The Dale Jr. Download - 262 - Kelley Earnhardt Miller: We Saved Each Other

Episode Date: June 24, 2019

Dale Earnhardt Jr. and sister Kelley Earnhardt Miller open up about their journey together from a tumultuous childhood to running a successful NASCAR team.  The two get emotional about tough times and big decisions like leaving DEI and the living room retirement discussion. They also reminisce about Late Model racing and speak about what it's like to be a female leader in the Motorsports industry.  DJD talks about Dale Jr.'s big news, getting back behind the wheel at a test, and has fun sharing some very unusual life-hacks.  Odd History tells the story of how one famous driver used the mob to kick start his racing career.   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. Dirty Mo Media. Dirty Mo. Hey, everybody. It's Dill Jr. for the Dell Jr. download back again. We got a great show today. Mike Davis is here. Leiavon, Matthew Dillner. I'm excited. You seem excited.

I am. I just still can't stop laughing at you in sunglasses. Well, the thing about it is, is I'm wearing these sunglasses because these are the new spies that I help design. So spies, you know, they have the colored lens. They got the blue and the green and the red. Well, I like orange. Orange is my favorite color. And so they came out with these new spies.

These are The Hunts. The Hunts. Yeah, that's the frame. It's called The Hunt. And then they got this orange lens that I'm very happy about. Well, I'm glad, yeah. And so I thought I'd wear them. But Spy is a company that I've been a partner or working with for a long time.

I don't know how long, Mike. Decade? Over a decade. Over a decade. In fact, Spy was the very first advertiser on the Dale Jr. Download. So however long we've been doing that, they were even Dale's partner well before that. I remember us doing a press conference with Boris Sed out in L.A.

I mean, so that would have been back in your DEI days. So this lens that I've asked them to create, it comes in a lot of different frames, but this is the hunt frame that I often wear. And we have the dirty mose. You know what I like about these? What do you call this? The thin temples, whatever it is. I think that's what they call it.

But I don't like those real thick temples. And you used to like the sunglasses. I used to wear wraps. I'm not a rap guy these days. Raps will probably come back. Depends on the actual, I wear the wraps or the square frame glasses depending on the bill of the hat. Oh.

So if the bill has got a, if the bill of the hat's got a big curve in a lot of, it's aggressive curve, then you can't get the square frame in there. You've got to wear the wraps. If you get a little flatter bill, you can get the square frames. You know, look at our producer Brian. Flatbill, square frames, he's got it going on, right? He would not want to wear wraps with a flat bill. That looks weird.

Have you ever thought about being a sunglass model? Yeah, I think you could. Matthew's doing the same thing. Flat or flat sort of flat build, not aggressive? Yeah, not aggressive. Square frame. Never flat for me. Come on.

That's the combo. That's the combo we go with. East Coast. All right. Kelly, my sister is our guest. I've been trying to get Kelly on the show for a long time. So it's going to be a lot of fun for me. I think, you know, we've heard some of these stories before,

some of you especially that have been around us for a long time, but we're going to hear them in a new way. I don't think me and Kelly's ever really sat down and set the story straight. There's going to be a lot of, hey, did this really happen? What's your version of this? Here's my version. It's going to be a lot of fun. Let's get started.

Someone's going to take control of this day. Someone's going to make the change. Someone's going to raise their voice and say. There's got to be a better way. We've got to find love if you want to be loved. And seek other opportunities to strive for a new team in 2020. We all come home. We tell some of being a hearing of the body.

The family He gets it. We're doing it every year. Yep, here she is. You hear the drum roll. The drum roll. Giving herself her own drum roll. So Kelly, all right.

So I've been trying to get you on the podcast for a long time. Do you want to stand for your phone? I really ain't using mine. No, I'm just going to pull up just a couple notes. Oh, yeah. You prepared? I tried to print them,

and I don't have these fancy iPads that you guys have. And my printer wasn't ready to wake up when I walked in a five minutes ago. You have printer problems. I know. think of all the people that has more IT-ish problems, you do, and that should not be that way. Don't get me started on IT. I was going to say, if we want to talk about IT is going to take the whole show.

Well, I just think that, you know. And you're going to put me in a bad mood. Well, I just, it shouldn't be that way. The bosses should be able to have their problems. Mike, everybody has IT problems. In every boss of the life? I don't know. I can't.

I can't. I don't know. I've only worked here. Since IT's been a thing, this has been my job, you know, for 17 years. So when you, yeah, before that, there was no IT department. No, I don't think so. In the other businesses you worked in? No.

Not back. How did y'all get by? I know. Not when I carried the bag phone and, you know. Oh, yeah. Actually, I just saw a work print a picture from my sports image days or somewhere, and somebody commented because I still had, you know, we had the big box computer things. Okay.

I guess. Desktop computers. You're talking about like desktop, like Macintosh type. Yeah, but. Yeah, was this big. Yeah. Yeah. Your screen was.

I only recently upgraded to the. newer stuff like a year ago. I'm going to put my sunglasses back on this. Oh, no, no. Look at this. So do you feel special because nobody has ever got the sunglass dail like you were about to get sunglasses? Well, I'm just proud of these new spies.

Okay. That's just promoting my new sunglasses that came out. I've been trying to get you on this podcast for a long time. Like that's so hard. You rolled your eyes. That's hard, isn't it? I mean, I'm not the only one that's in control of the scheduling here. Mike, did you not want me on this podcast?

It's just twisting arms. Okay. It's twisting arms a little bit. You know what, honestly, I felt like we had you on recently, and I might have been wrong about that. Was I wrong? Because we've done so many things.

I've never sat at this table. That's true. You have never sat at the table. So I haven't been on this year. What do you think about the table? Do you feel like it's everything you thought it would be in more? Yeah, I love it. You were so much involved in the building and the construction table.

That's maybe why I felt this way. She was? Yeah. You can't just go have a shop employee build a table without letting Kelly know. Well, yeah. It was your idea as a matter of fact. Well, no. So the designer who helped you guys with the space here saw a table like this online and it was crazy expensive.

Yeah, and not in our country. And not in our budget. And not in our country and not in our time frame. We would still be waiting about it. So I said, well, hey, it's metal and wood. So there's two guys, you know, out Jeremy and Nick. And they crafted it for you guys. So I was like, hey, we can accomplish this.

Yeah. So what is your very first? childhood memory not but not but not it doesn't have to have me in it what's the first thing that you can remember happening oh gosh in your life um so i'm glad you preempted me last night at nine p.m. that's a little bit of anybody that's early i don't know what you're saying that's just to tell anybody yeah behind the curtain man i'm terrible at memory stuff so um you know i i was i was just trying to think through the childhood and i really i need to look at pictures and stuff dale i'm i'm so jealous of in this manner because his memory is so good.

He says he has a memory of dad at four years old, riding in on a talk of truck for his birthday. Really? Four years old. Yeah. So I don't remember anything like that. I would say, I was trying to think like timing, I think like 70s, eight maybe. I remember us being at Trees's apartment with Dad. Really?

Trees at apartment? She was in college in Charlotte. And I can see us in. this apartment. I was talking to mom about this not too long ago. Because I was trying to get like timelines, you know, of our life. But really, most of my childhood memories are in the house that burned down. So from that time period, that's the only house that I really remember living in. So that was about eight, you know, seven, eight, nine. And I don't remember living anywhere else prior to that, which mom said we lived in a thousand different places. So that's

probably why. And I've got some memories at mammals and things like that. But yeah, it's It's very sporadic. I have zero memory. I mean, this is like the first time I'm hearing of us going to an apartment. The Teresa was going to school in Charlotte. Uh-huh. And dad was hanging out there. Yep.

Oh, college days. What were y'all doing at Teresa's apartment? Well, see, I don't remember that part. You just remember being there. I just remember that we were there. I got you. I just remember we were there. Yeah.

My first memory, yeah, like you said, was four years old. We were in Mamaw's house, kitchen. Dad, the twist, was that dad wasn't going to be there. And I was disappointed, and then he come rolling around the corner on top of a big, what were the yellow toys? Tonka truck. He was on top of a big Tonka truck, probably, you know, big enough for him to sit on and ride in.

But still, not designed for him to ride in, right? No, I mean, that was his corin. He was wearing black jeans, a white t-shirt. And I was like, dang, dad, yay. You know, because we hardly saw him at all. And, I mean, from the time, that was 78, Dad and him got divorced that year. And then from the time, from 78 to 81, I guess,

when we moved in with him, I got one memory of him. And that's been in the night of his house, the lake house. And it was just me and him. I don't know where Teresa was, but he wasn't married to Teresa. Or me. I don't know where you were. I think you were with mom, and it was my, for whatever reason, dad took me for the weekend.

And I remember he must have not been racing that weekend. And back then they only run about 26, 20, 28 races a year. So he probably had a weekend off, didn't have Teresa around. And it was just me and him at the, and his lake house, hanging out. Considering how, I know how much you were always longing to be around him. That must have been like Disneyland for you. I only remember him tucking me in at night, and he didn't have anywhere for me to sleep. So I slept in his king-sized bed with him.

Yeah. I remember some of those times when we did that, yeah. And I just remember being there by myself and going to bed. and I don't remember what we did that weekend, fishing or anything like that or where we went. I just remember I was just really intimidated. See, I don't think during that time of our life, we had the longings, like, necessarily to spend time with dad. You know, we were little kids. He was a little bit of a stranger.

Yeah, and so I don't really, I don't know that that longing really was like in our minds or whatever. And so the time that you got was just cool because it was like, oh, dad's here, you know. I remember one time him coming to the house that burned down. And, yeah, and I don't remember that at all. I think I played tee ball. I remember you playing tea ball and him taking us to your tea ball practices in Canapas. Yeah, in like a Transam or something. And, yeah.

Awesome. Tea T-tops. Yeah, with T-tops. And me and my cousin, Shelley, both played T-ball. And I remember us riding in the T-T-top back to Mammaw's house and him like doing, you know, fish tails and all that kind of stuff you were. Yeah. Or either I remember you telling me this story back. Oh, gosh.

You in the car. Remember when you rolled my fingers up in the window? Do you remember that? No. I think that was when we moved in with that, and we were riding from Canapolis to Mooresville, and you rolled my fingers up in the door of the car. On purpose?

Well, I don't know if it was on purpose. Can't realize. What's your first memory of me and you together? Oh, probably, gosh. I mean, being just playing and starting. stuff again at at the white house that burned down like that's kind of where all of my things are and playing and remember we had that old garage out in the back that was kind of dilapidated and we spent a lot of time with the neighborhood kids across the street they were bad influences yeah but that's

that's kind of where I think that like the caretaker and the kind of the mama thing with me took off there because mom worked like crazy shifts with her job and um so I just I just I just remember Remember, yeah, and babysitters and being out in that yard. I mean, I can picture all of that just, like, perfectly, and that's kind of like... This is the house that burned down. Yeah. Where was that? Canapolis.

Glenwood Avenue. So, the kids across the street were rough, and they stole my shoes. I had this cool pair of Adidas shoes that they stole. He literally stole them and wore them in front of me like the next week. I'm like, those are mine. They're missing. Those are, no, these ain't yours. And then they took a...

I don't know if you remember this. We went down to the, it was like a convenience store at the end of the street and tried to tell us how to shoplift. Yeah. Remember that? Yeah. The guy with your shoes is teaching you how to. They were our age. Yeah.

They were our age. No, no, I got it. They were with kids. Oh, we take shit out of here all the time. I'm like, man, what? Is it time to out them? Go ahead and give a name? No, no, no, no.

We don't know. I don't know. I think I remember their name, but yeah, let's not go there. We talk about the house that burnt down. Tony, Gary, Jr. No, I'm going to say. We talked about the house that burnt down, the house that burnt down, the house that burnt down. Yeah.

Help people understand what we're talking about with that and how big a moment that was in our lives. Yeah, it was big. So, you know, we lived there for a couple years, and it was me, Mom and Dale. How old were you around this time? Six, eight years. I was six. You were eight. Yeah, yep.

So May of 1981, we had one week of school left, and we woke, well, mom had a boyfriend who was over and woke us up. I think it was around like 5 a.m. or something like that. And the fire, everybody always wants to know, how'd the fire start? So it was one of those neon circular kitchen lights.

Got it. You know, old house. This is 81. Yeah. And Adele's bedroom was right beside the kitchen. And you have a memory,

I think, of coming out and like seeing the fire. Oh, freaking, when I walked out of my bedroom, I remember her boyfriend. I don't know his name. I think his name is Kelly.

He seemed like a nice guy, yeah, as far as I remember. And he'd come in there and he's like, get up, get up, get up. And yeah, I get up and he even was like we, I put on some pajamas. They were like Incredible Hulk, Underwuse. Ain't leaving them things behind.

We loved Underwraise. We had Underreuse. Everybody did. Everybody did. We had every damn one. And I walked out of my bedroom and I remember, I don't remember heat feeling like the room's warm or anything, but I walk out of my bedroom and like 10 feet away is a wall of fire. Like you can't see anything but fire from wall to wall to wall, floor to ceiling.

And the kitchen was there. And I mean, it's blazing, popping. I don't remember none of that. And I saw that. And I was like, holy crap. And he had me by the arm and we took a left to the front door. And then we were in the yard and it's it. Yeah.

So I remember being at the neighbors and they were like an older couple. I think they had dogs or something. And so I remember been over there and I remember the school bus going by. And then later there was something said about the people on the school. the people on the school bus, the kids on the school bus said that we had died died in the house fire. Oh man, we went by, you know, and the house was on fire. And they weren't here for the school bus, so they must have died. They didn't come to school.

But I was also asking mom about that before she passed away because I can't really, I couldn't really remember what the spread of time was that day. You know, did we, I remember having two plastic bags of belongings. And I remember being at Mamaw's house with those two plastic bags. And like she says she took us to Mamaw's. afternoon. Don't remember that. And literally, we went to live with dad. Straight away. Yeah. That day. Like in a day. Yeah. I remember being in the front yard of the house burning down. Maybe we were actually in the front yard of the neighbor, either one. I thought we were right in front of the house. And I asked whoever was there. I don't know if mom would have been

there, but another adult family member was there. And I was like, do we have to go to school? And they were like, oh, no. And I was like, Awesome. And then, I mean, it was like a snap of my fingers. The next memory I have is being in Dad's garage at the lake house, going through my toy box. Yeah. So I remember going to the store with him, Tucker Furniture in Canapolis, and picking out our black and white TVs. Oh, yeah.

And Dale still has his blackout. Can you believe that? Yeah. Why is that thing not in the studio? My probably exists. Dude, that would be a great addition to. It's in my tree house. Yeah.

And it still works. Really. Did yours have the football outline guy on the? No. It's just white. Okay. It's just white. Okay.

It was just a white, 13 inch white, black and white. The black and white TVs. And we got to, we also got to go to the store and pick out a toy. And I still have my, I bought a cookie monster, um, stuffed animal. And I still have that. Oh, wow. My TV is probably at Don't Harm Corpore. I think that my, like all my important belongings were there.

Is that where I might have got my stuffed animal, Lamut? Maybe. Because I had this stuffed animal. It was just a canned dog that would, It was like my woobie or whatever. Whatever you call it, right? Whatever kids call that thing. It's all kinds of names.

It's either a blanket or it's a stuffed animal that goes everywhere you go. And it was called Lumut. That was the brand or the brand name. And I went on eBay about two or three years ago and found a brand new one. Yeah. Yeah. And I was telling Amy the other day, I was like, I might try to get Isla attached to this thing if I could. That'd be cool, huh?

Yeah. It would be cool. I've done the same thing, yeah. I tried to imprint SpongeBob on Kelly's kids, especially Carson. That didn't really work. Among a lot of other things, he tried to imprint on my kids. I'm like, you're going to be a Redskins fan, you're going to love SpongeBob. I'm going to fill your room with SpongeBob.

It didn't really work. Well, Harrison, it worked for a long. Yeah, yeah. I mean, both of my kids were big SpongeBob fans. They watched that religiously, yeah, yeah. So when you guys went to live with your dad, was that good or bad? I mean, did you miss the house? I mean, what were the...

I mean, we're just... Yeah, I don't really remember being emotional one way or the other. You know, our mom moved to Virginia. Immediately. Immediately to live with her mom. You know, my mom, I mean, we were paycheck to paycheck family. And so my mom was just really working hard just to keep our head above water. And so she, you know, dad was 1981.

So my dad was Ricky the year. He was the first time comp champion. And she thought that things were going in a good way for him. And so she thought that was the best decision. for us to go live with him. And so she moved in with her mom in Norfolk, Virginia. And for the first year or so, she would come to our lake house and stay with us while dad traveled.

And so we got to see her quite a bit. Everybody had a great relationship. And then, of course, Teresa and my dad got married. And a lot of that changed, you know, in terms of her being able to come there, obviously. I mean, you know, you're not going to have your ex-wife come stay with your kids at their house. Yeah. Awkward.

Yeah. But so, yeah, I don't. don't remember any bad emotions or whatever. We were talking last night, L. Dubbin and I about me being afraid of fire. And he said that Dale didn't know I was, I'm petrified of fire. I mean, anxiety to the level if I start talking about electrical stuff, like if I'm home and an outlet's not working or a light's flickering or anything like that, I get extremely anxious. And I don't like being in, in closed quarters. Like we have a travel camper on the ride to a campground.

My anxiety starts building. But when I get in there, I'm fine once I realize that everything's going to be okay. But it's really crazy that not having any emotional or no recollection of anything bad other than you were in a fire, that that comes out so much later, you know, and haven't because Dale doesn't, he don't have anything like that. I have a jewelry. Well, I know. Thanks to you.

Yeah. I don't even know. Why do you say thanks to her? I wore minimal jewelry today. You see these earrings that have no jewelry on today? Because of this, specifically because of his phobia? No. I really did.

I just said, I mean, I did it. I'm not going to wear anything for Del Jr., but I got it this morning. The Incredible Hulk is going to come out. Because normally I accessorized my outfit, and I thought this morning I was like, I just go easy going. So he's getting better at it.

But why is that her fault? Yeah, no, why is that my fault? When we moved in with Dad, like probably a year, year after that, she would chase me around the house with necklaces and jewelry. Not snakes. I had no problem with jewelry. Where the hell do y'all think I got necklaces and jewelry, Tom? You had your own.

Dad had a necklace that you wore. I didn't care about that. I didn't bother me. For whatever reason, Kelly thought she would chase me around the house because I was bothering her, knowing her. And that was her defense. And that, I don't know, from that. From that point on, I did not like jewelry and didn't want to be touched by it.

Didn't want to be near it. Do you remember this? No, I don't remember that part. I remember him running around the house and annoying me. Of course. Yeah. So, yeah, our rooms upstairs were side by side and I was, if I was, I was, if she was in her room, I was in there bugging her. Well, thinking about chasing you around with jewelry, like, that's not that cruel.

I had a TV. But did she do anything cruel to you or are you guys doing anything? cruel enough. I had a TV I had a TV in my room and I would go in her room to watch TV. Yeah. You wanted to be around her? Yeah, we were extremely close. We were very close and we played well together and did well together

so we... Did y'all have bad babysitters or something? Because when you said you started becoming a motherly figure. Kelly liked them, I didn't like them. Is that right? Yeah. Well, we had that one, Meredith. Was it Meredith or what was their name? Avon? No, the red, the big green mercury. Oh, no, her name's not Meredith. Her name

was Margaret or something like it wasn't Bertha it was a giant green forward

yeah Dorretta Doretta yes Doretta oh my gosh her husband made fly fishing

lures they lived in Stony Point North Carolina which is a really small country town they were

very country people and again you know you're talking about being in she was probably well all of this would have been

80s because we didn't have a babysitter after we were, you know, 18. But yeah, we had a live-in nanny, Yvonne. Anne. We had Anne first. Anne was our first nanny. Anne was tough. Anne was very strict. She made us eat everything on our plates, which we hated.

And so we would get up and try to scoge things back in our plate or put them in napkins or do all kinds of stuff, which is where my love of peas come from. I hate peas. I can't eat a chicken pot pie to this way. Because of that. Because of Dorita. I mean, it was literally chicken pop pie every night, and you could not get up unless you finish it. One time, one time when Teresa was trying to force the chicken pot pie down, she left the room, I chewed it all up and spit it back on my plate.

She came back in there and I said, I ate it and threw it back up. I think I was like 10 years old. I seriously thought I was going to convince her the truth. Me and Dale, I mean, we were the only two sitting down for dinner. I mean, like, we didn't have, like, parent dinners, you know, 9 to 5 parent workers and parent dinners. It was just me and him. We had this glass table with these ugly, like, brown leather chairs in the kitchen. And, I mean, we would sit there and you couldn't see good, like, to see if people were coming because the hallway was behind you and there was a doorway and then the living room was over.

And so we would, like, get on the lookout for each other, you know, and be like, okay, can I, tell me when I can get up and put them back in. and you'd get up to the go the stove real quick and try to put stuff back in the pan. It was terrible. It's crazy. But the, Bertha, she had that big green... No, Doretta.

She had that big green car. It's so embarrassing to pick a set from school. Yeah. We even went to a Christian school and we were still embarrassed. Yeah. We would... This sounds like that scene in Uncle Buck where, you know...

It's just like his car. Oh, my gosh. Del and Howard. We would try to get her to park down the street. We would. It was like an uncle butt. Right. Did it backfire?

Did it like, co-boom? It was so terrible. It stood out like a sort of throwing. It was so bad, yeah. We'll get back to Kelly. But first, let's take a quick second and tell you about our friends of Vavilene. We've talked about them before.

I was sponsored by Vivalene for several years, and I even drove a Vivalene car at Darlington in 2015. A lot of drivers are sponsored by motor oils. Vivalene, man, they're a little different. They were more than just a logo on the suit and, you know, on the quarterback. panel of the race car. They were a real partner and what I mean by that is they were hands-on in our engine performance. They'd send teams of Charlotte to the shop to work directly with our engine guys in the garage to squeeze out more horsepower depending on the power, the motor that we were running. They had a different mix of oils for each engine to try to make that as effective

as possible. Plate races, road course, short tracks, intermediates. It didn't matter. They had a solution to make the best power for that different style of racetrack. They even helped me get the monkey off my back at Martinsville in 2014. Got my first win there. NASCAR's one of NASCAR's oldest track, I think. Isn't, uh, is that the oldest one or is Darlington, though, this way? Darlington's older. Right.

That's why Vavilene is the only motor oil I trust in my engines, is why you should trust them in your engine too for high mileage rides that need that thick anti-wear film. To newer engines that have carbon buildup, head over to Vaville.com slash Dell to find the product spec for your engine. That's Vaville.com slash Dell. You remember our first go-kart ride. Yeah, you know, I was thinking about a couple of things that were monumental like that. So, yeah, that was when you backed into the Godwire. I drove it straight into the Godwire.

Okay. You can't back a go-car. Okay, well, I thought we spun around and you backed into there. No, what happened was is y'all said the gas makes you go, the brake makes it stop. And I didn't know you had, I thought you'd mash the gas and just held it. And so I mashed the gas and it's flying. And I'm, I don't know where. I'm just, I'm not.

And you weren't at Dayton or Talladega's there. I mean, I'm just, I don't know how to steer. But set this up. Who's putting you in a go-car? Dad? It must have been dad. Okay. The goat cart was dads.

Papa Ralph built it for the Elmas kids, and then we ended up getting it. So it was, I don't know how to explain it, but like just a really flat metal pan with a couple bars handmade, you know, goat cart. So Kelly had been riding it for a little bit. I was the Daredevil in the family. I rode everything, motorbikes, you name it. Not that one. No. She's like, dad is showing her how to ride it.

She's riding it for a couple weeks, doing really good. And he's like, Dale get on it. And I set in Kelly's lap. And our driveway was, I don't know, a hundred yards. Is that a football field or something? A football. A little shorter than that. And we would, I would just go up and down the driveway, up and down the driveway.

And at the very end of it was the telephone pole with a long guide wire right by the mailbox. And so they're like, just that makes it go. And, you know, the gas makes it go. The brake makes it stop. So I mash the gas wide open and it takes off. And I don't know how to get it. I'm like, I can't realize a comprehend at that time that I need to lift off the gas and match to brake. And I drove it right into the guide wire and it went straight up the guide wire.

Oh my gosh. So you hit it direct. Like you rode up the guide bar. You can, I just remember jumping off screaming at Kelly and Dad. This wasn't the only time that that happened. So I remember bicycle wreck down, down the street. Do you, I don't remember which one of us, but remember we T-boned a job. jet ski on a leg day.

I don't remember who T-boned who, but we did not want to go back to the pier to tell dad. Because it busted the side of the ski. Yeah. Jet ski. We had to sit down jet skis. Yeah. And she come by or I come by and sprayed it.

One sprayed the other, and the other ran wide open at the other and T-boned. Oh, so you all were horsing around. No, we were mad at each other. Yeah. It was like, if you. Right. You know, not exactly, but. Kind of.

It was that attitude. Wait, who hit who? I don't remember. How did you? Oh, no. Let's just take a hunch here and say He hit me. He hit you because if he was this mad,

you didn't realize this was as mad as I would say you probably did. You probably ran into it. Well, immediately the anger went away and we started. Fear. Fear came in of like who was going to tell dad and what the hell he was going to say. I think that says a lot about our relationship. Like we might, one of us might screw up, but if we were together,

we both went into it and helped each other. fence of the other, you know, I didn't go in there and go, Kelly, Debbie, and you know, Kelly's fault, or she told me to do it, you know, we just, that didn't happen to my belly, I got my belly button pierced and he wanted to go tell down. God, I hated that, because my jewelry phobia. Yeah. But one other, one other time about running into things was, um, um, the Volkswagen. So my dad, when, when I was like 14 and had bought the land where Delenhorne Incorporated is now, we went to the junkyard and right down the street and he got me this

dilapidated Volkswagen and he put me a little radio in it, put me some lights on the front of it, and I rode that thing all over the farm on these logging roads. It was a manual and the purpose was for you to understand how to drive a stick because you were getting ready to get your driver's license. I mean, I was still young though driving that thing around. But I'll tell you a little secret. I drove a lot before I had my license. I would drive us all over Moreswell from Dad's friend Joe Whitlock's Lake House.

I would drive us home, which was about five miles. What are you? In our conversion van. 14 or 15. In a conversion ban. But that particular Volkswagen rides, I had this Volkswagen, we took it all over. And, you know, just little logging roads, little dirt roads, you know, all over the farm. And Dale was riding with me this particular time.

And I come around this corner and I banged his side. into a pine tree. And it had running boards. So the board flipped up. Of course, we were in a pine tree and like trying to get out. Oh, he was cussing me to death. I'm never riding with you again. Da, da, da, da, da, da.

I'm going to tell dad. I'm going to walk back and tell dad two miles, you know, walk in the woods. In the woods. I think I made it 100 yards. I was like, scratch that. Change of plans. Yeah. But he was always like that around riding things.

Like he was nervous about him, didn't really do well on him. He was always really shy. He didn't like confrontation. He wasn't competitive, I guess, you know, in nature, kind of. So him being a race car driver, and I always got asked that question, you know, what I think about him being a race car driver and that kind of thing. And that's what I remember is that, you know, if you asked me when he was 10, was he going to want to drive a car 200 miles an hour?

I've been like, heck, no, he's not going to do that, you know, because he was scared of everything. and most everything. So, yeah. I mean, you know, you just a few weeks ago told us the story about where you ran into the pace truck at Martinsville. It seems like between the two of y'all, y'all run into just about everything with wheels at that point. Oh, yeah. So we got a little bit older, and like you said, we lived in a lot of places.

We also went to a lot of different schools. And we ended up going to military. I went to military school. Yeah, Dale, got sent to military school. I was sent to military school. Apparently, I was getting ready to get expelled from the Christian school. we were in. What do you mean apparently? Is that still a controversy to this day? Yeah, he wasn't expelled yet, but

it was coming. It was coming. And it was, we had only been there for the one semester. We had been there. How do you do that? We had been there for the half of the year. We were at Christmas break. Yeah. And I, something had happened in classroom, a talking issue. You got demerits or something there. You got written up. Yeah, you got it. And I had been written up enough times to get expelled. And they basically were telling me that it hasn't processed, but once it processes, which is eventually when you come back from your break, we're going to kick you out. You're going to kick you out. And I went home thinking, God, I got to tell dad and Teresa that I'm about to get expelled,

or do I not, or what do I? And as soon as I walk in the door, that plan went out the window because they were in the floor of the living room with pamphlets laid out of all the military schools. they were looking at several boarding schools, some military, some not. And they had already decided in their mind that they were changing, I was changing school. Well, I imagine as you were getting in trouble at the Christian school, the Christian school

was calling home and telling them. I did not know that day. I mean, that's just my guess as a parent. That's usually what happens. So they were already in motion to move me somewhere, which is interesting enough, but you ended up going to military school. I did.

So. Why? All right, so you got all right. So you've got all these friends. I mean, you got a foundation of friends, your home. I know, but keep in mind. Yeah, you have friends, but we had changed schools like every two years. So we didn't have kind of the same group of friends.

So I was always going into a new school, trying to meet people, you know, and friends. So let's see. We were at Brookwood private school for two years. I was there sixth and seventh. When did I go to military school? It was ninth and tenth grade. So I was there seventh and eighth grade at the Brookwood. Well, half of eight, because the eighth grade is when we went to Christian school.

Or ninth grade is when we went to Christian school. I know. Just to keep track of your school. I say there's 12 grades and we went to like 13 schools. I mean, seriously. We went to so many schools. We did. Y'all didn't move around that much.

Well, the problem was, okay, kindergarten back then was a separate school. It was only a kindergarten school. First through third grade for me was Canapolis. House burned down. Mooresville, go to Mount Moorne, which was the elementary school. we only went there one grade, fourth grade, because it ended. Then I had to move to Brawley Middle School, fifth and sixth grade. Then they decided they didn't want us in public school anymore,

so we went to private school, which was Brookwood. That was seventh and eighth grade. Then they decided they want us to go Christian school, so we went there ninth grade for me. Southview and Troutman. Yeah, Southview is still there. And then, you know, the guy across the tables gets in a lot of trouble.

And so half of my ninth grade year and 10th grade year, I spent in military school. And you were there already a year. year. I was there for a few months. I thought you're there for just a few weeks. I thought I went like a month later or something. And then finished up high school at Morrisville. So by the time, I mean, we were in a new school and Christian school. We were, had left another private school and those people weren't in our Christian school. So, you know, I mean, yeah, I had friends and the safety of having being at home. But I mean, I just was always looking out for him. I was always me and him.

I mean, we spent so much time together. You're talking about having nannies. You're talking about having relatives. Your parents aren't home every weekend. We did not have the normal, you know, family unit. It was just like me and Dale. So I didn't really, I mean, I didn't want to be alone at home with, you know, a nanny or a family member or whatever. I don't even know who our nanny was at that point. And so I wanted to go with him and be with him and protect him. And, I mean, he was a scrawny little thing. You should see him in our military. Oh, I've seen it. I've seen it. I was four foot three. Yeah. In the seventh grade.

And everybody else's his age was at least five foot. Yeah, that it was put taller in me. Kennedy's in the seventh grade, and she's five, too. Do you reckon you were getting demerits, you know, almost like in your subconscious just as a rebellion? Because, I mean, like, you said he's not confrontational. He didn't like that kind of stuff. And yet, apparently demerits don't scare him.

Jewelry scares him. Demerits don't. And he gets kicked up. It's not like he's biting his teacher. I was not mean to the teachers or at, or. It was just talking. This is what it was. Yeah.

So when I would go to these schools and we would have to leave friends, go to schools, and make new friends. And when someone in that classroom became my friend or talked to me or showed me any interest, I couldn't help. But over, I don't know, I would get so excited about that or enjoy that interaction so much that I would often be caught talking in class or not listening to the teacher, and interacting with my new friends.

Yeah, you were more interested in the relationships that you were forming. I'm like, oh man, this person thinks I'm cool, wants to be my friend. This is awesome. That's important. And I would want to just be, I went to school because that's where my buddies were. I like going to school, but only because I was going to hang out with my friends. And so I goof off in class, sort of class clownish, a bit of annoyance to the teacher, but not mean. Yeah, he wasn't defiant or disrespectful.

Just looking for attention and friendship. Because we had to be extremely respectful. Yeah. Looking for companionship. Man, it's somewhat sad. Yeah, you look back on it and, I mean, you know, I'm sure we had our feelings then of how we felt and felt, you know, unloved or not, just didn't have the right family unit, I would say, knowing what family should be like, you know, now. And but I don't, I don't think it bothered us as much then because we had such a good relationship. And keep in mind, now we were going to our moms and having a heck of a time in Virginia when we would go there.

Twice a year. That was awesome. And spend weekends with her when she would come down. So we had a good life, you know, when we had roof over our heads and all that kind of thing. It's just the in the family with dad and Teresa, it just wasn't very family loving, you know, situation. I've always wanted to ask you this, Dale, to be shipped off to a military school would, to me, be the probably like the, at that age, the worst thing I could possibly fathom. Let me tell you what the worst thing is. So the first two weeks you're there,

when you get there, there are other kids that have just gotten there in the same boat you're in. And y'all all kind of gravitate toward each other. You're all new. You just got all your fatigues and you're moving in. You often are rooming with a new kid that just got sent there, you're telling each other why you're there, how you're there, why you think your parents sent you there. So you kind of have that little nucleus. You don't trust any of them because you assume that anyone that's there is there for a reason. They're bad, right? And so it's hard to really build any trust in there in that school. You do over time. You become friends with people. Find people that you like to hang out with. But the worst part about it was we would get to go home on the weekends,

which was tough because our dad raced. So he would often be racing on the weekends. And so to be able to see go, our friends are going to see their families if they were relatively close. But a lot of times we wouldn't be able to see dad on the weekends and weren't going to races as often. One particular weekend, and this is two, three weeks after Kelly got there. I'd been there for about a month. And I am home sick. The first two weeks you're in military school, they don't let you go home.

All right. That's foreign as hell to any kid, especially in just a seventh. greater, right? So you're missing the hell out of your family. And then I had to, I had, if you get any kind of demerits for not shining your shoes, not polishing your brass, not being on time for something, you get written up. You have to work those demerits off on the weekend. And so that means staying and marching or doing detail, cleaning up, trash, whatever. You're going to do something that's going to work these demerits off. Every demerit, well, you got a half hour work. So I'd worked in just a couple weeks I'd been there. I'd had a handful of demerits.

that was going to keep me from going home. It wasn't uncommon for a lot of kids, new kids. I mean, because you got in trouble for, I mean, if you didn't salute, like, the right rank of person. You could be walking by an 11th grade kid, and if you didn't salute him, he would stop you and write you up. Yeah, or make you do push-ups right on the spot. Yeah, and so that was another thing.

Like, in your military school and the older kids. Older kids are running the show. Yeah. They get a little bit of authority, and they're pretty excited about it. and it was a little bit of initiation. You're rough on the younger kids. So anyways, even if you were a new kid in 11th grade, you got, it was hard on you.

But we were, dad was coming to pick Kelly up. All right. So I got this information from Kelly. All right. Dad's coming to get me. He'll be up at the front of the school at X hour if you want to sing. All right. I'll see.

So I am in my dorm looking at the clock. It's 10 minutes till. I'm going to go up to the door. I'm going to walk 150 yards to the front of the school to see Dad pick up Kelly. And Kelly's going to get to go home, but I'm at least going to get to see Dad. And I walk out of my door,

and I could see the front of the school, 150 yards away. And I see Dad's black pickup truck driving away. He didn't even wait. All right. And I lost it. I'm talking, bawling. And I'm running.

And I mean, they're gone. They're leaving. driving out, leaving me, right? And I'm freaking out. And Kelly comes, I mean, for three days, two days, for all day, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, thinking my dad drove up there, pick Kelly up. And Kelly's in that truck, knowing that I was wanting to come see dad,

and they left. And dad just drove out. Kelly comes back, and I'm like, I can't freaking believe that dad left and didn't say hey to me. And she goes, oh, that was chocolate driving dad's truck. Y'all chocolate Myers. Oh, my gosh. I was like, God, damn.

and the hell to dad not like so then i go to why didn't dad come to see me right yeah you know and that says a lot about like what dad was at rCR working that day just up there doing a seat or something in winston salem which was near and had him come over and yeah that's right yeah try go get kill it yeah yeah i was the last thing on his mind yeah yeah uh you know that was the hardest the bad thing about the bad thing about that like as he was telling that story i'm thinking about dad and the disciplinary person that he is. And, you know, you have a kid now. You have two girls. I have kids. I really try to separate the person and the behavior, right? So you really try to discipline, you know, this behavior is, wasn't appropriate. Da-da-da-da-da-da, but I love you. But, you know, we're not going to stand for

this. Dad, that didn't, and, you know, I think sort of the times a little bit, I think. But also, that's how dad was parented by his dad and so dad's parenting that I mean for Dale to think that his dad drove off from him was not out of the ordinary to think

because that's how dad would have treated a situation son you're in trouble you got demerits you're not getting any of my attention I'm going to go along with the whole punishment thing and that's how he did things I mean that's how he disciplined us in punishment so it was like he didn't you you felt like he didn't like you

he didn't love you you know during times when we were in trouble which we had extremely strict rules and our trouble was massive. Like when we got in trouble, they took our TV away, they took our radio away, they took our toys out of our room. I don't know where the hell they put all this. But, I mean, it was massive.

I remember I was 17 years old and like this boy in a neighborhood around down from the farm. I told dad, which I lied. Okay. And I granted I lied. I told him I need to go to the CVS to pick up something for school that I needed for a project. So I left the farm, drove to this boy's house. Why my dad picked this neighborhood to drive through? Because you don't come through this neighborhood to go home to our house on the lake.

But he did. And he saw my car. And he walked up to the front door. And he knocked on the front door and got me out of that and was like, what are you doing here? You said you didn't say you were coming here. Da da, da, da, da, da. I got grounded for like, I'm 17. I got grounded.

I had to quit my job. He wouldn't even let me go to my job. Had to quit my job. You did lie to him, though. I did lie to him. I know, I did lie to him. I did lie to him. But I mean, like, who you ground your kid and then you make them quit their job?

That's aggressive. I mean. But it's consistent. It is consistent. You know, it was very consistent. Listen, of all the parenting tips that I've received, consistency seems to be one of the things that is most prevalent to, like, if you're really going to raise your kids right, you have to be consistent. don't let them think that you can be talked off of your discipline. Well, with that and Teresa, you knew what was coming.

There was consistency. There was no doubt. There wasn't no, you know what, I might. I wonder if they'll go easy. There was no doubt. There was no bursting. That you were going to get what was coming to you. And the bad thing is like even if it was an accident, like, you know, I mean, accidents

happened. There was just no convincing them of anything that it was just, yeah, it was straight on. Down right. We'll fast forward. Yeah. I don't know how y'all aren't more screwed up than you are. I mean, like, you guys have every right to be completely, like, you know, getting therapy every day. I'm just saying, but go ahead.

I think that. We saved each other. Oh, there you go. So you wanted to talk about late mile racing. I was working on, or it's racing together, me working with you. We talked a little bit last night, and that was one of the things that you wanted to touch on, and I was just trying to figure out exactly what about, what about, that part of your, you know, people talk about your racing days.

Yeah. That I was the best one of the group. That you were the best one out of the group. That's what I thought. That's what I've heard. That's the common thread. You know, I would be interested in your take on, because I've heard that, you know, all of our life for the most part.

But I wasn't that good, per se. I mean, I can help you. All right. So there is a, we used to, but I was aggressive, I think. We used to talk, there's a term like you can, you can pull a rope, but you can't push a rope. All right. And the, the deal with that is, is like, you can't make somebody drive a car harder or deeper into the corner if they're not willing to do it. And I watched you race enough.

And you watch other people race and struggle. And they either are over, when you first start driving a car, typically you're either going to overdrive the car. or you're not going to drive it hard enough. And then there's some people where you just can't convince them, like they've got to get in the corner deeper. Like the only way you're going to make the corner work is to drive in there a little further. And they just don't have it.

You can't push that rope. Yeah. But with Kelly, it wasn't never a problem about getting her to drive deeper. No, I ever drove. The problem with Kelly was that she overdrove the car. She would drive the car in beyond its ability to hold, you know, hold the corner. And we would, you know, we would convince, we would talk and talk. They would try to convince me of that.

About, you know, back it up a little bit. You know, you're losing the back of the car in the middle of the corner or you're pushing because the way you're getting in the corner is too deep. So that was where the promise was in Kelly. She had some great runs. She put together a lot of complete races. She didn't make mistakes. She could go out there any week.

Yeah, I didn't wreck a lot or anything like that. You never worried about her doing something foolish on a restart, not knowing where she was very self-aware on the racetrack, which is very, you know, important quality, and she put together a lot of complete races. I was talking to LW about this. When you can go to the racetrack, you could go to the racetrack, and I went with you a lot when I was working on your cars for a year or two. And I never worried about, man, we're going to be working on this thing fixing it next week.

I just know it. I never worried about what kind of silly thing is going to happen on the restart or are she going to run somebody in the fence or turn herself into the wall. I never worried about none of that. It was really what I worried about was who was going to wreck me. Exactly. Yeah. I was a girl.

Yeah. Oh, so you took a lot of the brunt of that just by being a female? Well, yeah, I mean, just a young female and being Dellenhart's kid. I mean, we all took that to be Delt and Hart's kid first, and then I was a girl. Right. And she was good enough to mix it up in the middle of those guys. She wasn't hanging on to the back. She was in the middle of that mess.

I mean, there were probably about eight to ten competitive cars at the track she'd run at, And she'd run anywhere in that thread from first to 10. Right. You know, she would average, I guess, from fourth to fifth. I mean, in and around some very good tough competition. I would run as, I would run about the same at the same racetrack as would carry. Carry, maybe not quite as good as that. Kelly had the basics of a good race car driver.

You could eventually work out the flaws of her overdrive in the car. But that was going to be a whole lot easier. pulling that rope than trying to push one. Yeah. And so that was one of the thing, if she, I feel like for sure, if she had been, if she had stuck with it, you know, we would have been able to, she, I say we, because I worked on a car for a little while and was always around with her, giving her the advice that I thought she needed.

Dad wasn't there and she didn't, I mean, there were other people around trying to help, but I felt like. Did I ever see you race? Dad never saw me race. Did he ever see you race? 159 laneball races and he never saw one race. Nope. How many late model races did you run?

I ran three years worth, so I'd say, 90 to 100, would you say, Dale? Okay, so not quite as many as you. He started before me. Okay. Yeah, down at the beach. I know if Kelly had, we, our late model program was a little bit different. A lot of people ran coal overs that were very competitive, three-linked cars. Dad insisted our cars had big springs, which is actually something very popular today.

Dad insisted our cars had truck arms. He thought, well, if you're going to. And those big old steering wheels. Yeah. He thought, if you're ever going to make it in cup, this is what. what your car is going to be. It's going to be big springs, trailing arms, but that wasn't the ticket back then.

And so we really couldn't compare our cars and setups to other teams. They were running 400-pound front springs. We had to have 800 pounds. Oh, wow. I mean, our cars were set up completely different. And we were typically, we had a little bit of help, but we were really kind of going off of our own notes. Yeah.

And we've really all kind of struggled being competitive. But as far as talent, Kelly has ability, raw ability, and had she stuck with it and actually got around some people aside from myself, I was in the same boat she was in experience and knowledge and help and advice, if we could have got around, if she could have got around Tony Sr. and other people as her career went on, I'm certain that she would have been a competitive race car driver. It was hard, it was hard on her.

I remember we were testing at Myrtle Beach one day. I had been running a little bit, and I ran there every week, and Kelly didn't run there. and she came up there to run one night, and we went there for the day before to test, and she was frustrated. She wanted to go there and run as fast as I ran, and I run there every week.

And it just wasn't, you know, you're just going to take a little time to figure out the line and all that stuff, and she was getting so frustrated, and I'm like, you got to do this, you got to do that. And she's like, finally she just snapped. And I was like, man, you know,

in that moment, I realized this is not as easy for her as it is for me. And it's hard enough being an, Earnhardt, but being a female. That was when I learned how difficult it was for her as a female having the pressure. She had a lot more pressure on her. Y'all weren't climbing the same slope. No. Hers was steeper. And that's when it kind of set in to me that how hard this was on Kelly. And to continue, I think, and I'm speaking for you. You can tell me. Good, because I don't have a lot of memory of all that. Yeah. And you said she snapped. I don't even know what that means. Well, she just started,

she trying. She's probably crying. I got you. She started. She started. She started. crying. It was just me and her. We were sitting there and I was like, man, you know, she came into the pits and clipped the... I wasn't going to cry in front of those other people that helped me. No, no, no, no. She clipped the pit wall with the rear end and bent the rear in housing. And she thought, damn it, the race is tomorrow. We're practicing. The car's ruined. I'm like, we're going to fix the car. Don't worry about it. We'll get the housing out and fix it and it. It's going to be fine. And she just started crying right there with me. And I was, while I was trying to give her advice about her line and throttling all this stuff.

and I was like, oh my God, I mean, I'm thinking this is, like, I feel, I've got it pretty good. Like, I was stressed and not winning. I was running second, third, fourth every week. And, uh, and mind you, too, like, you know, because a lot of people ask why I didn't continue racing. So when we started racing, I moved home from college in the middle of 93, drove Dale and Kerry Streetstock for the rest of the balance of the year at Concord. stood I mean I had a hard time there stood in a payoff line girl turns around punches me in the face because I passed her boyfriend okay

so I had a rough time from the start doing that then in 94 we got our late model program together we ran that in 94 5 and 6 I was going to college so I moved from Wilmington went to Charlotte was going back and forth to college I lived in Concord would go over to UNC Charlotte to school and then I worked worked part-time. So I started working for a champion sports group, which was the company that did the good wrench and acedelco hospitality and things like that. So 94, 95, I'm working part-time, I'm going to college, and I'm going to race on the weekends. I graduated in 95 in that half a year, and then I got a full-time job at Sports Image. So then I worked full-time, but luckily they would let me leave on Fridays around 2 o'clock to go racing. So I didn't work on my cars. I wasn't

around the people. You know, Dale did work on my car for about a year and a half, but we had other people that, you know, we kept our car at these other people shop. Me and Carrie did. Dale didn't have to do that. But, you know, Dale worked. He was with his race car. That's all he had to concentrate on was doing that. And I was doing lots of multiple things, you know, to race and to go to school because dad was really wanted us to go to school. And then I started working and I started doing well working. And so, you know, the sponsorship and stuff fell apart for our late model program and so Carrie and I, you know, just kind of went and did our own thing. And then Dale got the opportunity to run the Bush car in 97.

I think that was the first time that you ran. And then obviously, you know, got the opportunity to go racing in 98 full time. And I just, you know, worked full time and racing was done for me. You know, it was no, and I don't even remember it really. It was just, okay, y'all don't have any sponsorship. Yeah. We're done, you know. That was it.

It was no. Not too many things have changed all these years. I mean, run out of sponsorship. Yeah. But, you know, now, and I've said this, you know, in recent interviews, you know, looking back, I'm fine with the way that that played out because looking back, having lost our dad and then coming to work for Dale, that was what I was being set up to do, you know. Yeah. So I'm, yeah. I mean, that's, yeah.

I think that that was probably in motion well before that. I mean, you guys have been trained for, yeah. For, to be there for each other for a long time. And I look back and I think, you know, gosh, what? it, you know, that, what could have been, what could I have done? Could I, you know, been a good race car driver? Because I love the other aspects of racing in terms of, you know, people and personality and and work and talking to the fans and things like that.

But, you know, I don't question, I guess, what I was supposed to be doing because I feel like that's all worked out. You don't have any regrets. Yeah, I really regrets about that. But that's why I was so excited. When we got Dan, I could have come drive here because I think I lived vicariously through what she was doing. Yeah.

Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. So. So you talk about coming. to work for me. I guess you called me and said, hey, I got an idea. You need help. You look like you need help. Well, you know, so when our dad passed in February 2001 and I came to work for Dale in August of 2001, I don't really remember us spending a lot of time together. I mean,

I'd go to the races and stuff, but we weren't spending a lot of time emotionally together talking. I think we were both, you know, handling dad's death in several ways, and he had to carry on and race every single weekend. I was working in the souvenir business. Teresa was going through the autopsy situation. Oh man, that was a mess, yeah. The souvenir business, you know, we could not keep that stuff in stock

and people, you know, the more we could produce, the more people wanted. And Teresa wasn't able to focus on that. And so my company was getting very frustrated because she was tied up in other areas that we could do things. And so I'm sitting in these meetings having to listen to, you know,

not talk negative. but I'm just having to listen to, you know, can you help us out? We need to get this done, da, da, da, da, da, I'm like, not my deal. You know, I'm not getting involved in that. Would that have been your dad's position before he passed away, or was that always Teresa, who was now preoccupied with other important things? Well, I think, I mean, dad would have been heavily involved, and business people would have been involved, but nobody was making any moves.

Y'all were lacking leadership now. Yeah. Well, you were lacking leadership, but nobody was going to make any moves until Teresa. You know, at that point, I think Teresa was in charge. You know, there was no Don Hawks or whatever. Whoever was there, the Tynoruses of the world, those people were put on notice, you don't make a move until this goes through Teresa, you know. So I, you know, I felt like that as those things were transpiring, I mean, I was getting frustrated on my job.

And I knew that dad took care of everything for Dale, you know. I mean, whatever insurance dad had is the insurance Dale had, whatever bank, dad banked that's the bank that Dell banked that. You know, however dad made a contract, that's how Dale's contract was made. You know, whatever dad made for his first race, that's what Dale was going to make for his first race. Whatever. He's running in his cup car.

You're running in your late model car. Dad ran the show. I mean, you showed up at dinner and, you know, you was going to have a table of eight. You stood around the table until dad told you everywhere to sit. You sit there, you sit there, you sit there. You know, and that's just that worked. So I knew, and I knew our relationship with Teresa was, we were, it was, it was, we were, it was going to be difficult. And I just felt like that Dale really needed somebody to look out for him

and not do everything the Dellenhorn Incorporated way and her way. And so we talked about, he's like, you know, there's no way you can come work for me. You make too much money. You know, why would you want to come work with me? Dale's always had these very high expectations of me in terms of like what my life was going to be like. We talked about this like as far as husbands and stuff. And he's like, I always thought you'd marry a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. And I'm like, I'm so not that kind of person, you know. But he always had, he always had me on this pedestal of these expectations of things to do. So coming to work for him, he's like, you don't need to come work from me.

You know, you're doing all these other things. And I can't afford to pay you. So I'm like, I'll take a pay cut. I'll do whatever. So we worked it out and it's worked out good ever since. She took 50% pay cut. Yeah. Did you know it was a 50% pay cut at the time?

I made six digits, yeah. She made six digits and took a 50% pay cut to five digits. He knows what I make. I signed on his first computer at Best Buy. I was a co-signer. Yeah. When the first PC game for racing came out by Papyrus NASCAR Racing original, I didn't have credit, so Kelly had to sign for a computer.

It's a $400 computer, and I paid like $100 a month to you. He would drive me crazy because he would never pay his bills, and he would have all these. You remember your time life, subscription. Time life. Yeah. Hellraiser.

The music. The music. Solid gold or something. Oh, he's driving me crazy. I had the solid gold sole subscription. I had country classics. Yes. Subscription.

Yeah. You'd walk in his trailer that he and Carrie shared and like the bills would be laying on the counter and be like, you know, your power is going to be disconnected in 15 days. If you don't pay this. Then you got these time lights. And I'm like, why are you buying? in time life and you're not paying your power bill.

Help me understand this, though. At that time, this was 2001. You had already, you had Budweiser for a couple years. You were making money. Why couldn't you afford Kelly? You weren't, you weren't broke. You weren't mid-90s broke. Yeah, so.

He didn't really know what I had. I had no idea what I had, how much money I had, how much money I was making. Yeah. Really no idea how much money you were making. Not a clue. Yeah. weren't you ever curious?

I wasn't getting a paycheck anymore as far as... So I went from getting... In 90, I don't even know what year, but like I went from getting a paycheck looking at it going, okay, $350,000, minus there's my taxes. That's when you probably worked like at the dealership or either like on my label or something

where you get a normal paycheck. I go to BB&T and deposit my check and my account and then I'd go spend it, right? And spend it for the next couple days and then get the next check. And then when I started racing for dad, I didn't get a, the checks, I just didn't get a paycheck anymore.

And I would get a, I'd get an envelope from her, from Teresa or Don Hawk or somebody, like quarterly or whatever, with race winnings and my salary. And I wouldn't look at it. I'd take it to the Niels sister. Yeah, he had a little secretary that paid his bills and stuff.

Jamie was sort of paying my bills and depositing my money. And I would give it to her and say, here, deposit this. and I never I never would look at a checkbook, never look at a balance, never look at anything. So I didn't know what I had, how much I had,

how much I was making per week, per month. I didn't know what my salary was. I didn't care. I didn't care before. Why would I care then? Well, the answer to that, in my opinion, would be that at that time, you had been paraded out with Clydesdells

and everybody had made a big deal about this huge sponsorship. Life was never been done. Life was awesome. Yeah, but I mean, I would have thought it had piqued your curiosity at least to look at the check you again. No. But it didn't. Yeah.

And he was just kind of like from at his age. I mean, he's just still a kid. Yeah. And so that should make sense as to why the number that Gibbs showed me made me freak. And then when I went. You were forced to look at the space. Yeah. That was the first time that I got a good idea of what people thought my worth was.

And then I went to meet with Rick. And he tried to hand me that sheet. and I give it back to him and said, you and Kelly do this. I don't want to see that. And I just let Kelly pick out my salary. Kelly, you figure out what my salary should be. It's pretty much that was the way that he operated on, you know,

most, I mean, if he wanted something, he'd come tell you that, you know, I want to get this or buy this or whatever. But as long as he knew he had money in the bank and he wasn't going to go broke, that was enough. That was enough for him to know. And, I mean, that's how, I mean, that's just how we've operated.

And the last, all these years, And the last probably three to five years, I would say, he's gotten a lot more involved. Yeah. You got married. You got to. Well, it just kind of grew, you know, I mean, I think, you know, I don't want to say just grew up. But, I mean, really, the years after dad passed away and being thrown into what he was thrown in from the Budweiser situation, you know, just all the attention and publicity and everything, then your dad passes away. And then you've got all those fans and all that attention.

and then, you know, every day the whole sport rests on your shoulders. Every day, you know, okay, Dellenhart's not here anymore. This is his son, Dellenhart, Jr., he's going to take over the world, you know. And at that age, I mean, that's a lot for somebody to handle. And so he's already not a multitasker kind of mind person. So, you know, that was enough. Like, okay, this is what I got going on. You handle this bucket over here, you know, because I don't want to process anything else.

I didn't think that knowing and learning and understanding all that financial stuff and would be beneficial for my mentality and my emotions and my... He might be broke if he knew all that. I probably would have become really egotistical, really... I'm rich, you know. Yeah. Get it out of my way. I don't deal with you folks, you know?

Like that. That would have sucked. That would have sucked. Do you remember what that first week of working with him? for him was like, when you got into the papers and stuff, did you have this moment of like, oh, God, you know, like? Well, we took it. It wasn't a mess.

It wasn't a mess. And we took things very slow. So when I came to work over there, I mean, his secretary, Jamie, you know, she stayed there working. He had a couple, he had his motorhome driver. And I just sort of, you know, seen what was going on,

helped get things a little bit more organized. But my focus was really on the relationship with Donahorn Corporated and getting imbobbed in that relationship. So, you know, again, the end of 2001, this is going on. We had a contract through 2004, I think, at that point. And I just wanted to start getting involved in those discussions. So whether they were sponsorship discussions and what he was doing for them, we did have, I mean, there wasn't really anything at his office that needed to really be handled.

So that was kind of where I focused on just trying to get involved and put myself in. Did you feel that was a disruption to the DEI flow, you being involved? involved? I mean, was that okay. And so what was that like? Because I would imagine that the relationship standpoint of that would have been complicated. Well, you know, it was. I mean, the thing about it is that most of the people that you worked with at Del and Horn Corporation were great people, you know, the people in PR, the people in marketing, the people in sponsorship, you know, working with Ty Norse. They all wanted to have me involved. They wanted to do the right. I don't want to say do the right thing like she did the wrong thing, but ultimately the decisions were Teresa's. And so how he got paid,

how things got split, you know. And, I mean, an example is if you're talking about a Wrangler sponsorship, you know, they would get a sponsorship. And then my goal was to get a piece of that for Dale from the standpoint of doing a personal service agreement. He would have to go do appearances or photo shoots or whatever. And so just working that out, they were reasonable in that until it got to her. And then when it got to her, it was, she felt like that it should all go in Delon

Home Corporated's, you know, piece and that he was lucky enough to be driving a race car and getting paid to drive a race car and that's how it worked. Well, I didn't think it should work that way. So everybody that we worked with, you know, was amendable and agreeable to that. So where would these disagreements land? In La La Land somewhere? I wish I knew where they land a pile of paper on her desk. I mean, it you felt like you never got, we never got there. You never got there. I mean, that's why we're not there. We never got there. You know, we had great conversations with Ty Norris. We had great conversations with Max Siegel. We had great conversations with Jeff Steiner. These are all the people that came in, you know, in the president role of Delenhorne Incorporated through those years that we were there.

But, you know, meetings with Teresa and conversations with Teresa were very few and far between. And she knew what she wanted and it didn't line up with what we wanted. And so eventually we just had to make a decision on what we were going to do. But that, it was lots of letters, you know, lots of persuasion and lots of frustration, you know, and just trying to get that done. So, yeah. That's a, that's a podcast for another day. That really is. It's amazing.

We should do that and just talk through the whole story. When did you get your first race for me? Later than probably last year. From him, yeah, like two years ago. Seriously. That's not true. So Kelly, you called me? See, this is the problem in working with Dale.

Dale, like. I'm ashamed. So even though I'm smiling and laughing. No, don't be a shame. I'm a little ashamed of this. No. I mean, I gave myself raises. Don't get wrong. Don't, don't I mean, don't feel sorry for me or anything. But, you know, you, everybody in a position wants someone to tell him they're doing, which he's never had a problem telling me, I'd do a good job. But, you know, just you, you want somebody involved in what you're doing and to give you a raise.

I mean, it always feels weird giving myself a raise or whatever. But trying to explain things to Dale are complicated because his world is complicated. And so even if I just try to explain, like how something works, I got to give him a long backstory because he's not involved in any of it, you know? So asking, doing that, it really was that Mr. Hendrick was kind of the first person and would say like, okay, Dale, look. And he would always say, I remember these conversations when we started working with Mr. Hendrick, he would say, oh, she's fine. I mean, if something happens to me, she's going to get everything I got. And this is before he got married and had kids. And Mr. Hendricks's like, no, dude, that's not how it works. Like, you got to take care of her now, you know? And so, so, he's just.

yeah it was about two years ago and he sat down and looked at it and talked to other people. He did do diligence and talk to other people and other drivers and how they handle their people and do things like that. So it was pretty funny. That was good. She's like, you know, I haven't gotten a raise from you. I haven't gotten an evaluation from you or anything. I was like, dang.

Is that something I'm supposed to do? You don't have to give specifics, but like give us an idea of if the raise got you back to what your fair market value is. Like how, did you get a 50% back? Like, like, how significant of a jump? You guys throw around raises like it's a, you know, a 2% raise or a 3% raise. I would say that it was probably. No, it was a very nice raise.

And it was, and in fact, he even went to the extreme of making up for some years. Okay. You know. What you call that? Retro. Retro, yeah. But I mean, he looked at it and was like, you know, we've been doing it wrong all these years. And I mean, look, I came out of college making $23,000 a year.

I didn't, you know, I had an apartment. I had a car. Life was grand and good. And if I needed to go back to $23,000 a year, it might be a little hard in today's time. But, you know, I've not suffered or anything of that nature. No. But by any means. But, yeah.

So, yeah, I would say it was probably. 50% yeah it's pretty interesting so you've been working as a GM for for me for junior motorsports all these years you're also in a lot of things that a lot of people may not know about as far as the licensing industry and and you're in a ton of meetings as far as NASCAR's evolution from an owner's standpoint do you realize you know that you're a straight badass in the industry I mean, especially when it comes to females in NASCAR and business women, you get accolades and credit often from various, you know, groups for your ability in the boardroom and so forth.

And I always tell people like, you know, I'd put Kelly up against anybody in negotiations of any form. Rick's often talked about how aggressive. and capable you are. Has that been a goal of yours to become who you are today? As well respected and appreciated and where do you go from here? I mean, what's next? What's the next achievement for you?

I know you're raising kids and you're trying to, you know, you're trying to, you're going to, I know what that is. Yeah, you got family and you do a great job as a mother and a wife to share time with them. and you have a lot of things on your plate. Do you, did you set goals, I guess, to achieve? Did you reach goals? Did you achieve things that you hope to achieve? Are there things out there in front of you that you want to achieve

in a professional business standpoint? Yeah. I don't really think I didn't set goals. I mean, you know, you and I talk about this, even from a junior motor sports perspective, we never thought that we would be a four-car Xfinity organization, you know, when we started in 2006 with one car. But so, no, I didn't really set any goals.

I mean, I set out when I went to college to be a criminal justice major, and I don't even really know why I was just interested in, like, detective and that kind of thing. And so then when I changed my major to business, I did that just for the scope of a business major. And, you know, I didn't really know what I would do because, you know, dad didn't really want us working in his businesses. You didn't see that on the horizon of working in the family business. So what's happened has just organically happened And happened by the hard work that we've all put into it And I don't it's really hard And I know you can appreciate this Because I think you do this with yourself as a famous race car driver It's hard to see yourself as that person That other people see you as

So you know I mean I definitely know that I've made a mark in this sport And I'm a great business person But I don't That's just what I do. It's just what I wake up and do every day. And I don't, you know, set a goal to do X, Y, and Z. And I just recently got asked to be on the board of Brant, one of our partners. And, you know, I'm the only outside board of directors that is going to be on that board. And I mean,

that is like a huge honor to be on the board in a family run and owned business that they would look at somebody like me to be on that. But, you know, I'm down to earth. I'm a straight shooter. I don't like BS, you know, when you deal with me. I just want to know the facts, the figures, why you think it needs to work that way, and let's run on with it and prove that it'll work out. And if it don't work out, we'll start over, you know, but I always want to get people of resources

to try to do what they, you know, intend to do. But I think that's why things work. I mean, I'm just down to earth and hardworking. I've always had a work ethic like that. And I don't know where it came from. I do say that's like a positive of our, childhood from that situation is like we were built to survive, so to speak. I mean, I feel that way about myself. I'm not so sure about Dale. But I can't speak for him in that. But I feel like we were

set up to survive situations and hard things were put in front of us from that standpoint. So it's just what I do. Yeah. And in my mind, you said it. You know, I see you like a lot of other people see you is a very important person not only in my life from and from personal and a business standpoint but you're in the industry you're very important in the industry and being able to help people understand what's critical and what's important and what needs to happen in certain situations from ownership to licensing uh all types of different departments and compartments in this sport and it's my belief that you're only halfway uh through your journey yeah um and that there's even more greater accomplishments and milestones in your professional future.

I know we talked last night, you want to keep this limited, but I want people to know that you're in the middle of writing a book about that very thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, as far as like what does the future hold? I got no idea. I mean, I hope that, you know, the future holds continuing to be part of junior motorsports and on race teams and, you know, Dirty Mo Media.

building Mike's vision and creation with Dirty Mo Media, you know, whatever you have in store for your life. But I think that there's still a lot of things for me. You're on the board of, you're on the board over at Bank. Yep, I'm on the board of Blue Harbor Bank. Been there 10 years, a community bank locally. How many boards are you on? That's a great question. I'm on the foundation board here for Dell Juniors.

And I'm also on, so just three, Blue Harbor Bank, which is a community bank here in Morrisville, Brandt, which is a new position. My first board meeting there is in late July. And then Children's Hope Alliance, which is a nonprofit based here in Statesville area, that we've worked with for the foundation for a long time. It used to be Barryham Springs home for children. It's been around for 130 years. And they help not so fortunate kids, kids who have a lot of trauma in their life, whether

it be physical abuse, sexual abuse, just bad home situations. they bring them in and work with them therapy-wise and therapeutically wise to, you know, be either back in their home or whatever, just to be better functioning adults from the childhood trauma that they've experienced. So I'm on that board too, which I love all of it. But Dale was alluding to, I'm writing a book, been working on that. So I was introduced to the people that published Dale's book, Racing to the Finish. And they looked at me and they said, have you ever thought of writing a book?

And I was like, actually, I have. so but my I wanted to write a book about a lot of the things we talked about very early on in this conversation you know of our childhood but as we started talking about what the book would look like it does have a lot of that in it for several chapters of kind of setting up the scene of who Kelly is and it's necessary but it is a leadership principles book so and and and it's it's about you know it's my experience as a leader so I mean I'm you know, what I say may or may not work for the people, but I just want to share what I feel like is worked

from a junior motorsports perspective and running the businesses that I've run from the experience that I've, you know, brought to the table. So that's what it's about and it's got key principles in it, and I'm really excited. Yeah, I read a lot of it. It's amazing. I'm excited for people to see this.

I just, I know it's still in the process. I want to put it on everyone's radar. Yeah, it doesn't come out until spring of 2020, but we'll keep you hosted. I want everybody's radar because, It's incredible. You talked about how you went through your childhood a little bit. If you thought this was an honest interview, you wait until you read the book.

Yeah. Can I ask a quick question about her business leadership? I think it's interesting. Well, I'll lead you. You do. Well, I know. I know. But we were joking yesterday.

We were having a meeting. And we were joking how some colleagues of ours in the industry or whatever say they are intimidated by you. Yeah, I know. And I'd laugh about that. We had a good laugh in our meeting. And then half the people in the meeting said, I am too. I'm intimidated by her.

You know, yeah. Why? Do you think you're intimidating? Yes, I do. Why? I do. I don't know why, but I guess because I'm just matter of fact and straight to the point. I'm not afraid to say if I don't think something's going to work and I'm not afraid to ask for more information.

I'm just not afraid to challenge people. And I think that's what, you know, typically I'm not afraid to bring up things that I think they should think about in a situation. even if they're, you know, hardcore things to think about, the reality of situation. But people should appreciate that, not be intimidated by that. But not, but every, I don't know that it's a bad, I don't know, I think that it could be very similar in, in, in, it's a, it's,

the intimidation is also, they admire, they appreciate. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. You know what I mean? It kind of goes hand in hand, hand that intimidation is a respect. Yeah, I got you. When they hand over the email or the piece of paper with whatever they, want to suggest or do it's just like what holes is she going to poke through this yeah really and i think that's the intimidation have you ever felt that way in in conversations yeah yeah when so when

kelly walks into the room there's oh he hates the way that i work like that because i bring up all the things that you know he doesn't he doesn't want to have to consider you know i'm like man this is a great idea let's do it and she goes well let me tell you what let me tell you what's not what's let me tell you what you need to think about first is this this and this and i don't want to think about that it's not the fun part um But, you know, Kelly, similar to dad, when she walks in the room, you realize right away that there's a person that's not going, nothing's going to get over. Nothing's going to get past. She's already studied and prepared for what's getting ready to happen in that room.

And everybody in that room, nobody's going to be able to slide anything through. You know, and so that's why I say that I could take her into a negotiation or about anything. and I think I've done my homework and I think that I've got all the questions that are important to ask, I'll ask them and she'll come in behind me and ask questions that I never thought of. Yeah. I'm like, oh, wow, that's important. Yeah, sounds important. But so, you know, that is, I am a very black and white nuts and bolts.

How does this work? Get me to the bottom line. What does this mean? and I would say that Dale is, and I'm thinking about when you got your concussion. Yeah, that was one of the moments where. Yeah, and I'm just thinking about like, Dale is very how he feels about something. Emotional. You know, well, yeah, not emotional in a bad way, but like, you know, an attachment.

I think with my heart. Yeah, yeah. And Kelly uses, Kelly is tuned, tune herself to think with her. herself to think with her brain. And I think with my emotions. Yeah. And things that really are important to him, he will, you know, if this, all this memorabilia, it doesn't matter if it's, you know, $2 million worth of stuff in

here. It is important to him. It's an emotional attachment. It's something that hits him right here. He's going to do it. And I'm like, well, here's why you shouldn't send $2 million on that. Yeah, because we parade people through here and they may, no, whatever. I'm just saying that's, you know, so that's like when we had our situation.

when he um our situation our little living room uh conflict when he's like just be my sister so we're this was the concussion thing that you talked about the book so um you know obviously if you read my book this is a very important part in there um where me and my sister sort of we over the i mean she's been an amazing sister supported me emotionally and personally for years through through everything all the way up till today but it and at one point in our lives when I hired her. So from that point on, she has always thought with her business mind. And especially of late since, you know, in the last probably decade, every decision she's going to tell me how that affects me from a business standpoint or a financial standpoint or what have you. And it was

critical for her when I was thinking about retiring from concussions to think that way, right? That's her job. We were in my living room. and I was like Kelly. It was just Amy, Dale, me, and LW. Yeah, and I was like, Kelly, I want to retire. I'm hurt. I'm hurting. This is, I don't, you know, this is hard and tough.

And what do you think? And she goes, well, you know what? Let me talk about this. It's going to affect this relationship, this partnership, this sponsor. This is what you, you know, in her mind, she's going, well, if you retire today, you'll have this much money and this is how it'll play out. And if you run another year, this changes. if you run two more years, this change.

And she's thinking in her head numbers and dollars and financial stake, right, and partnership. All of which is important. Yes, yes. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. No, like I, like, brother to sister. I'm hurting and I'm feeling bad. He really yelled at me and said, just be my sister. And I, I mean, I kept trying to get her to say, I love you and I care about you and I don't want you to be hurt.

And I don't want you to race or. I never said that. that bad. I'm sorry. And I screamed at her. I was like, just be my sister. I thought he already knew that I loved him and reported him and, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I can see, I can see and agree with both your vantage points in this. It's amazing. Then there was a lot of crying. Yeah. I had to go to go to the bathroom for a while and thinking, I was like, oh my God, what have I done? Is that really what you were thinking? Yeah. When I come back, I was really quiet. Right. She was very quiet and I felt like that I shut down in those moments. I felt like that I had insulted her. I was,

or hurt her feelings in some way. And I'm like, I just want her to tell me from a sister's standpoint. And it's so funny because on the flip side, I'm thinking, oh, my God, I feel so bad that I didn't even consider being emotional and consider being that way. So we're both thinking the same exact thing in our mind. You're both thinking out for each other. Like my mom. You know, if I go to mom and say, Mom, I've had all these concussions and I think I should stop. Yeah, you should stop.

I love you. You got your wife. You're, you know, you don't have a family. I love, I think you should. You've raised a nut. Look, you've done enough. Yeah. And, you know, I'm like, all right, yeah, I feel good about that.

Thanks, Mom. When I'd go to Kelly, she wouldn't do that. She would go, well, you know, this is how it affects junior motorsports. This how it affects Hendrick Motorsports. This is how it affects nationwide and Mountain Dew. And this is how it affects these other partnerships that you have. And this is your financial situation personally. And I'm like, no, no, tell me, like, be my sister.

And, oh, it was, we had, we were not on the same page. Ever since then, we've been on the same page. Well, yeah. I mean, in that moment, you know, we weren't. And she came out of the bathroom. Even then I thought, oh, my God, what have I done? She's going to quit right here and just try to. Had you thought about that?

No. Okay. I have this fear, like Kelly's just going to go, I'm done, you know. And I have, okay, so we're going to stop right here for a second. because this is kind of a, oh God, I don't even know what the right word is, telling on myself or kind of bringing something to your attention that I don't think you've ever noticed, coming forward with something. Yeah.

So there was a time. Oh, no. You remember, you will remember this. There was a time that I really considered quitting. I do remember this. I don't really remember exactly what it was over. I think I do. You do?

Yeah. But Dale has never ever mentioned the fact that up in the hallway of our offices, the Dale Earnhardt uniforms that used to hang in that hallway, do you remember the Tasmania devil, Delenheart uniform, and the white uniform that was with one of the yellow and blue cars? There were three Dale Earnhardt, the Wrangler uniform. The white ones over at my house. That you gave me, well, you have a white one and I have one.

Yeah, okay. So the Wrangler uniform you gave me, my Tasmania devil, and that white one. hung up there and I got really mad over a situation and I came in and I took every one of those suits down. I took everything out of my office that was mine personally and I packed it up in a tub and it still packed up at home and we put his suits up in those things. I mean right away I had my assistant out there I'm like I'm mad I'm done I'm over this and we put those suits back up there and he's never ever said a word about those fire suits being gone. I didn't even notice. No, yeah. I still don't understand. What does that mean? You were taking your dad's fire. You were taking them to take out and you were leaving. I was moving out and leaving. I was like, I'm done. I am getting my stuff out of here and I am taking these out and I am leaving. I didn't even notice that either. It's right outside of my office and I didn't know that.

She never put them back. I just thought it was time to change it up a little bit. I don't know. I remember. It's probably been three or four years ago. Yeah. That's been a while. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I thought it was longer. No.

Time passes fast for you, no. But, but you know, you guys, I mean, it's, you sort of. Well, let's see. Okay, it's 2019, so it wasn't, let's see, you got hurt and sick. It was probably, probably 2015 or 16. That's right. My gosh. Yeah.

You guys are like an immune system, though. You sort of start self-healing, and you don't even realize it. I mean, you guys are so close about that. But it makes me want to ask, you guys aren't the only family that works at junior motorsports. So how difficult is it to work with family? It's hard. I mean, you even have your husband here.

So tell me the difficulties it is. We got uncles. Yeah. We've had cousins. Well, it's hard because obviously as a family member, people expect you to, you know, be, have that connection, that family connection, check on them. How are you doing? Pass them in the hallway. Hey, catch up.

So on and so forth. But then you have to have business conversations with them. You know, you have to be in situations where you're talking business. and sometimes you may have to say or do something that, you know, they don't want to hear or something they're not performing in their job or something's not being handled. Or, I mean, it can be as simple as just, I mean, discussing a raise with them or whatever. I mean, all those are hard conversations, you know. And so you have to have this balance of a business-minded person and, you know, that personal relationship and keeping those separate, which is really difficult, you know. I would imagine so.

Yeah. I mean, because you're a direct person. Yeah. You get right down to the nitty-gritty. Sometimes the family doesn't want to get down to the nitty gritty. Yeah, I talk about that a little bit in my book about relationships with family and that kind of thing. And it's hard. And my mom and I struggled with this because, I mean, it's hard to be mean to your mom, so to speak.

I mean, it's hard to tell your mom to do something or be a certain way. And she was a bit of a boundary pusher. Yeah. But, you know, she would like text me in the evenings, all these things that she didn't like going on at work or whatever. and I'm like, hey, I'm off. You know, I'm not at work. I quit. I left at five, you know.

And, but, you know, they, it's hard. I mean, especially from the boundary of a mom. I mean, an aunt's different than a mom and uncle's different than a mom, you know, different than your brother, different than a sister, whatever. So, yeah, it's hard. It can be tough. But we miss her. Yeah, we do miss Brenda.

You really, I mean, there's scenarios, and I know you know this. We go through these seasons, what are your concussion. and Kelly seems to emerge more superwoman than even you thought before, right? And the episode with your mom that happened just in the spell of three months, four months, I couldn't believe how she was able to run a company, take care of your mom, take care. You got three kids, and they happen to be a wide range of ages. They suffered. I don't know how she does it.

I could ask her right now how she did it. She would answer. I still wouldn't understand how she did it. Yeah, and I don't know how it, I mean, I don't know how it happened either. I just know I was wired. I'm wired. I mean, I am built genetically to respond that way to whatever the situation is, is to like go into kind of that fight or flight, you know, I go into a situation prepared

to handle, straighten it up, fix it, make it the best it can be before looking at it from an emotional standpoint whatsoever. And I don't know why, but just down. But it catches up with you. Yeah, like you do that. Like you'll, like with mom, with mom's illness and her passing, you went into crew chief mode. Yeah. And then you do the emotional thing part after.

I know. I do. And you did that, you know, you do that all the time. I actually wrote that down to ask my therapist about because it, it's happening right now with my daughter. She's moving home from college. And I'm so excited about her moving home from college. But all of my efforts. are focused on where she's going to live, what it's going to look, you know, all my efforts are

these logistic things of getting her, the mechanics of how it's going to happen, who's going to move her, when they're going to move her, da-da-da-da-da. And the emotional part will come about me, I mean, I'm excited to have her here, but every time I talk to her, it's just about that kind of stuff, and she's like, Mom, you know, are you going to call me for anything else? You know, you're trying to call me and tell me that you love me, but I'm just wired that way. I don't know. I'm going to get to the bottom of it. On the next time you have me on this podcast, we can talk about it. We just have a therapy session right here.

Because my therapist is smart, and she knows why all that stuff happens. So I don't know how she does, but she's good. You do a radio show, but in my mind we always have Fastlane family sitting in the mothballs ready to be brought back out, you know. That was a good podcast. Yeah, that's fine. Well, we definitely enjoyed our conversation with you today. I knew it would be awesome.

I was excited this morning when I got up to come over here. And I told Kelly last night, I said, this isn't going, it doesn't have to be the interview of all interviews with you. We won't have you back, and we're going to have all kinds of other chapters and stories to tell. We've already got some in the works and some planned as far as talking about the DEI days. Wow. I can't imagine what that will be like. So be taking some notes.

The older I get, the more courageous I guess. So you just keep pulling me in here. That's definitely evident. Noted. That's definitely evident in the book that you're writing and all kinds of, and how you're running this business, this Junior Motorsports Company that's won a lot of championships over the last couple years. Well, thank you guys for having me. I've enjoyed it.

Absolutely. Go have fun on your radio show. Sounds good. Thank you. Got a new partner this week on the download. When it comes to making life easier, clutter is the undefeated champ. Oh, this ought to be good. Clutter is the world's largest full service on-demand

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This ain't your average race react. Unfiltered commentary and an abundance of opinion. Mr. Max got or Mr. got it out of my way. Like Johnny Cash, we ain't afraid to walk the line. This is a door bumper clear. Available on major podcast platforms. All right, Mike.

So I went on Twitter the other day and said there was a secret that I had to keep. Someone else was going to tell the secret, but in my secret to tell, it was going to be told by Regan Smith. and the secret was that he is going to drive two races at Junior Motorsports at Mid Ohio, Road America, in the number eight car. I hashtag getting the band back together. A lot of people were excited about that news. Some other people were very surprised that I was able to keep the secret.

Me being one of them. I thought it was funny that Reagan said that too. You know, and the reason why I guess that is such an awesome deal is immediately okay so Rigging gets starts communicating

with his partners and they are interested in working out a deal to run these races he comes to Junior Motorsports Kelly I imagine

or somebody Joe Joe Mattis that works here and says you know I got this deal and they lock it down I get that

information a couple days later and it was a very awesome surprise all right And let me tell you why, because when we went to, we went to Regan, I went to Regan and I said, you know what, I think this kid has a lot to prove. I think he's talented.

I want to get him in our car at Junior Motorsports. I talked to him on an intro stage somewhere, some race. He ran the last race of the year at Homestead in a Junior Motorsports built car. Steve LaTart called the race. 2012. Yep. And he won it, right? And I was like, hell yeah, see what I mean, everybody?

See what I mean junior motorsports? See what I mean, Hendon Motorsports? This guy can get it done. All right, he drove our cars for a couple years and did great. Won some races. Battled it out and some solid championship battles. Came up a little short. But I think if we'd continue to work with Regan full-time,

we would eventually gotten that championship. Yeah. Anyhow, we became very, very close. We'd go up with me and Amy would go up with Regan to Colorado to his house. We hung out all the time. He would come with me to Key West and we'd hang out. we just became very, very close. And then we had to make a decision or a decision was made where we weren't going to work together anymore.

Tears were shit. It was difficult. It was hard for him. Hard for me. It put a strain on our friendship, which is still strong today. But it's just, it made, it was hard. It was very, it's one of the hard things about racing when you love working with friends, but it doesn't last forever. Nothing does.

I learned that early in my career that the good people in your life, professionally are going to come and go, and you just got to be ready for that. And this was one of those scenarios. I would have loved to have worked for Regan or worked with Regan as long as he could race, but that wasn't in the cards. And we've had a chance to run together since then. But any time that he comes in the door and says, hey, let's go run a race, it's freaking awesome. And it gets me excited.

And so that's why I was excited about that secret, excited about that news, and I'm glad that Regan was able to announce it. And he's a rattlesnake, as I said, on social media behind the wheel. I love his style, especially at road races. He gets up on the wheel. He's excited about racing there. He said so himself. He loves those two racetracks.

And he's one of them, mid-Ohio. So in very grand fashion, moving that 22 car out of the way. It was big. Yeah, there's a lot of tear of shit over that. But I'm excited. And I hope we can give him a great opportunity to go out there and race for the win again. Absolutely. Can I just also add to the significance of Reagan and the way in my mind of his importance to what he means of junior motorsports?

I look at junior motorsports from start to finish in three eras. There was that, you know, early days and we wrecked a lot of race cars. And then, you know, Brad Kozowski kind of came in and gave us some legitimacy. But then he left. Then there was that period of just we sucked. We just did. We went two and a half, three years without a. a win. And it was, it was demoralizing. Regan's win changed it into what I think is the era that

we are still in and it gave us momentum. We had not won in three years. Regan wins in that very final race. Gave us an offseason to actually boast about something, feel good about life. You think about it. That gave us momentum that we have not lost yet. We have won races in every single year. We've won three championships since that all happened. I look at Regan as the the guy that came in and gave us that boost, and we are today reaping the benefits of what Regan Smith brought to us that night at Homestead Miami Speedway. That's in my mind.

That's why it means a lot to me, too, to have him back. I agree. I think he's still got a lot in the tank. And like I said, I guess the pressure is on now for junior motor sports and that eight crew to bring a rocket for him to the racetrack because he can get the job done if we can give him the right car. I went to the racetrack the other day and drove a race car. I want to say, man, I haven't drove a car since Richmond last year.

And a couple things. People all the time say, you know, man, you should run the Indy 500 or you ever going to run 24 hours of Dayton again? You ever going to do this? You ever going to do that? Listen, when I went and drove that car the other day, it reaffirmed to me my belief that, No, even the greatest of race car drivers cannot assume that they can just skip around from track to track whenever they please

and jump in any type of car they want to run and be great. Back in 20 years ago, and even more so in the 60s, 70s and 80s, it was easier to do, all right? Because there was not as much competition. Okay. All right, and you could get in a solid car

and in good cars and be competitive. All right, there's so much competition. competition today in the Xfinity series and the Cup series. I'm just taking those two series out of the many that you could choose. You can't assume even me or anyone else that they're going to just take a year off and jump right back into it and pick right back up where they left off. Now you got the Greg Biffle example at Texas. I'll be honest. The stars aligned that night for Greg Biffle. He did a great job, won the race, but there's a lot of things that played into that, put him in that situation.

I don't know that I thought he was going to win that race a quarter of the way or halfway through. And I did go to Richland last year and run way better than I ever thought I would. Yeah, led a lapse. All right. Led the most laps, 94. Who's counting?

But driving this car the other day, I was out of breath. It was hot and miserable. I'm telling you. And it was hard to do. Was it? It was hard to do. And it just really made me appreciate, I guess,

just how elite the drivers are in the Xfinity series, in the Cups series, in any series you want to name. And the guys that do it every week are honed and tuned, and they're elite. They're at the peak, right? Because they're doing it every single week. We had Casey Kane in here several months ago last year talking about how he can't expect to do well

in the World Allied Tour unless he can get there and go, you know, race after race after race for three to six months. He needs to be able to get in that routine of understanding how the cars work, how the tracks work, what's actually good, and how to drive the cars, what they need, what he needs to be doing. He can't just hop in there and be the old Casey Kane and dominate. He's got to work at it. Those guys are too good. Tom Brady's got to go to training camp. He's got to get reps in.

Yeah. If Tom Brady took a year off, he's going to come back and he's going to have some struggles. There's going to be some rust. In baseball, those guys, they got to, you know, they don't jump right back. in there and just start nailing it. I just was really taken aback, I guess. Were you able to knock the rust off? Did you feel you got to where I didn't run enough laps. I didn't want to, I didn't want to, I didn't want to, it was a situation where I had a very small window of laps to run, but I could tell that, you know, if I was there all day and or several days, that I would eventually get back to where I wanted to be.

Gotcha. It was just so impressed, I was just so impressed, I guess, by how hard it was, to jump in there and just say, man, I'm going to run 15 laps. So I don't know. That was a really interesting experience for me. You know, I ain't been in a car in months and months and months. Ain't even thought about it driving a race car. So I'm telling you, if you want to get out there and compete in the Xfinity Series, truck series, Cup Series, you better be ready to go up against some pretty tough competition

and get your butt handed to you a little bit before you figure it out. So with that said, looking forward to Darlington later this year. I won't drive a car again until we get to that racetrack. Well, at least it's a real easy racetrack. I know, right? As we get closer and closer, I'm sitting there thinking, what have I done? It's going to be hot as heck, miserable. And that's a gay race.

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It is time for Vivaling question of the week. Dale Jr., this is every man's favorite thing to do. Life hacks, things you can McGiver. Do it, do it yourself, kind of engineer, common sense. Do you have any that come to mind? All right. So I thought long and hard about this last night. Talk to Amy for some advice.

You guys didn't let me know whether you think these are life hacks or not. We'll let you know. Or ingenuity in an unlikely situation. So back when I lived in the double-eyed with my brother, Kerry, We would have parties and get a little crazy And sometimes the wallpaper In various living room, dining room, whatever kitchen Would get this torn, ripped, scratched

I'd imagine Yeah, so anyways, the wall gets a little dinged up Our trick was to take helicopter tape Which is clear and it's wide And it's thick and durable We'd go into the closet Get a little razor blade and cut a square of the wallpaper to fit whatever you're replacing. And then take the helicopter tape and the square of wallpaper out of the closet.

You're kidding me. And put it on the wall. You know, you've got to light it up to where everything's right. And then helicopter tape it down. So you'd see the sheen. He paid so much attention to making sure the things were lined up because you don't want anybody to think you're classless in your repair work. If you don't, I mean, if you go looking for it, you would see it. But if it's not lined up, it's going to pop in the corner of your eye, right?

Because you're going to go, that's weird. What's that square? What's that shiny square? If you line up the lines and whatever design it is, you're not going to see a square. You're going to see nothing. That's right. Unless you go looking, scooping in there tight, you'll see some. But nobody's doing that.

So you'll see some helicopter tape. So does that fall under the lines of? Why not? It's not a pack? I wouldn't call it a good one. Ingenuity? It's... Taking a vote.

Taking a vote. Here's the next one. Three people vote yes. It's a good life act. We used to race skateboards, all right? And we used to race them around... We used to race them in an oval. All right?

Is skateboard oval? We used to skate... Nice. We used to race in an oval on this little track that we built. Concrete flat. And so when you go through the corner, you leaned, right? Yeah. And a lot of times, when you're trying to get a little extra,

there was a point where you... You'd listen. The skateboard just come out from under you, all right? And you always try to get right up against that point, that edge or that right up against the envelope of losing traction and the skateboard flying out from under you, right? Very painful when that skateboard would leave you and you're leaning. You're going down and down hard. So what we did was we would take duct tape and take revolutions of duct tape around the right side or outside wheels. And so you would take a lap on your skateboard and that would knock all.

the duct tape but leave the gum the sticky from the tape yeah would still be on it would be slick probably the first few laps well first corner yeah so the first corner it knocked a tape off and then you'd have the glue from the tape the gum from the tape and boy did that give you some grip life hack or no that's a damn life it's not only a life hack it's the redneckiest life hack I've ever heard of actually more than a patch in a trailer no I mean listen no you're right there's a A couple of good, yeah. That's a good, that's a racer life. Yeah, but I'm telling you, you brought racing common sense.

If you're a little extra grip on your wheels. DIY. Put a little duct tape on there. A couple, couple revolutions. However long you want that grip to last, that's how much duct tape you need to add. It's kind of like soaking your tires. That's right. This is amazing.

Where is it off? You know, quickly. So one, one revolution, one layer of duct tape. That's like qualifying. It's going to last only a few corners. Yeah. All right. That's pretty impressive.

This is awesome. So in, in, in my, my house in Key West. I've had an Apple. So to be able to send, if you're a guest and you're going to go to my house in Key West and you want to connect to the, you want to connect your phone to be able to play music through the stereo, I had an Apple Air Base that you could connect to. And for the layman or for the average person that hasn't used one, it's a bit of a challenge to connect to and to link your phone to it so you can play remotely while you're sitting out by the pool or whatever. okay well it dawned on me the other day why don't i get rid of that thing and just get a

bluetooth bass so they have these little bases of bluetooth bases that have little antennas and you plug that directly into the head unit of the of the stereo and you can bluetooth to your phone easy there's no login there's no password and i can say hey man go if you're at the house this is how you play your music through the whole house stereo right i've even heard that People are doing car stereos that way. People are taking their cars to a place, like if you were going to Freeman's car stereo, used to be around here in Charlotte. Still in Concord, yeah.

So you might go there and say, look, I'm getting, I want a stereo put in my car. Maybe it's an old car you're restoring, and you want to leave the factory one in there, but just put a, you don't want to hook it up. You put an ant stereo and a Bluetooth receiver or a Bluetooth antenna, and basically you run your phone through the stereo. Life Hacker note. I mean, I'm pretty. I'm pretty impressed by your ingenuity on that one.

I mean, so yeah, I think that's a life hack. But I've heard of it. You might have heard of it. I mean, to be honest, I wish my brain thought like that. Okay. My brain doesn't think like that. Not to be Leah or anything, but I can't take anything. It should have started with that one first.

Well, I've got a couple more. So I'm just thinking of these and I'm just going to let you guys decide what their life. Did you hear that? Did you hear what he just did? No, it's a big deal. I think that the Bluetooth to me was on the borderline of probably not being a life hack. But I think it is. I'm impressed.

If you want to. Now impress us. with another one. Okay. I want an impressive one. I used to smoke. We all, you know, now I'm a spokesman for Nickerette now is they got the cool ice mint lozings that we're trying to promote.

But back, you know, probably eight years ago, I quit. Before that, I was a 15-year smoker. I built this house that me and Amy now live in. And I played video games all the time. I played on the PC. I have a desktop PC. I'm sitting at that desk. I'm racing.

I'm playing video games, first-person shooters all day for hours. and I would smoke over and over and over all day, right? Chain smoke sitting there playing video games. And I put a fan. I built, I cut a hole in the wall, and I mounted a fan, and basically kind of looks like if you were standing outside of the house, it looked like an opening for a dryer. You know, there's a little dryer.

So yeah, it was a small, it was just a small, flexible hose to a hole outside the house. and I could have a little light switch and I'd set my ashtray next to that fan and the fan's in the wall I can't see it. I got a cover, a little grated cover to put on the wall and I could flip when I was smoking I'd flip that switch and it was always running that fan and I would sit my ashtray next to it and it sucked a smoke out

so the house never smell like smoke. That's expensive. The only problem with that is that draft that it was pulling would all sometimes light the butts on fire. Oh no, really? Yeah. I'm at sometimes, rarely, but sometimes I'd have a little fire in my ashtray.

But life hack or no. Life hack and considering you were smoking, probably in the most literal sense possible, you were life hacking. Get rid of that. That's funny. Oh, my goodness. I got one written down here at Tiny House Windows. Yeah, I was wondering what the hell that one was. I don't even know.

I'm sure Davis has one. Tiny house windows. Oh, I think I meant I have Tiny House windows. No. I didn't know what the tiny house? I was like, what the hell is that supposed to mean? I don't even know. what that would have been.

All right. So the other one, okay, so after the smoking in the wall, I'll try to figure out what I was trying. That's a note. I can't even remember what I was trying to think there. So we recently partnered with Blake Cook on filter time. Basically a subscription filter, air filter business. You sign up for filter time.

They'll send you filters for your HVAC on a monthly schedule every three months or whenever you want to do it, right? Okay. Me and Amy have been having a lot of trouble over the years with our house cooling, all right? And we had a company come through and seal all the baseboards and basically vacuum seal the house to where they could, before they did this job, they could measure how much heat loss we had and how much air was escaping the helm, all right?

And they went through the whole house and sealed it up. And it was supposed to not allow all this cool air that my HVACs make. Right. And it did an amazing job. freaking cold, right? But we like our bedroom to be freezing. Like, I cannot, I want it to be so cold in there that I want to bundle up. Even in the wintertime, I want it to be cold.

Yeah. I want to bundle up. We put door sweeps under our bedroom door and the bathroom door that go to the bathroom. So there's two doors that enter my bedroom, and we put door sweeps under them to not allow any, whatever, you know, to not allow any air that's being pumped into that bedroom to escape any cold air. Life hack or not. Putting door sweeps under your door.

Silling your door. Life hack, yes. I mean, sealing anything to make yourself more comfortable, that's a life hack. If you did it, yeah. So those are my life hacks. Those are a couple that I could think of last night. I need to bring you to my house and just go crazy. Can you hack my house?

Yeah, go hack my house. You're hired. Davis. Listen, the only thing I could really think of was I rigged, you mentioned video games. For whatever reason was playing a video game that I couldn't put down. I had a new baby. Gracie was just born, you know, and this, by the way, it was a life hack that I'd now know to be not a smart parenting deal, but I rigged a system to where the bottle could just,

she could take the bottle and I wouldn't have to, I didn't have to dedicate an arm to positioning the bottle. So like I, I stacked a, I've got a picture of it. I got, I stacked a couple of stuffy little things and this, that, and the other to where the, the, the bottle was basically just like this and she's laying down. But I also know that that's not a good idea. No. But it's not a good idea. So, I wasn't proud of it after I realized it. Not that none of us have thought about it. We've thought of it.

But I could still finish in the game that I was playing, and so there was that. I figured out what my tiny house windows was. What was it? It was a typo, tinting house windows. Tenting house windows. So as well. Oh, tenting. Okay.

Also, so in an effort to, when we made Ila's bedroom, in an effort to make it darker for her naps, we tinted the windows. Okay. In her room. And we liked it so much. And like I say, we love our room. to be cool, right, at night. We're only in our bedroom at night for sleeping.

So I don't need to run the HVAC unnecessarily during the daytime. So we also tinted the windows in our bedroom so that the HVAC doesn't work unnecessarily hard during the day as the sun's trying to push through and light that room and the heat's coming into that through that window. Hey, it works in a car, works in a house. It does. It works really good. We feel like that it's, we're just, we're just,

trying to, you know, it's a cost-saving measure, I think, as far as keeping the house a little bit cooler. 100% is a car, yeah, yeah, especially in your house. Because our HVACs seem like they run, they were running ragged. Hey, you know, you know what? You know who's itching right now? Who's itching? You? She never has anything.

Oh, she's got some today. She's never has anything. You guys cannot give me shit. I have something. I think there is, I think you always have something. You just aren't willing to be made fun of. Look at my space. Because that's her first...

That's her first reaction. We haven't even heard it. She's like, can't give me shit? So I think she always has something to add, but she's so worried about getting shit, she won't jump in the pool. I can't tell you. Right. Right.

I want her life hack to be something like, I used to underage drink a lot. And so I had this fake ID made. I mean, like, okay, so it's not that. But you have something. What do you have? So I use, you know, those like big ammo boxes, like the hard plastic. like ammo boxes. Ammo box.

Yeah. Like I made that into a center console for a pickup truck. I have a ammo body. You do the same thing. That's right. He does.

Yeah. Well, I didn't know that. That's a good life hack. Yeah, it's got a little tray on top so you put like pins and stuff and then take the tray out and you've got. Very cool. Yeah.

She's redeemed herself. Very nice. She's made a nice step. Let's not get carried away. Let's see if she can go two weeks in a row with a contribution to something. Those are good All right

Good job everybody Listen Matthew Oh I'm sorry Matthew I didn't have one Until this morning When I heard she had one I started thinking

I'm like You gotta have one I don't want to be the last one You don't want to be the Leah I don't want to be the Leah And the only thing I can think of Off the top of my head This is kind of stupid

Funny I went to the Frozen Four My first time And I'm working This event years ago It's a final four Of men's college hockey And get there

Get there Get unpacked in the In the hotel And man I got to go meet these people for dinner. I've never worked around some of these people. So you want to make a good shower. I'm getting ready and I realize, oh, I don't have a comb. I don't have a brush. Why isn't it packed in my bag? I look at my other bag. It's not there. I'm like, oh, crap, what the hell am I going to do? And at that moment, I look into my toiletry bag and they're wrapped in plastic. I believe it was

for a Wendy's is a spork. And I thought to myself like, this is going to happen. So I unwrapped that spork, and let me tell you something, the spork is the most amazing utensil ever, because it's a spoon, it's a fork, but it's also a comb. You combed your hair with a spork. And went out with executives for a dinner with sporked combed hair. All right, there you go. Life hack. Life hack.

It's definitely ingenuity in a tough situation. It's definitely a dillner story. Yes. That is a dillner story ever. I don't know many. Like who carries a spork and they're talking. It's obviously a dillner story when you hear the dramatic pause. That's right.

We're telling a story about a spork. Right. And we've got dramatic falls. There's mood silence. Let's move on. White flag. Well, let's hit the tag first. From high mileage rides that need that...

Hit the tag, Mike. From high mileage rides that need that thick anti-wear film to newer engines that have carbon buildup, head over to valvaline.com slash Dale to find the product spec for your engine. Balveline.com slash Dale. Keep talking, bud. White flag right there. White flag right there. White flag.

All right now, Mike, you ready for the white flag? I'm ready. This is presented by Nationwide. Nationwide presenting this because we don't have our YouTube segment. Nationwide's on your side. Hey, as you Dale, as you Dale Hard, diehard, Dell Jr. Download. As you, Dale Hard. What a name.

Delhard. Why do we call him Junior Nation? We should call him Dale Hard. No, you should. Yeah. He's like, no. As you Dale Hard's, no. And again, white flag is the best segment.

We love when you leave us feedback on the Apple Podcast ratings. here's a few from this week. J.H. Buckeye wrote on Tuesday, five stars in this day and age of podcasts blowing up all over the place. This one is absolutely the best. Your recent interviews with Simon Paginoe and Willpower were excellent. They should bring Indycar followers to NASCAR. And he says Junior Nation fans to Indy.

We'll call him Dale Hardes. I'd love to see more cross-promotion between the two series. And by the way, I like that about the Paginot thing too. I really like that. T.M. Black wrote on Monday, I've been in Earnhardt fan since 98 when I was just a little. This show has brought back a lot of memories watching senior and junior race as well as my dad, uncle, and I used to race at our local dirt track. Glad I finally gave in to podcast, and I enjoy every moment while I'm at work.

Justin Rogers wrote, my dad passed two weeks before the 2001 Daytona 500. I was 13, watching Udell, how you kept going, and then winning in July that same year has helped me learn it was okay to move on in my life. When I listened to y'all, it's like sitting with old friends and telling stories. So that was from Justin Rogers. Thank you, Justin. Nice to hear. Very nice. Yep. So Dale Jr., this is what your schedule looks like this week.

Vegas on Monday at the SHRM conference. This is a conference you guys. They're sitting Dale Jr. To an HR conference. It's a conference of 18,000 HR professionals. You better be on your bed. And they want Dale Jr. to go. I'd have anxiety.

The nationwide. Did you know that the SHRV conference was for HR director? Whatever, man. Yeah, you're there. It's an SHRM conference. I thought it Stuart Haas racing. Let's do it. Right.

You're ready. You're going to tell them what the dress codes are and what the rules are going to be. After that, you're going to L.A. to record some promos for NBC's The Voice. I couldn't help with this. Looking on Tuesday, you said you have a cabinet meeting. Is this like where you get the director of Homeland Security, Sunny Lunsford, and the governor of the western town together? I just had some new cabinets put in my garage.

Oh, literal cabinets. Oh. We're going to make, we're going to do some additional work. The treehouse treasurer and the director of dirt tracks. No, just normal, okay. Just normal home, everyday cabinets. I got you. Then Thursday, you were off to Chicago to begin season two of NASCAR on NBC's broadcast coverage.

Last year at this time, he was a little nervous. You feeling probably pretty good this time. Yeah, I am. Ready to get going on. I'm excited. We had a small little race broadcast practice the other week, and boy, it fired me up. Cool.

Just reminded me how fun we had last year, how fun we had last year, how fun these guys are I get to work with. That's awesome. So speaking of NBC Sports, you can catch the Dale Jr. download this week on NBC Sports Network at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific. I got out of boys on Twitter from the Pacific people saying, thank you for thinking about us.

We will now say the Pacific time. And then the people in between, you figured out. Everybody, Central Time. Mountain time. Y'all can do the math. It's not that many. It's just one or two off. Pacific Time, you know that that's 2 p.m. Pacific Time on Tuesdays. Follow Dirtymoe media on social media networks.

That's at Dirty MoMoh Media on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Our YouTube channel's taking off. Leah, you're doing a great job with that. Lastly, I do want to plug our sister show, Door Bumper Clear. It's doing quite well. Brett Griffin, T.J. Majors, Casey, Boat. I think they got, do they got Ross Chastine coming in this week? Yeah.

So, good time. I like to hear this one. Especially if you can go to St. Louis and get a win. Yeah, oh, man, that'll be cool. So check out door bumper clear, and that's it. Dale, you got some odd history force? I do, man. In 1967, the Beatles sang, I get by with a little help from my friends,

NASCAR Hall of Famer, and Illinois native, Fred Lorenzen did just that. But this wasn't your typical help from typical friends. It was the mob. Fred's NASCAR career hadn't hit full song yet. He had won the 1958 and 59 USAC stock car championships, but in 1960, he entered NASCAR driving a car. He owned himself, and in 10 races that year, he finished in the top 10 five times. Not too bad. Decades later, Lorenzo would admit he financed that car by borrowing money from the Chicago area mobsters.

After the season-ending race at Atlanta in 1960, when he was trying to make it in NASCAR in that equipment, he was forced to sell most of it off to pay the $10,000 he owed the mafia. Luckily, that was at the end of the story for Lorenzen. The risky loans worked to advance his career, however, months later, he was hired to drive for Holman Moody, where he went on to win 26 races. Hey, that's a nice number. And become a NASCAR Hall of Famer. Jeez.

You think it tipped off NASCAR when the competitors turned on their car and it blew up? If he hadn't returned it, maybe that next race. That's a bad, so. The next race. Cabooo! Oh, my gosh. Fred Lorenz is your winner. That wasn't confetti cannons.

Wow. Nothing like ending the show with a good mob story, boys and girls. As a fun one, I hope you guys enjoy having Kelly talk to you and tell you some great stories. I sure did. I did. Leah, Matthew. Good job today, guys, and we'll see y'all next week. I hope you enjoyed the show as much as I enjoy pristineauction.com.

is an authentic sports memorabilia website that you can order this stuff. Yeah. Did I do good? Mimblah bl blah blah blah. You kind of got memorabilia. Really? It was like, it was pretty good. Hey, who am I to sit there and criticize?

Yeah, I can't say any more. I live in a glass house. Well, check it out, man. It's a website. You buy this stuff from the comfort of your home. Let me explain. Pristineauction.com offers a daily auction where all bids start at just one dollar. They also have those 10-minute auctions that I like.

Those are the ones where I think you can get in there and get some steel. Yeah, I did it. Some deals. The door of over. Right. Yeah. Chich and they're a lot of fun. Ten minutes and it's over.

It's rapid fire. Get your heart rate up and they're great deals. The authenticity of those items is the, what are you looking at? What are you distracting us with? Chichich! Distracting the middle of this region. I bought that on a 10 minute option. Oh, yeah.

Oh, did you? Yeah. Did you feel like you got a good deal? I mean, yeah, I got that for 25 bucks. It's signed by Cheech and Chong. Wow, is? That's actually kind of cool. Yeah.

I was just going to say, if it was on autographed $25, I don't know. But it's autograph. All right. Well, of course it is. It's from pristineauction.com. And you know it's authentic. You know it's authentic autograph, right? I've signed with them.

So I know that everybody that's on there that you got an autograph, it's the real deal. It's the real person signing that autograph. No forgeries, no fakes that you see on all the other websites. People trying to get you out there. Nobody's trying to get you at pristineauction.com. Before the show, we spotted a 125. fourth scale Elvis die cast from the movie Spin Out. I don't even know what movie.

I haven't ever heard of that movie. Spin out. That must have been one of the 50 beach movies he made right there right before the 69 comeback special. The Shelby Cobra also comes with a collectible coin. All right. Go check out pristineauction.com now. You'll be hooked.

It's free to register, free to bid, and you only pay for the items you win. That's pristine auction, spelled P-R-I-S-T-I-I-N-E-Oction.com. And when you register, be sure to select Dell Jr. Download podcast from the drop-down menu. We really need you to do that. That's how they can tell that we sent you there. You're helping us. We'll help you.

See you.