The Dale Jr. Download - 247 - The Healing Begins with Steve Park

Episode Date: March 12, 2019

Steve Park joins Dale Earnhardt Jr. for this emotional yet fun episode. 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.

Yeah, you can't hold me down. Yeah, how you like me now? Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. We're another episode of the Dale Jr. Download. With me, as always, is my co-host, Mike Davis. How you doing, Mike? I'm well. How are you? I'm pretty good.

We've got Leia Vaughn and Matthew Dillner behind the glass over there running the keyboards and whatnot. What are y'all doing back there? Yeah, what's going on back there? There's a lot of weird conversations that just go on back here all the week. I bet. I'm excited. We've got a great guest today. Steve Park.

I mean, I haven't talked to Steve in a really long time, which I'm kind of ashamed to admit. So this is going to be a lot of fun for everybody in the room to see what he's been up to, ask him a lot of cool questions about our past together. We also got a new partner this week. Let's hear about it. Yeah, butcher box. So everything's coming in the mail these days. That's right.

You don't even have to go shop anywhere. Just get delivered to the house. And now they'll send you beef, chicken. All kinds of things. I actually got order myself. We'll talk about that later with Butcherbox. Use the promo code Dale Jr. That's D-A-L-E-J-R, no space.

I hope everybody knows that to spell that by now. Well, I just worry that they might spell Junior out. Yeah, right. And they may put a space in there, not know any better. So we'll make it clear to use the proper promo code. And we got a lot of things to talk about. We had a fight on Bitt Road this week, road trips, all kinds, all kinds of different things. I went to UNC, Chapel Hill.

So we're going to get into all that during this show. But before we do that, obviously we want to talk about a longtime partner of ours. So Pristine Auction's been a partner on this show. How long, Mike? It seems like... It seems like forever. Yeah. And so Pristine Auction is basically an online sports auction site.

You can go on it. Well, they have other things side sports. You damn. And we're going to tell you about one of those items later in the show. But you can bid on and win. in authentic sports memorabilia from the comfort of your home. pristineauction.com offers a daily auction where all bids start at $1. So everything starts really cheap and that's a great way to snag some pretty awesome deals.

There's no waiting. You hurry right on over, check it all out. They also, in addition to the daily auction, have other formats and they have a 10-minute auction, which is probably my favorite. It's really quick. The items will pop up. They start at $1 in 10 minutes. They're gone.

They're gone. Really, really great deals through those 10-minute auctions as well. You catch a lot of people sleeping. That's right. Some of these deals are insane, Mike. That's right. They guarantee the authenticity of all their items. Everything you purchase comes fully authenticated by the most trusted sources.

And I know this because I've signed myself for Pristine. Everything on there, I know that it's signed by that person. There's no fakes. And we've had guests on here that validated that they signed for them. That's right. When you go to other places, there are fakes. There are fakes. Lots of fakes, man.

Jerks. Don't be fake. Right now, there's a sign Jeff Gordon trading card on there from the Rainbow Warrior Days. What is the Rainbow Warrior Days? Is that a precise? I know. Is it a precise time? Yes.

Yeah, 90s. Before he went to the flames. The precise time is the 90s. That's right. It's only 18 bucks. I mean, that's pretty damn high. I'd be proud if I was Jeff Gordon. That's right.

He did not start off at a dollar. This ain't no 8 by 10, which we love. Well, some of you. Some of you. This is just a trading card. But if you look at the picture, there's a reason it's $18. Yeah, go ahead. Look at the hair.

Yeah. I know you love that hair. I know you love that hair. You wrote that in there. You wanted me to say it that I'm not saying. They don't like the bangs. There's a line in here that dinner put the hair alone is worth $18. What, Mike, what's the best part about this whole thing?

Excluding the hair? I mean, listen, it's affordable. And to be honest with you, if you spend any time on this website, you can't, there ain't enough time to spend. There's rabbit holes you can go down. I mean, we're talking about sports memorabilia. I get it. Yes.

All right. Oh, man. I am vindicated. Do me a favor. I'm not cutting it out. Oh, God. Can I get that for Ritobria? Rintone.

Can I get that for my Texcone? Dang it. Anyways. No, it's affordable. Can we get that in the show open next week? All right. All right. I'll never get old.

This is got, this is, I have a feeling. We're going to get a lot of mileage out of that. Dang it. Just take your time, Davis. God. All right. So there's a lot of things on this website. You can go down all these rabbit holes and they're all super affordable.

And I'm telling you, I mean, it's just, it's better than any other auction site I've ever been on. You talk about rabbit holes later in the show, we'll tell you one of the rabbit holes that Mike ended up down and how that paid off. Yes. Check out pristineauction.com now. You'll be hooked. It's free to register, free to bid, and you only pay for the items you win. That's pristine auction spelled P-R-I-S-T-I-N-E-Oction.com.

And when you register, do us a big favor. Please select the Dale Jr. download podcast from the drop-down menu in the How Did You Hear from us section. So that lets them know that we sent you there and they will continue to support this podcast. They're great partners. We've learned so much about them and appreciate their business. All right. Well, let's get to the guest, man.

Let's bring in Steve Park. Let's do it. Local favorite Steve Park led the field. And Steve Park driving the team United Ceramic Tile cars with his dad Bob. Steve Park in the Navy above New York now has made his way to Victory Lane. With an Earnhardt, Hart-in-Hart in his head, Steve Park will drive to Victory Lane. I brought tears in my eyes.

Steve got turns around a wave that black cat with the number three to a crowd. All right, so we got our guest here, Steve. What's up, man? Hey, what's going on? Good to see you. It's been a long time. It's been a long time. But, man, you look great.

We've been keeping up with everything you've been doing. And it seems like your life is getting even more exciting. Now you stepped out of the race car. It's pretty crazy. I've been pretty busy. Yeah. What have you been doing? Well, tell you truth, I've been, started my own business about three years ago.

opened up a Batteries and Bulbs franchise right here in Moorsville. Decided to raise my family and stay in Moorsville, even though I retired in racing. We love the Lake area. We love the Moorsville area. So, you know, we plan on raising our family and being here for a while. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. Battery and bulbs. Battery and bulbs.

Yeah, batteries and bulbs. We do cell phone repairs and also keys and key vives for cars. So it's not just batteries and bulbs. It's pretty unique. I'm actually wearing a shirt says we fix it. Nobody fixes anything anymore. Whatever happened to the TV repair man. Yeah.

When I grew up, there's a TV repair man. Now you don't even see those guys anymore. So we do fix things and try to keep people going and try to keep those little kids and those little battery operated cars. That's right. It's every kind of battery. I mean, like, you know, because I learned something over the weekend. I had never heard of a quadruple a battery, by the way.

Oh, wow. Have you? No. So there's a double and a triple. There's a double and a triple, but my computer. My computer has this little stylus and it quit working. And so I'm like, what the heck? And now, oh, this thing comes apart.

And I pull it out in a 4A batter smaller than a AAA. And I'm like, what in the world is this? Where are you going to find this thing? Right? Well, you know, I'm right off 150. This is when we knew we needed you. By the way, you thought you were here to talk about the old days. No, we needed a 4A batter.

Yeah, well, you should have told me. I would have brought some in, man. That would have been pretty cool. But, yeah, we have them. Like I said, the long and short of it, we have batteries from heroinades, all the way to track the trailer batteries and everything in between. And then we have lighting where we could light a headlight in a car to, you know, we could light the parking lot here at JR Motorsports and everything in between.

I bought this illegal laser on the internet. This is fine. Let's talk about this. This was a long time ago. It said that you could shoot this laser for miles. And so I bought it. And it came, I didn't know it was illegal. It comes in this packaging.

and it said, it had all this kind of Chinese writing on it or Japanese writing on it, and it said pin, like an ink pen. Like that's how it got through all the, and, which I don't know. But it had no batteries, had no charger. And I'm like, well, how do I, so a place like yours would have come in real handy to it. Yeah. You've done anything for any illegal activity, Steve? No.

Well, I needed this special battery. It wasn't just going to take any old battery. That's right. And I went to get this battery, and the guy's like, be careful with these. Well, lithium, I mean, usually when somebody says, be careful with this, you know, the early stages of lithium had some issues like we know about those hover rounds where the kids were riding. They were going on fire and then they were getting recalled and stuff. But, I've had no problems with my laser. I did prop it up on the railing of my front porch and shined at sort of low level across the sky and then got in my truck and drove down the street to see how far this thing went across the sky.

and I got beyond a mile and could still see this laser. Yeah, it's crazy. You know what you can't? I don't know if I'm getting myself in real trouble here. I could shine this laser at the end of my driveway, which is a half a mile, and it would light up the entire cockpit of the car at the gate. That's amazing. Just from an illegal standpoint, just don't shine it up in the sky.

Yeah, I know. This is something you don't shine at helicopters and airplanes, because it'll hit them. It'll hit them. And I don't know exactly what the law is behind it. it, but... I don't have that laser anymore. Just as you tracked it to the end of your driveway, they can track it down to the ground where it's coming from.

And come get me. And big trouble. Yeah. Well, I didn't think we're going to get into that. Hey, you know, what you need to say is you use the laser for your cat because cats love that. I need to get a cat. I thought you might have had tears. I don't have anymore.

Yeah, I used to have cats. So, man, where do we start? I don't even know where to start. You drove for DEI for two years in the AC Delco car. And I remember that team when dad drove for it, I remember that team as dad's sort of home family team with Tony Senior, Rick Bossed, eventually Tony Erie Jr. Jeff Green got put in the car, had some reasonable results,

but the team was still sort of growing, understanding how to run a full schedule because dad never ran a full schedule with the team. You get in the car, ran two years, got them to Victory Lane. You won in Nashville. Yeah. And you built a lot of the cars. You worked in the shop. This is a period of time back then when you spent a lot of hours during the week working on the cars, right?

Yeah, yeah, all the time. I mean, my background came from building my own race cars and racing up in New England. And, you know, I used to work a full-time job. People don't realize that when you're racing not for a living, I used to work a full-time job so I could eat and pay my rent. And then I used to race. And, you know, if you made an extra couple hundred bucks, that was great. If you didn't, you know, you still had your job to fall back on. And, you know, so we used to work till five, six o'clock at night, have something to eat, go to the race shop, work till 12, 1 o'clock in the morning every single night.

That was just a routine that we were used to. and when I actually moved down to Charlotte and went to work for your dad, I thought it was pretty amazing because, I mean, I was like, man, it was like my dream job. I can just get up in the morning and go to the shop and work on race cars. And this was awesome. And I think I told you dad, I said, you know, I just need enough money to live and a bed. Just put a bed in the shop somewhere and give me enough money so I can feed myself. And we'll go racing and win a lot of races.

And, yeah, obviously, I guess like that. at me. So, uh, but the point of my story is, uh, it was like the first day or second day I was working full time in this dream job. And it's like 4.30 and I'm seeing all the guys going to the bathroom. And I'm like, I asked Tony Yuri. He said, hey, what's everybody doing? Oh, man, they're washing their hands. They're getting ready to go home. I'm like, man, it's not even five o'clock. And then I'm thinking to myself, if everybody leaves, what am I going to do? Right. What am I going to do in a shop till? Until one o'clock in the morning. And a lot of times I stayed because when I originally moved down here, I actually lived in your dad's house in a spare

bedroom for a while until he woke me up at 4.30 in morning every morning, and I begged Ty Norris to take me into a spare room in his house. So your dad wouldn't wake me up so early every morning because I'd work till midnight, 1 o'clock in the morning. And I can't tell you how many times it'd be 9, 10 o'clock at night and your dad would walk in. And I'd hear the cowboy boots kind of marching across the floor. and I'd look and he'd be like park what the hell you're still doing here i'm like tell we've got to race this weekend i got to you know we got to get this car done you know everybody left the five o'clock and i mean your house is only right there could buy through a rock and hit it and i'll just walk

home when i'm done done working on the race cars and he said well just you know you don't need to work all night long you worked all day so that's what i'm used to so it's more of what you used to then something different you don't understand because i'm going to wake you up at 430 you need to go Yeah, well, I'd tell you what, and the way I was woken up, you know, a lot of people don't know is you used to kick, I don't know if you ever kicked your bed, but he used to kick the end of my bed where the bed would almost rise up off the ground, slam back down the ground. And he'd be like, Park, get up, looking, I'm like, it's still dark out. And he'd be like, get up, you're going to sleep your life away. He said, I got all these new deer, I want you to come take a look at it. So I was like, we'd have to go down on the farm, 4.30, 5 o'clock in morning, we'd go down on the farm.

check out some of the new livestock he bought. And what are you thinking in your head when you're looking? I know you're probably going, oh, well, that's awesome, right? I mean, you're saying all the right things. What are you thinking? Well, I'm thinking, you know, he's crazy for waking me up so damn early in the morning, first of all. And then I race cars. That's all I did.

I didn't hunt. I didn't fish. Never really had any interest in hunting or fishing. And he was just such a big hunter and fisher and knew everything you need to know about deer and livestock and everything that I've learned, I learned from him because my dad, all he did was race. So I never knew a deer could jump like an eight-foot-high fence. And he showed me that one time. He had one deer.

I kept jumping over the fence. And we went down there with a big red spotlight and headlights off on the truck. And we're going 60 miles an hour across a grass field in the dark with a big red spotlight. He's like, keeping on that deer right there. Keep an eye on him. And I was watching him, watching him. and that deer reared back looked like he was sitting down

or maybe trying to take a poop or something. And next thing you know, next thing you know, he just scaled like this eight foot high fence and I was like, oh my God, I didn't know a deer could jump that high. And he's like,

yeah, he's one of my prize won. And he, we got to get him back in here. Carl Lewis. We call him Carl Lewis. Yeah. He can jump.

So, I mean, the stories are endless. And I know I've told the story before about, you know, being with your dad. He always had, memory always had electric fences. Every fence he had garage door openers on his visor.

He had like 15 of them. And you'd come up to an electric fence. And we'd come down on his dirt road going back on the farm. We're cruising along probably 50 miles an hour. And he's hitting all these clickers on top of his visor. And that fence ain't budging. And I'm looking at it. I'm trying to time.

And I'm like, oh, we're going 50 miles an hour. I'm like, even if he hit the brakes right now, we're going to hit that fence. All of a sudden, boom, the fence starts opening. and there ain't no way this fence is going to get all the way open before we get this truck through it at 50 miles an hour. So at the last second

I was seat belted in and braced up against a floor and if you know what I mean tightened up and I was like I was like I'm like damn we're not going to make it and he looked at me as that fence was open and he said you don't tell

the seven time Winston Cup champion had a drive and we went through that fence and you heard boom and it knocked both mirrors off both sides of the truck And I looked at him, he had that half-mustache grin, waiting for me to say something, because we did make it, the things that didn't make it were the mirrors. Yeah. So, oh, my gosh.

Pretty, pretty funny story. So online, on Twitter, one of the fans was talking about the red-headed stepchild, which is a race car that we had a lot of success in, and you said, to ask Dale Jr. who built that car. I want you. Maybe you could tell us. Ah, that's funny because that was one of the first cards that I had built for DEI. And basically the story went to one of the big tracks.

It might have been Charlotte. And then we were getting ready to go race at Hickory. And we're taking the same car. And I said, if I know anything, I know how to get a car around a half mile because that was my background. I knew the car we took to, you know, a mile and a half track was not the car we needed to run a half mile. And so we went and we struggled.

And I think Randy LaGroix won with Steve Bird. I went to Dale and said, man, if I know anything, I know how to build a car for a short track. I know we're going to Nashville next and let me have a shot of building a car. So we did. And I think we were using Hutchson Pagan cars at the time. And this car was built by Mike Loughlin, his group. And they built a car and we went and picked it up and we did divide ourselves on it. And the reason why I got the name the Redhead Stepchild was because anytime somebody worked on the car,

Now, remember the past story. I was there 12 hours a day. So anytime somebody worked on the car and they put a bracket on the car and I thought it was too heavy, I'd wait from to go home at 4.35 o'clock, cut the bracket off. So everybody got mad at me that was working on the car. So everybody boycotted working on the car. And long story short, I finally got the car done. And we went to Nashville to test with Tony Urey and Jr. and 2Bier and a couple of guys.

And the car that we tested with for two days, It was pretty fast, and I kept begging them, roll this car out, roll this car out. So to appease me, they rolled the car out, and it was like a tenth slower. And then one change, and it was a tenth faster. So Tony Uri said, man, this car's pretty damn good, you know. So we took it back, and Delcum in the shop, he said every car we had was painted gray. The frame was painting gray, and then had the blue and red AC Delco and white body on it. He'd come in a shop, and he told the body guys, he said, you paint this car,

bright red, the inside. And so they did. And I said, why do you got to paint it red? He said, because when I'm sitting in my motorhome at one of the NASCAR cup races, and you're running around in the back and it's got that red frame, I know it's like, I know it's that car he spent all that money on trying to think. I always wondered why they painted that chassis red. I thought you knew that.

He wasn't know why. He'll know why. It was pretty funny because, I mean, he was so smart. he knew that he probably wouldn't be at the race, the short track race. And when he was sitting in the motorhome, he wanted to be able to see that red chassis. He swore it running the back, and I swore he'd win the race. And, you know, thankfully, I was right. And it was so funny because, you know, he called me in Victory Lane.

And he said, how's that Redhead stepchild? And I was like, oh, my God, there was the first time, you know, it was called the Redhead Stepchild, because I would always complain, I, we're not going to get it done. Nobody's helped me work on it. And he said because you keep cutting everything off That everybody helps you put on the car, you know So anyway, just a great story That is the car you won your first race with?

Yeah, won the first race. And you raced it too. Yeah, I won... In 9899, I think we won seven races with that car. I mean, it was everywhere we took it. You remember the stepchild? Yeah. Yeah, because we had the stepchild and then the step bomber, right?

Yeah. Because we built another one. or Dale Jr. had another one built from Mike Loughlin, and it was supposed to be the twin of this car. They won a bunch of races with, and they struggled with it. I think we ended up looking at it, measuring it,

sending it back to Mike. They redid the clip on and brought it back, and Dale Jr. ran it like 10 laps and said, all right, we're back. Those cars, the difference in those cars, it had a drops now. So being to everyone listening to pivot points on the front clip, were dropped.

And that just for whatever reason lowered the center of gravity and all the measurements and everything else made the car just turned so much better in the center of the corner. The car, if a lot of people remember the car that we ran at Richmond in 01, was a Gossamer car. Was that O'1? I don't remember. I think it was. That was a drop snout as well with a Hutch's a Pagan dropsout. But the drops now, why would a drop snout work so well at short tracks?

versus the bigger, you know, one and a half mile tracks. You didn't run a drop in out. Yeah, a lot of what it did was just like what you said. It just really helped the front end turn better. And, you know, being the drops now, like you said, it changed the points in the front end, but it actually lowered the roll center. So it gave the front more grip.

Yeah. There was different camera changes, which was better. You didn't want to have a lot of camera change on a big track because you're going 180 miles an hour, and it's a difference between 100 and 180 if you believe that. But, you know, the way the car, would set in the corner, have a low center of gravity, have a low roll center, and have a, have a quick camera change. It would actually help the car rotate to the center of the corner.

Makes a ton of sense. And it made a ton of sense, and that's what we learned and what we used, you know, like it tracks as big as New Hampshire. New Hampshire was a mile. You did this with your mods? We did this with our Bush North car. Okay. And we worked with with the modifies too. So different type of suspension, different type of weight. But we learned a lot with the Bush North car and racing against guys like, you know, Kelly Moore and Dick McCabe and just all these guys that would just, you know, dominate Andy Santere up in the Bush North.

You know, they all had it figured out where they'd get these roll centers, you know, either centered up or moved to the left or lowered and just get the car to react in a different way. Which when I moved down south, you know, the majority of the tracks that we ran were a half mile or smaller. And then when I moved down south, the majority of tracks were a mile and a halfs are bigger. So, you know, it just seemed like once we got a chance to go to a short track, I was like, all right, now we're in my wheelhouse. You know, I'm still learning how to run some of these big tracks and aerodynamics and everything else, but the short tracks I felt like I knew pretty well. So you had great success in the Xfinity Series, and I think that that team was poised whether I drove it or you drove it to win and do great things going into 1998-99. and I want to credit you to the success we had with that program in those two years.

I watched you move into the Cup Series, and from my recollection, we built a couple cars, had a couple races. It wasn't really that great. I was so apprehensive about how that Cup team was going to do. I knew, and I've learned since, how difficult it is to go from the Xfinity Series to the Cup Series and how tough it is to get good and competitive with equipment and people in the Cup Series. but y'all did it. You went out there in the first year and you won at Watkins Glen,

and then you went to Rockingham in 2001 and won right out of the gate. Talk about that experience. And maybe were you apprehensive as that cup team was getting developed and built and those cars were getting built? Were you nervous about moving into that cup level and against that competition? Well, you hit nail in head because, again, you know, spending the time with your dad, I'd go to a lot of tests that were close, Darlington, Rockingham, Charlotte, and I would just go with him. And he just wanted me to wear a headset, listen to how the driver and the crew chief communicate,

because that's what you're going to have to learn how to do as you move from the nationwide to the Cup Series. And it was so funny because I was just running my first year in Nationwide, and we were running good, and we were coming home from Charlotte Motor Speedway. and I was driving and your dad was kicked back in the passenger seat and he, out of the blue, he just says, he said, if you were going to run a cup race, where would you want to run it? I says, Dale, what makes you think I'm ready to run a cup race? He says, well, what makes you think we're ready to build a cup car? I was like, well, you got a point there.

And it was that factor of realizing, hey, you know what, you grow with us and we'll grow with you. And it was kind of that understanding, which it takes a little bit of the pressure off you because Dale's not thinking, okay, well, here's the best of the best of the best, and why are you running 15th? You know, he's just, I remember sitting down with a couple of sponsors that we had too. And as we started running in the Cubs series, I think, with Burger King on a part-time basis, he adamantly told some of the CEOs, he said, you know what? he said you invested your money with me and my team and we're going to win races he says we're not ready to win right now but when we are he wanted to build his own cars he wanted to build his own engines because he wanted to control everything you know not being controlling but he wanted to if that engine wasn't good he wanted to walk in the end of the shop and rattle some heads and say why is our power not good if our cars aren't good he wanted to go in the fab shop but once you get that winning combination well now you have it you know behind close you're not you're those doors. You're not buying it. You're hiring the people. You're putting the right people in place.

And I just think it makes a wins that much more enjoyable. Hey, I got a question. You know, we've had a lot of old guests. You had the Yuri's on to start the year. And I've really, we found a lot of enjoyment kind of recalling how Dale Jr. even got into that Xfinity series ride, Bush series at the time that he took over for you, basically. Now that I'm hearing yours, you had a lot of pride in ownership in those cars. So what do you recall of hearing that Dale Jr. was going to take over that ride in 98? It was excitement. I mean, how did you find out? How did you know? Dale probably told me. I mean, I junior was senior because really what had happened was I had really moved into the Cup series because, you know, Dale was just like, you know what, we got a brand new team. We're going to be

building cars. You know, you're new to this. You're still learning. So let's learn with this. this new technology in the Cup series, and then we're going to take Dale Jr., move him into the Bush or Nationwide Series. And that's when I asked a question, you know, do you think I'm ready? He says, well, do you think we're ready? And the answer on both sides was no.

I wasn't ready. You know, his team wasn't ready, but we both knew that we could develop that team into a team that was capable of winning races. You know, we were just hoping we had the time on our side because, you know, this sport has driven so much by the sponsors that, you know, we didn't have 15 years to develop a race team. You know, we had three.

So, you know, we had to work hard. And one thing, you know, I've never shot away from is hard work. So the more of a challenge and the hard of the work, the more you dig in and make things happen. But, you know, when Dale Jr. stepped up, I mean, when I first moved here, Dale Jr. was still running street stocks and then late models and stuff. and I remember Wesley was your crew chief. Yeah. And he used to come into the deerhead shop,

and he'd roll one of your cars in and start working on it. And we had, I think, three or four nationwide cars, and we'd have to roll them out just to have room enough to work on them. I mean, just the sports changed so much, but those times, I mean, you can remember, Jr., those times we used to have so much fun because we'd work hard, we'd race hard, and then, you know, we didn't travel in airplanes. We traveled in team bands and Sunny, who's no longer with us when we miss them dearly.

You know, he used to be the truck driver, and he used to drive the team band, and we'd get in the team band, and he'd have a couple six-packs of Budweiser sitting in there, so we'd all have something to drink on the way back to the hotel and stuff. So it's just different. It was more like, you know, we all had each other's back. Yeah. And, you know, nothing is more rewarding than to win races, not only from a driver's, standpoint, but, you know, the Uri's and all the guys that were that were building the race cars and doing the bodies.

And I remember, you know, when we moved into the new shop, it was the, it was the nationwide car or the Bush car and then Brown Hornaday's truck team, that was truck team. Yeah, that's right. So we, you know, if you look at that shop today in comparison, you'd think, we ran, we ran a truck team and a nationwide team out of that shop. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Shops have changed. Yeah. Sure have. So let's talk about Darlington, the crash at Darlington. How difficult was that on you? What do you remember from that experience? And how difficult was that on you to work through, to rehab through and to get back to the racetrack?

It was a lot. I mean, a lot of not so much rehabbing, but a lot of emotional because what happens is in our sport, it's a first time that I've ever felt like, you know, tainted property or injured property where, you know, when you're at the pinnacle, when you're at, you know, the Winston Cup or the Sprint Cup level, it's hard to maintain your job without performance. But then it's hard to also try to find another job when you've been injured, especially with a head injury because people think, oh, you know, he'll never be right again.

So really what I went through, the hardest thing I went through was, Ed, the loss of your dad. You know, that was something big that we all had to go through. I mean, not only from a driver standpoint, but from a fan standpoint and a son standpoint, you know, on top of coming back from an injury, and, you know, at that time I was back, then things just kind of seemed like they fell apart. Like, we just didn't have that continuity within the team. You know, we were just, just, things just didn't seem right. I mean, Paul Andrews was one of the godsend that came to the team that really propelled us to a team that was Caleb. when it races quite a bit. And, you know,

and after Dale's passing, it just seemed like, you know, it took a lot of, it took a lot of wind out of a lot of people's sales. And I think when, you know, when we struggled and,

and the team decided to go a different way, and I think they moved Jeff Green back to the Penzole car, and then I went to the AOL car for Richard Childress, you know, it just seemed like at the end of that tenure, you don't get those offers anymore.

You know, you don't get, you know, For lack of a better term, if you want to run a 20th place team, you're going to run 20th. If you're going to try to win races, you've got to race for a team that's capable of winning races or trying to win races. And those opportunities wouldn't come my way anymore, and the reason why they wouldn't come my way anymore is because I was hurt. I was recovered, but people don't look at it in that aspect of it. So for me, the only challenges I ever had is how I challenged myself. So to me, after getting hurt, spending a few years, you know, bouncing around a cup teams and then going to Brendan Gullen's truck team, which gave me a great opportunity,

until I won that race in California. That's when I was back. It was like three years later, you know, it was like, you know, nobody's talking about, when are you going to win again? When are you going to win again? When are you going to win again? since you've been hurt, when are you going to win? Just winning that race was, for me, help put everybody else to bed.

Like the questions from the media weren't being, where are you going to win again? They were like Steve Parks back. You know, he's back in Victory Lane. And that's what I worked all that time for. Never mind rehab him because, you know, I mean, I was rehabbed him back in a car and probably less than a year. But, you know, results weren't there. so then all of a sudden, you know, you start searching for results,

but finally just getting back to Victory Lane, even though it was in the Chuck Series, took that label of when are you going to win next to, okay, let's go on to something different. I remember that day in Darlington and went to the hospital as soon as they said you were going to the hospital. I met you there. They wheeled you in. It was frightening.

But I also remember the first time we got back on the racetrack. We had a private test over at Charlotte, Speedway and then they took me and you and Michael Walchrop and they put us all in the racetrack together. Yeah. And it was basically so you could be out there not only just by yourself, but also around cars and get a real good sense of how you felt. And so you, do you remember that test? Yeah. About how long after the accident was that? It must have, it felt like maybe four to six months, maybe. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, six, seven months. Okay. I remember with Dr. Petty and the Charlotte Motor.

speedway. I would spend almost three days a week running a legend's car out on the back track behind the racetrack, yeah. And Dr. Petty was there and a lot of people from DEI. And again, it was just getting reacclimated to

be behind the wheel of a car where I didn't feel like I had to reacclimate myself, but I think I had to reacclimate everybody else's thought processes around me. Sure. And, you know, when times are good and then when went to Caraway with a cup car and, um, and times are good. You know, Paul Andrews is the first

guy that would say, I got no problem going to the track with this guy. You know, I mean, and like I said, me and Paul won a lot of races and have him say that it was a breath of fresh air. I was like, well, at least my, at least my crew chief still believes in me. Yeah. So when you're doing the, the backtrack legend stuff, were you healed by then? And was Dr. Petty? Were you looking to, uh, earn his clearance or had you already done that? Yeah, well, no, we were trying to earn clearance to get back into NASCAR and it wasn't for Dr. Petty. It was for NASCAR, but Dr. Petty, as Junior knows, is highly regarded with NASCAR.

So he wanted to be there. He supervised all my recovery right up until I got into a race car, you know, got into the legends car and he wanted to be there and he wanted to witness what was going on before he gave his clearance on it. And, you know, it wasn't long. at all, you know, we got clearance to go back racing again. And I kept going to the, I kept going to the legend car track as much as they'd let me because I wanted to make sure my skills were fine-tuned before I got back in that race

car again. And then, like Junior said, we went and did that test in Charlotte. And I think it was really just to prove to other people. Yeah. You know, I mean, I think it was proved to other drivers. So I'm sure they were asking Michael and Juniors, well, what do you think about him? I mean, he's okay, you know. And I didn't sense any apprehensiveness from you personally.

Yeah. It was really, I think, for everyone else to see and watch you and just go, all right, yeah, this is going to be fine. Yourself included. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which, I mean, you know, I'm in my car.

I'm fine. You know, I feel like that, you know, if Steve thinks he's ready, let's go. And, but I think, you know, there was a lot of people in the industry and in, in, inside the office and so forth from the top down that just wanted to make sure that Steve felt good and that they felt good about him being out there. But that was an interesting experience to go through and certainly paid off for me later in my life when I went through the same similar situation. How rewarding was that win at Daytona in the Modified?

That's funny you say that. People talk about that and there's a lot of mixed emotions about that. But that was sort of the theme of the night was moving people out of the way. Yeah. And we got a great soundbite from what Stefanik, wasn't it, Mike Safanik? We got a great, great post-race sound bike that we have to thank you for. Yeah. That had, I just remember the happiness on your face after that race.

You were back in your, back to your roots. Roots, yeah. You know, and I think that it was just sort of a great book-in for you on your career. Do you see it that way? Yeah, you're exactly right. The only reason why I did it was because, I grew up racing modifieds. And when they announced they were going to have a modified race at Daytona,

and I was partly retired at the time. I said, man, you know, I'm going to, I've got to find myself a ride because in the record books, like you were saying, you know, when you go and look or your kids go and look in the record books and has my modified career, which was absolutely stellar, got me to the point to come to work for DEI. And then they have a modified race at Daytona. I wanted to be on the book My goal was to be in the top 10 You say, oh, Modified's at Daytona

Because they used to come here with my dad When they ran the road course The big track And they used to run the big track And put the fenders on them And build those cars and stuff So I was never in the record books For running the modified at Daytona

Or winning at Daytona I'm like junior How many wins you got at Daytona? 18, I think 18, yeah Well, I got one There you go I don't need tell people It's in a modified time

I say, you ever win in Daytona? Oh, yeah, I won there once. It don't matter what races it is. I count them all. Yeah, exactly. Nine points race, it doesn't matter. Daytona's a win. And I was sitting with your dad in the grandstands for that one,

and knowing your family for as long as I did, I've never seen your dad so happy before than when you won that race. Yeah, and like I said, it was pretty neat because I hadn't been in a modified in so long. And, you know, my son, there he was like three so he you know he'll probably never remember but we got his picture anyway and my dad was there and it's kind of like we went there to have fun you know went there to have fun went there to go back modified racing and um we got i don't know we got a and a tangle up and the heat

race running third and we had it starting to back um and we just methodically worked our way to the front and that track in the short amount of time that we were there you just knew the inside was the only that you wanted to be. So I remember when I was racing, I'd actually count what position I was in, if I was an even number or an odd number. And I was always trying to put myself in that odd-numbered position, even if I had to drop back a spot.

Because I knew if a caution came out, I'd gain five, just being on the inside. So my whole plan almost got ruined because we got down to the end of the race. I was running third. and a caution came out. No, I was running fourth and knew I didn't want to be on the outside. And I muscled my way to third and I got the third.

And I was pushing for the lead for the win. And caution came out. And I said, oh, man, this is going to ruin it. Because now I'm second. Now I've got to start on the outside. So when we start on the outside, we're able to get our way back down to the bottom again. And then as we know, we had another restart. towards the end and I actually believe it or not I actually got pushed into Mike and Mike wasn't real

happy we had spoke probably about three or four days later give him some time to cool off and he said we looked at the tape and he said you know we saw your front tires locked up and you being pushed yeah there's not much you can do and all I thought was it ruined my chance to win the race because I wanted to pass Mike on the inside because I was better getting up off the corner drag race down the back stretch side by side and three and four and come off a four and for the win. And, you know, obviously, who's ever better is going to win the race, definitely didn't want to spin

them out, wanted to race them, and, you know, it just turned out being a little bit different. But the best thing that came out of it is Mike's never been on Jay Leno, but now... That's right. That's funny. I've been with Jay a few times, and we were laughing because it was

kind of funny, and Mike was definitely mad. I mean, that was true passion. Great sound bike. Great sound bike. True passion. I've raced them a lot up in New England. And when we got a chance, talk, he said, Steve, I've been racing with you for, you know, 15, 20 years.

He said, I just, I've never raced like that with you, and you've never raced me like that. And I said, well, I really thought my race was ruined being pushed because I was trying to get a move on the inside and got pushed to the outside and ended up being good because when I ran into the back of him and he spun, I had a room to go by on the outside. Yeah.

So you haven't raced in a few years. How are you replacing that, I mean, you have to miss it like all drivers do, and how are you replacing that, you know, that competitiveness? And you said, do you have a son? Is he interested in racing? Doing any racing? He was early on, and I pushed him pretty hard, you know, when he was, like, four, you know, I got him like this Borrell European go-kart, and we'd go to GoPro, and he'd run.

And he did good. You know, he was really competitive, good times. I had him out in a couple different kid cart races. Kids, I think he was a year or two, too young. And my and I fibbed about his age and got him up in a class. And I'd tell him, you know, he'd qualify like fifth. And they'd do a standing start. And I told them, they'd say, you know, standing start,

you can't leave until the green flag comes out. So I told my four-year-old, they said, the soon as you see the flag man move his elbow, you just pull out, drive around everybody and go on the lead. So sure enough, everybody's sitting. still and he pulled out and drove around everybody and he had about a 10-cart lead and ended up losing the lead to some some champion kids from Ohio or something and and then it was about a year after that he just lost interest I think he got to the age where he found team sports yeah where

he wanted to be with his buddies and he wanted to play baseball and basketball and he wanted to talk dirt on the sidelines are you one of the dads that goes to the games and talks to dirt to the other dads yeah well I don't talk to I try not to but I really, it's hard, man, because I'm so competitive that I'm usually on my son's case and I usually got to try to remember to chill out a little bit because, you know, he's only nine years old right now and he just made a traveling baseball team, so we're getting ready to travel around for baseball. So that's keeping you busy?

That's keeping me busy. My new business is keeping me busy. So I'm hearing that you don't necessarily have that. If you're channeling the competitiveness in other ways, but you've managed to life after racing is okay for you. You're fine. Yeah. I mean, you know, junior, looking at him, I mean, he's, you know, an unparalleled race car driver. And, you know, for me, I've raised cars since I was 15 years old.

I ran go-kart since I was like 10 or 12 years old. And, you know, like Dale Jr. knows the grind of the sport. You know, it's a young man's sport. It's, it's tough. You know, I'm 51 years old, and it's tough as you get older to be away from home all the time, living in a motorhome, you know, all the sponsor obligations that you have. You've got to fly here, fly there. And now I'm really enjoying being a dad.

Yeah. You know, as you can attest, it's just, it's just amazing that, you know, you can create this human being and watch it grow. and then it's amazing how sometimes like I'll see my wife and my son and then all of a sudden he'll do something where I just see me in him and it's just amazing feeling to know that

you know you've created this thing and you're going to watch him grow and flourish and and you know you want to wish him the best and people say oh you want him to race I'm like I want him to do anything he wants to do that he enjoys I mean you know I race my dad raised

you know, it doesn't mean he has to be a racer. If he wants to be, I'm going to support him doing that. If he wants to be a garbage man, I'm probably going to let his mom support him. But if he wants to do anything, that'll, you know, put a smile on his face. Hopefully he can do whatever he can. I'd love to get your reaction to this. We did a poll for favorite Steve Park moments for fans. Leah, you want to jump in here and tell us how that ended up?

Yeah, so I put a poll out there that had four moments on it. We went with your first Walkins Glen Cup win. Which was so cool. I mean, like, I can still see that. You're standing up there. I mean, the excitement. I mean, like, you winning your first cup race. Yeah.

You're just... In New York. In New York. It was amazing. And you don't think about that stuff when you're behind the wheel of car. And I try to tell people all the time, I mean, you know, watching Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart and Mark Martin and back in the day, Terry Labani, the Iceman, he was hard to be. on a road course at times. And, you know, to put yourself in a position where you can win and when you do win,

you know, what happens is you look back on it after victory lane, after inspection, after your home for a little bit, and you say, man, I just beat all these guys, you know? I mean, I remember as a kid, I just wanted a shot. I just wanted to have an opportunity to get there one time, try to stay there, try to, you know, chart my own course and try to win because if you do win, you beat all these. people that, you know, were heroes of mine growing up, you know, back in the Richard Petty days. And then in the era that I drove when you got Tony Stewart and Jeff Gorn and Mark Martin and Terry Labani and, you know, all these different guys, just the elation came from realizing

that you just became the best of the best. But you're only good like that for three days, I think, because come Thursday, you're at the next track and now you're back to zero. Back to zero scrapping. But it also was a comeuppets for DEI. I mean, like that was the new, DEI's here. I mean, like, it's legit. I remember, you know, just I was just a fan,

and I just were like, okay, so DEI, they're going to be really good at this cup stuff too. So, Leah, by the way, I'm sorry, I didn't need to interrupt. We were doing a poll. But we said, like, you throw out of memory and all of a sudden, it's like, yeah, that was a good time. And what was a poll? So, yeah, here we got that moment, what else?

Yep, and then the 05 truck win, which we talked about, and we talked about the modified win at Daytona, and then the one that got the most vote, 76%. 76% 2001 Rockingham. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hard to beat that one. That was something.

Yeah, hard to beat. Man, just, you know, victories like that really go down in history because it goes down to my history. Like I said, I never do nothing for anybody else. I do it for myself because I'm the hardest. critic of myself. And, you know, at that point, I mean, we all know what we've gone through the week beforehand. And, you know, we had sat in the conference room trying to decide, okay, what are we going to do?

Are we going to sit out the next race or two? It was a real conversation about that. Real conversation about it. And I remember in the boardroom, you know, Dale always sat at the end of this big, long, beautiful table. And as we're all sitting there, you know, in tears and trying to figure out what, you know, You know, what the hell we're going to do? What's the right thing to do to honor Dale? And I remember, to this day, I remember when Neil Bonnet died.

And your dad saying that he's going to go out in the next race and kick everybody's bleep and in honor of Neil Bonnet. And, you know, so, I mean, that made the answer kind of easy to decide on what we were going to do. We're like, you know, if Dale was sitting in his spot at the end of the table, He said, you go out there and you win that damn race and you win it for me, just like he did for Neil. So, uh, and so anyway, we started that weekend and, uh, you know, we had to walk into the track, what our heads kind of held high and, you know, we had a job to do and stuff that we had to do. And then, um, I remember early on in the race, uh, junior crashed in turn four, you know.

Like first and your second lap, right? Yeah, it was, it was pretty early. And he, and he went in pretty hard. He went in pretty straight, and, you know, it was a flashback from the week before, and I think all of us just wanted to know that he was okay. And when we found out he was okay, I mean, we just, another memory in my mind was, you know, Jeff Gordon was pretty dominant that day, and we had chased him down. And the guy who taught me how to race Rockingham was Dale Sr.

And he, my first year running Rockingham, I'd go out behind him, and he'd say, You follow me. I'm going to show you how to get around here, and I'd follow him, and we'd get up the speed, we'd go down the backstretch, we'd get three quarters way down the backstretch. I'm a car link behind him. All of a sudden, he gets up off the gas, and I almost ran smack into the back of him. And next to you know, there he goes, and now he's two car links ahead of me. So I'm catching him.

I run right up on him again into turn one, and almost run into the back of him because he's lifted so early, and all of a sudden, boom, he's three cars ahead of me. And that's when I learned. I said, man, you know, you got to lift early. You got to let the car roll through the corner. You know, don't wear the tires out because everybody else be wearing their stuff out. And we, and after that experience, I learned how to drive the track different. He said, you'll see the back bumper of somebody.

Go away. Go off into the sunset. He said, give it 20 laps. You'll be seeing them coming back the other way again. And sure enough, that's what they did. And the memory I was going to say was coming off a turn. I'd pass Jeff Gordon for the lead. And Jeff Gordon being a guy, you know, when I used to run up in New England,

he was the kid that came in and competed against Dale Earnhardt. And when I passed him and there was no other cars in front of me, I was like, I just passed Jeff Gordon for the damn lead here at Rockingham. I was so damn proud of myself. And then all of a sudden it was like, uh-oh, here comes Bobby Levani. You know, and we were on old tires and we barely had enough gas to make it. You know, everything just worked out to go on a win a race. And, you know, that last lap, I had to do everything I could to fight off Bobby Labani.

I don't know if I said Terry, but Bobby Lamani in true Dailant-hardt fashion. I mean, you know, he had taught me how to run the fast lane and to run up by the wall. And as I saw Bobby starting to catch me a little bit, my spotter was giving me intervals. And I was trying to calculate in my mind, you know, how many laps are going to be left. and by the time he gets there, and we're just fortunate enough to have enough fuel win a race. I would assume you would have left the track already. Do you?

I can't even remember what I was doing, but I will say this. If Steve doesn't win that race, I don't know how DEI would have done going forward. I don't know that we can quantify how, much that one win, that one single win. If you look at all the companies in the sport and the history of NASCAR and you think about,

well, with this company, what's the biggest win for that company? What's the one win that mattered the most? I think you would have to put that one near, if not at the top of the list for DEI, because had that not happened, I don't think that we would have had any of the success that we had going forward. Because we were, as Steve said,

I mean, we were really unsure on how to proceed. Yeah. And if we go to that race, I crash on the first lap. I don't know where Michael ran. And if Steve doesn't win, what's the morale? That all carries over. And so for him to go out there and win that race, gave everybody a bit of some relief.

And the thing about it when you lose somebody like that, the world keeps going. Rockingham was coming Sunday, whether we were going to be there or not. And so we had to make that decision to go. He goes up there and wins. Wins the race. And it just kind of kept pushing that boat along, you know, kept pushing the barge down the stream. And we really, really needed that. And so that's what I remember from that day. I remember us wearing the three hats sitting on,

I remember, you know, I had a bad day, but the one thing that I enjoyed the most is that me and you and Michael sat on the wall right before the start of the race on pit road and the we're not blood brothers but in that moment I felt I felt like we were all

as family as family could be and we were there and we were together and we were gonna we we had nothing but each other and y'all were laughing there's a picture I remember seeing it and it's you guys are smiling and laughing it looks like Michael's sort of cutting up I don't know what y'all are talking about probably some Michael

sit. But it looked like that you guys were healing in that very moment. And that picture really encapsulates that. I think, like Junior said, said it the best. I mean, you know, when you're in that situation, you got to realize, you know, we're a DEI, we're a high-profile team. At that point, we weren't letting any outsiders in. So all we had was really ourselves.

To grieve, to mourn, to, to, to, to think of how we were going to make ourselves and our team and our people better. We had a lot of employees. And the greatest thing I ever heard was that somebody said this is the beginning of the healing, not only for the race team, but for the race fans. Yeah. You know, we might have had 100 employees, but there's 100,000 race fans. And that one moment was the beginning.

of the healing of DEI because at first when we you know we sat at that table at the high level you know people and brass and drivers and we just didn't know what we were going to do we didn't know how to react we didn't know what you know what we need to do so when in that race was definitely the beginning of the healing where we learned as a team that we can still move forward and we can still continue to grow and win races even in the absence of our leader. Well, there were three significant moments coming from a race fan's perspective at that time. There were three moments, and you guys at this table delivered two of them, that one,

and then when Dale goes back to Daytona and wins in that summer race, Kevin Harvick and Atlanta was the other one of a healing moment where that team was able to, you know, get their moment. And you think back in how the cards fell during that 2001 season. It's story. the best movie screenwriters that ever existed couldn't have written that script for 2001 and how you guys were able to deliver healing moments that year. Yeah, just motivation too.

I mean, you know, I think that not the, you know, no quit attitude that I think we all had, including Richard Childress's team, you know, with Kevin Harvick. I mean, you know, we had no options to fail. You know, I mean, we had to work as hard as we could to try to succeed because we had we had we had seen the deepest darkest valley that we had to climb ourselves out of and uh you know the the personality of all of us at DEI at that time um was that you know you know we're in the deepest darkest valley we're going to get back to the top of the mountain again that's right man well Steve I appreciate you coming today this is some great conversation yeah I've enjoyed me and you

have to do a better job of staying in touch yeah so maybe this conversation Is it so great next time? I've been waiting for you to retire. Because usually you never arrived. I said I was going to retire, but I didn't. But, man, take care of yourself. We're going to have you back. We'll talk to you again.

Thanks for coming. Hey, man. Appreciate you having me. Love to be here and love all the race fans and love what NASCAR. Battery and bulbs. Where's Battery and Bulbs at? Battery and Bulbs is right on 150 on 464 River Highway.

There you go, buddy. Moors of North Carolina. I'm there every day. Steve is there every day. Stop in. Mike, we've got new friends. That's good. I love having eight.

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I've heard of grass-fed, but not grass-finished. Rub-grass on them? I don't know. Well, considering. what we're talking about. I don't know what I want. I don't know if I want to know what the finish is. Well, we've got to figure that out. They have free-range organic chicken and heritage

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The reason why I love new friends is because I get to try this stuff out, Mike. I know you do. All right. So you had a butcher box. Yeah, and I had my packing slip right here. Okay. All right. I ended up getting some chicken breasts, ground beef, chuck roast,

ribby steak, pork chops, bacon. What? Yeah. All of this in one box. Oh, yeah. And it was, I tried the ribby steak. Two of them came in the box. And I already ate one of those, and they were great.

Me and Gus, my dog, both tried out that steak, and it was good. Gus is eating a ribby? Yeah. I want to be your dog. I want to be a gel junior dog. Gus is living the good life, boy. I cooked it. I didn't season it so that Gus could try some because I didn't want to put any salt and stuff on it and then feed it to him.

The convenience, I mean, this is where everything's going these days. Everything's getting shipped to your house. You don't have to go shopping anymore. The convenience of this is. is just incredible and it's high quality stuff. It says it comes on dry ice. It was all frozen. The dry ice was not hard to handle.

I didn't even, I mean, really, I just open the box, take out the packaging, and there's the meat. And put it all in my freezer. I thawed what I wanted to eat that day. So it's just the convenience of it. It's very simple. It's great, good tasting food. This month, Butcher Box is offering finely ground beef that's clean and delicious and is

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How are they making money? I don't know. This was Butcher Box's most popular offer last year, and they're bringing it back for a limited time only. But, man, dude, that's two pounds of meat. A lot of meat. Every box for as long as you're a subscriber, you got to go get that. For $20 off your first box and two pounds of free ground beef in every box for the life of your subscription, go to butcherbox.com slash Dale Jr. Or enter promo code, Dale Jr.

Remember now, for $20 off your first box and two pounds of free ground beef in every box for the life of your subscription. I mean, I got to repeat that. $20 off the first box, and you're going to get the two pounds of ground beef for the life of your subscription in every box. Go to butcherbox.com slash Dale Jr. or enter promo code, Dale Jr. All right, Mike, so we had another race this weekend, obviously at Phoenix, still doing the West Coast swing. How do you feel about the season so far? I mean, it's been pretty interesting. It's been interesting. I really enjoyed Phoenix. I was able to watch the back half of it. I had a little bit of a lawnmower issue in the front end. I was listening to the MRN deal. We won't get into the lawnmower issue, but I'm going to tell you

something. First and foremost, when it comes to Phoenix, or hold on, ISM Speedway, is that what we're calling now? I hate when they change the names of these tracks. The restarts at ISM Speedway, Phoenix, alone make that very interesting for me. I mean, I can't believe how they scatter out, and I still am blown away how they don't wad them up. All of them, all of them, wad them up, you know, just going into two. I love that you can take it off the exit ramp and then come back on a restart. So I love Phoenix for that. I love Phoenix for a lot of reasons.

But I thought the race was very interesting. I like the strategy involved. What did you think of it? Well, I'm with you. I didn't anticipate the movement of the start, finish line to where they have it today, as having that grade of an impact. I really underestimated how much that would change the look of that race and the restarts. And I think they have to be loving.

what they've done. They spent a ton of money and put a ton of money in this racetrack to try to make the experience better for the fans, and I think that they checked all the boxes. So great job for those guys over in Phoenix. I'm just thinking about, you know, it's early in the season,

but still looking at teams that are performing teams that maybe aren't performing that well. Jimmy Johnson had a pretty decent run, had some good strong points during the day. That's got to make him feel good. He's got a new crew chief. I've been in that situation

where you get a new crew chief and you just got to get that good run in there, man. You just want to have at least one good run to feel good about and it gives you so much confidence in each other and really makes the conversation between you and your crew chief going forward a lot easier. Matt D. Benedetto has been way stronger than I anticipated. Yeah. You know, I mean, you just zoom, you know, a lot of the, I know that as a driver, when a guy moves to another car, you kind of are apprehensive about the performance changing because a lot of times it depends on the car. Yeah. You know, and so I didn't know exactly,

I know wherever Matt goes, he makes things better. But how much better could he make that 95 car? And they've been fast. And I think the relationship that they have now with Gibbs must be helping a tremendous amount as well to give them new resources that they've never had before. But Matt also, he does make cars better every time he goes to a new team.

A guy must have some real talent. I mean, you know, that's a given. Everywhere he goes, and it reminds me a lot of Kurt Busch, everywhere Kurt Busch goes, cars get better. Kurt Busch has taken that one car and moved it way up the line. ladder in performance, getting a lot more out of that team. And still waiting on Corey LaJoy.

I wanted to see how Corey was going to do when he got in a 32 car. Matt was able to elevate that team's progress. If you look back of what that team's done over the past five or ten years, Matt had a big influence on improving that team's performance. Still waiting on Corey to continue that progression, improve that team even more. Everything that Corey's ever got in has gotten better. He's a hands-on guy, likes to work on his own. cars. I don't know if that's the case today with the 32 team. He could tell us that, but I'm

watching Corey as a year goes on to see him. I'm expecting him to fire off and have a great strong run as well. The Xfinity race, a lot of fun to watch from a personal standpoint because we had Ryan Truex out there racing in his first race this year for us. He will not race again for several months. And he had a top two finish. I know. Matches his best career finish in the Finity Series, and I know that he's not in a great place because he's not racing all the time. You know, he's in a very difficult position personally because he doesn't get to race again for several more months, as I mentioned. So it was really important to go out there and have a great day. If he had a bad day or something out of his, you know, out of his control gave him a

poor finish, that would be so tough. He's got to sleep on that for a couple months. Right. Yeah. Who wants to do that? Yeah, you're on the same page. So he had a great day. He's happy. He's happy, he's proud. He gets to at least ride that momentum as hard as he can into the next race. Maybe that will stir up some conversations with some new partners or current partners to get more involved in his career going forward. Noah Gragson had some good speed, sort of watching that team gel and come together and communication getting better and stronger between him and Dave, the crew chief. So that was nice. Michael Annette, I mean, what a year this guy's having. He's out of the gate strong. I'm sort of sitting there over the last couple of weeks.

Keep my mouth shut. Sort of waiting on everyone else to start talking about this. I know that a lot of people might say at Vegas, he kind of lucked into a top five finish because of the attrition and trouble at the end of the race, but he was running great and in position to do that. That's what you do is a good, you know, when you got a great car,

you put yourself in a position to take advantage of those situations. This week at Phoenix, he ran well without attrition. I think it's time for people to start taking notice. I mean, this is a guy who's really stepped up his game. I've been watching him outside the race car. He's really changed his approach, and he's very dedicated. And Travis... And he's got Travis Mac.

You're about to hit it. Yep, T-Mac. T-Mack, I think the chemistry, it goes both ways. You've got to have a crew chief there that's going to take the ingredients he has to work with and make the best meal out of it possible. Absolutely. So just a lot of great things going on there. We had the Kyle Busch winning more races this weekend, and he's now at 199 wins.

Incredible. And, you know, there's a lot of great conversation going back and forth about comparing it to Richard's 200 or what does this mean and all that. So, you know, we can all chime in on this. But I think that what Kyle has done is completely separate from Richard Petty and his 200 wins. They aren't the same thing. So I think both should be celebrated. What Kyle has done, I mean, is incredible. And he's 33.

He's going to continue to add to this. win total and continue to do more incredible things, and I think it should be celebrated. It is not, to me, the same thing as what Richard did. Richard Petty did it at a different time throughout several different decades, and it's cup wins only. So I don't look at the two is the same thing. What about you? If Kyle was out there saying that it's similar, then it would be worth a conversation.

Kyle is not saying that. Kyle is not even part of that conversation. So anybody that wants to make that a debate is doing it. that on their own intuitions and that's that's hogwash Kyle out there is like that's for you guys to discuss he's out there racing I can appreciate that from him and I think that what he said in his Victory Lane interview yesterday I'm going for a hundred yeah I'm going for a hundred cup wins if he were to get a hundred cup wins that would be insane because he races once a week I mean listen I got to be honest with you if you can really appreciate how Richard Petty got his 200 then you can

appreciate how Kyle would have got 100, right? So, listen, hats off to the guy. I think that truck series, Xfinity series, Cups series, the guy is amazing. Amazing. I will say this. You know, his immaturity and the mistakes that he made outside of the car continue to haunt him today. And I think that that is the reason why he doesn't get the credit that he deserves for what he's accomplishing in the sport. But he's changed quite a bit over the last several years. And he has matured, and he's saying all the right things. When you compare it to LeBron, who comes out and says, I'm the greatest, I should be the greatest, everyone should consider me the greatest, and then Kyle Bush, who you would think,

that's what Kyle Bush would say, right? That's what you would expect Kyle Bush to say. He comes out and says, well, that's for everybody else to decide, not me. And when they talk, what? The first thing he said on that track interview is how last week made it. He was still hung up on last week's. race. You know,

that, like he just won number one 99. Losing last week. And losing last week was still just stuck on him. Yeah. That's something,

that is a competitor right there. You're right. But he's saying all the right things. Yeah. He's like, look, that's for everybody else to decide. He's leaving it up to everyone else to debate.

That, to me, is a real sign of maturity. And I appreciate it from Kyle. He's still a sore loser. Yeah. But he's a self-admitted sore loser. Is he? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. He owns it. Yeah. I mean, Listen, last one, listen, Tim Dugger had a funny tweet about, like, it's hard to act tough when you're sipping your drink out of a straw. Yeah. And so, and so Kyle was sitting there giving his short answers, and he's like, me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's like, and it's so funny, Tim was right. But now I've learned to not let that annoy me. I can appreciate all that comes with Kyle Bush. It's real. It's real. He doesn't like losing. And if you needed a better example, he just won the race and he's still thinking about last week's loss.

I like that. I like it. It may rub you the wrong way. Some people think he's a spoiled little brat when he does that. But the bottom line is he owns it. And I've got more respect for him now, the way he's approaching this whole Richard Petty questions that are just brarding him all the time. It's like, Richard Petty, 200.

And the way he's handling it, I got even more respect for him. I have a lot of respect for him, too, but you never forget. I thought y'all worked that out. We did, but you still. You don't forget. Don't forget. I guess, you know what it is, is I'm so scared that old Kyle is going to come back out one day. Well, at least it's not going to be at your expense.

Well, I know, but I don't want that to happen. I'm not hoping that happens, but I'm just a little guarded. I think I have a right to be a little apprehensive. I'm celebrating Kyle. I'm celebrating his 200 when he wins it and whatever he does beyond that. We had the Suarez fight with McDowell. That got a lot of publicity. That was pretty interesting.

Qualifying. Round one. Didn't know it was going to get that heated. I mean, right. I know it. It's qualifying. Tune in to qualify next week. You never know.

And Suarez, so he goes up there and McDowell goes to get aggressive first, starts pushing and shoving, and Suarez somehow took him down and ended up, quote, winning the fight. Did he? Because I didn't feel like he did. Oh, let's hear this, because I think everybody would say that Soros, I think Soros did. Okay. So you're definitely, you're right, before everybody else jumped in.

He had a takedown. He had a takedown. Yeah. Right. A lot of people had a problem with the- I don't think he hurt him at all. No. He had a helmet on, honey.

Of course, he didn't hurt him, Mike. A lot of people... Well, that's how I determine who wins a fight. Oh, a guy's got to get hurt. You got to be bleeding. Really? Yeah. So Joey Lugano won versus Cobbush.

Right. Okay. So, that's nice to know going forward. You're right. You're right. He had his helmet on. What are you going to do? McDowell's, I wonder, was Swares going to fight?

He was going to get chirp. Was he going there to talk or was he going to fight? What was the verdict on him? I'd never heard him. What's a chirp mean? A chirp. Well, first of all, it's a hockey term. Like, you're chirping somebody.

You're talking somebody. Well, hockey's relevant here because those two guys went out to the team. Hockey's relevant here. Yeah, it is. McDowell and Swares went to the hockey game. I think of ice. Hey, think of irony here. Those two guys went together as friends to the hockey game the night before.

They did not. I did not. No, they did. They said they didn't. They said they didn't. They said, listen, man, you got to know the whole story. Fake news. Fake news.

So McDowell, they get in the fight. McDowell says, man, it's cool. It's cool. We're friends. We went to the hockey game last night. And they asked Suarez and he goes, I went with other people and he showed up. All right. See, I never heard that far.

That's awesome. All right. Well, so now you know, the rest is the story. There you go. Our Twitter was blowing up. People said we did our tag team poll too soon. They picked Suarez now. There you go.

All right. All right. Well, Morris, Dad, you've got a little fight in him. That's for sure. He gets out of all this mess and goes to the media and the media talks to him about it. And he says that,

you know, if you disrespect me, I'm coming to kick your ass. He made it pretty plain and simple to understand that this is how I'm going to react in these situations. Got to keep an eye on that going forward if he backs up those words. And they had a conversation with NASCAR in the hauler. The conversation in NASCAR in the hauler per Daniel Suarez was the make sure that, those guys didn't intend to take it onto the racetrack.

And otherwise, I mean, NASCAR has to be, you know. More of that. Give those boys a bonus. Give a bonus. I mean, this is usually the stuff that doesn't happen until the playoffs come around. Right. Man, for it to start this early in the season, the intensity is starting this soon, this early, it's great for us.

It's great for everybody watching. And a great tone setter for the weekend, right? I mean, like, is that happening on Friday? Yeah. That was great. So we're going to talk about UNC and Duke. I know we got some UNC fans in here. Matthew Dillner's wearing North Carolina hat.

Are you a UNC guy? Yeah. I didn't know that. My cousin was an All-American football program. So growing up as a Yankee, I was a Tar Hill fan. So Duke comes into the season. Everybody thinks it's going to dominate. They've had some injuries and things like that

that have made the season difficult for them. And North Carolina's beat them twice. Who would have thought? Yeah. Kick their butt in Cameron. That was awesome. Interesting thing is I happen to be in you, you at the college in Chapel Hill this weekend.

That's right. I got invited to go speak with Mickey, my doctor, Mickey Collins, at Chapel Hill about concussions, about the book, and that was a lot of fun. And one of the things that Mickey told me, which I thought was really, really cool, and I tweeted about this earlier. So when we wrote the book, I told McGee, I said, man, you know, I just want the book to help people. I told McGee right up front in the first meeting that me and him had, and I didn't know how many people it would help or whatever.

I thought maybe Mickey might hear about the book once, twice a month, from people coming in to see him. Mickey sees about 25 patients a day. And so, yeah, Mickey sees a lot of people. And this, I mean, Mickey doesn't see just athletes. He sees the every man. He sees kids, the carpenter, plumber, the housewife. You know, if you fall at home or at work or whatever, Mickey can help you.

And so he sees a lot of different people from all walks of life. But he told me the night before we went to speak at UNC that he sees five to six patients a week that come in from the book. And his girls at the front office are keeping track of these individuals as they come in because they ask them, you know, how did you hear about us? How did you get here? And five to six patients a week. and so I let McGee know and everybody else through Twitter that the book is, man, doing some great things. I'm so proud of that.

Also, so we had a great conversation in sharing our story with some folks at the college. I also got to meet Mac Brown. I didn't anticipate that wasn't part of the plan. Matt Brown's the head coach. Mac Brown is the head coach, new head coach for the Tar Heels on the football team. Hermie Sallor was there,

and so Hermie lined up the meeting for Mac Brown. I have been a Tar Hill fan all my life. I also like the Gamecox, especially when Spurrier was there. I became a Gamecox fan because of Spurrier, and I followed Spurrier everywhere he went. But I've always been a Tar Hill fan, and particularly a fan of the football team. You know, football is probably,

I love football more probably than any other college sport and professional sport outside of racing. And so I've always been a Tar Hill fan, and they've struggled, particularly over the last couple of seasons. So the Mac Brown story this year has got everybody excited and me as well. He's a legend. Yeah. It was great to meet him.

He was incredibly nice. And I look forward to seeing how their program goes going forward. I got questions, though. Yeah. So did Mac Brown, first of all, who are you speaking to? Who was in the audience that you and Mickey are talking? And how many people are we talking about? They were probably about 200 people there.

and... So you went and... Hermie was sitting there. Hermie was in the office. Yeah, Hermie's daughter goes to school there, and she's a cheerleader, and so Hermie was there and she was there listening, and it was a symposium, and I'm just speaking to very... There's all kinds of people in the room, various different ages and so forth, and Mickey was there giving a speech before me to talk about his practice and his teachings and so forth

and what he's learned over the last several years because the science for treating concussions is changing every day. And anyways, Hermie was there, and Hermie's like, hey, before you leave, you want to meet Matt Brown? And I'm like, yeah, of course.

And so we were all right there. It was great. I got to look at the stadium. It's, you know, Jeff Gluck does that quiet track photo after the race. Well, it's really cool when you go to stadiums

and they're completely empty. Empty, yeah. And knowing, knowing the energy and the craziness that's going on during a game or prior to a game and then seeing it completely empty

is a real neat, I don't know, neat experience. But so that was fun for me. So we had that going on and got me pumped up for the Tar Heels this year. So we are no longer a South Carolina fan. Is that what you're saying? Because you said Spurrier.

I know. You've had your South Carolina affinity to Spurrier. He's been gone a long time. Well, I have a personal trait of loyalty, Mike, and I... Is that what it is? Yeah. Okay. I cannot stop pulling for them just because Spurrier left.

Okay. Really? And so I can... Do you like that new tip? team he's coaching in the uh i will not pull for that team i'm not no no not nothing against this new he's undefeated nothing against this new league and nothing against that team nothing it's steve but i'm full i got enough teams you're you're you're maxed out a maxed um i'm mac now he didn't all right all right so you're back at see uh basketball you you big on them

so that's totally tournament's coming so secretly oh lord oh oh i do pull for the basketball team, but openly I cannot cheer for them because me and my wife made a deal. Oh, that's right. She'll be a Redskins, which I would just assume not have made this deal now. In hindsight, she'll be a Redskins fan if I will be a Wildcat fan. Kentucky Wildcats. She went to Kentucky and cheered there for a year, and she said, you can't pull for the Tar Heels. you've got to pull for the Wildcass.

And I'm like, she's like, I pull for the Redskins. I never liked the Redskins until we got married. And so, or until we started dating. So it's sort of a trade that I've made with her. But that's, you know, in my heart. Well, listen, she's from Texas. She can secretly be a Cowboys fan if that's how this is going to work out. I could not even know it.

She may be pulling for the Cowboys or the Texans, and I might not even know that's happening. Yeah. All's fair. A lot going on in this marriage, by the way, that we're uncovering. We've got some secret pull, or pulling for secret teams. No, listen, you can, you got to stick with Kentucky in this case.

Keep your wife happy. So Russell Westbrook, basketball player. How about this? He wore a Kyle Busch jacket the other night to a game. Got everybody all stirred up. Got everybody excited. Kyle Busch and particularly got excited about it. And so it got me to think, you know, do these, and we see it all the time.

Right, Leah? Yeah, I mean, there was, I think, like, three supermodels last summer alone. Like, Gigi hit it, like, like a huge name supermodel. all in NASCAR gear. Yeah. And even like last week, the Paris fashion show, there was a fashion editor in a Tony Stewart T-shirt. Really?

What? With like a skirt. She was wearing like a high-end skirt and then like a Tony Stewart t-shirt. So this is, yeah. Justin Bieber was wearing dad's shirt several months ago. That's right. Yeah. I remember this.

Yeah. And it's not new. This has kind of been going on for a while. I've seen a lot of NASCAR gear. hip-hop culture and hip-hop world over the last several years. Farrell wore Jeff Gordon's jacket way back in 2008. Amy, my wife, she finds vintage NASCAR shirts on a lot of the sites that she frequents. And she thinks it's a passing trend.

My mom says, don't throw your shit away because trends come and go. But the real question, I think, is, does the person that's wearing this NASCAR gear, did they know? That's right. Do they care? Is it just a cool item of clothing? Did Russell Westbrook know he was wearing a Kyle Busch jacket, is the question. Exactly.

I don't think they know. Yeah. I don't think they know. I think it's all about color. Yeah. I don't know if a rapper is a Terry Labani fan, but I've seen plenty of people in hip-hop culture wearing like the Kellogg's Corn Flakes jacket. And it's like, yeah, I don't know if they're a Texas Terry fan.

So every team on the racetrack has a bold color scheme, a differentiate themselves from the other team's. multiple logos, and all this stuff on clothing, it feels genuine and authentic and fresh. And it kind of reminds me of starter jackets. Like, if you, if somebody were to say here, here's a starter jacket without any logos on it, you probably wouldn't wear it, right? The bright colors and so forth just doesn't work for you.

But if it's your favorite team, then you're really proud of it, right? And you're wearing it, right? Heck yeah. And starter jackets were that way. You would see people wearing starter jackets that didn't even like that particular team. The Raiders, the San Jose Sharks, Chicago Bulls. The colors and the logos are so real and in your face. They were so big, too, the starter jackets, man.

I begged for one, begged for one, dude. And my parents, they tried so hard, but they got me one of those real satin, kind of shiny starter jackets, and I got picked on in school. What? It wasn't a cool start-a-jail-jail. So that's the thing. Yeah, when I was in high school, I wasn't extremely popular. that very, very small group of friends.

But when I wore that red-skinned starter jacket, I felt like I jumped the rung, several rungs on the ladder immediately, just because of the jacket alone. Starter jackets were hot. Yeah. So you had a Redskins one. I did. I was loyal.

What was yours, Matthew? New York Islanders. He was loyal. I was yours, Mike, Alabama. Mike, you had an Alabama? Yeah, absolutely. I had one. I wish I had that back.

I would have loved. She doesn't even, do you know what a starter jacket is? Yeah, I know what it is, but no. The Charlotte Hornets. That was a popular one. That was a popular one. I have Charlotte Hornets are celebrating their 30th, I think. Their 30th year they shoot this season and they sent me a starter jacket.

Yeah. What's up? Is it like a retro-looking starter jackets? Oh, yeah. Okay. It's old school. But anyways, you know, going back to the colors, the bold colors on the cars and the big logos everywhere.

Logos everywhere, too. The more logos, the better, I think, in fashion. And that's a funny thing. That's the last thing I would wear is things with crazy logos all over it. but it works, I guess. A lot of hip hopper. I guess we can't answer that question of whether they know or they care about the driver or whether they just like the item of clothing.

For some reason, though, I feel like obviously a lot of them, Bieber has to know who Dale Earnhardt is, but does he wear it because of Dail Earnhardt or because it's got a cool big giant three that he likes on it? I think Russell Westbrook likely knows who Kyle Busch is, and it can't be coincidence that Kyle's creeping up on this 200 when milestone on and in the news quite a bit, and Russell Westbrook, who he, you know, who he has to assume is one of the best players in the league is sporting his jacket.

I don't think that's a coincidence. I think that Russell knows who Kyle Bush is, and in a way is sort of giving him a nod to his greatness. But otherwise, I think, you know, when you see it in fashion, when you see it on models, when you see it in hip-hop, I'm not so sure that they know or care. Right. Here's the question is that, you know, where we used to see it a lot was with the old bud stuff. Yeah. I mean, you see people wearing old bud stuff, and I always assumed they knew whose jacket they were wearing or his shirt it was.

And I mean, but you also had a powerful sports brand in Budweiser. Right. That was on that thing. And it also looked pretty sharp. I guess every time I see a NASCAR shirt on a celebrity or in fashion, I got to know. Do they know who that is? I got to know. It drives me crazy.

It's interesting. Yeah. I guess that's my curiosity. Answer it for us. Somebody tell us. Somebody tell us. Somebody tell us. Just dial up, Westbrook.

I'm going to tell you who will know. It just occurred to me. Who? Marty Smith. Yeah, Marty Smith would be able to ask Russell Westbrook because he just did a bit with him. He just did a thing for Marty Smith's show. And Marty Smith will find out for us if Russell Westbrook knew whose jacket he was wearing. Didn't, uh.

They did ask him, by the way. Yeah. And they said, who's your favorite driver? And he said, M&M. Oh, gosh. So there you go. All right. Eminem can't wheel.

I think he was talking about the sponsor. Yeah. Can we talk about that giant 88 sculpture in that pet house in New York? Yeah. That was insane to me. I didn't know what to think about it. That is exactly sort of in the same conversation with this, you know, NASCAR gear on celebrities and in fashion. This big giant, you remember the 8th?

88 steel, big giant 88s that NBC had made at the end of the year and had all these little... So I got that in my woods. I've got it from NBC and put it out in the race car graveyard. Well, another identical copy of these two giant metal 88s showed up on a website that was selling a, you know, promoting the sale of a multimillion dollar apartment in New York City. And apparently whoever has this apartment had these two giant 88s play. So crazy. It's very strange.

And they got me to thinking, is that only in there because they think it looks cool or do they know who I am? Or who is this? Are they a NASCAR fan or not? And it's the same thing. Like anytime, I guess it's the humility or the, you know, you just don't think that your reach is that far, that NASCAR's reach is that far. That other drivers reach is that far. And it makes you wonder when you see it outside of that NASCAR bubble. is it real?

And so, yeah, and I was joking around and said, man, this must be Jimmy is. Jimmy selling his apartment? Jimmy says no. Maybe it's Jeff Gordon's apartment. Maybe. Nope. I don't know who's apartment is. Jeff had a funny reply to that.

He did. Jeff said, well, you know, it was very meaningful that time I got to drive the 88. Yeah. He said 2017, but he was wrong. It's 2016. That's right. Must not have been as meaningful as he said. Hey, we're all getting older in years.

These years run together. Anyways, whoever's selling this apartment, let us know. Do you like NASCAR? Were you a Dale Jr. fan? Alex Bowman fan? A Jeff Gordon fan? Or is this just cool art? They could be a Regan Smith fan even for that one practice.

Oh, yeah, that's right. Not about that. I spent Saturday watching some grass roots short track racing. The cars tour kicked off their season at Southern National Speedway, J.R. Motors'I. Adam Limkeke and Josh Berry were on hand. Adam Limke had a crash in practice, did not get to finish the race with his car. But Josh Barry, with the All Things Automotive Junior Motorsports Chevrolet,

led just about the whole race, was passed on the last lap and lost finish second. It was a great race. So I wanted to say that because they kicked off their season. We're very proud of what they do. I watched Carson race as well after that running her little sprint car. She took a flight. She did. She ran great.

She led her heat. and got on the berm and spun herself out. And then she was into C-Main and was leading that, or running in third maybe, and spun herself out. Either way, I think she will hopped. She made a couple mistakes, and then she ended up getting in the back and wheel-hopped a guy and flipped.

She got out of her car and stormed off, which got some unfavorable reactions on Twitter to her storming away. And she's got to work on that a little bit. It's just embarrassing. You know, when you make those kind of mistakes, when you're that young. It's super, super embarrassing.

I told her next time to get out and take a bow. Were you able to watch that live, or did you just hear about it? Yeah, I was watching it live. So when she stormed off, I mean, what were you thinking? I was just disappointed. I mean, she's embarrassed and she is ashamed that she was leading. She made two mistakes and then that mistake to flip. So she keeps screwing up and she knows it and she feels terrible about it.

And she's embarrassed. and that was her reaction. So I told her to work on that reaction going forward. Don't feed the trolls and give people ammunition. I told her too. I said, if that was your car, if you owned that car, built that car, you would stay with it. You would be sure to make sure that it was removed from the track

in the best possible way and followed that car back to the trailer. And the boats were out there who owned the car, Billy and his son. And when the car is sitting there and they're trying to remove from the track, they're there because it's their car. and they want to make sure that it gets taken care of and back to the garage and try to repair whatever they can. And I told her that try to establish that relationship with the car.

Try to get to where that car and you are best friends and that whenever something happens to it, you're right there wanting to know how to fix it and what it needs. Therefore, you won't have that reaction of, I got to get away from here. I got to get out of here. I'm embarrassed and shamed. I need to believe where I'm at.

And so that was tough to watch, but she's going to figure it out. you're going to make mistakes. I told her the only way to, you know, she can be great. She can get to where she wants to go, and the only way to get there is to keep trying and keep learning from making these type of mistakes. Everybody's had those races where you're ashamed.

I remember you've had them. Oh, yeah. And you want to crawl in a hole, no doubt about it. You want to crawl in a hole and don't come out. But you know she's going to be better off now. She's going to be better off by this. Yeah, we had a lot of conversation about it. and she's receptive, you know, she's listening, which is great.

So, and I'm, I guess we talk about that so much is because I expect her career to be fun to cover, and we're going to cover it here. By the way, you know, I saw Billy Boats tweet to Carson afterwards. Carson did put a tweet out that really just took full ownership of everything that happened. And Billy Boat, who I don't know, put out a response to that and was so supportive of Carson, and it made me just think how awesome of a guy he is. I mean, like, if there's an owner in the garage you want to drive for, it's somebody like that.

He's a racer. He was so good. Yeah. And I told it, Carson, I said, if you're looking the haters way, you'll miss things like this. I sent her that tweet. I know she saw Billy's tweet, same time I did. But I wanted it a reminder, like, if you're paying attention to the bad things people are saying about these things, you're going to miss all the good stuff that people are saying, too.

because if you look at her timeline, it's 98% supportive. Yeah. You know, but she's going to see those couple bad comments and dwell on that, which is easy to do. But she'll figure it out. It's like the people that say our table's too big. 98% think our table's fine. I was just thinking about that when you said that.

There's 2%. I don't know if this will make sense. I don't know if this will make sense, but the people that like the table aren't saying anything. Yeah, so come on, table likeers. Help us out here. And so the majority of the people, that aren't saying anything, don't have a problem with the table.

That's right. So now we've got to overcompensate with a giant car. Yeah. That is not what we're doing. This is one of my favorite pieces. I brought this from my own home, and it's a junior motorsports corvette, Stingray, and I've had this in my house for 10 years, and so I brought it out here. You park it in your garage.

People are talking about our big tables, so people are talking. Okay. That right there is, I'm sorry, that was good. This has been sitting above, on a shelf, above my SIM rig on where I've raced online for years. And I figured, hey, we've got a big table going to get a big DAC gas, all right? Big DACAX. There's going to go. We're just all back it on in here and park it right here on the table.

Forget about it. I want to put Ken and Barbie in there. I think they look good. No. There was never a Dale Jr. Ken and Barbie made of all the crazy things that were made of you back in the day and the Bud day. They did make Barbies with, you know, a racing theme Barbies. I remember that. I had an Oscar Barbie.

You did? Right. We were on the packaging, but we had nothing else to do with the contents of the box, which is weird. I've signed a few of them. Really? Yeah. Oh, wow. We were on the packaging, I think, but the past, we had nothing to do with the contents.

I've never even heard of this. We're looking at it up. We should be. Who are you talking about you and who? Dad. Really? Yeah. Right?

So what you got? Oh, you're looking at this up. Yeah. Oh, shoot. Yeah, there's your car's on it. My car's on it? Yeah. But the contents of the box, there's really nothing tying that together, right?

Barbie's got that. Barbie? This is where those fashion designers got it from. This is. They looked at. Exactly like what they're wearing. But is she wearing Dale Jr. Stuff or just racing stuff?

She has on a tank top that says I heart eight. Oh, okay. And then like her little dress is, has like the NASCAR. It's there. Oh, and there's an eight on that too. Yeah. All right. Yeah.

There you're good, Mike. Man, I didn't have that one. Barbie is a trend center. I guess so. She looks good. How about that? All right, this is the last leg of NASCAR goes west. And a lot of people that I know are road tripping, race teams and stuff between no road trip is complete without some damn good tunes.

And I know you're a music guy, Jr. I figured I'd go around the horn here. We'd start a Spotify playlist. Leah's going to start it up. Let's talk about some good road tripping songs for this little journey. All right, Dale, you go first. I got to go first. Man, well, you know, I don't have a list of songs.

I do not bring you a list of songs. I have two things, two ways I can approach to this. I stream music and I create a station that's going to throw things at me and just surprise me, hopefully, with something new. I'm going to hear some stuff that I like, but also going to hear something new. I can do that either two ways with Spotify. or Pandora. And so that's how I like to travel down the road.

I'll put on whatever genre or whatever band. They're kind of the originator of the station. And then it goes from there and creates it itself and plays whatever it wants to play. And I like that. I like not knowing what's next. Being surprised at times. Well, that's it.

I'm embarrassed to admit. There was a road trip that, the biggest road trip that I ever, ever took that I can remember was to go pick up T.J. Majors. I knew it. All right. T.J. Majors lived in Buffalo. He wanted to come down here to either become a race car driver. I don't think he was new. He was going to be a spotter at this time, but he wanted to get into the industry. And I said, well, the only way to do that is to be here, move here. We had another friend that was going to allow him to move in and be a roommate. So we went to pick T.J. up in Buffalo.

We had a duly and drove all the way there. on two-lane roads. So we started on the interstate at 85 and right around Salisbury an hour into the drive. I said, man, this is not fun. We're not seeing no, we're not seeing the country.

So we've got a compass. We know we need to go north. You needed a compass. Let's get off the interstate and take two-lane roads strictly all the way to Buffalo. Adventure. All right.

We ended up in Washington, D.C., going around the Beltway. We went to the capital. We went to the Pentagon. This is all around 3 o'clock in the morning. We went to the Eternal Flame at the Battleground battlefields of Gettingsburg in Pennsylvania. That's cool. In the middle of the night.

The only thing is so dark, we're driving down the road. We didn't even know we were there at the battlefields of Gettysburg. But we're driving down the road and we keep seeing these little weird objects on the side of the road just kind of faintly in the headlight of the truck. It slowed down. It was cannons. Oh, no way. And we're like, hey, where are we? There's cannons on the side of the road.

Clearly they also had a mission to not look at signs on the way to Buffalo. We're just using the compass going north. And so T.J. would call and we'd say, he'd say, where are you? And we'd start reading names of the streets and stuff that we're seeing. He's like, you guys are so lost, y'all are never going to get here. And it took us 22 hours to drive to Buffalo. Which is about like six hours too long. 22 hours.

All right, so this is, it's me and two other buddies. We're drinking Mountain Dews and Slim Jims. Oh, God. All the way there. All right. You didn't need a playlist. We had one thing that we had to do. Every hour.

Every hour we would play only time by Inya. What? What? Yeah. Why? We just had to make the trip as ridiculous as possible. I mean, just driving through the, you know, driving through the two-lane countryside of,

United States. Inia was pretty hot by that. She was, I mean, she... From North Carolina to Buffalo. Only hour. We played only time by Inya. And otherwise, I drove the first 18 hours. And finally, I tapped out.

I said, I cannot drive anymore. Somebody else has got to drive. But whoever was riding played CDs out of a big, big, big sack of CDs. It was a lot of fun. We ended up getting there finally. And T.J. was so angry. we had not taken a straight direct route. And so this is the funny thing about T.J.

And this sets the tone for T.J. For the rest of his life. This is him in a nutshell. He complained on the cell phone all the way there about how we weren't taking a direct route and getting there as fast as possible. The plan was to hitch up a trailer to our dually that would be in his yard.

He had a trailer that he erased his little go-card out of. It was supposed to be full of his stuff and he was supposed to be ready to go. When we get to the house, the trailer is empty. His room is literally in the same shape that it's been since he's lived there. He has not packed one item. Oh, geez. I said, TJ, you're supposed to be ready.

We gave you six extra hours for this. We literally been driving 22 hours to come get you, and you're not even packed. Oh, man. That is TJ. That is. In a nutshell. Yeah. And so anyways, we had to help him load all this stuff onto this trailer.

We hitched up to Dooley, and we did take the interstate home. Listening to Enya. So is Enya? Is that your song? Yeah, I think that is the moral of the story is Enya is number one on his road trip song. That is the embarrassing admission is that Enya, only time, is the only road trip song that I can give to you today. Well, at least Mike could easily top that. I mean, it doesn't take much.

The road trip home did have an overnight stop in Ohio, which is not east of Buffalo. Yeah, where do you get over to Ohio? Compass again? We didn't pay attention. We just drove south. So we ended up in Ohio, and once we realized that we were going quite a ways out of the way, we ended up spending the night in a hotel. We went to a bar.

All right, we got to this bar. And in the middle of hanging out in this bar, these two brothers got into a fight with each other. And we basically had the whole bar 50% on one side, 50% on the other side. And there was a big giant fight, and the cops came. And we ended up becoming friends with the police who gave us a ride home to the hotel. We ended up racing luggage carts in the aisle of the hotel lobby with the police officers pushing. And this was a great, great trip. We'll have to get TJ on to tell it one time.

He'll be here in a few minutes. You know, we are back in Ohio right now. Yeah. Because we wandered off our compass. Right. Yeah. So we ended up spending the night going home the next day. It was a great trip.

That's how TJ ended up moving to North Carolina. Oh, T.J. So, okay. What you got? So, Mike, road trip songs. Road trip songs. See if you can top in you. The closest I could do is Abba.

Are you serious? I could possibly put Abba in there. But I don't think that's the best of the road trip songs. All right. So my top three, first and foremost, number one, Sweet Home Alabama. Yes. No, we knew you would say that.

Well, it's a good road trip song. It is. It's great. I think you've got to have Born to Run. Yeah. Bruce Springsteen on it. And I think you've got to have this is very cliche road trip song but I think that that's what you're calling for and even if it wasn't this sort of creeps up in the playlist

Willie I knew it it's got to be Willie doesn't it's a good one to have on it's a good one now I've got others I couldn't just keep it to three but that's the three I'm going with since he's going with in you I'm definitely going to put some you know some masculinity to our playlist here and uh and and give you those three uh Leah are you going to subtract from the masculinity for us yeah because I do have a carry out see it for me for me for me for me me, like, road trips are all about, like, what you can sing along to. Well, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I have to pick, like, those songs that I can just belt out in my car, usually with just my best friend listening. So my number one is Garth Brooks, Beaches of Cheyenne.

It's a good song. Now, Garth Brooks, I can agree with. I don't know Beaches of Cheyenne is the best road trip song. Oh, my gosh. It's a great, great song. Yeah, okay. I mean, Thunder Rolls. I mean, you got all these other, you know, rodeo?

The story. Like, I like the story. Like, I like songs in her story. So that's, that's that. That's a depressing story. I know. You like to cry on your road trips. She gets emotional on her road trips.

Yeah. Okay. That's kind of a thing. My carry underwood one is a Chalktaw County Affair, which wasn't really a single, and not very many people know that, but she literally says the word catty wampas in it, and that's one of my favorite words. You're hooked. Yeah, so she got me there.

And then my third one is Nelly, Shake Your Tail Feather. Oh. Shake your tail. A little bit of a bad idea. I like that. All right, road trip and songs. There you go. Everybody can write at Dirty Mo Media on Twitter and let us know if you have.

We just assumed Dillner sucks, so we just got to skip over here. Oh, I'm sorry. Save it until last. I thought you talked. I'll go real quick. I'll go real quick. I'll go with Mamas and the Pappas, California. What's that?

I don't know. Somebody drops something. Keep going. I'll go real quick with Mamas and the Pappas, California Dreaming, because I think that's awesome. Roll on Highway by Alabama. Oh, that is a good one. That is an awesome one.

It's about an 18-wheeler. And come on, man. Goldeneering, Radar Love. What? Goldeneering. The band, it's a one-hit wonder, but Radar Love is a badass road trip song.

All right. All right. I'll take your word for it. I'll take your word for it. You went out there. So we're going to put this on Spotify, right? I feel like that Dillner went pretty... To Ohio, basically.

No, no, no. I think Dillers. Dillers would be very similar to a lot of lot of peoples. Yeah? Yeah. No one had Inya. All right.

No. All right. That was great. Road Tripping songs. All right. Let us know at Dirtymo Media on Twitter. What's your road tripping songs are. Talk a little crap about ours if you like.

Let's get to the white flag. Keep on the bud. White flag right there. White flag. We'll do white flag. By the way, if I'm the one that comes up with India, then they'll talk crap. But because of Dale Jr. being in the United States.

Oh, no, no, no, no. He'll be like, oh, that's great road trips on. I'm going to totally get some crap for that one. All right. Listen, I, y'all wanted to hear this big bang that we had a crash just about a few seconds ago. Here's why. Because we have a new addition for this wonderful studio, and that is from our friends at Pristine Auction. Pristine Auctions really hooked us up.

Now, a few weeks ago, we talked about an item, and it was a tombstone memorabilia. See how I just nailed that? Tombstone Mirabia, it's a howitzer. I almost messed it up. Let me just get it, because I already kicked it over once. Check this out now. The unboxing from Mike Davis. There it is.

Oh, man. Check this out. All right. Point that. You're pointing that at me. I'm going to open the action. I'm opening the action because this is safety. It is a replica.

It's not a real gun. But check this out. Look at the autograph. And look at the authenticity. Check it out. It's signed by two people, Val Kilmer and Doc Holliday. It's the same person. It's the same person.

This thing's heavy. I know, right? Yeah. Look at that. Isn't that cool? We've got to put this in here. Listen, I want to thank Jared at Pristine Auction because this was a... Here, I mean...

You don't get mad at me for pointing it at you? God! This is awesome. I really appreciate them. And by the way, Pristine Auction just became even more dear to our hearts, even though they are a longtime sponsor when we get that. There's more of these, by the way, on them. Not just sports. They got a little bit of everything, which is really, really cool.

So thank you, Jared, and let's see here. Windale Jr.'s ride is out of the gate strong. Really, after one week, there was a lot of tickets sold. Yes. Everybody must love this addition. This car is different. It's blue. There's a lot more to it. It's not only blue.

It's Admiral Blue Metallic Corvette, Z-O-6 with a 2LZ package and a 6.2-L2-Liter, supercharged V8, direct injection, engine, plus a billy-boat C-7 fusion exhaust for the bimodal design and carbon fiber tips, coupled to a seven speed manual transmission. That's the challenge now from now on. It's the one breath challenge. I'm going to propose that. Like the micrormachine guy. If you can do that, yeah, that was, I like those.

So you can go to Wendell Jr.'sride.com to do a $25 raffle. Dale, back me up on this. This is one of our biggest fundraising initiatives of the year. So listen, it's not only that there's this cool car that you can win, but like this is it for this. this is a big one for us. So your $25 raffle ticket purchase goes a long way for the Dale Junior Foundation. So keep that in mind, too. I want to thank everyone who took time last week to rate and review our show.

It really matters to us. We read them all. We appreciate that. We love the honest feedback. We get a lot of it, especially about our table. And we take it to heart. So thank you. And if you did not rate and review us, please do.

We'd appreciate that. Follow all of Dirty Mo Media on social media. everywhere. Leah does a fantastic job. And speaking of, I want to just say real quick, Dustin Lee's in the room, and Micah Caldwell, my Dirty Moe Media team, really grateful for you guys. The J.m. 360 last week. That was great. It was incredible, was it not? Yeah, everybody needs to go to Junior Motorsports at Twitter and check out the latest 360, really entertaining. Yeah, yeah. So that was well done, and we're going to do another one sort of like that. But that's it for me. What are you going to close us with? Well, I got some more odd history.

We're going to Fontana this weekend, but this odd history isn't about the West Coast swing. This odd history is about Rockingham. We were talking about Rockingham here recently. On March 12, 1972, Jimmy Van Diver. Jim Van Diver was a race car driver, kind of an independent, but he actually had some great runs, really competitive runs, particularly on the speedways. But he finished third in a cup race at Rockingham using a pick crew made of entirely volunteers. Now, you think that's not that crazy because people get volunteer help all the time,

But this volunteer crew was from the infield. He assembled the crew two hours before the race. None of them had even been on a pit crew before. They were hammered. He didn't know nobody's names or nothing. That's awesome. How embarrassing was that if he won? Like, hey, thanks.

You guy. Call you number one, call you number two. It had been like reservoir dogs. You're like, you're Mr. Green. You're Mr. Pink. Jim Van Dymer. That had a pretty cool race car, man. Actually, one of his cars is over at Ray Evanham's place.

He's got an old Jim Van Diver Dodge. But that's odd history. And remember to watch us on Tuesdays at 5 p.m. on NBCSN. Every week, they'll cut all this down to an hour and have a show there. We'll have Steve on and a lot of great video and photos and so forth to accommodate the podcast. And it's really fun to watch that. I'll listen to the podcast. Then I watch TV show.

It's not really even like the same show. It's not. It's a lot of fun. Appreciate everybody for listening. It's been a great week. Look forward to Fontana. It's going to be an awesome race watching those guys run all over that racetrack this weekend. Hopefully our Xfinity guys are ready and they do it.

We'll see you later. This bit of bad assery was made by Dirtymo Media. Dirty Mo!