The Dale Jr. Download - 236 - Raw Emotional Stuff w/ Ryan McGee

Episode Date: October 16, 2018

Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Ryan McGee discuss their new book "Racing to the Finish, My Story." They touch on the challenges, fears and misconceptions of concussions and overcoming them. The DJD guys also talk Talladega controversy, big time racin' cheats, fans throwin' beers at Jeff Gordon and 334mph diaper changes. 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, everybody, it's Dale Jr. for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download. Is that good energy? I need a little more from you. I need a little more from you. Well, I'm excited about this show. We've got a pretty cool guest coming on, Mike. Tell us what we got going on. We got Ryan McGee coming in because we've got the book that comes out today, if you're listening to this podcast. Two days ago, if you're watching this on the television show, and it's just a lot. It's coming out this week.

Big deal. Let's just say it's out October 16th. October 16. No matter when you're listening. Look at your calendar and you can determine when it was. But we've got that. We just got back from Talladega. That was a lot of fun.

And let me tell you something, my friend. I took my daughter to an Alabama football game this weekend. Her first Alabama football game. Big Dad moment. And two times from complete strangers, I was called Eddie Munster. Oh, really? Yes, really. And it's, let me tell you something.

Look what you started. You know what I haven't explained. your daughter. Why? They're calling me Eddie Munner. I bet she enjoyed that. Well, she did, actually. That's a little demoralizing for me. So thank you for, uh, you know, creating that little fun thing for the weekend.

I've said, that is not new. I've told you that before with the, with the peak in your haircuts. Probably not the peak in my haircut. It's really that, it's just a very small, unique thing about your hairline that is similar to his. Nothing else about you is like him. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Because I know if there was one more similarity you would make sure to tell us all all right all right i am what i but look enough about that that was a little fun thing i thought you'd get a kick out of but we got a good show

today mcgee's going to be on his way in here uh we got a lot of good stuff apparently dillner has finally got some good dale junior questions that uh we've been busting on him he'll judge he'll judge so we'll see if you really met the standard all right let's do this okay nothing would have cooler and more, you know, important to me than be able to stand next to that car with Ila and Amy. And I know Ila won't remember it, but one day we'll be able to show her that we were here and we were doing this. And when I, you know, when I tell her, try to tell her what kind of dad she had and what kind

of race car driver I was, we can say, hey, you were at this one race. And hopefully she gets a kick out of that. I really hope she does. Yeah, that was a little bit of a piece from the little clip from the return, which was a short film that Dirtymo Media created, regional content. I thought it turned out amazing. We talked about it on the last podcast. You know, it finally was available for even me to see.

You hadn't seen it until it came out. I hadn't seen it until it was released. I didn't want to see any kind of the rough cuts. I wanted the full thing because I knew you guys were working on it pretty hard, and it was real thorough. One of the things that some people told me that they thought it was really dramatic. And my answer to that is this is a way for, this was a great opportunity for us to show how much dirty mo media has grown. And what dirty mo media is becoming capable of and what our, what yours, Matthews, and my vision is for the future of that part of our company.

So pretty exciting. I thought it was so well done. and Matthew, you did a great job capturing a lot of good content and how it was edited and cut together. The production side of it couldn't have been, I couldn't have been more proud of it. And that was the goal, I think, obviously for the production team, for it to be great.

And all you guys are responsible for that. So I was really thrilled with it. What was your favorite part, man? My favorite parts about it, I think, in anything that I do, and it was the same with this, is when people get to see the real person, or my real personality kind of come out in some of the conversations we're having, or us in a more intimate environment having a conversation,

wherever that might be. We always are by a race car. We're always talking into cameras and wearing a driver's suit and inside the racetrack, you're going to get similar sound bites. You know what I'm saying? So when we were not in those environments and we were just being real, those are my favorite moments. I think that's what's been consistent with us through my whole career.

was that we've always been able to deliver those type of things and pretty much everything we do. And anytime we've ever got out of a race car, no matter we were won or lost, anytime we've ever done an interview, we've always really kind of been honest and transparent. And so those moments are my favorites. You know, the one that sticks out for me is,

you know, most people would not want to put in the final product, not having your credential or being in the wrong booth or going up the wrong elevator. But those were moments of vulnerability that I thought were just beautiful moments. and listen, you know, of imperfection, but really raw, transparent glimpse into how much we don't get it right. We were. Yeah, we were watching that, and during that process of me trying to find the booth and trying to get on the right elevator, we went to, so we go to this one elevator, and we were complete way off. We were down church term one, and I'm thinking, this can't be right. Why would the booth be down here?

And somebody was like, yeah, this is where it's at. We go up there, and there's nothing. You know, there's no booth, nothing, nothing. And the lady's like, I don't, you know, you guys are in the wrong place. So I went to the start, finish line. And Amy's like, what's going on? You don't know where the booth is? And I'm like, why would I know where the booth is?

It's my first time everywhere. Yeah. And so every time we go to these racetracks, you're going to see the booth for the first time. Don't know where the booth is. So that's not uncommon pretty much every other week for us to sort of be stumbling through the first day. It was the perfect glimpse of our year. We are going through this year kind of for the first time.

We're going to racetracks that we've been to for 20 years, but not in this role. And so everything is new. And so that was a perfect little glimpse and moment that I thought was sort of really encapsulated, kind of what our first year as a broadcaster or post-driving career is. Now, I really enjoyed it. I was glad that the broadcasting side of the weekend or part of the weekend was included. and it wasn't really just about the race. I told you guys when I wanted to go to the race and run this race at Richmond,

I said, I don't want to make this a big deal. I just want to go have fun. So us sort of intertwining the whole weekend into it made it better for me. I didn't want to make too big a deal from our end about us going back to the racetrack. This is just us having fun, enjoying an opportunity to run, and it was perfect. It worked out perfectly. We were able to go run good, and so therefore making something like this short film had more purpose and subsisting.

behind it because the car we did run up front and have a good race and so the race couldn't have went better aside from not winning because in the beautiful part is if you would have wadded it up on lap one we just wouldn't have done the video yeah i mean it's it's that simple when you do it this way yeah we just don't really come out with anything so all right we'll just hit the leit so pretty happy with it we're you know tell guys where you can watch it there's a youtube channel that dirty mo media has that's right dirty it's an exclusive video on our dirty moody youtube which uh if you have been uh listening to this podcast all year. You know, we've been really trying to hit on it and tell people because we just started it earlier this year.

So this is an exclusive piece for that. I think it's a nice piece for it. It's 25 minutes long, right? But it's a very good, interesting, entertaining view. So go to YouTube. That's where it is. Are you know what else is returning? Oh, play on words.

This is going to be stupid. I can already tell. Can't you? Come on, you don't know what else is returning? The pristine auctions, man. That's right. That's not as dumb as I thought it would be. No.

I thought this was going to be one of those cheesy little dilderisms. I knew exactly what was coming. We love pristineauction.com for supporting the Dale Jr. download. It's an online sports auction site where you can bid and win authentic sports and memorabilia from the comfort of your home. So you don't even have to leave the house. And that's better than having to travel to an auction house or find where you're going. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

The auction.com offers a daily auction where all bids start at just one buck. So one greenback dollar is how the auction will begin. And this means an auction is ending soon, no waiting. So hurry over and check it out now. Starts at a buck. It's going to end. It's a daily auction. You're not going to wait.

You better hurry. There you go. In addition to the daily auction, they also had several other formats, including a 10-minute auction, so that's even quicker. You better be on your game. I tell you. what? That's like a restart with three to go.

Don't get distracted. I mean, they're really entertaining, you know, because the intensity kind of ramps up with the 10-minute auction. It's pop up just for 10 minutes. It's rapid fire bidding. Right. And you better be sure whether you want this item or not. Ain't mulling it over.

You have time to think and ask the wife. Yeah, you'll have to consider this one because it's 10 minutes. Honey, I got 10 minutes! And so what this presents is some of the deals that you're going to get, especially on these 10-minute auctions are insane. Because they pop up quick and a lot of people, you know, your hardcore bidders might not see this 10-minute auction, might not be bidding on this item. They might be in the bathroom. They might miss it.

Yeah. You might get an opportunity to really snag an item cheap. They guarantee the authenticity of all their items and everything you purchase comes fully authenticate. Fully, I knew I would. Fully authenticated. Nope. Almost. Do it again. You do it.

Authenticated. Yeah, there you go. Good enough. God almighty. Authenticated. There you go. All right. By only the most trusted sources.

You know, if you are buying. something, you know it's the real deal. You know these guys. You've signed for them before. And I think it's important that people, I don't know, do people realize how much fake stuff there is out there? I certainly do because I see so much fake stuff. I don't think they realize it. I don't think they do realize it. So, I mean, if you're bidding on these other websites and so forth and buying stuff from stores, and they don't have the authenticity. They don't have. We know what you mean.

Yeah. And they can't show you any kind of form or pay. that tells you this is a real deal. You don't know whether you're getting the real autograph or not or somebody signed that. Maybe I didn't sign it. Someone else signed it. You know, that happens. It happens a lot. And to be honest with you, it happens beyond autographs.

The saddest story I know is when somebody bought what they thought was an actual race car, an old DEA race car, the number eight, and then they sent pictures of it. Or no, it was the A.C. Delco car. Yeah. And they sent pictures of it to us after they bought it just to make sure it was. And Del Jr. looked at it. He goes, that's not even remotely. Oh, no, that's not cool.

That's a big deal that they guarantee the authenticity of all their items. You don't have to worry about getting scanned by a fake. The best part is, obviously, that it's affordable. Like I said, you might get some great deals, but most of the deals on there are going to be incredibly affordable. Right now, there's a Ryan Blaney autographed Pocono win photo, and the bid is at $2.10. He got the flow going on in this one, too, man.

Of the hair. Oh, the hair of the hair. That's right. That's right. I think that is good for an extra tenth or two. Yeah, I mean, he should get a dollar or two just for the hair. There's photos of Blaney signing this item. Okay.

Well, that's all the authentication that you would need if there's photos of him signing it. Pristine takes the photos. They're there with their people. That's awesome. While the driver's signing these items. So go check out pristineauction.com now. You'll be hooked. It's free to register.

And it's free to bid. You only pay for the items you win. so it's free across the board. That's pristine auction, spelled p-r-I-S-T-I-N-E-Oction.com. And when you register, this is important. Be sure to select Dale Jr. Download podcast from the drop-down menu in the How Did You Hear About a section? So in the how did you hear about a section, select Dell Jr. Download podcast from the drop-down.

That lets them know that we had something to do with you going there and bidding on these items. And it helps us get continued support for this podcast. Thank you, Pristine, Auctions, for coming back, and we're taking that word out of the next read. Authenticate. So is it officially like time of death? Authenticated. Authenticated. Time of death in this podcast, it is done.

Authenticated. Right. Authenticated. So you got it. Yeah, we're not saying that anymore. Sorry, Pristine. It's done. Pristine needs me to read.

It's authentic. It's real. It's real. We're going to have to come up with another way. We're going to have to come up with another way. They let you know it's a real thing. To get that point across to the fans listening. All right, so I see Ryan McGee just walked in.

Let's get him in the building. Get him in here. The good-looking part of Marty and McGee. Look at his slick hair right here. Yeah, look at him. He's let's slick. He's got a little Blaney action going. He's letting the hair go.

I've noticed this about him. I see him on TV. And I said, well, I've got Ryan Blaneyish going on here. Look at him. Good to see you. Stand by. Man in the camera. You guys are.

This ain't exactly Marty McGee set now. You're going to have to slumber a little bit. I've known him long and I've known either one of y'all. Well, that's because he was here about when Lee Petty started racing. How were you when we started, you were, how were you when we started working together? It would have been 2001. 2001 when we started working together. So totally NASCAR back in the day.

Totally NASCAR. I saw it send him out on the road. Oh, that's right. McGee was one of my first, he was probably like my second or third boss in racing, man. I used to be a boss. Just to crack the whip on me. I had a staff and the whole lot. I wasn't very good at it, but I did it.

Get some good shows, man. Totally NASCAR was on for how many years? I produced it for two. It was on four years. Four years. I left RPM tonight to go produce the show to compete with RPM tonight. So this is a Star Wars hoodie, right? Yeah.

Are those stars or is that lent? That's sewn into it. Oh, no, it's lent. No, it's not lent. Yes, it is. No, it's sewn into it, though. No, that was just a random piece of length. Listen, we need a t-shirt.

We need a test. We need a test. Shake them off. Take them off. Throw a lint roller down that sleeve. Hey, McGee's were lent heads in Rockingham. So that's my best. There's what it is.

Look at it. I see it. Doesn't it not look like it's just come. Yeah, but it's sewn into the deal. It looks dirty. That's fancy. Not dirty. Not dirty.

It just looks like it came out of the dryer. Yeah. As far as you know, they meant to do this. What a great observation by you, by the way. Bob Taser, you can't be a guest on this show without Dale Jr. He's going to look at every little piece of a picture of your game. My wife was. making fun of me because before I left a house I'm like do I just do I go with the Star Wars

City I had like two or three other I had a J. Foyt T-shirt it was too wrinkled up otherwise I'd have worn it I had like an old NHRA deal and I was like she was why are you acting like this for you this is this is a big deal I said if you don't wear the right thing in front of dale my daughter it's true true sure because of dale my daughter who's almost 14 now over the weekend she was at some candy store right by a whiskey river in uptown Charlotte and she bought me this cream soda because it had the old Farah Fawcett picture on the front. Oh, really? And she, we, she and I had a whole conversation. They make a cream soda with Farah Fawcett on the front. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I, because I, because she saw a picture of you with that

T-shirt. Oh, okay. And then I explained to her, it was an old story I had written about you years ago. And she saw the picture and she goes, is that, that's the Charlie's Angels lady. I said, yeah. And I went through the whole thing about how everybody had to post her and Cannonball run and the whole deal. So yeah. So I educated her. Thank you for that. And how proud as a dad were you as soon as she was able to recognize that was Fairfosset on a... Oh, no, she's old school, man. No, she's seriously. Just like I'm saying.

You're proud. That's what I'm saying. No, that's it. Yeah. Yeah. She'll sit there and watch the original Star Wars and quote it like there's nothing to it. So I've done... That's what happens when you live with you.

The deal is you'll go through this. The deal is you do everything you can to make them love the stuff that you love knowing that one day they're just going to start listening to stuff you don't like and whatever. But when they get older, they'll come back to, you know, hopefully listen to what you listen. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I'll take whatever. You've got this all thought out.

I like it. Oh, no. It was like just like getting up ahead of steam to jump a canyon. You go hard as you can go with what you got and then hope that y'all all land on the other side. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. I know he appreciates my parenting tips.

That's why we brought you here. Well, when we started writing the book, he wasn't a dad. And I didn't have a teenage daughter. And by the time we were done, my daughter was a teenager and he was a dad. So it's been quite the journey. Those pages, right. That's right. That's right.

Well, you're here to talk about the book. You guys, I don't even know where to start because it comes out this week. I asked you before, as you were walking in, I'll ask you again to actually hold one of those books, both of you guys. What's that feel like? Well, I'm glad it's, you know, the stories in these pages and in this final finished form and that we are done drumming it up, you know. And, you know, telling the story, I guess I didn't think about how. at times it was kind of frustrating, trying to recall. And I was talking to McGee about this.

I said, man, we're going to write this book. And at the end, we're going to get done and go, oh, we forgot. You know, this very important part. And he said, well, that happens when it write every book. So don't worry about it. Because, you know, you're going to do that. No matter how many books you write, you're going to always have that moment. And so I just sort of stopped worrying about whether we got everything in there that was important.

We've been waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. and waiting for this thing to finally be available for people to pick it up and read. You know, so there was a lot of work, then quiet time, a couple months go by. We had to write. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, we were done. We were done. It was weird.

I told him, I saw, we saw each other that I said, it was weird. I said, because we literally were either, we saw each other, talked on the phone, text, whatever, every day for a couple of months, and then it's over. Then you just kind of send it off and you wait on the, whatever. And then the summer came, and he hits the road and, you. football starts and now hit the road and whatever and we just kind of waiting you just kind of wait and then all a sudden you know you're holding your hand it's been a strange experience from that standpoint that we the process and and when we talked about doing the book the october release date was out there and we're thinking why so long you know dang this can't we want it done now you want it done before summer but

then we're going to release in october like why ain't we releasing it when it's done and so the wait that's been kind of kind of tough i'm glad it's here and available and i'm uh very very very very proud of it. McGee did an amazing job. There's a part of the whole process that's even a mystery to me. So McGee comes to the house and we would sit up in my library for a few hours talking and he was ready to ask every question that needed to be asked. And then when we would be done, he'd go home and write like a madman. Yeah. And he'd be wore out. Yeah. And that was, I was telling somebody the other day that that's a part I understood very quickly. after the first time we met.

It was up in his office. The first time we did book meeting, and we sat up in his office, and he just paced and just started going through this. And I didn't ask a lot of questions that day. It was like just, all right, let's get it out there and what we were going to talk about, and, you know,

I asked some real broad questions about how did you feel and all these and stuff of things. And it went on for, we were up there three hours. And I'm like, that was awesome. Let's do it again tomorrow or whatever. And by the time I got home,

I realized how tired I was. And I was like, I wasn't the one coming. I'm asking. him to go through all this awful stuff. And so, like, that night or the next day, I was like, you know what, let's not do this tomorrow. And then we realized, but then I realize, but then I realized we need to space it out a little bit because I just didn't, I don't, I didn't understand until the first time how trying that was going to be, because we were going through heavy stuff.

I didn't either. I didn't know how trying and tough it was going to be to write the book and to talk about the book. I think writing a book is not an easy thing to do. And I think no matter what we had to discuss, it would have wore us out mentally. Because you, you know, you know, you do so much rummaging through your file cabinet upstairs in your head. And I mean, you've got to go far and deep. And you got to be honest. You got to be open and transparent about what mistakes you made. I was going to be telling people that I'd be keeping this secret and not.

I'd been openly telling people what to do and not doing it myself. So here I was going to be admitting to being a bit of a hypocrite. It was just a really, really strange experience. It happened in a bubble, you know, between me and him in the library of my house, and we would go, we would go to the sushi joint and have lunch, which was a lot of fun. One of the fun things about doing a book is, so me and McGeevon on each other a really long time. His life so damn, you know, he's all over the place, and mine too, we're going and going going.

This, writing this book gave us the time, kind of forced us to sit down and be around each other and spend time together and talk about things. And we talked about things not even related to the book, you know, life and. and kids and marriage and anything going on, you know, and whatever's happening in our lives. And so we became, I thought we became real close, a lot of trust, and built a relationship and a friendship that will last a really long time. So there's that, that, I knew that was probably going to happen.

I felt like if I was going to write the book that the person I wrote it with, I needed to be able to, you know, have trust in because this was going to be some sensitive stuff, you know, and. And I didn't even know how deep this got. I didn't even know. I didn't know that the depths of which that were going to be so difficult for you to go relive. And we learned that on the back end on that. McGee, as the person that really kind of heard the story for the first time, why will people want to buy this book?

Because they, listen, everybody thinks that they know. I mean, I covered it, right? So one of the things for me was I kind of had a timeline in my head. The first time he and I got together at Burkdale for lunch, like it was right before Daytona. And we did, you know, just as you know, too, this is not, you don't write a book. look like in the period of time that we did it. We did it in basically 12 weeks. And you don't, that's not how you do something like this. But that's how this went down. But we met at Burkdale and we're like, all right, listen, we started talking. I kind of had a timeline in my

head and like, you know, and I had been, I was at the press conference at Darlington and I was at the press conference at Charlotte, you know, in 2012. I was there for all these things. And so I thought I knew. I'm like, well, you know, I wrote columns and stories and I've covered this guy his whole career. I thought I knew more of the details. then I mean I did not know nearly as much I thought I did. And so when he was being so honest with me so fast, I mean, I'm talking about the first time we had like, like I say, like the actual writer meeting at his office, you know, at the house,

10 minutes in, I was like, oh, damn, this is, this is happening. And it meant a lot to me because he was so honest and so open, so fast, that I think that's what people were going to be. I think when you read the book, you'll have the same reaction. His honesty, Stopped Junior Tracks, or what he was saying about? his story that you didn't know i never doubt he's going to be honest but i was surprised at how open he was as quickly as he was gotcha and but the other part is just how bad he felt and listen when when the first time we met at burkdale that day i told somebody i think told the shawlter

was over the story the other day he sat down and we talked for like 10 minutes like all right we're going to do this and he said something to me then that i always remembered he said if we're going to do this we're going to have to be friends because we've known each other 20 years but the reality is we're friends. I was friends with you. I'm friends with Dillner. We knew each other, but we weren't tight. Yeah. But we are now. I think we are. I think you have to be. And so he said it that day, I'm like, all right, well, then we're in. You know, and two days later, we were, you know, having that conversation. But I think that's going to people, even the people who think they're his biggest fan, even people who are related to him. I mean, I don't think they understand what was going on. I know

they don't understand what was going on. And what I love is the stuff you hear like, you know, and he addresses this stuff directly in the book. And I'm already getting, I've gotten a lot of it on Twitter in the last couple weeks, which is, well, you know, Amy, that's why he quit driving or, you know, oh, well, you know, so-and-so, everybody comes up with a different list of reasons, and he addresses all that. But once you read this, you understand, it's ridiculous and amazing that he was out there as long as he was, because he could have walked away. No one you know now, he could have walked away after the first two races that you missed.

and I would have been totally cool with it. I mean, after I know what I know now. I mean, you say that you guys go there and that Dale goes there when it comes to Amy. I don't think that's understating what y'all do with it. It's almost aggressive at the point that you guys drive home about the reason for retirement. That chapter alone alone is really compelling.

And for all of us, you bring it up, you hit it. We're as close to Dale as you can get, right? I mean, we're as close to Dale. And we read it for the first time. and learning things about and rehashing things from the years past. And it's like, oh, that makes sense now. It didn't make sense.

Kelly talked about reading it for the first time and being angry. Amia said she hasn't even read it. I don't know when she will. She's afraid of what to think about it. This is raw emotional stuff that people are about to read. And it was very difficult to go there. Well, and again, going back to that first time we had lunch

and we talked for us. I was going to say, we talked for 10 minutes, and all right, this is what we're going to do. And, you know, we're in, all right. And he says, he had to take a call or something. He was going to send you these notes. And he dropped those notes to me. He walked away for a minute. And I'm sitting there scrolling through these notes.

And that's when I was like, that was the first time. And at that point, I don't think, but just a few people had ever seen them. And it was Sunday night felt like this. Monday felt like this. Tuesday felt like this. And then it was rinse and repeat. And it was just race after race going through it. And I was just like, and then I,

ran it up against the timeline already put together. And what was crazy to me was a lot of those times, you would feel terrible during the week, and you could finish fourth. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, and I talked to Stevie about that. And he said there was a level of,

and you said, there's a level of concentration you had to have, maybe going into the weekend that forced you. That whole part of it, I just didn't see coming. I thought it was going to be, didn't feel great, and this is what I was dealing with. Ran 25th all day, yeah. And, you know, and kind of thought about retiring, whatever, but it went so much deeper than that so fast that it was, it was one of the great

surprises of my career. That's saying something right there, I mean, because, you know, people hear books being touted and promoted and things like that, but when the author is shocked in how it unfurls, that's saying something. Well, it just told me you were serious about it. Yeah. You know, because there's a lot of people who write books. You read a lot of books by athletes and there's nothing to it, you know, and just told me,

He was committed to it. Yeah, I mean, I felt like that when I was driving in that last year in 2017, I wanted to tell this story, but I didn't want to, I didn't want my final year in racing to be dominated by questions about my truth and the concussions. And I wanted to just enjoy that final year with my team and go to the racetrack and race and try to stay healthy. And plus, you know, when you're talking about, hey, you know,

I had this traumatic experience. my head, you know, when I was going to come clean and say, you know, I'd hit all these problems. You can't do that while you're competing out on the racetrack. People are going to say, well, you're lying, you know, are you lying now? Are you truthful now? What's going on with you now? That would have just been a difficult situation for me, right or wrong. That's what I decided to do. And once I was clear of the career in driving, I felt compelled to come clean because people were wondering why I had retired. They said It might be Amy.

It might be my family. It might be, you know, just I didn't want to race or didn't care to race. It wasn't tough. Whatever. Those were some points for writing the book for me was to clear that up completely with, Here's the Story. The other side of that, too, is when Mickey helped me the first time in 2012, I was like, wow, you know, you gave me my life back. And then we went into the issues in 2016, and it was so much more severe.

And it took me out of the car for a whole half of season and beyond. And I was fearful in moments of that process that I wasn't going to ever get fully recovered. And Mickey helped me do that. And I thought, wow, okay, this is the second time that you've done this. And even more impressive on the second time, the work that he did. I'm like, I will never be able to do the same for him. I don't know how I could ever repay him in the same way. And so he would always encourage me when we would do an article or, you know,

if somebody ever asked me about my concussions in the media, and I would be open about it and talk about it. He would always text me or call me and say, hey, read X article. This is important. You're doing good things. You're helping people. Somebody came to me to my office yesterday wanting help, said they read this article. And he's like, you're helping people get to me so they can get help.

And so he's encouraging me along the way over the years with that kind of conversation. And so I thought, well, I'm going to write this book. And that's really going to be a big home run for him. That's what I wanted it to be. was a book that people would read and it might push and direct people even more people and bigger numbers to Mickey. And then we talked to Mickey about, you know, the book. You know, I was wanting him basically at the very beginning to read the copy and approve it

in a way that maybe Pete the treehouse master might come to your tree house and say, yeah, it's not falling out of the tree. Yeah. So when we read, when we talked to Mickey, then he's like, hey, I'll do whatever you need. I'll do media with you. I'll even be involved and give you some verbiage and conversation to be able to put in the book to back up a lot of things we're talking about. So he basically joined the train, jumped on the bus with us. He's the third author of the book.

He is. Exactly. And it was from beginning, the first time I was, we had our lunch and we had our first, like, meeting where we did kind of an interview and like you went to Korea and I went to Daytona and we're all over the place. And in the middle of all that, I remember I was driving to Knoxville, Tennessee for something. and had been playing phone tag on Mickey. He finally called and I pulled over on the side of the road because I didn't want to lose him in the mountains. And I remember sat in a parking lot of like a funeral home

in Shelby, North Carolina and talked to him for two hours. And it was the first time that I could take to him, all right, now Dale said he felt this, this, this, this, and this. And Mickey was, all right, the reason he felt this was because this, this, this, and then the challenge for me was taking how he felt, how Mickey explained it. And then I would go back to Dale and I go, all right, if we describe it, like this does this make sense and he'd say yes because we're trying to make sure in the book it's not a medical journal we want somebody in the book to understand the chemistry of all this

and then i go back to mickey and go all right so dale and i think this is kind of like stepping on a fire hose he's like perfect you know or dale and i say that's perfect you know yeah so so it was taking literal brain science and trying to explain it to first of all us in everyday terms exactly right and and you guys do a masterful job there was a particular thing i'm not going to give away the book here. But you basically put the reader in the hospital room, in the, in the room at University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Medical Center, and in the conversation from Mickey to Dale. And that's exactly what Mickey was doing for Dale and for all of us that were in the room too. And it's, and you write about that in this conversation. Mickey, I hope that people,

and Mickey writes the forward here, I hope people understand the level of badass that Mickey Collins is through all of this because one you've got somebody that's really running point on the concussion awareness for everybody two uh this isn't a racing book and this isn't something this and this isn't a medical journal journal and and yet we've got the best doctor out there in this book and like you said a third author but that's because micky is i've never seen anybody that cares about what he studies and about the people that he influences and helps like i've seen out of this doctor it's not just it's just not taught it's not book selling talk either this guy i mean you see the the the the passion dail has to write this book he needs people to understand that there's a mickey collins in this world and that there's

a lot of people that we're finding out that are going through a lot of the same stuff and there's hope there's a way to get there's a way to get help yeah and you guys i think did a fantastic job uh just putting that all on the table in this book yeah i feel like that there's a there is a group of people out there that feel like that they have no answer and know where to go, no one to see. They've been to this doctor, this doctor, and this doctor, and they've gotten everything out of that experience that they can, and what they have left, they have resigned to live with.

And that the remaining symptoms and issues are just what they're going to have to deal with. They've accepted that, right? I hear people say to me when they talk about, man, I'm glad you're speaking up. I'm also had a traumatic brain injury when I was younger, and I've got problems today, and, man, I'm glad you're talking. And my comment to them would be your problems today or maybe something that Mickey could fix. You know, give Mickey a chance to understand your problems,

be transparent with him, and he may be able to help you, be able to minimize and lessen the severity of those symptoms, if not wipe them out completely. The one thing that people always talked about was quality of life, quality of life, quality of life, quality of life, getting the best quality of life you can get. And so that's what I think we all are seeking. Anybody that's ever had a head injury and that has those recurring symptoms and ongoing

issues and lingering problems is trying to get a good quality of life to where when you wake up in the morning, it's not something that's hanging over your head and annoying you through every minute of the day and every experience that you have. It's like, you know, trying to minimize that symptom, if not wipe it out completely is the only thing you care about. And so the hope is that people that have this issue, or if you know someone that does have these kind of problems, that think that this is something that they have to live with,

that have given up hope on finding any more answers to fix it, that they'll give Mickey a call. And when you go and people think, well, you know, Mickey sees me or he sees the Steelers players and he sees the NHL Penguins team, I go into his, and I thought that too, When I first started going to see Mickey, I thought Mickey was a doctor for the Pittsburgh sports teams. And his facilities right there, right?

His facilities, it is located. He has two facilities, two offices, and he's both throughout the week. They're both at ones at the Steelers training facility and ones at the NHL training facility for the Penguins. And the thing that I thought when I first went to Mickey's was, oh, wow, man, I'm in great hands. He works with the Steelers and the Penguins. man, he's dealt with this stuff. Yeah, he was Sidney Crosby's doctor. Right.

So what I learned, though, when I walk into the lobby is that every man is in there. The kid that's gotten hurt playing sports in high school or been in a car accident, the plumber that, you know, injured himself on the job, the wife at home or, you know, he sees anyone and everyone. When you go into the therapy room, it's just giant room. It's a gym-like room with a bunch of apparatuses and stuff. there's all walks of life in that room working on all types of injuries. And so the United Pittsburgh Medical Center I learned is not just about Mickey Collins and athletes.

Right. All right. And so if you're hearing this today or you read this book and you have problems and you're wondering if Mickey can fix them, he'll welcome you with open arms. And so I hope that people are encouraged more, you know, to go. see him. One of the big things I learned, this is just, this is an injury, you know, I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's brain science, you know, so you go in thinking it's this mystical, magical, you know, we'll never really understand it and all that stuff. And then you talk to Mickey and it's bruising and it's, you know, it's, you know, it's just, and he, he starts

breaking it down into this chemical and that chemical, it's, it's, it's like breaking your arm. And there's a, there's a treatment for it. And, you know, you don't think that because what we knew about concussions 10 years ago is completely obsolete. And what we know 10 years from now will be completely different than what it is now. What Dale always says, we say a bunch of times in the book is, you know, it's no longer going to sit in a dark room. It's not. But it wasn't that long ago. That's what the treatment was. But now there's, you know, there's treatment. You just have to find the right doctor that tells you it's not, like any other injury. If you, you tear up, tear an ACL or Tommy John surgery or whatever, you go see, you know, James Andrews down in Pensacola because he's the specialist,

You know, and he knows more than your guy down the road knows. And so this just, to me, it's the most honorable part of the whole project. And honestly, why I wanted to do it is the mission at the end, which is if you don't feel right, even if your doctor is telling you so-and-so, go. There's hope. There is. And don't be hardheaded. Don't just say, well, it's just how it's going to be.

You keep your mind open. And people, now I'm getting tweets and emails and people coming up to me and going, well, I saw, Mickey or, you know, Dale said this, and we got a guy in the book that this kid in the book from Maine who, you know, read the story in ESPN magazine, but Tommy Tomlinson and went and saw Mickey and he's got his life back. You know, that's, that's why you do this, right? Oh, we were in Indianapolis and, you know, a couple people went up, came up to us, a 16-year-old girl softball player. Yeah. Struggling. Struggling. Can't, you know, can't make sense of it. And asking us, do you

have the number for Dr. Collins? Yeah, absolutely. We got the number for Dr. Collins. And she's up in Indy, working with Dr. Collins. It's anybody. You start this book very interestingly. And I know that you, I've heard you talk about, you knew when the start of this book, you knew it when you heard it. Talk about this. You go back to a race that was very compelling for you the way to kind of tee up what was to come. It was at Talladega.

Talk about that. Yeah, it was one of the earliest conversations, but I mean the very first conversation we had. And you talked about lifting. I remember he was talking about this Talladega race. And I knew there had been, and I knew it because of this podcast. I knew there had been some blowback because the race ended and they'll never really engaged at the end. And I can't remember where you finished, but just didn't, you know, he knew he didn't

have a chance to win. And I asked him about it. And he told that story. And when he said, and I lifted, it was like, as a writer, I was like, okay, this covers a lot of material right here. not just how he felt, but also what we were talking about earlier about people thinking they knew how he felt and they didn't know how he felt. And just kind of, and there was some secret keeping that was going on there. And so there was a lot going on in that moment that I thought was the perfect

way to start it. Because, you know, even if you don't know anything about any of this, if you read that and this is Mr. Restrictor played and at his place and now you're making a conscious. decision and then immediately regretting it. And I thought that was the most important part is to understand. You know, it's, all right, there was a conflict there that immediately set the tone for this is, this guy is going through so much more than anybody understands. And to me, that kind of set that stage. You know, you're letting everybody know right off the bat, you thought you knew what was going on. And guess what? The woman asleep to him in the bed that night, she didn't know what was going on. So you sure as hell didn't know what was going on.

And so to me, it was important to set that tone early on. Now, you're a sports writer. And right now, concussions over the past few years have been a huge, huge story. You know, there's been movies about it. There's been, you know, you're covering sports, you in racing where we're bullheaded. It's got a lot of machismo, you know, we've got a lot of machoism within the sport. Same thing with football. Now you're seeing some people, you see this with this book, some transparency we haven't seen

in this sport, but also you're covering both these types sports. You're seeing something right now in the education process, but also in the mindset process of just coming out and saying, hey, this is what happened. As a sports writer, that's got to be incredibly refreshing covering all these different sports to hear this. Well, and this is how I knew, I mean, you knew all along the book would have crossover potential, but I'm in a college football game every Saturday.

Yeah. And I was at LSU this past weekend. I was at Notre Dame the weekend before in Ohio. state and they're asking about the book and people involved in football are asking about the book and so i think that yeah i mean it's just it's a conversation that is taking place now that nobody was i mean he talks about when he had your what you had your crash in the in the bush race at Daytona 98 and just the way you handled that then is just how you handled it and nobody talked about it was just not that's not the world we're living in anymore well i mean listen it opens up an intriguing dilemma that

that athletes have been dealing with a long time and that is playing hurt for the for the most part, we can all agree. Athletes play hurt. Where do you draw the line is the question? When you've got contracts and you got your whole way, this is how you're supporting. You just made it. You just made it. Your dream. And now you're here. And now where do you stop? It is so difficult for athletes to be able to know enough. I can't do this anymore. I'm only, Ricky Craven, really, when he was on this show several years ago, when Dale Jr. was sitting out of the car and he opened up a lot about the dilemma that you've got to face. I don't want anybody taking my spot because I know that the moment I get out of a car

or for a football player, the moment I go to the sidelines, that's when your Tom Brady comes in and, you know, supplements through Bledsoe or whatever. This is what's going through their mind. Let me say this. I want to be clear, I didn't wake up one day and go, you know what, I'm going to make a wise decision. I'm going to, you know, go see a doctor. The symptoms that you have frighten you into calling someone the way that if your leg broke right now,

your ass would be going to the doctor and you would be wanting to go, right? Not, oh, my legs broke, I'm going to make a good decision and go to the doctor today. Right. And get it fits. I see what you're saying. You know what I'm saying? It's more, so I want to be clear that, you know, I didn't have this epiphany and go, man, I'm making all these wrong choices.

I've got to do better. Most of the time when I did go get help, it was because I was frightened about what was happening. And the reason why I'm frightened or was frightened in those moments is because of the information that's available today. Like 5, 10, 15, and certainly 20 years ago, there weren't movies on concussions. There weren't articles about, you know, NFL, retired NFL players having issues. There weren't suicides and circumstances and coincidences linked to concussions. There wasn't a conversation about CTE on and on and on and on every day, propping up on your phone and your alerts.

Just in a traditional news app alone, there's a concussion story almost daily. If I have a concussion in 2012, I'm out of the car for two weeks. I'm okay, sounds good. Okay, we're healthy. we're going to be back in the car. I'm never, should be good to go, right? Yep, great.

But that experience is imprinted on me. So when I see a concussion story, I read it. When I see a conversation about CTE, I join in. And when I, I'm absorbing all this information about all these players and everything they're going through and everything that's every, anything, anytime anybody's been transparent, the families that are wondering what, why this guy was acting this way and, you know, why he killed himself. And, you know, I'm absorbing all this information.

And so that is what is. driving me to make the right choice. Yes. Yeah. So when you do get that injury and you have read all this content, you get your, you know, you go to the doctor on fear alone. This book is going to do the same thing. People are going to read it.

And if they get a concussion, they're going to go, oh, I better do the right thing. I read in this book. I don't want to screw up. I don't want to make a wrong choice here. And anything connected to concussions, the conversation that we have today, the ongoing discussions, the articles written, the family's coming forward about their loved ones that have passed away and the stories and the questions they have. And the experiences that players and athletes have today with concussions, their injury,

their recovery, they're going back to play and having success. And all these stories are piling up. And it's all just great positive ammo for an athlete or a driver that will experience a concussion one day. I covered an NFL game several years ago, and I watched. My only job at day was to watch this one wide receiver, and I watched him suffer. I watched him. I watched it happen, and he went back to sat on the sideline, and then snuck back into the game, watch him sneak around the doctors and go back into the game

because he knew if they saw him that wouldn't live in the game. And so that mentality is never going to change, but the doctors were looking for him to keep him getting in the game. Yeah. They wouldn't have even done that, you know, five or six years ago. And that's another thing, too, is, You don't shut down football. You don't shut down racing. If you want to race, you want to play football, you can do it.

You just need to be smarter as to how you do it. And know that if you do suffer and injured, you can do it. And then there's also things that you can do on the front end of that to make, you know, you aren't just running around out there with bad gear and stupid stuff. You know, it's just preventative maintenance and then also taking care of it when you're injured. All that exists now. There's tools that exist on both ends of that. didn't exist, 5, 10, certainly, like he said, 20 years ago.

And now you just live, but you don't have to wrap yourself and bubble wrap and never do the things that you love. No. Whether that's working construction or whether that's, you know, playing youth soccer. You can still do those things. Just know that you can get help if you need help. Yeah. When you're 20 years old, your body, you're young, your body recovers faster.

It doesn't, you know, the injury for the same injury at 43 or, you know, 40 years old for me, was much more significant than it was when I was 28. When we had that crash at 1998 at Daytona, I was falling over, like getting out, you know, walking around and out of the care center, dizzy. When you were talking to us, you were talking to the mediators. I about fell over. He did this thing with his head and he, I mean, they'd catch him.

Yeah. Yeah. And so. We're all ha, ha, ha, ha. Yeah. Yeah, really. You know what, and what I remember, I remember that vividly. And I remember feeling that dizziness.

for that second and then completely clear the moment later. Yeah. You know, so it never registered in my mind. There was not a symptom that was ongoing and annoying that would register with me that, hey, I have a problem. I better speak up, right? Right. The youth of my younger body, you know, didn't allow those symptoms to be exposed for

whatever reason, you know, in the same crash at 40 years old would have been debilitating. Yeah. Right. That happens well. So like when Ila, I nebula, she's going to scratch herself. Right. And you could almost watch it. Heal up.

While you're looking at her. If I scratch myself right now, it's like six months later, I got a scar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's just how it goes. Yeah. One of the things I did was I went back through, like, stuff I had written, like, while I was covering you during all this. And I wrote a column that day in Charlotte, the press conference in 2012 where you said I'm going to be gone a couple races. And Jerry Petty was there.

and all that. I wrote a column that night saying this was important. And the reason it was important was because this was not some guy that you may or may not have ever heard of. It finishes, you know, 30th every week driving for a team that's going to fold in two years saying I'm walking away for two rates. It was you. Yep. And so the point was if an Earnhardt is saying, you know what, I'm going to be sent out a couple races, it sent a message, I thought, which was, all right, you know, whether you're a retired guy or whether you're a guy getting started, it's okay to go take care of yourself. Even though you hated it at the time, it's okay to go take care of yourself. And I think this book is going to make people think the same thing,

even on a much, much deeper level. Yeah. I could tell you in 2012, when I walked into the room, and it was Mickey and Rick and Kelly and everybody in there, and they said that you're going to sit out for a couple weeks. I was not on board. No. So even in 2012, I wasn't ready to make the right decision for myself.

and we talk about it in the book how a support system around someone like that is very critical. Someone with a concussion is not someone that can make decisions for themselves. Especially in the heat of the moment right after a crash or an injury on the field, they certainly need medical staff and so forth in place to be able to help them. It's the same at home. When they leave that field to play and they wake up the next morning, that support system needs to be there. And I certainly had one around me in the most.

critical of times and you know we cover that in the book we talk about amy a lot of people we a lot of people wanted to put the retirement on amy but she was actually the big part if not you know aside for mickey she was a real reason why i was able to get well enough to come back for that final year it's uh it's uh it covers about all of it you know at the start of this uh interview in this conversation mcgee i was talking i was saying how that we were going to have these moments where we thought man we forgot something i haven't had one of those years you You have? I was going to ask you. That's good. I was going to ask you. I mean, we were done with this thing months ago. Yeah. I've read it three or four times. I haven't had that people. Well, and as a writer, my wife was making fun of me because the only copy of the book I have, I'm laying in the bed the other night reading it. And she's like, what are you doing? I go, I'm reading it. She's, well, you can't change it now. I go, that doesn't matter. This is what you do. And I felt the same way. I wanted to know if an author reads the book when it's out or if you'd be afraid to read it.

Not well. Honestly, I think the, yeah. I mean, I think there's a little bit of that, but you're just going on and do it. Yeah. But I'm proud of it. I really am. You know, I read the earlier drafts a hundred times because I wanted to make sure that they were okay. And it was, I'm going to jinx this because I hope we get to do it again one day. But the process on this was so much smoother than I thought it was going to be. Really?

It really was. I would drive up to his place. So we basically wrote the book in halves. And I drove up to his place. And it takes me about an hour to get from my house to his house. whole drive up there I thought, man, this is going to suck. Because we're going to go through this thing and in a good way. We're going to fix what we've got to fix.

He'd sit at his desk and read. And I'd sit at that funky recliner with my laptop ready to go. And he'd read a whole half of the book and we wouldn't change a lot. And it was like, I was like, we're not terrible at this. Yeah. It was awesome. Yeah, the only one of the one parts that I remember reading through with him in the room. And so I started to read one of the chapters and I thought, I need him here.

I need him here. I'm going to have a lot of things that I think are incorrect. And I'd just rather him be sitting here so we could have a real conversation about it. So we want to be thorough. So he's like, all right, I'll drive up there. So we sit down and I'm going to read four chapters of this book right now. And it's going to take about three hours. And so I read through it and I only had one snag on the bobwire.

And that was this line about, and this is in the first four chapters or so or whatever. talking about Rick in the conversation I had with him at Daytona. I was in his bus. I remember having a conversation with him and just, I was just being annoyed. I was annoyed and I'm having an, I'm just going, hey man, you know, this is, I don't like this. This has got to stop and I want to do this. Like he's, his brain is, he didn't have a filter to this. But I'm talking to him like this.

I'm like, hey, this is coming to the end. I don't, I don't know if I want to do this anymore, Rick. I really don't, you know, I just, you know, I'm not having any fun. This, this, and this happened. And damn it, this, you know, what, you know, not. running good and you know I'm just this is the way I'm talking that's how it sounded in your tone and yeah this is how it sounds in my head and so I'm reading in the book here and and he it says I'm yelling at Rick yeah and I said I don't remember yelling now now we can't put that in

there because I don't want Rick to read it and go he wasn't yelling at me yeah nobody yells at primordaunt employee yelling at the boss yeah nobody yells at me and he goes that was Rick's recollection is that is that that that's what that's what Rick told you. I talked to him like just a couple of days earlier. Yeah. And so that really made me realize that, okay, well, he's really went and talked to Rick, talked to all these people about these experiences in this whole book to sort of add credibility

and substance to him. You didn't know you've been yelling at us all these years? That's not how he described it. So everybody else would describe it. No. But, Mike, I talked to you for a long thing. time, several times. And I talked to, I mean, Tony Mayhoff here, talked to Rick, talked to Steve LaTart, talked to the Greg and the crew guys, and I mean, everybody. And so people know, we're not

rewriting any of Dale stories. You're just looking for a little bit of perspective on it. You know, give me a little bit of detail on it, you know, and like that. Like he says this out of how it. But if he had said, I didn't yell at Rick, and that's how that was, then that's how he recalled it. It's his book. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I kid about this, but you know what the fact is, I mean, this is what I would tell McGee. Because everybody has their own vantage point from it.

And so from my vantage point, we didn't know what to make of all this as it was going on. This is what it would be like. Dale would be in your office and be like, did you just, I totally just, my balance just left. And I believe him, but it's like, dude, if you don't want a race, just say you don't want to race, you know, or, you know, what's going on. I mean, like, I don't, you don't know what's going on because he was. go to places and not have any symptoms. We're like, and admittedly, we're all being honest here. It's like, was it a coincidence that you didn't have any symptoms in Key West?

Or, you know, when you got your day off? Yeah. Is it really every time you go into the garage or go to work? And so literally when we go up to see Dr. Collins, and we're all in there, there was this pervasive, undertone feeling that's like, Dr. Collins is going to, if there's BS here, Dr. Collins is going to call it out. It's like, you be like, here comes, right? You know, because he's asking him questions.

It almost felt like a court scene. It almost felt like Dr. Colin, he's got his assistant sitting there, you know, typing little notes. And he's asking questions to Dale. And Dale's like, you know, my eyes won't, aren't working with me, man. It's like, you know, I can't, I can't focus. I can't do this. With the moment you're like, okay, if there's, if there's any BS to be called out, here it comes. And Dr. Colin says, you should have been here sooner.

I know exactly what you got. And he rolls out this chart. And it's got all the six different types of concussions on. it. And it was verbate. It might have been Dale's bio for the past year. It explained everything he was saying. Yes, you don't have all these symptoms. You know why you don't have the symptoms in Key West? Because

it's not triggering stress. Stress will trigger these things. Or high speed environments. A racetrack may qualify, right? Right. And so it's like, oh, and we all learned a very valuable lesson that day. We don't know what we're talking about. Right.

Just so you know, brain science is my favorite. Yeah. This is my favorite part of this podcast. Hey, do you want me to make that into a ringtone for you? Can that be a clip for the ground? We don't know what we're talking about. But that's, it goes back to something we were talking about earlier, which is because he is who he is and because so many people care about what he does on a racetrack or who he is

or just everything he does, everybody thinks they understand him. That's right. And you don't. You don't. You do not. There were two people on planet Earth who understood what was going on. He understood how he felt, and Mickey Collins understood what was going on. That was it.

That was the beginning and the end. And everybody else believed, everybody had a theory, whether it was a sports writer or whether it was somebody that was, you know, with him all the time. Everybody believed they, oh, well, this is what's going on. We didn't know what was going on. That's right. And the fact that we all, looking back now, the fact that we all believed that we knew it was going on with the brain science is crazy. Right. So imagine the mailman or the clerk Jimmy at the hardware store who has a concussion.

And he can't, he has that same frustration of trying to, you know, you can't see it. He looks fine. You know, he just rang me up. He looked normal. Yeah. He was crazy to begin with. Yeah. And, you know, they have that same inability to showcase what's wrong with them so someone can go, all right, I see, I get it.

and they have this inability to go to Mickey because they don't know Mickey. They don't know where he is or who he is or that he exists. They don't know this opportunity to see someone like Mickey exists. And they're walking around every day with the frustration in their mind that no other family or friends really know what they're going through. And they don't know how to fix it. I mean, that's so scary.

You know, I'm glad that I'm well and I don't have that fear and frustration every day. but there are so many people out there that do, and to me that's very scary. I'm in an insulated environment, and a lot of people aren't so fortunate, and a lot of people don't even have that support system around them. So it's a scary thing. It's a necessary book, guys.

I'm glad it's here. I'm really eager for people to read it and give us feedback. We love hearing it. And, Dale, if it's exhausting talking about it, by the time everyone listens to the show or watches this show, you'll have been in New York for two days doing the same thing regurgitating it. But it's something that we feel like it's so necessary that it's a message and it's a, it's a conversation that needs to be had.

This book's going to start the conversation. That was why he wrote it. That's right. I just will always be grateful that you guys entrusted me with this. Well, we definitely picked the right guy. The book turned out the way I had it in my mind the whole time, you know, and you made that happen. You know, when I read it, it's me. It's my quotes.

It's my words. It's as if I wrote the damn book with the pen. I know, but that's not the case in a lot of books. Well, there's nothing in there you didn't say. I mean, yeah. Oh, I know. I'll say, I'll go back to the beginning. In the beginning, he said, we're going to have to be friends to do this.

I feel like we're friends now. And the most important thing about all this was I got to see the baby before anybody else. I did. I got to see the baby before like anybody. Because I was, they came home to hospital and like the next day because we were trying to. You were like. Hey, tell me about to race. to the finish. We're trying to get this thing. I kept saying to him, dude, we got to be done by

May 1. He's like, well, they're not going to. None of those seriously. I just brought a baby home. I mean, give me a dare to. When the baby gets here, I said, you're not going to be sleeping. We're going, we got to get the heavy lifting done before the baby. That was my goal was to be done by May 1. And we still had a little bit to do. And like, I mean, that baby hadn't been home 24 hours. And there, there was the writer nerd was with my laptop. Hey, man, what's up? And they're like, here's a baby. I'm like, great. There ain't, there ain't no paternity to leave when you're writing a book. No, but I was. I was. My claim to fame in the end will be that.

I was one of the first ones to see. I would say if there is one occupation to have if you have a baby at the house, writing a books, one of them. Yeah, yeah, sure. Any kind of work from home. Yeah, yeah, you got it made. No, that was it. Well, fellas, can you hang around a little bit longer?

We're going to talk a little. I'll stay as long as y'all want. All right. I mean, you remain on the move, so we don't know. But everybody, listen, go check this book out. It's available now anywhere books are sold, and it's not even that expensive. So go get you one. All right, let's get to an Exalta update.

This is your Exalta Race Center update on Matthew Dillner. Talladega, Alabama was the epicenter of NASCAR this weekend. On Saturday, the truck series was back on track, and it was an outlaw, former full-time series competitor Timothy Peters, who came in and stole the show, racing in just his fourth truck event at the season. The last lap wreck between he and race leader Noah Gregson

decided the race with the field frozen when the yellow flag came out. Gregson, Matt Crafton, Grant Enfinger, Justin Haley, Brett Moffitt, and Johnny Sauter, will all advance to the playoffs round of six, which starts in two weeks at Martinsville Speedway. On Sunday, the Cup race saw a big win with playoff implications. Eric Amarola broke a 149 race winless drought by taking the checkered flag when teammate Kurt Bush ran out of fuel on the last lap. While the trucks get a weekend off, the Xfinity Series playoff round of eight kicks off at Kansas Speedway on Saturday.

On Sunday, the Cuppers go 400 miles in Kansas with an elimination race to close out their round of 12. This has been your Exalta 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, please visit ExalttaCS.com. All right, so let's talk about Talladega as a wild weekend. I got a new Chevy Silverado while I was down in Talladega. That's awesome. We're going to Talladega a bunch.

Never came out with a new Chevy Silverado. I was going to drive at home, but I got a friend of mine to drive it home, and I'll see it. It's at the house now. I haven't drove it yet. But you have seen it. I have not seen it. I have only seen it in pictures, but I'm excited.

What does it look like? It's red, black wheels. It's got all new body lines and stuff, so I'm really excited about it. I was at the Texas Motor Speedway when they unveiled this Silverado almost. Be a helicopter. Yeah, the helicoptered it in. And I was like, that's a great-looking truck. When it's available to the public, I'm going to buy one.

I haven't bought a Chevy truck in a long time. So I've been driving Chevy's all my life, but it's been a while since I bought a truck. It's a pretty truck. Yeah. Did you buy it from yourself? I bought it from a dealership. Yes. In Tallahassee, yes.

I was down in Tallahassee for Florida State, Virginia Tech Labor Day weekend, and I'm telling you, dude, I don't know how much you're spending on radio advertising now. It's a lot. I mean, it's every commercial breakdown. down there, it was you. Really? Come on down to Dale Jr. It's a good job.

That's funny. And everybody's going to sit there and say, well, if you bought it from your own dealership, why didn't you just get it? But that's just not how the automotive business works. That's not how it works. Get it for free, you mean? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm paying for it. It's mine. I don't want any strings attached for all that crap. So Taladeg anyways, the end of the race was really interesting. Stewart Haas dominates. They brought these four fast cars that we just dominated the field. At one point in one, stage they had a half a lap lead on eighth place.

We haven't seen anything like that since Dale Jarrett and Robert Yates car would have that kind of control over the field or even better, Bill Elliott in the 80s driving away from the field on his own. I think I would relate it to that type of performance from Bill Elliott, but it was four cars instead of, it was for Bill Elliott's out there. They really controlled the race. I mean, if you watched it, you saw it. They were up front all day long.

When they did get shuffled back at any point in the race, they would work their way right back to the front. They just had incredible speed in qualifying, and it transferred over it in the race, and, you know, it really came down to just which one of those guys is going to win. A couple things right at there at the end of the race. NASCAR did not throw a yellow flag when there was a crash doing down into term one involving a few guys, Matt D. Benedetto and Chase Elliott and a few others were involved in that crash.

And there was some drivers complaining about the fact that they didn't throw the yellow like they had in the past. 2015. Right. So. Been nice then. Well, yeah. Well, that crash happened at the flag stand.

I'm a little bitter about it. Sorry. Yeah, really? We're going to start going down the list. Yellow's the Talladega. We're going to do that. Here's a situation from my standpoint is if NASCAR throws the yellow, they're going to get criticized for not letting it play out.

If NASCAR doesn't throw the yellow, they're going to get criticized for not throwing the yellow. Yeah. It doesn't matter. Yeah. It doesn't matter what happens. Somebody is not going to like it. Can't make everybody happy all the time.

I think that in. NASCAR defense, they were trying to let the race finish, and they do have ways to be able to communicate and understand what the situation is down at the rec site and whether guys need medical attention immediately. So they made the human decision, which Kurt Busch pointed out, it's a human decision. It's not a black and white rule this way or that. It's a decision by a human being up in a booth to decide whether the yellow comes out or not. They made that call not to throw that caution that resulted in the finish.

that we got. That's why Kurt was upset. He felt like that the precedent was to throw the yellow. But I feel like that when they have thrown the yellow over the past couple years, that people have griped. Why did you throw the yellow? Of course they did. It wasn't a big enough crash.

And NASCAR's reason was, well, we're going to get the medical staff out there to get to this guy. He's hit the wall hard and we want to get him help. And he stopped. That's another thing. If they drive off, okay. But in Talladega, you can give them a few seconds to see if they are going to be in the way when you come across.

That's true. And so, you know, NASCAR has given, I think, good reason for what they did before and what they did this past weekend as far as throwing that yellow flag at the end of the race. Also, there was some comments by some of the drivers about the length of that yellow flag leading up to the green white checker. Some felt like there was an extra lap in there. Kurt Busch mentioned that. Ryan Blaney mentioned that as well.

Talking to Steve O'Donnell and hearing his comments, since the race, you know, he's a lot of since the end of the race, they needed another extra lap to clean up some of the debris. They could not open pit road as quickly as they traditionally do on a caution because of the location of the wreck being in turn of four. So they had to wait until they could get everything out of the way before they could open pit road and do a traditional cycle. They could have done a quickie yellow, which would allow the lap cars and lead lap cars to pit together. They did not. They went with the traditional cycle, which would require even another lap for the lead lap cars and the lap. down cars to pit separately.

So, you know, you could, I've been in that situation as a driver. When it's late in the race, you've got a great car, you're sitting there with an opportunity and you need all the laps you can get to make that happen. Or in this situation, those guys are worried about fuel mileage and they're adding laps to the race unnecessarily in your mind as a driver. So from the driver's seat, I can totally understand the frustration there. And, you know, there's no easy answer for that one. I didn't have an issue with anything NASCAR.

I thought the rulings were good. You know, I feel like, okay, as a driver, I would be frustrated. But you're not a driver. I'm not a driver anymore. Now, I'm on the other side of the fence. I don't see a big deal with it. If NASCAR wants to take more time to make sure the pit road area is clear so they can allow the cars to enter and the cycle can begin, that's what has to happen.

If they don't want to do a quick yellow and decide to do a traditional yellow cycle, that's what happens. It's easy for me to say this because I'm not a driver anymore. But one thing I learned as a driver was you can complain all you want about any rule in the book. You can protest, stomp your foot, be as mad and angry as you'd like to be, but it hardly ever, in any case, does any good. It's not going to change what happened. It's not going to change what happens going forward. And also, every time that I've had a complaint, much like these, similar to these, every time I've went in the NASCAR hauler,

they gave me reasons for why it happened. Right. And it was never, I was out to screw you. Yeah. Well, it's never that. It's balls and strikes. So just to recap, the guys who ran out of gas thought they shouldn't have added laps. Right. And the guys who would have had a chance to win, they believe it had not been for the caution, think they should have. Yeah.

The caution was ill time. So could your situation, Mr. Driver, maybe affect your worldview of the situation? I mean, could that be it? Yes, of course. Yeah. And so I thought, I liked seeing it. I like seeing it race out because there was, what, only two cars in? that right? Well, there was a few more cars in the crash, but most of them drove away. I think

all but two drove away. Oh, that's interesting. But remember, there's radio chatter that NASCAR listens to and stuff. So if there's a situation where they know a driver needs help, they're going to know it. Yeah, they have the radio chatter as well as video, but also the location of the trucks down in those corners, the corner workers with visuals on those vehicles, cars that are crashed and so forth. So there's a lot of things that they use in that moment to determine whether they can continue racing. They want to be able to give the fans a green flag finish, a real, you know, they want to give the fans that opportunity to see that if they can. And in that moment, they made a decision to leave, you know, leave the green flag out there.

We've had worse situations leaving Talladega. And I can recall the one you're talking about, you know, be glad that we're not in that situation anymore. Let's just recap it real quick, just so everybody knows what we're talking about. 2015 cut off race to the chase I mean like you had to advance Dale junior was right there on the line and he had been up front all day he's up there racing Joey Lugano you're coming up to a green white checkered restart right and back then we caught it a green white checkered restart and Kevin Harvick I still

need therapy over this one Kevin Harvick brought out the caution it could be argued that Harvick needed the caution and therefore brought out the caution but anyways that was Then there was a wreck. There was a wreck that started, and it was a big one. It was way bigger, admittedly, than the one Sunday. Dale Jr. took the lead, but they threw the caution. The caution light flew, and they gave Lugano the win. So, Junior did not advance in the playoffs.

Y'all know I've been doing this for a while. Yeah. And that was, it's not even a conversation. The most bizarre post-race there's ever been because no one had any idea what was going on. I'll never forget. Matt Kinsis was one of the guys that was on the cut line as to whether or not he would make the next round. And so we're all standing out on pit road, races over, and guys are getting out of the cars, and no one's mad, and no one's happy, and everybody's just standing there.

I'll never forget, we're standing there. Matt Kinsett turns around and looks at me, he goes, do you have any idea what's going on? And I go, no, because we're waiting on, like, a scoring rule. And Bob Hawkers is there, and he's listening to NASCAR and waiting on whatever. and meanwhile everybody's standing there completely silent waiting on someone to say all right this is this is what happened and Lugano's out celebrating and the crowd is booming i mean they are flipping out because what happened to you that would have been the one difference is that they threw the caution immediately go back to that score and loop gave Lago the win didn't even let him get into the middle of turn one and two what i'd learn by that point in my career was that if you feel cheated or slighted or jipped that it's best to get over that as fast as you can

because what happens is you get out of the car and you complain and be, you know, be frustrated. And then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you're still complained, you're still upset, you're still complaining and upset, but you're the only one. Everyone else has moved on.

Monday, Monday by lunch, everybody doesn't move on for your problem. Nobody cares about that damn lap, that extra lap. Nobody cares, yellow didn't come out, but you. It's 2018. I'm still not over it, but all right. I see your point.

But yeah, that's what I would experience from my standpoint as a driver. I'd be like, y'all believe that? Y'all believe that. And everybody's like, what are you talking about? Man, damn, all right, you still going on about that? Sorry, Tuesday. I do get over. Like the race is over.

What was it? Now that you talked about the craziest finish and craziest post race, like I remember a crazy post race when Jeff Gordon beat Dale Jr. at Talladega. Well, I was just so. I remember the situation. Why were people throwing beer cans at Gordon? Well, since the caution came out, right? Yeah, the same situation.

Same situation. There's still people down there with rotator cuff injuries. Marty and I, Markis. Hey, Marty and I were just talking about this other day on our show, which was, there were dudes that I was as wrong as it was to be throwing beer cans at Jeff Gordon. I was impressed with some of these people that threw those beer cans from row 75 and, and like, doored that car with a beer can while it was rolling down the front stretch.

I'm like, that's a Dan Marino. Letting perfectly. Yeah, that's Doug Williams in the Super Bowl. There's a couple things I remember about that whole experience. Jeff had just gotten up toward the front, and we'd been doing well all day long, and this would have been five in a row. That's right. And so down the back straight away, going in three, Jeff had sidetracked me and gotten ahead,

and I was sidetracked him back and starting to go back by him. In that motion, as I'm trying to go back by him, I'm going. by him, right? I'd just another another hundred yards and I'd be out front. And the 25 car fun in the middle of the corner.

And NASCAR's precedent at the time was that the field was froze as soon as the car started to spend. Like in the moment that the crash is beginning to happen, the field is frozen in that exact moment. And so Jeff was ahead. You know, we didn't have timing lines.

We didn't have, you know, we weren't going by the caution lights. We weren't going by the flag man. anymore. I mean, usually it was, like, for the longest time, it would be the flag man. Well, part of the confusion was when they would do replays, there was a caution light that you saw come on. And it came on like a split second after you had gone back in the lead.

And that was irrelevant. And people didn't understand that. People didn't because of what you're talking about. It was the second loudest booing I've ever heard of a racetrack. Yeah. There was that day. The other one was the second Labani Dale Sear deal at Bristol. And so while we're coming around.

the racetrack on the pace laps, his thinking in that we're not going to win this race, you know, that we're going to lose this race. And Jeff Gordon, who ain't done Jack all day long, is going to walk into victory lane and like he's a hero, you know, and I was so frustrated with that because we had been, we'd won four in a row, and we were best in the win that day. We were good. And we're riding around under pace laps and those beer cans are flying across the racetrack, and I got up against the wall behind the fence.

That's right. And so I'm not getting in any. beer cans. And Jeff goes further and further way down to the apron and they're still going, they're like, they were like throwing full beer cans. Now, you know that you got some pissed off Alabama fans when they're willing to throw a full beer. That's true. Right. Yeah. So I, I remember one other instance where that happened in my career. I think it was my first July race in Daytona, 2000, may have been 2000, but I think it's 2000.

And they threw the yellow with a lap or two to go, and so it was going to finish under yellow. And this was back when the back grandstands was full. And they had put seat cushions on the seats before the race. Yeah. All right. And the grandstands, I don't know if they did it on the front stretch,

but the back stretch, they had these little seat cushions that they put on every seat. So the caution comes out, and the fans are thinking, man, surely they're going to get this thing restarted before the end. Well, we get the white flag and the caution, and the fans know that they're not going to restart the race. And by time we're coming around, turn one and two,

the fans had covered the racetrack with those cushions. You could not see a piece of asphalt. And we're driving through there. It's like the inch or two of cushions. They're just flying everywhere. Cushins are going everywhere. All the cars are cushions are flying up there, and cushions are going into the fence,

and every with their apron. I was like, it is something, there's something interesting about witnessing mass protests. that there's a weird feeling like i hate to say it too like i was gratified by the cans hitting gordon's car yeah i was like hell yeah hit that damn car with him cans and i know that's wrong you know and i know when i came around there and saw those cushions it was wrong but i could not help but laugh oh yeah no that's awesome it was so enjoyable well you were you were okay yeah then nobody was you were not no one was going to hurt you with a beer cake at that point yeah

but but for two reasons one they weren't throwing at him too he had the you common sense to get up against the wall. Right. Because I don't think any of them. Kenny Staler could have been up there, but he wasn't going to hit that trajectory right over the fence, over the wall, and landed on a car. You were in a protected environment, so you were good. And those cushions weren't going to hurt anybody. All right, man.

Maybe you want to get some Asc Jr. 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. Are you ready for this? Uh-huh. Ask Junior, sponsored by the nationwide home fire drill 120.

Matthew. Important program that you and Amy are very involved with. Absolutely, man. You guys got to get your home fire drills done. You want to get out of the house to a designated spot in under 120 seconds, sponsored by Nationwide. That's right. So, hey, we were giving you crap about all your questions. Ask Junior questions you've been pulling from the internet.

But apparently you got some good ones this week. Well, I mean, we did have a long show, so I got a hack and whack as we came up with that term earlier. the show. I'm making excuses. I make it excuses. So if these questions don't suck. But let's see if we let's see if these fans delivered. You're starting to get some anxiety of it. All right. Let's start off here with Megan Nilsen who says, would you have wanted Chad Canals as your crew chief? He seems pretty intense all the time, even from his beginnings at Rockford Speedway. I would love to have known what it was like to work with Chad, just like in the same way that I always wanted to know what it was like to drive in Hendrick Motorsports race cars.

So while I was racing to DEI, even if we were winning, you always wondered what the other cars felt like, what their motors felt like, what they drove like because they do their clips differently or whatever. And so in the same way that, you know, I'd love eventually would get to drive an HMS car. I would be cool to see what going to the racetrack with him is like and how his intensity is and what his cars drive like, the adjustment he makes and things like that. Wouldn't have lasted five minutes. Well, he was a little intense. Dale, you like the laid back guys a little bit more. I'm flexible, man, and I adapt and I think I could have made it work. All right. WDR chiming in, this is great.

He said, they say, you ain't cheating, you ain't trying. So what's the wildest thing you've ever seen or heard about someone doing to a race car? I understand if you don't want to say names, he says. Oh, well, there's a lot of things that guys have done over the years. One of the ways to run really good at Daytona was to have, you know, get air into the engine with the restrictor plate, trying to get air into the motor to be able to put more fuel in the motor to be able to create more power. It's definitely going to be able to help you. So I know that they had drilled holes in the valve cover studs on the top side next to the intake

and then had pour holes into the intake to be able to, you know, suck air from through the studs. of the valve cover in the manifold, you know. And so, but you could hear that. It would whistle, you know, so there would be a way. A little giveaway. Well, they would have something in there that may melt away or a substance or something that would plug it up, but get hot and go away in the heat of the car as it's out on the racetrack. There's up there, I mean, there's been all kinds of cheated up parts and pieces and flexible

things and bending things and ways to get rear skew. And back when, I think the biggest thing that I ever did, Here it comes. I had, we used to try to put stuff in our fuel because we would, this was back on our race late models. We would always, we tried propylene oxide and we'd buy L fuel and run that. It smelled so good when it burned. Sweet. It did.

We went to, I got something from this WCA go carton dude, and he told me to put this in the fuel, and this would be a good thing. And we didn't mix it very well, and it ended up burn a piston on my car. So we put it in the fuel cell. We put it in the fuel jug and didn't shake it up enough or we put too much in it. And when we put it in a fuel tank, it went right to the bottom to the pickup and right into the motor as soon as we pulled out to qualify.

And the pipe, the blue flame come out to the tailpipe. And it burnt a jug, I mean, it burnt the center out of the piston. It was ruin the motor. And I got in trouble for that. I brought that home and dad was really upset. He caught me on the phone one time talking to guy about nitrous oxide. He said if I, he said if he ever, I found anything like that on my car.

I would not be racing anymore. But, you know, you're trying, we would soak tires. We try, you know, soaking tires, really everybody did that at Hickory in Tri-County where our brother and sister race. So we wouldn't really want to do that at Myrtle Beach where I raced, but, you know, we try a little bit of everything, trying to figure an advantage for our cars, especially in the late model days. You just try about anything. I got a question for, and maybe you even know this. fact or myth the snake oil that I always heard about like that children used to run or like I remember hearing in the garage there was this snake oil that nobody wanted that you know completely illegal but in they like mine for it somewhere in some remote location I mean it was basically there was some motor oil that teams had that would help their cars in qualifying it was a lot of power for qualifying you couldn't race it because it wouldn't last long enough it'd blow the motor up but but.

it was thin. Everybody was sort of trying to find who had it. And if you went out there and qualified really good, everybody assumed that you had it. And so they were pumped, I think it was RCR, it was pumping the fuel or pumping the oil out of their car after qualifying in this jug. And so the rumor is that Slugger Labby walked over there because everybody was like, well, how are you going to get some of it to figure out what it is and have it tested? So Slugger Labby walked over there and stuck his arm in that thing.

And walked off. That's all. That's awesome. Catch up. He stuck it in there and he walked over to the hauler and then let it drip into a container or something to be able to gather some of it enough to test. Put it in the petri. Petri dish. That's right.

Andy Petri. Yeah. I've heard that story forever. And you've ever asked Slugger about it, he just smiled. Is that right? That's when you know it's true. Which is, yeah, which is an absolute indicator. That's how that went down.

There was bleaters and tires and all kinds of things. Guys drilling holes in their wheels and trick valve stems and there's been all kinds of crazy stuff over the years. One of the coolest parts about the old school racing, old school NASCAR is when they would pull, when they would find those things and parts and stuff, they would put them in the NASCAR hauler and you could go in there. He's feeling a table. Yeah. He's been on a table out in the garage. We'd go by there. That's the first thing we do.

You get to the track of early Friday morning and they'd put the table out with the stuff they'd confiscated the weekend, especially the week after Talladega. That table would just be covered up with stuff. But no, it was that was my all-time favorite was when Gary Nelson was working on Darrell Walchip's car. And this is when Darrell used to win every race at Martinsville. They had a deal where they had just ball bearings all up in the roll cage. And he had a little spring-loaded deal and go through tech. And then right before the race, Darrell pulled that little trigger. and a little hole it opened them up,

they dump all those ball rings just out into the grass. And they did it for years. And then one time, Darrell Walt D.W. on the radio, it was bombs away. Over the radio. And when he did that,

because it'd always been rumored that they were doing that. And they could never find it, you know. And he did that, and that's when they finally bust them. They go bombs away. I had heard that story. All right.

So I'm at the NHRA race yesterday. And my old buddy Ron Capps, I find out, is a huge fan of Dale Jr. download. And he's got this question for you. Cool. All right. All right, Dale, I got a question. We just going to Carolina Nationals. I want to know if you can change a diaper in 3.8 seconds, 3.31 miles per hour. That's pretty good.

I don't know if I could do it at 300 miles an hour, but I could probably change it. I probably couldn't change it in 3.8 seconds either. But I changed one this morning. You getting better? You getting faster, man? Come on. if there's a, I didn't know if it's a competition. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I used to do that. I used to do that. All the time. Why? Because we're men. For the same reason, you time mowing the grass. So, all right.

My little girl, she's real happy when she ain't got any clothes on, right? Most kids. Oh, yeah. Naked time. You never grow out of that. All right. So, like, I don't rush to process, you know. And this morning, she had a dirty diaper.

and not a wet diaper. She had a dirty diaper. So I make sure, you know, not, it's nasty. It's everywhere. You know, so I take my time, make sure she's clean. And two, she's like, we sit there and talk for a second, you know. So it's not some big hurry-hust thing. Yeah, but those pee diapers, you could just rattle through those.

Sometimes it's like a competition for me, like especially if they just woke up at night to try to keep them in that sleep mode. It's like a fuel only stop. Exactly. The pee thing, I still try to clean and make sure she's good. dry and I don't want the rash happening. I don't even know how the rash starts or gets there, but I don't even know

that on my watch. And she likes to chat. You know, when she don't have a diaper on, she just starts talking, and I'll just stand there with her and we'll just have a conversation. And so I read this little, I'm reading this magazine, and it's like you know, when she talks, like,

repeat what she's saying. So we talk and I repeat what she says and repeat what noises she's making, and she likes that. She moves, and I put my face down near her face and she grabs my my beard and rubs on my beer a little bit she likes that you never thought that she's maybe grabbing your beard and saying just put the damn diaper on me already not because as soon as i start putting a diaper on just put some legs out straight yeah yeah and then it's hard to get it on it's like oh man she don't want that's her way of

that's the first line of defense that's the first line of fit he's right though because that was that was my daughter's exact same way which is she don't like that diaper free and easy is yeah no that's a big deal well we've learned a lot about dale junior in this last two minutes. Well, congrats to my boy, Caps. He says he has about 12, 10 episodes on the DVR because he's too busy watching his wife's Graze Anatomy, but he promised he's going to catch up. All right, good deal, man.

I'm glad he's a big fan of the show. We're a big fans of his. All right. Good, quick, white flag. Keep coming, bud. White flag right there, white flag. All right, we are off to New York. We said this earlier.

We're off to New York. A few places you can catch Dale Jr. We're going to be on NPR's On Point. We're going to be on Jim Rome. Good Morning America. A bunch of serious exes. show. So we'll put out that stuff on social media so you can kind of be on the lookout for that.

Also, check out Sports Illustrated this week. There's a nice little piece that you see the text I sent you McGee. I did. That was awesome. Yeah. Nice little piece there. Charlotte Observer did a nice piece last week. They're very nice.

Liz Clark? What? Liz Clark? That's Washington Post. She did, yes. She did as well. So a lot of good stuff out there. The book is available.

Everywhere books are sold. Amazon seems to be a favorite for everybody. But Barnes & Noble has actually a signature edition. You just spent most of his August and September signing these things. So go look for that. I need to get one of those. I need to get one of those. Well, look, actually.

There you go. Oh, thank you, sir. There you go. And I don't think you have one yet, do you? There you go. Really? The man doesn't have his own book? Not yet.

No, hey, let me tell you something. All these people on Twitter going, hey, I got my copy of the book. I'm like, yeah, I don't have one yet. That's been happening, actually. That's funny. Lastly, Dale Jr. we'll be making a public appearance this week at Kansas on behalf of Mountain Dew. He'll be joining

Chase Elliott and other Mountain Dew athletes on Saturday after the Xfinity Series race at Cabela. So look for him there. If you guys are in Kansas, that'll be right next to the track. And McGee, I mean, it's been so fun having you in here. You are, this isn't your first Dale Jr. Download experience, but it might be your first

in-studio, Dale Jr. Download experience. Hey, last week, I know he said he didn't want to reveal his sources, but I was really pumped last week. I got my voodoo man story on the, you guys. He asked about the practical jokes. Oh, you were the source. He was one of the sources.

Got it. Got it. That was. That was a good source to go. That was a good. Yeah, Hal Needham told me that story. Listen, aside from the book, you also, you guys are kicking butt on your new TV show on SDC Network. I saw it on ESPN this week.

Yeah. Marty McGee. We got to get you on that deal. Yeah. Marty McGee. I'll put it on there. I'll be shamelessly, I'll be shamelessly pimping the book on the show this Thursday night. Oh, really?

Has already read it? Uh, no. I'm going to send it to him. I'll get him one, yeah. Tell him to buy it. Oh, no, I'm definitely making him buy one. I don't worry, but that's all, well, now you're at that point where everybody's going to ask. Yeah. Can I get a book?

I have great news. My man just went and bought his own truck from his own dealership. Marty can buy a book. This thing's got like a, I think he and I both just realized. This thing's got like a relief there. A little embossed or something? What do you got? Yeah.

No, it was embossed. Yeah. That wasn't part of the plane? A bass relief. I was sitting here wondering why you guys are rubbing on the book. I know. Yeah, like it's got those. Get her powers.

Get a room, guys. Pictures. I'm telling you, that's nice. It's got the pictures in it. Good pictures in here. His book, his name is raised. Mine, the with guy doesn't. His name is raised.

I'm not in boss. He's not a rich. With guy and boss. That's all right. I'm on there. Well, good show. Hey, Brian, have fun making that 22 minutes. And that's it.

Final words. Dale, anything? Thanks for listening. Looking forward to going to Kansas. Barbecue. Shut off, man. Now I'm pissed. I'm not going on.

for the first time and like, yeah. Right, see ya. This bit of bad assery was made by Dirtymo Media. Dirtymo!