The Dale Jr. Download - 213 - Fist Bumps and Fisticuffs

Episode Date: April 10, 2018

On this episode Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the guys fire away at faulty pit guns, share their favorite childhood toys, talk short track brawls and racetrack disguises. 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.

Hey guys, it's Dellen Hart Jr. back again for another episode of the Dill Jr. Down low. The Download. Now go with that. All right, the Dill Jr. Down low. We got some down, we got some, we got some secrets to tell it today. Yeah. Dirty Mo Media. We're in Exalted Studios with Mike Davis, Matthew Dillner, the producer. We got a lot of content. Good content today. Yeah, listen, I mean, for the first time since joining NBC, you simulated a race broadcast on Sunday. I'm curious to hear how you think you did. Also, Amy had her first baby shower over the weekend.

All the gifts you received, I bet there's one that you have no idea what it is or how it works. But I will ask you that. Plus, we've got a fan submitted questions or many fan submitted questions. One of them is, have you ever disguised yourself in public places? I think it's possible that you have. We'll download it. All right. We'll download.

Let's download. Let's do the Dale Jr. download. Pat, check. Microphone. Check. It's time. Amy, stay inside for the best. Here we go.

Three paces. One. Two. Three. The Dale Jr. download starts now. I see what we have going on here. It's a Texas theme. And we did have some Texas-themed stuff going on in this race on Sunday.

He had jammed guns. You had some hurt feelings, some strong words. Even had the government making an air. The sheriff. The sheriff, NASCAR made an error. They fessed up to it. And there's pitoons. The town's people were up in arms.

They were upset. Oh, man. But, man, Texas race. I don't even know where to start with that. What was the bigger story? Was it the pig guns or was it Sheriff NASCAR? Fessing up to their errors. I don't know.

You know, I think the big story is, something I'm trying to get to the bottom of, the Wives Show for CNT. That's the big story. Is this one that your attention right now? The Wives Show for CMT, all right, has apparently it's good to go, green lit, but one of them,

one of the wives and a wife and husband, had to back out because of a sponsor, stepped in and said, you can't do the show. Really? There's a little speculation on social media about which couple that was, man. That's a big deal.

What was the speculation? Well, I don't, I mean, nobody knows. I think it's Denny. So I'll be interested to find out because I know they were supposed to be in the show, I thought. If Denny's not in the show, man, I'm really changing my perspective on optimism of the show and being excited about it goes down.

So Denny has to be in the show. I bet even though it's about, NASCAR wives and girls and girlfriends? You want NASCAR. The drivers are going to be in this show. You know, you're going to see some Austin Dylan, Kyle Busch. You know, it's good for everybody. And if Denny's not in it, man, it's just not quite as exciting.

You know why I think you might be right? And I have no idea, by the way. I have no insight into this. And the fact that Del Jr. is, this is what's on the top of his mind right now as we come into the Del Jr. Down low. Now I know why he calls it the Dell Jr. download now. He's trying to get the down low on this.

Trying to get a scoop. On this wife show. But if there is a sponsor that's stepping in saying, no, I mean, Denny is one of the few, if not the only one, that has that season-long sponsor, right? I mean, like FedEx sponsors the entire year. I would say that that might lend to them having some influence over what their driver does because they have the most sweat equity in their driver.

Does that make sense? No, I don't know. That could be way off there. The rumor is that several sponsors press their driver. drivers to not be involved. Some said, hey, we're doing it. Really? Yeah.

And some. All right, let me think what I feel about this. Maybe one said, hey, you know, we want me and my wife, we want to do this, we're doing it. And then one said, yeah, maybe we won't. I could see Denny not wanting to do it personally. Maybe. Yeah. Well, that's a shame.

I was excited. A little less excited about the show, but it's still probably going to watch it. If this is the case. You got to watch the first couple. I mean, you're going to watch the first couple episodes, right, Mike? Even you. I would watch it, yeah. Everybody's going to watch it.

I would watch it. But you know what, though? I would want Denny in it. I do not want to watch an Austin Dillon-Call-Bush heavy show, right? Like, I'm less interested. No offense to them. I'm less interested in their significant others. Yeah, their personal lives.

I am. I am. They're maybe not as much polarizing figure in this sport right now, but this might make them that. I think that you're going to, I think that you might be just a little surprised by Austin Dillon and his. Is it Whitney? Yeah, Whitney. They're a lot of fun to follow on social media.

They're a riot, you know. And neither one's really scared to sort of show them their true self, you know. So it's going to be, that part's going to be pretty fun. He followed Whitney on her Instagram, hilarious stuff. What if it's Austin Dillon that's getting the sponsor slap on the hand? I'll be happy Denny's in the show. then. Yeah, so you want Denny or Austin Dillon.

You'd be okay with either one of them. Well, those two, I think. But without both of them. Well, it starts to go downhill. Oh, yeah, without, but without. So I think Danny brings a lot to the table. I think Austin brings a lot to the table for a show like that. It's something up in the air whether Samantha and Kyle will be, you know, exciting on, in a show context like that.

I think so. I think Samantha's pretty entertaining and she engages on social media. She, you know. Since you seem to have your hand on the pulse of this show, is there the executive producer? Is there any non-drivers that have their wives or girlfriends? Non-drivers? Former drivers.

I mean, are they all current drivers in their? I really don't know the real details of who's in and who's not. You're not trying to get him on there, are you? Well, I'm just simply asking because, I mean, he's so into this show or the prospect of this show. Well, all right. But I don't think he would ever want Amy on. it. Or I don't think gaming would ever do it. No, we're like fans

of shows like this. We don't want to partake in these shows. We want to be watching them. Well, you want to partake. You don't want to participate. Especially, get this, man. Imagine a reunion show where they're all in the same room, you know, like the housewives do. They get them, they have

these reunions and they're so good they have like a part two of these reunions. You know, it's not just one reunion. There's a part two. They're so good. So you're like, is this like real world like at the end of the In the end of the season. They put everybody in the same room and it's no holds barred. It's like a cage match.

They discuss all of the episodes and all the fights and squabbles. And everybody in the same room, you can't go nowhere. It's great. So imagine that with this show. Okay. It might be real PG. I don't think they're going to be going at each other and arguing and carrying on like the housewives do on Bravo.

I don't think that's going to happen. Listen, though, you just brought up something, though. If sponsors are really starting to influence these people, there's a good prospect. This show never happens. And you are going to be pretty upset about it, it appears. Nobody's really making any comment, but some well-placed executives have said in recent days

that it's going to be greenlit. What are you reading? I'm reading Twitter. Of course. So I'm Adam Stern, man. I mean, he knows this stuff. Okay, sports business journal. Yeah, he knows stuff.

But I've seen that there's been rumors of this type of show happening again. But this type of show has happened. Yeah, the MBS 24-7. Well, Kyle and Samantha did a show like this for a while. Actually, Harvick and Delana did a show like this at one point, similar to this, where it was a look into their home life. Dale, you were on that show. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. It's like Kevin and Delaney's show. No, no, it was that NASCAR driver's 360. Yeah. And that was after the MBS 24-7. Well. Yeah, the NBS 24-5.

Yeah. This isn't new territory. with the current success of the Bravo stuff, this is really intriguing to me. I think it'll work now. Yeah. If they're willing to go off the rails, yeah. If the wives and the husbands are willing for that circus to happen.

Otherwise, it's not going to make it past the first season. Let me ask you guys, I'm going to assume that there's some legitimacy to this Twitter sourcing that Dale Jr. is bringing up on the show. And this is, by the way, your recap of Texas. so everyone's clear. If sponsors really do influence the drivers on whether they can participate or not, do you see that as potentially an overstepping of sponsor influence?

And especially when our sport is in a situation where we got to generate. God, yeah, this stuff is going to be great. This stuff will be, I was going to agree with you, this will be good content. Today's audience is going to like this. I'm not saying the constant, I'm not saying the major narrative of critiquing NASCAR is that it's over corporate, but some of it is. I mean, some people say that, that it's just kind of turned to corporate America and everything. I mean, we've seen that.

If Powell Bush does something bad and then, you know, a sponsor, a few years ago, you know, there was a little sponsor backlash. I guess it was the Hornaday deal or whatnot. You know, we see before where sponsors kind of give a little backlash. That's a sensitive deal. And I think that's what you're getting at, right? Yeah. That's true.

But we've also seen the sponsors sort of dial back their dollars. We will, and maybe we're not there yet, we will get to a point to where the leverage goes away from the sponsor and back into the hands of the owners and the drivers where they have a little bit more say in exactly what they can get their cells involved. This is what I used to love about Budweiser. I'll just say that. Budweiser would just flock to opportunities like this, right? Because people drink beer. Yeah, Budweiser would love it.

Oh, they would have just been all over it, right? Anyways, I'll say that. So some sponsors may be excited about this. I think this is a good time to move on to our review of the Texas race. Listen, let's start that, let's start doing that by talking about what we did yesterday, which was really, really exciting. People ask me all the time, like, how do we, how are you going to prepare for this new job, this new opportunity broadcasting?

What do you do? You know, just jump right in there in the booth in July in Chicago. Like, how is it practicing or what? So there is practicing. What we did this past Sunday for the Texas race was we went over to the Hall of Fame. We got into the MRN or the radio booths there that the Hall of Fame has. and we simulated a broadcast of the Texas race, and using the feed from Fox, we simulated this broadcast.

We obviously can't control what's on the TV. We can't say to the producer, hey, man, go watch this battle, change what we're looking at, but we can, you know, we can kind of do some mock broadcasting, and it was a lot of fun. What we were doing was we had two booths. I was in one with Steve LaTart, Jeff Burton, and Rick Allen were in the other booth. Rick is going to be the play-by-play. He's going to say, hey, there's a green flag. Here they go. All those good things. And then they sort of hand the baton around. They might pass it

to me and Steve, and me and Steve just sit there and talk a little bit about what we were seeing. It was so much fun. And I've been in the booth before and had a lot of fun when I was doing that in 2016 when I got to go into the NBC booth a couple times that year. And I was a little, you know, I was anticipating and anxious to get started, preparing for this job. Well, that was the first real opportunity to get in there and get a sense of what that's going to feel like. I swear it's the most fun you can have wearing a sports coat. Honest to God. We had a great race, which I thought Texas was a great race.

So that helps. But even when maybe the cars got strung out and it wasn't quite as exciting for a lot of fans, I still enjoyed what I was seeing and calling that action and trying to figure out what was going on on the racetrack. I don't know how to explain how much fun I had doing that. I don't know how to tell you guys why it's fun because broadcasting don't sound fun, don't look fun. You know what I mean?

If you were thinking about doing it as a job, does it look exciting? Does it really, you know... I mean, not as it. Like, for me, it looked exciting, dude, because that's why I'm in it. But for you coming from the seat, there's nothing. the more exciting you could do with your clothes on than drive a race car. I've always said that. Wait, wait, wait, were your clothes on?

Yeah. Okay. So I just, I really enjoyed it. I'm going to have so much fun in this opportunity. It was another affirmation of that. I'm making a great choice by going into this, taking this opportunity to get into broadcasting. So we sit there and watched that race. I thought it was a great race.

You saw the tire problems. That's concerning, obviously. There's a lot of variables at play there. create that situation. They softened up to left side tire. That creates a little more speed. That puts a little more stress on the right side tires. They're going to go through the corner a little faster.

It was very chilly for this particular race. That's also going to bring the speeds up. So there was a lot of things that sort of played into creating those tire issues. I think if you had a 90-degree afternoon, you might not have seen the same time. type of situation as often. I'm sure you still would have had maybe a failure or two. We've failed tires at Texas with the same situation where the tire kind of unwinds and eventually pops.

You could see this tire in a lot of these replays unwrap. Like literally the tire is unwrapping, the tread's unwrapping off of the tire before the tire pops. So it's kind of like a sweater. Once you pull that thread, it just all comes unraveled. That's kind of what the tire is doing. and it starts at the inside shoulder or the outside shoulder. It starts on one of the shoulders, and it starts to unwrap all the way across the tire,

and eventually gets to the, you know, gets to the fabric and pops pretty quickly. But I've had that happen to a lot of racetracks. We had it happen at Kansas. We had it happen in Kansas leading the race running about 70 percent, not even running that hard. In the lead. In the lead, yeah. We had it happen at, I jumped out of the bottom groove and went to the high side

and was making a lot of good time early in a race at Texas. just getting up out of that groove into that green racetrack really beats that tire up and unwound the tire there early in a race at Texas one year. You know, I think it's just, I don't know that they're definitely probably going to go back and test and try to figure out a better situation. They're going to try to, you know, make sure they don't have that happen again. I know Goodyear's not very excited about what they saw and neither are the drivers. But I don't think it's a situation where we needed to panic. Aside from those nasty, nasty hits that those drivers took. Oh, true.

Really? Yeah. Oh, man. Honestly, the angle that Larson hit was the one that concerned me the most. The one that made me cringe the worst was probably Newman's. And talking to Newman, he said it busted the mirror. Really? Yeah.

Like when you shatter the mirror, that's a pretty profound, you know. What was the one with the in-car? Was it Turexas that had the in-car where you could see the impact? And it's like, man, I mean, you, you know, as a race car driver, you look at that and you just know how much that hurts. Yeah. Those guys hit a ton, and we're hoping those guys are feeling pretty good today. I've had a few text messages with a couple of them, but you hate to see that. But it was otherwise outside of that, I mean, I thought the race was really exciting. We had a lot of crashes, man.

Those cars were really on edge all day. Restarts were wild. Yes, they were. Broke my heart to see 88 spin out early and not getting an opportunity to see what kind of race he could have had. But that sort of set the tone for what the day was going to be like for a lot of these. guys on the restarts. Everybody was getting loose on the bottom, you know, chasing their cars up into traffic on these restarts in turn one and two and turn three and four. Couldn't believe how slick the track was. It needs to be challenging. I know that, you know, the drivers aren't going to come

home and complain, man, you know, the cars are too hard to drive. They want them hard to drive. You always did. I think all the drivers do. Because what a drive, why drivers want the car as impossible to drive is because they feel like each, every one of them feels like they're the best driver. and that if you make the car hard to drive, they're going to win the race. You know, because nobody else is going to be able to handle it, and they will. So the drivers are never going to complain about the cars being out of the racetrack

or being, you know, they're going to complain to their crew chief to make it better so I can be the best one. But they're never going to complain about the cars being that, you know, track being that slick cars being that touchy. It makes for really great, great racing and awesome excitement on the restarts. Kevin Harvick had an unbelievably fast race car, had a lot of problems on pit road, a lot of their own, a lot of problems that they created themselves,

some problems that they feel like that the guns created, a lot of back and forth with that. That's going to be interesting to see how the gun situation plays out through the year. They're really pushing back hard on NASCAR now. You've got a lot of crew chiefs chiming in. A lot of people, this ain't one or two guys, and it ain't one or two different guys each week. It's the same people pushing hard on NASCAR.

I think that will be effective. Will it be effective now that it's Coach Gibbs, because that's the first time I've heard him really say something as profound as that. Coach Gibbs doesn't, he doesn't really make anything up. And when he talks, I think it's important to listen because he doesn't say much very often. He doesn't really weigh into these type of situations that much unless he's serious about it. Gibbs spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop one of the best guns that we've ever had in NASCAR. They had a clear advantage over all the teams with the type of gun that they had built.

Congratulations to them because they put the effort and the money into it. This is really difficult for them. Imagine if you were part of that company. It's really difficult for you to say, hey, now I've got to use this common gun. That's not something I trust. It's obviously not performing well enough for me to trust it. And I've spent all this money that's really all for nothing. And we've got all these awesome amazing guns up in the storage unit that we can't use.

And I've got to take this gun that I don't trust and don't believe in and don't know whether it's going to work or not each week to the racetrack. So that's got to be difficult for them. But this push that they're, you know, this push toward, towards getting NASCAR to make some changes or take, you know, I know, I know, we're hearing the comments from from NASCAR today about how they're reviewing all those instances. And they're trying to make sure that, you know, with the manufacturer that they're understanding these failures, understanding these issues and they're making the adjustments to try to fix it and alleviate these problems. They don't want to have these problems.

NASCAR knows it's not a great look. So I know NASCAR's going to do everything they can, but this push from Harvick from the crew chiefs, not just Harvick's crew chief. We're talking about a lot of crew chiefs pushing back. This kind of push is really going to, I think, be effective and get NASCAR to move fast. What was your thoughts on this, though?

I'm going to get in particular. I don't know what Joe Gibbs said, but I know what Kevin Harvick said. And I will summarize because he had a lot to say about it. But he said the pathetic part about the whole thing is the pit guns. The pit guns have been absolutely horrible all years. year. Our guys do a great job on pit road. And the pathetic part about it is the fact you get handed

something that doesn't work correctly. And those guys are just doing everything they can to try to make it right. It's embarrassing for the sport. And then Cole Pern, Martin Trix, Jr.'s crew chief, tweeted, and he said, he's right, but his team voted for it. NASCAR just gave the RTA what they asked for. What is your reaction to that? Yeah, I mean, I think that the teams did want this. The teams do want this. You know, there was a, I think everybody, wants these guns to work, you know, because what we had before was a superior gun over here that spent, you know, that costs near a million dollars to develop. Teams trying to find funding just to be able to get to the racetrack, much less develop

a freaking gun that's going to give them a second advantage on pit road or half a second advantage consistently. The teams wanted to take the advantage away from the tools. That's what I meant. Yes. And put the advantage back into the. the pit crew. That's right.

Take it out of the equipment and put it back into the actual people. What we need is we need conversation about who the best tire changer is. Who's the best carrier? Who's the best jackman? Because that used to be the talk.

Yep. That used to be very important. You would celebrate individuals. You would celebrate the crews as a unit. We even had awards for those guys. We had an all-pro pit crew. We had a second team, a third team. we bragged about the Wood Brothers for years being innovators of the pit stop.

You need to be celebrating individuals and groups and teams like that for their ability. And so trying to make a common pit run, I think is in everybody's best interest. Everybody wants that. NASCAR wants it, but they've got to figure out why these issues are happening and get it to where it's much more dependable. It'd be like NASCAR assigning a spec motor for the truck series, and four or five of them blowing up every race. They cannot have this happening, and I know NASCAR is going to... Maybe they're, you know, hindsight is 2020,

but maybe we should have tested them a little bit more before we started. That's a tough call to even say sitting on this couch here. I know. One of the things that NASCAR does often, and this is a real smart play, is that they introduce this at the lower levels, at the truck series or Xfinity series. Usually when they want to try something different, whether it's an equipment or platform or format or what have you,

They introduce it at a lower level to sort of test, run, you know, test it out. And maybe that would have been, you know, hindsight is 2020. But, you know, everybody's going to stay on top of this. Yeah. It's, it's, this is a lot of noise going on this week about it. People are upset, wanting things to get better. I don't think, you know, I hope they don't, you know, panic and go, go back to, allowing teams to develop and, and create these guns.

I think trying to get a common gun for everybody uses and, you know, the- You still think that's the best option. I do. Okay. You know, because I, only. Now, only because I want to know who the best tire changer is, and I want to know who has the best guys over the wall. Right.

This is a perfect segue. I mean, you know, the best guys need a fist bump, don't they? You know, all the talk yesterday, there was so much dang chatter about this fist bump. Oh, yeah. I don't get what the big deal is. What's your take on it, dude? Well, we got to say exactly what happened here. I mean, like, NASCAR failed to not penalize Kevin Harvick's team

for a uncontrolled tire, right? Yeah, I don't think they're related to issues. They're not related, but I'm saying, but the reason the fist bump is the controversy is because they didn't get penalized for something they should have. NASCAR came out and admitted it. They made an error in that.

And then this gift or this photo or whatever it is. Basically, the network cut to the pit stall of the four car and there is a video, there you are watching the official and the team have a powwow. It isn't a good look. I mean, regardless, And I think the blame really lays on the official in that situation. You can't have referees, high-fiving coaches on the sideline.

You know, they can't, because he pulled a flag off the field, you know, if they overturn a penalty or something, you can't have them. Thank you, man. You know, high-fiving, patting each other on the back. And the responsibility of being professional in that situation is weighs heavier on the official than it does. Harvard, you know, KHIs manager or the car chief or the car chief for anybody else. It's in that situation.

And by the way, those conversations happen a lot during a race between the officials that are on pit road. If I was an official and the teams. If I was, it does. It happens often. It's where it's because of the culture in our sport has been the same. We are a traveling family, a big family. That's what happens. Yeah.

That's the difference between the referee. That's the difference between the referees and football teams and that kind of thing. I will say, I agree. But at the same time, if I'm an NASCAR official and a guy from another team, puts his fist out to fist bump me, I'm going to feel weird about that. Okay, yeah. I'm going to go, especially in the middle of competition. Now, if it's Saturday walking around the garage and he's like, hey, man, good job,

you're all, you know, you all had a kid, whatever. That's different. Or after the race there when Andy fist bumped him. Yeah. It's a, it's, you know, it's, you know. You are a fraternity. It's something to be cognizant of if you're a NASCAR official. It is.

And I think that this probably was the awakening that they wish they didn't have, but probably it was, it was going to happen eventually. I'll say this. I mean, I understand why it happened, how it happens, because it's the culture and our sport. I don't think you should do that going forward. Maybe the next time, don't offer up that opportunity or to be in that situation.

I thought it was silly. Hey, I think we're in a fish bowl, man. I mean, you got a good point. I get it. But, you know, growing up and racing and stuff, too, and you know this. You have relationships with guys and stuff, and it's a little different because you're in the car, I understand.

I know, but in that situation where in that particular situation, is why it bothered people because they had just not called a penalty on them, which a day later, they're saying, hey, we should have penalized them. And there you have video of a fist bump going on and patting each on the back. It just looks bad. It looks bad. People looked at it like the Patriots when, you know, that referee, you know, there was that gift going around with the referee, patting the guy on the back and smiling with whatever. Right.

It's just not a good look. There's nothing to it. Yeah. No. You know, NASCAR's not playing. People have said for years it drives me crazy. NASCAR's got their favorites. This is not true.

NASCAR busts everybody's ass the same. They might miss a lot of calls, and they explained this morning how they can't catch every call on Pitt Road. They owned it, which is awesome. Yeah, that's fine. That's what they got to do. But they can't catch every call on pit road. And so that was just a really terrible scenario.

But the responsibility, you know, you've got your responsibilities to the official. He's an official. Act like an official. It's a non-story. The bigger story was the fact that NASCAR. came out and admitted they made a mistake, which I am like you. I thought that was commendable because there were other times when I thought they had those opportunities and they didn't.

And I thought that was pretty cool. All right. Let's do an Exaltor Race Center update. What do you say? This is the Exaltor Race Center update. I'm Natalie Safer. Both Cup and Exfinity competed at Texas Motor Speedway over the weekend. On Sunday, Kyle Bush won the O'Reilly Out of Parts 500, making it his first cup race win of

the season over Kevin Harvick. still maintains the points leave. It was a dominating Saturday for the Blaney family. Ryan Blaney won the My Barriatic Solutions 300 NASCAR Xfinity Series race, while his dad, Dave Blaney, former NASCAR driver, won a sprint car race at Port Royal Speedway later that day. Junior Motorsports drivers Elliot Sadler finished 8th, Michael Annette 15th, Tyler Reddick 23rd, and Justin Algear 35th. Junior Motorsports late models were scheduled to compete at Wake County Speedway, but Mother Nature had other plans. The race is rescheduled to August 25th.

This has been your Exaltta Race Center update. Exalta is the official paint partner of NASCAR, developing, manufacturing, and supplying coatings to all types of vehicles and industrial applications. For more on Exalta, visit ExaltedcS.com. All right, let's do some Ask Junior segment. Let's do some Ask Junior segment. That sucked. Here we go.

No, you don't get to redo it. I don't. Yeah, Dale didn't get to redo it. Fair enough. Do better. Let's just do Asked. Do better. Next week.

Remember, I screwed this up about every week. actually so uh okay let's do some ask junior segment it's time for ask junior i got a question you have a question for me hit us up on twitter using the hashtag ask junior say what if your question doesn't suck we may answer it all right bad uh all the fans chiming in with some questions and i'll tell you what this week's questions probably some of my favorite ones there was one i missed last week and davis gave me crap about it. So we're putting it in here this week. It's awesome. It's a great question, though. Troy LeCount wanted to ask, hey, he said, let's face it. You're very famous, Dale, and a recognizable guy. Have you ever worn a disguise to conceal your identity? And if so, what disguise was the most

ridiculous? Only once have I done this. We were, okay, so Richmond, Virginia, we're racing. We're going to, we're going to park our car across the street from the fairground. So this is about, all maybe, I don't know, half mile walk from the garage all the way to where the car's parked out through where, you know, out through the grandstands where everyone else who's attended the race will be exiting the venue. So I decided for one, and the first time we were going to do this particular escape or this was our plan for, you know, we have a different plan for trying to get out of the races and get to the airport as quickly as possible and not really get stuck in traffic.

and this was our plan, and this is the first time we're trying this plan. So I got a Bobby Labani hat and T-shirt and a grandstand seat cushion or a cooler or something, some small cooler. It was. And I think I walked to the car as a fan. Yeah, he did. He did. So nobody recognized you.

Not only did anybody not recognize him, but it was funny. I remember I was walking behind him. He was carrying the cooler and the seat cushion and a hat. He looked like a race fan. Can you high five anybody? We had a miserable race that day. We had a miserable race that day. And there were people talking about Junior's race.

Like, hey, where did he finish anyways? And they were literally walking right next to him. Yep. It was funny. I know Lobani's Bobby and Terry once did it at Martinsville where they. Well, that's where he did it all the time. And they walked out with a cooler. All right.

That's how I got that idea. Oh, really? Was that I heard that Bobby would do that. So I got that idea and wore his hat and shirt. Yeah, in honor of it. In honor of his idea. Yeah, I went out to the souvenir stand and got the shirt. Did you get a real cheesy one?

Yeah, I mean, well. As cheesy as possible. I want the Kellogg's Cornflake rooster. I mean, you could go up and blindly point into a souvenir hauler and probably get something pretty cheesy. Yes, you could. All right. Next question. Judy wanted to know.

What was your favorite toy? growing up. My favorite toy, I mean, I would have to say there was one that I've been looking for, and I can't find, and it was a football passer. So this, it was about, I don't know, three foot tall. And it was sort of a slingshot. And the football was plastic, really hard on the fingers when it was cold, trying to catch his thing.

But it's a plastic football with a hole all the way through it, and it slid down this metal rod to and the slingshop would you know it clip in and you'd set a timer for like you know so you could go out and run your pattern so you'd set like a five second pattern you know timer or ten second timer and it'd start ticking and you'd go over and go hike and take off running run your pattern and you could aim it you know whichever way and it'd throw a good spiral about 15 20 yards and about the same distance every time and uh i just would play with that thing over and over all day I put on my pads and I had a whole suit. My mom got me a suit and I would dress up as a football player for Halloween for like six years straight.

But I had the pants, the head, you know, the shoulder pads, the shirt, the hemp and all that good stuff. And I would just play with this thing. And eventually I was keeping it outside because I didn't know any better. And eventually the rubber band, the slingshot rubber band part dry rodded and busted. I've looked all over the internet and eBay for one. and it just must not be a real common thing because I can't even find an old picture, a vintage picture of one.

Really? Yeah, so I don't know where she, my mom bought that for me. I don't know where she found it, but it's about four foot tall. And it, you know, it had about a 45-degree angle that it would shoot this damn football off this steel rod. Would it zip it?

I mean, how hard would it? It was kind of an arc. A little bit of art. Yeah. But when it was 30 degrees outside, it'd bust your fingers open. You're trying to catch it. Hey, did you guys, either of you have that Hot Wheels or Mattel car city that sort of like folded up into almost like a suitcase, but then you could unfold it and it was like this S that would come down a hill?

You never had that? No. Oh, man. That was such a tough toy. When I was little, I had tons of matchbox cars and I painted them all like the real cars out on the track. You sand down and paint them? No. No?

I didn't know how to sand car, little matchbox cars back then. I just painted over them. you know those big oval rugs? Yes. And so if you rolled the ends of those oval rugs under, it would make banking. And so anyone, whenever I went to anyone's house, if they had the bigger one, if they had a little one, I'd use that, a little short track. But if they have the big one, I'd roll the corners, the ends of it up, and sit in the middle of it and have a race.

I mean, I was good. Look, Gossage, do your tracks like this, and then you give it the rug. This is the perfect backing right here. If that rug was in any of these houses I was at, you know, because my parents split up, I was all over, aunts, uncles, grandmalls,

just, you know, here and there. You had a circuit. Wherever. If that rug was in the house, I was gold, I didn't need nothing, the rest of the day.

That's hilarious. So his favorite toy may have been a rug. It was an accessory. Favorite track. All right. Michael Henry wants to know, did you ever have, do you ever have plans to maybe

someday own a racetrack? Heck no. Me and Tony Jr. had joked that when we retired, we were going to build a dirt track. We were going to have a strictly one series, just street stocks. We're going to pay 2,000 to win. We were going to have heat races and A, Maine, C, main, B, main, but just with one series. So if you're going to race here, you're going to have one series, and we would have a whiskey river off of turn four or whatever that everybody would go to after the race. I remember this.

On division, you'd have a lot of cars, especially if you have a bar there. That's all you need is cars to be able to have all the races you want all night long. You could race from 7 to 10 and be done and then go to the bar. And I don't know why that wouldn't work. But if I did on a racetrack, that would be the... I'm surprised you'd go dirt. I just think it's easy to manage, low maintenance. And it's a good bar.

I mean, if you're going to have a bar at the racetrack. Yeah, dirt track bars. That dirt track bars. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. All right. If I ever do, that's our model. I like it.

I'd go. Cameron Davidson wants to know. I like this. Have you ever gone all days of thunder on another driver in a rent-a-car? You know, we got funny. Tell the truth. We got cute sometimes bumping into people and stuff. We never hit doors.

You know, you can't be doing that. Who's me? We isn't who. I don't remember. I just know that, you know, we've taken some rental cars and hit bumpers before, but we've never doors. Push somebody through a drive-through, pushing through a red light, you know. Yeah. It's like that, right?

Something like that. Do you recall any instances in particular? None at all. Especially in your younger years? Nope. No, really? No. I remember one that in Daytona for a test, and Paul Morris and Owen Kelly were there.

I think it was a test. I don't think it was Speed Weeks, but I remember them just really kind of wearing out a, rental car and they were friends of ours, so we sort of had to take accountability for that. Yeah, I remember that. Paul Morris and who he is is another whole episode for one day do.

Once he's back in the States, we should get him on the show. He's another great follow on Instagram, Paul Morris. I don't follow him. I follow him because he does stories all day. And he's hilarious. Australians have this hilarious sense of humor. Their perspective on life is really interesting to me.

And so I get my feel watching his stories on Instagram is really entertaining to me. Lisa Ann says Kenny Wallace relayed a story about Kyle Petty getting so angry at a speeding penalty once that he did it on purpose six more times. Have you ever done anything like that? Have I? Have you ever? The question is what?

He got so pissed off at a penalty one time that he just literally just did it over and over again just to be like. I don't think you've done a, but you've been plenty pissed off at penalties before. Yeah. You know, one of the things when it comes, this wasn't a penalty, and I don't know why this even comes to mind, but, like, there was an incident early in your career when Kurt Bush had done something to me.

Oh, yeah, yeah, follow it. And you went right up on his ass, and they were warning you to not do that, and you were pretending like there were radio problems and like, I can't hear y'all. And so you just kind of persisted to do it until you were done. Yeah, Kurt turned us off turn to at Rockingham, and so they fixed my car and I got back out there,

I had to torp car, but new tires, so I was able to keep up with him, and I just sit there and rode right on his bumper forever. Long enough that he finally realized I wasn't going to do anything. But Tony Sr. was like, stop, just quit, doing what your doing. I was like, I don't hear you. He's like, yes, you do. You better freaking quit. I don't want Tony Sr. to whoop your ass.

And I was like, I don't want Tony Senior to whoop him my ass. I think the other thing that comes to mind is one time we were testing at Darlington, and there was only about four cars there. So the garage area wasn't very busy. And I ran about a 10 or 15 lap run, and it was early in the test, so it wore the tires out really quick. I came in the garage. I said, I'm ready for another set of tires. These are junk.

And Tony said, I think we can get another run out of them. And so I started doing donuts in the garage before I came to my pit stall, or garage stall. So, like, right at the turn of the garage, I just gassed it did like five donuts. Like hard, hard race winning donuts. And then I pulled into the garage. And it was like literally 40 yards from Tony Sr. And I said, all right, I think they're done. I want some tires, damn it.

Oh, my gosh. That's ruthless. I know, right? That was one of them deals. Anytime you ever did that with Tony Sr., it was going to go one or two ways. He was going to whoop your ass or he was going to laugh and love it. What did he do?

Is it risk? He didn't, he didn't. ass that day. But it was a risk that you took when you were messing with Tony Sr. He didn't never go down the middle like, yeah, whatever. He was either red-faced pissed or cackling laughing. Hey, one more thing that you used to do out of spite. Now, I think we're kind of doing things out of spite here.

He used to get mad at NASCAR, especially in the Budweiser days at DEI, because, you know, he would park in a garage gym practice, and then the fans would be so, there would be so many that it would really kind of interfere with productivity. activity for the race team. You know, you got the tire guy trying to usher in new tires and this, that, the other. So then Dale Jr., I think that your dad started this. I don't know, but he would then go get out of his car, not tell us a thing. He would never give you a heads up.

He'd grab a Sharpie and he'd go sit at the back of the NASCAR hauler and just do an autograph session. Yeah. For a autograph session. Yeah. And do it for, you know, a half hour. I'd never seen that. Nobody could go in the NASCAR hauler. Mike Hilton, nobody could go in there.

And he would never say it. anything, but he would do it, and then the point was well taken. You going to interfere with my productivity? I'm going to interfere with yours. I try to give him a taste of what that was like for the crews, you know, to not have some sort of, and all I really was, all I needed was to figure out how we could create a better control of the situation in the garage, you know, because you're driving in the garage and about run over people walking around that aren't, they don't seem to know that there's

practice going on, you know. Yeah, I did that trying to show them how congested the garage was. This was before hot passes. That's right. You know, the hot pass situation helped a lot, but it was basically free-for-all. Garage would be slammed full of people, right, you know, right in the middle of practice. All right, one last one real quick. Tammy, Amy just had her baby shower.

Actually, I think she had multiple ones this weekend, right? Her question was, what gift from that baby shower or those baby showers? do you have no idea how to use? All of them probably. I mean, honestly, I haven't had a chance to, I've been pretty busy this weekend with the broadcast and I haven't even seen all the things that Amy's gotten this particular. We had two showers, one Saturday and one Sunday,

and I haven't really had a chance. It was just a pile of stuff in the house and I haven't had a chance to go look through it, but I was talking to Amy and we made a big pact to keep May wide open because the baby's supposed to come to second, and I didn't book any work so that I could be home as much as possible and made a health, Amy, that first month at least. Well, what I didn't think about was how nervous I was going to be in April

at any of these times when I'm leaving to go out of town to work. I'm like, I didn't even think about this, and I don't want to leave. I wish I don't want to be here when this goes down. I want to be the one that drives Amy to the hospital. I don't want to have to ask someone else to do that. And me. Yeah. God.

And because I've been there through the whole part. I want to be the one that I've thought about this. I've dreamed about, you know, day dreamed about driving her to the hospital and what that's going to be like. That's part of the experience. Yeah, taking her into the lobby and all those things. And I don't want to, I don't want to not be there when that happens. So anytime I'm going out of town in April to do something, it makes me really feel bad and wish I was not. But yesterday was particularly tough because the shower was over it.

at Mamaw's house in my dad's childhood home. And so the opportunity to see Amy's family in that house with all the other Earnhardt, the aunts and everybody, all together doing something would have been really awesome to see. I told Amy, I said, when you're sitting there, open them in presence, just take a second to look around the room and realize exactly what's going on and how special that is and how excited people are that you're in our family and part of our family. And hopefully, I'm sure she did. but I wished I would have been able to see that.

I hate that I didn't get to see that yesterday. So, yeah, this month, going out of town, like, I've got a few obligations in the next couple of weeks, and I'm going to be super freaking nervous. And I didn't think about that. I didn't plan that very well. But Mays, after May. You got a backup plan at least? You got somebody like a stand-in?

Because we did, you know, when- Air Guard has got a jet. No, but I'm talking about somebody to get to the darn hospital. Yeah. We got a way to fix that. but I hope that doesn't have to come into play. All right. Good stuff.

Thank you, Ask Junior. Thank you, fans, for asking your questions. It's not as easy as it sounds. Thank you for that. Keep them coming. Hashtag Ask You. I think karma's really come around and got Mike today. He picked on you about that open and ever since he's tanks.

All right. Let's do, did you see that? Did you see that? All right, man. So the did you see that this week is, well, We got a good one. Oh, yeah. I know what you're about to say.

So, I saw this video on social media. The Arc Series was at the Nashville Fairgrounds, and so the Super Late models were there as well. Stephen Wallace and Mason Mingus got into it on the racetrack. Big. And apparently it ended up with Mason in the fence. They parked Stephen. So there they are both in the garage during the race. Angry.

Mason confronted Stephen physically. there's no video of that that I'm aware of. What the video that we do have, and that everybody's seen on social media, is pretty much the tail end of everything. It starts with Stephen Wallace and a bunch of other people on the ground. Stephen gets up and throws some guy clear across the garage,

and then a sheriff is there. Apparently, someone that was at the race says there's a lot of sheriffs walking around that complex, so they must have these kind of issue. The National's got that thing in control. Yeah, which is great, because when it does go down, you definitely want the law be able to step in and stop it, not let it escalate,

because that could have gotten pretty bad. That was a real mess. A lot of people in that physically fighting. Anytime it gets to physical fisticuffs, people on the ground, people bleeding, it's good when the law is in town. I just couldn't, you know, you don't see that that often. You don't see that kind of stuff outside of Bowman Gray Stadium. But when you do, Stephen Wallace is half the time involved in it because he's been in a few post-race altercation.

Yeah, he is. He took it. He sure took care of things on the track, though, because, I mean, he and Mingus got into it a few times before the incident had a period put on it. Yeah. You know, Mingus went after him in the pit area there. I've got a beef with that. Okay. My beef is kind of, some people won't like this, but my beef is Roger Slack one time told us.

He got gathers all. Roger Slack who promotes races at Eldora. And his family's promoted races for years. He used to work with Charlotte Motor Speedway. And when we were running a street stock race one time at Charlotte, he told us, hey, $150 bonus to anybody that fights in front of the grandstands. Oh, geez. Okay, well, the whole knock I have about Mingus going after him,

I'm just going to say it, not going to be popular. Dude, don't do that behind the tunnel and the backstretch where nobody could see it. Get out of that car and whoop his butt then. Yeah, like they do at Bowman Gray. That's just my opinion. I know it's not the popular opinion. Yeah. Well, I mean, it might be a popular opinion.

It's just, you know. I don't know that it's really that popular opinion about where it happened. I mean, we don't really know the particulars about how where they were and where they, I mean. They were outside of the tunnel. You know how a national. Well, no, I'm saying as the accident happens, Mugis is in the fence, Wallace drives away. Yeah, true. They parked them.

He's no way for him to get to Wallace. Then they park him. And the quickness, he got to him as soon as he freaking possibly could, apparently. Because the rumor that I heard was that he walked right up to him and popped him. He didn't even say anything. So, yeah. He had a bloody lip. Oh, yeah.

He popped him a few times, I believe, before we get to the, where we pick up where the video is. Gotcha. You know, I don't have a dog in that fight. I do know that I will say this. You know, Stephen Wallace, regardless of what you think about him, has done some really cool things for me when I was, when I've known him a while. Growing up as the son of a popular race car driver isn't easy. Growing up as Rusty Wallace's son, I imagine could have been difficult at times.

You know, Rusty was much like my dad where race. was the number one focus in his life. And you fell somewhere where, you know, you fell down the line where, depending on the day, you might have been in the top five. And so, and I won't list the things that Steven's done, but for me personally, but I know him as a pretty, yeah, pretty decent guy, you know. And he's wild like redneck wild, you know. And so seeing him fight in the garage, it doesn't really surprise me that much and doesn't change my opinion to him.

do I agree with everything he does? I don't know. I didn't see what happened. I don't always agree with everything he does. I haven't agreed with everything he's done on the racetrack, but my dealings with him have always been great. He saved my ass a couple times, actually took care of some things for me that, you know,

really made me appreciate him as a person. As far as doing things outside the car for his friends, for people he knows, he's a good guy. He's going to, you know, he's going to come through in those situations. That's cool. I mean, by the way, I didn't mean to see. suggest that I was giving disparaging marks about Stephen Wallace. I'm just saying I can count, I probably need two hands to count the post-race altercations

that are just in my head that I... He's fired him, man. I mean, Kyle Busch, you know, wouldn't he the one that grabbed Kyle Busch by the helmet and shook him around a little bit? Stephen Wallace. Yeah, that's true. In the Trinity Series, there was almost every race. And I'm not saying that he was to blame.

A lot of times they went up to him. Kind of like that. Yeah. I feel comfortable saying this. Stephen Wallace was a designated driver for me one time. I was too intoxicated to drive home. Okay. And he got me home.

And I think, you know, I don't care what you say about Stephen. Not going to change my opinion about him. D.D. is like one of the most important people in your life. Yeah. D.D. and I didn't even ask him to do it. And he did that. He took care of it.

He took care of not only me, but my vehicle and never asked for anything in return. Didn't even, you know, I didn't have to ask him to do it. It was really cool. And that's just one thing, you know. Yeah, I like Steve. He's a good guy. I don't even know this Mason Mingus guy. But screwing.

He ain't ever got a DD of me. I don't even know him. I can't say screw it because I don't even know the guy. Hey, I like the fact that he stood up for himself. I do too. Yeah. I like the fact that he... I'm not bad for the old man to get slung to the ground. Well, don't be in the middle of that.

You don't want to get slung around. Exactly. Stay in the exterior. Yeah. If you can't handle the damn heat, get out of the kitchen. If you don't want to get into it, you have to have... It felt like Pedro Martinez slamming Don Zimmer to the ground. You know what I'm saying?

But the bottom line is, like he said, you know, if you're going to go at the racetrack, I've been in a few altercations myself. Don't get in it if you don't want the consequences that go with possibly losing. You've got to realize you're Nashville Fairgrounds and if there's a fight going on and you don't like fighting, don't go over there. Go sit in the holler. Diener, real quick, what was the altercation just a couple years ago that you filmed that was so popular on Pit Road? You get within 10 feet of that fight, you're liable to get into it.

Kessalowski, man. I was right in the middle of that. I mean, I thought I was going to get blood on me, dude. It was awesome. You could get punched by association if you're 10 feet from this fight. The one where Harvard pushed him into Gordon? Yeah, well, my favorite story about that, by the way, is I got, there's an amazing photo of that Keselowski-Gordon fight. Yeah.

Okay. So I get this amazing photo given to me of it. And if you look in the background, there's Zipideli man in the back, and he's laughing. So I go up to him a few weeks later. I'm like, hey, man, check out this picture. And he's like, oh, yeah, that's a good picture. I'm like, and I zoom into it. to his face and he starts chuckling.

And I'm like, tell me what you're thinking about right there. And he goes, well, Harvick just looked at me and said five seconds before that, hey, watch this. Yeah, and he did it. That's funny. Well, good stuff. All right. Let's go to White flag.

Keep coming about it. White flag right there. White flag. Dale Jr., you're leaving today. I mean, you don't have a busy week, but you do have a busy day to day. You're heading to a speaking engagement. This is something, this is also new for retirement Dell. Retirement Dell now does speaking engagements.

You know that, Matthew? What are you speaking about? I'm going to the Fidelity Information Services. Hell, I don't know. He's speaking about himself because clearly he's not speaking about fidelity information services. There's about 400 folks I'm going over there to talk to them a little bit. Yeah. So that'll be fun.

We'll see how that goes. I do this for, you know, I do this with a little. a lot of my partners and it's a lot of fun. Well, this is a paid deal. Yeah, but I do this for a lot of my partners and it's a lot of fun. Yeah, but we like to get paid too. That's even funner. I know, but I do this.

I've done this. It's not like the first time I've ever done this. This is going to do this same thing that I do for other partners. It's a lot of fun. I enjoy doing it. But if you want to pay him. No, we're not. This isn't an advertisement.

This is not an advertisement. Are you uncomfortable right now? And don't call asking me to come. the rest of any time this month or next month. In May. He wants May. May 2nd. If you want him to speak at your engagement, May 2nd, he's available. I'm kidding. All right. As I said, it's not much of a busy week. Do we want to mention that we have a basketball draft this week?

Yeah, I was just trying to look at the, yeah, the DMBL is cranking back up. We've got a draft this week. Five teams, six players per team. We'll have a lot to talk about as far as the season goes. Six players per team, and that's including your bench guys. Six players on each team, period. Five teams, six players on each team. It's three on three back. You're a captain, and so you will be drafting.

Have you been preparing for it? Okay, well, can I tell you about me? I'll prepare to my mind. I don't plan to give my best effort this year. So are you captain? No, no, no. I'm telling him my draft status needs to be prepared to only be half throttle. Well, because your knees all messed up from the ski trip still probably.

It is, yeah. And I plan to go half throttle. So take that into consideration, Mr. Captain. There you go. Yeah, so whatever. He was texting the entire time. He has no idea what we just said. I want to advertise him every time he, I want to put an advertisement.

You're trying to tell me about your draft stock in the NBA. Like, you made careers about that. Like when you were doing NBC, how many times did you look at your phone? I drafted you last year expecting a lot more than I got. He was disappointed. How many times? You've been released. How many times did you look at your phone?

Definitely going to reavit. reevaluate the way I look at you. We started this show. He was looking at his phone, completely missed the intro song. And now he's looking at his email again. But you can do that because you messed up. Advertise this moment right here.

Who wants to pay us money? We will put your brand on every time Dale Jr. looks at his phone or gets distracted. All drivers that hit the fence yesterday told me to feel fine today. Beautiful. Oh, is that what you were just looking at? Who was it? All the drivers.

I feel no different. All of them said they feel fine. They all texted you right now. All right. Well, that's white. By the way, Wendell Jr.'sride.com is where you can go to buy a raffle ticket. I just knew Mike was so concerned. About Wendell Jr.'sride.com.

So you should go there, buy your ticket, and that's all I got for White Flagg. I'm going to tell you right now, if you don't buy a ticket for this Winddale Jr.'sride.com, I mean, this is the year. I've had all these cars in my garage. I've drove them all. This car is the car. So you'll know what I'm talking about when you go on my social media handles and see this. image of this Corvette. It's silver for 300, 500, 650 foot pounds of torque, 650 horsepower.

It's incredible what this car could do. I've been driving it around. I ain't going to drive it too much, but I'm supposed to drive it, you know, to win my car. So I'm out there putting some miles on it, taking it around town, enjoying it. I'm just saying I've done this for several years now, and this is by far my favorite one. This is the one he's going to have a little bit more difficult time party. This is the one I'm most excited about. And when you win, by the way, when you win the ride,

Dale Jr. hands over the keys. I mean, it's a personal moment between Dale Jr. and the winner. He hands over the keys. You take pictures. You come here to Junior Motor reluctantly. We treat you. Yeah, this time he's going to just kind of hang on to him a little tighter this time.

But anyways, it's winddalejurysride.com. And that's it, boys. Another good one. Appreciate y'all. Take it easy.