The Dale Jr. Download - 174 - Not So Good Vibrations

Episode Date: May 16, 2017

Dale Earnhardt Jr. discusses issues he and his team faced in Kansas with NASCAR's inspection system and in-race vibrations. He also turns back the clock to talk about his favorite All-Star Race memories as both a fan and as a driver. Plus, Earnhardt fields fan questions during the weekly Ask Jr. segment. 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.

If you love Dale Jr., then Exaltor racing is your go-to social media account on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It brings you Insiders info all weekend long on the 88 team. It's at Exaltor Racing, a must follow for any Dale Jr. fan. This is Dale Jr., and you're listening to Dirty Moe Radio. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. Back in for another episode of Dirty Moe Radio's to Dale Jr. download. With me, as usual, is Tyler Overstreet. Hello.

The intro song for today is Of Confidence by the Dangerous Summer courtesy of Hopeless Records. Man, I love that stuff. It's a good jam. Yeah. So we got a pretty robust show looking at your production sheet here. Robust. Yeah. All right, so Kansas Race, we finished 20th.

Got a lot to talk about here. Usually when we don't run good, we don't like to really discuss it. But we had a pretty fast car. One of the things I want to say right off the bat is this one of the ones, this one of the ones, week before the race we went to the Chevy simulator. Do you know that? Yes. All right.

So for those that don't know, Chevy has this giant simulator. It's literally an entire car in the middle of a big giant room with this big, huge screen, and you climb in the car, and you drive basically like a video game. And in a room behind you with a bunch of windows and stuff are all these engineers, and they just kind of change stuff on the car. So it's kind of like a opportunity to simulate changes that you might make during the race weekend. Obviously, the practice sessions we had for the race weekend consisted of maybe about three hours total. Two and a half, yeah.

And during the day, so it was kind of different. Well, yeah. So you don't have much time, and you can sit on that sim and mess around all day long, trying stuff. So we found a lot of stuff that we liked. We took it to the racetrack, and we tried it in our practices, and man, that made things go way smoother. Yeah, it was fast right off the bat. Yeah, the car did come out of the trailer quick.

A car drove great, and all the practices, our mock qualifying runs were good, and we were feeling pretty confident that we're going to have a good day. We had a lot of trouble getting through the LIS machine. We joked about that on Twitter, and you got to laugh. If not, you would probably cry. Exactly. So we missed qualifying for the second time this year.

The last time we missed it was at Texas, a similar racetrack. Also, a good race, though. I don't know if that's coincidental. Yeah, that was the last mile and a half. Right. So what happens? Why are we, you know, to explain to people how that happens, there's a lot of confusion on social media about it.

Everybody from the drivers, fans, media, NASCAR, even have their own opinions on why it's happening. So I'm not going to assume that I know everything and I'm correct. But all I know is, one thing I do know for sure, is that we went through at one particular point on Friday, and it was incorrect. So we went and worked on it, fixed our little issue, went back through on our own dime. basically you can go through any time you want. Right, because y'all ended practice maybe like five or ten minutes early and they went over there.

Intentionally quit practice early to be able to go over there and get in line and get it done on our own to check it and make sure we're going to be good for qualifying tomorrow or the next year later that afternoon. So we go through. It's clear. All right, man, thumbs up. We're feeling good. We actually, after we cleared the tech inspection, we went back to the garage and even made more adjustments to even. make it more comfortable to get through. So we adjusted it a second time, even after we passed, and then when it came time to go through the tech inspection, we failed. Failed twice. Yeah, I mean, we failed.

Yeah. So we've heard a lot of reasons as to why that might be the case. A lot of people think that the teams are just lying through their teeth. Right, but there were 12 teams. Yeah. 12 out of, what, probably 40. I heard a comment from, I'm just speculating that it's possible that it could be the wheels because the wheels aren't perfectly, they have a little runout, meaning as you turn the wheel,

it might have as much as an eighth of an inch of runout, meaning the wheel is not quite perfect. So it could be something simple as like if you touch your wheel an eighth of an inch. Or if it roll, you know, if the car could pass, you could roll it forward a half of a turn of a wheel and it could fail just because the wheels themselves have some imperfection. Yeah. So this LIS machine is measuring and failing cars at 10,000ths of an inch, a very, very small, you know, measurement and the wheels have, the wheels certainly have that much run out

and imperfection in them. So that's just one of the many, many speculations on why this is happening. Are you one of the people that think that... It's inconsistent. Like, I think it was Andy Graves from Toyota, tweeted that they should have, like, a calibration car go across once an hour. I wasn't sure reading that tweet,

whether Andy was proposing that the machine's good, and if they had a car that they could run over, run through it, prove it, they could prove that the machine's good, or whether he was saying that the machine is inconsistent, and if they had a car that they just ran through it every hour, that it would show how inconsistent it is. I couldn't tell. Right.

but I did see Andy's tweet. It was an interesting idea. Interesting. Yeah, very interesting. Yeah, I think they should do it. But, I mean, it's unfortunate because you get, there was all these cars sitting in the line, and you know qualifying starting in two minutes.

So, like, you're standing at your car. Matt Kinz is standing at his car. Everybody's just standing around waiting to go through this LIS deal. You sit there, and it's like, check, check, check. then X, and then it's like, okay, well, we failed. We've got to go. We're not going to qualify. Yep.

I like the system, though, that if you fail one part of the inspection process, you have to start all over. I like that. There's a lot of things about it. I like. I'm not proposing we reevaluate or make big changes. I just think we need to look at this LIS machine. Are you okay with the penalties? Like this week, you had a 15-minute practice penalty and you didn't get to pick your pit stall?

You had the last selection? You're fine with that? Yeah, yeah. They need deterrence for failing the LAS machine too often. Glad you agree because I'm assuming we have another penalty for the 600. Probably do. Oh, well. And, you know, that pit selection penalty is actually pretty critical.

People might not realize how important it is to be able to pick your pit. If you look at the pit selections for race days, you'll see that. No offense to anybody who may assume that they're a slow car. But there's fast guy, slow guy, fast guy, slow guy. Usually, it alternates between. Ideally would not be pitting right in front of Chase Elliott. Right. It usually alternates where you try to pick around.

Usually the slower guys, the guys are qualified in the back pick last, right? So the fast guys sort of separate themselves by a stall or two as they start picking pits through the top 10. And so that means that the slower guys pick those available spots. And it sort of really works out pretty well. You get to come down pit road, get in and out of your stall with relative ease. Well, when you don't get to pick your pit, pick your pit, you pick last and you get put in front of your teammate. That is a no-no. Like that had Greg Ives so sick he wanted to throw up on Friday night that he was having, he had felt responsible for failing the tech inspection so many times that he had to let NASCAR pick his pit for him.

put him right in front of Allen, the crew chief of the 24. So, you know, Greg feels terrible about that. I saw Greg Friday night, and Alan actually put his arm around him. And I don't worry about it, I understand. And it had nothing to do with you pitting in front of him, but him chasing the 95 got in that wreck, almost wiped out our front tire carrier, tire changer. It actually does have a little bit to do with us pitting in front of him. You think so?

Yes, because imagine, visualize the pit sequence on pit road. So Chase comes in. I have to come in around him. So when I come into my stall to go around him, the right rear of my car is hanging out of my pit stall. Because I can't get into my stall without positioning my car in an unfavorable weight. And he has to really get aggressive to turn out of his stall to go around me. And he's thinking more about getting around you as opposed to who's coming in. Yeah, and he's more aggressive.

So he's driving hard, hard ride out into pit road. And the potential for him to have contact with the car, it just so happened to be the 95 that was in front of me. The potential for him to have trouble really goes up, and it happened. So I think it all has something to do. Us being there and having to pull around him to get in our stall, definitely make it difficult for him to get out. It played a little bit of a role into that issue.

So we had a lot of vibrations during the race. Let's talk about that. I feel terrible for my team. You know why? Yes, because the immediate reaction, when you feel the vibration is it's a loose wheel. And I was standing, I don't usually stand in the pit, but I was the other night. And you could see it like on their face whenever that comes across.

And it's deject, like they're dejected. So they went to that hammer gun, which is basically just an older model gun. So it's like a second and a half slower. That's why you came in 10th and you'd go out 15th. It's not that the guy's just a terrible tire changer. It's because he's using equipment that isn't the latest and greatest. because they were concentrating so hard to get those lug notes tight. Yeah.

So, also, the social media aspect of that, and the public perception of that is very hard on the team. So if I come in and I'm out on the track and I say, I've got a vibration, I think it's a loose wheel. I mean, I got to tell Greg that information. That becomes public knowledge. Immediately the media starts tweeting that, oh, well, they'll have a vibration, maybe a loose will.

fans start to react. Everybody in the industry up and down pit road in the media center and everything, immediately the responsibility falls on the changers and the crew itself, the pit crew. So whether the wheel is loose or not, the perception is that somebody made a mistake, which is unfortunate because it turned out

that we didn't have any loose wheels. Right. Yeah. So I'm here to say, and I think I've said it on Twitter earlier, Sunday night, that the wheels weren't loose. There was some other vibration. Yeah.

So there's a possibility that we broke a belt in one of the tires. That has happened there before. We've blown tires out because the belts snap and the tire themselves. But Greg and the guys took the car back as it was, as it left the track, put it on the chassis die note, and it shook. And so they went through the car to find out why this thing was shaking. They changed the tires, which helped. So the last set of tires that came off, the car vibrated. The tires themselves, not the wheels, not the studs.

So there's an issue, you know, somewhere within the package of the car or something we're doing this year that created that. Another thing, too, and I said this also on Twitter, is every time we go to Kansas, we all talk about tires shaking. Clint Boyer talked about it, I believe, during the race with his car having some concerns about vibrations with his car. If you look back through radio chatter for many races throughout Kansas over the last couple years, everybody talks about tire chatter and tire vibration. And it's never really loose wheels. It's just, for whatever reason, that track either snaps the belts and the tires, and you get a set that shakes really bad.

You'll take that set off. The next set won't shake. That kind of alternates throughout the race. I didn't think about that during the actual race itself. If I'd really thought early before the race even started, look, man, this is a place where tires are going to shake. You might get a set that does. I might have been a little less. So if you get that same feeling at Charlotte?

Well, it happens at Kansas only. Okay. Sorry. So if it happens to... It's track specific. So if it happens at Charlotte, you're going to know it's a wheel. No? You never know.

I know, but I'm just saying... A vibration is a vibration. Typically, okay, so if a drive shaft shakes, That gives you a specific type of vibration that you can say, hey, guys, I think we need to rotate the drive shaft. And what they'll do literally is take the drive shaft, unhook it from the rear end housing, flip it 100, flip it like 45 degrees, 90 degrees, 180 degrees, whatever. They may even change the entire drive shaft. That fixes that vibration. The last vibrations that we had, and we won't talk about vibrations much longer, was all firewall forward.

So I think we actually snap the belt in the right front tire And that just shakes the whole car literally going down the front straightaway You can see the windshield Almost coming out of the car It looks like it's very violent and everything you know Everything in the car is just shaking like crazy The shifter Everything I mean it's a it was as it goes down the straightaway

This vibration gets extremely Ramped up because as you pick up speed Everything gets it gets shaking more violently So ultimately you were running 13th and then had to pit, lost the lap, made the lap up, and ended up 20th. That was one of them races, one of the rare events where I wish we had more laps. 500-mile or at Kansas. Yeah. I love Kansas.

Yeah. I would take a 500 mile or somewhere else and swap it. I like Kansas. The track. It's a great track. The town, everything. I like Kansas. It's a good place.

Yeah. I didn't get to have any. Great cycling out there, too. That's what I saw. So, yeah, there's this little part. it's four miles from the track and it has a six mile paved loop so we me and jimmy and a bunch of other people went over there and we rode 27 miles Friday then we rode another 27 miles Saturday morning and then me and Amy went back over there and swung on the swings a lot of fun who did the boomerangs

when y'all were was that a random person that was Kenny kenny jones driver that's awesome we let the dogs go over there run around it was great time that's cool um another big thing that happened obviously in the Kansas race was the accident with Eric Amarola and Danica and Joey Lugano. That was a big crash and a lengthy delay. But now, obviously, Eric was airlifted to the hospital. He's out now. He has a T5 fracture in his back. But it's good that he's okay because he's our friend.

He used to drive for us. But seeing accidents like that, I mean, you've had really. bad accidents before but does that worry you as a driver or is that just a freak thing because of what happened to joey what happened to joey he had like a brake rotor fell right front and it just shot left and danica i mean that's your probably fastest point of the track yeah yeah i mean yeah i'm glad eric's okay and i've chatted with him a little bit through text message and uh he's a little disappointed because he's likely going to have to miss it's likely going to have to miss some time.

And that'll be determined, I imagine, if they haven't announced that. But obviously, with a fracture like that, he needs to be very, you know, careful and make sure that he gets healed up before he gets back out there. Another accident like that with any kind of injury can make things a little bit worse. Yeah, he's a great guy. One of the good guys in the garage, super nice. And we did have a chance to work with him. He drove for us over here at Junior Murder Sports.

makes it a little more personal, personal, happy that anyone else. I mean, Danica's impact into offense was just incredibly violent. And Joey's wasn't any better either, really. I mean, all those guys are really lucky. It was an extremely fiery crash, just really dramatic. And we don't see them too often, but super glad everybody, you know, at least was able to get out of there

in one piece. I don't remember the last time before that that I had seen a roof get cut off. It's been a long time, and I saw that a little bit on social media. Somebody said, you know, it reminds me, it makes me think seeing this process of them trying to get Eric out of the car is that we don't see this as much. It used to be kind of more commonplace, and that is true. The cars are so safe, and we learn something new every year to improve, you know, our ability to withstand those kind of accidents.

The thing with the, you know, I guess the one thing that concerns me is what are we, hopefully they're learning something about these back fractures. Denny mentioned that, you know, he understands exactly what Eric's going through because he had the same issue from a wreck at Fontana a couple years ago, missed a race or two, did he? Yeah. So it was very similar as far as the impact. He had a head-on impact, lifted the back tires off the ground, the car slams back onto the ground.

I don't, the actual hitting the hitting something head on drives the, drives the individual down into the seat, and it's a compression fracture. It's literally getting, you know, squished like a walnut, right? So, you know, as your back compresses into the seat, something's got a gift. Hopefully they're learning something. I've seen, you know, I know NASCAR is definitely studying, studying this in-house to try to figure out a way to make, help us sort of withstand those style of impacts that Denny and Eric had that are creating these back fractures. So hopefully something comes down to pipe pretty quickly for that. That seems to be, you know, one of the injuries we're seeing, at least in the last couple of incidents like that.

So moving forward, Charlotte Race Weeks, there was some news yesterday about next week's Charlotte Race, the 600. NASCAR decided to make it a four-stage race, 400-lap stages. So that means there's going to be an extra 10 points on the line, equivalent to the Daytona 500, how they counted the dual races as points. There's just an extra segment. Yeah. Does that bother you? Bother me?

Well, it bothers me because they could have announced that. If you're going to call it a crown, like you're basically calling it a crown jewel, very important race, because it has more points on the line. Yep. They should have done that in January. I agree. In my opinion. Okay.

I share your opinion. Okay. Yeah, I mean, it's, but that's NASCAR, you know, they're going to make some announcements just a week before the race. Right. So, like, should we expect the Southern 500 to be run in four stages? Be ready. Okay. Could happen.

Could happen. I'm anticipating it will. Yeah. I'm with you. I think that, yeah, I think it'd been nice to announce that earlier, but, you know, there's a lot going on leading up to the season. They're just trying to get the actual announcement of stages out. Maybe there's not enough vision and foresight to see, hey, man, this is, you know,

think about the 600. Right. Four stages. Until you, you know, once you get to that bridge, you're like, dang, this would be a good idea. I just, I wish they wouldn't change, like. Right at the last minute? Yeah, especially stuff. that affects points.

Ah, I get your, so you think it... If they would have said it, at the beginning of the year, I would have been fine with it. Don't do it as the season's happening. Right. During the season. Because what if those additional 10 points make a difference somewhere? Well, they will. I know.

Oh, yeah. And all the points thereafter like, you know, second, third, fourth, they're getting point. Yeah. Yeah. So those points could make a difference. Yeah. But they didn't ask my opinion. another track-related

rumor this past week was that Indy may be running their cup race on the road course next year Yeah So is this like a fad Yeah If people want to run road courses now

Yeah So I think this is a bad decision I believe that In in the short term If I have a racetrack And it has a road course And I'm

My attendance is in serious trouble. In the short term, hey guys, we're going to run the road course this next trip. That is going to work. People are going to be like, hey, cool, something new.

They're going to go. They're going to watch. You're going to see, you know, spike in sales. Is that long-term fix? No, because it's not going to be, it's not a traditional road course like Sonoma. Right, yeah. Anything that's a roval

where they actually use part of the outside track is going to allow the cars to get spread out. You see it. at Daytona in 24 hours. Anything that's not a roval like Watkins Glen and Sirius Point doesn't allow the cars really to get away from each other and you see them nose a tail and you have that road course, traditional road course action that you like. And that's why they strive and continue to strive.

This will work for a trip or two until the honeymoon's over and then you're back to the same issues that you had at the track that you have now. What if they did like one year oval, one year road course, one year oval, one year and kind of alternated back and forth to give you a little something different every year. I don't like the road course idea because I'm an oval guy anyways. Yeah, I don't like alternating either. I just want, just fix the problem. That's not the problem.

The problem is not the track. I mean, the problem is not the oval. It's like, I think that if you switch to the road course, you gave up on the oval. How do you go back to the oval? Right. You're not going to admit a mistake. Yeah. I mean, you're really, you're really, you're really, you're really, you're really, you're really, you know, you're really selling off the farm here if you leave the Oval and go to the road course.

Now, if you have two dates, that may, that doesn't look as bad, you know, if you're Charlotte and you run the Oval one time and then the road course the next time, all right. Yeah. That doesn't feel strange to me, but maybe this is Indy's last, last ditch effort. I mean, if they don't. To make NASCAR work. Yeah. Maybe if they don't do something that gets sales that they're off the schedule. Maybe this is a potential last-ditch effort for them to remain part of the series.

I don't know. I've not heard any rumors. Yeah. But, man, if you go to the road course, how do you go back? Yeah. So I think the issues with racing there have nothing to do with the racetrack itself. Yeah. You know, the physical track.

But yeah, I don't I hope they figure something now. I like that a lot of, you know, I know a lot of people like road course racing and I, you know, this is my last year. Add more road courses, fine. I'm not a big fan of them. I didn't grow up wanting to drive road courses.

But if you want to add more road courses to the series and fans are going to love that, do it. But these are not the style of road courses that are going to produce the action that you see at Sonoma and Watkins Glen. These are rovils. So once you come off, the road course onto the oval, the cars kind of spread out.

Right, especially indie, because you run from the middle of one and two. Think about Charlotte. They're going to come out of turn one and go all the way around the track. Yeah, it'll be, yeah, but the cars are going to get so spread out. It is going. Yeah, it'll be pretty boring. It'll be cool to see once for me. Maybe it'll be cool to see one lap.

Yeah. The second lap, it'll be like, okay, whatever. But also, moving back to Charlotte, the All-Star Race Disaster. weekend. You have any cool memories of that race as a fan? Obviously, one big one for your dad was the passing the grass. Any memories from that or any other ones? Because I'm sure you went to that growing up. Yeah, I mean, I watched a lot of the All-Star races as a kid up in the Turn 1 condos. They built these condos back in 86 or 85 sometime around then. They sold for $20,000 a piece. You can't get one now. Same condos. Same decor. You can go up.

into these condos and it's literally like walking back into 1985 and they're selling for over $200,000 a piece. What an amazing investment. Yeah. Yeah. So I, uh, we, I used to, I remember, I'm just going to ramble here, but I, on drivers intros, back when I drove the Bud 8 car, we'd ride by and all the people in dad's condo is the second floor all the way over to the right. And they would all be full, it would be full of family and we're waving. Now when I go by there, There's nobody in there. Empty? Wow.

Yeah. That sucks. So there might be a few people in there at a random race, but I haven't seen anybody in a while. Yeah. But anyways, the... So I saw a lot of races and had an amazing seat. Obviously, the 87 passing the grass wasn't really a pass, but that's what they call that. It was the almost lose the lead, but didn't lose the lead.

Incredible race. And as a kid, I was... I didn't really understand. I was scared. Like I thought dad was in trouble, and they were all fighting, and didn't realize, I guess through all the back and forth between him, Bill, Jeff Bodine, the beating and banging and all that, the roughing each other up after the race. I didn't realize what an awesome thing I saw until later.

Oh, so you weren't instantly like, man, my dad's a badass. Nope. I was like, oh, man. everybody you know we're dads in trouble NASCAR's mad drivers are mad fans are mad

fans are happy you know it was like a it's so much emotion going on and energy in that one event right there in that moment as a kid you know you're watching this I must have been 12 13 yeah

so yeah I didn't understand exactly what I'd seen now I regard that is one of the most incredible races I've ever watched and when I go back and watch that final segment and look, you know, Bill's car was incredibly fast.

My dad did everything he could in his power to keep Bill from passing him, no matter what. And was some of it a little aggressive? Absolutely. That was a lot of money on the line. Yeah. At that time, that was an incredible amount of money. It was like $250,000? Yeah.

They'd never seen anything like that for a win. So, yeah, dad brought his A-game. The You know, I've seen a lot of races there That's probably certainly the one that's going to stick out the most Obviously we won the race as a rookie In 2000 Do you remember when you won the race as a rookie?

That was the one where the bridge fell Yep I was on the other bridge at about the same point When the other one fell Walking in, walking back Yeah, that was a Yeah, that was a really difficult year too I think we just recently had lost Adam.

Yep. Petty. So I remember the banners for that around the track. I think that's why they had the victory lane move to the front stretch and left the normal victory lane open in his honor. Maybe so. Yep. So that was a, yeah, that was a incredible day. We had just won the Texas race and the Richmond race a couple weeks before.

So we really, you know, we're just amazed to be in the race. race, didn't think we were going to win it. Since it's 2000, that was what, 16 years ago, I can tell you a little bit about how we won that race. So this is common now. But I'm learning, imagine like in 2000, I've ran two full seasons in the Xfinity series. I'm still kind of green. Don't know everything about racing, right? Still don't know everything about racing.

but we were testing. They had an open test a couple nights before, and Tony Jr. sent me out on the track and said to go run. I'm out there running, and our car is way faster. Right? I'm like, man, this thing is right. I mean, we're posting top two lap times. Really thrilled.

This thing's fast. We get to the race and go practice and everything's cool. and the car's pretty decent. In the first segment, we were on third. I'm thinking, okay, you know, we've got a top five car here. This is going to be great. We're going to have a good account of ourselves. I bounced into the fence, and the car got faster.

Now, we didn't know nothing about rear toe and skew back bend. So I think when I hit the wall, I actually skewed the rear end housing, which would improve the speed of the car. That makes sense. So that's one thing that I think happened. We slapped it pretty good off turn four. So the final segment. We did come in and get tires, only a few laps into the segment, which tires were a big deal for that.

Was it still a 10-lapse segment back then? Yeah. We did come in and get tires. There had been a lot of wrecks, so there was only about 10 cars in the race, so we line up around 8th or so. But also, for that last segment, Tony Jr. didn't fill the car up. Tony Jr. only put enough fuel in there to run a 10 laps, so that put a lot of nose weight in the car, which is something you would do in qualifying to really improve stability and speed of the car. And so that's what he had done in the practice a couple days before, but I didn't know that. He wouldn't tell me these little things.

So we go out there and hauled tail. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if anyone else's, you know, I'm sure other teams are smart enough to do that. But that was one thing we would do that would give our car a credible amount of speed for a short period of time. You wouldn't do that in a race because you'd only make 10 laps. You couldn't run a race that way. But if it's a 10-lats segment, you don't need to put all that fuel in there for no reason.

So the car was a little bit lighter It had sticker tires A little more nose weight So you could haul butt When you got a little more nose weight You can really hammer the gas It'll eventually get tight though On the long run

Once all the fuel burns off You're gonna have too much nose weight Yeah, but 10 laps Yeah So I thought that was interesting Turned in 2001 It's raining They throw the green flag

All of us went down in the corner and crashed You didn't crash You just slid up I talked to Steve LaTard about this race they won. 24 car. He was what, the car chief? Yeah.

So all the cars crash. NASCAR says, all right, you guys can get your backup out. So they had like 15, 20, 30 minutes to fix their cars and get them ready. And they were cheating them things up pretty good. Because they didn't really, they weren't going to really tech them hard or anything like. They didn't do LIS back then.

Well, yeah, they didn't have that either. So most of the guys, at least, you know, the 24 bunch, had their car wired for speed. Yeah. Steve was talking to me about that the other day. Ended up winning that race. 2002, I caught Newman on the last lap, bumped him, and he saved it. So I catch him.

I'm really fast. I got a great run. Hitting somebody off a turn two. It knocked him sideways, but I kind of lifted because I thought he was going to wreck. Yeah. You know, I hit him hard with the intent to knock him out of the way. And if he wrecked, you wrecked. I mean, that was...

Oh, so you would have been... It was an All-Star race. If there's one race where you can wreck a guy on the last lap, that would be the one. There's a lot of money. I think it's half a million dollars at this point. Yeah. Newman. As a fan, I was disappointed that he didn't wreck.

Newman never lifted. So I hit him. He goes sideways off a turn two for 150, 200 yards, full throttle, saves it. I lifted because I thought I was going to need to dodge him, get ready, get my car ready to put in a position to miss him. but he saved it if he didn't lift and he saved it like that

then he deserved to win yeah well then he deserved to win yeah so that was a that was one that oh man I think about that one because the guy we were so close we should have won

that was a fast car any other I put on here the 2012 because that was in the spell where you ran the open for two years one year you won the fan vote then the second year

we won the open yeah you just kicked there ass and then you almost won the actual all-star race that year. Did we? Yeah, it was really good. That's when you drove the black foundation car. Yeah. The original gray ghost.

No. No? No, it was just the black and white for the foundation. The original gray ghost was in the 08 all-star race. Yep, first year with Hendry. Well, that's enough about that all-star race. We got that going on this weekend. You'd be driving the exalted car.

We're driving the exaltic car. That's going to look good at another lights. Yes. I asked Greg. I said, you got something ready. got a bullet for that race. He said, yeah. Oh. So we'll see.

So this is the start of J.R. Race Weeks. There's a discount. If you listen to this show, you get 15% off your purchase when you mention the code DMR 15. What's the code? DMR 15. And that's at the Junior Nation retail store here at Junior Motorsports only. You mentioned the code at the desk?

Yes. Yes. Just say the code. Yep. Not the online store. It's just here at the shop. Is there any, you whisper it? You just say it like a normal person.

Like me and you are having a conversation right now? You just say it like that. Say it normally. DMR 15. And you get a 15% discount. Now through May 28th. That's only on the... It applies through...

Through May 28th. So starting right now. Yeah. Right now. Act now. Okay. And also we've got fan day here at Junior Motorsports next Friday, May 26. We're going to have podcast recording all day long in the studio.

We're working out in a special edition of our show, though. We're going to be tentatively outside, assuming it doesn't ring. And we're going to bring in the JRM drivers, Kelly, LW, Mike, whoever we can pull, which nobody can say no because you are the boss. And that's going to be fun time. That will be fun. So, yeah. Are we going to live stream our podcast?

Hell yeah. Yeah. Mike Davis is here. Here he comes. He's got something to say about that. Tell us, Mike. I say we do. I say we live stream.

not only your podcast, the entire podcast, but we also live stream from the outside stage all day long. We can bring other things up there, not just Dale, but we ought to do a live stream all day from Fanday Junior Motorsports Facebook page. Sounds good. That's my idea. What do you all think? Sounds pretty good. I like it.

All right. It's going to be fun. There is. We're anticipating a great turnout, so. Yep. So I'm signing autographs. From 11 to 12. 11 to 12.

There was a lottery for those, so those have been distributed already. All right. So those folks know what? Yep. Our podcast is going to start around 1230. 12.30. Okay. Probably 1230 to 2, 1230, 1, 30, something like that.

Depends on how long we feel like talking. That sounds like a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to it. And that is May 26 next Friday. Yep. Out here at Junior Motorsports. All right.

May even have a special announcement. What's the announcement? May have a special announcement. Are you breaking news? No, no, no. No, this is a tease, man. It's what's called T's. We may have a special announcement.

We leave the news breaking to you. I want to know more. You know what else? We may not. Yeah, exactly. That's all you can tell us. That's all I'm going to tell you. I want to know more.

You need to come to Fanday. All right. Make sure you show up. All right, guys, we're going to get to our Ask Junior segment. As always, we take questions on Twitter, and we're going to do this on Facebook live today. So if you're watching, send in your questions. Dale will answer them. I'll answer them if I can.

We're joined by Mike Davis, as always. What's up? He's going to be our moderator, so let's get to him. Susie Q-088 asked, have you ever convinced your spotter T.J. Majors to go riding bikes with you? T.J. has a mountain bike, not a road bike. But he doesn't know the difference, and he says that he'll go riding with me if it's around 10 miles no longer. he is going to be miserable riding eight, ten miles on the road on a mountain bike. Is that right?

But he doesn't know the difference. He's like, I got a bike. I'll go. So I'm going to get him out there. And he doesn't, he has problems with the seat being very painful, but he doesn't know any better to wear the padded shorts. I was going to ask that. I know that it's kind of getting to be an old question, but like does he have to go wear the bike gear, the spandex? He won't do that right out of the gate.

Neither would have I. All right. All right. Here's how, and I'll have, LaTartre explain this to me the best. This is how it works. The first ride, you put on the spandex in your, you know, wherever you are, and you're in a, you know, bathroom or whatever. And you sneak into, you have, you have, you've set this up beforehand.

You've got the bike on the car rack, on the back of your suburban, what have you. So you put on the spandex behind closed doors. You run outside, you jump into the car, you drive yourself off to somewhere private so you can get out of your car without anybody seeing you. You get on the bike and you go riding, right? This is what you did in Atlanta. I know. I'm just saying this is everybody's first ride. And this is the spandex experience.

So you don't want anybody to see you. And then you go ride and your plan really is to do the reverse on the way back in. Ride back to your suburban, jump in the suburban, drive back in. haul butt into the bus, not let anybody see you, get out of your spandex. But after riding a bike for the first time for 16 miles, your give a damn is gone. Good. And you ride that son of a gun and ride on. And you're so proud, you're like, man, you know I rode 16 miles.

Spandex, man. You come, your cruise back into that bus slot and you're rolling, you're going in donuts, just cruising around, showing off to everybody that you just rode 16 miles. So that's really how it works. Now, we're very proud. Very proud of our cycling. There's another cycling question right here. Are you going to do the assault on Mount Mitchell next year? No.

Next year. So those guys wrote, the assault on Mount Mitchell is 100 miles. They do 10,000 feet of climbing. The last freaking, I don't know, the last 30 miles or 25 miles is literally most of the climbing. It's like 8,000 feet or so. No way. And they, you know, I was looking at all of their Strava posts, and they're burning like 5,000 calories. Like, I mean, you, to do this now, to do this, you have to prepare.

You have to prepare days in advance as far as what you eat, you know, what you're doing to get yourself, your body's got to be able to, you know, your body's got to be able to do that without breaking down. We talk about riding 30 miles, 40 miles, 50 miles, and bonking out. Like running out of carbs, running out of nutrition, you literally can't pedal anymore. You have to get off and call somebody. When's the descent down Mount Mitchell? That one sounds more fun. Yeah, can we have that? Can we start at the top?

That would be fun. That'd be completely no-pedaling. Exactly. It's just cruise. Yeah, we'd need some breaks. We'd need some better brakes. Not a bad idea. Yeah.

Let's see here. Scott Glover-Four asked, do you think NASCAR should have a night practice if you're going to be having a night race? Boy, that'd be novel. Wouldn't it be? Yeah. You'd think you'd do that more often. Great idea, Scott. Let's see here.

I'll keep on going. I won't make you expand on that one. I don't think we have to. No, I don't think so. I like this one from Savage EK-9. What's your worst DMV encounter? He's currently waited over two hours. Where are you seeing this?

This is on the top of my list. It's on the other page. Oh. Yeah. So the DMV. Yeah. The weight there is terrible, but I don't. know about everyone else's DMV, but how about the ladies in there? Our DMV is all female

officers. They are no nonsense. Wouldn't you describe them as no nonsense? Yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you and I've gone to the DMV together before. Yeah. They are awesome, awesome girls. Are they? They don't take no crap. I remember one of them being quite rude to me, not to you. Yeah. That's how they... Is that how it works? That's how it works. Okay, guys. They love me. Yeah. Imagine that. I'm nice to it. Yeah. What?

You're nice to. Hey, listen, I'm not complaining. You know why? Let me explain. We didn't have to stand in line. Oh. Maybe. I go in there with a smile on my face.

You think that's what it is? That's what it is. Oh, okay. I'm always smiling. You go in there. No. With your smirk and your brow lowered. I'm smirking my brow.

It's a country song. Yeah. You just believe that smiles is what's getting it. Well, I don't know. Look. I think, you know what, you can see my smile in my driver's license picture. Oh, you have a smile on yours? I look so pissed off in mine.

Yeah. It's got the experience. It's your resting face. Yeah. I think that's what they call it. How excited are you? This is from Dub, Angel. How excited are you for this DIY program to start?

Yeah. We announced that last week. Yeah, I am. I'm really excited about it. So we bought this piece of property many years ago. Two, three years ago, anyways. We're thinking like, oh, man, this thing's got to, it's going to need a ton of work. I think when people see it, they're going to be really surprised we even tried to take this home.

But this thing's going to need a ton of work. In my opinion, I just knocked the house down and just make the lot bare and leave it alone. Sailed a lot as he is. They've been an awesome show and more fun. Not a TV show. I'm just saying, when you see this house, this is what I would have done. But in the old town with historic folks, with the historic, what is that called, historic district.

Yeah, so there's rules. You can't tear houses down. The historic society won't allow you to replace anything you want. They actually have to come in there and say there's a board. They look at this board and they go, well, this is the only part that's rotten. This is the only part of the board you can replace. So you literally got to cut the board in half or cut off the rotten in and replace that only and leave the rest of the board. So that, I mean, how do you make that work, right?

I mean, that's a real, that's a lot of hoops to jump through. And each time it's a process. Yeah. It's not like you call them up, hey, look at this board. No, no, no, no. The guy, from what I understand, the guy comes out there and looks at it and goes, hey, all right, this has got to stay, this has got to stay, this has got to stay, this got to stay, this got to stay. So, and maybe it's more than one of one actually event, but it doesn't, it's not, it's not, it's not, call up the guy and get him out here. We got a board.

We got a leg out. It's not like that. So, anyways, I would have just knocked this whole thing down and maybe started from scratch or sold the lot. Can't do it. Can't knock it down. It's an eyesore in the community. We're going to have to remodel it. And that's going to make a lot of people around that area happy.

But we were going to probably be way upside down trying to remodel this thing, trying to do the whole renovation. So I was thinking, fine. Yeah. So I'm thinking, man, what ways can we, what ways can we try to, you know, try to cut some of the cost? And we talked, we knew some people with the, with the networks, the DIY folks. And so we called them up and said, hey, would you be interested in this?

You know, let's talk. So we've talked for about a year and a half. A couple phone conversations, getting the right people interested, getting in this guy's ear and this guy's ear. finally they want to sit down to talk yeah it works the timing's right for us the timing's right for them and so we decided to do a show it's going to be a four episode show real short series about specifically four 30 minute episodes yeah so it's really it's it's not a whole season it's not going to be you know a five-year deal it's just we're doing this house this was a economical way to do it and

That's important to say because there was reports like, oh, Dale's found his second career. Yeah, like this is going to be my next career. No. I mean, I'm not opposed to doing TV and TV shows and so forth. This is fun. This is going to be a good time. Right. This is the plan for this one is one. This is not, yeah, this is not what I had in mind when I said, you know what? I am, when I'm done driving cars, I'm going to go into Home Renovation TV. That is not exactly what was in the discussion.

I think one of the things that we've always liked is to do things that are kind of outside the box or outside of the racing bubble. This is one of them, man. This is going to put NASCAR in front of some new people that have never seen it. And I'm excited, too, about the Amy piece of this. Absolutely. Doing it with Amy. She's an interior design. She's done that all her life.

It's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be a challenge, too. You know, you're going to see the frustrations of going through a process like that. It's all going to be laid out there. Everybody's seen these shows. They know what they're in for. We also, Steve, our contractor, he's a guy we've worked with before. So this guy, Steve, he'll be another personality in the show that's going to be helping us remodel this home.

That's someone we know. We're friends with. So I think the show's going to work really well as far as the chemistry goes. We're going to learn a ton. me and Amy are going to be physically in there doing the work. And, you know, going down to Key West and having to do a TV show, it's not a bad gig. Yeah, they're aware of places to go. It's going to do a TV show.

Might as well. Might as well do it. But one of the things that I'm going to go ahead and put out there that I'm a little nervous about is when we bought this property, it was full of trash. I mean, literally the person had owned it was a hoarder and there was a bunch of trash in the backyard. There's a lot of cats living there. just a mess. We go back in there to clean all this out

at least, well, Sunny did. Sunny, my property manager, went back there and they found about 30 scorpions in two days and they kept them in a bucket, big giant bucket. I mean, just tons and tons of scorpions.

Scorpion mamas with like 10, 15 scorpion babies on its back. I mean, just scorpion hell over there. So I'm a little nervous about that. My mom got stung by a scorpion one time. I remember that.

And her thumb blew up like three times a side. Didn't you keep it? Didn't you keep the scorpion? Yeah. You did. That scorpion came home and lived at Dirty Moe Acres for about six months. It did.

I remember it. On mosquitoes. This is all true, folks. I'm a little nervous about the scorpion issue. But, but it would make a good episode. Yeah. I just know that we're going to have some scorpion problems. Yeah, you will.

They're going to attack. Race Angel 64. Would you ever consider being on dancing with the stars? No. Why? I hate it. I don't watch that show. Do you have to watch it?

Why does everybody, how do dancing with the stars become the go-to question? Yeah, I don't know. Is it just solely because of Michael? No, I think it's a very popular show. It's a very popular show. Well, so was the voice. People don't ask me if I'm going to go on there and start singing. No, that's right up and coming.

Yeah, yeah, you know why? Dancing with the Stars. I'm up and coming? As if you didn't. Not a singer, you're not. Not a dancer either. Dancing with the stars, you're supposed to be an amateur. I mean, it takes people that don't know how to dance, pairs them with somebody that does know how to dance.

The voice in American Idol, that's just talent shows, right? Am I wrong? You would make it to the top three easy, just based on popularity. I think that's the nicest thing Tyler's ever said to me. I think that's the nice thing Tyler's ever said to anybody, including his fiance. I know. No, that's not true. Tell her I love her every day.

Do you tell Dale? No. I will never. Beyond Dancing with the Stars. All right, there you go. He answered the question. Nation Nana. Nation Nana.

Outside your family. Who would you say has influenced you the most? Dang. That's a long list. Rick, my boss, Rick Hendrick. Got to be at the top. Yep. Yeah, probably him.

He's probably influenced. Yeah. I've got to go there. And you can leave it right there. Is there any other questions on the sheet that you want to answer? You've got people asking you to do a hunting show, by the way, here on Facebook Live. You've got that. Yeah, well, hunting show would probably be a little more up my alley than dancing with the stars.

So we just got done turkey hunting a couple a week ago. We like to bow hunt for Whitetail, and my brother's a big hunter, L.W., my brother-in-law is a big hunter, my friends. So I see True X, me and him. We're great hunters, great buddies. I'm not a great hunter. He's a great hunter. Yeah, hunting show sounds a little more realistic. Okay.

So who knows? Plus with our partnership in True Timber Cambo. That's right. Which I saw somebody on TV wearing True Timber Camo. You tweeted this, and I didn't know who that guy was. Yeah, so there's a TV show on Bravo called Southern Charms at me and Amy watch. Okay. Shep took his buddies on Southern Charm.

A pheasant hunting. About a year ago, Shep had these hats with the American flag on them, and he's like, hey, check out my hats. So I said, send me to. And I said, I'll send you some true timber camo stuff. So we swapped some gear, and he wore his on the show. Last night's episode. You wore his hat for the Darlington test, so I think that's a fair trade. I thought it was great.

I mean, it's a hat with American flag on him, man. I thought he was just wearing that true timber. When he tweeted it, I thought he was just wearing it organically. Not organically. Yeah, just like an Instagram post. Man. All right, we're going ahead and look ahead. Tuesday.

That's today. We got meetings at HMS, as usual. We go up there and talk to the team. Then we have a meeting with all the drivers and the crew chiefs, yada, yada, yada. Should be all good stuff. NBC Arts and Crafts shoot. So this is a shoot where NBC gets all the footage. When you see us on the TV broadcast and it's all these little

glamor shots of us. Like coming in and out of commercials. Yeah, going in and out of, I'm walking down an aisle with smoke pouring out, carrying my helmet. That's the NBC Arts and Crafts shoot, and Fox does one as well. I don't know why they call it arts and crafts. I don't know, because we tweeted or you tweeted your Daytona schedule

and we had that on it, and someone was like, what the hell's arts and crafts. I know. That's just what they call it. It sounds like they need to change the name. This will be the last one you have to do, so I doubt that. Because we have the Xfinity race We'll have to do the arts and crafts shoot for the Xfinity races that we run.

We have an exalt appearance this afternoon. Yep. They're opening the training facility on the Hendrick campus. So that's a fun. Beautiful place. Wednesday, production with Kelly, Justin Agar, and Advanced Auto Parts for Justin's Darlington throwback. And I'm excited.

It is a... Have we revealed it? No. But it is one of your throwbacks. Yeah. It's a throwback to me. Yeah. Which is really my first, I think.

Nobody's done a Dale Jr. throwback before. Yeah. So it might as well be your own car. Yeah. And we also have Catwalk for a Cause. We're doing the Catwalk for a Cause rehearsal tonight. Are you walking? Yes, me and Amy are walking.

Okay. There's a lot of folks in it this year, and they moved it to a hangar over at Statesville. I'm going. Airport. You're going. I'm going. So this event, this is Catwalk for a Cause is the event that Martin Trix Junior's Foundation runs by Sherry, obviously. incredible event, so much growth.

When you're talking about drivers with their own foundation events, this is the standard, in my opinion. Florida Georgia Line, which is a huge act. Yeah, so amazing work that they're doing, and they're pushing all the other drivers and their foundations to get going to, you know. Yeah, it's become an annual tradition during All-Star Week, so that's cool. Thursday, Freightliner production.

So we do a production for Freightliner who gives us our trucks. Yep. And trailers. Yep. This is Freightliner slash Thomas Built buses because they own, they build those school buses. Ah. So we're going to do some stuff with them. We have an Exaltamaco media event.

Yep. At the racetrack. At the racetrack. At the racetracketkain's Foundation dinner. So we're going to that. We've never been to that. I don't think so. No, it usually was in Seattle, I think.

Oh, that's right. And he moved to here. Yeah. So that's going to be a lot of fun. Never been to Casey Kane's Foundation dinner. Friday we have All-Star Practice and then All-Star practice. and then All-Star qualifying. There's three laps, including a live pit stop with no pit road speed.

We've been doing it like that for a few years. Pretty hairy coming on to pit road as fast as you can. It's cool to watch. Without wheel hopping and then getting into your pit stop without sliding through. How fun is that? The first time, it's just like the road course. It's just like running a road course at Charlotte. It's fun the first time.

It'll be fun the last time. It's really, yeah. 6 p.m. on Fox Sports 1 for All-Star qualifying. Saturday, we have a nationwide autograph session at Linail. We do this every year. A lot of fun. They raise a lot of money for a nationwide children's hospital through that, so that's a good deal.

Yep. We have the All-Star race starting at 8 p.m. on Fox Sports 1. The Open starts at 6. Yeah. The Open is on the same day as the All-Star race like they used to do it. And it funny how we do things right the first time, and then we change them. Yeah. Because we think we need to change them.

And then we always come back and do things the way we used to do them. I'm surprised they're not calling it like a throwback All-Star. Oh, yeah. All right. The open starts at 6 p.m., as we said, who are your picks to advance from the All-Star, or from the Open End to the All-Star race? So I've got to say Blaney. You think Blaney have been there?

Oh, yeah. So there's three guys that qualify in. There's a 20-lap, 20-lap, and a 10. So three guys qualify in that way. And then a fan vote. Fan vote. Yep. So you got Blaney?

I got Blaney. I got Blaney. Boyer, Chasel. win one of the stages. Dan and Colgett fan vote. All right. There you have it. I like your picks. Well, that's it for this week's show. Appreciate you all listening. Again, Jerry M. Fan Days next week. Check us out. Take it easy.

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