The Dale Jr. Download - 197 - 'All The Feels' Talking Baby News and Talladega

Episode Date: October 17, 2017

Dale Jr. discusses his and his wife Amy's recent news that they are expecting their first child. He also recaps a busy, but successful final race weekend at Talladega Superspeedway and answers fan questions during the 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.

This is Dale Jr. And you're listening to Dirty Moe Radio. Welcome back to the Dale Jr. Download. We are here. This is Tyler Overstreet, co-hosting with the Dale Earnhardt Jr. Let's get right to it. Big news yesterday. Wait a minute.

You didn't tell everybody that... I know. I got so excited about your news. Thank you to The Dangerous Summer, Hopeless Records. I knew that you kick the show off was a mistake. I was so excited for your news that I've figured. Got the song of confidence by our friends at the Dangerous Summer. Thank you to Hopeless Records for letting us use that.

But let's get right to it. All right. Tell us your news. Oh, yeah. So me and Amy are going to have a little girl. We're very excited. We have, we've known for several weeks. The baby, we didn't, I didn't know what the protocol was,

so I didn't say what the due date was in our social. media Instagram posts. But the due dates May the 2nd. May the second. And I'm praying for April 29th. That's my dad's birthday. That's what I was thinking. I was like, man, a couple days early. Apparently, in this day and age, they can make that happen. But I'm just going to hope for a healthy, healthy birth and not asked for any favors. But yeah, it's super, it's really, really exciting. Obviously, this is something that I've been looking forward to. on my life. Amy, obviously, she's excited as well. When we got married, we wanted to go ahead and talk. We'd been talking about having kids. Obviously, I'm 43 and we just need to, you know,

we're going to get after it or not, you know, we're going to ride out of time. So we, I know you like to share everything, like as soon as it happens. So how difficult was that to not be like, hell yeah, we're having a baby. Yeah, it was really hard to, Haney's telling me like you can't say anything, you can't tell anybody. And I'm like, okay, yeah, I mean, I kind of know this. A lot of my friends have recently had kids

going through that, have been going through this same experience, so I'd watch them and seen how all that developed. And so I kind of got it, I understood. But it's really hard to keep that, you know, you're so excited you want to share that news especially with like your mother uh your sister did you tell everybody yesterday basically um yeah basically we told our uh immediate family and then some our friends uh we tried to cover all the bases but it's never never possible to cover them

all did you guys run through like a list of ways you wanted to announce it yeah i mean you went with the pink chuck taylor shoes yeah um But basically, we sent the, well, you get this email from the doctor. So we go to the doctor to get some, just some standard test run and so forth. And then they send you this email, and there's a link in the email to understand the gender. And we forwarded that to Amy's sister, and Amy's sister sent us the shoes. So we would open the box of the shoes and there was... Oh, so y'all found out via the shoes.

Right. So did you just find out yesterday? Yes. Okay. So we just found out at the same time everybody else did that it was going to be a little girl. Secretly, I was hoping for a little girl because I just, man, little boys, that would be...

I just feel like that I can't screw a girl up. With Amy, with Amy around. I ain't going to mess no girl up. Amy's going to make sure of that. But I feel like raising the boy, your first child, you could potentially raise a little stinker. And I don't want to, I want to, you know, I want a sure win the first go around. That Amy take the lead on this. Yes.

So I got what I wanted and she's, I mean, there's just, you know, there's just so much emotion, you know, you just can't, you can't explain it. And I imagine, you know, we haven't even seen the whole iceberg here where this is just sort of... You're very, very, very early. Right. Yeah. I mean, the emotions that we're feeling already, I can't imagine what it's going to be like once, you know, we get down the line and we're in the hospital and so forth and going through the process of the birth and everything. It's just going to be, it's just going to be bigger than anything ever in life. So looking forward to it.

I can't thank everybody enough for being so supportive and so excited about our news. Man, did that make us feel great yesterday? And I can't wait to go to the racetrack and see all my friends, my peers, all the folks in the industry that were close to. I can't wait. Amy won't be at the race track this weekend, but I can't wait for her to be out and about. Her next time with the track is going to be behind the wheel of the pace cart at Martinsville. Yeah. So me and her been joking about that.

So we have this app on our phone. I have a, you know, there's going to be all kinds of things to try to learn as much as you can. Being the husband, there's a responsibility to try to know as much as possible going through this process, being plugged in, understanding what's going on, reading books, all kinds of crazy stuff, right? So I've been really applying myself, trying to support Amy. And there's these apps. So the app's telling us at this particular time, it sort of equates the size of the baby to maybe a fruit or a vegetable or whatever. So right now it's a little lime. And so we were joking the other day.

I said, you're going to take a lime for a ride in a pace car. You're going to be able to tell the little lime one day that it actually got to ride in a race car. Or the pace car, I mean, around the racetrack and how you did that. Because when I was in my mama's belly, she took me for a ride in dad's race car. our dad took her around a racetrack and a race car just kind of slow. Oh, I was like, what? Yeah, what did you think? I thought he was a hundred and eighty mile an hour.

Oh, this was 1974 and he's racing late models and he went around, just cruised around track. She was pregnant at the time. He just took her for a ride for funzies. And so what a coincidence. Amy will be taking the line for a ride in the pace car. So, but I'm really excited about that too. Amy's sort of getting out of her comfort zone.

that's really something that I didn't think she would accept doing. I was skeptical too when we got the request. I was like, I was surprised by that. I'm glad that she's, you know, I'm really glad that she's doing that proud of her. You don't get that asked opportunity to do something like that.

No, that's cool. And Martinsville is awesome. And, yeah, I appreciate Martinsville for thinking about Amy. They said they were going to add like extra padding around the pace car now. just to be safe. Yeah. Anything getting close to messing with Amy this weekend.

That should be pretty cool. And yeah, and this is coming on the heels of what was a pretty emotional weekend in Talladega. Just Friday, you got the car, which we'll get to. And then Sunday's race was pretty gnarly. Yeah, it was wild. Well, yeah, so we go to Talladega. I know that all our fans had circled this date. This was a, there was a lot of, I'll see.

say pressure, stress, anxiety, emotion going into this race weekend. I knew as well as everybody else that this was a great opportunity that maybe our best opportunity for a win to write this season and sort of, you know, get things, give people something to cheer about. So, you know, you felt that going into the weekend and we had a lot going on. And we had, I had my buddies from the Danger Summer coming in. We had Ben and Matt. We had gotten them a bus and had them parked over and turned three and four with all the other fans over there so they could see the race.

Eight people piled into a bus. We had eight folks coming. We had the Dorffels coming from QS, those guys down there that are playing. Twelve people there. Actually live in Nashville now, but we had 12 guests there, and we had all our hospitals. We had whatever the track was going to do. We didn't know what they were going to do at the time as far as their media and, you know, gift giving and whatever you want to call that. So Friday, and then you got the, you know, you really got the responsibilities of your normal job.

Yeah, I mean, driving the car and carrying on. So we get in the car and we're practicing and the car was pretty decent. Then we got around some of the other manufacturers around the other the Chevys. our car was really good in practice, and then we got around the forwards and Toyotas, and boy, you know, the Penske guys are super strong, watching them work the draft in practice was really impressive, and the Toyotas were all fast working together, and our car wasn't handling exactly like I was hoping it would. We've made a lot of changes, actually, to our car. That's really not really something that happens at the plate tracks. Most time you unload what you have,

and what you race. There's not a lot of adjustments you make to the setup of the car. So I wasn't happy with the way the car was driving. We made probably four or five different changes to the geometry of the car and when the race started, it was pretty good. But anyhow, we had qualifying on Saturday,

qualified on the pole. That seemed like the longest or pole-winning victory lane deal. It took us like an hour and a half to do all, like, the victory legs. Well, I wasn't in no hurry. I mean, I was just a lot going on. I was like, wow.

Yeah, it seemed like a little, I don't know. I was looking on the pole board, and we've won two polls this year, which is quite a lot for us. I don't remember the last time we won multiple polls in a season. 2013. Yeah. And there was one guy up there. So they put cans up on the Coors Light billboard.

and we have two cans up there, and Kyle's got like a whole case. And so he's got a case of beer. And I don't really know how long the pole celebration is last, but for us it was special. We're at Talladega. We hadn't had a lot to celebrate this year. And you never know when this might, you know, you never know this is the last opportunity to celebrate with that team.

So we've made the most of it. I wouldn't have a hurry to get out of that victory lane. But I really, I wasn't surprised that we won the poll. We'd been on the front row all year at the plate tracks, qualified, I think, second at Daytona, second at the first Halliaga race, got the pole at the July Daytona, and then the poll this race.

Last year, I think we were on the front row or third. Right. Most of the year. Yeah. And the year before that, you know, I mean, it's just been us in the 24. Yeah, and then until these last two, we were always second or third and never got a poll.

Yeah. So it's been nice and But that's good for those guys because I mean obviously the Talladega and Daytona pole is really about the car and so that shows that these guys are bringing fast race cars and to finally get to show that off is really cool for them. Yeah, I'm excited for Alex next year to get in the

you know these particular plate cars and do what you can I think he's going to have a pretty good time of it. I wouldn't mind if he's qualified. qualified like fourth or fifth, so that would show that you make up a little bit of it. Yeah, that would be nice. If you qualified second, third every time. Yeah. I'd be like, oh, yeah.

I could have got it. A little difference the driver makes. Of course, we know the driver doesn't make a whole lot of difference in how the car qualifies, but you feel like you're doing something in there. But it was great to get the poll, gave us a lot of confidence. All right, so then we go over to the media center to do the media with the racetrack, and we're going to find out what the racetracks going to do. So all these racetracks have done a lot of different things,

been very creative throughout the year, whether it's a gift or they honor us through a charity function. It's been a lot of awesome things happening, and it's become one of my favorite parts of the weekend. And they gave me two champagne bottles. Let me try to remember exactly where these two came from. One of them was out of the case that they made for my father's last win. So they get a case of these bottles made so that the team that wins can spray these champagne bottles.

They don't use every single one, but they have a small, very limited amount made for that particular event. And so this bottle came out of that case. It's not corked or anything, or it is corked. It's not sprayed. So it's got all the labels and everything from that race that day. one I think it's 2000 and so they also got a bottle which is a much larger bottle of the last was it was your first tallow my first tall it was okay so it's a really big giant bottle and so I have happened in that year to where they doubled the size of champagne bottles but there's

those that's two cool things to have and um uh then and I and I figured yeah they had something else their sleeve because Talladega is they're super eager and we've worked with them on two I think two winter circle programs so we kind of know the their personalities I will say so they're like hey we got something special out front everybody get out of get out of the media center go out front so all the media shuffles out there real fast and then they wouldn't let me go out there till everybody was out there so we finally walk around the corner and I could see the shape of the car under the car cover and I know exactly what it is but I didn't know like they were going to give it to me I'm just wondering how does this car fit into this?

So we uncover it, and they're like, we're going to let you have it. It says this little, it has a little plaque on the dash. It's property of the state of Alabama. The state of Alabama owns the museum. A lot of people don't know that. They think that the track owners own the museum, they don't. That museum's funded by the state. Like, it's a legit museum.

Yes. So it was, it is a Hall of Fame of Motorsport, not NASCAR. Right. You know, we have the NASCAR Hall of Fame here in Charlotte. This is a Hall of Fame of Motorsports encompassing, right? So there's a little bit of everything in this building, and it's tons of fun to go through. I've been going through it multiple, multiple times ever since I was a little kid. This car's been in there since the mid-80s, and so they're like, hey, we're going to loan you the car.

We're going to let you take it home. So it's going to come here. I'll probably piddle with it and rebuild the brakes and carburetor and get it running a little bit. better and probably clean it up a little bit. I probably won't mess with it as far as stripping it down or painting it or nothing crazy. Right. But I think the decal on the, this is funny, silly stuff, but the two on the passenger's door is a little far back for my taste. Honestly, like I'm looking at it in pictures and it's just not quite centered where it needs to be,

so I might re decal the car and get it a little more perfect. That'd be awesome. Let me fix this for you. Well, it's a little bit far back. It's probably about 3 or 4 inches too far back. Okay. Quite a bit. Yeah.

And that's one of those things. Like if you look at it. It bugs the shit. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to, but anyhow, I'm going to play with it. Blaney wants to drive it. So we have a paved loop on our property, and it's exactly a mile in length.

So I'm going to let whoever wants to drive the damn thing, drive it around the damn. Where are you going to keep it? It's going to park right in our garage. Right at the house. Oh. So like when we... We have a four-car garage and it's going to... So like something's leaving.

Wouldn't we leave? I'm like, which car are we driving? And that's going to... I mean, that's not really going to be an option that we can take with two people. They'll be in there every time. That's cool. Yeah. It'll be fun to look at.

Yeah. Yeah. So like those little pink shoes for the baby, I told Amy this morning, I said, I want these shoes to sit on this coffee table to the baby's born because I want to look at them every day. And I'll be able to walk out and look at that car every time I go in to get my pickup truck every morning. That would be cool, huh? That'll be cool.

I mean, I don't know anybody else that can say that. Yeah. So they're going to send this car down here. I can't wait until it gets here. And but it still belongs to the state. Eventually, I'm going to send it back to the museum. That's where it belongs. That's its home.

Right. Just enjoy it for a little while. I enjoy it for a year or two. Yeah. And then that'll be that. So very cool. I couldn't be happier. about that, very thoughtful of the racetrack,

and they have been super good to me for so many years. And then we sold them quite a few tickets over the years. Well, I personally didn't do any legwork there, but I know what you're saying. Then comes the race. So race day morning, Talladega, you could, I saw, me and Amy were talking in the morning. I was like, man, I am overwhelmed.

with like this, uh, this weight on my back, you know, it's just so, the, she said it was palpable. She could feel it.

She could feel the, oh, yeah, the, the pressure. I don't even know what the word is. How would you describe it? Um,

I don't know. It's, it's not pressure, but it's like a, anticipation that's just so, right. Thick. And,

you know, there's, you know, there's a lot of, you know, I think social media, social media is like a I know it's not everybody is not on social media

not everybody but it's a small window into sort of the overall feeling and opinion of yeah it's a good representation of how people feel exactly perfect so there's a lot of comments on social media about I'm at Talladega I'm coming to this race I'm will see junior run his last Talldega race I'm here for that and you could see

there was more people in the grandstands, there was more campers. You know, it just felt like, like all these people came to see it, what were they going to see? Right. You know, and we had to deliver. Give them a show.

That was a little pressure. So, luckily when the race started, I thought the car was pretty good. We had to fight there to kind of keep some of our track position in those early laps, and I could get the car to where, if I didn't have a whole lot of help behind me, I could kind of maintain my position

until some help came along. And so basically if you're on the inside line and there's a lot of guys lined up real tight on the outside line and there's nobody behind you, you're basically going to get trained and kind of overcome by the guys as your car is kind of falling back through that line,

you're going to get overwhelmed by everybody behind you and it's easy real quickly to get shuffled back outside of the top 10. Well, the defense to that is to jam that outside line up against the wall on the straightaways really, really tight, and run like two inches off of the door

of the guy beside you. What happens is you both are kind of fighting for the same air into your cow. It kind of holds that car in position beside you. And it almost makes the guy behind

him a little nervous to push that guy. because he sees that, you know, a little bump could, you know, knock you two together. And plus he's not, he might hit you on the inside, you know, there's just no room there. And that guy's not real, he ain't eager to get up in that tight little space himself, right? So it's almost like you're playing chicken? No. Because you're, like, daring them to do it? Well, it's not really a chicken thing.

You just hold that guy real tight against the wall. And the guy behind him's like, I don't want to get in that spot, you know. I don't want the guy squeeze me against the fence. So he don't really push the guy through. Anyways, when I've had good cars, I've been able to do that. When the car's not good, you squeeze that guy against the wall, and they just keep going by. And we were able to maintain when we needed to by doing those things. And I'm like, all right, this car's, you know, if this car can hold its own at times like this, it gives me a lot of confidence.

pits. We had a lot of things happened during the race. I got so we we got caught speeding one time. We had a couple of things. So on that first pit stop, you guys had committed to pit road and then McMurray started wrecking behind you. Right. So I was going to ask, I saw a lot of people were just up in arms about the penalty. The rule. Yeah, because you were 100 feet, 200 feet, whatever from the line. You're too committed to get out, but the light was on. Yeah. And they're like, well, rule needs to change. And somebody on Twitter was like, well, they should have a box that's like a grace period. But then I'm like, what if you're in that box? Then you just have to keep making boxes all the way around the track. Yeah, it just backs up the... Right. I mean, it's sucked, but it's the

rule. It's sucked, but it's the rule. I, you know, I don't think they need to change the rule. Right. It's nice when it bites other guys and it's done by you. Right. It's nice when it happens with everybody else. I mean, I've seen it happen to Kurt Bush and Kyle Bush and people are like, it's too bad for you. Love the rule. Yeah. So, I yeah that was one thing that sort of shuffled us to the back didn't have you know

we still had the confidence and it was going to be kind of fun to see if our car could what it could do trying to get back up through there before we could figure that out we got caught speeding on pit road so we run two yellow lights on the dash that's pit road speed we go and test this out on Friday

during practice so we make sure it's right and we set it and we're confident well we went out there and in the race when we ran pit road speed down pit road, we were one mile an hour faster than we were Friday. I don't know why, but something had changed. And so we had to go from two yellow lights to running only one yellow light.

It's kind of like an RPM bar on the dash. As you go through the RPMs, there's green dots, and then they turn yellow, and then they turn red. Red is too fast. So you run two yellows. What's the difference in like, one yellow light and two yellow lights. Probably...

Like 20 RPM or... Well, I don't know about the RPM. I can't... Right. I can't read it on the dash, but it's probably like a quarter of a mile an hour. Between two lights? Right, or half a mile an hour.

Yeah. So, yeah, basically, if I'm running two yellows... So it's pretty difficult to hold one light. No. No? Not really. Okay. They do bounce around and you get one yellow, two yellow...

One red pops up. I mean, they pop up and carry on. It's sort of jumpy. But if pit road speeds 50 miles an hour, two yellows, your team wants two yellows to be 49.8, 49.9.9. I mean, that's how close we are pushing pit road down all the way. And so one little bump by car behind you or just a little bit too aggressive on the throttle and you're 50.01. and that's it. Yeah.

You're black, you know, you've got a penalty. Yeah, because it's not like when you get a speeding ticket on the road where you're going

significantly over a year. Yeah, we're not, we're not sitting there riding around two mile an hour. Yeah. It's not like a big mistake.

It's a very, very fine line. So, uh, we had, anyways, had that happen and, and the car was able,

at one point, I think we drove all the way back up to second place. Yeah, you were working with Truex. And I was like, oh, maybe they talked about this all week.

TrueX was like, yeah, I don't need to win. I'll help you. Yeah. And then that, yeah. So we got up to... You were up to the second or third.

Second behind the 21 and the 24. They were having a little battle. We ended up riding behind them for a while. So we were... And that was kind of fun how we got up through there. We passed about, I don't know, six, seven cars there in a matter of a two or three laps. We got one run that we were able to sustain

and get like three or four or five cars. It's right there at once, side drafting and moving and passing. And when your car can do that, you know, it gives you a lot of confidence. And then all the wrecks started to happen. And I don't know how we dodged all that stuff. I mean, I've seen the replays.

I was in the car. And you just, you're in the right place at the wrong time. And, you know, you could just be a foot this way or a foot that way and be in it. Yeah, the one where you spun, like, I think it was David Reagan was coming down the banking. and y'all couldn't have missed by more than a foot. Right. And then when the 6 and 21 spun across the nose, it was less than that.

It was inches. But the final one was the one that hurt the car the most. When the 24 and the 19 got together, I hit the back of the 24 pretty hard. It bit the splitter on the right front down about an inch and a half. And so when we went back to Green Flag for the end of the race, it was on the splitter really hard. And that would slow the car down in the center of the corner.

corner quite a few miles an hour, probably two, three, four mile an hour. And when that became a problem was on the green flag restart, my intention was to push Brad clear of the 31 car starting in the outside line. I wanted to lock onto Brad for at least until we got to turn three. I thought I could lock on to him, push him through one and two, down the back straight away, and then NASCAR would probably want me to turn loose of him before they had to Black Flaggis. And we got going around the middle of one and two,

and I could feel that splitter hitting really hard, and we became kind of unhooked. And I knew then that, you know, this is bad. The 31 and 11 are still hooked, and they're basically tandem drafting, which is what I wanted to be doing, and now they're going to go. Right.

That sucked. We lost our opportunity to push Brad clear and hopefully have our own little run on Brad at some point. Still, there was a lot going on beyond that. We had a run on Joey going into turn one that he blocked pretty aggressively, but he's got to do what he's got to do. Yeah, people were really upset about that.

I'm like, he's trying to race too. Yeah, I mean, I would have probably not done that block because it kind of hurt us both. Right. I would have done, I block. I mean, you've got to block, but you don't want to block so much that you hurt yourself. You know, you're not going to do anything that you think might hurt your car.

Right. Or your run. But he went so high in the corner, it's like, man, you know, just giving it up to everybody behind us for me and him. That was it. When that happened, it killed that run, and we couldn't create another run before the finish of the race. I was disappointed that Almarola kind of pulled in behind you,

and he could have pushed you a little bit, and then he just pulled out. He talked, he texted me on the way home. He said, hey, I know this doesn't help, but for my future and my career, I had to push it forward. And, you know, that's just the way it's, that's, you know, the guy's got to work with the manufacturers, and that's the way it is. So anybody that would be upset about that just has to understand it.

he's got his own bit of responsibilities and expectations from people around him. The one guy that I was hoping that would push me was a five. Oh, yeah. I thought you were going to say Landon. Casey, okay, so the 43 didn't go with us, and then there, here comes my teammate, number five. But he went with the 43 and tried to gain a couple spots on that front straightaway as everybody was dicing around coming to the checkered. Yeah, I guess he felt bad for you, so he wrecked the 43 right at the

the finish. Yeah. I was hoping. So. But yeah, I was hoping. Right. That last lap,

man. Nobody decided to lock onto the bumper and go. Had that happened, we'd probably finish in the top five. I mean, we crossed the finish line

a foot behind the nose of the 11 car and then somebody else is on the outside of him. So, I mean, we had a real shot at getting a top five. Yeah, I knew we were in trouble

because they showed like one time you went, y'all went into one and you could see it sparking real bad on the right front. And I was like, yeah, we're probably... Yeah, it was bent down an inch and a half, and that's pretty bad. I mean, we run that thing right on the ground

when you bend it up or down. It's not going to be good. Any other racetrack, that would have probably, you know, relegated us to, you know, a finish of 20th or worst. But there were like five cars. Yeah, there were only like five cars left.

So anyways, we've got a reason we'll finish. I was disappointed when I got out of the car, and I felt like, You know, I feel like a lot of times that whatever I'm feeling, I can assume that our fans are feeling the same way. I was really pleasantly surprised, though, by everybody's comments and remarks about how they enjoy the race. I mean, we did run hard. We ran up front. We gave people some things to get excited about, which is all you can try to do.

I talk about it all the time. When we go to Daytona Talladega, those people show up, and they want to cheer. They want to cheer every single lap. They want something to get excited about, and that's the way I would be. You don't want to just cheer the finish. So I'm always trying to, like, get into the lead, because I know that they're like, you know. I will say there were some multiple occasions where the cheers this weekend were crazy loud. Yeah.

Like, I've never heard a crowd that loud on Saturday for qualifying. Yeah, that was great. And then whenever they saw that you made it through after spinning out, they were cheering. Yeah. And then under the last red flag, they were. weren't cheering for you. They were doing the wave pretty hardcore, and then they would cheer if it finally got from turn one all the one into the other. Yeah. So that was, that was great to see that support during the weekend and after the race. After the race,

seemed like everybody was happy and, you know, at this point, we didn't win, but it seemed like they enjoyed their weekend. Yeah. And enjoyed being at the racetrack. And that's it. I mean, that pretty much. So you're done for Talladega for? forever. I mean, it's hard to say. Okay. You know, it's hard to say. Never say never.

Never. Yeah, I mean, I've never, I'm not like through racing. Right. I'm just done full time. And if the only thing, you know, I'm not going to get in just any car. It's better be a damn good car. And if a good opportunity comes along, you never know who might need some help. Some driver might, might have an injury or something and needs somebody to fill in.

You never know when you might get that call and what that opportunity might be like. It'd have to be a Chevy. I have a contract with Chevy and I hope to continue to work with them beyond my racing career. So I couldn't go drive a Ford or a Toyota nor would I think I would want to. Wouldn't need to. A lot of variables there, but never say never. All right, we're going to get to our Ask Junior questions now. We're joined by Mike Davis.

What's up, guys? Moderate this for us. How are y'all doing? Doing awesome. Are you talking to me? the guys. I'm talking to our listeners. Even Garrett over there.

I mean, you know, we got police escorts today. Yeah, exactly. All right. Is there a reason why? Like, are you watching somebody specifically, Garrett? Are you just kind of observing? See, oh, he can't tell me. He can't tell me.

I feel safer. Usually I feel a little creeped out by Tyler, but now I don't. Usually? Yeah. Should be always. Always. All right, guys. We've got some good questions here.

Let's get right to it. Starting off, Savage Diver 31 says, what happened to the helmet cam? You wore it for practice but not the race. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, that's a good question. I wanted to wear the helmet cam for a couple reasons. So I wanted to wear it so I could know what wearing it's like.

So if we talk about it next year during the NBC broadcast, I could talk about it with some knowledge. And I thought that if I'm going to wear it, Tallade would be the best place to wear it. I mean, wouldn't you want to see everything that happened Sunday? that we went through via the helmet camp. So anyways, that was something I thought Junior Nation would like. I got this thing on, and I couldn't believe how much it blocked out.

Like, it was all down in my brow, man. It was, I couldn't see the mirror when we would go into the corner. So think about this. Now, when you go into the corner and the banking and that thing's down here on your brow, you can't see around the corner. So I had them I was like I drew all over it like I've cut this part off We're going to cut this part off

And so when they saw what all I wanted to cut on it They're like no no I don't want to We don't want to cut it You're not our guy This is a 3D printed piece and Dada da and I was like all right fine Someone else should run it I'm not going to run it

Because I need to be able to do what I want to do inside the car Do we know who wore it? Nobody wore it Sunday I'm Sadler's going to wear it for the Xfinity race in Kansas Yeah. So I think I should wear it at Martinsville, which is a flat track. You don't get into the banking and need to kind of look around, you know, look around the corner through the top of your helmet or through the top of the visor. You sure? I'm pretty sure because it's flat track.

It feels like even at a flat, small track, you still don't want it blocking your peripheral. Especially with cars. It ain't blocking your peripheral. It does not block the sides. Okay. It's just the top. But when you get in a banked racetrack, you kind of look out the top of the visor as you're going around the corner. You don't look to the left. The other guy said the same thing? I did not talk to anyone else about this.

I know there's a guy that handles the helmet cam, and he was a little too close to the window when he was getting out of the car. I was like, hey, man, you got to back up. They're like, oh, no, he's with the helmet cam. I'm like, oh, whatever. Poor guy. He don't have a helmet cam shirt. No. It just says NASCAR.

You thought somebody's getting their autograph. Yeah, it was in the window. My bad. Tyler came in. I want to wear it again. I think Martinsville will give it a shot if they'll let me do that. Okay. All right.

We have another one. I'm not sure how to pronounce it, but we'll ask their question. How come you refuse to hand over the flag you got for getting the pole over to Tyler? He looks sad. I told him I was. Oh, yeah. What's going on here? Well, nobody knew at this time, but my wife is in the bus, pregnant, and nobody knew it.

and she would have typically had been there. Anyways, he was like, hey, let me have that. I said, hell no, man, I'm taking this back to my wife. She's probably in tears right now, which she was. She was back at the motorhome crying her eyes out. Because it has this pregnancy, has, they're so emotional. You know, those pregnancy poles, man. Yes.

It's a whole new, it ratchet up the emotions. All the feels. Right. But so, are you going to tell the right? rest of the story? No. Oh. So he puts it in his pocket and I was like, okay, well, I was going to take that back for your archive so you'll have it someday. And he's like, no, I'm taking it back to Amy. And then we get out of the media center and he's like, I lost my flag. No. But so I got one and then I gave him the one that I got. Well, I mean, I, he thinks this is so great.

We're in Victory Lane and there's like literally 20 of these damn things floating around. I'm just like, I'm going to stick one in my pocket. It's a sea of flag. It's not like he has the only other flag left. But you have one. He's trying to pat himself on the back here. You have one now because I got one for you. Okay. The flag that makes your wife cry that you delivered back.

The flag didn't make her cry. Get the pole. I got it, but you were going to deliver a flag back to her, right? Yes. And that was going to be a moment. And you lost it. It fell out of my damn pocket, dude. And then I came through and gave you one.

It wasn't like I gave it away. Most people say thank you, right, Tyler? Yeah. I thought this was his opportunity to say thank you. I did thank him. Oh, he thanked you. I don't remember. Of course you don't.

Now, that makes sense. Now it's all becoming clear to me. Yes, right. But that's what happened. That is a good story. That is what happened. That was not sad. How did I Melda 88 know about this?

Did you guys take this to social media? No, I don't know. They said Tyler looks sad. Maybe she was there. When he went to get the flag and I was like, no. You know, they're seeing all this body language come across the TV. So this was on TV.

I guess. Oh, people were shaking their heads. This was a moment caught on camera. Yes. And he looked. This is the story of me and Dale. Right. Me trying to be nice.

I hate I missed that. Well, good stuff. All right. Never again. Never again. WC-L-E-W-17 asked, since you got your dad's old car this weekend, which one of your old cars from your career would you like to have for your personal

collection? Oh, that's a good one. Which one of my cars? Which one of your cars like for your personal collection? So I don't know. I mean, my mind goes right to the ones that I know exist. The late model that I won my first win in in 1994 is over at DEI restored. I wouldn't mind having that.

The street stocked at me and Kelly and Kerry raced is somewhere on the property over at DEI, probably outside of one of the sheds. Last time I seen a picture of it, wouldn't mind having that. The cars that me and dad raced in Japan in 1999. 1999? The winner of 98.

Is it 98? Yeah, okay. Those cars are at DEI. Wouldn't mind have in mine, at least. There's probably, there's an Xfinity car, the A.C. Delco car. There's one of them over there.

I mean, there's a lot of good stuff over at the, just sitting. Just hanging out. Just hanging out. That's all we'll say about that. SLG 714 asks, how much family and friends are you bringing to Homestead? I'm glad they're asking this because I've been meaning to find this out from you myself

for our own reasons. Will your mom and mamma be there? Who are you planning on bringing to Homestead? I definitely want Mom to be there. That's another one of those, what would you bring on an island question? If Homestead was your island and you were stranded at Homestead for the weekend,

what are you bringing? I want a lot of people there, actually. So it's kind of like, hey, this reminds me of me and Amy talking when we were getting married, do you want to have a big wedding or a little wedding? And you kind of went through the pros and cons of both. Well, I want everybody to be at this last race

that can be there, you know? And I know that's not logistically possible because we've got to find ways to get them there. Right. We've got to find airplanes with a lot of seats. And I know that I know some people that got those. How much is that going to cost? Right.

You know, so it comes down to logistics and affordability. I've heard you've already invited people, friends. I'm curious if you remembered that. No. Yeah. Because I remember hearing that it was over beers. So that's why I'm like, I wonder if he remembers that. When I'm drinking, I invite people everywhere.

That's right. You should be there. Right. This is how most of the guests that I have end up coming to races. Right. Right. Because, hey, you need to be at X. Where do you live?

Come to that race. And it, you know, that's how those happen. That's how the dangerous summer guys ended up at Talladega over beers in Pittsburgh. How many was that, by the way? Eight. Eight people, yeah. Eight total people. And they were awesome.

They had a blast. Yeah. They did? Yes. They had a freaking blast. We went and saw them. They were in a campground. We went to the infield and set in a bus for a while with them, and then they came out on the road.

I think I saw a picture of you guys in a bus, and it didn't look like you. Their bus that they were in was Paul and McCartney's old bus. Oh, was it your old one? No. Oh, I thought it was your old. So Paul McCartney's old bus. Yeah. Well, that didn't suck.

Which they, that was like an extra bonus. They're magicians, right? So they're at the racetrack having a great damn time. They're magicians. Magicians. It sounded like he said magician. That's a tough word to say. All right.

So they're in Paul McCartney's bus. That's a thing for them, right? Yes. A thing for anybody, if you ask me, right? Especially musicians. Magicians love Paul McCartney buses. Pilkington, North Carolina. I'm sorry, Pilkington, NC.

I don't want to just assume that means North Carolina. Could mean something else. Do drivers study film before or after race is at certain tracks similar to other sports like in football? I'll tell you who I know does, and that's the crew chiefs. The crew chiefs watch every race. So if we run Talladega, Greg probably watched the last two or three Talladega races during the week

to understand all the variety of strategies that played out and what teams may have done to take advantage of those opportunities and those pit strategies. So the teams, the crew chiefs, are watching races all week long. I'm sure some drivers do too. Do you think the film that they would have watched of past races doesn't help as much this year because of the stage racing because the way like the strategies play out.

Yeah, because the way the race plays. Yeah. Yeah. Scott Campo one asked, have you been contacted yet to add, speaking of the wrecks of Talladega, have you been contacted yet to add to your race car graveyard collections since so many cars wrecked on Sunday?

No one has called. Yeah, we get that a lot. No one just calls up, right? Yeah. They call you? Yeah. They'll text me. I'm sorry.

Usually it's somebody that, usually it's a guy that I've either worked with before that's on a team and he'll go hey y'all want this car and it takes a couple weeks it doesn't happen right after the race the car comes back to the shop eventually they end up taking their time stripping this car down it's a wreck so it's not something they have to get to immediately uh maybe a two weeks later the car finally gets stripped down and nothing they get whatever they can use off of it and then it easier that's when that conversation comes up internally with that team they'll you know they're like hey got it which you called jail and see if he wants it

John Kinsley asked, have you given Amy any advice? I'm sorry. Have you given Amy any advice on pacing the field at Martinsville Speedway? No. No, I haven't. I think that I'm sure that the pace car, they have a different pace car driver every week. And they have this protocol that they go through where they take that person and they practice with them. And they tell them all these things either Sunday early in the morning, which I don't know if she knows all.

all that that goes into it. But she has a little job that morning. That could be another one of those pregnancy, emotional moments. Yeah. Wait, when she finds out she has to go to this extra meeting or? Yeah. So they'll take her and show her what's going on, what's happening. They'll probably even actually run through a drive run through it.

I think she's probably got to wear like a headset and everything. Oh, yeah. There's a lot more to it than she thinks. It's not just driving. Not just hop, not just show up, hop in and go. That's interesting. I haven't brought this up yet to her. When are you going to do that?

I'm not. Probably do it that Friday. You ought to just take a picture of a headset on a table. Instagram that out, copy her on it, and you can kind of reveal to her what it's all in terms. What it entails to be a pace car driver the same way you know. I don't even know, so I'm just going to watch it all happen. Yeah, play dumb to it.

Like, wow, that sucks. I wouldn't have agreed to that. Everything sounds like a great idea to you. got to jump on top, you know, get up and do it. I think she's going to have fun with it. I know she will. I think they let cameras in there? I mean, like, can we document that?

They'll be, uh, can I say Dustin to Martinsville? Yes, they have go pros and stuff inside the pace cars. Yeah, because it becomes part of the, uh, it's part of the broadcast. Like, they'll be, they'll show her in the car. I got to work on that. Yeah, next weekend. Yeah. Maybe we have Amy on.

Like, what's the plan for? for the podcast next week. We don't have the plan. Okay. Maybe we get Amy on to talk about... He gives us a lot of credit. Yeah, yeah, I do. I assume you'll think about this kind of thing.

Maybe we have Amy on to talk about her experience. Let's do it. Yeah. Oh, no, that'll have to be the weekend after Martinsville. Yeah. Which I think she'll be, she might be co-hosting that week because you'll be out of town, so... Okay, perfect. So you have plenty of opportunity to talk about.

That's right. Jason Hodges, has your downtime at the track when you're not practicing, qualifying, or racing changed over the course of your career. If so, how? Yes, drastically, actually. When I first started racing up until probably around 2006, I played, I was just a video game junkie. And so I was playing between practice and qualifying and after qualifying, I mean, every minute of the day, all up until, you know, the wee hours of the morning, I'd be in there

playing video games and then get up in the morning and practice only about four hours of sleep and pretty much didn't leave the bus. Now, you know, we go ride the bike or hang around in the holler all day. If I'm not riding the bike, I typically sit in the holler and just listen, talk to the guys and jibber jabber, bug everybody. But I don't even know if we got Xbox on the bus anymore, but it hadn't been much of a gamer these days. We played a lot.

Lots of video games. I remember once. Tyler, you would have loved it at this time, actually. This would have been your time. This would have been perfect for your era because I wasn't much of a gamer, but it would be on weekends, especially when that game Fight Night came out. Oh, God. Remember that?

Yeah. I remember us, I think it was at Talladega or Atlanta or something. We were on Pit Road qualifying, and you and I were comparing our blisters on our thumbs because we had been playing that game so much that weekend that we literally, you could see it on our thumbs. It required a lot of, you know, action, a lot of thumb action. Fight night, you know, it was great. Oh, it was a great game, yeah. Fight night too, I think it was. That's right. That's right. Arturo Gotti was. He was. I was always Arturo. That's right. If he didn't, if I didn't get bloody and they

didn't call the fight over cuts. I was usually the win, knocked Mike out. What, not? Yeah, no, I don't, I don't really remember that. But, you know, I'll take your word for it. Hippy Chick, oh, this is the last one that we got. Hippie Chick 0881 asked, are the URIs still involved in NASCAR?

If so, what are they doing nowadays? Yeah, the URIs are, the URIs have went back to the roots. They are part of a company called Fury cars. Fury race cars. So they build super late models and modified chassis. And they have a couple house cars that run the super late model races around here. The cars tour and so forth. They'll be at the Snowball Derby.

And they could have up as many as four cars, I guess, competing in that race. Tony Jr. and Tony Senior are sort of the leaders or the head of the company. They won the Snowball Derby last year with Christian Eckys. and you may find some pictures of Tony Sr. jumping around on Pitt Road after that win, like a little kid. But they're having a lot of fun. I saw Tony Sr. at Charlotte Bird Speedway. He came out to accept the Smokey Unic Award of Excellence, very deserving.

And we got to chat a little bit about what's going on in our lives, and it's a lot of fun. He says him and Tony Jr. having a blast. They're working just as hard as ever. I asked him if he's having much time to golf or anything. He said, nope. Always it's shop. They work a lot.

If you thought they worked before. I promise them I would get over and see them for lunch. There's shops over there on 150, exit 36 off of 77. You go into that motorsports complex by the Chick-fil-A. They're back in there. Okay, where Ganesi used to be. They're back in there. That's where they are.

All right. That's cool. Yeah, it's good that you got to see pops. I was really glad to hear that he was being recognized. I know it. I know it. Given his life. He's been in racing.

You know something called the smoke of social media account on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. It brings you insiders info all weekend long on the A8P. I was back at the racetrack. I was glad that you guys got to run into each other. I know if Kozlowski got to see him a little bit. I know that between Brad Kozlowski and Dale Jr., you're talking about two guys that just mean a whole lot to Tony Sr. So that was neat.

I was happy to see that. Yep. All right. That's a good question. Good questions. I appreciate it. Did you pick those out, Mike? No, Tyler did.

and Tyler, and we should thank him for it. Thank you, Tyler. Thanks, Tyler. That's a good question. Really appreciate you. Thank you for the opportunity to pick these good questions. Thank you for the people who send in the good questions. Looking ahead, Tuesday, today.

We got a freight line or appearance. What we doing? They're having a meeting with like 90 of their litigators, and you're going to go there and do a little Q&A and some autographs photos. Gotcha. That's right after our debrief with the team over at HMS. Yes. And you're also doing Coach Kay's radio show here in about an hour. Oh, okay.

So that'll be fun. Yeah. We're doing NASCAR American on NBC today at 5 p.m. Yep, that'll be on NBC Sports Network. You're on there the whole hour. Really? The whole hour. Whoa.

Whoa. That was a loud, whoa. Well, I thought it was an interview. It is, an hour-long one. An hour-long interview? What's five segments? Yeah. What, damn?

What are the questions? What are we going to talk about? Check your email. Check your email. Holy cow. They're going to talk about your family. family, the Talladega race, and inevitably talk about your baby news. Five segments.

Talk about the current state of the sport. Okay. They'll do some fan questions of their own. And then I forgot what the other segment is. Oh, the other one is about the fans, obviously. Awesome. Appreciation tour. Yeah.

Okay. Lots to do there. That sounds fun. What? I didn't know it was so robust. I didn't either. But that sounds fun. I feel

No, it's not like they're not singling you out. They've had a driver on every Tuesday or Wednesday throughout the second half of the year. And so this is just your week. I was unaware. Yeah. Very cool.

It's in your emails. I know. I've got some, you know. He's had a baby announcement. Come on. Give him a break. He doesn't know what that's like, man. I haven't got there yet.

So anyhow, that's Tuesday. Wednesday. We got a Mountain Dew appearance in Michigan. What's going on there? It's, top 40 customers of retail and grocery stores and whatnot in the Michigan or the state of Walmart. Usually our Mountain Dew appearances are at Walmart.

Yeah, this is like a private event for about 50 folks. Thursday, we got a DIY project. Yeah, you're going back to it. We're firing the show back up. This is the house we're remodeling down in the Keys. We've sort of been on hold for a while as the Keys sort of get themselves back on their feet. after a hurricane. And so yeah, it's time to get back to work.

Can't wait to get down there and see everybody, see the whole community. Friday, we have practice and qualifying. Qualifying is at 6.15 p.m. on Easter time, which is what? 515. 515 there. And that's on the NBC Sports Network as well. We've got two practices Saturday. The Xfinity race is at 3 p.m. on NBC, the big show, Xfinity Race.

on NBC, that's a big deal. Yes, it's the first race of the second round. Yeah. On NBC, though, it's on the big channel. Yes. Yeah, Xfinity's on the big channel. Cup is on sports network.

But that's really, really good for... The Xfinity series. Yes. The numbers that we get from that are significantly better. Sunday, we have the Chevy stage Q&A appearance at 1110 a.m. outside the main grandstands.

We did that last week, or this past week at Talladega. And then the race, is at 3 p.m. Eastern. So it'll be 2 o'clock there. 2 o'clock there. And that's on the NBC Sports Network. And you ran good there in the spring.

I like Kansas. Kansas is a track where one of the tracks on the schedule that where you can get up against the wall. That's where I like to run in the corners. And so it has multiple grooves. So much fun. And such great barbecue. Yes, that's right.

So Amy's not going to make the trip. TJ's going to stay on the bus. And me and him are going to get some barbecue. Which one do you go to? Oklahoma Joe's is the first one we went to. Jack Stacks. Yeah, I like Jack Stacks. Yeah.

Oklahoma Joe's is just Joe's now. That's right. Which was weird because I don't know how long it's been. Right. Oklahoma Jews. So I don't, yeah, why did they have to drop Oklahoma? Because there was a Joe in Oklahoma. It probably got offended.

It probably had an auto parts store or something. Oh. that was named Oklahoma Jones and tried to sue them. No competition whatsoever. Yeah. What do you get when you go? It depends on how hungry.

They have this one deal where it's got like burnt ends and just a mix of everything. The brisket's awesome. Yeah. I like the burn ends and the sausage. Yeah. That's what I get. I remember one year we went there and just, it's like a $45 deal and they just give you everything. Yeah.

It's amazing. Yeah. What do you get? Get on your sides. I get baked beans and slough. Bake beans. I probably just get fries. I don't end up eating the sides because I...

Yeah. Focus more on the other stuff. But golly. Now I'm hungry. All right. I'm sure everybody listening is. Yes. If you ever go to Kansas,

hit up the barbecue joints. Very cool. All right. Enjoyed the show. Thanks for listening. See y'all next week. 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 DirtyMoe Radio.