The Dale Jr. Download - 268 - Dave Marcis: The Independent

Episode Date: August 6, 2019

Dale Jr. spends quality time with the last great independent, Dave Marcis, to tell the tale of doing it his own way.  The NASCAR Legend talks about Goodyears & Wingtips, dumping Dale Earnhardt, working with Harry Hyde, his Pocono crash & towing his mobile home behind his racecar.  DJD turns up the volume on the NBC broadcast, talks Chastain vs. Allgaier, discusses Dale Jr.'s Western Town and tells a story about Tim Richmond and Huey Lewis that didn't make the news. 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 the production of Dirty Mo Media. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download. Mike Davis, Matthew Dillner, Leavon. All folks are in the house, and we got a great guest today. Dave Marcus is going to come by, talk about his career. It spans five plus decades, so we got a lot to cover. And let's get started. Hi, guys, Sue.

We had this race this past weekend at Wackens Glen. We did the race radio style It's a lot of fun I really do enjoy it I didn't like doing it at Pocono The track's so too small And we get the cars in such a small window And you have to spit out of thought

And a lot of times They're coming through there the same way they did the last lap And trying to create something new And something different to say Is real tough But at Watkins Glen It is fun, wow and it's always something new happening in the interloop where I'm in.

I'm kind of in a coveted spot between me and Mike Bagley and Jeff Burton, so I'm not going to complain. And I had a blast there last year. I had another great time this year. I love doing the radio style broadcast at that track. We also do it at Indy. Again, I'm not a fan of doing it at the Oval's, but at the road courses, it works really well.

anyways if you've listened to a race on the radio they talk uh with a ton of energy all right and that's because they're out next to the racetrack where the cars are particularly at polka no i was 10 feet away from the track and it's loud so your your instincts are to talk louder and so there's uh there's that there's that part. So the cars are coming by and you're trying to talk over that. And also, you're watching a live event. You're watching it in person. That is more exciting than how you might call it from sitting on your couch. All right. So the fact of the atmosphere and the energy, the fact that you're watching it in person and it's happening right in front of you for the first time, it's organic, it's live, and it's loud. You, you know, the fact that you're watching it in person, and it's happening.

up talking louder than normal than you would in the booth at least. But anyways, the comments on our race from the fans and the majority are very favorable. A lot of people really, really like the radio style. But there is a small group that have two different opinions about it. And one opinion is that we scream too much. It's annoying that me or Burton or whoever is screaming, they don't like it, which they'd stop screaming, right? And so I personally tried to quell some of that, not shrill as much.

Because when you're excited and you're talking about a real great battle, or you're seeing a car spin, for example, in the Xfinity race, Kyle Busch had that problem with suspension. He'd come sliding by me. It was a shock to see that. He was going to dominate and win that race. And now here he is spinning, for whatever reason, right underneath me. And so in those moments, it's hard not to react.

naturally and it sounds somewhat unnatural, I imagine. But so I was getting that feedback and I was thinking, man, I'm will try harder to sort of bring that down a little bit, not get so amped up and so loud and high-pitched, especially when there's a action or a wreck or somebody getting spun out. So I was conscious about it. All right, so there's that opinion. There's the screaming group. There's a, like, don't you're screaming.

There's a, yep. Okay. The other opinion is that they can't hear us at all over. the engines. I'm in that group. Mike, you're in that group. Yes. All right.

And that, I've seen that quite a bit for every race. Yes, I'm in that group every race. And I'm hearing that there's a fix for that, and it's in your television settings. And Matthew, you did a little bit of searching. And now this might not work for everybody, but give it a go, Matt. Yeah, it's not even just racing. You know, if you're watching football, if you're watching hockey, if you're watching baseball, you will notice sometimes on your TV, depending on your TV, that you'll hear

those sounds, the background sounds more than the announcer. So it's all how the mix is done. So the surround sound settings and whatnot. So the best thing to do is go into your TV settings, go into sound modes. There's different modes like news, clear voice. If you don't have those, you could go into the EQ, lower the base a little bit, increase the treble, that could help as well. If you have things like an Apple TV and you go into settings, audio and video, there's settings called reduce loud sounds. So go in and play with your, surround sound settings, because that's what it is. Whether you're on the Fox side or the NBC side, it doesn't matter.

You're watching baseball, football. A lot of times you'll hear the tackles and all that stuff, and the announcer's voices will be reduced. You can go into your settings and get that optimal setting. All right. Yeah, I was prepared to ask, is this something that's intentional to give us an at-track feel? Yes, yes. If that's what NBC's doing. And knowing good well, you may not be privy to that knowledge.

I mean, you're a broadcaster. You're not, you know, the sound technicians and stuff. I had Leah look up some of the comments on social media. Let's hear some of that. Yeah, it was a little bit of a mixed bag. Was I in there? I didn't pull yours, Mike. NASCAR on NBC is providing great coverage.

One critique, however, lower the race noise and playing in-car audio. It's really hard to understand, which is something I notice as well. Oh, they're talking about specifically in-car audio. Yeah, that was specific to that. I never can understand what the radio chatter is. Yeah, I couldn't, like, Chad Canals was yelling at. I had no idea what he said. NBC really has to work on the audio mix.

I'm all about loud cars, but when I watch on TV, I expect to be able to hear the commentary. So things like that. But then some of the positives, they love the around the track, play-by-play style. It definitely adds to the excitement.

They love that you could hear the crowd on TV, which is something I notice as well. I like that. That makes it like a true setting, that you're at the racetrack. And like Dale said, NASCAR and NBC listen to us. We don't want to watch the three.

race with teenage girls screaming things. You know, I noticed a comment that when they're in their, I don't know what else to call it other than the scream mode, but when they're trying to talk up and they're excited, Jeff Burton and Dale Jr's octaves are very similar. Yeah, I agree. So I've listened back to some of that, and yeah, I agree. Me and Jeff sounds similar when we get to the same place there. Yeah, it's tough.

I mean, I know I've done some radio pit reporting type things, and when you're down in the pits, you're instead of eating the mic it's an instinct it's an instinct to speak up speak up well so anyway that's interesting i think that um you know for the for one i can't you know for the people that don't like the screaming which uh i don't know if it's true i don't feel like i'm really screaming but for the people that don't like that style i don't know that that'll ever go away if i'm always in the booth or calling the race there's going to be i'm going to do it in a way that comes natural. I'm not faking that.

I'm not trying to amplify something that's not there. I'm not trying to blow up or make a race that's not exciting. Exciting. I'm talking about the action the way it's making me feel in my heart. And so, you know, I love racing and I love what I'm watching and I enjoy all types of battles. I enjoy ass whoopens by 15 seconds. and I enjoy what we saw yesterday. So when you're hearing, that's another comment I think we see sometimes,

is they're making something out of nothing. Oh, God. And, well, that's going to make me angry. I'm just being, I'm going to just say right out front that when you're hearing me on there and you're hearing any kind of emotion, it's genuine emotion for what I'm seeing. I love my job. I love what I'm doing. I'm having fun in that moment, and I'm also liking what I'm seeing, you know,

because I enjoy and love racing. So, and as far as the screaming, I mean, it's just I tried to control it a little bit. Like, during, if you listen to the first probably stage of the race, I didn't, I wasn't thinking about it. And I was just probably getting a little bit wild in a few instances. And then I started trying to control it a little bit in the second stage and then the final stage for sure. And so hopefully that helps some of those people. So were you literally making those decisions to control it based off of Twitter feedback? Don't get mad at me, Mike.

but yes, I'm I'm, look, listen, it's not, I'm going to scream now. Let me say,

let me say that I know not to do, I know not to take that kind of input directly from Twitter, but these are people that are watching the race in the moment.

And so it's not, it's not, yeah, it's not reactionary day later, weeks later. I got you. This is someone going,

hey, I love this, but I don't like this, right? Fair point. This second. And so I was conscious about it, but in the end,

I'm not going to broadcast how I'm not going to do it how I don't want to do it. I'm not going to do the job. I don't have to do the job, don't need the money. I love doing it. I want to do it because I have fun doing it. And I'm going to do it the way I want to do it and the way I think it should be done.

I always loved the radio broadcast. Back in the 80s, we didn't have TV. You had nothing but radio. It was always awesome, energetic. It sounded amazing. They always were, for some people, yelling. If you Look at any race call

Where there's a great last lap Listen to the announcers Oh yeah They're excited Or any time of caution comes out Like you know Anytime there's a wreck or an action Anything

Right Spitting three one I mean like they go up there And stay up there And that's I wouldn't want to another way That's the other thing I think people act like this is the first time Broadcasting has ever been done this way

With energy Yeah I think that is what is missing from our broadcasts for the last decade is that energy. Absolutely. And so I'm here to bring it. Bring it. Damn straight.

Amen. We can all agree on that. I apologize if it's not your favorite style. I apologize for them sucking and having bad opinions. Hey, then they could just turn on golf then and just have the race on visually. For everyone who loves it, I'm glad you love it. I'm thankful because it means I get to stay up there. If you didn't like it, I mean, really, it wouldn't be how, it wouldn't matter.

matter how much my employer loved me or thought of me, it's all about what the fans enjoy. And for now, the majority of you are enjoying the broadcast. And so that means that we keep our jobs and keep going to the track. So I appreciate it. Hey, you had a lot of things to be excited about in that race, by the way. God, there were a lot of things. There was two awesome races, Saturday and Sunday. The joke after the Xfinity race amongst the NBC folks was that, man, Dale, you had

everything happening down there. And, you know, so I'm not going to complain. I was, I'm in the preferred location when it comes to Watkins Glen. I'm not, you know, I would, I would be happy calling the race anywhere, but I'm telling you in that bus stop is wild. They even gave you the best camera angle that I have ever seen in live sports TV. Kevin, they gave you like a camera that ran the entire length of the backstretch there. It was so cool.

Yeah. Yeah. But like, okay, opinions. Kyle and Bubba. All right. So that's a pretty interesting. That also involved a Twitter handle that popped up on my timeline. So I turned to see Bubba sliding into the wall.

And I have to open my mic because I can't just start going, oh, there he is. I have to reach over, mash the button. And then I can start talking, which you realize that I made a mistake at the end of the race and didn't do. That was funny. Yeah. So I see Bubba spinning and hitting the wall. I did not see why, but they were putting speedy dry on the exit of the interloop.

So I just assume, well, you know, I'm not going to point. I'm not going to make up, you know, the right. I'm not going to blame a driver that didn't spin him out. I'm just going to say maybe he got loose in that stuff. I did not see the beginning of it. But I hit my mic and I go, hey, Bubba Wallace is over here in the fence, guys, in the tire barrier with the left for a quarter pound. You know, we go through that whole process.

and someone on Twitter said he got turned around by Kyle Bush if you would look at racing on the track instead of staring at your monitor you'd know that and I said all right yeah I love the critique and advice anyways so I tweet back to the guy

I said I have to watch what's on the monitor because that's what I need to be calling I can't call a battle for 10th if what you're seeing on television as if you were at home is the battle for the lead you would be confused and think I was a complete moron. And so while I have to watch the monitor and call what I'm seeing and also see the track, hopefully catching those crashes as they're happening,

it's a bit of a different, you know, you have to bounce back and forth from monitor to track, monitor to track. And so, but he said, he goes, you know, he didn't spin out by himself, this Twitter handle. He goes, he got help from Kyle. And I said, all right, well, we don't have anything. We don't have a coverage of it. We don't have a camera coverage of that. But I put that in the back of my mind.

And then obviously we saw what happened on the front straightaway between them two where Bubba spins him out. And so I used that thanks to that Twitter follower for saying, hey, that's how that started. And I said, I think we know now how Bubba ended up in the tire barrier over here in the carousel. The other part, too, is it's tough for me, was they, I've always called it the bus stop.

It's the bus stop. NBC and Bagley and everyone else calls it the inner loop. Well, it's not a freaking loop. So I don't call it an inner loop. It's a bus stop. That's what I've always called it. Yeah. And so I was trying, so, you know, bags would say,

here they come, Dale Jr. in the inner loop. And I'm like, well, I'm not going to say, yeah, they're coming through the bus stop. Yeah. I'm not going to, you know, conflict. So I tried to say inner loop. Oh, really? And it screwed me up so bad. I was so screwed.

I was calling the carousel, the interloop, the carousel loop. It was a mess. So I've always called it the interloop. Contrary to popular belief, I don't always agree with Dale Jr. But, yeah, I've never called it, the bus stop. Right. I've always called the bus stop, especially since when they miss it, they have to come to a stop. And there's a bus.

There's a bunch of buses. Well, there's a bus that has a deck on it that Rutt was on, called the bus stop. And so, you know, for, and you're an older fan as well, you're an old, you're an old. I'm old. Well, it's not a generation thing. It's not a history thing. It's just what people prefer. I'm sure, maybe it's more IndyCar F1ish to call it the interloop. Maybe. More redneck or, or NASCAR to call it the bus stop. I don't know. Bus stop's just so much easier than inner loop as far as your, you know. I mean, I'm sure Twitter. I'm sure Twitter can correct everybody if they're calling the part of a track wrong.

I think you use less muscles. Mike, no talking about Twitter, Mike. Bus stop. Anyway, I found all that stuff pretty interesting, the Twitter back and forth. You know, I try not to pick up Twitter during the race because as soon as I do, I can't put it down. Really? Yeah, because I'm so curious. Yeah, what people's opinion of our broadcast is.

I got you. Or the race. And, you know, like I said, you'll learn something from your followers. what's what's going on the track that they're seeing that you're not you know as a broadcaster you're imperfect and you're not seeing everything and they let you know and so you know i try not to pick it up because i don't want to get distracted yeah um but sometimes i mean i follow i end up following twitter pretty much every single race that's interesting and i reply a time or two to to something yeah at the end of the race i forgot to open my mic been doing it um without even thinking

about it all day long and yeah that fine we stood there forever before they brought us on camera after the race was over with going through interviews and so forth and fit your lane ceremony and whatnot they came to us for our final thoughts and i'm thinking man i'm getting off this perch i'm climbing down here i'm going home and started talking and the button was muted but you caught it right away did some with somebody in your ear no oh so you just knew just kind of i can hear myself in my headphone i think that's another reason why that there's a disconnect between soap to bring up the headphones. Everyone in the truck, NBC trucks got headphones on, I think,

listen to the race. They're hearing, we're talking to them, producer, everyone there, right? Everyone working at the race, camera guys, producers, everyone's got a headset on, just like this, right? All the commentators also have headsets on. All right, so we're all hearing this content the same way, the same way we're doing this podcast. While you're at home, you're on your couch,

several feet away from your television, not using a headset, catching every detail. So when we hear the in-car audio, man, sounds fine. I don't know what you're talking about. But I imagine at home sitting several feet from your TV, not knowing it's coming,

and it pops off, and you're like, wait, what was that? I didn't catch that. And it's probably not as audible as what you might hear if you were plugged into a headset, right? Imagine sitting at home, Lee, and listen to the race as odd as it would be with a headset on. Yeah, tuned in.

You would probably hear that audio just fine. Yeah, incredible, actually. Yeah, and so you'd understand what Chad said, which was incredible, but he said that. Yeah. Wow. But I'm not encouraging you to do that. I'm just saying that's probably the disconnect, and there's some sort of a, there's some sort of fix for that. Yeah, I imagine a lot of people probably didn't catch exactly what he said, but luckily there's Twitter.

You can go on Twitter and follow. and see they're going to tell you everything he said as far as the in-car audio. But anyways, I enjoyed my experience. I love radio style. I'm not thrilled about doing it at Indy. We'll do it. We'll have fun with it. I think that if I was better at it, I would be more excited about it.

And so I told myself, man, I got down after Pocono. I got real bummed out after Pocono because I didn't think I did a good job. I didn't think it went well. I didn't think the broadcast was as good as it could be, and I felt like I was a big part of that. This weekend, it felt better. It always doesn't. There's always enough content, things happening.

There's always a battle or a race to talk about in every lap in your space. There won't be at Indy. They're going to come down that. They're going to come into turn three or wherever they put me, and they'll be, you know, for the most part. They looked the same as they did the last time. Right. And trying to get creative,

on the spot is hard to do, something I don't I'm not great at. And if I do it enough and do it more and work hard at it, I can get better. And I'm going to try to do that. Instead of trying to get away from it, I'm going to try to get better at it and keep

doing it. That's right attitude. Well, if it's any solace, nobody can hear you. Yeah. I'm playing. I'm playing. That's a good way to end it. Hi, I'm Dellen Hart, Jr. Time Off is a campaign by Mountain Dew. They want to empower people to do what they love, and they help remove those barriers

to get in the way of their passions. Do the Do. Thanks to Mountain Dew, I'm giving some of my employees some DTOs, Do Time Off, and $1,000 to pursue their passions. Stay tuned and do the do. Okay, our guest today doesn't take any bull, but, you know, he's a no BS guy. But before we get to him, let's talk about. Workout gear.

Believe it or not, we're going to talk about some workout gear that's no BS as well. It's called No Bull. That's right. No Bull is on a mission to create products built for people who train hard day after day. They don't believe in excuses or BS, and that's why you won't find any in their footwear, apparel, or accessories. Listen, don't let the simple design fool you. No Bull's gear is built to perform. Their product philosophy, don't put anything on a product that doesn't do anything.

Take everything off that you don't need. be honest about what the product does. Kind of like building the race car. If you don't need it on there, don't have it on there. If you want to build a slick race car, you don't need anything on it that doesn't make it go faster. Their apparel is designed to be the most comfortable apparel for the most uncomfortable training.

Make it part of your training fundamentals. Your new go-to workout gear. I even got a box of no-bull stuff. I got the pants, the shirt, shoes, really. No frills. It's basically straightforward. It's true, but it's completely. comfortable. My gosh, man. It really feels good.

So the shoes are like, they don't have any designs or nothing on them. They just say they're gray. They say no bull. You put them on. They feel great. I mean, look. And you go to work. If you had a company called No Bull and it had a lot of frills in the design, then it would kind of be contradictory. It'd be a little

hypocrisy, if I might say. But they're not hypocrites. The clothes are the same way. It's in the material too. Great for working out. Wicks off the sweat and all that crazy stuff. So it's really great. I'm enjoying it. If you're ready to challenge your gear, the way that you challenge yourself, go to no-bullproject.com slash Dale Jr. today. For people who put in the work day after day, visit no-bull project.com slash Dale Jr. And check out their training gear. That's

N-O-B-U-L-L-P-R-J-C-T dot com, fact slash, Dale Jr. All right, here we got him. Dave, Dave, Marcus, in the house. Dave, thank you. Thanks for coming by. I know you were in Wisconsin. I know you live in Asheville, right? Yes, I do outside of Asheville. But I know that you're a busy man. Are you even retired?

Can you call it retirement? Well, I'm busy in all of when I was racing. Right. So I appreciate you giving us some time to come in here. We had Chase Elliott in here last week. I love getting the new guys in, but I also love bringing in the history. and a lot of our listeners love when we bring you guys in here, so they're going to be thrilled that you're here.

I'm going to start off right at the very beginning. What was your first race car? I had a 1949 Ford out of a wrecking yard up in Wisconsin. Yeah, and what did you do with that? Where did you take it and go race? I raced at State Park Speedway and Rib Mountain, Wisconsin, and that started in 1958. It used to be a track that was there years and years ago,

and then kind of race and kind of went away up there, and it was brought back by some fellows that used to be in it. And they had a meeting, and it was an ad in a newspaper, and I seen that. And so I went to that meeting, and if you joined, they were going to start a club and rent the racetrack to get racing going to get in the area. So if you joined that night, which was $100, you'd get a choice to pick your number. So that's how I actually ended up with number two, because I picked number two that night. And I didn't have the $100, but I joined, and I told you.

them I'd pay them next week. Yeah. Why number two? What was it about number two? Nothing, really? Just if it was available. What was going on in your mind that made you want to get involved in racing? Did you have family in racing?

Had you been a fan of it? Well, I was a fan of it, and I got Hot Rod magazine, you know, in the mail, and of course they covered a couple of the NASCAR races here. They didn't cover them all, but I always spoke for Richard Petty. I always liked the color blue, and I guess. That was the reason. And I just, you know, I just decided. My dad had a garage and a wrecking yard, so I was around automobiles all the time.

Okay. And my brother and I, we used to race some cars out in the field, and the neighbor kids would come down. And when my dad and Ma'd be gone on the weekend, we'd get them old cars in the junkyard going, you know. So that's where you got your first race car then. Was it your, that wrecking yard? No, it came out of a different one. Oh, okay. That was called Arrow Auto Parts out on the west side of Wausau.

Okay. But that, you know, just got interested in cars and speed and tearing around. Do you remember your first race? Yeah. Well, what happened? I think the engine ran hot. Yeah. But I think I finished the race.

It was a Ford Flathead and things were pretty tough. And we got in a few fights back in the maze, you know. Did you? Oh, no. So I don't remember exactly what. what happened in the race. I believe I finished second or third, but, you know, things got a little rough on the racetrack. There was a couple guys standing by the car when they pulled in the pits.

It was hard to remember that long back what all happened. But, you know, I wanted to race for a living, and that's what I did. And when I decided to come to NASCAR, I didn't have a clue, you know, what I needed, what it would take. And I didn't have no money or no sponsors. And you just so the story I've heard is you, you were racing at your local racetrack in Wausau, Wisconsin. You were winning some of many races. They put a bounty on you.

Yes, they did. And you were. That was in 65. Yeah. And you were upset that you, if you won, you didn't get that bounty money. And so you went away for one week and raced at State Park or somewhere? State Park. Well, I went to the racetrack in Wisconsin Rapids.

Yeah. We raced in Tomahawk, Wisconsin on Sunday afternoons, in Wausau, my hometown, on Sunday nights, or you could go to Wisconsin Rapids where Dick Trickle lived. Okay. And so you had to go right by to Wausau Racetrack to get there on Highway 51. And the promoter Sam Barta put a bounty on me because I had won every feature race there that year. And I told him he needed to give me something, and he wouldn't do it. So I said, I'm not coming Sunday night. And he said, well, I doubt that you would drive right by the racetrack to go down to the rapids.

And if you go down there to the rapids, you ain't going to win. He said, you got a race against Trickle down there and Marzofka and a bunch of them guys. So I drove right by Wausau racetrack and went to the rapids, and I wanted to feature that night in Rapids. And next week he had me back in Wausau. Is that right? Yeah. And you won every feature? Every feature that year at the State Park Speedway in Wausau, except that one.

That's doing it. The other story that I heard was that when your wife and you moved from Wisconsin, you borrowed the truck, you paid a dollar for that truck? Okay, when I came down here and with a 64 Ford and then I ran, I went to Charlotte and never got the car through inspection. It was an ex-home-in-a-moodie car, and I called Norse Frill, who was a chief inspector at that time. They said they knew the car and this and that and whatever. Iggy Cotonah had actually bought in the car from, I guess, Home of the Moody. It was an original Fred Lorenzen car. Iggy ran it in ARCA.

Then it got sold to a guy by the name of Alvin Perry, I think it was, in Kentucky, and Charity Glottesback was driving it on dirt tracks. And it was advertised in National Speed Sport News. So I bought that race car. So Norris Frill and them, they said, yeah, they knew it, just that. So Trickle came with me, and we came to Charlotte to try and make the fall race. We never got the car fully through inspection. What was the problem?

Well, it was just little things, and every time we'd get something fixed, they'd find something else. And finally, it was down to where you sit in the back seat. They had cut the floorboard where your feet sat down into the floor out of there and put flat metal in there. And they said we'd have to go to the wrecking yard. Get a stock floorboard. Yeah, and put it in there to where, you know, which is ridiculous. Well, we were out of time. We couldn't do it.

And finally, I told Trickle, I said, hey, you know. But, you know, we ain't got time to get it done. We didn't have no money to get home. So it went up and seen Richard Howard. He'd give us $150 to get back to Wisconsin. Unreal. What year was that? That would have been, I believe, in 67 probably.

So when you moved down to Asheville, you pulled the mobile home behind the car. Right. I met Clyde Lynn. Clyde was from Christianburg, Virginia, and he was running in the Grand National Series, what they called it at that time. And he had a wrecking yard up in Christiansburg. and he also was in the mobile home business. So I asked him if I could use his truck

to bring my mobile home down here. Yeah. And he said, well, yeah. He said, what we'll do is I'll sell you the truck for $1, and we'll put it in your name, and then I won't have no responsibility. It'll be all yours, and when you get back, we'll put it back in my name.

Wow. So that's what we did. And Helen drove our 69 Camaro, and, you know, because you had to have a lead car, and then she would go ahead from state to state, state and get the permits. To drive the mobile home through? And we slept in the mobile home.

Oh, that's funny. And we ended up in Jellico, Tennessee on a Friday night. And we were racing a cup cars that weekend in Asheville, Weaverville. Yeah. And Lee Gordon, Cecil's brother, was helping me. And my race car was at third place. And he brought the car to Asheville, Weaverville, and they shot. us down with the trailer at 6 o'clock in the evening.

So that morning we hit it to Asheville, Weaverville Speedway, and I went there and qualified that day and ran that race. I qualified, I think, fifth, but I think I dropped out of the race. Yeah, wow. Your first cup race was in 1968 Daytona 500. Is that right? Yes. And you were driving Larry Wurge car.

Larry We bought a 67 Chevel from Don Biederman from Canada. Don had been driving in the Grand National Series, and they built the car over by Asheville and Bill Seaford Shop. And you finished 20th. Yeah. That's pretty good. It's not bad. Your first rate plus is the Daytona 500.

Yeah, I mean, it was like. Making that race be tough. Well, when I drove in through the tunnel and I looked around, I mean, like, holy man, I mean, the turn four or once way down there. I mean, you know, it's a scary feeling. And, of course, I talked to everybody that I could. And the first person that came and actually welcomed me into NASCAR was Richard Petty. Really?

Yeah, he looked the car over and this and that, you know, and said, congratulations, coming into NASCAR. And everybody said, you know, you can hold that thing wide open. You don't need to worry about it. You know, well, mentally you can. Oh, yeah. But your brain tells us, I mean, it don't work. It doesn't feel right.

Yeah, you got to, I mean, you just lift. I mean, I was used to run in. Half miles and quarter miles and third miles. And, yeah, it was something. Yeah. Eventually, a few laps, you got a wide open. Yeah. You drove a handful of races in 1969 for Milt Lunda.

Lunda, yeah, Lunda Construction Company out of Black River Falls, Wisconsin. And he, through Larry Weirs and the chivalet dealership of Lairies, milk bought all his trucks for the construction company from Larry. So Larry got him to help sponsor the car. Yeah, wow. And you only ran a handful of races there, but in 1970, you decided to drive your own equipment, which would be sort of your MO throughout your career. We'll talk about a couple years you drove from other owners, but I guess deciding to have your own equipment back in 1970.

It wasn't such a challenge as compared to today, where it's near impossible. But maybe you can tell me, is that the truth? Yeah, I mean, it's – How did you obtain equipment? What was your process of like, I'm going to buy this car, I'm going to do this myself. I mean, you're your own accountant. You're your own boss. You've got to figure out how to fix this, fix that, and get that ready and get your crew together.

How did you do all that? I guess, thank God, there's a lot of race fans of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia and all around. And, you know, the first time when I went to Daytona, I didn't even have a pit crew. I didn't know you really needed all that stuff. And so everybody pitched in. This guy had a spare guy and that one and they all helped me. And I got to know some guys around Asheville and they came and helped me. And Frank Graham, who was with me for a long, long time, eventually come to work for me.

They just all helped me. And that's all I got started and got going. Everywhere we went in those days, I think most of the crews had help from the local areas, pick crew guys, you know. So, but you call them race? These were race fans? Are these just other team members, local racers? Both. Okay, wow.

Yeah, okay. You had a great. I had a couple boys up in Richmond, Virginia, that would help me every time we come up there. And they could come to some of the other tracks that were close by. Had guys out of Pennsylvania that had helped me on weekends, you know, because they had other jobs and stuff. Were they volunteering or were they, or are you paying them? Well, you know, I tried to always pay them something, you know, $100 for their gas and get them a motel room and stuff like that. that.

Okay. So what surprised me is how well you ran, even with your own stuff. I mean, you'd only been a cup racing for a couple years. You know, I've seen that race at Greenville Pickens in 71 that was broadcast. I mean, you ran into top three there with your own car against the, you know, against the K&K insurance team, big money team, petty, all those guys. Pearson was there in a 17-hole moody car. And your car was durable and competitive.

as an independent. I mean, there were a lot of independents back then, you know, Hilton and other guys. Yeah, half the field, I guess. Right. But you are the best independent, most competitive independent in the majority of the races you ran in just a couple years into the scene.

How did you come in, was it in your nature as a mechanic to be able to build a car that would be competitive? Well, I guess, you know, running all the short tracks that I ran and I've done all my own work there, suspension and everything. So just hands-on and a desire to do it and want to do it. And that's what I never give up. I just tried and tried and tried. And I just, I believe, I mean, that's what the race fan comes to see.

They don't just come to see somebody sit in the back of the pack and ride around her. And I wasn't down there to just ride around the back of the pack. I wanted to win some races. Yeah. And I didn't have enough money or good engines and all that to do that. You got a lot out of what you had. Yeah, I just worked hard. I just worked night and day on that race car.

You had old Dodge Charger. And the story I heard was you would go to Petty's sometimes to work on, get parts from those guys. Was Petty's the only connection you had? I know Buddy Harrington bought cars from Richard over the years, but they said you'd drive over there in the 70s and an old Honda Civic and load that thing down and the back of the Honda bumper

would be dragging the ground pulling out of the garage. Maurice helped me a lot with parts and then I actually had Petty's build me a race car and I talked with Maurice about it and Richard and they just, when I get some money I'd give them some money and they'd do some more work on it and they finally got the car done.

It took almost a year but yeah, they built me a car. Yeah. How was that car compared to the one you'd been driving? it. Well, it was really nice. It was good. It drives. It drove damn good. All right. So, 1973, you got an offer from Roger Penske to drive his car. How does that happen? Roger call you up? Yeah, he called me up. And I, you know, of course right away, you know, took the offer. Roger didn't run all the races. I wish he would have. Yeah. But he had the Matador and he needed someone to drive it.

I got chosen to do that. So he didn't run all the races. What would you do in those races when you weren't in his car? I run my own car. And it would be a Dodge? Yeah. Right. And so you'd end up driving for Roger again in 77.

You drove for him in 1973 into Matador. Why one year in the Matador with Roger? Well, he didn't run all the series or all the races. And I had to run them all because in those days the point money, even though if you were finished 30th, you still got some pretty decent point money in the point. Sure. So I had to do that and Roger was willing to do that and Roger even helped me someone let me take the Matador several times two races but we took care of it and stuff our own team. Right. But Roger would help me with the tires and stuff like that. And then you got out of that car

after a year? Yeah. He put Bobby Allison in the car. Oh so he just went he just went and put Bobby Allison in it. So you didn't have an opportunity to keep going with Roger? No. Okay. Somehow Bobby you know, got in the deal. And then you back in your own cars in 1974. Yep. 1975, 1976. I'll ask you later about what your best years and best team, but you drove for the famous K&K insurance Dodge.

Bobby Isaac had been driving the car for a while. He steps out, wants to retire, whatnot. I imagine that's when he was trying to retire. They called you up to take the seat. I guess you had to be pretty excited about that. That was the top front running car. Yeah, absolutely. What that deal was is when we were going, when NASCAR

was doing away with the hemies. Yeah. And the Chrysler products were having to either put a wedge-type cylinder head on the hemie blocks, which a lot of them done, but then they started the cubic inch change after that. So,

Buddy Baker was in the car at the time, and I don't remember where Buddy went, but K&K quit running all the races, and Harry Hyde called me up, asking if I'd drive the car at Charlotte and Rockingham. That was in the fall of 74. I think I put trickle in my car for one of those races, and Jim Sawdered the other time. And the K&K car, we dropped out of both races, I believe, with engine problems.

And then at Christmas time, I was up in Wisconsin. Harry called me up, and they hired me for the 75 season. And then I drove the car again in 76, and then the team got sold to Jim. and he put Neil Bonnet in the car yeah so um you won some races in that car yeah and i know that that that that that the cubic inch stuff and the in the hemie battle that that that like k and k and harry were pissed like they were sort of like mad because they were taking all that power away thought that was unfair and the result the resulting you know motor they'd have to run would wouldn't be competitive and so that's why they pulled out but they come back in uh you're

there and you go out there and win races you're finally a winner how that i mean that had to be pretty incredible well i mean i had a pit crew on all kinds of people yeah it was really nice yeah yeah but but the thing is and see as how it all came about is when bobby isa cidon's one time at talladega they put me in the car for the race and i put bill seaford in my car because it was after qualifying and everything and i led the majority of that race that day and then the engine blew like with five laps left, I was leading the race at Talladego, so I guess that was kind of our connection.

But it was a great team to drive for. I mean, it was just, but the deal is to win all the polls we did and win the races, and then when the team gets sold or whatever, you ain't got a ride. Right. And it was very disappointed. And then I drove for Roger in 77 again, and then he got out of the sport,

because he realized he's just too far away from the sport, you know, being up in Reading, Pennsylvania, and these guys that down here are home working on the cars, and, you know, we're going up and down the road. Yeah. And so Roger got out of the sport, and he said he'd one day get back in it, and when he came back in, he had rusty in the car,

and I guess that was the connection to Don Miller. Right. But then I drove for Osterlone, and then your father took that ride a year later, I think. The idea about that, the rumor that I'd heard was that Austerlund was wanting to go to two cars. And that back then it was not, dad always hated the idea of a teammate or having two cars. Daryl didn't like it either when Neil Bonnet and him were paired together.

And that you weren't in favor of Austerlund having a second car. Well, see, I don't know where that came from. That's not 100%. No, the deal was, I think, Roland Wall, Wolatica, who was. in charge of the team. What actually happened and why I left the team is they fired the crew chief, who was Dewey Live and Good. That was my crew chief.

And Dewey had worked for me many, many years before and on my car and built engines for my hemies. And I think we had three races left. It's a first year team. Dewey had his Rockingham car ready, his Atlanta car ready, and his Ontario, California car, and they fired them. No reason given. and Osterlin always said to me if there's ever a problem it's just a phone call away

well I tried calling them and it wouldn't take phone calls so you know and Dewey didn't know why they fired them either so I go to Rockingham I drive the car we were running I think we were either second or third in the points with three races left

a first year team I think that's pretty good yeah you're very competitive it just was working on me so much and so bad and bothered me when we went to Atlanta after we qualified, I went up in the press box and told the press I was quitting Osterman.

And I didn't even know that your father was going to drive the car for them next year. I didn't even know that at the time. He had driven the sportsman race car at Charlotte. So a lot of people thought that I quit because he was coming into the team. That's not true at all. Gotcha. So that night, I guess Osterlin tried calling me a bunch at the motel, but I called Helen and told her that.

Don't call me tonight at the motel because I'm not answering the telephone. So he didn't know about it when you made that announcement? I don't know if you heard it on the press. So that's the first he probably learned about it? Yes, sir. Wow. So how? So I went, then we went to Ontario and ran that race.

And I think Roland monkeyed with the car with the transmission. So we had a problem and had to change that during the race on a pit stop. And he dropped the straw bearing down in the bellhousing. I think that was intentional. Wow. So I told him. hell him after that deal i said i'm going back on my own because i mean i had to make a living that's what i'd done for a living and uh i didn't have no salary from nobody and no big sponsors yeah

so i told her i said it's going to be tough but at least i'll know i got a job politics you didn't have any i am not a politician you don't come off as a politician yeah harry g had so harry hide so Harry Hyde had a quote for you said he had the talent to be a champion, if only he weren't so stubborn. Do you think that's partly true? Well, I mean, I don't know exactly how he comes up with that. But, I mean, I just, I believe in doing what's right and treating people like you want to be treated. And I've been honest with everybody. That's just how it is.

And, you know, I can tell you guys, want to Taladega, everybody not going to. know about this, but usually when the K&K Dodge went to Talladega, that in the Woodbrother car with Pearson in it, where one of them two cars usually was going to be on the pole. And at one time we were a little bit short, and Harry couldn't, you know, they had us by a tenth, I guess. And Harry said, what do you want me to do to the car? I said, take the spider off. Now, in those days, we had a one-inch worker bill on the back.

That was it. And we could have it or we didn't have to have it. Harry said to me, he said, you can't get around the racetrack with that off the car. I said, yes, I can. I said, I've been working on it all morning long when we practice, and he said, you're going to get in the wall off a turn four. And I said, no, I won't. I said, I can make it.

And they shut track down for the lunch break. Harry went out in the infield and had lunch with his wife in the car. And when he came back in for getting ready to qualify the cars, he comes up to me and he pokes me in the chest. He said, Dave Marcus, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I said, what's that? He says, I'm going to take that spider off that car. He said Columbus didn't know where the hell he was going to land when he took off either.

That's awesome. So he took the spider off the car and I won the pole. I did brush the wall coming off of four, but we won the poll. Wow. How would you describe Harry Hyde for us? Constantly working on the race car, thinking about the race car, trying to bend the rules, read the rule book constantly. never gave up. He was competitive

all the time. I mean, he just thought race car, race car, race car, and I mean he had Robert G. doing the bodies and buddy parrot and I mean, just everybody there. And Harry was he was the stubborn guy. No, that's what I

always heard. And like, he has these funny one-liners. Like, he just gave us and we laugh at it. But was he, did he have a sense of humor? Was he kind? Was he cordial? Did he joke around? Yeah, but not around. racetrack much. He was serious all the time. I mean, he, you know, the time when at Daytona, when it was so cold, and I think they qualified the first couple cars and the guys burned

some engine bearings because it was so cold, they weren't letting us warm them up good enough. So all of a sudden they stopped and they said, let all of us warm the cars up and taped the radiators. So Harry just had a piece of aluminum and he just put the piece of aluminum in front of the radio. Well, they disqualified AJ. I think he won the poll for nitrous oxide. Then they disqualified Daryl Waltrop. They found nitrous oxide

in his car. Because he was second, so he was going to be on the pole. Well, then Harry and them had already left the racetrack and went to the motel, and they wanted me to bring the car into the inspectionary, and I told him I couldn't do that. You know, as Harry wasn't there. So

the car was in the garage and covered up, and the team was gone. back to the motel. We were third. All right. So the next morning when we come back to the track, they pushed the car in there and they disqualified the car because Harry put a piece of aluminum in front of the radiator and stood using duct tape.

And he was hot. I bet. I mean, he was hot. He's like, what's the difference if it's got dirty underwear or tape or rags or, you know, he was hot? So what he actually done, the next race we went to, he took one of them $2,000.

of radiators and took his pocket knife off and bent every fin straight across the full radiator, bent them all shut to plug the radiator. Damn. It was pretty furious in those days. Things that went on, you know, what inspections are inspectors and crew chiefs. Yeah. Do you know Loretta, have you ever met Loretta Lynn? This is the most random podcast question that we've ever had, but do you know Loretta Lynn?

Well, I've met her like, but with Marty so many years ago, she probably wouldn't remember it. I always like Lernerner. Marty Robbins. Marty Robb, yeah. Fellas, Loretta Lynn apparently is in our lobby. And I don't know. I just getting text, Matthew's getting text. Loretta Lenn's in our lobby and wanting to meet you guys.

You never knew who's going to come by a dirty moo meeting studio. She's fantastic. All right. Let's get her in here. Dave, you come here and then country music legends show up. I think that's because of you, I guess. Let's go check this out. All right, we'll get back to talking with Dave, Marcus, here in a second.

But first, Dale, let's remind our listeners about an important partner. Right, that's a good idea. Let's tell everybody about our partnership that I've had several years with Vavilene. I drove a Vivalene sponsored car at Darlington back in 2015, the paint scheme. It was amazing. A lot of drivers are sponsored by motor oils, but Vavilene, they're different. They are more than just a logo on the suit or on the car. Vaville, they're a true partner, and they always are hands-on in helping us make our

engines perform better. They'd send teams of individuals over to Charlotte to work directly with our engine guys in the garage to be able to squeeze out more horsepower in our engines. We literally would mix different types of oils together, and it didn't matter if we were running at plate tracks, road courses, short tracks, or intermediates, they'd always had a solution for us to make our cars more powerful. Power ranges for those tracks are in different places. That's right. The torque ranges are in different places. And you'd need different oils to perform different tracks. Believe it or not, it is true.

It is. They helped me score that grandfather clock at Martinsville back in 2014. That's why Valvene is the only motor oil I trust in my engines, and it should be the one you trust in yours. From high mileage rides that need that thick anti-wear film to newer engines that have carbon buildup, head over to Valvene.com slashdell to find the product spec for your motor. That's Valvene.com slashdell. Unfiltered commentary and an abundance of opinion.

Mr. Nice guy or Mr. You're going to be a fuck out of my way. Like Johnny Cash, we ain't afraid to walk the lie. I'll walk the line. Listen to door bumper clear. Available on all major podcast platforms. It burns, burns, burns. Ring of fire.

Door bumper. Clear. Yeah, that was good. Never know who's going to come in here. Hang out for a few minutes. Dave, man, y'all. pick right up where you left off. That was good.

Thank you, Dave, for allowing us to do that because we were in the middle of some good stories. Yeah, we were. It's got my hairy hide and stuff, and all of a sudden, the Red of Lynn just comes through the roof. I want to talk about what I think is you might consider the highlight of your career. In 1982, you were driving a Chevy Malibu, and you were a lap down, but you made the lap up when the cost you come out for the race leader, Joe Rutman. He spun out on the front straightaway. You passed him, so you got your lap back.

There were three drivers that were ahead of you, and they pitted, and you had assumed the lead, and then it began to rain. The race was called, complete as darkness set in. You were declared the winner, and you described the wind, saying, quote, I wasn't praying for rain, but I told the guys when I got out of the car, that if the good Lord wanted to help an independent, this was his chance. You quoted it as your greatest moment in racing, and you had even built your own engine for that. race. Going back, thinking back on it today, still the greatest moment in your career.

Well, certainly one of them. I mean, getting in NASCAR was great and winning in the first race at Martinsville was great, but that deal that day, I actually had just got passed. Joe Rutman passed me in the third turn, and he spun out coming off of turn four, but never crossed the start finish line, so I went right back by him. And I don't, a lot of guys didn't really catch what happened. They threw the caution out. Well, I needed to stay on the race. track anyhow to catch back up to the pace car everybody else dove in the pits and Dale Inman noticed what happened and he only put two tires on Richard and tried to beat the pace car back out but they didn't make it wow and so the rains I remember that day and uh well I've

watched that race quite a few times and you know I don't know if I've seen a bigger smile on your face but the fact that you built your own engine for that race I mean it's 1982 you know building motors and everybody built their own motors pretty much back then they're wasn't a big supplier, but I guess like building your own engines, you built your own motor, put it in your car that had the satisfaction. I mean, we take our own cars as a track and we're proud of them. We don't build the chassis and weld them together and build the motors. But imagine the satisfaction that you have personally from winning a race with an engine

that you put together in the shop. Yeah, and Frank Graham and I and Ben Barnes in Asheville, Ben Dundon, the machine work on the block floors and stuff. Yeah, it was our own engines. So it's pretty satisfying when you can accomplish that, especially, you know, in a NASCAR race. I mean, it's like. Has anybody done it since? I mean, can you guys think of anybody that's built their motor and won with it?

No, I think it's the last one. Yeah. I don't think so. I mean, I just, I basically, I used to tell people I do everything. I hauled a race car. I wreck it. I drive it. I wreck it.

I wreck it. And pretty much from that point. I mean, from that moment on in your career all through the 80s, I mean, until you retired, you drove for yourself. And when did you quit building motors? Did you build all your motors? No, not all them. All the way in 2002?

No, no. Like I say, Dewey Live and Good done a lot of them for me. And Jim Michaels up in Indiana done them. And Ben Barnes done some for me. So I had different people building them. And, of course, with the testing that I've done for your first, father and for Richard Childress. You know, I always wanted

to pay me, and I told them I didn't want no money, just give me some good parts. I'll win the money. Just, I need better parts. I was willing to, you know, so I would never take anything money-wise, and Richard took care of me with restrictor-plaid engines,

which is very difficult for a small team like mine to have a competitive restrictor-played engine. So if there were new things that they wanted to try and, because of the involvement with the championship and all the time

when your father was, you know, had a chance to win the championship. Generally, I would run that stuff in, like a restrictor plate engine first to make sure

it's worthy of a good 500-mile race. Yeah. You get putting the miles on that stuff to make sure it's going to last. Yeah. So you talked about it, testing for RCR.

How did that all come about? Well, I guess when we lost a Neal, then your father asked me to help them test. and I can't even remember where we tested first but he was happy with what I did in the race car you know again we had a good relationship

and it's you know he was bullheaded too yeah I remember a moment when both of you both of y'all's bullheadedness came together yeah Martinville in practice what happened and well he kept hammering on me And I spun him out. Oh. It took him two months to talk to me.

He finally come up and grabbed me around the neck and a big grin on his face. And he said, you know what I did at Martin'sville? I said, yeah. And he said, I had that coming. How good a friends had y'all been up into that point? Were y'all pretty tight up into that point? Well, yeah, but I mean, we both, you know, he worked a lot on his race cars too, just like I did on the short tracks and stuff when he was racing.

So, yeah, we, you know, we weren't as close, I don't think. but he come up and grabbed me around the neck and had that big grin and he said you know what at martins though i said yeah i do and he said well i had that coming and he said my daddy always told me if you had a problem don't carry it down the road handle it right there he said and you did yeah i was there i was at that track uh watching y'all practice in one and two and i remember dad hammering on the back of the car and then uh next time y'all come through dad wasn't there anymore you come running by and you had a little fender damage. And I was like, oh, man, I didn't know, I learned later that Dad had got spun out down there.

And you were always considered tough to pass, you know, and a bit of a badge of honor, kind of like Ryan Newman is today. Ryan Newman, we love Ryan Newman, especially as a broadcaster because he's going to make it hard for that guy to get around. Even a leader coming up to lap him, he's going to race for his position in his lap. and you were always a guy who ran hard every single lap no matter the position, no matter where you were on the track or who you were racing. And you did that your whole career. How do you sustain that passion?

How do you sustain that drive and determination? I guess just determining wanting to do it. And again, my philosophy is that's what those race fans pay to see. That's what brings them to the races. And I tried to give everybody all the room that I could and keep the car lower whatever one I was getting lap, but yes, I raced them. Every lap. I don't apologize for it either, do you?

Yeah. No. People appreciated it. Absolutely. 1999, you had a crash at Pocono. I watched it again just the other day. Incredible that you were able to walk away from that. Took you a little ginger to get out.

Remember much about that one? That was a bad crash, yeah. Brad Bulldine clipped me going in a tunnel turn and put me in the wall, And yeah, that was a wicked, wicked crash. I can remember hitting the wall and then coming to, and, you know, can't get your breath back and knocks all the wind out of you. And I could see and I know that I had a bad wreck, but I couldn't breathe. I couldn't get my breath back. Have you ever, is that the worst wreck you've ever had?

Well, yeah, I think so. Certainly one of them. I mean, good Lord had to be looking out after me that day. I mean, that was a wicked, wicked crash. I mean, I was watching it over the weekend, just kind of looking back through some of your races. And I'm like, oh, you know, we're programmed now to just assume that there's safer barriers. Like now that we've been enjoying that for however many years. And then I'm like, whoa, there were no, that was pure concrete he slammed into.

Yeah. And that, man, I can't even imagine. Airborne, spun around. Thing just, I'm like, how do you walk out of that thing? Like, how is it? I mean, it was so scary even now to watch it. Yeah. Yeah, it was a hard one, I'll tell you that.

And I guess I don't know, the car hit the wall so hard, and it just climbed up the wall, and it still had so much momentum. When it got above the wall, it started spinning then. Yeah, it was a hard crash. I had a crash just like at Fontana, where I got clipped in the right rear by Harvick coming. He had a flat tire, and he's coming down on the track trying to get the pits,

and I drove by, and he clipped me up in the right. I seen that. And it hits like the thing that I think was lucky for Dave is that it hit with the left front corner, missed the door, and then hits with the left recorder panel, right? It didn't smack the wall flat. It didn't flat side with the driver's side. That probably would have been bad for both of us. But our cars sort of hit no left front first, then it swings the back in,

and it sort of misses you, if you can understand what I'm saying. That's one thing we can all say for NASCAR, the safety and the safety and the cars, and they've always been really big on the safety. I mean, when an accident happens, they take a look at stuff and what needs to be changed. And it's always been the best of any racing series, in my opinion. You went over to racing Australia. NASCAR went over there a couple times. They had built this oval, and Bobby Allison, Neil Bond, a couple of different guys, you were one of them.

Tell me about that trip and how, you know, you're on a tight budget as it is. I know you probably drove somebody else's car, I'm not sure, but how do you pick up, how do you say yes to Australia? Well, I guess we were asked to go, and they offered to buy the airline tickets, and I drove actually a car from the West Coast owned by Dick Mitchley out of Victoria, British Columbia, and it was a great experience. A lot of the very nice people over there, and it was a very nice racetrack, and I can't remember, but the money and the purse was great.

I believe we won like $68,000 in Australian money, and that converted over to about 46,000 to 48,000 Americans. So, yeah, I mean, you still can't hold up there. It was close. Yeah, I was talking to Kaupetti about that, and he said you got on the plane with two sandwich bags full of sandwiches, the large sandwich bags, full of sandwiches, and multiple sandwiches.

in each bag and you ate all of them on the way over there. Who said this? Ka Petty. The things that people keep in their mind about these things. He's probably still agitated about that. No, he just said nobody could eat more than Dave Markes. Oh, I got you. I got you.

All right. So is this a truth? I'm a pretty good eating. I don't know how he stays so thin. Work. Work. What kind of sandwiches do you fill up two bags heading to Australia? What is that?

Like, is it P.B. and J? Is it pomeino cheese? What do you like? I like peanut butter and jelly. Yeah, very good. Go to, man. It's hard to beat it. So you always remembered, you're always remembered for wearing your Goodyear hat that you have on today.

And that's because you've had this longstanding relationship with Goodyear. When did that start? About 1970. Well, let's see. I guess probably somewhat in 69. We were at Atlanta, Georgia. and we had the two tire companies at that time, Goodyear and Firestone, and a lot of the drivers had a contract with Firestone,

and Goodyear was trying to get involved in the sport, and that particular time they were having tire problems with the Firestones, and somehow the Goodyear tire was a good tire and a safe tire, and even the guys that had contracts, like Kaliabro, I think, had one, and I don't remember for sure about Pearson, but they talked to NASCAR, and NASCAR said that they could get some of the small teams if they wanted to stay after the racetrack close

and scuffed tires because they needed to be scuffed. And so I think I actually was on Firestones at that time. And we stayed, I know Cecil Gordon stayed, and I stayed, and I don't remember what others, but it was about four cars or something like that. And we scuffed tires for a lot of, them big teams. You scuffed all the tires for this series. Yeah, and a lot of guys, even the guys that were on the Firestone contracts started to race on the Firestone's was switched over to the Goodyear's

during the race. Yeah. But that's how your relationship. Yeah, that was kind of the start. And then in 1970, Firestone put a big point fund out there if you ran on Firestone tires. Goodger came to some of us smaller teams and supplied us X amount of dollars worth of tires for the season if we put a Goodyear Tire Service store add on the race car. Big Cal. Yeah. The whole quarter panel. Oh, wow.

The whole quarter panel. And so I went with the Goodyear people, and I exceeded that amount of money that was allotted, but they took care of it. And they just helped me when I needed help in my career. I just didn't have the money to buy. a lot of tires and stuff. And the tire war in the 90s got pretty nasty when Hoosier came in. Tires got softer and softer and more dangerous.

Blister and popping tires started breaking guys' legs and all kinds of stuff. They had this race, they had a race at Charlotte, and the good year was particularly fast, and basically everyone to be competitive had to go over to the Hoosier tire except for Dave Marcus. and you were the only one that didn't switch. The only one, yeah. And that was because of your loyalty. Yeah. Yeah.

I thought that was pretty impressive. Well, I just, I guess like I said earlier, I'm not a politician, and I believe in doing what's right, and they helped me. And I actually was in the office talking to Leo Mayo and seeing what kind of tire he could bring because the tire that they brought to Charlotte to compete with the Hoosier, wasn't lasting either. So it was going to be they didn't have nothing in the race or they had to bring another tire.

And I tried to get Leo to bring the Atlanta tires, but he said he didn't have enough of them because the rule is you have to have enough to supply the field. So he said, all I have is Daytona. And he said, I don't know that you can get qualified on the Daytona tires. I said, you bring them, I'll get qualified. I think it'll qualify like 36th or something, but I got qualified. but your father and Kenny Schrader walked in Leo's office and wanted him to do the same thing,

bringing that Atlanta tire because they didn't want to run the Hoosier tire either. But they eventually switched before the race. So I was the only guy that stayed on to Goodyear's. Oh, is that right? I didn't know that. Yeah. They switched to Hoosiers? Yep. Okay. Yeah.

And so the record that Goodyear has in NASCAR by the number of years and starts and so forth wouldn't have been intact. I'm not done that. Yep. We had a similar situation at Pocono. Really? Yeah. Actually, the deal at Pocono, I think they maybe put the car through inspection with the Hoosier

on it, but then when we had it all on pit road, we switched them. My guys went down on pit road and put the Goodyear's on. I took the green flag with the Goodyear's. Oh, man. That's pretty awesome. That is. Wow. And we're really happy you wore that hat.

I didn't know if you still wear the Goodyear hat. Does he have the wingtips on, too? I hoped. I just, I like the Goodyear hat. It looks good. Like I said, when I was struggling, didn't have nothing. Like in 1970, I didn't have no money. He didn't have nothing.

And they gave me tires. I'd stay in business. Another thing you remember for is for wearing wingtip shoes when you raced. And I've read a little bit about the story about how that happened. Do you remember what brought that on? Well, in those days, a lot of us had trouble burning our heels on the short tracks. And it would burn a hole in your heel through the, sold a shoe about the size of a dime and it would be like a funnel and it was really difficult

to heal because it would always try and heal across the top around the edge but it's like a funnel it wouldn't be it would stay raw down internally and um we were at north wokesboro and bobby allison had just burnt his feet at or heel at the race the short track race a week before i don't remember which one it was but he come limping up pit road and i think kale and and Richard Petty and myself, Pearson, were standing there talking, and I said, poor Bobby, you know, he can hardly walk. He was limping up pit road, and I said,

I burned mine a little bit, but not that bad. And then Pearson said to me, he said, haven't you got any shoes with leather soles? And I said, I just got my dress shoes, wingtips. He said, where are they? I said, they're out in the trunk of the car in the suitcase. and because we had come from the motel and we're at the racetrack. He says, well, wear them today and you won't probably burn your heels.

So I went and got them wingtips and sent Helen out to the car to get them. I wore them that day at Wilkesboro and didn't burn my heel. I just started wearing them and then the race fans picked up on it. And, I mean, I'll bet you 75 people Saturday night at Hickory when we were signing autographs, bent over and looked under that table and wanted to see if I had them wingtips. That's what I was just doing. It's amazing. Them race fans don't forget.

Yeah. I mean, it became an identifiable thing with you. I mean, you and the wingtips. Yeah. And I was always curious, did that ever lead to a, you know, a partnership or a relationship, much in the same way you and Good Year developed a longstanding relationship. I mean, you are the wingtip driver. And so did you ever develop a relationship with a shoe company to where you did?

At least didn't have to pay for them? Well, the ones that, no, I bought all of them, and they were Dexter wingtips. Okay. And the people from Hush Puppie sent me some one time wanted me to wear them, but they didn't have the leather sole on theirs. Hush Puppie people didn't know what's up. He didn't do it for fashion. He did it because he didn't want to burn his feet.

Hush Puppies are fried, man. I want them feet fried. Goodness. You drove for one of my favorite paint schemes in your career was the Helen Ray special. Tell me about that race team. Tell me about the ownership and how that came together. Well, Helen Ray was a business lady from Arizona, and her and her husband owned Smitty stores, they were called, and they had food and jewelry and clothing and everything, and she ended up getting a divorce. I guess she enjoyed racing, and Phil Bart Doll, and they were involved with her, and Phil wanted to race, and she was willing to sponsor his race car.

So they came and talked to me if I would look after a car for him because they were only going to maybe run six races a year or something like that. And in turn, they would sponsor my race car. Oh, wow. So I took that deal because, you know, I needed help. And so we looked after Phil's car, and then she sponsored my race car. I was wondering how all that came together. Yeah.

Going back through your career, what's the best year that you remember? What's your most fondest year? in your career? Well, I mean, you know, again, you know, 35 years of racing and there's quite a few, but like in 1974, I really had a lot, a lot of good finishes running as an independent. I know we ran one of those hemie engines one time, six races, and one of them was the world 600. It was an engine that Dewey built. Ran six straight races.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think our worst finish was a sixth place. with it. You got to hang on to that motor. Yeah, I wished I still had. But, I mean, that was a great year, of course, with K&K insurance. And, I mean, there's a lot of highlights.

It's hard to pinpoint them all individually. But just, I guess, just coming down, I mean, when I first come to race in NASCAR, I didn't have a $100 bill in my pocket. Yeah. I just. How difficult was it to make the decision to finally retire? That was tough. Yeah.

But the thing was getting that. I still wanted to race, but I couldn't keep up anymore. I didn't have the money, you know, and the people, and you just about had to have an airplane. Yeah. I couldn't even begin to think about that, so I mean. Yeah, traveling to the West Coast, all that stuff made it almost near the hospital. Yeah, my guys and me, and we were in that van going up and down the roads all the time, you know. We used to run Dover.

I mean, I'd get up Sunday morning for the race and run that race, you know, and that used to be a five and a half hour race if there weren't many costs and sometimes six hours. And then drive the tow truck home so my guys could get some rest. And then we'd unload that race car when we got back to that shop about 9 o'clock on Monday mornings. And we'd work all day on the car at the shop and not go home until Monday evening.

And then you would have to like pull out for the next race. Yeah. And in those days, a lot of the racetracks we went to on Wednesdays. Yeah, because the weekends were longer, right? You know, years ago, we used to go to Tallade. on a Tuesday. You know, practice all day. Practice would start at 8 or 9 o'clock in the morning,

and the track was open to 5. Run as much as you want. Really? Yeah. Wow. Go out there anytime. That's correct. Isn't that crazy?

It's crazy. And it was weird. Like the Charlotte used to do a four-lap qualifying. Wasn't it? Like Indy 500 used to do, they did a four-lap average or something. Yeah. But they would be at Charlotte, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, open practice all day. guys out there running, other guys working on the car for hours.

Wow. It was a real relaxed, for my vantage point, you know, I'm a kid. I wasn't working on nothing. I imagine it was not very relaxing for the guys working, but it wasn't the, you know, happy hour hustle. It wasn't the show. No. Everything's a show.

It wasn't everybody just hustling as fast as you can to get everything you can done in an hour. Yeah, I think everybody, you know, all the drivers and all the crew members of all the teams, they all corresponded more with each other because we had all day to do it like you said. And we all borrowed parts from everybody. I mean, I had parts from Petty.

Sometimes they had parts from me, and when I had the Chrysler products, and everybody in the garage. I know Richard one time said, hey, you guys, he got all the Dodge guys together and Chrysler guys. He said, we need to take an inventory and get all these parts back on the right. Who's got what? Yeah.

That's funny. So back to the retirement question, how long had you been mulling that over? Was it something that kind of hit you all of a sudden? Or had it been something like a four or five year consideration? No, I just couldn't, I didn't have the money to keep up. That was it. Yeah, I mean, I want to be competitive, you know, and it was getting harder and harder to be competitive

because of the money that everybody else had and all the engines and all the costs were just going up so drastically. What do you have from your racing career in your position today? You have any cars? Just the last car that I drove with Daytona, and that's the car I've been going and doing some of them speed runs with them. So you go out to... Tell us about that.

What do you do? You're setting land speed records and stuff, right? Yeah, it's the original cup car exactly. I mean, inspection has changed now, of course, but if it had to go back through that original inspection, it could. Wow. We've cut nothing up on the car. And when Dewey retired from Richard Childer says,

they gave Dewey the development engine of the breed of the engines that are running today when the SB2s went away, and it's engine number zero, zero three. Wow. And so for your father, father, and they gave Dewey that engine when he retired complete, headers, intake, carburetor, everything. Dewey called me up one day and said, have you still got the speedway car?

I says, I do. He said, I got this engine they gave me when I retired. Let's put it in there and go down to Maxton and do some speed runs to see how fast we can go. So that's what started it. We went down to Maxton, and I think the first day there, or the first time, I guess we spent two days there. We got over 200. Wow.

Well, that was pretty encouraging because we were running Daytona tires because I don't want to cut the car up, so, you know, the clearances and stuff. I couldn't put no big wide slicks or nothing on. So we, then that track went away. It got leased. And I think the next one was they got a track up in Ohio. And it's an old airport at Amazon and them people had up there. and then some guys come and told me some of the guys that do the speed runs and stuff said you need to put them narrow

goodger Bonneville like type tires on the front when we put those tires on in front of that car the car pick up four miles an hour just with their narrow front tires you know it's from a standstill it's a measured mile from a standstill they timed the last 132 feet of that measured mile oh so it's really difficult for me to get going with them hard Daytona tires I got left side day Daytona tires on. But we're up to 219. I was going to ask you. I mean, so like, because I saw in 2012, you set like two or three land speed records with that car. Yep, yep. And you got, how fast, 219?

We're at 219.279 or something right now. Yeah. We're going to get over 220. Wow. And y'all are doing this just for fun, basically. Yeah, yeah. Because, I mean, I thought, like, surely he's, you know, partner. Somebody asked him to come do this because this isn't that long ago, right?

Well, do we want to run that engine? A couple of guys just want to see how fast you can go. Well, I mean, again, you know, his father and I were good friends, and that engine is zero, zero three, and do we, you know. So you had a good weekend. Ryan Repco won the Cars Tour 276 at Hickory this weekend, which is a throwback race for the Cars Tour. They have super late models and the Late Mall Stocks,

and this is the Late Mall Stocks portion of the show. He raced with Dave Marcus paint scheme, the number 71 real tree paint scheme. Dave was in attendance and was able to join him in Victory Lane. How did that feel to have somebody out there honoring you with their car, much less than win the race, you'd be able to celebrate with them? Yeah, really great. I didn't even know that there was going to be a car with 71 on in Rio Tree yet on top of it. And yeah, I watched the qualifying, and he didn't win the poll, but he ended up second.

And then I went down and introduced myself to him and talked to him. That's the first time I met him. And it's very impressive. He done a great job on a racetrack using his head, taking care of them, tires. Yeah, it was quite an honor, really. It was an honor to you. It was special for you. That was something that, you know, from an emotional standpoint,

see your old paint scheme out there. I just went down there to sign autographs, you know. I didn't know. Nobody told me that that number was going to be on the car. or anything like that. Oh, I would have assumed that there was a connection. Like if, oh, you're going to run a paint scheme or somebody's running the paint scheme, invited you there while you're there, go ahead and sign autographs.

You had arranged that separately. Is that what you're saying? I didn't know anything about it. I just went down there to sign autographs. That's amazing. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah, it was pretty neat.

So he done a great job in a race. It was just almost like I had a headset on because, you know, he had to lead. and I don't think he led 30-some laps or 40 laps at first and then there was a caution and he chose the inside on the restart and the guy on the outside got to jump on him and he lost the lead and the fellow that came with me, Todd Wagner, a guy that used to work for me on the team. I said to Todd, I said, I hope he just sits behind that guy now

and just lets him set the pace and just push him hard enough right in the center of the corners to keep him working and get his tires hot. And that's exactly what he did. did for about 70 laps and when it came time to pass him, he just drove underneath him and three and four and away he went. And they could not keep up with him the rest of the race. It was a good race. Do you still watch a lot of racing?

Do you get it wrapped up in it? No, not much. I don't know. It's just not racing like we raced. What are you doing with your time? You building hot rods, I heard. Well, I work on some of that, and I got a big garden, and I got a dump truck I mess around with, and I got that taramite back.

mack hole yet from your dad and I's relationship with the people at terramite and uh I got hunting land in Wisconsin uh go up there and do food plots I cut firewood triangle fishing and yeah still got the restaurant yeah I still got wow what's the restaurant it's a bar a motel and a restaurant up in rib lake Wisconsin called Camp 28 yeah and it's all on the same piece of property cool all right to come check it out yeah I don't know if it sounds like you might eat more than we do, but I mean, we like to eat. I want to end on this one story that list. It stayed with me for my entire career as a driver.

We were at, I was working at Dad's dealership, changing oil, phone rang. Dad said, come to in the morning get on the airplane, the King Air with your helmet and your driver's suit. You're going to Talladega. And he didn't say anything else. So I got on the airplane go to Talladega. I get there and they're testing. testing the Xfinity car with a new V8 engine.

They're moving the V8. They're taking the V6s out of the Xfinity series, which was the Bush and National Series at the time, and they were going to put a V8 in there. So Dad was testing this V8 at Talladega. You were there. You were driving the car. They also had Dad's cup car there,

and he was messing with that for some reason. So you're hanging out with Tony Senior and Tony Jr., all the guys on that number three, a good wrench car that dad raced in the Xfinity series with a V8 motor. dad said put your suit on and you're going to go drive it and so he said you know get out in there and go run I go out there and I go run and my lap times are really close to what you had been running you've been out there running for hours and I'm thinking man I ain't even really done it I didn't

I didn't really done anything yet or I don't I'm sure I can find a way to run faster I'm surely I wouldn't even thinking about what I was doing and now that I've been out there I know I can clean it up a little bit and go quicker. So I go back out there and I was way slower, almost second slower. And I was like, I don't know how in the hell. I run slower. I opened the wheel up real nice. I'll know the straightaway, let the car feed out toward the wall.

And I let the wheel do it. It wanted to in the corner when it wanted to jerk around and through the bumps. And anyways, I come in and dad jumped right on my tail. What the hell are you doing? Why is it so slow? And I said, well, I let the wheel do what it needed to do in the corner. I thought that car letting it kind of feed around would be easier on it. No.

Hold it with a comfort grip. Don't hold it tight. Don't let it move. Don't let it steering. We'll move it all. And I said, all right. I said, yeah, coming off the corner, open the wheel up. That's stupid.

Don't do that. And walked off, right? He's got to go beat it back in his car. And Dave walks up and I said, Dave, I said, I run this lap and I let the car feed out the wall. And he goes, oh, no, no, no, you don't want to do that. And I was like, why not? Dave Marcus says

You're just adding feet to the lap You're just making it longer They're making the distance longer And you taught me how to drive the line You know And get back in the car Held the steering wheel as tight as I could And I ran the tightest line

I possibly could Because I asked you, I said Won't it bog it off? Bog the motor down off the corner He's like oh no no no Don't worry about that He's like just run as short a line As you can run

And I was like all right If you say so And I went out there And I ran basically You know Right over the top of your lap times and I always remembered that. I took that everywhere, every race

when I went to Dayton and Talladega for the rest of my cup career. I always remembered day's words. And any time I thought maybe opening a wheel up was the thing to do, I always reminded myself about that day testing at Talladega. I was probably only about 17, 18 years old.

Hadn't been racing late models but for a couple months. But I appreciated that. You know, I was just a young boy. I wasn't even racing in the Xfinity series yet, and Dad didn't have the patience as a father to say, this is what you need to do. This is why that's wrong. This is why that's right.

But Dave, being the student and the, I mean, being the teacher that he is and the, you know, with his knowledge and spent, you know, moments with me to fix that, fix my problems out there. And it was, it stayed with me in that entire career. It helped me win polls at Daytona.

We would watch the dark fish. and I'm, you know, we beat Jeff Gordon for the pole at Daytona, and I told my crew chief, I said, I ran as, I ran the best line I could run around one and two. I'm literally, because you, you had to run as tight as you could, but if you hit that apron with the splitter or the, or the skirts, that was speed. There's one bumped or two of that. Yeah, and you can hit, you lose a mile an hour. And I said, I ran as tight as the apron without touching it.

I don't think I could have done any better. And we watched the dartfish, and I was literally six inches lower than gold. and all the way around the corner, you can see my car just inching ahead, little by little by little. And it was because of that work with Dave that day. I'll never forget it. You're always amazing to me.

When I went to race in Iraq, I ran there a couple years. You were one of the guys that worked with those cars. Not only did you test all the cars, which was a tough task that took a lot of hours of your day. You had to drive all the cars to make sure they were pretty equal. you and Dick Trickle, Jim Sauter. But you also, when the drivers would come over there to drive them, you would sit down or you would answer any question that I had

because I was a fish out of water, you know, and I'm this, I was only in there because I was the Xfinity Series champion, right? I got no cup experience racing against cup guys, Indy car guys, and I'm like, golly, how the heck am I going to do this? And you're touring me and any time, I had a question. You spent all the time that I asked for, and I appreciate it. Big, big fan of yours, a lot of respect for you, and what you've done for our sport and the

things, the time you put in, there's going to be a ton of people that are thrilled to hear this podcast and relive some of those memories. And your memory, I don't know how in the hell it's amazing. That's been the most impressive thing for this conversation, is how you recollect all. all those things. I can't even remember shit like that. Well, 32 years I'd done those IRO cars. Yeah.

Wow. There were weeks when I was in a race car seven days a week. Right. Wow. Between testing your father's car and the IRA cars and my own car. Yeah. You know, we run Pocono, and then we'd have a test come up at Indy, and there would be an I rock race involved.

So Childress would have your father's car there, and my guys were trying to bring my car, and I would be doing the IRA car. So Monday morning, we was going again, you know, right after the race at Pocono. We appreciate you. Thanks for coming by. Well, thank you. It's a pleasure being here and just want to say hello to all the race fans and hope they enjoy the show. They will.

I promise you. No doubt about it. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Hiring used to be hard. Multiple jobs sites, stacks, resumes, a confusing review process. But today, hiring can be easy and you only have to go to one place to get to get it done. That's ziprecruiter.com slash

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ZipRecruiter.com slash Dale Jr. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. the Valvalene DIY question of the week. Dale, you know, we get this a lot. So let's ask it right now on the DIY, because this is a big DIY project you did. The Western Town. How did that happen?

What's the latest with the Western Town? I mean, it's been around a long time now. So the Western Town on your property, tell us a story. Sure. So the Western Town is definitely a DIY project. We were looking for a, we were looking for a place to hang out and raise hell with friends.

I didn't want that place to be connected or part of my own home. Right. And so, you know, back then I was smoking cigarettes and drinking, and we would party in the basement of my old house across street and D.I. And it ruined the entire house, right? Because all that stuff's going through the returns and the air conditioner and everything. I didn't care people went outside to smoke or not. They smoked inside.

It was awful. And the floors would get destroyed, sticky and thick with spilt drinks and beer and all that. And so we were trying to figure out something, and I thought, man, I'm going to build a tree house. This is way back before I ever saw that there were actually people building tree houses for adults. But I thought, man, I'm going to build a tree house, you know, big thousand square foot or something like that up in a tree. And Kelly thought, well, if you're going at a party, you're going to fall out of that. Or somebody is. Yeah.

We know your friends. Yeah. So I thought, yeah, that sucks. Yeah, that sucks. I can't build. Well, it was a letdown. I can't build it. Damn.

Love that idea. So I was watching a 60-minute special, a rerun actually of Willie Nelson, and he had bought some property, and it had an old western town movie set, just the facade of the buildings, and he finished out the saloon so he could go in there and hang out. And I thought, wow, that's perfect. I'll do that. All I need is the facade of everything else. Nothing else has to be real except where we're going to party, which will be the saloon.

So I had this place down next to this creek, and it's a floodplain, so I couldn't get a permit to build there. So we built this on cinder blocks. It's not got a foundation or anything, and not footings or nothing in the ground. It's just laying on dirt. But me and Sunny, my property manager, drew sort of the size of this western town, or this, basically the saloon first, on a napkin. We hired independent contractors from the southeast, various different guys that had never worked together, that were looking for work, to come down there and build it.

And in six months, we had a saloon, and we had added on a hotel because I thought, well, if we're going to party on my own property, I got to have a place for people to sleep, if they need to sleep it off. And as time went on and building went on, we added on, you know, stores and the sheriff's office with jail sales. My uncle's Robert and Jimmy Jr. built the jail cells.

Well, them up here in Junior Motorsports, we got a bank with teller windows and everything. We have a church. It's actually been used for a wedding. That's right. My friend, Sean Brawley, used the western town setting. It was a beautiful wedding. Yeah. So anyways, when we first built it, it was just for partying.

We had parties there pretty much every week. and every Tuesday or so we were there till the sun came up. And a lot of people come over, hang out. You know, that eventually sort of over years, over a decade or so, ran its course, and we just kind of quit using it. Then it became something that people started using for commercials. NASCAR shot some commercials down there, multiple music videos. Different bands have came and used it.

We use it for company functions, family functions, family day. We use it for sponsor events. They love coming down there and having dinner, catering it. We've used it for New Year's Eve parties, for friends, weddings. So it's kind of become this multi-purpose sort of thing. And that's, yeah, I'm glad that it continues to get used. When it was built, it looked brand new, right?

But it's a western town. So we had Sean of Robinson, old race car driver and friend of ours, come through and she's a designer sort of. paints and does a lot of decorating and so forth. She came in and painted this whole town, I mean, all of it, this entire town to make it look used and worn and rustic. It took a while, but she did a lot of great work, all of it's still there. But it's, you know, we've had a ton of fun there.

It's still a place where maybe once or twice a year, we'll go down there and have some beers. It's got a pool table, big giant bar, beer. It's easy to cater down there. It's pretty functional, to be honest with you. It is. Pretty useful. You have got internet down there and so forth.

I know some people probably think that's funny, but when you're down there and there's no cell service, there is no cell service. There is no cell service. Yeah, down on this bottom that it's in. If it belongs to you, you will have fast internet speed. That's just a fact. I don't care where it is.

It's helpful. You have to play, you know, stream music or whatever, watch a fighter or football game or something down there. We've watched, you know, we've watched the Super Bowl down there. We've watched big sporting events down there for fun. So it's great. You know, don't expect the bathroom to be too awesome. It's pretty straightforward.

And it's like the bathroom is for guys and girls. And being in a floodplain, it's got that sulfuric smell when you flush. So the point being, Yeah, it's no frills. It's like it's pretty rough. It's frilly. No, I mean, it's got a... It is frilly?

I mean, look, that place, what you define is rough. I'm telling you, there's a lot worse. I mean, being in a western town, I don't know what people expect. Like, it's a Paris, you know, restroom or something like that. There's tables and stuff in there. All that stuff. All that stuff, all the tables, all the chairs are hand-me-downs. Like, used wooden chairs, they fall apart.

You'll sit in one and it will just fall apart on you. Yeah. Well, that's, you know, that's no frills. Yeah. Hey, you know what I love about that? Did you know this, Matthew? A lot of the big wood beams came from the Canapolis, the Cannon Mills. Oh, really?

Yes. So they were recycled from the can when the cannon mills got imploded. We built this thing as cheap as we could. So all that stuff was pennies on the dollar. So there's history. That's history right there. That's cool. Yeah.

And some of the old original paint and stuff still on those beams. Yeah, man, we built it ourselves pretty much. haven't got any fines or anything from the county or whatever, you know, for building it without any promotion. If it was going to happen, it had happened already because, I mean, at this point, you know, everybody's, they want to go see it. So it's been an awesome place. I mean, like, you know, that thing, like you said, I mean, I've had a birthday party there. You've had birthday parties there. I mean, we've had a lot of good time.

And it's still there being used. That's awesome. From high mileage rides that need that thick anti-wear film to newer engines that have carbon buildup, head over to balveline. slash Dell to find the product spec for your engine. That's valvillin.com slash Dell and a big thanks to Valvene for doing this segment. Thanks for tuning in. This is the nationwide portion of the show. Well, it's the Ask Junior portion of the show sponsored by nationwide, our longtime partners.

So excited about your questions today. Let's go, Leah. All right. First question from BD. Langford. I think everybody probably wants to know what it's like to be calling a race and one of your car spends out another driver in a payback. situation.

Well, yeah, so the reference that's referencing this weekend with Justin Algar and Ross Chastain, this could take the entire segment, to be honest with you described. But anyways, I had to call both where Chastain spun Justin and where Justin spun Chastain, I had to call them both. And that was in my segment of the racetrack. And it was very easy to call it straight. down the middle. Honestly, you know, I want to work some of the Xfinity races. I don't want to work them all, but I do want to work some of them because I just like the repetitions and learning and

getting better. And I can call those races without pulling for my cars, without hoping they'll win. I can shut it off like a light switch. And, you know, I've, I've raced a long time. I'm not a new owner. I've been an owner for a long time. So it's not really about the balls and strikes. the wins and losses it's about the long term the employees their benefits their happiness their livelihood at home their families so the you know leading laps running for fifth and getting wrecked that's part of life that's part of racing it's easy for me to sort of put that on the shelf for the day and just be a broadcaster and and call the race so i didn't really have a problem with it and yeah I'd rather it had been in another corner so I didn't have to call it but when thrown into that situation I feel like I can call it pretty straight I can call it as straight as the next guy and you know I felt like that's what I did on Saturday I felt like you know they got down in the corner Justin drove down in the inside of Chastain three wide down the back straight away they got into the inner loop and Justin tried to race into there and it's tough to do that two white

somebody always ends up on the wrong end of it, and he ended up on the wrong end of it in that situation. And I think Ross didn't pay him any favors, but Ross didn't want to spend himself out, so he held the wheel straight, and Justin got turned around, and Justin was unhappy and mad about it, and Justin was, Justin said in his post-race,

he said, it's not just about that particular day or that particular corner or getting spun out today. This is something that's been going on for a while. I've had problems with him or he's had issue with Ross. And I could see it coming. They went down the back straight away. Ross gave a car in front of Justin and Justin an opportunity to go by entering the interloop. Justin said, I don't want to pass you going into the interloop. So he's going to stay behind Ross because he wants to punt Ross. And I saw it coming and I think I called that pretty much like it was. He went in the corner and sent Ross for spinning the carousel.

and put Ross out of the race. And, you know, I really kind of, as far, like Johnny Davis and I, the owner of that car, chatted just a bit after the race. It's no big deal. We both go into there knowing that those cars could be junked, and we definitely don't want our drivers to continue that situation going forward. So I text Justin after the race. I said, hey, I said, I don't want Chastain recognition.

us next week, you are tasked with getting this straightened out. You get with Chastain and y'all work it out. And I gave him Johnny's number so he could reach out to Johnny if he wanted to and talk to Johnny about his car. And so, you know, all that stuff will work itself out. It's nothing that doesn't happen pretty much almost every week between somebody, owners and drivers and all that good stuff. But yeah, I feel like if it happened every week, I'd probably have to talk to my driver more about, you know, not doing that every week rather than what I'm going to do as a broadcaster. You know, I want to continue working those Xfinity races. And hopefully, yeah, I don't have to do that often because if I do have to do it often, maybe I need to talk to my driver about getting in those situations every single week because it's not doing anybody no good. Kind of on that same topic. John Duncan writes in and he asks, the days of rubbing is, racing seem to be changing to rub and get you dumped. Is that how you see it? And if so,

do you, what do you think is the reason for that? Well, you know, rubbing is racing basically is always meant, you know, you can lean on me. I'm going to lean on you. You know, if you want to rub my side and give me a donut, I'm going to give you a donut or two back. What happened, you know, when you get spun into a wall like Justin, Bubba Wallace, Jimmy Johnson, that's not rubbing. That's not rubbing is racing. That's getting spun into a fence. And you're going to be mad. Your cars tore up. You're no longer competitive. You've lost all this track position. It sucks. And you're mad. And you want the other guy to suffer the same way you did. It's kind of like when you're in a relationship and you're hurt and you want to make that other person feel that pain.

And you always make the wrong choice by trying to do that. But that's what you do as a driver too. You know, in that moment, when you're spun out wrecked and you're mad and your day's over, you want that other driver to experience that same frustration, disappointment, and you won't put them in the wall. And if you're given that chance really quickly, like Justin was, because that was moments later that he was behind Chastain, I think if they had been not been on the racetrack for 20, 30 laps, maybe Justin would have thought, you know, better about doing that. I don't know.

but if you're given a week or several days or me even 50, 100 laps to consider doing that to another driver, a lot of times you change your mind. You think, man, maybe I don't want to do that. Maybe I'll talk to them after the race. Or maybe I'll wait for another opportunity down the road when it's really going to matter to that person, such as in a championship battle or so forth. But anyhow, the question being Rubbin's racing, rubbing is two cars leaning on each other.

What we saw yesterday was guys getting turned into the fence. That's what we saw Saturday was guys getting turned into the fence. That's getting turned into the wall. You want to go do it to the guy next opportunity. All right, let's move on to a fun question for you, Dale. If you were to put a doll, a toy car, or a stack of plastic Tupperware in front of Isla, which one would she choose to play with? Start again.

If you were to put a doll, a toy car, or a stack of plastic Tupperware in front of Isla, which one would she choose to play with? Probably the car. She doesn't know the word doll. she knows the word car everywhere she sees like we're walking through the parking lot today car car she came in here earlier before the podcast or during the podcast all she sees is cars so that's probably what she's going to go to first we got we had a check up at the doctor and the doctor asked us how many words she's saying about four or so and we're like oh she said about 20 or so

words she's got a lot of words she's saying and car is one of them car and ball and a couple of other things but she'd go after the cars for sure. All right. Jay Pinkerton, he wants to know from the broadcast this past weekend, was the camera down the backstretched and the interloop, a drone or was it a cable? It was on a cable. And it was, yeah, on this very long cable, obviously.

And they just run that thing wide open back and forth. And pretty impressive. And a great shot, obviously. I think everybody enjoyed that shot a lot. And it gave you a great perspective of the cars. how they could break, outbreak each other entering the corner, and then maybe somebody got through the center of that interloop or exiting it better.

You could really see that as I could describe it to you. That really helps. I'm trying to describe something. It's really helpful when that visual aid is there, and that angle is perfect. All right, guys, that's all we have time for today. Yeah, I think going back to Rubbins Racing thing, you know, I think a reason why we're seeing so much,

you know, cars getting turned around and bent, and so forth is because the etiquette on the tracks changed a lot. Back when Mark Martin used to drive, he sort of ushered in an idea of, you're faster me, I'm going to let you go. If I catch you later, give me the same respect. But if it's in 50 laps to go, we'll race each other to death. But, you know, first 400 miles of a 500-mile race, it's lots of give and take. That's really gone out the window.

and it's because of the new rules. It's because of the low horsepower, high down force. It's really made it a small box for everybody to live in as far as competition. The fast cars and the slow cars are now much closer together in speed, and so you can't allow a guy to get by you because that is the position you're not going to get back very easily, if at all. That's why we saw the 9 and the 78 racing up through the N.S. Doorbanging.

Trix knew that if you didn't get by him right, then probably wasn't going to pass him. He knew it and he had to take that risk of getting turned into the wall or getting a flat tire. They had to race through their side by side. You see them, you saw it all day long guys racing down in their corners side by side 10, 20 years ago, they would have gave that spot away easily. They're not doing it anymore. And I love it. I think it's amazing because everywhere we go, guys are racing each other for position where they wouldn't do that before. Yeah, a lot of feelings are getting hurt, but we're getting to see as view. viewers, some really hard racing.

We're getting to see some rubbing. We're getting to see some guys spun out. We're getting to see some guys pissed off. And we're getting to see some retaliation. It's drama. It's good for the sport. It's storylines. It's the way it used to be back in the 70s and 80s

as far as the mentality of how you race and how you race each other. And I think it couldn't be coming at a better time for us. White flag, right there. White flag. White flag. Follow us on social media, everybody. That is at Dirty Mo Media and subscribe to us on YouTube. So I want to spend a few minutes talking about socks, you guys.

All right? You go your sock people, right? Between now and September 27th, the Dale Jr. Foundation and Nationwide Children's Hospital is asking you to buy and show off a unique pair of socks as a way to socket to childhood cancer. That's the program. Socket to childhood cancer. These socks are fantastic. They were designed by eight-year-old patient champion Carter Nance at Nationwide. Children's Hospital. All proceeds go to the Dale and Amy Earnhardt Fund for Childhood Cancer Research.

Buy your socks right now at www.com. Socket2CC.com. Or you can find it at the Junior Nation retail locations. By the way, I want to give a few shoutouts regarding the Dale Jr. Foundation. Y'all know that the biggest event for the foundation is coming up here in about a month or two. It's the Driven to Give event. And nationwide is the presenting sponsor. Our partner here, Dale's partner forever. You know, you've been with them for more than 30 years. I don't know if y'all know that.

That's awesome. But they are the presenting sponsor of this event. So big thanks to them. Also, Blue Harbor Bank and state water heaters have stepped up. They're contributing in big ways to that event. So thanks to all of you guys. And we look forward to that Driven to Give event coming up in a few months. Some Apple ratings and reviews.

All right. We had a bunch this week. A bunch. So I'm going to try to condemn. I've picked some pieces out of each one to try to fit in more. Okay. So these are short, but this is some of the stuff.

they said. All right, KW Bomb 488 wrote, thanks for being real and leaving the fake to sticking ball sports. You guys are genuine, scars and all. You like that? I like that. All right.

Hershey Bear says, the best podcast behind door bumper clear. Oh, man. Another. The hell is that. We shouldn't be reading those. Well, I mean, you know, listen. Well, that we should.

They gave us five stars. T. Drums 9 gave five stars and wrote, I hated podcast. If it wasn't for this show, I would have never given podcast a chance. Now here I am looking forward to my work commute so I can listen to both the Dale Jr. download and door bumper clear. I'd love to see a one combined podcast,

which is something we have actually talked about. We may do that here in a few weeks. Thrill game five stars a row. We'd love to hear more about crew chiefs exploring the gray areas of the sport. That always interests me. I thought it was a pretty good idea. Chris Strasberg says, even as a Gordon fan, I have a lot more in common with Dell.

I don't usually listen to podcasts, but I love this one. I met Junior on Pit Road at the Roval last year, and you know what? He was a nice guy. I don't know what he expected. I mean, but you were nice. Yeah. Good job on that.

Lastly, a fan in Colorado gave us five stars and said, this podcast has rekindled their love for NASCAR. I love these types of reviews. Yeah, I like those as well. We've seen these a lot, so I'm reading the whole one here. This podcast has rekindled my love for NASCAR. I was not a Dale Earnhardt fan. In fact, I hated the intimidator.

It's supposed to be a gentleman sport, and he was no gentleman. I don't know anybody that thought this was a gentleman's sport. But anyways, then in 1998, Daytona, I found myself on the edge of my seat, rooting for him with three laps to go. What the hell? I'm my feeling, is what they write. The white flag waves, and I literally screamed, go, Dale, you got this. All of a sudden, I realized, I'm a Dale Earnhardt fan.

That being said, for the last few years, I've quit watching NASCAR. There were other things to do. Then a couple of weeks ago, I began listening to this podcast. I realized I have fallen back in love with NASCAR. The histories and the stories on this podcast have been a treasure. By the way, Dale, we've all shatter. ourselves at one time. And that's white flag.

Odd history. The year was 1987. Huey Lewis and the news was a red-hot rock band that already had three number one hits. Like the power of love. That was a good one. Not my favorite, but when they weren't doing it all for their baby, I hated that one. They were showing a whole lot of loving. Not another song that I would have picked from their catalog.

But they were showing that loving to their friend and race car driver Tim Richmond. During the Champion 400 in August 1987 at Michigan International Speedway, Tim had Huey as a special member of his pick crew. His friend Huey handed drinks to him on the pit stop. After a blown motor, Richmond, he finished 29th. The race actually turned out to be Richmond's final start. An even odd or tidbit about Tim's connection with the band surfaced a year later. Tim was battling double pneumonia, which unknown to most at the time was due to complications stemming from the HIV virus.

Richmond was said to be training to try to get back into the race car. He was quoted as saying, I was going to start running a little bit, but I bummed up my ankle. I was at a Huey Lewis concert in Kansas City and it felt. off the stage. Goodness. I'd never heard that story. I knew a good bit about Tim's final few months

in NASCAR and all that and how that went down. Never heard this story. That last race, I think, too, is the one where supposedly he blew the engine. You know, the rumors were at that Michigan race.

Yeah, good stuff. Man, that's a great show. Dave Marcus, awesome guest. But before we put a bow on the show, let's have some fun with Pristine Auction. Door bumper clear. Another podcast we have on Dirty Mo Media. Bids on items from the table for their show using Pristine Auction. If you don't know about Pristine, they're an authentic memorabilia website

where you can bid and win amazing autograph items from the comfort of your home or your podcasting table. That's right. I've signed for these guys. They're legit. Authenticity guaranteed. Indeed. Every autograph on there, it's the real deal. There are all types of auctions, including daily ones. Also like those 10-minute auctions.

Those are fast, get it done, get your item. You can snack some good deals on those 10-minute auctions. For some reason, we let Dillner pick out the items to highlight, and this week he's going to try to bid on a Rick Flair limousine. What? It's a black-stretched limo signed by the nature boy. It has a few bids on it already, up to $20. That's really a pretty freaking creative item.

Especially if it's a real limo, right? No, it's a tie-cats. Oh, it's a die-cast, got it, thank you. It is a, that's very creative. I'll hand it to you, Matthew. Good job. I actually wouldn't mind having one of those on the desk. Go check out pristineauction.com now.

It's free to register, free to bid, and of course you only pay for the items you win. That's pristine auction, spelled PR-I-S-T-O-S-E-S-E. I-N-E-Oction.com. Listen up, Junior Nation. When you register, please select Dale Jr. Download podcast from the drop-down menu

in the How Did You Hear About Us section. That's really important. It lets them know that we sent you there. All right, guys, enjoy the show. I hope you enjoyed the show. Enjoy your week. And we'll see you next week. This bit of bad assery was made by Dirtymo Media.

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