The Dale Jr. Download - 15 - Charlotte

Episode Date: May 27, 2013

Recapping an eventful 600 and talking to the man himself, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is Dale Jr. and you're listening to Dirty Moe Radio. Unhappy times on Sunday night is Dale Jr. as his worst race of the year, Mike. It was a night to forget for a lot of people. The Dale Jr. download starts now. Happy Memorial Day. I'm Taylor-Zarzer with Mike Davis and Dustin Lee. As we sit here from Charlotte Motor Speedway, recapping a race, as you said just a moment ago, Mike, one to forget for Dale Earnhardt Jr.

as he finishes way back in the pack after his engine blows up. He said a catastrophic engine failure ended his night, and time to move on. Well, you're right, Taylor. You have to move on. That 39th place finish is certainly not what we were hoping for. But it doesn't happen very often. I mean, this is Dale Jr.'s first DNF. Let's see, since 2011, and only his third DNF in the Steve LaCard era.

So it doesn't happen often, and motor failures, certainly. certainly does not happen. And with the Hendrick Motorsports Group, it just, it's one of those things. And it stinks that it happened tonight because the 88 team was really hoping to have a good run and kind of get back to their early season form. But you got to move on.

It's still early in the season. I think they fell to six in the points. I think 81 points back now. And so it took a points hit, not a terrible hit, but we'll move on the Dover. Yeah, I mean, I know, listen, we're going to hear the reaction theater people and they're going to be all over,

or, you know, what happens on a night like that. And I get it because it's a big night for the sport. You have a huge audience watching it on a holiday weekend. So I get the disappointment. Nobody's defending that, you know, but, you know, listen, it was a terrible night. But you have to move on and you have to be mindful of the fact that going into this race, Dale Jr. We're sitting forth in points. So he has had a very consistent year going in and you would have to expect it's not going to happen again, like he said.

We'd certainly hope not. again, this is Dale Jr.'s first DNF since 2011. He just, he finishes races. And when he doesn't finish a race, it seems to sting that much more because we're so used to him finishing races. So, you know, I think they'll get back to their early season groove, you know. They're too good of a team not to. We're in a little bit of a funk right now. And it's just, I think the important thing here is to keep our heads.

And certainly Dale Jr. and Steve Lattar keeping their heads. heads and going to tackle the problem. But this was just a crazy race. I mean, what a weird race tonight with a TV camera, the TV wire coming down, and the long red flag, and then the cautions after, even after Dale Jr. was out of the race. It's just a weird race. Before we talk about Dale Jr.'s tough night, let's talk about what you just said, a crazy night.

I have, I mean, so many people that have been in this sport for 30, 40, 50 years were all saying Sunday night, I have never seen anything like this before. A Fox TV cable breaks, the one that the sky cam breaks onto the track. Dale Jr. runs over it. Eric O'Morola runs over it. Marcus Ambrose drags cable with him into the pits. It tears up the right side of Kyle Busch's car to the point where he gets out of his car and takes a picture of what had happened to the damage.

They give them a 15-minute break, which really turns into a 45-minute break. but everyone is allowed to come and take a complete survey of their car for 15 minutes. They let Kyle Bush and Marcus Ambrose run practice laps to see if their car was okay. I've never seen anything like this. The only thing I can think that was close to this was the 2001 All-Star Race. When they started the race, they threw the green flag, and it started raining in turn one, and they all went crashing into turn one. And so they decided to let the teams get their backups out, and then we're just going to restart the race over.

I honestly think NASCAR did the right thing, though. We were all sitting there, and I was standing there next to Kerry Tharp, who worked for NASCAR. And I said, in all your years, have you seen anything like this? He goes, no, I haven't. And so, you're like, is NASCAR going to let anybody work on their cars? I mean, you got Marcus Ambrose that's just tangled in the wire underneath. And we were at the time concerned if Dale Jr.'s car had any damage to it. Fortunately, he did not.

It was the right thing to do. Man, a bad eight days for Fox after what happened with Jimmy Johnson last week and now this. So let's hear what Junior had to say here about that. Lap 122, third caution. Here's Dale Jr.'s comments. There's my stretch and flogic cable. Somebody injured or something? The nine car has a mess here.

I'm scanning. There's a whole bunch of cars saying that they hit this cable and now it feels like something's broke. The 18 saying it, the nine is in here trying to get stuff off their car. So I hear you. It's all over the track. I don't know. Moving around, unless I'd look up.

I've been watching them every time too. They look fine. Dale Jr.'s comments on a crazy, crazy deal. Now, moving on to Dale Jr.'s night, Mike, he had a tight race car there for really about the first 100 laps or so, but still was able to gain on it, despite a tight car, got up to seventh at one point and was very good on restarts, but then lost the back end of the car, and I mean really lost the back end of the car, and that pretty much ruined his night.

We talked about this a few weeks ago on the podcast, as the track, changes, the temperature changes, it has these adverse effects on the car, and, you know, the car starts acting up. Well, you don't want to lose the back end. You don't want the back in to come out of the track, as Dale Jr. likes to say, tonight the back end came out of the track, and they were making some pretty big adjustments trying to get it back in. He got really loose, and I believe he restarted P7 after that long red flag, and he just kind of went backwards. He was a P15, P16, I think, when the caution finally came out. So the back end came out, really battling a loose condition.

Here's Dale Jr. after the back end, I mean, and using a NASCAR term, went to junk. Seems like all we just have heard the back, haven't helped the front at all, hurting our speed because the back's out of the track. Would you agree with that? The place getting in and off corner, the front, the whole turn in the middle. I've got to get the entry back so you can do something to try to help the middle. I hear you. So I can't fix the middle.

I can't hurt the exit trying. So let me get the back underneath him. So there he is. That was after lap 211, position 18, and was a lap down. Very disappointing. But it unfortunately got worse. Lap 257. Dale Jr. blows up as you hear T.J. Majors here talking about that, his spotter.

Just a way hot here as soon as I get a hole. After the 10 car, it goes by you. After the 10, I want you to get low. I guess that's what the smoke was. It wasn't a vet. That's the engine I've had, so we didn't lose a good one. Crazy enough. Kyle Bush was also blowing up. Both of them go into the garage at the same time.

Media going crazy. Dude, do we go to Junior? Do we go to Kyle Bush? I mean, it was crazy. as both in the garage at the same time. But Dale Jr. did take time very graciously to speak to the media, including yours truly. Here's what he said. The motor broke.

We were running lap down, trying to get a lucky dog, and a lot of race on left. I feel like we could still get back into the fight. We were frustrated with the way the car was driving and handling, but started smoking, smelling smoke, smelling burn the engine. and we didn't know whether there's a, you know, rubber built up, head or fire or something like that, but eventually started losing power and knew we had a drive line issue

and then the motor cone part. But Hendrick guys build great engines. They'll figure out why it happened. We won't ever have it happen again. The rest of the season, I'm sure. We'll have good stuff. And we feel like we know why our car wasn't driving well so we can bounce back and get it over with a lot of confidence.

I hope everybody's okay. I hope that the fans that were injured to recover fast and I know a couple of them haven't been released, but several halves. We're just hoping everybody's okay. This has been a fabulous weekend from Memorial Day weekend, and just wishing all the soldiers out there that they're having a good weekend. And if anybody sees a soldier out there, shake his hand, thank them for what they're doing.

The way the car drove was frustrating. You're going to break engines. You're going to have part failures. That's part of racing. But you like to think that you can put a better race car on the racetrack for the race. And we didn't do that this weekend. people have to work on that going forward, but we think we had some good ideas on why, you know, why we ran like we ran and we'll feel confident we can go to Dover with no problems.

And Mike, I have to tell you, I mean, he pretty much just had a that's racing kind of attitude about it there. I mean, you heard it. First, two things come to mind. A guy that's totally ready to move on, go to Dover, and second, a man that's mindful of what today, as everyone listens to this podcast means, that he would, after a torn up race car, he would still have the time to say, go shake a hand for a veteran. That's pretty cool. Oh, that is cool. And that's just Canapolis Manors there for you, Taylor. But the thing that I found

the most interesting in his comments were that they seemed to have an idea of why the car was as poor handling as it was. And I think that that's probably why we sensed a lot of confidence in Junior's voice after this race today was that they seem to have that idea. And they have no choice but to look forward to Dover. Listen, I know people are upset. Trust me, we've seen the Twitter messages. We're about to hear it on Reaction Theater. But frankly, it's not in anybody's best interest to lose our minds right now. It's in everybody's best interest to keep our minds, solve the problem, get back to our early season form. I think that's what Stevie and Dale are trying to do.

It's the only thing you can do. All right, so there you go. And that's what we will do. Move on from Charlotte and talk about the Dover race. I want to talk about some potato chips first, though. Before we do anything else, before we get yelled at on reaction theater. You had some this week. When you were really good.

You had the jalapeno. They were really, really good. I ate the whole damn bag. There are four flavors of Dale Jr. potato chips, crispy, original, zesty jalapeno, creole, and green onion, and Carolina barbecue. There's something for everybody. Go to DaleJ.R. Foods.com right now to get yours today. Before we have reaction theater, on Friday, you won't believe this. He actually was on the podcast with us.

We let him on. Well, it's kind of funny that he immediately took a dig at you at the very beginning to say, Thanks for finally inviting me. You won't believe what he had to say. Really funny stuff from Dale Jr. As we had a chance to sit down with him, he even busted Mike Davis for his inability to make pickles. Here we go.

All right, like we said, a lot of fun to be here at Junior Motorsports and talk to the man, Dale Earnhardt Jr., here on Dirtymo Radio, on the Dale Jr. download. Yeah, finally. Finally. I'm finally on the download. Yeah. It's good to have you, man.

It took y'all so long to invite me. You know, you got to pass the test, you see. We just don't let anybody on. Oh, I passed it. Yeah, you're doing okay now. Right, yeah. I was going to say where you've been. I've been, well, I've been listening to the podcast, I think.

Which I think it's been going pretty good. I hope the fans, I think the fans have been enjoyed it. I've been here a lot of good reaction at the racetrack from them. So you guys have been doing a good job, and I've been wanting to come on to the show, so here I am, I'm excited. I think we said, if he's in the top five in points by the time we get to the 600, we'd let him on the show. Isn't that the deal? That was part of the deal. Yeah, okay.

Yeah. And we would all grow. Yeah, another facet of my life is controlled by statistical. You know, it's just never ending. That's right. That's right. And we would all grow beards. Dustin yours looks great, by the way.

But, hey, you know what? I've heard you talk a lot about Regan Smith and Casey Kane and other guys that drive for you, you know, and how competitive you are as an owner. So, I mean, hey, this is your podcast. I mean, I want to hear, you know, Taylor, you did okay. when you started off talking about my potato chips, but when you asked a question to TJ a few weeks, you know,

so I want that kind of feedback too. Well, I think that the fan reaction is my favorite part. I love hearing the fans. And, you know, it's funny because they use it as a, almost in comedy. It's fun to hear them come on there and be creative and do their own thing. And they add to the show by doing that.

You know, they bring an element to the show that we can't create. You know, so that's kind of fun. and I like listening to, you know, Steve or guys like TJ having some of the crew on and hearing those guys, you know, getting some insight from those guys because you guys have an opportunity to ask them questions that you normally wouldn't ask them and give them an opportunity to tell a story or tell their side of the story that isn't usually isn't available anywhere else. So, you know, there's other platforms and other areas where the guys like TJ get to speak,

but they don't get asked those type of questions that we can ask them because we know them. We know we can dig deep and ask them some pretty embarrassing stuff, so that's pretty fun to listen to. I'm glad you brought up reaction theater because earlier I was handing out Dirty Mail Radio decals to the people that were in autograph lines. And one of the ladies, very sweet lady, asked me, does Dale Jr. listen to the fan's voicemails? And I said, listen, if you've got something to say to Dale Jr., call reaction theater because, yes, he listens to Reaction Theater. Yes, that's a good way to. If you want to say something to Dell Jr., that's a good. way to do it.

You have, that's basic, you think it's Dale Jr.'s voicemail. And then I was like, maybe I shouldn't have told her that, because I should know what, I should ask her what she actually wants to say to him first. Yeah. No, it is good to have that for sure. All right, let's talk about a bunch of different things. First of all, you just, a broad question, how do you feel the season's gone so far? I mean, you've had seven top tens.

You got off to that unbelievable start, at least statistically. It's the best start of your career. I know. So, I mean, how do you view it? Because I know winning is very important to you as well. Yeah, we've been trying to win races, and it's not, you know, it gets more difficult every year and more competitive every year to win races. The new JNsets car is really level to play in field, and everybody's trying to find that advantage.

We had that advantage. You know, we had some speed advantages last year where we were out engineering the field, and then everybody kind of called up by the time the end of the season came around, and that's what you've got to do. You've got to find that niche. You've got to find that next thing, and that's what everybody's working on. But we did start a year out real good, extremely good. I think we were the best fantasy pick, which is something we haven't been in a long time.

That's important to us. That is important to us being big fantasy guys. So it was just a great start of the season. Then we had a few issues. We had a bad run at the track bar come loose at Martinsville. And then we had an alternator break at Texas. And just a couple things like that sort of knocks you right off the tracks. And now we're sort of in rebuild mode where we're trying to get that confidence.

The confidence is there with trying to get those finishes back and trying to get back to where we were, you know, we had good speed and trying to find, you know, certain packages in the car that sort of relate from track to track. And we're coming up on a lot of great race tracks that I feel like we can excel at. And I think that, you know, where the summer months used to be part of the season that I struggled at and dreaded, now that's tracks where we run good. Since I've been paired up with Steve, we go to poker.

on Runwell. We go to Michigan and Runwell. So I'm looking forward to the summer. I look forward to going the road courses, trying to get some good finishes there. I think we're due. And, you know, so it should be a good summer for us. This is the most important question of the day. Did you really drink carrot juice for a couple of weeks? Well, not for a couple weeks, just for about eight days.

I was a friend of mine had talked me into doing like this cleanse diet where you just eat raw vegetables and fruits and you drink prune juice for seven days and carrot juice for eight days. It was no fun whatsoever. But I got so far into it, like, I was at a point of no return, you know. And I couldn't, you know, I couldn't chicken out, I guess. And so. How much weight do you lose? Lost 12 pounds in 15 days, yeah.

But I was running. How are you walking? I was running. Well, I was running and working out. and, you know, doing exercise along with it. But, boy, you know, I've done about a, I've done a complete 180. I still get into the gym every once in a while, but we got into slow cooking. Yeah, you're eating barbecue now.

Yeah, so we're making brisket and ribs and all kinds of stuff. We're going to do a couple of cowboy steaks. That's a barbecue detox. Yeah. So, yeah, we're all over the place, man. That's right. We've got to keep our organs confused. You know what we need more of are potato chips.

We need some more damaging your potato chips. Those things are perfect, especially for Memorial Day. That's right. We're going to go through a few bags. We're going to go to a few bags. There's what other thing we need to clear up that has come up on the podcast, and that is, and this is near and dear to my heart, do the PR reps that actually represent you at the track have anything to do with your performance?

Because let me tell you something. The gentleman behind us, Mike Hogg, has been taking a beating on the Dale Jr. Download, has he not? Yes. I'm glad finally somebody spoke up. It's been, you know, I'm one to really kind of boil that up, and I haven't really been honest. But, you know.

Mike Hogg and, you know, Mike Davis, you know, you figured it out over the years, you know, that, you know, when the driver's happy, the car is faster. And, you know, so I think Hogg's trying to learn the, learn how that works. He's trying to help the team. He's trying to learn how that works. He doesn't really know exactly how he. He affects that and how he controls that.

But I'm glad the fans spoke up. The fans always have my back cut out, Hog. That's one of the things you're going to learn. You can't win, Hogg. That's awesome. Do you want to say, do you have anything to say that? Come on. What do you got to say?

What are you doing for the team? I'm talking to the microphone here. What you got? I can't really defend myself when it comes to the use of Sharpies. But as far as at track, I mean, I like to think I keep the driver happy most of times. But there are times where those sharpies don't work and his performance on the track. There's a joke there. There's a joke.

One of our jobs is we always have to have sharpies because Dale Jr. is going through a garage. There's a lot of fans. You're walking. You don't have time to go looking for sharpies. And Hogg got it to a string of giving Jr. The most dried-out Sharpie, like it wouldn't write on anything. And so that kind of became the thing with Mike. It's just a piece.

That's a joke. That's not the whole job. That's just a small part of it that seems to go wrong every week. Yeah. Well, when Mike first came to work here, he didn't know that. See, the Sharpie is paint, basically. Yeah. It's a little tube of paint.

And the end that you write with needs to be down when it's in your pocket so that the paint stays in the correct end of the Sharpie. Now, if you turn the Sharpie upside down and you carry in your pocket, it will not write well. And so I thought they taught that in PR school. Well, that's, you know, that's probably a new class they should have. Ever since I said of interviews, now we actually, when we interview somebody, we actually say, hey, pull a Sharpie out, and we look and see which way they're actually holding the Sharpie, and it's all because of hog here. There you go.

Well, we have a lot of fun with this. We do, we do. We do it like busting your chops on the show. It's all in good fun. And his name is Mike Hogue, but it used to be. Call him Hogue. But he's Hogg now. He likes to be called Hogue.

I could say this. It is awesome to have Mike Hogue here, and I know that I speak for Hogue and saying that it's been, it's so fun to work with Dale Jr. Yeah. You know, even when. We're busting on each other and having fun. You just like having a hook here because you can stay home and watch your farm on Sundays. That's all you're saying. Watch the farm.

Is that what I do? So sit out there and watch trees grow? Is that what I did? He just basically all he does is he ruins cucumbers trying to make pickles. That's his weekends. You've never tried my pickles. I don't think anybody has. You went low right there, man.

Don't you talk about my pickles, man. Would anybody dare try your pickles? Shoot, I'm about to. Oh, yeah. You're going to see my pickles now. I'm telling you. A lot of wasted cucumbers. Well, a lot of fun to talk to Junior there, and we'll have more.

We didn't play at all. You know what we did not play, which I made Delete, is you totally throwing me under the bus. I mean, took both of my legs and threw me under there. What did I do? What did I do? You said, you basically said, hey, Dale, Taylor thinks you're terrible on a road courts. Well, you do. I don't think he's terrible.

Well, you know what's funny about that. However much you think I threw you under the bus, Mike Hogue thinks I threw him under the bus even more. Poor Hog. Poor Hog got destroyed there. His track record didn't get any better today, did it? More from Dale Jr. in weeks to come, big time defense of Jimmy Johnson, the friend that he is to Dale Jr., you'll hear that.

How he does on road courses and several other things we'll get to coming up. But it is time now with no interruption from Mike Davis or you. yours truly for reaction theater. Let her rip. Dale Jr. is a class act, and I'm holding Dale Jr. and Steve to it that they know what's wrong and they will fix it, and we don't have this again. Good night.

Hi, everybody. Harry Carey here. I've dealt with bad luck for over a hundred years now, even after I died. With that being said, I just want to remind Junior Nation that Junior wasn't the only one that had bad luck tonight. Kyle Bush, Brad Kislauski, Jeff Gordon, Heck, even Jimmy Johnson and Matt Kensley had problems tonight. But on a more serious note,

if you think juniors have a bad look, think about what the folks in Moore, Oklahoma has dealt with the past week. That being said, happen Memorial Day, and God bless America. Hey, it happens. We'll go get him at Dover. Set up for nighttime?

Set up for nighttime, my ass. Just took a... This is freaking ridiculous. Am 48 cars supposed to have alternator problems, is running in the top 10. When the hell does the 88 team get a car that actually is going to run right through the entire race so we can get a decent fucking finish. Kevin Harvick's an ass. Jim and Johnson's a bitch.

Brad Toslowski's a f*** moron. The 88 team needs to get their shit together. Sick of this bullshit. Our engine lasted longer than cowl bushes. It was unfortunate. Her engine blew up, but we can learn from this for the chase race at Charlotte and move on to Dover. Go Junior.

I blame Dan the junior fan for race weekend and not staying for the damn race. Hey, it doesn't matter what happens. If you guys don't admit that the idiot team has a problem. We haven't had a dominant car this year. We're not leading laps. We're not winning. In some cases, we're not damn competitive. So nothing will get changed until you guys.

and Steve, he realizes that you've got a problem, you're going in the wrong direction, and I don't know how am I going to make the chase and we keep running this poorly. I worry about it. The whole 18, Bill Jr., Steve L.G. Steve L.R. and I hope you guys pull that thing back out for Daytona. There's a beautiful pain scheme.

I want to thank all the military that makes it possible. Also, good news is. I've been calling panic mode for six damn weeks, and now our damn car blows up, and we weren't even a contender. And I'm just wondering if it's okay to panic yet, Latart. We're not supposed to worry about any race flap until the last lap, but all of a sudden we suck.

Hey, happy Memorial Day. God bless those who died in saving our country. Ooh, boy, happy Memorial Day after hearing that. Okay, well, hey, you always can call, and we appreciate people doing that. Even on a night like that, let us have it. And you heard Dale Jr., earlier in this podcast saying that was his favorite part of the show. all about the fans, good or bad, let us have it.

Let him have it. Let us have it. So we appreciate you using Reaction Theater, and you can hear all of it later in the week at DaleJR.com. All right, again, folks, when we're downloading the races each week, there's only one snack food here at Dirty Mo Radio. It's Dale Jr. Potato Chips, and you can get them, too. It's easy. Go to DaleJ.R. Foods.com to find a story that carries them or place an order for yourself.

That's DaleJ.R. Foods.com. Mike, let's throw the white flag. All right, it's somewhat of a low-key week this week for Dale Jr. Obviously, he has today all from Memorial Day. He'll regroup with his team tomorrow and begin preparations for Dover. On the Junior Motorsport front, I want to say thank you to everyone who came out for Fan Day last Friday. We met a lot of Dirty Moe Radio listeners, hopefully gained a few new ones as well.

So if you're listening to the podcast for the first time, thank you for giving us your time today, and we hope you keep coming back. Last Thursday, we put out a J.R. 360 featuring Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Casey. Kane. If you missed it, go to jrmracing.com and check it out. A big thank you to the great clip store in Huntersville, North Carolina, for letting us have a little fun in their store last week. And don't forget that you can play a huge role in Dell Jr.'s charity efforts by purchasing a raffle ticket for his new Camero giveaway. Go to the Dell Jr. Foundation.org for more information. NASCAR heads to Dover, Delaware this weekend. Regan Smith and Casey Kane

will be driving the Taxlayer.com and great clips, Chevroletes, respectively, in the nationwide series race. And on Sunday, Dale Jr. will pilot the number 88 National Guard Chevrolet. Taylor, that is it. All right. Happy Memorial Day. I'm so grateful to my father and my grandfather for what they did to fight for our freedom. Mike, I'm sure you have people in your family as well. My dad in the Navy, my grandfather in the Army, friends, and virtually every branch of our armed forces, we just thank you all. You're all my heroes. For Dale Earnhardt Jr., for Dustin Lee, for Mike Davis. I'm Taylor Zarser. This has been the Dale Jr. download. listening to Dirty Moe Radio.

Have you tried the new Dale Jr. potato chips? Are you wondering where you can find them? Today is your lucky day. Go to Dale Jr. Foods.com to see where you can find the chips in your area or place an order online. You can have them shipped right to you. That's DaleJR. Foods.com.