Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - Bob Pockrass Interview

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Kevin Harvick is joined by FOX Sports Motorsports Reporter Bob Pockrass for a wide-ranging conversation. Together, they break down the current playoff race, the biggest drama from the past two weeks, and where the championship battle stands heading into the next round. They also dive into the latest on the lawsuit involving 23XI Racing, Front Row Motorsports, and NASCAR, discussing what it means for teams, drivers, and the long-term future of the sport. Finally, Harvick and Pockrass explore the direction NASCAR is heading, from on-track competition to off-track changes that could shape the next era of racing. LINK TO SUBMIT PICKS FOR THE ROVAL: https://forms.gle/nFSHX1w6EZ22eg8k7 0:00 - Intro 0:34 - Bob Pockrass Joins The Show! 1:50 - Denny Hamlin Drama 4:55 - 23XI Lawsuit Developments 13:28 - Kyle Larson’s INDYCAR Future 16:15 - Kyle Busch’s Future 21:08 - Ram’s Return to NASCAR 23:22 - Ross Chastain’s Future 30:03 - Next Gen Car 33:23 - NASCAR Playoff Format Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Den Hamlin is amid chaos, which is what he loves. There's nothing better for cup racing than the Earnhardt family owning a cup car. If I was NASCAR and Jim France, I would give Dale Jr. whatever he wanted. I wouldn't see them sticking around if they don't have a charter. I think Kyle Bush wins again. I just don't know whether it's at RCR or not. Welcome to Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour, presented by NASCAR on Fox. And today we had to bring in Bob Pockris as our guest because I just feel like that there's

so much going on in the sport right now with changes and lawsuits and people and teammates and all the things that that are happening. And you, my friend, are the most knowledgeable about what is going on here. So I thought it was a good time for us to just sit here and talk through some things, Bob. Well, there's certainly a lot going on. Certainly feel like you've been in the middle of a lot of it, trying to figure it all out. Certainly a lot unpredictable. And when people ask you what's going to happen next. I think we're taking some educated guesses, but I don't know that we know how things are going to end up in a lot of these situations. Yeah. Well, I told Tyler, before we got the show started, we were going to call this to burn it down with Bob segment

because we can either. I don't know if I can do an SVG type of burnout. I don't know, Bob. I think you can. I've seen a celebration with some bubbles and some beer. Maybe and that would probably be pretty high on the celebration list. What do you think? I can do a phone party. I can do that. We can teach you how to burn it. We can teach you how to do a burnout. That might take a little too much coordination. Yeah. So let's start with this. What, what do you think Denny Hamlin is right now? I know. Denny Hamlin is amid chaos, which is what he loves, right? Isn't that what Denny thrives on is chaos? And it seems like he's creating as much for himself as he can. And I think when you look at the, you've got the lawsuit, you've got the situation with Ty Gibbs last week.

You've got the situation with the 23 car this week. But, and I told, you know, Caitlin and Mamba, when we had the show this week, I've been in that situation where you're driving for one team and you're owning another team. And it's very difficult to not separate it like he has, you know, this week at Kansas. because the expectation from JGR is to do exactly what he did. But do you see this week more difficult to navigate than last week with Ty Gibbs? I don't see it more difficult to navigate if you're Jenny Hamlin. Yeah, because I think Denny Hamlin has 77 races left.

And I think his don't give a hoot. You can say don't give a shit. Don't give a shit. Yeah. Is going to just keep rising because he's only got that. He knows he has a limited amount of time left, and he's going to do everything he can to win races. He's going to probably take more than he gives. Yeah.

And when you look at, because I felt like last week with the Ty Gibbs situation, I felt like him approaching it head-on, kind of taking accountability for going over the line and the things that happened in Loudon, I felt like he handled that professionally. How do you think that he navigates it within the walls at 2311 this week? That's a great question. I think he navigates it by saying, look, what would you expect from a legacy driver who's another Toyota team, but not one of your teammates? How would you expect them to race you? And he would say, probably I didn't do a whole lot wrong. Now, the result wasn't what he wanted, but I think he's like, I'm going to go for wins. So when you're in a position to get a win, I have 59, I want 60, maybe I even see 65 or 70.

I don't know if I'm going to win a championship. So I'm just going to keep trying to win races. Yeah. Well, I think it's definitely, you know, our big question last week was, is that the moment that derailed his championship? And that was by far one of his best performances of the year, even though they didn't win the race. I mean, the Toyota's right now to me just seemed like they have. everybody covered pretty much everywhere but Loudon. And does that mean everywhere but Phoenix?

Yeah, good point. So I think that's the big question. And what's wild is Toyota dominates that race and they don't win. Yeah. And Hendrick is right there to take it when it's kind of, I want to say given to them, but when they're given the opportunity to take it. So when you go back and we get back on the 2311 piece of the puzzle, where do you feel like we are with the lawsuit?

And can you tell me if 2311 wins or NASCAR wins, what do they win? Because I can't. That's up to the judge to decide. Like there'll be a trial. Assuming they get to trial, there'll be a trial in front of a jury. In December. In December, the jury can award monetary damages, I believe. But then anything that would kind of break up the monopoly is the judge's decision.

So both sides would then propose if 2311 wins, which isn't a guarantee by far. But if they do win, the judge would then make that decision after recommendations from both sides. And at that point could be the time where they kind of come to the negotiating table. Yeah. And so we get done with December 6th. Do we think it's actually over there? No, because there will be appeals. And there will be if...

How long will that take? probably at least another six months to a year. So I think that you'll have at least an idea of the direction things could go, but I don't think you're going to get a definitive answer. You know, if NASCAR wins, I think it would be a lot harder for like 2311 to win probably on appeal, but you would assume that they will. Yeah. And, you know, I think when you look at, you know, we know that there's some personal issues on the Tyler Reddick piece of it,

you look at you know bubble wallace frustrated after the race what do you think what do you think the opportunities are for those guys to go do something else do you think that there's i think i think tyler reddick certainly has opportunities i think people see a lot of potential in tyler reddick obviously he won the regular season title last year so i think people would be willing to write check right now for tyler reddick and he probably to decide do I want to wait it out or should I jump ship now? And I think if you're Tyler Reddick, if all these people want you now, they're going to want you nine months from now or 12 months from now whenever this whole thing, if it doesn't go 2311's way and things, you know,

whether they close or sell or whatever they would do if they don't win, eventually, I still think he would have the suitors who would bump up his salary. Right? Like, you only need two. You only need two teams that want you And it sounds like there certainly are Bubba I'm not so Sure about I think he could find a place But I don't know that he would have the options

Tyler Redick does So it seems like a lot of the Like a lot of the seats I mean do you think that's a Do you think there's a possibility That Redick could say that for next year? I mean he's he As long as they're an open team

He can go Yeah And certainly there would be That's from his contract from his contract. But I don't think that he want, I would say Tyler Redick is happy at 2311. Yeah.

And that he would want to stay there. Yeah. And I think that. But money talks, doesn't it? Money does talk. And again, as I said before, the money, if he wants stability, then he would consider, have to consider leaving, I would think.

But again, I think right now the best place for him is probably 2311. They were the ones who went after him. Those are the ones who have invested in him. And I think loyalty would trump stability in his case. So we get to the end of this thing and let's just say 2311 loses. What do you think is the possible? What are the scenarios for 2311 if that happens? happens because you hear a lot of things, but you don't really know what do you, they won't

have charters, right? So how many teams could they, would they want to operate if they wanted to continue to operate? Or would they just sell the building and hopefully to somebody who has a charter and all the equipment and everything and hope that they kind of do somewhat what trackhouse did with Gannasi several years ago? I mean, I, I wouldn't see them sticking around. if they don't have a charter and trying to race is open. It just isn't economically feasible. And their charters are somewhat, they're in different categories right now, correct?

Am I correct? A little bit, right? The charters that they bought from Stuart Haas, or the one charter they bought from Stuart Haas has kind of looked at a little bit differently than the two charters that they had. The two charters that they had, NASCAR believes they forfeited, right? They didn't sign the deal.

So they've given up, given those up. the ones that they bought from, from Stuart Haas, who had originally signed the deal, seemed to be in a little bit different kind of bucket. Yeah. Well, it's a very interesting scenario. And I think when you look at everything involved in it,

I mean, you've got, you know, you've got three drivers at 2311. You've got, obviously, a lot of Toyota support. When you look at, when you look at Denny Hamlin and saying that he has two years left, I mean, do you ever see him drive? driving a 2311 car? I do.

I see him not full-time. Yeah. But I could certainly see him getting in a car for a track that he really likes. And especially if he just wants to kind of see where they're at at some point.

I definitely could see it. I mean, we've seen how hard we keep see Jimmy Johnson coming back, right, for a little bit more. I definitely could see Denny come back. Do you like that, though? I just, I'm of the opinion that I always wanted to get out and say, if I could just get out, I was super happy that we led laps in the last race.

We were competitive all the way to the end. Do you feel like it takes away from what you've done in the sport? Because I feel like, and I think Jimmy Johnson himself said that he, you know, his last three years and going to IndyCar and all the things that he did kind of took away from what he did as a seven-time champion. Maybe a little bit, but I don't, I mean, if you're a seven-time. champion. Yeah. What do you care? Does somebody look at you like you're a five-time champion? Well, I mean, in his words, they look at him like he was almost a no-time champion because, you know, he put it. Well, how did you look at Daryl Waltrip, you know? Yeah, but he did the same thing, right? And so, I don't know. I don't, I don't look at it that way, but I guess you could,

If I had seven trophies at home and I don't have any, but if I had, if I had one, I'd probably be like, I don't really care what you think of me. Yeah. And it was really interesting to hear him say that because of the fact that he brought up the fact that he went out to the front of the racetrack, and they were selling seven-time Richard Petty merchandise, and they were selling seven-time Dale Earnhardt merchandise,

and they both had, they both had merchandise lines and all these things that, went with the credit of their seven-time champion status. And he's like, I don't have anything out there. And I just find it so bizarre that it's, that it doesn't, it isn't even close to the way that it gets treated from Jimmy Johnson to the other two guys. Yeah, and Jimmy Johnson, I feel won most of his championships in the hardest format around, right, winning those 10 race chases where I thought one of the most difficult things to do because, you know, you got a mulligan maybe one, potentially two,

but you had to be so good at all different types of tracks. But, you know, when Jimmy went indie car racing, when we asked him, why would you do it? It was almost because I can. Right. And like, how many people can just do what they want, right, after having such a career. And, like, I don't blame him or I would want to see him try it again,

Even if you knew the results weren't going to be great. I mean, what's, I guess you wonder about your legacy and how you're viewed. But, you know, from a racer standpoint, why not do a couple years of IndyCar? Does Kyle Larson ever race the Indy 500 again? Not while he's racing NASCAR. Yeah. You know, maybe when he's a full-time world of outlaws or full-time high-limit racer. Yeah.

And whether that's 10 years or so, I would say maybe he does it again. I don't think he'll do it when he's racing. Is there anybody that you think tries it? I think Kyle Bush would try it if he had the opportunity. I mean, he had it pretty much all set up. Yeah. Grand though several years ago, but I still think he would, he would do it. I'd love to see Zillich do it.

Yeah, I think he certainly has the talent. Yeah, and I think you've got to do it while you're going. I just think that, I guess you don't have to do it while you're young. I think your best opportunity to perform like Kyle Arson did in year one is to do it while you, you know. Do you think you need to have a championship though, a cup championship so that you would never look back and say, gosh, if I hadn't split my time in May, I wouldn't have won a title? It might be better just do it in your rookie year just to get it out of the way, right? Because then you have all the excuses in the world that, yeah, I'm just a, I'm a rookie here. But you mentioned Cowell.

Everybody Justin Marks, he still wants to maybe own a, he likes to own things, so maybe he can get a partial ownership of an indie car team. Maybe he just starts an IndyCar team. Yeah. And does a program like Mr. Hendrick did with whoever to go put Zillich in it. But honestly, I would do it early because the expectations from the Cupside, you're still building the program and you're still doing all the things to get yourself in place and the enthusiasm and everything that goes with it.

I could see it both ways. You know, I think it's, I think it depends a lot on, on the scenario. I think, you see Zillich may be going Formula One though in five, six, eight, ten years. And if he does that, then he, and he wants to do the ND 500, probably would have to be early. I still infirm in believing that Connor Zillich is, is the most, he was, he had the highest possibility of being a true contender in F1 as an American. I just, I watched him from carts. you know, he's been in the European carding program and been successful over there. You know, those, luckily we steered him towards NASCAR and not the open wheel route because he was one of the ones,

very few that could go over there on talent and make it on the F1 side without just a bucket of money. They could have found him a bucket of money to support all the things that he did. So it's, I think once you get out of that system and try to go back, seven or eight years later, I think it would be really difficult to follow the details of what you need to be, what you need to be doing in a car. But you mentioned Kyle Busch, and we're talking IndyCar, double duty. Where does this go for Kyle? Does he ever win another cup race? Does he stay at RCR? What do you think, is it the car? Is it some of the car? Is it some of the Kyle? Because there's just a, you know, a number of moments where we hit the wall, we spin out, all those

things that shouldn't happen. I mean, where is Kyle Bush? I mean, I think Kyle Bush wins again. I just don't know whether it's at RCR or not. And look, I think Spire would like to have them and see what they could do with them. Yeah. You know, sounds like he's, you know, as they've all said, and, you know, staying for next year. But, I mean, you know, it can't be happy.

Yeah. And, you know, if they continue to run the way they've been. been running, he'll want to, he'll want to leave. Yeah. And, you know, and I think that's the challenge now in getting a new crew chief, right? Do you bring somebody in who is probably wondering, gosh, am I coming into crew chief Kyle Bush? And is that just going to be one year?

Or am I being brought in to crew chief Kyle Busch for a year? And then maybe either Austin Hill or Jesse Love or somebody else. Yeah. And it just becomes more difficult by the day, right? And, you know, Rodney Childers was probably the best prospect out there to bring into the system that could have potentially put him in a position to get things on track. But he went to junior motorsports to manage the Xfinity car that Quaple and Zillich are going to run. So, well, I mean, do you think, what do you think are the options? Because it's been really quiet.

Like, it was really quiet when Randall was leaving. It's been really quiet as far as what they're going to. to do. I'm not sure yet. You know, they do have a few people in house that I think they're considering. And again, I think you've got to look at it and say, you know, how long is Kyle Bush going to stay? And do we want to put somebody in there who could be a rookie crew chief with Kyle Bush, which you know might not work out? But if you think that that crew chief has potential and then they have some. experience when you bring somebody else in, it can be beneficial. So I think the hard part is the right answer for Richard Childress Racing, also the right

answer for Kyle Bush in that situation. Yeah. And I think that all that becomes super interesting when you talk about Richard Childers Racing. And, you know, I look at Colleg going to Dodge and I see, you know, what they're going to do on the truck series program. And Dodge has to have an engine program. So those choices, you can either start your own as a manufacturer like Toyota has done. But who, how do we get this Dodge Cup thing lined up with who that can build an engine?

Right. And you're asking, is ECR going to be? Yeah. It has to be ECR. It has to be, I mean, Penske's got to have their old engine shop still sitting around. Right. Right. I mean, you know, could.

It's not calling. You look at somebody like RFK, right? And you look at somebody like Brad who potentially like could do it or find a way, I think, to potentially do it. You know, I've been asking people at ECR and around that group. Yeah. If there's potential for them to do it. And they're still saying, no, where Chevy team have been in the last. A long time.

Richard's pretty loyal. Yeah. I mean, Richard's pretty loyal. I hadn't thought about the whole RFK piece of it, but I think when you look at trying to get out from underneath what you've always been to make it something better, the potential has got to be there. I would assume if you're going to step out. Yeah.

And, I mean, you would think, I think the question is how much funding will Dodge have to go cup racing, right? because, and that's not a cheap endeavor. Yeah. But because look, even if another engine shop, let's say you were going to an existing, let's just say ECR, I mean, they would still be building Chevrolet engines for a little bit. So you'd almost have to have some sort of whole separate wing or separate building to start doing that type of development. When do you think that, I mean, do you actually think Dodge makes it to the grid in 27? No, I don't. I don't. I think it's going to be 28 at the earliest. And where do you, I mean, do you know where all the manufacturer alignments are with teams as far as when they end and when they don't end? Ooh, I'm not positive on those. And, you know, those things tend to, if somebody knew is coming in, those things can be worked out because you don't want somebody who's just kind of sitting there waiting.

But, you know, I think, you know, you look at Dodge, and I know they're hopeful for 27, but that just seems just such a way, way aggressive time. So what happens with Collegg in between there? We know that they've, you know, they're running their truck shop. Do you think Chevrolet continues to support the rest of the things that they do? I don't know how much support they've been given them. Yeah, but you still got to get engines.

So, I mean, I think they will get engines. I think there's still some question of how many, if any, if any, if any, car as they run, you know, because they obviously need it. I think they were saying at least 50 people to run the truck shop. So, you know, it'd be a lot easier to take some of your people who are working on and move them over to that truck program. So still some questions of how many exfini cars.

As far as cup cars, I think they can. can get engines, but they won't be able to touch them at all, even if they were able to touch them now. When you look at the simulators and the simulation and all the things, most all those things come from the manufacturer, right? And in order to put that cup car on the racetrack, the simulation has to work appropriately. But if you don't have the programs and things to put in it, I know that they don't get a lot of support, but it's still to make it function, you're using the stuff either through RCR or through the manufacturer. So it definitely becomes a little bit tricky

to be able to understand how to put that car on the racetrack. I will say if Ty Dillon is still there, which I expect him to be there next year at Kaling. In the cup car. Yes. Yeah. That, you know, you would think that with that relationship,

he can at least maybe get some information, right? You would think that there could be still a little bit of flow. Talk to me about Ross Chastain. Because when I look at the trackhouse dynamic is interesting, right? And I think when you look at trackhouse and Ross, I mean, that's what the anchor, I mean, he's viewed as the anchor of the team. Is that fair? Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, you see Zilich coming in. You see a new crew chief coming in. You saw him build the car for SVG. and bring Stephen in to be the crew chief and built a whole team around it. They've done a great job with all the sponsorship and everything that they do. What do you think, what do you think, because I would assume that his contract is getting towards the end, where do you think, does he stay at track house? Do you think that there's too many things that have changed?

What do you think that whole dynamic turns into? Yeah, I want to say he has at least a couple years left. And again, I don't see Ross as a guy who likes a lot. change. And he's the guy who I think is very comfortable at Trackhouse. I think he'll still be the anchor, right? Like SVG is still going to be on a learning curve. Zillich is still going beyond learning curve. I think the bigger question, Kevin, is a few years ago, we were always equating like 2311 in Trackhouse, right? The new teams. And it seems that 2311 has continued a certain level of performance and track house has been a little bit more, I would say, up and down,

just maybe a tick behind. And the question is, are they, are they, as the bigger teams develop the next gen car, develop ideas with the next gen car, are they going to be able to keep up? And you saw them, obviously, make a lot of competition changes here in the last few months. Definitely took a swing on it. I think he hopes to do it. I think that, so who do you, did, you, did, you, You mentioned RFK as possible, Dodge. We talk about track house, talk about RCR. I mean, do you see that just being one team when they originally start putting two cars on a racetrack, four cars on a racetrack? I would think you'll be four.

Four teams? Yeah, I think four cars. Okay. Same organization. Do you think it would want? I think it depends. Yeah. Go back to the start of this conversation in the lawsuit and how many teams have charters and how many.

Yeah. And how many cars each organization has. I would say four to six is what you often hear. If you can get six and have a four-car team and a two-car team, you know, then, you know, it's legacy, you know, an organization that you would, that'll be a three-car team at 20, 27. Yeah. So when you open up the charter conversation and you bring a new manufacturer in,

does that not open the door for a NASCAR to expand the field? certainly open store for them to, you know, they have the ability to issue 40 charters, you know, an extra. So they sell those or they just give them away? I think they can do what they want, is my understanding. I do think, from what we've been able to gather from the lawsuit, and we hear bits and pieces, but it almost sounds like that if you're a current team, you have to be at least given the right to kind of bid on it. But we haven't heard like whether NASCAR is obligated to accept that bid. So the new manufacturer coming in could open the door for that.

Does Junior Motorsports ever wind up with the charter? When the ability for NASCAR to give them away? Because there's nothing better for cup racing than the Earnhardt family owning a cup car. Yeah, I think it's open. I'd give them one. If I was NASCAR and Jim France, I would give Dell Jr. whatever he wanted. and for free, you'd be like, just do it. I mean, I think it's open,

but from everything you hear out of that organization, they don't want, because, you know, they've had people come and talk to them about investing and buying a charter, but they want to run that program year to year without losing money. They don't want to look at the charter as something like, okay, this is something that we can make,

you know, we can lose $20 million over, 10 years, but then make it back when we sell the charter. They're not looking at it that way. And I think they would need to have the sponsorship and the funding that they feel is necessary to compete. That's easy. I mean, you've got, you've got Dale. And, you know, I think that, I think the workload that goes with it would be the hard part. You know, it's, it's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, it's a, but it'll be interesting to see how it all works out because not only do you have the new manufacturer, you've got the lawsuit with some undecided charters, there's a lot of things that could make something swing in a direction that we didn't see coming. Is that fair? That's very fair. Okay.

That's very fair. Yeah. And when you talk about, when you talk about NASCAR, um, we saw him make some, some changes with race director this week with Juson. He's out. I don't know why he's out, but we see that Chip Weil is moving on. Are we on the front side of a restructuring from NASCAR or are these just coincidentally at the same time? I mean, I think those two are coincidental at the same time. We heard indications that Jussam wasn't performance-related. One, and Chip is, they've been out there, he's been out there saying that he's wanted to do something, different. So I it's a great question

Kevin because every few years it does seem that NASCAR does kind of reorganize things and I think with the lawsuit you know we're certainly seeing you know what some of the executives are thinking that is and I think that it all kind of boils down to probably what happens in the lawsuit

and you know when to do they feel that Ben Kennedy is ready to take even more of a role than what he already has, and he already has a pretty big role. Yeah. And certainly if he were to get put in charge, he's going to want to put his people in certain spots. Yeah. And I think, you know, I think it's probably not a bad time to restructure. I think when you look at the, when you look at the next.

Gen car. I don't think it's saved. I know it hasn't saved anybody any money. And when you look at the way that the car is raced and the millions and millions and millions of dollars that NASCAR has put in to try to change it and make it better, to me, it seems like it's, it would be a good time with the lawsuit and given the Gen 7 car a few years. Would you agree or disagree with that in order to to kind of restructure some of these things? I would probably wait and see if Honda decides whether they're coming in, right? They're still trying to make all the indications we get from them is that the one thing they won't do is do both IndyCar and NASCAR. They'll do one or the other and still think that I don't know that there's any timeline for a decision probably in the next year or so.

I would want who's ever working with these new manufacturers now who's working with, Dodge and Ram who could be working with Honda if they come in. I wouldn't want to, unless I feel like that they're not doing the job to get them in, I would want to have some consistency there in that direction as far as the competition side. Yeah. Well, it's an interesting time on a lot of fronts. I hope that I wish that they would put a lot of horsepower on the cars and just make them super sketchy to drive.

but we've all seen the challenges there. I think they're going to put... You put a little bit in it, but is they going to put enough in it? Well, everything that I've heard, they put it in and the driver couldn't even tell, you know, that they changed the horsepower. It needs a ton of horsepower.

It needs to be faster. You know, you go back and you watch those old videos. And can you do that on the tires you have now or are you going to have to develop new tires for all that? Yeah. I mean, that's, I mean, every... It's the cause and effect, right? It's the cause and effect for the engine department.

I think all the engine departments would probably do it if they had the proper runway. Yeah. And that's the hard part about the position that NASCAR is. Oh, and then the next-hand price goes up because they're going to have to raise the price for the engine leads, right? When they lowered the horsepower, the price of the engines went up. And because the valve train, it becomes so important. And I just think that we're in a much... It's supposed to go down because you were using an engine more.

Nothing went down. The engine bills did not go down. And I think that's the ironic thing about, you know, a lot of these scenarios. But I think that technology and I don't think we need to turn the engines 10,000 RPM, but I think that the cars need to go faster than they do today. They should be the fastest cars and they're hard to drive. Don't get me wrong. But every time we've taken speed out of the straightaway and made the cars faster through the corner,

it becomes harder to pass. It happened at the very first test when we took horsepower out the first. first time, cars immediately became harder to pass because of the corner speed. But we'll see. And, you know, I know that that's a tricky, that's a tricky question. Last, last NASCAR question, won't get us in too much trouble. Where does the playoff format land? Ooh. Man, there's been a push for this, for 36 races. Yeah. But I just, I mean, I don't think the last 20 years have been all that bad.

Yeah. Well, here's my argument to that. When we went to the one race for it all, all or nothing, did the TV ratings ever go up? Has the crowd ever gone up because we have a championship race? The hard part is that TV ratings were going down. Because people's general, what we don't have is what was the cause of, you know, because general TV viewing had changed.

Well, let's just forget the last three years. When we first started it, was the last race the most watched race? because of the championship format? Not that I ever remember. But, I mean, the thing is that, you know, as we talked earlier, the 10 race championship, I thought, I'd love that.

Yeah. I've felt the one race has been, while easy to understand, is not the best way to crown a racing champion. Yeah. I think they'll go, you know, four or five race, they'll have some sort of playoff and then cut it down once to, you know, five or six,

and you'll have four or five races. Yeah, the thing about the four race playoff is I like the fact that you can take a super speedway, you can take a road course, you can take a short track, and you can take an intermediate. And, you know, may the best man win that can put all those different, you know, styles of racetracks together. And it just flips, Carovo and Las Vegas right now. on the schedule, right? Right.

And you'd have that. So that would be... Better. Yes. It would be better than what we have currently. Yeah. And then I think questions, how much do you give for a win? Yes.

You know, because you want to get rid of these playoff points because it's just too confusing. And I think the other challenge for NASCAR is to decide on whether they want to have a certain number of drivers make the playoffs. Or do you just say top 10 in points in anybody who wins? or do you say, oh, we only want to have 12 or 14 and 16, so is it top 10 in points, and then two winners or four winners or six winners? I think that's kind of a lot of the conversation that they're having now. Well, I told you it was going to be the last question, but I lied.

I just thought of something else because it sounds like the Super Bowl, the NFL season is going to get longer. At some point. Does the Daytona 500 have to be the first race of the season, or can we knock off some in January so that we can end earlier? It sounds like that NASCAR is pretty adamant that the Daytona 500 will be the first race of the year. And I don't see them going up against the Super Bowl. What do you think, though? So I personally don't think it has to be, but NASCAR has said that their fan polls that they've taken want the Daytona 500 to be the first race of the year, first points race of the year.

So I would say if, I mean, I haven't seen that. survey, but if that's what the fans are saying, I'd have to find a new place to poll this. I don't know who's on this poll, but it seems a lot like the political polls that are never right. Maybe we need a broader scope of fans. I mean, if you want to go, everybody talks like, go back old school and go 36 races, right? There's a time when the date to 500 wasn't the first race of the year. Yeah, we used to go to Riverside. And, you know, I just think that, you know, football has become so popular that it makes the dynamic very difficult to

compete against them at this point in the year. So a lot of big things to have. Last question, Bob. Most important question of them all. What was your first car that you bought and drove? Okay. You're not going to get out of here without the consistent guest question. Well, were you prepared? I mean, I've listened. I watch every week. So I know that the question, what the question is. And the first car I drove was a hammy down from my parents. It was a Pontiac Phoenix. I think. one of those. But the first car I bought was from my older brother, which was a blue Camaro with some rust strategically placed on the hood. So it didn't last all that long, but it was enough to get me through college. So did you sell it? What happened to it? Or did it just blow up? Just let it burn. I'm trying to think if I wrecked it. So what you're saying is, are you a good driver or a bad driver? Those who can't write.

So you're a bad driver? I mean, I'm adequate. Adequate. Adequate. You get yourself from point A to point B. That's right. Okay. Well, I appreciate you taking the time.

I know that a lot of things going on, but there's nobody that navigates it better than you. We're thankful to have you on our team. So hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.