The Dale Jr. Download - 241 - An Earnhardt Thanksgiving

Episode Date: November 20, 2018

Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the DJD guys have a lot to be thankful for, including guest Tyler Reddick's championship. They discuss the rough road to the title for he and Joey Logano, the great turkey debate, Dale's groovy gravy, and take out the Homestead trash. 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 Dale. This is a production of Dirty Mo Media. All right. Are you ready? Dale Jr. for another episode of the Dell Jr. Download on Dirty Mo Media. Bye, ba-da-b-da-b-b-dab-b-d-b-d-Bi-Bi-Bi-Bi-Bi-Bi-Bi-Bi-Bi-Bi-Bi-Bi-Bi-Bi-Bi-Bi-Bat.

Matthew Duhn, that's a Budweiser beer that she used her. Mm-hmm. It was Jimmy Fallon. Jimmy's pregnant. Will you bless our baby? We're here to talk about the pro you brought. There's your baby. Play the sun's brighter and air's fresher and can't wait to get her in your arm.

A book called Racing to the Finish. Now I look at something to go, how can I fix that? NBC broadcasting debut One, two, three. Exciting news. Oh, God, Broadcaster Dale. I can't believe that they pay me. Slide job, slide job.

Talk about what I see. He's doing to slide job. Whoa, whoa, whoa, I ain't deserving no hype. Her stocking is... It's not call a duty. Oh, daddy. You got sevens all over your ass. Did you see that?

I feel like I'm standing at the Golden Corral. Hey. We like, I like tacos. I'm trying to be serious. What is this, Millie Vanilli? No. We got two, the Port-a-John. I'll give you a little nugget.

Put the bumper to him, really, really bad diarrhea. No. You're just born with that face, man. It's the resting denny face. They're having a phone party. Is there a way to plead the fifth? That number three is going to Victor Lane, but this number five is going to be stuck in the side of it. Smackdown, the lawgiver.

Where's some cream sickles at? I sold $80 out of my dad's chain jar and ball a game boy. We got Matt Kins at the Dale Jr. You're in the same room. Whoa. Who wants Joey Lugano to win the race? Hey, I'm right here. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Because I make my moves at late at night where nobody else is. And hopefully people enjoy seeing this on TV. I hear this Dale Jr. download is pretty large. And this year's a little different. I can't go loud. Dang. That's like the greatest hits, maybe, or?

Is that what it is? Greatest hits? I'm telling you something right there. We get in the show. We get in the show right now. That's been our whole year. God, that's funny. That is good.

It's a fun year, man. Well done. Well done, Matthew. I know you were working on that show open for a while. You said you were having fun, and I can see why, because that was pretty hilarious. We talk a lot about food. He says some crazy stuff. I know.

It makes you want to know the context of all those conversations because some of that stuff, I don't even remember. When you have phone party and diarrhea in the same open, that's pretty incredible. Yeah, well, well done. Well done. And we're back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download. I'm Dale Jr. My co-host, Mike Davis, is here. Matthew Dillner, you hear him talking.

He edits, produces. And we got a good show. This is our final show of the race season. We're going to do one more in December somewhere, sort of get a kind of a catch-up with everybody and see what everybody's been doing. Now, you know, with winning the Xfinity Series championship with Junior Motorsports, we'll have the banquet to go to. I'm going to go to the Cup banquet.

We'll have the Xfinity Banquet. We'll have a company Christmas luncheon. There'll be a lot of things going on throughout December. People wonder, I guess. Maybe they wonder. I don't know if they wonder what's going on in the offseason for us. But it'll be a busy one with family and holidays and all that stuff. And we'll try to get together and keep everybody in the loop of what's happening around here.

We'll also probably do another one in January. Keep everybody up to speed as we head on in the next season. And it'll be here for you, you know it. People are already starting to count down to Daytona on Twitter. which is a popular or unpopular thing to do. Unpopular in this corner of the studio. You don't like it? No, no, no, I don't like that.

I do like it. I don't like it right now, but I like it in a month. I hated it when I was racing because I'm like, give me my damn off-season. Don't start that till it's time. I don't want to hear that coming right out of Homestead, but I was a real grumpy, grumpy race car driver like most of them are. And they don't want to hear that.

You know, they want to go home, take a vacation. They don't want to talk about or hear about Daytona yet. Me on the other hand, now, as a broadcaster, I'm excited about the next season and all the changes coming. I'm excited about the changes, the new rules. I'm excited about driving the pace truck for Chevrolet. Yeah, that's cool. Daytona 500. Which wasn't announced yet until you tweeted it yesterday.

Right. Well, I announced. Okay, I thought so because I saw it. I'm like, how come I hadn't heard about this? I have broke two stories. I have broke two stories. He did. The fantasy one you broke earlier. It was a newsbreaker all weekend.

I broke Noah Gregson and Dave Ellen's are going to be together next year. I broke that. That was hysterical. That was funny. You were in the press conference. You probably weren't planning to go to the media center afterwards. You don't do that. That's sort of superstitious if you did.

And so there you are. You find yourself in the media center, breaking news, saying stuff. But the best part is you have this instinctual moment in your that goes, hold up. That may not actually be out yet. Yeah, yeah. If so, Kelly will come in here and clean it all up for us. I just figured that's the best way for me to shut up. and not cause any more damage there.

Well, I mean, we won the championship. I went to the Media Center as the owner before, but this time being the broadcaster and the owner, I really didn't know what was tasteful or not tasteful. I told my bosses and stuff, I said, I don't want to do the broadcast, don't want to do any hits from the pit box or anything like that. Just kind of, you know, if I can just kind of hang in the weeds back there

on the back of that nine box and watch the race, that'd be great. They even asked if it was okay if I, you know, they put the camera on me during the race. I felt like that was fair. And I know the fans are sensitive to it, you know, the optics of me being an owner and a broadcaster. So I'm trying to be sensitive to how the fans feel. But I'm not going to miss that celebration. And if I can go into the media center and talk about our partners, talk about our employees,

talk about how important this company is and how happy this company is, it's a great opportunity for me as an owner to be able to do that in the media center. So I'm going to go in there and do that. I went in there and hung out. like saying hey to everybody and you know you don't get a chance to really see nay ryan and those guys or jennifer and and say hello jennifer had a bone to pick with me because i said she uh baited people with questions so we had to clear that up yeah she did she wasn't happy with you yeah she said you all right so she called you and cuss me to you yeah and you don't tell me this thing actually i tried

to i tried to yeah that's what i said hey call me when you get back to the bus that was it yeah i forgot I forgot to call you back. Yeah. Well, we talked it out. We came to an agreement that it's just her personality. You and Jenna came to an agreement. She did. She said it's my personality.

I'm like, well, that's fair. Yeah, okay, it's your personality. Which was my point last week on the show. It's like, look, you just got to know Jenna. That's what Jenna does. Jenna and people that she gets along with, that's what they do. Yeah. But I was curious, though, because you said in the press conference, after the Xfinity race,

when we won a championship, she asked a question, and you said, is this you, is you stern? What did you say? Is this you baiting me? bait me and I didn't know if you guys had had a conversation beforehand or if this was literally your reaction your first response to her since the Kevin Harvick press conference a week ago. Yeah, that's funny. Well, we had a good conversation and I'll jump right to it.

The greatest thing about sitting in that media center was listening to Kelly talk. Because Kelly is matter of fact. And she's super proud, right? She's coming there. She's proud of what she did. She knows more than anyone. what we just accomplished with how we do business. People would be surprised at how strictly, you know, monetarily and to the budget we run our company

and how compromising everyone is. The crew chiefs, car chiefs, those guys want the latest and greatest, the parts and pieces, they want to spend money to make speed, but they have to understand like, all right, we can buy, if you got five things that will make the car fast, you got to pick two. That's right. You don't get off five. You don't get all five here, and Kelly holds them to that, and they buy in. Like Dave's up there nod in his head when Kelly's like, look, you know, we run this way.

You know, if the guys come in and say, here's 10 things that can make us better. All right, well, we've got to pick the ones that are affordable. We've got to pick the ones that are durable, within the rules, all that stuff, right? We don't want to spend $100,000 and it get taken away by NASCAR the next day. So it's a maze to navigate. And Kelly is deep, deep, deep in that maze with these guys, right? Boots on the ground, working every day. And so when she comes in that Medi Center and sits down and they say, all right, you know,

what's the difference between you guys winning this championship or Penske and Gibbs winning this championship? And she laid it out there, man. And she was 100% right. And let's recap what she said because that was gold. It was gold. It was basically like, listen, people think that we're just affiliated with Hendrick. And so we're basically in Hendrick extension. but we're sort of a stand-alone team here.

She said it best. She said we're really more of a customer. That's right. We buy our stuff from Hendrick. Yeah. You know, I will tell you that the relationship with Hendrick is why we run well. You know, Dave Ellen is working here because Hendrick wants to keep him in-house. And Hendrik wants to keep him in the fold.

All right. That's why Kevin Meander worked here. That's why Greg Isle worked here. It's why Team Mac, you know. Yeah. That's why Team Mac's back here. Hendrick Motorsports Affiliation. This is their farm team.

But imagine that. That's a great analogy. Okay. So this is their, we're their farm team. Yeah, we're the Trenton Thunder for the Yankees. Yeah, I got you. Yeah. All right.

But do the Yankees really have a big involvement in the way the Trentons ran, the business of Trenton? Probably not, right? They probably don't have their fingers in how they're managing their business. The day to day. The day. So Kelly really nailed that. I thought I was so proud because she's so tough, man.

She is tough. I see her as brother and sister all the time, so I think she's kind of soft and she raised me. You know, we have a lot of love for each other and look out for each other. Oh, yeah. And I'm pouring it on too thick. So, but when she sat down in that chair, man, it was like a boardroom. It's funny because Rick used to say, Rick Hendry, when he would be in meetings with Kelly and the meetings going on and Kelly would shut her book, that was a sign that things weren't going well. and they'd have to have a timeout.

All right, you know, and Kelly and Rick would go sit in the room and talk, and he'd go, okay, what's wrong? You shut your book. What does that mean? What does that mean? You don't like something this company's talking about. That's funny, is that? Yeah, because she's something, man.

I loved listening. She doesn't really ever go into the media center. She doesn't ever really get that microphone or that opportunity to that platform to talk about the company and stuff. And when she does, boy, she never, she hits homers. So that was fun. Did the celebration before the media center, I mean like the onstage celebration, what were your impressions from that? What did you think of that?

Because I was watching on television, I had some observations from it, but was, what was the temperature? I thought for a championship win, the celebration was subdued. Subdued, yes. Yeah, so I'm not going to put that on anybody. I don't think, you know, I talked to Tyler and I said, dude, I said, I was standing right next to him on stage and we'll talk about this when he comes here. He's our guest today. So that's your kickstart. Yeah.

Yeah, there you go. Tyler's going to come in here. We can ask him this. So I said, hey, man, the only advice I can give you right now is to celebrate this and enjoy this. And he said, man, I just still think I'm waiting on the race to finish, the race to end. He's like, I just can't, it doesn't feel real to me. And I said, well, let me help you realize that a couple hours, the team's going to be on the plane. Everybody's going to be gone from here.

The stage is going to be gone. Your car is going to be in a hauler. And it's going to be, that part, this part of it is going to end. And you're going to be standing there taking pictures with the trophy over in turn three with some photographer going, dang, you know, where did everybody go? And you're going to have all this emotion still bottled up inside. I was like, man, you need to let it. He's like, I want to go crazy. I'm like, go crazy.

Go crazy, man. This is it. Like, don't, you're going to look, no matter how hard you party or raise hell, you go and look back on it and go, man, I should have enjoyed that more. I should have really, boy, I should have said hey to this guy and backslapped everybody and whatever, you know. It got going once the champagne bottles came out and it was time to spray everybody down. Everybody loves that. You got into that one. I did.

I did. I loved it. I figured it out after all these years. You got to wait until everybody's done and then nobody's expecting anything else. Oh, yeah. Here you come in. Soking them down. Delayed attack. Oh, yeah.

And all those guys on that pit crew were my guys, my pit crew from 2017 and before. So I knew all of them really well. But yeah, it was subdued. It was. I don't, you know, I'm just as proud of it as all the other championships. I was shocked, surprised, all the emotions that you would expect inside. But I don't know. For me, you know, for me personally being an owner, there's a whole different satisfaction

and a whole different emotion in winning a championship or even a race. When I win as a driver, you want to jump up on top of the highest thing and scream and hop up and down, you know, and just scream and hop up and down and dive and dive into people's arms and stage dive and all. You just want to go crazy. Now, when you win as an owner, it's more of, it's different. It's, it is more subdued, but the pride is maybe even more. The pride of it, the honor in it and the sense of accomplishment is, is more substantial. But you're way more relaxed, because you're an owner. Owners aren't supposed to stage dive and act wacky. I've always sense that you find yourself somewhere in between.

Not to say it's awkward, but to me, there's never a clear role for the owner in a big celebration, in a big celebration. Even if you're Roger Penske or Rick Kendrick, what are they going to do? Untuck their shirt and, you know, a body surf across the crowd. I mean, what do you do when you're the owner? When you're the, well, so when you're the owner,

so you're standing on that bit on the pit box while Dave's calling the race, and they put you on the TV, and we got the monitors. I see that I'm on the television. and I'm thinking, man, I'm not even the guy here, right? And it makes you think about those things. You're like, I'm not even the guy. The guy is Dave. The guy is Tyler, the pit crew, the team, the people, you know,

and it gets you thinking about how small you are in this whole thing. And so when you go up on stage for the celebration and you look around, there are pretty much everybody on that stage has done more to get this here to make this happen than you did. I own it. I don't turn a wrench. I don't weld apart together. I don't call a strategy. I don't turn the wheel.

I don't pull. I don't bolt the tires on. I don't jack up the car. I don't paint the body. I don't do a shit. All right. But stand there and go, yep. Good job.

We did it. You know, now there's a lot of things that happened at the start of the season that I have to think about like, okay, man, what is my role? What is my role in this? You know, that's just something you personally do. I don't want to really get into it. I do a lot of things on the back end that behind the scenes, keeping this thing going, keeping the wheels turning.

I got a small role. I like my role. And, you know, I'm in the big decisions when we make big decisions, which hopefully we don't make too many big decisions. That's when we're real, you know, that's when things are going good when you don't have to make any big ones or any hard ones. But the great thing about Kelly, if you go back to her, is that you never have to make them alone.

No. And Kelly is a really good person to have in that decision making process. Well, yeah, I mean, I can't take much of the credit for the success of this company, how it's sustained itself. Kelly has to take all that credit. She's hands-on day-to-day. We use my name, my notoriety and celebrity to glue it together. You know, I'm working with the drivers and with our partners and all that stuff

and trying to do my part, driving a car every once in a while and all that stuff. I've got questions, though, for you. Do you mind if I ask them now? This is pertaining to this Xfinity race. If we go and knock them out now. And they're random, some have to do with Tyler, some don't. First question is, Kyle Petty said that this was a straight-up whoopin. Tyler Reddick went out there and schooled those other guys.

Is that right? The race had a story, and Tyler was part of it. Coming in, everybody thought Cole Custer was going to kick ass, and it started the race out, and it looked like that was going to happen. Cole Custer's out there just driving around, having a great time. Nobody was nowhere near him. To me, an ass-wopin is when a guy leads from the start to the finish. But what happened as the night went on,

I think our car got better. There was times when our car wasn't good enough. And I think Dave and those guys were making great adjustments on the car. And that track is, you know, that top gets better and better as it gets later and later in a day. And Tyler was committed to running that top and Tyler was running it perfectly. And when that top came in, the double zero couldn't duplicate what Tyler was doing. And he said as much. He's like, I can't go up.

I can't find that speed up there. And, man, it just neutralized everybody when Tyler was up there on the wall. running the way was and only and really only he could get that kind of speed out of his car up there and why is that because he practiced it he tested up there and he said he had in his mind and his mentality all weekend and coming into the race that he was going to stay on the fence and run the fence he wasn't even going to try to run the bottom during the race dave's like hey you know what we're doing is not working maybe try to run the bottom Tyler's like you know we'll get more for him but he's like I need to fix this to this and this to get the top to work well maybe go to the

bottom well once we get the top to work and I'm gonna fix the tune this tune this turn that we're gonna get that top going boys you know and so tyler just never would give up on the top he he just never would quit on getting that top to work he wanted to he wanted to run that wall he wanted to run the fence um I even told david's you know I said hey you know the bottom of one and two might be there late in this race it might be there at times during the race you know don't keep reminding him you know to try to be uh open minded to moving around but Tyler was not open you know not he was not open mind he was not open mind he's not He just wasn't interested in running the bottom.

And he wanted to run the fence, and he wanted to talk about what balance issues he had to get the car to run there. So how hard is it? I kept hearing that how that was the difference in what Tyler did. That winning the championship is basically what I've heard. Because when other guys tried to replicate that, they either couldn't or they wrecked. So I get that it's hard. But it's impossible for me to really understand that. It's like, yeah, going to the moon is hard too, but I have no way to even understand that.

So explain to us, give us an analogy or something on how difficult it is doing what he did in that race. So you remember Mario Brothers? You play original Mario Brothers? Okay, so remember how you were trying to go through the first stage and you'd hop up on those little pipes? And you want to hop up on the pipe and stay on it, but you'd slide off the other side. That's kind of what running atopias and hitting the fence, you know, misjudging it. It's so – and that's – I'll try to think of a better now. But when you play that original Mario Brothers to get through each stage, you have to hit marks.

You have to hit, you have to land on this perfectly. You have to hit, you have to jump at the right time to get here and do all those things right, right? You can't miss it. Can't be over here. You can't be off a couple inches. And running the top is the same way. If you go in a couple feet too deep on the throttle, that's going to put you in the middle of the corner faster. That's going to get you into the fence.

To make the speed up there, you have to run right on the wall. You can't run a foot off the wall. You can't run two foot off the wall, three foot. Every foot is slower. The closer you get to the fence, the more that air cushion is created beside the car and the fence. It's really kind of funneling that air back to that right rear quarter panel and creating side force and increasing side force. And the closer you can get to that wall, the faster that air moves and compresses into that quarter panel and creates that down force and side force. on the side of the car, the further away, the further away from that you are, the less of that you have.

And so it's like a cushion on a dirt track. We need to get Tyler in here so we can get his take on it because he did so well doing it. I'd love to hear his explanation. It sounds like it was just like walking to a minefield almost. There's no room for air or walking a tight rope or just one little move the wrong way. Then you've basically bought the farm. You're done. I'm trying to think of a good analogy in everyday life that people, there's not a lot of things

in everyday life that have to be so precise. Right. There's things that are forgiving. You want to be good, but it's forgiving. This doesn't seem like it was very forgiving, and yet he was still able to do it and do it the entire race. We'll think about that, and we'll talk about it with Tyler. Let me ask you a couple other things.

Elliot Sadler, you went over there and had a beer with him. I thought it was pretty interesting that, you know, in his last race, especially with all the stuff that he went through over the weekend. And we could talk about that later. But the fact is that at the end, he did what you did last year, and he had the beer. He asked me about that. He said, hey, you think that's a good idea? I was like, course, he says, does it matter what beer we have?

I said, get your favorite beer. I don't care. It's your moment. It's your time. And so I went out, I made sure I ran to Tyler stage, said, saw them, saw Tyler. I said, I'm going to run back over to Elliot real quick. Had that beer because I promised him. He asked me, he said, man, I really want you to be there.

Because I was walking up there rolling the car away, and the guys were going with the car and beer cans all over it. But I found Elliot, and Elliot was, I found the beer cooler where he had a beer, an awkward hug. And that picture, by the way, was hilarious. Thank you. Thank you, Exfinity, NASCAR, whoever hell, thought that would be good. Maybe it was Casey, I don't know, but that was pretty funny. Help a brother out. Come on, I like to get him when he looks like he's in the middle of a bleat.

I would love to meet the person that tweeted out. I would love to talk to them one minute. I look at that picture and I go, Dale likes to have a good time, a party. I had half a beer. I literally drank half that beer and then set it down and ran back over to the championship stage where Tyler didn't were. Even Elliot is not very first. flattering in that picture. Yeah.

Like even him. At least he's doing something cool. I'm the, I look terrible. Oh, well. But good time with him. And I think he's off to his next phase of his life and happy and content doing it, right? Yeah. I think Elliot feels good about his decision.

And he's got a lot to look forward to going to be busy, busy with his kids. He's put in a lot of years. So Sunday, we had a great cup race. We had a great day. Busy, busy weekend. As a broadcaster, we signed books on Sunday morning. around trying to get our thoughts as far as how we're going to open the show. I had to talk about Truex and Kyle Bush, what I thought about those guys.

I felt like that Jeff Burton was telling everybody that the 22 car was his pick. I felt pretty good about that pick. I felt great about their pick crew and how consistent they had been. And when you look at the numbers in the playoffs, Joey had been the best car. And so when practice started on Saturday and throughout Friday's practice as well, Joey had great speed. He brought more speed to the racetrack than I thought he would. Truex was better than I thought he would, was going to be.

We saw the four kind of struggling in practice, but they seemed to have gathered it up for the race. When the race started, the four was flying through the field. I'm thinking, okay, here we go. We're going to have a Harvick butt-wopin. But he didn't, you know, as that track changes and it cools down and whatnot, we get in late until the night, you got, you know, the car can change or maybe not be quite as good.

Not sure exactly why Harvick didn't have the speed. And the 18 just struggled all day long. Yeah. struggled to run forth. But, you know, compared to the championship guys, yeah. Yeah. Definitely didn't run the way they wanted to. And it was a race between the 78 and the 22.

The 22 had to short run speed. His car would fire off for 20 laps, 25 laps, really good. And then Truex would come on. And Truex was better from that point on and would either run him down, pass him, take the lead, whatever. But Truex was doing an awesome job. And he ran the bottom of the racetrack all night long, which was crazy. They changed the tire a little bit coming back,

and I think that that allowed the bottom to be an option for guys, whereas in the past couple of years, everyone was on the wall, or at least in the third groove. So that made the track a lot cooler to what. Yeah, it made the track better. I think guys running low and high and so forth. So anyways, the last five races, I think, have had a 36 or shorter lap run to the finish.

No, not any of the cup races have had a long green flag run. So that didn't play into Turex's strengths. into the strengths of Joy Lagano. When we had that short, you know, 15, whatever lap run to the finish, that was perfect for Joey. It was built for Joey and the way his car was running and handling. And there was controversy for that last caution that people were bringing up. But as a Kislauski put it to rest on Twitter. That's ridiculous.

I have not heard. He caused the caution on purpose, which I think is a bunch of junk. Wait a minute. If you're racing four wide, it's not going to work out well for somebody. It's put the rest here. Ladies and gentlemen, let me just say this. All right, so when the screen goes to the 19 car, and he's in the fence.

Right. Everybody goes, well, yep, 19 wrecked on purpose. And then two seconds later, we see a replay the two-car wrecking the 19. Oh, no, two-car wrecked him on purpose. Everything is a conspiracy. Right. Yeah, so I ain't even going to play with that. Right.

That's annoying. So, yeah, I'm not annoyed you. I'm annoyed it. It's annoying that people even go there. Yeah. It was a racing incident, and nobody even knew who it was benefiting at the time. Yeah. in a race we didn't have any cautions Friday we didn't have any caution Saturday Sunday that was you know had a debris caution and then then that you know it was but we still had great racing even though we didn't have those you know typical yellows outside of the stage breaks every race was great and this you know the cup race was amazing we had we I didn't know you there wasn't really ever a point where I thought Kyle was in it there was some times when I thought you know the four car was the best car the 22 was the best car the same day was the best car it was a best car it was

You know, it was never, you know, it was never decided until the very end to the very last run. And I think that we're sitting there, I said it on TV. I said, you know, with 20 to go. I said, we got four, the championship four are going to line up one, two, three, four on this restart. I mean, Merry Christmas, everybody. Could you, could we just stop complaining about everything and enjoy what's happening? Appreciate what the hell's happening right here? I'm sitting there with my family and my little girls were watching it.

And I said, listen, girls, the only four people that are able to win a championship are restarting right here, one through four. That is impressive. Let's just sit and watch this thing. Right, yeah. Watch them, because nobody knew how this was going to unfold. Yeah. Right at that point. Right.

Yeah. Congratulations to TJ majors. Guys have been my spotter, most of my career, at least the back half of it. I had some great spotters early in my career. But TJ spotted for me throughout the Hendrick days. We never won a championship together. First year with Joey, they win the championship. I watched him on stage last night and enjoying himself, checking his phone, checking his phone, checking his phone, sending text messages out.

I'm sure everybody was blowing him up. Blowing him up. I mean, that's one thing I thought about this morning is like, I wish Joey Ligonon would tell us how many text messages he had this morning. Oh, geez. It's got to be in, you know, almost a thousand or so. Well, we have a way to ask T.J. at least tomorrow. I know it's not going to be the same as Joey's,

but I think tomorrow when they do doorbunk for clear this week, we should ask T.J. How many texts he got? Because I bet it's a lot. I was one of them. I'm so happy for T. Yeah, I find myself just like, you know, I am literally happy for T.J.

Because the way they won this championship, I mean, you had the big things. three in the conversation all year was the big three, then whoever else was going to feel that role. And the way Joey won this championship certainly wasn't without some conversation. And I know T.J. was probably part of that as well on how they even made it to homestead. But boy, did they earn it. Yeah.

Did they earn this championship? You could make the conversation. You can make the case about how without that caution, Kevin Harvick may go win this thing. You know, Harvick had a lead. I don't know if Truex would have caught him or not. But that's not the way racing typically works. Racing typically works with a caution late, and it works with some drama at the end, and the person with the best car at the end wins the thing.

That's how you win a championship. Joey Logano did it. Yeah, Joey did. My mama texts me. She was not happy. No. Who did she want? She didn't think Joey earned it.

She's like, I don't. Yeah, she's like, tough crowd. I know. She was like, I'm done watching. That was one of her kids. She's the done watching crowd. Oh, yeah. Gotcha.

I was like, Mom. That was a great weekend. Great race from my viewpoint. She's like, show me the stats. He wasn't the best. Oh, geez. He didn't earn it. I'm like, oh, my goodness.

She's not alone. We'll give her that. I'm not. I ain't trying to hear that. Yeah, I hate her. Not from my own mom. Joey haters, right. I mean, I can hear enough on Twitter.

Well, who did she want to win? Truex? I don't know. She didn't even bother you with that information. She's just telling you who she didn't want to win and that she's done watching. That's right. Well, by all means. That seems rational.

All right, Mike, we got them back again. Pristineauction.com. Love them. Love these people. Yeah. Hey, there was a lot of tweets this week for people that were doing pristine auction stuff. They were tweeting you too. They were tweeting me that a lot of people were saying that they are on pristine auction because of the show.

They are winning stuff. It's good to see. I did see a guy say that he got a Ryan Blaney autograph photo for like $22 or something or maybe it was a gono. Somebody did. I saw some tweets. Pristineauction.com, man. Obviously, we mentioned it. It's an online sports auction site where you can bid on and win authentic sports memorabilia.

from the comfort of your home. They offer daily auctions. The bids all start at a buck, so pretty affordable right out of the gate. There's no waiting. They have other formats besides that daily one, though. They have a 10-minute auction, which is a lot of fun. Imagine that. 10 minutes.

Get it and go. It's a pop-up for 10 minutes. It's rapid fire. You better be quick. All of them are great deals. They guarantee the authenticity of their items, and they come from the most trusted sources. You look at a big. I skipped right over that.

You don't want to say authenticated. Wait, I messed it out. You did it. You did. I'm sitting too close to you. Mike, you give it a go. Which one? Authenticity or authenticated.

Authenticated. Mike's the only educated one in the room, I guess. I mean, I think the pronunciations he puts in here might actually complicated a little bit. It actually makes it worse. Authenticated. See, that's not how you say. That's not how you say it. Authenticated.

You don't say authenticated. You have a capital T as if you're supposed to emphasize the T, but you're, you're you don't. True. Authenticated. I don't know. That's true. There's an emphasis on that that shouldn't be.

Well, there's a Sports Illustrated on there that I signed. It has pictures of me actually signing it. So it's authenticated. It's authenticated. That's as authenticated as you can get. Yeah. So it doesn't get more real than that. You know, there's a lot of drivers that do it.

And they'll all have their photos of themselves signing all these items. So you know that it's a real deal. It's affordable. There's a Joey Lagano signed 8 by 10 photo with him. from his old Joe Gibbs 20 car days. Get you one of those. It's at 30 bucks.

It's in 30 bucks. It's in 30 bucks, man. I mean, he's champion. It's got to be, that's got to be toward the end of the auction, right? Get your Joey. It's right towards the end of it, and I'll tell you what. I mean, he won that title, so.

Yeah, go up. Get your Joey Ligano stuff now. Well, eight by ten photo. I don't know, 30 bucks is a lot. No. Yeah. It's not. For the champion?

30 bucks for an 8 by 10. Are you just one of those Joey Ligano haters? All right, Brenda. All right, Brenda. All right, Brian. Who is collecting? This is your mom speaking? Who's collecting 8 by 10?

Who collects 8 by 10s these days? Just because you don't, doesn't mean other people do. I don't. I've never went to anybody's house and they went, hey, check out my 8 by 10s. I've got 8 by 10s on my wall. Really? Yes. Of your family, probably.

No. Of Joe Lugano autograph number 20 car? Bill Curry, Gene Stallings, Mike, every Alabama head coach and Nick Saban. So your house is like a New York steakhouse. Where else would I put it? Eight by 10s lined up. No. Where would I put it?

Why did your life put your wife let you do that? In my office, yes. Oh. Oh, yeah. Office. Yeah, I mean, I don't remove my kids like school pictures and then put Jean Stallings in there. Right.

I don't put hanging on my Christmas tree is orange. I got you. Eight by tens. All right. Well, we learned something. So you'd prefer like a four by six. Yeah, what do you prefer? What kind of pictures to see L.

Junior look for on the pristine auction? Yeah. I like my picture smaller. Keep them in a shoebox. Oh, because that's good. Just put them in a shoe box. Well, eight by tens. Nobody can enjoy it.

A eight by tens take up a lot of room. Good grief. Not in your house, they don't. Let me tell you. He's only got one kid. There's a lot of wall. He's only got one kid. There's a lot of wall.

Apparently, there's a big, big giant group of people out there collecting eight by tens. And if you love, if you're one of them, Joe Lugano's got one signed on there. It's 30 bucks. Check out pristine auction. now you'll be hooked. It's free to register. Free to bid. You only pay for the items you win. That's pristine auction, spelled P-R-I-S-T-I-N-E-Oction.com.

How come we don't spell out the auction part? Yeah, I mean, there might be people that don't know how to spell it. Yeah, but A-U-C-T-I-O-N. Go ahead, spell the dot-com. D-O-T-C-O-M. Yeah. I don't know. And when you register, be sure to select Dell

Junior Download Podcast from the drop-down menu in the How Did You Hear About Us section. So there's a section, click the drop down. Dell Jr. Download podcast is what you want to select. That lets them know that we sent you. Before we bring in Tyler Reddick, the Xfinity Series champion of 2018, here's your Exalta Update. This is your Exaltor Race Center update on Matthew Dillner.

Homestead Miami Speedway was all about the championships. First up on Friday night, Brett Moffitt got up on the wheel and brought his number 16 Shiggy Hittori-owned truck to the front to earn the win and the truck series championship. On Saturday, the Xfinity Series battled for a title under the Florida Sun. When the day was done, it was Junior Motorsports Tyler Reddick, who was the last man standing with the checkered flag and the Xfinity championship, the third title for the J.R.M. team. On Sunday, a late race restart gave Joey Lugano a chance, and that's all he needed,

as he bested his four combatants to win his first NASCAR Cup Series championship. the short tracks. Josh Barry and Sam Mayer didn't have the results they wanted in the Myrtle Beach 400 at Myrtle Beach Speedway, finishing 30th and 25th respectively, but it was a strong year for the junior motorsports late model team. 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 Exaltta, please visit them at exaltas.com. Ladies and gentlemen, the champion is here. The champ is here.

The champion is here. All right, buddy. Come on in. So how do you feel? Feeling pretty good. Has it set in yet? It's starting to. Good.

Finally. Two days later, it's starting to sit in. Yeah, I've went to bed twice now and woken up, and it still happens. So I think it's reality. It wasn't a dream. Oh, my goodness. Congratulations. Thank you.

happy for you, really. You went out there and, like we were talking earlier, as Kyle Petty said, he went out there and schooled them. Do you feel like you schooled them? Well, obviously all year long we didn't, but I made a lot of mistakes over the course of the year, but it was just a learning process from start to finish. And I mean, we just hunkered down when the playoffs came around and we just got to Homestead, which is what we've been telling ourselves all year, so we could just get to Homestead. It's anybody's shot. And we knew that that track would play to our strengths and just ended up working out. So let's get to it, man.

You run the fence. You correct me if I'm wrong anywhere, but you tested on the fence. You said, I'm going to run the fence. You told Dave that if they hit the wall, don't worry about it. We're going to hit the wall. Make the car where it can hit the wall a lot. You went there for practice and ran the fence and the race you ran the fence. Me and Dave both tried to talk you off the fence, but you said, no, I'm going to keep running the fence, fix the car, make the car where I can run the fence.

Oh, this is true so far. Yeah. So all that being true, tell us. us how to run the fence. Imagine that I'm a driver and I'm new and I've never ran homestead. How does that work? What are you doing up there and why do you want to run there? Why are you so dedicated to it as opposed to moving around or doing anything like the bottom, the 21 ran the bottom. There's some other ways to get around that track. Tell me how to run the wall. I feel like just the easiest way and the hardest thing for me was just overcoming the fact of

entering on the wall and entering really close to it without telling yourself you're going to hit it. because just like anything, if you tell yourself or you think you're going to hit something and you're looking at it, you're going to end up hitting it more times than not. And just getting adjusted and I guess carrying just enough entry speed where you can make time up there was the biggest thing. It's just the more, it seemed like on Saturday the more I would back my corner up, the better it would work. The more I back it up, the higher than enter, the faster we would go. And for me, it just, it's all about making straight away as long as possible, really. You know, in the past when I've ran the fence and been okay, I've just second.

If I see much speed getting into the corner, stopping almost, as Kyle would like to say, and then taking back off. It's all about just trying to carry just enough speed into the corner without hitting the fence and then just getting back to the gas for everybody. What's the difference in speed from going in and running the bottom to the top? Entry speed, I'd say. Yeah, entry speed. Ideally, you know, if you get it really dialed in and you're really moving, you don't want to lose too much entry speed. But definitely the guy's carrying a much shorter, driving a much shorter lap for sure on the bottom. You know, it's not necessarily about entry speed, I'd say.

It's just about how fast you back to the gas. and carry speed off the corner. The reason I ask that, I guess, and you can answer this too, if you're so accustomed to going in slower to run the bottom, I would guess it would be very hard to train yourself just off of your instinctual, just the muscle memory, to go in faster into a corner when that wall is closer. I guess what I'm hearing you say is that's the challenge

to get yourself to not think that way, because you are going in much faster, right? I don't know. I think you're not. The entry speed is not that much different, I don't think. I actually think you carry a little bit less speed in the corner. Oh, okay.

You drive it off further into the bottom of the track, I'd say. It's just you try and essentially back the whole corner up your apex, if you will, and everything, where the center of your corner is just so you can lay the power back down and just carry a lot of speed down the straightaway. When he says he wants to make the straightaway longer, basically he wants to be in the gas sooner

than he would have been running the bottom. Yeah. And if you're in the gas sooner, it's like a big whip. You just kind of pendulum off the corner and down a straightaway quicker than the guy that had ran the bottom because you got in the gas way before he did and to be able to get in the gas center you got a lift sooner before Kyle Larson came or there wasn't too many guys that ran the top and we didn't have data to look at they didn't look at my data they didn't you know they would have wondered like how do you do it how you do it how I can't figure out how to run that top they never understood how much you had to back the corner up yeah they also you make a great point about entering on the fence and that's something that I really didn't learn to relate to my career and Kyle Larson showed me just how aggressive you could be entering the wall. When you get up, when you get the car against the fence, it creates additional side force.

The car's in y'all, so the car's kind of pitched. The wall is straight. You know, obviously it's curved for the corner, but it's against the car. It's kind of straight. And that air funnels down the car and packs into the back, trying to, trying to escape by the back of the car, and it creates that side force that you're looking for in that cushion. The sooner you can make that happen, like if you can enter the corner on the wall, it's happening.

then instead of driving in maybe a car length off the wall and getting to the fence in the center and that start that cushion happening you can start it entering and that's what you were doing so well a lot of guys that have figured out how to run the top still don't know that entering on the wall is the ideal way to do it and it helps that center so much too that center turns the more you can open up that entrance and arc that entrance and get in on the wall the center's quicker you go to the straw a little bit more. Guys just don't learn how to do that as quickly as you did. Do you think that your dirt experience helps you because when you run dirt, you've got to enter on the cushion. You don't enter low and up to the cushion and then run off the corner, right? It kind of depends. And some of the

late model stuff, you almost had to do it a little bit. You couldn't, when I first got into the late models from the open wheel cars, the open wheel cars, you kind of just pitched it and you were kind of already on the fence or the fence, the cushion. You never really came off it. But the late models, I can't say how many times it took me of trial and error just turning in off the cushion and literally just getting tight and wrecking. So like, the laymalls were a little different. You kind of had to get it pitched just enough and then just kind of keep it pinned. I've had a couple cars that are really good. It knocks. I think back to I had a car one time it knocks where I could literally just keep it on the cushion all night long. But yeah, I think the dirt racing helped a lot. I think

more of the probably so the outlaw carts I came from because those things, the higher you could keep them and the more you could keep them in the moisture, the better it would just be, especially at Cycleland growing up for me. But I think that's where me and Kyle probably picked up and learned those things. I think it came from the Outlock Carts when I first started. That dirt experience allows you to run that top. I think so. It allows me on the top.

It makes it, for better or for worse, I'd say it makes me want to go out and search for speed in places that other people most likely wouldn't. But it also at the same time can make me, you know, I probably should just stay on the bottom or just staying lying early in the run when I'm already looking around. Looking around too soon probably. But I've been getting better at that. At time goes on and then I have some bad days still.

But sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. That's true, man. When you're running a race where you can, you know, you can go to the top at some point in the run, it's so hard to be disciplined and not want to jump up there because you know that's where you want to end up. It's five laps into a run. You know you probably don't need to go up there until like 10 laps in, but you're dying

to go try it. It's so hard to be disciplined. You might give up a few spots. going up there too early, but you're going to run and mow them guys down on the long run. So was that the difference? Do you think to that, would you win this championship without running that high line? I don't know. It was our game plan from even way before we ever got to Homestead.

I felt like all year long going into that race, that's what we were going to have to do, knowing we're going to have the composite body. I was like, man, I feel like I can get away with murder almost hitting the walls many times, you know, and not knocking the quarter panel in and on the tire and all that stuff. So, I mean, with all those things in place and knowing it going in, in, especially as the year went on and seeing how fast we were at times running the top, it's like, well, it might as well. It works really good at those other tracks. I felt like if the race had a short run to the end, a 10-lap run to the end, yeah, it wouldn't work. But in years,

last year before, it was a long green flag run to the end. And I knew if I kind of wanted to play to our strengths and set ourselves up if the race went our way that we'd have a really good shot at winning it. And that's kind of what the game plan we had going in. I got to ask you to this is impressive how Dave called the strategy. I was sitting on the box watching it. I didn't know, like, when I was a race car drive, I couldn't see this stuff happening or I'm in the car driving and I'd be like, I don't know what the strategy is.

He'll just tell me when to pit, you know, and I'm just going to race hard and try to get everything I can, every single lap, you know, and he's going to tell me when to pit and I don't know what we're doing. But now that I'm in the booth, listening to Steve, tell people on TV, like, all right, this is the strategy this guy's doing, this is strategy this guy's doing. I understand it's so much easier.

I'm standing on that box. Noah Gregson is up there, and I said, Noah, if we can catch the double zero, Dave's going to bring him to pit road and try to get there first. And if that happens, we're going to be in front of him. When he pits and comes out, Will has cycled him. And it worked. Like, I've heard Steve tell this to the fans and the viewers at home 100 times this year, and I'm sitting there going, you know, I was real proud of myself because I'm sitting there,

like, I know what's coming. And did you know what they were trying to do? in the car or you're just like out there driving trying to run the high line make time did you know that i need to get close to that double zero then he's going to draw in a pit lane did you understand the strategy yeah i knew that um if we were in that spot that if we kind of got to them but couldn't pass them kind of like uh in practice on friday we were actually we actually were on newer tires than the 20 um in practice and in practice on friday we couldn't really run the fence i was up there but i couldn't run it like i wanted to so we weren't as fast but i caught the 20 and

and we were two, three-tenths faster lap than him on newer tires, obviously, too. I got to him and then couldn't go anywhere. So Dave was like, if we're in that spot where he feels like we're running him down and we kind of stall out like we did, we come to pit road. But the 20 came to pit road, I believe, lap before we did. And so Dave was like, well, we don't want the 20 to, you know, gain any more time on us. So we pitted, and I was just kind of blown away after I went back and watched the race, the double zero stayed out as long as they did.

I was actually impressed. Like, Cole picked up on immediately. He's like, where did I go? Like he was on top of it. He was like, where's the nine? Why are we staying out? You know, he was asking that question right away. But I was surprised the 42 and the double zero stayed out as long as they did.

I don't know if they were caught up and racing each other for the owner's championship too. Yeah, we got out ahead of those guys. And it didn't look good for a second one. The double zero passed the 20, I would say. And he was about a second back of us. But I knew that it was either have to wreck it or drive away from them. And fortunately, the other one worked. Wow.

I think that that's so impressive for that you can see. You know, not a lot of drivers that are young as you are understanding the strategy as the race is playing out. But that's where racing is going. That's where drivers are having to go. They're having to not only make lap time, drive the car on the fence and inch off of it, but also understand what their role and job is in that moment. No, hey, all I need to do is get close to that double zero. Then I'm coming to pit road.

I don't need to try to go up there and pass him. I don't need to get the car in the fence. I mean, these are so many things that I saw you do that night that were so impressive to me. Noah's coming next year, so I'm sitting there saying, Noah, watch. Tyler is going to try to catch this double zero, and he's got to stay off the wall. He's got to, he can't make any mistakes because Dave's got this plan. And you did that, you did it flawlessly, Dave did it flawlessly, and then we get back out there and with 20 to go. I'm like, now he's got to run these last 50 laps without hitting anything.

And he's got to run it right on the fence. And I was so amazed by how precise you were. A lot of guys hit the wall. Every time I would run that fence all night, I would get in the wall. And it changes a car. The car never drives as good. We've seen it happen with Justin there before trying to race for the championship. It's just a dangerous, risky game.

But you made it work. I couldn't believe it. Hats off to you. I'm still amazed by it and pressed by it. But Dave told me when we were getting ready to go into the playoffs. I said, all right, you know, what do you think? He goes, if we can get a homestead, we can win. And I was like, all right.

And he says, I really feel confident that if we get to homestead, me and him will go out there and we'll have a shot. We'll have a great car. We'll have a shot. And he was right. He was right. You were really, you know, meticulous and smart throughout the playoffs. At any point, like during the playoff system, during playoff rounds, was how intense is that pressure on a driver with that elimination factor hanging over your head? It was quite ever-present.

It was really hard. It was difficult. I wouldn't say it was hard to sleep at night, but it was difficult to. relax and go to bed. Every single one of those elimination races, and even the first two races of each round. Richmond, we weren't bad, but we weren't great, and we never really, it seemed like each of the six practices

throughout, you know, the round of eight and round of 12 and round of eight, that we just weren't very happy with our car and we were worried about scoring enough points throughout the race to put ourselves in a good spot for the next race or to even advance. So it put us in a spot to really kind of take risks and, you know, either wholesale the car, make a lot like the one or the seven or, you know, make, make some adjustments and just hope they worked in the race. But every single one of them that we made from practice to race was the right

call, all playoff long. That was a lot of stress on Dave and Brandon and those guys because we're, you know, we're looking at the sheet and we're 10th or worse on speed, you know, fast lap average. It's like, I don't know how we're going to score enough points to get to the next round. And we would just unload in the race and we go to work and somehow find it and get it done. Yeah. Yeah, just all this mental talk and all. all these things, the strategy going on. I can't help but wonder, is you get to 10 to go, five to go. Do you even let yourself, with all that's going on, do you even let yourself think about

what is right in front of you in five laps and 10 laps? And if so, does that become a distraction? I was, I mean, it seemed like as soon as I'd taken the lead back from the 20 and the double zero was right behind me, it was ever so present what we were racing for. You knew. I don't know if I would say it was stressed, but I knew it was on the line. It was time to go get it done or get paid. past and not win the championship. It took me all race, I'd say. I ran the top all race,

but it took me most of that race to kind of hone in where I needed the lift and everything I needed to do to get through turn one and two really well. That was my struggle all night, I'd say. Yeah. That last run, we really found it and took off. What was the celebration like? I would say that to me it looked like you still hadn't really understood exactly what you had accomplished yet. Yeah, I mean, it was crazy. Like, I can't believe it actually happened. Like we went through so much throughout the year that I knew we could still accomplish it and get it done. But to overcome what we did, go on the run we did in the playoffs, it's just crazy. Because I sit back and think to Rhode America and Dave says that was the lowest of lows for himself, myself, myself, all of us included.

And it just seemed like the world was on fire. It was all burning to the ground, right? But we still, we hunkered down when the playoffs started. Is that what you're first thinking when you're sitting on that stage? I mean, like, when you cross the start finish line, are you thinking about, wow, we did it because of the play? the lows that you went through? I mean, I think they played a role for sure. We didn't have this move this year for sure,

but I think some of those rough spots made us tougher and made us appreciate the nicer moments a little bit more. I just feel bad for those guys because throughout the regular season, I'm feeling bad for them because they, you know, they deserve so much more, and I just wanted to go out there and get it done. And unfortunately, sometimes pushing so hard

was not always the answer. But we had a game plan going to the playoffs, and we worked on it throughout the playoffs, and we just continued to just be a smart. as we could be, and we had good six races and put ourselves on that spot to win. What did you do after all your work was done? Your pictures were taken, your media was done. Where'd you go? Who'd you talk to? What'd you do? Well, I had a, I had a beer, which was nice. With who? You win it that long? Dave. We were taking a picture with the trophy in turn three,

me and him got to kind of for a second. Finally, all the, all the commotion was calmed down, and we just couldn't believe what we had accomplished. We were really happy. We both believe we could do it. But the fact that it happened was, you know, it just, it's crazy. It was, it was quite an adventure to get to that point. That's good, because I'm assuming at that point it's dark, there's nobody at the track. It's sort of you guys are just kind of wrapping up. So is that beer with Dave, anybody else? Or just you too. Oh, Campbell was there too. Campbell was there hanging out with us? Kristen was there? Was that one of the high, moments of your celebration then? Was that when it really started to sink in?

Yeah. I mean, we came back to North Carolina and hung out for a bit. Me, Dave, and Mike and a couple of the guys on the nine car. Some of them almost have to drive the opposite way where most of us live. So we didn't get to quite hang out with everybody, but for the most part, a little group of us got together and kind of soaking in. It felt nice. What time did you shut it down? I call it quits, I think, around 3 o'clock. Man, pretty good.

I was, Dave kept on going. He soldiered on. Had a boy. Dave kept soldiering on. Him and Ashley just kept on going. And I was, I think I've, yeah, you drove the race. It was, I imagine you're probably tired. Yeah.

So are you starting to get nervous about having to make that speech at the banquet? Yes. Yes. Any help would be great because I don't, I don't know where to start and I don't know where to finish on that thing. Is that right? I think it's four minutes. I got a gap. Well, you take any time you want.

You take all time you want up there. Nobody's going to shut you off. That's probably the toughest part about the whole thing. I mean, you hate to complain about success. But making the speech in front people is really tough. And I think that, you know, you just want to make sure that, you know, I think if you just say what's on your mind. A lot of time, and I never figure this out, I think,

until later in my career. But going up there and speaking from your gut actually is way better in trying to write a speech. But you probably should write a speech the first time. Yeah, probably. Or I'll be, I'll start here. And I know myself. I'll be talking about something way over there.

It's like, don't go over there. Yeah. Then I'll look down. remember, oh, I need to be talking about this, and I'll start here again. It'll be a disaster. So I probably... Don't look at it as something you have to do. Look at it as an opportunity for you to finally be able to tell the people that need to hear.

Yeah, absolutely. Give me a little hell because of how nervous he is. Say what? I said, we've got to give him a little hell for how nervous he is, trying to make him more nervous. I'll be a little nervous for sure. That's what you drivers crack me up. It's like, you're in the heat of the moment, and you're not nervous about all that's going on with 10 laps to go and five laps to go, but the speech is something that could derail. Oh, my God.

Well, the thing that you're in front of you, you're in front of you. your peers. Yeah. You know, other drivers are there. Everybody in the industry's there. They're going to critique you. Yeah, it's like getting up in front of the driver's meeting and having to talk. Nobody wants to do that.

I, uh, now that we're talking about this, I remember back every year when the year would end when I run World of Outlaws or Luke Soil, we go to the banquet. I would almost forget that I have to get up and speak and it's like, oh, no, I got to get up here in a bunch of hundreds of people and talk. And you almost get frozen the first couple times. I think I've gotten this a little bit better at it, but I'm still probably going to going to have to figure out how to accomplish that one. Yeah.

I can't wait. I'm excited to hear that speech and celebrate that night with you. Winning this championship, you have really improved the offseason for a lot of people. Amy into that. And, you know, everybody at this company is going to have a much better, happier offseason because of it. We get a bonus, too. That's right.

But let's quickly, let's talk about it. You're moving on. You're going over to RCR. This is a really reputable company, great race team. They have had great success in the Xfinity Series. I know a lot of those people over there. Sorry. I don't know.

Did you say, hey, Siri? It must have thought Xfinity Series was what like a series. Xfinity Series. Xfinity series. So have you met Richard? If you talk to Richard, pretty cool guy, right? Yeah, he's, I mean, he's Richard Childress. I mean, you see, like a lot of the legends

of the sport you hear and see so much of him on TV and getting to meet him in person and it was pretty cool. I'm not going to lie. But he's a very hands-on owner. He's very involved in what goes on. He loves his team and he loves a sport. He's one of the owners that made his living being purely a car owner. So he's very in tune and knows what's going on.

So you're excited about, I mean, I know it's early just won your championship, but he excited about defending that title and getting to know everybody over there and going to work. Yeah, it's going to be fun. fun. There's getting used to not, you never know, maybe in the next couple of weeks I might accidentally drive here when I mean to go there. Like, oh, sorry, wrong place. But, yeah, I'm excited to get up there. There's a couple people at, as you be around this, as you're in the sport longer and longer, it seems like when you go somewhere, you find a familiar face as long as you're in the sport. There's some people up there that I know from BKR days. So that'll be cool to be around some of them again.

But yeah, it's a totally different place than what I've come accustomed here. It's obviously everything's, they got a lot of stuff. It's spread out in a lot of different buildings. And getting used to that will be interesting, trying to make sure I go on the right building for the right thing. But I haven't necessarily gone too much more into that than that because we had a lot left to do this year for sure. I didn't want to lose sight. What was right in front of me and let it slip away because even if you do everything right, as we've seen, like as what happened to Justin, You could have the best year of your career.

You could win lots of races. You can do pretty much everything right, and still one thing can take you out of the playoffs. Just like Christopher, he can win a bunch of races and be in a spot leading the race with 40 to go or so and end up not winning the championship. So you can't take for granted what's right in front of you. That's kind of what we did this year,

and I didn't want to lose sight of what was ever so present. Yeah, man. Well, you did an awesome job. I appreciate you coming on the show this morning. I know you got a lot going on and you're being pulled in a bunch of different directions, but it should be a lot of fun this offseason. The speech, Mike's right, enjoy it.

Enjoy every part of it, right? Because it's hard to do. Not a lot of people get the chance to celebrate a championship, be a champion, and all the stuff that comes with it. Soak it up and have fun with it, be yourself. And we'll have a great offseason. And then next year it will be a lot of fun racing against you. And anytime you need somebody to talk to or you want to come hang out with your old buddies,

Dave, everybody's going to be here for you, supporting you the rest of your career. So thanks a lot. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it, guys. Thanks for having me. Thank you, too, Matt. Thank you, Tyler.

Oh, man, that's good. Have Tyler on here, Mike. It was good. And enjoyed that. And you know what else is good? Tell me. Robin Hood. They're back.

Yeah, they're back. They came back. We got two ad reads this show. It's big. Yeah. Robin Hood is an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks. I remember these guys. Yeah, a month ago.

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You can go in there. You know, they really spell it out for you. It's not intimidating. It's a nice app. And you learn by doing. You learn how to invest as you. build your portfolio. You discover new stocks and track favorite companies with personalized news feeds.

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Apple, Sprint. They're going to help you build your portfolio with free stock. There you go. Sign up at Dale Jr. Dot Robinhood.com. That's Dale Jr. dot Robinhood.com. And then tell us about it.

Tell us that you signed up at Dell Jr. Robin. Tell us about you. Tell us about you learning the stock market. Hey, I just got to text with TJ Majors. He says he's pretty sure he's still drunk. I can't believe he. He barely drinks anymore.

He had two beers. Yeah, that's right. That's all it took him. That's right. All right. He says there's a brown bag about two feet from him right now that he's about to puke in. Where is he? I wonder if he's at home.

He's on a bus to the airport. Oh, he's airport puking. That's not fun. I've had those days. When you're on that damn shuttle bus, well, I was a commercial flyer. Y'all don't know about this. When you're on shuttle bus and it's bouncing around,

you've got to puke. It ain't fun. Yeah. Well, it's up. All right, man. Thanksgiving. Yep. Obviously.

Well, it's my favorite holiday because you got damn food. You got football. It's like the bomb. You got family. I should have made that first. That was really crappy. Family first. But, all right, you all right,

you all have some good Thanksgiving memories growing up or, you know, you're going to be starting some new ones. Mike, Dale? Yeah, I'm excited to go through the holidays with Ila. I don't know what to expect, but having someone else to enjoy the holidays with and help make that a special day with, like, Christmas and so forth. So that'll be fun. We get together at the Earnhardt's house, Mamma.

Mamma Arnhearts. Yeah, we go to Mammaal's and the whole family gets there. So Ila's going to go through that experience for the first time. Get passed around to everybody. She's going to get tired of being passed around. but I think she's been to Memaw's before in that kind of a setting, but probably she'll at least be a little more alert this time and kind of knowing what's going on who's.

She has a little stranger danger, so that should be interesting. Okay. Yeah. Hey, you know, it just occurred to me. So don't the Cowboys always play on Thanksgiving Day? Is that right? Yeah. So will Danny Earnhardt be at Thanksgiving?

Yeah. Is that intolerable to be during a Cowboys game around here? They're very quiet. They are. Yeah, they're very quiet about their football watching. Yeah, football's on the TV in the living room. at memalls, everybody gathers around. Who's the first to fall asleep?

Because you know you're going to have some old person falling asleep. Nobody at their own hearts falls asleep. Damn. Nobody does. Tripta fan doesn't affect them. Earnhardt. Nope. Nobody falls asleep at Thurne hearts.

Good, they stay wide awake. There's lots of conversation. Their kitchen's always full of people. I mean, every room in the house is full of people. Yeah. Yeah. It's not the biggest house ever. So I have a 20 people maybe, 25 people total?

Oh, no. More than that? Yeah, that'd be a 10, 10, 20 more than that. Okay. Wow, that is a full house. For sure. Yeah. Kitchen will be full of people, living room full of people.

There's room in between. It's kind of like her collection of dad's stuff. Yep. Which is fun to look at. What's your favorite thing when it comes time to eat? Are you a drumstick guy? Are you a dark meat guy, a white meat guy? Oh, man.

Cranberry sauce. This is a step above the, if you were stranded on an island question. Oh, come on. It is. Work with me here, Davis. Hey, you want to know what I'm thankful for? His answer in the press conference when they asked about what his biggest experience to take away from Joe Rogans was.

He said, well, we found out that Matthew Dillner could actually edit these videos in less than 24 hours. I didn't hear that. Oh, you missed it. Dang you. I cracked up. You really said that in the press conference? In front of everybody. Yep.

And that's when I was most grateful. Start of the year. Shine was new. That was the start of my Thanksgiving. All right. Let's get to Samas Junior Live. All right, we are live. All right, everybody.

this is the Dale Jr. Download podcast Ask Junior Live on YouTube. How y'all doing? Mike Davis. How's it going, everybody? Get it out. How you doing? Presented by Nationwide. Off in the distance that you cannot see is Matthew Dillner, who will be asking the questions that you guys are putting in.

Hopefully everybody's up and at it this morning. It's early because we got stuff to do. So I know you do too. Let's get to it. Nikki, Bobby Marks commented on Joey Lugano's, burnout. How bad that car was tore up afterwards. That was an incredible burnout. What were your thoughts on that? I, yeah, the burnouts all weekend were great. Everybody got pretty aggressive with the burnout. I had a man, Tyler Reddick, running over a flag. Oh, did he? Yeah, completely

butchered it. The championship flag. That's pretty cool. Tyler's car sitting right over here with the quarter panel missing. Burnouts were great, man. Congratulations on the, I mean, I think that That's the time. If you're going to do a car destroying burnout, that would be the opportunity time to do it. It's the time to do it. Yeah. What other podcasts, Brian Wilson wants to know? What other podcasts do you listen to?

None. I don't listen to podcasts that much. Do you listen to a podcast, Mike? Yeah, you do. Mike listens to a lot of podcasts. I'm going to assume just to learn about podcasting, right? I take some things from time to time, but I actually listen to a podcast that I'm interested in. And, yeah, absolutely.

I listen to the daily podcast that NPR puts out just to hear what my news. They give it to me in 10 minutes. Oh. I listen to that every morning. I listen to the NPR hourly news. They got an app called hourly news or whatever on my phone. So I listen to that. I go to sleep to that, monotone NPR news delivery.

It's all the same, no matter who works for NPR. They all talk the same way. That puts me right to sleep. I go to sleep with it. I hear you. It's kind of my noise machine. Yeah. It's listening to the NPR news.

But it's not a podcast, but what I do like to do is watch Dan Patrick. So they do turn that into a podcast. I know. Yeah. I love what they do, how they do it. And so like you listen to podcasts to see how they, you know, people are doing it differently and get more creative. I watch Dan to sort of learn what I want to learn about interviewing people. That's one of my favorites, not just interviewing.

But even the way they format it, man, they're also loose and hang out. Yeah, the setting. They go different studios. They have a New York studio and they go to different studios, seeing what they're doing with their space and listening to Dan is awesome. Gersabone. I don't know how the heck you pronounce that. What's your favorite Elliott Sadler memory, you know? That's a good one.

Oh, man. I guess running, I ran second to him at Bristol in 98, so close to winning in Bristol, and then we went to Texas in one, and he ran second. We've had, we partied together a lot. We would go downtown Charlotte all the time, and we'd ride down there in my Impala. I had an old Impala, like a 96 Impala, not that old, but we'd blare the music, and I'd go to pick him up from his exit on 77, and we'd go downtown.

We'd do that on Tuesdays back when he was racing in the M&M car. We had a lot of fun together. I don't know. I mean, when he came here and he won at Darlington, that was a pretty awesome deal. Aside from the fact that, obviously, he would have loved to have won more races, especially this last year,

he would have loved to have had the chance to race for the championship, considering what happened to him the year before. Aside from all that, I mean, he just had such a great time working. with us and becoming friends with Kevin. It was great. The Ripster 777. Can we get a 2019 Dirty Mo Media preview? Changes, new stuff.

We heard you talking about a new studio. Yeah. This is our little studio space right here. It's, I don't know, it feels like it's about a 12 by 10. It's a closet. Yeah, it's tough. It's small. We're going to knock all these walls down and use a bunch of bigger space and totally change

the whole setting of literally. how we sit and so forth. We haven't decided on any of that yet, but we've been talking about it, thinking about it, looking at other people's studios, Rich Eyeson Studio, Dan Patrick's Studio, just trying to get ideas and seeing things we like.

And it's going to be, once it's ready and kicking, it's going to be fun. We're going to have to hustle in December and January to put it together to have it ready. It's going to be cool. I can't wait to... That's just as far as the download goes. Now, as far as Dirty Mo Media,

were they asking about Dirty Mo Media as a... In general. Yeah, we're going to end up. integrate a lot more drivers and a lot more other personalities into our platform in 219. We've been working on that already. I'm really excited about that. People that are not necessarily just even associated with junior motorsports, but just that have their own fan bases, their own, you know, population that we're going to be

able to bring and hopefully create some good stuff. Oh, man. So watching this chat room has got to be my favorite part of this whole deal here. And we have our new social person here shaking her head laughing at some of these things. Dale, do you ever quote lines from Lakota Sioux from Dances with the Wolves to your buffaloes? That's got to be the weirdest question I've ever heard. That is pretty good. All right, Brett.

They are so glad that you asked you. I mean, I just, that person is. That person's like Christmas. That person is laughing. I can't believe you said it. Brett Edwards. Hey, Dale, have you ever considered purchasing Concord Speedway, a place where you cut your teeth, one of the places in late models, and bringing it back to a weekly racing series.

It needs some help. And we were discussing off camera last week. It is for sale again. Yeah, it's for sale. It's under $2 million. Pretty reasonable price, I think, for the property. If I were interested in being a track owner, I think it would be something you'd consider, but I'm not interested in becoming a track owner or a promoter.

I got my family. I want to, you know, my goal is to raise my daughter, become a great broadcaster. That's going to take up a ton of my time. If there was anything appealing about that, then, you know, consider it. But there's two professions, track owners and soccer referees. To be it. No, no why anybody would. To be a track owner and to be good, you'd have to live it.

Yeah. Absolutely. It's a daily. You'd have to live it. You have to be there every day. You'd have to be hands-on. I'm not wanting to do that. Think about the track owner from Homestead, Miami Speedway this weekend when you got the one driver that couldn't get into the two.

And then supposedly there was some confrontation with him. Supposedly, we saw pictures. Do you guys see pictures of it? Yeah. Elliot Soutler got upset. They wouldn't let him in. They wouldn't let him in without a parking pass. You know what?

Elliot and the track owner or not track owner, it was the president. Yes. Oh, that's right. So track president screaming, Elliot screaming, there's no video, but it's just hearsay. And I'm thinking, why would the track president do that in front of everybody? But then I tweeted about this. When I went downstairs at the bottom of the elevator in the basement trying to go to the booth out in the grandstands, They have a miniature replica of the original layout under, and it's giant.

You know, it's kind of what you build, like, when you're trying to show all the investors, like, here's what it's going to be. This is the vision. It's the model of the world. The model. And it's the original model, and it's under trash. Like piles of shit on top of it. And I was like, I took a picture of it, and I'm like, oh, yeah. How in the hell is this down here?

And how's it being treated this way? And so I text a couple people, and they're going to send it up. Yep. Stop. Yeah. So he doesn't have 8 by 10s, but he's going to have freaking models. Oh, yeah, by all means, 8 by 10s are way too big. What kind of shoebox you're going to fit that model in?

It's going to go into our studio. For those of you listening to the podcast right now, you'll have to hear the whole story of what we're just talking about. It's going to go into our new studio. Just some nice ambience in the background. So you tweet that, and just like that, they're sending it to you. No, I asked for it. I tweeted it and I sent some text messages going,

this needs to be taken care of. And if it's going to be sitting here doing this, send it to my house. Let me at least keep it nice and out. And if you guys ever want it back, because one day you're going to go, man, wish we had that thing. You give it back? Yeah, absolutely. That's the same thing he did for the Unicow 76 ball out there.

You know, he's like, man, he put on a, basically a full court marketing campaign on it. It was laying in the trash in the back, at that Talladega Motor Street. I'm like, that should be hanging. That should be on a pole somewhere in somebody's yard. After seeing that thing under all that trash, kind of all the heart, the stuff with Salar made more sense. There you go.

All right. This is great. Groot House and Amy Britton and a few other people wanting to know turkey, ham or something else or side dishes. Boom. In your face. Mike was clowning you for your question earlier. I know.

It was clowning me for my turkey and stuff question. Come on. I simply said that this is kind of like if you were on an island question. That stuff is legit. Honey baked ham. Oh, God, yeah. Dude. If you don't like that, you're just wrong.

I know it's cheating. It is. To have the honey baked ham in there with the turkey and going for the honey baked ham and not eating the turkey. Turkey feels bad. But you're talking. Do you feel bad for the turkey? Turkey feels insulted that it's being upsy, uprooted. By the honey baked ham.

Yeah. By the honey baked ham. It's like, wait a minute. Thanksgiving is Turkey Day. Yeah. Not Honeybeak Ham Day. Yeah, they don't call it Ham Day. Yeah. But it's like you can't, you got to have it.

It's so good. No, I'm all down for that ham. If that was a way, if there was a way to make the whole hand, tastes like the outside of the ham. That would be even better. Does turkey taste that good when it comes down to it? If you do it right, I do, I mean, if you do it right. Turkey is dry.

No, you're not doing it right. It kind of is. You're not doing it right. No, no, hold on. If it's done the right way, if every food in the world was done the right way, turkey is still towards the bottom of the world. Really? And it's the healthy, boringest bird, yeah.

The turkey leg, I kind of like. Because it just feels like you're a Neanderthal, like when you go to the fair or something. I love it. That's you. That's me. That's you. You feel like a Neanderthal. I, yeah, it's a little dry.

And it's just like a, it's like more of a necessity. I'm going to tell you. That's what people think of cranberry sauce. Oh, wait, wait, wait. That's like a necessity. We got to get my uncle Robert G. Jr. To tell us about his turkey recipe, he deep fries turkey, like chicken nuggets, like turkey nuggets. And he has a certain recipe on how he does it, his panko bread crumbs and all that stuff.

I bet that's good. We killed, we shot a turkey and ate it that night at my hunting place. And I was like, ah, man, turkey, not my favorite bird. But he killed it. It's so good. That is the way to eat turkey. Yeah. No, I'm with you.

But, I mean, deep frying, anything is good. That's true, too. It just occurred to me, though. I think, you know, my overall feelings of the entire Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving as a holiday. I think the overall meal is a bit overrated. Dressing, like to say, now I'm not saying it's not. not good.

I get it, but I'm just saying the cranberry sauce that don't touch. The dressing. I hate cranberries sauce. When else would you eat that, right? And then the turkey, I mean, like, you know, I would rather have ribs and beans and macaroni and cheese. I'm not crazy about the dressing. I like gravy, especially that KFC gravy. What?

Yeah, KFC gravy. He just, that's sacrilege of it for, like, for the big gravy Thanksgiving people. Out of all gravies. He's so brand focus here. He's the honey baked ham and the Kentucky fried chicken. Out of all gravy is the best gravy I've ever had. I want to go have a burger. Let's go to Burger King.

Really, dude? No. I'm just saying, all right, so where I'm getting my gravy is probably not the best place. Thank you. Okay, you admit it. You owned it. All right. All right, moving on for the damn gravy.

KSty Gravy. Nicholas. Gavee. My goodness. Yum, yum, yum. I used to eat KSC all the time. Oh, my God. How do you not look like me?

I can't even go to that place. is anymore. Oh, man. I had to stop. I mean, it was getting out of hand. If Mamma, all she did was go to KFC, instead of make any of that stuff, you would not be disappointed one bit, would you?

Oh, man. If it was that big family deal with the big bucket. I'd be fine with that. Yeah, you would. Yeah. If it was like, all right, you know, ain't nobody feeling like cooking. We're just going to order a crap ton of KFC.

Be totally fine with me. Oh, my God. Great. All right. Daniel Newcomer. Did you see the new Bowman Gray show, race night at Poma Gray yet. I did.

What you think? The production and editing on it, it's a little, a little bit off of what it was. Am I right? I didn't see it. Why are you laughing? Well, can I say why I'm laughing? Yeah. Dealer, weren't you part of the production?

I wasn't part of the production. Are you a camera film? I did camera for the races. That's it. That's it. That's it. I have to get specific. So they were showing a car qualifying, right?

Oh, that bug the heck out of me. I know what you're going to say. They're showing a car qualifying. fine. He's on his hot laps and then they cut to him in there warming up the tires which he would do before the hot lap and they're overlaying

some radio communication about how his car's handling and so forth. All that stuff isn't real. That's not what happened. Nobody's out there driving like this coming out on, you know, warming up your tires on a hot lap. Just that kind of stuff

bothers me that there's not whoever's in charge of this thing doesn't have a driver or some race guy, some motorsports guy sitting there as to putting this together to go, no, no, no, no, that doesn't work there. That doesn't work there. He's in the middle of his hot lap. He would not go start warming his tires up. That happens before he starts his hot lap.

It's that particular stuff that maybe the fan, I think a lot of fans will notice it. Is Jim Bob that's never watched the race before that happens to stumble on this show? Is he going to know it? No. But those are the things that annoy me. It makes me wonder about the rest of the show. show and how well or not well it's being put together. It's the same cast of characters, guys that we all know well, the Myers brothers and all that.

I just thought the show was better built as Madhouse. It flowed through the episode better. What did you think about it, Dillner? I thought it was good. I think it takes a little time. I mean, it's already got moved from Discovery Channel to Velocity, which there was a good big hub of about that this week and that it was canceled. There's rumors that it's canceled.

not coming back next year, this and that. Already? Already, which is not a good thing. Well, the whole reason is because the editing of the show, it don't flow. It don't flow. Madhouse, as we knew it from a couple years ago, was an excellent show. Should have been picked up for a second season. And that's what they need to try to build.

Whatever's happening now, it feels like whoever's doing it. Has it never really watched a race or been around. racing. Maybe they need to have a, you know, whoever's doing this show needs to get some people that know racing, no Bowman Gray, really involved in the editing of it in the production side of it. Listen, hold on, not to keep this thing going, but you're saying that it was intended to be on Discovery Channel. It debuted on Discovery Channel.

And now it's already going to another network, which is a sister network. Velocity. Right. It is a sister network. But velocity would be more of the motorsports. The Motorsports. I wonder if there's a correlation behind that. You're saying it feels like it needs to be by racing people.

Maybe. I wonder if that's why. We'll see. I just hope it does well. I don't care if it's Joe doing a local racing public access show. I want them all to do well. So that's the bottom line. Scott Campo, how would you grade your first year as a broadcaster?

I hate talking about myself. You know, I was sitting there during that race thinking about that. There's little things in there that you learn as you're going to get more comfortable with. You get more comfortable speaking up, like to your producer and to the other guys in the booth. We have buttons that we can mash where I can just talk to Steve and Burton and Rick, no one else. I have a button that I can mash that I can talk to the producer. Like, hey, man, we're getting ready to have a pass for the lead. Let's make sure we are watching that.

There's things that I can do to help the producer know what's happening or coming. Latart does it too. He's like, hey, there's a pit cycle coming. Let's make sure that we're not on commercial when these leaders hit pit road. Things like that. I've gotten much, much more comfortable speaking up. When I first went in there, I was like, I knew, yeah, I'm not going to say nothing. I'm just going to talk when I see something cool happen on track.

I learned that I got to be way more aggressive. Or, I mean, really, if I don't be aggressive, Burton and Lattart and Rick are going to do all the talking. They're not going to open, they're not going to stop and lay out and hold my hand through this broadcast. They're not going to ask you, hey, Dale, what do you think about this? No, it's not going to be an interview process or anything like that. So I learned that I got to be way more aggressive. I felt like though, as I was thinking about it during the broadcast last night at Homestead. I was like, man, I've came a long way.

I'm in this. I'm in this. It's like double dutch. It's like, man, I'm in it. I know I can jump in. I'm comfortable jumping in. I can jump out and let some of us jump in and jump back in. I can meet two of us at the same time.

That's rhythm. Yeah. That's good. It just gets more and more comfortable the more you do it. I follow the Twitter while I'll look at Twitter maybe twice during the race when I get a real break. to see what people are saying. And, you know, some people say they love it. They love the enthusiasm.

There's a lot of people that don't like the screaming as much. But, and I try, I'll hit the button and ask my producer, am I, do I need to calm down? You know? Because I was so excited when that race started. And I felt like I was annoying, right? I was worried maybe that I was being annoying because I was just that excited for the first stage and as things

were unraveling, we got about halfway through the race and I was like, guys, I need to calm down because am I annoying y'all? If I'm annoying you, I'm annoying the viewer, but I'm freaking, I'm loving this. And this last race of year championship, man, I'm just, you know, and there's a fine line between, you know, being excited

and a race fan, broadcast, all that stuff kind of has to merge together, being a broadcaster, being professional, a little bit of each ingredient in what you want to do. And maybe I was being too excited, too much race fan, not enough broadcaster, not enough professional. Be honest. Did somebody say that to you on Twitter? Did you see that or something? No, no, no.

The screaming, the yelling. I see that. I see that. I see that. I don't like the yelling. They need to stop yelling. And I'm going to say it right now. I'm going to look at my Twitter timeline in probably 10 minutes, and it'll be full of people saying,

And no, don't change. Don't stop yelling. I love the enthusiasm. I know that the overwhelming majority enjoy it. But when you see that one or two, you have to check yourself and go, hey, guys, am I being too annoying? And they're like, no, no, no, keep it up. Give it up. Love the energy.

You know, and it's like, all right, I'm going with it. I feel it's what I feel. It's how I'm feeling. And so I just let a rip. Look, man, and I keep going back to this, but if I can't be the way I want to be in the booth, ain't no point in me even doing it. Yep. I don't want to be cool and calm and trim down.

And if me being the way I am is not what they won't, then that's great. They'll do what they need to have the broadcast they want. I don't have to work. I love working, right? I don't have to work, but I love it. I love broadcasting. I loved the whole season. I hope to keep doing it, but I only want to do it if I can do it the way I'm doing it.

That makes perfect. One of my best friends has been away from NASCAR, like four years and he tuned into Chicago just to hear it because you were doing it. He's like, I'll give it it. And he's loved it. It's not just you. He said that your excitement has been infectious to the other guys and he's actually watching some races now. This ain't no PR thing. My buddy Steve Bowler is legit. People are chiming in saying that the KFC gravy is awesome by the way. I know this. I know. I didn't want to make a big deal out of it. But I knew I knew that this, I knew that they would back me on that. Craig Parrish, I want to kill this guy.

they're sending you pallets of gravy, right? Everybody knows that KFC gravy is the best, it's great gravy. I mean, it's back in a truck up here. Come on, man, Bojangles even has better gravy than them. I'm not going to say KFC is the best gravy. I can't say that with confidence. It is top three, top five gravy.

Saying something. Provisional. Craig Parrish said this. Dillner has got to be kin to Penn Gillette. I don't know who that. I have ever thought that. I hate that. Oh, I know who you tell me out.

He does look. I wish I could curse right now. I effing hate that. Look, it's like one of my most hated things when people say that. When I see you, I don't think Penn Gillette. But when I see Penn Gillette, I think you. I do. All right.

It really does. I see the resemblance. Yeah. Mr. Hornak here chiming in. Are you going to do a secret signing? Kind of like JT. I guess Timberlake, unless it's talking about JT's and race. What does that mean, Mike?

A secret signing. He did a secret signing, I guess, at a target. Oh, yeah. Okay, okay, okay. Let me ask y'all, as fans, you guys watching. So if JT. or somebody does something like that, and then someone else, myself or anyone else goes and does it. It's just, is it copycat or is it still cool?

I mean, I know the fans that walk up and buy the book and find out, oh, my gosh, it's a sign. Justin Timberlake was not the first one to do that. I know, but I just make sure that if I go do that, that it ain't going to come back on me like, ah, you know, you just seen this guy do it. He's only doing it because of X. He's only doing it because it's pot, you know, because, you know, he wants to be cool or whatever. Does that make sense? Makes sense.

I just don't think it was an original. idea by him. If it was an original idea by him, you'd absolutely be copying him. But I think that's just not an original idea. So you're all to say, you're well within your right to go do it, if that's something you want to do. As a matter of fact, there are particular retailers. I'm not going to go into them right now where we needed to put emphasis in. And so that would be a good idea to put emphasis in those particular retailers. Well, just know that if I do do that, those retailers and my publisher and everyone else is going to want to promote that I've done that. So if you, you know, there'll be some promotion behind it.

So it's secret but not a secret. Yeah, but what part of that is bad? Nothing? Just letting people know. Just talking to fans, not you. I got you. Talking to listeners. Promotion sounds good to me.

I mean, they said it would be good if you were dressed like a target employee and just surprise people. Now, that gets a little cheesy. Yeah, that's funny. I don't want to dress like some target employee. Paper or plastic, please. All right, man. That was a good segment of Astre Jr. Nicola Starder is closing us out here because he said he's actually going to shut this

Ask Junior Live on YouTube down and go get gravy at KFC. I appreciate everybody for tuning in and watching. We're going to do another Ask Junior Live sometime in December, hang out and follow Dirty Mo Media on Twitter to keep up with when that'll be happening. Nice. Time for the white flag. Keep talking about it. White flag right there, white flag.

I want to start this white flag, this final white flag. of the official NASCAR season by saying it's been awesome doing this show with you guys this year. We really got to sort of enjoy it by listening to the open that Matthew built. So, yeah, thank you guys, Dale, Matthew. Thank you. Even Leah in your last few weeks there, or your first few weeks, you're doing great. You're great. I have nothing else that add to that.

I also want to thank the people that listen to this show every week. However you consume the show, whether it's on the television side of it, if it's on the social media clips, a big appreciation for you, as we approach this Thanksgiving. We also want to say, as we approach the holidays, go buy Dale Jr.'s book, racing to the finish. It's at Dale Jr.com forward slash book or wherever books are sold. NBC Network will air this show Wednesday at 5.

So one hour show this Wednesday, 5 o'clock, so you can catch the Dale Jr. download on NBC Sports Network then. Dale Jr., you have a week off this week, but you will be going to Vegas for the championship or champions week. That'll be fun. You'll have a great time out there. Also, we will have a special holiday. season of the download, a special holiday episode of the download during December.

We will give you details on that, but just as an FY, we will have a special guest on there that has been requested by a lot of people. And so I'm not ready to disclose who that guest is yet, but it's going to be a good one. It'll be a good December episode. And fellas, awesome year. Awesome year. I really appreciate you guys. Closin thoughts, yeah. I'm going to go rest.

Go rest. Yeah. This month has been a hustle. You know, we had the book tour in New York, in L.A., the races. It's been a busy, busy November. Being a dad. Yeah. So happy Thanksgiving to everybody.

And we'll see before Christmas. The surprise we have for you for the next podcast in December is excellent. And I can't wait for that to happen and people will hear it. It's going to be real. And Dale didn't break the news. For what? Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Dirty Moe.