The Dale Jr. Download - 244 - The Smoke Show

Episode Date: February 19, 2019

A no holds barred Dale Jr. Download with guest Tony Stewart 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.

Ladies and gentlemen. All right, everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download. The second episode of the 2019 season. We got a new partner today, Mike. We do? We do. Mack Weldon. Oh, you've been excited about this.

Yeah. Promotion code. Dale Jr., no space. We'll talk about all that later. Also, we got a great guest today. Tony Stewart's in the house. Smoke. Before we get to our guests, let's talk about one of our old school partners, man. Pristine auction.

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I don't say authenticity well or authenticated. That's right. All right. And they're all in this read every single week. Anyways, pristineauction.com. They offer daily auctions for this sports memorabilia. Memoriliia. Listen, go get your memorabilia.

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10 either. It's from the movie cars, and it's Darrell Waltrip's character, Darrell Car Trip. This is like the worst freaking item they could possibly have on this website. Now this one I did pick out. Oh, it did. Lay myself on the sword. This is like the worst item. It's just because it's an 8 by 10, you don't like 8 by 10s, or is it just because it's Darrell Car Trips? Who the hell wants this? It's a great movie. My kid would love it. I would

bid on it for my kid. I might do it now just because. It's an 8 by 10. It's not your average 8 by 10. 10. That's for damn sure. Here's the upside, though. If it starts at a dollar, the Darrell Carter probably will end at a dollar, too. It's $10 right now. It's $10 right now. That's the current bid? Yeah, but look out on your sheet. All right. Okay, I stand corrected.

Darrell Walter, I'm sorry. The 8 by 10 of Darrell Cartrick. Well, Darrell probably bid on it. That's why it's at $10. That's why it's at $10, because DW is on there, bidding it up. Oh, my gosh. Go check out, pristineauction.com. now, you'll be hooked. It's free to register.

It's free to bid. You only pay for the items you win. And when you register, please be sure to select the Dale Jr. Download podcast from the drop-down menu, or Pristine's not going to sponsor us anymore. So you've got to let them know. That's how you heard about us. And have a lot of fun. Go check

out some of the items. I've got some great stuff on there. It's all real deal. That's right. If it's autographed, it's autographed. Buy that specific person. No BS. No fakes. That's right. Christine Auction.com. You'd notice how he's creatively got around the word authenticity.

That was good. I was doing everything I could. You're like a broadcaster or something. Dance around that one. All right. So let's bring him in. Let's bring in Tony Stewart. Tony Stewart.

Tony Stewart, indeed. Stewart wins the championship. Look up racing in the dictionary. We're racing here. Stewart and Edwards, first and second. Winner gives the championship. I'm going to bust these eyes. that. Thanks Tony. Thank you.

That's awesome. Matthew Dillner puts those together. He does a good job. Yeah. Sound fun. It sounded fun. Yeah. Tony Stewart is here. I'm excited about this. Thank you for coming, first off. So there's a lot of people listening this podcast right now. They're thrilled you're here. You're retired, just like me. One of the things, I want to start off our conversation, really, because I'm curious, what are you doing? What do you do? What do you do during the week? You're an owner of a cup team. You own a racetrack.

You own a series for sprint cars. You just came from Daytona, I imagine. You got a posse with you. What are you, and you're going to, you're going back home to Indiana today. I'm trying to go home to Indiana at some point. What is your, what does your week look like? Well, it just depends. I mean, the last three weeks, I've pretty much lived in Florida because I've been racing my

sprint car. I've already ran 10 races this year already. Wow. So I've been to Ocala, I've been to Volusia, been to East Bay. This weekend we go to Florida. Well, we got another race in Florida in the Panhandle this weekend. So we're all over the place. I literally go home this afternoon.

I'm home for one day tomorrow. I've got an Ollie's outlet store grand opening on Wednesday in Tennessee. I've got a Coke dinner on Thursday. Then we're at the Big Track Friday. Friday night, I go to Florida race, come back. to Atlanta, be there Saturday for the Xfinity race, fly back to Florida to race Saturday night, and then back to Atlanta for Sunday. So, absolutely.

So why, with all the things that you have from a business standpoint, do you race? Why do you race so much? That's all I really want to do. I mean, the rest of it has to fit in around that. Right. So, you know, it's like I told everybody when I, quote unquote, retired. I mean, when I quit driving a NASCAR and went back to run the sprint cars, It's, I get the best of both worlds now.

So I get to, I mean, I literally have 99 races on my schedule this year that I'm racing. I'm probably going to add four or five more in the next couple weeks working with another owner. But that's just what I love to do. I mean, and, and you know, I mean, you've been a driver. If you're going to be good in anything, you've got to be doing it all the time. And running the wing sprint cars that I'm running. I mean, there's a lot of guys that are a lot better than me right now. And the only way I'm going to get caught up and be competitive with these guys is to be racing

every possible night I can race. Did he say 99? Yeah. He said 99. So help me, that brings up something. We had Casey Kane on the show last year, and he talked about that as he starts to get back into running sprint cars, how he needs to run for a long, repeated, you know, races,

race after race after race, just to get to where he feels like he can be competitive. Now, I feel like that I can get in a cup car and do as good as I did right out of the gate, But in a sprint car, it's not possible. So tell me why that you think you need all those races to where you can get competitive. There's just so many good drivers and so many good teams out there. And it all depends on where you go race. It was weird because my background wasn't really in wing cars.

It was non-wing sprint cars and midgets. And I could show up at a brand new track and go out and break a track record. It wasn't a big deal. When I got into wing cars, they're easier to drive because you got the down force and the side force of the wing on. top. So it's easy to drive them, but it's hard to be really, really good and really fast in them. And I don't know why that is. But when we've hired drivers like Donny Shots to come run our World of Outlaw team, we've always picked drivers that have been around the circuit at least one year because they know the tracks. And there's just something about having that

experience in those cars. And they're so momentum driven of just knowing how the tracks change, where to be on the racetrack, when to move off the bottom lane, get to the top lane, just how things change through the night. It's different than pavement racing, but there's just so many good guys in different regions of the country that you're racing against it. You know, last week at East Bay and Tampa, I mean, there's guys that race there every week. Well, those guys know exactly what that racetrack's going to do every night, or they can look at it after the B main and say,

this is what this thing's going to be for the A and this is how we need to adjust our car. I got to go up there and I got to guess on what it's going to do and sit there and go, well, it looks like it's going to do this and make our educated guess. So that's why I think it's so tough. And that repetition that Casey said is exactly right. I mean, it's hard to sit there and just go run one night a week and be good in it. If you can get an opportunity to go race two or three nights that are in a row, that is a huge advantage for us to kind of get back in the swing of things and get that feel back.

Yeah. Who's your hero? AJ Foote. Why is AJ Fort your hero? He's a badass. Yeah. I mean, he's like us. I mean, he just when you got a guy that'll get out of an indie car,

that's running 220 mile an hour and he'll take a hammer and start whacking on the right front suspension with a hammer and then climb back in and drive it. But AJ was a guy that it didn't matter what kind of car he got in, whether it was an indie car, whether it was a midget or sprint car,

whether it was a NASCAR. He could get in and just, he could win in everything, but, I mean, he was always fast and everything that he got in no matter what kind of car it was. So we see a lot of guys try to come from Indy car and open wheel

and getting to stock cars and struggle a lot of times. How are you able to do it? Well, I think, you know, at the time that I went to IndyCar, I also had started in NASCAR at the same time. So it really wasn't that I was an IndyCar guy that tried to come over to NASCAR. It was, I was at a fork in the road, and I got to go down both sides at the same time.

I mean, I went from being a midget and sprint car guy and had the feel of cars that I had in there to all of a sudden having to learn an Indy car over here and learning a stock car over here at the same time. But I think it's a lot of easy. easier to go from a stock car to an indie car than it is to go from an indie car to a stock car. I mean, the downforce and the grip that the Indy cars have is pretty incredible. Now, they've had a package this past year where they took a lot of downforce off on the ovals.

And, I mean, you want to talk about guys that had their hands full, and you could tell they were having to hold their breath at times. I mean, they had their hands full. But to take them out of a lighter weight car and put them in a heavy stock car, it's a lot harder adjustment, I think. Yeah. So what other drivers besides Foight did you idolize? Do you have like a Mount Rushmore that? Yeah, Steve Kinzer on the sprint car side. I mean, Steve just was kind of like your dad was. I mean, he just won everything. He won the Knoxville Nationals a ton. He won a ton of championships and he's still the winningest driver in wing sprint car racing. Doug Wolfgang, your father, Mark Martin, and Mark Martin, the tie with Mark is because a Cummins Engine Company that is in my hometown of Columbus, Indiana. When he was driving for Rouse, that Cummins logo was on the car. And so

you automatically felt that tie because I lived in that hometown. So, you know, Mark was a guy that I really liked and, you know, felt like he was pretty cool. You're known for your fiery attitude. I've experienced it for a time or two. On the receiving end? Or just watch from the sidelines? Or both? Both. I was waiting to see how he was going to handle this. Well, I mean, I mean, so do you know, do you know like a rough number of how many drivers you've had a physical altercation with? Oh, God, no. I don't have enough fingers. I know that.

I won't even name names here, but there's rumors that you physically attacked people in the NASCAR haulers. Is that true? I don't know what you're talking about. Come on. I don't know what you're talking about. There might have been one day that somebody, like Bobby Allison said, I mean, somebody. I mean, somebody kept running their face into my hand for some reason. But I don't recall.

But wait a minute a second. You guys had an in-haul or altercation that I didn't think that you guys, yourselves got into a physical. I think it was more your crew chiefs, right? We didn't, but we were the, there was a match flame that was here, and we were the ones that put the gallon of gas on top of it, and then got out of the way to watch it flare up and watch our guys do all the rest of the work with each other. So, yeah, I, um, me and Tony Stewart racing at Pikes Peak, uh, I was trying to pass Tony and running into him over and over and over.

And he finally punted me down into turn one on a restart. And they asked us to come to NASCAR hauler. And so we went there and there was an altercation and pushing and shoving between me and his crew chief. And Tony Sr. was kind of in it. And, uh, Stuart, he was in it. Uh, but nobody really ever got popped or anything. And then. We didn't have time. Because if you remember, I still had to run a super modified right after that. Really? Oh, wow.

After that race was over, we get called to the NASCAR hauler, and I'm like, I still got a race here. No wonder y'all didn't get into it. He had other things to do. But here's the thing. It really wasn't, you know, this was at a point when we were in, at the time, the Bush Grand National Series. And Dale's background in the sport, he understood the etiquette a lot better than I did at that point. I didn't really understand it. And, you know, what he was doing trying to get around, I mean, he was definitely faster than me, but I wasn't used to, I wasn't used to the etiquette of, you know, you kind of got the warning a couple times, and then you get moved out of the way the third or fourth time.

So I was still learning that part of it. Well, I, here he is hammered on me, and I'm not picking up the hint, you know, that I need to get out out of the way and just let him go and then figure it out later on down the road. And I'm just still racing his guts out. And that's just the way, the open wheel racing that I came from, that's the style of racing that I came from. Because he was actually nice about it, you know, because he had eight opportunities that just flat dump me and be done with it and never put me in that spot. I remember trying to pass him on the inside of three and four, and I kept getting loose and sliding up. The only thing it was saving me was him. And it kept happening over and over and over and over because I would get out. So you're bouncing off of him?

Yeah, like I would slide into him and over and over and over. But anyways. So he looked at it as you doing him a favor. Well. Yes and no. If I was doing him a favor, I'd just lift it at the end of the straightaway and let him go. But I just didn't know any better at the time, honestly. And actually, it was that conversation that we had in the trailer that that kind of started making me, I mean, when you're, when you get called to the NASCAR hall,

you obviously have a little more time to think about why am I in here? Yeah. And what did I do to get myself in this position? So that actually started the process. and we actually had time to talk about it there. Isn't that how you're next? Yeah, it is. Cornerstone of any friendship.

I mean, I thought a lot of Tony because he had, you know, he's a champion in Indy, and he's coming over here and he was very good. And he was in good cars, and I'm like, this guy's going to be around for a long time, going to be racing him for a while. But yeah, that was the first time he met was when we got called to the holler. Next week we're at Milwaukee. I'm walking into the pits, and Tony walked up to me. I would have never done this.

So it would have probably been awkward for a long time if it was up to me. But he came up to me on Friday morning before the first practice and said, hey, man, we're going to be racing each other a long time. So let's be friends. Let's not run into each other anymore. And let's not drag this out. Do you remember this? Yeah.

He's like, that's exactly what he says. I got no problem with you. I'm cool. Let's just be cool. And y'all been cool. And we'd be cool. So we have. That was really, I would have never done that.

No, you wouldn't have. No, no, I know that. He wouldn't have done that. So that brings up, a lot of people would say over, in the early days, I guess, when I was driving the Bud 8 car, me and you were great drafting partners. We worked together quite a bit. Why do you think people said that? Well, the stats show at first of all.

I mean, that's the easiest part. But, you know, I was telling somebody yesterday while we were at Daytona that I had Bobby Labani as a teammate at the time. And, you know, like what we're seeing the era in NASCAR now, where the manufacturer, all the teams under our manufacturer umbrella, starting to work together. So all the Ford teams are working together. And then actually we saw a new era start yesterday where there's such a small amount of Chevy teams and Toyota teams that they don't have the physical numbers of the Ford teams to team up. So Hendrick and Gibbs teamed up yesterday.

And it's just showing how the sports evolving because it's no secret that Chevrolet absolutely hates Toyota. But here you got Chevy teams and Toyota teams working together because they know that this is the direction that they have to go after what we saw at Talladega last year. So it's just the evolution of the sport. So I was telling somebody yesterday about that. And, you know, my teammate was Bobby Labani. And, you know, they tried to get us to work together. And but the problem was Bobby was the one that kind of, and I kind of looked at him weird when he said it.

And I took it personal, but he goes, you know, our ideas are different about how to do this. And he had an idea how to run the restrictor plate stuff. and I had a different idea, well, your idea how to do it, and my idea were exactly in line. And it just, I mean, literally it was one race that we got together, and he knew that, and it worked a couple times, but we were always a lot more aggressive than everybody else was with what we thought and where to go and when to go and why to go. But once he went, and he knew that when he went that I was going to go with him, and that pattern, I mean, that just, that's the way we ran the entire race, and it didn't matter. It didn't matter if we were going through three wide. It didn't matter if he went to the damn concession stand.

I was whatever he ordered I was going to order behind him. And that's the way we ran that whole race. And then after that, any time that we were together and it didn't matter what the order was, we knew that if we got together that we had somebody that was going to go with us and knew that when we did something, why we were doing it. And so we were on the same page and in sync that way. And that's something that Bobby and I couldn't get hooked up that way and couldn't get in the same mindset. but, you know, everybody goes, well, why would you do that?

Well, we're still racing for points. Right. And you still want to win, but there's so many variables that can keep you from winning a restrictor plate race. And to me, my mindset was, I've got a guy that I know races and runs this type of racing the way I like to run it. So even if I follow him and I push him to the win, I still get second place points. I still get second place money.

I'm giving myself the best opportunity to get in the top two. even if it's not the win, I'm still getting the best finish I can get out of it. And that's what we did. I mean, it got to the point to where they tried everything they could to separate us. Guys would intentionally try to get us broke apart. Teammates. Like actual teammates. I mean, it was always funny because we had Jeff Gordon in here, and we asked him,

like, you and Dell, didn't really draft together very much. I didn't really like each other when it came to plate racing. And it was a complete different philosophy. He called it to philosophy. They just, two different game plans. And neither one of you really strike me as the kind of people that want to be told what the rules to racing are, before the race actually happens. I think you want to write them yourself and do it your own way.

And I don't think the teammate thing was always jiving with either of you, right? Yeah, I hated teammates at play tracks. I just hated it of responsibility to anyone. And there are people, and Tony was one of a, I can't even count. them on one hand that you go out on the racetrack with in a plate race and you see them do something you go that's exactly what I would have done and that's exactly what I want to do and everything that he did I'm like yep I'm I'm I was right there with you in the train of thought and it seemed like it was just come so natural when we would find each other at Talladega and

Daytona he's like oh hell here we go because they ain't going to be able to stop this and it it worked really good for a while I really enjoyed it Yeah. Yeah. That 2004 race, when you won your first Daytona 500, you and Tony were just, I mean, that was a race between two people, I felt. Yeah. And I have a question that I've. About that?

Yeah. Go ahead. I've always wanted to ask this question. So we're, I passed you down the back straightaway, and you didn't side draft me. I don't even remember it. I'd have to see it. I'd have to see it to remember this. I've always wondered.

So, yeah, we're going down the back straight away, and I side drafted you and had this. momentum, but it was slow, you know, and it's a slow process of sort of going by you to try to get clear, and I was just like waiting for you to side-bass. Kurt was four or five carlings behind us. Yeah. But it was otherwise it was just me and you. It was just you two. I'd have to watch it.

I mean, it's a good question, but I'll have to look at it to remember that. If I run first or second, or if I, you know, in a race like that, I'd have never been able to forget it. Like, I would, I would, that's interesting that, like, I can't lose those memories or, Especially the ones I lose. Especially the race. There's two Daytona 500s that absolutely stand out in my mind that I know I screwed up, or at least felt like I screwed up.

And this is such a rookie mistake, and I wasn't even a rookie. And I can't remember what year it was, but I know I was leading the race. Jeff Gordon was second. That's when we still had the lead cars on the outside lane and lap down cars on the inside. But by this time, there's nobody left a lap down. Everybody's all in the lead lap.

And I remember sticking my hand out the window, and when I got on the gas, where he'd even to go? and he just sat there and waited for about a second. And by that time, I'm about eight carlinks out. I'm like, man, I just did the dumbest. And you know, I already knew 100 yards past the start finish line what was going to happen. And you have to sit there for about five to ten more seconds and wait for your fate to get sealed here. And I saw it.

I'm like, man, I was so nervous because I was like, I'm in a spot where I could win this race. and I didn't even think about what I had set myself up for, which was absolute disaster there. And the other one was when Ryan Newman went by me, when him and Kurt Busch were lined up together as teammates with Penske and myself and Kyle Busch were lined up. And I remember seeing him coming and I'm like, don't leave your teammate, don't leave your teammate, don't leave your teammate, don't leave your teammate.

And I thought if I get up there, the speed that they were running, I thought if I tried to get up there, I was probably going to get wrecked anyway. But I sat there and I'm like, when it doesn't work out for you, like, I'd rather get the least tried and got wrecked knowing I wasn't going to win it down. If I had known I wasn't going to win it down here, I'd at least tried it up there. But those are two that absolutely just, I cannot get it out of my head. Really? You today. Any other races like that? Any other things in racing or any regrets like that that that sort of bother you today? Well, that depends on what day it is. It depends on where we're at. I mean, you know, there's dirt races where, I mean, I lost two. races last year in the sprint car on the last corner of the last lap. And this was at the same track. And the guy that beat me was the same guy both nights. And it was two different set of circumstances. And the second time it happened, I'm like, I'm guarding against this. This is what happened to me on the last lap. And he just totally did something different. But both of them, lap cars that got involved

and broke our momentum, which that's, like I said, in a wing sprint car, that's a huge deal with that airspeed and momentum. And you sit there and you get back there and your crew. chief won't even look at you. And it's like you feel like such a failure when you do that. When somebody says raw talent, what does that mean to you? Well, I think there's guys that have raw talent, and I'll go, I'll come back to it. Then there's taught talent. I mean, you can sit there and you can watch videos, you can study, you can talk to people. Raw talent are guys that don't have to think about what they do. They just get in and do it. It's not taught. It's just, that's what they do. They get in and they do it.

We talked about some drivers last week on the show that I thought had raw talent. what driver out there do you think has the most raw ability? In Cup right now, to me, it's still Kyle Larson. Yeah. I mean, I think Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell, and I'm not picking them because they're dirt track guys by any means, but you look at what Kyle does in a car. He overdrives everything he does, but he can still make it work.

I mean, there's times he's got that thing sideways and saves it, and it's like there's not a lot of guys that could save it and push it that hard for that long and not make that mistake. And he still makes a mistake every now and then. but I've watched him when he was open wheel cars before he got there. And he's like playing video games, and he just puts his phone down, gets in a car and goes in races. He doesn't think about what he does.

He just gets in and does it. You know, and there's just not a, there's a handful of guys that fit in that kind of category. There's just not a lot of guys that, you know, Robbie Gordon was one that you and I both got to race with. Robbie had a lot of raw talent. Now it was rough around the edges raw talent, but you could put Robbie in anything,

and he could get 90, 25% of the way they're like that. And there's just not a lot of guys that can do that. And it's, I think everybody has an amount of raw talent, but there's just a handful of guys that I think that just truly are pure raw talented drivers. Hey, Tony, I got a quick question for you. Going back to Daytona, I mean, you got,

the results notwithstanding, I'm talking more in general. I've got a theory that Dale Jr. as an owner doesn't particularly like watching restrictor plate races because it's just the weight of the wallet. Just seeing you just hear that cash register seems like to go in. And Junior Motorsports does pretty good, won a race. Do you enjoy watching Restrictor plate races as an owner? I didn't even like, as bad as it is, I mean, as many

races as we won at Daytona, I don't even, I didn't like even being in them, let alone watching them, because like you said, and while you were starting that question, I'm sitting there going ching, ching, ching, ching, shing, especially this week. Oh, yeah. And then I saw a stat last night. We were watching the basketball game, the All-Star game last night, and there was a thing across the bottom it said three drivers out of the whole race weren't involved in a wreck at some point during during the race yesterday 37 out of 40 cars were involved in a wreck at some point at the Daytona 500 that's crazy it's like you sit there and you just shake your head it's hard to look forward to i would imagine if i have this investment and uh and you're taking you know basically half your fleet

uh two at one race for a week and then you go and then it's just like you just know that they're coming and you just hope to that's it's no way to live it's well we're sitting there on the red flag and Mike Bogoravich, that's the crew chief on the 14 car, we're sitting there and he was talking about when we won with Kurt. This is during the red, I mean, with like, I don't know how many laps to go. And Zippy's sitting to the left of me and he's like, yeah, he goes, you know, he crashed three cars. He goes, but it made up for it when Kurt won. I just started laughing. I'm like, you obviously don't work upstairs where the finances are. Because with all three of those cars, what we won at the Daytona 500 didn't even pay for those three cars. Wow. So it's, it, it,

It's a losing proposition when you go to Daytona. You're not going to make a dime. You're going to spend a bunch of money to go down there and tear a bunch of stuff up. Did I assume incorrectly or am I right? My theory that you don't particularly enjoy watching those restrictive plate raises. Pends on what position you're in. I actually do. I don't know that it does with him.

I actually do enjoy watching them. I didn't when I first was, when I first became an owner, I didn't. And we did. We tore up all our cars down there one year. And it was like, like, a tenth of our budget spent in one race, you know. And, but every, I don't know, I kind of have loosened up over time. Um, you don't look it. Yeah. I mean, we did win the race. You feel like you've pulled a pin on a grenade. Yeah. That's what it feels like. As soon as they drop the green flag

the first time, you feel like you've pulled a pin out of a grenade and you're just waiting on it to go off at some point. I think I'd be a bad person to ask as we did in it winning. Um, so you wouldn't own up to specifics on your physical altercations would you own up to ever having a cheat on your car cheating in racing everybody in racing is i know that will you do you have any stories of cheating like so for example i will give you one of i'll give you one of mine so i put some trick fuel in my car uh and went to myrtle beach and burnt the motor up as soon as i cranked so i drove four hours to myrtle beach and burnt the piston out of the number and pistol cylinders and drove home because I didn't mix the fuel. Yeah.

I went right to the bottom of the fuel still. Oh, God, that's awesome. Yeah, I'm going to tell on my dad, because I didn't even know this. I was a kid. But, you know, when I raced go-carts, the carburetor was a one-inch carburetor. So ran restrictor plates in the class that I had to run, and it was a 600,000th researcher plate. Well, there was a spacer block in between that and the actual motor.

and so what my dad had done is had somebody make a 600,000th hole in that plastic block but it put a taper on it like a cone. Yeah. And one week he ran it on one side of the plate and the other week he ran on the other side of the plate. And I mean, it obviously helped it a little bit,

but we ran it and then he did it two weeks in a row and he took it off and never ran it again. But I like telling on my dad because my dad's 80 years old and it's like role reversal now. I'm being the parent and he's the kid now. But yeah, there were, that's the job of all of us in racing. I mean, that's been the history of racing is taking the rules that the sanctioning body gives you and trying to read between the lines. And anytime there's, there's an

opportunity for interpretation, you are always going to take that opportunity. Absolutely. Being a track owner, you can appreciate this. In one of the last late model races I ran down at Myrtle Beach, I told the head inspector that I didn't have much speed, so he brought me a plate to used for my carburetor. And it was so gnarly, I was scared to put it on my car. It looked like a beaver chute on the inside of it. It was pretty bad. I have a favorite one of yours.

What's that? I won't say what racetrack it was. It might have been a restrictor plate. But I remember Tony Jr. coming in and going, do you want to win this race? I mean, do you really want to win this race? How much do you want to win this race? and it was his like code. I don't even know if you remember that,

but you're like, yeah, I want to win it. I want to win it. You're like, don't matter what happens in the week. You want to win it? I want to win it. All right. Well, then we're going to win it. That's funny.

All right, so with you coming on the show, we put a poll on our social media handle in honor of Tony Stewart being on the download. We want to know what your favorite smoke sound bite is, and they voted below. Racing, passing, definition, got 9% votes. Taledega figure 8, got 27. This one's for the fans, got 10%. The Legato rent got 54%. Oh, the Ligano rant with Steve Burns. It's got to be the classic,

right? I mean, that's just the gift that keeps on giving on YouTube. Do you have some samples of those to the fans? Oh, yeah. Of course. You know, for the people listening, you could still vote until Wednesday, so that's kind of a cool thing. But the racing definition one, we'll roll that one first. Is there anything that NASCAR or the IMS can do to create a little bit of more passing in these races? Because since 2004, there just hasn't really been a lot of passing. Look up racing in the dictionary and tell me what racing says in the dictionary. And then look up passing in the dictionary and tell me what passing is. We're racing here. So that's all I'm going to say. This is racing. If you want to see passing, we can go out on 465 and we can pass

all you want. Good one. Good one. Good one. And then of course, Mike Massaro, I think you wrecked at Daytona and this happened. How much does this affect your chances of winning the 500? I don't know, rocket scientist. I mean, I'm sitting here with a backup car. What do you think? If we wrecked, what chances do you think we have now, dumb sacks?

I mean, come on. And then this one was after the second brickyard win. I remember standing next year for this one. I thought this was cool. You win again at the brickyard, Tony. Can you put this one in comparison to the last one? This one's for every one of those fans in the stands that pull for me. We can take all the bulls from everybody else.

Hey, we can play this all day long, but that Talladega one, this is, Tony always gave us crap. Mike Arning is going to have a heart attack right now. Listen to this because this like literally puts him back in therapy. He has to get therapy for three or four weeks. Well, he's in this. He was in the background and he was like keeping that straight face. Sorry, we couldn't crash more cars today.

We didn't fill the quota for today for Talladega and NASCAR. If we haven't crashed at least 50% of the field by the end of the race, we need to extend the race until we at least crash 50%. percent of the cars because it's it's not fair to these fans for them to not see any more wrecks than that and more tore up cars i mean we we still had over half the cars running at the end and it's it shouldn't be that way i don't think any of the wrecks were an overheating issue that's why i say i don't i mean i think we ought to just tape them off solid and run them until they blow up anyway i think it'd make it a lot more exciting for the fans if we don't crash half of the field by the end of

the race they need to they really need to extend it because i mean that's what that's what that's what the fans want they want to see that excitement it would have been a lot more fun if i could got caught up in one more wreck. If I could have done that, it would have been perfect. I mean, I think if we could make it a figure eight, it would be perfect. It would absolutely be perfect here. It'd be better than what we got. That's going to be my vote next week, is that we make it a figure eight and or we can stop at the halfway, make a break and turn around, go backwards the rest of the way. And then with 10 to go, we'll split the field and half and half of them can go the regular direction, half of them can go backwards.

Oh, my God. See, NASCAR's made the adjustments. We crashed all but three cars yesterday. The formulas were working. And, of course, the best one so far in the whole thing. I know we're all crying here. Well, Tony, what angered you at the end of the race? What did you take issue with? What the hell do you think I was mad about? Dumb little sce rungs us clear down to the infield.

He wants to b*** about everybody else. And he's the one that drives like a little bick. I'm going to bust his ass. Thanks, Tony. Thank you. Oh, my God. You know what that just reminded me of? It reminded me of A.J. Foyt at Nazareth talking about Jeff Andretti.

It sounds almost, it almost sounds to a T identical to AJ Ford. I was so mad at Joey. Joey had a real big habit at that time of just absolutely running you all over the racetrack. He literally ran me down to the grass where nobody had been all day at that part. You know, because we would all go down to the apron and start finish line at Fontana. But this was clear by the end of Pitt Road. And I picked up so much stuff. And we were like, I don't know, fifth and seventh.

or seventh and ninth on the restart. I finished 24th. I lost so much time in that first lap trying to get tires cleaned back off to go. Oh, so mad. I was more mad at my own crew guys that were from... I'm trying to remember which team it was.

Danica's team or Ryan's team. But I had Joey hemmed up, and I knew where my guys were, so I was like, I'm way far away. They can't get to me. I didn't even think about my other teams, and one of them were about three spots away from where I had Joey hemmed up.

I'm like, I got his ass. now. I'm going to dot his eye across his T. We're going to, we got this. And about that time, big fuel guy grabs him by the collar and pulls me back like I'm a ragdoll. His or yours? Mine. Your guy. I got you. And I couldn't whip my own guy. No, no. Hey, not because, not out of principle. I mean, sure you could try out of principle.

This guy was, I couldn't whip him. There's no way. He had, he had me covered eight ways from Sunday on that. Is that, is that your Jack Hewitt moment, you think? I mean, Jack's got the, you know, when you look back now. Yeah, run that sound bite. No. Run that sound bite here. Yeah, that probably is my, that's the closest thing to my Jack Hew at moment was there. I was just so mad about it because it's like, daggone, it just, you know, and

when we started, we got taught, we got taught etiquette. And if you didn't do it the right way, you got dumped and you got part, you know, you were sitting there at the wall trying to crank your car, you had enough time to figure out why you got wrecked and what you did wrong. And then they'd come after the race and tell you, this is why I did this. This is what you weren't doing right. And then every new generation that keeps coming in,

there's less and less of that etiquette. And they just race you like a . And it's like, it's hard to sit there when you've been taught a certain way to do it from your peers. And then all of a sudden, new guys come in and they just like, that's not the way we do it anymore. But even, you know, I think the day that I finally said, okay, I got to put this out on my head

that this is how we do things anymore, was when Jeff Burton was like, they just, we just don't race like that anymore. They don't, nobody races like that anymore. Yeah. And I'm like, if Jeff Burton's saying that, then it's, you better just give up the idea that this is going to get fixed

because it's not going to get fixed, and it's, you just got to figure out how to adapt to how we do it now. Yeah. I don't think we can top those sound bites, man. Oh, I, I, there are way more. They're way more. I mean, there's an encyclopedia.

Oh, geez. And we, and we thank you. I know that. Right. Yeah. Yes, you're a national hero for this. A treasure. I'm telling you.

Don't confuse bravery with stupidity, all right? I'm telling you. Well, do you regret any of them? Oh, God, yeah. You do? Every Sunday night and Monday morning when Mike Arning's ripping my ass about it and says, now we got to do four days of media to get the sponsor to not be so p-oed about it. So, yeah, there's a lot of time.

You know, and that's what's so great about our sport, but it's also something we're losing in our sport, too, is that there was that raw emotion attached to it. I was just thinking of a great idea. So they sent me and Mike to talk to these young, new kids coming into the sport at the beginning of the year. Last year. Yeah, last year. What did they call that? Well, it was the NASCAR.

It was like all the rookies of every series and the NASCAR next. I don't know what they called the summit or the seminar. It was like a seminar summit, whatever. We were going to give them some tips on how to handle themselves. We said, just watch Tony Stewart. And I think that Tony should be the guy. He should, right. Actually running those.

Yeah. It'd be easy. I wouldn't need very much time. I would just say, grow some balls. They would you think. Well, as a broadcaster, I'd appreciate that. Yeah. That's right.

Because see, now his whole outlook on life has changed now that he's on the TV side. All right. Start another poll. Okay. And ask people if they like these vanilla drivers. Leah's on it. And see what they think about that. See if they like this politically correct BS that we're all dealing with now.

Yeah, Leah. So like, what would you prefer? Would you prefer, would you prefer? I mean, yeah, seriously. Leah's like, I prefer you not ask me this crap right. She's literally doing it. I'm going to make a bet. They're going to make a bet.

They're going to say they want. the colorful Tony Stewart type drivers, but they also reserve the right to get pissed off at them when they do something. Yeah, by Kyle Bush. The ones that don't, the driver that's doing the ranting, the fans that don't like them, have 100% ability to sit there and be keyboard jockeys. Right. But they won't sit there.

And if they were face-to-face, they wouldn't have the balls to sit there and say what they say on a computer to them. Oh, yeah. We see that day in and day out. Yeah. Because the reason I say that is because you'll be somewhere and somebody's, buddy will be right. They'll both be right in front of you. And this guy go, my buddy said this about you. And he's just standing here and look at you. And he does not have the balls to say it in

front of you. Yeah. And that's just the way he's backing up. He's track backtracked. That's society though. Well, you know what I meant. Yeah, exactly. As many of these gold sound bites Tony Stewart gave, I wonder why there's not any social media altercations that you've had. Because you just stay off of it. You just realize that it's like there's nothing to gain. because you're fighting a bunch of guys that are spineless that sit behind a keyboard and they run their mouth and you're fighting a bunch of people that it's just not even worth fighting anymore. I think this goes back to when you said Tony Stewart would go to you after y'all had your altercation. I think you just prefer to deal with it man to man, don't you?

And that's something to appreciate. But it's respect too. I mean, the reason you're willing to go to somebody is because if you don't even respect them, you don't even care to go to them and talk about it or have an opportunity. altercation about it. You know, the guys that I got some of the biggest fights with were guys that I had the most respect for. I mean, everybody remembers when I threw the helmet at Matt Kenseth on pit road. Well, I love Matt Kenseth. I mean, I think the world of Matt Kenseth. And at the part of the race where we crashed in each other, it's like, it was stupid for us to wreck out at that point. We both had really fast cars. And I was like, same thing. I mean, I had ran him down from a half a straightaway. It's like, why not just let me go? Yeah. You know I'm going to let you go at the same time. And that's why I was so mad about it. And I was so mad about it. And I was so mad about it. And, and I was so mad about it. And, It wasn't because I was just mad at Matt. I was mad at the situation we were in and the fact that I'm like, why of somebody that's that smart and so good at this, that's what I was mad about.

So it's, I don't get in these social media rants because it's like I don't even care about these people that sit there and don't have the balls to, they can sit there and say what they want. At the end of the day, they don't matter to me. What are you gained at the end of the day? I don't see them. Yeah, I don't see them. They don't interact with me personally.

I don't interact with them. they are not worth the energy in my time to sit here and get in a pissing contest on social media with them over something that just doesn't matter at the end of the day. And it gives them their 10 seconds of fame on social media because all of a sudden they got in an argument with somebody famous. I mean, it's just not worth glamorizing them. There you go. Well, you talked to you going to run 99 races this year. What's the biggest race you're looking forward to? Oh, man.

It's hard to pick just one. I mean, I have my Ollie's All-Star Circuit of Champions. I'm going to run most of our races on our schedule there, but there's a lot of stuff that I'm kind of going out and around. There's some new tracks that I'm going to that I'm looking forward to. There's some places that I'm going to that I just want to get better there. I mean, Knoxville, Iowa, for example, I am absolutely terrible. Our series went out there.

I ran the D-Main. I won the D-Main. There wasn't an E-Main or an F-Main. I was in the lowest main of the night and won the D-Main. And my announcer that's one of the guys that's the... with me today, he keeps reminding me that I won the D-Main at Knoxville and I remind him that I pay his paycheck and shut the hell up. I have to ask you, so running the D-Main in that race is humbling. Oh, yeah. For a three-time Western Cup champion, NASCAR champion, how do you manage that? How do you manage your expectations? How do you manage being humbled? Like, if you're going to

race, you know you're not going to win every single race. I would say, for example, for me, as a driver, I guess why I'm asking this is because I'm a little selfish, I'd love to go run a lot of late-mile races, but I know I'm going to get my ass kicked. So how do I manage that? The only thing for me, so to go with that, so the next week is the 360 Nationals at Knoxville. So that's 360 cubic inch motors. And then the following week is the Knoxville Nationals, the World of Outlaw guys, All-Stars guys, all the 4-10s. I ran the 360 Nationals the last two years. I'm running the 360 Nationals again this year. I'm not even, I've not even entered the 4-10 National. because I know I'm going to get my ass kick.

Yeah. But at the same time, everybody's mindset is, well, you're an ASCAR champion. You're as good as these guys. Well, just because I was an ASCard champion doesn't mean that I'm the caliber or a guy that needs to be running. I know there's guys I can beat at the 410 Nationals at the Knoxville Nationals. But I respect the guys that I race against enough to say, I suck here, and I don't want to screw somebody else's day up because I make a mistake.

But I'm willing to put the time in to get better. at it. And at the point that I'm like, well, I just can't physically get any better, that's the day I just quit. You know, if I can't, if I can't get better and can't make myself better, I'll quit at that point. But I have no problem saying, listen, I'm just, I don't run good enough at this place, but I'm willing to keep running some of these races to try to get better. So that's one of the places that I'm really looking forward to this year is just trying to get better at some of these tracks that I struggle at. That's pretty cool, man. You know it'll be fun to go to one of his races, would it?

Yeah, I mean, you're retired. We get nothing to do. This is all we got in our lives. Brian Vickers, and Brian was at Daytona this weekend. He's talked to me for a couple years now about going on a weekend. Eric Amarola goes a lot. Yeah, I mean, when we're at a, like this weekend, where we're at Atlanta, and it's only like a 20 or 25-minute flight down to Florida

where I'm racing. Eric will go with me and hang out for the night. And, you know, Daniel Swarres joined our team this year, and he's talking about wanting to go to a couple and see what it's like. So, you know, we got some of our sponsors that'll go to the NASCAR races that also go to our dirt races as well. So it's fun. It's, you know, and Eric's background, Eric's grandfather raced, his uncle raced wing sprint cars. So he's used to that kind of racing as well.

So we've had a lot of fun going and doing the dirt stuff. And it's nice just to kind of sometimes just getting out of the circle and going and doing something different in racing is just kind of re-sparks everything. I mean, if you're having a bad day and you can go do that, it just kind of. Plus the culture is so different. Oh, yeah. Like when I went to the 24-hour race, I've forgotten how different the culture is there. And it kind of gave me new energy for going back to the NASCAR stuff other than the year. I was like, man.

It was like I was really interested that Steve O'Donnell went out to the chili bowl this year. Yeah. And I was – Respect. Yeah. Well, that – and also I was curious on what he took away from it that, you know, you can implement this. I can tell you. A hangover.

Well, there you go. That's what we're missing. A bunch of those officials were there, and they were on top of the, there's a concession stand on the backstretch, and they were on top of there. And they made a point every time I drove by on the tractor while I was working all day and all night. You were. Every time I went by, they made sure and showed me that they were enjoying a nice, cool beverage that I couldn't have at that point of the evening. But they had a lot of fun. And it was.

I thought it was great. It's, you know, I think from their standpoint, they wanted to see something different as well. well, you know, just like we're talking about taking our guys. And I think it was, the great thing was actually seeing them just actually have fun at the racetrack. I mean, you can imagine what Steve O'Donnell and all these guys, the pressure they have every weekend of running the greatest series in the United States and to sit there and for them to take a couple days and be able to go, just go to a race and be race fans. Right. I mean, same thing. I think it just kind of gets you spark back up again and gives you a different perspective on what's going on in racing. Absolutely.

man we could talk all day long we could talk all day today for about seven straight days we have enough stuff we could talk about but we'd love to have you come back if you will sometime later this year and uh you know tell some more stories and maybe we'll talk a little more current events but thanks for coming today it was a big deal for us our listeners are really excited you were here yeah hope you have a great week i appreciate it had fun man all right so today is february the 18th 2019 everybody knows about this day this is the day that dad passed away 18 years ago. One of the great things about this day, obviously you'd like to remember Dad, but I go on social media, Mike, and there's a ton of great stuff out there. A lot of great comments, a lot of great pictures. Today I found some pictures.

I put them on my Twitter handle. Okay. That I found, so I got this big, giant picture catalog that I've been saving, collecting. There's about 2,500 pictures in it, and it's all stuff that I've never seen before, and it's all old from, like, the early 80s and before.

Nothing in the 90s. There's plenty of that stuff around. But it's old rare pictures, and I found four today on Twitter. And so, you know, sometimes I kind of get sad thinking about this day and it coming. But once it's here, I'm reminded every year that there's so many people were remembering him, celebrating him. I think it's important to comment on that in the show today. And I appreciate that.

After all these years, I think the one thing that I was always fearful of was that dad might become forgotten. And every year, I'm reminded of how important he was to so many different people. And so it makes this day a lot of fun. Absolutely. Where did you find these four pictures? Those pictures are incredible. On Twitter. Somebody sent to you?

Yeah, some Twitter follower of mine posted these in my timeline. And I just happened to check. I check my timeline roughly throughout the day and just kind of see what people are talking about and what the topic of the moment is. But on the day like today, it's all Dale Earnhardt stuff. And these popped up in there. And I have that big collection of pictures on my phone, and I immediately save these and shared them with my family,

and my sister and uncles and cousins and everybody. And so, you know, it's not often that I see a picture of my father that I've never seen before. That's the great thing. You know, there's bad days on the day. Twitter. We all know. There's a lot of bad negativity on Twitter, especially over the last couple weeks, but there's some great things happening on social media and on Twitter, and that's one of them. It happens ever, ever so often that I'll find a picture of my dad

that I've never seen before. And so that was a great thing today. Thank you for that. Thanks for all the comments and the kind words about dad, how much you meant to everybody. Let's see. What else we're going to talk about here? My sister is writing a book. Do you know about this, Mike? I do. So I've got, I had the book racing to the finish come out, I had a great experience with that. We're selling books. We're signing books. People are reading it,

telling me all this great things about it, how much they enjoyed it. Well, my sister's in the middle of writing a book for herself. It's kind of a... I got to read a couple chapters. She sent me these chapters about it. Dude, it's heavy. Is it?

Yes. So she was telling me she was going to write a book that's kind of a... sort of a guide to success from her point of view. That's right. I thought that's what it was. Yeah. And she had to touch on her childhood a little bit and sort of tell how she became the person she is and why she does and makes the decision she does. I'm telling you, man, it's heavy. And I am really excited for people to read it. Listen, you know, we have these conversations, you know, behind closed doors and stuff. But anytime I hear about y'all's childhoods, and I always wonder, if that ever goes into a book or a movie or whatever,

is. I mean, we've had people pitch us all kinds of that stuff, right? Man, y'all had a childhood. Well, did y'all have a childhood? Yeah, Kelly goes into detail. I don't want to spoil it. I want her to be able to tell it. That's right. And share, but man, it is, I'm so excited for what this experience is going to be like for her. I'm excited for her to go through getting this book out there and telling this story and getting it out into the public. I'm also excited for the reaction and the fans to be able to read it and react to it. So I wanted everybody to know that she's working on that to be on look out for that. So we had Valentine's Day. All right? So we talked about that on the last show. And we all, I think I, you know, we all, thank God we talked about it on the show.

Yeah, we've got a lot of making up to do because we talked poorly of Valentine's Day, I believe. Did we not? Not of our wives and girls. No, no, no, just of the day. That's fine. There weren't a lot of fans in this room. I'm not changing that. All right. So I talked poorly about it and how it probably wasn't very important to me. But I want to tell y'all something. My grandma calls. me. Martha Earnhardt, out of the blue. Harley ever calls me. She said, hey, I want to thank you for my flowers. I was like, what? I was like, she said,

I got these flowers from Ila, and they're pretty, and I'm like, oh man, and I looked over and Amy, I was like, because she can hear the phone conversation. She's grinning. My wife sent flowers to my mom-maw from Ila. Awesome. Yeah, cool. That's great. Isn't it great to have a wife to, like, basically compensate for all that you don't do? Right. She also sent 100,

50 cards and balloons to children at nationwide children's hospital. No way. Just out of the blue. Wow. I'm telling you, dude. Amy Earnhardt wins the Valentine's award. How amazing. I'm telling you.

You know, I don't mind saying it, man. She is amazing. Those are the things that she does that shows me that she's the real deal. That's awesome. So we, I won't say we. I'll say I made an ass of myself talking about Valentine's Day last week and that it wasn't a big deal. I might have teased y'all off. I don't know, man.

I don't think I did a good job. Amy comes in, saves a date. Did she see that? Amy didn't watch that. She might have heard a clip on Instagram and been very disappointed. Uh-oh. Well, did you, what did you do for her? You didn't go to the drugstore this year.

Yeah. What did you do for? We, oh, well. Oh, boy. We went to lunch and dinner and did things. We hung out. Yeah, I probably didn't do enough. Obviously, I didn't do enough.

I mean, I just told you how amazing she is. All right. We got to talk about Sam Bass. Sam Bass passed away this past week, an incredible artist for NASCAR. Sam was a really, really, really close friend of my father's, very close friend of really the family. Me and Kelly have been in contact with him a lot over the last couple years, trying to assist him in any way we can to help him with his illness. You know, it's very sad for, I think, the whole sport.

He was such an icon. I don't know how that happened, but he was adopted as the artist for NASCAR. There's been a lot of guys that have done some pretty great illustrations and art in our sport over the years. But he was sort of the adopted artist for NASCAR capturing incredible moments, wins, big moments in NASCAR history as they were happening. And even, I saw some on social media where David Reagan won at Talladega. Well, I think that Sam Bass was to present the winner a drawing, and he didn't have a David Reagan drawing.

He had these other ones made to present to who they thought might win the race, and there wasn't a David Reagan one to present. So he had to draw one on the fly in Victory Land to give to David Reagan. David Reagan, I believe, is the one who tweeted about that. Sam not only drew all these incredible racing moments, but he also designed cars, which is kind of like finding out somebody you think is really cool, wrote a song you like. You know what I'm saying?

So if you think about the Rainbow Warrior car that Jeff Gordon drove, Well, Sam Bass created that iconic paint scheme that became so, so big for Jeff Gordon throughout the years. He did numerous cars for my father. Your DEI car, right? Yeah, he did my number eight. He did dad's cars.

His one off that he would run into All-Star race. You know, the Wheaties car and so forth. Silver one. The silver car. So this man, I mean, he's been around a long time, done so much for our sport. On top of that, not only was he badass artist and just doing all kinds of cool stuff

throughout his career, But every time you saw Sam Bass, Sam Bass acted like he was extremely thrilled to be seeing you in that moment. And there's not many people in our lives that are like that. I think if you're lucky if you got one or two, where you see them in every single time, no matter what kind of day they've had or what's going on in their lives, they are thrilled that they are seeing you in that moment, man. And it was genuine and real. I don't know how he did that.

But I always thought that that was the greatest thing about him. I knew when I saw him, he was going to be smiling, and he was going to be glad to see me every single time. And good times and bad, too, man, because the first time I met him, he had that little closet office on the corner there by Charlotte Motor Speedway, not the big thing that he eventually had. And he treated people the same back then as he did now, but then you look at his successes and then struggling with his health problems and having an auction off stuff when there was some hard times. And he was the same Sam the whole time. It's not something you do.

it's something you are. There you go. You can't fake that. That's it. Great point. So you answered that. I was just wondering how on the hill he was so perfect and how he engaged and maintained his relationships.

And you answered it, man. It's just who he was. So there was one thing I wanted to get to Tony Stewart that I didn't get to. And that was what's the craziest thing a fan has ever said to him. Because I'm sure he's been engaged by the fans several times. I had a guy come up to me and say something I never heard. He said his wife's not. going to divorce him now that I gave him an autograph.

Well, that's some pressure. Right? That's weird. I gave him the autograph and he goes, thanks, man. Now my wife won't divorce me. I really wanted the backstory, but I didn't get a chance to get to. The backstory is he's a crappy husband, clearly. If this is what's going to have to pull him through in the, in the club.

The autograph's going to save. That's going to save the marriage, but we've got other issues. But mighty big of you to give him. I felt like I did a good deed. No, I mean, sure. Right. Were you going to not sign it if his marriage wasn't what's pending on it? You're like a counselor.

Right. I didn't know that it was... Did you say good luck, you two? I was speechless. I was like, what? That's an odd thing for a man to say to another man. It is. Even if their marriage is great.

Oh, there's worst. I've heard worse things. Like what? Well, I think the one thing that really makes me uncomfortable is when, what do they call that? Where you're the hall pass, or what is it? Oh, no. Oh, yeah.

You're like the, um... Yeah. The one? Yeah, I'm the one. When they say that, I've heard that a couple times, and that's awkward. That's weird. That is weird. Like, so you're saying basically a wife will tell you that her husband.

Oh, the husband? That's even weirder. Wait, it ain't weird? I'm confused. The husband will go up to jail and said, you're a free pass. Or the husband's in the, husband's in the earshot of the conversation. I mean, it's just weird. Yeah, that's weird.

That's weird. Listen, listen. I don't want to know that. I'll never be anybody's free pass. So I don't care. DeLord. Let's just be honest. Dillon, what's it like to be the free pass for somebody? Don't ask me.

We could all know that I got a face for radio or podcasting. So, listen, you saved a marriage at Daytona. You didn't wreck the Pace car. Pace truck, I'm sorry. You did good and that. Overall, it sounds like a pretty successful Daytona weekend for you. Wasn't the E-break or something? Rodney Sandstrom said something about that.

Oh, yeah. So, all right, Leah was asking me earlier before the show about cruise control, right? And obviously, do you sit a? on cruise control because I you know as we're going up to speed so this is what to tell you we have a pit pick a pit car or pace car practice but a pace car practice right what can what can pace car practice be well let me tell you so this think about those there's celebrities like Peyton manning and guys that have never done this so they're going to have a practice they need it well they'll tell you they run 30 mile an hour once you start rolling run about 30 mile an hour

on pit road once you get off pit road from into pit road all the way to turn two you accelerate to 55. Take a very slow process of accelerating and it allows the field to be able to catch up to you and get double file behind you. You need to be 55 mile an hour off turn two. And you get to key the mic and tell the tower, pace car one at 55 mile an hour, which is great. So you hold it at 55 miles an hour. I did not.

They wouldn't let me use the speed control this time because, okay, this new truck, the Chevy truck. it has a very high-tech sort of system on it that tries to save the truck or correct the truck from a rollover. All right? And when we would take the truck up on the banking, it would start to think that the truck's out of control and in danger of flipping.

It would start to do things to try to correct this. And we would not be able to pace the field. So they had to disable the speed control. And that's funny. I had to hold it at 55. Wow. When's the last time you had to do that? For two and a half miles times two times three?

It's hard to go slow. Yeah. Well, the thing is, is like I'm sitting there and it's like 57, 58. I'm like, oh, no. The field is going to get a speeding penalty. I've told them. They think this is 55. It's really 58.

The whole field is going to get a rash of speeding penalties because I wasn't holding the correct face. That's pressure. I've got it. I've got to come clean. I ran that last lap at 58. Oh. Yeah, I did. Rebell.

You're a rebel. Also, coming to pit road, did y'all see? I kind of was a very aggressive. I was a hard left. Hard aggressive left. I did notice that. I did that for visual effect. Did you?

Yes. Okay. Did it not get you excited? We noticed. Get me excited? I thought you were about to miss the turn. The pace car, sometimes you'll see them and they'll come off there real slow and lazy, and it's like, what the hell is that?

You've got to dive on to pit road. Because the guy, the announcers would always say the pace car dives on the pit road. Yes. Here comes the field for the start. The pace car dives the pit road. The green flag is out, right? He doesn't say the pace car gently eases off the pit road.

Yeah, the pace car eases off out of everybody's way. I was diving, man. You dove. I dove. You dove twice, actually. Because the second left into the garage was pretty quick, too, wasn't it? Boom. Slam on brakes.

I thought you might have forgot. Thought you might have forgot pit road. And then all of a sudden, it's almost like, oh that's the entrance wham! I mean you went right into the garage like that too. Yeah, that's where they said to go. Wow, yeah. Man, I thought you were going to stay out for another lap.

Both of your pace car driving adventures have been that adventures. Indy, he ended up in a holding pin and couldn't get out, right. Couldn't get out. I was stuck out in the racing area. Another observation I had was that, man, it looked like you were driving basically a school bus full of kids.

I mean, there were so many people packed into that truck. I had three people in the back seat and then the official in the pasture seat. But I had my, I had a radio on, so no conversation with me. Yeah, you weren't. I was working. That's how you prefer it. I mean, I'm having a whole 55. I didn't have any help.

That's funny. Were you nervous a little bit? A little bit? Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah, your adrenaline's pumping. You're hearing the motor of the guys behind you. They're, you know, coming up behind, you know, they're getting their cars all

revved up and ready. It's awesome. Boy, that Silverado looks like a spaceship. I totally won away the green flag one year. Somewhere. Have you planted that seed yet? We just did. We just planted.

That was it? We just planted. Just don't be like the king, his first year retirement. Remember it? He waved the green flag. I can wave, let me tell you right now. I can wave the hell out of the flag. Really?

Oh, yeah. You got practice? Well, I think every kid that's ever wanted to race a race car has waved a flag and, you know, mocked and mimicked the flagman. Because you can't be that person that just goes out there and just goes. Oh, I hate that. I hate that. Oh, man. They just do this.

I know the wrist. I know. I know the trick. You got to start up at the top. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you've got to just bring that thing down. And then you've got to go back up and then you've got to bring it down again. You bet your ass if I get to wave the green flag.

That's what you're going to see. Don't be doing this. No. No. Like that person, that Denny Hamlin commercial with that big huge flag we were watching last night. And my wife looked over and said, I know that pisses you off. Because the lady's just sitting out there. Yeah, big broad strokes of the green flag.

Yeah, you got to wave that thing like you mean it. And if I get to wave the green flag, we said last. last week that we're just going to continue to try to take odd jobs at the Daytona 500 every year. Did we get any cool ones from social media, Leah? We should ask. Fry cook, man. Well, I really, I mean, we got, I'm totally serious about that. So what, did we go to social media asking for what odd jobs?

The new micro, the new micro of Daytona. I just need a reason to be at the Daytona 500, man. They'll find you a reason. All right. And also, you were talking about Daytona. We had a win. for junior motorsports. And it was a

big surprise. I predicted it. You did? Michael Annette got his first win of his career. Yeah. And this story, man, I don't even know where to begin. So Michael Annette, he himself, he said this.

He's like, man, everybody is being clowning me, saying, I don't belong in this car. I don't belong in this ride. I'm not good enough. And it's so funny, because people forget. He had a really, really good year. I think it's 2012, 2011,

in the 43 car, finished fifth in points. And he ran into top 10 throughout the majority of the season. And this is a guy that everybody, his whole story was, he's a hockey player, decided to want to be a race car driver. And everybody was like, he's got some ability,

because he's doing really well for having no real background in motorsports. And then he got hurt at Daytona, broke his sternum or something, in a crash in turn one and two, and he had to set out for three months, and his career really got derailed from there. And this guy goes and he drives, he gets in some pretty bad rides that don't produce for him. And I think that it sort of programmed him and took a lot of the wind out of his cells and took a lot of the passion and drive from him. Anyways, when we hired him, he's a different person than he is today.

He's changed and transitioned into a guy that we really know has some passion, has drive, and has determination. All right. And he's sort of rebuilt himself, and we've helped him do that. And I think that's what we do. We give people opportunity, and we give young guys, new guys opportunity. We help veterans and other guys sort of put their career back on track. We do it all. And it's been a process with Michael.

Was he lacking confidence or something when he came here? Is that what you mean? Yeah, he had no confidence. He had no confidence in himself, but he had been beaten down by him, I'm sure by himself, which I've experienced that where you just, you don't, you know, you lose all faith in yourself and you believe in your ability. But he's also hearing it, you know, from everyone else.

And, you know, fans and Twitter and everything else, just hounding him. And so obviously he was in pretty bad shape when he came here. Luckily, like, all right, so we weren't really perfectly on track with Michael. It was a process trying to get him right. One of my friends, Travis Mack, had taken a job as a crew chief on the 95 car on the Cupside, got let go in the middle of the season. And I'm like, man, that's crazy.

He's good. He'd been my car chief forever, worked at Hinton Motorsports for a long time, super, super driven, really, really driven. Won a championship over here with Chase Elliott under Greg Ives. That's right. Went back to Hendrick. Yep. Yep.

And so this guy's got this really cool, I don't know, he's got this real weird drive. And he reminds me of, he's not going to like this, but he reminds me a lot of Chack andhouse. Like a lot of people find Chaginous a bit difficult sometimes, but it's because of his standard, of excellence and what he expects out of you. He expects things to be right and perfect, and he has a mentality toward his job, and he puts everything into it. And it can be tough. It can be hard, right? And that's what I see in Travis Mack is that he has this, I'm willing to do whatever it takes, and if you're going to be on my team, you're going to have to have that same attitude and personality.

Well, that explains why it probably didn't work out at the 95. Maybe. He didn't have what he felt like he needed to be perfect. Checking else probably wouldn't be any better at 90s. Give him much of a chance. Right. No, that makes sense. I'm thinking, man, this would be awesome for junior sports if we can get T-Mach over here.

And if he's willing to take over on Michael's car in the middle of the season, maybe we can get Michael into the playoffs. Because Michael was sitting outside of the playoffs at the time. We weren't able to do that. But maybe we ran really good at the end. I know. I'm like, you know, you expect things to jail a little quicker than they do. And they just take time sometimes in motorsports. but you could see the process getting better.

And it was as much about Michael as it was about the cars. What T-Mack did when he came in here was he took that passion and that drive and that weird, you know, obsession that Travis has was good for Michael and his passion and his drive. T-Mack sort of helped Michael find that last little bit of determination and accountability. Like T-Mack was going to say, hey, this is what you've got to do and I expect it. And this is what you're going to do for me, similar to what Steve Lhart did for me. Yep.

All right. And so we're starting to see Michael respond mentally and physically, taking better care of himself, being sharper and ready and driven and focused and accountable. I know it's a plate race. People are going to say that, you know, plate races are often won by luck and so forth. But you get there at a preparation. You get there because you're determined. and you get there because you got your mind right. You're in that position because of those things.

Michael Annette was not in that position a year ago to win this race. He was because of all the work he's done this year. And Travis Max is a big part of that. Two guys, man, a big story of redemption for both those guys. That's what was so cool about that win for me. It wasn't really even, it was bigger than junior motor sports. And it was bigger, you know, what had those two guys had been through and to stand there and watch them in Victor Lane, T-Mack was in tears, T-Mack's

dad was standing there in tears, everybody was just shook up because it had been such a hard road. And I, you know, I just was thinking, wow, if Travis can take Michael Inette to Victor Lane, what a day that would be for both of those guys. And that's what we needed. We needed Travis Mack. He's back. So anyways, that was such a great day. The fans didn't love the race.

All right. That's true. Hey, it is what, I can't. What, no, I can't argue with them, man. I mean, there was no passing. Even though we won, got to be up front and straight. That wasn't a very fun race to watch if you're a fan. But man, we didn't get the same thing on Sunday.

Sunday was the complete opposite. Some people didn't like that. Why would nobody like that? Not enough passing, no enough, you know, action, and then there's too much action, too much crashing. You know. Stay off social media. If that's what people are saying that.

That race on Sunday was incredible. Even Lugano alone. Jeff Gluck's, was it a good race? Pold last time I checked at 85%. Yes. Could you believe? Who's voting no? That seems low.

Yeah. Why would that race gave you everything? Right. I was reading in comments to Jeff's post and people were saying, well, I voted no because the last 20 laps were boring or something or too much reckoned at the last 20 laps. It's boring.

Well, there was a long delay, the big red flag. Mike, you like the big long delay in the red flag? Well, you got to clean up the track. Actually, I went to the kitchen and made dinner. I was good with it. What are you going to do? Not red flag, not fix the track? Not clean up the track?

The replays of priests rolling through that darn sparks and all kept me. I was wondering if that was why the last 20 laps were. Listen. Look. We're not what people expected. I liked it. It's always the other way around. People go, the last 20 laps are the only part.

to watch. Listen. But this race, people said the first 180 laps were the best. The whole 207 laps were the best. I mean, like, come on. I mean, like, we have become, we have become too entitled. Like, we have to have an opinion now broken down by lap. Come on.

It's bad enough. I don't particularly like when Gluck says, was this a good race or not. I mean, listen. I know if it's a good race. That's fine. I don't like it. I don't like the poll if it's a bad race. But boy, if we're coming down now breaking out.

But breaking up, well, I liked the first two stages, but that third stage, no. I cannot. I love what Mike Rams. This is all I wanted was a Mike Grant. People just appreciate that that race, you didn't know who was going to win, you know, as you typically don't at Restrictor plate races. But the drivers hung it all out. Did you see the moves, like, the moves that Boyer was making, now I know it ended up costing them. But like the moves, Jimmy Johnson was driving.

It was his first race, I mean, in a good way. I got to tell you. Like he hadn't won seven championships, and this is his chance to win his first. They were driving, like, like, putting it all out there. What are you guys for? That's it. Last year, the drivers were badass. Not that they're not ever bad.

Not that they weren't before, but I was seeing it from a new perspective as a broadcaster. And what I watched every single week was freaking awesome. Yeah. And they did it again Sunday. Yes. You know, if you like the race, it's not the package. It's not the damn played. It's not the spoiler.

It's the race car driver behind the wheel. And not that this had any influence on the drivers, but there was one thing that happened in a driver's meeting that was very cool. And that was Jim France. Oh. He got up and spoke. And first thing he said was NASCAR is a family sport. We're here.

We're dedicated. This shit means everything to us. Count on it. And then he said... That's cool. Now, if some of you other drivers out there can get behind Denny Hamlin and Chase Elliott on that bottom grooves... I know. I saw that. And make a race out of it. That'd be nice.

Get down there and try to pass somebody. Yeah. And there's so much... And I'm sitting right in front of Mike Hilton. Me and Mike Hilton are literally two feet apart face-to-face in the way they have us staged in this driver's meeting. And I'm watching Mike Hilton. I've never seen Mike Hilton look at someone else the way that we look at. at Mike Hilton. You know how much we respect Mike Hilton?

Yeah. Mike Hilton was looking at Jim that way. Oh, wow. It was crazy. Wow. I mean, Mike Hilton to me is like the baddest man ever. The top. Yeah. And he's like looking at Jim going, damn right. Yeah, getting him fired at. Jim, you the man. I'm sitting there going, wow, I'm looking at Mike Hilton the way I look at Mike Hilton. He's looking at him. It was weird.

The things that go into your mind. That moment. Didn't listen to anything else in the driver's meeting. But why would you, right? You're not the driver. That moment was really cool. Jim France is a freaking badass. I'm so glad that he got up there and said that. And we need to hear it. Man, gosh, we need to hear it.

From a France. We want to hear that so bad. And it makes it sounds so good. To be clear, though, that's not what gave us the racing on Sunday. No, it wasn't. What gave us that? The drivers. Was it really?

So is that to say that Saturday was the drivers just being complacent and sitting in line and not wanting to risk it? No, no, no. I mean, from what I could hear, you know, listening to some drivers, they're wide open in that Exfinity car. How are they going to pass? They're on freaking gas wide open. If they're not getting a run on the guy in front of them, you know, there's a lot of variables

at play that created that high line. I don't know. I wasn't driving in the race in the Xfinity series to know if those guys would have just jumped to the bottom. They could have run side by side. We've seen some of that in the Xfinity race. One of the stage two, I think, started out with a little side-by-side action. I think that, you know, sometimes

during speed weeks, a trend begins and it sort of gets mimicked. But with that said, the truck race was crazy, right? Yeah, yeah. So I don't know. I think that the package with Exfinity cars maybe needs some adjusting. If the guy running fifth or tenth in that line is wide open

and not running over the guy in front of him, damn, they need to adjust the package. They need to get those cars where they can create runs and get runs on each other. Hey, here's one thing that you were right. You said this before the race and you were right, and that is, If it gets down to the wire on that race, you want to be the one out front because the person out front is going to probably hold that position easier than it will be to overtake.

Right. But that was the case. When I saw them take that final restart and I saw them racing for second and third. And I know that Ligano, I was sitting there keeping my eye on Ligano thinking that here goes, Joey and T.J. are about to do their thing, you know, right? Because they're so good at that. I think McDowell said, no, I'm going to try to win this thing. And then when they got disjointed, I knew Denny was set sail. Yeah, that was that.

So I'm happy for Denny. I actually wanted Denny to win this one. Really? Yeah. You know, with the whole JD Gibbs, I bought in. Oh, yeah. I bought in, man. I was happy for coach.

I liked it. I liked that storyline. I thought they deserved it. I just want to wrap this up real quick. Denny Hamlin's one of the best plate racers on the racetrack right now. I don't know that he, I mean, he had a great race car. He won the race. the Penske cars look a little better, the Ford's.

And Joe Lugano is a great play racer, too. But at Denny, man, he does things out on the racetrack in the draft that I think a lot of other people don't do. And he sees it and understands it. He has a confidence in his ability out there that is different than a lot of his competitors. So he didn't back into that one. All right. So we talked about it at the top of the show.

We got a new partner, Mac Weldon. You know what Mac Weldon is? Tell me. It's underwear. And it's better. than whatever you're wearing right now, Mike. How do you know I'm not wearing Mac Wilden? Are you?

How would you know? Well, you can tell it. I would tell you. I really, on any other day, I wouldn't ask you. You know, but this is the type of relationship we have. We just ask, hey, hey, Dale, what kind of underwear are you wearing today? So anyway, well, you sent me the promo code. No, what I sent you was the-

You sent me a promo code. But I also sent you to shop. That's a credit. Oh, okay, whatever. Yeah, and they sent you a credit. And boy, you were excited. about that. In fact, Dillner was thinking, this is going to be one of those ones that Dale Jr. is not going to want. And Dillner was already starting to pick out his pair.

Oh, no. And Dale, Jr. said, back up, bud. Well, I was pissed because I saw his order, and his order had the same pair that I wanted, but of course, it's a different size, that orange pair. I was pissed. All right. I was like, damn it. I, all right, so Mac Weldon makes underwear. And when I heard about this sponsor, I did get some credit. And I went and bought four pair, and they're freaking awesome, man. They are, High-end custom kind of fit. All right. Yeah, so you were wanting no, I'm just saying.

Look, all right. I don't know, man. Even when it's a sponsor, talking underwear with another man just seems weird. Get used to it. You only stick to the script. Not get to creative. Well, don't look at me and ask me to respond. You keep doing what you're doing.

Mike, I just say. Look deep into Mike Davis's eyes and tell him about your underwear. It fits so good, Mike. Tell me more. Tell me more about your underwear. underwear, Dale. They're very comfortable. How does it feel down there?

Describe it. They're very comfortable. Oh, man. So I was really excited about getting this order of underwear. They're freaking awesome, man. So I want more credit. I will say this. He was excited about this one so much so that he came and told us last week.

He thought the Mack Weldon sponsorship was kicking in the first show. and he goes, hey, I wore my MacWamond underwear. He said that as good information for me to know as we prepared for the podcast. Mac Weldon believes in smart design, premium fabrics and simple shopping. It was very easy. The shopping is simple.

Mac Weldon is the most comfortable underwear, socks shirts, undershirts, hoodies, and sweatpants, and more that you will ever wear. We got to get into the rest of that stuff. I just got the underwear. We need to get some sweats. Well, since I started that job in the booth as a broadcaster, the sock game is serious with the rest of those guys in the booth.

Oh, yeah. And so I've been having to buy all these crazy socks to try to keep up. So Mac Weldon, maybe I need to try out some of their socks. Anyways, not only does Mac Weldon's underwear socks and shirts look good, they perform well too. Tell us about that. It's good for working out. Going to work.

What is that? You can wear them to work. You can wear them out on dates, Mike. All right. You can just about wear them in everyday life. Well, it's really easy to order. I went online, bought four pair, came right to the house. You were impressed.

You were impressed how they were shipped. I mean, I'm sorry, and how they were packaged. The packaging is high-end, dude. Look, I mean, this is the kind of crap I never even cared about until I got older. And now, man, I just wore pretty much anything. Like, whatever, I just buy underwear. You just pull it off the shelf. Sox same way.

Now, I mean, we're getting more and more particular. I am. All right. Stuff's got to be comfortable. I'm tired of waste my time. This is a special offer to listeners of the Dale Jr. download. For 20% off your first order, visit macweldon.com and enter promo code Dale Jr. at checkout. That's promo code Dale Jr. D-A-L-J-R, no space.

Thank you, Mac Weldon. 20%. That's significant. That is. That's a good deal. I really, I like the underwear. I would love some, I would love to try out the socks. You want to try to get some more credit out of them? And I do like hoodies.

Hoodies, man. Who don't like hoodies? We got a Asch Jr. live segment. All right, everybody. It's Dale Jr. at the Dell Jr. Download podcast. This is the Ask Junior Live segment on YouTube. Mike Davis's voice. You'll hear that.

We also hear Matthew Dillner and Leavon also in the studio. Thanks for everybody who's tuned in. Tony Stewart was just here as a guest. and you'll be able to hear that on the full podcast later when Matthew gets it out. We're recording a little late today. It'll be 1 o'clock in the morning at this rate. Yeah, the podcast is going to be out late because I wasn't able to get here this morning and record on time. I'll be editing in my Mac Weldon's.

TMI. All right, so let's get right to it. Got some good questions out there, guys? Yeah, man. People are populating the chat room right now, but we can start with Ryan Holman, who says, do you think we'll soon see the green-white checker? become a thing of the past. We've seen it in action for a while now.

Is it worth the carnage? Yeah, the green-white checkers not going anywhere. Good. I think that the ask car is going to do everything they can to try to give the opportunity for a green flag finish. And so the green-white checkered, I think, is, for the most part, quite popular. And there's, you know, there are times when you're going to have a lot of, you know, a lot of crashing at the end of the race. I think that's the risk you sign up for as a driver and as an owner when you go.

go to the racetrack and load your car up and take it there, that it could get torn up. What incarnation chiming in with the pressing question of the day, and she's shaking her head because we know your response here. Do you like potatoes? Potatoes. I do like potatoes. Why? I mean, I just want to know. How do you prefer your potato?

I like, well. I feel like there's more to this. It's just setting you up for some potato prank. All right, I love potatoes. Did we get a potato spot? What's your favorite kind of potato? What? What's your favorite kind of potato?

Like a russet? Well, like, do you like baked? Baked potato. I like baked potato. Mashed. I like baked potato. That does all the work for you. Gravy, yeah, put some gravy on my potato.

I don't know where the hell we're going on with it is. All my GFC gravy, though. Well, Breger Winter, 98, chimed in. They'll save us right here. Do you ever think you'd want to race at Bowman Gray Stadium? I know you said you haven't been yet. I want to go to Bowman Gray and watch a race. I do not want to go race there,

but I'd love to watch a race there. The history of that racetrack is incredible. Obviously, the energy, I mean, it's packed. What's 10,000 people get into that racetrack? 17,000. Every single week this place fills up. And I don't know that there's anything else like it. I know in North Carolina, maybe even in the country,

the short track bringing in that many people week in and week out. All right. Laura Chris says, what rule or regulation would you want to put in place, if you could, or abolish? Oh, man. I mean, there's so many things that if you could be president of NASCAR, there's a lot of things you'd probably adjust and change. I would probably, do you guys have anything on you?

Yeah, it's not a rule for NASCAR. It's a rule for everybody else to not talk about rules packages every day. Okay. That's my rule. I was thinking more specifically to the car or something like that. I think that there's so much I would change. I would change everything. I would change at all.

Jeez. I would probably. try to figure out a way to get the cars unsealed from the ground. I like the direction they're going with this new Gen 7 car. Apparently, if it's going to be closer toward the production model, that's a plus. I don't know how close they're going to get, but if they can make the cars look really identical to the production model on the showroom floor, I would love that. Basically, the noses do now, but the back half or the center section of the cars all look

the same to me. You know, kind of back in the early 90s, you could tell a Ford from a Chevy and all that. I would like to try to get close to that as it possibly could. I like the idea that they're going to a smaller engine, but an open motor. This tapered space thing, I think hopefully is just a stopgap

till they develop the new they're going to do the new, the Gen 7 car is going to have a new engine. So hopefully it's a smaller open motor. I'm looking forward to seeing how all that works out. I would say, you know, my original, my answer to that would have been restrictor plates, but

that was the last restrictor plate race this past weekend, so I don't know what my answer is after that. Can I add, I would also like to try to design a narrower tire. There's too much I think the tire contact patch is too big. John Douglas wanted to

note, what did you think of the two days of Thunder-esque kind of moves that Ryan Priest made to avoid some the tracks? Yeah, there's always a driver in the plate races that's going to do what Ryan Priest did. A lot of it is just a quick reaction time, obviously, but also luck of where the cars are spinning and not spinning.

But Ryan Preeze is a sharp little race car driver, and he's actually going to be driving our car this weekend in Atlanta in Xfinity Series. So we're going to get to know Ryan Preece quite a bit really well this year. It's going to be a lot of fun. All right, Tara wanted to know. Did you meet the Live PD crew while you're in Daytona? I did not. Did you know who they were?

No. Were they at the track? Yeah, supposedly they were. I mean, Live PD is pretty badass. I know. I've watched LivePD before. Still, it doesn't, I don't know if it rivals cops. I always thought cops is a little bit. I'm a copse guy.

I do like LivePD. I know it's very popular, and I'm probably getting a lot of crap for liking cops because... No, you're not, you're not going to get it for me. I think cops seemed... You like cops better, guys? I like cops a little better. Why? I don't know.

I just felt like LivePD isn't really live. What? Yeah. Poll question. I'm going to be working her pretty hard here on these polls. I smell a poll question. A few people chime in and wanted to know how was Disney. Well, the thing is, it'll be like, man, here we are in South Carolina and it's daylight.

And I'm like, well, North Carolina, it's dark. So what's going on here? I'm talking about LIPD. Sorry. What was next thing? I was like, what about Disney? North Carolina, there's a Disney now? Sorry.

I was like, oh, damn. A few people on the chat room wanted to know how was Disney. I saw you guys took a trip as a family. Took Ila to Disney. She's nine months. It's probably a little early, but she still, she liked it. We went on two rides that she liked, Dumbo, and it's a small world. Oh, that's a good one.

Yeah. Those were two that she liked. We took her on Winnie the Pooh, and I ain't never been on that ride, but we go. So Isla has never been scared before, ever, right? That's just not that I know of. and she's never been in a situation that was scary or have a reason to be scared. So other than getting a little water on her face in the bath. But we go into the Winnie the Pooh and it's dark.

Like you go through these doors and it's dark and I'm like, hmm, this is interesting. And then they got Tigger kind of glow in the dark Tigger jumping out from all kinds of different places. And I was starting to look around at me and Amy going, what is going on? Why are we doing? Where are we? And why is this happening? and I'm watching her get scared for the first time, and I'm getting angry. I'm getting, like, mad because I'm like, who thought this was good for kids?

Who, they should have said, no, no babies, or this ain't for babies, you know. She is getting, and she's like, dad it, yeah, she's reaching for me to save her. And I'm like, man, I kind of like that. I feel bad, because I'm like, I'm liking that she wants me to save her. You know? But at the same time... You ain't saving her to the rods over. I know, but at the same time, I'm sitting here going,

I'm mad because this poo-s-skaring her. And then I'm like, oh, that's cute. It's so cute. And she's scared her. She wants daddy. Yeah, of course she wants daddy. Again, take it for a second lap. But, man, and the whole...

I'm thinking, all right, you know, it's going to lighten up, and there'll be a great, you know, this is going to be a short period of, you know, scariness and then it's going to have a fun ending. Nope. Dark and scary all the way to the very,

we got it, it's over. I'm like, what? I didn't not know that poo his whole, his story,

is so dark and scary. It's not scary. It's not scary. I don't remember. My kid didn't get scared on that ride. How old was you? How old was you?

About that, I don't know. I'm just making it up. Well, you want to make a competition. We're making a competition here. My girls never. I never cried on that ride.

I just couldn't. I was just really surprised. I didn't go on the poo one when I went and, you know, thank God I didn't. I don't know what else I could add to that other than I was just super surprised. It was the way it was. How'd you like Small World? Because my kid was. That saved the day.

It's Small World was the last ride and she was happy as hell. Is that song still stuck in your head? No. I love when it gets stuck in my head. I love that ride. I don't know why. Hey, Groot House. Hey, Groot House, man.

You're always on these. You're a big Dirty Mo fan. Check it out. What's the name? next animal you would like to add to your property? Have you ever thought about this? I don't want to add no more animals. No? No. Not like a llama or something? Oh, geez.

Oh, no. See, that was the old me that thought everything was a great idea. That's why I still, that's why the buffalo are there. They just, I mean, they, I'm not. They don't get into anything. You're good. Yeah, they're They don't get in anything because there's a fence, but they've broken. They've broken out of the fence and went

miles down the road. That's right. And we found them in neighborhoods and people's front yards in the middle of the night. Get that phone call. Yeah, they're a real pain in the butt. But I don't, yeah, we don't want any more animals. Amy wants to rescue all of them. But, you know, I'm trying to, I'm trying to cut back.

Tap the brakes. I'm trying to cut back. But yeah, I got four Longhorn Steers that a fan from Texas gave me. Can you ever, like, eat them? No, why would you want to eat your pets? Well, you know, they're pets. Oh, okay. If they're pets, you don't eat them.

Gosh. I mean, Longhorn probably, I don't know if that's good steer meat or whatever. I don't know much about the meat industry. Steer meat. I know, but they're pets, dude. All right. Okay. Could be farm out a while, I know. You ain't ever been hungry then.

Yeah. Pets start to look good. All right, Melda chiming in here. You're live on YouTube. Live on YouTube. Talking about eating your pets. Just a random question for Dale Jr. here. If you ever did one of those escape room adventures, which I want to know, have you done one?

No, I haven't. Okay. Which current. NASCAR driver would you want as your partner and which one would you absolutely not want? I would not want Martin Trix Jr. Because he's not going to say two words during the whole experience. The guy doesn't talk. He only texts with emojis.

He doesn't even talk when he texts. That would be, I would be so frustrated, I think, with him. Are y'all talking about escape rooms? Yeah. Like the one I just did this weekend? You did one? You did one? For my kid's birthday.

Yeah. Really? For the first time I did it. They're fun. had nine, 10-year-olds in a room, you know, with 17 locks in trying to, and I'm going to tell something. It was a blast, and I loved it so much that I wanted us to do it. I wanted us, like, as a team, Dirty Mo Media.

Micah, James, all of us to go. Mike's got a breakthrough. He's thought of it. No, listen, it's fascinating. It is. Problem-solving. Yeah, it's problem-solving. It's team-building.

It's all kinds of stuff. I'm just surprised you thought about us out of work. No, I did. I did. No, I really thought it would be fun. You don't have to go. Do you want to go? Yes.

I ask him to go to lunch all the time, and he says no. No, stop. I really think if y'all want to do it, let's do it. I'm put my head up. I'm going to escape. So let's get back to it, though. Okay, who would you want with you? Probably true X.

Wait. I don't know. Who would you really want with you and who would you? We know you don't want True X. Would there be a good problem-solver kind of guy? You think a riddle, find out these riddles and stuff. That's who you want. Probably.

Jimmy Johnson. Yeah. Yeah. Same time champion. Who do you think is good at breaking into stuff? This is a good way to find out who you wanted in. So who is that person? Yeah.

Boyer. I'm telling you. Okay. Boyer would be a good one then. Why? Because you're having. Have you seen him break into things? I mean,

it seems like an ocean's 11 where everyone has a specialty. Yeah. Because listen, I'm going to tell you something, guys. There's records. There's time records. And now that makes it like you're like, okay. Now, if I did put a team together, who would I put? Because I'm going to go after the record.

We did a bunch on the road. And J.G. Ali, Jeremy Clements, Garrett Smithley, Kate Fegley, we all had a big group of us that we started going to a road. You got to have a mathematician to get you an engineer. Don't bring driver that 51 in the Xfinity series, Jeremy Clements, because all he did was scream like he was getting murdered the whole time. Really? He was awful. Don't get him. Well, if you don't enjoy small talk, take Truex.

Or you. I mean, you and him are both. I talk. He'll be fitter in a riddle game. And he'll be looking on his phone half the time. Small talk games, no good. Yeah, yeah. We're checking this phone half the time.

Yeah, you talk, but you don't small talk. All right. People want us to live stream our escape room experience. Oh, my God, that would do. On YouTube. No, we won't live stream it, but you know what we would do is video it and then cut a couple of videos. It'd be fun. Any more questions, guys?

Let's wrap it up, man. That was a live-ass YouTube presented by Nationwide. I don't know how good that was. I hope everybody enjoyed it. Ash Jr., presented by Nationwide. Let's get, let's get the. white flag roll. Keep talking about white flag.

White flag right there. White flag. We'll start this white flag by wishing happy birthday to my wife and my daughter all this week. Oh, Mike, way to go. I know, right? Brownie points.

So, by the way, I want to ask, how good was that Earnhardt Gordon document? Oh, yeah. I mean, because we were talking about, you know, your dad at the beginning of the show, but you were very proud of that documentary. You were very happy with it. Yeah, so I was, you know,

dad's not here to tell. his story. Jeff is. Jeff works for Fox. So I just, you know, not that, you know, Jeff would take liberties and skew it. Right.

I just was just curious to how they would tell it without dad be here to give that input, but they told it exactly as it was. And I think that that, Jeff had a big influence on it being told correctly. And to top it off, I mean, obviously,

when Jeff goes to the statue. Oh, what about that? In Canapolis at the end. That was something. Just perfect. perfect. It was, right? Yep, just perfect. I was just so appreciative, I think,

of how Jeff handled it. You could tell there was times when dad saw it an altercation one way and Jeff saw it another, but man, he told it with such respect, and I really appreciate it. Well, I just wanted to throw that in white flag because I knew that was something that you were happy with. I want to congratulate Junior Motorsports

I racing drivers, Brad Davies and Michael Conte, for a good, successful beginning to their season. Although, are we going to talk about the end of that peak-A-free's eye-racing Daytona race or no? We're just going to let that one go by. So on the last lap of the race, the stream crashed. And we've been pumping this eye racing partnership up that now we're a team. We own a team in the series. A lot of other, you know, Wood Brothers and a bunch of other teams do as well.

we've been pumping up this race and how excited we were to be a part of it and then the stream crashed on the very final lap of the race. And we're still excited to be a part of it. But that is that, I actually, I was ready to come in here in E. Crow. I was ready to come in here because I've given Dale Jr. such a hard time in a previous podcast about this and how, you know, we debated on whether it was real racing. And I was on the edge of my seat with this. Brad Davies had a ridiculous save that it took him.

him out of contention for the wind, but he still kept it on the track. It was amazing. And I was literally nervous about it. And when the feed went out of the last lap, I'm texting Dale Jr. going, did that just happen? And he was like, what are you talking about? You know, like, it was no big deal. And I'm like, I'm watching the eye racing thing. And he's like, yeah, it's just, in my head, I know how Dale's hit the tone of this text. He's like, yeah, just too many people on it, just too many, which I don't think that was the problem, actually. No, the, the producer for the, the producer for that race is in Brazil and he had a brownout

what's a brownout what is that basically is block lost power oh I got you okay so the whole thing hinges on one guy in Brazil apparently to not have a brown out wow but he was backup plans work a lot of times well they race again they race again they race again they race again they race again they race again they race again a week of half I'll be posting about it on my I want to see the yeah I want to see that because I want to watch it live

Las Vegas there you go all right Dale junior you'll be in Kansas City this Saturday for an autograph session at the World of Will Show. That will be from noon to 2 p.m. on Saturday. Go to otorama.com for more information. Come see us. There's so many cool people that come through the line. You know who goes to the line? It's the kind of guys that need to save their marriage with an autograph.

And then there's some very interesting items that they want you to autograph. Like what? Well, I mean, there was this giant fishing lure. Whoa. Right? What? There was a huge giant fishing lure. Like how big?

Probably two, three feet big. Long. Oh, my goodness. I have no idea. I'm not, I mean. Yeah. We're not exactly the anglers. It was like a mountain dew fishing lure.

As they are, as you would expect. Yeah. And nothing like a mountain dew fishing lure. Anyhow, I would like to take Lee and capture that content and share with everybody what's going on. All right. Last thing, NASCAR heads to Atlanta this week. Dale Jr. reminds me of a particular win in 2004. I was just wondering if you remembered anything about that race when you won Atlanta.

It was your one victory at Atlanta, right? Yeah. I passed. Do you remember anything? Do you remember who finished behind you? Yeah. Like right behind you. Yeah, I think Jeremy Mayfield.

Yes, he remembers. Rain Man delivers. Do you remember who led the most laps that day? Tony Stewart. Yes. He remembers. You do remember these races. That was a good time.

I tried to tell you. I try to tell you. Well, that was it for White Flag. What do you got to close us out, though? Well, Mike, you know what we have at Atlanta this weekend? It's a new package. Oh, that's right. We do.

I know you love talking about it. Let's start over and talk about it some more. And that's it, Dale, final thoughts? I got something. Came in on social. Big fan of the show, but he's criticizing us. Some cat named Ron Caps. NHRAGRAGRACAPS.

Yep, he says he's glad to have the new Dale Jr. Download on his DVR, but he has to say he misses the couch. What the world. Come on, Cap. It's because he hasn't sat on it. So here's the story, Ron. So we wanted to keep the couch, but we had this new employee named Leah and she said, if I'm here, that thing's got to go.

And so we got rid of the couch, Ron. It's all my fault, Ron. She's got your trophy and no couch. We got no couch. Blamele it. So Ron Caps is really criticizing us for. Yeah. I've seen a couple people in there saying they missed the couch.

I got to say, man, this room's badass and I love the table. Way better. Yes. Take that, Ron. There you go, Ron. I appreciate everybody for tuning in. I want to thank Tony Stewart for coming all the way over here on a busy busy schedule to be part of our show.

And remember, you can listen to this in a podcast form, but we also are on NBCSN 5 o'clock Eastern on Tuesday. I hope you enjoyed the show. We'll talk to you next week. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Dirty Mo.