The Dale Jr. Download - 167 - This is my team. You're talking about my family.

Episode Date: March 28, 2017

Dale Earnhardt Jr. recaps his race at Auto Club Speedway and addresses negative fan reaction to the No. 88 team's first five races this season. He also discusses an interesting stat regarding fewer passes so far this season and shows some love for the North Carolina Tar Heels leading into the Final Four. 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.

Hey, Junior Nation, now more than ever, exclusive, entertaining, and free content from the world of Dale Earnhardt Jr. is no further away than your fingertips. It's all thanks to Dale Jr.'s Dirty Moe Radio presented by Exalta. All eight DirtyMoe Radio podcasts are available on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and of course, Dale Jr.com. So whether you're at home, at work, in the gym, on the run, or just hanging out, dirty mow radio gives Junior Nation its newest and most versatile way yet to plug directly into the world of Earnhardt. Anytime, anywhere. This is Dale Jr.

And you're listening to Dirty Moe Radio. The cannon, 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 Jr. again for the Dale Jr. download on Dirty Moe Radio. as usual, my awesome producer, editor, co-host Tyler Overstreet's with us. That's the nicest thing you've said to me.

Well, I'm trying to hold back. We got some good stuff to talk about. Fontana, obviously. We'll talk about a couple things we saw on social media this week. Talk about the celebrities that we saw the track. Fontana is a race where we get, you know, we always get celebrities at most of the race weekends, but that was quite a few. It's comparable to the Dayton 500, so we'll talk to that.

NCAA brackets. We'll also do some Asked Junior questions. That'll be live on Periscope. And Facebook Live. And Facebook Live with Mike Davis helping us out. And then we'll do looking ahead. Anyways, it's got a pretty good show here. A lot of good stuff.

So let's get to it. All right. So obviously another average finish for us this weekend at final. Montana, 16th place. We lost a couple spots there right at the end. I think didn't he hit the wall off before, and we kind of didn't have anywhere to go. Don't you think we lost a spot there?

I want to beat him. Would we beat the 31? I think we would have been close. I think you may have lost one spot, but the only way to get around him would have actually been to drive through him. Yeah, yeah, of course. So that, you know, I guess,

16th, yeah, not very good. Considering we had to start in the back, though, we did, and there weren't a lot of cautions in the race, right? No, they ran pretty long green. Yeah. So we didn't have too many opportunities to take advantage of restarts to pass a lot of guys. We had five restarts in the final stage. I just said we didn't have a lot of cautions,

but we had five restarts in an 80-lap stage. It's quite a few. Yeah, but four of those were in, like, the last 20 laps. Right. All those restarts. so we were on the inside. Started 17th, 15th, 15th, 17th, and 13th. And I think on at least two of those occasions,

you were going to be on the outside, and then somebody would pit, and then bam, there went in your spot. Yep. So starting on the inside is really, really frustrating. Especially at a track like that. You really get pinched down by the guys on the outside. They have the momentum off of turn two.

So you're lucky if you can maintain your position. I'm sure there's some guys that got lucky and might have gained a spot or two starting from the inside, but it's very rare when you're able to do that. Typically, if you're on the outside, going down into turn one, you either want to go into the middle

or go into the third lane, thus making it three wide. So you're waiting on everyone to sort of decide what they're going to do, and you jump into what available hole there is. And so the guy on the bottom is completely vulnerable to all this. So your only opportunity to even get to the

middle is depending on that guy running the third group. So like you were trying to get to the middle on some of those late restarts. I know. That was the only way I could survive is if I jumped to the outside of the guy in front of me. But anyways, starting on the inside is pretty frustrating. Yeah, that cost us an opportunity to get a top 10 finish that I think we were capable of getting. That made it much more difficult. We also anyways had to start in the back.

that we had a cut tire on the right front of the car so that morning when we were getting the car set up they found that cut in the right front the rule in NASCAR is that and it's a new rule implemented cars are supposed to qualify and then start the race on those tires if they qualify so is that a cost-saving that is a cost-saving rule a lot of the guys From what I heard, it had been told, it was a rule to save every team one set of tires throughout the entire year, which amounts to thousands of dollars, particularly a good rule for the back half of the field, some of these guys that are tied on the budget. So what it's done, though, is in situations like this, it has made NASCAR have to make a lot. a call where I had to cut my tire and I can only replace one tire. So for people who, you know,

haven't drove a lot of races or, you know, know a lot about tires and so forth, putting one sticker on a car with three old tires is going to make that car drive completely different than it's set up to drive. So that one tire, wherever you place it, is going to have a ton more grip than the other three tires. So it causes a little bit of frustration because we're going to get a lot of bad input from the car as to what to work on for the next pit stop. So do we adjust on the car or is it this tire creating this issue? And we have to go to the back.

I mean, you know, I can understand going to the back if I have to put a tire on. I'd want anyone, you know, that gets a new tire to have to suffer some kind of penalty. But I'd at least like to put rights on if it's a right side cut. So you would be fine if you could do just two. Okay. Yeah. Because that keeps the balance of the car reasonably close to what it's going to be. And that's still not such a big advantage.

I mean, you had guys that didn't get through qualifying. Yeah. Jimmy and those guys opted not to qualify, so they're not in this conversation. but some guys missed qualifying due to not being able to get through tech to 6 to 22 and a few other cars. It's almost a blessing because at a place like Fontana where it's so wore out and slick. It'd be the same thing like at Atlanta where the tires were out and slick.

Immediately, yeah. So you can, you got so much better tires than everybody else. And these guys in front of you, directly in front of you, have one cycle on their tires. When you get into the top 24, you've got got. guys with two cycles on their tires. When you get in the top 12, you're racing guys with three more cycles on their tires than you have. That is

about a half a second in speed at Fontana. Advantage. So, I was just jealous as hell. Once I got sent to the back and had one sticker, I'm starting back there with guys that have four stickers. Right. So I was like, damn, I should have just

misqualifying altogether. Hindsight is 2020. It is. But fortunately, the caution came out with in like the first 10 laps and you were able to get up to yeah you're it's not all negative it is i don't like the rule i don't like the rule either all right that's what we're talking about yeah but it also happened to denny hamlin a couple weeks ago yeah denny does i wonder if denny likes the rule i'm sure he hates it well it was frustrating uh to wake up to that news in the morning but anyways

we seemed to be able to, you know, we got back up into the top 20 in 10 laps, so we made up the penalty pretty quickly. The car was pretty fun to drive. The balance wasn't all that great all day long, but we worked real hard, obviously, like we always do, making a lot of adjustments and made some things better, never really fixed some other things. But the car, we didn't practice really well. We practiced in 30th and 27th on Saturday in the two practices. And people were freaking out. Yeah, I would too. I mean, if that's where I saw my driver in the lineup,

the reason why we didn't practice that well is because we started all those practices on used tires. The reason why we did that is we used one more set of stickers on Friday during qualifying practice than we typically do. Greg was trying to figure out how to get the car little faster for qualifying, and we sacrificed a set of stickers that we'd typically use on Saturday. So we had to start practice on Saturday on a set of tires because of that. And like I said, it's a half a second difference, the sticker versus even one cycle on the tires. And so when I go out to practice, I'm at a half a second disadvantage to most of the guys that are out there on stickers. And that's why we were so slow in the chart. Now, our average, if you average all the lap times together in practice, we were about fifth best,

which I thought told me we're in the ballpark, and we kind of were. We were running around 11th to 16th, most of the race, most of the race, and I feel like we should have finished around 8th to 10th. If we had gotten lucky on some of those restarts in the outside line, that would have been a good possibility for us. All those restarts get pretty crazy. down in the corner. Like I say, there's five lanes in the corner, right? So we're all heading down into term one, and you're going to go wherever no one, you know, wherever they don't. And so what you have is, you know, five lanes, you got five cars plugging in those holes.

Yeah, it's pretty incredible just watching a restart there to see everybody go every which way. And it's not like you're not all over top of each other. No, not really. There's plenty of room, but you've got to be real aggressive. And it's hard to, You have that confidence and it's easier to be aggressive when you're now outside line. You've got way more options. So that would, that pretty much sums it up. You know, we obviously understand because we're living it, that our car needs a little more speed.

We're working hard trying to dig and find our weaknesses and find the speed that we need in the car to get the cars to driving better. I want everybody to know that we are working pretty hard. We've worked hard to this point, and it's not good enough, and we know it. But there's been an unusual amount of, I wouldn't say criticism, but concern on social media. I stay pretty close to what fans are saying, what our supporters are saying on social media. There's been a little bit of an unusual amount, I suppose, of concern, considering and how we finished in the first several races.

But one of the things that really pisses me off, I guess, is when they talk about the pit crew or my crew chief. You'll see a tweet every once in a while where they're like, change this, get a new guy here. Get rid of this guy, get this. This is my team. Right. You know, and that real, you're talking about my family.

Because people just don't understand how much time did it, people are put that these guys are putting into it it's not that people are slacking off they these guys are digging in but so is everybody else in the field it's a competition it is it's not supposed to be easy i've worked with this pit crew for a couple years now um we've all gotten really close and i've seen them perform extremely well and i know they can and that's why i believe in them uh so yeah that's a little frustrating when you see people so quick to you know to jump to conclusions on what you need to be doing or what changes need to be made but that you know we're all very close and communicate with each other throughout the week and we're going to work on this together and get it right

as a group with who we have so we're 21st in points it's been a slow climb and claw back into relevancy, obviously trying to get in that top 16 to get to the chase and a lot of room for improvement. But we're working hard. Next five races, Martinsville, Texas, Bristol, Richmond, and Talladega, all racetracks that we've won at. Yeah. So.

And ran very well the last two or three years. Yeah, really enjoy Martinsville. We're going clock hunting this weekend. Texas is great. They got a new configuration. in turn one and two all new pavement that's going to be interesting for everybody to sort of dial in Bristol you can't not hate bristol I mean Bristol is just amazing yep I'm hearing at Bristol that they're going to be putting down tacky on the bottom yeah to try to help the bottom groove but anyways got a lot of good tracks coming up for us to see you know that the thing I like about that list of tracks is that I'm confident we can run well at them and we'll be able to understand how our progression is is going when we go to these tracks that we're confident in we'll be able to understand if we're getting better and start

to see some improvement there so I'm sure we'll you know heading into the summer we need to start getting back into that top 15 points if we don't have a win by midsummer it's going to be it's going to be pretty close, I think, getting it, getting toward the chase. We're going to be in those, you know, we're going to be fighting some guys for that bubble spot. Right. We're in such a bit of a hole right here.

So it'd be awesome just to get ahead and knock a win out and get it locked in. They could happen. Yeah, absolutely. At any of those tracks. All right, let's move on. We had a couple of interesting tweets this week. One of them was the quality passes.

which that is a pass inside the top 15. Right. So Monday I replied to a stat comparing the quality passes. Passes inside the top 15 for the first five races of the past three years. So Daytona, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Fontana. There's down significantly at Daytona, Las Vegas, and Fontana down from 2015, but up from 2016 at Phoenix, no change in Atlanta. So passing is down.

How, how, and really the racing hasn't looked much different to me. The cars. And the spoiler is about, what, an inch shorter than it was last year? Yeah. The cars have way less downforce. It was, I don't know, I don't know that it was going to produce more passing. I think that was the wrong message or the wrong impression for people to get. it wasn't going to create more passing.

It's just going to make it harder to drive. It's going to make it harder to drive, but if you did get to a guy, it wouldn't be so, it wouldn't, it would be easier to pass. And is that accurate? Yeah, I think it is. We still have trouble, you know,

following another car. They do punch a hole in the air. We could go on and on talking about, you know, ideas on how to improve this or that and the other. But I was surprised, by that stat, that the passes are, I didn't think there would be any change, really. I thought it'd be minimal as far as a difference between passing and the top 15 from the year to year.

I will say it's right now, it's kind of like the top five for it seems like the past three or four weeks is the 78, the 42, the 24, two and 22, somewhere in that range. Maybe you mix in the four, the 18. But it's the same guys pretty much running up front. Yep. So you're not seeing a lot of, and those guys qualify at front. So you're not seeing guys drive from 25th up to the front very often. Nope.

Although it does happen. I just, you know, I don't know. I don't know why passing is down significantly. I do like the low down force package. I did have a lot of fun driving a car that was very hard to drive and should have been with that kind of a spoil. on the back at Montana. Do you think that the stage racing and the point incentive to run in the top 10

is making guys more conscious of, like, have a potent in this spot? I want to read what you wrote in the show sheet. Are guys racing harder at the front? Now, you've got to read the whole question. Are guys racing harder at the front now to hold on to those top spots for the stage points, whereas before they be inclined to let you pass, write it out until the next pit stop? No. Okay.

So these are questions that we have to ask. I know, but nothing makes a race car driver more aggravated than someone saying, are you racing harder? I know. We talked about this. You're not. And I just wrote, and I wrote along with you a couple weeks ago, and it seemed as though you were driving very hard, even in like a little show car ride.

So I assume that you're driving as hard as you can. It'd be hard to dial. Yet, yet with that knowledge, you wrote this into the show, show show. Hey, the people that listen to this may be interested in knowing that. No, everybody's racing hard, every lap. I mean, what in the hell

are you out there for if you're going to take a lap off? So, LeBron James takes games off, so maybe... We can't. And I don't want to. I mean, racing's fun. That's a fresh... I don't ever want to see our guys racing

harder ever again. Ever. In this studio. No more of that on the show sheets. So this was really funny. And I invited, okay, so for this race, I became friends with AJ, lead singer of the Dangerous Summer. So I invited him to the race this weekend, see his first race. We also had Justin Hartley from This Is Us out there. We met him at the Today Show.

And he's a huge race fan. So he came out to meet a lot of jobs. drivers and spent an afternoon enjoying the events. But anyways, we saw this long list. We got an email or a long list of who's who that was going to be at the racetrack, all these celebrities that were kind of invited to the race by the racetrack, I guess, or NASCAR. And there was a long, long, long list, right?

So it's such a random group of celebrities. I wish we had this list. It was like 35 or so people. I have the list. So pick a few names off of there that strike you as random. Chrissy Metz. Okay. Never heard of her.

What does it help? Caitlin Olson. Yes. That was random to me, but I guess you drove the pace car. Then you had like Tommy Lee. Yeah. Who had seen him in like 20 years? Terry Cruz.

Yeah, Terry Cruz. That was cool. Eric Stone Street was there. He's always there with Harvick. Jay to pick it. Scott Eastwood. Taylor Lautner from Twilight. Nick Lachay.

And his wife, Vanessa. So there was about 30. Jackson, Brittany, from Vanderpupruels, one of the Tom's. So all these people, right? So we had the driver's meeting, and I invited AJ to go to that. And we sat down, and they literally introduced every person that they had invited said yes and showed up. So what was it?

30, 35 people, you were there. It was a long time. It was a long time. It was like a 30-minute introduction before the driver's meet never started. I was thinking, damn, I'm not going to get a sandwich for race starts here. But. And they made the driver's meeting. like a lounge.

Yes. It was like a VIP lounge. Yeah, that was weird. Yeah, it was creepy. So, only at Fontana does this happen. Right. Daytona happens, but I mean. There's about a, every race has like a half a dozen, maybe three or four celebrities that they bring in.

One will drive the pace car. One might be the guy that weighs the green flag. But otherwise. And I've never known them to have to introduce every celebrity. Yes, they really went out of their way. I love that they come out and see what we're doing, but it was funny. Even me and AJ were talking about it afterwards. He's like, man, that was, I never expected it to be like that.

So it was pretty funny. But we were glad that we went out to the race car for after intros. That's where we saw Jackson, Brittany. We saw Justin at the bus before the driver's meeting. AJ saw him a couple times throughout today they had a great time everybody seemed to have a great time yeah I got into Danger's Summer like a couple years ago

great band so if you want some new music if you don't know the Danger Summer check that out and yeah I'm sure I've heard them writing with you but otherwise I don't know you have so yeah AJ brought

they're with hopeless records and AJ brought me a big old box of Vine finals and CDs and T-shirts. So on that note of all the celebrities, and mine, for me, it would probably be like Peyton Manning when he came. Who's like the biggest celebrity

or athlete, whatever, that you have met at the track? Hmm. Hmm. Man, I don't know. I mean, that's... The 500, they always bring out... Yeah, the 500, there's always...

You know, I don't know. I mean, this is us is a pretty hot show right now, so Justin's pretty big time. Yeah, because whenever he was leaving your bus, you were parked beside Larson this week. Yeah, that was Larson's mom. Yeah, she was like, oh, I'm going to make a crazy. Amy was watching that show on repeat last night. Yeah, is it sad? Well, I had to get a mop out after he was all over with.

Oh, gosh. There was an, oh, gosh, there's got a guy on Twitter that's going to call me out. Yeah. How many times, that's our drinking game for folks listening in to the Dirty Moe podcast, I Del Juno Downo. Anytime Tyler says, oh gosh, you need to drink. I know it's 7 in the morning. It's never too early.

Yeah, it's 5 o'clock somewhere. So, yeah, I don't know. Has Clinties? Have I ever met Cleeney's? No, I haven't. I don't think I met Clinties would. I'd like to meet Clinties Wood, and I'd like to meet Tom Hanks. But neither one of them, I believe, have been out to see his race.

I wonder if NASCAR could work on that. It seems like if they could, they would have. Yeah. So, yeah, the celebrities at the track. That was pretty interesting. So we're going to. That was cool. It's a great segue into our next discussion, the NCAA brackets.

It's a terrible segue. Anyways, the 88 team fills out a bracket. Adam, our interior guy, created a league, as he does each year, all the members of the team. feel out of bracket. I was very confident while I was feeling mine out. I'm still, I'm still kind of, I'm not in it anymore because you're above me and we have, we both have North Carolina winning. Yeah, which Travis Peterson, one of our engineers, has them winning also, so I'm not going to win

either. I kind of hate that. Like, to be, to still have the opportunity to have the winner overall. You should get your money back. I didn't have it. Oh, yeah. I didn't pay money either. I have not paid my money.

We both owe Adam some cash. Yeah, $10. $10. It's a low wager. I'm 10th out of 13th. That's not very good. I know. Your fifth out of 13, both picked North Carolina to win the national championship.

Hopefully they do it. We only picked one correct team for the final four. That's awesome. And it's a difficult time at the household these days because North Carolina, to beat Kentucky, which is Amy's a Wildcat. It was amazing to be in the car with her as that happened. Yes. We did a Periscope post race, and that game was kind of winding down.

So if you want to see Amy's reaction to Kentucky's loss, that would be a way to do it. So are you pulling for a North Carolina, South Carolina Final Four championship, national championship game? I think that would be cool. Well, that's not really the Final Four, but. The National Championship game, that would be incredible. I think it would be awesome. As long as North Carolina wins.

Yes. South Carolina fans are kind of mouthy. Whoa. I was a South Carolina fan for quite a while. But you liked them because of the coach. Yes. Because of Spurrier. Most people didn't even know they had a basketball team until two weeks ago.

Mm-hmm. So I'm hoping, I don't care who the championship game is. It would be cool if it was South Carolina, North Carolina. Go heels. As long as Carolina wins. Yes. Go heels. Go heels.

This is the Exaltor Race Center update for the week of March 27. In Saturday's Service King 300 NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Auto Club Speedway, it was rookie William Byron leading Junior Motorsports with a fifth place finish in his number nine, Exalta Dura Coach Chevrolet. He was the highest finishing Xfinity Series regular, and he remained second in the point standings behind Elliot Sadler. Sadler finished seventh, Justin Algar 9th, and Michael Annette 13th for Junior Motorsports. Kyle Larson won the race. It was the first of two victories for Larson as he also took the checkered flag in the cup race on Sunday.

Dale Jr. in the number 88 Exalted team finished 16th. In the car's late model tour, 17-year-old Anthony Alfredo led Junior Motorsports in the twin features at Dominion Raceway with a pair of fifth place finishes. Josh Berry finished 11th in the first race. After spinning out racing for the win with Mayatt Snyder, he finished 17th and second race with overheating issues. The Exalta Customer Experience Center officially opens in May during the All-Star race weekend. The CEC is the first of its kind. It will be a training facility for Exaltas customers right on the campus at Hensulta. Motor Sports.

It will be used to educate body shop technicians with Exaltas new products, technology, and innovation. For more CECEC progress and updates on all Exaltor race teams, follow at Exaltor Racing on all social media platforms. All right, guys, let's get to some fan questions. These were submitted using the hashtag Ask Junior. We're also live streaming on Periscope and Facebook Live. We're joined by Mike Davis, who's going to be our moderator, so that Dale and I can

answer and or debate these questions. We had Iron Tipo as, do you think stage racing favors short run setups? Seems that Penske and Gannasi are benefiting from this. Yeah, I think so. Obviously, the stages are long enough. In particular, at Fontana, there's 60 laps, 60 laps, and 80 laps. So they're long enough to allow guys to have, you know, for long run setups to sort of have success. But a long run setup is really going to.

you know show up when you have green flag stops and you know more than 60 laps I suppose so if you if you have a short run setup it's very it's it's it's it's it's it's it's very good for you right now because you're going to short pit in some of these segments yeah because like Fontana it's 60 laps and they're pitting it lap 30 right split it up yep or you know you're you may pin a little bit later and still you know you you finish the segment in a short run right particular uh particularly uh good for phine uh pinsky i think penske's guy's been a pretty good short run cars for a while now we've seen that a lot of races over the last couple years but yeah i mean that looking for that short

road speed something i think we're we're definitely a little more aware of uh in practice and knowing that uh how important it is to take advantage of those restarts and be on the past cars That's the best opportunity to do it. You've got to have the car really handling well the first couple laps of the runs. Yeah, great observation. Is that as simple as air pressure or there's other stuff that you guys got to do? It's got to come off the trailer just working. You know, it's hard to find once you get to the racetrack.

So if you can unload with that, it's great. Here's another good question. Zach Copeland asked, do you think that more time in Xfinity or trucks would have benefited some of the drivers who've moved it up so quickly? Zach cites Austin Dillon spent two years in trucks and two years in Xfinity. won championships in both, but hasn't really done a whole lot in Cup. But Kyle Larson, on the other hand, spent a handful of races and trucks and won in Xfinity. He has two cup wins and is doing very well.

Both are in their fourth cup season. I don't think it has much to do with experiences it does. The situation they're in, the strength of the team as a whole, is obviously benefiting Larson, as those guys have found a little speed over the last couple of years, particularly at the end of last season. and they're still kind of steamrolling along with a lot of momentum. He showed up at every racetrack. He had been really fast.

The one car as well, Jamie, his teammate, has improved his performance this particular year compared to last year, wouldn't you say, Tyler? Yeah, they're both really fast. So that company has gotten better. That's benefiting Kyle Larson. I think that if Austin, for whatever reason, was in that same situation, he would probably be providing his team with top five finishes and wins. they just come out of the gate a little bit less competitive,

much like we have, and got to work hard to get going. So back to their question, though, do you think spending more time in trucks or Exfinity is a big issue, or you think... I think that it's team-related, situational. It depends on... I know, but, like, the one going on right now

is Eric Jones is running a good bit better than Daniel Suarez. And Jones is in a brand new car, whereas Suarez is in a car that was in the final four last year. Well, Swares won the championship. Right. Over Jones. Right. And so, I mean, there's an argument that, you know, he was ready and Jones wasn't.

Is it just? But Jones is doing better in the cups. It's just situational. They both don't drive for the same team. They're not driving the same car with the same crew chief. The communication isn't the same. One's having a little bit better luck of it than the other. But Swar has finished in the top ten the last two weeks.

He has. He's rebound. He's definitely starting to, you know, find his groove. It's very, it's very, very competitive in the Cup series, and it's going to be difficult for these guys to emulate the same kind of success that they've seen at other levels. I mean, these cars, you know, these cars, these teams are completely different than what they had last year in the Xfinity series.

So I'm a little more surprised, I guess, in the Jones' Daniel Suarez comparison because, like you say, Suarez came into an established car. Jones is in a startup team, and it looks like that Jones is showing a little bit more speed, but like you say, Daniel's starting to come into his own. I think that the norm or the general opinion is that two years in Exfinity is a good foundation.

Yeah, that's what, like, Austin Dillon did, that's what Chase did. I think I did three years maybe. If you're in there longer than three years, it's only because the right opportunity financially hasn't presented itself on the cup level. So, you know, these guys are obviously wanting to move up as fast as they can.

If you're having success in the Xfinity series, but I aren't moving up. It's only because the opportunity to Cup series isn't opened up yet, or the sponsor money is not there to be able to be able to fund a team. Sometimes these guys come out a little quickly after one season like Daniel. And I think that that was because Carl's retirement

and Daniel's opportunity with his sponsors, they were ready to go. Sometimes it happens sooner than you'd like. But yeah, I think Daniel would have benefited from another season as anyone would. But he'll be fine. I don't think it's going to stunt his, I don't think he's going to stunt his career in the Cupside. He's just learning everything that he should have learned in his second year of Xenity in the cup level.

And I think he'll be fine. Right. There's a lot of questions right now about T.J. over this, from this past weekend, some of the questions have been like, why doesn't T.J. listen to you? And then there's other questions that, like, you know, what was the deal with getting irritated every time T.

T.J. said no pressure. You want to explain. any of that. We'll be running along for like, you know, a fanful laps, ten laps, and he'll just come out of nowhere. Four cars back, no pressure. I'm like,

well, all right, what's that? He gets paid by the word, so he must. It's just, only time I say the only time I sort of get annoyed with him is when he's telling me something I don't, that's not really that important at all. Fontana,

Fontana is a very, very, very technical racetrack. The low down force stuff has us really all sliding around and you've got to have like 100% concentration. So anytime he talks, just imagine it's sort of depleting the concentration tank. We're at 100%. When he opens his mouth, we drop down 5%. And for every five seconds that he talks in, succession, it drops another 5%.

So I'd just rather not say anything if there's nothing really important to say. But, you know, he's just trying to, I think he's trying to calm me down and say, hey, nothing to worry about here. Yeah. I take silence as nothing to worry about, you know. But then sometimes you will, you'll, like, want somebody to be talking to you. Yeah, because there's cars around me, and he's not. not talking. But so, but whenever you get mouthy at him, that might be like, well, damn, he doesn't

want me to say anything. And then he might like shut down emotionally. He'll be fine. Another question that I just saw pop up actually from Billy who said, you know, with the break issues that you had had over the past couple weeks, now we're going to Martinsville where the brakes are a huge deal. Are you a little concerned about that? I'm not because we have a, we don't run the same break package everywhere.

where we don't run the same brake package at Phoenix that we run at Martinsville. I've talked to Greg a little bit about this. I think we're seeing that with the small spoiler on the back of the car, there's way less drag. So when we lift off the gas going into the corner, we're having to use more brake to slow the car down because the spoiler's not there to do it.

The drag on the car is not there to do it. So we're even seeing some brake fade or the pedal getting longer or softer, even at Fontana. We're using quite a bit of brake getting into the corner. You're going to see that everywhere. And if those hot races, Kentucky and other places where we've had break issues in the past, you're going to have to have some sort of extra cooling on these to benefit the car.

But you don't want to open up ducks on the front at some of the mile and a half, two-mile racetracks and sacrifice downforce and hurt the arrow of the car. So they'll have to figure out a way to get the temperature out of the brakes one way or another. But again, going back to Martinsville, we run a bigger, tougher, stronger package at Martinsville than we do at Phoenix. The argument can be said that we need to move toward that bigger, tougher package for Phoenix. Some of the stuff we have at Martinsville where we take extra care to cool the brakes, we need to bring them Phoenix, New Hampshire, Richmond, all those, you know, three-quarter, five-eights, even the mile racetracks. We may want to run even bigger brakes or better cooling at Dover and places. like that because we're going to be on the brake pedal a lot more this year due to the reduced

drag in the cars but i'm pretty confident uh we run an extreme we like when you go to martinsville you run the biggest rotors the biggest calpers you have the most you have all the ducking on the car you can possibly fit on there so if it doesn't work it's not because you didn't have enough or didn't do enough it's just because the car's not driving well or you know the driver's on the brake pedal too long down in the corner or you're running up you know behind somebody for too long a period of time and not getting any air to the brakes thus cooking the bead and popping the tires so we've seen tires and and beads pop there before and it's just due to the cars being not handling well and having

to use too much brake in the corner and also being in traffic for too long you can actually you know be mid-pack and just really close on these guys for lap after lap after lap using a lot of brake and if you're running really really tight on swipes bumper for that longer period of time it's basically like taping the grill shut taping the duct shut for the brake so they don't get any cool cool it they don't uh the temperature goes up and it heats the heat gets into the wheel which pops the beat on the tire so you have to be real careful there i think a couple of these questions must stem from your periscope sessions after the race which you've been doing the past couple weeks and i think are very enjoyable from fans but uh a couple questions are why is tj

driving every week. TJ always drives to the airport. He likes to drive. He likes to do it. I navigate. He drives. Dale sits in the back.

I sit in the back and hold the flowers. There you go. When a driver crew chief gets fined, do they really pay the outrageous fines? Who actually pays that? The drivers do pay the fines, and the drivers have to pay the fine before the next race so they don't get to compete.

That's a long... That's been the standard for the for the many years that I've been around the sport. Usually this money goes back into the Points Fund or to the NASCAR Children's Charity. Sometimes, you know, the drivers may offer, like we all offered to pony up and pay Tony's fine last year. Sometimes if the owner feels like that his driver has been wronged and doesn't deserve the fine, the owner may step up and pay the fine, but these are all just goodwill gestures. most of the time it's a check written by the driver

and I also know that some I think Rusty Wallace paid a fine and pennies one time and brought it directly to the NASCAR hauler that'd be awesome yeah I believe that to be true wow what about when crew chiefs so get fined like that you know like Cole Pern just got $60,000 strapped to him I believe when the crew chiefs get fined and Cole can

And Greg, or anybody else can get on social media and straighten this out if I'm wrong, but I believe that the owners take care of that of the teams. What if I were to get fined? If you got fined, it would probably be because Junior fined you. No, what if I did something detrimental to stock car racing and NASCAR levy to fine? It probably costs you your job. Oh. Yeah.

It's a hefty fine. That's just calling it. That's right. A question right here on Periscope. I didn't see who asked it, so sorry about that. But does Amy get upset when other drivers cuss you out on the radio in competition? Oh, yeah. Or say things in radio in the heat of competition?

Yeah, she was a bit missed by Blaney the other week. But he got her some flowers on her birthday. He didn't know it was her a birthday, but he bought her some white roses and some orchids and stuff. He did really, really good. Yeah. So, yeah. She gets, she's on, she's aware of her social media pretty constantly throughout the day. So during the race, she'll, you know, it's obviously lightened up a little bit during the race because of the activity on the racetrack and people, people live tweeting.

So she, um, she tries to, you know, bite her tongue. But there's a few times when I get out of the car and she'll have responded to something. And, uh, and, you know, that's, that's some difficult waters that have to wait through. but she does pretty good job with it. But yeah, she's, she's, you know, she gets offended just like anyone else. There's a gentleman that says, I have a number eight,

Dale Earnhardt, Goodrich, Rangler, Black, and Silver car. What year was that? He's asking what year it was. Number eight. Number eight. It says number eight, Good Wrench, Wrangler, Black and Silver. Yeah, this would have been an Xfinity car, Dad, Ran.

I'm a guess, I'm guessing it's a, Antenac Venture or a Nova and the year would have probably been 1986, somewhere around 1986 for what was then the Bushman National Series. Okay. Here we've got one. Lisa, Norr, asked, what has been the best pranks that you've done to the employees at J.R.M? It's coming up on April Fool's Day, so I don't know if you guys...

That snake or the Canadian prank we did was pretty awesome. Not at the time, but once we were able to put it all together, because I remember we talked about that for, we spent a couple hours the day before, and then everything was going according to plan until Stephen called NASCAR, and then we're like, oh, shit. Yeah, should we give it a little bit of context? I mean, we thought it would be fun to prank our travel coordinator,

and this is when we were racing in Canada, and we wanted to manufacture a problem getting across the line. into Canada, right? Yeah, so we used this voice changer program and Martin Friedrich, who's German. It made him sound, we were trying to emulate a French person. It didn't really sound French, but... Sounded German. Yeah, at the time, and so it popped up the name on Stephen's phone saying Canadian Border Patrol,

so he thought it was legit. And we made up some form, emissions form. and he freaked out, called NASCAR. We basically said that the trucks have been confiscated and that he was in trouble because he didn't fill out the paper. Yeah, the trucks weren't getting across the border, which if you've ever crossed the border, it's a pretty serious business. So they couldn't get across. The truck driver calls, and Stephen starts freaking out.

He calls NASCAR because there was a lot of back and forth the teams do with NASCAR to get across the border that we didn't know about. about or maybe we should have known about and done our due diligence there. So he calls NASCAR like you're supposed to. And then we finally reveal like, ah, it's a prank. And we, NASCAR was not happy. No, Frank ended up being on us. We actually have it on camera where he was on the phone with NASCAR making the call saying it was a prank.

And that wasn't a good reaction. So we got called to Kelly's office. They were going to call the crew chiefs and the drivers to the NASCAR hauler that week. But we got out of it. We haven't done that again. Junior, any pranks on you? Or that you pulled. I can't remember you actually pulling one really.

Yeah. We put 2,000 crickets in Josh's bedroom one time. Oh, yeah. He did do that. So he had crickets singing him to sleep every night. uh... we we used to uh... when we used to raise hell all the time

we'd uh... one of the last things we do at the end of the night uh... if you went to bed early if you were one of the first ones to go to sleep uh... we would go in to your room and throw a bucket of water on you then a pound of flour and uh... that made things pretty messy so we did that a few times to a few people

you did that to me once but without the flower You don't remember this. Just a bucket of water? No, it wasn't even a bucket of water. You brought the water hose into your shop. In your late model shop where we play basketball now, I was asleep on the couch, where the couch and TVs are. And it was like three or four in the morning, and you brought a water hose in and just went to town. I'm still a little angry about that, actually.

Dang, that's a really jerk thing to do. It was. It was. Blaney is right. Yes. Blaney was right. Yeah, I agreed with Blan. Yeah. All right. Let's see. What other questions do we have here? Why the black side skirts on the JRM cars, says Mike Wheeler. I mean, sidescarts are a big deal to you.

Before you answer that, every time we put out a paint scheme, Mike Wheeler sends us this tweet. So I'm glad I'm going to finally answer this. For like four years. Is that right? Yeah. All right. Mike Wheeler, today is your day. Painted side skirts cost money. Apparently we're on title and budget here at Junior Motors. That's the actual truth to the whole thing. A car has never gone faster because the side skirts. I know, but I do like a good painted side skirt, so I can understand the frustration. I know Justin Algar was hoping to get his side skirts painted if he had won a race, right? I think he had a bet with the shop foreman that if he won one of the first five races,

they'd paint his side skirts, so he won. So the shop foreman said, what do you want, flat or gloss black? So it's, yeah, it's just a little bit expensive for the teams to paint because they have to change sidescurts several times during the weekend. And it's expensive to paint or decal these side skirts and have them all stashed on the truck. If we run a different paint scheme each week, you've got to have several different sidescurs ready to go

and interchange them on and off the hauler. It's just a real pain to butt. Sherry Taylor on Facebook Live, ask, what is your fascination with Elvis? my grandmother was a huge Elvis fan and when we would stay with her when we were little kids she had all these little canteens and figurines and all kinds of pictures

of Elvis all over her house it seemed every day there was Elvis playing from the stereo and if it wasn't Elvis it was Patsy Klein or something like that but I out of curiosity because of my Martha Earnhardt's being a fan out of curiosity

he just wanted to know why she was such a big fan. So I started watching a little bit of, you know, watching movies about Elvis or documentaries and listened to his music and just became a fan. Any Elvis? I'm not. Nothing. Elvis's life story is complete, is really intriguing, right? Because he kind of went through these, you know, highs and lows.

Brent Dudding asked Martinsville hot dog or no. Yes. I love the Martinsville hot dog, and now that I'm doing all this cycling and running and lifting weights and everything else they have us doing, I'm going to eat some this weekend. I haven't been eating them because I haven't been working out, so I have to, you know, if you can't, if you're not working out, you can't, you can't just eat anything you want. But since we're doing all this hard work, I'm going to be able to eat a few. We used to, and still do, a lot of the teams still do this. So there's these rafters in the garage area at Martinsville. If you go down in the garage area this weekend at the racetrack,

you'll see on the rafters guys are keeping score of how many hot dogs they eat. All the guys on the teams will basically right on the rafters, you know, how many they've had that week, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. The guy on the team that eats the most, you know, probably wins a pot or something of a couple hundred bucks. And I used to get in on that a little bit when we were race with the bus. Budweiser 18 and I'm talking eating over a dozen hot dogs in a two three day period and I didn't I wouldn't eat any on race day obviously So I was kind of a disadvantage But some guys were eating above 20 24 hot dogs a weekend in three day period

I mean they're only two bucks so yeah it's it's they are so freaking good yeah and plus they're they're kind of small so it's not they are small overwhelming yeah you're right they're the perfect size and uh yeah so I'm going to have a couple. I haven't had, I haven't really indulged in a while, so this weekend it's on. All right, looking ahead, we always do a segment each week where we talk about what we have going on Tuesday. Today, we'll be at Charlotte Merse Speedway and Hammerhead

Entertainment for a Goodies production. We're driving their Xfinity car at the Bristol Race in August. Thursday, Texas Winter Circle appearance in Dallas with William Byron and Graham Ray Hall. So we're there to promote the Texas race, drive a few ticket sales. I'm sure they're selling pretty well, considering the new configuration. Friday, we have practice at Martinsville, qualifies at 4.35 p.m. Eastern on Fox Sports 1.

There's currently a 100% chance of rain, though. Oh, my. Yeah. My plan was to drive, just so you know. Oh. We're going to take the suburban, because I want to, if it's going to rain, maybe we're going to drive anyways. Yeah, we're going to drive anyways, but I wanted to take the bike up there. Okay.

All right. Cool. So even if it's raining, I can ride the bike on the trainer in the bus, which is my plan Friday night. All right. Because I'm going to eat the hell out of some hot dogs. Okay. All right. Saturday, we got two practices.

I'm assuming those are in the morning, as usual. Well, morning and there's an afternoon one. About into like 2.30. Okay. And we'll have a little team debrief. And then I think we'll probably helicopter home, right? Yep. A lot of folks always ask, do we stay?

Do we back and forth? Yeah, unless the weather's rough, which it looks like to be fine. If it's raining, we probably won't drive home. Right. Probably just stay because it's about an hour and a half drive in it. Hour 45. But if the weather's good on Saturday, we'll helicopter home and helicopter back in for the race on Sunday morning with Amy. The race starts at 2 p.m. on Fox Sports 1.

Good luck this weekend. I will not be there. Yeah, Tyler's not going to go. Yeah. Thanks. Tony Mayhoff. Thanks for leaving me hanging, Tyler. Hey.

I really appreciate that. Sometimes we just need our time apart. So Tony's going this weekend. He's another member of the brand team. You'll get to know Tony a little bit more as the season goes, as he will pick up all of Tyler slack. There's not much slack to pick up this week. What kind of pre-race meet and greets do I have?

Do you have an exalt a suite appearance? Where's a suite at Martinsville? They didn't have sweets. Yeah, remember when you went to the TV booth last year? Last fall, it's up there. Oh. Yeah. Okay.

Exalt the suite? exalt the suite and there's a mountain do thing that if you bought like a ticket package which you usually do that it's a Q&A up on the hill ah in the tent yeah yeah okay so it's pretty similar to what you normally do all right so two meet and greets in the morning of the race those are always a good time especially that one up on the hill all the fans in there they're pretty yeah they're rowdy out there yes sir I love Martinsville I'm really looking forward to that racetrack it's good short track racing and uh again yeah we want to

try to get in there and get our first top 10 this year. Top 5 win. It's traditionally a very, very good track for you. Well, that's the show. I hope y'all enjoyed it. We had a lot to talk about. Obviously, after Martinsville, we have one more show here in the studio. Yep.

Next week we're in the studio. And then I'm taking this show on the road. Me and Amy are going to host it after Texas. And she's already talking smack about how awesome the show's going to be. and the week of Easter. So it'll be me and Amy out of office on location. That's going to be exciting. The first one's about, it's going to involve some racing.

The second one won't have any racing to talk about, so it's going to be interesting. It will be fun. So looking forward to having Amy on the show for a couple weeks. But anyways, you guys, hope everybody enjoyed it. Thank you to our friends at Exalta for making this happen. They helped us build this awesome studio, and they sponsor the Dirty Moe Radio. As always, we're broadcasting from Exalta Studios at Junior Motorsports.

If you want to come and listen to the show, we record. We're actually going to move up to 8 o'clock every week. We're usually record at 9. We're moving to 8. Also, if you come to the studio on Tuesdays, they give you a 20% Dale Jr. download discount. Oh, yeah, in the gift shop. We're selling some merch, watching some podcasting. Yep.

So anyways, be sure to subscribe to the Dale Jr. download through Dale Jr.com, iTunes, SoundCloud, and Stitcher. I think Mike went all through those in the Periscope. Good job, Mike. Thank you. Look that. Thank that, man. Celebrate him. Let us know your feedback on Twitter. It's at Dale Jr. at Overstreet Tyler at Dirtymoor Radio. And also check out DirtyMow Radio's Facebook page.

We'll see you all next week. Tyler, I'm leaving. I won't be here the rest of the day. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Dirty Mo Radio.