The Dale Jr. Download - 249 - Rival Rusty

Episode Date: March 25, 2019

A very honest interview with one of Dale Earnhardt's greatest rivals, NASCAR Champion Rusty Wallace. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again for the Dale Jr. Download podcast on Dirty Mo Media with my co-hosts, Mike Davis. We almost went guests. I did. Good to be here, Dale. Yes, thanks for being here. This show here is presented by Bristol Motor Speedway. Thanks, great. And we have a great guest who has had a ton of success at Bristol Motor Speedway, and that's Rusty Wallace, coming on the show here in a bit.

We're going to tell you how Mike keeps those giant, amazing choppers of his shiny and white. I mean, are they really giant, Dale? I mean, are we exaggerating a little bit? Can I just say that I'm very envious of your teeth? But you use quip to keep those things bright and shiny and white. We're going to tell you how you do that. And use the promo code, Dale Jr. I don't do that, but I will now.

D-A-L-J-R. Well, it must be an expensive situation for you. No, it's actually not. With so much real estate. So maybe this quip thing is right up your alley. We're going to talk about Martinsville this past weekend. I had a couple races there. We've got stories of throwing stuff at people and more.

About to do that to you. You know, because there was a lot of things thrown at Bristol Motor Speedway. Even at you. At me? Yes. Yeah. I remember that. Before we get to the rest of the show, obviously we're going to talk about one of our partners, Pristine Auction, Mike.

Yeah. I love pristine auction. It's an online sports auction website where you can bid on. and win authentic sports memorabilia from the comfort of your home. Pristineauction.com. They offer daily auctions. All bids start at one buck. So you're going to start out free and easy, man.

It might get a little expensive, but it might not. You might be able to sneak in there while everybody's sleeping and get some great deals. There's also some other formats. They have a 10-minute auction, which is a lot of fun. Adams will pop up just for 10 minutes. And so those, I think, are the better steals, wouldn't you imagine, Mike? I mean, he's got to be. You've got to get in there.

That's only for people that are on top of their game. And it happens fast, which makes it a lot of fun. I enjoy the 10-minute auctions. Some of these deals are pretty insane. They guarantee the authenticity of all their items. I've signed for them, so I know that every other person that signed and autographed stuff on Pristine, that's the real deal. There's no fakes. There's no phonies.

You can't trust these other sites. You can't trust what you're getting from other places, but you can from Pristine. So, Mike, what's the best part about Pristine? Well, you just mentioned the authenticity, but the fact of the matter is they get some awesome stuff on there. I mean, listen, we just took ownership of a tombstone shotgun. And when I said authenticity, listen, it comes with every type of certificate of authenticity that you can imagine. How many times are you going to say authenticity? As many times it takes.

You're saying it a little more often today, because I think because you screwed it up last week. I didn't remember billion. So you're not saying that. You notice I didn't say that. Right. I ain't going to go down that road again. doubling down, you're doubling down on authenticity. Yeah, the one I know I can do?

Yeah. Right now they've got a signed Kell Yarborough, number 27, diecast. And it's a beautiful piece, it's only $28. That's the car, I think, that he went over the wall with at Darlington Motor Speedway back in the 60s. Go check out pristineauction.com. Now you'll be hooked.

It's free to register. It's also free to bid. You only pay for the items you win, obviously. That's pristine auction, spelled P-R-I-S-T-I-Oction.com. when you register, be sure to select the Dale Jr. Download podcast from the drop-down menu and the How Did You Hear About Us section. That lets them know that we sent you. So we mentioned at the top of the show that this is presented by Bristol Motor Speedway.

Folks, got to get off the couch and get to the racetrack. When I was a kid, it was one racetrack that I wanted to go to. I didn't care. I mean, I obviously wanted to go to every race. But the one that I did not want to miss was the Bristol night race. The Bristol Day race was equally as exciting. but Bristol Motor Speedway was at the top of my list all through my childhood. And even today, when somebody says, I've never been to a race, man, which one should I go to?

I know to send them to Bristol Motor Speedway, because I know that to hook them as a fan full time for the rest of their life, that's the one that'll do it in the first try. Because you can't have a bad experience. I mean, there's no, there's other racetracks where you're going to, honestly, you don't know if they're going to get the show. Bristol delivers. Bristol delivers, and I'm telling you, if you have a kid who's not been to a race track, you've got to take him to Bristol. And there's no better time to do it than in a couple weeks, right?

This is the time. Get your butt off the couch. Take your kids, take yourself, and go to Bristol. I brought my boy in there last year for that modified race, and the look on his face when he went through the little archway there to see that stadium was priceless. Right. The Food City 500 is at Bristol Motor Speedway on April, the 7th. You don't want to miss it.

We need all of Junior Nation at Bristol for April and August, so go get your tickets. You can call 844-8-28-6998 or go to Bristol Motorspeedway.com slash DJD. Again, that's 844-8-28-6998 or Bristol Motorspeedway.com slash DJD. During the Food City 500 weekend, we'll be celebrating the 40th anniversary of my dad's first cup win there back in 1979. Only Cup rookie to have won a race at the high banks of Bristol. So the first 10,000 fans through the gate are going to receive a free commemorative poster painted by motorsports artist Bill Patterson, inspired by a photo from the Bristol Motor Speedway Archives

of Dad's car crossing the finish line with his arm held high across the outside the door. It's a really, really cool shot. I'm going to want to try to get my hands on one of these as well. Got to be one of the first 10,000 to get there. So just to be clear, he had his arm out the window when he had his arm out the window when he crossed the line? Yeah, well, you've got two arms, one on the wheel. Stud!

That is the man, yes! That is cool. Oh, my gosh, you don't see that. How could you? There's a window net. Well, he's winning his first race. I mean, if you're going to win your first race, Bristol is definitely the track to do it.

Just a really, really cool item that are going to be available to the first 10,000 fans through the gate. It's just an exciting weekend for NASCAR. Bristol Motor Speedway always delivers, and I'm glad they're presenting the the podcast today. Yes. Let's get to our guest, Rusty Wallace. Wallace with a hot-in.

All right, so we've got our guest here, Rusty Wallace. How you doing, Rusty? Everything's good. First time I've been over here. I like your room. It's pretty cool. Yeah, it is. So what are you doing these days?

Well, car dealership stuff. A lot of car dealership stuff. I remember my boss man, Mr. Penske, told me, said, hey, man, you're going to quit driving one of these days. You better have you act together and ready to go. I said, I hear you. And so, you know, 28 years ago, man, spent a long time, a long time. My first deal was a Pontiac dealership in Tennessee, and a guy calls

me up and said, hey, man, why don't you come over for an autograph session? So I went there and we had like 1,500 people in line. And then I went to Bristol and I won the race. And he calls me up and he said, hey, okay, I'll come again. I said, yeah. He said, hey, man, you know that buddy you're Dale Earnhardt. He said, would you bring him to? And I said, all right, let me look. And so I called him up. and I said, hey, you want to go to the Chevrolet dealership, or does Pontiac dealership with me? I think I'm going to buy it or be a partner in it. He says, okay. He said, if you go to yours, if I go to yours, you've got to come to mine.

I said, all right. So he flew up there, and me and Dale back there 28 years ago doing autograph sessions of my Pontiac dealership. So that's where it started. But then we built more stores. Now we've got eight of them up there. Really? Yeah, I got eight stores. We sell about 16,000 cars a year up there.

And the car business has been basically my number one deal. I love doing it. I had no idea that you were in the car business that much. I know you had a store at one time, but. Oh, no. That's awesome. Yeah. People get on me all the time.

So, what are you doing? What are you doing? I said, man, I've been working the car stuff for a long time. We've got a beautiful Honda dealership, a beautiful Toyota, a brand new Nissan, a brand new Chevrolet, a brand-new Ford, three Kiyahs and a Nissan. How spread out are these? They're all in Knoxville, Tennessee area. They're all in Knoxville. All in Knoxville.

Yeah, and I just love Knoxville. We have a great time up there. Beautiful airport, great area. A ton of race fans up there. And it all started with all that winter and I did in Bristol. And that's how I ended up in Tennessee. And so that's basically what I do now. But a lot of people hear me on the radio. I love working with the guys at Motor Racing Network. It keeps me involved in the sport. I do 21 races. I'm at only the cup races and only the ISC-owned racetracks. That's what I do. Yeah. Man, how much do you enjoy doing, you know, I just got into broadcasting last year,

and I just wanted something to keep me at the racetrack because I wanted to keep going. You know, I didn't want to stop going to the racetrack because I love being there. But I needed a reason to be there. And so what was your reason for getting into radio and is it to just be in the sport and be involved and be around it? The reason was I did television for nine years with ESPN and really enjoyed it. And when it came time for the contract, yeah, everybody was bidding. NBC won the bid, obviously.

They had all their own guys. And so then my career with television at that point was over. But then I got a phone call from the guys at NASCAR, and I talked to them back and forth, and radio was a fun thing. And so I do a lot of stuff with ISC. And if people don't know what that means, that's the people that mostly own all the racetracks in NASCAR.

So I'll go up to Chicago and do their advance work, where I'll go to Watkins Glen, do their advance work. And, like, this Sunday, I'm the Grand Marshal for the O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 in Texas. And that's an MRN duty because they're one of our big sponsors. So you get an invitation to go beat a Grand Marshal, and I say, hey, man, you're going to have good dinner on Saturday night? Hey, man, you're going to give me a nice shirt? Yeah, okay, I'll do it, you know. Feed me and clothe me, and I'm there, right?

Is that what Rusty Wallace? That's what moves Rusty Wallace. Well, yeah, but did they answer your question? And I'm between, you know, the car dealerships are number one. Number two is what got me in the car dealership is racing. And I don't want to be out of NASCAR. Right. So I love the MRAN stuff because it's 21 races.

The guys are fantastic. They're super knowledgeable. And I love working with them. I really do it. It keeps me at the track. But then not too much at the track. Yeah. Because, you know, I like to enjoy myself also.

Sure. I've only had a couple opportunities to do radio. And I found out, I found it to be more challenging the TV. with radio and you can you can add to this and correct what i got wrong but with radio you have to sort of paint the picture there's no visual for people that are listening and it seems like it's a more difficult job or a tougher job to really explain to people what they're seeing what you're seeing and and how you know trying to explain the in tv we're just looking at a screen the same thing everybody else is at home we just go see that on the screen yeah that's pretty cool on the screen and

But with radio and also the baton passing, you know, as you're going around the racetrack, the cars are going around the racetrack and they're literally passing it from guy to guy around the racetrack for an entire run, I found that to really be, it was not awkward, but it was just challenging. Whereas TV, you have so many more tools, I guess, and just a visual aspect of it seems to be a lot simpler. It's totally two different animals. It really is, in my opinion. After being in television for nine years and now doing radio for the last, heck, I've done radio now for the last four years in a row.

So, yeah, when you're doing television, you're looking at what the viewer sees. You don't have to be calling the race because they're already seeing it. And you're basically given commentary about what you think, you know, when they're going to pit and what you would do and stuff like that. Now, I still do that in radio because we've got the play-by-play guys. Jeff Striegel and Alex Hayden right now are Playbilt. play guys, I'm the race analyst. And so, and you talk about passing the baton around the racetrack. That was my biggest concern, too. How do you do that, you know? Because MRI is so

exciting and so jacked up and everybody's like, it tells me all the time. I love listen to those voices and how they really paint that picture, you know. And so when I first got put into booth, I said, how you do it? I said, okay, Dave Moody generally is up in turn one. You got Mike Bagley over in turn three in Daytona, Kyle Ricky off at turn four. And as those cars, are coming around and Kyle's done talking off of turn four. It's free game. If you want to pick up right there, pick up. So what I do, I use hand signals. So the other two guys are getting ready to pick up. And if I got something, I'll raise my finger and I go, Rusty's got it. So off a turn four, every time you hear my voice, it's always off a turn four, most all the time,

because I pick up after our last corner guy's done. And so it sounds real complicating, but it's not. It's pretty seamless, you know, when you know when to talk and not to talk. But I like the radio stuff because MRN's got so much heritage. They've been around for so long. You got guys like Winston Kelly who runs the Hall of Fame down there. You've got voice that you hear all the time like Dave Moody during the afternoon on XM's 90 or series 90. But it gives me something to do, keeps me at the track and lets me talk about something I feel like I know about. And so I'm kind of like you and that.

You don't want to leave the track, but when you're at the track, you want to have a purpose. And so if you didn't have your, say, well, you don't have your, you got your expanding cars. They're there on Saturday. But you're not there on Sunday. But you're not there on Sunday because of television. And that keeps you tied to the sport. And that's kind of the one of the things I wanted to do, too. You talked about dad and you having a friendship.

We wanted to get into that at some point. So I guess we could dive right in. When I was a kid, obviously, I was going to the racetrack and watching you guys for a long time. I remember, you know, I was at Bristol. You won your first race. and was around throughout the entire process all the way up until you went in a championship and then racing against you myself. And it seemed like your relationship with dad was just always kind of hot and cold.

Like you guys could bump into each other and be upset for a while and then maybe friends again. Could you sort of help me understand, I guess, what that process was like with him and how it could go from good to bad and back to good? Well, first of all, I'll tell you, my relationship with your dad, was really, really good. And we were exceptional friends off the track. You've noticed the stories probably. We spent a lot of time into Bahamas.

We spent a lot of time on boats. We spent a lot of time vacationing. I took my oldest son, Greg, out to the old farm, and your dad grabbed a hold of his arm, set him down, taught him how to shoot a gun. And I was over at your dad shop one night when it was over in Canapolis, and we're sitting there, and he's building a brand new bush car back then, it was called. And he's building a brand new for Daytona, and it was beautiful.

And he was really bragging about it. And the whole time he's doing that, he's sitting there drinking some Miller Lights. And yeah, back then he did drink Miller Light. Okay. We're going to be friends, but here's one condition. You're going to have to drink Miller Light. He did drink Miller Light back then. And so we're sitting there, and he's telling me, and out of the clear blue, he asked me to come over for some reason, I don't know what it was.

And out of clear blue, he says, hey, man, I want to show you this new bow and arrow. have. I said, okay. I'm like, dude, I don't know about this stuff. So he takes me outside this old building and you know what it looked like. And he takes this thing and he pulls his arrow back and he shoots it and it goes right through the building and all of a sudden I see his eyes get real big and he's like, oh, crap, you know. And he says, come on. He runs inside the building and that damn arrow went through the side of the building and right through his brand new oil cooler for the Daytona Bush car. And he blew his oil cooler out with a bow and arrow. And he's like, oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, and I tell that story now and then because it's kind of exciting,

because that's an off-track picture of what your pop would do, you know. But we were really good friends. We spent a lot of time, like I said, in those Bahamas, and then I'd be down there, and I'd come back to the boat, you know, I'd rent, and I'd go down and stay in the bedroom down there, and it'd be a case of Budweiser. He's always screwing with me, you know, always doing stuff like that. And then one day, I was winning all them races of Bristol, doing real well. One of our next races to come up was Bristol. So we sit down, we're drinking

beer and one night in the Bahamas. And he goes, he said, hey, man, I need you. I haven't been running too good at Bristol. Give me that damn setup you use. I said, I'm not giving you know, set up, you know, you're crazy. Come on, come on. And I said, and I thought to myself, self, you know, every time I try to help somebody, I give them the setup, but they only use like 70% of it so you can give it to them and it's not going to do them any good. Yeah. Because it's going to get filtered out by some crew guys or some engineers or whatever, because they're going to say, oh, no, that's stupid. I said, all right, so I got a piece of paper.

I wrote it and I gave it to him. And I, to this day, standing at this desk right here, I gave him exactly what I'm run. We went to Bristol next week, and I won to race. And I think he finished third or fourth or something like that. And I said, you use that whole setup and goes, no. I don't know what to tell you, man, you know, but I was honest with him. But he did a lot of stuff for me, too.

You know, when they started the merchandise business, he got me involved in that, and it made some good money. And he was a good guy when it comes to that. But we spent a lot of time off the track. But on the track, we had to race each other. And sometimes it got controversial. And sometimes it was like accidental conversation. I'll give you an example.

We're at Michigan. Now, I'm going back up a little bit. I'm at Richmond. And Gordon took me out at Bristol, knocked me up to racetrack. And last lap, he wins. I finished second. I said, okay, to bump and run. And I said, I'm not letting him get away with that.

And so I've rated three races. I go to Richmond, and there's Richmond, and I find myself a couple laps to go. He's alongside of me. I said, it's your turn, big guy, and I stuck him right in the fence. I tore his whole front end clear off his car. He was like, I said, we're even now, okay? And Navas said, he said, yeah, but I didn't wreck your car. I said, well, yours did. And so then the next week, we go to Michigan. And I practice in Michigan, and your dad and myself found ourselves side by side and going down the front straightaway. I'm the inside car. I hauled off in their turn one, and I got loose. And I got loose, and I said,

slid up into him in practice, and I put him right in the wall. Holy smokes, I've never seen him that mad in my entire life. He come flying out of a car, and the first thing got ringing out of his mouth, I'm not going to take that crap like you did to Gordon at Richmond. That's the first thing he said. He didn't say anything about, you know, me and him reckon, I'm not taking that crap that you did to Gordon. What? Yeah. And then the very next time, or next morning, I'm sitting there, I'm dead asleep in my motorhome, and all of a sudden, bang, bang, bang, bang. I hear something beating on the door. I opened the door.

It's your dad standing there. He goes, hey, man, just blow that crap off from yesterday. I'm over this. I'm sorry, dude. I said, no problem. Okay, that was it. But he was like that. But we would, and a lot of fans like, oh, man, those guys are in a big rivalry.

It's not. Wow. But I would go to those short tracks and win a ton of short tracks, and he would go to Daytona and kick our butt. And he'd go to Charlotte and kick our butt. And he'd go to Michigan. And then I'd go to the road courses and I'd win. And I'd go to, we had these different stomping grounds that we wanted. And then we do crazy stuff like Wilkesboro.

At Wilkesboro one time, Mr. France Jr. got a hold of us. And we're talking about T-shirts back in the day. And we went on and on and on about T-shirts and merchandise and stuff. We were having a good time of this stuff back then. It was really all these different pain schemes and all these things was exciting. So we get in a race and I come off a turn two And he bangs me in the back end And I'm like, what?

And the world's going on here, you know? So we run like three more laps And all of a sudden he gets a good bite off a turn two And bam, hits me to back in again. And so, man, I got hot. And I said, I've never done this to a driver, but I did it to your dad. And I come off a turn two and he hits me in the back

And I slammed the brakes on. I just locked him down. And he then hit me in the back so damn hard He tore the grill out of his car, tore a whole friend off his damn car, my bumper all off, and I went ahead and finished second race, and he had the front end tore off. And then old man, France comes down and goes, what hell you're doing out there, man? I said, just selling T-shirts, boss.

And he laughed and went off, and we got over it. But we do stuff like that, but I really respected him. He taught me a lot. He made me want to be like him. At times, he made me want to dress like him, made me want to sit in a car all slouched over in a car. you know, he'd take his helmet off and come in after a plug check or something. Ever make you want to shoot a bow and arrow right through your car? No, no, I didn't do that.

I left that up to him, though. I left it because he was really, but that was incredible watching it that night, watching him shoot that dock on oil cooler out of his brand new car, you know? When did you meet him? Like, where does it start with you and Dale Earnhardt? 1980, Atlanta. I went to Atlanta and I tested with Penske. I just ran all these ASA races, and I was doing good in the short tracks.

up in Penske said I want to give this kid a try you know they put this car together with a guy named text pile of myself and don miller we went down to land and we tested test to test I drove irock cars me and rick mirrors and we tested the crap out iirac cars kind of get my feet underneath you get my sea legs you know so then we put me in that 1980 caprice and i ran my butt off all day long and that 500 and i finished second and dale won the race I'm looking at that car behind your head it's a blue and yellow number two, and that's the car that he won with, and I finished second behind him in. And that's where he first meant. And he went to me, he said, holy smokes, dude, where you come from? And I said, I've been to Midwest, man. I said, where you come from? And then I met him down in

Pensacola, Snowball Derby one time. He was running a bush car down there. He was an old Nova with the fender well was all cut out and the tire sticking out about a foot front and rear, you know. And I said, oh, man, I never seen a guy drive a car that hard in my life. And he was just wheeling that thing. And I had like my ASA car, and got a swoopy-looking car, and he had this old boxy car, and he was whooping everybody's belt with that thing. But I met him at Pence Cole.

I met him after we finished first and second, and then the relationship, the conversation started from there, and it just, and then when I went over and started driving for the Blue Max guys, those cars were really fast. The late Barry Dotson and Jimmy Maycar and Todd Parrot and all those guys really had those cars.

About what year is this? That was 86. That was 86. 86, 86. 87, 88, and 89. And my last year with the team was 1990. And in 90, we won to Coke 600, and we won Sears Point, and then it was over then. So you and Dale were friends. You met in 80, but when did you guys become like Bahama friends?

I'd say probably the Bahama stuff, that was probably 90, 93. 93, I won 10 races that year. And that's when your dad and I, I don't know if this one of your questions or not, But that's when we get together at Teledeg and I go, you know, end over in there, you know. He flipped you. I mean, you rolled. I rolled, yeah, but I know exactly what happened. I mean, it was a big run where come to start, finished line.

I saw him coming. I went down to block, and when I didn't get down there quick enough, and I got my left rear corner into his right front fender. And I went, you know, end over in. And then he calls me in a hospital, and he says, hey, man, I didn't mean to try to kill you. I said, I know. No problem. The next week I show up at Sears Point in the big faker, hey, Rusty Wallace to the big red truck or to the red truck or Rusty Wallace to the truck. I said, all right.

I said, what do I do wrong now? I didn't know I did anything wrong. And I go up and Dale's in there with Bill Jr. And he goes, hey, we always go to the Bahamas and we want you to go with us. And I went, okay. I said, that sucker's trying to pay me back for killing me. But we did that for 18 straight years. Really?

Yeah, it's cool. So, you know, the water bottle incident is one thing that everybody always remember. And that was after, I guess, at Bristol, the dad got into you and turned you around and tore your car up. So listening to you talk, it sounds like that some of that stuff was, were y'all selling t-shirts? Like, was that really what y'all were doing when y'all would go to the racetrack and have those kind of things going on? No, no. Like, so how did- That's just a byproduct of it.

And the conversations always arose. We had fun with it actually talking about it. That's what I mean, yeah. We had fun with talking about, yeah, man, we're going to go sell some t-shirts. That was a slogan. Then we'd get out to erase our brains out, you know, and the fans were really into it, and it was exciting. But, no, man, we weren't just out there selling T-shirts.

No, I hope you're not thinking that type of stuff. But you've got to remember your pop was the leader of that. He was the one that started that whole business and helped a lot of people. You know, myself, Dale Jared, Terry Labony, and Jeff Gordon, and he was the leader of that, him and Fred Wagonhalls. And so, yeah, yeah, a lot of conversation there. But I will tell you, you get on that dog on track, just like you know, these guys, if you want to find friends, buddy, you better find your neighbor. Because if you think you're going to have a pile of friends, you know, that you've got to race against, they might be friends, you think.

But when you get on a racetrack, they're trying to steal your money, too, man. And they're trying to whip your butt, and it gets pretty tough. At least for me, it was. What was the water bottle the high point of any incident between you and Dale? Would you say that that was as rough as it got? Can I tell you how that happened? True story? I'd love to hear it. All right.

I'm going to tell you how that happened, true story. We're on pit road. Gordon has been kicking our ass. He's kicking your dad's ass. He's kicking my ass. And your day I was sick of it. And I was sick of it. And that particular day at Bristol, I qualified really well.

I think, like, third. And your dad qualified, I think it was fifth. And Gordon was on the outside of us, I think, on the start of the race. And he come, your dad come up to me, so let's do this. And I said, what's it? I said, let's just get this sucker out of way and check out and get gone. Because that was one of my good tracks, and that was your own man's good track. Not so much for Gordon back then, but he said, let's just punt this kid and get gone.

He said, I'm sick of him. I said, all right. And punt him, men, just kind of rough him up a little. bit and kind of hammered because we could do that back then you root them out yeah I root them out a little bit and get going so I come up we get about 10 laps in a race and I come off a turn two and I get loose and he's right on my tail your dad is you know we're like we're like bumper to bumper man we're rolling we're not getting it done you know we're honking through that field you know and getting next lap we're going to lead the race you know I come off a turn four and I get loose he hits me an ass

it wasn't his fault it's probably my fault for getting loose you know because we were so tight and I go spin it around and I hit the wall and then I can limp that damn thing around the whole race, you know? I'm frustrated and I get over there and my son, Greg, walks up to me with just a regular bottle of water and I was hot and sweat and he gives me a bottle of water. I'm drinking the water and I start walking down to your old man, and he was down there because him and Terry Labani just got into it coming off of turn four.

I think Labani won the race. Dale's sitting down there and he's got a whole pile of people around him. And I'm mad. And I started walking down, what I was thinking was, what I was thinking was, we had a deal, dude. What are you doing? What the hell are you doing? We had a deal. You're the one that started this whole thing, you know.

You're sick of Jeff Gordon. You had it with him. Let's dump his ass and get going, you know. And so I started walking down here. Greg goes, what are you doing? Dad, what are you doing? I'm going on her talking. Oh, come on, dad.

Don't do that. Don't do that. I keep on walking down there, and I see him, and he's about 10 foot away from me. I say, hey, no response. I say, hey, no response. I took that bottle, I went, I slung that bottle to get the response. And I met to hit him like in the shoulder, but I hit him right in the center of the forehead. I hit him right in the forehead and it was game on.

He just blew through that crowd and came over and said, what's wrong? I said, what the hell's all right about, man? You've knocked me in the back and I got to limp around to him or crawl to hell. I said, I'll tell you what, I won't forget it. I won't forget what you did to me a Teledag either. And he goes, you know what? I won't forget it either. We're bad, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Then the next morning, here comes the phone call. the talk. Hey man, forget about that bullshit. I'm sorry about all that. Really? Oh yeah. And that's how it went. It's just that type of relationship. But at that particular point, man, he had it. He could not take that Gordon stuff, that young kid coming and kicking our asses. And he was. Jeff was just putting it on us, boy. And we were sick of it. You actually cleaned up that conversation because we were watching that video just the other day. That conversation had a lot more color in it. You did a nice job cleaning it up a little bit. Yeah, because you guys. So you could tell that, right?

Well, yeah, but like, you know, now, there were no punches thrown. No. But I want to tell you something. J.R. Rhodes was in between you guys. J.R. Rhodes being Dale, uh, Dale's guy. And J.R. tells a really good story from his vantage point where he said afterwards, Dale got on to him a little bit and he said, J.R. always leave me a hand. Because I guess J.R. was holding him back and basically wrapping him up.

Although Dale Earnhardt had, like, there was a couple times where he kind of like tap, you know, does something on your face. I don't know. Like, I don't even know if you, there was a big crowd. It was chaos. I gotta go back and check that when I haven't seen it. Yeah. Like he kind of goes up like a little love tap.

Not a slap. Pinched cheek. Yeah, kind of like that. Maybe like friends would do. But Dale Earnhardt said to JR after it was over, always leave me a hand. Just in case. You never know that Rusty way. Rusty may just swing one one time.

There was, so I got a picture of the car. I'll show it to you. It's an awesome picture, too. Let me see. Here it is. All right, Bahama friend. You had his number with a big X through it on your car. A week after Bristol.

Now that can't be a show car now. That's got to be your car. I don't know. Honestly, I promise. I don't remember that. I don't remember that. I do know one thing. That would not have been something that I would have promoted and said to do.

Yeah. Oh, man. I think it's really interesting that back, because I did that too. And I had a Calvin pissing on this guy's initials on my car after he spun me out the week before at Myrtle Beach. So, I mean, I thought that that kind of stuff was kind of commonplace. Well, the Sardine story, that was you and Dale, wasn't it? I mean, maybe that was just a prank. Maybe that was just a fooling around type thing.

That's what I always took it as is when you'd see that kind of stuff, it was basically just jabs. It was just fun jabs between the teams. I've never seen, you know, I've never seen. individual. Your dad ran in a pack. It never was him doing it. It was him with, you know, Kirk Schoamer Dean or Chalkler, all

these guys in this pack and they're all like doing this thing together. I'll never forget when I get in the damn car at Darlington and I get in my car and it stinks so bad I can't see straight and I get in and I sit down and I feel like I'm sitting in a big old mush and I get out and I like, what in the world? And I picked the seat cover up and it's full of sardines

and I back out and I turn like this. And I get in the and it's not him standing there by himself. They're like eight of them behind them, like a football team. They're like a football team backing them up or look what we just did, you know. So the Sardine story is true. Oh, yeah, it's true. And how'd you get him back? I stole the steering wheel the next week at Bristol.

And Bristol comes up again. We're getting ready to go. He's back to our holding court, and we used to stick our steering wheels on the roof of the cars. And so he's over there just going on and on and on. And I just reach up and take a steering wheel off his hood. roof of his car and I just walked around real quiet. Nobody saw me. Nobody saw me tuck a damn steering wheel off a damn steering wheel. I took the steering wheel, popped off the Velcro off the, you know, well, no, they didn't have Velcro then. So I took just a wheel and I put up my car. And,

you went out on track? No, I'm sitting there in Pet, and really getting ready to start to race. Oh, shoot, the race. Yeah, we're getting me to start to race. And I'm sitting a car, you know, and they're all buckling down and all that. I'm just looking in a mirror of the car, and I'm looking, and all of a sudden I see panic going on. They're all going ape shit. You know, there's Everybody's going nuts and where's the wheel? You got it. No, I don't have it. You got, no, no.

They're going nuts. I mean, it's just getting frantic. They're freaking out. We're getting, say, gentlemen, start your engines and the doggone Bristol 500 and damn Dale Earnhard doesn't have a steel wheel. And he's just going to go crazy. Finally, I reached up, I took the wheel and I went, oh. And he goes, oh, man, you got me on that one, you know.

I said, no more sardines in my seat, dude. That's epic. That's epic. A true story. Why did he put sardines in your seat? Just because? Because him and I are going for the championship, and he was just screwing with me all year long, trying to rattle me.

Yeah. Holy cow. It sure was, yeah. Sardines in the seat, man. Did you guys ever apologize to each other for any one thing? Like, did anything ever go across the line that you're like, I'm sorry, that was wrong? The closest it came was when him and I got together at Michigan,

and it's not a, hey, like you might do nowadays. It's, it wasn't a, man, you know what, I'm really sorry about that. It's just a poor decision. It's my fault I take the blame. His, you know, saying I'm sorry is, hey, man, I'm over that shit. What about you? Hey, man, I'm over that. You okay with that?

Yeah, I'm okay with that. Okay, bye. That's it. That's how that went. That'll do. You're talking like three or four seconds, and that's about it, you know. That's great. It's crazy.

So that, we had Jeff Gordon on the show a couple shows ago, and he said that he felt like his early success that you had a problem with it and you just you know i think you and you just said you and dad both had a problem with his early yeah i had a big damn problem with it yeah oh really yeah man i was jealous really yeah because it was me and dale was me and dale went on all them races it was it was it was we were just getting it done and all of a sudden here this young kid comes in and whole different style than us i'll tell you that now you know dail's solid black clothes everywhere he went I'm just kid out of the Midwest, got a big mouth going on, you know,

and here comes Gordon. Making it look easy. He wasn't making it look easy. And I'm like, man, I'm not liking this, you know. You know, you could tell me I was supposed to be more humble, but I wouldn't, man. I wasn't liking it a bit, you know, and that's what it was all about. I think one of the toughest things that I remember you going through

and looking back at your comments during that time was the win at the All-Star race. obviously winning the race was great but I think the fan reaction that happened from that was spinning Darrell or Darrell spinning himself across the front of your car however you want to categorize it that's how Bobby Allison says

right he backed into me I remember those I remember comments from you shortly after that and how how I guess upset or hurt you were by the fan reaction because it was pretty harsh what would you describe as probably the low point in your career?

Was that it or was there another time that I'm not thinking about? No, I think you're a dead on on that one. Probably the low point in my career was then. Because, I mean, a lot of rough driving, a lot of exciting stuff going on. And I'm in that race, and it's no points. It's all for the money. And I win the first segment. Second segment, they come in, and somehow those cars had buy supply tires back then.

And I'll never forget the number. We had an 88.5 inch right front tire. We had an 88 inch right rear tire. And so we accidentally got the right rear tire put on the right front. And the car is pretty loose, you know, in that second segment, Darrell beats me. But mentally, I know I got the best car. I know I got the best car. Barry Dotson comes across the radio and says, hey, man, we made a mistake.

We got the right side tire swap. He said, just drive it. So, all right. I'm sorry. This was after the second segment, after I came in. They took him off and saw it then. I went, oh, man, he said, we're just sorry about that, blah, blah, blah, glad you drove it like that. So then I'm like all jacked up.

I said, and I know I got this baby right again. I got another shot at winning this thing. So in the third segment, Darrell takes off, and I catch him, and I sail it down in a turn three, and it's sticking pretty good. And I get in the middle of the corner, and I slide up, and I get in his left for a quarter panel and takes a spin. I'm like, oh, that's just dramatic, dramatic stuff that happens here all the time, you know? But, man, I'm telling you what, then they took me, put me to vicarious. Lain and everybody's going crazy and crazy mad at me. I'm like, dude, what in the hell do I do to get everybody this mad?

I mean, they're really mad. And the pit crews are fighting. I mean, you're beating the crap on each other on pit road and all hell's breaking loose. I said, okay, they said, now it's time for you to go up to, what do you call that thing up there at Charlottomere Speedway Club. Yeah, the Speedway Club. Time for you to go up to Speedway Club was they always took all the winners up there after the race. So I got ready to go up there and they said, man, you can't take you on a golf car.

it's too dangerous. I go, what? So I go, there's an ambulance waiting for me behind the dog on Victory Lane. They put me in an ambulance and drive me around, take me up there. And they walk up into the Speedway Club in Humpy Wheeler says, and the winner of the All-Star, Rusty Wall, let's just give my hand. And everybody went, boo. Really? Everybody in a whole place went, boo. And I'm like, okay. They put me back in the ambulance, took me back downstairs, and drove me to my house over in Charlotte in that day. damn ambulance. Wow. I go in there in my house. I go to sleep in this old recliner for a while. Then I went upstairs and went to bed and the two police officers over there, they sent two police

officers over there. They stayed in my house that night. And my daughter, Katie, comes running downstairs. So, Dad, there's two police officers down. What's going on? I'm going, it's a long story. I'll tell you later. You know, so I wake up next morning, tell them all what happened. But it was dramatic as hell. And it went on for a long time. Every race, boo, every race, boo. And finally it stopped, you know, but I was like, I still don't know to this point what caused that to be so dramatic. I agree. I found that really surprising, too, because it actually, like you spun out a fan favorite. That's right. D.W.

D.W. was kind of, you know, I mean, he had his fans at the same time, but, you know, he was often booed as well because he won so many races. And two years prior to that, we basically seen one of the wildest, roughest shows in the 1987, Winston. star race with Dad and Bill Elliott and Jeff Bidine. And I, like you, was really surprised by the reaction because that was sort of the norm for racing back then. You saw it almost every other week guys getting in each other, moving each other out of the way. But I remember you being pretty beat down or disheartened about the reaction to the fans. I think, though, over time you sort of earned back that trust and fan base.

Well, I tell you, one, I noticed it changed a little bit. And Alan Quicky, when Alan got killed in a plane wreck in 1993, I think everybody knew him and I were really good friends. And go to the track that night, Alan gets killed in the plane crash, and then I win the race. And I do the reverse Polish victory lap like he did all the time of just trying to honor him, you know. And I don't know, I noticed after that people got nicer. They got a little nicer and then it got better, you know, and Darrell and I, have always been good friends. We've, you know, we still are good friends.

And believe it or not, people won't believe this, but Jeff Gordon and I are really good friends. We just, we got back from out there in the sand dunes, what was about two months ago, me and him and Greg Biffel and Ray Everham and all of us out there at Guy down here at the guy named Ron Peretz, place having fun. So we get along real good.

But back when we were racing, man, it was, it was strong. Those relationships, we've had raced a hell out of each other on the track. And if it was possible to get along during the week. Yeah. The other thing that stands out from that conversation in that story you're told was,

when you won the Winston, you went home and took a nap. Like, y'all didn't go raise hell? Or, like, Barry, you were. Dude, I was so, I was so be. You named some of the biggest hell raisers on your team, Barry Dodson and Maycar and those guys. Notorious. Yeah. I needed to learn better from you when it come to that.

I really did, because I know you're good at that. And believe it or not, I'm damn good at it, too, but I have, uh, I know. But that particular night, I didn't exercise it for some reason. I think it was because I was locked in that ambulance all the time. They would let me out. I wanted to raise hell and have a hell of a time at that Speedway Club when they took me up there. That was going to be the start. That was going to be game on.

It was going to carry on. But, boy, when everybody in there booed me, I went, dude. Sort of a buzzkill. I can understand four or five of them, but not one like every one of them. This is interesting. I mean, like all those years watching you and Earnhardt and all these guys, I mean, like, I would have never guessed that, you know, what the fans thought about you affected you to the point, but you just said that that was a low point for you. So like, you do want to be

liked. You didn't want to get booed. You know, I did, you know, you know, you can win all the races you want like Kyle Busch. He can win, win, win, win, I don't care if he wins thousand races, but man, I don't want to go across there and go everybody go boo all the time. So it did affect you? Hell yeah. When you said a low point, what do you mean? Like, what did it do to do you, just emotionally? It just, it makes you go up there and want to put your finger in your ears when you get your name announced. It didn't make me want to get mean and mad everybody and I'll show you and just be a jerk. You know, it didn't make me want to do that if it's just like, man, I don't want to be like

that. I want people to like what I do, you know. Did it ever affect the way you race? I want people, I want people to cheer me and boo me like they do Dale Earnhardt Senior. That's what I want. I don't want to be primary boo, boo, boo, not boo, or not boo! I was getting, boo. I don't want that low boo, man.

I want that high boo, you know. You don't want ambulance rides anymore. No, dude. I don't think anybody wants that crap, you know. I got you. So you talked earlier about where you were winning races. You mentioned the road courses. How you don't have road course background?

Like you didn't grow up racing road courses. How did you get to be so damn good? I went to Bob Bondarant out in Sonoma, California, and I ran and I ran and I ran. I'll never forget the last day I was about to graduate from my first road racing school with Bob Bondarant. And I'm out there running. and he had Paul Newman out there, and he's teaching Paul Newman too.

And so I'm driving a Mustang, I think it was, and they were in with like an old LTD Ford or something with some big fat tires and stuff on it, and they're out there running around. And so I had like two laps to go in my course, and then I'm done, you know. All of a sudden I see this whole car come behind me. I'm thinking, oh, it's Bob Bondrette, you know, and the guy pulls up in this LTT and just pounds me an ass, you know, and it's in my Mustang, you know. And I pull in and I get out of a car and I look back and it's Paul Newman. He caught me just beating on me. He's a hell of a road course guy.

That Newman was really good, you know. But then, so I went to Bondarat, but then the biggest thing it really helped me is then to Barry Dotson and the guys and Jimmy May Carr and Harold Elliott and all those cats, they built me a full-blown road course car. They really put a lot of focus in on primarily right-hand-turned cars.

Because back then, people were taking their short-track cars and putting the gas tank on the other side. That's all they did, you know. And they treat the road course racing as a nuisance. It was like, oh, man, let's just get through this thing. But Barry wasn't like that. He's going to build a hot rod car. And now we're going to go test.

We load that old truck and go all the way to California. And we tested and tested and tested and tested. Went through every road course ratio in those old Jericho transmissions back then, did all that stuff. And when I showed up, I won. And before they shut Riverside, California down, I won the last two races. I got a T-shirt, starts at the very top with Pernelly Jones, Mario Andredi and all these names, the very, very bottom it says, Rusty Wallace, Rusty Wallace.

then they mowed that sucker down and turned it into a mall or something, you know. So that was a big deal. But then it just kind of got the rhythm, you know. And I think that racing on bicycle, like tires and a road course taught me a lot too. I call it body English. I could learn how to throw the car. I would throw the car and throw it back and forth and throw it back and forth. And then when the radial tire came out, I had to calm that down a little bit.

But it still got that aggressiveness that I think that you need in road course racing. And I just love that style of racing. You went to Bob Bondarant's, me and Steve Park went to Bob Bondarantz in 1999. I ended up winning Watkins Glen over Ron Fellows and Park won his second cup race, I think, or his first cup race, I think, at Watkins Glen. So, I mean, at Bob Bondron School, if you go there, that was a really big deal back then. I'm sure it still is today, but a lot of guys would go out there, And you could literally learn how to become a road course racer.

He taught you a lot. It was incredible. He really did, you know. And the only thing I failed on, I don't know if he did this to you or not. Did he put you on that doggone machine where they jacked the car off the ground a little bit? So it was like a slick track thing, you know. There's an official name for it. I forgot what it was.

But anyway, they take your car and put castor wheels on the outsides of it. They lift it and take all the weight off it. And when the car gets side where you're supposed to control it, dude, I spun that thing and spun. I could not master that at all. I just gave up on that, you know. That would be impossible. Close to impossible, it seems like. What made you so good?

All right, so you were winning at road courses often and early. You won at Watkins Glen in like your third start, right? I mean, it was pretty quick. So what made you still good at Bristol, though? I think what got me in Bristol that I love short track racing. I cut my teeth in the short track stuff. Winchester, Indiana, Salem, Indiana, big high bank racetracks, you know, and all the stuff in the Midwest.

And you got to remember when I, came out of short track race and Alan Quicki came out of it and Davey Allison came out of it and even yourself, I guarantee you what I'm about to say you're going to agree with. All you went to bed with every night is thinking about your car. You're thinking about your old shock and your spring and your tires and it's all you're thinking about. You're not having a conversation about something else because if I had a conversation about something else, it's going to hurt my racing, man. I had to be 100% into it. So when I went to Bristol, you know, all I was thinking is, you know, how am I going to get these four tires to stick to the ground. I got to get my sway bars and my shocks and my springs. That's all I did.

And then, then I went to a short track and I won on a short track. Duh. Kind of makes sense that my first would come on a short track. Not at Daytona. Yeah. I don't know how to draft, you know. But doesn't everybody start on a short track? Yeah. I mean, like, you weren't, you weren't original in that regard. Everybody starts on short track. Yeah, but you know what? Not everybody is passionate about wanting they're getting mechanically about their car. There's a lot of of people that aren't super passionate about one to understand every nut and bolt on their car. Okay. And I was.

And Alan Quicki was. And Davey was taught by his father, Bobby. And you, I tell young kids nowadays when they come to, hey, man, I want to be a race car driver. What do I need to do? I said, well, you need to get in that shop. And if you get a chance to get in a car somehow, you better understand everything about it. Because if you don't, you might go out there and win, but you're not going to win on a consistent basis.

You're not going to stay winning. And you get yourself in a ditch. Most of these guys got to turn to somebody else to have them pull them out of the ditch. You've got to have some ideals. And back then, we didn't have no computers. You got to remember that. There's no simulation, no computers, no nothing. You had to figure it out.

I'd come off the racetrack, and the first thing that happened, a cruise chief was stick his head to it when I'd say, what's it doing it? What do you want to do? That's how the conversation went. What's it doing it? What do you want to do? I said, take that $1,700 out of the right front, put an 18 in it.

Take that $3.50 out of the right rear, put a three and a quarter in it. Give me two rounds a bite, drop the track bar a half inch. Okay, hurry and get that done. Go back out. And that's what we did. And we kept going out, going out, going out. And I've seen some drivers get so frustrated. They go, man, I don't know what to do.

And that's it, you know, but I wouldn't like that. And so when I got in those short track cars, I was always into that chassis stuff. And I think it helped. Yeah, one of the things that people would say about Rusty Wallace was that he would get during the race or during practice, Rusty would call for the changes that he wanted in the car. Whereas, you know, even more so today, guys come to. the garage, parked their car, the team, you know, gets the information decides what to do, what's the next change.

They might already have a list made that they're going to go through. But Rusty, and not a lot of guys were like that back when you were driving in the 80s and 90s, but Rusty knew every spring, every shock. And so when he was out on the track driving the car, he was thinking about what it needs, and he was telling the team often, more often than not, what part to change, what change needed to happen. And, yeah, I think you were definitely one of those guys that knew every nut and both about their race car. Now, if I try that nowadays, I'd probably get thrown out of the garage, you know, because team members now, they're so smart and they're so good at what to do.

And the whole game has changed. And I talked to a lot of current drivers, and they say, man, if you get your head in there and you tell them to do this, do this, it doesn't fly too good. They need to do that. They don't need you messing it all up because you can't do the same stuff nowadays. like I did back then. But I almost want you to try. I mean, just one weekend. That was something I wanted to talk to you about.

I believe you said a few times that you felt like maybe you might have retired too soon. Like you had a few good years left. Yeah, I, you know, I think that started because did you ever have anybody come up to you and say, hey, man, how much longer are you going to drive? All the time. You did? Okay. Yeah, that started with me.

And one guy that's a great friend of mine that got under my skin, it was at Indy for the Brickyard 400 with Jerry Punch. And I like Jerry a lot, a great friend of mine. And he walks up to me, ran him and said, hey, Rusty, he's interviewing me. We're talking. And one of the last questions was, how much longer you think you're going to stay doing this? And I'm like, why in the hell would he ask me that question, you know? And then all of a sudden I get these questions from somebody else, you know,

hey, how much longer are going to keep on going? And then I'm down to Daytona one time, and Bill France Jr. comes up, and said, how much are I going to keep doing this? I'm going, okay, I'm getting all these questions. There's something going on? Because what was going on, the reason I'm getting these questions is because I was on like a 65 race losing streak. You know, and they're like, oh, man, things are going the wrong way.

Probably the same stuff Jimmy Johnson's getting, you know, currently. Right. And so I got thinking about that. And then I go to the banquet and I'm hearing these TV guys wanting to start doing this stuff. And they start coming up to me wanting to go to work and do TV. ESPN was one of them and asked me to come up and rehearse. and I did all that, and they liked all that. And so then I tell R.P. about it.

And he goes, you know what, man, you've accomplished everything you really have done this sport. I know you want to win Daytona and you haven't done that. But everything else, you're pretty well done. And he said, maybe at this time just start thinking about it, you know. And I said, okay. So then I get this offer from ESPN. I said, let's do it. Let's pull the trigger.

Let's go announce it, you know. And so in 2004, I announced I'm going to quit. And I'll never forget. I'm at Homestead, Florida, 2005. I finished like 11th in a race or something. Pull off the track, and I'm going, this is the stupidest decision I ever made my entire life. What in the world am I doing? How did I get myself talked into this?

How did I go down this road? And I got out of that car, and I was the emptiest I ever felt my life. And then I go around the very next thing I do, I go to an Indy car race because ESPN didn't get the deal to 2007. And I retired in 2005, so I had an 06, nothing going on. So I want you to call Indy. So I called the Indianapolis 500. I did all this stuff and had a great time doing it, but I just felt empty, you know. Man, that took a long time to get over.

Right. And still, I was standing in front of your building a little while ago, and there's six kids out there with a bunch of die-cast cars. So I sure wish you get back in the car, man. Come on, get back in a car. Why did you do this? That was a stupid. And the guy looked at me in eyes. That was a stupid move.

How long did it take you to get over it? Five years? It took me. No, it took me longer than that. It took me like eight years to get over it. And I got a phone call from Daytona. They want me to go to Daytona and run a Ferrari in the Ferrari Challenge. Had a hundred twenty-three cars show up.

And I thought I was just going on to do a show. And I said, no, man, we want you to go down there and be serious and try to win this Ferrari Challenge event. So why you want me? He said, because you're not driving now. And Ferrari said get one of those retired NASCAR guys to compete with our guys, you know. And the Ferrari Challenge cars are super fast cars, you know. They're 200-mile-hour cars. I went to Austin, Texas and tested for two days in his Ferrari.

Then I went to Daytona. 123 cars showed up my finished 10th. And I was pretty happy, happy with that. And then I got the juices flowing again. I said, man, I got to get back in this car. And I said, no, I'm not going to do that. What year was that? Then I got drunk one night with all my friends, and this is a true story.

Finally, he gets drunk. I was up in the mountains. I was up in the mountains, and I'm sitting there one night. And a friend of mine was there. There was a guy named Billy Nash. and Billy and I were having some beers and he said, I have it stupid you getting out of that car. And Childress was calling me.

He said, man, he said, as soon as I retired, he's like, you need to get back and get in one of my cars. So I called him up and said, all right, I'm going to come out of retirement. I'll drive your car. He says, I can't do it. I said, why? He said, I just hired Clinton Boyer. I got no room now.

So did you ever get an offer that you really considered? No, I never did. Was there any rumor that DEI called you at one time to see if you wanted to come drive for DEI? No? No. Never to get that. Wow. Not that I know of, you know.

Okay, yeah. But that's kind of that stuff. Yeah. I think about it all the time. When I go to, like, yesterday at Martinsville, I say my old car win the race, the two car wins, and it doesn't win by a little bit. It just dominates, you know. Right.

Well, it wins both stages and wins 445 laps. I used to call that. Every time I win these old races, I get out of the car, and I tell old Roger Penske, he said, man, that went good. He said, what did. I said, I popped up on a can of whoop ass, man, is what I did. And that's what that was yesterday or the other day at Martinsville. Without Dr. Jerry Punch starting the string of questions and without that, what year do you think you would have raced to then without the pressure to retire?

Probably, probably, probably 08. So in four or five years. Probably three more years. If you remember, Mark Martin and I, we announced almost the same time that we're going to retire together. And we retired and we went to Sears Point and Fox brings out rock and chair. for both of us. I remember. Presents that to us and they start finish line and we're getting keys to the city all year long. We're getting all these accolades and all these cool things. And three quarters way through the year, Mark says, nope, I've made a mistake. I am not retiring.

And he just pulled out of the deal. Did you look at him and go, hmm, maybe I should do that too? Yes. Right. Hell yeah, I did. I said, so I'm out here in his island all by myself now and I'm retiring and I'm still thinking stupid. But I had one of the smartest guys in the world, and that's Penske. He said, don't listen to that noise. You're making a right decision. You're making a right decision. You need to start focus on those car dealerships. You need to start focus on business. And you need to get that race car stuff out of your head right now. You've done that. And I said, all right, he's the one that calmed me down the very most. And my wife, Patty. Patty was like, for sure, it's great having you at home, you know, and it was just, she liked that better.

So being sponsored by Miller all, most of your career, did you race the other beer cars a little harder than everybody else? Yeah, I think I had to a little bit, you know. Boy, I tell you what, it was like the big three in Detroit. If the Chevy beats the Ford, everybody talks about it. Well, that's Miller guys. They did not want to hear that Budweiser car beat that other car. That's true.

No, that is absolutely true. Remember from our Budweiser days. Our Budweiser guys the same way. When they looked at the finishing order, they want to know where the Miller car was and the corks car was. 100%. I asked that because one of our listeners hit us up on social media and said It seemed like he always raced you harder than everybody else.

And I felt that too on the racetrack. I felt the competition, I think, between our sponsors. And I was racing the field and the millicard. Yeah. And the chorus car, you know. But I remember one of the first lessons that you taught me, you might not even been intentionally trying to teach me anything, but we were racing at Atlanta in 1999. I had a five race schedule.

And I had never ran on a big track before too many times. It had a lot of big track experience. and we went down into term one and you were on my door and I almost spun out. I'd never been in that situation before where you could take the air off of the side of a car, you know, and I almost spun out. We raced all day long, it seemed like that race. And I learned so much. When you're in that point in your career, this was 99, you were inevitably put with younger drivers as teammates.

Did you feel like you were a mentor? Did you enjoy having teammates, working with teammates, teaching younger guys? Or was that sort of kind of on the back burner compared to what you were trying to do with your own career? Look, I've got to tell you, I'm not proud of what I'm about to say. I was never good at that. I was never good at saying I'm going to get a teammate and I'm going to teach a teammate. I remember when your dad came up to me, we were children, so we were going to get a teammate. He told me, so I'm sick of this teammate crap.

I said, why? He said, because I'm the veteran, and I feel like I got to be spending half my time teaching them. He said, they're not coming up teaching me. They're not helping me. All the information is flowing the other way, and it's draining me. I don't like it, you know. And then my particular deal with the Newman, it just got competitive. It just got competitive. It was just personalities were totally different. It got to where he didn't like me and I didn't like him, and that's what it was, you know. And I tried to get better, and we had hot and cold years, but I just wasn't real good at all that teammate crap. I really wasn't, you know, and I remember talking about, I was talking to Rick Hendrick

about it, and I told him one time, I said, man, we're talking about getting a young guy and this and that, and he said, hell, if I need a young guy, I'll go find one and steal it from somebody else. That's what he said. That's right. He said, I'll go find one and steal from somebody else, you know. He said, this, you get toot on all this young guy stuff and spending all this money, you know, let somebody else do it.

And so I'm, but I am, I'm happy that guys like you. you and guys like Kyle Bush are spent all that money and time bringing these new guys up because nobody else is probably going to do that. You know, I want to ask a follow-up to his question. When Budweiser took their sponsorship from Hendrick over to DEI to put it on this guy's car in 2000, they put a lot of money just in the announcement. I mean, I remember him talking about the most nervous he's ever been in a race car. It was that first qualifying for Charlotte in 1999.

What was the reaction from your story? side of the camp, not just so much that, you know, your good buddy, Dale Earnhardt's son is now into the, in Cup. He's now won two championships in the Bush Series and the Az Cup, but now Budweiser is backing him. What was your thought to that? You know, it was a big buzz because Dale can drive a car. He's a popular as hell. He's a great driver, and it comes from an incredible family, so they knew what was happening. They knew that car, that sponsorship was going to one hot ride car and one hot ride driver. You know, so, hey, it was competitive, you know, there's no doubt about that.

And I'm not sugar-coating this at all. I know you know what I'm about to say, man. I said, these beer companies, I don't care what they say. They hate each other. Yeah. They don't like each other. Understand what I'm saying right now. Budweiser hates Miller and Miller hates Budweiser.

That's just a way it is. It's so competitive. It's incredible on the field. And I've learned out right of West. Man, you guys are mean, dude. What's going on here? I'm in a Bud Shootout in Daytona. and I get a Budweiser guy comes up to me because I'm in the Bud shootout, and he's super nice to me.

And I'm like, I said, I don't trust this, dude, you know. There's no way he can be nice, you know, because they all hate each other. The guy was truly nice to me, you know, but I was having a hard time understanding that. That's interesting. Yeah. No, not only did they hate each other, but like, you know, we learned really quick that even the, like, for Anheuser-Busch, there was multiple brands and the brands didn't like each other. Like everybody's like, you know it would be cool? You run a Bud-like car.

Do you understand that would be almost as bad as. running a competitive beer brand car? The Budweiser guys paid for that. They didn't want Bud Light on their car. Especially Budweiser, because Bud Light was out selling Budweiser. And Budweiser was like, hell, no. He's the last place on that car. Right, right, right.

That's awesome, man. Well, so you have Stephen Wallace, your son, he races. Me and Stephen have a pretty good friendship, and he's a lot of great things going on in his life, still racing, still out there competing. What's he, you know, what's his future? What's he been up? up to and how are you guys working together to keep his racing going and keeping him on the racetrack?

Good question. Thanks. I talk to him every single day. In fact, I'll see him in a little bit when I leave here. But he just had a baby. Right. Had a baby. And she's a small one. Her name is Nova. And she's about seven and a half pounds. And Stephen is turned into this incredible fabricator. He's, you know to see him the things he does in fabrication. It just blows me away. And he's built some really cool cars. He's built this incredible C-10 Chevrolet truck right now. So he's going to be selling a lot of custom stuff, but he loves his short track racing. And he's running all the Fury-style cars right now and the beautiful cars. They're picking a new one up today that the mad scientist over there, Tony Urey Jr. and senior have been working on, you know, and they're going to deliver that to us today. So I can't we see

what this rocket ship looks like. But Steve loves doing that type of stuff. And he was up his, I think the last race he ran was a big race up in Kinley, North Carolina, and he was running second with a handful laps and we blew an engine. So now the next race he'll be up. He'll be at the motor mile up there, running the race up there. But he loves the super late models. What he really wants to do, he's hot and cold on wanting to get back in the NASCAR because he's having a good time what he's doing.

Now he's got the baby, and he likes messing with these hot red trucks and his short tracking. But he said, if I ever went back into it, I'd want to do the truck series. He really likes the truck series. He thinks it fits his stock. mile better, you know. But he's doing real well. He's really matured. Older now. He used to be wild and crazy as all hell, you know, but that's not the Stephen you got right now. I don't know if you've heard this story, maybe you have, but long time ago, we used to go out on the lake on Sunday or, yeah, I guess it was Sundays or Mondays. Anyways, we had a race and it was on the West Coast. We would

get back from Phoenix at about 4 o'clock in the morning. We'd get right on the boat and go out on the lake at four in the morning. And so me and my friends, we got a boat full of people driving across the lake. Sun's just starting to come up. We're going to go to this place called the sandbar and tie up. Well, we get there probably four hours, five hours for anyone else. And we start drinking, having hanging out. Right around three or four o'clock in the afternoon, I went downstairs in the cabin

and went to sleep. I woke up and the boat's running. And I'm like, okay, I'm going somewhere. I don't know where I'm going. Somebody's driving my boat. I go up, and there's nobody on the boat. I go upstairs and Stephen's driving the boat. And I was the only one on it, me and him.

And I was like, Stephen, where are we going? He goes, I'm taking you home, man. We're going to Willys. Willys is my stepfather. And him and Willie had become friends through the Pro Cup series when Stephen was driving the Pro Cup cars and so forth. And he's like, oh, I know where Willie lives. I'm going to take the boat back.

We're going to put the boat up. I'm going to take you home. And I was like, all my friends that I had, on the boat to go there we're going they left you alone left me and steven was you doesn't need a driver stephen was the one stephen was the one guy that was going to make sure my boat got taken home i'll be darned and see there's lots of stories i haven't heard that one you know so he's got a lot of stuff he doesn't tell me though that was one of the nicest things that anybody's ever done for me and uh he didn't you know he wasn't worried about where the party

was going and where everybody else was how everybody else was going i'll be darn but uh he loves his He's got a new one right now he just built. He built this big houseboat. Oh my guy, I love that lake stuff. Really? Yeah. Man, I didn't know that. Yeah, spear fishing boats and all that, you know?

Yeah. Put these big old lights on the front of them with generators and stuff and he goes out there middle of the night. That's what, uh, yes. We had, bow fishing. Bo fishing. Jeffrey, bow fishing. Jeffrey bowfishes and he took me out there and we did that one time. You ever went out with Stephen and done it in the middle of night?

It's actually pretty fun. I mean, you just kind of drinking beer and, you know, cruising around five mile an hour looking for these, you know, looking for these fish. These ugly-ass fish, right? And there's no sights or anything. It's not like you're not aiming, really. You're just kind of pointing it at the thing. It's pretty funny.

Let me ask him about that story when I see him a little bit. You should because I thought that's pretty incredible. I mean, you raised him right. What's Rusty Wallace like as a grandfather? Oh, man, I'll tell you what. I've changed a lot. I really have because now I've got four of them. My oldest son, Greg, has got Ian, and then we got Caroline, Olivia, little twins.

and now we got Stephen with Nova, and this is something my wife has waited forever for. She's been waiting and waiting and waiting. Now she's just all laid up in the grandkids, and the other day, or Saturday, we're over at Greg's house for Ian's second birthday, and we got to talk about my phone's full of birthday pictures of little kids and stuff right now. So I'm kind of an old softy right now. I'll do whatever they want. Katie, my daughter's getting married in June 15th in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico,

at her down in Mexico. and we're taking all those little babies down there. And that's going to be a trip on an airplane, isn't it? Yeah. So they're going to be throwing them out on my lap. I'll be holding on all those kids going down to that airplane while they're all screaming on hollering probably. But, yeah, I've softened up a lot when it comes to that, that's for sure.

Yeah, I bet. Well, man, we appreciate you coming on. It's been a lot of fun hearing your stories, and we'd love to have you come back. Okay. So Rusty Wallace, folks. The man, the legend. Thanks a lot, guys. It was cool.

We had a lot of good conversation there. Yes, sir. One of the most important things you're going to do for your health every day is brushing your teeth. Most of us really don't even do it properly. I mean, you think you just get in there and dig around a little bit with a toothbrush. That's going to do the job. But Quip is going to help you do this properly. It's an electric toothbrush designed to make brushing your teeth more simple, affordable, and even enjoyable.

They have a built-in two-minute timer that pulses every 30 seconds to remind you when to switch sides, helping guide to a full and even clean. They also have a multi-use cover that mounts to your mirror and unmounts to slide over your bristles for on-the-go brushing. That's blowing your mind, didn't it? Yeah. It declutters your sink or cabinet and makes traveling with an electric toothbrush easier. Quip does not require any clunky chargers. That's one of my favorite things about it.

And it runs for three months on one charge. So, you know, if you get those battery-powered toothbrushes that, you know, you got it in your bag, you travel a lot, you know there's going to be a day. You're going to pull that thing out, and it's not going to work. It's going to be dead. And there's nothing more weird than trying to brush your teeth without an electric toothbrush. Once you go to electric, you can't go back. That's right. And so when you fire that thing off and it doesn't run, it is annoying as hell.

And you know you're not doing, you know you're not getting your teeth clean. I've never done it. Never an electric brush. You just said about the weird thing. I've never done it. You've never not used? Never used an electric tooth. Why not?

I'm old school. I can't wait to get this quill, man. You need to get on this deal, man. You're not, you know, you're not cleaning your teeth properly there. And it looks it. That is not nice, Mike. Especially coming from a guy with pristine, white, pearly teeth. You doubling down on his eyes. Well, I just feel like, you know, if anybody's going to hurl insults about teeth.

It should be somebody with equally bad teeth. It would be most painful coming from you. Well, listen, I got one advantage in this game. It's my teeth. Nothing else. You know, I got nothing. So. Honestly, though, I mean, you know, three months on one charge, that's pretty awesome.

That's why we love quip. And while they're backed by over 20,000 dental professionals, obviously not because of the charge, but because when I go to the dentist, they're always telling me, hey, man, this is, you need to use the electric toothbrush. You know, this is going to do a better job than a traditional toothbrush. And so dental professionals are backing these things. They're back in Quip. Quip starts to just $25.

And if you go to getquip.com slash Dale Jr. right now, you get your first refill pack for free with a quip electric toothbrush. That's your first refill pack. Free at getquip.com slash Dale Jr. What's in a refill pack? I guess it's just the bristles.

I think that they should name it something else. So people know it's bristle refills or something. I don't know. Bristle batch. Bristle batch. It's bristle baby. It's bristle baby. That's pretty good, Mike.

I don't know why I want to put this over here. Oh, Lord. When me and my wife go eat, when me and my wife go to dinner, you know, you got the fork for your salad, whatever. As I'm going through, you know, you've got the dish for your bread. As I'm going through the dinner and I'm done with X and Y and Z, I slide them over to her over to other parts of the table. Like here. Your problem now. You're a problem.

I don't need that anymore. You do whatever you got to do with it. That's funny. Well, here, give it. I've got my stash stack over here. So I was sliding my papers over to Mike. Like, I'm... Yeah, like I'm your wife.

I put it right under the car. I'm a bad person. Yeah. I'm a bad person. I'm just realizing it I'm not as good as I thought I was. Yeah. Work on it. Yep.

Rude. Man, what did you think about Rusty? Love Rusty. I mean, listen, Rusty. Took him a while to open up a little bit. He didn't want to be as honest as I wanted him to be out of the gate. over dad and his relationship and he downplayed it quite a bit

but then at the end we got the goods I think that what we could summarize Rusty Wallace as a person is that he tries to be a great friend but there are things that affect him to the hilt and like Jeff Gordon was won. I couldn't believe his

response here that's great. You know Jeff Gordon said that to us in December that yeah Rusty had a big problem and it played out in Japan and then Rusty said yeah What's we managed to write buttons? He opened up. And Jeff Gordon's a hot button.

I enjoyed that, though, and I hope we can get him back on. Martinsville Motor Speedway this past weekend. Brad Casalowski led over 400 laps, more laps than anyone's ever led at Martinsville to win the race in the modern era. Your favorite era, Mike? Yeah, I definitely like to delineate between the eras. So, and I thought that that was probably, I said on Twitter, I thought that, man, that's the most impressive thing you're going to see in our sport. I'm thinking, okay, you know, what's the most impressive thing I could see at a mile and a half when you, you know, road courses, Talladega Daytona.

Well, I guess when a guy dominates at a short track, because short track racing, arrow's not as critical. You know, power's not quite as critical. And it really comes down to the setup, the team, the driver, the crew chief, the strategy. and so when a guy could go out and dominate like that, really, I mean, he didn't drive away and lap the field. You know, he never really, he had competition on his heels all day long. Yeah. And he didn't get ruffled.

You know, he didn't lose his school or make a mistake. He just sort of had a workman's way about it. And I found it to be really impressive. Do you guys find it as equally as impressive? Did you enjoy the race? Well, I've had other Martinsville races that I enjoyed more, but I'm not going to be the one that says because he led more than 400 laps that that was a non-enjoyable race.

I don't think, like we said with Bristol, I don't think you're going to have a bad experience at Martinsville. The short tracks just deliver. Yeah. And I'm going to soak up all the short trackness as long as they can give it to me. Right. And I would love to have more, you know, I'd love to, I would do more Martinsville's, even if I knew that there was going to be somebody dominated.

Isn't it? One of the things I find extremely interesting is how different the two races are from each other. We have fireworks and just the wildest stuff that you'll see all year long happen in that final race at Martinsville that's in the playoffs. And then the first race is typically what we saw this past weekend. At times we've seen more guys lead, more guys up front sort of taking control of the race with a shot to win than we saw this past weekend. But it's always such a different race, less controversy. More manners. More manners, yeah.

There you go. People more plus. I find that extremely fascinating that when we go back again later this year we're going to see something that is not even close to what we saw this past weekend. It seemed like the race was on for second

more than anything, but listen Chase gave it a run now. Chase had a great day. And it could have been different if there was some, you know, maybe the pit road speeding penalties definitely played a factor in that thing, but I mean, Brad just spanked them. You know, you always hope there's a little bit of physical contact between somebody

in some sort of storyline that comes out of that that maybe carries on to the next short track but that was just a good old-fashioned assholehood. Yeah. What did you think other than that? Looking back in the history of our sport, this is still in the modern era NASCAR, 1973 at the Southeastern 500 Bristol Motor Speedway,

presenting sponsor of the podcast. Kelle Yarborough led 500 of 500 laps. There were zero lead changes. and they did have seven cautions for 56 laps. That's even more impressive that they had that many cautions and he obviously came to Pitt Road and there was no exchange for the lead. Right. Nobody stayed out.

Nobody just kind of took the lead and took a gamble. He won by two laps over Richard Petty. He had third place, Bobby Allison, five laps down. Wow. Jeez. But, you know, Brad's win obviously was only a few car links, but I think comparatively, you know, in today's NASCAR, that would be similar. to what Kelly Arboral did back at Bristol Motor Speedway.

And I find those, I think if I was at that race, watching Carrie Yarbrough lead five in her laps, I'd walk away going, wow, that was, I didn't expect to see that. Right. Right. That was really, I didn't expect to see Brad win every stage and win the race. I mean, short tracks just are hard, it's hard to do that. There's too many variables, the contact, the closeness of the racing,

the tightness on pit road, strategy guys taking different tires and so forth. I think the lack of caution took strategy out of a lot of guys' hands. But just really an impressive job by those guys. Late in the race, though, Chase Elliott, looked like Brad's car was a little tight on that last run. Chase got to his bumper, gave him a little bit of a, you know, gave me a shot in the back. And Chase raced him very clean from a competitor's standpoint.

I thought from a driver standpoint, he raced him really clean. You've got to get aggressive. You've got to use a bumper a little bit in that situation. And Chase tried to do that. And then at the end, the last couple laps, Chase really changed his line, which was so fun to watch. Him moving around, trying a high entry to get that straight run off the corner and try to close that gap. And it seemed to be kind of working. And so, you know, Brad even said that he thought maybe they didn't have the best car and won the race.

Maybe the nine had the better car and just having that clean air, you know, and being out front and keeping those brakes cool and all that would help him over the period of a long run. just really a fun race to watch. I miss racing there probably more than any other racetrack that we have on the schedule. I miss racing there and at Nashville Motor Speedway at Fairgrounds, but Martinsville to me is the best experience from a driver that I would have at the racetrack in the car and really enjoyed it this weekend. What about Kyle Bush winning again? He's now at 201.

Any thoughts to that? And he also said he's giving away his grandfather, clock. Is he? Who's given to? Rudy or? I don't know. Rudy never had, that was his first one.

If I was going to send him a nice text, this was going to be the week I would do it. So just keep that in mind. He said he's giving it away. Going to give it away, huh? Maybe you should, yeah. Kyle always thought you were my favorite driver. I listened to it. It was funny.

I was listening to it on the MRN. And Rusty, he mentioned this seeing that number two go to victory lane. Rusty's voice, his inflection is definitely up a couple octas with that blue deuce out front and winning the race. It does something to him to this day. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, the only thing I took away from Martinsville was Timmy Hill. I don't know a lot of people follow this story, but Timmy Hill has been racing in the cup,

truck, Xfinity Series, you know, just kind of grinding it out in the back of the field for many years, started his own race team and took a truck to race in the truck race. And he sort of, he didn't really go into depth about it. but he talked about it on social media and said, hey, I started my team. I've got a truck. I'm going to the race. I'm going to race. And I was fascinated by that.

I'm just so curious about his financials, his planning, what he was trying to accomplish. How does he continue this process? I'm actually going to go have dinner with him this week and sit down and talk about that. We're going to have lunch, actually. I just want to know. Like, I've never been able to really sit down with somebody and go over the numbers of how he planned to put this deal together. And he's going, I guess, his next race is Dover, per his social media handles. And he gave me a very small snippet about this past weekend, what he spent and what he made, and he broke even.

And so I'm just so curious, you know, as to how he, for people that find truck series, Xfinity Series Cup Series so hard to get into, here's a guy that's doing it. Here's a guy that's got a truck, got a motor, going to the racetrack. He's competing. He started this team on his own. Just really interested to hear more about that. Maybe we'll continue to talk about it here as we learn more. Well, listen, having Kirk in here last week really made me intrigued over the whole independent teams to begin with.

And I think Timmy is a current example of that. There's something intriguing about that from a business. standpoint, it's got to still make business sense. People, even, you know, die hard racers don't do things just to just lose money hands over fist. So if even breaking even is the success story, or is the end goal, what does it take just to break even? I mean, that'd be fascinating. Well, I want to sit down with Timmy and find out what the goal is and how does he plan to continue this? Because I don't think he can at break even. I think that he has to, he has to at some point be able to to make some kind of money.

But maybe it's interesting enough to bring him on and have him explain to our listeners exactly what his mission is. And I find it really fascinating for some reason to see it happening and playing out right here in front of us in our sport today, which is, you know, it's a challenging landscape. Finding sponsors, getting to the racetrack.

Well, Timmy Heels is doing it. Looking forward to that conversation later this week. And maybe we'll get him out on the show to tell us more about it. Did you just text him and say, hey, I want to talk to you, let's have lunch. I mean, over this? Well, I met Timmy at the NASCAR Xfinity banquet,

and we were standing out in the cocktail area, having a few beers, and I said, hey, man, I just want to tell you, I had been watching him the past couple of years, and I said, man, it's just really impressive your attitude. He knows when he goes to the racetrack that he's not going there to win. He knows that there's a whole different objective.

He does that with a smile on his face. I've been out on pit road during qualifying park next to them and watch him be a part of that process and he'll do it with a smile on his face and he knows what their goals are. So when he said, hey, I'm going to start this truck team and I'm going to get a truck, I'm going to go to the racetrack and it's mine. I'm going to do it myself. I was like, wow, you know, it's just another, it's just like, Timmy Hill just keeps on keeping on. That's the impressive part though.

Right. You know, not just taking a little bit of money and going to some team, you know, doing that on his own, that's a huge undertaking. Yeah, so I was just so curious as to, I just want to know how he's doing it. How is you doing it, man? Because maybe this is, as the bigger teams, the big teams continue to succeed, but there seems, there's less and less big teams. There's more and more independence each year.

We see it in the Xenity series, we see in the truck series. And as the landscape financially gets more challenging, the independence continue to find ways to make it happen. BJ McLeod, Carl Long, these guys are still at the racetrack, and where you think,

as we know as big teams at Junior Mergers Sports, where we understand how challenging it is, it's so impressive to me that these guys continue to go to the racetrack continue to compete.

And Timmy Hill's starting a team. He is creating a team now out of thin air, it seems like. So I'm, I reached out, and I said, man, I want to know how you're doing it. I know a few people

that are trying to break into the next level. And maybe this is the avenue, you know, maybe this is the avenue for those guys. And they just, it's just like, they just don't know that it's available. They just don't know how to approach it. Timmy Hill could be right in the blueprint for, for guys to break into the truck series. You know who did this from a complete business standpoint was Tommy Baldwin. Yeah. Okay. So Tommy Baldwin bought a team during the recession. Okay. So when everybody is saying, And it's impossible to race now. What was this?

2009, 2010, right? Baldwin had the wherewithal to go in and start buying his team and building his team then because it was on the cheap. And Baldwin also knows exactly where he's got to finish to make money. And that's all Timmy Hills do. I mean, I would assume you'll find out when you go eat lunch with him. But like there are these teams. It would be fascinating to know, I mean, they don't release what the earnings are anymore

for each spot, right? NASCAR doesn't disclose that anymore. But it would be fun to know from a fan standpoint to be able to pay attention to the Timmy Hills to know where Timmy Hill is trying to get to. It's not first. It's not even 10th probably. Where is Timmy Hill trying to get to be a win for him? That would be fun to know.

Whether it was Del McHour or Timmy Hill or those stories to me, Jeremy Clements, they're as intriguing sometimes as the top 10, top five, the big guys. Yeah. What was Smut means trying to get each week? Was he trying to get in top 10, top 15, when it made sense for him? I wonder, I bet they really just looked at the payout and said this is. That's what I'm saying, yeah. Right.

So each week, it might have changed. Of course, no, yeah, that's my point. But since they don't disclose those, we don't know where to payouts, you know, so we don't know where they're trying to get. Right. Well, since this week's podcast is presented by Bristol Motor Speedway, we threw a poll up on our social media handle of dirty mobe media. The poll was who threw it better at Bristol Motor Speedway.

and the options were reward Burton's booties. He threw those at me. You had it coming to you. I did not. I was clearly underneath him going into turn three, and he came down the racetrack. Dale Jarrett threw his helmet, 1993, after getting spun out in that interstate batteries car.

That was a good one. He hurled it. Tony Stewart threw his helmet at 2012. Matt Kenseth on Pit Road. And Rusty Wallace, the water bottle. Yeah. 1995 and 76% voted for Tony Stewart. Wow, 76%

Yeah. Tony Stewart. Now, why do you think that is? Did he really get more into that throw? Or is that just the more popular? The one that most people remember. I think it was how he did it, you know, and how perfectly it hit the card

flew off. Somebody said that you can't win this poll thrown booties. It wasn't aggressive enough, I guess. I think that Ward, and maybe felt embarrassed after a few minutes, goes back to the hauler, thinks that was really silly throwing booties. And so he says in his interview,

I wish I had a shotgun or something I could shoot. I don't think embarrassment was the first thing that came in mind. He was so embarrassed. He was so embarrassed by throwing those booties. He's like, oh, throwing socks. He's like, that'll teach you. Bill of fighting. Stewart owned that moment, though.

even after he did it just, you know, riling up the fans, he owned that. Oh, he wound up now. He was Randy Johnson for sure. Hey, did you even realize that he threw something at you in that race that Ward threw those booties? I looked at the replay that. I could not believe how close reward was to your car. I mean, he was on the track. You got to get close if you're going to throw booties.

Those things don't have a lot of velocity to them, all right? But man, it was close. Yeah. Well, Bristol invites you, I mean, if you're going to be on the banking. So you know you can walk on that apron right to the racetrack and get right close to that car without any real concern. The flatter tracks, I think like Turn 3 and 4 at Phoenix, I don't think you'd walk anywhere out there trying to throw something at another driver.

You chase after them into the garage. Yeah, at Bristol, if you throw your helmet, it's probably going to roll right back to you. Self-cleaning. Self-cleaning. You may not be able to use it anymore, but at least you get it back. Well, that made me wonder about, you know, our own stories of throwing this.

stuff. Maybe Leah actually has a story. No, probably not. Yeah, I probably threw stuff of my brother. Have y'all thought about your own experiences with throwing things? What did I throw?

So I was trying to think about myself and I couldn't figure out anything. Really? I text my wife and my sister and they said the only thing that I was ever good at throwing at them were insults. That's worse.

Yeah, well, I felt pretty good about myself. Yeah. Really? You never got in your whole career, you never like threw something at somebody. Oh, you're talking about as a racer? As a racer, I thought. You ever remember me throwing anything at you? You wouldn't throw anything at me. He's talking about other drivers. I know. I'm just saying, well, we got to clear you first. Have I thrown anything at you? I would imagine you probably have. Right, I haven't. So have you thrown any, have I thrown anything at other drivers? I cannot remember ever throw anything. I don't either, but. Interesting. Yeah. Why did we not include in that poll, by the way, Dale Earnhardt throwing his shoe at Dale Jr. That would have won.

Mike, have you thrown anything? Come on, man. That one wasn't on camera. True. No, I got it. Yeah. Have I thrown anything? I don't recall throwing anything at a person I have, and I'm sure we're all here. Everybody's throwing a baseball through a window, right?

You know, that one fast ball that got, no, no, no, just you're throwing and maybe you're throwing a ball against the wall. You're throwing with catch something and it gets a little, gets out of control. I've sent a few golf balls into the parking lot. I mean. You've sent golf balls? Yeah, like I don't, I'm slicer or hooking them. Listen, I got, to get back on point, I've got a brother and a sister.

I would imagine I have thrown something at both of them. Yeah. And I would imagine I've even connected. Yeah. Still want you to come out with something. I mean, I guarantee you I throw, like, one of my brothers, like, tractors or even, like, one of my barbies. I guarantee you I'll throw something good. That's sort of like what Ward Burton did at them.

It's real tough. Basically his barbies at it. Embarrassing. But the fact is, is that, like, the only siblings that I, would not think through anything, would be Dale and Kelly. I can't see Dale Jr. and Kelly throwing stuff at each other. They were too, too lovey. I mean, they're like this, you know, brother and sister.

I mean, that's how I see them. Yeah. She was always looking after him. Yeah. I can't believe this, but I actually was hoping you guys wouldn't ask me it, but I just remembered one time, we used to, like, mess around with rent-a-cars back in the day on the road. Obviously, we don't do that anymore.

And we were throwing stuff out of rent-a-cars at each other. probably something I shouldn't be saying. I'm the type of person, if you mess with me, I'd like to mess with you three times back. So I was rolling by Sean Pregano, former reporter for TNN and stuff, rolling right by his car. And I'm like, you know what?

I got half of this damn strawberry milkshake left, and it's going in. So I threw this thing at his side window and he had his window cracked open. It was a perfect shot. It went all down the inside of the doors, run a car. I got the last laugh.

All right. Can you see Matthew Dilloner giving up half of a strawberry milkshake just to get somebody? That's the surprising part of the story. story. That's good, man. I'm sure between Matthew Dillner and Bob Dillner had to throw stuff at each other growing up.

He's skinny, man. I don't care. He's, you know. Oh, throw stuff? No, he would just injure me. Well, some of our listeners tuned in on social media and had a couple good examples of their own. John Douglas threw a desk chair at a kid in fifth grade. He still thinks the kid deserved it. That's a big item. That's a pro wrestling move right there. Billy Bradley threw a mustard bottle

at his sister when they were younger and he missed her head and it went through a window okay so similar you know there's things that go through windows yeah

yeah for sure I didn't ever think about a mustard bottle doing it Wyoming Husker had a prank foam brick it looked like a real brick

guys would walk in his barracks room and he would throw that at them and they would try to do the matrix that they realized it was foam

That would be fun. Gabs, it's not a morning person. Her brother walked in and thought it'd be funny to wake him up. I don't know if it's him or he. It's Gabbs, baby. I'm going to say it's a girl. So anyways, the brother walks in, wakes him up at 6 a.m. And the alarm clock to the left eyebrow.

Goodness, gracious. That's rough. That is. But it'll wake you up. Ding, ding, ding. Charla had a bad temper growing up through a butcher knife at their sister. And it's stuck in the bathroom door. I'm almost scared.

I feel like we can't play that one. I saw that and kill Bill. Yeah. She got a real good talking to that day. I bet she did. Gee, I hope so. Jessica, a few years ago, took a car to get a new transmission, got to go pick the car up, and the mechanic had been driving it around town.

Fast food wrappers all over the floor, mud, on the carpet and the floor mats. Wow. It had a thing of oil in the back floorboard, and she threw that at him and hit him in the face. Man. I want to know the rest of that story. Yeah. Right?

In the face. That's crazy. All right. If all he got was an oil can, he got off good because he deserved more than that. Yeah, I don't care. You don't go drive around somebody and trash their car up like that. In the face. Well, that's our throwing stuff.

So Dale's the lame one this week since. I know. I feel pretty lame. I don't have really any great story about throwing things other than insults. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. at the Dale Jr. download with co-host Mike Davis. This is the Ask Junior YouTube Live segment presented by Nationwide. So let's get right to it, Leah.

Mike wants to know, what is a bad habit that you've had that you weren't aware of before Amy and getting married? A bad habit that I've had. Oh, well, I guess leaving the toilet seat up. That's the one that Amy reminds me of all the time. And one of the funny things about that is when we started dating, and maybe other guys have had this experience, but when we started dating, it was the toilet seat, like leaving the seat up. Then when we get married, it's the lid, too.

So I thought, okay, I'm doing great. I got the seat down. I'm always leaving the seat down from my fiancé. And then when we got married, the lid became part of the whole thing. Man. And now it's like, you let the lid up. I'm like, when? Yeah. Why does that matter?

How did it change? It's changed. The rules have changed. So that'd be probably one bad habit. Oh, and... Next, it'll be like a dupe-up. Flushing. Also, flushing with the lid down. Yes, you have to do that. Because of the germs.

Yes. So I never, you know, when I was a bachelor, nope, never flushed with the lid down. But now it's all about closing that lid and getting it flushed before, you know. And that's that, that's it. That's probably, um, that's the one. thing. I do it every day, and so it's always on my mind. Every time I close the lid, I'm like, this is how I've been taught to do it now. She trained you well. I'm impressed. Tye wants to know

what is your favorite paint scheme this year. Oh, well, still early in the season. We're going to see a lot more special paint schemes throughout the year, but the one that I still like even from last year is Ryan Blaney's paint scheme, very colorful. paint scheme that he has, the PPG paints or something, whatever it is. That one's great, but we'll,

you know, one that I loved last year too was Alex Bowman's Valvaline paint scheme and he probably will have another Valvene scheme. That's a great opportunity for a good paint,

so we'll see how that works out. Anybody got some favorites? I don't know that I have favorites. I'm still shocked that Blaney's paint scheme is your favorite. It goes against everything that I thought you liked

about paint schemes. You like clean paint schemes, Preferably white. Does his car have white wheels? Is that what it is? The PPG one is the white and blue one? It's a blue, red, yellow, everything. It's a little loud for what I thought you would like.

It's a step below the Peter Max car, the Dale Earnhardt. I think it's a good-looking race car. I like Nationwide's paint scheme. I like Alex Bowman's paint scheme. And that's not because they're a sponsor this segment. I think it's a cool looking race car. I like the one with the dogs on it. Of course.

That was cool. The nationwide dog? Yeah. You would. Mandy wants to know any special plans for Amy's birthday today? Well, I said, yeah, I mean, we're going to put this out later so I can tell you, but I'm going to go get a card for myself, for Ila. I'm going to handwrite in the card, handwritten letter.

Amy told me the other day that I've never given her handwritten letter, so I'm going to do that. This is live, too, remember? Oh, shoot, that's right. We're actually in your live right now. Well, hopefully she doesn't hear about this. And I'm going to give her a handwritten letter in a card. Ila gets a card to give to her.

I'm going to have hopefully a gift from Ila that'll be fun. Flowers, we're going to go to dinner. All right. Yeah. Nice. Thanks. Listen, the card is the best thing in this. When we're our age, you know, they don't need a whole lot.

They just need the... Be careful there because... Oh, she needs a lot? No, she needs a lot, but it puts some thought into it. What's really not about... And I'm not teaching you any lessons you don't know, but to everyone out there. It's not about...

the size or the money you spend. It's about the effort. The gesture. The effort that goes into it and the thought just to show you you care. Just let us know next week how you did if you felt like she liked it. That's all I need to know. East County Tire brought up the big news about Gronk retiring. What are your thoughts on that?

Great. You know, I think the guy, you know, these guys are making so much money today that they can afford to retire sooner. A lot of guys played for maybe two reasons. They love the game, but they're also making a lot of great money or needing to make more money, seeing an opportunity to make more money. But now guys are getting paid so much after that first contract, that first rookie contract, that really that's enough money for them to retire at 30 and say, you know, I'm good. And he's won a lot.

He doesn't have that urge to continue to play to chase after a title. He's got titles. So he's in a situation where, you know, he's in a situation where, He has personality, opportunity to do other things, whether it be in business, entertainment. This guy has a whole other life beyond playing football that he probably wants to get started on. Also, I think, you know, injuries. He's played through injuries over the last second half of his career. He's probably tired of that, probably tired of being banged up in his body,

and he's probably carrying around some of those injuries every day. Even after they heal up, he still has those pains and aches in the mornings when he gets up. I also feel like just I haven't really heard this from players, but I feel like that, you know, we see them play the games during the regular season, but there is so much more going on that they have to do throughout, you know, training camp, mini camps and all that stuff

to keep themselves in playing shape. And I think that that grueling schedule during the offseason can be a deterrent. You know, a lot of guys, I think when you see guys, the really, really good guys that sort of retired, but then they decide to come back. They always skip training camp. You ever notice that?

Of course, yeah. That's your first ride of passage if you knew, if you're successful. If you're able to skip training camp, then you know you're one of those. Yeah, I'll come back and play, but I don't want to do the training camp. Right. They'll just, you know. They negotiate that stuff. They do.

And so I think that, you know, it just shows how difficult that job is. And, yeah, that's how. For the YouTube audience, we had Rusty Wallace in here a little while ago. We were talking about Rusty after retirement and how Rusty. it took a while to come to grips with not racing. I don't worry about that for Gronk. I think Gronk is going to be just fine. I don't think he's going to be, man, I miss football.

Because Gronk... With that said, Jason Witten decided to come out of retirement to come back and play, and he's quite a bit older than Gronk. Maybe Gronk goes a year and gets a little rest, gets a little time away, and says, you know what? Actually, I miss competition. I miss playing. I miss the guys, the camaraderie.

the locker room. You know, there's going to be all those things outside of just playing the game that aren't going to be part of his life anymore. And maybe he doesn't even know that. And so I wouldn't be surprised if he does come back. I think it comes back before the end of this next season if they're in playoff contention. I don't know why I have that little thing that I think it's going to have. I know it's almost cliche when somebody that was very successful at their sport retires

and then people just assume they're going to go to TV. I'm just going to tell you, though, right now, Gronk on TV changes the ratings games. And games that I could not care less about, I would care about if Gronk was... Has he done TV? I don't know, but I'm just saying... It'd be entertaining. It would be fun to watch.

Yeah. It would. He could be the next John Madden. Because he could do the booms and a bang. Watch it. He gets in there and wham. I can see Grom doing that. You know, that was what was great about...

Right. You know how... Do you remember in the NCAA? You guys might remember this because... but I do. It was 2012. Alabama was in the national championship game, and Brent Musburger makes that comment about

A.J. McCarron's girlfriend at the time of his future wife. And he's like, I tell you what, boys, get in the backyard and whip around that football. That's what you got coming if you're good at quarterback. That will be gronk any week, right? You know, if they're paying a shot to someone's girlfriend

or just a girl in the crash, gronk cannot not comment about it, right? That'll be gronk. I'll watch it. That's it for today. That's it? Yeah. We can't end on that.

one, right? Yeah, I thought that was a good way. We're ending on that one, I guess. All right, well, thanks everybody for tuning in to the Ask Jr., YouTube live segment of the show, presented by Nationwide. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Keep coming, bud. White flag, bud.

White flag right there, white flag. White flag, everybody. You can follow Dirtymo Media at DirtyMone Media on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, especially. Hey, listen, you know, earlier in the week, we encouraged people to go to Apple Podcasts and write and review. So, Dale Jr., Matthew, Leah. I've actually gone and I've looked at some of these reviews.

And I'm going to read you a few. Yeah. In fact, I think I might actually pick a few each week. If people will rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and we put out a link on our social media feeds, I may read some. So good and bad, if there are any, but we'll just go here. Kevin C.T. said, what a beautiful table you now have in the studio.

Yes. I like Kevin. I have trouble concentrating with that piece of art in the room. Wow. Get you a load of that. I like that one. All right. The Bug 93.

Great show, but you need to make the interviews longer. Please and thank you. Matthew, you heard it here first. We got to make them longer. Make the show longer. Make the show longer. It's pretty long. I'm surprised they want it to be longer.

It'll be Wednesday before the podcast comes out. He's going to be a longer. Urb 2444. Fun, enjoyable, lots of laughs, good to hear old stories of senior. Just Common Folks with Money. Lee, I guess they're talking about you there. Common folks with money And then I'll read one more here

Kev L. Jen Dale, you're supposed to put peanut butter on banana and mayo sandwich. I agree with that. Wait a second, though. I don't know that I do. He didn't remove the mayo.

You're right. He added the peanut butter with the mayo and banana. I've never tried that. That feels like a foul. Yeah. We got to try. I don't, let's not judge people.

That's what people do with the banana mayo. They judge immediately. Let's not go foul. Just a minute. Let's try it. Let's try it. So you're going to try a peanut. We'll make a sandwich.

I'll get half and you get half and we'll give it a bite. Hey, taste test and we'll see how it works. All right, Kev, Elgin. And listen, C-Mack, the Gift. I don't even know what his comment is, but I like his name. He calls himself The Gift. So we're going to read his comment. I don't think he thinks I leave.

Whether a sports fan or not, this is still a very good podcast because of the way they talk about every aspect of life. Very impressive comments there by C-Mack, the Gift. So anyways, rate and review us on Apple Podcast. We're looking at those, and I'm going to read a few every week. New episode of the Drum. Drop is coming out this Wednesday on Dirty Mo Media's YouTube page for you gamers. Watch Bubba Wallace blast bad guys.

That's what he does on the drop, so there's nothing like that. Lastly, you guys, I was really excited to have Bristol Motor Speedway come and be a part of this show. And so I do want to encourage everybody to, again, think about going to Bristol in two weeks from when we're doing this. In fact, I think we're even going, are we? Yeah. Are we still doing that? Me and you are going up there and we're going to watch the Xfinity Race. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Do I going to go on? We're all going. All right. Except one. Matthew is not going. Matthew's going to. Of course, the one time that you all asked me to go up to the race,

I'm at Buffalo. I'm looking forward to that, and I encourage everybody to take the most of that opportunity. I think it's going to be good weather, too. You can get tickets to this race and the second Bristol race later of the season, Bristol Motorspeedway.com slash DJD. That's it. All right, Dale, close us out.

Also, we have tomorrow big news in NASCAR. The schedule for next season is going to be released tomorrow. And there are a lot. of interesting changes. The one thing that I think would be interesting to find out is not only to see the new changes for the schedule, but also to know that this is not something they're locked into. This schedule can change year to year. They'll tell us more about it tomorrow.

Also, yeah, we've got some odd history for you. Let's hear it. Joe Weatherly qualified 13th for the July 1962 race at Bristol Motor Speedway, but he's a very superstitious guy, and he didn't want to start in 13th. So instead, the race officials live. listed him as starting in 12-8. Oh, my goodness. That weird?

What? You would think 12th. 12th would be 12-A, so he'd be 12B. Right, for sure. But he was 12-A. So somebody else was just 12, and he was 12-A. Right. Really?

Wow. So, also, on this date, March 29th, 1959, the Cup Series raced at Wilson County, North Carolina Fairgrounds. And one hour before the race started, a drop cigarette lit the front-stretch grandstands on fire. The fans tried to put it out themselves, but the time the fire department and was called the entire grandstands had burned to the ground. One thing was important, though, the race. That still happened.

Junior Johnson won. Richard Petty got his first career top five finish. Wow. That's incredible. What are those drivers are thinking? They're wheeling around. They're freaking grandstand on fire. Didn't even notice.

That happened an hour before the race. Oh, it was an hour before the race. They're going to have that damn race now. Fans, you're just going to stand along with the ashes. Just stand there. There was a fire at Charlotte Motor Speedway. It didn't burn down the grandstands, but remember one of those bushes? It was about what?

Ten years ago during one of the races and all of a sudden you saw the smoke coming out of the grandstands. Yeah, it happens. Nice car race. It happens. After that fire, I mean, if you were anywhere but this first row, your race view sucks. That's right. That's a tick-it downgrade. All right.

That's the show. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Dale Jr. download at Dirty Moe Media. Thanks, Mike. Thank you, buddy. Matthew, Leah. We'll see y'all next week. This bit of bad assery was made by Dirtymo Media.

Dirtymo!