The Dale Jr. Download - 250 - Steve Phelps: We've Made Some Mistakes

Episode Date: April 2, 2019

A candid interview with NASCAR President Steve Phelps. 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.

This is a production of Dirty Mo Media. Hey everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download with my co-host Mike Davis, Matthew Dillner, Leah. Everybody's in the house. We got a great show today. We're going to tell you about the best way to get some real cool stuff at pristineauction.com. Speaking of cool stuff, we also have the president of NASCAR. Steve Feltz coming in, live, Asch Jr.

And some unreal odd history. Let's go. You know, I want to be a race car driver someday. A race car driver someday. drop her someday it's a great sport I love it death you know

that's you know it's all I've ever know racing that's weird Matthew it's weird I was really

proud of that one yeah I mean as as usual man all your all your show sound elements are amazing

anyways we got a great show we got little Dale little Dale was just here Steve Phelps coming in

in a bit President Askar, we're going to try to get the goods, man. This will be a tough interview, I think. I'm a little nervous about it. You know, there's a lot of pressure. I don't know if you saw this on social media, but they were like, don't just be softball questions, Dale and Mike. Yeah.

You got to ask them the hard stuff. Well, okay. What is that, dear friends? I took a lot of direction from Twitter. We put it out there. We're going to ask what we want to know. How about that? That's a good starting place.

I did put in some of the curious things that Twitter had in my list. I'll stay and correct it. Well, we'll see. Anyways, we've got some interesting things in the grassroots short track racing segment of the show. Did you guys see that South Boston? The crewmen running out on the racetrack. So correct me if I'm wrong. So Lee Pulliam and Philip Morris.

Philip Morris are out there racing. They're running second and third. And I watched the replay of the accident. Philip got into Lee just a little bit. Nothing. I mean, short track racing. Totally cool. used him up just a little bit to buy him, but nothing crazy.

And as soon as they get in the next corner, Lee just dumped him. It's hard to tell whether Lee was expecting him to check up like that, but Lee really didn't give him much of a chance. It turned around, Phillips' car. Philip was back into the fence, and they had a red flag. Philip Morris's crew chief runs out on the track, throws his radio at Lee's car, and then runs around to the pasture side,

apparently to get in there and rip out the wire and harness. Now, I'm not sure if that's entirely true or not. I haven't heard that from him himself, but I would assume that would be why you'd run around to the pasture side of the car, not the driver's side where the driver is, which is a great thought if you're like, I'm out of the race, your ass is out of the race. I'll pull the damn wire and harness out of your car and you'll be done.

In this moment, as he's reaching in the car, kind of climbed into the car. Lee fires his car up and pulls away. Now, knowing how much time it takes to get a car started and drive off, I'm assuming that he was starting that process before the guy was in the car. Yeah. At least a split second before the guy was, I'm going to assume, because you've got to crank the car.

These things aren't just, it's not a. You don't have a key. He went pretty quick. Yeah. So I don't think he was like, oh, okay, you're in the car. Watch this. I think he was probably thinking, I'm going to drive away as soon as this guy gets out of the way and comes around the nose of the car.

I'm moving because he's coming to me. I know he's going to try to get in here and do something. Danger situation, and we, you know, a lot of people were mad at both parties. Let's be clear. You said he pulled off. He gunned it. This guy, he slung him like a rag doll. This guy comes barreling out of the window as you would if you're hanging half out of a window.

And, I mean, just, you know, is rolling over. I mean, he gunned it. Gunned it. It looked like a drag car. They ejected the crew chief. which I think was a smart move. I mean, obviously you've got to police a little bit of that. You also, we see that all the time.

Matthew, I'm going to let you come in here because Bowman Gray Stadium. I mean, this is sort of the thing they're known for, the madhouse. This is exactly what we see, maybe not every week. You're there every week, but it's often that the madhouse gets mad. And while stuff happens, guys are chasing each other in and out of their race cars around the racetrack. Police are all the time having to intervene and get involved. and it's part of the show. It's fun, as long as you understand that it's in the confines of that racetrack.

So there's a twist of this that is healthy, but at the same time, I think it crossed a lot of lines and very dangerous situation for that crew chief. I hate it for the guy, but I think he needs to get suspended for a while. Which guy? The crew chief. Yeah. The guy that went out there.

Heck yeah. But is the driver all responsible for this? I mean, I think this is a question that you must ask. It would be setting a new precedent. I don't know. I mean, listen, listen. If the guy gets hurt or if the guy dies, is the driver not responsible? I mean, yeah, I guess he is.

But I'm going to say this. Like, you alluded to Bowman Gray, how this is part of the spectacle. This isn't normal at most racetracks. But my opinion is this. if it's a driver versus a driver, human versus a human, all right, right? If it's a car versus a car under caution or something, I think it's a S show, but whatever, it's fine. You don't do driver versus car, car versus driver. So if you're going in there, a human versus a car, like that deal I don't like at all.

Like wherever it happens. I think that the mistake is made when the guy decides to go out on the racetrack. He's responsible for putting his ass out on the racetrack and putting them both in that situation. So I think that, you know, the crew guys can't go out on the racetrack and beat on other cars and do whatever they're going to do. So that's the first mistake. And that dominoes starts, you know, that starts all the dominoes. We don't have a problem. We don't have Lee pulling off firing his car, driving away or anything if the guy doesn't go on the racetrack.

So I think there needs to be rules initially laid down some sort of precedent set on what the penalty and fines will be. So those guys will know when they're signing that ticket. to get in that racetrack in that morning that if they go on the track, then they're not coming back for a few weeks, if not longer. And so instead of learning what the penalty is and learning what the damage is after the fact, they should know this going in. So maybe it would deter those guys from ever doing anything like that because he, this is, I believe, the crew chief for Phillips car.

And a guy that is well respected by, at least Philip, because Phillips's very successful. So, you know, he wouldn't want to have to miss races or not be allowed to go to the racetrack and compete at a place that they're running at weekly and maybe wouldn't do that. But let me ask you guys again. Not to go back to this point, but we all agree it was dumb for anybody to run out on a racetrack. That's obvious. It's also dumb to go against a car. Yeah.

No-brainer. What is the driver supposed to do when you have somebody attacking you? Because if you're going to be responsible for the outcome of that person and, and I think you would be. I think that you would have charges pressed against you if that person gets hurt. You would be in an investigation for sure. You would be in an investigation for sure.

Your life will be changed at that point. So what are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to let the guy rip out your wires? Are you supposed to take punches? How do you defend yourself when you're in a car? It's gunning it the only way to defend yourself, which I would say I would hope not. Because I don't, I think gunning it,

listen, there's a lot of other examples on this. I mean, I saw Brent Wentz had sent a lot of videos from back of his home track where you had one even look worse than that. What are the drivers supposed to do when you have somebody going at you like that? I think that I agree. Like if the driver guns it and runs over this guy, hurts him, kills him, you're going to be in an investigation. You're part of that process. You're getting investigated. It's a bad situation for everybody.

But at the same time, I can understand that gut reaction. You're not thinking. You're just going off instinct at that point. Do you know the guy's coming in there to tear the hardest out of your car? And you're thinking, well, I can move this car. I can move it away from here. Yeah, I can get away from him. Yeah.

And so the instinct to fire the car up isn't as simple as the instinct to run out on the damn track and do something to the car. Yeah. If you stop that first incident from happening, you never have to worry about the driver and what he's going to do. But short track racing, man. love it and we're going to talk about it every week, especially when we get stuff like that coming in. Junior Motorsports had a great weekend at Texas Motor Speedway. I want to mention that because

Jeb Burton, he first race in our car, finished fourth. And one thing I learned in that whole process is that Jeb's name is not from Jebidi. I thought his name was Jebidi. What? Why do I think that? I don't know. But I'm looking at his, I've read his name, his name is John Edwards. John Edward Burton, the fourth. All right? And so his, his initials, J-E-B is why they call him Jeb. I never knew that either. I didn't either. I was wondering what your notes meant. I was like, what is this code? Where his dad got Ward from is from Edward. He's Edward the third. Ward, Ward, Edward. So, who knew? I mean, I'm just, you know, learning something new

about these guys. I thought that was real interesting. I think it's even more interesting that you thought it was Jebediah. Like, that's immediately where your head went when you didn't think of it was. Like he was born in 1860. Biblical times. Knowing Ward, I could see him naming his son, Jebedi. That's true. If anybody's going to name their kid, Jevedite, it would be Warren. You're right, it would. Michael Inette had another sixth place finish after six races in the Xfinity series this year.

His average finish is 7.5. Wow. And no one's hating on Michael now. No. Social media is awful quiet. Solid speed from the 7 and the 9 car. Just a great weekend. NASCAR schedule was at least last week.

We're going to talk about that with Steve Phelps a little bit, so I don't want to really get into that right now, Mike, but what do you think? Everything I saw I like. You like? Yeah, I mean, to be honest with you, they got to shake it up. I like it when they shake it up. So, you know, there was nothing in there that I was like, oh, that sucks. Now, I know there were some people that thought that, you know, there were unfortunate things.

And if I'm a specific track, like Homestead, I'd probably have issues. But from a fan standpoint, I don't know, kind of like it. I do too. Yeah, and I kind of like what I'm hearing. You know, may see next year. Yeah. We'll talk to him. Yeah, there's a lot going on.

on there with that. Doubleheader at Pocono, they're going to finish the season at Phoenix. I question that decision, because I don't think that Phoenix, I don't know that Phoenix can deliver for a championship race. Great restarts, but after that, it sort of plays itself out, and there's one or two dominant cars. But either way, it's a championship race, so it may look completely different than anything we've ever seen at Phoenix before.

Sure. I got a question for you. Yeah. Because I don't want you to have to answer this in front of Steve Phillips. Okay. Go back into Driverdale, not TV Analyst Dale, because TV Analyst Dale is. happy about everything and just let you seize the sport from my whole new lens everything's great go back to driverdale the or the ornery the weekend guy i got the freaking message here okay okay

attitude dell the figurine you just got them into ornery dale it's perfect two races at polka no in the same weekend yeah would you like that hell yes you would have yes yes going there twice in the matter of about a month's period of time was a pain in the ass i like going to polkano but having to go back again four weeks later pretty much was not fun okay it's going to be easy it's going easy. It's going to be nice. They're going to be short, shorter races. Yeah, I like it. Not going to be, you know, the 160 to 200 lap races that we've had there in the past. They'll be shorter, and it'll be fun to process that race and go over what you're going to change

and try to have a great personality and a great attitude and upbeat feeling about the next day. I think double-headers are something that I would have loved to have tried. Oh, come on. Yes. You remember when you had double duty weekends? That was driving different cars. going from Xfinity to Cup and the practice is always laid on top of each other. And you'd be late to one practice and then have to get out of the car early sometimes to get to the next practice. It's a real pain in the ass.

So I remember it right. You hated those. I did not like running both Xfinity and Cup in the same weekend. It was too much work. It was not too much work. It was more work than I was willing to do. Wanting to do. It's not too much work.

Good clarification. Yeah. Right. But doubleheader is great. You won't have to go back there again. That's a great trade-off. as a driver from a driver standpoint. Obviously, Dover or Pocono would love you coming there every week of the summer,

but we're not going to do that. I think that they were eventually going to lose that date entirely and be down to one event. This is sort of a great compromise for Pocono Speedway because they get a doubleheader, the first of its kind, in several decades. Apparently, they used to run doubleheaders all the time back in the 60s and 70s when the races didn't count. But I think that's great. We're going to Phoenix at the end of the season. a lot of great cutoff races.

What are the cutoff races, Mike? They're Bristol, Martinsville, and the Roval. Road courses and short tracks. Oh, goodness. So apparently somebody's starting to figure out that those are pretty cool places to go race at. Right. So hopefully we can't bring in new short tracks. We can't bring in Nashville today for this schedule.

We can't bring in new road courses just yet. There are agreements in place that still have to be honored. That's the only reason why we were able to just shuffle around races. But coming into the end of 2020, the agreements end in 21, In 2021, new agreements will be signed, possibly with these new short tracks or new road courses included. We'll talk to Phelps about that. Yeah. Of all that stuff, is that the part you like the most about the schedule shakeup, the fact that the cutoff races?

What did you like? What did you like the most? The Atlanta being moved, I think, because I want that track to survive. It's going to die. It's the second date of the year. It's not going to survive much longer. So I'm hoping that we can keep Atlanta around. And getting on that West Coast swing is going to be tough.

for the industry because that basically puts two very, very big events back to back, Daytona and Vegas. Big events for the industry, all the people that are trying to handle hospitality and all that stuff, you've got, you're moving a lot of things across the country and trying to prepare and have a lot of things in place for that race weekend. It's going to be tough for the industry. But I wish Dover would have went to a doubleheader. You know, I think that'd be a place.

That was another track I did not enjoy going to twice. I don't think we need to go to any of them. We're getting a little further in this now, won't too. I know, but I just was curious on what you, you've told me things you didn't like about it. Yeah. But I didn't know what you liked about it. The Martinsville night race is going to be amazing. That'll be nice.

I hope that they can move that into a warmer time of year. Every race wants to be in a freaking perfect weather, right? But night at Martinsville in early spring, basically the end of the wintertime is going to be, I'm sorry, end of fall. It's a start of fall. It's going to be cold. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, maybe the action will warm us up a little bit. I think last time we raced there and it ended at night where, you know, chasing them got into it. It was chilly. It was. Maybe that helps with the temperature of the drivers. We weren't complaining about the temperature when we left. I'll tell you that.

Makes them a little ornery. We were loving what we saw. Yeah, I know. I like that. You know, people were upset about Daytona getting moved off of July 4th. I really don't care. You know, we used to have an off week before Daytona. Let's talk about you and Daytona.

You say one little comment about what you wish Daytona would do, and all of a sudden it made a social media firestorm. You said on NASCAR America that you thought it would be a good end race, at end of the year race. Championship race. Yeah. Championship race at Daytona. Yeah.

Where it all started. Well, I mean, listen, I wasn't going to say whether I agree or disagree. I just thought you created a firestorm. It's good enough to be our Super Bowl, but we don't. wanted to have it a championship race? Good Lord, everybody. Grow a pair. Oh, stop. Yeah. You're the only one that thinks that, though.

I'll cry. I'm not. You're not the only one that thinks that it's a good idea to end the year at Daytona. If you would go on social media, you would have noticed that there were some people that agreed. I went on social media. I don't know. I must have them muted because I didn't see a whole lot of support.

I saw people going, what are you talking about? You wouldn't be able to know if it's you really. your champion. All right. Right. I mean, congratulations. Ricky Stenhouse on your championship. Wait, is he in the final four?

Well, then he belongs there. All right. Well, I don't know. Man, you could also have all four of them wiped out. Sorry. Who gets it? Do you crown the champion that finished 32nd because they didn't finish 35th, 37, 39? Now, in the old days, if you let them work in the garage to get that thing back out again,

that would actually be cool. Now, that would be cool. That would be cool. Yeah, a race. Championship race, let them work on it. You have like every team from an organization all working like the old days. I love that. So we're totally all against having a race at Daytona is a final race of the year.

It's good enough for the first race to year in our Super Bowl that we love to call it that. But why don't we think about why we don't want a race there? What's wrong with the racing there that we're not begging for it to be the final race of the year? This is the best facility on the schedule. that it is our it is a it is something that we should be extremely proud of always wanting to showcase and we don't want it to be our final race of the year so it ain't the racetrack it ain't it ain't it's the it's it's a whole other there's if you could fix the racing to where you wouldn't be worried about the four guys finishing 35th 36 37th and 38th from a crash and you felt like

they were in control of their own dentist destiny which at some point in Daytona and its history. Drivers have been in control of their own destiny. We've seen based off the qualifying what happens when drivers try to control their own destiny, and they kind of just screw it all up. No, I'm saying you've got to change a package to where they're not driving all over top of each other. Well, let's change a package. I'll just say this.

Let me attempt to answer your question, though. You said, why wouldn't we want that? I think whether it's good or bad or what is the answer not because it might not be a true representation of who actually deserved the championship? I mean, is that not the right answer to that? Isn't that what people would be afraid of? It's not the true representation. We need to fix racing at Daytona then, so it's a great representation.

Fair point. Maybe so, yeah. No, I agree with you. But I think that that would be the case in any restrictive place. I think it's absurd that we're going to be willing to shift the championship race all around the schedule to different racetracks except a few. They do that with the Super Bowl. I think it's absurd. I think it's absurd that there's racetracks and places that are off limits. Well, I guess to his point, though, if you're saying about the Super Bowl analogy, they shifted around to some but others, but they bring it to the best facilities.

So from a facility standpoint, he's got a big point. It's maybe the style of racing. What's wrong with that? Force of tracks to want to be the best to earn the Super Bowl. Well, Daytona's one of the best facilities. Capitalism. You get it. You know, the people that earn it, yeah, you bid on it.

Daytona has earned it in that regard. True. I would like Daytona to be, I agree that the racing there right now would not be what I would. want to decide the championship, but I would want to fix that. Okay. No, I get it. Fair point. I would want to fix it to where the racing is what I would want to decide the championship

at Daytona. And I think you can do that with parts and pieces and engineers. All right. Well, listen, I didn't even anticipate asking you about that. I just remembered it when you brought that up. Anyways, go ahead. What else? Well, let's hear from our friends.

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Mike, we got NASCAR president, Steve Phelpson. You ready? I'm ready. All right, so we asked you, we told you, you couldn't wear a suit. I didn't. I don't think I've ever seen you not wear a suit. I didn't. Full disclosure, I did change going up 77. See, he said this. I had a suit on. I'm not joking. When we were talking on the phone, probably get arrested for that. Steve said, he goes, Steve said, I'll be coming to you from a meeting where I have to wear a suit. so I may have to change in the car. So you said you changed in the car?

I did. Where? On the side of 77? No, I was moving. No, no, hold up. You weren't. Well, it's stopped for a look. Oh, yeah, when it emerged.

Yeah, after 18 or whenever. Yeah, a lot of traffic. Yeah, so it stopped. So the pants were the tough thing. But sure, it's easier. You can change clothes. You change clothes. You change clothes for sure old 77 traffic.

I was behind a Charlotte police. officer. I didn't know if that was a good thing or not. I'd have felt safer. Listen, the headlines. The headlines. If we had the NASCAR president pulled over because he was changing clothes while driving. Yeah. You think I would have caught some steam? You think that people would have noticed. Yeah, I don't really need that.

I'd have felt safer having the cop there. Like, oh, I'm doing it. Anything happens. There's a cop right here. So, all right, President of NASCAR. You've been in the sport, though, a long time. What's your history? So I've been in the sport about 14 years. I started and ran our New York office for about four months. What happens in the New York office? You got an L.A. office? New York. Daytona? Daytona, Charlotte, Concord, which is... What does the New York office do? It primarily do sponsors, but we have some of the sponsor group in Charlotte as well. So it's a pretty small office. I've got about, I don't know, 14. 15 people up there. So then I moved to Daytona, and they promoted me after three or four months.

That was their first mistake. And then I was down there for a bit, and then, I don't know, about three and a half, four years ago, they moved me up to Charlotte, and then they moved me back down to Daytona last April. What have you most enjoyed about the work you've done for NASCAR over those years? You know, listen, and I know it sounds, what else am I going to say, right? But I love the sport. I've been a fan of the sport since I was five years old. So I went to my first race at five, short track cut from Vermont.

It was with my dad, and it was very cool. So for me, I was always known. I worked at the NFL for 13, 14 years, and I was always known. What did you do in the NFL? I ran their sponsorship group. Nice. So, but I was always the NASCAR guy. So I remember one time, Paul Tagler, who was a commissioner.

of the NFL at the time brings me to his office and said, hey, I hear you're the NASCAR guy. I'm going to meet with Bill Jr. and I need to know as much about NASCAR as I can. So I sat down with him for almost an hour and gave him a kind of NASCAR 101. So listen, I've done a lot of really cool things since I've been at NASCAR. I love to go to the races, obviously, and that's a pretty cool thing. So in my new gig, I get to go to pretty much every race, which is a lot of fun. But you know what? I think just trying to kind of spread the word about the sport and how great it is.

And that's kind of how I look at it is. We need to do a better job of making sure our existing fans understand that we care about them and are listening to them. And then it's, well, we need to bring other people in the sport and show them how great the sport is too. And I think NASCAR fans do as good a job as any, probably better, kind of opening up themselves and teaching people about the sport. because they want to share it too, because they wanted how great it is. Yeah.

So when I went on social media and asked a lot of people about what they wanted me to ask you. Oh, I saw that last night. Yeah. I got 800 notifications. I'm sorry about that. And I saw one guy said, don't give me any softballs. Right, yeah. Oh, yeah, right.

Well, you would get a lot of them mentioned, specific changes, different size tires, wheels, snow side skirts, no splitters, different downforce, horse powers and so on and so on. Sure. But you're, and I need you to tell me, you're not that guy. That's, you're the president of NASCAR. The president of NASCAR isn't dealing in downforce numbers. He's got people. Right.

You're, and I want to set that up at the start of the interview because I don't want people to think that we're going to dive into competition here because that's not your focus. Area of expertise. Right. I'm not an engineer for sure. Yeah. I don't even pretend to be one, which is good. And so who are those guys?

Yeah, so it really is out of Steve O'Donnell's group, right? And he's got some really talented people that work for him. I know enough to be dangerous. I know the direction that we want to go in. Right. But I don't even pretend to do that. So it's really, you know, Steve and Scott Miller, John Probst and those folks dealing with our OEM partners, so our auto manufacturers and their representatives,

you know, one from Chevy Ford and Toyota. that kind of make up a broader group that helps determine the direction we're going. And then obviously working with the teams and their engineers and where they want to go. And it really is, I think some people have this idea that, hey, NASCAR, just make the rules and just be done with it. And you're listening too much to what other people have to say. And you listen to too much of what drivers have to say. And then you don't listen enough to what have drivers have to say. And it's just what we are trying to do is trying to figure out, hey, how can we make

make this sport better. At the core of what we do, it's about competition. It's about the racing itself. So we want to make sure that racing is as good as it can be. And I know it looks like we're chasing it a bit. And sometimes we are, you know, low down force, lower down force, the lowest downforce ever. And then, you know, kind of a complete switch, right, with less horsepower, you know, more, you know, more grip, you know, more downforce. And I think. I think, listen, I get paid to be kind of an evangelist for the sport, and I try to make it true. And so but the test really is what a fans want to see, right?

And what have they seen so far? Right. And so you take Texas yesterday, and we had three times as many passes for the lead, Green Flag. You had twice as many passes throughout the field. So we had 3,400 passes. Last spring, we had 1,700, roughly. Is that good?

Well, I think directionally, it's good. The question is, is that what people wanted to see? You know, I think that, you know, close competitive side-by-side racing, we saw a bunch of that yesterday and passes for lead and passes throughout. I mean, you take a look at Martinsville, right? We didn't have a lot of passes for lead, but we had a ton of passing. You know, Boyer back, you know, from the back to the first. front back to the front and a bunch of guys were doing the same thing, which I think is pretty

cool. But a lot of times, I'm not trying to be critical of television. They show up front, right? And what's happened up front? And if you're a Keselowski fan, it was an awesome race because he was up front for almost 450 to 500 laps. With that said, I think there were some really, I was, you know, I was at that race. I watched in the booth, watched in, you know, different places around the racetrack. And I thought there was some really cool racing that went on there. Maybe not exact, didn't look like the fall, right? We didn't have, you know, carnage that, you know, people's emotions get on, you know, pretty upset about what's going on, but that's what short track racing is.

Yeah. And so you said, you know, we understand that Steve O'Donnell's over competition and he's a guy that's, you know, in charge of the nuts and bolts. But you're in those meetings. You're in those discussions. Sure. How much influence do you have over procedural stuff, such as, right, Right now the big complaint is qualifying and what's going on with that.

As the president of the sport, how do you influence O'Donnell? How do you influence procedural changes? Yeah, you know what? You want to make sure, I would say procedural things are probably because they're not really engineer type things. I can look at it out as a fan and say, hey, what we saw this past weekend in Texas on Friday, is that something we want? Absolutely not. And a couple other places, obviously, before that, too. So, you know, Steve and his crew, Steve and I email, text, talk multiple times every day.

And I wasn't at the racetrack this past weekend. So he was texting me Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we're talking. There's a lot going on there. So do I think we'll make some changes moving forward to that? We're going to have to. That was unacceptable if I'm a race fan and unacceptable if I was at the racetrack. So do I have some influence there? Yeah, I have some influence there, but I want to make sure that the guys that are responsible for that particular are doing that.

So not dissimilar to what I would do for Jill Gregory on the marketing side or Daryl Wolf on kind of the sponsor side and the business development side. You want your people to do their jobs and they're talented people and they can do that. To the degree I can help them, I want to do that. Yeah. What is the standard you use? I mean, you just said that you sort of watch it, try to look at it through the lens of a race. Is that what, when you're watching a race or a qualifying event or whatever it is, what are you looking at? Well, I think the hard thing with that question is that, yeah, I've got my own standard, but it's way different than you ask 100 race fans, you're going to get 100 different answers.

That's right. Something that will be, you know, kind of directionally the same. If, you know, if we make a rules change and you get, you know, or a format change or something and you get 80% of the fans to say, hey, I like that. Well, you know, that's something that's good. to try to get eight out of every 10 race fans to say, hey, that works for me. I know that's a lot of race fans who are unhappy with you, too. But that's, you know, and I've said it before, we can't make everyone happy. But if we are making the majority of race fans happy, then that's what, you know, that's

what we're going to try to do. I do find it interesting. Like on Twitter yesterday, I was just kind of looking through some of the questions that, you know, those non-softballs I was going to get. And you have race fans that disagree with each other all the time on Twitter and everywhere else, frankly. And they kind of look at it through their own lands, right? So if there's something that their driver likes, a lot of times they're going to like that, too.

If there's something their driver doesn't like, then they may not like that too. It just depends on where it is. So, well, I look at as a race fan, I do. And I know what I like. and what we saw on Friday is not something I liked. One of the earlier this morning on Sirius XM Radio, Steve O'Donnell, mentioned that single car qualifying was being looked at as a possibility. It seemed in comments from Miller and a couple of guys

as this process is unraveled over the last couple weeks, that single car qualifying was the last resort if it all ever thought about, but now it seems as though it is being considered. it won't you know Steve says O'Donnell says it won't be popular with some owners and why is that I mean is it is it a money situation is it that expensive for them to see to make that change and I know that's you know you're not an owner and only the owner can speak to that sir I'll give you a quote one of my favorite Bill France quotes when NASCAR was formed all the car owners sat down in a room to make the rules after many hours they came out with no agreement and I learned it had to be one

man who told the people what the rules were going to be. If they didn't like it, they could go home. That to me is how the sport was ran even in my father's last few years. And that approach, I felt, worked so well. A lot of respect to Bill France. Mike Hilton sort of had that same type of respect as well when he was in the position. Why the shift to include drivers, owners, these committees, the collaboration, councils, fan councils.

A lot of councils. There are so many councils. And do you feel like that that has paid off, or are y'all reining back on that a little bit, to get more control over it and be able to make these decisions on y'all's terms, how y'all want the direction of sport to go? Yeah, that's a good question. So I think that getting back to the first question about ownership, We need to make sure you can, you know, when I first interviewed the sport, I interviewed with Mike Hilton and one of the questions he had, or it wasn't a question, it was a statement.

You know, they're kind of three legs to this stool, right? You've got the sanctioning body, you've got race teams, and you have racetracks. We need for to have healthy race teams as part of that stool. And I think the difficulty is that, you know, race teams chase speed all the time, right? And it's kind of a cycle where you have, if you have speed, you can win, and if you win, you can have sponsors. And it just kind of starts again, right? And so if you can't have speed, you know, quote Kevin Harwick, you can't make a slow cargo fast. You have to have speed. The only way in this environment right now is to make sure you're spending. And so teams will spend as much as they can in an effort to, you know, to be successful on the racetrack, which I understand completely.

So if we're going to make a rules change, and we believe the rules change in the best interest of the sport, we want to do that through the lens of not just layering on costs to our owners, because that's just, that's not what we want to do. We have told them we want to partner with them to get them in a better, healthier position. If I'm a race fan, I just want my team to win. I just want my driver to win. And we get that. But we have to try to help the owners be healthier, because if this sport's going to continue to. to grow or to grow, you have to make sure you have healthy teams.

And I think that these councils, it's an effort for us to listen to what each of these groups is thinking about. So if I ran the sport, what would I do? What I kind of think of it as, when I woke up this morning, I wanted this sport to grow. When a team owner woke up this morning, he wants the sport to grow as well. until such time is that it's not advantageous to him, right? If it's going to put him at a competitive disadvantage, he doesn't want to do that anymore.

And racetrack's kind of the same thing. It's like, well, you know what? That date would be a whole lot better for me to run that race because I think I can sell more tickets. Well, what about, you know, the difference between running on a Saturday night and running on a Sunday? You know, the folks at NBC and the folks at Fox would say, hey, we're going to get a 30% ratings increase

if we go from a Saturday night to a Sunday night. because there are more people that are watching television on Sunday afternoons. So we try to put it all in kind of a blender and figure out what that can look like. And it's not going to be popular every single time, either with race fans, with owners, with tracks, with our broadcast partners, but to the degree that we can do that, we want to do it. You're serving a lot of masters. They are. The most important one, and I promise I'm not catering to the fans on this one, the most important one is a fan.

What does the fan want to see? What's the product they want to see? Where do they want? What kind of racing do they want to see? So some of the questions last night is, hey, remind Steve that, you know, I think Weaver said, hey, remind Steve that a short track is 0.75 miles and below. I am aware of that. So, but I think there's, you know, fans have said that they want to see more short tracks

and more and more road courses. And I get that. And fewer intermediate tracks. We totally understand that. We tried to mix up the schedule as much as we could with the limitations that we had. Right, because we have five-year agreements. This is the 2020 is the fifth year of the agreement. So we took, you had to go to all the same racetracks, but the way we kind of configured them,

kind of put some emphasis on short tracks or emphasis on road courses or the roval in that case. I think the switch from Indy, the Indy Daytona switch, you know, is to, provide more drama. And I know that we've been accused of manufacturing drama. I'm okay as long as they're trauma. You know, if I'm a race team or I'm a driver,

the likelihood of me winning indie if I'm already outside of the playoffs is pretty slim. The likelihood of me winning a Daytona at the final regular season event, at least I got something there. Yeah. Right.

You bring up the schedule. a lot of folks who were mentioning when the schedule came out Ben Kennedy's name. Yep. And Ben used to race Ben Kennedy's in the France family,

son of Lisa, and he has been a driver for a while, but now I stepped out and stepped into a role as an executive in the sport. Is he being sort of groomed to eventually

be the face of the France family for this for NASCAR? I would say, unless I've not, never had this conversation with Ben, so I'll put myself out there. Ben has done a tremendous job in the short time he's been here, so he was kind of the general manager of the trucks. This year we kind of switched, so he, you know, is, you know, working on the kind of competition side of where things are. So he worked with Steve O'Donnell extensively on the schedule. So they

were really the force of the schedule, and then, you know, they kind of check in, hey, how's it going? you know, do we need, you know, do you need my help, whatever it is? And, and they did a great job, I think, you know, getting tracks aligned on the importance of making the changes that we made. So to answer your question, yeah, I think that Ben is. And if that's what Ben wants to do, is to, you know, run his family's business, you know, I think that's fantastic. You know, he's smart. He's passionate about the sport. You know, he did drive in, and, uh, and, uh, and was a winner in the trucks in an Xfinity, I would think it would be a great natural step to have him in there,

how soon he comes in and runs the place. That really is between Jim and Lisa, his mom, and Ben. But I think I wouldn't bet against it. Yeah. I like the guy. I think he's got a great future, and I feel like everybody feels better when there is a France behind pulling some of the strings

and kind of looking over this whole thing that they've created. Going back to the schedule, you mentioned that a lot of these tracks, we couldn't take away tracks or add new tracks to the 2020 schedule because of these agreements that are with the tracks that do run out at the end of 2020. New agreements will be written. Will we see a racetrack on the schedule that is not on the schedule today? We won't assume or guess what race track that is. But will we see a new track on that?

on the schedule 2021. Well, I think that I don't know the answer to that. And I've said publicly a number of times, you know, we have to, the changes in 2020, I think people were probably surprised to the degree that we were, that we changed things and mix them up, even though they're the same track. So it sounds like a foolish thing, but pretty cool having Bristol in the, you know, in the playoffs, as a cutoff race. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, you guys made Bristol, Martinsville, and a road course. to cut off tracks. So it's obvious that you guys are starting to favor the short tracks and the road courses as great race tracks to go to. And so I'm wondering if in 2021 that we might see some new tracks come in, preferably short tracks, road courses. I would, you know, it's absolutely on the table. I promise I'm not trying to be evasive, but we don't know.

Truthfully. Are y'all going to look at these agreements differently where you guys sort of aren't boxed into a situation like you've been in the past where you can. can't be more flexible with the schedule? That's the plan. So, you know, we think that, you know, having race tracks kind of being together with us and making changes. So, and having a certain standard for what it looks like to run a racetrack or to run a race at the highest level of NASCAR, I think that's important. And so could we see different tracks?

Yeah, we absolutely could. What they are, where they are. I mean, there's a ton of speculation about what would be a good racetrack for us to go to. You know, we've heard, hey, don't run two races that, you know, the mile and a half saw that on Twitter last night. Yeah, I agree with that one. And so I'm not suggesting we're not going to do that. That wasn't my burner. I just think that, you know, listen, we have to do some things differently.

Fans want us to do things differently, and I think we need to do it. as quickly as we can, you know, within reason, understanding there are, again, three legs of that stool. And one of those legs are the tracks. You said that a lot in recent interviews when you were appointed as a president, that you want to do things differently. NASCAR needs to do things differently. Our focus may have been misguided or we've made some mistakes even. That's general. So what are you talking about there?

What are we going to do differently or where are we going back to? Sure. Well, I think that there was a, you know, this was in an interview I did around Daytona and they said, hey, hey, we've made some mistakes. And I, listen, we're not the only business that's made a mistake for sure. And I think that we probably, I think we chased a new fan at the expense of an existing fan. We'll never do that again. So it doesn't mean that we can't have new fans in the sport. Of course we can. But we want our new fans and our existing fans. And our existing fans. fans and are, you know, avid, long-time, loyal fans, you know, we want them to kind of nurture and grow these young fans or these new fans, young or old, I don't care where they're. It's long as there are more people that are coming to the sport. We have a great sport. We want to share it. So, you know, other things that, you know, we can change again, I think it goes back,

first and foremost, it goes back to, you know, the racing. So where are we racing? What's the racing look like? Is the car going to look more, you know, more? more, quote, stock. I think our auto manufacturers, our OEMs would like to see body styles that are more reflective of what happens, you know, in the showroom. I think they would want to see some different types of engine packages that we could put together that would be more relevant to what would be good for them. And as part of that, I think we could hopefully take the three existing OEMs we have and add a

couple more. And I think the winner, frankly, is the race fan. And I believe that. because, you know, it just more and more excitement, more and more rivalries, you know, would be great, for example, I have Dodge back in the sport. And we've, you know, we've had discussions with Dodge and we'd love to see him come back. So come on back. Yeah, in some of those social media posts last night, it was strictly just Dodge in response to my question of what we should ask. I guess we'll assume we know what they mean by that. There's a lot of, you know, Dodge fans out there that would love to see them back in the sport. Are you going on social media a lot? You're just being talking about seeing all these responses.

I think you saw more than we even did. I'm a watcher. I'm horrible. I feel bad because I don't post. I think the last thing I posted was something around Daytona. I'm horrible. Actually, that is not horrible. I don't think anybody wants you posting on there.

Well, that's a good thing. I'm glad I'm satisfied. Nobody expects that out of our president posting on social media. Get myself in trouble. But you are watching. You're watching. Oh, absolutely. You are active from an observation standpoint.

Yeah, I think, listen, you brought up the fan council. Now, that's a council that makes a ton of sense to me, right? Because we have 25,000 people who are part of this fan council. They are our most avid fans or a representation of our most avid fans. And we talk to them on every week basis. What did you like about the racing? What didn't you like about the racing? What would you like to see different?

And it really helps us kind of gauge where they are. It's not the only thing we use, but it's an important tool that we use to listen. And I think, you know, as I talked about, I think we got away from listening to them. We've had a fan council now for, I don't know, probably nine or ten years. It has grown, and it's still one of the most important things that we do. There are some questions on there. We'll ask them open-ended questions, what would you like to see different? and the number one answer about what they like to see different at a racetrack is no rain.

So I fix that one. That one's a tough one to fix. Although so far this year we're seven for seven. I just jinxed. I just jinxed where we are for this weekend. But I think it's a, yeah. I'm sorry, Jerry. That's a bad deal.

It's my bad. But I think, but listening to them is important. I'm just kidding. Listening to them is incredibly important to us because they have their fingers. on the pulse. And if we can kind of figure out where the mass of fans want to go to create the best racing we can or things that they think are interesting. So when I came into the sport, the two racetracks that rated the bottom every single time were Sonoma and Watkins Gled, last. And now they're top five. Martinsville, right? From a sponsor standpoint, no sponsor wanted

in Marnsville, right? They just didn't. And not, you know what, Barnesville is, you know, it's awesome. It's a short track. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess that's a great, that's a great thing to bring up. You know, as much as we want short tracks and road courses, we can't repeat history and just pour road courses and short tracks all over the pancakes. So, you know, we just, we have to bring in a few. You know, we got, we, we did that with the mile and a halfs and, and, and, and, Now we're in this situation we're in where we want to probably bring in some more short tracks or road courses, but be smart about those choices. I agree with that. So you take a look at the roval, right? You know, ratings were up, but tenants was up. And so the first immediate reaction is, oh, well, we've got other roval opportunities at other mile and a half tracks. I don't think that is the answer. It doesn't mean that we won't do that in the future at a, you know, a small number.

you know, could we support another, quote, Roval? Could. But it's kind of like Eldora, right? So there's something special about Eldora. It doesn't mean that you're going to run, you know, eight, you know, dirt races for trucks and, you know, four for Xfinity and two for Cup. There's a specialist that exists,

and I think that's what we have to try to get at is opportunities to go places that are different and unique from each other. And I think that, you know, Dale, you can talk to this certainly more than I can is you can go to a mile and a half track that looks, that's exactly the same layout as another mile on a half track. But the surface is different. The weather is different. And you're going to get different results. With that said, this kind of lumping in of intermediate tracks, we just have too many. Okay.

So is there an opportunity to potentially go elsewhere and shorten the number of, of, of, you know, intermediate tracks, yeah, that's something we can look at, and we're going to. Yeah. Has NASCAR had any involvement in? So, y'all took the banquet or taking the banquet from Vegas to Nashville, which I think is a great idea. Nashville is a great town. I think that we'll have a lot of success there.

Does it make sense for us to be racing in that town if we're going to be celebrating our champion there? And has NASCAR, I know that Marcus Smith has had some involvement of trying to talk to the track and figure out how to navigate the sport into the fairgrounds. Has NASCAR had any involvement in that? What's NASCAR opinion on that? Would you guys love to go back to Nashville? Well, listen, Nashville is a great town for us, right?

So, you know, we have two different tracks, the fairgrounds and the one outside of town. It is a – would we like to run in Nashville again? We would. I think it's a great – it's a great town for us. Having our banquet there, I think, is a good place to go. I think there was a – a time, there was a kind of a thinking at NASCAR at the time that, hey, don't, don't embrace country music because, you know, that's kind of the core. That's our roots. Well, that's a mistake.

We want to embrace country music. You know, not only is country music incredibly popular, but it's part of, you know, kind of a natural tie for our sport. So going to Nashville, I think, is a great idea. You know, what's going to happen moving forward in 2021? Are we going to be racing in Nashville or not, I don't know. I know that, you know, I at least have been told that Marcus has had discussions with the folks in Nashville at the fairgrounds. How likely is that going to happen? You know, right now he has no sanction agreement for 2021, so he can't bring anything there. And if he was going to, if he wants to bring something there, you know, obviously NASCAR has to have involvement. You know, they are, they are our dates. Why don't y'all get involved?

So, and we will absolutely do that when it's done. when it's time to do the sanction money. Don't mention that other track out there that's the mile and a half. Let's not talk about that track ever again. Don't get involved in that one. That is not the right one to go to. This is something that I've always been curious about, especially now since I've got into broadcasting,

we see other sports form their own network to have more control over content, place to showcase the content. Has NASCAR, I'm sure NASCAR is considered the idea of forming their own network. network, and is that something we might see in the future? Yeah, I think that's a good question. You know, our, the answer to that is, I think there are different forms of it, right?

So I think that you could see NASCAR do something that would be more, so take fans' choice. Yes. Right? Fans choice is an opportunity for, you know, different racing series to be part of, you know, kind of an aggregate place where essentially you just go, you give your email address and you watch racing. It doesn't cost anything. So is there an opportunity to create different racing products?

I think it's not that fans don't care about what happens behind the scenes because obviously they're watching, you know, they're watching this podcast, right? They're taking the time to watch it because they're interested in what you have to say and what your guests have to say, with exception of me. I think the... You'll be surprised. Yeah, I think they care.

But I think that having a dedicated network where we have, have, we just don't have as much content, live content to push as other sports. Right. As well as the fact that we have broadcast agreements or TV agreements or media agreements that restrict what we can do. So I think in the future you'll probably see more opportunities to take, you know, some of the lower series that we own or have affiliations with and put them on there, where you're creating a, you know, your own motor.

sports network that's done digitally as opposed to kind of, you know, on television. Incredible. I know. I'll be honest, I am so, I'm thrilled. I'm so thankful that in this day and age, I can get on fans' choice or these other locations to be able to watch racing all across the country. Something I never even thought would be possible or would happen four or five years ago. I can basically hop on social media and say, what's on, what's, what's, Who's racing? How can I watch it? And I'm going to have my choice of many different races to watch that are happening at your local short track or whatever might be going on in the NASCAR sanctioning world.

So I'm grateful, and I'd love to see NASCAR get more and more involved and helping promote that. Obviously, it's a growing business opportunity. And Matthew's brother, Bob, is heavily involved in Speed 51, which is a great place to go watch some racing. Predict what year you'll see a new manufacturer coming in a sport. Well, we're starting to run out of time for 2021. Really? That would be ideal, but there's a lot of work to do. Is your Gen 7 car on schedule?

As of right now, our Gen 7 car is on schedule. I think we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do with our OEM partners, and we have a lot of work to do ourselves and a lot of work to do with the race teams. But I think that a 2021 Gen 7 car, you know, body style chassis as well as a 2022 potential revamped engine is a distinct possibility. That's what we're working hard to get.

And we've got folks that are working on that every day as hard as we can in order to, because I think it'd just be better, frankly. You know, you're not, you know, it seems a bit, you know, you're going to take an engine and put a restrictor plate on a tapered spacer on it to essentially create, you know, quote, better racing, right? And I think that would it make more sense to just build the engine to whatever that specification is going to be? Right. Then I would say the answer to that is yes. I love it. And then you're going to, and then the opportunity to make the car look cooler and, you know, the designs, more recognizable. I think it looks, I mean, it's, it, early designs look

really cool. Good. And then, and then on the engine side, you know, we have late 50s engine, you know, technology that we're using, you know, and it's been fine-tuned and fine-tune. I mean, it's incredibly the manufacturing that's done. But I think there's an opportunity to have something that's going to make long-term success, or give us long-term success. Well, he's talking right to your heart right now. Yeah, it's all the great things I want to hear. You were mentioning when we were talking about Ben Kennedy earlier, you mentioned Jim France's

name. We know that with Brian France and his troubles last year, Jim has stepped in. I think he's done an incredible role in a difficult situation, being the face of the France family, taking ownership of the sport. I imagine you highly approve of his increased involvement and visibility. What is Jim doing? Is Jim with you in contact with you consistently? Is he in the room with you?

Is he helping you understand what he would love to see in every. direction you turn. And because Jim was over the Emsadil and, you know, and NASCAR's involvement there. And how much of a turn has he made to be helping you? Sure. And over NASCAR as a whole. Well, I think I start with your first statement. I think he's doing an incredible job as well.

He is a, you know, when you have the founder's son, the founder of NASCAR son running NASCAR, That's pretty cool. He is a really, really good guy who loves racing, loves racing of all kinds. He's been a racer himself, motorcycles, cars, if it's got wheels, he's been on it. And he's a thoughtful, smart, caring guy who loves this sport. So how involved is? He's involved every day. You know, he is not a, he may be, you know, kind of not out in front in your face on the

microphone, you know, granting 50 interviews. It's not kind of his style, but he knows exactly what's going on. And it has his, you know, kind of guiding hand on it. So you talked about Gen 7. Jim France knows all about Gen 7 and how to get there. And it's a, it's important to him. But Jim France also knows about, hey, we need to do more, you know, when to grow our database and understand who our fans are, Jim France. You know, Jim France is involved with, you know, something we call project horsepower to try to increase ratings and attendance. And that has been at the heart of our marketing efforts that Jill and her team are doing, Jim France, asking all the time, hey, what's Jill doing? How are they doing? How do we do on the ratings? You know, we were up for the year.

We were up 36% yesterday. Now, that's a, we were on Big Fox instead of FS1. But even so, our numbers and our share numbers continue to increase. Those are, those are exciting things. Monday I sent a note to Jim and Lisa hey here's where we are and it has been a you know that portion certainly has been a success story you know and he wants to know you know how's the how's the racing going he's at every single he's been at every single event but one and that was some circumstances that he and I needed to to you know be in Daytona and so we couldn't be at Auto Club but it's been it's fantastic and and to me

I see it with all the different folks in this sport, starting with the people who work in NASCAR. So if you work at NASCAR and you see Jim France, and you know what, he may not know, 800 names, but he's going to shake a hand and say thank you. And he's going to be involved and say, hey, what do you do? And, you know, what can I do to help you? That's who Jim France is. Listen, we saw it firsthand. It was towards the end of last year.

You know, it was a Friday here. The team was gone. And we're walking through the shop and I look over and there's a man in a place. plaid shirt and then a big man with a mustache next to him. And even the lights were dimmed. He couldn't see right away who it was. And then he could get a little closer. It was Jim and Mike Hilton.

And they were in our shop, unannounced, I think. Because I called Dale and I called Kelly. I was like, did y'all know Jim France and Mike Hilton are here? And they're like, no. So what was that? Because I'm curious about the visibility factor of this and why that's so important. It made an impression on us that day. You know, I think if you look at, we talked about councils, Jim France,

from the time he became, you know, stepped in to become chairman's CEO, NASCAR. He's been at every driver council, every OEM council. If there's a council, he's been there. He went to every race last year. He's only missed one race, and that was for circumstances that I talked about just a little bit ago, every race. And he loves racing. And, you know, I think he's a, as I said, he's a steady guiding force to where NASCAR. is going.

Yeah. And he's not passive. I can assure you that. And he's, he is a detailed guy. So you better bring, you better have done your homework because he's going to ask you every question of the book about why and how we get better.

And he'll celebrate the wins with us and he'll, you know, he'll give a, hey, we need to do better on that if we're not, we're not doing it the right way. I got a question for you, Steve. A lot of the things you talked about using fan councils and we really trying to,

get back in touch with the old fans. But my question is about new fans. And what is it they want? Because I have a theory that a lot of the things that we talk about may not actually be even remotely relatable to what might be a new fan. And you might know more about new fans than I do. What is the sales pitch today? Is it what we're trying to get done by 2020 or 2021? If right now there's somebody listening to this podcast and they're taking in NASCAR, but they haven't made their decision yet, why should they stay? Well, to me, it's because, A, we've got phenomenal racing, and I think we've got tremendous stories and storylines out there. And I think you've got this mix of veteran drivers and young drivers who

are colliding all the time on the racetrack. To me, that's what it's about. So if that's not your thing, right? If these drivers, so if you have a young fan, most likely they're going to resonate with a younger driver, someone like them, you know, a Chase Elliott or a Ryan or, you know, any number of these, you know, these young guys out there, Bubba or, you know, or Suarez or whomever. And I think that each one of them has a story. And we have to try to help develop those stories and help them develop those stories. You know, the sport's always been about the characters, right? Have always been about the drivers and why people should care, you know, as they strap into those race cars and do something that the rest of us can't do.

because we can't. It's not possible. So we've got the most talented race car drivers in the world that are, you know, watching some of the F1 race yesterday with my son. He said, you know what, Dad, they go fast and they're incredible, you know, incredible technology and not, you know, for the timid for sure. but it's just it's not like driving NASCAR you have to that you know ragged edge that you need to do to be fast it's just um our drivers are unlike any drivers in the in the world they just are and you know the courage and the you know all of it that makes them them that's why someone should watch and i think you know if it's a if we can get someone to come to the racetrack and truly experience what the what it is to go to a to a race

not just the racing itself, but the broader experience that exists, the camping and, you know, the, you know, kind of the community and family and all the rest of it, people just having a great time. That's what it means to me to be, you know, to be about NASCAR. That's what NASCAR means to so many people. So young fans, new fans, they're all welcome. We ought to be smart about what we're going to do. So, you know, the question yesterday, you asked most, you know, avid race fans, hey, is, was yesterday's race the right length? And you're going to have some of them now say, you know what, I don't think we should have 500-mile races except for the Daytona 500 and the Coca-Cola 600.

All the other races should be 400 miles or laps or below. And I think, you know, that's a hard one, right? because you're trying to serve a lot of masters on that deal. Moreover, does it get a little agitating when people take such a fine-tooth comb to a particular race or a particular, maybe even a segment? Was this racing good? And then they start piling on. As the president, does that not get a little annoying?

Because you're taking such a long-term vision? I mean, this is a long-term fix. It's a long-term strategy. And yet, everybody has such loud, seemingly loud opinions about, you know, A 20-lap segment of something and then just tear it apart or whatever they're going to do. Does that get annoying? I wouldn't say it's annoying because, listen, our fans, you know, they have opinions and they are, in many cases, are not afraid to voice those opinions.

And that's okay. They're fans, just like fans of other sports. They're going to voice their opinion. We have to take a long view. So looking at one segment or frankly even one race is not how we should look at. it. So if we would look, you know, with this kind of new rules package, we would look at the breadth of what we've seen so far. And in some cases, we've seen things that were better than we thought. And in some cases, there are things that are not as good as we thought they'd be or at racetracks.

And so that's where we have to try to fine-tune. And again, if we're, if we're do this the right way, again, the winner's going to be the family. What about when the drivers tear it apart? Not the fans, the drivers. I mean, like... So I'll give you any good. example, right? So Clint Boyer was understandably upset after qualifying again. So, you know, I get it. You come, you get out of a race car. And I don't know that because I've never, I've never driven a race car, right? I've never been in his situation, so I won't presume to do that. But what I see is you get out of a race car, you're upset, you're emotional when someone sticks a microphone in your face. And you're like,

what do you think of that? Well, it sucked. I hated it. And NASCAR better do something about it. And so what we've tried to do is we have tried to limit those opportunities or places where drivers are going to use the media to get across the point they want. That's why we developed the driver council. And so the driver council right now is in a little bit of a state of flux, but we're going to have, well, in a good way, I think. So we're going to have some driver. Well, we heard about the driver council, and Dale was on the driver. council, you're talking to 10 guys, right? And so, and most of the time, the way that was made up,

you had veteran drivers, and then you had young drivers, because we want to have some representation across the different OEMs, future Hall of Famers, plus these young kids who were coming in the sport. The problem is that then you had 30 drivers that were not represented. And the difficulty is it's not that you got information, it wasn't flawed information you got from the 10, the other 30 didn't know what we were talking about, so they fell out of the loop. And so then they're out trying to figure out what's going on, the lobby. So what we're doing now, we started this last fall,

is we're going to meet with all the drivers, and you do it in smaller groups. So we'll do it in groups of three or four around Richmond, three or four groups around Richmond, where you're going to lump your champions and, you know, kind of veteran drivers together, so they can, you know, talk and listen to what, where we're going and we can listen to where they want to be. And then we'll separate into,

you know, two or three other groups of, you know, various teams. So teams will stay together for the most part. And we think that's a better way to do it. So that's why I say, hey, driver counsel's in kind of a state of flux. It's just changing. So I would call it a new driver counsel, just not with the formality of what we had previously. That's a tricky one for me. The drivers, because they're your mouthpieces, right, like a boyer. But they also, also they have a lot of different opinions. They do. I mean, a lot of different opinions.

And I would venture to say that they're not always thinking entertainment, fan entertainment, because they're drivers. Why would you? You want to make your car go faster. I agree. And so that's a tricky one if I'm you, because like, you want to take the drivers. You want to take Dale Jr. in his opinion, but you also have a show to do. Sure.

And so it gets a little tricky. So, you know, it's interesting because you're exactly right. I think Brad, an interview after, I think he was with Claire or someone after the Martin's Will race where he led, you know, 4 and 45 laps. And he said, you have to understand, I don't care about the show. I care about winning. I don't care if I could, I'd win by 10 laps. Yeah.

I don't, you know, I don't care. Now, that's actually not true. Of course, he cares about the sport. He cares to put on a good show. But his job is to get in that race car. He was perfectly happy. He was perfectly happy, right? And he wants to go as fast as he can.

And do I want to leave four and forth? I do if I'm Bradcastle-law, and every other driver. So you have to kind of, it's a, you know, they're an important voice. They're not the only voice. And so, and that's what we try to do. And it's much about listening to them as well as telling them where we're going to go. So they understand, oh, I get that. So we met with them before Daytona in a couple different groups and told them,

hey, this is what we're, here's where we're going from a competition side. Here's where we're going from a marketing side, just so you're informed. And, you know, if people are asking your questions, you at least know what it is that, you know, what they're talking about. And you can inform your opinion about what it is in your own voice that you want to say. I appreciate those meetings where you get everybody together and tell them, hey, this is the plan. I think it's important for the drivers or the owners or the networks, everybody to be in the room at the same time to say, hey, this is why we made this decision.

And this is why we had to make a decision that we made. But at the same time, I was in the driver's counsel. I felt like when I was going into the driver's council that, man, this is a great opportunity for me and the guys, us to get together, have one voice. We want things like we have a few ideas on how to make things better. And this is going to give us a chance to really implement those changes. It did that for a little bit. And it probably still does it to an extent today. but I felt like once I got out of the car and I got on the you know I started seeing the sport from this new perspective I felt like that there was too many meetings there was too much collaboration right that all we were doing was collaborating and and that's why I bring up that quote from Bill France about you know hell with it I'm going to make the decision I'm going to be the decision maker and if you don't like it damn go go find something else to do and uh

I long for, I guess, to revert back to that a little bit. But I think also Mike talking about everybody picking things apart, picking every race apart, from what I'm hearing from you and for what I felt like I've known is that this is, we are in a big transition process in a phase where, you know, we've got new rules this year, we've got a new schedule next year, we've got new agreements coming from even more possible schedule changes down the road, we've got a new car being developed and entirely new approach to the engine being developed. This is a NASCAR is going to go through some very, very good phases and changes over the next decade. And positive stuff, stuff that I'm excited about.

I was thrilled when they announced you as being put into the president role because I feel like that you get it. I feel like that you're a guy that can juggle all the meetings, all the collaboration. changing the car and change out of the suit into some casual clothes driving down the road but yeah um i'm excited uh you know about the future of the sport i'm not going to love everything i know that nobody is and you're going to hear it when he doesn't but i'm just saying i know that i'm not going to love everything like everyone else and you you know that's just part of it and i'm excited about what you guys are doing i can't wait to get back to the track get back to work and see what's going on thank you for coming.

Absolutely. I hope that you'll come back. I would love to. As these changes are, you know, happening, nobody else we'd love to talk to about it and see what else is coming down the pipe. And hopefully, uh, yeah. He's right. You just said it, is that we all do a lot of speculate and we'd rather just hear it from

you. Yeah. And that's why we wanted to have you on. I appreciate that. We talked about that. We're like, you know, hey, this schedule just came out. We want to, let's just have Steve on now if he can make it because I don't want to have to sit there and pick a part of schedule that I really don't know anything to

have anything to do with how it even came to be. Well, I know you went way out of your way to be here, so I want to thank you. Well, it's my play. It was truly an honor to be here, and when I heard that you guys wanted me on, I was thrilled. And, you know, the casual thing, I actually, people don't see me except in a suit. I'd rather be in shorts and a T-shirts. Is that right? You would? Absolutely. Is that what you, like, when you go home at night and you're just going to go, you know, you unwind? How do you unwind? How do you unwind? Just, throw on a t-shirt and then just absolutely grab a beer grab a beer and my present do you remember

do you remember the the key west or bahama trips or whatever that oh yeah the gym i'm not gym bill dad and helton and those guys went on for you bring that back yeah yeah why are you not doing yeah what's going on here i mean you get i'm gonna i went to visit you a key west yeah you did you need to get a, you know, get in your shirt and your shorts, get some of the executives that are cool. You did. You're not the non-cooled. Just get the cool ones. Had a couple beers. We did. Get a couple of the cool executives. Get a couple of cool drivers. O'Donnell. He's in. Get O'Donnell. Well, I'll hang out. We'll make up some decisions. We'll come up with some decisions. All your problems are fixed, just in Key West, right? I'm for it. That's all the counsel you need.

Can we go now? All right, man. Awesome stuff. Thanks, Steve. Thanks for your time, guys. Appreciate it. Oh, we're reading this with Matthew Dillner's sense of humor and inflected into, I got it.

This is going to be fun. Don't be too cheesy now. Modified. Pizza. Pizza. Boomer green. Islanders. Spitting chicklets.

You guys know that I love to buy stuff online, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. All right. I'm telling you, this is a place that I'm going to here lately. You need to check it out. Pristineauction.com. It's an online sports auction website where you can bid and win some incredible items.

There's a lot of great stuff on there, Diocast, Helmets, 8x10s, all sorts of unique autographed memorabilia. That's Mike's favorite word. I like that one. Mike, he knows about other stuff on there. It's not just sports. There's all kinds of things, right? Yeah, I mean, you got a favorite movie? I mean, but there's a chance that whatever your favorite movie is, there's something from it.

Tombstone is, yeah. I mean, I got other favorite movies, too. There's all kinds of movies. I'm big, I'm big, I'm big, yeah. Our gun is big. Where is it? Yeah, I knew you're going to ask that. He's not, not want to talk about it.

You don't want to put it up in here? I did only to show somebody. Oh, he did it home! But I'm going to bring it back. Okay. It's ours. It's interesting. It is. No, it is. No one else would take it home without sell it.

I wanted to show. Wait, we all brought in stuff from our homes. I brought stuff. You brought stuff for the studio. What about you, Mike? I mean, God. Where's your stuff? Did you win? I got a big shoe sitting right next to me. Is that not count? Look at this. Shaquille O'Neal's shoes. Dale had to come get it out of your office. Well, we're not talking about how it got here. We just talking about it's here. Well, it is. I'm bringing the gun back. It is signed. It is. Yeah, look. You bring the gun back. All right. All right. Well, they have different types of auctions as well. Daily auctions where you don't have to wait around multiple days to bid to win. There's also a 10-minute auction. That's probably my favorite. That way you get in there and you get it done fast.

You get the items. Sometimes you get these people not paying attention. You can get some stuff on some really good deals. But also it's quick. 10 minutes and you've got the item you've won it. It's coming to your house. Let's talk about my favorite word, authenticity. I got it.

You nailed it. Let's see if you can get to the hall. All the items on here are fully authentic. Nailed it Authenticated. Because you don't say it the same way. Authenticity and authenticated. They're two different words, Dale.

It's a tough deal. It's derived from the same word. Yeah, but that's the way the English language works at times. The trusted people that are signing these things, these autographs on this website are legit. They are from the people that actually are the people. That's right. How do I know that?

Well, because you've signed for them. That's right. And you're a real person. I've signed for Christine. I'm a real person. And when I write my name, it's my name. So the things that you've signed, the things that you've signed, there is right now a 9-inch NASCAR limited edition attitude character figurine on there. It doesn't say Dale Jr.

But let's just say, when I say attitude, you're supposed to think Dale Jr. Because that's what it is. It's a figurine of Dale Jr. I'm reading this part because it'd be awkward for Dale to read about his own figurine. Wouldn't it be? Yeah, but I am going to say it's up to $31 after five bids. That's pretty good. You're feeling good.

Start out a dollar, so. Having an experience that I have at auction websites, I think that's doing pretty good. That's a good starting point. You know what? We're not going to compare to other drivers because, you know, in this part of the read, we've mentioned other drivers in their merchandise. And then we catch hell for it on social media. Like, we're talking smack about the other people.

I've never read anything bad on social media, Mike. No, well, all right. Maybe it's just me. Don't talk bad about social media. Okay. It's a good place of sunshine and roses. Rainbow. Butterflies.

rainbows, unicorns. And Darrell Walter fans don't get offended over the things. Well, check out pristineauction.com now. You'll be hooked. It's free to register, free to bid, and you only pay for the items you win. You only pay for the items you win.

That makes sense. I mean, nothing would suck worse than to pay for the items if you don't win. That's pristine auction spelled, P-R-I-S-T-I-N-E-O-O-C-O-com. Why don't we spell out the auction part? And then you rate... Dot, D-O-T-C-O-M. And when you register, be sure to select

The Dale Jr. Download podcast from the drop-down menu in the How Did You Hear About Us section. I'm sorry if that's confusing, but it lets them know that we've sent you there. Boom. You say boom like we nailed it. All right, so in honor, I guess, of Steve Phelps, we've got a great little segment of the show, president for the day. So what I wanted to get done here is to try to understand if you were president of NASCAR. What would you do? You just have one day to get it done?

One day. You got to make it happen. Do you have an idea? I've got one. I'm still thinking. All right. I struggle with this one. It's a very difficult.

I've been asked this a million times. It's not easy. It's a conversation that people like to have all the time because everyone has an opinion of how they would fix NASCAR. Here's mine. I would make it where the drivers could talk and communicate to each other during the race. I want to be able, hey, you could even give them a little CB radio. Brager, Braves, you got your own.

Boyer, you know, I don't know. Come on a turkey. I'm serious, though. Now, think about this. And this is not just some, you know, I'm serious. I have thought this for years. I want them to be, I want to be, if they're really so big and bad like they think they are, I want them to be able to say it to each other.

I don't want them to be able to talk through spotters. And I really don't want them to have to talk through media, you know, the post-race interviews. I want them to say it to each other during the race. And that doesn't seem like that would be that hard. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard. Think about the viewer. If you could hear Clint Boyer in the car during qualifying

as Ryan Newman blocks his center lane, hear what Boyer has to say about that. And actually not even hear what he has to say about it. Hear him tell Newman. Get your ass out of the way. Oh, please let's do this while Kurt Bush is still running. Kurt Bush. Please. Honestly, this is when I first thought of this.

This is years ago. I want to be able to hear Kurt Bush say something to his team because he was always dogging his team. teammates. It doesn't matter what team. Roush, Stuart Haas, yeah, it doesn't matter. I wanted to hear him do it with the teammates and hear the reaction. I don't know.

I just like it. It seems like in today's technology, we can make that happen. That way, I don't have to hear TJ go, I told a spotter. I don't want spotters get involved in it. I want to be able to hear it. I think it would be good TV. That's me. I love that idea.

It's different. I think it's a great idea, Mike. I think so. talking to each other, that way they, you know, they can, I think that would create more drama on the track if they could degrade each other. Yeah, degrade each other. You know, think about even at the restrictor plate tracks. Matthew, you reminded me, was there not a time when the drivers could talk to each other? Yeah, there was that dial.

Remember that? Yeah, we had a dial on the dash. You could turn it to each driver. Right. During the, what did you call it, the dance and partners phase. Tandum. The tandem phase. Just have, you know, maybe you have your favorite five, you know, like on the phone.

Oh, wait, so it's like a Seinfeld. You didn't make my speed dial. Maybe you got five people you think you may have something to say to during the race. Put your five on there. Oh, Lord. Matthew. I would run the truck series. I'd revamp the truck series.

I think most of their events are companion. You would be president of the truck series? No, well, I think there's a lot of things that we can just hold up here. The truck series would be better served. Hear me out on this. Truck series would be better served instead of running as a third companion. than the Cup weekends, they would be better served running companion events at short tracks with ARCA, with the E-Series, with the West Series, especially start out West, then have shows with the

E-series in ARCA that would make the foundation of the sport stronger. But as far as Cup, it's bottom line, noon start times. I know there's different parties involved that may not like that, but I've always said if you want to hook the viewer, especially during football season, you have zero chance, you have less of a chance to do so, starting the races at two or three o'clock. If I'm sitting on my couch and I'm going to have a football game starting at one and the race comes on, you hooked me, you give me a chance for an hour to be hooked. And then maybe my team doesn't play to four. So I'll watch that whole race. Well, me, you know, I'm a nerd.

I'll watch it either way. But for a person that's split between that, that gives our sport more of a chance to have eyes on at noon start times. But what is it? I missed this. The truck series. So you're saying you would noon start times for cup or for trucks? Noon start times for cup. Trucks need to be revamped, get back to the old school short tracks,

run them with the East Series and the West Series. It'll bring new life into the truck series. East Series competitors, West Series competitors that buy trucks, get involved. ARCA, now that NASCAR has purchased ARCA, I think that would be a huge thing as well. So you got two decisions you made on your day. Heck yeah, man. I'm working hard. You've packed that day full.

I'm working hard. Making it a full day. Working hard. What about you? I think, I mean, I'm obviously social media, so I need to be able to set up the racetrack and have functioning Wi-Fi. I know that's something that a lot of places struggle with. And I'm kind of new around here, and I know that was a big struggle on the NHRA side. So that would be probably top of my priority list.

But then I also have this crazy dream in my head of creating the ultimate motorsports experience and make it one weekend, have the World of Outlaws on Friday night, have an NHRA exhibition on Saturday, and race cup cars on Sunday. I know a track that could do that. I know a track that could, you know, SMI. Yeah. You can do it at Vegas as well. Yeah.

Yeah. That would be cool. Good idea. Yeah. Very cool. These ideas are amazing. And I would have to focus my time on the new Gen 7 car. And I would want it to look as identical to the manufacturer production model as possible.

I'm talking off the ground, body panels. Every measurement almost as identical as I could possibly get it to the production model to where it was unmistakable. Unmistakable. Cup holder. As to what car you were looking at and who was a manufacturer of that car. I would have them design an open engine that wasn't limited by spacer plates or anything like that. That was creating 550 horsepower.

So there would hopefully be more throttle response. for the drivers in the corner, I would eliminate every ounce of down force that I possibly could off the cars. That's included in side force as well. And I would try to find a way to put as much possible drag on the nose of the cars as I possibly could. I mean, standing the windshields back up

toward the production models. That would be cool. Whatever it takes to get drag on the front half of the car, because I think that would help sort of disable the leader just a little bit and give the following cars that advantage to draft up and get the slingshot possibly back into racing. What would you do with the spoiler in the back? Like I really would want to know what you would think on that.

I'd just let the teams put over whatever they want it. Okay. Really? I'd make it real short and ineffective, and they could lay the summits down flat if they wanted to. And I'd also make a more, I'd narrow the tire up. I would think about all kinds of different things you can do with the tire. I've heard the drivers talk about having different size wheels and, maybe a shorter profile tire or whatever.

I don't know. That would be something I'd listen to and want to know more about of why you would want to do those things, but I think less tire on the ground is going to take away some grip and corner speed. We've always searched for a way to really slow down the corner speeds a little bit

and get off throttle time, and I think less tire on the ground would achieve that. And it'd be a very risky move to try to develop that tire in safely. But that'd be a direction that I'd try to go to create this. This new Gen 7 car is a great opportunity to really make all these changes. And I do not want to miss those opportunities.

But I think you guys had a lot of great ideas. The Wi-Fi. It's huge. Every one of our ideas were in our respective corners of the earth here. Dale Jr. was the most driver idea ever, right? He wanted to make changes to the car. Yeah. Leah wanted to do something to make social media better.

Perfect. A lot of people on social media. Matthew wants his TV time. When I went online and asked the fans about Phelps And we should ask them a lot of people talk about Wi-Fi You know No excuse on why you don't have that problem fixed We shouldn't have to be president for a day to fix that

Yeah That should have been done five years ago Work on that Leah I'm on it No for real That's interesting Good stuff All right

Live Asch Jr coming up You guys ready to go live here Sure Stand by Stand by your mics are hot We are live Hey everybody it's Dale Jr For the Dell Jr.

Download This is the Asch Jr. your live segment of the show on YouTube. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. Co-host Mike Davis. Leah's in there getting y'all's questions ready, so let's get after it. We got some good ones today.

I mean, in my opinion, we'll see what you think. First one, this is a big one. If you had known Mike Davis in elementary school, do you think you guys would have been friends or foes? Jeez, that's the first question? I think we would have probably been friends. I was friends with most everybody. Yeah, me too.

I was friends. I didn't have any enemies. I didn't have any foes. Yeah. I think. When you were in high school, what was the group you think you were in? You were you a prep? Were you one of the rednecks?

No. Jock. No, I wasn't. Were you? Were you one of the guys in the carpentry class? No, the shop. Yeah, shop class guys. Wasn't the shop class guy.

I kind of wish I was. I could have used that now. I don't know. You were in the, you know, I played sports and I just had a. Jockey. Yeah. I wasn't good enough to be a jock. I mean,

don't you have to kind of be good? I played sports and I wasn't a jock either. All right. So maybe we would have been buddies. I was, I think I fell in the redneck category. Really? Yeah.

I hung out with people that wore Bo Seif's shirts. Did you wear Bo Seif's shirt? After school, rode dirt bikes and went mud and in her trucks. Yeah. You definitely were that. Yeah. I wasn't a prep.

And I did play sports, but I got a letter jacket, but I wasn't good. So all the jocks, I didn't get to hang out with them. They weren't good enough. You got a letter jacket, though. I did. I mean, yeah. Went to state, got me a little state patch.

Did you have a girlfriend? Did she wear your letter jacket? I had a girlfriend. No, I never had a girlfriend all through high school. Really? All right. So we would have been friends? I didn't go to any of the dances.

Really? Never went to the prom? Never went to the prom? Never went to prom? Nope. It was kind of pitiful. I was racing. Was there like a tractor pool or something?

No. I was racing my street stock with Carrie at 16. So, I mean, all through high school, I was racing tree stocks or late models or something. Carrie would have gone to the prong. Carrie was probably married by that time, wasn't he? I want to hear some of your high school. It ain't all about me. It is, though.

It's called ass junior. It's totally all about you. Ask Mike Davis. Okay. We're still curious as to what Mike's high school career was like. We'll find out later. Next question, Leah. There's a big cardboard cut out of my head up in my office.

I mean, you get, you know, a little bit. Anyway, John Riggs, he wants to know since it's April Fool's Day. What is the best joke you've ever seen pulled? Say what? It's April Fool's Day. Yeah. Oh, man, there's been some good ones. I can't even think of them, but what was one we fell for in the industry?

There's been a few good ones in the last couple years. Usually the... It's usually like Texas Motors. He's coming back. Texas Motor Speedway. Like Eddie Gossage, has he put out a release today? I mean, really, I'm asking. I saw a good one where the, I think the orange cone.

created another Twitter account and where Orange is he used the letter zero so you could hardly tell it was different and then he said he's like oh no I changed my handle name and lost all my followers

oh wow yeah and everybody's like oh man how'd that happen but it's not the same account I thought that was really clever I bet you've been holding on to that one for a while didn't he just come out and tweet out that he got somebody pregnant and I think he did that today.

What? I think he did that today. This is today. Like the real orange cone? Yeah. Or the person, the real person behind it. Oh, geez. Who knows?

I don't know. I don't know Mike's story. The character or the human. Well, like, pull this thing up. Here, y'all finish this. Let me, let me, yeah. Mike's leaving. Like, bye, Mike.

See you. See you, Mike. Next question. Thanks are coming. Laura, Chris wants to know. What's your favorite piece of decor? core in this new studio and what does it mean to you? Oh my God. Okay, there's a roof of dad's number two, 1970, 1979, 1980, Monte Carlo. It's not the real roof. We actually got that roof out out of a car in the

junkyard for 20 bucks with the decals and the paint and a little bit of grinding and cutting and cleaning up. We got a hundred and $125 into that thing and it looks real. And I think it's the greatest kind of man cave piece you could have and anybody out there could make that and create that. If you got a favorite race car from any part of history in NASCAR, you could go get a junkyard roof and pretty much create that roof without having to find the real thing. And it looks beautiful. I think it's by far my favorite piece. What I miss? My favorite part in a piece in this room. Okay. And he didn't say Mike Davis. Can you guess what it is? My favorite thing in the room. All the little momentum. Hell little do you. You know Del Gerell, Mike. Come on.

Listen, I would have thought maybe the Jimmy Means helmet. That would have been my guess. Or maybe the roof. It is? Okay. Roof is cool. Justin Kennedy, who decides which race teams will carry in-car cameras? Is it possible that every car could have a camera every weekend? Well, that would be the best case scenario.

It would be awfully expensive to have a camera in every single car, and plus having the infrastructure to be able to control every camera in every car, having the people behind the scenes that are controlling those cameras and being able to help you understand what you're doing. watching who decides what cameras get what car so we get an email in the middle of the week from the guy who kind of handles that whole department with the in-car cameras and he'll say what cars do you guys would you guys love to see a camera in we'll tell him as in me steely letart jeff burton rick allen and he'll go and try to ask those crew chiefs if we can put the camera in there and

it really comes down to whether the crew chief and driver prefer it or have a problem with having the camera in there it's a service they're doing for us. When the drivers and crew chiefs accept the camera, they're doing us a favor. We have sponsors that are willing to buy those cameras to help pay for that, you know, process. But that's kind of like process works. And the crew chief or driver will say, no, I don't want the camera.

And we'll have to think of the next guy we'd love to have the camera in or another car that we'd like to have. And we can even decide what cameras. So some cars will get a 360 panner on the side or some cars, you know, we'll get a looking back at the driver camera. there's that new camera that we have on the cars at some racetracks that's right down on the ground on the nose of the car and we try to pick where who's going to get what camera because of how we feel like that driver's going to have race during the day If we feel like he's going to be passing a lot of people, then we want that side pattern.

You know, if we feel like he's going to be behind a lot of guys real close, we'll put that camera on that car. If we think it's, you know, you don't want to put a nose camera on the car that you think's going to lead every lap because you'll never get any great shots out of it. So it's pretty interesting how much involvement we have in it, I think. JT wants to know, is Carl Edwards ever going to be a guest? Carl is on our list. I have a guest list sitting right here. I'm looking straight at it. And we've got about 40 people on that list, and Carl's in there.

We got more guest targets than we have shows. We did. Yeah, he's on it. Somebody actually just chimed in. Mike Skinner, would you consider Skinner? I don't know if we ever put that one on there. That wouldn't be a bad, you know, guess because I have questions about him. Jeff, I mean, Rusty Wallace talked about being a bad teammate.

That's right. Not wanting teammates. And he mentioned Dad being the same way. And I know Dad did not like the idea of having a teammate, whether it was Mike Skinner or anybody else, nothing personal to Mike. But Dad did not want a teammate. And so it'll be interesting to hear from Mike's point of view how all that went down. Yeah. Dave Mitchell wants to know where does the name Dirty Moe come from?

Dirty Moe comes from Dirty Moorsville. Dirty Mo is just a nickname for Moorsville, the town. I went to school there and everybody at school called it the Dirty Moe. Now that I know what crowd you've ran with, now it even makes more sense. It's just an affinity for Moorsville. It's really a nice, it's an endearing term. even though it didn't sound like it. Thomas Hicks, what do you think Alex Bowman needs to do to get his first win?

Well, you know, Alex is, I think Alex has a lot of great talent. They really struggled this year, and this weekend had to be real tough because they had great speed and then just had a lot of things go throughout the weekend that ended up having a terrible result. Rect and qualifying, do you? Yeah. He had a lot of problems all weekend long, and his teammates were up there running up front, been in that situation where you're a teammate and you're not the best teammate and you may be

the worst teammate and you've got all the other guys are running great and you're you're decidedly worse off than they are that's extremely frustrating i believe in his talent i believe that he can get it done and this isn't a knock on the team this isn't a knock on gregg ives or anything like that gregg eyes will say this uh steve leart told me this as well when we weren't running good we needed better cars we need better cars and faster cars when jimmy johnson wasn't performing well over the last 12 months, he needs better race cars. Jimmy Johnson is the same time champion. To run up front, he needs a good car.

And so when he's not running up front, I have to say that it's probably something to do with the vehicle itself. And hopefully they can get that sorted out. But I think over the last weekend, Hendrick seemed to show quite a bit of speed and at least three of their cars. And that information trickles right down

into that 88 team and Alex Bowman and hopefully they'll start showing up on the racetrack. Bobby Gray, any plans on coming to Bowman Gray to watch my Myers boys run. I would probably go there with Matthew. Matthew's been going to Bowman Gray forever. I've never been to Bowman Gray, and I've thought about going on several occasions,

and I'd love to do it just to say that I have. It's kind of a bucket list item for me, to be honest with you. So I'd love to go to Bowman Gray and see a race, and I know with the time now that I have not driving race cars, I can do that. But I'd probably just go with you, Max, and you know where to go, and what's good on the menu? I know it's good on the menu. We were talking about it the other day.

Yeah, but I don't know how much early you want to go. Pulliam's close is pretty early. Yeah. Polliams closes early? They close early because they go to Bowman Gray. I guess that makes sense. But they got these little sweets and stuff. Yeah, we'll go with the balcony out front. Yeah, if you want to go, we'll go to Pulliams,

and then we'll go find a spot in Winston's Helm, have a few beers, and then we'll go back because you don't want to sit out in that sun that long. Yeah, sounds perfect. All right. That's a wrap. All right, guys. That's the Ash Jr. segment of our show on YouTube. Thanks to Nationwide for presenting sponsor of that segment.

I appreciate everybody for tuning in. Keep coming, bud. White flag, right there, white flag. White flag. Some of our more recent reviews on Apple Podcasts, y'all ready for this? Oh, yeah. All right. Jason from Waynesburg, Pennsylvania.

I'm a captain on a riverboat. Look forward to listen to Del Junior crew every week while I'm steering up and down the river. Oh, that's so cool. Keep it between the buoys, buddy. So Tasnifer says I wasn't a race fan I would tell people I like Dale Jr because he's a few months younger than me and hot But then I met my husband He was a huge senior fan and taught me about all the history of the sport

Now I'm addicted to this podcast Not because it's junior But because it's educational for those of us who married into the sport So there you go nice See Hal says I just want my review read in the podcast And Jeff Gordon is the greatest of all time All right that's going to help us out to make our show better, right?

Last one here I got, listen, Dillner comes up into these previews, or I'm sorry, into these reviews. Did y'all know this? You got a Dillner hater? No, no, no, no. Well, you tell me. All right, so I don't know the name of this.

It's S-L-B-U-S-A listed pros and cons to the show. I'm not going to get into all the pros and all the cons, but this was interesting to me. One of the pros was Dillner seems to be Mike and Dell's punching bag, and they've been listed as a pro. and then on one of the cons Dillner seems to be Mike and Dell's punching bag

and they said it's sometimes awkward so I don't know I didn't think Dillner was our punching bag did you? I do agree that at times it's awkward okay but do you consider it a pro or a con I'll let you all answer that Dillner do you feel like we punch on you a little bit

I have in the past but I'm sorry I can take it dude I'm not I didn't know that I don't have to go cry in a safe space we're good Did you write this review? I think Mike has a secret, guilty sort of conscience over it, and he's reading this to help his self-opolis. Like therapy? This is sort of an apology to you.

Or it's not. Put it this way. I've always had this relationship. Mike is, you know, it's awkward for Mike to bring it up and want to apologize. Hey, I'm really sorry. Have you ever been in a meeting with Dillner? Dillner punches back. He just may not do it on this show.

Correct. Dillner is from New York. Okay. Don't tell me, people feeling sorry for Dillner, you don't have to feel sorry for him. He gets his punches in. He does. He does. Leah's agreeing with you here.

Mike's justifying his style and aggressive style, too. Do you feel bad about punching him? Momentarily. You get over it quick. And it goes away, yeah. I've had relationships with my friends where it's like, you can come up and punch me in the face and, you know, we're guys. I wouldn't hang out with those guys anymore.

Oh, man, you can punch me in the face and, like, A week later, man. Let's just have a beer. I've never hung out with a friend that punched me in the face. Who were these people? I actually did once. It was a lot of beers. If you had your friend hanging outside of your race, half out your race car, would you gun it?

My friend, no. That's what y'all, okay. We would always wrestle. Oh, yeah, wrestling, yeah, for sure, for sure. Okay, to rate and review, the Dell Jr. Download, go on our page on Apple Podcast. Click on the rate and review tab and have at it. We'll read a few of those each week on the El Jr. Download. Subscribe to Dirty Mo Media's YouTube page, please.

That's where you'll find many videos of our podcast, this Dale Jr. Download, plus Door Bumper Clear. You also find the original video series, J.R. 360, and The Drop by Bubba Wallace, all kinds of good stuff there. The Dale Jr. Download TV show will air Tuesday night at 5 p.m. on NBC Sports Network. By the way, you sent me, I think it's doing pretty good, don't you think? I think our TV show is doing all right. TV shows doing great. Yeah.

Yeah. I like what we're seeing out of that. I appreciate everybody tuning in. I think Door Bump, Clear Guy's been kicking some butt here lately. Yeah, I do too. How's the drop doing? Drops doing, okay, listen, it's not for everybody. I think that's what we want to try to say.

Listen, to say that it's been 100% unanimous positive, not the case. But the people that are being negative nancy's, it's not for you. Don't hate on us because we're doing something different. Right. It's, it's got a unique niche crowd, and I think once it finds those folks or they find it. It isn't our, don't take this wrong way, everybody. It may not be our current audience. It may be the audience we're trying to get, all right?

So listen, we're not trying to change up our sport here. We're just trying to add something else that might be interesting to them. Be nice to us. Right. You can be mean. I don't care. It bothers Lee if one of it doesn't mean. Don't use this as a punching bag.

All right. Lastly, don't forget to buy a raffle ticket on Wendell Jr.'sride.com. It's 2019 Corvette Coupe Coupe Z-O-6. I've shortened up that read to just that. It comes with a lot of other stuff. You don't want to do the micromachian read? Just take my word for it. It's easy again.

Go to Wendell Jr's Ride.com. That's it. All right, ma'am. It's time for some odd history. This is a good one. Take yourself back to 1961. Asheville. Asheville.

Weaverville. Weatherville. Weatherville. Weatherville. Weatherville. Weaverville. Just Weaver. Ashville Weaver.

None of those sound the same. So y'all are really butchering two of the three. North Carolina. That's better. Well, Ashefield, North Carolina. That track, by the way, is a walking track. You could go there right now and walk around it like it's a park. Yeah, I went and tested there.

Okay. A long time ago, with a late model. Just after the start of the race, though, in 1961, the surface began to come apart, and it formed a bunch of potholes. Big giant ones. Actually, one went through Junior Johnson's windshield about a bit bigger than a baseball, right at the A post, right in front of him, right where he's sitting. Junior set on the pole of the race,

but as these potholes started to form, efforts were made to repair the payment to no avail. With the race under red flag at the 208th lap of the scheduled 500 laps, NASCAR officials told the drivers and the crews that the race was going to end after 50 more additional laps. The drivers would get a final red flag and a checkered flag simultaneously. No announcement of the decision was made over the tracks loudspeakers, So it was a surprise to all 4,000 attending fans when Junior Johnson was flagged the winner on lap 258.

And some started screaming and yelling in protest. The track promoter had long gone. He had long left the facility. I'm out. I'm out. With the gate receipts. Yeah. All right.

And the protests grew in intensity and it quickly became a riot when a large logging truck was pushed into the opening leading to the infield and pit road. And that basically, with the track having no tunnel that blocked, the access to the racetrack and the competitors were trapped inside. At one point, a would-be mediator tried to talk some sense into the irate throng and was picked up and thrown into a pond. Law enforcement officers from the county sheriff's office and the North Carolina Highway State Patrol were summoned, but they were outnumbered and they could do little. Junior Johnson says, I remember it vividly. We'd lost patience and one of the crew fellas, Pop Ergel.

Oh, that's not even a joke. That's his name. All right, girl. He went to the gate, and he told him, we're coming out. And a riot ringleader who had a two-by-four poke pop in the belly with it. And Pop, he was a big guy, and he worked for Bud Moore. He was 6-6-285 pounds. He grabbed that board and started swinging.

And before long, the place was cleared out, and everyone left. Not one single refund was paid. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, buddy. Pop. Teared for Pop. Good job, Pop. All right, man, that's the show.

Appreciate everybody tuning in. a lot of fun. Thanks Steve Phelps. We got to thank you to ask our man for all the odd history. Guys, great supporter of this podcast. Love his work on social media. We'll see you guys next week. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Dirty Mo.