The Dale Jr. Download - 186 - Junior Talkin' Pocono, Preece, and More

Episode Date: August 1, 2017

Dale Earnhardt Jr. recaps his up-and-down weekend at Pocono, Ryan Preece's successful gamble, and fan questions regarding the Gibbs pit crew suspensions, 2018 Xfinity driver eligibility and more. 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 Dirty Mo Radio's The Dale Jr. download. And with me, as usual, is our host, Tyler Overstreet. Hopeless Records for providing today's theme song. No one's going to need you more by The Dangerous Summer.

In the Dangerous Summer, we went, you say that about all their stuff. So now you're big fan. I like them. Yeah, I know. I can tell. That's good. Hopefully a lot of other people are hearing it and liking it too. We went to see them the other day.

We was down, we was head down to Key West to film some of the DIY show renovation. and we stopped in to a little suburb in Florida where they were recording their new album or whatever you call it and listen to some of the new stuff. They are all finished up and I think fans of theirs are going to like what they hear. They haven't had anything. We haven't put it out of record, I think, in four years.

So this is a pretty big deal for them to get back together. They're now a trio. A trio? What are they? I was for. Oh. But when I was asking them that question, it's like when you go on tour, will you bring in guys and they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, we'll bring in.

He said there's, they were telling me that there are these guys that when they bring, when they go on tour and they need another guitarist, they can learn all the songs in 24 hours. How many. Yeah, it's hard to, not knowing how to play a guitar, it's hard to believe that would be possible. Yeah, that's incredible. Anyways. All right. So let's talk about the Pocono race.

I really can't remember the last time we put together a full race without issue. Yeah. It's been a while. We've had some of the weirdest, oddest things happened to us this season, but it seems like a long time ago since we've had a finish that was reasonable. Ended up 12th. The race started off. Actually, let's just talk about the whole weekend.

We're struggling all weekend. The car was really slow. we had a problem with the car being super loose on entry. As soon as you turn the steering wheel, the car was sideways into the corner. Once we was down in the center of the corner and through exit, it was pretty decent, but really, really worried about the car, changing everything. As far as the morale of the team or the attitude of the team,

it wasn't panic or anything like that, but we were not, I guess we were not feeling too positive. about it would be a good way to describe it. But you tweeted that right after qualifying. Yeah, I was just kind of trying to prepare everybody for the worst. But I know you're supposed to have like this, everything's going to be great attitude, but sometimes you've got to be realistic. The qualifying on Sunday morning gives you an idea of kind of where your car is,

even though the qualifying setup's a little bit different. and when we went to run qualifying, I was a little disappointed that some of the major issues in the car were still there and probably still something we'd have to deal with in the race. The race started, and they had a big crash in turn three. We got in the back of Eric Amarola and dented up the front end of our car. Luckily, it wasn't too bad. How much of that is luck and how much of it is just listening to T.J.? I don't know what T.

DJ said. Okay, yeah, because... I mean, it happens. You just go where you got to go. Because, yeah, there were like four cars spinning, and I was like, damn it. Especially the way that our race ended at Indy bumping into somebody and smashing the radiator, I was like,

don't let this happen on the first lap. Yeah. Well, I understand the frustration. I mean, I talked to Eric afterwards, apologizing for getting into the back of him in that accident. And he said that's probably the first time he's ever been in a race where he completed no laps. so I told him that I've done that a few times.

But it was, yeah, that was kind of a lucky moment for us to be able to get through that accident. Cars are kind of going left and right and spinning through the dirt and so forth. We've got a speeding penalty on the first, I believe, the first time down pit road. Usually, so this year we've had more speed and penalty. Let's try to explain that. You have these dots, these. lights on the dash and it starts out they start out as green lights so you'll have you can you know you can light up one two three four green lights just like the RPM

bar and then there's two yellows that'll come on one at a time and two yellows is what I should be running for pit speed I don't have a speedometer in the car I don't have really a tackometer even it's just this light bar so two yellows you should be running should get me down pit road and there if I go above those two yellows there'll be red lights anytime I see those I'm going too fast and we can set this light bar we can space these lights apart by 100 r pms 50 r pms 25 r p.m. so if you set them really close together, it lights up really fast. That's what I was...

There's a lot of movement. That's what I was wondering, because you said it's jumping around, so I didn't know, like, how fine is that line of two lights and a red light? So this year, what we've done to be more competitive on pit road is to really close those gaps between those lights and really get aggressive. When I get it right, we run within two-tenths of a mile an hour. under the speed limit, but it does present you an opportunity to get busted a lot more often. And again, this RPM bar is only going off the RPMs of the motor.

It has nothing to do with rolling speed or is not measuring any speed at the wheel. So the RPMs could be bouncing around. The car can chug and do all kinds of funky stuff going down pit road. and give you all kinds of crazy, give you all kinds of a crazy light show on the dash. It's very frustrating, obviously to get that penalty, but then to hear that it's jumping around and doing that

because I can only imagine you're trying to find, just finding the pit sign seems difficult enough. Yeah. So think about it like this too. Coming down pit road, you have the air pressure and the tires up because you've been running laps and the tires are built up air pressure. It's very easy, it's much easier to control this pit road speed with high air pressure.

So you come in, you change tires and you put on tires that are really, really low on air pressure, and it's really hard to control the speed leaving the pits with that low air pressure. That's when the car wants to buck and chug and lug and bounce because of the air pressure or tire sort of sends that through the car. makes it really difficult. Tracks where holding pit road speed steady are really difficult

are only the tracks where you run very very low air pressure like Martinsville. We run down around 9, 10, 11 pounds in the left side tire just coming off of pit road. At, you know, you're still, you're under 20 pounds,

around 18 pounds, 17 pounds of air pressure and left side tires at Pocono even, a big old track like that. That's not a lot of air. They're going to build quite a bit and get a little more stable as the air pressure comes up. But it's really a challenge. Luckily, it happened early in the race,

didn't get too bent out of shape about it because I knew we'd have opportunity to get our lap back and, you know, get some work done. This did put us pretty far back. We got back into the top 15. Literally, you know, I don't think we passed a ton of cars on the racetrack. I think that the reason we finished so well is because of the pit track. strategy.

Greg and the guys on the pit box, you know, we're doing things that were giving us opportunity to get track position. I was trying to do my best to maintain that track position. We don't have the type of speed that the cars in the top five have. Obviously, the 18 and the 78 were incredible. They were in a class of their own. Yeah, at the end of that first stage, third place was 14 seconds behind. Yeah, I mean, that's insane.

You know, that's insane. for cars to be that much better. Considering the rules and the world we live in today where the cars are so hard to work on as far as within the rulebook, you're just so limited as to where you can go to find speed in these cars for a team or any team or two teams even

to set themselves apart like that is incredible. And it's pretty awe-inspiring, but at the same time, frustrating because you're out there trying to compete against them. Right. I mean, it's two weeks in a row. Those two cars have been hands down in the class of the field.

Obviously, they wrecked each other at Indy, but Sunday they didn't really have any issues, and it was going to be next to impossible to beat them. It was. You know, typically you can, at Pocono, you can, you know, you can't hold up a guy that's faster than you at Pocono, but it's a guy that's only about two or three deaths faster than you. You know, with the dirty air and everything else,

it's pretty line-sensitive at Pocono. there's only one way through the tunnel. There's only one way around turn three. So if a guy does run you down, he's going to get in your dirty air, and you can slow him down and kind of keep him four or five carlinks back. That seems really frustrating, especially with how long that front straightaway is. Yeah. To know you're faster, but not be able to get a big enough run.

Yeah. But the 18 and 78 were half second, three quarter of a second, even a second faster than most of the field. Yeah. And they're going to be able to pass. you no matter what. So you're right. It's going to be hard to beat those guys.

Luckily, every track's not like Pocono, particularly this weekend at Watkins Glen. I think it's an open opportunity for any team to get in there and get a win. These guys, I don't think, will be setting themselves apart like they did at Pocono. I think it'll be a little more of a level playing field. But when we go back to Michigan, you know, the 78, 18, those guys are going to be strong. again. Yeah.

So. Speaking of a road course, did you see this quote from the new Pocono CEO, Nick Adolsky? He said that they could do one oval race and one road course race at Pocono. Yeah. Well, they have a lot of, they have quite, I don't, they don't have like one road course configuration inside that racetrack. They have like eight. Yeah, so they could really do two road course races if they want.

I don't know why they would want to. No, I like, I like Pocono the way it is. Yeah. I think Poconos is doing okay. You know, I don't think that that would be looking at the grandstands and then looking at the camping. Yeah. There was a lot of people on the inside of that racetrack this weekend. I was really surprised as we was riding around for driver's intros and how many campers that had filled up the turn one side of the track.

Typically, that part of the track really doesn't get full. Yeah. You see a lot of campers mostly in the tunnel turn and up toward turn three. They really fill that out pretty well. But I thought they had more than usual the amount of campers and people inside the track on race day. I don't know what that would do if you had a Roval race at Pocoon. I don't know how much, you know, how much of a financial hit that is not having a lot of those folks inside that race track. Yeah, it may just compact them a little more.

In certain areas. Yeah. It'd be interesting to see how they would do it, but I don't think I'd be interesting to see how they would do it, but I don't think I'd want to watch that race as opposed to the Oval. But again, you know, we've got to give Greg and all the guys credit. They did a great job using great strategy. I don't know how else we were going to find our way toward the front. So that was a great job on pit road.

We came out on that last run. They had a long green flag run. We came out behind Matt Kenseth, who I thought we had a comparable car to. We actually kind of catching him as we were. you know, sort of coming down to the last 20, 25, 30 laps, and then the right front tire corded with about 20 to go. We had been super loose on entry, and the right front tire cording tells me that we had too much camber,

either too much static camber or too much camber gain as the car traveled and goes in the corner, the geometry and the suspension gains too much camber. So that's... slowed the car down tremendously. It started obviously without with, you know, where the rubber is missing, where

this cord is showing through, you're not going to have the grip because there's no rubber on the tire to grip, get a hold of the racetrack. So we got really, really tight. It also started to start shaking because the tires are out of balance with half of the tire corded.

So we lost a lot of speed. We weren't able to try to challenge Matt. We actually lost a couple spots to our teammates that I don't think we should have lost. Right, because you were probably going to finish 9th from 10th. I don't think we'd lost in a couple, two spots. That had been nice to call that a top 10 finish, considering how the weekend went, but we'll take 12th.

Is that almost a blessing in disguise that that thing courted and maybe gave you guys like the idea of maybe we had too much camber game? We were lucky as hell. The right front tire didn't blow out. We didn't hit the damn wall. Well, no, obviously we're lucky that it didn't blow out, but that happened. What a blessing that corded tire? What?

But it happening, it makes it like, oh, well, that might have been what we were dealing with. Tyler, they can look at the tire wear and see it's wearing excessively on the inside. I don't need it to cord for me to get the message. Well, I got the message through the cord. Well, that was incredibly lucky that the right front tire didn't blow. If it corded with 20 to go, it ran 20 laps on the cords. I haven't had a tire, you know, I haven't had a corded tire. I make it that far.

So kudos to good year for saving. my tail on that one. Let's talk about the two-day schedule, so this is the first time, right? Isn't this the first? Well, technically indie was. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. But this is the first time we did the qualifying on Sunday.

So two-day show, this is, I don't know that this is a big deal, but are really worth getting too far into, but I think that the fans were worried about what, what has happens on Friday if there's no cars on the track. So we went into Pocono and we did the fan fest, right? So they had a lot of drivers come out. They had this stage and they would have, you know, a driver like myself up there for 45 minutes to an hour. They were rotating guys in and out throughout the afternoon and evening. They had a lot of different things going on. I was in this cooking contest. They had other guys doing this lip sync battle. I don't know what else they had other people doing, but I assume it sounded pretty random and far reaching. Larson and Stenhouse did a name that

tune. Yeah. So, okay. I don't, you know, let us know. Did you enjoy that type of

experience with the drivers? Would you rather be autographed sessions? Would you rather be Q&A sessions and autographs? What would you want? You know,

I signed some autographs on my way out, but I would prefer a much more organized autograph session. Yeah, I agree with them. You know, where you sit down,

people can come up, you know, get what they need. I think if you did 15-minute Q&A and then about an hour of autographs. That's probably 200 people. Yeah.

But the way it was, I mean, the idea was good. I mean, it's you guys doing something fun, I guess. I had fun up on stage doing the cooking, but I don't know that I would want to watch that. It was kind of, it was really just kind of chaotic and messy and not a lot of, not much commentary. Thanks to Landon Castle, he grabs a mic and starts doing some questions with some of the drivers around there.

But without Landon doing that, there's no commentary from the drivers. Right, it's like they're just watching you. Yeah, they're just watching us cook food with these fans. And I didn't have a microphone, so I never really said much. As far as there was no back and forth between the audience and the people on stage. It's a work in progress. It is working. The next ones, we can do the Q&A and autographs.

I know that some drivers did do some Q&A. Yeah. Did they have an autograph session with certain drivers, no? Anyways, I think that there is content, there is stuff for the fans to do. So there's a purpose to be there on Friday. Some fans I was reading on social media talking about, what do I need to be there for on Friday? Well, I said to hang out and party. I mean, that's a good reason to be there.

People want the three-day experience the whole weekend. You don't have to have on-track activity to enjoy camping with your family and settling into the racetrack and getting ready for the race. I think the two-day weekends give the teams a lot of opportunity to adjust their schedule and give some of the crew guys, really the whole industry, a little bit more time at home. Here's the situation that I heard talking to Greg. So this basically gives them maybe 24 hours of more time at home. Which is a lot.

Yeah. But their instincts are that when they have time, they fill it up by working. So Greg said, you know, they did have a little more time with this two-day weekend, but they ended up using it to work. So the guys really didn't get this opportunity to take advantage of this free time. Greg said that the teams will get better and adjust going forward with more two-day weekends to be able to give the industry a little extra time at home with their family, maybe half a day or sometime on Thursday.

I think that it'll get even better as we move forward. The tracks will get a little more creative on how to access the driver's time and give the fans a great experience on Friday when there's no going on track activity. A lot of these tracks, though, are going to have companion events too with trucks and Exfinity cars and all that good stuff. Right, like Exfinity or trucks practiced Friday, and then there was, an Archer Race Friday so there was on-track activity. That was

a little frustrating. We were doing our stage stuff for the fan fest during the Archer Race. See, to me, there shouldn't be anything going on when a race is going on. Yeah, well, it had been had it? Yeah, because you know how we sat? We

ran into a traffic jam coming in. That's because the haulers had going through the tunnel. They usually crossed the track, but all that got messed up because it had rained. So the Archer race started later than unusual. Yeah, yeah. It was supposed to start at like four and be done by 530, which is when the fan fest was going to start. All right. Well, that makes sense. Because I saw the cars going and I'm like, why are we doing this if there's a race going on? People should be watching the race. We shouldn't be doing anything taking attention away from the race. I agree with that because it frustrates me on like a Saturday when the Xfinity guys are racing and then people would just be like hanging out for autographs. I'm like, come on. These guys are racing.

I know. There's a race. Yeah. I think everybody liked it. I think the fans will get used to it and grow accustomed to it. I think the industry will be a little bit better at utilizing that extra time that this is trying to create. So Joe Falk, he's the owner of Jeffrey Earnhardt's car. He had some concerns about the schedule, and we'll quote him, for a small team like mine, we're in trouble if something happens in qualifying.

Well, that's the same for everybody. If we wreck or blow up, we'll have trouble fixing our car or changing an engine. that's the same for everybody. The backup doesn't have an engine per NASCAR rule, so small teams might have trouble being ready when the race start. This is no different for a 10. I don't understand, though. Why can the backup car not have an engine?

I'm not quite sure about that either. That's questionable because I know the Hendrick guys were like they had one ready to go in the event. Especially if you're going to tighten that window up, they should, like don't say, oh, you've got to throw this engine in the car too. That could probably be tweaked. Absolutely, but I don't see anything in these comments that, I mean, we had the same concerns. We talked about this in our own hauler about, you know, if X happens in qualifying,

Chad and house brought it up actually in our team meeting that if you really want to make us difficult, well, us Jimmy, you know, crash the car and qualifying. So I don't think this is any different from anybody else, and it's just something that... Just playing for? You just have to, you know, well, you do the best you can. So I'm all for it. More two-day weekends. Even though I'm on my way out,

I think that the industry will appreciate it. Let's talk about Ryan Priest. This guy came into the Xfinity Series race at Iowa. A track that, I think, is coming into its own. Man, do you see those guys running the high side right away? Speaking of Iowa, did you see where they started a Twitter handle? They're trying to bring you to Iowa next year. I didn't see that.

Very excited. Small grassroots movement. Yeah, it's only got about 30 followers. So how do you find stuff like that? I have a tweet deck, and it follows every time somebody mentions you on Twitter. You're stalking. Monitoring social conversation. Okay.

But Ryan Priest. Yep. So Ryan, great kid, hard worker, modified guy, very successful. He ran full time last year. He has to remind everybody about this. He ran that 01 car. Yeah, he ran in the O1 car. I first time I remember really seeing him do exceptional.

in that car was at Dover. He was running around in his top 15 for most of the day. That's very good for that car, and I think that team would agree that that's a great day for them. But he decided, after that full season with this team, that he would rather go back into the mods and win than to run mid-pack. And he had a little bit of money, and that if he could get an opportunity to run with a good team, team he would like to do that. So he contacted Gibbs. He told them about this, you know, this package that he had for a couple races. He put all, instead of taking that little bit of money and spreading it over the entire season with a mid-packed team, he went all in, basically pushed all his chips

in for two races. And man, what a payoff. He was competitive at New Hampshire. Right. Second, yeah. And that would have been a, I don't, you know, I think it's even better that he wanted Iowa because at New Hampshire, the mods run there. And if he wins, you know, people would say, yeah, well, you know, he knows the tracker. So, wouldn't be quite as a shock, I guess. He goes to Iowa, a track that's really slick,

hard to get a hold of, place that I don't think he has a ton of time at, aside from the races he ran there in Xfinity Series, and he goes out and wins. I mean, obviously, he's in a great car, but he's got to make great decisions. You've got to get on off the road. You've got to have great restarts.

I mean, he did a great job. I think that, um, similar to, you know, this is not a guarantee that he ends up in a full-time ride next year with a great team. But you like to see people bet on themselves and win. And I would say it significantly increases his chances. Well, I think it puts him toward the top of the list. Yeah. But that list is there regardless of whether people find money for these guys or not.

I mean, we got Josh Barry here that we'd love to run full-time. I mean, I would put Josh Barry in a car tomorrow if I could find the money to do it. But I do think that that moves Ryan up the list. toward the top of the list of eligible drivers that if a team, you know, does find the funding that they would be calling him up. So good job, Ryan. I know he was on door bumper clear this week. Yep.

A plug for T.J.'s show. Yeah. So have you heard, have you listened to that? No. But I know he was here. Yeah, I do too. So, like, he came in the studio and everything. I'm sure people were like, oh, gosh, Ryan Priest is walking in the J.R.M.

But it was just for the podcast. Yeah. Well, one thing that does frustrate me, like, about when Ryan Priest wins and you'll tweet about it or like when you posts about Bubba Wallace coming to the race is when people, they jump on there, hey, throw them in your car. Yeah. But just like you said with Josh Barry, you got to have sponsors.

Yeah. If I, I'll tell you right now. You're right. Every time I, if I compliment a driver, I'm just complimenting a driver. I've got Josh Barry, he's at the top of my list. The next time I get money or a sponsor comes in here or calls his phone over here and says, we are interested in being a part of your team,

I'm going to put Josh in there. Josh is not going to get beat out by Ryan Priest or Bubba Wallace or any of these other guys. Josh is a guy we've been working with in our late model program for this opportunity. Every team has a Josh Berry. Maybe Ryan Priest is now Joe Gibbs Josh Berry. Right. You know what I'm saying? Maybe Joe Gibbs sees what Ryan did and says, you know what, next opportunity, it's yours.

Next, next sponsorship we put together. for an Xfinity team, Ryan Priest gets the deal. Yeah. So good for Ryan. I hope we see more of him. I like his attitude. He's super, super confident. But I like his attitude.

We text back and forth a little bit, and kids definitely got what it takes. And he markets himself. So I think he'd be pretty good addition to any of the NASCAR top three series. truck, Xfinity or Cup. So on Xfinity, some news that just came out literally while we're recording this show.

Next year, the Cup drivers will only be able to run a maximum of seven Xfinity races, which this year was 10, and they will not be able to run the Dastro Cash races, the final regular season race,

or the playoff races. What's different? It's reduced, and they can't run any of the playoffs. Like this year, Blaney and Larson and Dylan, they can run the playoffs. And they,

except for Homestead. Right. Interesting. Well, you know, I don't think, I think this is an on-issue. They reduced it from 10 to 7, Big Whop. You know, they can't run dash for cash. They can't run any of the playoff races. I couldn't have told you that that's any different than the year before.

everybody's worried that, you know, you know, this is going to hurt teams, hurt these Xfinity teams that are using these cup drivers for deals. You know, if you got a cup driver that can only run seven races, but you want to run a cup driver for 14, go get another cup driver. I mean, there's plenty of cup drivers on the cup driver tree. Right. You know, go over to the, you know, you got guys that, like Martin Trucks Jr.,

that would love to probably run some Xfinity races if he, you know, know if he got caught upon. I know Matt Kenseth would run more if he wanted to, if, if they wanted him to run more. Clint Boyer. I mean, the field's full of drivers that we could put in the car. Yeah, so it's not really, it may not quite serve the purpose that they're wanting. There's only, there's only. It's just going to mix up the cup.

There's a small, there's a small percentage of cup drivers that are really running more than seven races. Right. It's the point. It's not a big deal. Obviously, I can say that because we have. four full-time cars that don't use cup drivers. We only ran Casey, Kane, twice, and me twice. So we're in a position where it really doesn't affect us at all.

I know there are teams that it will affect, but, you know, I don't think it's that big of a deal that they just barely changed it. I was expecting and hoping that it would be a little bit less, maybe five races for the cut guys. And Mike's just stepped in. Mike. Hello. Hello. Hello.

Hey, what's up? So last night we played into the, we played our wildcard game in the playoffs of the DMBL. Me, Mike and Tyler are on the same team, the Cleveland convicts. You're the captain. I am the captain. And I thought we did a good job. We ended up winning our game. Blew them out.

Yep. Wasn't even close. We beat the Harrisburg hog legs. Yeah. T.J. Majors is on that team. So it's always good to beat them. Yep. Oh, yeah.

T.J. got a little mouthy as he does last night. Got an early foul called him, started complaining. I wouldn't expect anything else. Took him right out of his game. I was within the first two minutes. Oh, yeah. So as soon as T.J. reveals his true self, we just pounce. It's like we go into a complete mental.

That is something key about our team is we look for the psychological advantage. You know what the difference makes? We talk some smack. You know what? The tides turned when my team captain, Dale, benched me for making a... I've never even seen this. That was true.

You totally yanked Tyler for poor play. I've never seen this in our league. We never take it that seriously. And yet there is Coach Earnhardt saying, Tyler, you're out, Davis in. And we're like, whoa! He stood off of Sean Brawley and let Sean shoot a three. And I said, why did you let him do that?

He just stood there and watched it. He said, well, he hadn't been making that shot, so I was going to lay him have it. I was like, this is a wildcar game. Can't have that. Can't have that out. And once that happened, the tide's turn, and we just destroyed them. You think that was it?

Was that the move? Was that the time it kind of pivoted and went away? That made them think, wow, these guys are serious. And they weren't ready for that. Yeah. I was proud of Tyler. After that, he went back in there and cranked up the defense. And he poured it on them too.

And he made some great shots. It happens. Listen, I get that nobody cares about this, but it matters to us. So you have to just kind of. This is for Team Moran. Barrett. This is a playoff win for us. I don't know if we were underdogs going in, but, you know, we laid it to them,

and we're now going to beat the next team. Yeah. Two more wins, and we are the champions. And you know what? If that happens, we'll devote our podcast on it, to be honest with you. Special edition. Right. We may be the only ones to listen to it.

All right, now we're going to get to our Ask Junior questions. As always, we take questions using the hashtag Ask Junior on Twitter. Mike Davis has joined us to moderate this and tell us the questions that are coming in through our Facebook live feed. Let's start with Clemens NC. He asked, can a car owner have a net loss on a race day or do they profit no matter what? Like if a car gets destroyed. I think this is a fantastic question. There's no guaranteed profit.

So like even, you know, that's why you only have 36 cars, I think, attempting to qualify at Watkins Glen. in a race where 40 can make an attempt and start. So that lets you know that you're going to lose money if you show up, qualify, and finish 40th. So like JRM at Daytona this year, I think we wrecked like four out of five cars. Yeah, basically every time you wreck a car, especially at Daytona, which is going to destroy it, that's about a $150,000 hit to an Xfinity team. and if you're running four cars and you tear all them up, you can spend $600,000 of your budget right away.

And you're not making $600,000 for that. Heck, I mean, you're racing for, you know, dozens, you know, a couple thousand dollars. It's very, I mean, obviously you're trying to get sponsorship to pay for what it costs to be there. And then you're, you know, what you win in the race, part of that goes to the driver. That's really the key component for driver's salary is race winnings.

So it's very difficult. J.R.M. Sort of fluctuates between making or losing a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, depending on how much we tear up. Really, it comes down to how many cars we crash. If we have a bad season and tear up a lot of cars, then that hits the bottom line. If we finish in the top three in points and have a relatively clean year,

we can make a couple hundred thousand dollars. But we budget to break even. That's what we do. This thing here is here to give you, Tyler and Mike, and all these people behind this wall here working in this shop a place to work. Thank you. And to be able to provide for their families. but it doesn't make a profit.

And when it does make a considerable profit, if we do have a really, really extremely good year, we actually put all that money in an account that's basically a safety net for us if we have a down year. Say if something like the recession hit, we have some money in a safe place

for us to fall back on. So any profit really kind of just goes into that. So that's, yeah, it's, that's it. That's it, yeah. You can make profits in other ways, but they're asking specifically about the race team, and you're right. We just try to not lose money. Kid 67Y asked if you were Joe Gibbs, if you were in Joe Gibbs position, this is a good one. Would you have suspended crew members like Joe Gibbs Racing did after the pit road incident with Kyle Bush's crew chief, Adam Stevens, and guys on the 78 crew?

Each of you get a shot at this one. So Tyler, think about it as well. I definitely wouldn't have done that. I wouldn't have made it, I wouldn't have done the suspension because it becomes public knowledge. And then it gets discussed by everybody in the industry. And everybody gets to throw in an opinion. Like us. Right.

So I would have done something behind closed doors. I'd have brought everybody into a conference room, sat down, went over how I'm disappointed in this, this and this. how we're going to change and rectify the situation, who, where everybody's lane is, you know, this is out of line, this is unacceptable,

so going forward that this doesn't happen again. But making it public is something that, I don't, I think that's just personal preference. I wouldn't have done that because it, it allows everybody to discuss it. And it, it became a popular discussion,

you know, Wouldn't you agree? Yes. I agree with what they did. You agree with, so let's just say what they did. With the suspension. Joe Gibbs Racing is in partnership with that 78 team. Yeah, true.

And I guess they have some sort of jurisdiction over them. And so they had the confrontation in the pits. Joe Gibbs announced that they were suspending the 78 pit crew, two members of it, for the confrontation that happened when Adam Stevens went into their pit box. Yeah. So they work for Joe Gibbs Racing, and they're essentially disrespect. a pretty high-ranking guy at Joe Gibbs Racing, so they're superior. Yeah. Like if I go and I cuss out Mike Davis or I go cuss out Ryan Pemberton,

then there's going to be some repercussion for it, or if I cuss out anybody... You're saying that if you go, they didn't go after him. He came to their pit box. Well, the guy, he was walking by and the guy was clapping, kind of taunting him. so he was essentially drawn in to the guy being a smart ass so you're 100% sure on exactly how it went down I'm going by the video that was posted my assumption is that there was something else that happened outside of the video you don't think that maybe adam said something I don't know that's just what the video I mean if he whoever if Adam started it then I agree with you but if I'm going by the video where he's walking and the guy is clapping and he's like

if are you happy now and then they get into it, then that guy taunted him into the situation, in my opinion. Yeah. That's interesting. I still wouldn't have made it that big of a public. I still wouldn't have made it such a public thing. Yeah, I don't know that I would have announced it. Yeah, I definitely don't.

I think that there's fault in both sides that it got to where it did. And it obviously, I don't know that they knew they were being filmed, but for it to be captured and everybody to see. that sucks. But I wouldn't have made it such a debatable topic. Let me ask you this. Would you expect your pit crew to do anything different than the 78 pit crew did? What would you want out of your team?

If the same scenario had happened, another crew chief comes into y'all's pit box, I know that you're on the track. You wouldn't find out about it until later. But what would you expect out of your team? Well, I don't, I like the passion. I mean, you want your guys to have your back. this is a different NASCAR than what we had 20 or 30 years ago. What I mean is that there's a road crew that goes with the car on Thursday or Friday

that gets the car through inspection. They're the mechanics. They get the car through practice and everything else. And they sort of hand the car off to the pit crew, who is a different set of guys that will change the tires and work on the car during the race. this pit crew typically shows up on Sunday. Other than that, they're pitting Xfinity cars for J.R.M. They're doing pit practice at the shop every day,

but they're a different set of guys than the regular road crew. So when those guys show that kind of passion for that car, I like that. That means that they care, that this is, they feel like that this is their team. They need to stand up for this team. I like that a lot. Years ago in the 80s and 90s, the guys that went with the team on Thursday and Friday and got the car through practice and inspection and everything else, they also pitted the car.

But this day and age, we've got all these athletes coming into the sport that are becoming jackman, tire changes, tire carriers. And they don't have a history of being around the sport. They haven't grown up with or around a team working in a shop. they just came out of college or leaving a professional sport, trying to find a new career path for themselves, and learn how to be tire changers and tire carriers and pit guys. So for them to buy into the process or feel like a part of the team

and to care enough to be that passionate is great. I think that I like seeing that. You want your guys to – anybody comes in a pit box, you want them to be ready to get them out of there or put them in their place. So I kind of like that. Taunting is no good. It's never a good look for anybody. If that's how that began.

And if it did, then Adam Stevens had every right to tell them what the hell is going on. Why are you taunting? Because you work for Joe Gibbs. But definitely a difficult situation. But I would have handled it internally if I was in that situation. You just don't, you know, you just don't want to, I don't think it's, you know, you just don't want that kind of stuff looking out there and everybody having to get, you know, chime in like we're doing today. Yeah. And I think we've generated enough headlines for this, for this topic today.

So we'll move on. Let's see here. All right. This is a good one. Oh, there's a lot of good ones here. M. Garfield 44S. Do the manufacturers develop their own software for the simulators or do they use irasing? I think this is a good question because there's a lot of, it seems like, simulator talk,

Sim. You spend a lot of time in the Sim. Tell us a little bit about that and answer this question here. Yeah, the simulator basically uses old gaming software. It is not iRacing's software. I don't think there is a simulator out there that uses iRacings software. I've got a lot of good connections within the corporate office at iRacing, and they have interest in being in the simulation features.

for professional motorsports and particularly with NASCAR, they wouldn't mind being part of a simulation project. And I think that that software is probably the best software out there to use. In my opinion, it's much more advanced than the current gaming software that all the simulators are using. I believe that all the simulators use a similar software from a different manual. a different gaming company. I won't get into specifics about it, but it's, you know, it's dated and it's up to the manufacturers like Chevy and Ford to push it forward visually, physically with the you know, with the actual physics of the of the software.

It's old stuff. It's old dated software that I remember using and playing and long time ago, and it's up to the manufacturers to really develop it into whatever, you know, whatever it will be or become. I-Racing is already there. They're already, I-Racing is as good as it gets, in my opinion, and it's current. You know, it's current software, and I think it would help both sides, actually, for I-Racing and one of the manufacturers to work together. It helped ira-racing continue to develop their product.

and it would make it a lot easier. I think on the manufacturers as far as how much they're pouring into this financially to develop the software themselves. So with that said, that's not confusing enough. Maritime Special asks, how do you choose the design for the pit sign? And have you ever had trouble locating your pit during a race? Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Most famously, the Daytona 500 came down pit road running third and drove right by the pit box. This was before we actually made all these, you know, crazy, colorful signs. A lot of the teams, even during the day races, use signs that light up. Signs that we would only use at night races were now seeing at all the day events where, you know, the signs are actually lit up electronically. And once I missed my pit box the first time, I went down to talk to Tony Jr.

is my crew chief at the time. I said, you know, pit road is becoming more and more colorful. When you pull onto pit lane, there's just so much more confusion to look at. We need to get a little more aggressive on making our pit sign that we actually hang off the pit box, not the pit sign that the guys are holding that I drive up to. There's a pit sign that hangs off the pit box high in the air. We need to be a little more aggressive on making that stand out, make that unique to ourselves and not similar to anything else on pit road.

So we did some like hazard lines, the yellow and black hazard lines. We did that as a background and then the number. And that was, I think, for a year or two, the most, you know, the most obnoxious pit sign on pit road. Now I think it's lost in the muck. I think there's so much more. If you go down pit road and look at the pit signs today, we're not the most obnoxious. We're kind of middle of road now. So they have went in that direction.

I think everybody is, you know, pit road has became much more confusing and there's a lot more color and a lot more things going on. So the pit signs have kind of ramped up over the years. And it's still, you know, it's still something that you have to really focus on and pay attention to coming on the pit road. But luckily, you get used to the same sign, and that's what you look for. If I go around, when I would go run races for the Xfinity team Junior Motors Sports, and if I was driving a car that was number five or something else, I'd still use the 88 pit sign because my, you know, my memory and, you know, when I'm coming on the pit road, that's what I'm looking for. So you get used to that, and if it works for you, you stick with it.

All right. Let's get to this question here. Where did it go? Oh, the weird Twitter name question. It's cool that you are giving rise to Redskins players during training camp. Who is your favorite retired Redskins player, and who is your favorite current player? It's hard to pick just one favorite I always liked

Art Monk who was a receiver in the 80s I was a big Darrell Green fan who was a defensive back and John Riggins was popular among fans for his for his personality you know he's kind of a

he kind of marched to the beat his own drum did his own thing current players Ryan Carrigan is a guy that I like Will Compton Morgan Moses

I mean there's so many guys on the team that are key players and important to the success of the team those three guys are coming to our event next week at Richmond Raceway Kirk Cousins, quarterback he's going to come out

Josh Norman I mean there's just a lot of great Guys, I think, talented players. Chris Cooley's a guy that I'm friends with. He used to be a tight end for the team. He does a lot of their radio stuff now. Even though you've gotten to know these guys, do you sort of geek out a little bit when Redskins come around?

Yeah, try it. Yeah, absolutely. I just got a signed jersey from Jeff Bostick, who was a center for the team years ago. And collecting that kind of stuff is a big deal for me. Being able to meet these guys, we're actually going to go to an event later this year where there'll be a lot of old veteran players.

The end of August, yeah. That'll be for me like someone going to the MTV Music Awards or the Golden Globes or, you know, the Golden Globes. You know, like Amy, if Amy were to go to like the Golden Globes or something like that or the Oscars, this would be me going to anything Redskins is similar to that. Yeah. Cool. All right.

Blake Freeman 10 asks, will we ever see Carson Ellage Drive? one of your late models and or race for junior motorsports. I don't know what she wants to do. You know, she's actually drove our late model in the limited race a time or two. And, you know, she wants to mess around with that and have a little fun. I'm sure we can find some opportunities for that. But she seems to love running that little dirt card that she has with their dad. Her dad owns that company that builds those carts.

And I think it's QRC. Yep. So this is the stuff that Larson and those guys play around with from time to over at Millbridge. And she loves that. She races every other Wednesday, I believe. I think LaTart's son races out there. A bunch of kids.

Patrick Star 42 asks if it rains this weekend at Watkins-Glen. How would you feel about running rain tires on the road course? I hope it does. I've never had the chance to run in the rain, so I'd love it if it poured. Obviously, heavy downpour, a lot of rain on the track is probably not going to be good, and we probably wouldn't be able to race at all. Even with the rain tires, there's a limit. to how much rain you can actually put up with.

But if it did get wet, I wouldn't mind the opportunity to go out there and play around and see what a couple of car drives like in the rain. I've never ever had a chance to do that. We saw the guys racing the rain in the Xfinity Series up in Toronto. Yeah, and then last year, mid-Ohio. Yeah, so I'm a little curious. That'd be interesting.

Yeah. I ran in the rain in the Corvette, in the prototype 2 in the 24 hours of Daytona. and I was pretty happy with how I did personally, so I would be interested to try it. I'd be interested to watch. Cup cars haven't ran ever in the rain. I don't think. I think there was one weekend where it rained during practice and they opened the track up, but not many people took advantage of an opportunity to go out there because there was no

no, you know, it was supposed to be raining on Sunday, so there's no point in practicing in it. I think a couple cars did go out and play around a little bit. That'd be just tomorrow, have fun, right? Yeah. Yeah. Michelle G1 asked if you could be anyone else for a day. Who would it be and why? We'll do both of you guys on this. Tyler. Tyler, you're going to have to go first. I have no idea. Tyler, I know you've thought about this. You probably think about it daily.

I'd probably be Cam Newton. Because he's the man. Good Lord. Is that really who you'd be? Probably. I would, yeah, I would want to play football or be a football player and just experience one time. Yeah. Because I never played football and then just to play football. ball at that level. Yeah.

I think that would be cool. Cam Newton, huh? Cam Newton. But you still wear Cam Newton socks? No, I haven't won those since, I don't think. Oh, man, that's unfortunate. You got guilted so bad. You took such a beating in this place that you don't wear.

Just one day. Just one day. It's all it took. I would have a hard time picking just one person. It might be interesting to play football, so maybe being a redskins for a day. No particular person, but maybe the owner of the team for a day. I was just thinking the same thing. What's his name?

Snyder. Snyder. I'm like, yeah, forget the guys that get hurt and have to go through the toll, the body toll. Forget being out of breath and sweating. Just one day. Just sit up in the box. Forget the 180, 190 heart rate. Yeah, just one day, and then I'll come back to this the next day.

Yeah. Put me in the owner of box. What kind of day? Like draft day, Super Bowl Day, opening day? That might be cool to be the GM on draft day. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oof.

Yeah. That'd be stressful. Probably. But, I mean, by time draft day, you kind of know what you're going to do. Yeah. It's not, I mean, they're not going to be too many surprises. I think stress is probably leading up to that. Yeah.

In the months prior. Right. And then you would just come in and take over for that one day. Yep. Good job. All right. There we go. Adam King 883.

ask, do you help with the designs of your helmet? These are really cool. I don't. I don't do anything other than tell Nick who paints my helmets. He's painted my helmet since I drove an Xfinity car at 9899. I just tell him to use skulls. Keep some skulls on there. I like skulls on my helmet for some reason.

And he's always kind of incorporate. He used to paint the backdrop to like Guns and Roses concerts and all these big bands, like the big painted, you know, they paint all kinds of crazy stuff on these backdrops and he got, you know, obviously got

into painting helmets and motorcycles and stuff like that. So, uh, he's great at painting a skull. Yeah.

Different kind of skulls. Yeah. And so I tell him just to go crazy. Um, there's been a couple, some of my more favorite, uh,

helmets had like a little hidden things in them. Like he had, you know, like the silver, silver naked lady on the back of the trucker, yeah, flaps and stuff like that.

I mean, there'd be stuff like that. that in there, hiding in there, little tiny ones. That's cool. Yeah. And one of our sponsors found out and told us we couldn't use that anymore. Oh, which sponsor? I can't remember.

It was like six or eight years ago. One of the Hendrick deals. Okay. Yeah, didn't like the... It said we couldn't use what? I had questionable artwork on my helmet, but you couldn't see it unless you were looking for it. Oh, I do remember that.

Yeah. So they said we couldn't use it anymore. All right. But skulls. Yeah. 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, Wednesday, nationwide appearance in Colorado in the morning. You're going there tonight. Yeah, so I'm flying to Colorado tonight. We'll grab dinner. We'll get up in the morning early and we've got some, we're going to go up to a Q&A. for nationwide, talk a little bit about our, what are we going to talk about you think? We'll talk about your partnership,

talk about your race, talk about racing, how you are a customer. Yeah, it should be a lot of fun. Then we have this awesome event. It's only a day away. Yep. Wednesday night, we're going to be on QVC at 7 p.m. Eastern Time. This is for race fans only.

They used to have this show all the time. Dad would go in there all the time. I got to do it quite a bit. Then it went away. We'd go on there and try to, you know, we'd sell some of our souvenirs and talk about upcoming stuff and obviously talk about racing and so forth. But we'll be on the show to unveil the exalt the car that we're going to run at Homestead. Yep.

It's going to be a huge deal. I can't wait, man. I'm really excited about this. And you'll be able to see that Wednesday night at 7 o'clock on QVC. We're also streaming that on your Facebook page too. So you can watch it on Facebook also. Great. Saturday there's two practices at Watkins Glen.

The Xfinity races at 2 p.m. Eastern on NBC Sports Network. Sunday we got qualifying at 12 p.m. Eastern. The races at 3, both on NBC Sports Network. It's going to be a good weekend. Yeah, it should be. Watkins Glen, shifting gears. So we made it through Pocono without tearing up any motors. We'll go to Glenn and see if we can do it again.

All right. Good show. Good show. We'll see you guys later. See you. See ya. The Dale Jr. download and all Dirtymo Radio podcasts are made possible by Exaltta. You can subscribe to all eight programs on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, and all major podcasting outlets.

As always, you can listen to Dirtymoor radio podcast on Dale Jr.com. Follow us on Twitter at Dale Jr., at Overstreet Tyler, and at Dirtymoor radio. Also, check out the Dirtymo Radio Facebook page. Thanks for listening to Dirty Moe Radio.