Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - Regan Smith Interview

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

Kevin Harvick is joined by NASCAR on FOX Analyst and former Cup driver Regan Smith for an interview. The two reflect on Smith’s driving career, including the ups and downs of racing for Furniture Row Racing, the perseverance it took to stay competitive, and the story behind his unforgettable Darlington win in 2011. They also dive into how Smith feels about NASCAR today, how the sport has evolved since his driving days, and what the current generation of drivers can learn from his experiences. 0:00 - Intro 0:28 - Regan Smith Joins The Show! 5:11 - Driving For Furniture Row Racing 11:24 - Advice For Young Drivers 21:52 - Looking Back At Decisions 29:47 - Transition To Broadcasting Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There's definitely stuff I would have done different. I didn't learn that until it was too late. You evolve or die. I've looked at more damn Kevin Harvick data from Atlanta. I can tell you what you do with your feet, when you do it, how you do it, why you do it, but I can't do it. Welcome to Kevin Harvick's happy hour, presented by NASCAR on Fox. And today I've got one of my teammates here from the Fox group, Regan Smith. Thanks for taking the time.

I'm glad to be here. And it's a full Fox day here. I know. We can just dish on everything. You know, the fans have really enjoyed all of our teammates being on the show because of the fact that we've all kind of had different paths to how we wound up on TV. And I think for me, it's been fun to hear everybody's stories and hear the fans' interest and everything that's gone on. So I guess we can just start with what have you been up to. I know we've seen you on some truck races and I know we all do something different with our time, but you work constantly.

Yeah, time is one thing that I wish I had a little bit more of. You know, it's obviously we've got our first, what, 14, 15 at the start of the year that we do. And, you know, it's fun. And I think that, you know, we all get to the end, especially this year because a little shorter than it normally is. And it's like, oh, man, we're really, like, we're having fun right now. And we don't want it to stop. It's like you just get into a routine. Yeah.

And everything, you know, everything's flowing good and feels good. And, you know, the second part of the year, I do some of the truck races, like you mentioned. And it's been nice this year getting to, you know, do some of the booth work and see it from a different angle, right? Yeah, not just be on pit road and it kind of opens your eyes up to different things. So do that the second part of the year. And, you know, we got a lot of family businesses that I'm heavily involved in and getting more heavily involved in by the day. So that, you know, the beauty of the of the TV schedule being the way it's broken up is. kind of gives opportunity to focus on other stuff and other stuff that maybe, you know, for

what, for 35 years in my life, I never paid any attention to. Funny how that works. Yeah. All of a sudden you start growing up and you're like, oh, wait, there's, yeah, there's more that has to be taken care of after it. And then three kids in the mix, Kevin, as you know with your two, that, that definitely adds a whole other element to it. So just chasing kids around all the time and, you know, their passions and the things that

they love. I've got my son, oldest son, Wrette, who's big. into golf. And I spend more time at a golf course now than I ever have. The difference is I don't actually play. I just get to carry his bag around. I feel like the mule for him basically just just tugging a golf bag everywhere. And my daughter, who's our middle child, she's big into dance. So dance competitions, all that stuff going on. And we got we got a three-year-old too. So all those things thrown into the mix, it gets very busy and fortunate that it is busy, right? So, You see a lot of it now from the outside looking in, from pit reporter booth, you see all these different things.

When you watch on, let's just take Sunday, when you watch on Sunday, how has it changed from, I mean, you're in the middle of it for 14 weeks, but how has all that changed from your perspective into what you watch today, what the drivers do, the difference in the garage and how it operates? Well, I think watching as a fan, I still watch the same way, right? Like, I want to watch the cars. I want to watch what's going on from the TV standpoint. I don't watch the same way because I'm picking out other stuff and I'm paying attention to maybe what a pit reporter saying or what the booth's saying or different things like that. Or if, you know, if there's a shot that I'm like, oh, I want to see that.

No, why'd they go away from that little stuff like that, right? So you critique some of that a little bit more. But, you know, I think watching the races, I still watch them the same way. I watch them. I want to be entertained. I like the rivalries. And if there's one thing that maybe for me personally has changed, right, is stuff that as a driver maybe I would have frowned upon or looked at and thought, oh, don't do that. That's bad. Now I look at it and haven't seen it kind of from both different aspects. I'm like, oh, yeah, do that. You know, let's go after him. Go after him. Do something crazy. Do something wild. So, you know, I think that's really the only big difference. from my perspective, but, you know, I say that and I'll watch next weekend at Kansas, and I'll lose my mind over something that maybe I'm not thinking of right now. Yeah, and when I go back and I watch the races, it's a lot rougher. The racing is a lot different than what it was 10 years ago, in the way that you race,

the way that you approach it, the time you spend in the Sim. I mean, it's an evolution, and I used to always tell my guys and people in this show have heard me say this a lot. You evolve or die, right? And you can't unlearn what you, what you learned in the past. And it's just such a different, it's such a different way of going about racing. And I feel like when you got into that, when you got into that 78 cup car, you started to experience that next evolution. You were at the very beginning of the furniture row piece of it. But I find that evolution of organizations and teams and people and and walk me through when you started to when you left that 78 team,

because I think that's a great example of the evolution that we talk about all the time on the show because teams changed or cultures changed, the way they go about things changed. And you had an interesting group and transition at the furniture row car of everything that you went through. Talk me through how it started and then we can kind of get into how it ended. Well, and to backtrack for one second, in terms of watching races and how the actual racing goes on track, it's some of the stuff to me is mind-blowing right now, right? Some of the, some of the moves. And to your point, I think it's a lot of it's got to do with the car, right? A lot of it's got to do with just the fact that everybody is so close. And there was a lot of, a lot more

separation, you know, back when I was driving and even on the early parts of my car. there was a lot more separation between the equipment. And now the equipment's just gotten so close that I think it's induced some of what we see happen on the racetrack right now. And, you know, certainly if I was to go hop in a car tomorrow, maybe some of the things I did 10 years ago, wouldn't, not only would they not work, but you'd have to have a different mentality on that. Very different.

And I think that kind of leads a little bit into, you know, the furniture row aspect of things and when that started. When I got the job at Furniture Row, it was, let's see, I guess that would have been 2009 was my first year with Furnitureo. I was coming off of what was my rookie season with Dail Earnhardt Inc. And it was not ideal. It couldn't have been more of a disaster than what it was. And yeah, we had the opportunity to maybe win Talladega didn't work out or it did work out, depending on who you guys. It's kind of at the very end of the DEI, the whole DEI scenario.

And it was just, it was a tough year. I wasn't ready for a cup yet. And circumstances caused me to have to go to cup. I needed another year of running good and expensive. And I knew that as a driver. So fast forward, DEI's, you know, downsizing as many teams were doing during that era in that year. And here's Furniture Row. And Furniture Row at the time was full time in 2008 and had decided they were going to scale back and go part-time in 2009.

And the way that it all played out, you know, Jay Guy was the original crew chief when I went out there and happened to be somebody I've known for a long time and worked with them through other organizations in the past. And it was like, yeah, you know what? This is going to be fun. It's something new. It's something different.

I think for me coming off of my rookie year, it was almost like a good reset button. Okay, let's reset and let's go build something. So I don't, I want to say we ran 15 races that year, maybe 16. and we did, you know, less than half of the schedule, but had started to kind of zone in on things that we needed to fix, things that needed to be better, things that we needed to try and start targeting and got it to a point where Barney, who, Barney Visser, who owned Furniture Row Racing had said, let's go back full-time racing. And, you know, I thought that was a big

moment, right? Okay, now we're going back full-time. And it's going to be a whole new set of problems and a whole new set of things that we've got to figure out and we've got to work on and work. work towards, but we're ready for it. We can tackle it and we can move forward on it. Now, is that, now, I don't, I don't mean to interrupt you, but is that from your personality, I look at you as a leader, were you kind of a person that pushed in those scenarios as the things that you needed to fix? Because there's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's not a lot of Joey Laganos, right? There's not a lot of Joey Lagano's that can lead their team and push. Was that, was that your, did you find yourself in that role?

Not at all. No, not at all. And especially back then, I would have been, I think at the time I was probably 28, 29 years old, something like that. And I was still trying to find my way as a driver, right? So even though I might have known things and felt things that I'm like, man, we need to push, I was always a guy that was, what can I do better? How can I improve? I can't.

I'm messing up. I'm not driving it good enough. And I was always the guy that was worried like, man, what are they thinking of me? I just, you know, I went out there and I was a tenth off that lap compared to the lap before. they probably think I can't, you know, I can't drive a lick right now and they're going to fire me next week. So I felt like, you know, even at Furniture Row, maybe not the earliest, I didn't ever feel like I was fighting for my job. But you know how it is. Like in the Cups series, you're always fighting for your job. There's always somebody that wants that seat. There's, you know, there's 40 seats.

And at the time, there was like 40 seats. And there was less and less teams. The garage was continuing to get smaller and smaller. And it creates new problems that you didn't even know how. to prepare for. 100%. From the media, the team, just the, the pure competition of the Cubs series and the pressure that goes with it is something that you can't explain to people unless you're in the middle of it.

Oh, it is a pressure cooker. It is literally, and it is what you make of it, right? And I felt like I always had a challenge, not only furniture, or just through my whole career of being able to deal with that pressure. I was super competitive, right? And if it's not going right, if you're finishing 20th or 22nd or 23rd and not getting the results you want. And, you know, if we're being honest, that was a good majority of my cup career, was just feeling like the results weren't there.

And, you know, always scratching your head on Monday and being mad when you're flying home on Sunday and trying to piece it together. And you mentioned was I a guy that would push for those changes and push for different things like that. I didn't push hard enough. And that's something I learned after the fact. right? I didn't realize that until it was too late. Nobody cares about you more than you. That's what I tell all of our young guys. You've got to speak up. For any of the young drivers, I think that's the best advice they can get, right?

You got to that point for a reason and trust in yourself, trust in your ability and what you're doing. Don't always pin it on you and say, well, I got to get better because then that shows weakness. And then that's all anybody's looking for if they are trying to look for a scapego. And I'm not saying anybody ever did this in my situations. Yeah, it goes in tears. It goes from the driver, and then it goes to the crew chief protecting his job, and then the engineers protect their jobs. And it's nonstop.

And, you know, it's to circle all the way back a little bit, furniture was unique from a standpoint of it was always trying to get a little bit better, right? We were always trying to go up, up, up more so. And, you know, 2010, we had brought some people in. J. Guy had left and was going to crew chief, Brad Keselowski, at Penske, which was a great opportunity for him. And what was, I believe that would have been Brad's rookie, I think it was Brad's rookie year officially.

I don't remember all the rules to the rookie of the year back then, but maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. And it allowed us to, okay, who else is coming in? And we had an engineer at the time that was going to be the lead engineer, Ryan Coneyum, who I had known from working at other teams. He had decided to come out to Denver and be a part of it. well, he was the one that was ultimately responsible for bringing Cole Pern in. And that was, you know, that ultimately ended up being the move that got furniture to row

to where we all saw it when it, you know, in the heyday when it was championship and, you know, all the wins and everything they did with Martin. That was kind of the key moment there. And that was what really helped us to advance the program and push the program along. Ryan was the only crew chief for like five or six races, and it just didn't work out, right? He worked for Barney for a number of years in Denver, actually doing a machine shop. And it's a machine shop that to this day still makes parts for the cup cars right now. And so, you know, it kind of all balanced out nicely.

Pete Rondo took over the crew chief and duties. And we had a lot of just really good people that had come there from North Carolina, different reasons for all of them, right? Maybe they just wanted to change. And you know as well as I do the, all the shop. in North Carolina together, it can really get compacted and feel like a little bit of a rat race at times. Guys pushing toolboxes down the road like it used to happen back in the day to the next job, to the shop right next door. And we just had a nice mix of guys that were, you know, that were really intelligent, but loyal.

Once you move to Colorado, you're even more of a team than you could ever believe because that's, you probably don't know anybody else in the area. Wherever you're living, whatever you're doing, you're meeting all new people and it creates this kind of a connection with everybody that was there and you know it really all the way through you know 2011 we went a race and and you know yeah we stayed not just a race it was a good of the races yeah but you know we had started building a lot of speed and the cars just kept driving better and better and better and we were always kind of you know highlighting okay what's the next area to fix what's the next thing to do what's what's the next thing to try um and and really and i credit cole with a lot of this um thinking

outside the box on a lot of stuff yeah and and really being able to kind of see different things and you know it for me right when i got done at furniture row it was it was kind of a weird how that all came about um 2011 was a year that all of a sudden okay now we're showing up we're we're qualifying good everywhere, we're fast. Some races, we didn't know how to put it together all the way through the end. And a lot of that I would pin on me. I was still very green in terms of the Cup Series and finding my way in the Cup Series. And it becomes different when you go from the middle of the pack to the front of the pack and the decisions and the things that you have to do. And how much smaller the margin for air is in terms of getting it just right to keep it up there.

And, you know, I didn't have a good understanding or knowledge of that. I knew how to go fast. I don't know how to go fast for a long time and I was trying to refine that and figure all that out. But at end of 2011, I think it was actually right after Watkins Glen, some things that happened and Cole had actually gotten let go from the team. And there was a lot of big changes that happened going into,

because of that happened going into 2012. And, you know, it's, without being rude and how I say this, I was very concerned when we like, when Cole was no longer there about what was going to happen and what was going to take place. And you asked how much did I push for stuff? The one thing that I pushed harder for out there than anything else and that I lost my mind over was we need him here. We need him here. We can't do this. This is our speed. And in terms of a leadership role from finding that speed and making sure all of our engineering was going good, he was the guy. And, and it, I mean, it was just overnight.

And I can't even, to somebody that's never driven a race car, it's tough to describe how quick a race car can go from really good to just not something that you can compete with. Well, we proved it in about a four-month window. Details matter. Oh, my goodness. And I can back that statement up simply by saying 2012, we get halfway through the year, and I'm losing my mind.

It's just nothing's going good. everything that we had been building on for three years, it's like we just threw it all the way. It was gone. And we were running terrible. And I want to say it was after Sonoma had a chat in the rental car, heading to the airport with some of the leadership. And I just said, guys, it's like, what are we doing? Like, can't we go bring some of these guys back? If we know we've got good people that we can get here tomorrow, why don't we do it? And shortly after that, the church, change was made and actually Cole Pern and Todd Berry were brought back together. Todd Barryer at the time, I think he was crew chief for Bobby Labani maybe at the time. And I don't remember

which team it was. It may have been JTG racing or Gishter back in the day. And they came out. And one of the first races or the first race that they were back. And mind you, we hadn't even sniffed the top 20 all year long. We were blowing engines. If there was a problem, even tracks that we felt like, okay, we're still going to be okay at. It was, you know, it just, it was as bad as you could imagine. And first race back for them was indie of when they both came in. And I remember having a conversation with Cole before the indie race. And I said, is it going to be a little bit better?

Like how far off were in? How bad was it? And he said, it was worse than I thought it was going to be. And I'm like, really. And, you know, little stuff. When you're taking 40 pounds of weight at the time in nuts and bolts and putting it in the frame rails, instead of it being in areas in the race car,

it doesn't need to be. Just little stuff. And the first lap of practice, I went into turn one at Indy, and I was like, oh, yeah, we can attain what I'm trying to find here. It does turn. It works. The left front's working on this race car again.

And unfortunately, kind of, you know, my ship had already sailed, and there was other plans in place there to where I wasn't going to be there any longer. But that furniture row for me was a lot of fun, right? And I actually moved to Colorado. So Megan, my now wife and I, we weren't married when we moved to Colorado. So she's kind of moving her whole life from North Carolina where she had been born and raised and on a whim, quit her job teaching, you know, all this other stuff.

And we went out there and had like this fun adventure is the only thing I could think to call it. And it was a good time. And you don't change it for anything, right? There's stuff that I would have changed and I would have pushed harder for hindsight. and rather it changes the end result of how long are to team or where the, you know, where the trajectory of it goes and where it ends up at. I don't know. I can't sit here and say that.

All I can say is there's definitely stuff I would have done different. And I didn't learn that until it was too late. So, you know, I think that that's a valuable lesson for a lot of the young guys that come into the sport because of the fact that they just sit there and they take what they've learned. and all the knowledge and things that got them to that point. And it's like all of a sudden you have amnesia and you forget all those things that you learned

and you're talked into, you're doing this wrong, you're doing that wrong. But ultimately it's, you know, you have to communicate with the team to be able to get the car right. Because if the car won't drive right, it will never work. You cannot drive a slow car fast.

I've said that for years. Well, and what's right for one guy is not always right for another guy. And I'll say this in front. You're a prime example of that, right? for all the years that we would go to Atlanta, for example. And Kevin's so good at Atlanta. Then we get data.

I've looked at more damn Kevin Harvick data from Atlanta. I can tell you what you do with your feet, when you do it, how you do it, why you do it. But I can't do it. And I could never make a car drive that way. And that's why it gets down to a point of, yes, that works for him, but it doesn't work for me. And still to this day, I think you got the most messed up breaking pattern I've ever seen in my entire life. it makes absolutely no sense. It's still sitting here right now. It makes no sense to me, but that is what it is. And, you know, so what works for one might not always work for somebody else. And I think

that's why if, you know, a young driver coming up, like, you just got to have the confidence in your ability that got you there. That's right. To say, no, this is, this is what I need. Right. And, you know, I've seen data and different traces from other drivers that stuff that I got taught and told to change that I did change that wasn't, it's not natural for you. And while it did work, the change has worked, you'll see another driver that wins 10 races, and it's completely different for a while. It was like, oh, yeah, you got to roll on the throttle

and be super easy on the throttle and be gentle with all this stuff. I know for fact there's drivers that are winning multiple races that it's like, nope, light switch, as hard as you can hit the gas pedal, and somehow they find ways to make it work. So it really is individualized. So you go back and you look at it all and you say, okay, if I map this out again,

what decision would you have said, okay, I wouldn't have done this, I would have done that? Now that you're sitting here several years later to just say that was probably a good decision. It seemed at the time, but I think for the longevity of my career, I would have done this different. This decision. Yeah. And that's a complicated answer, right? because I'm a big believer and always looking forward. Yeah.

And I have a hard time looking back at stuff because that ship had sailed, right? And that decision had been made to do something. And I do think at all moments, you take all the information that's in front of you, right? And you process the decision, you make a decision to the best of your ability and the best of your knowledge. But you're smarter now. Well, I hope so. I don't know if some people would argue about that. But when you look back at, like, you talk about the DEI piece not being ready, would you have waited?

Or do you think that that was just the opportunity there that you take? I would have waited if I could have. Yeah. There was other factors in play in that decision and that I couldn't get around. And it was stuff that had nothing to do with the racetrack. And it was stuff that had to do with at the time. Ginn had merged with DEI. Right.

And it was a really complicated merger. and the way the teams were consolidated. We went in, the last year of Ginn, which would have been 2007 season, we, or I guess it was kind of the first year as well, we went into the start of that year. And the plan was me to run 12 races when Mark wasn't going to run full time in the cup car. He didn't want to run the car tomorrow yet,

didn't want to learn a new car at the time. So here I am like, okay, I can run 12 cup races with Mark Martin as a mentor to start to learn. and then have a full year of Xfinity or Bush at the time in a really good car. And I'm like, this is perfect. Well, halfway through the year, all of a sudden things were changing. And it was going to be, hey, we're going to cut back to two cars. And starting at Indy, you're going to be full time in the 14 car, which at the time was Sterling Marlins car.

And you're going to run the rest of you during a cup car. And I'm like, okay. Well, yeah, I guess. And we had just gotten that program, that Bush program, to where. it was really good. Like it was, there was races that you would go drive it and I'd drive 80% and be driving away from the pack. Right.

And it was, it had come along and progressed just, just at a level that you couldn't even believe in, and you talk about fun teams. That was a group of misfits. Yeah. And I say that, you know, with all these guys still being my friends, it was a group of guys that like, we just pieced together. Doug Randolph pieced them together. He was the crew chief.

And it's, and it's like, it was just, there was no pressure. It was just, let's go have fun. weekend. So to get back on track here, because I tend to get derailed on having a conversation. We have no rules here. Oh, that's good. I like no rules. Had I been able to say, no, I'm going to wait and I'm not ready for cup, I would have done it in a heartbeat. And, you know, it's interesting because I think there's some scenarios in the garage right now to where you see some of that happening. And it's tough to do that, right, when the opportunity's there. But I think a driver also knows when they are and when they're not ready. I think I had enough cup races to be able to see,

like, no, I need to refine my skill and my craft a little bit here to be able to compete with what those guys are doing. I need to find a better feel for the cars. I need to understand which corner of the car I want it driving off of and why I want it driving off of it, maybe at this track, different than that track. So, you know, I just, I don't think I can look at it and say there's one moment. So what was the moment that said, okay, I'm going to go do TV? Well, that one was a little bit easier decision. So I, 2016, you know, all the stuff, Junior Motorsports and all that's in the middle there. And, you know, I felt like the last year for me at Junior Motorsports was 2015.

And that was, you know, on paper as well as me as a driver. I felt like, man, I've finally figured this stuff out, right? I finally understand what I want out of a car at all moments. And even my first year there, I think you would run some races. and it would have been 13, which was my first year there. And, you know, you and I had worked together other years, rather it was through RCR relationships and affiliations and things like that at the time. But it really, you know, those years at JRM, I had matured a lot.

I had calmed down a lot. I wasn't cussing on the radio quite as much. The last year at J.R.M, I had a kid. So I was like, that me out a lot. And I probably, hindsight probably should have done that about 10 years prior. It sure is a lot easier to function. I lived on the wild crazy side on the radio, and it just creates more problems. It makes everybody mad.

And I'm a Yankee. I had no problem. That's my pop off relief valve, right? It is to yell it and scream it. And I'm like, well, check your feelings at your door, because it is what it is. I'm going to say what I say. And then I'm going to go out of the car and we're going to go talk about, okay, how do we get better? And sometimes I just need to scream, right?

Yeah. But ultimately, I felt like, you know, that last year at J.R. I had really started understanding a lot of things and started getting to a point where I'm like, yes, I feel like I can help a program even more now than I've ever been able to help. And went back up to Cup with Tommy Baldwin. And, you know, we talked earlier about the separation in the garage and how the cars are so close right now that just changed the racing. I misjudged the garage. And it was a last-minute deal that came together. And as I've learned after the fact, there was a lot of things that happened prior to me getting.

called saying, hey, do you want to two weeks before Daytona, do you want to go cup racing, you know, full time? I'm like, well, that never happens two weeks before Daytona. What's going on here? Well, we don't have a driver. And, you know, at the time Alex Bowman was in the car. And, and I guess he didn't even know that he wasn't driving the car until he read it online. I didn't find that out until after the fact as well. I thought it was all kind of on the up and up or whatever had taken place there. But, you know, thought, okay, I can hop in that car. And, yeah, we can run 21st, 20 seconds, something like that. And I had totally misjudged the separation in the garage and the equipment and how

just how far apart things had grown. And, you know, it was a tough year. And we had good people and we worked hard. And Tommy's still to this day, a very good friend of mine. And we were friends before that, friends after. It just, I think it was a tough year on all of us. And at the end of that year, he had decided to sell the charter. And, you know, he'd come to me and ask my opinion.

So Tommy, I think, you know, absolutely. If it makes sense for you, don't worry about me. You worry about you. And I appreciated that he was thinking that much to have that conversation. He didn't need to do that, right? And that left me kind of in a situation in 2017 of trying to do fill in roles and trying to piece together a schedule however I could and just hopping in different stuff. And, you know, I could see a path back at some point to getting in good,

and having an opportunity to win a race. But I didn't know if that was going to be a four-year, five-year, six-year pathway. I wasn't sure what it was. And the frustrating part was I felt like as a driver, I had a lot to offer. And I personally felt as good in a race car about being able to dissect it to piece together, hey, we need this or we need that or this is where we're lacking a little bit. I really had a good feeling for that stuff at that moment and thought that those were kind of my primers. Everybody hits their primers at a different age, right?

And maybe one guy that's at 23 years old. Well, I was a late bloomer on everything. So it wasn't going to be at 23 for me. It was always going to be further down the road. And right around that same time period, I'd been doing stuff at the Fox Studio for the couple years leading up to that more based on the Xfinity series and had actually done a race. I think it was 2017.

I did a race at Iowa. They had an opening and needed somebody that had some Xfinity experience. or was pretty current with the garage to go do it and did that. And I was like, oh, that was kind of fun. I could do a little bit more of that. I enjoyed it. And I got to, you know, work with some really good people. And they taught me a lot just in that one weekend.

And I want to say it was probably a month or two after that race. And I was actually in Colorado because we still lived in Colorado at the time. We had stayed out there. I didn't know that. Yeah, we had stayed out there. And we were splitting our time with North Carolina and Colorado. but anytime it made sense, that's where we would be. And we had no phone service at the house in Colorado.

We were up on top of a mountain. We had no internet, no phone service. We did have satellites so we could watch TV, which was really nice. It was in the modern world that we all live in right now. It's like, wow, you can actually truly disconnect from something. So I had a message pop up on my phone. And I was like, well, that's interesting. Well, to get service to call out on my phone, I had to drive down to the mailboxes,

which were about a half mile away. So I'd shout at Magna, like, hey, I'm going to run to the mailbox real quick. And I'd drive down the street and I'd gotten a phone call from actually Jacob Olman, who you know well at Fox and is a good friend of all of ours now. And he's like, hey, do you think you would ever want to do something like this? And I was like, huh, I guess I hadn't really ever thought about it.

Can I call you back? Like, can I think about it for a little bit? Let me drive back to the top of the mountain real quick. Yeah, so I went back to the top of the mountain and, you know, the air is pretty thin. up there. So maybe I wasn't thinking clearly and, you know, kind of had come to a decision over the next couple of days. I was like, you know, maybe that does make sense right now. And maybe while I'm not ready to do it yet, because of what I was looking at in terms of my path back to, to have an

opportunity to win races and being frustrated that I didn't and not being able to see that clear future as to where it was going to go, it was, it kind of became a no-brainer almost at the time. And I also knew a lot of guys, a lot of guys were about to retire that were probably going to want to do the same thing. So I was like, well, maybe if I can beat them to the punch on this one. Yeah, I was on the backside of, you know, a lot of when there was 48, 49 cars every weekend. I was kind of on the backside of that when there was less and less cars and you're really scrapping for jobs. So I was like, well, I'll get on the front on one of these here and be a great decision. As I found out later on, you were a part of that too. So that worked out, that worked out really

well. It worked out good. And I think for all of us, you know, the TV stuff has just been a great way to be involved in a sport and still be engaged in something that we all loved and put our whole life into. But last question, what was your first car? What was the first car that you bought and drove? First car I bought and drove. Oh, I'm going to sound bad. On the street. I know. I know. First car I bought and drove was a BMW M3. Really? 1995. I got my license in 2000. It wasn't a convertible, was it? No, definitely not a convertible. You were going to throw me right outside of what I thought really quick.

It was, so I had always had a deal with my parents, right? And I started working when I was, I want to say, I was full time at a race shop at like 11 or 12, not full time, like outside of school, right? I'd get back from school and I worked in a race shop. I cleaned. And once I got the bathrooms and the kitchen and all the toilets and everything cleaned, then they'd let me go try and learn how to weld. Then I'd be, you know, kind of doing it on my own and they'd come out and teach me occasionally a little bit. And so I'd always been saving, saving money up from paychecks and I never spent any of it. It was. was like there was food at home. I didn't have to go buy food or anything. I'm 12 years old. You're collecting money. Yeah. So from 12 to 16, I saved all this money. And my mom had always made a deal. And she said, well, whatever you raise by the time you're 16 to get your first car, I'll match it. And I'm like, that's a pretty good deal. I think that's great. So I actually, it was a Roush Mustang at the time is what I was, that's what I wanted. And I'm getting this thing. Like, this is where I'm going, V8, you know, supercharged or whatever they were doing to them back in that day. And I was like, yeah, this is going to be the best thing ever. And they talked me off that cliff.

They thought that was probably a little... So was it new or used? It was used. But it was pretty new. Did you sell it or crash it? I sold it. Okay. It actually got stolen.

Oh, it got stolen. Oh, yeah. It sold the car, right? And I had it for like a year or two. And I was like, I want a truck. I need a truck. I'm more of a truck guy anyways. And went to sell the car.

And guy brings a cashier check on the weekend and turns it in. And go to cash the cashier's check on a Monday. and it was a project of cashier's check. Cars long gone. They finally found it like three hours away somewhere. The cops found it. And we did get the car back and then I sold it a second time. So we sold the car twice.

Luckily it wasn't destroyed or anything. But yeah, it was a fun car. I got into a little bit of trouble with it. Well, thanks for taking the time. We appreciate hearing all the old stories. I told you that 40 minutes would go by pretty quick. I enjoyed it. A lot of great stories.

And I feel like we could probably do this again. So there's way more to the Regan Smith story. Thank you. Thank you. ALEEN SULLIVAN