The Dale Jr. Download - 190 - The Rest of the Uber Story

Episode Date: August 29, 2017

Dale Jr. recaps his off weekend in Charleston, his humorous Twitter exchange with Uber, and answers 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. Thanks to Huckless Records for providing today's theme song of Confidence by the Dangerous Summer. So we're back again for another episode of... of the Dale Jr. Download, presented to you by Exalta. Good job.

Our sponsor. We're unlike NASCAR. We don't take weeks off. We don't. So here we are this particular show. We did have an off weekend. What did you do? I went to Myrtle Beach. Oh, really?

Oh, yeah, for a couple days. We went down to Charleston. It was a lot of fun. We've been going down there a little bit this year. since we're working in Key West on the house for the DIY show we've been taking our vacations elsewhere. But it was great. The food's awesome in Charleston.

The weather wasn't all that great. We had some clear skies, but it was super, super windy. It's a little cool here. Was it cool there? I think the coolest day we had was 80, but when the sun was out, it was actually pretty warm. and man I hadn't been on the beach in so long and I forget how sand gets on and in every single thing

that you take out there so like you just carry all this sand all the way home with you in your clothes and your phone did you sit out there for like three hours four hours like a normal person yeah could you lather up in sunscreen that's my biggest fear is getting sunburn yeah I've been ever since I started riding the bike I've actually started getting a little color in tan. Yeah, so I have been able to back off on the sunscreen a little bit. I'm down to 30.

I was always putting on 50 just because I was the same way. I didn't want to get burnt. So I took it kind of easy with the sunscreen to try to get a little more color. But it was so windy, and the sand just blows across the beach and gets all over everything. And our umbrellas were destroyed by the end of the day. did you take your own umbrellas and like set them up or were you did just do like the rentals we did that for the first day and they were destroyed and then we had rentals but it was so windy you wouldn't even think about putting them up right because they just blow right over so anyways our um i don't know

if what else we could touch on about that particular trip but it was fun there were a lot of instagram posts of you hanging out with uh southern charm chep and yeah there's there's some of some of those folks we made friends with over the last couple visits in Charleston, so we did run into them and spent some time with Shep and Austin and everybody. It's, you know, they're super nice people. And Shep actually lined up a dinner our last night with Danny McBride and his wife, Kenny Powers. Was that a surprise to you? Well, I mean, I didn't know whether they were telling me that it might happen.

or he might be able to show him, you know, have dinner with us, and he did. And it was a lot of fun, super, super nice guy. And real down to earth, laid back, easy to talk to. It's not a lot of people, I think, that I would, that I'd get that excited to meet. Right. You know, but when, you know. That's quite an American combo. Dail Earnhardt Jr. and Danny McBride.

When Eastbound and Down was on TV, I remember everybody I knew. talking about it right and couldn't wait for the next episode the following week and i mean so he was he's a big deal does he live in charleston i lived somewhere down there yeah oh i didn't i didn't realize that so that was um that was pretty much it we i think the bigger part the bigger story that came out of this weekend let's talk about this was uber and your poor rating i know so i just started using uber really since i started vacation in charleston because it's the easiest way to get around And I didn't know what my rating was. And I guess for a while when you start using Uber the first little bit, you don't have a rating, right?

So you've got to establish a few rides before your rating shows up. So we're riding in a car and everybody's talking about their rating. We were down there with Amy and her family and friends from Texas. And so there. So they're talking about their rating, and I was like, hmm, what am I need is? So I look on my app, and it's not there. And I'm like, mine's not showing no rating. And so we took another ride or two, and finally my rating pops up, and it's a 4.0.

And I was, they were like, oh, that's bad. And the guy driving said, yeah, I almost didn't come pick you up because that's pretty low. And I'm like, I wonder why I got such a low rating. I've only, you know, I hop in the car, hey, we're going here. We conversated a little bit with the driver, and then we get out. And I guess I just started using Uber right around the time that they started allowing you to tip the driver. Because for the longest time, that was a, that was a thing about Uber is like you didn't have to tip them or they didn't take tips, wouldn't accept tips. There's all kinds of rumors, I guess, or a conversation about that.

And I guess the first few rides, maybe I didn't tip and they weren't happy with that. So they gave me four points, you know, give me four stars instead of five for not tipping. Right. And plus, if you didn't have many, the only to go off of, then your number's going to be a little skewed. Exactly. So as we rode, I was, like, overly nice to everybody I rode with. I'm nicer than normal. Are you the guy that sits in the front seat?

I've sat in a front seat of a few of those rides, and I tip, made sure to tip. So as we were on this vacation, my rating began to rise. So it was like 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, all the way up to 4.5 by the end of the trip. So we got a little work to do still. What about the guy who caused it to go to 3.88? I think that that guy realized that he made a mistake in the rating me. And then because later on, just hours later without me taking a ride, it popped up to 4.4. Oh, so they can go back in.

Yeah. I'm guessing that's what happened because it went way down to 3.8 and I just about gave up at that point. Do you get an Uber and people go like? I was about to go to become a lift. passenger. I went with an Uber guy in Asheville, and he was Uber and Lyft. Right. I saw a couple of the guys that had Lyft and Uber. At that time, it was before Uber let you tip. So that's why he was complaining about Uber. Yeah. But Uber. Yeah, and they only allow you to tip $10 max. Did you know that? No. Yeah. So this one guy was talking, this one guy we were riding with was talking about how

he'll only make enough to pay for gas and he's trying to get another job and maybe move that it does so i was trying to tip me more than 10 it won't let you pretty interesting yeah well uber is quite the invention though it is a great invention if you want to go get a little rowdy as much as i was poking fun at the whole rating thing and and and going through that my whole feeling about uber is what a service um if we go out and have a few drinks or we need to get in you know get into town or something, um, quickly.

It's so, uh, it's a, it's a safe way to travel. Right. Yeah. So, and,

you know, you, you, you, you, you meet so many unique people. Right. I think I want to be an Uber driver,

maybe for like a short period. You can be an Uber driver anytime you want. I have a friend named Sarah that is a life, is an Uber driver and she just, Uber's whenever she wants. You can turn it on and off. Oh, so like you work when you want to work.

You work when you want. So she, ubers whenever she feels like Ubering. But just imagine the people that you meet. Right. Especially if you work like 10 p.m. to about 2 a.m. I remember my first Uber ride and I was quite nervous about it because for me it was odd to get into a stranger's car and go anywhere. That's, you know, you've been told all your life not to do that.

But it's now common practice and it's really good service. Yeah. You're welcome Uber for all this free publicity. Yeah. So moving forward to this week, Darlington Throwback Weekend. Yeah. We hyped the car all year. We unveiled the car.

Finally, going to run the AC Delco throwback car. Any thoughts now going to Darlington to drive that car? Wear the fire suit, all the good stuff. Yeah, the only thing that I'm thinking about is, you know, I'm just really concerned about how we've been running. Obviously, I'm disappointed with the way Bristol worked out for us and how we finished. and I feel growing intensity or pressure mounting to start making some things happen, like get some results on the track. Like this, you know, we started the season out and we always said, well, you know,

if we didn't have a good finish, we did have speed. And we would, you know, we were fast at a lot of racetracks up until the summer. And then we lost our speed. So now we're not only having difficult finishes and frustrating runs, but we don't have the speed to be excited about going into the next weekend. So I'm pretty concerned at this point. It's hard for me to really think outside of performance. I'm excited about the car.

I think it is a great-looking car. I am proud to have that opportunity to run this car. But for me, and I feel like I feel pressure for myself, and to my fans that if we don't run well, it won't matter. Right. And that's been, there's been a lot of great response on Twitter about, hey, you know, don't, you know, don't let these finishes get you down. You hear a lot of people say, you know, that they're very supportive regardless of how we run. and there's a bigger picture ahead, but it's still, you know, as a competitor, you want to do well every week.

There's so much work and effort put into going and practicing and the team working on the car that you want to result. So that's really what I'm thinking about going into this weekend, and Darlington presents one of the tougher challenges for all of us drivers throughout the year. This is probably one of the biggest challenges when it comes to getting. getting around the track and how hard it is and difficult it is mentally, physically. It's a tough race. Very, very long race. Yeah, it seems longer than the 600.

It is. The pace, right? So we run, you know, you get around there okay on new tires, but the pace falls off so much in the race. And it's so much work to get around the track. Like literally driving the car, it's so much work to get around there that every lap just seems like it takes forever to complete. Um, yes. And then there's, you know, that race just kind of drags on. Those last hundred miles are really, uh, really difficult. But, um, it's an accomplishment, you know, to get to the end of that race and run well and finishing the top 10, even, you know, obviously if you finish in the top five, I think it's an incredible accomplishment for any driver because it's all, that's a lot of driver involved in that. So I'm a little, little, um, I'm a little nervous about how difficult that weekend is going to be for us. If we don't have. Um, it's all, it's all, um, there's a lot of, um, um, um, um, um, have speed. It's hard enough as it is when the car is good and you're running well. I haven't been to Darlington in a while where we've just struggled and fought all night and ran mediocre.

Last year, looking at the notes. Jeff and those guys ran 15th about 15th to 20th all night. They got lap down at one point. They did rebound to 14th place finish. Restarts weren't very good. The car wouldn't go very well in restarts. We went back even further in our our notes over the past several years to look for to look for something set-up-wise that might give us some good direction. But with the way the arrow package has changed so much over the last couple of years, you really can't look at these notes and say this is the right spring combination to put in the back of the car.

This is what you need for the front spring because you wouldn't run that stuff with the arrow we have today. So the arrow has changed so much, it's really made it difficult to rely on old notes. So I'm just ready to get to the track, get in the car, see where our speed is, see how the car feels and drives. It is where we tested when we got cleared to race back in December. I thought the car was really good there that day, felt comfortable. But that was a cool day in December, you know, and every track's pretty comfortable when it's that chilly. It could be a cool day in September, that could. Yeah. I mean, it's supposed to rain a little bit this weekend,

so it would be not as hot. That's no good with our rain in the forecast, particularly, you know, with a late, that's a late start. I was talking to the interior guy, Adam Jordan. He said that you're going to wear this cool shirt for the first time. Yeah. So we, I got really, really hot in the Xfinity car at Bristol. Jimmy's been wearing this cool suit. A couple other guys I know Annette's been using, and Annette said he's worn it the last

couple weeks and it's amazing. So I'm sitting here thinking, you know, I got a few races left. I just want to try it because if it's become. something that's a little more popular, a little more common next year. I want to have the experience to be able to talk about it. So I'm going to try it out this weekend. That's a great race to try it because it's going to be a real difficult race physically. So we're going to try and practice and see how it works. So you've got to have a suit and the vest. So you've got to have a whole different suit. Because the suit, driver suit's got to be a little different. He was saying they had

to get some cuts or something. Yeah. So you've got a few fire suits. They were working on those right now as we speak. Oh, really? Yes. Sorry to be putting you guys in a bind. Justin Algar is going to be running a really unique scheme this weekend. It just unveiled it today. Yep. The Advanced Auto Parks car will be featuring our mom and pop's late model design,

and it's a tip of the cap to all of us, Kelly, Carrie, and myself. William Byron is going to be running a Liberty car featuring Ricky Hendricks, 2001 GMAC paint scheme, which I thought was incredibly good-looking car. Oh, I saw it in the shop. It's awesome. Yeah. I was really excited about that for Rick. Rick and Linda went to the unveiling.

Me and Rick had a lot of communication about that, how much that meant to him. And it was a very cool experience for him. So that's a special car that we'll be running this weekend with William. So, and then Elliot. Yeah, he's running a throwback to a Kail Yarborough car. To the Hardee's car, they just had to flip the colors around a little bit. Right. And his number one is identical to the Kale's number 11.

It's very small, though, I thought. What's small? The number. See, when it was number 11 on Kail's car, it looked pretty good. But now on Elliott's car, it looks tiny standing there by itself. Empty space on the side of the car. Yeah. Good job Jordan Erickson.

Yeah, yeah. When I saw it, I told Jordan, I said, you need to make that one bigger. He's like, how? What do you mean? It's exactly just like Kales. I'm like, eh, it doesn't look right. Oh, well. Too small.

Sadler won that race last year, so. Yeah, Sadler did. That was an incredible battle he had with Denny Hamlin coming down to the finish. Elliot got in the wall a little bit. Denny called him. They had a pretty close race to the finish. That's a big win for him for Elliott. Right.

You know, as he's getting back into, you know, a competitive car working with our team, starting to win races. Really, that was a pretty awesome weekend and a big win for him. Have you kept an eye on? So everybody's running these throwback cars. Have you been seeing the unveils enough to, like, have a favorite besides your own? Yeah. Can't say your own.

I'm going to hold my opinion until we get to the track. When you get to the track and you see the cars really firsthand, all lined up in the garage together, it's a little easier sort of going, oh, yeah, this one really stands out, right? When they're all together. Put some of the crew shirts and pants. That adds a little bit to it as well. Right. Because the teams do come in with brand new uniforms and stuff. Some of them take it pretty far.

Yeah. I don't know. I know my brother was on Blaney's team last year. Yeah. And my brother was a big dude and he had to wear white pants and white chucks. And I was like, that's awesome. Yeah. I mean, not for you, but it's awesome.

So I'm looking forward to it. We obviously, we weren't down there. Do you have a favorite yet? Um, I don't know. I'll have to see it. Yeah, we didn't go last year. Yeah. I mean, we were just there for two hours or so because we did the press conference.

Right. That wasn't a fun day. Right. Exactly. It was a weird. It was so weird to go to the track. And leave. Yeah. You're like, okay, we're flying in. Yeah. And then, all right. And then you're back home watching the race. So besides Darlington, something that we've got coming up, we've got the 88 team league has a draft Friday night. Fantasy football. And Monday morning we're doing one for, uh,

all our buddies. Yep, it's the basement league is what we call it. And then we have one that's Wednesday, I guess, the couples league. But fantasy football is back. Oh, yeah. I'm excited. Have you been doing any studying yet? No.

Me either. I did a mock draft. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, that's a, I'd consider that studying. Yeah. There's a lot of guys. Well, not a lot of guys.

There's like a handful of guys already out for the season. Right. Yeah, that's why I think it's important to wait to wait to draft for your league after the last preseason game. I've talked to some friends that draft early. and they're already, you know, they already have guys on teams with injuries and so forth. So that's got to be kind of frustrating because, you know, you lose a, you know, a key guy goes down for the season.

Right. Could really, um. How pissed off would you be if you drafted like Edelman? I feel bad for Edelman, you know. I mean, he's been productive. And a lot of, you know, he's been a great fantasy football player with his production. But I don't think that's going to hurt the Patriots, though. So you haven't done any research.

I haven't done any research. I've usually started researching by now. Usually got a good idea of, you know, I like to, you know, I like to think I'm really smart and clever about it. So I try to go and look for guys that are a little deeper in the draft that I think will be steals in the later rounds. But I haven't started doing that yet. And I think the best way to do that is like you, like you mentioned, is doing to do a mock draft. You know, you can look at the list of players and say, yeah, I'd love to have this guy, this guy and that guy. But as you do, do mock drafts, you sort of see how the drafts unfold and the mistakes you can make by being too patient to pull particular picks. I'm always too patient to get Cam Newton. Right. And you end up not. And I always get like Eli Manning. Right. So you got pull a trigger. Yeah. And just you got to go with your gut, pull a trigger this season. So I'm expecting you to draft him. In the fifth round. Okay. Well, I think that's smart. I wouldn't take him in the top three. All right, we're going to go to our Ask Junior questions. As always, we get these questions using the hashtag Ask Junior on Twitter. First question is at Fan 88 Junebug. And obviously

Amy being a Texan, this is, we've received a couple people. Did any of Amy's family get flooded during Hurricane Harvey? Is everybody okay? Everybody's okay. There was a lot of property damage. Her family's sort of scattered about throughout Texas. But, But a lot of them were without power for several days, maybe even still without power today. A lot of flooding, property damage. But it's been, that whole thing, I don't know about you, man, but that whole storm snuck up on me. Oh, yeah. I heard on the radio, they were like, yeah, this storm is rolling in.

Yeah. But then it seemed like right the last second, it doubled in size. We were watching it rather closely because Amy's family being. from Texas and and it became so it became evident really quickly that this was a serious situation. You know, this was not just going to be a lot of rain. And so we're thinking about all the folks down in Texas. Houston's really dealing with a lot of flooding right now. And I'm certain that, you know, the folks are going to see a lot of outreach over the next several

days, especially throughout this weekend from the NASCAR community. everybody always trying to do their part to assist and donate and the NASCAR community always is really great at that so John Kinsley asked what job do you like doing most on the DIY house project so the other day we got we got down there and they put me on a excavator to dig the pool I enjoyed that I enjoyed I enjoy I was on that thing for five hours I thought I'd hate it because it's hard to get it adjusted to how it works. If you never ran an excavator before, it's two joysticks, one in each hand, and you're using your feet.

What are you doing with your feet? Your feet run the tracks. Oh, oh. So either, you know, you can turn, go straight forward and all that good stuff. Well, the one joystick on the right runs the bucket. The other joystick on the left runs the arm, the boom, whatever you want to call it. And it takes a little while to sort of understand how it all works and what you're trying. to do if you're trying to scoop and then dump and spin around and all that good stuff too uh but as

soon as you get the hang of it it's like it's like you're it's like it's like it becomes a little another limb like it's a part of your body so you're saying do this and it does that it's really cool a lot of fun i had had never ran an excavator before i can't believe that they would just let you i know yeah i thought this was like they threw me no they threw me on there and they're like okay, go. And I'm like, okay, here I go. And so I worked on it for five hours one day, digging this pool. We rented this thing for $600 a day, so we had a hurry to get this pool dug. So you got to dig the pool and the hot tub. And we busted up the cistern, which is this old concrete kind of a, kind of a, it's a rain collector that all the houses had back in the

1900s and so forth. And so it's about 10 foot deep and it's just a big concrete block with a top concrete top on it. And so I got to bust that up, which was a lot of fun. We actually had a jackhammer attachment on the end of the excavator. And so I could jackhammer this thing into the ground. It was heavy. It was a lot of fun. So you guys are legit doing the work. We're really doing the work. Yeah. So folks, I'm not going to any of these DIY shows. So all this is- You're oblivious to everything going on down there. I'm like, what the hell. So I got to run the excavator.

That was a lot of fun. I do like working in the house, but it's really hot. Yeah. The temperature down there is around 90 to 95 degrees. It's really hot. And the work just really pushes you on your patience, trying to, you know, trying to do everything. You know, I'm not handsy.

I've never really used a nail gun. These things are incredibly, sophisticated these days, really powerful. I would be scared to use that. I know. So I'm not, you know, nail gun is not something I carry around and use all the time. So you pick this nail gun up and in the first couple hours, you're like, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. And then after about three hours, you're like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, you're just them hammering all kinds of stuff, throwing nails everywhere.

Yeah, nail guns actually, they kind of scare me. Yeah, they do. They're intimidating through my toe or something. They are intimidating at first, but. after a while you sort of, it's so hot and you're so impatient about what you're doing that you've got to hurt. You're like, I don't get this done. But it's, the house is nasty. There's a, we just got all these bees out. There was this big infestation of bees in between the first floor and the second floor. So the ceiling of the first floor and the second floor, there was a, there was an infestation in there. We, we ripped that out.

They had built this major production of honeycomb and honey in the floor, Joyce. Right. And, I mean, these things were everywhere, thousands of bees. And so we finally got those out, so that was nice because everybody's worried about getting stung. We were hammering in the floor, Joyce. We had to put an entirely, we had to jack this house up because the foundation was rotten. and the footings did not pass code. So we had to jack the house up, take all the old footings out.

Some of them were as simple as a stump, and some were actual concrete footings that they made years ago. So we had to bust them up, but we had to dig new footings to spec and to code. We had to mix the concrete to pour all that in there and put it all down in there. Then we had to build the foundation of the house, you know, put the floor joist and the floor system back in there. back underneath it, a brand new one, set the house back down on that, and then start framing from there.

So you guys are like seriously? This is going to be an incredible transition for this house. Watching this, it's only a 30-minute show, four-part series. We're getting so much content. I don't know where it's all going to go. Right. But from where this house is going to start to finish is, it's the biggest renovation project that I've ever witnessed.

you know, we watch quite a bit of stuff on TV. I've never seen anybody that, I don't know whether we're really smart to get this involved in something that needed this much. Too far in back out now. Yeah, we're too far in now. So it's happening. We got a budget, we got a specific budget to stick to. And we itemize and keep track of that and view this budget weekly with our contractors.

I mean, we're hands-on. We're really hands-on with this project. and I think people are going to be, I don't know if impressed is the right word, but they'll be surprised. At Colby Wall asked, do you still get the quotes from Stevie Waltrip to put on your dash each race?

Yeah, absolutely. Stevie obviously doesn't go to every race. So she'll either, she's there, she always hand writes the quotes and hands them to the chaplain who'll bring them to me. If she's not there, she'll text them to the chaplain, he'll write them and give them to me.

If you follow Amy. I always signed Stevie. Love Stevie. If you follow Amy on Twitter at Amy Earnhardt, she always tweets out the Bible verse each week. So just keep an eye on that. At Southern Kentucky Sports Guy, how will the new generation composite body Xfinity Car affect junior motorsports both cost and competition-wise? Well, our hope is that over the long haul it is much more cost effective. we won't have to handmake all these bodies over in the fab department will it won't be quite as

difficult of a job for the fab guys to put these bodies together so there should be a point in time to where the initial cost will become offset by the savings down the road it is going to be a little bit of a bump on the start on the front end to buy all this stuff because there They had to build all new cars. Right. Which is non-cars. There's a lot of rule changes in the cars themselves, the chassis. So this is sort of, this was a process that was going to happen anyways as far as building some new cars.

And so part of that was already going to be part of the process and this flange-fat body stuff is something I think that if they're going to bring it in, it's a good time to bring it in since we're having to build new cars. from a performance standpoint the bodies hopefully will be harder to manipulate you see a lot of guys running with their doors caving in and their quarter panels flared out and these bodies are altering as the race goes on everybody is guilty ourselves included I mean you've got to try to take advantage of every opportunity you can to create an advantage

and down force. What used to be trying to create an advantage if you don't do it now you can't keep up. So it's actually a disadvantage if you don't. It's no longer an advantage

because everybody's doing it and if you don't do it you're in big trouble. You know, you got to try to get as much side force as you can. Well these new bodies hopefully will be hard to manipulate and cut down on some of that.

But I think it's unnecessary that we do it. you know it it's frustrating that we have to do it to be competitive and everybody tries to push that envelope so hopefully it takes that away takes that tool out of everybody's hand and we just get back to you know driving race cars and not worrying about whose doors looking the best and whose quarterback looks the best is this something they're going to try to bring the cup I imagine that that was uh that's the direction they want to go is to you know bring this into cup eventually at some point 7S, what do you think is the future of sim racing and how big do you think it can get?

It's sim racing, um, esports. Like, you know, it's become, it's become something guys can make a career out of. These professionals are being paid a lot of money to, to play video games. And, and it's become, what a life. Yeah, well, I mean, it's, it has its own fan base. It's popular. It's popularity has grown a lot in the last several years. I think that eye racing falls right into that.

The simulation and production of the ir racing sim is second to none. I mean, it's the best driving and racing sim available on the market. And it's very technical, which I think is something that sets it apart from other sims, is how technical it is to the setups in every particular change you can make. They even have like the simulation programs like a cup team uses so you can run your setup through there. Yeah. You can, you can, you, you can, you, you can, you gather data while you're driving the car to go back and look at how your car is working. So these guys are legitimate engineers nowadays.

Exactly. So you're got, these, I racing has a crew chief. You can crew chief a car during a race. You can spot for a guy. I mean, it's literally a virtual world that's been. become more and more like the real thing every day. They have just released in the last two years the dirt side of things to where you can race as rent cars and wage late models.

And that was an incredible development. That's something that people have been asking for for years and years and years. They're now going to go into, they're now starting to develop the SIM, bringing the SIM to life, so to speak, with it actually changing from night to day. having things be more dynamic as far as the track surface and so forth. The track surface has become dynamic where the guys run. The track surface gets hotter, loses a little grip. Guys are moving around now in the race car, in the races during the Sims.

During the races, you'll see them change lines and so forth. I still, I don't race online as much anymore, but I do follow and watch some of the videos and so forth just to see where they're at and what they're accomplishing today. I think that it does happen. I think that Gerais will have an opportunity one day to actually make a living as a Sim racer. Do you think it will become like a fourth NASCAR series? I think it should. I think it should.

I think that there's opportunity for advertisement and there's opportunity for people to, you know, to make money doing it. At Phil M. Phil McIndless asked, which Underdog Cup team do you believe is the closest to pull off a Jeremy Clements type win because Jeremy Clements obviously won the Xfinity race this weekend at Road America. Oh my. You know, I don't really know what defines, you know, what you consider an underdog these days. The most recent one would probably have been when the 34 won with Chris Busher last year. Yeah. Yeah, the fog. The fog grace of Pocono. The Sucon. The Sucon. The Sucon. The same team also won at Talladega a couple years ago with David Reagan.

I would say that those, you know, those teams, maybe the 32. Matt DeBenadeo. Yeah, maybe they have a shot at Talladega places like that because they've really been showing out here lately. They've showed a lot of speed, qualifying really well. That car was one of the, that team struggled more, you know, more than most. over the last several years, but they've really bumped their performance up some 10 to 15 positions over the last just a year or two.

Yeah, and I think they just announced that- As soon as Matt got in that car. Him and the crew chief for both back next year, yeah. Which I think is, you know, their growth is going to continue, but they could go to Talladega and win. I think that they could. At S. Casto-21 asked, how involved are you with your car dealerships, and do you think you will be more involved after this year? I get down there a couple times a year.

We haven't had a chance to go this year. We will say that. This has been an incredibly busy season with the retirement and all that stuff. But my goals personally was to get down there at least twice a year for an entire day, walk around, say, hey, to everybody. We're trying to put together a bit of an open house where we can go down there and spend the whole afternoon, get a bunch of drivers down there, sign an autograph. having a bunch of little pop-up boutiques and stuff like that for, you know, hot dog stands

and whatever for folks to come out and enjoy. Maybe you get a dump tank, get you and myself in there. A dump tank? Yeah, that would be fun. Why not? All right, that's all the Ask Junior questions for this week. Thank you for sending those in using the hashtag Ask Junior on Twitter. Be sure to send us questions every week.

We'll pick the best one, so please make them good. 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 Exaltza Racing, a must follow for any Dale Jr. fan. All right, folks, looking ahead Wednesday. I'm pretty excited about this. We're going to visit Washington Redskins.

They have a welcome home luncheon charity event that we're going to go. And we got some to announce where we're going to work together with their charity and the Dale Jr. Foundation. She's going to do some things together. So can't wait to go there tomorrow. I'm going to be able to have a chance to see and meet some players past and present. That's always a big deal for me, being a big fan. Well, that's so good to see Josh Norman, former Carolina Panther.

Hopefully he'll be there. What do you mean? Welcome home. He better be there. Thursday, we have a video shoot. Actually, we're doing two things. We got to put together a lot of content for the Driven to Give Charity auction dinner that we do every year for the Junior Foundation so we're going to be filming a lot of that information or filming a lot of

that content that's a pretty awesome deal we raised several hundred thousand dollars during that dinner we have a lot of folks come out and have fun and do a do a we have a comedian come in and last couple years been a lot of fun last year it was what sin bad yeah and he picked on me the whole time yeah and we do we have an online live auction during that event yeah I we I turned to bid on like four things last year and I got outbid late. The heavy the high bidders rolled in at the last minute. Friday we have two practices one o'clock and three 30. Saturday there's qualifying at two p.m. in the afternoon then there's something really cool happening over at the racetrack

Saturday evening at 8 p.m. there's an Earnhardt fireside chat and they've invited me Kelly and Kerry and Richard Childers to come over to about 200 or 250 people. and talk about the old man. So that's going to be a lot of fun. And also, the track is honoring my father and myself by naming the towers over in Turn and 3 that have been there for so long, the Earnhardt Tower.

So that's going to be pretty awesome to see that. I like the guy on Twitter was like, why are they doing that? He never did anything. Yeah. But he was a typical troll who deleted his tweet after you responded. Don't be that guy.

Yeah. Obviously, Sunday is the race. It's at 6 p.m. Eastern on NBC Sports Network. And with you talking about weather, I hope that we don't have any delays. That would push us pretty deep into the night there. I think it's only Friday and Saturday, if we're what I read. Hopefully we're clear on Sunday. I know everybody's got a lot of things on their calendar for Labor Day on Monday. So everybody be safe on Labor Day. I know everybody likes to go out and have some fun, but take care of yourself and take care of everyone around you. Um, we, uh, hope you enjoyed the show. That's our first, is it, this is our first show on an off week, no? No, no, no, no. Well, our first, me and you've done.

Yeah. Usually Amy does these and people love those. Yeah. So I know you're disappointed. Amy's not on here. But, uh, Tyler, you did a great job. Yeah. Just a reminder, we will not be in the studio next week.

So please do not come to Junior Motorsports. You will leave disappointed and we'll be sad for you. So, uh, we'll talk to you guys next week. We'll talk about Darlington and everything else that's going on. I'm sure there'll be a lot of on-track action to talk about and discuss. And then we'll be heading into Richmond, the last race before the playoffs. And double duty again. Yeah, big deal.

We run the Xfinity car and the cup car out there, so we have that to talk about. Take it easy, guys. See you. See you. You got your best. The Dell Jr. download and all Dirtymo Radio podcasts are made possible by Exalta. You can subscribe to all eight programs on. iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, and all major podcasting outlets.

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