. Chick-fil-A's not open on Sunday. Yes.

Yes, it's so perfect. But yeah, they didn't believe me. And the reason why it came up is whenever I was dirt racing at home and me and me and Jessica had first gotten together, there was a three-week stretch that I had ate chicken on race day. And I literally was leading the race and something stupid had happened. Then the fourth week came around, we came around and won both races on the same night on Friday and Saturday. Both cars.

No chicken. No chicken. Ever since that day, five years ago, I have not done it. I'm about to start taking that up or something. Talk to me. Talk to move. Don't be a chicken. I don't know what he does, but he just needs to do the opposite or just don't do anything at all.

He's just working, man. I don't get it. Bless his art. All right. DBC picks. I've been whooping y'all's ass on this. God, almighty you have. Yeah, I have.

Last week was so obvious, though, for you. Well, yeah, but do you know how many times last year that when it came to the road courses, I was second or third pick, and they would always get to pick SVG before me? Yeah, that's. So I deserved that one. I got five top tens in a row and not one win in those five weeks. Where do we go this week? Dover.

I mean, I haven't picked Carson House. I think Dover. We opened it up, right? I don't think Dover counted before. I don't know. Well, they're all stories, I should say. I don't know. We just, we might as well just pick and not really count it this week because we got the extra extra guests.

We got two guests this week. Let them pick together. Are you scared to make a pick? No, no, no, no. I just, how does it work? We can pick. So each week, we go heads ahead. You can only use a guy one time for the year.

So then, you know, we just probably are only time too. So, so you're easy. So you guys, the ones that are grayed out, you can't pick. Gotcha. So, yeah, you guys, you guys collaborate and you can come up with something. Was it, do they go first? Yeah, they go first. All right.

Yeah, you guys figure it out. Dover. You guys figured. Like, SVG hasn't been picked by a guest. Well, he probably was already picked. Like, if one of them pick him, we can't pick it. Yeah. Yeah.

So this is for All-Star race. This is for All-Star Race. This is for All-Star Race. Yeah, the 350-lab All-Star Race. I don't know. I'm looking at this guy right here. Ty Gibbs. All-Star-type atmosphere, shorter race, being aggressive.

Man, Toyota's really good at Dover, too. Right. The Cubside's been really awesome. Yeah, I think the Fords are always too aggressive on the right fronts there. but then Hendrick Hendrick owned that place Hendrick owned that place what

come on that that's the one on the right talking it's more conspiracy theories too I'll say you this I'll say something about Kurt so I went we were at 23 11 he came over there

and was that 22 if I win this I mean you're gonna owe me a six back yeah yeah for sure yeah we and you can teach you about a shotgun but like we went to a test

and like obviously I worked with a lot of drivers over the years but we went out for the first run of the test and his feedback, when he came in, I was like, what the, this is something shit. I've never, like, he could tell you what every corner of the car was doing. Like, every moment of the corner, I was like,

this is incredible. And I think we wrecked on the last lap of that test, but it was okay. It was like, I think it was the first next-gen test. He dialed him right in. Phoenix or something like that. Oh, was that a Phoenix? Yeah, I was fun, yeah, because we were doing a mocked-key ride. Yeah, we didn't wreck.

I think we just got fluts. I think we've been loose all day. Let's go for it. We didn't wreck. I think we just got beach because it was, you know, flat tires from the spin or something like that. I don't think we ever hit anything. But, yeah, but I just, I was blown away by the feedback. I was like, oh, oh, this is what feedback sounds like.

It was crazy. I don't know. I think we're going to go with Gibbs or who do you think? Yeah, well, since you got that one, I guess I will go. No, you only get one. You got to. You got to collaborate. We have to agree.

I'm mad if you're goose. Yes. All right. All right. All right. All right. Yeah. All right.

All right. Tommy, you're next. I'm going to go with Priese. Does Matt Kenseth run? He's always good. I will go with... I'll take Brisco. I will take Kyle Busch.

I'm running out of Toyota's. Somebody's going to have to figure it out. Except the first time Kyle has been picked up. I love you? I'm kidding. Probably. I think I picked him in a plate race because it was a crap shirt. Yeah.

No, Tommy picked him for Atlanta. A plate race? Yeah. I mean, Kurt, talk about that for a minute. Obviously, they're in a tough... And they've been fast the last two weeks. They've had speed, obviously, the end of where we were, Kansas didn't go well. Or where were we at last week?

Was that Kansas? Texas. Texas. Texas. Didn't go well. But, I mean, they've turned it around. But, like, you've been there. You're driving the 51.

Like, you're kind of fighting an uphill battle. How hard is it to try to stay composed and keep pulling the train in the same direction? I mean, the way they started out at RCR together was like gangbusters. They won three races. Well, I said they were cheating then. Well, okay.

Way to go. Now your cars might be slower. Don't admit stuff on the radio. Yeah, if there's one thing to take away from this episode, it's shut up on the radio. I don't know who he knows, but the next week they took the car back to the last two weeks ago. Last week, yeah. There's some ruts that you get in.

I mean, they started like gangbusters, and he won on a lot of the old surfaces, like Fontana, I think St. Louis, another one. And I don't know. They just didn't keep up with the changing of times, whether it's this package from the sim or whether it's this pattern that you find off a certain decode on the tires.

But one thing I'm proud of him for is he's been a great father. He has been a great racing dad. He is there all the time, and as much as he can be with Brexton, treats his son with the right amount of discipline, but also just helping him learn the cars. Brexton can pull up all the stuff now on his tablet, and just the way that he's absorbing racing. I'm just proud of him in that way,

but maybe he's spending too much time in that category, too much time at the dirt tracks or running his legend, but it is special time with his son. So I don't know. There's a lot of focus you have to have on a cup car, and a lot of team meetings and a lot of sim work. I know one of the secrets at 2311 is a lot of sim work. Yeah.

There's a lot of talk that, like, he hasn't adapted to this car very well, which obviously he talked about he'd be fired off well. How much different was it getting out of the last generation car into this one? Bottom line, these cars, you drive them off the right front. You have to have a small bit of front slide. And in the sim or in ira racing, you just slide that front just a little bit. It's awkward the way the irasing penalizes you. Kyle is a right rear driver.

I'm a right rear driver. Jimmy Johnson's right rear. Tony Stewart's a right rear. Now, same era, same car like next gen 6 car, whatever. Guys like Jeff Gordon, they drove off the right front. Ken's always had a tighter car than I had at Roush. Harvick was always 2% tighter on wedge. So there's certain guys that drive more on the tighter side of things,

some guys on the looser side. This car does not like that extra bit of yaw unless you're at a track like Kansas, Darlington, where you have that little bit of forgiveness. That's a key thing. Oh, for sure. I can't remember what race it was in 2022, and I did an appearance with William Byron, and he sent something about the front slip angle and driving the car square. And I just had to go back and digest that.

I'm like, wait a minute. And so I just applied a little bit different driving craft, and it helped me find more consistency early in that 2022 season and ended up winning in Kansas about a month of later. Yep. What you got? Your favorite part? This is my favorite part.

Weekend winners. Who did you see win this week besides Caden Honeycutt? I got Cain Honeycutt. I got Caden Honeycut. I got Cain Honeycut. I got Cain honeycut. Casey Cain. Can you believe that's his first outlaw?

Yeah. I mean, they said like 29 years or something. He's been running with the outlaws. Finally got his first win at Williams Grove. That's so cool. Yeah. It was hard to believe it was his first win. I know.

Wasn't even in his own. stuff. Yeah. It was it? No, it was in Macri's car. Yeah, so he's driving

Macri's car, which is funny because Joe Mooney, the buddy of mine, he was a long-time crew member at Casey's team for Brad, and then he moved,

he left there to go crew chief for Macri. And obviously, Macri's out injured right now. So they put Casey in the car and goes out and wins.

And probably one of the toughest dirt tracks in the country. Yes. Not easy. It's, it's really impressive. Gravel won there Saturday night. Ken Roxon,

I saw he won the 450 championship. Yep. Have you seen like the way they put his arms and stuff back together? That's the coolest part about it all. Oh, you need to look that up. Yeah. I don't think it sounds.

It's not graphic worthy to show, but it's, it's pretty amazing. It's like the story of it. The way he won the championship and the way he came from Germany and the session. That's, that's really cool. That's been like all my Instagram has been flooded with is like the stories about it. And it was cool to read. A lot of this stuff. This following stuff was on Flow this weekend.

Justin Sanders won at Silver Dollar. Dominic Selsie somehow won't again. I don't know how that. but Aaron Ritzel won the high limit race. Hayden Ryan Bolt. Shout out Hayden Ryan Bold, Andy Ridebold. Dude, first silver crown race, Hunter Lapper at. It's only happened one other time, right? Yeah, where were they at? I can't remember.

Oh, shit. Kansas State Fairground. So shout out to them guys. Andy, if you got a chance to hang out with Andy, just say yes. Yeah. I think Hayden, what, started in the back? Because the very first silver crown race and won the thing. It was crazy. Unbelievable for him. Congrats to them.

Mike Marler won at Ponderosa. Strickler last night was bitching about that because he was leading and something happened. He piled into a record. Last night, did you guys go to a big else? I might have stopped by. It's weird. My phone never rang. Zach, because you never show up. So, Zach Mitchell, Southern, he won at Lake Cumberland. Brandon Shepard won a couple races this week at Spoon River and Fairbury.

Bowman Gray. Mike Speaney won the first modified race. Kyle Southern, really good story. Kyle Southern, his house essentially, I know his shop burned down. I think they lost everything they had. Goes out and wins his first modified race at Bowman Gray. So shout to him. Zach Orr won the first late model race. sportsman race. Tommy Neal dumped somebody to win the second sportsman race.

He had a good story, though. Who? If you hear his interview, I mean, he kind of made sense. Tommy? Yeah. He kind of made sense of what he's had to deal with leading up to that point. I promise you, he's gotten a lot more than he's taken over there. I know, but he kind of made sense.

After I heard it, I'm like, okay, I'm going to maybe give him a pass here. He doesn't have a pass from me. Brian Robertson won the 50-lapper. Street Stock race, I think it was. Luke Smith, AJ Sanders, win. stadium stocks, Stafford, old Keith Rocko still plugging along. He seems like he's 100, but he's only what? He's probably younger than I am, I'm assuming.

But he won that. My buddy Adam Gray won the late model race. Robert Bluxham won the SK Lights. Gary Paddode won the limited late models, what they call it? And then Brandon Warren won the street stocks. I saw Yankowski won Utica Rome. A lot of rainouts, right? Yeah, there's a shot. I have no river and wall, both rained out. There's a lot of stuff up in that northeast that rained out. Shocker. Yeah. Six-pack summer shootout at Grundy,

Grundy County, Tyler Williams. I forgot to write down who won the six-pack summer shootout. That guy's going to be pissed at me because he texts me every week and I always don't answer. Sorry to that guy. Sorry, sorry, buddy. I can go find it. I can go find it.

Tyler Williams won his first lay model win at Crowley's Ridge. Jack Lehner won at Albany's Haritoga. Taylor Cool won the 602 Modified Race at Natural Bridge. Flat Rock Speedway, Gary Peltier. I think that is. One of the Super Race. Greg Stout, won the streetstock race.

Billy Early, Figure 8 winner. Shout out of Figure 8s. Colton Bertie won the must-see sprint car race at Anderson. Corbin Wassenberg, 15-year-old won his

second race ever at Swano Speedway. Jerry Osterhausen, Colin Bozell, won a column Zoo. Michael and Brandon Piper won a Dominion and Jesse Tunney won the Phyllis Tunney Memorial at the Speed drone,

Figure 8 race. Someone, Connor won Langley, right? Conor Hall. Yeah, he won Twin 50s. Both twins. Yeah, both twins.

Did he bring the blue car out? Yeah, Blue 77. I'm going to go back. You guys talk about some shit for a second so I'd go find this guy. What was the magazine they drop off at the NASCAR trucks each week? Stock car scene.

Yeah. And I would always go to the back and check on all the different tracks and check on the winners each week. That's like my favorite thing to do this in the show. I spent a two hours. I was talking about racing so I can just get to this part. I have some like 90, like my grandfather gave me some like

92 to 95 like old NASCAR news. papers that they would like mail out consistently and that's one thing that's fun to do now too is like go back and read those and like i saw like dennis sester was in it and so then when i saw them this weekend at ace i want to bring it and show it to them but it's cool to like read through all that and see all the people that i like still see and know in car store and then people that i i had no idea yeah i mean there's really one newspaper still around area auto racing news that you can get all this information weekly and yeah it's a great that's cool to see the names yeah yeah yeah became popular, right?

Yeah. Speaking of winners, uh, wasn't that long ago, you want to race over here at old 10-10s. You get to, you get to beat up on Gordon a little bit. Yeah,

it was a little I-Rock reunion. Um, last summer though, well, back up two summers ago, Ray Evernham, he's calling up all the old I rock guys and who has cars and him and Rob Kaufman.

They're trying to round up as many I rock cars as they can, redo them and, you know, sell them and kind of get some of the gang back together. And so we ran Laguna last summer. Uh, and Dario Frankeeney shows up last. minute Scott Pruitt's there, Schrader, Mark Martin, myself, Jeff Gordon, Bobby Le Bonnick.

It's like, it's like, damn, man, this is a cool little frat house that showed up. And it was fun to really like get out there and feel the energy of a race again. And to be competitive with some of my friends. I mean, yeah, we're all kind of running at like 80, 85%. And then Evertonham's doing a good job, getting the cars, more of them rounded up. We did 10 tents this spring over up just in the shadows of Charlotte Motor Speedway. It's a cool little country club-style road course, and we did a little 12-lap race. I kid you not, though.

Qualifying? Like, we went all in, man. They had qualified? We went all in. Everyone put tape on the grills, and it was like a three-lap run. And I think the lap time was a minute 24. I ran a minute 24-5. Gordon ran a minute 24-6.

And Bobby was a minute 24-7. Wow. We were all two, three-tenths with, like, we all finally showed our cards because everyone's been kind of playing and awesome. And it was fun. Like, the start of the race, it was Jeff, it was myself. Like, Jeff could get me in the faster rights. And then our car would really cut left well and accelerate out of the slower.

What year card do you have? What year was yours? What year was Jess? Was it you in the same era? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So they had the Firebird era. And then there was the Dodge Avenger era. and then there was some of the old Porsches were still out there. So Jeff's car, I think, is 01. Bobby's is 02. Mine was 03. And so we all have the firebirds. And that's why us three were pretty quick.

And so it was just fun, man. Like just going after it, grabbing gears and just like making sure you're not overdrive in this corner. And by the end of the race, it's the same tire the trucks we're on. Oh, okay. And so, like, we are now all, like, tossing. Like, it's bad. And like I'm sliding and someone who's laying down oil. I see Jeff Gough go off from here this way.

And I had to nurse it home with the way the tires were dropping off. And so it was fun to win an I rock race. And when I got out of the car, I'm like, I'm not going to stand on the door. I'm just going to go down here. Yeah, what do celebrations look like these days? I was just like, don't be that dude. Good choice. So it's fun.

And then there's going to be another race, Laguna this summer. And then Evertonham, I think it's going to get lined up. Indy car is running Washington, D.C. in the streets, and I think we're just going to put on a quick exhibition with the I Rock cars on Saturday. Oh, that'll be really cool. So I'll get all the V8s out there rumbling down. You've got a pretty exciting summer coming up, I think.

Yeah, I've got another secret. There's another big race that I want to announce maybe next week, a week of the 600. Come on, man. I know, I wanted to... Come on, man. It's not quite done yet. It's expensive being a car owner, right?

Yeah, yeah. So I've got to line up the extra sponsors to do this, still. And then I've been racing RC cars. I had no idea. Tony Stewart. I knew he owned at one point an RC car company, but I'm getting into Dirt Oval with the RC car stuff. So something fun with that.

Yeah. That's a bunch of owns everything. He's everywhere. He's everywhere. By the way, it was Ricky Baker and Max Kuehler won those two races out of Grundy that I forgot to write down. But yeah, Thomas, what do you have to do this weekend? Do you go in any modified races? Luke runs a truck race at Dover? How many laps?

Six, seven? I hope more than that. Two hundred. 200, right? That's what I always keep telling the whole race. Maybe you can give him a little call. I have a little chat with him, please. I think I need to take them to lunch and just like, we need to. No, you don't need to take them anywhere.

Well, I got this for you. Whatever the fuck you're telling him is not working. So whatever you try something. Whatever I'm telling him, he's not fucking listening. Apparently, he's trying to good luck beard is what he was telling us this weekend. He's not. He's got like a little rough going on. Yeah.

Beard is a stretch. Let him do something. So, that's what he said anyway. No, we don't race until Franklin County at the end of the month. Oh, that's right. is a Bowman Gray, right? They don't run against boat. Cars tour?

No, we're off this weekend. We're off till Langley at the end of this month. So I'll probably go be a supportive sister this weekend at Dry County and watch Wyatt. Excellent. Carson. Carson. Caden, how many races you win this weekend? Do you planning? I just got one.

Just one. Just one. Just got one. Yeah, there's a, I think there's one other time I do four in it's Wilkesboro. And they're all, thankfully, it's all at the race race. It's all the same race. Thank God. But it's, what's weird is now the pros and late-mile stock race is that there.

the truck. Yeah, it's the same day, right? Yeah, same day. So I'll be sticking around a little bit longer. I hope nobody asks me about that. Kurt, I appreciate you coming by, man. I'm really fun to drop in, catch up. I haven't seen.

We need to see you more. I mean, I see you at the race trackers once in a long. I went to like the first five or six in a row are doing all the Hall of Fame stuff. And I'm like, you know what? It's just so tough being you. We should go to Dover together and find the guy that spit on you. You want to get spit on?

I got you. It ends up. have a good career if you get spit on it. It's Hall of Fame worthy. Are we got to do as MF somebody and you'll have a fan for life? Maybe next time we have you on, you can bring all your friends. Kurt, thank you again for stopping by today. Caden, I know last minute I called you there today and you're more than happy to jump on,

so we appreciate you. Congrats, man. Great. I have a feeling you. This won't be the last time we've got to tell you. But Tommy, take us out of here, do something. Let's get out of here.

I mean, let's leave. Well, let's see how we say, come on, let's go. I got shit to do. Yeah, we got shit that we do have shit to do. Thanks guys for listening. We'll be back next week. I don't remember who's coming next week. I don't know if we haven't guys lined up yet.

TBD. But, yeah, we're out. Bye. Thanks for listening. Bye. See out.