The Dale Jr. Download - 182 - To run The Clash or not? The boss weighs in.

Episode Date: July 5, 2017

Dale Jr. is joined by his wife Amy to discuss the Daytona race, whether or not he will run The Clash next season now that he's qualified and more. Dale and Amy also answer 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.

My racing career isn't just about me. It's about the team, the fans, the sponsors, the families, the tracks, the whole sport. Join us over the next five months on the Junior Nation Appreciation Tour, where we show appreciation to where it's owed. This is Dale Jr., and you're listening to Dirty Mo Radio. Hey everybody, it's Dale Jr. Back again for another episode of the Dell Jr. download and with me this weekend, is my wife Amy. Hello.

Back again. Yeah. Thanks to Hopeless Records for providing today's theme song, Sins. That's one of my favorites. They also have kind of like an acoustic, couple acoustic versions of that song that I like. I've not heard those.

By the Dangerous Summer. You have heard them. The acoustic versions? Oh, yeah. No, I haven't. Okay. I can't recall it. It's called Sins, quotes, revisited,

or something like that. Yeah, all right, anyhow. We're in vacation mode. It's July 4th week. Yeah, happy 4th. Happy 4th to everybody. Any special memories from celebrating the 4th? Honestly, most of what I remember is just we always kept it pretty simple and classic.

It had hamburgers and hot dogs and we did fireworks. Okay. And we always went out to the country to do it, my great-gar and parents farm. Oh, in Texas, yeah. What's that town? Raisin. Raisin, Texas. So, yeah, we always had the July 4th Daytona race going on.

So that's most of the memories that I have as far as celebrating July 4th. We've always kind of been in Daytona for that as a kid. Same thing, racing, cheeseburgers and fireworks. Speaking of Daytona, we had pretty eventful. race weekend. We won the pole for the race, which was great. Yeah. We've been trying to win a super speedway pole, actually, for a while now. We've been getting close, so it seems like it's either the 24 who beats us or somebody comes up there and surprises everyone. Like Stenhouse did that in Talladega. But he ends up winning the Talladega race as well. Andy won this weekend,

which was pretty incredible for him. Two wins in a season already. He's been pretty, he's had a successful career in Xfinity Series, and now he's starting to come into his own as a cup driver. But anyways, we're trying to win the pole for the Super Speedways for a long time, and he just kept getting second, third, or fourth or something like that. Kept getting beat, kept getting beat. And so finally to be the guy to get the pole, that felt great.

I don't think I've had a poll since 2013. Really? Yeah. Ever since they went to this new... And Dover? Oh, I mean, I don't remember where... I think it was Dover. Yeah, you might be right.

But ever since they went to this format to where we have three rounds and all that stuff, it's... I don't know, for me, it got harder to win the polls. More... I guess it's good. I guess it's good that it got harder. Yeah. Not supposed to get easier.

but it seems like it's narrowed it down to where the pole winners are, or I don't know if it's predictable is the right word, but it's the same kind of guys all the time now. Lugano wins a lot of poles. Kyle wins a lot of poles. The 42's been fast this year, so he's getting a lot of poles. Yeah. But when it was a single shot qualifying where you just went out and you had a couple laps,

sometimes you have a guy that would surprise or somebody to skip up into the top five. out of nowhere. So we had an opportunity, I think, better chances to get the polls back then. We're recording outside again this week. Big plane coming in. So we're going to have some ambient noise. So considering this poll situation that qualifies you to run the clash, which we got into an argument about afterwards.

Because you're retiring and now you're wanting to consider running the clash. Oh, was that a joke? I think joke is a strong word, but, you know, when you, any time you've, anytime, it's just like this. So if you get an invitation in the mail, it's nice, right? If you get an invitation to a wedding or party, you're like, oh, cool. Somebody thought to include me. Include me. And that's kind of what being, you know, getting the poll and getting an opportunity to run to clash is like, it's like getting an invitation.

might not want to go to the party, but you're upset if you don't get the invitation. Well, Mr. H mentioned it to me when we were in Victory Lane for William Byron. Oh. As if you had discussed it with him already, so to be continued. To be continued. See, yeah, I told him that if I was going to run the clash, that you were going to be the one that he would have to warm up to. Oh, great. About it.

So that's why he reached out. No pressure for me. I was like, all right, Rick, if you want to run this clash next year, Amy's a cursein you got to talk to. She's my new agent. I'm the boss. She's the boss. Yeah, I was telling everybody my stock answer,

my go-to answer for anybody asking me, hey, you're going to run the clash now that you got the poll? Was, I'll see what the boss says. And everybody's rebuttal was, is that Amy or Rick? Because we've got two bosses now. Yeah, you do. So winning the poll was great. And we'll definitely continue that.

discussion about the clash. In the race. So the race was, like I said, eventful. Had a lot of things going on. It seemed like to me that it was a very, there's a lot of crashing. Yeah, it was a fun race to watch. Yeah. I think the fans thought it was a great race, judging by the comments. Social media. Social media. So, yeah, Gluck does this poll where he says, was it a

a good race or not. Just vote yes or no. Which I like to check the poll results out for that because fans are pretty honest on there. Seems like they liked it. It was really a lot of, there's a lot of wrecking, a lot going on. Didn't seem like it was a very predictable race,

which is good. And what I enjoyed about it was my car was handling great and I could do anything I wanted with it. I could be aggressive in the draft like I need to be. and I was in my I was in some three wide and at times four wide situations that typically would be very uncomfortable or it would be you know you wouldn't want to if you saw an opportunity to go four wide you'd be like no I'm not going to do that but for whatever reason my car gave me enough confidence that I was like oh yeah I'll go four wide no problem and we were bouncing off of cars and bouncing off of the wall and I think at one point we got four years four wide with Keselowski and no one else. They didn't give us quite enough room. Me and Brad both were kind of squeeze into the fence there.

Yeah. And eventually, I think the right front tire went flat. We got into the fence. We got that repaired. And we got back up to the top five somehow or to top six. Greg says we were making a lot of crazy moves and a lot of good moves out there. I don't remember how it all happened, you know, because you're just doing. You're not really taking.

memory into you don't really remember and you're not absorbing what's happening you're just kind of choosing things so you're just you're choosing to do what you're doing one thing after the other one decision after the other you don't really remember it when it's over with yeah but uh yeah the car was good we were back up toward the front and man just like out of nowhere the four card cut a tire and spun around off a turn two and didn't have me where to go yeah there's nothing you could do about it no nothing you could do about it yeah yeah nothing we can do But I was surprised that there was, you know, that was still 50 laps to go in the race at that time. And they had a lot more action.

A lot more action. Yeah. We took off. We got on the plane went home. Yeah, we were trying to keep up on Twitter. Yeah. But Stenhouse wins. So awesome for him.

We like Ricky. Yes. Good friend. Good guy. And I wish he would grow his mullet back out, though. I miss his mullet. We were just having this discussion last night about all of the new. of mullets and all of the young kids are kind of bringing the long hair back.

You want me to try to grow my wallet back. I think we should grow it out. Really? I don't think that was an option. We can always cut it off. Okay. I'll try. I'll grow my mullet.

You know, and you grow the mullet, though, you gotta take a lot of crap. All right, well, then, your choice. Yeah, I know. It's like people don't realize that you know you have a mullet. They're like, hi, you got a mullet. Of course. Duh. Yeah.

planned it. I see it every day. Thanks for noticing. So you take a lot of unnecessary ribbing. All right, well, about that. That's a bad idea. Yeah. So that's about all the, all that happened to us in the race.

I don't know why it was so wild. Brad Kisalasky said on social media, they changed the tire for that race. And, hey, it did add a little grip. Brad thinks that the added grip, you know, the added grip, you know, gave everybody a lot of added confidence. Oh, really? Yeah. Which that's not a bad... It's not a bad analysis.

Yeah. Who knows? Brad. Well, I hope that our car is as good when we go to Talladega. Do you take the same car? We'll probably fix that car and take that car. And I hope that it's as strong. And grippy?

Yep. And it handles as well so we can be aggressive. Because, I mean, I really felt like if we had been around at the end at Daytona, we'd definitely been in the battle for the challenge for the war. win, whether it had worked out or not. I know we'd have been up there. So if we can get that kind of car again, I feel great about a lot more confidence now going into Talladega than I probably had before Daytona about our plate stuff.

So that's that. Let's move on. We're going to talk about some of the things we did, the week of Daytona. We went to Charleston. Me and you took a personal vacation. We usually take vacations, but we go with people. We go with friends. We take friends.

Or we take the dogs. It was just two of us. We stayed in a hotel. It was nice. And we had a lot of new experiences. Except for the, there was a young child in the room above us. This toddler was on a mission. His thing was to run from one end of the room to the other.

And these rooms were kind of funny corridors. These rooms we had were like long. Well, it's an old building. It's a series of old buildings that they put together. So it's wood floors. I think it's pretty much symmetrical, a big square, but this is a long hall like room.

And this kid would go from one end to the other. I mean, over and over. At 7.30 in the morning and at 9.30 at night it was happening. At one point we were even considering that maybe it was just a ghost. Because whose kid is up just and why were they in the room all day long? And he ran this back and forth for three days. Back and forth and back and forth. I couldn't believe it. I really wanted to know what he was doing.

Yeah, I kind of want to see what the kid looks like. Taking something to one in the room and then bringing it back. But so we're in Charleston. You've been wanting to go to Charleston for a while. Great town. Probably some of the best food I've ever ate. We ate really well in Charleston, yeah. The food there is awesome.

And we're big fans of the show Southern Charm. And we've gotten to chatty. We've got a little chatty with a couple of folks on that show through social media. And they said any time we were in town to let them. knows, so we did. Here we are. And they, in turn, invited us to dinner. Yes. At Patricia's, right? At Patricia also saw us. Yeah, we actually, we went to Charleston with little plans. And if it could have gone any better, I wouldn't have known what we would have included, because the whole trip was just super fun and surprising. And we hung out with most of the cast from Southern Charm.

and they were great, gracious, very, very polite people. Shep especially is... He's sort of like a tour guide. Kind of like a tour guide. He's just one of those people you feel like you've known forever as soon as you meet him. Yeah. Austin was great. Austin was great.

Super nice guy. Cameron. So awesome. Whitney. Whitney. And Thomas Ravenel came to... Te-Rav. He came to dinner.

Everybody was super nice. And, yeah, we like... like to show shows a trip uh i think i like it because of the location it's a it's a tv show that's close to where we live and i you know i don't i think that's just neat most of the shows reality shows are based in like uh you know bever the hills or new york city or you know so it's kind of cool to see a reality tv so close to home but um and the the yeah they they resemble the folks that they are on tv like i guess what what people would always wonder, and what we probably wondered was, are they really the way they are on television?

Yeah. They're exactly like that. They're very genuine. The food was great. They had fried chicken and Patricia ordered out from this restaurant. Whitney is a big Redskins fan and huge Elvis fan, so we had that in common to chat about. Shep took us around to a couple of bars, and we were thinking about riding around ourselves and stuff. sort of exploring some of the smaller communities around, yeah, the beaches and so forth.

And so they helped us with some of that information, very cool folks. But we spent a lot of time with them. Shep gave us some more Shepgear. Yeah. Which is what we're rocking today. He has this hat that the America flag on. It's perfect for a day like July 4th to be patriotic. But anyways, that was a lot of fun.

It was a lot of fun. Yeah. The food, though, was incredible. Well, since it's so close, we can go back anytime. I know. should take another road trip. Yeah. I enjoyed it. And we went late on the beach one day.

Yeah, Sullivan's Island. Yep. Sullivan's Island. So we'll definitely look forward to going back. This week we're going, I'm going, I don't think you're going. I'm going back to the nationwide children's hospital. No, you're taking your team with you, aren't you? Yeah.

So we're running a special paint scheme again like we usually do at Kentucky. The nationwide children's hospital paint scheme. This is a second year in a row. I thought we did this three years. Anyways, we're going to have, we have patient champions that we honor throughout the year. And we raffle off gloves. Gloves, yeah, to sort of honor them and to raise awareness for their own personal struggles. There's specific types of illnesses.

Yeah. So we're going to have all four of those patient champions at the race. Yeah, I love it when the kids come. and you'll get to see them. But Thursday, we're going to the hospital, which is a lot of fun. I've been there several times. I'm excited to take my team because I get to show them what the hospital's all about. And so you go into this hospital and get a pretty neat tour.

They show you one of the things that they're doing that's really incredible are the, the newborn babies, some of the premature babies. Yeah. They're born like, how many? At half term, some of them are 20 weeks, 22 weeks. They're so small and so. Fragile. Fragile.

And it's incredible what they're able to do and how many children are actually able to save. Right. We were able to see, I guess, 22 weeks, is that a whole little boy was? and with his parents, they were doing just basic skin-on-skin-ton tummy time with this little tiny baby. So to see that in person. It was incredible. It was super incredible. And I'm thrilled, really, really thrilled to be able to take a team and show these guys.

A lot of these guys are new fathers, you know, and have children of their own. Yeah. Our own Travis Mack actually... He pretty much delivered his child. Delivered his own child in his house. It was an unplanned event for them. So, I mean, this is going to be a great experience for them. I can't wait.

It is amazing what they're able to do at that hospital, and we love to be able to champion it and share, yeah, share with folks what's going on. Nationwide puts a ton of funding into this hospital millions and millions of dollars each year. New research going on constantly. Yeah. And they were telling me. when you're standing there with the preemies and in that facility, they're like,

hey, these are kids that are 20, 22 weeks, and we wouldn't be able, we were not able to save them 10 years ago. Right. And with the money that the nationwide insurance has been able to put into this hospital, they're,

they have the research that they're doing there, that they're able to do a lot of things that they're not capable of doing many years ago. So it's incredible to see. We also see a lot of our, a lot of the patients that we have. Yeah, there's a couple that we've seen a few times. And sometimes they just come back to see us on that day. They're not actually still patients of the hospital. Maddie in particular.

Maddie and Thomas. Will she be there on Thursday? I think she will. Okay. Yep. And she's a little disappointed you're not going to be there. Well, I'll have to send her up by then. Maybe we'll FaceTime you.

Okay. So that's something we're going to be doing this week on Thursday. And, I mean, if you ever get a chance and you're in. Columbus go to the go by the hospital and check it out. They'd love to show you around and let's see what's going on. The hospital, you know, is something that the Dale Jr. Foundation has grown very close to. You talked about the Driven to Give Gloves program. This month I'm wearing pink gloves.

Hot pink. For Maddie. Yes. To raise awareness for therapeutic recreation. That's awesome. Yeah. Do you wore them for the first time in Daytona? Yes.

Okay. The thumbs in these gloves are tiny. Wow. Yeah. So every pair of gloves that I get kind of fit differently. Yeah. And the thumbs in this pair are super tiny. So I got, so my interior guy, Adam, shuffs big giant bolts in them overnight.

To stretch it out. To hopefully, yeah, hopefully they feel a little better this week. But they were tiny thumbs, whoever modeled those. Back on conversation, back on track. There's a lot of other foundation initiatives going on right now. We've got a lot going on with the foundation right now. We got the Wind Dale Jr.'s ride, which is a $25 raffle ticket you can buy at windell juride.com, right?

We have a 2017 corvette. We've given a Corvette away from Chevrolet. Yeah, from Chevrolet, thanks to them. Someone's going to win this car. And you said it before, like... A lot of people just win off of buying one ticket. Yeah. And it's pretty incredible.

And the foundation pays the taxes on this car, too. So you're really not winning something. That's a burden. Yeah. It's a yellow corvette. We drove it around a little bit. Yeah, we did. Went to dinner.

Yep. So Windale Junior's ride, if you want to try to buy a $25 ticket to buy this, or to win this Corvette. And they get to meet you too, right? That's right. They'll come out to the Junior Motorsports shop and we'll give you the car key.

Let's check out the car. You take the car home. A lot of the folks that have won this raffle over the years, they've become this sort of club. A club. Yeah. So they drive. to Junior Motorsports each year together and they all meet.

That's cute. And they bring their Corvette. So you can become part of that club if you win this thing. Another thing we got going on is called Weekend with the 88s. We've done this for a couple years with Greg Olson, awesome guy, tied in for the Panthers. They're $18.88. Raffle tickets and go to Weekend with the 88s.com. What you can win here is a unique experience where you go to Panthers.

football game on a Thursday night. You'll get to meet Greg and you'll get to check out the stadium. And then you'll fly to Talladega for the race that weekend that same weekend. So the Panthers game, I believe, is on Thursday night and then the race at Talladega, you get all that in the same weekend. And we'll obviously be at Talladega to meet you there if you win that. $18. That's an awesome.

Weekend with the 88s. Greg's a super freaking cool guy. He really is. He went to a charity event with us. And I've never ever seen anybody more entertaining. He is funny as hell. He really is. Yeah.

I was surprised. I love to hang out with him more. And this is sort of his idea. He's like, hey, we're two 88s. We're right here together. Right here together. Let's do this. I love what you, he's like, hey, I like what the foundation does.

He has a foundation as well. Yeah. And our missions are very similar. Similar. So he sort of brought this. It's a smart match. Yeah, he brought this together. Very cool.

And we've been blessed to be a part of it. There's one more initiative that I want to talk about. And this one I'm really excited about to discuss. It's new. We're doing it this year for the first time. And it's called Amy's Clutch. Yes. So this is something I wanted to do just to kind of make a girly initiative. Yeah. A girly initiative. Yeah. Well, we do a lot with the foundation and a lot of it's about, you know, meet Dale, come see this. You know, here you get a car. But this is just a fun kind of girly thing to also help money for the foundation. Yep. And we partnered up with Jordan Fish, who owns custom clutch, and that's Danny Hamlin's

girlfriend. And designed just a cute little handbag that you can buy, and the proceeds go to the foundation. So if you want to learn about this, go to custom, that's custom with a K, custom clutch.com. Yes. And you can learn more. There's other clutches. Yeah, she has a lot of different options on, so if you want to buy a few. This is her personal business. It is. And y'all teamed up to sell this particular clutch to raise money for the foundation. So I'm very, very proud of you. Thanks. Everybody can find it on Instagram and Twitter, too.

We've both been sharing the link. Denny Hamlin texts me. He's like, hey, man, can you tweet about this? So he's going to be very excited that we discuss this in the podcast. Yeah, that's funny. Yeah. Denny, I like it because he's like, hey, man, I'm supporting the calls. Yeah.

You need to get behind this. I get it. I like it. I like it. Thanks, Denny. Thank you, Denny. So, all right, let's move on to Ashton. junior portion of the show.

Okay. What are we got? All right, Amy. I'm going to get you this one here first. This is from May Moss 53. How do you decide what to wear at the track on race day? Oh, I love this question. Oh, God.

May apparently loved the dress you had on Daytona. Well, thanks, May. I've seen you try on up to three different outfits within 10 minutes of going out for driver's intros. Yeah, so I'm weird about planning. I don't know. I like to just wear a dress because it's the most comfortable thing. I used to put on an outfit and ask Dale what he thought about it.

I just have since stopped doing that because he's very honest. And if he says, no, I'm in a bad spot. So I don't even ask anymore. But I don't try on that many. I don't really plan and try on before I'm getting dressed to go out. No, you're right. Yep. Maybe two.

So how do you decide? Comfort? Comfort. I try to just put on something of flattering that's comfortable. Cool. All right. This is a very long one, but we're just going to cut it in half. Pedrosa, 88.

The name that is, is very long. How difficult is it to keep Gus out of trouble? And, you know, he went to the vet. He went to the vet this week. Yeah. Emergency 24-hour care in Volusia. Well, he's currently trying to push me off the couch, too. He got into his paw a little bit.

He gets bored. And he doesn't like it when we leave. So we came home after Sonoma and he was fine. We left again the next day. And he got mad. And so he started messing with his foot and he licked it to death and infected it. So we've got it wrapped up now. He's fine.

But it's been a pain in the butt, to be fair. He's into everything and he won't stop messing with the bandages now. Guys, come on. So keeping him out of trouble. Keep him out of trouble. It's not that hard at home. Yeah. I run him every morning because he's got so much energy.

So we take a lap around the farm, which is about a mile. And I walk and he runs because if I walk, he runs more. And he's more worn out when we get back. And we pretty much have to do that every day just to keep him normal. Is that how you would say it? He's pretty high strong. You take that upon yourself. You're like, hey, the dogs need exercise.

So I guess I'm going to do it. Well, unlike you, I did breed research before we even got Gus. You just wanted Gus. Yeah, like he's an Irish setter. He needs to run. I know I've had an Irish sitter before. I know what an Irish shitters look like. I know.

You used to run around the yard with him, too. I get in my, I get in, I don't get in like the habit of doing it, but like when I have time, I play with a dog. Yeah, I know. I'm not saying you don't play with a dog. Yeah. But he needs to be run. He is a lot of work, but in a good way, because I love him. Yeah.

All right. Are you done asking questions? No. I thought you might want to ask one. Oh, okay. All right. Judy B. 88 asks, do you have any chores around the house? If not.

Well, you have a honey-do list after the season ends. Well, I have one. That's up to you, I guess. The honey-do list comes from you. Yeah. Amy, definitely, I think, I'm waiting on this. He doesn't have chores, but I do like it when he takes the trash out. Yeah.

She likes it. I do like to clean up. I do like to stay organized. So I'm often, yeah, I'm often kind of... Tighting things around. Tidding up a little bit. That's kind of one of the things. I do, do take the trash out.

You will create a few piles of things here and there that sit for a while. Yeah, I mean, I'll create a mess, but I don't mind cleaning up my own mess. But I am excited sort of anxiously awaiting what life's going to be like after the driving's over with. I don't think I'll really have like a honey-do list. If you're going to be like, hey, okay, now that you have all this time, I need this and this and this and this done. I want to go over here and do this and this and this. get to start having kids in that same kind of time frame. Oh, man. That will be where the honey-do list comes from.

Doing, yeah. Baby stuff. Baby stuff. Another one for you? Sure. Okay, Dale, multiple people have asked, when, oh, when will you reveal your Darlington Paints game? It's throwback 80s, right?

Well, I don't exactly know. See, I don't. Well, the theme of the whole race this year is 80s, late 80s. It's like a block of odd years. between like 86 to 94. It's not like a chunk or a decade. I don't know why they're doing it that way. And I don't want to get into a big

complaining conversation about it, but I don't know why they don't just say, hey, Darlington's the throwback track. Let's just bring your throwback. Bring your throwback idea, whatever idea it is. And that's that. But they're wanting to really fixate on a particular time in history.

and so it's like 84 to 94 or something like that. What helps with the overall marketing? You can't just say throwback. Well, eventually they're going to run out of years and they're going to have to say, hey, okay, we're just now throwing it back, period. I got to. Do you're anticipating that happening anyways what you're saying? Yeah, I'm looking forward to just the regular throwback.

Okay. I will avail it sometime this month. That's all I can tell you. Wow. Nationwide will let me know when I'm able to do that. I'm excited about it. I think you guys are going to love. this year's idea.

Yeah, they're definitely going to love it. I haven't seen it either, but I know what it is. And speaking of throwbacks, he may not ever give me any credit, but when you see Matt Kinsis' throwback this year, I had some help. Oh, really? I insisted him in a certain direction. You steered him?

He asked for some input. So, yeah, I'd like to help my buddies out. All right, well, honey, next question. Russell 5229 wants to know, why does it NASCAR have a cup race in the northwest. Are they ever going to look to have one? Oh, let's say northwest. That would be... I've heard a lot about Iowa lately. Oregon. Are there tracks out there? Washington State. I don't know where we could race out there. They'd have to probably build a track up there. I don't know. I don't know when that's going to happen. Okay. Let me get you a question. All right, this is from Matthew. What places in the

world are you hoping to visit now that I won't be racing full time? Well, we want to go to Monaco. He wants to go to watch Le Mans. Let's watch out. Watch out with this wee stuff. I want to go to Le Mans to see the Le Mans race. Yes. And your trade for going to Le Mans is that we stop in Monaco for some time during that trip.

It's a beautiful city. Fair trade. That's ambitious and hopefully we can get it done. Yeah. Well, we're going to go to Italy soon too. Are we? Yeah. I think we talked about this already on the last podcast.

But we bought that trip from Casey Cain's Foundation. Oh, yeah. Tuscan. Well, Tuscan. in Rome. Tuscany. We're going to Tuscany, right? Yeah.

Okay. It's an area. Okay. I'm looking forward to that. That was a good trip. Yeah, we bought this trip at a charity event for Casey Kane. Yeah. So we're going to go do that.

All right, one more. Here we go. Jenny wants to know. What is the inspiration for your custom clutch design? Honestly, we just wanted it to be fun in summary. I picked, we picked colors two. that we felt like would stand out. The tassels are really popular now.

Everybody's putting tassels and pom-poms all over everything. So that was a fun little addition. And you can take it off. So if you don't like it, you can put it on your keychain or something. We just try to pick something bright and pretty. All right, last question for you, Ralph. Hurricane Jr. 88 wants to know. Was it her dealing with the constant media coverage of your possibly last race in Daytona?

I like that name. It's Hurricane, but it's spelled like Casey King's. last name. So he's a might be Casey Kane and a junior fan. Was it hard dealing with the constant media coverage by Daytona being the last Daytona race? Yes. I thought it was a bit overplayed.

Everything, I mean, the networks mentioned it every two minutes. I don't think you really understand, though, how big of a deal it is that you're retiring and that was your last... I just felt like it was a bit overstated across the board. But...

Are you honored, though, that they... Yeah, I mean, it's a great feeling. Want to support you so much? Yeah. There's a, so there's some things that we're kind of cognizant of. And that's, that we don't, we were kind of talking, we're a bit self-aware that we don't want the tracks packaging deals and trying to sell tickets or make money off of the last race here and the last race there. So we don't, you know, we're hoping that anything done is going to be done tastefully. And so you're just kind of watching all the time, wondering like, you know, what's...

Is it going to get too far? What's the agenda? And I think that, yeah, I mean, they just want, they want the fans to tune in, watch this race on TV, get me some, you know, get some great ratings for this race. so it's a little bit that's a little bit too much sometimes because I think it's great to mention it yes this is my last race at Daytona okay

but they said it over and over and over and over and over and over all day long Friday, Saturday it's ringing in my ear oh Lord I'm kidding bless your heart yeah I mean it just

I don't want people to be I get nervous that the fans are going to be like enough yeah right I understand that's it that's all and my peers, you know, I wonder what my... Yeah, like, yuck, I'll turn the dang TV off. We're all sitting there watching the TV.

I know that the other drivers and crew chiefs and the industry is watching it as well, and I just don't want them to be like, yeah, enough, bleh, that's all. I get it. That's all my concern is. So, all right, there's your Ask Junior questions. Thanks for writing in.

Always use the hashtag Ask Junior. Send those to me, Tyler Overstreet. But I have a question. Oh. Sorry to interrupt. Sorry, not sorry. I wanted to ask you this question because we got into a really big discussion about it yesterday. Salmon?

No, not salmon. So that's some of the, that's more like my pet peeved than yours. And then we've discussed that over the pole, or we've discovered over the pole ratings at the salmon. Oh, it is salmon? Yes. Okay, yeah. So I think it's salmon because there's an L in there. And I don't think that the L is.

silent, but you and a large part of the public think that it's salmon. It's salmon. Okay. Yeah. Well, I think it's... Mystery is solved. I think it's a regional thing that you... It's regional, yeah.

North Carolina and say... So it could be salmon depending on what region you're in. Oh, God. It's not salmon. That doesn't even sound like a thing to me. Okay. Well, I like salmon. It's tasty.

You cook a good salmon. My real question for you, though, was the pet peeve theme. He hates it when people abbreviate a word. In conversation. Yes. So if you're going to say, Session. I'm about to go have a workout sesh.

That really ticks him off. Yes. It's so. I don't get it. Why? It's like sort of preppy? Preppy? I don't know.

It's a little annoying. What's annoying about being preppy? Okay. What are those shirts? the alligator on them. The cost? Yeah, those with pop collars. Pop collars.

That's going to be my next race day outfit. 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. All right, looking ahead Thursday, like we said, we're going to the nationwide children's hospital. And then we'll head on over to the race track.

Friday, two practices and qualifying. Qualifies at 6.15 Eastern on NBC Sports Network. Don't forget the NBC Sports Network. NBC is now telecasting the remainder of the season. Xfinity Race is at 8 o'clock on NBC Sports Network as well. Can William Byron make it three wins in a row? I think he can. And then Saturday we have the race at 730 Eastern on NBC Sports Network.

That means a rare Sunday off. That's right. Yeah. Sunday Sunday. We have some friends coming into town? I think so. I think we have some Texans coming in. Cool.

All right. So maybe we'll cook some food and have some fun. Let's get some catering. Okay. What did we do the last time? Tacos? I got tacos. Taco bar.

That's awesome. Let's do that again. Tacos? Catering tacos. How expensive is that? Not expensive. All right. Well, that's the show, folks.

I hope you guys enjoyed it. Thank you, Tyler, for your editing skills. And we'll see you guys next week. The Dale Jr. download and all Dirtymoe radio podcasts are made possible by Exaltza. You can subscribe to all eight programs on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, and all major podcasting outlets. As always, you can listen to Dirtymo Radio podcast on Dale Jr.com. Follow us on Twitter at Dale Jr. At Overstreet Tyler and at Dirty Mo Radio.

Also check out the Dirty Mo Radio Facebook page. Thanks for listening to Dirty Mo Radio.