The Dale Jr. Download - 240 - Chastain: A Self-Made Story

Episode Date: November 13, 2018

Dale Earnhardt Jr. sits down with Ross Chastain about the amazing journey that led to a full-time ride with Chip Ganassi Racing in 2019. The guys download about stage-three insanity, the ol' Wilson ball, anti-media sentiment in NASCAR, Family Feud and Dale pissing off an Uber driver! 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 everyone, Mike Davis here. I got a question. Who are you? No, really, we know that somewhere in the world you've listened to this podcast, but we really don't know anything about you. The folks who support this show would love to know just a little bit about who is listening. So if you have two minutes, and I'm telling you, it really just takes two minutes. Help us make the Dell Jr. download an even better experience for you by telling us just a little bit about yourself. All you have to do, go to listener queue. That's L-I-S-T-E-N-E-R-Q.com. slash Dell and take the short survey. You can also give us direct feedback on the show, which we would love to hear, and as a thank you, you'll be entered into a drawing for a $100 Amazon gift certificate. That's two minutes. That's all it takes. ListenerQ.com slash Dell. That's listener queue.

com slash Dell. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. For the Dell Jr. Download back again. Man, we ain't got many shows left, but this one is going to be a good one, Mike Davis. Yeah, it's going to be a big one. Just your week was big.

In the past week, you met Mike Tyson, Joe Rogan, Steve Harvey. He ticked off an Uber driver. That was even before he got to the racetrack at Phoenix, where we had our championship four determined in all the series. We're going to talk about all that. We've got a special guest. I know you're excited about coming in today. That's right.

Ross Chastain is going to come in today. He just announced he'll be running full-time Xfinity series next year in the 42 car for DC Solar. We got him here to talk about it. That'd be exciting. Big show. You drive with a sincerity. Sincerity.

You're real serious. that's the only thing we got to do is just keeping him tone down he's like a wild horse and just got to keep him down all the time all right

all right man this is a this is a good show looking forward to all this content we'll talk about so coming out of Phoenix we've got the homestead final four decided

what a wild race that was did you got I mean I say this just about every other week I just did not see that much happening during that race. Oh, I thought Kevin Harvard was going to, you know, dominate, and it was just going to be up to the rest of those guys

and somehow figure out a way to get track position on him, but he was just going to be up in the top two or three. Then he has that flat tire before the end of the first stage. Now, Chase Elliott is winning the first stage, and as the points are moving around and changing as they run, I know a lot of people like that. Some people don't. I love it.

Yeah, I like it too, especially in the playoffs. I got to have it. Yeah. Chase Elliott is in, then he's out, Kurt Busch is in, And then he's out. Then here comes Harvick back. Yep. So all that was going on.

And then they had the crash on the back straightaway that takes out Kurt Busch and Chase. And I thought the fireworks were over. Little did we know Eric Almarlo was going to get up there and flirt with trying to get the win. So that was, you know, a little extra bonus action that I didn't think Eric was going to be capable of. Hadn't really ran well enough all day long to be in the picture. But there he was. It came down to the last couple laps. and I didn't have Kyle Busch winning the race.

He gets the win, which shuffles up the conversation of who the favorite is. You got Joe Ligano winning a race. All right, he's the favorite. He's even calling himself a favorite all week long. Kyle wins at Phoenix. So now is he the favorite? I don't know. The four car stomped everybody's butt at Texas but had the penalty.

Is he the favorite? And had a miraculous drive even at Phoenix. I mean, like him coming from the back, I knew that when he had that tire thing, there was still a lot of laps left. but his drive through, it should be commended. And our champion is under the radar. That's what I think is so cool. I don't know if he thinks it's real cool.

His cars haven't been running very well. And I know that he doesn't want to speak openly about that because you don't want to say, hey, man, we've been weak. But I would say that he's probably not thrilled with the way his cars have been running over the last couple weeks. He's kind of been running right inside the top 10, inside the top five, but not winning races, dominating races, dominating mile and a halfs, like he did earlier this year. So under the radar, Martin Trix Jr., I think they were last year,

but the current champion, the champion going back to defend his title, I would say is probably not at the top of a lot of people's list is the guy that has the opportunity to win this thing. I'm picking them. Well, you can pick him if you want to be a gambler, but would you really consider him a favorite? No, you got the nail on the head there. So a lot going on in that race.

Kurt Busch was pissed off at a penalty, He said that he didn't understand how he was ahead of the pace car, but we saw it on video. I think when he goes back and watches that, he'll understand. They talked about it in the driver's meeting that you cannot pass the pace car before the commitment call. That's exactly what happened. As you heard his radio during the race, he was confused as to how that penalty happened to him because he said, well, I can't see the pace car because of the pit wall. Well, actually a penalty happened before you get to pit wall.

So it was clear that he misunderstood exactly even how the penalty happened. And he said he stayed the speed limit, which I think was part of his confusion. Yeah. Well. But it looked like he actually accelerated looking at that high angle camera. But you're not getting timed until that line anyway. You don't get time to the line, but you can't pull up and pass the pace cars. They talk about it in the driver's meeting.

Denny Hamlin gets, you know, charging hard gets loose underneath. I've done that. I know people think, oh, Denny Hamlin, what a dumb move. What an idiot. Well, I've spun out off that corner transitioning from the apron onto the bankings. I spun out in front of the whole damn. field. And way back, I think, 2009, 2010 during the very dark days. The dark days.

Yeah, we had a crash that basically almost blocked the track. It's very embarrassing. So I can understand how, and you watch Denny's car, the back slides, the back steps out, he corrects into the 41, and then they get into the wall. So you, but you're agreeing, Denny messed that up. Denny made a mistake. Obviously, he made a mistake getting loose, but I don't think that. he was, oh, I'm clear, or here I come, boom, pal. Because to me it looks like he thought

he was clear, but you're saying that that's probably not what happened. I mean, it literally looks like he thinks he's clear. Yeah. It absolutely does. He drives right up into... Reading some of it. Well, he gets loose and corrects his car into Kurt. So he gets loose and he has to steer

right into Kurt. Okay? Here's a guy who's charging hard because he doesn't want to race. And he's racing his butt off. And sometimes that happens. I mean, he made a mistake. He admitted it. And it cost them guys a race. Chase Selly got collected. Wow.

We knew that was going to happen. I mean, the restarts were really crazy in turn one and two. And every, I mean, I've been telling everybody all year long, stage three is insane for every race. And there's only a couple exceptions there. But every week at stage three, the intensity goes through the roof and restarts all of a sudden become really wild. Guys sort of take it easy in the first stage, and the restarts aren't very exciting. The guys aren't going to take any big risks. You know, it's early in the race.

But stage three, all bets are off. So I expected us to see something like that. You know, it's as unfortunate that it took the 41 and the nine out. They were both in a tight battle. I'm not pulling for one guy over the other to make it into the four. I just wanted to be fun and close. Right. You know what I'm saying?

Well, we got that. Yeah. We got that question. Last week on this show, you thought, and we kind of agreed with you that the changing of the start finish line there was not going to change any new things. But it seemed like on Twitter maybe you changed your position on that. Did it add to the drama? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. So if you're in the middle of a run, 25 laps, say 25 laps into a run, does it look different than any of the Phoenix? No. But the restarts are different. So the cars come off. They restart in the middle of turns three and four. They come down in the front straightaway.

They all cut and fan out across the dog leg, three, four, five wide. We got a straight on shot, a head-on shot at the cars coming straight at you going into turn one, and you can see it. They're just everywhere all over the racetrack, way down on apron, way up into third groove. The track widened out really nicely in the race. The guys were having to use a lot of different racetrack, which allowed to keep that track clean. So on restarts, you could go anywhere you wanted to, and you could go in there with confidence. So we saw a lot of wild, you know, good three-and-four-wide racing and shuffling through the field in turns one and two that would play itself out down the backststress. straightaway in through three and four.

And it was exciting for, you know, restarts were, you restarts were much more exciting than they were at that racetrack before. So in most cases, it's a mistake to make these kind of changes to the racetracks, in my opinion, reconfiguring Atlanta, mistake. Putting concrete on Bristol to me, mistake. Reconfiguring one and two at Texas, unnecessary. Those kind of things, I mean, there's a lot of things that happen in the sport where you're like, ah, man, why do we do that?

That didn't even do, you know, that didn't help us any. But this one, I think, definitely added to the excitement for the fans. They built an incredibly beautiful racetrack with all this. They spent $170 million to build a brand new Victory Lane fans on, garages for the cup guys, and grandstands, and it just sweets, the TV booth, everything brand new, top of the line, beautifully done. The greatest thing about it is there's Wi-Fi on every seat. Really? I didn't know that.

Every seat in the grandstands has Wi-Fi. 5. Wow. Not a lot of tracks. That's a bigger deal than where the start-finish line is. I have to agree. That's where all these tracks are headed.

A lot of these, you know, Tal Degas is rebuilding. Got a big project underway. A lot of these tracks that NASCAR owns are going to start doing these type of things to upgrade and give that fan experience. Completely changed the fan experience. I mean, going to the racetrack at Phoenix

is going to be unlike any other experience you're going to get throughout the rest of the season. It's going to be like any experience you ever got at Phoenix before. You're going to have Wi-Fi in your seat. You've got a ticket in your hand and a tunnel underneath the flagstand that'll take you into the infield. And you can go over there and get your damn margarita or hot dog. You can stand there right in Victory Lane when the driver gets out and wins the race.

You can go into the garage and stand 10 feet away from the car with this grandstand ticket. That's awesome. Wow. So you have this access. That's like NHRA, you know, access. During the entire weekend, during the race. You can leave your seat, go down in the infield. coming back.

I mean, it's incredible. Good for Phoenix. And you're in the shade too. And you're in the shade in the Phoenix desert. So great job by Phoenix. Great race. We got a great, we got four really, really heavy hitters going into Homestead. That's going to be a badass weekend.

If you remove your, you know, people's favorites and who you would, you know, prefer and defend them, isn't this sort of like maybe the closest to the perfect four based off a performance here? It's been all year long, it's been about the big three. and who else would it be? What other guy would fit his way, you know, be that fourth? Who would be the fourth? And it was, well, it was Clint Boyer to start of the year. He looks like he's a fourth best team out there.

And then, you know. Chase. Yeah, then Chase. Keselowski. You know, it's a flavor of the month. And the 22 has been the best in the playoffs. I mean, he's really been consistent. And so he's earned that opportunity.

Didn't really stumble and fall into it or trip into it. I found myself appreciating the fact that through this, you know, what you would consider maybe kind of like circus-like type of structure for the playoffs, the cream still rose to the top. Yeah. We didn't have that Newman this year or, you know, that one person that really just didn't belong based off of their overall, you know,

body of work. I think these are the right for. And it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy for Truex. It wasn't easy for Harvick. Yeah, Kyle is kind of easy for Kyle. But these guys that had been so great, some real adversity to add to their story should they win in homestead.

It'll be incredible. Going into the weekend, we did this show last week and then obviously there was some big news with Harvick. Going into the weekend, what was your takeaway from the overall feeling in the garage at the track based off of the news that Harvick had had that wind taken away and that you had crew chiefs now being suspended? It seemed to me the weekend was all about the redemption for Harvick and would he be able to come back in and get into that final four.

but what was the overall vibe of the garage and the track during the weekend? You know, I felt like that it was some renewed hope for guys like Kurt Bush, Chase Elliott, a little more giddy up in their step, considering where they were when we left Texas and then wherever they were on Wednesday. There was a lot of conversation about spoilers. Who else was doing this? And there was a lot of conversation about how that might have been quite a popular area for teams to be working on. It wasn't just isolated to Kevin Harvick or Stuart Hawke Racing.

Harvig got the lucky prize to be able to send his car to R&D, and therefore he's the one that took the fall. But you're saying that it's probably more common. It may be more common. There's a lot of talk about all three cars failing, how not one car that went to the R&D Center passed. Then there was obviously some focus on the field as in what else are they doing, you know, and what else is going a little bit too far?

If they're getting blatant in one area with the spoiler, where else are they getting? So there was more focus, I think, from drivers, crew chiefs, people in the garage on everyone's car as to like, hey, what else might be it moved and tweaked and pulled and tucked? So it was a little tense, you know, on Friday, Saturday. It was. And Harvick sort of made that obvious. That bubbled to the surface in the media center with Harvick. It did. I mean, he was not saying anything and then he ends up going and went in the poll.

which forced him into the media center. I'm just here so it won't be fine. Yeah, that sort of deal. That was kind of the way it was, yeah. Yeah, I mean, but it was really captivating, really interesting to watch all that, play itself out. Yeah, we'll talk about Exfinity. Al-Gyre had a little heartbreak,

damaged the right front there, thought he was having a pretty good day and might be able to work his way into the final four, but contact with Nimichick, damaged the car. Elliot Sallar just struggled. Didn't have any speed all weekend, all day long in the race, just was not really happy with the car,

not real fast. Tyler Reddick was smooth and consistent, kept his nose clean, was fast when he needed to be and made it work. He's in the four. So, you know, I'm proud of that. I think it's not easy. I think we, you know, we had a good run of having a couple of cars

in the final four for a few years. and maybe you got a little spoiled and realized, you know, I think this year was a reminder of just how hard it is to get cars into that Final Four. Yeah. How challenging and tricky and how many trip lines there are out there during the playoffs. Even winning the regular season championship, and as good as that seven team has been the whole year, and he had that advantage there, but, you know, things can happen.

If Christopher Bell, if Christopher Bell doesn't win that race, he's not going to get in. But he was able to go out there and win the race. Yeah, we're in the race that he had to win. So Wild Weekend at Phoenix. It was a wild weekend. weekend. Yeah. Did you just take it in like a fan?

I mean, like I do every week, buddy. Every week. I'm just a fan, man. People are like, hey, you know, there's a lot of people that like our broadcasting, but there's a couple of them that say we scream. But, I mean, we're fans. It's what the hell of fans do when stuff happens on the racetrack.

Fans in the grandstands aren't going, oh, oh, blah, blah, blah, he's passing a little day. You see that, Johnny? Look, he's passing them to third three. They're excited. They're a hell of a battle. You see that? All right, we got to read.

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Daily auctions, they also have other formats besides that daily auction, a 10-minute auction. They ain't waiting around for that. It better be on your game. Yeah, and you better be your game. You better know just how bad you want. You better believe it. That sounds fun.

Like, I don't even want this, but I don't like losing it. Right. Items pop up just for 10 minutes, and then they're gone. They guarantee. Kind of like Denny Hamlin in that race. Puffed up up for a few minutes. Gone. Gone.

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It's only a dollar. Yeah, it's crazy. So Daytona, Victory Lane, Hardy, Hardy's 28. That's 1983, 84? Wow, Rain Man. 82. Look at him. You better be right.

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And we need that, so they'll keep coming here to this podcast. What year? 83 and 84? Back to backs. Okay, you're right. Yes. I was correct. Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing.

And by the way, I just bid on something right before I came down here. It's nice. I'm Christine Auction, so see if I could finally win my first thing. I don't want to tell you. You might outbid me. Come on. It's a Dansby-Swanson autographed baseball because I covered him in Kyle's World Series when he was a Vanderbilt and he's a great dude, he's a brave.

He's cool. All right, so before Phoenix, we had to go to the lovely city of Los Angeles, Mike. Wow, what an interesting two days for you and for me. First and foremost, not to start this on a kind of a downer note, but while we were out in L.A., you had the mass shooting that happened Wednesday night while we were there. And then the fires on Thursday. And so, like, right away, I'm telling you, I mean, like, the fires, these are things that people are still dealing with.

So, you know, what we're about to talk about in L.A. is inconsequential to that stuff. But that was all happening while we were down there when I was checking out of the hotel Friday morning. I was actually passing and talking to families that were evacuating. So, you know, our thoughts and prayers are those guys. Yeah, for sure. They were looking. They had their animals, their pets with them.

They were looking for hotels that would let pets come in. I mean, it was a real thing. We see about those wildfires. you know, us on the East Coast and we see it and it looks terrible. But that was a moment when I'm like, oh, man, you're seeing a family actually having to. Yeah, I was sitting in a hotel room and a buddy mine text me and he goes, I know you're out in L.A. and there's a shooting and just checking in on you. And I was like, really?

And so I started looking around and I just, it's 40 miles away from where we were staying. Right, right. And, you know, L.A. is a big place, but they all, it was a, it was a strangest thing. It was. It was real. It became real. It's like, wow, we're right here around this, and you could feel the pain and the aching of the community. So that was going on. We were out there promoting a book, Racing to the Finish, we did some media, and we did some interesting media. We did.

We met some people that, I don't know, that otherwise we would ever have a chance to meet. And some of them, I'm a little shock that you hadn't met already, but you were really excited about Steve Harvey. Yeah, so I'm a big Stevie Harvey fan and, you know, love a lot of things that he does. It shows great. Social media that he does is great. Very positive guy. How I became a fan, though, was that he did Kings of Comedy tour way back in the day. That's right.

When you buy the DVD or the tape or whatever, watch that, that's filmed in Charlotte. And I thought, this is one of the coolest things happened to Charlotte. You know, for these guys to come here and do what they do, and the one they're going to film and release to their fans is the Charlotte episode or visit. Yeah. Made me proud, right? And so when I saw Steve, I said, hey, man, you know, I became fan of years through watching Kings of Comedy, and you're feeling that in Charlotte, and everybody in Charlotte loves you. And so everybody says, hey.

Everybody in Charlotte says hey. Everybody in Charlotte says hey. And he goes, man, I love that's my city. So Dale Jr., the new mayor of Charlotte. I was just like, man, that's how I know who Steve Harvey is. And I've kind of followed him ever since, and I just kind of like what he's about. I wanted to go on a show real bad Got an opportunity to do that this week

Got to meet him, shake his hand, talk to him Super, super cool, genuine guy, real. Like, you know, when you meet people that you got You kind of fan out over, you kind of hope that they're real a little bit. You hope you can see a little bit of a real human in there And he's all human, man, he's all... He's a big bundle of emotion is what he is.

And you know what another thing? He is a big Dale Jr. fan. That's cool. Now, hold on. A lot of people will probably say that to Dale Jr. to his face. You know what I'm saying? But when Steve Harvey went out there and did, you know, did his thing, and they had not met yet when they met for the first time on the, on the stage. Oh, so there was no pre-thing. There was no pre-thing, which I thought was interesting

because sometimes there is, right? And Steve Harvey says to his crowd, he's like, man, I've been looking forward to this a long time. This one right here means a lot to me. And he brings Dale Jr. out. And you could just tell there was just his mutual affection for each other that I thought was, that you feel to the interview. wait for people to see it. I wish I knew exactly when it was going to air. I know. I think we do know that, but I just don't remember. We put it out there. But we'll put it out there. But that was

a good moment. It was cool. My wife is also a fan of Steve Harvey, and she texted me before I went out there. I said, hey, I'm getting ready to do Harvey. Here I go. And she goes, family feud. She just says, family feud to text. And I was like, all right, God, it. Message clear. I'm going to mention to him

on the show. I'm going to mention to him, maybe off the show about could, you know, is there any chance of us doing family feud. Well, he brings it up at the tail end of the shit. During the interview. Yeah, during the interview. And I go, you know what?

It's interesting you bring that up because my wife texts me before I come out here, family feud. And that meant to me that I needed to tell you that we want to do it. And he's like, oh, man, we're doing it. So we're going to be doing it. We're trying to set the dates sometime to start the next year. We'll be going back to L.A. to do Celebrity Family Feud. Nice. The Earnhard Family.

Yeah. So me and Amy have been talking about it with my sister and so forth. Would you choose in the end because you get to choose who's the person that does the end? Who would you choose? He already had his team pick by the time we got to the car pretty much. Easy, easy, going to get me in trouble with the wife. I'm supposed to, I need to talk to her about it. Oh, you have.

Never mind. We don't need to do that either. I have. I have a little bit, but we're still trying to figure out exactly who we think should be on our team. And you want to win now. Yeah, dude. You can't just put anybody. We were talking maybe Kelly, Amy's sister, Katie, and my mom.

Okay. And I was like, I. all girls. And she's like, well, you've been surrounded by girls all your life, so what's a big difference? So we think it'd be fun to have mom out there. Oh, yeah. Gracious. She'd be the winner.

Good gracious in a good way or a cuttale? Greatest and entertaining. Gracious in a viral way. Okay. Trust me, I hear her every Monday talking about her fantasy football thing. It's literally my favorite thing on Monday mornings when I get in here. Talk about her pickums. It's so funny.

Well, that was just one of the cool opportunities we had. We got to meet Mike Tyson and do a podcast with him. What did you think about that? And Evan Britton? Evan Britton. A great guy. I'd not met him before. Didn't really know much about the podcast.

But Mike was awesome. Evan was great. Me and Evan talked quite a bit and hit it off. And Mike was very nice, very cool. I mean, I didn't expect him to be anything else. Real laid back. Just kind of chimed in every once in a while during the podcast to ask a question or two. But me and Evan really just kind of sit there and BS the whole time.

That was fun. And Joe Rogan's podcast. So Joe Rogan's podcast is incredibly popular for good reason. We got to meet him, and he has an incredible studio, a lot of fun, something similar to what I'd probably have. You know, he's got a bow shooting range, much like a golf simulator. He's got a lot of toys and bells and whistles in his little... I mean, he's very proud of this archery range, by the way.

But this is basically his version of the Dirty Dome. Right. So he's got a little garage where he has a lot of fun in and just kind of has a lot of neat stuff going on. And he's got his podcast studio. And so we went in there and sit down and talk for two hours. And I thought, yeah, this is going pretty good. I don't really know how good this is going.

That's what I feel about all our podcasts, right? Right. We get done and we go, hmm, don't know if that was good or not. And then you'll watch it and go, wow, it's better than I thought it was for sure. It was good. Well, that's the way this turned out. I went and did it. I thought, this is great.

I'm talking to Joe Rogan. He's an awesome guy. He's very nice. We had some great conversation, but I didn't know if it made for good podcasting. But all week long, my phone has literally been going crazy with people that listen to his podcast, which there's very, very many people that do. And they've all had great positive things to say about it. So that was something that really made me feel good.

I don't know all the people that contacted you, but when I saw Mark Martin, tweet what he tweeted. And he says, you think you don't have two hours. But I'm telling you, you do, and you need to go listen to this Rogan interview with Dale. That was impressive. Yeah, I appreciated that for Mark. Yeah. We had an extremely fun time. Did we leave anything out?

We did a couple of other things. We did other things. We went to Yahoo Sports. We did Rich Eisen. We were really blown away by Rich Eisen's studio. So I've never done Rich Eisen. I've done Dan Patrick several times. And every time I've done Dan Patrick, I've enjoyed it and learned something.

Dan has amazing studios, which we like because we're getting ready to renovate hours here for our podcast. So we draw a little inspiration from those shows. We got to go to Rich Eisen's studio, which was really nice. We got to pick up on some of the things. things they're doing there. It's huge. Huge. But I was finally able to sit down and talk to Rich Eisen, who I've watched on the NFL

network or ESPN or whatever over the years and just admired his ability to cover what he covers and do the job he does. He does it with a certain style and personality that I think's cool. He brings some color to what he does with his personality and the way he delivers. He's a great conversationalist. I learned a lot sitting there talking to him. Two days getting an opportunity to talk about our book. Do we want to talk about the Uber driver?

Yes. What happened here? This is funny. It was over and done in minutes. But Tony calls, Tony orders an Uber on his phone. Tony Mayhoff, who wants a brand team. He was out there with us. We're going to go to dinner.

And Tony orders an Uber. Uber gets there, and I was messing with Mike. I saw him starting to walk around the front of the car to go the other side to get in. So I walked around the back and beat him to the door. And he goes, well, I'm not walking back around. So you just get in and slide over. So I hopped in the car and slipped. across the seat and the Uber driver turns back to me and goes sliding across the seat that's how

you ripped the leather and neither Tony nor Mike heard it and they get in and I just I was so pissed off he was he was I mean it was crickets like I get in I mean like we were all kind of conversive and we were having a good time and he was obviously in a cut up mood he's running over to the other side of the car and he's like hey hey I beat you and I'm like get out slide get over yeah I'm like going back around I get in and it's like I was so mad it's like what he had a roll Royce, come on. It's a Chevy. What's happening?

It's a nice Chevy. But Tony and Mike are giggling and laughing about, you know, just having conversation, general conversation all the way there. And I was like, I can't wait to get the shit out of this car. He's tweeting. I guess that review wasn't too good. Oh, yeah, I did tweet that this happened. I didn't actually know what he said. I knew there was a conversation and I knew something was weird about it.

But then I look over and he's tweeting about it. And I'm like, Twitter. Oh, did he just, did he step to you? And he's like, yeah. You know, and he's all mad about it. And I'm like, oh, this is beautiful. I love this Uber driver. Five star.

Tony, give him a five star. Give him a raise. Give him a tip. Nice. This is too good. Twitter is the only place I could go to sort of pop the valve. That's right. Right.

I was like, ah. Anyhow. Good stuff. We were out there talking about the book. The books available in everywhere books are sold. Stores online. Go to Dale Jr. slash book.

Dale Jr.com. slash book if you want to order it. It's still in the New York Times bestseller list. A new one, actually. And I was going to do this in the white flag. So there's a weekly list, and then there's a monthly list. And the monthly list is the subcategories. And one of the subcategories is sports and fitness.

And racing to the finish was on number three when this new list came out last week while we were in L.A. So more good stuff for this book. All right. Well, that was pretty cool. Exalta Update. This is your Exalta Race Center Update. I'm Matthew Dillner. ISM Raceway in Phoenix was the stage as NASCAR raced to set the championship four in the big top three series.

On Friday night, Brett Moffitt charged hard from third to first on the final restart to take the truck series win and put himself into the final at Homestead. He, Johnny Sauter, Justin Haley, and Noah Gregson will race for the championship at Homestead Miami Speedway this Friday. In Xfinity Series action, Junior Motorsports driver Justin Algeyer swept the first two stages. but lost his breaks and a playoff bid after being involved in an incident on lap 145. Then Christopher Bell took the final checkered flag, giving him a spot in Saturday's finale at Homestead against Cole Custer, Daniel Hemrick, and J.R.M.'s Tyler Reddick. In Cup Series action, Kyle Bush put a stamp on his playoff berth by taking a win to lock himself in at Homestead.

He'll face off against Martin Truex Jr., Kevin Harvick, and Joey Legano in the championship finale at Homestead on the game. Sunday. 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 our great partner, Exalta, please visit them at ExalttaCS.com. Hi, that's your Exaltta update. Let's bring in our guest. We talked about at the top of the show, Ross Chastain's here. How you doing, Ross? I'm good, man. How are you? Yeah, so Ross announced this week, or this weekend, that you're going to be driving in the Xfinity Series

full time next year and for DC Solar and Chip Gnassie. Everybody that's been watching this sport over the last several months knows the story. You've been racing, you ran a couple races for Chip Gannasi. We'll talk about actually how that came about, but you did extremely well. I actually got to race with you in one of those races in Richmond, and you ended up second there. You won. You might have won. Darlington had a great run going there.

So, you know, just that small sample size, you've impressed the hell out of these people enough for them to want to put you in a full-time ride. So we're going to get to the bottom of that, figure out how all that happened. First off, I want to talk about how you got here. How you even got to the Xfinity Series? What's your history in racing? Where did you start? I know you came through the trucks.

Tell us all about that. Yeah, so it's snowballed into this great thing now, but it was never meant to be or never supposed to happen. It was a hobby that my dad did a little bit before I was born. And then I remember a little bit when I was young going to the races with them. but just hobby racing. His first race truck he rented, drove it around the house, and then

went to the racetrack with it, and the guy he rented it from, got it there, and called a fast truck. And so he went to go out on the track, and he pulled his seatbelts tight, and it pulled him back too far from the pedals, and he couldn't reach. Like, he never pulled the belts tight at the house. So that's how he started. It just

had some fun, and then he got me going in it. And actually, Mark Martin's son, Matt, raced down there in the fast kid class, and we went and watch. What kind of cars with these? These are, it's a metric chassis, and it's a full-size race car, but like a Monte Carlo, like a late 80s chassis with a fiberglass truck body on it. And you put at the time a 305 small block or a ZZ4 crate motor from Chevy in it and

automatic transmission and like a four nine inch are in. Really? And yeah, just all the standard suspension couldn't have anything, no race parts on it. But they look good. They were trucks, but they were low to the ground. you know, they're pretty, for relatively speaking. And so we got started in that. So Matt's last race, we went and watched, and he won and, like, threw Gatorade on him.

We had the Gatorade sponsorship. My head's like, what do you think? I was like, I want to be Matt. Like, that's really cool. And so we were in the next race. We borrowed a truck from a guy and literally, like, sat on two-by-fours, like, not just one. Like, three, two-by-fours in the bottom of the seat to get me high enough. Oh, man.

My radio was a next-tail walkie-talkie with a wired earpiece into my right ear, and he would key up. And I used all my dad's old driving stuff, and he would beep in, clear. And then people were beeping him during the race the first night, asking him if that was his son out there? Like, is that your kid out there racing? He's like, I can't talk, and he'd exit out of them and then beep me back in. Oh, that's hilarious.

And I end up crashing, and it was bad, but we were hooked then, and then we bought our own race truck and snowballed there, into the trucks, the kid class, into the adult class, winning races. Limited success, honestly, and then in the late models, even less success, but really just loved it and loved the, I mean, it was, late models are tough. They were tough down in Florida and they still are. What tracks do you, did you race around there? Yeah, so Punta Gorda, or Port Charlotte, was our home track. It was about 40 minutes north of us. There's no tracks south of us in Florida. Highley is gone, and Sunshine or, you know, Sunshine was shut down.

at time. So we ran like Punta Gorda, Ocala, before it was dirt. Love that place. If they ever take the dirt back off of it, I'm going to go back there and race there. That was probably my favorite one. And then Orlando and New Smyrna. And so New Smyrna was where I got kind of my break, if you want to say that, where we realized in 2011 we ran the World Series there in the limited late model class, and we did really well. We qualified on the pole first night and won three races out of the eight. Decided right then at the end of that week, if we wanted to make a go at racing that now was the time i was 18 years old and we needed to try to we didn't know anything about it we were actually kind of starstruck that week uh the mire brothers came down there to race uh with their

big modifies and after the third night our car was not handling great and um we were using the track scales to kind of reset each morning and uh we couldn't get we were confused because their scales kept reading different and so we went my dad went home and got our grain scales and brought him back to the track. It was about a four-hour drive, and he went back on Monday when we had the day off, and Jason Myers saw him pulling with the grain scales, and he followed him down to our pit, and said, hey, man, my modified's handling terrible. Our digital scales aren't working, the track scales aren't working. Can I put my modified on your grain scales? So we got done with ours, and then he brought his big old modified, and that was back when Madhouse, the show was, the first time

was on. Yeah, so we were too. So we were star-struck. And I don't think it helped him as much we got our car handling better and we won some more races at the end of the week. That was our, when we decided we wanted to figure out the business side. We knew there was, there had to be a business to this and we knew that we had to do a better job than other people to figure it out. And that's how we got started. How did you get into the truck series? So we came up here, but didn't know we stayed at a hotel there in Moorsville at Exit 36. And what year was this? 2011. It was springtime, maybe early summer. And we knew Todd Bodine through a,

mutual friend, Mike Greenwell, is a neighbor of ours. He played for the Red Sox, and he drove a little bit. Mike Greenwood. Go for Bobby Daughter. That's right. Grew up, going to races with him. Our families all are really close, and there's three, the Singletaries of Greenwells and us, the chastanes. We traveled to races. We made a trip out west as a family in the motorhomes when I was probably 10 or 11. But yeah, so Mike had introduced us to Todd. Todd had signed the hood of my fast truck when I was probably 13. That was when he won the championship that year at Germain. And so we were just like, I mean, we were fans, like, but we were. were racing locally.

And so Mike and, you know, Todd kind of told us about Bobby Daughter, but we weren't sure David Starr was there at the time. Sir Willie got in room for me. So we met Stacey Compton. He had the turn one. He had Colwitt and the Red Bull truck and Fuel Doctor. And so Justin Marks had the second truck. About halfway through the year, they ran out of funding and they shut that program down.

So we would come in and my first race was IRP. And so we went to IRP. I'd never done live pit stops, never shifted on REAPs. starts, never anything. And so we go and run 10th. And we're like, holy cow. Like, and coming down, we did a green flag stop to end the race to try to make sure we didn't lose to, we run about 14th, 13th, 14th. We didn't lose too much time. They just did two tires. So as I'm coming off turn two, they said, don't slide your tires. And I'm like, I don't even know like where pit road is. Like, I might like spin out here. So I was able to, I stopped right on the sign, changed two

tires and finished like five car links behind Cole. And his truck, I can say this because I'm friends with him, his truck was tore all to hell. And mine didn't have a scratch on it. And he was eighth and I was 10th. There was one truck in between us. So that was cool. And that was the best and worst thing that could have ever happened. Because I honestly think if we would have just ran 25th or just went out there and I'd have struggled, we just said,

ah, that's all right. We were on Stacy right after. Like, you know, we need to get some more races. And, you know, at that time, we're funding in ourselves. There's no way around it. I had a bunch of really good people that only sponsored me because they knew me. And it was a lot of people in the watermelon industry that knew me since I was a baby, knew my dad, his whole life.

So they invested in me and they put money behind me. And that's what it takes. I know people don't like to talk about it, but that's the truth of the matter is. And so that got me four more races. They went terrible. I mean, I crashed at Bristol twice, spun out at Kentucky because I hit the kill switch on the wheel. with my elbow. Just, you know, first time at a mile and a half, I didn't know you could hold it wide open around Texas.

It was crazy. So then went to Homestead and it rained out so we didn't make the race. So I got in one of Sieg's trucks, Rod Seeggs, starting park truck, and ran the whole race. And that was just a cluster. So we kind of reset and went and race for Bobby Daughter the next year, got the full season, blew up a bunch, had some good runs, though, ran 7th at Martinsville. And by the end of the year, so when I went to Vegas and Phoenix at the end of the year, year in the truck series in 2012 we actually start and parked it was one of the most humbling things

i've ever done to go all the way out west um and just knowing you're not racing and you have to go out first time at both tracks and just make a couple laps and then qualify and then pull in and so um it's kind of crazy to think now we got our first win at Vegas and announce our season uh for 2019 at phoenix is uh very humbling talk about the transition from trucks to to infinity series i mean you've kind of bounce back and forth, you even race in the Cup Series. So before we ever get to talking about your opportunity of the 42 car, talk to us about these last couple of years what it's been like to work as hard as you have. Yes, so I was, you know, I ran the year with Bobby Daughter, and then made the jump,

ran less races with Brad, and still was bringing sponsorship to the table. I got a thought. One question real quick, you said you ran less races with Brad. So in theory, you took the same amount of money, but ran a better car for less races. And we've seen some guys do that here recently in this. in the, you know, Ryan Priest. If you're a case study, like you're the guy that made it work, the guy that made his dream happen, just like Ryan.

Yeah. So if you had advice for a driver who had a limited amount of funds, would you tell them to take that and get in the best car they could for a smaller amount of opportunities or to try to spread that over a full season and a smaller team? What would you do? Yeah. Well, I couldn't have raced the way I did in the first. 42 car, if not for the laps I had in the other cars. And it worked this time, but it failed with

Brad because I thought there was a path to Penske. We did. And they never said there was. We just assumed. And so that's why we went there. We thought, man, if we do good, we run like Blaney runs. Right. And maybe we could take the steps like Blaney. We know Blaney's on the path. That's a realistic idea. It wasn't the case. And that's just the way the business was. Blaney came from Penske down and then went back up to Penskeke. And be. BKR was never a stepping stone. For me, it was never intended on their side. And we realized that very late in the season, even though by halfway through the year we were running with Ryan, it was never meant to be. So, no, I wouldn't say you jump straight in. I don't think you need to go

jumping Kyle's trucks. You don't need to just jump in the best Xfinity car. I think you can go run with Johnny, Johnny Davis, who I've ran with for four years. You know, I actually got into the Xfinity series. It was nationwide at the time. because I got fired from a truck team. I was running for a truck. I started out at Daytona in Martinsville, and I caused a big crash at Daytona, and then I ran 14th.

I practiced, qualified, and race 14th at Martinsville. And they said, the crew chief and the owner said I was no good. I needed to hang up racing and go back and farm watermelons. And that's the PG version of how they said it. And so I was actually living down at their shop. It's not in the Charlotte area. And so I headed back up here and spent most of that was 2014, the first half of the year just not really know what to do

when Shiggy Hattori was running a nationwide team and Johnny Sauter was driving for him and he couldn't make some races because of the truck series schedule so reached out to Shiggy and just said hey I'm available but I have nothing to bring and he said yeah come drive and so that opened my eyes that there is a way to do it that was the number 80 it was the good year sponsorship

had I said it's a lot of the sponsors that Brett has now on the 16 truck that's Shiggy owns the 16 truck truck couldn't be happier for them man they are kicking butt and they're getting done so they got a chance to win a championship and that's all Shiggy who's ever wanted as a championship in NASCAR

because he drove back with the germane days and stuff he's a great guy that kind of got me regoing and then so you had some good runs in that car we did we ran 10th at Kentucky only because I bonsai had a late race restart and then held off Elliott raced him in 2014

there at Kentucky and got top 10 and that was uh you thought we won the race You know, that was a big deal for us. And so that got me going. Then I ran the last, the final race I ran the truck in the nationwide race at Homestead for Mark Smith and ran a fifth car for him, raced against Johnny's cars. And that's where Johnny noticed me. And I was able to race with Jeffrey some that night in Landon.

And that's where he was, he called me in December and asked if I'd come talk to him about driving the four car. So you've been running for Johnny since then, every week in the four car. What's that opportunity like in the CUP series? How does that come about? How do you get the phone call to go to do that? And what makes you, how does that help you as a driver? So I didn't think I wanted to do CUP. I wasn't ready last year in 2017.

And actually one of our sponsors in Delaware got a call from another CUP team saying they could make their cup car look just like Ross's Exfinity Car. We could do the same program. You know, you could have all this cup exposure. Just send us the money. And the sponsor called us said, hey, is this a good idea? They didn't really know, and we said no. So the team contacted the sponsor and said, do you want that same livery on the cup side with the cup.

You could still have Ross's car, but you could also have a cup car now. And so they were, like, intrigued, and they called us. And Tony Prospero down at Johnny's, he said, no. Like, that's the vice president of sales and marketing. He handles all the sponsorship, basically. On all of Johnny's cars, there's one guy down there that sells for 132 races a year, you know, four cars all year. And he said, no, we can get.

get Ross in a cup car and they had no idea that a driver could do that and so that's how I got my first cup started and they were like yeah we want you in the cup race as well as the Xfinity race and then we were able to get I was driving the 66 truck we got it on the truck as well so we had all three race cars that was a good idea I didn't I told Johnny no because he told me it would be with Jay at premium and I just from what I had seen I was I didn't know anything about the cup series I knew nothing about I didn't really know reed Swanson that well I didn't know the team and I said no you need to go talk to him like we're doing this like What race was that?

Dover. I remember that race. And so, yeah. Between IRP, I mean, you got your starts and baptized into tracks that are not easy. Not easy, man. And so Dover is insane. I was shaking. Like, I pulled out on pit road and the spotters like, are you ready?

I was like, no. I was sitting there with it running just like holding on the wheel. And I'm like, all right, here we go. And almost crashed a bunch in practice, but didn't. And then I got it handling pretty good and raced with you a little bit there in the race. He raced really good. The 15 car, you know, that car doesn't typically run inside the top 25, and I think that day you had that car running really well.

It surprised a lot of people, and I remember racing with you quite a bit there toward the end. Most competitive I had ever seen that car run. So that's kind of been the M.O. ever since. So then there was no other opportunities, and we ran the fall race with the same sponsor. And then going into this year, I was, Johnny was pushing me to run as many cup races as I could. He's like, BJ's guy, when he doesn't have a funded driver, you be the guy in the car. Like, there might not be sticker tires.

It might be older cars. Like, there might be an agenda where you don't race, but you run all the laps, you get, you know, the practice sessions, and that'll help us on the four car. Danica ran the car at Daytona, and Justin Marks ran, really with the group that I'm with the team of guys in the 51 number, but it's our group. Really, Danica running was obviously a really good program, funding-wise,

and that has helped me more than anything get the team going where then we could buy a sticker tired. We've had, I mean, we've had stickers anytime we needed them this year. We get on a lap by herself or something. We might use some scuffs or something. So y'all manage that during the race? We, uh, we, Jay is a master. It's insane.

We'll go to the back, you know, depending on what the scenario is and then give everybody just some room on the restart because that's when the crashes could, are most likely going to happen. And once we get singled out, he lets me go, and I can run up there and see how far up we can go. But yeah, it's constantly evolving. Our radio is pretty entertaining to listen to just how they're talking to me about, you know, it's not just always go, go, go, go. Right. Like the four car and the 42 and different things, it's really, I mean, Jay, it's insane. And sometimes the crew, my crew chief, Pat Trison, he kind of gets aggravated.

He's like, he wants to go up there and race, and I'm on board with Jay where it's like, no, I know the deal. I know my place here and just getting all those laps. And really, I value Friday and Saturday practices more than anything. In the cup car. Yeah. So that's kind of been your M-O ever since, I think, ever since that Dover race, is you've gotten in cars and you've improved the performance of that car, the traditional performance of that car.

But it's not all me. I try to be as strategic as when I drive stuff with the 38 truck now where I see potential, but the public expectation, even in the industry, is lower than where I know there. at. And so I know I'm going to look good. I'm going there at the right time. But that all came from making mistakes by going to teams at the wrong time, you know, with the one I got fired from, and I was at Brad's really a year too early, you know, from when they really took off. You know, that was the first year. They started the second team where they really flourished the next year.

So yeah, it came from a lot of failure. Tell us how you got the opportunity to drive the 42 car this year? Man, there is so many dominoes that had to fall just right. And there's not even a way to really explain it. But honestly, the group at Spire, I've known for a long time and met with them back in 2011 and 12, trying to work with them as a management deal thought they could help me, they could find a sponsor for me, right? Spire is a company. It's a, yeah, it's a Spire Sports and Entertainment. They're a group here in town, represent drivers, sponsors, and teams, and they kind of work in all facets of it. Couldn't do anything back then, but stayed friends with them.

As they've needed me to, what's kind of been published is I'll take their motor home with the track for them and just get it set up. And that way I'll tow my truck behind it and I didn't have a camper at the time. And that way it got me to the track with a little bit of cash and stayed friends with them and, you know, stock it with beer for them and food and just get it set up. So you were setting up their motorhome. Yeah. Yeah.

And so the Jeff Carpenter. Poppaw and Paulette. They had a bus at Darlington two years ago, so it had been 2016, I guess, and I drove down there, maybe it was last year. It was 2017, but I was over there between Xfinity practices. I needed to get some water in it

because they had used almost all the water, and I knew it was getting low, so I was trying to find the water truck, and I found the guy, so I was waiting on him there. Waste water. Well, I was getting fresh water put in. I was getting fresh water put in. Not like bottled water. No, no. So I was waiting on that guy, and I guess he saw me over there and he asked, and so that's where it all started, where he first saw

me, but I didn't see him. Who? Jeff Carpoff. He is the co-founder, CEO of DC Solar. He sees you over there messing with his bus. Yeah, he knew it was his fire bus, and he's like, that's a race car driver, right? Why are you over here? Right. And so he asked him, and they told him, and soon he started paying attention, and they started talking, and they mentioned to me one time that they had talked, and I was like, oh, you know, come on. Right. That guy doesn't, he's not going to do anything with me and I know like he's interested and we're working on it and I was like well we didn't have anything signed like I wasn't I wasn't a driver of theirs at the time and I know we want to we want to do

this say he likes you we like you this could be a really good deal and so it just evolved and then then you know we we met each other at the beginning of this year and he's like we're I'm going to do something like we're going to I'm going to help you get into the playoffs that was the thing and then we got in there on our own we were going to it was clear you know with a couple of circumstances it weren't ideal, but by the end of it, we got in legitimately. And he was like, no, like, we're going to give you some races in this 42. Like, there's some open races. They want us to pick up. But we want you to be the driver.

And so we're going to do it. And then we'll see, you know, he was confident then. He's like, we're going to do something even beyond these three races. Like, he was trying to tell me to not worry, but, like, just like I was for the first cup race, like, Darlington, I threw up, like, before the race. Like, I was so nervous. It was just, I knew what. what all could happen if it all went right.

You know, and then obviously it didn't all go right at Darlington, but they say, and I have to believe them, that they knew then that they were going to put it together for next year. It may not have gone right for a result in some ways. And obviously, Darlington had a lot of people talking, including Kevin Harvick. But in a way, you kind of showing that you weren't a pushover in a way without being a punk or anything could be like a really good. thing, you know, when you look back at it five, ten years from now.

It worked out, and I don't know why it did, because it had every making of me being the bad guy. But you said that they knew at Darlington that this was a deal for this full-time thing. That's when they started angling for that. Well, that when Jeff did. But that was probably more because of your, just how competitive you were, right? I guess, yeah. That was an interesting weekend because, like, and I was going to ask Dell this.

I mean, like, there's a lot of guys like you out there making it. Your story is very captivating as I hear it. You became a fan favorite this year, and I was, I think I know why, but I was going to ask you guys why. Dale Jr. really started taking a liking to you. We started talking about you on the show. Why is that? I don't know. Why is Dale?

Well, no, why do you think that did you think? Did you sense that you became a fan favorite? Are pulling for you. Right. I think it's, I think the fans are pulling for you because of the underdog aspect. And it's a bit of a self-made story. and I think that the fans, our fans are blue collar. Our fans are self-made people.

They work hard. And that's what I think you represent. That's the, you know, that's the, they relate to that. And so they want that guy up front so they can pull for that guy. They want a driver up front in the race that they think they can relate to. And I think that's why they, you know. That's what I saw. That's what I saw.

You were so relatable. You made people want to. cool for you and you made people want you to get that full-time ride. Had no idea that part of the reasons that some of the affinity for you was, I mean, you're out there trying to get fresh water in a motorhome. You know why? Because that was your job. Yeah.

That was part of your job of why you were there at the week. It's amazing. It's amazing. And I've known how much you've had to work, you know, within the Johnny Davis thing, you know, sitting there at Phoenix on unload day, helping the crew out, you know, hanging out with you and whatnot. I had no idea it even went that far to drive in a bus. So you want to talk about relating, you know, that's something that people can identify with.

So it's an incredible story. You win at Vegas. I mean, of all racetracks, that is an incredible market to win in. We saw your genuine reaction and emotion to it, which I think endears people to you even more. Anytime you can be completely real about what you're feeling, which you have no problem doing, it's going to make you so relatable to people. That was a lot of fun, I think, for everybody to see you had that success, considering what happened at Darlington. You know, everybody thought that was, man, this guy's going to have a great day.

This is going to be a great result. It ended shortly. You've got to redeem yourself or at least get that kind of result in Vegas. Great run at Richmond. How does the conversation go from there to the release of the press release this weekend that you're going to be driving the car? I mean, how long have you known? Can you give us any insight? into how that played out.

Yeah, so there was a lot of confidence on Spires part and the Carpoffs, Jeff and Paulette. I mean, like I said, they told me after Darlington that night after the Xfinity race that he's like, man, this is only the beginning. He's like, I know you're down. Like, I was that over there, and they were all eating dinner, and we ate dinner down there at the bus with all of them. When is this? Saturday night after the Darlington Xfinity race.

So you're bummed. Yeah, I'm like, they're like Spires texting me after. Well, first of all, I was in the media center until when I got out, I hopped on a golf cart, and when I went back to the Infinity Garage, all the haulers were done, and the first one was pulling out, was how long I was in there talking, and I've never had that much attention, obviously, for a 20th. We finished 25th. I was like, man, like, it's insane.

It's a lot of attention for 205. Yeah, so my JD guys were still there. It takes us a little longer load up. They haul all their own tires and wheels and pit boxes and everything, and one of their trailers has no cabinets in the bottom, So a car goes on the bottom. They haul three cars. It's a whole puzzle piece to get all this stuff fit back in all its haulers.

It's got to come out one way. To clear that up for the listeners and the viewers, a lot of the teams don't haul their own wheels. A lot of the teams don't haul their own crash carts, pick carts. A lot of that stuff is toted by business in the sport. So, you know, this is a team that still does that. Yeah. So anyway, they were like, you know, you need to come down and eat.

So I was like, oh, let me go shower. Like, I didn't sweat that entire Darlington race until that final restart I made up front. And I was so free. I was so loose. I knew those guys were going to be on me from the very first corner. I was like, oh, like we tried to tighten it up, but it just went the wrong way, just mechanically in the car, just didn't react the way we thought. So by the time, you know, we were racing hard, and Brad did a slide job and crossed them back over.

And I was, by the time we crashed, I was dripped, like, soaking wet because I was driving so hard trying to stay up there with them. And I knew if a couple more laps went by, I had saved enough tire, even though they were close to me that I knew I had saved more than them just by how hard they were driving. So go down there, shower, go down there, and walk up. And that's the first thing Jeff Karpoff walked up, and he shows me his phone. It's a text from Chip, and they'd been texting, and it was all really good stuff. And Chip wasn't at the track that day.

So he's like, man, I'm telling you, like, it's going to work. So that's when looking back, I knew then. And he's like, we're going to figure it out. Were you questioning yourself at that point? Yeah. I thought on track after the crash, I thought I would never drive that car again, honestly. That's what I told me. And I accepted it because I had like 20-something laps probably to finish the race.

We were all torn up. The track bar was bent. So you're out there riding around. Yeah, it was about a wreck every down the straightaway, but just trying to finish. And I was like, man, this is it. And I like, when I pulled in, did the lug nut check and stop, I just. kind of looked around the car. I was like, oh, that was really cool and really nice,

but they'll never let me drive this again and got out, and there was nothing but positive. And then they heard the comments, though, that Harvick made, did that kind of even make it worse in your mind? Like, oh, crap, I'm really never going to get that chance. No. So they had a phone with all of his bullet points of what he said, and they said, listen to me for 30 seconds.

And the guy was CGR and a guy was Spire, and my crew chief and they all just grabbed me before TV did and they're like just don't, the only thing like read this and listen you can't say anything

that's going to help you or us. The only thing you can do is hurt us. Be appreciative, be yourself, go talk, don't even bring it up.

Everybody on TV that's one thing I've been told is, and I believe it, everybody on TV knows what happened. They don't need you to tell them how the crash happened, how you were right,

how the other guy was wrong. They know, they've seen it in slow-mo 50 different times with all different angles. You were in the car, you're hot, just be yourself,

And don't even bring it up and let everybody else do their deal. That's how I go about it. That's incredible advice at a critical, critical moment in a man's career. Whoever those people are. To be commended. They need to be commended for sure. Would you have done something different? No, I would have rambled on and on about the race and I would have been so nervous.

And they were just like, just get it in and be done. And that way you don't mess up and say something you're going to regret. And just be yourself. And that was the biggest thing is just show your emotion. you were racing and that was it. So I look back at it and I, you know, I nitpick what I could have said. I think I sound terrible like my voice.

Like I don't even, you know, I don't know how y'all feel, but like I don't like to hear myself talk. I don't leave it. We hate it. I can hardly listen to these podcasts and rewatch the races that we broadcast because I'm afraid that it's going to make me never want to do it again. I would rather just not even know what I did wrong. And it's not the right way to be about it.

I know it's not. You need to listen and watch so you'll know what to fix. but it scares me into thinking I'll never do it again. Yep. Did you and Harvick ever talk beyond that? We shook hands between a couple of NASCAR haulers at some point in the last month or so. But that was just the tightest grip handshake I probably ever had, and I was just happy my hand didn't like collapse because he was squeezing as hard as he could,

and I was too, and we just smiled at each other, and that was it. So that was, it was like two Clint Eastwoods meeting in between the haulers. That's all, nothing needed to be said, though. So, all right, you make the announcement. You glad to have the news out? I am. You glad to be able to tell everybody? Yeah, I only, I signed it on Tuesday of last week.

Yeah. I stayed out between. Did you shan shake then? No, not a handshake this time. No, did your handshake? Well, it was actually with my finger because I'd do it on my phone. Oh, wow, really? Yeah, so I stayed out after Texas and stayed out to Phoenix.

Yeah, doc. Thank you sign, man. Are you kidding me? I was in a coin. Are you kidding me? No, this has got to be the first driver contract that's ever been signed with their finger on a phone. It has to be the first one. You're just jealous because you would have loved to have done that.

I'm jealous. It has to be the first. So I was trying to get it done the week before and it wasn't ready. And I was like, I'm going to be out. And they're like, it's all right. If it comes through next week, we'll take, it's all right. They're like, it's 2018. It's okay.

And I had no idea that you could do it. and so I was at a coin laundromat in Dallas, Texas. Of course you are. Doing my laundry. Doing my laundry to get ready to fly out Tuesday night to go to Phoenix. So we had a 10 p.m. cheap flight that we got, me and all the truck crew for premium to fly out there to Phoenix. And it comes through, and the email pops up and I'm reading it. And the text comes through, hey, you need you to sign this ASAP.

Dot-da-dot, Ross, did you get this? Please let me know that you got this. We need you to sign it. and then it has to go back through a chain of other people to sign. There's four places to sign. Sure. So I get it, and I'm like sitting there, shaking, and I'm like trying to sign it.

And I keep clearing my signature and trying to sign better. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was your first phone call? Who did you tell first after you sign? My dad. Your dad. Yeah.

I mean, he already knew it was going to happen. How did that call go, though? I think what was cooler was the first time when I found out that we was actually going to drive for the, we got the offer to drive for four races, and we were able to do three. because Dover was a big deal for Johnny and our sponsorship there with our Us Your Mellon campaign,

that whole watermelon brandy there. You forego one race in the 42 to do Johnny a solid. Yeah, because there's three races a year that really helped fund that whole program. Dover was there, and I just told I said, man, from the very beginning I said, I can't do that.

I can't take that from them. So we end up missing the next round of the playoffs, but realistically that was going to be our last race anyway. So it wasn't going to, it would have made a difference, I guess. But still, I can sleep at night. And that's what I told I said. In 20 years, I want to be able to sleep because that this is, that would be wrong, I think.

So, yeah, so when I found out the first time my dad and my brother were there at the house, another friend. And I was on the phone with Spire and they're like, yeah, we got it. We got it. And I was like, no, come on. Like, no, they're going to send you that contract soon. And so I turned around to my dad. And he's like, what's wrong? and I guess my face and I was like we got the 42 like we knew it was a possibility so that was cool to have him and my brother there in person how did they react uh we hugged yeah we just we were there in the basement i think we were working on a carburetor just messing around down there uh working on one of our four-wheelers it was uh neighbor neighbor and um so yeah so that was uh that was cool and then this time i called him and i was like it signed he's like no way holy cow congratulations like he's in florida working at the farm and

He's like, that's, he's like, we'll be there. We'll be at all of them. Is this relief or pressure now? Now the real work starts. Like, I'm so excited to get farther into CGR because just in those three races, Josh Wise is kind of the guy they hand you off to. Max Jones, Doug DuCardt, they kind of like go to the back to Josh's office and do whatever he says. Just get in with Josh and do it.

Granted, he is a fitness guru. Him and John Hunter take it serious. They bicycle like that. And so he got me in spandex, like in the stationary in there, and, like, did it, like, a baseline, and it was terrible. I mean, like, I felt, I wiped up the floor because there was so much sweat. So this begs the question, man, are you going to get a road bike? Because I definitely need somebody to ride with around the house. Yeah.

Because I ride all those roads. Do you? Yeah. Okay. It's no big, it's awesome. He keeps, they keep threatening that I'm going to get one, so. I think so. All right.

Well, you're going to want to ride with somebody. Okay. So I can show me the way home. I'm ready to rock any time. I've got, I can, we can find 40 miles any way you want to find it around there. 40. It seems like a lot, doesn't it? It seems like 40 miles.

Take off to zero. Well, we'll start off with 20, work our way up to 30. Only 20. He says only 20. How was it your first time? How was that first? I rode 16 miles in Atlanta in 2017 and, you know, the second race, third race of the season was Jimmy. And we got, it was great.

It was great. And we got to the end and they were going to continue to ride because they, They ride 30, 40 miles every time, and I said, no, I think I'm good. I really was good. I don't think I could. I would probably not very, not being very comfortable or happy if I continue to ride. So 16 was enough. Okay.

But they ride. I think it helps. Yeah. Oh, God. It helps. So, like, all the baseline stuff with Josh, that was what really opened my is, like, one, the fitness side. Like, I know how much more I need to do there.

But just getting into the basics of the race cars, Nick Harvey there is kind of their GM of the Xfinity side, but also in the cup side. And so, you know, got to go with them and do the cup test at Atlanta. That's right. And so that was a cup car. 2019 package. Not going to be much different. Honestly, the fans, I don't think they'll see a big different.

We didn't have the drag ducks. So I think, you know, we were still able to race. Eric Jones was there. He was fastest car, just like they are now. I was able to hold him off the first time we raced. We kind of just jockeyed around. And then we ran like 10 laps hard, and I was out front. And I could just take his line away and keep him behind me.

So that was cool. The track brought over like a little track. if he liked, you know, the first, first 2019 package. So that was funny. Had some fun with that. But yeah, just trying to get as far into CGR. Because right now, everything is, well, this is how Kyle likes it. And this is how we do this because Kyle likes this.

And Kyle doesn't like that. And even down to, like, the window braces, Kyle's made a comment that, you know, this one is bent. And he notices that he stares at it. And if, you know, catches his attention. And then they got these fancy glasses that track your eye movement and stuff. and mine are like, I mean, they're scattered all over the place. That's interesting.

So just trying to fine tune all that. My hand speed, man, I shake the wheel on entry. I do a lot of correcting, and I have to get more comfortable with my entry and slowing my hands down. And, you know, now with the SMT data, making all those lines a lot more smooth, which every driver is working on, but I really want to try to let them teach me, you know, how they want me to drive these race cars. Yeah. Do you know, can you tell us how any of the structure of the contract, the deal,

How long it is? It's one year. One year deal. It's a one shot. Well, I don't know. I feel like... If you go out there and continue to perform, it'll be longer. That's what you feel like, right?

This has only started. I mean, there's going to be bad days. We all know that. And they said, like, well, going into the three races, they said, if we go run 10th, the spire, they said, we're all quitting. We're all getting out of racing because we don't know what we're doing, because we all believed in this.

They did, and I did. They said, if we don't go run good, then we need to stop. So that's the same way next year, like, we need to, you know, we want to compete. And obviously, the 42 car is one of the best out there. So I just want, the biggest thing I want to do my job, like, I look at Chip, and I'm like, man, I don't want him mad at me.

I don't want Max Jones mad at me, Doug DuCard, like the Spire guys. Like, if I underperform, you know, I just want to do my job. So there's going to be some days like at Richmond where we couldn't keep up with y'all. Luckily, the cautions fell the right way, and I was able to jump on the restarts and hold y'all off. But, I mean, y'all, y'all had us covered. Like, you drove away from me all night. I couldn't even see you at some points, run in 10th. So trying to maximize everything and just do my job.

Like, that's the only thing. I ran 9th in that race the year before. And don't know why we came back and ran so good. But you won. I know. I won the spring race. I won the spring race. Yeah, you moved me out of the way one time when you were laughing me.

I won. Punded me in 3 and 4. I still remember that. I won. I won. I have no idea how that happens. So you're going to have that up and down. And you're not going to know why.

you know, some of those days don't go as well. One of the things that I think is going to help you a tremendous amount is how much experience you already have. This is not, you're not a Christopher Bell or a Cole Custer or William Byron getting in this car as a rookie. You've got so many laps in the Cup Series, a lot of laps and experience series, truck experience, where that I think, where that's going to help you, not necessarily in the performance of every lap, of every weekend, of every race, more so in the longevity of the season.

I think that you understand, you know, if you start to have, if you have a couple bad weeks in a row, you know, not to get worked up and not to get to, you know, not to push it and make more mistakes and make it worse. And you also know, you know, how to point your way into positions to do well into championship. You obviously had to be cognizant of that all season long, driving that four car to try to make that playoff, which you did. And you beat teams that you shouldn't have beat, you know, to get in that position. And so I think that's going to serve you well, man. And I'm excited. I told them when I heard about the announcement this weekend,

I feel like you're obviously a contender. Your guy that's going to make the playoffs. You're a guy we're going to have to deal with all season long. And I'm excited that we're going to have to deal with you, man. I think you're a great guy. You've been an awesome neighbor. Quiet. I know it.

I don't make too much more. Yes. My mom loves the fact that you're quiet. But there's so many people pulling for you, man. And it's just the story just comes. going to keep getting rote and keep getting better. Yeah, look forward to seeing what you can do in Homestead, have a little fun. One last race with J.D., how's that going to feel having to leave your good buddy?

Yeah, so I actually got to just, before I came over here, got an email from the guy that writes all our press releases and he was asking kind of how I wanted to spin it, so I haven't responded yet, so I don't know. I mean, there's going to be some tears. I mean, like, that is the best decision I've ever made was going and driving for him because at the time, Landon was in the 0-1. one car, had some limited success, but had kind of the best of the non-cup affiliated teams, like, already going for them. And they had done the second car the year before, went terrible,

you know, and just didn't, just wasn't prepared. You know, I don't, looking back at it, I just, it took that growing pain of that year. So I came in at the right time, but we were running SB2 motors in 2015. I mean, just went to the road courses. I didn't know, I legitimately went out at Road America and went through turns one, two, and down to turn, they call it five. There's two, I don't know where three and four are at Road America, but five is a long straight away than a downhill breaking, heavy braking zone to a left. I downhill brake and got on the left side because I thought I was at Canada corner. I thought I was coming up to make it right and I get down there and I'm looking, looking, looking. I'm like, that wall is not moving. I can't turn right. And I'm like, oh my gosh,

where am I? I have no, so then I was lost. So I just put it around that whole, practice session just kind of learning the track. So just like thinking back on all that all those times or that's where I say like if I'd have been in the CGR car then I would have been terrible and I wouldn't have gotten what the car and that's and I see guys jump into it and they think that you have to be on a KBM truck two years jump to Gibbs or jump to wherever and you have to be on this plan like get the cup get the cup. Like I don't think that's the way you need to do it. I think you can do so much better by just by learning this stuff. It's hard. Like this is hard. Oh yeah. And the pressure is high these days and and guys are bringing sponsors.

They feel like they have to get the cup to pay back or to get it where they can be established. And, man, since I've came in in 2011, I mean, I can't even count how many guys had better opportunities than me, but just spent way too much too soon. And then they're gone. They just, they run out of funding. They run out of the drive.

They feel like they, you know, they didn't do a good job. And if I would have failed in the 42, I would have probably went away too because I would have known then I didn't need to be doing this. Yeah. So that's what the biggest thing is like, you know, I'm nervous as I can be of how I'm going to do next year, but I know, I know what the potential is, and I know that if everything goes right, we can do really well, but it's going to take a lot of

work to get there, and that's, like, that's exciting to me. Well, if it's at all possible with all this pressure and all this expectation, enjoy it, all right? Try to soak, try to think about it every once in a while and just really enjoy, like you took that moment in that car at Darlington to look around and appreciate that opportunity and look at that nice race car. It was the nicest car. I can imagine exactly what was going through your mind.

Went down to the test Atlanta and they made a comment after my first round. Yeah, sorry, the brake pedal isn't, it's too far to the left. And I said, what? They said, well, how we would have set it up for you, but we didn't have time and it's the left. It was like 3 eighths of an inch.

And I said, it was Matt McCall. I said, McCall, this is the nicest car I have ever been in. Like by far, like the best handling, like it drove around Atlanta, granted, with the package we were wide open. I was like, but man, like everything this car does is what I've always looked for. Like, that's, that's it. Granted, they had 1,300 more counts of downforce in the current cup car with that package. So they handled really well.

But I was like, I can feel the car. Like, the car is doing everything. And I was like, that, like, man, this is, like, that was another moment. I was like, this is the best. Like, this is the best ever been in. So I say thank you a lot to them. And they, when the test team asked the experience, affinity team what to expect from me.

I said, oh, I'll do a good job. We'll go fast and say thank you 10 million times. So just get ready for it. And I did. You know what the thing I love about you is there's a lot of people in this sport. Dale Jr. would back this up that would say that these days you can only get rides if you come with a lot of money. Your dad's got a lot of money, whatever it is.

And that's how basically the sponsorship game works. But you actually earned your sponsor by an impression, by impressing them, not even on the racetrack to begin with, which is another thing. So you are a bit of an exception to the rule. Would you agree to that these days and the current climate? Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, there's a lot of different ways to get into this sport, but I think people can really appreciate the way the Ross has done it.

You can see that in the reaction the fans have to his success and him being on the racetrack, him getting this opportunity. We'll see it next year all throughout the year as he races the fan reaction to his. I mean, that's where Jeff Carpoff and Paulette, they need the credit. I mean, I don't just say that because, like, this hat is, like, stitched into my head now. Sure. I mean, it's like, this hat's not coming off. They had Kyle Larson, like, they have him.

Like, he's their cup guy, but they wanted, like, they want an Xfinity guy. Like, they want somebody that's, and I'm, I want to be their guy. Like, I want, like, forever. I want, like, no matter what, like, even if next year went terrible and whatever, like, I will, like, the car pops will always be a phone call away, and I will always go see them, like, for the rest of my life. Because for better or worse, like, they've changed my life. Yeah, man. I tell you what, it's unusual to be cheering for the competition sometimes. In this case, I'm with you now.

I'm bought and sold. Dale Jr. has been big on the Ross train for a while, and yeah, you've won me over as well. All right. I love it. I love it. Well, thanks for coming in, buddy. Thank you, man. Appreciate your time.

Thank you, all. All right. So, everybody that's tuning in, are we feeling? Are people coming in? People are just starting to come in, Dale, and Mass Jr., presented by nationwide, doing this deal live now on YouTube. It's pretty darn cool. Can they see you? They can't see me, which means the ratings are going to go up since they can't see me. It has to be weird for them to be hearing someone else. They can't see. All right, so this is the Ask Junior

portion of our podcast, YouTube Live, brought to you by Nationwide, Mike. They're on your side. That's fact. They're on your side. Yeah, you know what, Dale, there was an Asked Junior question that came in on, that we wanted to talk about anyway since we're live. Some guy got a piece of your car, what was it from Homestead or whatever, 1997 or 98? 97. Tell us about that. Yeah, a guy this weekend, yeah, I was at the race this weekend, and a guy walked up and said, I got this nose piece to a car you raced in 1997, and I've seen a picture of it, and it's

the real deal. It came off the car, we raced. We raced it at Rockingham, and we raced it at Homestead. I bought it from the guy for two grand. He sold it to me for two grand, so I thought that was a reasonable price. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, so I'll get that Tuesday. The Wrangler car, number 31, that I raced in 1997.

All right, Dave Wheeler already chimed in. I think this is a really good one. What do you think about Jeffrey getting his opportunity with Joe Gibbs racing in Toyota? I thought a lot about it. I texted him to see if he wanted to come on to his show, but he wouldn't text me back. He didn't text me back either. He's one of them Gibbs drivers now. He's big time.

He is hard to get a hold of. He's hard to get a hold of. How did he get a hold of him? You know, I was, when I heard about that, obviously, I mean, I had not heard any rumors of this coming together. And I text Kelly and I said, Kelly, do you know about this? And she said, no, I have no clue. He never reached out to us. A lot of people are going to go, well, you know, they always do.

Anytime I mention Jeffrey or like, you know, talk about Jeffrey, they go, you all to put him in your car. We would have definitely entertained that idea because we have some openings for next year. but Jeffrey never called us. It doesn't matter. This is an amazing opportunity for Jeffrey. He's doing it on his own. He has a relationship with Toyota that he's created over the last year that he wants to continue to grow.

And so this was a choice on his terms, you know, that I think is a great choice and a great opportunity and driving incredible equipment. Absolutely. The right choice. Yeah. So I think this is maybe even better than him coming to race here. For him.

You know, obviously it would be great for us to have him and have a car on the racetrack with a driver in it. But, you know, I think it's good that he's going to get a chance in a really awesome race car. I am too. I've blown away, actually, at some of the comments when this news came out. And that was, how can an Earnhardt run a Toyota? And I'm like, is that even a question people are asking right now? What's weird is that he's been running a Toyota all year.

Nobody noticed you. You people didn't notice. Right. So there's that. And there's two is, it's only your life you're dealing with. Is he not allowed to go drive an opportunity? that comes up regardless of manufacture or is there some loyalty to a manufacturer

based off of who you drove for or who, you know, Dale Earnhardt drove for? The guy just got his, you know, the ride that he's, the break that he's been looking for. I mean, I don't know why that that's even a question, why people get confused by that. I agree with that 100%. All right, Luke Huddo wants to know,

and he's asked this question so many times, so we're going to just get it done with. Because, man, this guy gets on there, Wilson ball, Wilson ball, Wilson ball. He wants to know about the Wilson ball. you had in 2001. Do you still have it? Wilson ball.

You have in your car. Yeah. Yeah, I remember. I think I still have that ball. Yeah, so I think I still have it. The deal is we were racing somewhere. I was talking or asking Tony Jr. a question and he wouldn't answer me.

And that pisses me off more than anything as a race car driver when you ask a question and they don't answer you. Because you're in a car. It's loud. You're working. You only have opportunities on the straightaways to sort of, and you want that information. You can't key up in the corner. You're working on a streetways.

right away you're going to go, hey, tell me what's going on with blah, blah, and you want them to tell you what's going on with that, right? What else could they be doing? And there's an answer to that, but not that the driver much cares. Yeah, the driver doesn't care. He wants the information, and you should be as a crew chief or whatever, wanting to get, that information to the driver so he quits worrying about it, getting back to thinking about his job.

And Tony Jr. would always often not answer me, and I'd have to repeat myself and get pissed off. and I said one time I was like, man, I feel like Tom Cruise on an island out here by myself. So the next race, we're at Dover, and this was 2001 after 9-11, when we won the race, I was out there running around the car, and I was like, I asked him a question, and he goes, something not very critical. And he goes, why don't you ask Wilson? And I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? And he says, Wilson, he's in the car with you.

And I was like, I don't know. what you're talking about, because it didn't register with me that he's talking about a volleyball from this movie. I'm like, Wilson, what, who? And he goes, look to your right. And I look, and they strap this volleyball to the roll bar. And I never saw it. I got in the race car.

Yeah. I got in the race car for the race and never saw it. And I'm like, man, damn, you guys are crazy. He did that one other time with a ticket that he had gambled in Vegas. 1998, we went to Vegas to race. We wrecked at Daytona. This was 98, my first year in Exfitting. We wrecked at Daytona, finished 15th at Rockingham, so we've not been stellar.

We go to Vegas, and our odds were bad, so Tony Jr. put a ticket down, put money down on us, and tape the ticket to the dash of the race car. Oh, that's funny. And I ran second to Jimmy Spencer, and I got to Jimmy's bumper on the last lap, but I didn't hit him because he's Jimmy Spencer. And Tony Jr. goes, why didn't you hit him? I'm like, I don't want to run into Jimmy Spencer. and he said, but the ticket, we would have won. I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about.

He goes on the dash. You never saw it. I'm like, no, why didn't you tell me there's freaking money involved in this? You know, yeah. All right, Pete Rose. Jeez. Oh, hey, that's, we don't care. There's money to be made.

Yeah. Tony Jr., those guys are pretty sneaky and little. It's the most fun at that old school. It's the most eerie thing ever to go to the lengths of doing something and not give the proper context or explanation. You know, you're talking about even just finding out about how you got that 98 Bush Series right at the time. You have never been given the benefit of having an explanation before.

You always have to find out in the weirdest ways with those guys. You're right. You're right. They love it. They want to watch you figure it out. Yeah, I guess so. It's entertaining for them. Amber wants to know she's chiming in here on the Ask Junior Live YouTube chat.

and she thinks it's really interesting that you seem to match your shirts with your shoes. Every chance I get. What started that and why? I bought my first pair of ASIC, Mexico 66 tennis shoes five years ago or whatever, maybe even more. And they just have every color, so I wanted every color. I've got about probably 80 pairs of these tennis shoes in different colors. Some pairs I've got doubles. Wow.

Yeah, I just like to match. Why not? Why not match? It looks cool. Yeah. These are actually my redskins. They just, they do. They do happen to match this slits hoodie, but this is actually what I wear when I wear them redskins gear.

They won this weekend. They won't talk about my team this weekend. My wow was not that you like to match. That's fine. My wow was on the number of shoes you have. I couldn't believe that. Yeah. Wow.

I've got them a lot. I've taken a picture of it one time to put on social media, and Amy told me it was a bad idea. She's like, nobody wants to see all that. You'd be like the Amel DeMarcos of NASCAR? She's like, don't do that. Don't do the show in the shoes. I look at everything I got.

I'm with her on that one. Yeah, that was a good call. She saved me some ridicule probably. Yeah. I was so proud of it. If I could have a lot of shoes, I would. Dylan Ward, chiming in here. Being a historian of the sport, is there a time in NASCAR history that you wish you could go back and race in?

Also, thanks for signing a copy of racing to the finish at Texas last weekend. Absolutely. I think the 70s are awesome. Racing in NASCAR from 75 to 1980 would have been what I would prefer if I could go back to any time. I like the cars, like the size of the cars, the big Lagunas and 442s and Monte Carlo's and the Chargers, all that stuff, to be able to race in that. When did Riverside go away? 1986, I think. I saw Mark Martin talking about how he missed Riverside.

Does that look like a track that you'd have loved? You hated road courses. Yeah, I probably didn't. I probably wouldn't have loved it till the very last race. That's right. That to me, though, feels like a very 70s, 80s racetrack. Seventy. Ontario.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Ontario. That's not the same, though. No, no. The old Ontario was weird. It's weird how close together that Ontario and Riverside were. And I drove by Ontario.

I went to the last couple of races at Riverside with Dad, and we were riding down the road toward the hotel, and he goes, but that right there was Ontario Moes Speedway. That was turn three right here on the corner of this street. Right on this street corner, that was it. And there's still one little section that's undeveloped. There's a little section of banking that's undeveloped, a corner of the racetrack. About how far from where the current track is?

Six minutes, maybe. Yeah. You can walk out there and see the banking of the turn. and if you can use your imagination, you can see it. Wow, that's cool. Very cool. Sean Drake wants to know. Have you seen Hallie Deegan race yet?

Have you seen Hallie Deegan race? Just on TV. A couple things about Haley. Love her energy, personality. Yes. All right. You know, any race car driver, you got to be engaging. You got to be a great interview.

You got to be excited. She's always in a great mood. I mean, obviously, you know, so I'm sure she gets a bad mood every once in a while when she doesn't run well. But before qualifying or before race, when they interviewer before the races. Her attitude and personality is cool, you know, and exciting.

I look forward to seeing her race more and get more experience and seeing how that progresses for her, how her results progress. And she's... She won this year, right? Yeah. Yeah. She's got, she's in great position to make it. She's on a good path to get into the Xfinity Series one day, trucks, maybe even the Cup

series, if everything worked out the right way. but her attitude and personality is one of the one thing that's something you can't teach that's something you don't you can't learn and you can't fake Austin Duggan chiming in here what are your thoughts on Jenna Fryer's comments about driver media availability and Kevin Harvick's giving her a hard time after the race Jenna has always sort of baited drivers a bit she has that that's just her personality I think to and I don't know if she I don't know if she means it to be malicious or she's just kind of playing. Mike, you might know a little bit more about that because you've worked with her a little closer. Yeah. I think that she, first of all, you said after the race, but I think that this...

It was after qualifying. It was after qualifying. So before the race. And if I was just making sure that I had not missed something else to this story. I think that Jenna, first of all, Kevin kind of started that. Yeah. Kevin started the, oh, good to see it, the racetrack thing. And nothing wrong with the way he said that or what he did.

I think that it was just two very, very, sarcastic and people being sarcastic with each other. And that's Jenna. Jenna does that with the Kevin Harvicks, the Tony Stewart's, because they do that. They kind of feed it and they kind of start it. They enjoy prodding each other. And that's really all I took from that. I didn't, you know, people that got mad or upset with Jenna just don't know the nature.

Kevin would have never said that to somebody that he didn't like or didn't want to just give a little ribbing and prodding. You don't do that with people that you don't know or don't lie. Yeah, I guess. I think. I don't know if they like each other. I just know that Jenna and Tony Stewart used to do that, and they were friends. Right, of course. They did spend time around each other and were pals.

I don't know if they still are, but. I think that people have a weird, they don't know how to receive Jenna of the fact that she is, one, very opinionated, and two, is friends with people that she covers. Well, this brings up something that you wanted to talk about, a tweet from Jeff Gluck. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So this is a great time to... Well, what happened is that our own driver, Sadler had put a tweet out that said that, you know,

basically acknowledging the fact that, you know, the media can't be trusted and they're not there to, they're looking for attention. And we could only assume, he didn't call Jenna out by name, but we can only assume that this is what it was in reference. Reactionary to that. Yes. Deal with Harvard. And then, and then I think, what did Gluck's tweet say? I think we have it right here.

Gluck said, it's clear to me, the anti-media sentiment in this country has seeped into the NASCAR world. Call me naive, but I did. realize that until now. Honestly, it really hurts. At the same time, good to know where everyone stands going forward. Well, I'll say this. So I don't know if I agree with that. I feel like that there were guys in my career early on that I was nervous to do work with in the media. There were people that there were people in the media that I, as a driver, was nervous to do a story with because I didn't know if I could trust them. And Jeff Gluck was one of those guys early in my career.

I did not know if I could trust Jeff Gluck. I read an article that he wrote one time in the Winston Cup scene or whatever that was, Grand National scene. And the article was about drivers getting opportunities such as Jamie McMurray getting an opportunity to race for Roush. He mentioned McMurray and Mears. These guys getting multiple opportunities. And the article basically said, you know, I don't think these guys deserve these opportunities or why are they continuing to get these opportunities

when there's other people out there that don't get one opportunity? These guys are getting multiple opportunities. Why do we keep regurgitating the same drivers around this? I thought that was so rude to those drivers. Me being a driver, I was offended, and I thought, man, this guy, and when you read that article and you see the name attached to it, you put that in your, you remember that. And when you go, when somebody says, hey, you know,

you don't think about it. And then the next time you're, you know, as a PR guy, comes up to me and says, you got a Jeff Gloke article or interview in 15 minutes. You go, I better watch what I say or not try to give any sound bites or try to say anything that's going to. It happened last week. We won't mention the, we won't mention, and it wasn't NASCAR media, but it was. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it happened last week.

Yeah. And let's not go mention what it is. But, yeah, Dale Jr. didn't feel great about one of the things that we had lined up. and so we didn't do it. Yeah. There's, there's, I don't think that there's a, there's a disdain to the media as a whole. I think it's really, it's really, you got to look at it a little bit more like it's individual versus individual. It's in, it's, and it's, it's, case by cases, what you're saying.

It's like this, this person's either developed a reputation or this guy doesn't trust this guy. It's not that he doesn't trust the people in the room. He's probably got a lot of media. If you sit a driver in a media center, he's probably got a hand, A handful of guys he trusts and a handful of guys he doesn't. And half of the people he doesn't know. That's really what it is. And that's what it is for, that's what it was for me.

As I spent more time in the media center, as I spent more time doing one-on-ones with these people, I got to know them, got to appreciate them, learned what they're, you know, how they're working, trying to do what they're doing, created relationships with them, conversations with them, text messages and so forth to bridge. Like that gluck thing bothered me for a long time. So I put some effort into reaching out to Jeff years ago and to create some dialogue between me and him on a personal level. And we have, in my opinion, I think we've become friends. And so that would have never happened had I never tried to make that effort, I think. And I never would have learned that he's actually a great guy.

Yeah. And so, but there's some media members that I never were able to get over that feeling of, man, this guy could cut my legs out from under me. Or I don't know whether I can trust this guy. Some of them don't even work in the sport no more, but there's some that you just can't put your finger on it, but you just don't want to, you don't like talking to them because you're afraid of what they're going to, how they're going to use your words. And it's rare.

There's only a few of them. It's a catch-22 if you're the media member. I do sort of empathize with the situation, and also I think that there's a responsibility that sometimes the media even chooses to ignore. Now, what I say, what I mean by that is that the media have a lot of our, self-worth and joy in the in the palm of their hands they like at any time they they know that they carry enough influence that they could really make your week terrible yeah it just they did just too yeah that's that's a significant thing and because so we hold them to a standard and expect them to not make our weeks bad or

months bad and knowing that they got a job to do they got to do this they got to report so it's also an obligation for us to not give them that material but the thing I think is a little tricky here is that if people literally get mad at Jenna because of the friendship she has, Dale Jr. just gave you, Dale Jr. just gave you the reason why that's beneficial to the driver or the athlete. It's beneficial to both. Yes, because one is you've got to be able to establish a trust with them. Yes. And without it, you are going to not want to do interviews with them. You're not going to want to give them the story. Now, social media goes in there and makes this thing very complex. And I will also say this. I think Jeff was taking, I've failed to mention. and one other thing. He had made a tweet on Friday suggesting that Kevin Harvick, as somebody

who aspires to be in the media as a broadcaster himself once his driving career is over, it's quite the interesting tactic to not talk to the media as a way of getting through this weekend. And I think that Jeff caught a lot of flack for that, which goes to my other point. Media are allowed to have opinions on things. I mean, like, they just, they are allowed to have opinions on these and people that get mad at Jeff Gluck for saying something like that. for getting mad at Jenna Fryer for, you know, writing a column. She's a columnist. She's an opinionated columnist.

You've got to be able to draw distinction between those. And that they're allowed to do that. And we don't have to like it. But it doesn't certainly mean that we need to all of a sudden distrust the media or, you know, hold this as a personal vendetta against them. It's just, and I think that it took time for us to kind of realize how to process all that. I spent probably the first half of my career with anxiety to go to the media center. Going to the media center for me for the first half of my career was, oh damn, don't stick your foot in your mouth.

Don't do anything that's going to create a story that ain't a story. It was never, okay, this would be a great opportunity for me to do X, Y, and Z. It was always, I'm nervous, I don't want to do it, I've got to do it, but I don't want to do it because I'm scared of what it might create or what I might create because I don't know any better to keep my mouth shut. And so I dreaded it and didn't like that relationship, didn't use it. And it would often, you know, it would basically result in my worst fear. And that would be the wrong sound bite, the wrong context, just not being able to, not being able to get on the same page with the media. The second half of my career was completely the opposite.

For whatever reason, I don't really know why. I developed a really great, what I feel like, was a really, really good relationship with the majority of the media in the sport. You know, when I was good to them, they were good to me, vice versa, and we just continued that relationship. And there was more and more respect. and you're, you know, you need a comment or a quote about X. All right, no problem.

Here it is. And trying to give them everything that I, everything they asked for whenever they asked for it. And the relationship became more and more warm. And I started to appreciate them instead of fear that experience. I started to appreciate them as individuals and people. But I feel like that you got to, you know, as a driver, you got to be able to have a great relationship. with the media. You need to realize, you know, what that opportunity is when you're in that media center, what, how you know, how you can use that to your advantage, how you can help the

media do what they're trying to do and accomplish what they're trying to accomplish. It's hard to back away, though, and see that big picture, especially if you're in the middle of a points battle and you just got a big damn penalty the week before and all that mess. But, I mean, there's been times when I've been a driver where I've said the wrong thing and been short or nasty or Well, you saw it, you know. You saw it. You's watching the race, whatever, you know. And I certainly have a bigger appreciation for the media and what they do now that I'm a broadcaster.

And I know these guys like Marty Snyder and our pit reporters go down there and they have to ask these drivers after these bad moments in their day what happened. You know, and it's not a fun experience. They're not. They don't go out. They don't wake up in the morning to go interview people that are just been disappointed or pissed off. That's not what they sign. And they do it. And they, you know, oftentimes get a snarky snap response from the driver,

and they have to continue doing their job, you know. And so I've seen it from this side, which makes me really appreciate it even more, what that media member has to deal with sometimes when it comes to the drivers, me being one of them, and how we can be. I think also, you know, looking at Parker, you know, you talked about that last week, it's easier to take a question from somebody. Nothing against some of the guys that haven't held a steering wheel. But when you're taking a question from somebody that's...

Never drove a race car. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's... As a driver for me, it was easy to think that way and go, well, you know, this person never drove a race car. And this is so frustrating. But now that I'm on the other... I see...

I've said it over and over. I see everything about the sport completely different now that I'm not a driver and I'm in the broadcast booth. I had no idea how hard these people were working to get the job done that they do each week. So all that said, did you have an issue with Jennifer or Kevin Harvick in that case? Or did you just think that that was a no big deal? That was Jenna being Jenna and Harvey being Harvick. That's exactly how I saw it. Perfect for each other.

If you get mad at Jenna for that situation, you also have to get mad at Marty Smith for being friends and for having dialogue back and forth, something like that, like the way he would be with Jimmy Johnson or you'd have to get mad at Matt Yocum for the way he would be with Tony Stewart, which was no small task to have to interview Tony Stewart in those situations. Yet Yolkham, because of his friendship with him, was always able to be the Tony Stewart guy. Yeah. It wasn't because of his, he was some extraordinary interviewer. It was because of the relationship.

You work to get those inroads. Hey, let's move on here because there's a lot of people in the chat. Jutson O'Neill, we're going to put something to bed right now. I'm going to call it, and I think you're going to agree with me. Jetson O'Neill had a question that I just know you love to answer. It was if you're stranded on a desert island, who would you rather be with Casey Mears or Kyle Busch? So let's just put it to the end. This is the last time we do a stranded.

The last one. First of all, it's not the last time. No, it's last time. While I'm here, this will be the last time. Why Casey Mears and. I don't know. Casey Mears and Cow Bush are two polar opposites. Casey's just one of the most fun, chill guys to.

have a beer with and hang out with ever and you would describe Kyle as Kyle is just a well my interaction with Kyle he's just a racer that's it like guy likes to talk about racing you went too easy he's just a racer like what do you mean he's just a racing on that no bones about it he likes to talk about racing he likes to talk about racing he likes to race but assume there were bones about it what bones would be I don't hang out and drink beer with Kyle Bush like I have with like a Casey my interactions with Kyle are at the short track you know so it's a little different this is still not Answered the question. He's avoiding it.

He's avoiding it. You're avoiding it. I'll be honest. Yeah. I promise. Explain Kyle Busch. Intense. And I'd say kind of one-dimensional.

There you go. One-dimensional. All right. You want multi-dimensional Casey Mears or one-dimensional cop-bush? Man. Last time you can answer this. Not the last time. It is the last time.

I don't know. Neither one of them. Wouldn't want to be on the eye to? By myself. By myself. Why in the hell would I want to be in an island, desert island stranded with either one of them guys. No knock on them, but like that's...

If you're stranded in the desert island, it better be somebody you absolutely... Nobody, I don't know. He would drink more beers, so yeah, maybe Kyle Bush would be good. I'll be honest. If I was stranded on a desert island, I wouldn't want anybody to be there.

Done. How are you going to do is fight? Right. And one he's going to end up dad probably. Don't you remember when Tom Hanks and the volleyball got into it? They were even arguing. He threw him over the ledge.

Luckily, the volleyball didn't have any arms of legs and he couldn't fight back. So if I guess I'd want a football or something. Throw a few passes to myself. Or a boomerang. A boomerang would be perfect. All right. Let's take one last question.

Amanda Alvarado, after the Xfinity series race, you contacted, you probably contacted Justin and Elliott. How long did you wait and what type of interaction did you have with them? Well, I text all the drivers. Annette had a really good run going for. He had some trouble on a restart. He was running right there in the backside of the top 10 out running some really good cars.

I thought that, you know, having T-Mac on that cars seemed to improve Annette's performance, and as well as his attitude about it. Yeah, I told Justin, I was like, hey, man, you've done so much for this company this year. You've just been the model employee, does everything. And he goes above and beyond when it comes to supporting this team and company outside the car. Obviously, he does a great job in the car. So I made sure that he knew how much we appreciated the year he's given. us not just on the racetrack.

I told Elliot Sadler that we've been pals at a long time and just, you know, you just would assume you'd keep it at that, just being pals. You never even think you might have the opportunity to work together the way we have. Certainly when we were younger and we were racing in a cup series together, I never would have imagined I'd be on in a car that he's driving. That just wouldn't have never entered my imagination. But here we were in the last couple years. And he came out of a deal that wasn't really working out for him.

He was nervous, I think, about whether he could actually get back to being competitive again. And he came up in the bus at the end of 2000, whenever, I don't know, the year before he came here, he came up in the bus. And I said, you're going to get to work with Kevin Meandron. And he's like, I don't know him. That's right. I remember this. And I said, well, you're going to love it.

And he goes, I don't think this is a good idea. I got another idea. Yeah, he had a guy. I'm like, you're going to like this guy. I don't know. I don't know. I'm nervous. And so I bladed out about how Kevin was going to perform and why Kevin was good.

And he's like, all right, man, I hope you're right. He was nervous. He came in the bus and left in worse shape, right, as far as his anxiety over it. And long story short, they became great friends. And he came to me several times and went, you're right. You were so right, man. he's the greatest, Kevin's the best. And Kevin's going off to crew chief for Jimmy Johnson next year, which is amazing.

So finally, he's getting a great opportunity. So we talked about that a little bit. And I told Tyler Redick, I said, time to focus. I was like, this is going to be the most important week of your life as far as preparing for this race and watching video, whatever he needs to do. And I just told him, I was like, you've done a great job getting yourself here. This is the most important week of your young racing career. Make sure you feel like you're ready and focused.

prepared for Homestead and he said he will be ready. He said he's already started planning his week as far as how he can do that. So I'm excited because Tyler, I think that, you know, watching him at Kansas, he did a really good job running the high side, that's going to be critical at Homestead. This is the car. This ain't the exact car, but this is the team that won the championship last year. They went into that race and got it done with William Byron. And Dave Ellens feels like they have every opportunity.

there's no reason why they can't go in there and win this championship with Tyler. Tyler's moving on to RCR next year. I hate to see that happen because we're obviously sitting here with a chance to win a championship with him this year. But we'd love to win another one and send him off as a defending champion for RCR next year. All right. Ask Jr. presented by Nationwide, everybody listening, appreciate you being on here. And hopefully you guys enjoy it. And we could do a whole bunch more to come.

Yep. All right. Let's do some white flag. White flag, bud. White flag right there, white flag. All right, white flag. I'm going to keep it very book focused. We did talk earlier in the show that our book got to number three on the sports and fitness

category of the New York Times bestselling list, so that's good. Phil Jr., how did your book signing go? Because you got one more at Homestead, Miami. You had a book signing this past week at Phoenix. Was it a good one? Yeah, it was. A lot of folks came out. Very fun to see folks and talk to them about the book.

A lot of them obviously haven't read it because they purchased it right there at the racetrack, but there were about five or six people that in line. the in line that had read the book, and that gave me a great idea to send Tony Mayoff out into the line to sort of get some people to talk on our Instagram story, my personal Instagram story, about their experience reading the book. Awesome.

What better way to promote this book than straight from the people that have read it. And so, you know, you can read in a Twitter timeline, but to hear somebody and hear their expressions and emotions over it, I thought was very helpful to encourage other people to read it. it obviously it's just great to hear people say great things about the book yeah when so much goes into it we signed 550 books I believe so we're going to homestead to do it again I doubt that'll be the last signing we got we're talking about

doing some other signings probably some stores throughout the winter we'll keep everybody posted on our social media handles about where that might be that's right and check Dale junior social media channel this weekend he'll he'll let you know when he's heading out there to the autograph hauler that's right and Yeah, and the other thing I'll say about the book is that, you know, as it, as we now have done our last media tour, I think that what you just hit on is very important to us. And that is really kind of now hearing the takeaways from the people that are reading it. That means a lot to us. And it also is going to kind of keep the fuel through the winter on getting this book promoted.

So very good stuff there. The other thing I was going to say here is that this is an hour-long television show on NBC Sports Network. Assuming we stay elevently current. I'm sorry. No, I completely butcher that. Editorially current. If we're editorially current next week, it'll be an hour show. If it's not, well, then you'll have to check it out on our YouTube.

You can check out last week's episode on YouTube and on the Dirty Mo Media channel. But one-hour shows. Yeah, this should be on Thursday in case something crazy in the sport happens. And we get knocked off again. Except the second following week. This week's show, the one that you guys are listening to right now, This one will be this Thursday for one hour. Let's just stop there.

That's enough information for me. That's enough information for me. There you go. All right. Good stuff. Hey, Dale Jr., last word. Thank you for having Ross Chastain in. Yeah.

You win that award. Wait. We weren't competing. No, no, no. I'm saying that you. Oh, you're just giving me awards. The fact of them, I'm handing out awards. You're just handing awards.

Yes, yes. You can't win most popular driver anymore, so this is the award you're going to have to take you the, I'll take it. I'll take it. Listen, very rarely have, like, wanted a guest on it. I mean, like, a lot of times the guests that we have, you know, it's kind of a group conversation.

And a few times you said, no, no, this person's coming on. And I will admit that sometimes I'm like, no, I don't know. This might have been one of those times, and I am completely wrong, if that would have been a time. Because I enjoyed that conversation with Ross Chaston. It begs is the question. Have I ever had somebody on that you didn't like? No, because the only other time I remember,

but you's really being adamant about somebody who's Brad Means, and I love that one, too. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm glad, I'm glad to. We got more from Ross. I learned more from Ross than I even thought we would. It was better than I even thought it might be. There you go. And Jeffrey, just pick up your phone next time, dude. If you text me right after this, I'm going to be P-O. You know, he's hunting somewhere. Yeah, he probably is. That's what people do when they get their ride of a lifetime. He's hanging out with Victoria Secret Models. Apparently he went to the Victoria Secret Paget.

Yeah, he's everywhere. The guy's everywhere. I'll tell you what. All right, good for Jeffrey. See you. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Dirty Mo.