The Dale Jr. Download - 164 - The Most Punchable Face in NASCAR Belongs To...

Episode Date: March 7, 2017

Dale Jr. reviews his rough outing in Atlanta, as well as talks about the track's possible repave and recent rumors involving Las Vegas and quieter racing. Also, Junior poses the question of who has the most punchable face in NASCAR. 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.

The 2017 race season is underway and Dirty Mo Radio's race recap shows have you covered. Don't miss a single episode of Junior Motorsports Up Front with Justin Allgaier as he gives exclusive insight immediately after climbing out of the car. You can find Upfront on Dale Jr.com and all major podcast outlets thanks to Exalta. This is Dale Jr., and you're listening to Dirty Mo Radio. A Canon, Junior 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, it's Dale Inhardt Jr. for another episode of the Dale Jr. download on Dirtymoe radio. As usual, is my co-host Tyler Overstreet. What's up? Tyler also produces the show. So he's busy, man. He'll be editing this later for your pleasure. Anyways, we're excited about another podcast. It's been a lot of fun over the last couple weeks doing our podcast.

We're getting in a groove. We'll be doing our Periscope Ask Junior questions later. We're going to talk about Atlanta. We're going to talk about repaving or not repaving. We're going to talk about Vegas. We'll talk about riding bikes with Jimmy Johnson, who has the most punchable face in NASCAR. We'll get to that later.

Also, NASCAR, considering making the cars quieter. We'll talk about that as well, but it's going to be a lot of fun. So thanks for tuning in. it. So we're going to go ahead and get on to Atlanta. This is not a fun conversation, or I don't anticipate it being much fun since we finished 30th, five laps down. It was a long day. In stage one, as you know, the races are now in stages. So in stage one, we were caught speeding on pit road under green. We had a pass-through penalty. We also had a right rear tire go flat, which that was weird because during the race I made notes of what you were saying on the radio and you

were more concerned about the right front a lot of guys were seeing some issues with right front wear the way the car was driving and handling I wasn't worried about wearing the right tire out but I came around turn one and two I slid the car sideways which you know happens from time to time and it began it's kind of like a sweater if you you know pick a thread and you can undo the entire shirt, right? Yeah. And then it just sits there slapping up under the car? Well, it just unwinds like a thread, and the tire goes flat.

So we had that problem. We've had it before. We've had it at, and it usually happens at Texas or Atlanta, those really rough worn surfaces can really make that happen. We also had that happen at Kansas leading the race in 2000. 2015, I believe, in the chase. Oh, 14. 14.

You were kicking their ass and blew that tire. Yep, that happened as well. And the tire started unwinding, entering three, and blew out coming off of turn four. So that's happened. You know, it just happens. So I don't know. I mean, it happens to everybody. Yeah, I don't know what we can do about it.

Anyways, the speeding on pit road was funny because I was, we usually, I go off, we don't have a speedometer in the car, so I go off of these lights on the dash. And as I'm coming up to what we believe pit road speed is, my dashes lights will go green. I'll get one green, two green, three green, four green. Four greens are really safe. Then there'll be two yellow lights. One yellow is getting a little close to speed limit.

Two yellow is right underneath the speed limit. One red light is over. So I never saw any red lights. I was on two yellows the entire time, but we were busted in a, about four or five segments. So we thought, okay, well, we got to bring it down. We're going to just run four greens.

Anyways, it's very interesting that 13 total speeding penalties were handed out. And this is the first time that you guys have raced Atlanta since they kind of shortened up the segments on pit road. They added new timing lines, so they doubled or whatever the amount of timing lines on pit roads. So I don't know how that changes anything because we're not doing anything different than we did. in the past, but obviously it's cause some problems for everybody in the field. Because TJ was on the plane, and I mean, when you have

a day like that, you can't help but just be like, what, I mean, there's nothing you can do whenever it's like bad luck after bad luck after bad luck and TJ was saying on the NASCAR radio, it was like 88 too fast and segment three, four, five, six.

So it wasn't just one segment. It was a lot of different ones. Yeah. But, I mean, I guess the same thing happened to everybody, like you said. Yeah, Jimmy was caught twice, Matt Kenseth twice, Joey Legano, Truex, Chase Elliott, Harvick. So everybody's scratching their heads on that one. Does that, is that just an easy fit?

I mean, obviously, I guess it was an easy fix because you didn't have a speeding penalty the rest of the race, but does that concern you going to Vegas where they haven't, they've added the new segments on Pit Road? They've added them for every race, right? Right. So I'm not real concerned about it. If it happens again, we'll just have to keep working on it. Then somebody on Twitter was like, oh, well, you've raced for this many years, and you're going to speed on pit road.

You have one person on Twitter said that? Hey, I read the Twitter. Well, that's just one guy. Clearly delusional. Yep. Anyways, stage one didn't go so awesome. Got a few laps down there. Stage two, the car was a little bit better, still working on.

rolling the center better, getting a little more front grip in the car. At one particular time, we tried to stay out a little bit longer. Guys were short-pitting in those first two segments, trying to split the segments in half, really. So we tried to stay out a little bit longer and catch a caution to regain one of our lost laps. No caution came out. We actually lost a lap, an additional lap, during that pit cycle, because we stayed out, trying to take that gamble. The car, you know, we fought a lot of balance issues all day long.

The car would be incredibly loose. swinging back and forth between loose and tight. We made a lot of adjustments with the wedge, putting wedge in, taking wedge out. We moved the track bar all over the place from three inches down to an inch up, so four inches of swing in the track bar throughout the race. We did some good things that actually helped the car, but never really got it exactly the way we wanted it.

But I don't think anybody's car, even the guy leading the race, loved the way his car drove. Just some are faster than others. I think everybody battles some balance issues on such a slick racetrack with a new low-down force package. So it's a lot of fun to drive, even though we didn't have such a great day. I was wondering about that part because you were maybe two laps down, and then you're like, oh, but I'm having fun out here.

Yeah, it was a good time. I love driving. I know, but. Yeah. It's not, it's not. You don't like get discouraged, like. It's not only fun if you're leading. It's fun all the time.

Okay. I've never drove, so. Well, it's fun. Okay. Yeah. So even if you're running 30th, still a good time. Yeah. Stage three, early in the stage, we reported that we had either tires unwinding again or we had a loose wheel.

You know, the one thing about that is, so as a driver, you don't just assume that the wheels loose because the pit crew does not, you know, you don't want to say you have a loose wheel of the radio because it's tough on the guys. Yeah. Because the fans hear it. They assume the wheel's loose because the driver said it, but maybe the wheel isn't loose.

They're ready to crucify the pit crew. Yeah, the fans can get on the pit crew. Those guys don't deserve that. So a lot of times reserve or hold back saying that the wheel's loose and just wait until you get to pit road. Say, look, I've got a problem, vibration. That's it. Just say vibration.

So I try not, I thought, I was hoping that we had a tire coming apart or a chunk out of a tire or something that was causing that vibration. We pitted to fix it. The issue didn't go away. We come down pit road again. We added spacer to the wheel. Once we understood after the first tire change, after the first change of tires after the vibration, they could see the wheel was beat up, so the wheel is loose. So they can address that by adding wheel spacer. If I go back out and it's still shaking, that means that the first tire that was loose, beat the studs up, tore the threads up on the wheel.

So when you put another tire on it and tighten that down onto those torn up threads, it will not tighten perfectly. So that wheel will be loose as well. So what you need to do is come down pit road, put on a wheel spacer to get the tire and wheel and the nut out onto some clean threads. So that's what we did. It fixed the problem. no problems after that. So a couple loose wheels there, but once we got it sorted out,

we assumed that maybe we broke a gun. At one point, you were on pit road, and they pulled the front gun to the back because it was messing up on the left rear. Yes. So we thought we had lost a pit gun, but after the race, we found out that we just had glue build up

on the threads of the rear tires, of the rear wheels, and that gummed up the... the studs to where the tires could not tighten down, the gun could not get it tight. So we had a lot of issues with that. Once we got the wheel spacers on there, though, we sorted it all out.

Greg and the guy, this is something that I don't think it ever happened to me, as far as glue on the threads and the studs of the wheel, making the wheels loose, but Greg and those guys are going to sort that out. We took a wave around twice to get back to four laps down at one point, but ultimately we had to pit again and fell to six laps down. We ended up five down. It's a hell of a day.

Sorry that it was so disappointing to all the fans. It turned out. We had a great crowd there, though. Didn't you like the great crowd we had in the grandstands? The weather all weekend was awesome. The weather was awesome. So it was a good weekend. I love Atlanta.

I hate that it's not more popular. Yeah, I don't understand that because it's, it is a little bit of a drive from the city to get out there about it. I don't think that all the fans are coming from Atlanta. Yeah, but it's also two hours from. Talladega. I don't think the whole grandstands are full of Atlanta city folk. Well, I know that.

Okay. Well, I just was trying to... That's the big market around there. It's called the Atlanta Motor Speedway. Yeah, but it's in Hampton. But I believe that people probably come from Alabama, Mississippi, maybe Florida, Panhandle. Yeah. But if you're going to...

South Carolina. If you're going to have the opportunity to go see a race at Atlanta or Talladega, where are you going to go? Both. Well, that would be awesome. Yep. In a perfect world. It didn't have to be that perfect to go to both. So Atlanta's awesome.

And leading into the weekend, the big story about Atlanta was the repave, but then Marcus Smith over the weekend was like, here's this quote, I love all the positive comments we've gotten about the track surface. I assume from the drivers. We're just going to have to look into it. I'll tell you all the positive comments that we've had, it definitely causes us to re-look at our plan to repave. Yeah.

That's interesting because I don't... Why is that? I mean, so that surprised you that he's thinking, yeah, maybe I'm going to consider not paying it? Well, yeah, because it's rare for... Why is that so hard to... I mean, if the... So, if you're thinking, man, I'm going to paint this wall orange.

Yeah. And thereby comes in and goes, well, I kind of like the way it is. Wouldn't you reconsider just leaving it how it is? I would, but in racing, it seems like, people are like, I've made my decision, going with my decision. That's NASCAR. This is Marcus.

Marcus is different. Kudos to Marcus for listening to the people. Yes. I think that, so this is the issue that I believe, I've heard a lot of different rumors as to why the track needs to be repaved, but I believe that in the past, the weather hasn't been very good there.

They haven't had great luck. When it does rain with these older surfaces, we see it at Texas as well with the IndyCar race there and some of the days that were there for the cup races. If it rains at these older racetracks, they have those weepers that last all day and you can't get it to stop. It's water coming out from underneath the track

and it's just going to keep pushing water out. Once you do get it to stop, when you drive a car around it, the weight and the G forces that the cars have that load the track, squeeze that even more water out and kind of restart that weeper. And does the fact that the race is in like February, early March?

Yeah, I think that the date hurts as far as the weather goes. I believe, I saw, I forget who it was, somebody posted on Twitter that they ought to move the West Coast swing up a week and then go to Atlanta after the West Coast swing, give them a little better opportunity to have a later spring date. I don't hate it. I don't either. I mean, what does it matter? So, but I'm Marcus Smith, okay, this is Bruton's son.

He's CEO of Speedway Motorsports Incorporated, who owns the racetrack. He is a, he's one of my favorite people in the sport. very down to earth. We grew up together. We kind of knew each other since we's kids. I've seen him at Charlotte Murch Speedway all the time, Kelly and him hung out, became friends when they were young.

So me and him sort of kind of grew up in the sport at the same time. He's obviously a big player because of how many tracks they own and they have quite a bit of influence in the sport. But he's really smart. He listens to the drivers. Obviously, I take his quote in his comments that you read. is genuine. And he's the kind of guy that'll be,

that'll call you and say, hey, I'm hearing a lot of this from the drivers, what's your input? And I'm sure he or someone within Speedway Motorsports contacted drivers all weekend asking them their opinion once they started hearing different feedback. Were you one of those drivers?

Sure. Okay. So I think it's awesome that they're, you know, they're open to leaving it as it is. They got really fortunate. this particular race with great weather. And maybe they think they can hold off paving it even just for a year or two, right? Eventually they're going to have to pay it.

I mean, that's inevitable. But holding off for another year, maybe it doesn't hurt. We're not having problems with the track coming apart. Right. It's not like Daytona that year where you had a pothole in the track. So I think it's good for them to at least consider not repaving it. Because when they do repave it, it is unfortunately going to make it a difficult race to enjoy for a couple years before it starts to age.

None of the repaves that I can remember have been great races. Not for at least two or three years. Yeah, with the asphalt being so perfect. There's just very little room to get outside of that initial groove that gets developed. And the track doesn't get wide enough, so there's not great passing and racing for a few years. It would be so fast. And the speed, yeah, it'll be really fast, which faster is great. In theory, but not.

In theory, but it doesn't produce good racing. Yeah. You know. So, thanks Marcus. Well, on the topic of Marcus, he's also got another rumor come out this weekend. Oh, yeah. Now they're saying Las Vegas could get a second date as early as next year. How do you feel about that?

Because I love Vegas. Yeah. But. What is it about Vegas that you think is appealing? I know the town's awesome. The town's awesome. The facility is nice. The racetrack.

Yeah. The facility at the track. What about the staff? The staff is okay. The media center. For folks like me who go in there to work is super nice. They've done all that stuff for the face. They've got a dang spa in the infield.

Yeah. I've never gone in it. Well, Andy goes and gets a little spa action in there. So she'd like that twice a year. Yeah. I like it a lot. I think as a driver, I love, you know, the old track was great. I love more banking anywhere.

So when they increase the banking, I really like that. There's some pretty bad bumps getting down in turn one, but there is a second and a third groove, which makes it a lot of fun, especially in the race. You get up there on that high line and one and two and make some good time on guys down the back straightaway. Any track that develops multiple grooves in the corner is a track that I'm going to like. And so, like you say, the town's a lot of fun. We get in there maybe a day or two earlier, stay that night after the race

and enjoy maybe a Monday in town. That's always a good opportunity to have some fun with your friends. and I think it's a good ticket. I think people, you know, whereas Atlanta maybe gets a lot of folks that are regional, Vegas might be a track that. That's the destination. Yeah. Vegas is a track where people come from all 50 states, kind of like Daytona 500, right?

Right. So I think that's a great market for us. Two races there would be great. Where do you think they're going to take away a race from, or do they not? They just add another race and take away an off weekend. No, don't do that. You never know. We're down to two.

Two. We're down to two off weekends. I would hope. Well, I don't hope. Maybe one of the Loudon races. Man, really? Yeah, I don't like, I don't like Loudoun. You don't like Loudon.

Why don't you like Loudon? We stay in, no offense to people up there, but I don't like, we stay in Concord. And it doesn't really appeal to me. But I do love being able to go to Boston. I've gone to Boston a couple times and watch Red Sox. There's a lot of great. restaurants and places to eat. In Concord?

Yeah, just in that area. Oh. It's very, I don't know. I kind of like louding myself. I enjoy it. The racing there? The racing, the track, the area. Where would you pull a track?

Or where would you take away a race from them? Who owns Sonoma? Them. Yeah, let's not go there anymore. Yeah, good luck. I know that'll never happen. Everybody loves the road courses. Oh, yeah.

Anyways, that's a lot. a great idea. Marcus, you want some opinions of the drivers on what track you might pull. I know you probably already know, but Marcus does anyways. I mean, Marcus probably already knows, you know, what's the weak link. Yeah, there's one in the bluegrass state that could go away, and I wouldn't be upset. Kentucky. You don't? I don't like Kentucky. Yeah. Man. So this is difficult for, what do you think this means for a track like Iowa? You know, that's a real, looks like a fun track. It's a short track, which

are kind of a short track. It's kind of an intermediate in between the mile and a half and short tracks. It's like a Dover, I guess, as far as length. It would need, I've been to Iowa a couple times.

I tested there, but I didn't really take a lot of stock and what it would need to host a race. I feel like they would need to redo the whole infield. Oh. They would have to, like, knock down the whole thing.

They don't. Why so? There's a garage? The garage is pretty small. There's only one garage because they only run Exfinity there right now. And then they have an infield road course,

which seems like a bad idea for a short track, so that takes up a lot of... But I was just wondering, you know, when a track like that is trying to find their way onto the schedule when they hear about, you know, Vegas or somewhere getting a second date. You would think that Iowa being owned by NASCAR... Would that be disappointing?

Eh, I mean, it's not a... SMI can do with their races what they want, can't it? I agree. All right, we're going to talk about something that happened over the weekend. It got quite a bit of a buzz. And the holy crap, never saw it coming in my lifetime. Yeah.

So, have we talked about this on the podcast before, the workout stuff? We've talked about the podcast or the workout, yes. So if you listen to the past podcast or maybe you haven't, Hendrick is making the drivers accountable to making or acquiring or accomplishing a minimum workout schedule. So each week, we've got X amount of hours of cardio we have to do. We've got X amount of hours of strength. We're logging this on Strava, which is an app for that.

And HMS can oversee what we're doing. And then they send us a report. Usually on Sunday or Monday we get a report about what we did, didn't do, what we need to do better. There's a couple trainers involved. There's a lot of folks involved to hold us accountable. It's been pretty interesting for me. At first, I was not really excited about it.

And first, I'll say that Jimmy Johnson has been the guy that's kind of spearheaded this because he really feels strongly about how fitness has played a role in his life, not just success on the track, but just how quality of life. Yeah, he just feels better. Jimmy, you know, he does life. lot of different things, but cycling is something he really enjoys. And that is really picked up in the garage. If you were in Daytona in the bus lot, every morning, my neighbor, Matt Kenseth would wake

up at 7 o'clock. He would meet outside his bus with Jamie McMurray. They would make a lot of noise and wake up Amy, and that would wake me up. They were getting ready to go on their bike ride every morning. This happened quite a bit. So I noticed that a lot of guys in the garage are starting to do this. Trevor Bain, they're going in big groups, riding around town, Casey Kane. I mean, there's a number of drivers are starting to pick up on this cycling deal.

So I'm thinking, you know what, I'm going to give it a try. Jimmy gave me a bike about a year ago. It's been sitting in my garage. Tires went flat, dry-rodded. Had to get new tubes, new tires this past week. Finally, loaded the bike onto the plane, took it to Atlanta. I told Jimmy, I said, look, I'm going to meet you outside the track. Ain't no way in hell I'm going to let anybody see me ride through the infield wire in this bike of gear.

Spandex stuff. So anyways, I rode outside, pulled my bike out of the back of the Tahoe. Here comes Jimmy, Alan Gusterson, Casey. We all took off on a ride. and 16.7 miles we rode. A lot of fun. My first ride was a good time. I did get flipped off in the first five minutes.

That seems like an accomplishment. Okay, so you get on this bike, and I've rode it on my property, and I was fine. But for whatever reason, I was super nervous, and I couldn't keep my hands from moving. Like, I'm shaking. Like, you shake? Yeah, you shake all the time? So I'm shaking. I got a nervous shake, yes.

So I'm shaking, and I'm all over the road. Jimmy and them are like six, six inches from the shoulder. and I'm like, I can't ride that close to the shoulder. I'm all over the place. And I'm wobbling all over the damn road, and this guy goes by and flips me off. I guess I kind of kicked him off. But anyways, I was surprised at how rude drivers are on the road.

That's why they have the share of the road movement. Yeah. I was surprised at how much grief that bike, you know, cyclists get on the road. But anyways, we had a great time. Obviously, I'm not up to the speed that Jimmy, Casey, and Allen are, and they kind of rode, they kind of dialed it back for me to, to ride with me. But we had a great time. Anyways, it's something you're going to start doing.

Yes. Yeah, I'm already, I'm in talking to Jimmy about getting some more bikes, so I don't have to tote one back and forth. It's a little bit pain in the butt. I'm buying more gear, getting all geared up and ready to go. So that's going to be part of my workout regimen. It's, it is fun. I got to admit.

I do. I'm still not quite over the self-consciousness of wearing the spandex, but I don't know. I'll get there. I also ordered a peloton bite for indoors. A what? A peloton. I don't know what that is. Yeah. So look that up. I ordered one of them. I got some friends that have them. And yeah, man, we're expanding our home gym in Amy. We're doubling our floor space at home. We've got some stuff coming. from Bowflex.

Bowflex, yeah. So a big Bowflex fan. I like the old school stuff, but their new models are really, really neat. So we're expanding. Yeah, I mean, believe it or not, man, I'm working out. Anyways, we'll keep you updated on that. Hopefully we don't have any bad news to report,

crashing and so forth. But I was happy to get through my first ride without any incident. In other news from Atlanta, we did this interview. I'm sure a lot of our listeners have heard of Jeff Gluck, and he does the... Jeff Gluck from Jeff Gluck.com. Yeah, imagine that. Creative name, Jeff. He also lists his podcast.

You know, he also owns a website. PlayoffPoint. Playoff Points.com. Yeah. So I asked him about that. I'm like, what's this Playoff Points.com? But he actually just uses it to host his fantasy game, fantasy racing game, I guess. Yeah.

But clever, man, to pay 15 bucks a year to get that domain name. It's very smart. NASCAR may be coming for that. They'll have to pay up. So we did his 12 questions, and per usual, the last question, he lets you tee up a question for whoever he's interviewing next. Right. That's the fun part about, well, the 12 questions, the questions are always creative that Jeff has

because he basically, it's kind of like he does the questions, and then he asked the last question, the driver gets to pose. a question for the next guy getting interviewed. And if it's a funny question or it gets a great response, Jeff Gluck will put it into the 12 questions permanently, kind of like the specials at the restaurant. If somebody likes it, it goes on the menu. So what was the one that he asked me?

It was about what advice would you give to your rookie self? My rookie self is a driver. That was from Garrett Smithley in the XVI. Manity Series. Exactly. So we, I wanted to, I posed this question, who has the most punchable face in NASCAR? And, you know, when he says, hey, what do you want to ask the next driver? You think, man, I really want to put this guy on the spot, right?

Yeah. It's not that I think someone has a punchable face. It's just what's really going to put this guy on the spot. So you try to come up with a question that really makes somebody nervous. Yeah, because I think he gets in podcast form. So now you're going to hear that guy. have to fumble through this. Yeah, contemplating.

It was so fun. So we spent the weekend, like, trying to figure out who we thought. Has the most punchable face. And did you come up with anybody? All right, so a punchable face, in my opinion, and I think you might have a little bit different opinion because we talked about this, a punchable face to me is just a face you look at and you won't really punch it. Like, you could like the person.

Yeah. You might like the guy. So my punchable face is probably T.J. Majors. That's true. I don't want to hurt TJ. I like him. One of my best friends. He was the best man in my wedding.

But man, wouldn't you just like to sock that face one time? Wouldn't you? That's awesome. So, Tyler, you were like, hey, you know, it's Cam Newton because I give you crap about Cam Newton all the time. Yeah. But I would not want to punch Cam in the face. He doesn't have a punchable face. And he'd probably punch you back harder.

He would. He's a big boy. He is. But I figured out mine because I'm a huge North Carolina basketball fan. And I was watching the Carolina Duk game. And then I was like, man, that Grayson Allen kid, the kid that trips everybody, I was like, man, he has a punchable face. I'd love to punch that guy in the face.

Anyways, you know what, when TJ gives us crap thinks his podcast is better than ours. Does he? I don't ever listen to theirs. That really gives me incentive to want to punch his face. Yeah. That gives you incentive? Not just every day. Not just, yeah.

Well, I'll give him a pass on them. most things, whereas you maybe not. So there was a great, great, great conversation the last couple of days on Twitter and social media. I'd heard about this many months ago, and I guess I should have been anticipating with excitement, the reaction that this was going to get. But NASCAR either leaked or spoke with some media folk. Yeah, a source told the sports business.

journal. NASCAR's considering making the cars quieter. So I'd heard about this last year in the driver's council meeting that they think that some fans would rat, some fans maybe don't come to the race because of the noise or because the inability to have conversation like you might have at a basketball game or a football game with the guy sitting next to you, your buddy or whatever. And so they're thinking about making the cars quieter,

not like battery-powered car quieter, not like your electric razor. quieter. But is it going to be like as quiet as a street car? It's just probably going to go from like 120 or 115 decimals to maybe 90. Oh.

Nothing crazy. So they run, I mean, there's only so much you can do to, you know, make that engine quiet. A V8 350, yeah. So we have, I've ran mufflers before.

There were, some race tracks when we race late models were choir mufflers. If you went to race at Tri-County County and Motor Speedway or somewhere like that,

you'd have to put the muffler on the car. So we had a muffler ready to go, ready to bolt on it. Is that because they had like a noise ordinance or something? Yes. Okay. So it had to meet a certain amount of decimals or you couldn't race.

So anyways. And it was, you couldn't tell a difference between 90 decimals or a hundred and ten. I think people are envisioning it sounding like a street car and you're just going to hear the wind go by. Yeah. So you've got 40 cars at Daytona. It's not going to be like that. So, but it was fun to listen to everybody. Oh my gosh.

Go apesh. Yeah. It was worse than the playoff points, maybe. Oh, man. And the new stages. Yeah. So anyways, don't be too concerned about this, folks. NASCAR's not going to sissy up the, you know.

What will Fox do with the crank it up segment? They're going to crank it down, man. It's a new. They're going to crank it down for a lap. It's what the new people want. They said people at, um. All right, everybody. Lap 10.

We're going to mute, mute the television. All right. So I think people could come. down. It's not going to be that you big of a change. But boy, is it funny when NASCAR news leaks out. So anyways, we're going to get to our Periscope. Parascope Live. We're going to do these Ask Junior Questions live with Mike Davis. What's up, everybody, on Periscope? We're going to get going. Dale Jr. and Tyler Overstreet are in here. Let's start off with some questions right now. There was a really good one that came through. Who's your cheesehead? Ask, what bothers you more

driver issues or car owner issues? Driver issues or car owner issues? As in like being an owner at Junior Motorsports? That's right. Problems with my drivers? No, no, no. Like what causes you more anxiety? Is it your issues as a driver or issues as an owner?

I don't really have to, uh, the issues as a driver, I feel, I put so much pressure on myself as a driver. So those are probably harder to deal with. Here at the, you know, Junior Motorsports has ran so smoothly with Kelly and you and all the folks here that I don't have to carry the entire load, but man, when it comes to driver issues, I feel so responsible. Yeah.

Probably a little more challenging being, you know, dealing with those driver problems. He didn't include me in the handling issues of junior sports. Well, you know. Well, you know, the better question maybe, what's bigger issue? Is it driver issues or PR issues? Probably, yeah. Yeah. And you would say.

We've got the best PR rep in the Cup series. Oh, is that what you got? Yeah. Oh, not me. Not you. Yeah. Not me. Gotcha.

Gotcha. Yeah. Gotcha. So Berlin Dragon asked, do you have any time for enjoying Vegas during race weekend? If so, what do you enjoy doing in Vegas? Well, obviously, the hotels are awesome. A lot of great restaurants. You know, you're going to get top-in.

If you're going to sushi places, you're going to get some of the best sushi you ever ate. No boo. No-boo, places like that. We love, we're big sushi fans, me and Tyler. I'd eat it every day for lunch and dinner. Amy won't. So you get to go to some pretty cool clubs if you're in town after the race, maybe Sunday night, some good bars and restaurants and stuff like that.

I really enjoy that part. I'm not much about doing the shows or the concerts, but I will go with Amy. We saw Reba and Brooks and Dunn, which was great. A couple of other shows have been to see Carat Topic a few times, which is always fun. And exhibits to all the experience. exhibits and stuff like they had they have several there always be some kind of odd exhibit

in town that's gonna be there just for a few months so you feel like you have to go see those are pretty fun the track's great otherwise yeah that's it Tyler any plans I've got no plans we're not staying on the strip this year you're not no wait there's some sort of construction convention and they booze us out of the aria apparently So we're like Lake Las Vegas. I don't know what that means. I didn't know there was a lake in Vegas. We're actually, most years we stay on the West Coast for the whole swing.

So we'll come into Vegas early. We'll stay through Vegas and run the race. We'll drive to Phoenix and then stay through Fontana for the whole month, pretty much. But this particular year we're going back and forth because of scheduling issues or conflicts that we have we have stuff back here to do. But usually we stay in, stay out west for the entire trip and make a, you know, we would go to the Grand Canyon or do things like that. I don't recommend that.

I, yeah. It's the longest day ever. Well, it's a bucket list thing you kind of have to do. But yeah, it's a bit out of the way when you're driving to Phoenix, especially if you're hungover from Vegas. There you go. Were we? I was.

And if you don't remember, Tyler, I would go so far to say you might have been too. Probably. Dale Jr. 8630 asks, Hans Device, roof flaps, COT, Gen 6, softwalls. Is it time for the restrictor plates to go? Oh, well, I would love to, I would love for the cars to go faster at Daytona and Talladega. But I'm not sure exactly how much faster. I don't know whether we need to run, I think without a plate, you're going to run 230 miles an hour.

Can you build a tire that can actually withstand the loads and forces that it will see at those particular tracks? A tire that will last will be very, very difficult for good year to do. But I remember in 2004 driving at Daytona and actually having to lift in the corner because of the way the car was handling. even running toward the front in the qualifying races in the Daytona 500 having to come off the throttle and actually just driving the car which was so much fun much more fun than the way it is now now it's going that way we're getting to where the surface is starting to age the cars are starting to handle

handling is becoming much more of a factor so you have to be able to dial your car in and so we're heading in that direction. But man, the speed would make the cars more challenging to drive. It would force the cars to handle more poorly, for lack of a better way to describe it, in the corners, which is something I think all the drivers won't. The drivers like the cars to drive poorly because they feel that as a driver, they're the best, and that they're going to out drive everyone around them. I didn't see who it was asking, but somebody asked, do you wear the wedding ring during the

race. Actually, I haven't, I wore it practice a little bit, but I haven't wore the ring in the race. I have a Klo ring, a lot of Kalo rings, and they're rubber, so pretty comfortable. I've worn it in practice, but yeah, I took it off for the race just in case it gets uncomfortable. It would be kind of hard to take off underneath the glove and all that. I could probably do it under caution, but I think I'll get to a point to where I do, but I don't wear them just yet. Tyler, I know your job is tough and all, but when you get it. get married next year, you don't have any excuses. Oh, yeah, I'll wear the ring.

During the race. It'll be difficult. The circumstances will be tough, but I'll make it happen. There you go. Let's just ask us, what is a driver's biggest pet peeve? I think. Other drivers? Yeah, I mean, other drivers and how you get raced on the racetrack.

That's it. You know, you, it's just like, you know, when somebody does something on the highway that you think is stupid. they might not know that they've done something that you didn't like. They're just trying to get to wherever they're going. But people will do things and you're just like, ah, why did you do that? You know, why are you putting me in this situation? And that's how drivers are.

We're out on the racetrack and somebody might cut you off or do something on a restart that cost you a lot of spots, cost them a lot of spots or whatever. And you're like, God, what in the hell are you thinking? Getting flipped off. Nobody wants to get flipped off. For whatever reason, we can do, we can wreck each other, and that might not be as bad as being flipped off.

Just simply shoot somebody at the burr can make a guy come unglued. My pet peeve is debris cautions in the middle of Green Flag pit stops. Yeah, I think that's a great point to bring up. That's probably my number one pet peeve is unnecessary caution. So you'll see in some parts of the race, a car might be smoking. and they let him, you know, go on the pit road, no caution. But if it's 20 to go in that car smoking, boy, that yellow's coming out, because we're going to get us a dang restart.

Did you notice the other day they let the first two stages just go like, boom, boom, boom. And as soon as they got to the third, like longer stage, they're like, oh, debris caution. Yeah, I don't know. I wasn't really paying much attention with all the issues we had going on. But as a fan, I was like, what the hell? As a fan, I'm interested to know, you know, what folks think about. you know, those type of yellows. You know, you'll see, and I've seen people comment on Twitter and social media about it,

like they'll compare one caution that's similar to another that, you know, one issue on the track, I guess, that's similar, that one brought a caution out and one didn't. So it's, it seems like if it's, if it's, if it's easy and beneficial to the race, if it, you know, because a caution with 10 to go is ramping up the intensity. So it's almost like anything that brings out an opportunity to throw a caution late in the race, they're going to take it. But if it's lap 10 in the race and this guy can get safely to pit road with no problem, might not see that yellow.

Couldn't there just be debris out there that needs to be addressed? Are you, I think, no. No? I don't know. Mike Davis worked for NASCAR over here. Mike Davis, NASCAR official. I'm just saying it. What if there's just debris that needs to be picked up?

I don't know. I'm not watching the races so I don't get to see. this debris. I hear you. And TJ will say there, TJ will tell me a lot of times they think there's debris in turn four. And I'll actually have a couple of times

to go through there before the caution comes out to actually go, I don't see anything. I'll tell you one thing. There's been a few times when they have thrown the yellow and I've raised hell on my radio

and I've been called to the truck so Mike Hilton could tell me about the debris that was on the track and that is not any fun. You'd just rather hear it from TJ, wouldn't you? Yeah, I'm just going to take TJ's word for it. What if they hear this podcast?

and call you to the truck on Friday. We'll have a lot of time to talk about it. Friday's a pretty easy day. It means we've got to listen out of it. Yeah, exactly. We're reaching the right demographic. A couple questions on this. What is the picture behind you right now, Dale?

This picture? Yeah. This is a mural of our property out at Dirty Moe Acres. This is the old dirt track that we used to run the go-carts out. We've seated at it. It's grass now. This fence here is the interior where the, Buffalo hang out.

We got the 76 ball that came from Turn 3 and 4 at Caledega when they went away from 76 Unicavil to Sonoco. Those all came down. The the MRN radio guys would be up in there and doing their show,

doing the race from that particular vantage point. Amy did most of the deck rating in here. Did a great job. She sure did. There was one question that I saw if you could, this comes from Luke 88 58 if you could play football what position would you play I kind of wanted to pose that to not on myself but Tyler because Tyler's such a big Pantish fan I know you're also an Alabama fan too

Mike so you can weigh in on this Tyler what what position would you play I'd probably pay tight end tight end why because I'm slow what to work can you catch I would like to think I can I think yeah I mean I don't I'm just wondering you'd have to have good hands are you blocking tight end or catching tight end I'm a catching tight end okay I would model my game game after Greg Olson. He's the best. Take a lot of modeling. Boy.

I like it. Yeah, Greg Olson's an awesome guy to pattern your game after. One of the best tight ends, I think. What position would you play? Well, I always say safety because they sort of get to freelance. Yeah. I would have a hard, obviously going, you know, I'd have a hard time picking up the playbook and understanding all the, it seems like there's so much to know.

Right. Especially like run coverages and past coverages. Yeah, it's like an engineer. Like everybody has to be this highly intelligent, and you got to know so much about the playbook, and you've got to be able to read the offense. Not only know the playbook, but see what's happening on the field. And I think, I'm just guessing.

I don't know none about football. But I think that being able to be a safety, you can kind of freelance and play outside to maybe get away with a little more. Yeah, just not have to be so perfect on knowing I wouldn't want to be a corner because you are susceptible. Yeah, I don't want to be corner because I can't probably, I'm probably terrible at man to man. Now, zone seems like, I can stay in this bubble.

Yeah, I can do that. I don't think it's as easy. He just roll up, just running around. Hey, they come to me. Play a lot of madden. I think I could play safety. Just saying. Anyways, Mike Davis, you big Alabama fan.

You don't like any NFL. No. Isn't that weird? There's Alabama guys on. every NFL team. I know it. Except for the Panthers. But he doesn't watch, he's such a damn diehard Bama fan, but watch is not a stitch of NFL.

What position would you play? See, I look at it differently. I would play cornerback only because you can get burned like five times in a row, but that one play where you knock it down gives you enough ammo to talk shit the entire rest of the quarter at least. So like, I can get burned and that happens. But then when I knock it down, I'll be like, who's your daddy, man? I line up across the guy and talk smack because they don't care. Yeah.

They can talk, they don't need reasons. They just talk smack. And I feel like I could talk that game even if I get burned. See? Great point. All right. He'd probably be his own corner, though. Oh, I'm not fast.

Yeah. Right. Anyways, there's our Periscope. Appreciate everybody that tuned in live on Periscope. Obviously, everybody listening to the podcast. Thanks a lot for sending your questions to, for me and Tyler or Vett on Twitter at hashtag AskJrrr. And make sure you keep those coming for next week's podcast.

Looking ahead, Tuesday, we already did a quick photo shoot today with Michael Annette and our new partners at Pilot Flying J. That was cool. It was a lot of fun. They have an additional partner in that program that I think people are going to be pretty excited about, a little bit of a throwback. We'll announce here in a bit. Yeah, that's, yep, keep your eye out for that on all the JR Motorsports social media handles.

Friday, we really got nothing else going on Wednesday and Thursday. Actually, my trainer from HMS, Jamie, he's coming out to the house Wednesday. We're going to do a workout. I'm also receiving the shipment of my peloton bike. And your bowflex should be there. But boflex stuff should be showing up. So anyways, Wednesday and Thursday, we're going to try to do some workouts. and take a few days to just hang out.

Friday, we'll fly out to Vegas in the morning. We have practice and qualifying. What time's practice? It's 11 o'clock Vegas time, so 2 o'clock Eastern. So we're flying on out there in the morning to do all that. Saturday, two practices. We've got a morning practice, huh? Yes.

Dang. See, this past week at Atlanta, we only had one Saturday practice, so it was an hour and 20 minutes. That was perfect. It was 31 degrees at 8 o'clock. the morning in Atlanta. If we had practiced at 9 o'clock had been that 35 degrees, there's no point in doing that.

It's ridiculous. You can't, the car, the car's nothing. The track, the car, nothing is like what the race is going to be like as far as track temp, ambient temp. So you don't learn anything. So we do a lot of changes to try to make the car drive well. And then in the last practice around noon, we undo all that stuff. I think they're going back to the two practices.

It sucks. So anyways, two practices Saturday. Damn it. We got the Xfinity race. at 4 p.m. on Fox Sports 1. Is that 4 p.m. Eastern? Eastern. All right. Yeah. So tune in to Fox Sports 1 for the Xfinity race. We got four cars in that particular race, right? Yep. There are only five cars in four events this year for Junior Motors and one's already happened at Daytona. Casey Cane at Talladega.

Casey Kane at Talladega. Then me at the second Richmond and the second Bristol. Otherwise, we got our full time four car team racing every other weekend. They're one. Two in points right now. Are they? That's great. Elliot Salon, man, so consistent. He understands, you know, with his, he's a veteran, man. He knows the points deal.

Race is real smart. Sunday. The race starts at 3.30 p.m. on Foxeastern. This is a good track for you. Is it? Six straight top ten finishes. Oh, my. Yeah, that's pretty solid.

That is pretty good. I had no idea. There you go. Four top fives, ten top tens, and 17 starts. That's not really that impressive, though. But we've been doing well here lately. You've done a lot better since they added that banking. Your stats may have been skewed by the original layout.

Did you see the stat this past week? Speaking of stats real quick, that only like 7% of all the drivers in NASCAR have won a race, only 7%. There's only like 180 total have won a race. Have one a race of the, what, thousands or thousands? Yeah. So 7% that's pretty crazy. That have ever started a race have only won. And in the last 150, I think only 10 drivers have won.

Our last 100 or 150 events, there's only 10 drivers that have won those events. Damn. Yeah, I think Brad's up there with 12 or 14. Jimmy's got the same amount. Kyle. Kyle's 10 or so, Harvick. We got seven. Hey, man, we're in there.

Anyways, appreciate you guys tuning in. Hope you enjoyed the show. Thanks for all the folks that showed up today to the. the gift shop. I hope you guys enjoy listening in. Thanks to Exalta, as always. They make it happen.

We're in the Exalta studio at Dirtymoe Radio. We record every Tuesday morning. 9 o'clock. Pretty much 9 o'clock. So if you want to show up, get an autograph, get a picture, listen to the show.

We got a couple chairs. Be sure to subscribe to the Dale Jr. download through Dale Jr.com. You can also find it at iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and all the major podcasting outlets. And as always, let us know your feedback on Twitter at Dale Jr. at Overstreet Tyler and at DirtyMoe Radio. Also check out DirtyMoe Radio's Facebook page.

Make sure you send in those questions each week. Absolutely. Send in good questions. Hashtag Ask Junior. Hashtag Ask Junior. And be sure to make sure you tune into the Periscope as well to be able to watch the Q&A segment. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the podcast this week. We'll see you next week.

See ya. Thanks for listening to Dirty Mo Radio. Hey, Mike, so as we're sitting here in the newly renovated Exalta studio, let's talk Exalta. First of all, this studio is awesome. Is it not? Oh, my gosh. It's huge. I love it. It's amazing. Yeah, we are very appreciative of that. But Exaltas is everywhere. I mean, we just left Daytona. Thousands of people went into their seats through the Exaltza Injector. I myself, I'm going to brag a little bit here, but I actually watched the Dules from the Exaltza suite.

It was fabulous. You know, Exaltza is a co-primary on Dale Jr.'s car. That car, you will never miss it. so bright, colorful. It's amazing. And it's going to run at Phoenix. But yeah, Exalta is everywhere. They are really big supporters of our digital platform and our race teams. We didn't even mention the fact that Exaltza is going to be sponsoring William Byron. That announcement came out this week. And they have a brand new building that they just built right next to Hendrick Motorsports. I've had the privilege to see the outside. Now I'm really excited to go and take a tour of the inside. It's absolutely incredible just what they've been doing. Totally. So we appreciate

Exaltza. How can we follow them on social? You can follow them at Exaltor Racing on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.