The Dale Jr. Download - 163 - Moving on After Up 'n Down Speedweeks

Episode Date: February 28, 2017

Dale Jr. recaps his Daytona 500 and Speedweeks as a whole, and gives insight on the in-car eye test he performed just after his lap-105 crash. He and Tyler Overstreet also look ahead to the upcoming Atlanta race and field fan questions submitted during a Facebook Live chat with fans. 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. Cannon, Jr. goes to the lead at Daytona. Dale Earnhardt Jr. will lay claim to his first NASCAR Winston Cup victory. Dale Earnhardt Jr. has won the Daytona 500. Hey, everybody. This is Dale Inhart Jr. With me, as always, is Tyler Overstreet. What's up?

And it's time for the Dale Jr. download. Thanks for tuning in. We've got a lot of great stuff to talk about, obviously, the Daytona 500. We've got Atlanta coming up. We've had a pretty busy week, and a lot of things on the dock for the coming days. We'll talk about that. So, appreciate you tuning in. Let's get to it.

So let's talk about the Daytona 500. Obviously, we finished 37th. Boo. But you're 27th in points. How is that possible? Because of the ones that you earned in the duel. I was very confused. It's going to be hard to follow the points this year.

It is. Seems like it's going to be a little more challenging with those points that are given away after each stage. It's kind of going to jumble things around. Anyways, we had an accident on lap 105 while leading the race. Yeah, just up there chilling. Yeah, so I'd called the Gibbs guys. They had pitted early.

We were about to pit, I think, in about two laps. Yeah, it was within five. Right. So that's kind of frustrating. Anyways, I couldn't pass the Gibbs guys because I didn't have, we were running the top, and I couldn't form really any runs that way, which is why you run the top. People will talk about that here in a bit why that top works the way it does. But I had other guys behind me that were a lap down.

So it was like a seven-car pack and you were maybe fourth in the line, but you were leading the race. But I had cars behind me that were a lap down. and if I pulled out the pass, they were probably going to stick with the Gibbs guys, which would put them on the lead lap. So trying to pass the Gibbs or get them a lap down was not an option. Anyways, Kyle goes down into turn three with a right rear flat. Impossible to save that.

And unfortunately, I couldn't, you know, when you lift off the throttle, this stupid splitter these cars have, lays on the racetrack, It goes straight like a snow plow. Yeah, that's what I was wondering, because I saw a lady, T.J. was being a little bit of a smart-ass tour. Like, they thought you can just take a hard left, and that's not possible. It isn't.

Because, you know, that stupid splitter, when you lift, it lays on the track like a snow plow. And so I turned to the wheel lift a lot, but I just kind of kept going straight. For the record, the splitter is stupid. It is a dumb, dumb thing. Anyways, the car was very good. Obviously, we led a few laps here and there in the race. We had a lot of speed. I was real happy with the handling of the car, which we had struggled with in previous years.

We were very concerned with how the car was going to drive after watching Jimmy have problems in the clash, knowing all the problems that we had had earlier in the 2016 season. I don't know if you were just kind of being very, very patient, but it appeared that you weren't going out of your way to make dramatic moves up through the pack, but the car was so strong to where you were able to hang right there, top five, top six. Yeah, I definitely wasn't as aggressive, I guess,

in that particular race as I had been in the past. I didn't see a need to. It was, you know, we were only halfway through the event at the point when we crashed. The car was plenty strong. I didn't see a point in taking too, you know, taking too many risks early. and it seemed to be working out.

I mean, we were hanging around in the top 10 most of the day. Anytime we got shuffled back, the car kind of was able to respond without a lot of effort to get back toward the front. So proud of the car. I know the guys are upset that it got torn up, but we'll get that thing fixed up and get her ready for Talladega. Got a lot of talk about, we got a lot of questions, actually, and conversation about doing an eye test inside the car.

So after the accident, sitting on front straightaway, got a red flag. I decided to do a little self-diagnosing of my head. And, you know, obviously going through, so please understand, like going through everything we went through last year, I'm pretty self-aware and have under, I understand a few things that I can do. Obviously, I'm doing a lot of training and doing a lot of rehab on my own throughout the last six months to get this concussion cleared up. So I understand a lot of things that I can do to sort of understand where I'm at

and how healthy I am and whether I have any issues. One of those is a very simple eye test. And basically you take the point of your finger, the end of your finger or a dot or anything on a piece of paper and bring it slowly close in between your eyes to your nose. That dot or whatever the target is that you're looking at, needs to need to be able to kind of hold that dot as one, right?

So what I mean is, is you get closer to your nose. Eventually, your eyes are going to go bonkers and it's going to split and you're going to see two dots. And that needs to happen right off the tip of your nose, like real close within an inch or so. If you have a head injury or any kind of a concussion, that object will split much farther out, six inches, a foot out. So last year, your situation, it would split away out there. Yeah, and that's when you know

that you got a little bit of an event going on in your head, however you want to describe. And for people who weren't at the Darlington test, like, you'd come in and that would be like a test that you would take with the doctor after every run to kind of gauge your progress and make sure you were good. So it's not, it's something that you're very familiar with. Absolutely. It's just a real quick, simple self-test or someone that a doctor can use that I've had, like you say, when we're at Darlington testing for the, for the clearance in December, Dr. Petty was there. Every time I got in the car, that's the first thing he did over and over and over. And when you go to Dr. Petty and you say, hey, Dr. Petty, I think I got a concussion.

That's the first thing he's going to do. And so we're sitting there on, I probably, you know, I obviously brought a lot of attention to myself unnecessarily. I regret that, but I'm sitting there on the red flag and it's eating me alive, you know? And a lot of the symptoms that I've had in concussions in the past, I don't feel when I'm inside the car sitting down. I mean, your heart's thumping, racing. Yeah. I didn't feel the symptoms in the past when I was in the car.

So that's really the only thing that I could do to go, okay, this looks normal. This feels normal. So that was something that I couldn't be. I should have waited until I got out of the car. not drawing so much attention to myself, but I couldn't wait. We were sitting on that red flag and I wanted to know. This is the first experience with the five-minute damage repair clock. Because all three races were the way they were with all the wrecks,

a lot of people were up in arms about this new rule. What's your opinion now that you've been gone through it? Because the guys worked on the car for like four minutes, 40 seconds, sent you back out there and you said the wheel was out of line 25% yeah the car probably would have hit the fence just because of the tow being so bad I probably wouldn't have been able to run up to speed we needed a little more time to work on it another issue we had with the car was the frame was smashed into the fuel

or the the oil pump so that was rubbing on the pulley all those things could have been fixed probably in the garage We might have needed 30 laps or so of the race to get the car back together. We probably would have put a new nose and fender on it. Something similar to what you saw Chase do last year in the Daytona 500. But I'll tell you this. Okay. The crew chief may be the team, some drivers would be like, yeah, I wish I could get back out there and get the points.

A lot of guys don't want to drive race cars. I'm one of them. I don't like Greg in my car and then get back out there and being in the way and just kind of peddling through the day. Because then you're more of a hazard to the rest of the field and more so yourself. You're riding around in something that's already beat up and not as sturdy. Yeah, that's one issue. Probably not my top priority or my top reason.

My top reason is because it just sucks. It's boring. Right. And you're not racing for a point or two at max. That goes in the boring bucket. So that's, I'm, you know, thoughts on a five minute o'clock. I'm good with it. I didn't want to drive that car anymore.

If I am I out there with a good car competing trying to win, I really got no interest in just cruising around trying to collect points. Another thing that people were complaining about, they think that the stages caused the wrecks. But I'm of the opinion that they didn't, because these wrecks aren't happening at lap 59 and lap 119 before the stage ends. These are happening in the middle of the stage. The wreck you were in was because of a flat right rear tire.

Yeah. So, I mean, that has nothing to do with the stage. I'm, yeah, I'm going to hold off judgment on that for a few more weeks. I don't think it's got much to do with it either. Plate racing's just, you know, if you have a, you know, it looked like the truck and Xfinity race was just, just, you know, innocent, common mistakes that we see time and time again. You know, we've had massive big pileups at the plate races for years. You know, ever since they brought this plate into the sport,

we tore up a hell of a lot of race cars. So, if anything, blame it on a plate, not stages. Did it seem to you like they threw a lot of red flags this weekend? I thought they threw a lot of red flags. Is that going to be the thing this year? Yeah, I hope not. So the debris caution is so yesterday and now the red flags. It's going to make these races a lot longer.

The red flags is the new thing? Because they were like 30-minute red flags. Yeah. Like two of them in the first 30 laps of the experience. maybe this is their way of giving people opportunity to get up get a hot dog get a bathroom break you know the kind of the you know just like when you have like so you go to the panthers games right yeah what do you do when the quarter ends um sometimes i'll go get a drink there you go so maybe if the quarter doesn't end are you getting that drink um sometimes

you're going during action yeah sometimes oh man i thought you're a bigger fan than that what do you I would never get up in the middle of play. What if you got to get? That's a bit of, what's kind of disrespect will be honestly? What if you got to go to the bathroom? Hold it. Hold it. I race a car for three and a half hours.

I'm kind of good at holding it. Oh, well. So, I don't. All right. As a matter of fact, I was using the bathroom. I'm surprised. I'm surprised that you don't get booed when you get up in the middle action by the fans around you. Whatever.

Let's go back to the top line being good because they're at the end of the race. Chase had them running around the top. Yep. Kurt Bush, his pass for the win, was on the top. Yep. Why is that, is it just momentum or off the corner? It's momentum. So if you watch Daytona in 1976, not 1979, any time, I guess through the 80s.

They use the top all the time. That's where you ran. your car probably wondered up there more than anything. You chased the car, drove the car up there more than anything, but that was the fast way around. It builds so much momentum where when you run the bottom, you turn the wheel more, you bog the motor down, the car gets tight when you're in traffic.

If everybody's running the bottom in your fifth, sixth, seventh in line, 20 laps into the run, you're plowing off the corner. That's why the top, and you don't do that at high. At high, the car turns better, you get the right rear kind of swinging around and get the car kind of free, you stand off the right front tire, and you get monster runs off the corner.

And when we all go up there, it takes away the accordion effect that we have on the bottom. On the bottom, the field kind of accordions back and forth and you get multiple people with many opportunities and many runs on each other. When you get to the top, the accordion,

effect goes away and then everybody sort of gets this comfortable gap that's sustained throughout the entire lap you never really and this is great for the leader the leader's what the leader's the one that kind of really wants this because it dissipates kind of that accordion effect and it it it takes away second third fourth fifths ability to really create a run that's strong enough to use now you'll get some runs but they're very they're just not runs that you're going to go yet Yeah, this is one I'm going to take or I have to do something with this. They're not strong enough. And so you're not pulling out of line.

Because really, whoever pulls out a line and goes looking like an idiot because... Yeah, I mean, you go to the back and you get trained. But this has been the way... This is not new. People think... People are like, oh, God. This is just a new phenomenon that's been going on for, you know, last few years. No.

They run the top there at Daytona. In the 70s, they ran it in the 80s. They ran it all over the track back then, too. Yeah. Because they were bouncing around, and it was awesome. Do you think that's going to become even more paramount as the track keeps wearing? Agree, yeah, as the track starts to lose more and more grip, which it is getting really racing now. This Daytona 500 was so reminiscent of the old surface where the cars were sliding around a lot more,

and that puts the race more into the driver's hands, which I really love. Before everybody was, you know, the last couple of years, the track with the repave has been, everybody's been stuck like glue. It's not been a ton of fun, really, because the cars don't present much of a challenge as far as the balance goes.

But this past race, we're starting to see, you know, the old track come back, and it's starting to have, getting a few bumps here and there. They're going to start to get a little bigger, a little bigger each year. That place is going to continue to continue to get more and more fun for the drivers,

and I think put on a more spectacular race, you'll see more passing. But let's talk about, we briefly talked about the wreck, like Friday, Saturday, Sunday were just complete wreck fest. Overall, was that to be attributed to people being aggressive, just rookie mistakes, just dumb mistakes? Because in the cup race,

the first hunter laps were, fine. Then we had your wreck and then after we left, Jimmy and Harvick and Kuzlowski were all in that big wreck. Then there were like two other big wrecks in the cup race. The Xfinity race, you had that early, you had two wrecks in the first stage, including the one with Justin and Brandon Jones. It's a good thing that they put up those safer barriers because those guys hit a ton. Yeah, the 33 Brandon Jones. That's the hardest wreck. Hardest hit I've seen in a really long time glad he's okay he was the one that I was probably most concerned about the yeah the truck race Xfinity race a lot of big crashes a lot of tour up race cars

me and Kyle Bush were joking about all the money we were spending each time these cars wotted it up the cup race was a little more calm the first half like you said but then we eventually started seeing that intensity pickup and more accidents start to happen, but it looked like to me all these crashes were just little, you know, driver error and misjudgment. A lot of, a lot of inexperience in the Xfinity and truck races. The pack, the new package with the Xfinity cars, which I thought raced really well. There was great drafting and great passing. Yeah, the leaders seemed very vulnerable, vulnerable, yeah, which is great. So the, uh, the Xfinity race, I think a lot of those guys,

It wasn't, you know, didn't have a lot of experience with that particular package, and it showed up with some guys, you know, losing control of their car. Like with the Brandon Jones crash, they went down in the corner and hit that speedy dry and pushed up, you know, push up the track to start that. But it's just a wild week with wrecking, but wasn't it in 2016? They wrecked like 90 some cars throughout speed weeks. Yeah. It was either last year or the year before, but this one was over 100.

Oh, was it? Yeah. Wow. I read a stat. I don't know if that was official, but somebody tweeted it yesterday. Unbelievable. Well, I'll tell you what. As an owner and a driver, you don't like to see that many cars crash.

I hope that that's not... That doesn't become the norm. Yeah, I hope that doesn't become the norm. I hope that there's a... I hope there's folks out there that don't come to expect that type of racing every week. Especially at the plate tracks. We just can't keep, we can't stay in business tearing up. Right.

You know that many race cards. And you're not going to keep people safe, wrecking, especially as hard as they were in the Xfinney race. That was pretty ridiculous. It was so hard. Couldn't believe that yet. So that was the Daytona races. We had a busy week leading up to that.

We went to New York. We did Daytona Media Day. We did the Goodyear Blimp deal. Did the Hellman's appearance. We did a bunch of appearances Saturday and Sunday. what was the highlight of, or what's your takeaway from that? Because for me, the New York deal was really cool. Yeah, yeah.

I think it was a pretty busy week. NASCAR always runs us all over the place trying to promote the start of the season. A lot of drivers will do something in January to promote the fact that the season's coming. And then they'll have a bunch of drivers they'll send out to promote the Daytona 500, which that's what we got we got roped in for New York. They'll also have a bunch of drivers they'll send out to promote NASCAR Goes West, which is our Phoenix, California, Vegas race. Yeah, we don't want to do that.

So we don't, yeah, we're going to try to miss that. We got asked to go to New York on Tuesday. A lot of folks saw us on Dan Patrick's show. Amy got quizzed. She passed. And she passed the quiz. That was a lot of fun to have Amy involved, and Dan's great at, you know, Dan's such an amazing host and interviewer.

Yeah, he's a lot of fun. Really laid back. We did the Today Show with Soapbox racing, which was fun as well. Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen. That was awesome because, and we had Gail Summers on there, which she was so polite. Yes, she was very nice. Watch what happens live. Why is that something we were excited about?

Well, I was being married to Amy. Bravo is on the TV at all times. She watched yesterday. She watched the same Vanderpump Rules episode twice. Oh, really? Yes. We watched it, but I don't remember the same episode twice. Reruns.

So, I'm like, you know, that's just to let you know exactly how much Bravo is in my house. So I've become a great fan of some of the shows on Bravo. Atlanta Housewives is awesome And we obviously catch watch what happens live at the end of the day Andy's such a great host on there A lot of fun to catch up on You see some of these people that are in the shows On Watch What Happens Live

And you get to know whether that's really their personality Because they're going to be themselves on his show Anyways I don't know He was himself, regardless of being on stage, on camera, or in the back. I mean, he was... He's so... Yeah, he's a cool, cool guy.

It was a... It was great to meet him. I really enjoyed how much Amy was geeking out over being there. She loved it. She actually got to sit in the audience during the taping, and that made me much less nervous. I get super nervous going on shows like that. So when Amy's around, it's not so bad. We got a bobblehead.

Yeah, what did you do with the bobblehead? You're big bobblehead guy. I have the bobblehead and I put it over at Amy's desk in her office at home. I tried to get the second one for you. I know. It's okay. Anyways, Andy Cohen could have been right beside Cam Newton in my office, but not meant to be. They do sell them, I think, online.

Anyways, great. That was a lot of fun. I hope to have an opportunity to do that again one day. certainly, you know, we got a lot done in New York. Wednesday, we did a Good Year Blimp ride, which I'd never been in a good deer blimp. I was pretty excited about this. We surprised Paul Severson. He served in the Vietnam War in the Gulf War.

He works with NC Serves, which is a foundation for veterans here in North Carolina. Paul is a big-time NASCAR fan, long-time Dillen Hart Jr. fan, so I dressed up as a pilot. There's this, we got a video on. on Twitter and Instagram, I believe. And Facebook. And Facebook as well. Showing our experience with Paul, we surprised him.

I dressed up as a pilot and was up there in the front seat, as if I was flying the blimp. He comes in to take his blimp ride. He has no idea that we're there. And we turn around and say, hey, Paul, and he flips out. So we had a great time. We ended up giving him a $10,000 donation through a good year to his NCServes Foundation. So that was a lot of fun.

He was very nice. He showed up at the Helmand Steel. to see you the next day or two days later and then stop by the car on Saturday. Friday, Helman's appearance, we launched a new Strange Witch combo. Remember last year we had the banana mayonnaise sandwich. This year, the new sandwich is called the turkey nacho crunch. So basically it's turkey, mayo, and Doritos. So good.

Yeah, you can't mess up much with Doritos like that. I love Doritos. And this is a great way to eat Doritos on your sandwich. Yeah. It saves you time. Absolutely. So that's this year's Strangewich. This is one of my personal favorites. Saturday, NASCAR put together this awesome video using Zach Brown's My Old Man. I don't know why they made that, what the occasion was, but they just made this video.

So they approached us the week before because... So you're going to film me in? Yeah. They had done this for Tom Brady and Matt Ryan leading into the Super Bowl, because that's really when the song debuted. So it hasn't been out very long. And they were looking for cool avenues to put together stories. So you and your dad was a great opportunity and would connect with people. So they emailed us and said, hey, is this something y'all want to do? We said, sure, that'd be cool.

I had no idea that it would get the reaction that it did. But as of yesterday, it was up to like 19 million Facebook views. Wow. And who knows how many on Twitter. but it's just a great song. NASCAR did an awesome job, piecing together the footage. And hopefully,

I sent it to a couple people before they launched it, and they were like, oh man, this will get them crying. This will be a tearjerker. And I was like, yeah, it's a great video and all the footage meshed together so perfectly. So good job to NASCAR. Great song by Zach Brown. Very good, yes.

So thank you, NASCAR. I appreciate the tip of it. the cap to the old man. And, yeah, pretty cool. So, anyways, that was our week. Doing all those social media and doing all the appearances was a lot of fun. A lot of build-up to the Daytona 500. Speedweeks is so much fun.

And now we go to Atlanta. Yes. First mile and a half track with the newer, smaller spoiler and other arrow adjustments for this year. Yes, this, yes, yes. It's going to be a lot of fun. Atlanta's a very old racetrack, the surface. The surface is old.

They're going to repave it after this race. So this is the last race on the old surface. We're going to, like you say, run this new low-down force arrow package. This place is going to be slick. You talk about guys trying to hang on to their cars. You're going to see some,

you're going to see some guys earning their paycheck. Hopefully they've got some good in-car cameras for this weekend because the guys will be in there working. It's going to be, I think it said 70 degrees on Sunday, so it'll get a little hotter, a little slicker. That'll be nice. It'll be perfect for a race.

We won that race in 2004. We were third in 2015, second in 2016. So you know what that means? We're creeping up on it. I have high expectations this weekend. So Atlanta was your first? That was my first ever traveling experience with JRM. Traveling experience.

Is that what you call it? Well, yeah. Whenever I was an intern, you got to go to one race, and they're like, you go to Atlanta. It was whenever it was a Labor Day race. And it was when you drove the number five degree car and got the pole. Oh, yeah. That might be your last poll for Exminity. Well, yeah.

Who knows? But, yeah, and then we almost won. We were trying to stretch the fuel. But then we lost. You were a pass with three laps to go. I think Harvick won that race. He did. So Atlanta, we run the top there, too.

We run the bottom and the top. I'm not quite sure exactly which will be more competitive with this lowdown force, but I'm hoping, I love running the high side there, running against the wall, it's a lot of fun, but I'm hoping that that top comes in. Yeah, typically. Harvick runs that real, real, real, real super low line. Yeah, there's a, so the stripe that splits the apron from the surface of the racetrack is actually painted up on the banking.

Oh, so it's not on the apron. And that very small nuance creates a little bit of grip. The paint? Yeah. Okay. So you put your left front tire on that paint, and if you can keep it connected there, you're going to have a little more front grip, and the car is going to work a whole lot better through the corner.

So it's just going to add a bit more speed through the center of the corner. Harvick is one of the best. at doing that and being competitive at Atlanta year after year after year. Obviously, his track record speaks for itself, so I expect him to be one of the more dominant cars. We hope he's running the bottom and we'll run the top and pass it. Well, we'll see. That's the plan.

Okay. You're coming up with the plans. So I hope you guys tune in to Atlanta if you don't have a ticket to come to the race in person. Before we go, since we got through all our racing stuff, I hear a rumor. Oh. that you guys, I don't know where this came from. Are y'all, like, putting it together while you're sitting in the bus in Daytona?

But are you and your farm guys building a rat rod? We're trying to come up with a new project, so I'm thinking that we need to build a rat rod. Are you going to drive it? Of course. Oh, I didn't know if it was, like, just to have. What the freak? Of course you would drive it.

Oh. Oh, those things are slammed to the ground. You sound disappointed. Those things are slammed to the ground. I'm nervous I'll have to ride in it. Why? Because they're slammed to the ground. What if you had a bump?

You go over it easy. Oh, my gosh. Man, you're worried about all the wrong. So what are you going to do with it? You're worried about all the wrong things, Tyler. What are you worried about? Nothing. Oh, gosh.

Oh, gosh. So, anyways, we're going to, me and the last project we had was sort of restoring the 65 and Pala that I've owned for a long time. It's actually been in my family since it was bought brand new. And we got that thing pretty much finished about a year and a half ago. We haven't really had opportunity to work on too much or starting new projects. But me and Sunny, Brad Burroughs and a couple of the farm guys are those guys, those are those are dudes that.

Sonny's a property manager out here. We got 25 rental properties. We got the farm, which is 300 acres. J.R.M. He's working on everything. If there's a problem, got air conditioner, broke, if somebody's washer ain't working, somebody busted water pipe, or whatever,

he's going to fix it. So, Brad Burroughs, you've seen him in some commercials. He's part-time actor. He has a sag card. He has a sag card. If you remember the Sonoco commercial where the guy's waving the check the flag, he's kind of like a, you know, construction worker,

downtown Charlotte. That is Brad Burroughs. So Brad has been in a bunch of commercials, but anyways he mows he mows grass out on the property and he's just you know regular farm hand helping on helping sunny out we have a couple other guys out there putting in a lot of hours mowing and so forth anyways this group uh we get into building projects and building cars or working on something and i think we're going to tackle a rat rod so basically you try to build this thing as cheap as possible and you can get creative as creative as you want. I'm leaning toward a wagon, something that's maybe like the,

maybe like a Chevy Nomad or a station wagon or something like that. That's kind of, we're just kind of, right now we're just in the, you know, we're just brainstorming right now, trying to figure out exactly what kind of car we want to build. And what I'll tell you what got me thinking about doing this is, is I saw on Twitter where a guy had built a rat rod out of an old Porsche cab, the cab of the, you know, so I was thinking, man, I love how just, it's a blank canvas. You just start from scratch and you do whatever you want.

And it's just the bare minimum, you know, you've got to have a motor that runs, good drive line, brakes. So do you want it to have like the whole, rusted look and everything. I'm not sure exactly what we're going to end up with, whether we'll have a painted car, whether we'll, you know, maybe we'll just, you know, blast it and then put a clear coat on the steel. I'm not sure exactly where we're going to end up.

We're just brainstorming right now about getting a proper cab to start with. But it's going to be a lot of fun, you know, tearing things down and building them back up and creating your own, you know, version. and getting as, you know, getting as creative as possible. Sonny's really, really good at being creative, making fun things with the shifter or, you know, different ways to do things. He's pretty good at that. So he sees and he's pretty observant and goes to all these,

he goes to all those car shows and meet and greets and stuff around town at Sharpeer Speedway and what have you, the cruise ends and all that stuff. So he's seeing all kinds of stuff all the time. So stay tuned fans because this will most likely be plastered all over Twitter. Yeah, we'll keep everybody up to feed. If anybody's got any cool ideas on rat rods, just anything. No bad ideas, though. Well, there is no bad idea with a rat rod.

I don't believe you make it your own. Only you have to like it. Actually, yeah, just tweet us at Dirtymoor radio. Hashtag DJD. Send us some pictures, some ideas on what we can do with our rat. Rod, maybe we'll use them if we do, we'll let you know. All right, let's get to some Twitter questions. Sounds good.

Someone asked, did TJ give you any indication of Kyle's wreck or was there no time? Yeah, there wasn't any time for that. I was shocked when I saw Kyle turn it around. I didn't know how that happened. His car went around pretty quick, so now that, you know, it makes sense that he right rear tire flat. But at first I wasn't sure whether he was spun out or what, because we came up on these cars that I believe had

they had just exited pit road or yeah it was a small group like yeah it was like three cars we just ran them down or something and one went high and one stayed low and so we we started to try to go through the middle and I thought

you know you can't really see through all these cars as to where everyone's at so it was pretty touch and go there for a few seconds but I don't know how Kyle got a flat I guess he ran over ran over something obviously

It happens. Well, not rarely. Somebody asked, do you feel the cars need more downforce at Daytona? No, no, no, no, no. Downforce is, yeah, we got too much downforce as it is. These cars, you know, more downforce you got, the easier the cars are to drive, and we don't want to make the cars easy. We want the cars hard to drive.

What are you looking forward to most this season on or off the track? man i don't know um that'd be cool that'd be easier to say if it was multiple choice i um is there like a particular race that you're excited for no you know i i get that i get the question all the time what what's your favorite track just about every week i get asked what my favorite track is um i love the short track racing so i anytime we go to martinsville bristol i enjoy those uh jtona's fun i'm looking forward to this one i'm looking forward to this weekend. Atlanta. This will be the last race on the old surface, so

looking forward to that. California is a great track. It should be interesting how the lowdown force works at a lot of these different places. But there's not one that stands out. I'll tell you right now, I wish I could skip the road courses, but I think I say that every year. But you were real fast, it's

phenomenal last year. I can care less. I don't like racing there. That was exciting, though. I don't care. Remember that Paris Cissars they gave you for winning practice? I hate that it's exciting because I don't like it. I wish it was boring and people hated it too. But it seems like it's what the fans really like watching. They like crashing.

Well, they like road courses because I think the field stacks up. The field stacks up and it's not. Is it the crashing? It's the beating and banging, I think. Yeah. Not necessarily crashing. Yeah. Crashing was Daytona.

Yeah. Hopefully they didn't like that. Somebody else asked, do you think the pitch strategy during the stages will be different for the non-plate tracks like it was at Daytona? where the Toyota's and the Ford's kind of short pitted. Yeah, I think that you might see a lot of that. You know, guys are going to put themselves in position

to try to maximize opportunity to get points at the end of each of these stages. They may give up some, you know, there may be some guys that are mid-packed that see that they're not going to get that chance to grab some points in this first stage, and they may pit early. They may pit early to put themselves in a better position

to get points later in the second stage. I'm not sure. It just depends. I think you're going to, you know, see these crew chiefs try to get queued and, you know, outsmart their competitors. It'll all sort out real quickly over the next several weeks as to what the best strategy is and then everyone will be doing that. And it won't really, you won't see the field on so many different strategies as you did in Daytona.

But I think you might still see a couple of teams trying to do some things differently and get off the same strategy as the rest of the. the field just to see if that's an advantage later on. Someone else asked, do you have more head and neck safety features in your car? I think you talked a little bit about the headrest on Sunday. Yeah, we certainly did. Actually, so this is kind of how that went. This is pretty interesting back and forth from NASCAR.

I was thinking to myself, I was getting a massage. I think it was Valentine's Day maybe. I can't remember. But anyways, me and Amy had gotten us a massage across town. And I was laying there on his table for like an hour. And I'm thinking, man, I bet I can do a better job with my headrest or come up with something better, safer. So as soon as I got up from the massage table, I text Greg, I said, man, let's get together and talk about our headrests. Make sure we're doing everything we can.

I know it's like the ninth hour we're going to be in Daytona in a couple days. But I want to just make sure we're covering all our races and making sure we're as safe as we can be. So me and him got together and I said, you know it would be great is to have a breakaway headrest like we used to have back in the late 90s and early 2000s on the right side. I never had any issues, you know, with a breakaway headrest.

So basically it would be a headrest that's strong enough to hold your head up in the corner while you're racing, but if you hit something, it bends out of the way. With the Hans, you're not going to, you know, your head's not going to go flying off your body. So that in my mind would be the best scenario for me going forward to try to reduce the potential to have a concussion again. So we had a meeting with NASCAR.

The next thing we did was get a couple of guys from NASCAR in the room, and we sat down and they brought a bunch of slides and a PowerPoint about all the things that they've learned and studied and showed me all the data and videos on the headrest. and where we were, why we are where we are now, why we do the things we do today. So what I came, what to take away from that meeting was, I had thinned out the left side of my headrest, the padding in it as much as I could to get to where I could drive the car

and lean a little bit to the left. But that creates a lot of room in between each side. So my head could move back and forth quite a bit. And when you're going to blow right front tire, your first reaction is to pull your head away from the headrest. And you create a big gap, right? And then it slams against the wall. You got all this. Your head travels and has a hard stop on the headrests, which might as well be a freaking robar.

Yeah. You know, which that's going to give you a head injury. So I got, we basically refilled that area on the area on the. left side. We left the right where it was because that's where I want to race and we brought the left closer to my helmet so basically the headrest is right here on both sides. I can turn my head just a little bit to look at the mirror and that's all I need to do. I mean the headrest is only this high so you can look over the top of it which you don't really do a lot you're kind of you know looking in the

mirror they're looking out of the front that's all you really do but the headrest is really close on both sides now. Basically in that in a crash that brings the G forces that my head's going to see way down compared to my old headrest. The car sees, maybe in a, say, let's just throw some basic numbers out there. Say the car sees 40 Gs in a crash. With my old headrest, my head may see almost double that. Jeez. All right, so I bringing that down and creating no, you know,

taking away that space for my head to move or bounce around in that headrest, brings me closer to the Gs that the car actually sees in a crash. Simple, simple stuff. Frustrated that I didn't already activate and know this and do this, but you can never be too mindful. And it's always great, I think. What it taught me was it's good to go to NASCAR. NASCAR does a lot as far as feeling in the drivers each year

on the things that they've learned with safety because they're always self-funding. the safety aspect of the sport. But it's smart, I think, on the driver's side to go to them sometimes and say, here's what I have. Is this good? What can I do better with this?

For a driver, a lot of times, maybe you put comfort in front of safety, unknowingly. So that was a good little meeting, and I feel a lot more confident going forward. Somebody else asked, how did you feel physically at Daytona before the wreck, which I guess this is a good opportunity

you talk about your new workout regimen and how you're in the gym every day in Daytona. Yeah. So HMS has a new plan for all the drivers. We have minimum requirements to meet each week for cardio and strength training. So it's been a nice kick in the butt that I needed to get back in the gym. And yeah, I was in the gym in Daytona every day during speed weeks, either lifting or running on a bicycling or something. So I got something I have to do every single day, but it's great. It makes me, I feel better. I feel much more full of energy, I guess, not as tired all day long. But I felt

great in the car. I mean, I was using an Apple Watch and I had a Garmin to sort of see how my heart rate was I used it in the duel and I tweeted out those results so you can see what our heart rate is during a race at Daytona. I think my average was around 100 and my highest was 130 beats per minute and I also used it in practice just to kind of understand how practice might be a little calmer which it was. It was a little, you know, your heart rate doesn't get quite as high. I might use it in practice at Atlanta I'm sure we'll see more beats per minute than we saw Daytona. So it's been good. It's been a good kick in the butt to get us all feeling better.

And I think that's a good direction for the company and the team to go in, hold the drivers accountable, staying fit. Someone else asked any advice for a father's son race team on how to be successful as a team and also deal with the family dynamics of working together on a race team. Good Lord. How long do we got? We're going to need a whole hour. Working with your family is a real challenge,

particularly when it comes to competitive sport. of any kind. The father can, don't be too pushy and help the son understand how to win and how to lose. I think that racing

is a great way to help your child learn sportsmanship, how to congratulate the winner and accept defeat and also how to celebrate victory. and there's ways to do it with class

and I think that, you know, getting them in, this was something that's helped caution out a lot. She was kind of, she wasn't very good at losing, but she certainly has matured, and I think racing was a big part of that. So for the kid, I think it's great to, it's a great way to help them develop social skills, interacting with their competitors

and the people that are going to help them. You're going to have some people that are volunteers that go with you to the racetrack. it's a great way for them to develop those working relationships on how to get people to work with you and want to help you. So there's a lot of great growth in their opportunities for the kid. But the dad, don't be pushy. Just kind of sit back, encourage. You ain't a race car driver, so don't tell them how to drive.

If you want them to get some driver input or want to tell them, you know, some things that you think that they need, improvement on or help with get another driver to talk to him once you're done racing cup would you ever consider doing like a Kenny Wallace or Kenny Schrader dirt racing life or just racing like all the time I think once I retire from Cup I used to say or I said just recently I think that I was going to take a reverse course out of the sport like go back expanding racing go through the trucks and then go into the late models I'm not real sure I probably will have a hard time not running a late-mall race every now and then if we still have, you know, if we're fortunate enough still have our late-mall teams around,

but probably won't be racing on dirty any time in the rest of my life. Somebody said, do you have any idea yet for a throwback car at Darlington? Yes, we do. We have the throwback car for Darlington finished. And it's awesome. It is freaking awesome. You'll see it soon. Yes.

I just wish, you know, my hands are tied. You know, HMS and our partners, they won't let me release that stuff. Just release who came up, or who pitched the idea to you. Release that part. I think I came of that idea. No, you didn't. I'm pretty sure I did. Unbelievable.

I don't know. You think you're the first person that's came up with that? I was the first person to come up with it in the meeting that we had. Roger Thatcher asked, what do you think about the Redskins for this upcoming season? I'm worried that they're not going to sign cousins or they're going to franchise him and trade him to San Francisco. I'm super freaking worried. Who's their backup quarterback right now? Oh, my.

It's that boy from Texas to play. Oh, Col McCoy? Oh, I'd be nervous, too. I like Colt, and he's done a good job when he's been in there. But, you can't. you know that that's not going I'm sorry Colt but that's not going to be exciting for the fans to go into the season with him as a starter and even if he does does an amazing job that the chips are stacked against him as far as fan support yeah I just don't know whether getting you know

releasing Kurt is a good plan even though he's a fourth round pick and they may get a first in return compensation in a trade but But, yeah, it's a great deal on the paper, but, you know, he broke the franchise record in 2015, then broke his own record in 2016. I mean, come on. Give the guy money. Let's go play ball. Looking ahead, we're going to Wednesday, nationwide appearance at Ball Harbor.

Bow. Ball Harbor, Florida, near Miami. Thursday will be in Texas. Santa Antonio to be precise for the commodity classic for Brandt. Yep. We're going out there with Justin Algarz. All right. So meet some of their folks.

Who's going to be at the nationwide appearance? Anybody? It's some sort of sales conference type deal. So just me. Yeah, just you. You're the star of the show. No Peyton Manning. Nope.

All right. For Brandt, me and Justin will be out there Thursday. Friday, we're flying to Atlanta, practice and qualifying. Qualifying. What time is that? I think it's 545. It might be a little bit. chilly yeah probably so Saturday one practice in the morning and we have the

Xfinity race at 2 p.m. on Fox Sports 1 Sunday the race starts at 2.30 a late start I think you're gonna see a lot of late starts this year boom late starts being late getting home no crap all right so that's on Fox though not Fox Sports 1 just good old regular Fox normal Fox all 4-HMS drivers are wearing special shoes this weekend to support Chase Elliott's foundation they are ready white and green and blue. They'll be auctioned off after the race to benefit children's health care of Atlanta. Yeah, so they're pretty schnazzy.

I saw a picture of them. Okay, looking forward to it. They're designed by Bronco Reese. He's a 10-year-old from Woodstock, Georgia. Is Bronco going to be there? Bronco will be there. You're going to meet him on Sunday morning. I'm looking forward to it.

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