The Dale Jr. Download - 168 - Maybe I'm still pissed off and I spin him out...or maybe I don't

Episode Date: April 4, 2017

After a promising day went awry for Dale Jr. in Martinsville, he breaks down the race, his run-in with Ryan Blaney, and the crash that ended his race early. Junior also welcomes co-host Tyler Overstreet back from a trip to WWE's WrestleMania, tells stories of his first wins at Texas and answers fan questions. 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.

Don't miss a single episode of Door Bumper Clear with NASCAR spotters, T.J. Majors, T.J. Majors and Brett Griffin as they've recapped their weekend at the racetrack. You can find Door Bumper Clear on Dale Jr. on Dail Bumper Clear on Del Arnardt, Jr. will lay claim to his first NASCAR Winston Cup victory. Dale Earnhardt Jr. has won the Daytona 500. Hey, everybody. Back at it again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download. Back from his vacation in WrestleMania is Tyler Overstreet. I'm here. Yeah, he's back. And we also have Tony Mayhoff in studio with us.

He was. Hey, guys. Yeah, he was Tyler's fill-in. Yes. For this weekend. And we're going to find out if he was a, Worthy, fill in. I think he was.

So you said, you say here in the notes that it was one of three off weekends that you. Yeah, is that news to you? Well, it says PR folks get these. It's not uncommon. You're not a PR guy. Do you want to be labeled PR guy? Because I didn't think you'd like that. Well, more manager.

Or do you like that? More manager types get, they get like. Wait, whoa, whoa. Half a season off. What standard do you hold yourself to? Are you a PA guy? Do you want what all PR guys get, or are you better than that, Tyler? I aspire to be better.

I think he wants to be PR folk when it works for him. That's right. Yeah. And then he wants to be road manager when that works for him. That's right. Hey, I know Chase's manager gets like, is only going to like 12 races. Yeah. Starting out slow.

Yeah. Ease into it. Yep. Well, we'll talk about Tyler's weekend at WrestleMania. We'll also talk about your weekend. Well, we've got to talk about yours. Everybody wants to know about your weekend. Remember, you had the big news story in the...

USA Today. USA Today about going to WrestleMania. Do you function as your own PR rep, or do you have a guy who pitches those stories for you? Yes. I pitched that one. Good. Good work.

Well, I'll see. Hey. So we'll talk about... Got to get your name out there. Yeah, yeah. We'll talk about the Martinsville race and a few other things. Let's get going. All right, so let's talk about Martinsville.

Martinsville, one of my favorite tracks. I love short track racing, especially at Martinsville. And we didn't get to test out the lights. All the weather went pretty well for the weekends. We thought we might have to qualify later in the afternoon on Friday. They'd chatter about that a little bit. Yeah, and then it appeared to clear up. It was like 100%.

Everybody was talking about how bad it was going to rain all day Friday, and oh, man, it's 100% by lunch or so. We were good to go. And then you were on track. Then it rained. And did they say what the reason was that they didn't actually, was it because of tech? Yeah, because they couldn't get all the cars through tech in time. So it made perfect sense.

I saw Denny Hamlin tweeted that they should just qualify without teching them, and then the top 12 would tech after qualifying. I like that. I don't think anybody would have a problem with that idea. That seems like a reasonable idea for every week. Especially in... Because that's like a two or two and a half hour process. No, no, no.

I think that that, if you... I think if you present that as the idea going in, guys will manipulate that and cheat up their cars and know not, you know, think about it. The guys that know they might not make the top 12 can rig their cars up pretty good just to make the field. It's okay, I think, they're kind of springing on guys. If it's something you have to adjust on Friday, if you're like, okay, this is how we're going to do it, nobody can really scramble in that period of time to really take advantage of that or cheat any of the system manipulate it. Because you know that that is what the teams are going to do. they're going to take every opportunity to manipulate the rules.

And so I like Denny's idea. If we're kind of putting that box in the future, I think that's a great decision to make. But not going, don't go into the weekend with like this is, we're not doing tech on qualifying day. Yeah, you can't let guys know that they might not get teched at all. That makes sense. Because then they might really try to trick the system.

If they're going to give up a top 12 qualifying spot, that might get them something through into the race. Right. They don't need to be on their car. Anyhow, the weather was great. Really good, actually, and it was a little chilly. I was concerned about the temperature. We had a new right-side tire, and typically if the tracks are going to rubber up really good,

it needs a lot of track temp, and it needs to be kind of warm. So I was worried it wasn't going to be warm enough to rubber up the track, but the track took a ton of rubber. This was a great tire that Goodyear brought this weekend. really widened out the groove widened out we saw guys running even in the second groove make a passes in the second groove I saw the 42 and 18 up there I know the 18 was making a lot of ground up on the top we would go in really high and dime in the corner and be almost a whole full groove up the racetrack and then cut down

and run off the bottom it was tons of fun to drive that reminded me a lot of the old tire we used to run back before we went to green tires they took a lot of oils and chemicals out of the tires in the last several years to go to a greener tire that's better for the environment. And that has made it harder for these tires to really rubber up. They just turn all the stuff that comes off the tire turns to powder kind of and doesn't stick to the track. But this particular weekend, man, it was like the tire of old.

So maybe this is something they could utilize other tracks moving forward. Man, whatever they did, I really, really think they need to try to, you know, replicate that everywhere we go. The track rubbered up really quickly. And we tend to take the rubber back up off the track when the caution comes out with our hot tires just rolling around there. We kind of pick it all back up, but this tire would lay it right back down in 15 laps. Was it falling off significantly over a long run?

I don't know. I don't really look at my lap times on the dash in the race, but it was, it was the car, the handling was dissipating and the drive off and all that thing. You know, all that stuff was. Like you'd want. Yeah, like you'd want. So not everybody's just sitting there hitting hot laps, lap after lap. It was cool.

We were talking to Goodyear yesterday. Typically, when you hear about tires at a race, it's always a bad thing. Yeah. And you heard you specifically, but a lot of drivers were talking about how the tire actually added to the race. And to your point, it widen the groove. It made the race better. So it was cool to see that. You talk about the tires in a positive way.

That's right. Good Year was here yesterday at Junior Motors Sports. We had a chance to visit with them a little bit as one of our partners. but we um they that's true uh the drivers myself included don't really say much when the tire's good right well it's bad we all start talking have you ever been too good year to see them put the me and i've heard he did that right and it's they're making those things one by one a guy is literally laying on layer after layer yeah and then it comes off they they let it cool or whatever and then they go through like a process of engineers like checking every single tire so when these guys are

like, oh, could you do a terrible job? I'm like, there's an extensive process going on to make those tires. It's like anything else in the sport. It's the science now. Like, to Tyler's point, they use lasers and chemistry. It's awesome. Yeah. I think all the drivers myself included probably benefit from going up there and seeing that

process, we certainly probably would take a little more. We'd probably be a little more hesitant to speak out when we didn't appreciate the tire. But practice didn't go very well. for us this weekend. We struggled in all the practices, really. All four cars didn't show a ton of speed. Even on our long run stuff, it wasn't just, we weren't quite as competitive as we'd been in the past. I think we were all very concerned going into the race Sunday. Greg said he made a ton of changes. We always make changes on Saturday night. So when I say, man, we're going to make some changes. That's not really alarming. But Greg made an unusual amount of changes.

for this particular weekend because the car wasn't really performing that well. And I got to say, I mean, I was really thrilled with how the car drove in the race. I thought Greg and those guys, they sit, this is what Greg and them guys do after a race. I don't know if people really understand or appreciate. So when we get done with practice on Saturday, this is every weekend, I'll sit with Greg and the guys until he kind of dismisses me for the most part. We'll sit in the lounge of the truck, and they're literally pouring through the setup It's me. It's Greg, three other engineers, and myself, and everybody's sort of crunching numbers and running simulation and making changes and seeing what this does and what that does and everything is getting fed to Greg, and he sort of sees what he likes or doesn't like.

And Greg's also pouring over all of the notes from all the other teams and all the changes they've made, how they started practice, how they ended practice, all the comments the drivers make. then we have a meeting right about an hour after practice the last practice where all the crew chiefs all the drivers come into the lounge and we sit down and everybody goes over all the crew chiefs start talking first so the crew chiefs talk about every change they made from Friday and Saturday it's really extensive kind of boring at times but if you pay attention and take a lot of notes you can pick up on some things that maybe you didn't try or if you're tight in the middle and and jimmy tried something on his car that like to help the center. You can write that down. You can Greg can talk about it, run it in simulation, see if that's something you want to add to your car. So we spend hours and hours and hours. So when the garage closes, the drivers and crew chiefs and crew members, everybody has to leave, right?

So the crew will go back to the hotel. If Greg has his bus, he'll go back to the bus a lot. If not, he'll go to the hotel with the team. And when he goes there, he opens his books, and he basically gets right back to what he was doing in the lounge, going over the setup, going over the numbers. And he'll do that basically through his dinner. and all the way till it's time to go to bed.

And so he spends... And for Greg, that is not like a... That's every week. Yeah, that's not just like this picture. He's working all the time. He's legitimately working all the time, yeah. Exactly. So as a driver, that big amount of changes

that comes after the last practice, does that make you excited? Like, y'all, we got these big changes and I'm confident in them, or does it make you anxious? Like, oh, we had to take a big swing here. Let's see what it is. Well, when it works like this,

time and time again you go you gain tons of confidence in the in the in the in the things that Greg's doing he was a real leader this weekend he stepped up on the radio I told him I said you know I'm older than him and have been doing this a while but I told him I said just treat me like you treat any other driver if you want me to start to race with the track bar up an inch tell me put it up an inch and if you want don't tell you know don't sit there and go well he probably knows where he wants it I'll just let him make that decision you tell me me what you want me to do and I'm going to do it and he's in my mind the crew chief is sort of

the leader of the team I can certainly you know cheer lead a little bit and try to keep the troops morale up in certain times if we have us trouble on pit road or if I make a mistake on the track but Greg's kind of the guy that all the guys are going to look at need to be looking at and he really stepped up this weekend I was really happy and we're you know we're trying to get our confidence and and what we're doing so we can start to put some races together we're you know it's been a bit of a struggle but this weekend the car was great so when the race started we were kind of moving forward and we had worked our way into the top five early in the race top 10 and running seventh late in stage one we'd actually

had a caution we came in got two tires so we had old lifts on I was having a real hard time trying to get off the corner with that left retire on there and we got into it with Blaney again. So coming off of turn four, I was spinning the tires really bad. And I guess I squeezed him into the wall. T.J. said I didn't give him quite as much room as T.J. would have liked. And T.J. usually takes up for me in all situations. So if he was going to say, you know, if he says I did something I shouldn't have done, he's probably, he's probably right.

I feel like that's most spotters, though. My spotters, it's never their guy's fault. Right. But we squeezed him into the wall, and then coming off a turn two, I spun the tires again and slipped up the track a little bit, and he just never checked up. But, you know, I don't think that he intentionally was trying to spin me out, but he sent me for a ride. Anyways, I was glad we didn't hit anything. And then later on, it wasn't. But maybe it seemed like 50 laps later we were running.

Right. Knows to tell, not literally nose to tell the track, but. one position apart. Yeah, because I was sitting in traffic, and my fiancé Morgan was looking at Twitter, and she's like, oh, no, ADA spun out. It's like, damn it. Yeah.

And then by the time we parked, you were already back in the top ten. I was like, okay, he's fine. The car was so good that you could actually feel it in the pits, you know, with the over-the-wall guys. Anytime something like that happened, we saw you go from 21st to 5th so quickly in the beginning and knew the car was good and had confidence in it.

So when something like that happened, everyone was like, deal, you know, nobody got down, everybody was confident in the car. He drove through the field there without a right front fender before. Yeah, it's such fun track. So this got a conversation going at the house afterwards. Me and Amy were talking a little bit, and I said, you know, and I think most drivers are like this, and I don't know why.

This is the only part of my life where this happens. So out on the racetrack, it's hard not to. be, it's hard not to want it to be eye for an eye. So if a guy spins me out, I feel like that I need, the same thing needs to happen to him somehow, some way. And so, and in no other part of my life am I like that. If I kind of get a raw deal somewhere else in my day, you adjust, right, you adapt.

Sometimes, you know, you don't just, you're not so, I think it's ego. But don't you think I think it's probably competition in general, like in any sport, you know, even like playing pickup basketball. If I feel like I get fouled and don't get a call, I'm going to go hard back at that guy to get mine. You know, I'm going to call for the ball and try and go. So I think it's probably just sports and competition. You're a competitor out on the track. And if you feel like somebody got you, you're going to get yours back.

Yeah. But how do you bring yourself back down? Because you caught him so quick. We didn't actually get to him. So that whole time I'm closing, I thought I was going to run him down, but we never really did. He actually had a pretty good car, and we burned our stuff up, maybe trying to get to him. And I never really got to a position where I had to make that mental decision of him. I'm going to do anything here.

Usually I don't. Usually I pass the guy, and that's kind of my middle finger of, hey, this is how you do it. So. And that's not as good of middle fingers I want to give. I know it. So this is why we had to, this is why. I know. So this is why me and Amy were having this conversation.

Most of my fans are going to say, you know, get up there and spin him out, right? And in my mind, I'm thinking, man, I kind of want to spin him out. Or it's eye for an eye. Whatever that guy did, you want to do it back. And your fans certainly want you to be aggressive and don't want you to get pushed around on the track and want you to return the favor. So what other alternative is there to, what? What is the other choice you can do that, aside from spinning a guy out again,

to sort of settle the score? Right. Because if you just bump him up the track and drive by him, you could do that to somebody. We did that all day. Yeah, you'd do that to your teammate. That was par for the course as far as at Martinsville, rubbing and all that. We had the whole right side of our car was wore out and used up from leaning on guys, and that's fun stuff.

Right. But I don't know. I find a bit of a struggle to decide what is the right thing to do. Is it the right thing to do to go back up there and the next opportunity, return the favor on that guy? That might teach him a lesson. I know. And he's a young guy.

Maybe he needs that lesson. Yeah, but don't you think part of that's maturity? You see young guys do that. They want that instant gratification. And you have a long-term view of race guys the way you want to be raced. No, I'll tell you what. If we were running, if we were at a race, and it wasn't as highly publicized.

It would be way easier to go up there and knock this guy out of the way or spin him out. If we were racing at Myrtle Beach or somewhere like Nashville Fairgrounds and I got spun out, I'd have no problem going and spinning the guy out because it's small potatoes and it's small town news. But when you know that's all people are going to want to ask you about for the next two or three weeks, or is this a rivalry, are you guys finding?

But you did talk to him. No. You still haven't talked to him? I haven't talked to him yet. Was that real? You tweeted a picture of him calling you and he declined it. And you said that was pretty immature and I almost kind of believe. I thought it was right.

That's the kind of a little finger I would give. He was calling me and I was. Did he call multiple times? No, he called once and left a message. I haven't listened to the message. I don't think that's immature. Keep him thinking about it. He needs to think, man, I shouldn't be doing this on the track.

Yeah. I think the part that disappointed me is that you were, in position to get some bonus points late in that stage and then you get knocked out of it. At the same time, though, that does suck to losing points that gave us a great opportunity to come in and get tires with five laps to go in that stage. And then we just put it around until that stage was over with and was able to stay out and get a ton of track position back. And that's kind of how we got back into the top 10 was doing it that way.

And so I'm sitting there with great tires and didn't have to pit. So we ended up getting points in the second stage, I think, because of the, that strategy. I don't know if we'd have been able to drive all the way back through the field in the matter of time that we had to lap 260. But I was just, you know, I've never, I've been racing a long, long time, and I still don't know

exactly, you know, every other situation in the sport or in, and on the racetrack, you kind of know exactly what you're going to do or what you would do. But when you get spun out, you never really know exactly how to respond. And I guess it's a case by case. Like, if you think, you know,

it depends on how you get spun out, And who does it? Who it is, yeah. So I was like, man, if I catch him, what am I going to do? I couldn't really figure out what I was going to do if ever. And that's literally what was going on in my mind. I'm actually thinking. At the start of the season, I would have stuck up for Blaney.

Well, I'm just saying, like, people be interested, I think, to know what goes on in driver's mind. So you're sitting there watching and you're watching a driver run someone down. And in his mind, he's probably thinking, man, I don't know what I'm going to do when I get there. Hey, and for the record, if you're mind. What am I going to do? I guess I'm just going to wait until I get there and see what happens. Well, you know, maybe I'm still pissed off and I spin him out or maybe I don't. For the record, you weren't the only run in Blaney had.

Yeah, I heard that he got into each other and Chad had to come on the radio and say, hey, Jimmy, we need that car for later. So there's an example of a veteran who Jimmy decided when he got to him, he wasn't going to be okay with it. Yeah, and sometimes if you don't get a chance to spin the guy out, But he ended up getting in a wreck or has a bad day. That kind of makes you feel a little bit better. Yeah, it's karma.

But then you stole him one. Yeah. But at least he didn't have an awesome day. Right. You'd have a crappy day. But so you got back into that, use that strategy. You ran well in the second stage, finished sixth in that stage. So you did get some bonus points there.

Yep. Then in the final stage, you're running good. And then you had the speeding penalty on pit road. Yeah. Which you said was coming out of the box. I guess it was a segment beyond that. Not literally the segment coming out of the box, but the next segment.

So I got out of the box real hard and probably spiked over the speed limit as I'm crossing into the section that I sped and didn't slow the car down enough and get sort of... To balance it out. If you come on to pit road too fast and you know it, you can stop or over slow the car

in that first segment and average the speed out. Right. Yeah, because they don't have like a radar. Yeah, it's not a radar. The radar gun. It's the average speed in that section. Yeah, it's just how long it took you to get from this line to this line. Yeah.

And so you can know if you know and catch it quick enough. So I just got out of the box real hard and probably tick the line speeding for the next segment and didn't slow it down enough or get underneath the speed limit far enough to average that timeout. And it's literally probably like 0.02 or 0.01 over the speed limit. It's not a big chunk of, you know, like one mile an hour or two mile an hour. Right. It's tiny. But if they already give you, what, a five-mile-an-hour tolerance,

and we push it to that. That's how NASCAR works. If they give you five-mile-hour, you take it. Right. So that was my mistake. And I was really, really hoping that they were wrong. There was a restart one time in the race where we jumped at the inside of Matt Kenseth and made a three-wide. I did see that.

I swear I thought they were going to call me for pulling. I was in the eye-saw. the start finish line as I was to the left of Matt and you're not supposed to be in the act of passing. Even though you're not really taking them, you can't move. You can't change lanes before the start finish line and I felt like I had done it. It was a nice move. I liked it. Matt texted me after the race and said, wow, I guess I need to pay attention to who's behind me on every restart.

I said, yeah. I said, we had such a big run on you guys and they were all, he was half throttling everybody else in front of me. was too. I was like I had to go. You usually catch a lot of flack though for not being aggressive on restart. So hey I know. Sorry about your luck. Yeah, he wasn't mad. I know. We joke and picked. But

that race is so long to where that's going to happen to everybody. At some point, yeah. You're going to get put in a bad position. It didn't bother him too bad because he didn't get screwed. But the guy that was on the outside of that three wide, it's never good. Yeah. I saw him in my peripheral vision kind of get tapped by the 20

and get up the track a little bit. It's It's amazing some of the things you pick up in your peripheral vision while you're out there racing around. Anyways, yeah, we got toward the back there, I guess, just outside the top 15 after the speeding penalty, trying to make our way back forward. Still had a lot of time. Still felt good and confident that we could get back in the top 10. Greg was cheerleading. Hey, man, we're going to be fine.

Work your way up through there. And we got down into turn three. And I saw them guys kind of messing around up there with Denny and the 10. Ken car, Danica, but I couldn't tell exactly what happened. You can't see through those cars in front of you too well. But this has happened before where everybody kind of checks up. We kind of bump into the guy in front of us, somebody rear ends us, and it shoves. We have only one bumper bar on the car, and it's below the headlights.

And it went underneath the five car, I think, is who I was running into it. It went underneath his rear bumper. And so his rear bumper comes back over the top of the radio and sheared off the fitting on top of the radiator. This happened before when we ran into the back of Paul Menard in term one. Spring of 2015. There you go. So in my opinion, I hope when we go back, we have a little more protection up there for that radiator. Yeah, people were asking if you needed more of a bumper bar. Yeah. I would say you do. We don't, we only run the bare minimum because of weight and we're trying to get everything low as possible. So the radiator literally, the radiator is only a foot

tall right in the in the front of the car you know when you used to see cars in the you know if you've seen it looked under the hood these cars lately you'll notice the radiers got a lot lower everything in the car is low low low trying to get the weight down to handle better and so they take they took all of the bumper bars that we would typically run from the from the grill up around the headlights all that's gone there's nothing there literally nothing it's just body no support yeah it's a fiberglass yeah tj made a comment in the uh it's start of the race before we got in the car he said make sure you remember that bumper's not made a glass and I have to beg to differ it certainly didn't take the lick it should have been able to take

I mean we got it it's Martinsville you're going to have situations like that you hate not being able to continue we should have been able to come in patch it up continue finishing the top 15 top 10 wherever we would end it up otherwise aside from the fitting on top of the radar being knocked off the car was not hurt in any way So that was a little frustrating. Maybe next time we'll at least put a little more protection around there that will prevent that from happening so we can have a little more contact on the front end of the car. And that's it. I mean, we had to, we've been a victim of this new rule now where you can't, if you're in the garage for more than five minutes, or you go to the garage for any reason, I guess you're out of the race.

But you're still cool with the rule? Yeah, I'm still cool with it. I know it's bit us in the butt a little bit, but I'm okay with it. It evens out. It sucks. It races like Martinsville and Bristol, where you could fix it and get back out there and run. Yeah. But every other track, it's a good thing.

There'll be races like this where I'm like, I wish I could keep going, but then there'll be other races where the car is literally going to be three seconds off the pace. That's right. You don't want to get out of and ride around that thing, especially at places like Darlington and where you can't literally get out of the way fast enough for some of these guys. We're now 25th in points, so we were making a steady, slow climb back into relevancy, and now we've lost some more points. And I told Greg in the hauler after the race, I said, this fight to get back and try to make this chase just got a lot harder.

But if we can go to the next race and win it, we've signed our invitation into the playoffs. You're always one win away. One went away, and literally we have the confidence of a team that can go to any race and win. We know we can. We felt like we, in the right circumstances, had a good enough car and the speed to win this weekend. And, you know, we're going to get more opportunities. But if that doesn't happen, we're definitely going to have to start putting finishes together to – and I think, you know, top 16 in points is still attainable.

And again, just like during the race, after the race, those guys are four. frustrated because they knew you had a car you could win, but you could see that they were confident. Just when you were talking to them after the race and telling them, you know, keep your head up, good job. You could see it in those guys that they had the confidence that you guys are going to put a good machine on the car going forward. And so not worried about it. So I wanted to pose a question to our listeners and use the hashtag DJD, Dell Jr. Download, when you answer this question for me. So if you're a race car driver, considering everything going on,

out on the track. This isn't a question of what you want your favorite driver to do. This is what you would do. All right? So you get spun out on the track. You run, you're back on the, you know, later in the race, you're running around this guy. What's your, what's your action? What's your choice? So let us know. I want, we'll go on, we're going to, maybe we'll put up a poll. You want to put up a poll? We can do polls. We'll do a poll and get you guys to, uh, to answer that. That'll be interesting to see how that plays out. I know what it's going to be. It's going to be.

Yeah. Give it to him. Remember that time? I think Brad was driving for J.R.m. when he hit Denny, and Denny's like, if you throw a rock, I'm going to throw a concrete block back at you. I think that's probably what the fans are. Denny's not eye for eye.

He's eye for two eyes. Anyhow, that's the weekend. Hopefully, Texas goes a little bit better as far as the result. Going to a new racetrack there, new pavement, new configuration in one and two. But not to get off of the weekend. and with Tony here, how did it go? Okay, yeah, so Tony was filling in for Tyler. Tyler was at WrestleMania.

Yep. And Tony did great. I mean, I'll let him sort of explain. Yeah, so for fans that don't know, I work with Mike Davis on Dale's brand team, and so I see it from the business perspective, and my relationship is with our partners, so I'm at track a lot with Dale, but I see it from the partner side,

so it was really fun for me to see it from Tyler's perspective, and I think that it makes you better at your job when you can experience something from a different view, a different angle. So that was really cool for me. I enjoyed it. You know, certainly my whole thought throughout the weekend was making sure that I was making your weekend less stressful because at the end of the day, your performance on the track and how you feel getting in the race car, that's what's important. So I wanted to make sure I took away anything that could add stress to you. I had a great time, you know, and it gave me perspective of the fans.

Like I said, I love being in the pits. I think the thing that I took away, I specifically took some time to watch Greg, and we were talking about earlier, just all the inputs he gets as a leader of the team, hearing you on the radio here in TJ, and you can see him up there talking to the engineers and trying to hear you on the radio, and you were asking for feedback, and he's trying to get his guys to tell him what he needs and make those quick snap decisions to give you feedback. So it impressed me the way that Greg does that and is able to manage all that information to give you what you need on the track. track and make the right changes. So how do you, do you have more respect for Tyler now that you've had to go do his job for a week? Yeah, I think it. He almost sounded like he was, no. He was really dodging the true content we're trying to capture here.

He's filled in for you. Yeah. What's your impression of? It's two different jobs. I don't, I wouldn't want to do it. I think it takes the right personality. It's a balance. Certainly our fans are super, super important to us, obviously.

And it's a balance and trying to facilitate. those interactions with fans but set you up to be a competitor on the track and that's the primary reason we're at the racetrack so i i do have a new respect for tyler going to the race track every weekend and and facilitating those interactions and making sure that you're set up to succeed uh yeah i certainly wouldn't want to do it but it's a it's a different thing you know the only thing i want to know was the was the gate at the back of the elevator open when you got there on sunday morning no but uh tyler i'm a critical thinker it was it was easy we we made changes on the fly.

Okay. That's how we operate here on the Dale Jr. brand team. Okay. So the gate was not open, but we went in the other gate and there was no problem at all. Were you disappointed you weren't mentioned in Tyler's USA Today article about it? I was not. Yeah, they didn't share your tweet that said you were going. Yeah.

I'll work on that for the next one. I'm good. I don't need a PR guy. Well, in case you do. My job is to not promote myself. My job is to promote the Dale Jr. brand. I just. I couldn't believe that.

I woke up or no, before I went to bed. Trust me, we couldn't believe it either. Yeah, I got my Google Alert come through, and I was like, oh, what did they write about Dale today? It was like the fourth article, critical member of Earnhardt's team. And I'm like, really? Let's be clear, you also have a Google Alert set up on yourself. That's how you heard about it. That would be the first one.

Which I don't think it's happening. Morgan was not impressed. Well, bull crap. She was not. She was like, they didn't even mention that your fiance bought you the tickets. And I was like, do you want them to? Because I'll put out a follow-up tweet.

Could you please amend this article? Tyler is at his wrestling game while we're all trying to work. I'll be back at it today. Yeah. He's back to work. Yesterday, I thought you were here yesterday, but you were flying home, right? I had a hellacious experience. Remember?

Okay, so last Thursday we went to Texas. You put out the tweet about me, griping about the Wi-Fi. So I got my karma yesterday. Flying commercial, my flight was supposed to be at 745 last night out of Orlando, and I was going to get home about nine. We're like, man, we don't want to sit around Orlando all day. So we'll just stand by on a 145 flight. They wouldn't let me stand by, but they're like, oh, but we can upgrade your tickets for 75 bucks a piece. Whatever, do it. We got on this 150 flight, and they fly for about 45 minutes, and that's when I were, all these storms are coming through Charlotte yesterday. And they're like, well, we're going to have to

kind of hover here between Myrtle Beach and Florence, South Carolina, for 25 minutes. In case the storm passes and they let us land, they do this for an hour. And then they finally come on. They're like, well, they won't let us land. So we're almost out of fuel. So we're going to have to redirect to Raleigh, Durham, go to Raleigh, sit there for two and a half hours on the plane. The pilot, doesn't mention to other people, or doesn't tell people not to get off the plane. So he taxis up and lets people off the plane. So they're going to go get their food, whatever. And it's not an easy process getting on and off these damn planes nowadays.

So we have to sit and wait an extra 45 minutes for people to reboard. They come through, check everybody who didn't even get off the plane, check their tickets. So we didn't leave Raleigh until 7.30 last night landed in Charlotte, 8.15. I got home about 930. You should tweet at the airline, and we'll be looking for the for-the-win story tomorrow about your travel problems. I was about to, but I was like, eh, maybe I should.

So, yeah, I don't, I will appreciate the Wi-Fi this week. It's a free Wi-Fi, too. Actually, I think we got our Wi-Fi repaired on the plane, so you should be in better shape. All right. I'll test it out Thursday. All right. Well, so, Tyler, tell us about,

tell us about WrestleMania. You went to WrestleMania in Orlando. I know you're a huge wrestling fan.

I tried sharing some of your photos. You did. With the fans so they would understand your fandom.

And I saw some of your videos on Instagram and looked like a pretty good show. It was awesome. So I've

liked wrestling since I was a little kid. I stopped watching it for like 10 years and the last like three or four years I've got back

into watching it. And, And so me and my fiance, Morgan, she got me two tickets for us to go. That was my Christmas gift. So we flew to Orlando Saturday morning. And then they have this big fan fest event, which I was at this event. Like, man, NASCAR should do something like this. It was so well organized, integrated sponsors, had cool displays and autograph sessions,

and like you could get your picture made with a wrestler or whatever. Is that where the foam pit? That's where the phone pit was. What was that you were dropping into? Yeah, so they had this wrestling ring, and then it was like you were jumping off the top rope into a big foam pit. You could do that. That was cool.

You had to sign a waiver for that, though. They had where you could do, like, your favorite WWE person's entrance, so you would go up like this, and it would have the big screen and you would walk out. I can't show you that one. What? Come on. No. Ladies and gentlemen, that'll be.

be on social media later today. We'll figure out how to get that. It's, yeah. Who did you do? Me and Morgan, we went as this guy. It's Enzo and Big Cass. It's just like really loud, obnoxious guy from, like, Long Island. It's pretty awesome.

Okay. So we went down as them. And then they had, you could get your picture made. They've got this big cage. It's called Elimination Chamber. And they have like six guys in one cage match. and so they had that set up and it was like a photo op

so we waited in line to get our picture made with this guy, Finn Baller who's, he was the champion last year and then he tore his labrum in his shoulder or whatever and he just came back last night actually

after WrestleMania. We got her picture made with him. It was super nice. And then we met this girl wrestler, her name's Bailey. She's the hugger. So I had the shirt on

that said, can I get a hug? Did you put the shirt on just for that picture? No, I wore it that day. Okay. Just about happenstance. No, I wore it because I was meeting her. You knew you were meeting her.

Oh, that's you wore it with the intention of meeting her. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's hardcore fandom. It is, but hey. Or you wear a specific shirt for the day. Yeah, it is, but hey. P.S., we've never seen a shirt that fits a dude more than Tyler Overstreet wearing a Cannot get a hug t-shirt.

Yeah. Well, see, you go and you look and see what shirts they have for that particular wrestler. and the other ones are like teal or purple and I'm not going to wear that. You're a teal guy. Now it's not like Charlotte Hornets teal. It's like a more girly teal. Yeah, so I couldn't wear that.

So we did that, which if anybody from NASCAR ever has the opportunity to go to that and see it, it would be an amazing event to bring to like the Daytona 500 because there's a convention center in Daytona. They could do that. It would be an amazing event. The content that WWE is really well regarded in the sports world for the content they put out and the experience. I mean, Mike and I research that kind of stuff, and the way they distribute their content on different social platforms and over the top channels, it's really impressive. They do a really good job of engaging fans. Right.

So that was incredibly impressive. Sunday, obviously, was the WrestleMania. They filled the Citrus Bowl. There was 75,000 people in there, which was the record for the Citrus Bowl. And just the, if you saw the picture that or video that I tweeted, that was the stage and they were coming, the stage was probably 75 yards long. And they've just got people everywhere. And just the production of that thing was impressive with lights and all this stuff going on for each and every individual person was just, I was blown away by it. It was a great show.

It was very long, though. So who was the highlight for you in the show? In the show itself. It was the Undertaker's last match ever. He lost. There was a match. Bill Goldberg. He will be, he's actually going to be in Bristol a couple weeks.

He fought. Brock Lesnar. Right? He lost the Brock Lesnar. And then there's this guy, Seth Rollins. He fought Triple H, which Triple H, his intro, he had a police escort, like six motorcycles. and then he was on a trike bike at the back. And so it was quite an elaborate entrance,

but it was a good match. Was Hulk Hulk Hulk out of getting there? He was dismissed for making some inappropriate comments. What? Yeah, that happened like over a year ago. Oh, so he's not been allowed back? He's old anyways. Okay.

So do you see Rick Flair? He was not there. I thought he'd be there because of his daughter? He was in town, but he didn't come out during the show, but his daughter fought. She lost to the Bailey girl that I meant. Okay. What about the girl and Sina?

They got engaged. Yeah. What did you think about that? Well, it seemed very staged. Like, I'm... That's part of the show. No, I think that... Well, it was obviously part of the show,

but I think they had got engaged before. And then, yeah, they did it to be... Interesting. So maybe she just wasn't wearing the ring. Because it seemed too good to be true. And for her sake, I would hope that's not how you put it. Yeah, they know what they're doing.

They got engaged in someone at WWE said, hey, yeah, we can make a storyline out of this. Right, yeah. Well, all right, man. Well, I'm glad you had fun. And I'm back. I'm ready to go. Yeah.

You're sure? Yeah. We're going to Columbia. You want to take another weekend off? We got an appearance today. We got a deal on Thursday. We're going to Texas Friday. We'll talk about that looking ahead.

I know. I'm ready to go. Okay. He's refreshed, folks. One weekend at WrestleMania. that's what it takes. Re-energized. Re-energized and ready to go.

Oh, and I'm also re-energized because if you saw the game last night, North Carolina Tar Heels, National Champions. That was a pretty sloppy game. Hey. No, it was great. I'm glad the Tar Heels won it. The trophy looks the same regardless of how sloppy the game is. That's right.

There are a lot of foul calls, though. Yeah. I was real happy for the Tar Heels being a, you know, being a North Carolina, and it's awesome to see them, considering last year's result. Right. That went down. It's awesome that they went back.

I can't imagine how awesome that would feel having experienced that defeat last year, and then you go through the whole process again and win it. Quickly, we'll touch on your thoughts on Patrick Ewing, getting the Georgetown to coaching job, leaving the Hornets. That's good for him. I think he was overdue for even an NBA coaching job, so that's very good. I agree. We talked about the USA Today for the win article. So we get a USA Today for the win article about every week.

Yeah. It's pretty cool. Where they'll take a tweet and make a story out of it. So this weekend or this past week, they took the tweet about Tyler going to WrestleMania, which I appreciate you putting out there in the first place. Blue Tyler up. And so over the past few years, more and more sites have started pulling random tweets, right? And they're creating click-baked articles.

Basically, they're taking the tweets that people can see on Twitter, and they'll write an article about it or create an article, which is pretty, Interesting that they just out of thin air. I will say, though, USA Today for the win is a big supporter of our podcast because they tweet a lot about it. So we're not criticizing them. It's just an interesting topic that they put out there. So what are your thoughts on the article? Wasn't it that Fox was doing it a lot last year?

Fox does a lot. NBC Sports does a lot. So what do you thoughts on that, people making articles strictly out of a tweet? I don't like it. I think they could just as easy retweet your tweet. And it would get the same message out there. I mean, I understand. They've got quotas to meet. So they've got to get clicks to their website.

So this bridges to a question that me and you have talked about. We've wanted to bring on to the podcast for a couple weeks here. What are your pet peeves when it comes to Twitter? Whether it be from the media or from people you're interacting with, what is the one thing that set you off on Twitter? I don't like people, and this is, I think, started more so since we've done this podcast. Yeah, okay, so we're going to admit that having this conversation, we're opening ourselves up. Yeah, for criticism.

For criticism. But I don't like when this guy this past week pissed me off about the WrestleMania thing. I pissed him off. Yeah, he said, what a waste of money. And I'm like, oh, he said you're, to go to WrestleMania. Was a waste of money. Yeah, and I'm like, dude, I work to earn my money. How I want to spend it is not up to you.

And it's none of your business. There you go. That bothered you. That pissed me off. Yeah. Because he doesn't know me. Okay. If you want to criticize what I say on here, that's fine.

I was going to say what annoys me is when I'm up late tweeting and somebody says, go to sleep. Yeah. I'll go to sleep. I'll go to sleep when I want to. Yeah. Appreciate that. Yeah. It's like.

Be like, I woke up early. Yeah. I just, it's like, don't you have a race to run tomorrow or don't you have, oh, and it's a, if it's like Wednesday or Tuesday, aren't you supposed to be in Texas? That one's good. I'll get that one today or tomorrow. I'm not a golfer. I don't have to show up six days early.

No, they go to sleep. That one gets me every time. I don't really have a response for it either. You should just start liking the tweets. Yeah. Or reaching them. Well, okay, so that's how, okay. So when I first joined Twitter, I was blocking people.

Like when somebody would say something like, you need to retire or, you know, I don't like you or whatever. I'd just block them. And then I found out you can mute them. But before all that, I was liking those tweets. Like, hey, I saw your tweet, you're funny. I like, you know, kind of like... The mute is a great invention. I love the mute.

It's not offensive. Yep. But then you're like... I don't know that they know you get muted. Is there an app that, you know, somebody figure out a way to figure out how to get, you know, who's muting you? I thought I saw on Instagram, one of your best responses was keyboard muscles, keyboard muscle emojis. Yeah. Everybody's got opinions.

What was that response to? I forget some guy said... I forget what that guy said. You posted a picture with Paul Menard. Okay. So this, oh, man. All right, so Paul Menard never smiles, right? Rare when you catch a smile in this man's face.

So we're walking out of the driver's meeting, and I saw him. I said, Paul, let's take a selfie. Don't smile. I'm going to smile obnoxiously big. And then I'm going to post it. He goes, you're going to put it on Twitter. I said, yes. So I put it on Instagram and a guy says,

You need to pay attention to your car and your team. Oh, yeah, because you come in out of how fast he was. I was just noticed that he was doing really well in all the practices. He was in our garage stall next to us. So I'm like, you know, hey, Paul's having a good weekend. Pay attention to your car and your team. Keyboard muscle emoji. I don't know.

You know, I don't, yeah. I wonder, like, what process that, like, are these people, how are they consuming this content and firing off the, are they, like, looking on their phone? This is what I'm going to tell this guy. Man, it's such a large conversation about trolls and how brave you get behind that keyboard. I don't, I can't imagine. I try to remember, too, that most of the tweets that I, most of my replies and most of my tweets are full on sarcasm. Right. And maybe that's, they're just being sarcastic.

You know, maybe this guy's, like, trying to pick. Their sense of humor is like desert dry. But, you know, there's no tone. And maybe, okay, so here's some advice I got from my sister. The use of emojis would help a lot of these folks. Now, if you're really trying to be a jerk, use the proper emoji to send your, so you can tell tone in your tweet. If you're like, I hate you go to sleep. Use an emoji that would define the fact that you don't.

know you don't approve but if you're just picking use like a laughing moji right yeah so i just throw that on there half the time and then people assume you're joking yeah because my sister's like sometimes i'll be texting my sister she's like that would have helped if you were used an emoji uh i would have understood the tone so emojis use of emojis some people don't use emojis they think they're for kids or something they're not not me they're for everyone they are for all scenarios no matter how serious or not all right well all right so this is another one. Let us know. Hashtag D.J.D. Let us know what annoys you on Twitter. Probably mostly the same stuff that annoys us. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Go to sleep.

Jerks. All right. So we're trading Tony for Mike. Yep. Tony's out here. Mike's coming in. So I sent out a tweet earlier yesterday, I guess, about a, there's a check in my sister's office. And it's from the first win in the Xfinity series at Texas, and it's actually 19 years today, 19 years ago today, August 4th, or April 4th. Was it cashed? I imagine it was. So this is the, back then my dad, I was kind of driving for my dad, so they handled all that. So I don't know really how that all works.

Kelly didn't work for me then, so she doesn't even know. But it looks like the real check. Yeah, it looks legit. Yeah. It is legit. So I don't even know how I got it. Who framed it? why it's framed, whatever.

But maybe we cash a check, Texas got it, framed it, and gave it back to me. That's how I think it happened. That's how I think it happened. So anyways, Exfinity win there is 19 years ago today. You wanted me, you heard a story, you heard me tell a story about the first cup win that you hadn't heard. Going back to the first Xfinity win, I distinctly remember. sitting in my uncle's house and he liked you and I didn't yeah and they were like obnoxiously cheering this says a lot this it all makes sense yeah it all makes sense now he was actually not a fan

of mine and still isn't probably it still isn't yeah you can tell that it's just really a job no it makes sense it all it's all clear 19 years ago I was eight years wait 10 years old I forgot how old so when he when he called me or emailed me one day and said hey man uh how can I get a job over there at junior motorsports? He was actually kind of reluctant. No, I... He's like, you know, this is... I hate this guy, but this is really my only end.

No. No. This is my only end to the sport. No, I hate sending this text. So this one happened in early April. Or he thought it was the wrong junior. Like, he thought it was another junior. Like Bobby Hamilton Jr. Oh, no.

We've been on line racers. Yeah. So he knew me. And he's like, how can I get involved in racing? How can... How can you? help me. I really don't like you, but I really need to help. So you won this race. So you were basically a career path

for him, and that's about it. There's no emotional connection whatsoever. Stepping Stone and along. So you won this race in early April. By May, that Charlotte race, I became a fan. Oh, really? And I distinctly remember Mark Martin wrecked you in that race. It's Charlotte? Yeah, in a bush race. Actually, Mark Martin did not wreck me. We were trying to lap

the guy, the motorcycle racer. But you were racing with Mark. Mark was leading. I was running second. And the 88, the Black 88, his motorcross man. I forget his name. 98. Somebody's going to tell us here in two seconds on Twitter.

Well, we haven't gone live yet. Because we've attempted to go live a couple times, and then there's a story that gets noise. So anyhow, there's this, it's a, I can't remember the guy's name, but he drove a black 88. Had Dayglow yellow numbers on it? Oh, I remember that. It was a hype car? Yes. So he's out there trying to get his lap back in front of me and Mark.

and he got loose and smacked the wall, and Mark checked up, and I checked up, and my car slid into the wall as well. Rookie mistake on my part. I sort of overreacted to the whole scene. But after that race, I was a fan. Yeah.

I jumped on the bandwagon. Yeah, that sucked. We had such a good car. We qualified terrible. Anyways. So the Texas story, first cup win. A lot of people don't know this.

We led a lot of the race running really good. When the race was over, Okay, we had a pit stop with about 40 laps ago. Everybody comes in, gets tires, and we ran to the finish and one. When the race is over, we're coming around the racetrack after the checkered. Coming on to pit road, I went to mash the clutch in to downshift, and the clutch was gone. The pedal, broken, was gone. So, immediately the first thing I think of is, man, I'm glad we didn't have a late caution

or any other reason to have to need a clutch. Coming down pit road, getting in out of your pit stall, we did not. won the race. Yeah, that would have been big. I know it. So, and then the next thing, we pull into Victory Lane, and the first thing that always happened at the races was the PR guy, J. Gers, at the time that Mike Davis used to work for was a PR guy for Budweiser.

He comes to the window, and he's like, all right, real quickly, remember to see Budweiser. That's their job. That's his job every week. Whether I'm in a crash, winner or winning the race, he's going to tell me before an interview, make sure you mention the sponsor that I work for. And he's coming in to the window, and you see this in the replay of the Victory Lane celebration, and dad grabs him by the neck, yanks him out of the way, and jumps in there. And dad said, awesome job, I'm proud of you.

Now you're going to have to find another way home because he was going home. I would fly with him in his plane, and he was like, I'm out of here. you're going to have to stick around because of post-race interviews, and you're going to ride home with the team. So that was the whole conversation we had. But the team came back to the same airport that you did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I just, he wasn't going to wait around on me.

Yeah. He didn't have to go to the media center back then? No, they didn't take. And I was so mad. I was kind of mad. I was like, come on, man, hang out. This is going to be great. Right.

But, yeah. Come on, Dad. I know it. This is your Exaltor Race Center update for the week of April 3rd. The Junior Motorsports late models were off. The Xfinity Series was off. That just left the Cup Series at Martinsville Raceway where Dale Jr. had it going on until lap 418

when Denny Hamlin wheel hopped going into turn three, spun out Danica Patrick, and started a pile up that eventually knocked out the radiator of Dale Jr's Exalta Chevrolet. That turned a promising day for Dale Jr. into a 34th place finish. But the 88 team will look to rebound this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway. Have you heard what Exalta is doing for its customers? They are building an incredible state-of-the-art facility right on the

campus at Hendrick Motorsports. It's called the Customer Experience Center. It will be used to train and educate Body Shop technicians with Exaltz's new products, technology, and innovation. This is good news for you because paint and body work isn't just needed at the racetrack. You need it. I need it. We all need it at some point in our lives, and you want the best when it comes to your vehicle. The best is anyone that uses Exalta coatings because not only is it the best quality, but its technicians are the best trained. All right, now we're going to get to our Ask Junior questions for the week. These were submitted via Twitter as usual. We're live streaming on Periscope and Facebook Live. Mike Davis has joined us to give us the questions to discuss and debate if necessary,

if Dale's wrong. Right. Well, if he's wrong. Tyler, we've already established before this broadcast started that he's not a fan of Dale Jr. So he probably, if anybody, will say that he's wrong in debating. But anyways, folks, make your questions good. I'm going to do the best I can to identify some. Junior, you ready? I'm ready to go. Let's get started here. A lot of people have been talking about your bad luck lately.

So here's a question from Mike. He's got a big, funky last name, so I'm not even going to try it. Are you a superstitious person, because you might want to put a horseshoe decal on the car with the bad luck you're at it. Yeah, I'm not really – only superstitions that I believe in are the old – the ones you learn when you're young, like walking in under ladders or breaking glass or – you know, the black cat crossing the road in front of you. Those old kind of lies taleish. Those are the ones.

There are racing superstitions. Peanuts around race cars. My grandfather was a big into, was really a believer in that. Peanuts were bad luck. So if anybody come around the car of peanuts, he got them, he ran them off. The colored green,

which I, you know, I can't imagine that's very, that's bad luck. But a lot of people said green was bad luck in racing. The number 13, obviously, that's pretty much everything. That covers not just racing, but anything. Yeah, that's... Ty Dillon drives a number 13 car with green. He's doing really good this year, actually.

So there's a lot of racing superstitions, but I don't buy that. I don't buy into that stuff. I don't have a lucky pair of underwear that I wear every race or socks or a certain suit that I only like to race in or a certain way I, anything I any tradition I don't have any kind of traditions I know it's disappointing people what's your race day tradition what do you eat what's your race day meal and it's like I don't really have any kind of method to it but you know I do there is one thing and my dad made me a believer in this so he I do believe that if fans give you something and they're like hey can

you can you keep this in your car or put it in your pocket or this is going to bring you good luck a lot of times it's hard not to buy into that my dad met um i think it was a make-a-wish child before the 1998 Daytona 500 she gave me a penny that was good she said was good luck and he glued it to the dash of car and won the race right and so i guess ever since then i always get a verse from stevie walter and i won't race without the verse i feel like that it would be bad luck or bad karma to not take the verse it's always on a sticky note and i'll stick it inside the car somewhere every single race we run with a verse so that's one thing that i need but if a fan comes up and particularly kids like it's there's something about what is that what you know

there's something about a kid uh that that if they give you something it sort of brings you good luck because they're wishing you well in the first place right it'd be bad karma Bad karma. Yeah. But I think that there's some sort of something magical about that connection that the kids have to their favorite athletes or sports figures.

And when they bring like the penny or anything else and they're like, man, I really want to believe that this is going to help you. If you don't accept that or buy into that, you know, you kind of have to buy into that, right? And part of you, the kid, maybe the kid inside of you,

wants to believe what they're telling you that this is. is going to bring you good luck. So we're going to have to add a coin jar to the car now. I'm going to say a lot of that depends on how your performance has been lately. And so how many more, you know, unlucky finishes does it take for us to start going, okay, everybody, empty your pockets. We need some help.

All right. Yeah, starting to fundraise over here. That's right. Yeah, the lucky go fund me account. All right. Let's see here. Really good question here from Billy Bradley. Will Tyler be in Texas or is he going to be attending Disney on ice this weekend in Tennessee?

Hey, Billy Bradley. I hope you enjoyed Martinsville with the hot pass that I got for you. Oh, no, he said thanks. Oh, okay. Well, you should have started with that. Tyler will be in Texas Friday morning. You know, that's, that's Tyler's thing. Like, he immediately went to, I've done something for you.

You ungrateful. Peace of Christ. I will be in Texas. I'll be at every race through Loudon. And he, you know, he says he doesn't get thanked enough. and I don't know that he hears when he does get thanked. Listen, that got a lot going on. That for the win article, I made this point.

You might be getting thanked way more than you realize. Maybe. That for the win article, I made this point to you yesterday. That, they called you a key member of the team. That is all the thanks that you need, man. You are a key member of the team that got an article written about your absence. Hey, on that for the win real quick. But if it gets him three off weekends, he's just a lowly PR folk.

Yeah. But on that for the win article, That's his own words. The picture they used was Dale laughing at me in the garage in Vegas after he had posted an awkward Instagram selfie. So I was like... His own words, Mike. What do you mean his own words?

He's a PR guy when it works for him. Oh, my gosh. But then he's a road manager when it works for him. And then he's an elite key member of the team when that works. That's right. How do you keep your business card? Do you have three different business cards? I'm the road manager thing.

Jeff Gordon was like, why do you have a road manager? Ha ha ha ha. And I'm like, Jeff has a guy that goes with him everywhere. Wait a second. Jeff Gordon stepped up at you? Oh, no, it was in response. He's like, ha, ha. In response to his tweet that said, my road manager, Tyler's going to WrestleMania.

So yes. He said, I think it's awesome that you have a road manager, hashtag rock star. Stepped up to him. I think the difference is that Jeff Gordon's road manager actually likes Jeff Gordon. Yeah. That's key. It's key in every working relationship. Yeah. All right, let's pick another one here. How aggressive do you get with set-ups and strategy now,

now that the 88 team is sort of in a hole, not you specifically, but your team. Are you going to get more aggressive on the setups? Well, you know, I think that we're pretty aggressive as we are. You know, I think everybody's very aggressive on their setups. Everybody's very aggressive on getting through tech. You have to be to be competitive in the sport. You can't be, you can't be, you can't be, you can't comfortably inside the box of legal, right? You have to work really, really hard to read between the lines in NASCAR's rulebooks and try to find a competitive advantage that won't get you thrown out of the race or get you through Creeche for six weeks of suspension. So every car in the garage is doing that. That question is closely related to our drivers driving hard. Are you going to

drive harder. So I think that... Which they get a lot of play. I don't know that you'll change your strategy in racing either as far as your pitch strategy or what you're doing on the, you know, what you're doing throughout the day. It's pretty much cut and dried what you need to do to have a good run. If there is a strategy that would give you an advantage or one that's more aggressive, that's the one everybody's going to use.

So we're kind of doing that. We just need to... I think we need to get a, you know, if we can't win these races, we need to finish in the top 10, top 5, where we belong, where we're supposed to be finishing. And we get three, four, five of those in our pocket. We're back on track. So we just got to calm down.

We don't need to push all the chips in, bet the farm, risk losing everything, and just kind of get some consistency going and crawl back into this race here. Here you go, Ryan Burnett. While signing diecast of one of your paint schemes, Do you ever remember specific characteristics about that car, how it drove, any memories from those cars? Just when you're going across. Tell me some.

Yeah, I think this year I'm signing a lot of diecass of cars that I didn't drive. So this weekend I signed the Michigan car that we, the Michigan State, I guess the Michigan Wolverines car that we ran, the Jeff ran or Bowman. Bowman ran it. Alex ran it at Michigan. So I'm signing some cars this year that I didn't even drive last year, but they had my name on them. The Grey Ghost. I signed a lot of the Grey Ghost.

But yeah, every time you sign a die cast, you think about the race you ran in it. And I guess the, man, I mean, I really, really like that exhaust a car that we're running now. So that's probably the one that I like to sign the most. Those aren't even out yet. I know. because it came together well I'm signing some oh really they're just not

for sale yet oh yeah unbelievable yeah I just I've signed about let's see probably 50 yesterday oh yeah

those must be the first batch they are oh yeah very exciting if you were a fan of Dale you'd have known this yeah all right moving on here

I was busy there's some doors that Tyler can't get through that's right apparently or he just doesn't care it could be that you have to care enough to try That's true.

Is it difficult to get past a bad race, or do you just move on and concentrate on the next one? This is from Casey Martinsville-88. Used to be terrible. I used to not be able to get over bad races until we got to the next track so I could kind of redeem myself. I felt like I couldn't get it out of my system until I got back in the car and did something good.

That's kind of like a personal self-worth thing, a little battle of my own, know my own personality. But I've gotten a lot better at that, and I think I've gotten a lot better at it as you get older. And I think back to the races where I did get really, really disappointed and drug that on the entire week and think about what a waste of time that was. And so I don't even remember all those miserable finishes that much.

You know, I remember the wins and the great runs that we've had. Those are the ones that stick in your mind. So, yeah, I, I, I, I, And also I've changed the way I react to them immediately after the race. And I talked to me and Greg sit down and talked all offseason about this. And I said, Greg, I got to change how I'm doing things because I'm making myself miserable when we don't perform the way I want to. And I have a feeling in each race where we should finish.

And if we don't finish there, I feel like I'm disappointed. We didn't do as well as we should have. So my reaction in the past would be to get out of the car and, you know, stomp my foot and be disappointed and walk around to each one of the guys and pound my fist on the car and be like, damn it, you know, whirr, you know, that sucks, man. And I thought that I was showing my team that I cared and that, man, this matters, you know, right? I want to show them that I'm disappointed and damn it, I want more. but what that would do, I would basically give them this whole attitude, and I was giving them these negative vibes, right, and bringing them down, right? And I'm like, Greg, I'm just worried that if I get out of the car after 34th at Martinsville

and go, hey, guys, that's all right. We're going to get them next week, man, everything's fine, that they're going to think, man, he don't really care. Or he just, wow, I can't believe this just rolled off his back so easily. You know, why doesn't he care more? why is he upset? So I was afraid that I would send the wrong message, but it's not sending the wrong message.

You know, this year I've gotten out of the car. I haven't been negative. I've gotten out of the car and said, guys, just keep showing up each week. We just got to, because when this goes right, we've got to be here and ready and prepared to take advantage of it because it's going to go right. If we come in with our heads hanging and, oh, man, what's going to go wrong this week? When it's there for the taking, we're not going to be ready to seize it. And all the guys have said, a few of the guys this year have said to me,

I really appreciate how you are after the races because we're down. And your attitude keeps us going or picks us back up. They get out of the car going, or at the end of the race, they're dejected. And a couple of them have said, man, your personality this year is different and I appreciate it. And so it's having the desired effect that I've wanted to have all along. I just was afraid that they, you know, I was wrong in how they would perceive my attitude after the races. So I guess to answer the question is I don't let it get to me as I once did. I try to be more positive and particularly I go around no matter what the result.

I go to every guy on the car and tell them that I appreciate their work, appreciate how hard they work this weekend. And I can't wait to see them, you know, Tuesday at the shop or whatever. that's important to me that I see all the guys before I leave. I don't feel like it's weird just to get out of the car and say by to Greg and take off. So, yeah, the guys seem to be responding really well to it, and it's important too now because of how we struggle that we, you know, somebody that we're kind of keeping ourselves positive.

The fans are super, super good at that. And that's, I guess maybe I learned from the fan reaction. on Twitter. So after the races, ever since I've joined Twitter, I've been really amazed at how after a bad day, the fans are, or majority of the fans' response is, don't worry about it. Okay. Next track, right? And that surprised me, because I thought they would be like me.

Like, damn it, this has got to get better. I thought that would be the reaction because that was how I felt like I wanted to be. And so I've been really surprised at how the majority of the fans go next track, no problem. Get them. Get them next week. And so I've been trying to be that way, and I think that really picks me up when the fans are like that. It's kind of like, hey, man, okay, don't worry about it, shake it off. Don't let this bring you down because they don't, they're worried that you're going to be down and out going into the next event.

They don't want that. They want you up. Right. And so I've been doing that a little bit. myself and I think the guys on the team appreciate it that attitude and personality you know it spreads ever whatever you're gonna do you're gonna cast on to the next guy however you act and your personality it rubs off on the whole team and so yeah this year especially I've really kind of been able to let a lot of this stuff roll off my

back and we've gone into the next races with confidence and you know I feel good things are gonna get going right for us in the next several weeks I want to add one point to that because I've been with you long enough to where, you know, since 2004, I remember bad races would affect your entire week. Oh, yeah. And you do a lot of work in the week, midweek. And so, like, if we had productions and we had appearances, not only was it miserable for you, but then it made everyone around you miserable.

And it was not fun. No. It was not fun for anybody. And everything could go back to the performance of the previous week. Yep. Everything could point back to that. Yep. That was that.

You're right. There's just been a lot of questions about people still want to. some explanation on the segments. And I know they're still pretty new. The stages. I'm sorry, the stages. But they're saying segments and stages. Well, NASCAR does not like the word segments.

Okay, we'll call them stages then. It's still new enough, I guess, that let's do a quick explanation of it. And then also you guys talk about what you're feeling of it is so far. I was one of the guys on stage, right, during this announcement, pumping the sunshine. This is going to be a good thing for the sport. and it's going to bring a new layer of excitement. I like getting points in the middle of the race. I like what that does to the action on the track

and the intensity inside the car, because if you're inside that top 10, it matters, right? That didn't matter before. Or there wasn't a reward for it. You know, you still needed to be there. Every lap counted and you had to work all day to try to win the race. but now there's reward on the line in the middle of these races that it's critical.

It's going to add up, you know, especially when we run 34th or finish 34th. If we can get some of them bonus points early in the race, it kind of negates some of the sting on that bad finish, right? Talking about the importance of the stages on Sunday when Stenhouse bumped Kyle Bush on the last. So that cost him a playoff point. Right. So that, it's really. having the desired effect. And one of the things

that I've noticed is I'm seeing a lot of articles, particularly this week, of people praising the stages. The people are starting to see, I guess, the excitement that it's bringing, particularly at the Martinsville race, it brought a lot of drama

and excitement. It really throws a curveball to the strategy. We got spun out, five laps to go on a stage, we come and get tired, We are able to stay out, get a lot of track position in between stages. So there's all kinds of things going on out there that I still don't think the fans are privy to. I don't, you know, they will, you know, it's so much happening that maybe the broadcast can't convey everything that's going on that's so interesting. But it will, over time, become crystal clear to everybody watching the race what might happen or could happen in these little incidents.

and as these stage come to a close. So I'm pretty happy about it. I do not like riding around under caution because I want to race. I want to be racing. But it does provide the fans an opportunity to get up, go get a Martinsville hot dog. I know a lot of people like that about other sporting events

where there's a break in the action. They know, hey, this is my chance to go to the bathroom or this is when I can go get a concession stand break or something like that. It's, you know, it's sort of building that opportunity into the sport as well. I know those are, that's small potatoes, but all these little things matter. That might be a big deal to the guy sitting next to you, you know, knowing he's got that opportunity to go to a concession end or something

or get his family something to drink or eat. You know, and if you're at home watching on TV, you know, it's an opportunity to get up, go into the kitchen or whatever you need to do. So it's kind of a built-in timeout that the fans probably need or can utilize and get more comfortable utilizing. For the drivers, it's really neither here nor there. It doesn't really affect us one way or another. It's not something we like or dislike,

but I do think that it makes the race more interesting to watch. And that's a good thing. I'm still pretty happy with it. It's not doing anything wrong. It's not doing anything bad or detrimental to the races. or it's given people new opportunity to create new strategies. Like I said earlier in the podcast, some of these races, the strategy is already, it's already sort of painted.

The strategy already pretty much decided for you. You can't, in some of these races, you can't get off on your own, you know, get off on your own kind of strategy because either the track surface is too old and it's going to wear out tires. So everybody's coming for four tires, every single single. stop. You know, at a road course, you're going to run the race backwards on fuel mileage and all that stuff.

Well, with these stages, that changes everything. That presents all kinds of opportunities at all races for guys to try to trick the system a little bit. For a crew chief to gain the system or outsmart as competitors and put his driver in a position that's an advantage. So I like it. All right, looking ahead, we've got a few things going on this weekend. today we got an event at South Carolina Governor's Mansion to promote the Darlington

Throwback Weekend. We're going to talk about Darlington, how important it is to the community in South Carolina and the throwback weekend and how that's grown. Wednesday, we're going to unveil a one-time-only exalted paint scheme to race at Pocono later this year. This is just teasing it, so we cannot say what it is. It's interesting, though. It is interesting, and it's going to throw people for it's going to throw people for, it's

going to throw people for a loop, threw me for a loop. So tune in Wednesday to see what you think about this. He's all the paint scheme. We're going to run a Pocono. Thursday, we're going to the United Pittsburgh Medical Center for a concussion synopsis. Symposium. Symposium. It's in Pittsburgh for high school athletes, coaches, and athletic trainers. So I'm going to be with me with my team of doctors that I've worked with through my concussions. Mickey Collins, all his group, we're going to be talking to coaches and trainers at the high school level about concussions and treatment and so forth. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Friday practice. First time for everyone at the new surface configuration at Texas Motor Speedway. We've got qualified at 615 Eastern. Saturday, two practices in the morning. The Xfinity race at 1.30 p.m. Eastern. Sunday, the race starts at 1.30 p.m. Eastern on the Big Fox, not Fox Sports 1. And that's it.

That's going to be a full week. It should be a fun one. All right, everybody. I hope you enjoyed the show. Thanks, Tony, for coming on. Mike Davis, as usual. Tyler, glad you're back. Thanks to our friends at Exalta for making it happen here at the Exaltta Studios.

As always, we're broadcasting at Junior Motorsports at 8 o'clock every day. No, Tuesdays. Or Tuesdays. Not every day. Be sure to subscribe to the Dale Jr. download through Dale Jr.com, iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and all the major podcasting outlets. Let us know your feedback on Twitter. He is at Dale Jr. I'm at Overstreet Tyler.

Also follow Dirty Mo Radio on Twitter and Facebook. We'll see y'all next time. Thanks for listening to DirtyMoe Radio.