Door Bumper Clear - Live From Fan Day

Episode Date: May 23, 2026

The following program, Door Bumper Clear, was recorded on Thursday morning, May 21st, at JR Motorsports Fan Day. As the old saying goes, we saved the best for last. And as the last group to hit the Arby's stage at JRM Fan Day, DBC did not disappoint — or follow the rules for that matter. Jordan Bianchi shares his thoughts and findings on some silly season speculations affecting drivers like Alex Bowman, Connor Zilisch, and a new name making its name around the garage, Chris Buescher. After previewing the weekend ahead for the Coca-Cola 600, the gang gets into Spot On, Spot Off, where they debate: Should Kevin Harvick have been a unanimous Hall of Famer? Is the 600 the most valuable race on the schedule? Lastly, we go into the audience for some LIVE Ask DBC questions, where the Project 91 x San Diego x Kevin Magnnusen rumors came up, as well as a possible charter sale and more All-Star race debating ensues. Thanks for listening! Don't forget to hit up shop.dirtymomedia.com for DBC's merch. 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.

Before we begin, we want to take a moment to remember Kyle Bush, a competitor, a champion, a friend, and someone who gave everything to this sport. Our prayers are with his family, his teammates, and everyone across the racing community was feeling this loss. The following program, Door Bumper Clear, was recorded on Thursday, May 21st at Junior Motorsports Fan Day. All right, guys, welcome to Door Bumper Clear live from the RB stage here at Junior Motor Super Clear. Sports fan day. We have a super awesome crowd out here. It's a beautiful day. I don't know about you guys,

but I recently got some Arby's merch. I've been rocking my Hot Girls Eat Arby's hat lately. Tommy, have you... Wait, are you getting percentage for that or something? We're on the Arby stage, man. We've got to talk about our Arby's favorites. Right away, just plugging, naked money.

Didn't you, aren't you famous for the God I love cheese steaks ad? God, I love some cheese sauce. Yeah, that's right. That's what I thought. I heard about that Hot Girls, What was the hat? Hot girls eat Arby's. It's like a whole...

Did a picture surface this weekend? Kenny Wallace said something about that, I think, maybe. All right, so no cursing. No cursing. Yeah, we're not allowed to curse. Who wants to bet? Who the first one of curse is on this show? Why is everybody pointing to Tommy?

It's weird. Shit. Well, there he goes. I was the one that preached ahead of us last year. I was like, guys, we cannot curse, cannot curse. And I was the first one. So I'm going to try to hold out today. Yeah, joining us today as our obviously

me, Tommy and Carson are here, but Jordan Bianchi is looking around. I lost my run down. Here, hold on. You can't have mine. I'm not going to use it. I can't see it anyway. I got my sunglasses on. Jordan, obviously, part of the tear down.

Another one of our fantastic podcast here at Dirty Mo Media. How are you today, sir? I am great. It took me a little adventure to get here, but I am here. This is, by the way, this is the pink edition of Doorbub or Clear. None of us talk to each other beforehand. We all just showed up wearing pink. Well, almost all of us.

Way to ruin it. He's got a pink bracelet. Yeah, there we go. Tommy usually doesn't get the memo. What's going on, Thomas? How was the rest of your week since we record on Monday? Well, it's been busy. Just getting ready for Charlotte.

Luke's truck, cup car, getting modified's ready for next week. Jack's late model where we're building at, starting over with that with the Stoke people. He's going to run full-time for the cars tour, starting at Wilkesboro. So, yeah, we got a lot of stuff going on. That's awesome. Carson, how you been doing? What's been going on? How's sales over there?

Hey, the sales over in the car store corner are looking good. I was desperately trying to give away your phone number. Yeah, that was... What did the kids do in? That was dirty, man. It was dirty. No, it's been good. It's been a busy week.

It's a busy fun week in Charlotte. We had our Cars Tour Partner Summit yesterday. We hosted all of our great partners and just kind of mingled, had some panels, and then did the same thing with J.R. and partners last night. So, I'm doing a lot of talking this week, and hopefully people aren't getting tired of hearing my voice. Yeah, Jordan, your morning was eventful, I would say to say the least. Yeah, what happened to you? I had a 7 a.m. flight out of New York, New York to fly.

LaGuardia. Where they had a sinkhole. Rough. And so that got canceled, my flight. Not because it is sinkhole. Well, they had bad weather and then they had sinkhole and it screwed everything up. And so they couldn't get me to Charlotte until like 5 p.m. That obviously is not going to work for reasons.

I'm like, that's not going to work. They tried to go through Atlanta and Cleveland and Cincinnati and all these other places. was not working. And then I'm like, okay, can you get me to Greensboro? Which is no one has ever said that before, by the way. Never, never, ever, ever. And can you get me to Greensboro? They're like, yeah, we can get at an 8 a.m. to Greensboro.

So I hopped on that flight, rented a car, and drove right here. Normally you can do the Greensboro flight, but it's got one stop to Charlotte. Just get off. Then you just get off from Charlotte. Yeah, you skip lagget. That would have been great. This was a direct, thankfully. It all worked out.

And then, so, yeah, it was a little bit of an adventure. And I was like, I was getting ready to break out the group text of like, hey, I'm By the way, won't be there. What I wanted to ask you was, is Hendrick in a better place if Alex decides to come back for a year? I agree with you from everything I've heard. It's more of an Alex thing than a Hendrick thing. Ally likes him, obviously. Hendrick, the organization, likes him.

He's a good fit over there. He works hard. He does the things that they like. And he also serves them. The other way is that he gets him a bridge. And they don't have to make any decisions right now. And the name that we keep hearing, well, there's two names we keep hearing. One is Corey Day, which is already in house, right?

So it's easy to promote him from the O'Reilly series, but he's doing a great job. But there's also the Conner's village factor of that out there. Conner's contract is coming up. And can you get him and can you negotiate a buyout maybe with track house racing to get Connor in your car? I think we could all agree. I think Corey Day is probably better served by spending another year in the O'Reilly series. He has a ton of talent. I'm a big believer in him.

But you talk to people, it's like you can give him more experience because this is what only his third year on pavement. Yeah. And so there's that. But if you put Day in that car in 27 and he does well and Zillich becomes available, then what do you do? Because then Hendricks in a situation where you've got Kyle Larson, William Byron, and Chase Elliott. None of those guys are going anywhere. Those are franchise players. And then you may lose out on Zillich because you don't have anywhere to really put him.

And sliding day somewhere doesn't seem to make a lot of sense because then you're rotating drivers through the 48. And how does Day going to feel about that? Yeah, and like you said, it's a lot cleaner if you're able, if you get Alex for another year, then if both of them are ready, if you can get Connor in 27 and Corey moves up, you can slide Corey over to Spire. Yeah. I assume how much is Spire play a factor in Hendricks decision-making? Well, I mean, they're certainly a factor. They're closely aligned.

They have a technical alliance. It's, I don't want to, I'm trying to use the derogatory term of like junior varsity or anything like that, but it is kind of the other team in some respects. And that, but that's been the goal is like to get. them where they're that level and they certainly lost a cowboy hat. Carson, your hat's blown away. I think Jordan should put it off. There is no way.

There is zero chance. I'll give you guys a little bit of information. If Alex Bowman does not win Chicago last year, Justin Halle is in that. Two years ago. Two years ago, whatever it was. Justin Haley was in that car the next week. People make fun of us for saying that.

They can say all they want, but I know the facts, right? So he won the race. It bought him another couple years. Spire is not as strong as a key partner as track houses with Chevrolet and Hendrick. Yet. Yet. I mean, they're on that path. They're on the path.

They're on the path. They're not going to have to start seeing with the talent that's coming in. There's going to be some more, has to be some more synergy there to protect their drivers. Because if you look at the other organizations, Toyota's pretty full right now with somebody that's pretty good, that's going to buy. there are a lot of drivers coming up. But Chevrolet's getting ready to get full as well. So they're going to have to do a good job here. If everybody working together, the owners of those three organizations,

and kind of working out their programs to be more equal. Yeah. And they keep these drivers in the Chevrolet camp. And I don't want to make it sound like Spires a downgrade by any means. No. Look at what they're doing this year. And actually look at what they've done over the last year and a half. And they are certainly on an upward trajectory, have a lot of speed

performance in their cars. Carson Houssvard could have won three races last year. And Michael McDowell was very competitive at times. And we're seeing what Daniel Swarres is doing this year. So there's certainly on a really good path. They've made a lot of moves and they have spent a lot of money. And so just don't make this sound like this is like a small team that, you know, Hendrick is trying to support and prop up. That they're doing a lot of things on their own that Spire deserves credit for because they have made a lot of moves behind the scenes with crew chiefs or competition directors or what are we calling Chris? Don't say that. You can't say that.

You've been subpoenaed yet, by the way? No. He got cleared. I think I'm the only one out of that group. I was really... Which I'm confused, even why we're even mentioned. But anyway... The reaction I was hoping for when that happened.

No. I think the car with Connor, everybody noticed that Connor ran really good last week. There was something that they probably picked up on. It's going to be interesting to see where they take this in the next couple weeks, three or four weeks on these big tracks. So hopefully, you know, look, the patience with Connor Zillage, of kind of Zillage of not running well is going to be short, right? Because Connor is an acceptable talent, and everybody knows he's capable of winning and running up front with these cars.

It don't matter what kind of car it is. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of pressure behind the scenes, you know, with what's getting ready to happen is when, when Day keeps producing what he's, what he's, what he's, what he's, doing. Yeah, it's going to be a tough, tough decision. I mean, to borrow an old, you know, expression related to Hendrick Motorsports, they're soon going to be no room at the end.

Yeah. And again, their lineup right now with the three guys they have, two of them are former champions. And then William Byron is going to be a future champion. I think we all agree. You keep those guys. You don't let any of those guys walk. And so it's one spot for two or three guys.

And if you're Chevrolet and you're looking at this situation, You're like, we don't want to lose day. We don't want to lose Zillage. How do we accommodate everybody? And then the other part of this is there are other bigger teams out there that are watching this situation. And they're saying we may be able to get them and sign Zillage and put him in our car. And he may not be a GM guy anymore. Nobody is going to sign Zillage.

Don't, no, no, no. But the door is. There is, don't worry about zilage, okay? Trust me. He, uh, I mean, they can go get a guy like Raja. He's around here somewhere. I didn't see the helicopter. I hope he hasn't run it.

I hope Raja hasn't run into anything since he got over here. I figured the helicopter was going to come here. Has anybody seen Jesse Love? Because he's probably not safe. I saw Raja wandering around. I don't know where he's at now. But just maybe, if anybody sees Jesse, make sure you keep an eye on him. I might have a fight going on here.

Oh, God. by Mr. Softby over there. One name I wanted to throw you, Jordan, I think it's the surprise the most that they hear this, but inside the garage it's not. Is Chris Busher maybe one of the most sought-after free agents right now? He has definitely had a lot of interest from teams.

And Chris, for a long time, is regarded as one of the more underrated drivers in the Cups of his garage, where if you put him in a upper echelon organization, a Gibbs, a Hendrik Opensky, he's going to go win races for you and contend for the championship. He's that kind of elite talent

that can win on any type of track. There are teams that are certainly interested in him I know two organizations that have had their eye on him. Who? You know. I can say it. Go ahead. Well, one's a Ford.

Yeah. If it's not a Rouch, you can probably figure out which the other one is. And then one's a Toyota. It's not my team, I don't think. And so, listen, I mean, why would you not? And so that's a name to watch. Now, do I think at the end of the day, RFK is going to resign them? I do.

But again, you don't want to go down the road where you leave the door open and somebody can swoop in and steal them. But at the end of the day, Jordan, R of K will not have three charters next year. Are we sure about that? Where are they going to get it? Hayek just signed Stenhouse. Okay. All right?

We're not selling. Right? There might be one floating around that will be able to be leased or rented for their possibility. I'm not saying, listen, I don't. Hey, you're a guy. You have to say right now. We're not live. We can edit this out.

We can't cuss. None of these guys will let any. Nobody know. Don't say nothing. It's just the matter. It's putting us and you guys. What happens at Fand Day stays at Fannie? I wouldn't.

There is potential that a charter could be sold. And there are conversations ongoing about a team that could sell a charter. And it's not hard to figure it out. It's like I have to be like, generally this sounds like journalist. I just can't throw things out there without like walking down the road and double checking sources and that kind of. But I've heard enough talk for people that I trust that at least one charter is available.

I'm just going to give you a couple names. I want you to tell me if you think they're. safer out or whatever on the fence. Josh Berry. 50-50. Noah Glaxson. Noah needs to step up. There's a pathway for him to stay,

so we'll say 50-50, but I'd say 64. Obviously, you reported Riley getting close with Legacy. Riley's down the road with Legacy. That is very likely to happen. I would expect an announcement sometime in the near future. Are the other two guys there safe? Yes.

As of now, yes. Something dramatic would have to change for those guys not to return. We're talking about Eric Jones and John Hernandez. Well, John already signed, right? Well, they're both, there's things in their contracts and stuff, but they're both of our very likely return. I don't even expect. I don't believe that one, but go ahead.

I feel like I'm in a board room. I think that was it for me. And at 2311, yeah, I mean, listen. You got any idea who's my new teammate? Well, I mean, how many drivers are you guys under contract? Four? So if you lose one, it would be four, yeah. So, as Athletic reported, the likelihood is that Corey Hyne would be for that full time.

It just makes sense. If Riley Herbs is going to leave, 2311 racing. Who is 2311 going to put in that car? It's Coreyheim. So I fully expect that Coreyheim will be full time in 2027. And it's crazy because probably another three, four races, Riley Herbs is going to finish figuring it out.

He's going to finish into top 15, the rest of the year. He's been running better. Much better. He's quit running into things. But it's not necessarily all his fault either, though. He's racing better, and this is also a driver who's only in the second full year. You can see him making steady gains, and that's what you want to do. He was my pick in the beginning of the most improved.

Most improved. Let's move on to this weekend. Obviously, a lot of stuff going on. You guys, who was here? Did anybody get here like before the sun came up today? Wow. Jeez. Did anyone get here before 3 a.m.?

Geez. Before 2? Was anyone here yesterday? 240. I was awake at 240 also. Yeah, but you still out. Is that a difference? Is there a difference?

Yeah. I didn't know that was. Hey, that might be a tactic. Whether you're getting up or still up shouldn't make a difference. Well, that might be a new tactic to try for a Fand-A. You could go out. Get up. Go out, have drinks, leave the bar.

I've done both being up is worse at noon. Yeah. It's not so bad at four, but about noon it starts to kick in. Yeah, but no, this is a great week. Obviously, a lot of fan days around here. Obviously, you want to stay at this one as long as you can. But I saw Spires up the road. They had a bunch of people over there.

But, man, it's just one of the most, my favorite weeks to be in town because no matter where you go you run on the race fans don't yeah i mean we you know years ago we had a whole week and a half of this stuff right so there were you guys were just coming in and out the fans were just coming in and out the doors like crazy and it was a lot of fun a lot of i didn't say that um might as well um it's still our day um it's my day but uh yeah it's uh we appreciate you guys coming to uh to all this stuff and visiting the shops and really try to see what goes on behind the scenes what everybody's doing uh you know obviously Dale's Place has pretty much an open door

so you guys can look and see it's amazing if you guys look at how much work they get done with all those teams, right? It's crazy and how good they are with that. It's a good credit, big credit to all the guys that run that place. Got really a lot of good people there and yeah, it's fun.

It's hot, right? It's nice. Hopefully it's going to burn the rain away, right? We don't want to see any rain this weekend for sure, but let's get after. It's time. Racing, what, starts tomorrow, right? Yeah. A lot of people go to Hickory. Hickory tonight, watch the late model race.

All right, that's going to be a good race. Did you like Dale's night? So we talked about this on the show this week, with the All-Star Race being a week, you know, two weeks here. You said that's too much. Dale had the idea to run the All-Star Race Wednesday night. One, I love that idea because it takes a week off the schedule. But you would think that would be a good compromise to where you don't have to be here for two,

a whole week, but, you know, you add maybe a day or two days. I think we're all here. It's going to be different cars anyway. We need to run on a Saturday night right before the race, right? We need to, like, there needs to be, like, more excitement closer, right? Surrounding, you know, getting people engaged, getting them to, you know, watch and tell stories all night. And so, you know, this is what we live off, social media, right? Radio, right?

You know, everything that's going on. It's like, that could be a great conversation piece going into Sunday, turning the TV on. And, you know, we all get up and watch Formula One in the morning, right? Well, some of us do. I don't. I don't get up in time. Well, you're still up, right? No.

And then Indy 500, and then we roll right into our race and just, you know, we got to shake it up a little bit. Let me throw your idea. I think, sorry. Real quick. I was just, go ahead. Let me throw an idea. Spit it out. Who's going?

Who's talking? I was going to say, I think from a fan perspective, doing it like that would be awesome too because getting to see two races like that in the same week would, I mean, honestly, just be a sporting experience that you can't get anywhere else. And then, I mean, just from a travel and a cost perspective, too, I think it kind of makes it a little easier on everyone. involved. And again, you get to see two iconic races in one week. It kind of gives an old school feel maybe. 100%. And let me throw this idea at you, which is a part of that, is you do the Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Wednesday night. Get it out of January where a lot of people can't go. You've put it on Wednesday at this week, it adds more of a feel to it, right? Celebration of NASCAR, and you actually can get more drivers and owners and everybody, more people in the industry there,

and you can probably get more fans there. So you drive them Wednesday to that. Thursday, we do the All-Star race, whether it's at Charlotte, North Wilkesboro, Bowman Gray. wherever some driving distance yeah and there's a Wednesday we have a big event Thursday we have a big event we go right into the weekend Friday truck series Saturday O'Reilly Sunday Cove but not everybody

has a thousand dollars I'm not asking but it's well nobody has 2,000 to spend on two weeks nobody has to but you can't look at it all like that because it's going to yeah you're going to have people pick and choose I understand that's not the wrong with that yeah but people here and you have the fan fest during the day and stuff and it actually no matter what

it's a constant flow of engagement and fan interaction We bring in the teams, and we coordinate with the teams. Instead of having conflicting fan dates, we have like one or two at a time, and maybe you start them on a Wednesday and Thursday and start running them throughout the week. Right. And kind of, you know, making more of a spotlight. Okay, this team today and this team today, instead of five or six going on where everybody's got to try to run around. Right.

I think you make it a celebration and you make it easy for the fans who are out of state. Like, hey, I go to Charlotte for five days. We're going to make a vacation on this. We're going to see a bunch of different races. And we're going to do fan fest and this. It's totally worth it. 100%. Yeah.

Bank for the buck. And there's going to be some cool things, I think, next year for qualifying, too. For the All-Star? No. For here? No, everywhere. For some certain racetracks, there's going to be some really. Pit Road?

There's going to be some, I'm not saying nothing. You pushed me on saying stuff? No, I'm not that guy. I'm a Yoder reporter. I feel like I'm going to be a tennis match. I think there's going to be some exciting news. I hope, I hope there's going to be some exciting news coming out about qualifying. That's all I'm going to say.

Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. Take us some spot-on, spot-off. We're not talking about the Hall of Fame? What are we talking about? I can't read. I can't see.

You can't read, but you can read my mind. You can't read, but you can read my mind because that's literally the first topic. Okay, we're starting off. Obviously, a lot of news surrounding the Hall of Fame induction this week. Topic one, spot on, spot off. Kevin Harvick should have been a unanimous vote into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Tommy? Yes, but I'll tell you, there was so much. engagement. For anybody doesn't know, Tommy's in the room and deciding this. Part of the... Gets a vote and he's in the room when they're kind of lobbying for each other. Yeah, there's... This was probably the most engagement that I've ever... I've been doing, I think, part of it for five or six years now.

And this was the most engagement, I think, that we had. And it was the toughest one. You know, we all, obviously, we all knew Kevin Harwick was going to get in, but... So Tommy's spot on. The argument between Jeff Burton and Neil Bonnet was was the topic. That was where we were going back and forth because

my argument was yeah, Jeff Burton has done a lot of things and Neil Bonnet has done a lot of things but Neil Bonnet, if it wasn't for Neil Bonnet doing these things, Jeff Burton wouldn't be able to do those things, right? So you know, who has been on the

ballot the longest? You know, it was just a lot of going back and forth. It was a great day to be part of it. And obviously when I left, it didn't matter if Bonnet or Burton was going to get him because they both, you know, should have gotten in. But I think that's why Kevin didn't get unanimous because there was some more, there was enough argument going on about that. They was, they would just swayed. They were like, well, what happens is, is we all agree that Harvick's going to go in.

Like, Harvard's going to get the number of votes to get in. So if you have a vote for Harvick and you're like, he's already going to get in, I'm going to put my vote somewhere else because I'm really going to push this guy because I don't want him to either fall off the ballot or I'm to try to nudge him across the finish line. And so that is why you see a situation where a Kevin Harvick doesn't get all of the ballots. Now, go ahead, Carl. I don't want to jump in front of front. No, I mean, no, no, no, you're good.

But like, by any measure, Kevin Harvick should be unanimous Hall of Famer. Yeah. He's won a championship. He's won every single Crown Jewel race. You look at his stats. He's top 10 all time and wins. If he is not the epitome of what a Hall of Famer is, what are we doing? Well, we've pretty much set for years now.

If you win a cup championship, you're automatically in, right? Beyond that. Right. Right. But, you know, I'll tell you another person that was part of heavy conversation was Tim Brewer. Right. And I'm glad it was because hopefully you're all right. I'm going to get really helpful. Whatever you guys are done, let me know.

I'll be over here if you need me. Well, that's why you brought him in here. Tim Brew was. How do you think I feel? Don't ever feel bad because of him. Save my voice. It makes me feel bad all the time. It's my birthday yesterday, by the way.

Oh, happy late birthday. All right. I'm done. I'm bad enough. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Freddie, it's all about Freddie, right? So he gets feeling a little.

I didn't send a word. You're saving. You help me save my voice. Vote in the next question. I think we knew Harvick wasn't going to be unanimous because Jimmy Johnson wasn't unanimous. So, I mean. He was waiting to say it.

He just couldn't wait to see that. Jimmy Johnson was, I mean, I don't know what the, I know what the voters problem is. They got guys like Tommy in the room. But if he's not unanimous, then nobody's going to be unanimous. And it's for the reasons that Jordan said. Have we had any unanimous? I mean, I would assume some of the first guy. No, like, no.

None of them, even like Richard, Betty was unanimous. Best of my knowledge, Gordon. I don't think there has been. I don't know 100% of something. Dale Jr. wasn't? No. No, definitely not Dale Jr. But again, if Jimmy wasn't and Jeff Gordon wasn't, who you, like, what are we doing?

Jimmy, if Jimmy wasn't, there's never going to be one. But no, did you think, so you think they, I mean, like we talked about the other day. And I hate to see this, and I hate to keep saying it. This is why I keep talking about, we need to change the voting process. Because Jeff Burton went in the Hall of Fame. He got 38% of the vote. He deserved way more, but because you limit the amount of people you can vote on, I don't like seeing that.

You know, I want to see a guy. go, all right, yes, everybody in the room voted for this guy, or 75% of the people in the room voted for this guy versus we've split the vote 30% between three different guys and now one guy just edges out the other one. When they all, everybody on this list is going to be in the Hall of Fame one day, I think. Well, they don't fall off the ballot. You know, the thing that I left yesterday, the other day, and you had to remind me that probably True X is going to be on the ballot next year, right? And I'm like, I left next year, you know, for next year, I'm like, thank goodness is not going to be, you know, another guy that you're going to have to say. say, well, he's in, because now we can pick two guys, two other guys that are hanging on, right? Now I'm like, oh, sorry.

And now, now we're going to have to, uh, beep, now we're going to have to decide, have more discussions. It's going to be true X and somebody else. Yeah, yeah. This is why Tommy wasn't here last year. It was just us three. Where was that? I don't know.

I don't know. You were too cool for us, I guess. All right. The Coca-Cola 600 is the most valuable race. on the schedule, spot on, spot off, ready? Oh, yeah, points-wise, it's worth 10 more points than any other race. So, but duels, Daytona. Dules.

Oh, yeah, but you're not in that race, you know, specifically, I guess, you know, but if, yeah, it's just, I don't think you race it any differently, you know, obviously, you don't, I mean, there's, you don't put an emphasis on stage points, really, for in this race more than any other race, you would, but it is definitely the most valuable race, Tom, because there aren't 10 extra points on one. Yeah, there is. I mean, there's no strategy. everyone's going out to try to win the race.

So it's just, if caution comes out before the stage, a couple of four or five laps before the stage, then obviously some teams are going to have to make some tough decisions based off where they are in points, especially the last stage, right? If they're going to go, like, if I'm going to decide I'm going for the win, I'm going to have to stop before the stage and short pit, and hopefully the fuel mileage is going to work out.

But, yeah, it's going to be fun. What do you think this week looks like? So it'll be, it's 400 lap stages, the second, third and fourth stage, probably end up being 92 or 93 laps, I would assume. What do you think that looks like? You think that's two stops per stage? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. You don't have a choice, yeah. It'll be quicker to stop twice. Yeah. If it runs green. You'll split them in half, probably close to split them in half both times, all four, three times. Split them in half or split them in thirds?

Like, do you think you'll go 30, 30, 30, 30, or do you think you go 50 and 50? 50, 50's faster. Gotcha. Yeah, I mean, Jordan, I mean, is this, I don't know, like, it's a crown jewel race. We were talking, Dalton was talking about. It's like, is this the most prestigious one to win or the hardest one to win because it's so long. I feel like we've gotten away from that, you know, man versus machine. No, we're long gone back. The hardest one is Southern 500. Like, you just look at how Darlington

is by itself can just bite you. This race, there is no, there is no, we're near the mechanical failures. The drivers are in better shape than ever before. It's not the test that it once was. The conversation about points, this is what drives me crazy about this, is this race, and even the Daytona 500, because the duels and everything, I don't like it. Like, it should, I would be okay with if you said all four crown jewels, this, the brickyard and the Southern 500, you had more points or divided them up into state, more stages to award more points.

But to have two races on the schedule that award more points than other ones, that's not how it should be. Either make it across the board for all four majors, or it should be universal. I hate this conversation. And before they changed it as a duels, it was just the 600 where you did have more points. And it's like, why is this race

get more points than it? Because it's 100 miles longer. Well, the only reason why they added points to the duels is to have people race. I mean, let's face it. But again, like, two of your majors don't. Your other two majors are sitting there. It's like, come on. I'll take you the hardest test of the 600.

It's going to be my fat ass trying to stay on a ladder. How did that work? Ladder. Yeah, we got a spot from ladders. Why? Because they did the spotter stand last year without asking anybody about it. And we got there and we couldn't see anything because the way the Charlotte Roof is set up, the lights are technically right in front of us.

So there's like six or seven guys that have no light in front of them. the rest of us have to get on a ladder so we can see over the lights. We voiced that last year after the 600, which we don't use that stand for the roval. We use a grand stand. So I guess either nobody got that message or nobody cared enough to do anything about it. We're going to have to keep complaining. We got every other. That's the one thing we haven't fixed.

Well, we're trying. What did we fix this? We got rid of truck penalties. Practice penalties. We are fixing some stuff. We are. Just let us know when we get to ask BBC if there's anything you guys need solved. Send us some notes where you want to fix.

We'll work on it. We'll manifest it for you. We got you. We will definitely, yeah. But yeah, so that's a big deal, though, right? Tommy, I mean, that was not a very intelligent penalty. Big deal for you. A ladder.

The ladder. I'll survive somehow somewhere. You got me on a ladder. Yes. You're on a ladder. You're like standing on a ladder. Like a steps door or a ladder. I hope you have a harness too.

For five hours. First of all, I've seen your balance. It's not very good. Oh, you've seen me. Your core. Freddie, that's a really bad idea. I got a mid-story. I got a mid-old.

center. I got a high center of gravity. Isn't that like an OSHA violation? Well, yeah, probably, but I don't think we should mention that. I don't want to get tethered in anywhere. But, yeah, so I don't know. There's a joke there. It seems like a good time to maybe take some questions. I don't know. Dalton's got a microphone. Anybody have questions out there? If not, I got to keep talking and kill 30 minutes if you guys don't want to talk to us.

Well, we need to talk about. Well, we'll get some questions. We can work some stuff in while we're looking for more questions. All right. All right. You've already, you crumple up your page. Who's got a question? Right here in the front row. He was here all night. So give me.

Yeah, it's too 40. I can, can I trust you? You've been awake for a long time. Pot kettle black. What's your favorite race, like, just on the whole schedule? In the Cup series? My favorite race to spot is probably Martinsville races. The races aren't that great right now because of the package that we run.

But I grew up racing short tracks with Tommy. And any chance I get to go back to places like Martinsville or Bristol, Wilkesboro, those are my favorite races this spot. Tommy, what's your favorite race? Daytona 500. Yeah, is that because you won it? Is it like a Southern 500? Southern 500.

Those are good ones. Daytona 500 for me is the race. If I want to, if you actually want a race to win, I'd rather win a Daytona 500 than a championship. If that, like now it's a little bit different because it's not one race championship. But if you ask me right now, I'd rather win a 500 than a championship.

All right, my name is Joshua, and I have a question for you guys. What up, Josh? All right. So my first question is, If anybody's going to leave 2311, we'll be Raleigh Hrbs to go to the 84 car full time next year. Yes. Period.

Spot on. Jordan. Yeah. I mean, you just broke some news, man. Good job. I would be shocked if Riley Hurtz was not driving for Legacy next year. But they are certainly down the road and those conversations are close to being done. You heard it here.

First. All right. We got Jeff over here. He's got a question for you, buddy. I like your Tutsi's jersey. Jesus. What? Thank you, Carson.

Hey, Freddie, is Denny still great? Well, he did call me an idiot on his podcast this week, so. Where's the lie? Like, he's okay. He's not, he's downgraded from great to, like, decent right now. And we'll see. If he keeps kicking our ass like he did on Sunday, he's getting downgraded a lot further. We have Max here.

He's in a TVR hat, by the way. Hey. Yeah, I wore this to my. first ever race, Tommy. Nice. I like it. But yeah, my question is, how do we think the open cars are going to do this week with, we got Timmy Hill running, Catherine Legg, what are we looking at?

Good question. Not very well, honestly. They're going to run, and it's hard for those guys because they don't race every week. They don't have any resources, right? Like what we have. So, you know, I don't, did Timmy Hill or Catherine get Sim time, Tom? I don't know. Timmy, maybe at Ford.

I don't know, but Catherine, she might have. She might have, there's a couple different style rigs that she could, they probably have some allotted time on. But I know we've talked about it a little bit, but Catherine, she does a, for 600 miles, she's, and already going to run 500 miles, right, at Indy. That's going to be a test for her. The things I always liked about Catherine when she's racing with us is watching her grow during the race, you know, her speed pick up and do the things.

that she's doing and next you know next thing you know she's at by the end of the race she's running competitive times we you know we see a lot more data than than the average fan right of what goes on on Mondays and Tuesdays and you can see her stuff just it's a climb you know and it's never this or this it's always a climb so um I like Catherine I think she does a very good job and I think she's one that you know doesn't cause any drama on the tracks I know she had uh had an issue I think on first race at Phoenix but it you know it wasn't really her fault I mean it just didn't get any time on the track yet. So she's done a really good job.

And she's probably the one that's set an example for all the women right now. You know what's happening? There's one or two good ones that are going to be racing tonight at Hickory that you guys need to go see. I think she's driving that number 24 car. Jade. You watch that.

That girl is going to make it. She is going to be in the truck series soon and doing well. She's probably the most talented female race car driver I've ever watched. Yeah, Lainie. Laney's very good, but Jade, for some reason, like the first time I saw her in a micro at Millbridge, she stood out, then she started driving for Chad, so I got to see her a little more.

And she's just, everything she gets in, she goes fast, you know, she's learning how to race right now in these late models. You see the same mistakes everybody else makes, you know, trying a little too hard at times, but she is super talented. She's going to be one to watch. I am losing my voice. Again.

It's not again. It's not again. It's just, it's not, it's never ending. All right, here we go. All right. The question is mainly for Tommy. With the next-gen car being so close, how much control does the crew chiefs have over the setup versus the engineers at the shop now? Not very much, because you have to rely on the tools so much more nowadays. It's all about putting in the correct information to get the good information out. The crew chief and the engineer, they do have the final say.

You know, you get what the machine spits out. You go run it in the sim. You try a bunch of different balanced stuff in the shims in the sim, shock stuff, sway bar stuff, arrow stuff, cambers. You know, you name it. You go through it all. And then you got to sit there and weed through all that and pick the final setup. But lots of questions, man. There's more questions now leading into the practice session than you ever had before.

You go out there, you run the first lap. You pray that it's on top of the board or well-balanced. and you can have a good weekend. But if you're off, sometimes, man, it takes to the next race to get back on. We talked about our race last year, and I didn't remember. I think after talking about it, I think I just blocked it out. But we had an issue before the race started, you know, before the weekend started, that we'd never recovered from.

We qualified 32nd. We ran 20, 25th all race long, and then we crashed into third stage or the fourth stage. But like you said, like if you had the smallest issue and you behind the eight ball and you unload, Your weekend is it's going to be hard to recover. Yep. All right. We have Mason here in the front row. All right.

With Bowman being the one possibly making the decision about leaving, is this going to be a straight-up retirement decision or something for him to make a personal interest such as going in drifting or dirt racing? I don't want to. I can't say. I don't want to speak for him. That's an Alex Bowman thing. And honestly, he hasn't spoke publicly about whether he even wants to step away or not. It just sounds like there's a lot of factors.

Let's not forget. He had some health issues this year. He's had a lot of health issues the last few years. What he decides to do next, who knows, I will say this in general terms. We have seen drivers step away for a little bit, and many of them have come back and race and various things. So never say never, even if he says he's done. Anybody says they're done.

You never know, right? So we'll see how this plays out. All right. Yeah, we have my man here in the back row. Hey, a big fan of the podcast. With the warmer temperatures, this may, do you think we'll see us good racing at this? 600 this weekend as we've last as we had the last two or three six hundreds yeah i mean hot racing makes slick racetracks and that usually makes for a better race right i mean yeah i mean besides

indy this is probably the most temperature dependent racetrack that we race on i mean we the percentage of from sunlight to going dark of how much you have to change the car or be ready for the when the sun goes down there's the only toughest place that we have is is indy the only thing that doesn't change indie as much as we're usually now practicing almost at the same time frame that we're racing. But back in the, you know, before we had, when we had practices, we used to practice in the morning. It's 30, 40 degrees cooler the track. It was over a second and a half faster with so much grip. As soon as that sun comes out, the car wasn't ever in the racetrack. Charlotte's the same way. You could, you know, when the cars were more arrow dependent on the older cars, we probably

would have to set our cars up 20, 30 percent freer just to be right at night. So we'd be almost spinning out during the day just praying for that sun to go down just to be in good shape. So yeah, good question. I think I think whoever hits that balance right from when the sun goes down the last half of the race is going to be the winner. Yeah. So if you see your guys struggle in the beginning of the race, don't panic. It's probably a good thing. Jordan, we talked, I did get a kick out of yesterday. Bob shared a couple of clips from the Hall of talk podcast and the first one was, oh, they're putting resin on the racetrack thing kind of similar to Dover and the world blew up. What the hell are they doing? I said, well, we've been

doing this for about five years now. They've done this to the last two years, but I think, 2020 was the first one. And guess what? Racing at Charlotte since the next gen car has been fantastic. Yeah. So this is only on the bottom lane at Charlotte, right? Top, top and middle. Middle top. It's the exact same have they done for the last five years or so. And it's just, that's social media, though. And Tommy, how much? is that just trying to get rubber on the racetrack? You know what I mean? Just trying to get grip.

Yeah, and rubber, yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, when it's knees. The problem, the only problem I see, towards me. The only problem I see with that is, you know, let's use last week as, as an example, they did the whole corner. Well, when you're running on the bottom and you're not in it, you're not spreading it, right?

Most of us are going to run the bottom until race time. Yeah. So, and then if you're running in the middle and the top, where are you spreading it? Yeah. So it's, I don't know. I'm going to be interested in seeing after what they do next week because they're going to do from top to bottom at Nashville. How much of a difference?

I know it's concrete, right? I know it's different, but is it different? The thing that I like about watching, like, Charlotte and, like, what we saw last week of Dover is it's almost like you're searching for new racetrack. You know what I mean? Like we rubber it in, rubber in, rubber in, and then you see guys start to move up a lane. And it's just literally just searching for fresh resin.

And then they continue to move up, then they continue to move up. And then once they get all the way to the top, it's like, okay, now I can start coming back down and they work their way back down because now that's rubbered in too much. Well, that and it's searching like dirt tracks, right? I mean, it's all arrow and force dependent, right? I mean, if you drive into turn one and do over into the bottom

versus the top, the loads act differently in the car, your car might like the top better, right, because of what the setups in it. So it gives the drivers the availability to move around the racetrack to make their cars better, which makes the race better. Yeah, indeed. We got all.

We have LJ here. All right, first off, hey Carson. Hey. Oh. I think y'all already talked about this before, but do you all think too many drivers are getting to the Hall of Fame nowadays? No, I think we talked about. I think that we need to adjust the way we vote because then I think the people that deserve to get in will get in when they deserve to get in. And you'll see, you know, like if you change it to the baseball style of voting where,

Tommy, you can vote for 10 people on that list of 15, but they have to get 75% of the room. So, or, you know, maybe not 10 people, but whatever the number is, open it up to where you can vote for more than two people, and you'll see people that, like Neil Bond, all these people should be in already, but they can't get in because they keep getting leapfrog by Kevin Harving or Kurt Bush or who ever.

Martin Trex Jr. next year. So, you know, that's where I want to see the people, like they all deserve to be in there now, but they're not getting in because of somebody gets added to the ballot that's a little more deserving so that you have to wait another year and another year. And somebody like Neil Bonnet, like, maybe it's just me, but, you know, Neil got killed in a race car. So, like, for me, that puts him a lot higher on my list because he gave his life doing what he wanted, like, doing what we want to do. So, you know, I just, I wish we could open it up a little more where you can vote for more people. And if they get 75% of the room, they go in the Hall of Fame.

And some years you're going to have five people go in. Other years you might have one. But people are going to go in when they deserve to go in. And the issue I have is you look at the pioneer side of things. You pick one guy out of those, that five. That is ridiculous. That's tough. It's ludicrous that all five of those guys aren't in.

You sit there and tell me that Harry Hyde, who is a championship crew chief, has won a lot of big races. And oh, by the way, was a pillar in building Hendrick Motorsports. It was like, if you talk about Hendrik Motorsports, you cannot talk about, not talk about Harry Hyde. He built that organization up. And it was so, so instrumental, by the way, they, you know, they copied him for Days of Thunder. And this guy is not in the Hall of Fame? Like, that guy should be in the Hall of Fame years ago. Well, I think what we've done is all the crew chiefs that have been elected into the Hall of Fame have three championships or more.

Which is... Hold on. So the thing is, it's like we have, unfortunately, we have two or three on the main and the Pioneer one that only have one or two, right? So, look, the other thing we can argue is Randy Dorton, right? Another guy. Same thing. But the problem is now Ernie Elliott is on. And Ernie Elliott's the one that started a Randy Dorton.

So now we have another argument. But as Freddie said, and obviously he read The Athletic this week and listened to the tear down, is that when you have – He plugged that. That was a plug. That was a smooth plug. I'm going to use that. When you have an option to vote for 10 guys, you get in the Ernie Elliott's and the Randy Dortons and everything else. And they do naturally come in when it fits.

It's not a first year. It's not a second year. It's a third year. But you see this up. and it's insulting to Jeff Burton, who should be in the Hall of Fame, that people are going to nitpick and say, well, he only got, what, 38% of the vote?

But you've got to look deeper in that and why he only got 38. Because people are trying to... There's a lot of games playing on, where if you could have up to 10 names on a ballot, Burton's number is going to be higher than 75. And you're going to have this conversation. It should not be a thing in the room of,

well, is it Neil Bonnet, or is it Jeff Burton or is a Greg Biffel? All three should get in. The thing is, Their statistics were so close. Absolutely. You know, Neil Bonnet actually has a more winning percentage per start than anybody, right? So it's like...

There's just so many considering actors. Oh, my God, it thinks that we would... It needs to change, period. I'm not disagreeing. All right. But if we keep talking about it, we might get it. Hey, we're trying. We're working on it.

All right. Here's Mike. Hey, how you guys doing? So, Mike. So, question is, do y'all ever see Max for Staff and racing a one-off? been called ever and if so sooner or later i mean it would be later um i don't because like what reason does he well i will say this jordan they did put a tease out and i think the reddit police deciphered the tease of the project 91 driver is going to be magnuson is that like is that i mean

they didn't announce it but they did kind of the name i hear a lot is magnuson it's kevin it's kevin it's the name i'm hearing a lot for san diego for san diego it's not max or sappin i can confidently tell you that now Would Max ever run? Listen, you never say never. Would anyone ever thought that Juan Pablo Montoya was going to come over here and run full time? No, you never say never. Years down the road, there may be an opportunity. And Max is showing that he wants to do different things. And as NASCAR does this, you know, San Diego or Chicago or wherever else, it opens up opportunities to do one-offs like this. So I would never, ever say definitively, he's never going to do it. Maybe Red Bull comes in and says, hey, we got a great promotional thing we're going to do. We're going to push them. So we'll see. But it's not going to have. happened this year. That would be incredible if Max comes off races with this. That'd be fun. We out of questions. Anybody else got one? Yeah, my name's Josh. I was just wanting to say I was at the very first Hall of Fame. I was there today they broke ground downtown Charlotte. And I remember the very first one,

David Pearson didn't make it in. I just happened to be walking down the street behind where the convention center is. And he asked me where to park. He wasn't happy at all. And he shouldn't be. What they should have done was put the top 50 best-man car drivers all in one time. and then every year they should go ahead and put one crew chief in one mechanic one of everything in every year from there on and they kind of don't messed up so they might as well go back back track and it's it's insulting to david pearson that he wasn't a first time inductee uh josh has another one back there too josh let's get you josh i just want to shout out to uh dbc's crew chief sitting in the front row yeah oh yeah love it if one of your teams had a drop out would do junior's team come into the cup series at at any point in time in the future. Dale's too cheap. Yeah.

He won't buy a charter. You hear him on his show, he didn't want to, he's got problems with socks. He's got problems with wearing socks. You think he's going to buy a charter? We got enough going on around here. He's got 12 teams in one 5,000 shop

with square ship on a building. Take it from someone on the inside. We're bursting out the seams in there. Like, we're good. What else you got? Maybe one more. Hi, I'm William from Virginia. I got a question for you.

I'm a big fan of the roval. What are y'all's feeling about doing away with the roval in October? I love it. Sorry. I like the roval, but the racing on the Charlotte Oval is so good now that I think we had to run there twice, especially in the playoffs. Plus SVG, they just... Yeah, I'm tired of getting... We're tired of SVG kicking our ass.

Well, let's ask them again. Why were you a big fan of it? Because it's going inside and where our seats were, where they came out of the infield. Okay, so a fan experience. Just because it was something different. Let's try to get him up with Freddie. Hold him on the stool. Yeah, you want to do the stool?

You can hold the ladder if you want to be this week. It should be like a contest. We should give that away. Hey, I'm selling raffle tickets. $100 a piece if you want to hold the ladder this week. You can sponsor my ladder. Yep. We got some more time.

We've got more questions. Let's get one more. Here we go. Crew Chief. All right, this is for Tommy. You have a choice. You're fielding a car. You have a choice between Natalie Decker and Cleetus McFarlane, who you put in the car.

What kind of car? That's a great question. A truck? I would put Cletus in. Thank you for the right answer. Anybody a Cletus fan? Cletus is racing next week, right? Yeah, Nashville.

All right. Oh, hell, I'd love to see Cletus on Broadway. No, I seen the car yesterday. They're shining her up, getting ready. Yeah, and listen, we haven't heard a lot from Cletus since the last time you ran. But he, you know, he is just, you know, he's doing the right things now, right? I mean, I heard rumors.

You might be able to talk to this of maybe full-time ARCA next year, which is, I think, I think maybe, and Jordan, you can speak to this a little bit. Tommy, I don't know that you've ever done this, the tour, but the, the ARCA series has maybe one of the most diverse schedules. And it would be awesome for his content people, like to travel to, obviously all the big races, they go to copper tracks. But the Salem's, the Winchester's, Springfield dirt track, you know. Those races are unbelievable. So for his YouTube following, to get a look at some of that and that path, I think it's only going to be beneficial for us. And there's great characters in the Arca series. Just personalities.

Andy Jay. Absolutely. So, I mean, I've heard some rumblings about that. And I know Cletus has said he doesn't have the schedule and stuff. And who knows, they don't have a big robust schedule. So it's more manageable than a truck series are in O'Reilly. It would be good because it's such a variety of different tracks to just get in reps. I mean, you just need seat time.

It's, again, that's exactly. And look, when it all comes down to it, after everything they went through, they're smart, man. Coletus is not a dumb guy, right? I'm sure he sat back, got his group together, like, what really do we need to do? After talking to Dale Jr., have to listen to our crap, or, you know, just all the stuff that we said. It's just, you know, I agree. He's doing it right. It's going to be interested in Nashville next week.

Again, that's not an easy track by no means. I think it's probably tougher than Rockingham. But, hey, I'm excited. We're all excited for Cleas. We all want him to do good, but we want him to do it right. So he doesn't turn into a problem, right? Do we agree? Right.

Does he at least agree to that? Right. Yeah, you want him to be out there where it's only good news. You know what I mean? You don't want to put him out. Because, listen, he ran decent enough at Rockingham, had three or four incidents, but he got to test there for a day. He's not going to get that in Nashville.

So the bar, the expectation has to be set a lot lower for Nashville. And it's again, you're praying that he just gets through the race without being part of the story. He's running some cars to his stuff too? Allegedly, so we'll see. Allegedly where? I really don't know. We've talked a little bit about it and we're going to stay in touch about it. But I don't know if it'll be any time.

It might not be until maybe later in this year or even early next. I'm not totally sure. And he's got a great event coming at Stafford Motor Speedway, right? Connecticut. Richard Childers. Richard Chilin's going to race. You know, obviously Coletus is busy with doing all that stuff too, but that place sells out

every year that he brings that group up there for that Crown Vic race. I think we got time for one more quick question for a wrap up? We have one more and then Carson's going to bring us home. So as a Lugano fan, how worried should we be right now? Take the mic from him, please.

And we're done. We're just kidding. We're just kidding. Scared the poor guy. Should I be worried right now or about me coming to get you or Joey. Us or Joey's performance. Listen, no. Joey's super talented and we've kind of seen these stretches, right, Tommy?

I think, you know, I wouldn't be overly concerned. They're going to figure it out. That team across the board, Blaney's the only one that really has true speed on a week-to-week basis. Paul Wolf is too smart to not figure that out. Paul Wolf, we talked about on the show Monday, is a Hall of Fame crew chief at this point, right? One three championships. So, no, I wouldn't be overly concerned. I think Paul's been blaming the hair loss, like the bald head.

Paul's hair loss or Joe? Now that he's gone full ball, he's run like crap the whole season. Bring a wig. Bring a wig for Saturday. Jeez. Let's put some fans bring some Joey Lagano wigs what they want him to wear. Let's start posting. Let's start posting some Joey.

Before we get out of here, I just want to thank all you guys for hanging out. I know it's easy to walk away when Dale leaves, but we really appreciate you guys sitting out there and sweating. We know we're the better show, but we can't tell him that. He gets upset. But no, I just wanted to say thank you for you guys for showing up and hanging out with us. And Jordan, again, thank you for just stopping by. And Carson, take us home. And a big thank you to Arby's, of course, for sponsoring all the live shows today.

You check out their new barbecue lineup. Sandwich lineup. Have you guys tried it yet at all? You're heading there when you leave here, right? I thought I was supposed to have some on stage today. What happened? I guess Dale ate at all. Anyways, we're going to give out some free merch before we leave here.

If you are listening at home, you can always buy merch online at shop. DirtymoMedia.com. Again, thank you guys for hanging out with us today. I hope you fellas, have a great weekend at the 600. I'm going to keep watching the weather and see if I decided to join you. At some point this weekend, you'll probably find me in a bar stool of Big Al's. I can't imagine when that would be. But it's going to be fun, Tommy.

You can just look at the schedule, and when he's not at the track, he's at Big Al's. It's pretty easy. Oh, and his Twitter sale is over that he said about the Carstores. Yeah, we're trying to give away Carson's number. Thank you guys for joining us. We will be back on Monday. We're out. Thank you.

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