The Dale Jr. Download - 273 - Jimmie Johnson: I'm Not Done Yet

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

Dale Earnhardt Jr. sits down with seven-time NASCAR Cup Series Champion Jimmie Johnson. The former teammates discuss Jimmie missing the playoffs for the first time ever, the fire that burns within, winning five-in-a-row, getting Dale Jr out of his comfort zone, biking in XXL spandex, the good bad and ugly of parenting and the time that Jimmie crashed off of a mountain. DJD hits Indianapolis head-on, discusses how Corey Lajoie made the best of a stinky seat and the odd connection between Elvis Presley and Jeff Gordon.  Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is a production of DirtyModeo Media. Hey, everybody, man, that's got me pumped up. Boom! Coming in hot. Dale Jr. for the Dale Jr. Download. Co-host, Mike Davis is here. Producer Matthew Dillner, social media expert, Leah Marie Vaughn. Jimmy Johnson is our guest today.

You're fired up? I am. Doesn't that start and start? Did you go on? Yeah. Yeah. He can come in soft that way. No, I mean, Dale didn't come in soft.

He's here. I'm trying to desperately reach for his level. He's like, Monday, Monday. So we had a big weekend, Indianapolis, cutoff race. Pretty exciting race. And what is it, man? It's not, every year it seems like that by the time we get about 30 laps from the end, half the field's gone. Why are the good guys?

There's a lot of crashes in the race at Indie. And this year was no different, but the years before were the same way. the year that Casey Kane won it, man, there's a lot of issues on restarts and so forth, took out a lot of guys, and just thinking back through races, it's been pretty interesting. Yeah.

To see that at Indy, you'd think that that would race much like kind of Pocono, where there's not tons of attrition and guys getting crashed out, but it doesn't seem to race like Pocono at all. It races more like Daytona and Talladega. In the Xfinity and the Cup series, we're seeing big drafts down the straightaway, big runs coming from guys,

opportunities to make two and three wide passes and taking big risks and racing side by side through the corner, which is making guys get loose underneath each other, which caused a majority of the wrecks this weekend. And I think that's just a trend, you know, that we've seen throughout the season with the new rules. I don't even call them new anymore, but the rules this year has changed the way guys race, Mike, and the fans should be celebrating in the streets because years are the ago, even last year, when a guy caught you, you really didn't race him at hard. If he got

underneath you, you kind of let him go. There wasn't a lot, it wasn't very comfortable to race side by side through the corner, and it slowed both of you way down. And so you kind of let the guy go, and you knew that if you caught him, you was probably going to have an easier time of getting around him the next time. There was a lot of nice driver etiquette going on out there, and it kind of sucked as far as viewing that, watching that. Now, as on the racetrack, it was nice when he called a guy and he wasn't hard on you. But watching it wasn't a whole lot of fun. Well, I would imagine it even harder to call it, like radio style that way.

Yeah. Well, you, I guess so, yeah, but. You don't know if so? Well, you were doing it. Yeah. I thought it was a pretty exciting race last year at that track. But I'm just saying in general, every weekend, the mentality and the driver etiquette has changed. And we saw more of that this weekend where guys race each other into the corner side by side.

Right. They're not letting each other go by. You do not want to give a position away to a guy because he is not going to give it back to you later in the race. It is hard to pass. That sucks, but it's also a good thing. Because now guys aren't wanting to get past. Right.

They don't want to give up a spot, and we're seeing them run through the corner side by side. It's creating frustration. It's creating contact. It's creating drama. And so the fans should be really happy with what they've been able to see over the last several months. And just a really interesting race. Kevin Harvick dominated it.

Now, he wasn't the best car all the time. But in the early parts of the run, when the tires were good and in cool and overcast conditions, again, where the tires have good grip, he was dominant. He could drive away. Late in that race, it was perfect conditions for him. He had the clean air. He had a cool overcast racetrack, relatively new tires. And he was going to, he's just going to drive off.

And he did. But at the end of the long run, Cyle Larson had the best car. He drove up through there and could pass guys on old tires. The only problem is that, you know, that race is going to come down to late yellows and short runs. It's going to come down. It ain't going to come down to a long run.

So that was the disadvantage for Kyle Larson. Also, he got loose and got into the fence, but had he been out there, I still think Harvick would have beat him. Did you think Blaney might have had something? I had that caution not bidding? Because he had passed Harvick for a lead. Harvick chose incorrectly to take the inside line. He did.

I didn't know why he did that. he was watching the last several restarts and he said quote or he said the outside got dirty i'm not talking i don't understand whether he's talking about the groove itself whereas in uh there's you know there's rubber build up and so forth on the track that he didn't like or whether he meant that the driver etiquette and the drivers were getting rough i don't know um but he chose the inside line and uh learned very quickly that you know he didn't want to be down there on the next restart so uh yeah blaney had taking the lead and if you can get the lead in these cars with these big giant spoilers on them, you can use that to your advantage, basically taking the air away from the guy behind you,

going wherever he's going. And you don't have to go far on indie. It's pretty much one crew for racetrack. So wherever you're going to run, that's where about is running. There were some great opportunities for guys to get runs on each other and make passes down the straightways depending on how your car was trimmed out. You could see Bubba Wallace, who had an amazing run that finished in third place this weekend. He had the car set up to really have.

have great handling in the corner, but that was a disadvantage on the straightaways. And you could see how he was getting challenged by Blaney and a couple of the guys at the end of the straightaway. He had to get really aggressive and defensive to maintain his position because those guys could run up on him so well down the straightaway with their cars being a little more trimmed out. So there was a dynamic there that's pretty interesting with this year's cars where you'll see guys qualify really well.

but maybe not race as well because their cars are set up to run well alone. They're trimmed out, but then when they get into the race and in traffic, they struggle. Now, Kevin Harvick didn't have that problem. He was fast by himself and in traffic. But, you know, it's been pretty interesting. It was a fun race to call. I didn't have as much fun calling the Pocono radio style. And now let me tell you why, all right?

Because about 50 laps to go in the race, my bus was leaving the track, and the door came open on the side of the bus. and I'm right over, did I talk about this on the show? No, you told me about it, but I didn't know if you would bring this up on the show, but you are. I had a good time doing radio style at Watkins Glen. I had a good time doing it this weekend at Indy, but I did not have a good time at Pocono. All right?

And we're calling the race. I'm over the tunnel on the top of a billboard, right? Directly over the tunnel talking about the race. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Here they come. Here they come. And there they go. So my bus leaves the track. After we get past halfway, there's no point in him stand there.

he can get on to the next town, right? And that's what he likes to do. As he's driving through the tunnel, one of the doors, in the bays of the, underneath the living quarters, the bay door came open on one side, and it ripped the door off going through the tunnel. So he pulls over outside the track, literally 50 feet away from me, to fix this.

He has to get the door off and figure out a way to hold everything in position and get things out from under the bus. He's got like an hour and a half job here trying to organize this bus. to be able to get down the road. He drove to Walmart and got a piece of plywood and cut it and put it over this hole in the side where the door was. That's what he ended up doing.

But all this is happening with 50 laps to go in the race. So I'm watching the race trying to call action and then looking over my shoulder going, what in the world is going on with this bus? I don't have any binoculars. I can't really see what's happening with it. Yeah. I don't really know what's going on. I'm up there with the MRN guy.

He's got, he's calling the race on radio. He's got binoculars. And I'm like, hey, man, you see what's going on with that bus? because I can see him looking at it. And he's like, it looks like a door store. Oh, man, that sucks. He didn't know it was yours.

No, well, he probably did, but we did not discuss that. Yeah. I didn't think it was important to let him know that it was my bus. But, God, for the last 50 laps of that race, I was not able to focus. Yeah.

Not at all. It's hard. We watch it, and maybe you'll find that more entertaining. Now that you have that knowledge. Well, no, I knew about that because I know that it bothered you at the time, and that would be very difficult

to call a race. radio style, you're not used to radio style, and have your property out there destroyed within 50 feet of your eyesight. Yeah, that would be a, that would be a inconvenience. I was like, oh, I was done. I was check out. So fortunately, you didn't have that situation at Indianapolis, so it was much better. Yeah. And we, you know, we've talked about the crowds in Indianapolis way back when, you know, we first started going there. They was selling a place out, filling up the grandstands over in turn three where I was at. Last year, when I was at that perch in turn three, there were maybe a couple dozen, maybe a hundred people in those grandstands where I was at.

Nobody. I remember. I was one. Yeah. We had the whole place ourselves. Because it had rained. This was like on a Monday or Tuesday. Yeah, but still, there was nobody there was your point. Yeah. And this weekend, there were a couple thousand people over there where I'm at. There were people that had, you know, it was great. It was good, it was a good improvement. And, you know, I don't know if people assume that NASCAR is just going to boom one day. have 200,000 people show up to the any race overnight from one year to the next. I don't know what people think is going to happen, all right.

But if you watch the stock market or anything else that sort of has its ups and downs on a regular basis, the stock market will be a good thing to use as an example because it does go up and down on a regular basis. The drops are sudden. And the climbs back up are sometimes slow and methodical. Yeah, especially if it's sustainable. Right. If you have some big spike, it's not sustainable, and everybody knows that. Yeah.

Right. Same thing for this. Same thing for NASCAR and our attendance was, I think we're turned. I think the corner has been turned. I think we turned it earlier in the season. And I think we're trending back in the right direction. We certainly have a great product on the racetrack. And we have a lot of great storylines and drama and personalities in the sport.

But I'm seeing the numbers are a little bit. better on TV. The numbers are a little bit better in the grandstands. And I mean, Darlington was amazing as far as how people turned out to watch that race. We had a 20% increase on viewership in the Xfinity race. We had a pretty good number for our cup race, considering it was at 2 o'clock in the morning when it ended. I just feel like things are going in the right direction. But people still will say, ah, that place was empty. I don't know what you're watching. I don't know what race you're watching. Nobody there. That's bull crap. There were more people there this year. It ain't going to, they're not going to, you know, 200,000 people aren't going to show up next year.

That's never going to happen. It's going to be a gradual increase, and we're going to gain those fans back just a little at a time. So I was very happy to see the increase in fans that showed up. I thought they saw a great race. I asked them as I got down out of the perch. I said, did y'all like the race? And they did. The only thing they did not like was NASCAR not throwing the green flag at the end of stage two.

Well, I'm one of them. We had a late yellow. I'm one of them. And we had a few laps left. There was one single piece of debris on the racetrack off turn two. Right. That was the problem. All right. And they had a chance to go back green. We had a lot of things going on.

We had playoff bubble contenders in several positions, broke in and around the top ten that could change the way the playoffs were going to shape up. And it was just necessary to get back to green. What we didn't know is that once they cleaned up that one piece of debris off turn, to they found another piece. They didn't tell it. We didn't know that from NASCAR in the moment.

We didn't get to say that on the broadcast. But that was NASCAR's reasoning for not throwing, I still I'm still frustrated because I think, you know, hey, it's a piece of debris. Get the damn piece of debris off track. Let's go. I mean, how hard is it to pick a piece of debris up?

But I'm still a little frustrated. I still think they could have got back to Green. And I think it was tough because then you got the stage break, which is an extended caution. So now we're under caution for five laps to end the stage, and then we got extended cautions between the stages. So, I mean, we're just sitting there with nothing to do, right?

Fans have nothing to watch. And the fans are at home, too. They don't have all the answers. They don't know that they found another piece of debris. So that's a little frustrating moment in the race. But otherwise, great event. How about that tire barrier off a turn two? Brad Kislauski hit that wall.

It was a very, you know, it was a very odd. and rough angle to be going into a wall. But one of the things that I noticed that was really interesting about that crash is that they had that giant tire barrier and they had it spaced off the wall, like five or ten feet. I thought that was brilliant. Something so simple, something so simple

and really unrecognizable or nothing that you would pick up on really made a huge difference in that impact, lessening that impact. It allowed that tire wall a little give before it ever got to that concrete wall. Luckily, he didn't hit it hard enough to ever really absorb all of that energy and distance to that wall. What was his problem? Right? Did he voice some displeasure afterwards?

I think he did. I think that he just doesn't like the angle of that wall. It's definitely a bad angle. I mean, if he wasn't complaining about the tires, because the tires saved his life in that case. No. I mean, if he had, if he didn't hit the, he could, you'd never want to go into a wall dead head on, right? And you could potentially do that there in that case. But I think with that tire barrier there, it was.

really smart. I know it's not rocket science, but something so simple is to space that barrier off that wall. You know, you go to other race tracks and you see tire barriers right up against the concrete. But in this case, they had it spaced off the wall, brilliant by the track, really helped Brad sustain a much lesser of an impact. The hardest impact of the weekend. Landon Castle. Oh, my gosh. I text him immediately. I mean, I knew he would get his phone in his hands as soon as he got out of the infield care center, but I was scared to death for his health in that moment. I will be honest. It was vicious. It was a hard, hard crash. You're coming down the front straight away wide open into that corner. You don't really use tons of break going in there.

And the angle that he hit is just the worst physical angle. You know, it's just a bad, bad deal. And luckily, he says he's okay. I haven't talked to him today, but I talked to him yesterday after he got sorted out and says that he was fine. Denny's hit didn't look very good in practice. We didn't have a great look at it as far as our camera angles, but it's good to see him okay. Good to see Brad. Stop everybody and allow Denny to get out of his car and escape from that fire because

that thing was burning up pretty quickly. So, and just a lot of hard hits. I thought, man, the two car, the two and the 20 and the Xfinity race. Yeah. That was such a hard hit for Reddick. Oh, man. Let me tell you another scary one. This was close.

Nothing happened, so people kind of gloss over it. But that incident on Pitt Road, where Jimmy Johnson's pit crew had Bubba Wallace coming. You know, Chase got turned on pit road. They were so close to taking out Jimmy's pit crew there. I was, oh, it was so nerve-wracking to see that. But, man, all that's to say, there were just some really close calls and hard hits in this weekend. all across the board. Well, you got a straightaway nearly a mile long

and you're going into a 90-degree flat corner. There's nothing that's going to slow you down if you have any trouble. And their corner speed, mid-corner speeds are up because of the rule package there in both the Xenity and the cup. The cars go through the peak middle of the corner quite a bit faster than they typically would.

So it's just, it was pretty nerve-wracking. Luckily, though, it seems everybody's got out and everybody's okay and going to be able to go to the racetrack next week in race. Did you enjoy the playoff points battle throughout that race? You know, with Jimmy wrecking, that sort of took it down from four to three. Swares had his accidents or he'd brush the wall or something. So it really became a two-horse race, which is, that's what they were fighting for me.

I enjoyed Bubba. Bubba was in 10th at one point, and he drove in a matter of just a few laps up to third or fourth place, passing. Oh, he was so fast. And I was hollering. I was like, oh, we got it. We got, look at Bubba, look at Bubba. We got to get the Bubba. You're saying you were hollering on the back on the radio.

Yeah, I was hollering to my booth mates and so forth to like Bubba's making moves. We need to get on him quick. You know, we're covering a lot of stories. There was so much going on in that race, and we did get to Bubba and was able to talk about him. We covered the bubble points battle all day long. I was hoping that maybe a guy like Matthew de Benedetto would get up there and maybe give us an opportunity to talk about a surprise or a shock winner that was going to really, you know, come out of nowhere and take a playoff spot, but that didn't materialize. Ryan Newman, just typical Ryan Newman, very methodical.

They did a really amazing job in the first stage to be able to acquire some points, and they're not a stage point getting team. They don't qualify well enough to put themselves in position to get stage points, to finish in the top 10 in the first stage. They don't. They've got one top 10 starting position all year. And so if you can't qualify the top 10, it's very difficult to get that track position on the track. And they haven't really been able to, they've got way far less stage points than Jimmy Johnson,

than Boyer, and so. So they're a team that goes out and gets the end result, gets the top 10, gets the eighth place finish every single week. And that's what they did again this weekend. And they've made that work through methodical prodding along throughout the event to put themselves in position. And kudos to Ron Newman. I'm going to tell you, man, that team came in last year. They were awful. They were 25th, 28th, 20th.

They would go to places like Martinsville and run freaking almost dead, freaking last. It was awful. And I really did not expect things to get a whole lot better. After what I'd seen out of Ryan at the RCR over the last couple of years, I just didn't think this was anything if at all lateral move for him. I really didn't think that I was like, all right, I don't know how, I don't know if that six cars very good,

and he hasn't been very good, and this just doesn't seem like a great marriage. I don't understand it. But man, was I wrong? They have then, I know that he's, you know, he's not in the top ten in points. I know he's not won a race, but dang, has he turned around the performance of that team?

You can't overstate it. No. Just impressive. And now that he's in, this thing sets up so well for him to just bulldog his way through. We'll see. Well, like, I mean, now you start off with just a five-point separation between 10th and 16th. I know, but these eighth place finishes without collecting multiple stage points,

and he's got to be able to qualify better. They've got to be able to qualify better to put themselves in that top 10 to attain them stage points in that first and second stage. I just don't think these eighth place finishes will get him in the next round. He's barely hung on to that 15th, 16th place in points as it is. All right. So he is very vulnerable in this first round. So we'll see. The one thing that you can hang your hat on is that all these teams,

if you thought they were aggressive in the tech line throughout the year, oh, that's ramping up. Oh, man, I can't wait. All the guys, all those guys, they got things in their pocket on the shelves in the back, but they ain't been running. All these cars are getting ready to improve, change just a little bit, as far as their performance and how well they're going to drive. At least that's what your hope is as a driver that you're,

crew chief's got a few tricks up his sleeves that he's not he wasn't willing to run or use during the regular season and that they're going to get a lot more aggressive on the body and so forth and trying to get the car through tech and take advantage of some of the advantage you know the things they can do we'll see we'll see something to keep an eye on that'll be fun all right well cool hi i'm delin hart junior due time off is a campaign by mount do they want to empower people to do what they love and they help remove those barriers to get in the way of their passion do that's good. Put you bother me.

Time in get that money. In partnership with Mountain Dew, I've been giving some of my employees DTO, due time off, and $1,000 to pursue their passion. We have one more left, and it's a special one. So stay tuned and do the do. All right, before we bring in our guest, let's talk about our friends at ZipRecruiter. Hiring can be a slow process.

Who is that? I don't know. Cafe Altura. C-O-O-R-A. Oh, Dylan Misskiewitz. It's got the spelling. Miskowicz. Miskowitz. Miskowitz.

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You know his URL was like ZipRecruiter.com, Miskowitz. It's a wonder anybody got to him. You think the director of coffee guy has a specific URL? He was big enough to get put into our ad read. No kid. All right, Jimmy is here. Come on in. There he is.

Well, we'll get up hug and do all that at the end. Yeah, we've learned it. Free hugs. Nobody's got time for that. That's fair. Yeah. If we get up, everybody gets up, everybody leaves cameras, and it takes like 15 minutes to get everything back going. Right.

I like it. And before you know, we've got a three-hour podcast. Plus, we're such good friends. I mean at the table here, you don't need us to hug you to know that you're loved. No, you're absolutely right. I mean, come on. There's some people in here that we need to probably communicate that. You're not one of them.

No. You know it. You just know it. I didn't expect to come straight out of the lobby right into the studio, so I'm just a little surprised. Oh, really? We used to be in there in that space. It was kind of awkward. Hey, you'd ever done the show.

I've not done the show. I've watched the show, and I knew that the race shop, you know, the glass windows to the shop was right there. Yep. Well, this is it, man. What do you think? You got a lot of cars on the desk? Yeah, because the desk was empty. Yeah, I was going to say some of the early shows.

Yeah, everybody's making fun of how big the table was. Yeah. Wait, wait, wait, wait. So he cuts this intro for you. Okay. Matthew. And they're always very good, all right? You look at his hat.

Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, you got the Herzog's hat. Wow. He does. Old school, I'll break it out. That says everything you need to know about Matt. Yes. So this will be good.

The goat, the greatest of all time. Some float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. Others consider themselves the luckiest of men on earth. Some speak softly but carry that big stick. One called their shot. One lived by the moniker of the Great One. Select few champion unforgettable dynasty. Like MJ, the Mick.

bossy and braiding. Greatness can span generations. From bear to Sabin. Magic to Kobe. Run, jump, kick or throw, steer, swim, lift, or plage. Super Bowl. He knows. And sometimes... It's not just the he's. You see, the goat isn't represented just in the numbers. No, it's not the statistic.

The goat is a brand It's a legacy The goat Is an icon He does a good job Yeah Thank you pal Yeah

So that gives me That gives us some chills Wow Yeah Does that embarrass you at all? It's not comfortable I have to say I know

I think that I like that reaction because you're pretty down to earth with everything that you've ever accomplished in racing you've accomplished everything right you've done more five in a row seven championships i mean the list goes on and on and you've as far as i know i mean i've known you since the very beginning you have not changed the least little bit and it's so almost impossible to go through those experiences and not be affected in some way but man if you stay true i remember the first time that I'd seen Jimmy a little bit and probably I don't remember it as well, but I saw Jimmy around Hornardays a little bit when he first started coming around from the West Coast.

But Jimmy called me one day. The one thing I do remember, Jimmy called me one day and he goes, hey man, I'm thinking about getting a bus or I'm just trying to figure out what to do and do the right thing financially. And I thought that was cool. Nobody ever called me for advice. Wow. Yeah.

And so, because I was just getting started too kind of. Yeah. But he was like, man, you just got a bus. what did you do, how'd you do it, what was it, you know. He was nice to show me how expensive it is to have a motorhome on the road. Yeah. Was he right? He was right.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It was expensive. You're like, when you see it all on paper before the checks start going out, you're like, I'm not sure I can cover that. Right. That's a big number. Yeah. And you were just getting going, too.

You really didn't have, you had an opportunity in a Kingsford car at St. Louis. And so you didn't really have a lockdown ride yet, and it would be a couple years before you really had that, that, you know, comfort and security. Yeah. But. For sure. Yeah. So one of the things, I mean, so much to talk about, but.

I've wondered where you're going to start. I mean, we've got a lot of history. Oh, I thought, you know, when he went right back to the beginnings, I thought, man, right there, the best JJ story is at the pool party when he, he helped. Well, that was in the middle, so. So that wasn't it. We didn't doing this long enough. That might be like in the first quarter.

Really? I mean, what was that, 2002? Probably. So. He's busted his head many times in the pool, so like, it's hard to get him off. I want, yeah. So, God, I guess it was. It's been a while now.

Back then. Yeah. So we were racing at, the weekend before Pocono. I don't know where we're at. I think you were. It was Dover. Yeah, you won at Dover. Okay.

So I thought you or Jeff had won. But Ricky, Hendrick was having a party at his house. I don't know what the occasion was. So I won in Fontana and was so far away from all of our friends that we never had a chance to really celebrate. And Ricky said, the next race you win, you're on the East Coast, we're having a party at my house that night. Okay. And he lived in this skated community down in Charlotte, and he texted me and was like, come over.

And I was like, oh, man, I don't know, half your buddies. And that's y'all's thing. And come on, come on, come on. And I'm like, all right, I'll go. And I was by myself and drove over there. And, man, I mean, there's cars everywhere in the streets. Ricky had no business living in this beautiful neighborhood house. either.

Plastic furniture and a bunch of rowdy guys running around. I walk around out back and there's, I don't know, 50, 7500 people there maybe. I came, there's a lot of people. I recognized some of them. I had hung around Ricky before on the lake and stuff. And we just hung out. And for hours, you know, just celebrating, talking, laughing. We got the wild hair that we should pour everything that was so.

Anything that would make bubbles. Anything that make bubbles in the hot tub. Right. What? Laundry detergent? Everything. Anything in the house. We went through two stories of the house looking for anything that would foam and ported in the hot tub.

Yeah. And so the hot... This is where things went south, right? Yes. Yes. And so the hot tub's at one end of the pool, the shallow in, and you... Which, why would you put the hot tub at the shallow in? I don't know.

I mean, well, I don't know. This makes no sense. Yeah. Oh, you guys are thinking logically on the design of the pool as you're pouring soap. soaps into the pool. Well, no, we're thinking of that almost 20 years later. In hindsight, gotcha. And so there's a handful of us in the hot tub, and man, it was hot.

Heck, cracked up pretty high. Most are. And I'm like, I am burning up. I got to get in a swimming pool cool off. And so I jumped into the pool and dove into the shallow end and hit my head. I'm telling you, it looked like a cartoon when you see the cartoon character dive in the shallow end and their feet are still sticking up. I swear he's stopped. And his feet were still there, and I was like, this isn't going to end well.

Yeah. And he stands up, man, I think I hit my head. And there's blood just flowing. I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure you hit your head. I think you did too. And it was like a, it was like a X. Like I hit it flat and it sort of just popped an X right in the center of my head. Yeah.

Like so it's, it was an X-shaped hole. And I was embarrassed to death. It was like 1 o'clock in the morning. and every sure in that in that hour or two peak hour the party i mean this is it's a still still chugging along this party yeah and i've done ruin everything right i'm the guy like the guy that causes the fight or the guy you know i mean somebody throws up in the middle of the room or whatever so here i'm like i got invited out here i'm not even i'm not you know i was lucky enough to get asked to come out there and here i am done ruined it and jimmy is like we got a guy

We got a, you know, HMS has a doctor. He's on call. I mean, he'll meet us and we'll get this fixed. And I was like, are you sure? Not a problem whatsoever. So Jimmy is going to break away from the party that they're celebrating him, his win, the success and all that. And so Jimmy got me to the hospital. And we met this guy in this clinic.

So he unlocks the door and walks us in. And he's like, oh, it's fine. You're going to be fine. I'm like, okay, good. I was like, you know, it's going to be a big scar. No, no scar. He ain't got a no scar. And so.

I was like, man, this is great. I thought the worst, but this is going to... And so he lays me down on this table, and he puts this little sheet over my head and starts to go to work, and Jimmy's over in the corner playing with all the tools. So, Jimmy, like, I'm sitting there.

I guess you can do that when you know the doctor. Jimmy's walking around there going, like, what does this do? Dink, bang, bang, bang, bang on stuff. And it's just a real funny scene. And a guy sold me up, and he's like, hey, don't go. to sleep right away. And I was like, not a problem. I was like, we're going to go back

and start back drinking beer. So he went back to the house and I was like, he told me not to go to sleep. So I guess we got to sit up and drink some more beer. So we got right back to it. That would have been some good advice on top of the no sleep is probably don't go get drunk again, right? He left that part out. He left that out. Yeah. I did end up peeing in the closet that night. Oh, I didn't know if you're going to go there. Oh, I did know if you're going to go there. Oh, you remember this? I do. How do you remember this? I was I was passed out the floor and I heard a commotion and I looked up and Dale was sleepwalking and had the closet door open and thought it was the bathroom. He told that you told this story recently and you

did say you slept walk. Yeah. I just thought that's something people say right before they pee in a closet. I never. There's a reason to justify. Well, that's my only experience. As if that did it. Oh no. But I was like, he's not going to. I'm like, whoa, wait. Dale, he's working out. I know. So I woke up sanding up peeing. This is how it happened I've never sleptwalk in my life as far as I know And when I woke up It was because somebody was saying

Hey Dale, hey And I woke up and I'm like Oh no Oh no! Oh yeah It was upstairs in this loft over the garage And it was empty, just carpet room, wasn't finished But this is Ricky's house Yeah, yeah

All right It wasn't his closet, it wasn't like a spare It wasn't like a guest bedroom closet. Of all the closets. It doesn't make it okay. This is the one to pee in. If there was a closet to pee in, that's the one. Yeah, that was the one.

Well, good to know that when you're sleeping, you still know which closet is the best to pee in. And so now, anytime anybody pees in the corner of a room or something in the middle of the night because there's somewhere they're not familiar with, it's not as funny anymore. Right. Yeah. So this is why we brought you here. We wanted to see what your recollection of this.

story was. I remember that part. Yeah, that was all good. All right. Thank you, Jimmy. I thought you. Yeah. We'll do those hugs now.

Wow, that's interesting. So you guys had met each other. You know what? By the way, just one little thing on that story. All these times you've told it, I didn't know that you were such a, I didn't know you went by yourself and didn't know just about everybody at the party. So the level of awkwardness just got ratcheted up just there. I wouldn't, I mean, I've always kind of traditionally never went anywhere.

without a friend. A wing man. Yeah, wing man. Especially that far. That was a big drive. It was a big break from the comfort zone for me. But I was, I knew Jimmy for a long time,

and I knew that he was going to be there. And that would be, and Ricky is just the nicest guy. So every time I was around Ricky, he was, Hey man. You know, I mean, we'd go out on the lake and he'd be like,

come over my boat. You know. It's such a great job of just helping all personalities, all walks of life, just kind of come together. They were cliques. Ricky would do that. Yeah.

Well, that's interesting. There were kind of clicks back then, but it was geographically. Like, you know, your group, him and his group was down South Charlotte, and we all hung around Mooresville and, actually, 36, 33, and all that. But when we all were in the same place, you know, he did a great job, like you say, of, hey, you know, this group's good, this group's good, let's all hang together. Very true. Absolutely, man.

So one of the other things about Jimmy and me that stands out is he helped me get into a lot of new things in life. That's right. Do you do that with other people? Like, you encourage other people like to play golf. You help me getting into golf, social media. Golf was one that came to me this morning. I was trying to remember there was one missing.

Yeah. And he's like, I don't even remember. I ended up buying clubs and made him out at Quail Hollow. Yep. And he said... Started him on the easy one, I said. So he's like, come play Quill Hollow. And I was like, crazy.

And he's like, I said, I'll play the back nine. Nine holes is enough. I can't play all 18. Who can go play 18 holes the first time? Okay. And so he showed up a little early, and me and Steve LaTartre were together. Steve plays golf, and he's all ready to go. And I'm like, hey, let's go the driving range, hit a few.

You know, Jimmy and them are on a whole seven, so we'll wait and go hit a few and get warmed up. So we go over the driving range, and there's a lot of guys out there sending them. And I'm like, I can't go over there and hit. I'm not going to hit it straight. and it's going to go this way and that. All these perfect shots are happening, all these guys. I'm like, I can't go over there and swing and hit in front of them guys. So we decided to sit there.

I text Jimmy, I'm like, y'all about done. He's like, we're at hole nine. Come on. And so we drove over there, and we get over there, and he's like, play this hole. And I was like, I said the back nine, I'm going to play the back nine. He's like, play this hole, play this hole, play this old, come on, come on, come on. And I'm like, no. And anyways, I think I ended up starting on the back nine.

and pared the, it's a par four. Comes out and pars it. Yeah. I'm like, really? Yeah. It was awesome. Your story still stays true

because I didn't want to believe them with the whole driving range bit when he showed up at the first hole and pars it. And I'm like, okay. I'm getting played here. Right, right, right. But this story still holds up.

This is the part where you start losing money, right? Exactly. Oh, it was way freaking downhill from there. Yeah. Oh, was it? The real player showed up after that. Yeah. It was one of those deals where Jimmy or whoever was watching my shot had to let me know where it went

because I couldn't hit the ball and keep my head down and then know where the ball went. Who were you playing with? That makes sense? Yeah, because again, you seem to get Dale to do stuff, but it's always in situations it might be the, like, peak awkwardness for him if it's people he doesn't know. Who else was there? I can't remember our fourth. Yeah, it was another guy. It would be another member the way it works out there had to be another member.

So maybe like Scott Smith or another friendship, Shelton. Okay. And then we got to the final hole, and Jimmy said that you could shotgun beers for Mulligan's, like, if you wanted to take a, if you didn't like a T-shot. My own self-made, kind of rule. Not a Quail Hollow Club rule. Basically, it was the Jimi woning everyone to shotgun beers. Right, right. So that's what he ended up doing on the final hole, which is a lot of fun. But anyways, we got it, we got me into golf, got me into social media, which was a, he had been pestering me for a year. and he's like, God, you'll love this. Jimmy's the kind of guy that when he sees an activity, some people, I think people pop into his mind that he goes,

X, Y, and Z would love this. And then he goes to him, and he's like hammering on them, and you need to try this, you're really going to like it, you're really going to like it. That's definitely the case. Is that what you do? I do, I mean, you know, life is so busy, you know, as time goes on and you start a family, you know, all the people you know, you still care for,

but the people you see consistently just get smaller and smaller, And just at nature, I like to help people. I like to, I just like to help. So when I see things that fit, and with us spending so much time together as teammates, I just saw a couple things from golf I thought would be, you know, for me it was a good way to kind of escape on a Monday and forget about a weekend. Right. I haven't played much golf since I've had kids.

It's just too much time to eat up. Same with Twitter. Just how well-spoken you are and how important your voice is in our sport, that I'm like, you've got to be in the space. I mean, our sport is missing out as a result. So that's where that pressure came from. And then with the bike, again, I knew how much of an outlet it was for me. And knowing you at the level I did, I'm like, if I could just get him to put on those damn clothes.

Yeah, right? That was a hurdle. But that would be the hurdle for most people. The spandex was the hurdle for sure. Yeah. And it was so embarrassing that he's like, our first ride was in Atlanta, Georgia. And there's about four or five guys. Alan Gusterson was one who had been riding a while.

Anyways, Jimmy's got his group of guys that's going to ride with. And I said, man, I'm going to get my spandex on and I'm going to run and jump in the Tahoe before anybody sees me. And I'm going to meet you all outside the track. And he's like, whatever. Whatever it takes. And he's in like triple X clothes because he didn't want them too tight. Yeah, I bought all giant clothes. What a loose spandex look like on somebody, by the way?

I thought it looked better than normal. At least that's what it had in my head. Yeah. Yeah. So now I have all, I have sold all that stuff. You have? Oh, yeah. Okay.

But what I bought was like $40 crap on Amazon. I didn't know there was a difference between good padding and bad padding. Yeah, the shammie. The padding in the under your butt is very important. And there's bad and there's good. So a $40 pair off of Amazon ain't going to get you very far. Maybe about five miles. What do you call it, the shammie?

The shammie wasn't your biggest problem on this day in Atlanta. It was everything else. I learned, though. Anyways, we, we, I get. my, I'm standing on the side of the road. My bus driver, Kenny's in the Tahoe waiting to make sure, because he's going to wait. Actually, I think he followed us the whole time.

Yeah, he followed us. He followed us, so he sagged us, yeah. So he followed us about, you know, half a mile behind us, the entire ride, which is about 16 miles. Anyways. But we had a bit of a delay getting started. So we, really? I'm standing on the side of the road.

Here they come. I see them come out of the tunnel, and they're coming down the four lane to me, and I'm like, all right, I'm ready to go. And I get going and I can't shift. I forgot the battery for the electronic shifting. Something people might not know, and you know, well, the man likes the plan.

The man likes his stuff in order. And he was so neurotic about making sure the batteries were charged. He charged him at home before he took his bike. He charged him again like that day and left the batteries on the charger. Yeah. So Kenny had to run back in there and get the charger and they all waited. So they stood? Of course.

Man. I made fun of him. I would have never caught him. I would have never caught him. That helped us really understand the clothing choice that he made and the triple X. Y'all got to sit there and just kind of. like just focus on that for a little while. What are you wearing?

So Kenny finally gets the battery and we get going and I'm literally one mile and already have some because I'm wobbly, right? Jimmy and those guys, I'm watching Jimmy in front of me and he is front tire, rear tire, perfectly on the white line on the side of the road, right?

Straight as an arrow, smooth and I am hirky jerky and shaking and carrying on and hanging on too tight and white knuckling and I'm all over the road and this guy's driving People are driving by flipping me off out the side of their cars. Like one mile in, we got screamed at and flipped off. Yep, straight away.

Because I'm literally in the middle of the street. And I'm thinking, how in the hell? Like, I want to draft Jimmy because it's way easier in the draft. You wouldn't think it would be that big of a deal, but the draft on a bike is huge. And I'm not that strong yet, right? And so I want to be in the draft. But Jimmy's so close to the side of the road that I can't bring my nerve up to get over there. And I'm shaky and wobbly.

Well, maybe it's because you have bed sheets for a space. Bandex basically. Maybe a parachute. That was probably affecting it a little bit. But we rode 16 miles. We get back to the track and I'm like, I'm in my mind going, dang, that's enough. And Jimmy's like, we're going to go some more. You want to go some more?

And they went another like 20 miles or so. They ended up doing 40 total, I think. And I was like, no, that's enough. My first ride, I'm good. It's good opening stunt, though. It was. Yeah. So that ride in Atlanta ended up being 2,400 miles by the end of the year.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, you got after it. I stuck with it. Yeah. You know, the thing that's interesting about this is, you know, if you go back to the pool party and him going, you know, without really knowing anybody,

social media and then biking, like if you could pick like three insecurities that not just Dale Jr. has, but most people would have, you really, as a friend, forced him to conquer these insecurities. Oh, wait. Oh, wait. Oh, there's more. Oh, yeah.

So this is, I know that I'm talking a lot about my experience and me, but this is a two show you. what kind of guy that Jimmy is. I got you. So I'm coming up on my first anniversary. Big freaking deal, right? Amy says, you know what? I give her a couple options, and she says,

Aspen. I gave her Aspen as one of the options. So I called Jimmy, and I was like, Jimmy, you know, I'm bringing Amy to Aspen and it's our anniversary and I want to, you know, I want it to be special. I need to do some of the legwork, but he's like, it's going to be great. I got it lined up, right?

And so. Just happened to know everything. doing that talent. He does. You've got to ask you know. Yeah. You're definitely the Aspen Lifeline. Yep. And so we go and Amy, we had the best time, right? And Jimmy helped us make sure, Jimmy invited us to events that they went to and just, you know, afternoon hangouts and places to go. And it was, we were always entertained and had us over at his house. Just a great time. So Jimmy's, uh, Jimmy's like, hey, ma'am, let's go, we're going to go skiing. Oh. and I'm like, I never skiing my life.

Of all the things I had resistance on, the skiing part was probably the most. Really? Oh. And push. Yeah, just because we had some months in the planning phase, and you're pretty adamant that you're like, I'm not even bringing clothes to ski. That is not happening. Jimmy goes and has the guy that fit you.

So if you're going to go skiing, typically you're going to go there and they're going to give your skis and your stuff right there when you get to the lodge or whatever, he hires the people to come to his house, right? He paid them to be there so it was most convenient, right? And so I'm standing there in the house. We're looking for no excuses at this point. Right, yeah. He's doing that.

You're bringing the ski store to Dale. To my garage. To make it as convenient and easy as possible. And I have witnesses that can confirm he's going to give it a try with his wife and my wife. Yeah, that's right. And he even lined me up with this guy. Alon. A lawn, yeah.

Amazing. just the nicest freaking guy, right? Alon lives in Aspen. He's a real... French guy moved from Avignon, France, to the states to race BMX bikes back in the 80s.

Ended up landing in Aspen, and like most Aspen locals, has like four jobs. And one of his jobs is being a ski instructor. And he's this super mellow French guy that you can somehow understand when he speaks to you

and just has a great way to teach. So he's a busy guy. though. And it's New Year's Eve weekend, right? It's sort of everybody's there to hang out and lose. He's not trying to work. But basically, Jimmy hooked him up with me, and I spent the whole morning with this guy

riding the lift, and then skiing down the hill, riding the lift, and we started out on the bunny slope, we started out on the kitty slope, literally learning the pure freaking basics. Square one. Yeah. Starting right at the beginning. And I mean, in three hours, we're going down the big... He's going on the top.

Yeah. I mean, I couldn't believe your progress. that day. Well, it was because Alan was so freaking good. I can't believe it either. That explains it because he picked it up quick. He's the one that encouraged me to start trying it. I did not pick it up as quick. Of course, I didn't have a French coach.

Correct. You didn't have the, now, now you went to the Olympics and ski too, right? Oh, yeah. We go to South Korea and had, you know, they're like, hey, you want to ski? And we freaking went right to it. You said, yeah, you said, yeah, we want to do it. Yeah. We skied like crazy men.

That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. What had never happened. Some of us ended up on our back more than we skied, but yeah. But Jimmy just put everything he could into it. During his New Year's Eve weekend with his family, his focus on me and Amy and our weekend was incredible. And just including us. And I just think it speaks so much to his character and why we are such good friends and why he has so many great friends.

I appreciate it, buddy. I've been so thankful for our friends. friendship and relationship over the years. Clearly, racing in the beginning, we weren't on the same team, and we still had a very solid friendship through all that. But then when you're able to work on the same team, it just goes to such a different level. So we were racing against each other. I was in the Budcar, and he's in the 48, and we had a friendship. We would race, and obviously, when you're out there racing, you're going to bump heads every once in a while, and we'd have some disagreements. But one day, we're sitting out on the lake, and he's having a great time. He's

winning, he's doing well, and my thing was kind of going the wrong way, and we're sitting there, and we had a few beers, but I was telling him, I was like, we kind of started the conversation of, man, it'd be cool if we were teammates. And I was like, well, we're going to be teammates. One of these days, somehow, it's going to happen. And me and Ricky started talking about it, and I was like, man, we've got to figure out how to get that to work, how to make that happen. And then a couple of other things fell into place, and it worked out. That's interesting. Because Ricky, for you and I both, was the kind of ingredient behind the scenes, you know, the person behind the scenes that made it happen.

Yeah. He was really influential. I mean, he had Vickers. Vickers was his project. Yeah. You know, he had his fingertips on a lot of things going on. I think his dead and he had had such close relationship that Rick would include him and let him influence. For sure.

Yeah. That's where that started. I'm curious, though. I mean, who else? You've been influential in a lot of. of those projects. Who else do you do that for? And what is Dale done in return? Oh, hey, hey, hey. Oh, you got something on that? No, I mean, I'm serious. I'm serious because I think that's something you said. Well, I haven't done. I haven't been able to find anything that he had to try. I'm saying that would be a challenge.

Well, I could say, something just came to mind. So, you know, through the years I've also, you know, have friends that I've seen in our garage area that I've just felt like my journey through physical fitness would be of use or of help for them. And I've tried to inspire many. And Dale and I have a mutual friend, Chris Knight, that Dale came to me and said, let's do what you do and how you help people. Because I help Tony Gibson. And he just came to me. He's like, look, this is weighing on me. I know a guy that works in our industry. He's a journalist in our industry. And I, of course, know him. And I think we need to reach out and help him. So Dale kind of started that conversation. And we challenged him for a year and supported him, you know, his friends would and really helped

change his life and help his health. Yeah, I think that Jimmy's, you know, I think that's just Jimmy inspiring people to, to help other people. Yeah. You know, I would have never cared about fitness, my own fitness or anyone else's fitness, had it not been for Jimmy, you know, and he does that, I think, for his teammates. Look, I mean, I didn't, when Alex Bowman first started driving for HMS, and even before that when he was driving for us, he didn't take his health that seriously.

I mean, he's a young man. He's not really got to get too damn dedicated about it. Right. But we would go ride bikes, and he was miserable, hated it. And he wouldn't stick with it. You know, he'd take weeks and months off. And now, man, I mean, he's working his guts out. He's doing great.

Yeah. And I think you are the catalysts for all that because they kind of measure. When I was working at the first couple of years that I was working at Hintra Motors, Doug DuCardt came to me and he said, you need to do a better job of taking care of yourself. You look at Jimmy and the things that he can do. hell I could outrun you in a 40-yard dash. I was like, Doug, we're not racing on foot.

Doug. But, you know, but when you're around Jimmy, it doesn't become, it's like when you're, Jimmy, it's not annoying, like, oh, man, I really don't feel like doing this. Jimmy's kind of presents it in a way that makes it fun. And one of the things that I loved about cycling was a technology. And, you know, Jimmy kind of helped me understand, you know, how to get into the technology side of it and understand the statistics and how to measure each run versus the next. And if I didn't have the ability to go out and ride and then go ride that same ride and compare

such critical and in-depth statistics, that would take a lot of the fun out for me. I love like challenge myself, racing myself. He found an app that I thought was really interesting for cycling. Oh yeah. He found it? You didn't? I did not. Wow. Zwift. Well, yes, two apps. So Zwift for sure. And then the other one would be an app that tells you how many beers you've earned on your ride. Oh, I do know about that. Yeah. I thought you were always kidding.

But you really did. No, we'd finish up. You're like, I earned two and a half beers. And I'm like, what a random. Please share. Please share. So four or five rides later, I'm like, dude, you've got to show me this. When you wake up in the morning and you're thinking about beer before 11 o'clock, that's very important.

Is this just based off of calories that you burned? Is that how you order to beer? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so, yeah, you can equate it into whatever you want if you love pizza, pizza, pizza, slices, whatever. But, yeah, Zwift is awesome. So, Zwift is sort of like eye racing for cyclists. For bikes, yeah.

Yeah. And it's pretty fun. A lot of times the weather's either too hot or bad, and you don't want to ride outdoors, and you ride indoors using Zwift. And you're riding with other riders, there's, like, avatars, and you're kind of racing. And you create your own avatar, your own guy, and then you ride with anyone around the world, which is kind of wild. and your flag of what you're writing, your country which you're writing in is right next to the name, and you'll see flags from all around the world.

You're like, I can't believe the guy in Japan right now is riding with me on this ride in the game. You can ride with them and draft and talk to chat. All right, let's take a quick break. We'll get back to Jimmy Johnson here in a second, but first let's tell you a little bit about our partners at ancestry. And Dale Jr., this is something personal. Mike, it sure is.

Ancestry is great. I've been using ancestry. I don't know, maybe 10 years now. That's right. A long time. I was able to, you know, I knew nothing about my family beyond Ralph Earnhardt, who's my grandfather. So I didn't know nothing about his dad, what his dad did, and all that stuff, and anything beyond that. So with ancestry, I was able to go multiple generations back, like 10 generations back,

all the way to when our family had traveled from not only Philadelphia down to the Carolinas, but when they traveled from Germany to Philadelphia, I learned why they made that travel, where they were from in Germany as far as specifically the town they came from, this small town at Iblishheim, Germany, 300 people live there today. 300 people live there back in the 1700s.

So it's not changed at all. I actually went to the church where they worshipped and read books where their names were written in handwriting. I held the books with cotton gloves in the archives of Squire, Germany. It was awesome. It was very powerful.

All this was possible and inspired by my experience with Ancestry.com. Little did I know when I signed up for my account that that was going to be my journey. Wow. I had no idea. So you can trace your ancestry's journeys over time following how and why your family moved from place to place. They've combined DNA results with over 100 million family trees and billions of records to give you more insight into your genealogy and origins. and I'm sort of getting into that now. I sent out my DNA kit almost a year ago

and learning so much about the family tree that I've curated over the last 10 years was it was a more, it was one-dimensional. It's on paper. It's in front of you on your app or on the iPad or whatever. The DNA results sort of bring life to that. It makes it much more in-depth and interesting. And also, it connects you to people that are here today.

You know, it tells you. you about your, I mean, these are other clients on the service of Ancestry.com, and it'll say, hey, man, this guy over here. You're related. Y'all are second cousins. Yeah. And this is how.

Yeah. You know? And man, you really learn so much about just how, I don't know, man. I think you'd be really surprised at how intricate and complex our family trees are. So it amplifies those results when you combine the DNA test results and the DNA kit results. stuff with your family tree. It's pretty awesome. Go to Ancestry.com

slash Dale Jr. today for 20% off your ancestry DNA kit. That's Ancestry.com slash Dale Jr., D-A-L-E-J-R for 20% off your ancestry DNA kit. Ancestry.com slash Dale Jr.

So let's talk a little bit about racing. Yeah. One of the... All right, so five championships in a row, I think is probably the most impressive stat in NASCAR history. Cal Yarborough won three in a row, and I thought that was never going to be done. There's a lot of things like most wins, 200 for Richard Petty.

You could look at his career and kind of see how that was accomplished. But five championships in a row, especially as the way we gather points and the way the playoffs were determined and so forth changed year after year, you continue to win. do you look back at that statistic and not believe it is it unbelievable it is I mean for the man it's living it like you're the you're the guy that won those five what do you do when you think about that I really can't believe it you know each it's funny how you get so so focused and closed in on on the journey of each year and until

really until it came to an end and even years after reflecting back just I realized the magnitude of what we had going on there different generations generations of cars, the point system's changing, a point system kept changing, just on and on. All the time. All the time. And I just, and then the journey I've been on recently with a tough couple of years, I just reflect back and can see and better understand how special that was. And then thinking of how important the team aspect is and having the communication, the

connection, not just for the driver and crew chief, but the entire group, the timing of your manufacture and in their importance, the timing of your company's, you know, competitiveness within that, there's a lot of pieces there that had to come together to be right. And certainly I'm the guy that gets to have that amazing stat be spoken about most with the five in row. But, you know, a lot of credit goes to Chad, the 48 guys, HMS, Chevy. Like, that was just a magical period of time for us. So one of the things that blew me away is after your seven championships, you're not satisfied. Like, if I had won seven championships, I would not let,

and I don't know if I'm a word this properly, but you seem so like every sort of stumble, and as you've kind of trudged through this season, you get more and more determined. Like, you're like, I'm turning this around if it kills me. I'm turning this around if it's the last thing I do. I am not going out without figuring out how to go back to Victor Lane. And what fuels that?

You've already done it all. You don't need to win anymore. So what fuels that? I really think it's just my internal fire to compete, my internal fire, who I am. And this is also a similar place that I was in prior to all my success at Hendrick. I mean, I had to fight. I mean, I can't tell you how close I was to be in unemployed. through my journey is a young driver coming up.

Thankfully, Chevrolet had my back and was trying to support me, but the manufacturers and how expensive racing is, there's only so much they can do. And I literally got, I was very fortunate to have people believe in me and see my work ethic and my hunger and give me that next opportunity. And then also people mentor me that had credibility

that helped with that momentum that it takes for a driver to get somewhere. So I've been here before and I've worked through it. So to me, there's not this black hole at the end of like, oh, well, I'm not going to figure it out. Hell no, I've been here before. And I know what's going on within my team. I know what I'm capable of. I've been here before, and the fire is there. I just, I'm not done yet.

This is really what it's about. How much more do you want? I don't know. That's a question that's being asked a lot. And certainly, I think here in the next four to six months, I'm sure Mr. Hendricks is going to be pushing on me for an answer. So I know that's out there, but if I'm forced to make a decision, I'm choosing more years. I just, I'm not done yet. That fire is way too intense.

And, you know, it's another interesting thing. Along the way, I was able to build friendships with Rusty Wallace and Mark Martin and Dale Jarrett and yourself, Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart. And I've, you guys may not have noticed, but I've asked questions along the way, just trying to gauge how I feel about, you know, the year. I have left and what signs I need to have to step down. And it's all led to don't give up, don't stop, don't quit until you fully feel satisfied. Sure. And I think Rusty Wallace still believes he should have stayed on five more years. He said that here. Did he? Yeah, he said that. He said, you know, Roger Penske was sort of urging him out of the car. And he, it's one of his biggest regrets. I remember his first year retired. He just randomly found me in the garage area, grabbed me, you know,

how aggressive he grabbed me is don't you stop until you're ready i could still be out there kicking your ass right now don't you stop until you're ready yeah yes sir no problem so i just i don't know i've been aware of all of that and and i guess one one element that's that will weigh into my decision and be a very important part of it is what my kids and my wife think you know i've been very selfish for a long time going down my road and racing and if there's a point where especially i know where my wife stands, but as my kids get older and have more of an opinion on where they want dad to be, that'll factor in for sure. So what does Jimmy Johnson do when he's not driving race cars on the weekend?

What's your objective beyond driving? Objective? So for me, when the race is done, I think it's really important to get my thoughts together while they're fresh, get my notes taken care of for what I just experienced at the race. and then Monday, Monday is a day to kind of get everything collected and together for our Tuesday meetings. Monday's also kind of an off day for me where I can get back into the fold at the house and dominate some carpool like I try to do or after school activities with the kids. Mondays are now also a time we're trying to keep clear where I can have the opportunity to take my kids to ride dirt bikes or go-carts. They're interested in what dad does, so it's nice to have that and have that outlet.

Tuesday is a pretty solid work day. Wednesday, more of an off day. Thursday is a travel day and off I go. But as many know, you know, fitness is a part of my life. And the clarity it brings to me, I try to get something in each day, even if I've got to get up at 5.30 to do it or if I can squeeze it in at another point. So that's honestly, and the friends I've built within that, that's been my outside of racing, outside of family life routine,

is just trying to find those little windows of time to, hit a bike ride with buddies. And it's amazing how fast the day goes by with job, life, you know, job and personal life and then trying to get in a workout. Yeah, I mean, we just got back from Indianapolis, and it feels like in just a few days we're going to be back in Vegas, and this week is going to be one of the shorter ones. For sure.

You know, it's tough to, you can feel that sort of disappointment, I guess, an underlying disappointment in the house between wife and kid, that, man, you know, wish you were going to be around a little longer this week. Yeah, I got a question for you. I recall back when Dale Jr. was having some of his seasons that he was struggling, and that's when I formulated a theory that a driver's week and their attitude during the week is going to be dependent on how they performed in the previous race. Correct.

And so that 2009, 2010 years were a struggle, and he had a hard time, you know, separating it during the middle of the week. As we all do. How's it been for you? A challenge. He didn't have a family. Yeah. And you do. Yeah.

So how is it? How do you navigate that? It's a challenge. I think I do better some weeks than others. I've found that in the last month with where the team is, I'm drawn a lot of inspiration from them. And it's taking a lot of the sting off of it, even though the results haven't been that good. But, you know, the accountability that your kids put on you. is epic.

And I'm trying to realize that I'm having these teachable moments with my kids right now. Wow. And it's, again, some days I handle better than others. But those are the thoughts that run through my mind and trying to frame up when I see them. Like I got out of the car yesterday, got to the motorhome early, obviously after the care center. And my kids saw me coming and they both stepped out of the motorhome crying and hugging me. and they weren't upset about the result. They just wanted to know dad was okay

because they didn't like the crash. So, like, you know, here I'm in one headspace and they're just happy daddy's okay, right? And then as the night went on, there were many opportunities for me to kind of teach some lessons, and they were upset that I'm out of the playoffs, and my kids, during their prayer,

you know, both had very cute and adorable things to say about myself and the team and, you know, not making the playoffs and help us have happy hearts and move forward and do good, You know, they just, their accountability they bring. And to your point about Dale, not having that family piece there for those tough years, that that has been a very helpful aspect to it all, for sure.

Grounding. It is ground you. You're right. What kind of dad are you? Do you worry about your daughters every second of the day? Who? So there's two parents right in the household, one that's super duper worried and one that's like, I'll be fine.

Which one of you? They'll be fine. Really? Yeah. golly. Yep. My wife does all the worrying for all of us. She's got bases covered there.

I find that I'm probably a bit more strict on behavior and getting things. Not that my wife doesn't, but that's the part where I just find myself being sometimes maybe overly focused on. And my wife's like, just, they're nine and six. Jimmy's definitely the parent that thank him, thank the man for helping you. or like, you know, when you come around the parents and a little kid, you know, if you, like, give the kid something or help them with something, the parents like, now thank him, make sure you thank him. Jimmy, that's Jimmy. Yeah.

No, I mean, yeah, I understand that. Are they into sports? We're trying everything. We are. So, like, what kind of sport parent would you be watching on the sideline? Would you be the one that's yelling? At the ref, yelling at the kid, it's your kid, yelling at other kids. What are you doing?

the limited exposure we've had, I have been trying to stop myself from talking to my child out there. It's hard. You feel like they hear you. You feel like you're being helpful. But as you stop and look around, every parent's doing the same thing. There's no chance they hear you. Plus, their little heads are in a space trying to focus. It's so hard.

It is hard. Yeah. I just wonder how, like, so in the, in your early in your career, you were in the Baja 1,000 and you correct and went off a cliff, right? Yeah. Imagine what your mom or your dad were feeling in that moment. I can't even imagine it. So as a parent, like your kids are going to do things like that, right? Is that not terrifying? It is. Like for me is, I'm already the worrier, and I'm worried about her going to school with social media, bullying, and then being disappointed with failures and whether it be in, you know, whether it's sports or her job, profession, whatever it is, she gets older. And like, how do you, how do you handle those things? Having a heartbroken someday by God.

Yeah. I'm telling you, all these things. We're all. thinking guys. Give us advice, Jimmy. What do we do? Well, first of all, my wife, I worry plenty. My wife just worries more. And she is a total BA of a mom. Like, she is the rock, and she does a phenomenal job. And first thing as your talking came to mind was trying to let go of the seat on the bicycle without training wheels. Like, wait until you have that moment. You're just, you're not sure which way they're going to go. And then on top of that, you were there a couple weeks ago to see Mike. kids for the first time ever drive a go-kart. He and Amy came out to the go-car track, and I'm not sure if

I showed it, but I had so much anxiety inside worrying about the throttle hanging and where they might end up, you know, or if they, even know where the brake pedal is in a moment of crisis. So, I don't know, you, I think as life, as the years go by, you start understanding kind of the things that work with your kids, and they both need to be parented differently. There's no doubt about it with my two. You've got to approach them differently. So I just need the presence of mind. Like, all right, this is a discussion with Genevieve, this is one with Lydia, and you just try to find the right way in. I understand why you're asking Jimmy parenting advice, because he's been so influential in all these other areas, but where do you get parenting advice? Where do you

glean all the good information? Because there's no manual for this. This is the one thing I learned as a parent. I wish there was. There is. And I mean, I have great friends and mentors along the way. and my parents did an amazing job with myself. My father-in-law and mother-in-law, I don't know, just the surrounding, and there's also something inside of me when I get it wrong for sure, the guilt hits. And I'm like, man, I should have handled it different.

Let's all just fess up right now. What's our biggest parenting mistake we've made so far? What have you done wrong? I mean, have you dropped Ila yet? I did that to my first one, dropped her, throwing her up and dropped her. From an injury standpoint, first one comes to mind is Lydia's just into walking.

and had wet feet from being in the pool, and I thought rolled her ankle in our bathroom on the tile. I watched her. It looked like she rolled her ankle over, and two days later, my wife insisting that she had a broken leg. I'm like, no, she rolled it. I saw it.

We took her to the hospital, and they took an x-ray, and sure enough, she had a broken tip. What? Wow. I was like, sorry. Was she complaining? Yeah, absolutely.

What were you saying? Rub some dirt on it? What do you do? I saw the, I saw the, I'm saying my leg hurt? Yeah, absolutely. She wouldn't walk on it. Because they're a zillion, you know.

She wouldn't walk on it. To me, I saw it take place and the ankle rolled over. I assume that was it. To my surprise, all the soft tissue stuff for kids, super malleable, moves easily. Not the issue. It was actually a broken bone. But she was like five days in a splint in the bone healed so quickly she was back and going. My gosh.

But yeah, I definitely took a little heat on that one. I have, I think. I've been so I've been pretty, nothing really comes to my mind right now. I think the one mistake I'm making right now is just cussing in front of her. I mean, I haven't had that real moment that sticks out that was any kind of a, you know, where I might have bumped into her, knocked her over or something. But yeah, I just got to, I got to watch my mouth. Yeah, that's hard.

Because Amy will remind me and say, hey, don't say that. And I'm like, I didn't cuss. And she's like, yes, you did. And like, you cuss don't even know your cussing sometimes. Yes. Right. Right. Like it's just part of your vocabulary.

Right. And we're woven in there. So it's like, sometimes it's not even cuss words either. It's just maybe a not so nice word that you don't want a two-year-old saying. I'll have just start a repeatness. Right. That's the end.

It doesn't even have to be a cuss word. It can be any word and that they then misused in another setting and it's completely inappropriate. Then they tell you where they got it. You know, my daddy taught me that. You know, it's like, okay, well, let's keep some things within the family here. True. True. All right.

How did you drive off a classroom? cliff in the Baja 1000. What was that experience like? How far down did it go? It was maybe, I don't know, 15, 20 feet down. Far enough. I was in the mountains. So when I hit the rock, I thought I had no idea how far down I was going to go. Thankfully, I hit pretty quick. But honestly, I was at the wheel for 20 plus hours at that point, just trying to wait for the sun to come up to stay awake. Are you driving in the Baja 1,000 nodding off? I was. Wow. Yeah. And I'm like, that's common. Ivan Stewart's doing this thing solo and Walker Evans, and they're way older than I am.

I got this. I totally got it. Wow. Ivan Stewart's solo. I had a guy next to me that his job was to keep me awake, and he was passed out. What? He was.

So the other thing is we all know, like, it's rough on those races, right? So the first smooth road I hit was I just got comfy. And I wasn't out for long. I was just out long enough to miss my breaking marks. I just kind of nodded. And when I nodded and looked up, I was like, oh, man.

we're in trouble and I hit that rock and off it went. My God. Yeah. I'll never forget the headlights. Like I, it's pitch black still and I hit this enormous rock and the truck went up and I can just see the lights and my dad for months before the race is like, man, don't do anything stupid in the mountains. And I just coming out of the mountains.

I'm not sure if I'm out of them yet. Thankfully I was because it could have been one heck of a drop. But you were unrescuable, right? Wasn't it like in an area where you guys were worried? Yeah. Yeah, there's, so at night, they don't, they didn't allow VFR aircraft up. And there is a medical chopper, and we had team choppers that would be up and would help with radio transmissions in certain areas because we just needed it to get the signal out.

They're down because it's night. My chase truck was in a fender bender in a small little town. And you are guilty until proven innocent in Mexico. So the fender bender happens. They arrest my two crew members, put them in the jays. jail cell proceed to shake them down for anything and everything of value and once they got everything they could out of them and emptied the coolers in the chase truck they released our guys to to you know to take off so as all that happened that put them behind schedule like six or seven hours from the crash and then they had to go

through the last checkpoint that I cleared and drive down the race course in a stock pickup truck so all of that eats up really every bit of sunlight that there was the day I crashed and then to fix the vehicle and get it out of the position it was in and back to the trailer was another six or eight hours. So it was pretty much a day that I spent, a 24 hour period spent out there. Dang. So you weren't banged up? No, I was pinned in the truck and certainly was bruised up. My co-rider was knocked out and was wheezing really bad when he was trying to catch his breath. And I thought I hurt him. And thankfully, all the big hits were on his side. And I kind of came out of it just fine. So I know that Jeff Gordon, Rick Hendrick, there's an easy to,

choose list of names that have influenced your career but who are the people that influenced it in the first part like who are some of the guys that maybe don't we don't know their names sure my dad first and foremost what was his role early in your career we so my grandparents owned a motorcycle shop and we lived in an area where people literally just rode off you know from their driveway and be out in the hills out in the San Diego area a lot of big name motorcross racers grew up in that area and had practice tracks all around and that was just the culture just grew up on two wheels riding. We had the deserts nearby. We had the Colorado River in the summer,

which then led to like stand-up jet skis. So kind of again, in that, you're in that position riding and racing things. So that was just my upbringing. And my dad was a huge sprint car fan. There's a lot of sprint car midget racing going on in the area. My dad also had a friend that raced an off-road stadium buggy. So between that whole mix of things, and my dad's love of motorsports and his mechanical skills led to me being at tracks, me being at tracks, me being at riding my own races to being at tracks watching my dad work on on race cars so did you drive a sprint car ever never never my dad still gives me a hard time for it really in his opinion the bravest guys ever have driven a non-wing sprint car and he has a not so nice term to call me since i haven't been

away yeah well um so how did you get from two wheels to four my dad worked on an off-road buggy and through that relationship ended up going to work for bf goodrich tires yeah and when my dad worked his way up through the ranks of the tire company, the higher-ups at BFG were very eager to kind of help me and saw my commitment to racing and really helped me get my first ride and then things just kind of snowballed from there. So what's fun or the stadium truck or the big tracks outdoor? The indoor track, which is what I call stadium. Yep, yep. Or the big tracks out, you know, like digging and M run. Man, that's a tough question. Which one's more fun? For me, I guess looking back, the stadium environment was really special and the Mickey Thompson

stadium days. I mean, they'd sell those things out. I loved watching that on TV. And I mean, I did not miss watching. They were out of control. They were out of control. The offenders flying off and banging into each other. It was full contact.

Full contact. Full contact. It was fun. I mean, that element of being in a stadium and knowing those eyes were on you, you could hear the audience. That was really, really cool. What happened to that tour? Sadly, Mickey Thompson was murdered.

And then his son, Danny Thompson, kept the sport going for a few years. And it was hanging on, but honestly, the demise of it all was the introduction of the NASCAR truck series. Really? When that came along, because off-road racing was always supported by the manufacturers, from tire to vehicle. When the Craftsman Truck Series came along at the time, what it cost them to spend money

on one factory truck team on the dirt was for the entire budget of their, their truck. truck series stuff. Oh. So just the economics of it made way more sense to shift to the NASCAR truck racing series. Plus, they had a better platform to show it and market it. Yeah. So that was a race truck? One.

I drove that 81 truck that Randy Moss was partners with at Bristol. Oh, wow. I remember that. How did that go? Randy Moss. I spun out and crashed. I was running well. I don't know it's third or fourth.

Did Randy call you? It's mouse, baby. That's how he did. He used himself to you that day. Hey, it's my mouth, baby. I wish I would have saved his voicemail. I didn't know the number, and he called me, and he thanked me for driving his truck and went down this road of like, man, you scratched my back.

I just, I can't thank you enough. You let me know. If you ever have an it, I'm going to scratch it. You just let me know. That's awesome. So you've raced into sports cars at Daytona 24 hours, and you have said it, you've been in conversation about retirement and what that looks like for you from time to time over the last couple years. And you've mentioned that you have other aspirations of racing that you'd like to try

or things, goals out there that you'd like to do. Is that still the case? It is. What are some of those races that you haven't done or that you might want to do again? You know, prior to driving that Formula One car, I felt like some more off-road racing to kind of go back to my roots would be a lot of fun sports car. Like the Baja 1000? You know, Mexico is a tricky place. There's plenty of racing in states that is way safer. So I probably start that. That style of racing? Yeah, or the short course stuff.

Oh, really? Yeah, the short course stuff. The stadium stuff's gone, but the outdoor stuff you're talking about, that's still healthy and doing really good. And those vehicles have evolved so much. Like, I want to get back in one. I mean, they used to be automatic transmissions, and now they're manual transmissions, much more power to the tires, lighter vehicles, really cool trucks.

But since I drove that Formula One car and two open wheel cars sitting on the desk, that experience is unlike anything I could describe. I mean, that was so much fun. So I don't know. We'll see when I pull the plug, but I'd love to go do like some kind of road racing series in an indie car, certainly look at any type of sports car racing,

but that was a really neat experience that I'd like to do more of. Where do you think you rank as a road course racer? I don't think that it's my strong suit, but I feel like there are certain tracks that have, I think Sonoma's been really good for me. When I've been in cars with more downforce and more braking ability, I've been much more competitive, like in those sports cars I have been. I just think my driving style isn't ideal for a big heavy cup car.

And hopping in that Formula One car and having that chance to match Fernando's lap time, as I did in Bahrain was kind of an eye-open experience for me. That maybe on a road course those fit my style a little bit more. Right. That's interesting. How would you describe your style? What is your style? I have, even still today on an oval, I just, I love the brake pedal. And I think my upbringing on the dirt, the brake pedal starts the corner for me.

Okay. And I'm so used to using the brakes to pivot the vehicle and turn the vehicle that there's just a habit of using too much brake. And I think on the short run in a cup car, I can create speed doing that. But on the long haul, you just started abusing the brakes, using the tires, and that kind of fades on me. You've always said that you weren't, you didn't feel like that. the Xfinity series cars suited you. I've always tried to, well, I've always wished, I guess, privately that you would run some Xfinity races out of our garage from time to time because we've had guys come and go,

a cup guys drop down in and run a race here and there. But you've always kind of said that those cars don't really suit you well. And I've always found that really fascinating. And now, I think as we transition into the low horsepower, high-down-forish package that we have today, how have you tried, could you give us specifics, I guess, on how you've had to evolve as a driver and how you've had to change what you do in the car to make those cars work and be competitive in those cars. Yeah, now more than ever, it would be good to get back in a car, so maybe we should have a conversation.

Sort that out. I feel like, you know, at one point in time... Yeah, these cars kind of drive like the cup cars you were winning championships in now. Right. The Xfinity cars do. But at one point, they were so far apart. Right. And I was... They are very far apart now. Do you think even more? Hell yes. Really? Oh, man, these things are freaking hard to drive. Like at Darlington? It's a handful. And I mean, you know, the cup car has got the giant spoiler and no doubt, no power. And you would not want to be able, you would not want to do the same, you would not want to run both in the same weekend.

Same weekend. It would destroy you. All right. Scratch that conversation. We're going to have. I was talking to Blaney about it at Darlington. He's like, it kills you going back. That was my problem before.

It's just they're too far apart. And the other thing that's been tough for me is these guys, you know, at all these shops, especially, here they take that seriously and I I know the effort I put in day in and day out on my cup side and I didn't feel like I could fairly put that in on a consistent basis on the Xfinity side and that that's largely been why so how did you have to change what you're doing in the car in the cup car since the there's a huge change in the rules this year so what did you do as a driver specifically give these fans listening some nugget that they're going to go out that's pretty cool yeah for me I mentioned using the brake pedal and there's there's certainly a set that I

I look for the car to take in the corner that says stand on it from there. And it's always been a set that's been on the free side and required a smooth throttle application. And I've always felt like my dirt background, that's where that came from. And you just really had to be careful with the throttle and drive it with the right foot. Now that that's not the case. You know, entry speeds aren't as high, especially with the cup cars sit now. And you have to use your speed in a different manner and staple the threshold. throttle. So I've spent my whole life developing a skill to be very gentle with the throttle.

And now you've got to kind of anticipate the grip level and then just staple it again. So not only, you know, but in both areas, in and off the corner. And it just takes a little bit of, you know, takes reps to get used to doing that. And I think that's what hurt me before with the Bush series cars back in the day. I would take so long to get to wide open based on my natural kind of tendencies that I just leaving time on the table. So that that's something. I'm working really hard at now. I'm literally trying to take my foot off the brake pedal and tuck it up under the brake and just let the air catch me, let the air help the car change directions and drive it more like a light switch. How does having all the telemetry of the other drivers help a guy like you?

You want, you know, you've won and done. I know that, you know, you got all the statistics and achievements, but I know also that you're a guy that looks at that and watches how guys use throttle and steering and you're very open-minded to changing what you're doing on the track or trying something that somebody else is trying. So now that you have everyone's information, how are you using that? Honestly, that's where I spend the most of my time getting ready for a race now. In the past, watch the race, watch qualifying any in-car that we might have. And it's been tough to look at any of that stuff the first half of the year because it's all the old package. But the ability to pick cars and to really follow through on a thought in your own mind, like, okay, I'm going about it

this way. I saw whoever quick and blah, blah, blah. Let me watch. Let me watch. them and maybe see why they were doing it if it was their car allowing that to happen or their own driving style. So for me, it gives me a lot of rabbit holes to go down over the course of the week and really study people and show up to the track feeling confident in what I'm going to unload with. With all that information, are you doing more during the week to prepare for races than you've ever done? Yeah, for sure. And that SMT application that we have is really where the bulk of my time has been spent. My note-taking and our debriefs are all still very similar to the way it's been all along,

probably a little longer on some of the debriefs, so a bit more time there. But the hard thing for me is we've really struggled to count on the simulator as consistently as we need to. Really? And it's not the simulator's fault. It's just we don't test, and you can't get accurate tire data. You can't get accurate track data. And I watch William Byron's in it quite a bit. and you know there's there's some point in time of the weekend where we hear read in their

database and their notes that man the simulator did x and we tried that and it just didn't pay out play out because the data isn't as up to date as we need it yeah that simulator's always made me nervous to send you down the wrong path especially when you're trying to find tune for for big chunks of speed and to learn a track phenomenal but when you're really trying to count on it to apply that to your race car that's tough but you're in your case i mean i'm hearing you say that and i can't help but think man to have the old testing rules would have really been a benefit to you if you're literally having to change your driving style and the things you were used to with this new car. I can't imagine how difficult that

would be with absolutely no chance to have reps other than looking at data and, you know, simulate. Two-fifty minute practice sessions. What's that? And two 50-minute practice sessions. That's all we get. Right, right. That's not enough. And when you look back at the success of the 48, you know, one thing that I think was a major separator for us was my. and Chad and I and our work ethic and our desire to test. We tested all the time. I remember that. I mean, one year we won, I think it was like 08 or 09, we were struggling along in trying

to win the championship clearly and we're able to, but we tested 22 times on top of our 38 races. That was my problem. I hated that. I didn't love it, but it yielded results, and I'm like, the hell of it, let's go. No, can't do that. I don't want to do that. Man, I had some off weekends that we tested on that. Ruined.

Yeah. Yes. What do you mean? I don't know what you mean. Well, you got an off weekend and Chad's like, we're going testing. Oh, I got you. So the one that comes to mind, we're going testing. I take my wife to be with some friends.

We're down to Key West, actually. We go to Key West. I'm like, look, I'm just gone one night, right? Just two days of testing. It's the beginning of our off week. No big deal. We go to Kentucky and sit in rain for two days. Chad says, load it up.

We're going to Nashville. Sorry, what? We're going to go to Nashville. We're going to their tests for two days. I'm like, hey, babe. We go to Nashville, rains the first day. Still stayed two days in Nashville and tested.

Five days. Five days. At a racetrack. Three of them raining. That was Chad and out. He's changed, though, a lot. He has? Since he's become a dad.

He has. I agree. Yeah. I agree. His intensity is still there, and that is... He smiles a lot. He smiles way more, for sure.

Is this something that you used to note about how much he didn't smile? God, yes. You sit in, like, debriefing. Well, I mean, it was just obvious. Yeah, it was pretty obvious. Yeah. He's a, he's a unique guy. Kids will do that too, though.

But he's much more normal now. See, the thing with Chad, I was always able to see, you know, the things that people see now, he and I were so close and spent so much time together, I would see that guy often. Yeah. You know, the racetrack Chad. Oh, the normal guy. Yeah, I always called it off-season, Chad. I mean, off-weekend or off-season, that guy is who many get to see now because he's a parent.

Yeah, I agree. All right. You got, you missed the playoffs. but you got 10 races. I know you're probably more hell-bent to win one of those 10 than you've ever been in your life. For sure. And that's already started.

You know, you put out a video after the race was over with, telling your fans about y'all's initiative and your future. So how do you go about getting back on top in these 10 races? Because that's kind of the MO for most teams and drivers. I went through that as well when you get knocked out of a round and you're done. and those other guys carry on to the championship battle, you want to spoil it. You want to take the spotlight.

So where are you going to go take the spotlight? Yeah, as you know, you're looking for any fuel to pour on the fire to motivate yourself, motivate the guys. And right now we really don't need any additional, but we'll take it. We know we're out. We know we have something to prove. But honestly, I've been a part of some really amazing teams

and teams where each individual inspires the other. And right now, the 48, it is the strongest I have ever seen with that environment. I'm watching and living through our gains each and every week, the amount of detail that's going into each car, the extra hours these guys are putting in to make sure those details go on the car. And we're seeing it on track. I know when you look at a stat sheet at the end of the weekend, our results haven't shown it. But we're not far off. You guys are running better. I think the stat sheet would suggest that you guys have definitely seen improvement for sure.

The lap times are getting up there. Yeah. We're getting there. So that part is just so refreshing and makes it feel like it's the start of the year and not the end of the year. And I'm hopeful that because it feels like the start of the year for all of us right now after a long, long year, that we're able to separate ourselves from everybody we're around in the points right now because we can still move up quite a few spots in the points. And then certainly there's 10 trophies to go get. And you count all those green and white checkered flags in there, too. It's just about capturing flags right now.

That's what we're there for. 10-4. Man, well, we appreciate you coming out here, talking us to today. Hope you enjoyed. Come by the studio, and we would love to get you back out here again. Anytime, buddy. I appreciate it. Thank you.

We'll get him back out here when he runs that Xfinity Series race for us. Yes. Yeah. That'll be, look at him. Let's start planning. Yeah, you'd like it. They're hard to drive for sure. You got to stand.

Thanks, Jimmy. You've got to be easy on that gas. Unfiltered commentary and an abundance of opinion. Mr. Nice Guy or Mr. Good F-E-B-A-O-B 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. Get up, get out of you. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. For the Ask Junior part of the show, presented by Nationwide. I'm just going to answer some questions.

Leah. Hello. Leah Vaugh. She is our social media. expert knows everything there is to know about the world of social media. We are so thankful to have her. And she is coming through all your questions, trying to find the best ones, and I hope you got a good one to start us out with it.

I do. The first one is from Ryan Goodrum. He wants, he's asking, is there any particular sport or location you want to cover for NBCSN? You've been to the Kentucky Derby in the Winter Olympics. Is there anything you're looking forward to? You know, can I be honest? No.

Don't be honest. I don't. I know what you're thinking. I don't want you go there. I, I, what, you know, the summer Olympics are going to Japan. And it's during the two weeks off next year. So the schedule for the Cup series was basically kind of built around the Summer Olympics. It's because NBC does not want to be covering a race while they're also covering the Summer Olympics.

And they want to focus on Summer Olympics, then get back to racing. So there's a two-week break. If I get sent to that, I won't be sad. I really, really enjoyed my opportunity to go to South Korea. I thought that was just a really once-in-a-lifetime chance. And I'm going to make sure that Mike goes along as well to Japan. Really? Yeah, you went with me to South Korea.

Dude, I'm there. I got to take somebody. I ain't going all the way over there by myself. I know that, but Amy didn't want to go to South Korea last time. She doesn't want to go to Japan either. She just doesn't want to be away from either long. I'll be your workwife for another week. So I hope that we'll get maybe a four-nighter, even a three-nighter.

Yeah, we were there six or seven. Even a three-nighter. I don't want to be there for two weeks, but if they send me over there for a couple days, that'd be pretty nice. Because I just, when I went over there in 1999 to race in the NASCAR race at twin ring motet, what? Yeah. Yep. Whatever's called. I wasn't a sushi guy.

I wasn't anything. I wasn't about that Japan food at all. Oh, yeah. And. And times are a change in that. Yeah, buddy, now I'm all about it. I'm ready to dig in. I want to go to that special sushi joint in the subway

that they made that damn documentary about. Nah, I don't know. I really want to go just for the food. Honest to God, that's the truth. I want to go over there. I mean, obviously, I want to see Summer Olympics, and it's going to be amazing and see the best athletes in the world do what they do.

But I miss my opportunity in 99 to try out the real deal sushi. All right, Caden Brazel, he's joining us on YouTube, and he wants to know how far as the Nova Restoration come along since we've heard about it last, or have you started any new projects? So here's a good one. I wanted to bring this up. The Nova car, it's got

the doors. The doors are still on it. We put new quarter panels. I'm not going to try to paint the picture for you because I don't want to get it too complicated. But one cool thing has happened. I really needed a seat for this car. And the seat I need is called a Banjo Matthews.

bucket seat, right? And they don't make them anymore. They moved away from those in the late 80s. So the seats that are still around, the originals, are pretty banged up, pretty used up, and I ended up getting my hands on an old, old, just destroyed seat. It was so bad. Stunk, smelled awful, holes drilled all in it. It's just bad. But I got it from T.J. Major's my spotter. I don't know how really he. he attained it, but don't ask any questions when you're getting something from TJ. You don't want to know where it came from. Just the fact that you got it is all that you care, right? That's the truth. Yeah.

So I got this old chewed-up nasty seat and I sent it to Corey LaJoy. I called Corey and I said, hey, you make seats. I need an old banjo. He's like, I'll make it so good banjo, won't know the difference. That was his response. Corey Lejoy. Corey went to work, took this old junker did I send him and used it a little bit. He used some of the stuff, but not much, and made a perfect freaking replica of a Banjo Matthews seat.

And he asked me if I would sign the hood of his car. They'd erased at Watkins Glen. He did a charity, he had a great charity on that car that weekend. Samaritan's feet. There you go, Samarid his feet. He said, I donated a little bit of money, signed the hood of the car, and he said we were even. How about that? How about that?

Very nice. That is awesome. And Corey even delivered. Well, he wanted to see the Nova. But he brought the seat over here last week. So, such a freaking nice guy. We were debating with Corey right outside the conference room, whether to pull you out of the meeting you were in.

You were in a meeting, and he was here. And he said he was going to leave. I'm like, God, I know Dale's going to want to be down there with you. I did. Just Corey is a great, great guy, and does all kinds of nice things for people, and that was one of them. Very talented. Yeah.

And he's talented. Daniel McCall, he once. you to do a rundown of your new sim rig. Talk about your new sim rig. Well, I haven't got it yet. I think it's going to be another week. So, let me say, Sam. Carolina SimWorks is the company that I got my rig from.

He's going to be thrilled that I have mentioned him on this podcast here. Here, let me draw out. Carolina Simworks, he's local, just north of Hickory. He's done a lot of rigs for a lot of guys. I think that Noah's got one of his rigs, Noah Gragson, Paul Menard, Corey LaJoy may have one. He's done a lot of rigs for a lot of people, and we're working on mine. He built my rig, and I got over there to sort of set in it and get it all fitted up,

and it didn't have paddle shifting on the steering wheel. And I'm like, I ain't going to use this manual shifter that's on there. I want a paddle shift. I don't want to move my hands off the wheel if I don't have to. And so he's like, really? Paddle shifting? You're driving stock cars, you know? you don't paddle shift in a race car.

I'm like, I don't care. This is a computer. It doesn't know any better. So we had a little delay into finally getting it waiting on the paddle shifting and all that to come together. But I am excited. I'll have that rig maybe in a week from now or maybe 10 days from now. Pumped up.

Back on high racing, getting back to it. All right, let's switch gears to talk about football. Did you watch the game yesterday after the race? If so, how do you feel about our skins? That's from April. I got to, I obviously had my phone out while I was calling the race and was checking in probably every half hour. And it was, you know, Redskins, their first game, it seems to always do this. They'll come out of the gate great.

They'll have a pretty good first quarter. And you're like, hmm, okay, we've been doing well. Everybody's been paying attention in training camp and we got a good game playing. And then we just quit. Like the offense can't continue to score points. And the other team works their way back into the game, and they win. And we ended up losing 3227. Who did they play?

They played the Philadelphia Eagles, which is, you know, everybody thinks the Eagles are great. But we came out of the gate, and I think we're up 17-0 or 17-7. But it's very frustrating. But, you know, we'll see how it goes. We got a defensive tackle that's a very talented guy that has a sprained MCL, so a little concerned about that. I'm just glad that fantasy football is back. I had a really good, yeah, you?

Yeah, I won my first matchup. Did you? It's not over. There's still a game to like. I know, but. You're locked. Yeah, it's over. Well, I'm winning handedly in one league, which is a couple's league.

So there's all girls in one division and all guys and the other, and it's wives and husbands. I'm playing, let's see. Oh, Alexa Jordan. Oh, yeah. That's going to be awkward if you can't figure out of who you're playing. Well, they're new to the league. Alexa and Adam Jordan Adam was my interior guy. Yeah, super nice guy.

In the other league, I am playing Sonny Lunsford, my property manager, and he is winning 75 to 69. And I have Hopkins from Houston's wide receiver tonight, so that should put me over to win. Cool. That's exciting. Yeah, pretty exciting. All right, we have time for one more?

One more, sure. All right, we all know how much you love playing with Ila's taco truck, Melissa writes in, but she wants to know what are some of the other favorite Toys in the Earnhardt House. She loves to come over and ask you if you're holding her cell phone, which we often are. We try not to, but she wants you to play Baby Shark. She comes over and goes, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark.

Do you sing the song? Yeah, I'll sing all the songs. Sure. You want to sing the songs. You want her to sing the songs, right? And so you want her to sing it with you. But I'm also getting her into Elmo. And she'll see him and go,

Bo. So Elmo's coming into the house. And let's see. Amy buys her, she's going to be mad at me that I don't know the name of this company. But there's this company that makes all these very general sort of basic wooden toys. It's just a box with different ways to reach in there, like hinged doors, swinging doors.

and you just put balls, little stuffed balls in the box, and it's basically to show them fundamentals, like opening things, how Velcro works. You know, it's just a basic toy about taking things in Velcro and into something.

You know, I don't even know that, Amy's been, one of these toys from this company has been showing up like once a week for the last couple months. And it's just very traditional, I would say,

toys made out of wood. that give Isla sort of the basics of how something works, how a door hinges open, how to latch something closed, how to work Velcro on and off to do your shoe or whatever. So she's into that. She likes those pretty much. Her YouTube chat feed is now just everyone singing Baby Shark, which is pretty funny.

Well, I would have assumed that somebody was going to be suggesting what those wood toys are. Do you know the motion for baby sharks? Oh, yeah. There's different ones. Oh, you should show us. Yes, okay. Do you know them? I don't.

You don't. No. Your kid, your girl's too old? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So, Mama's this, right? And then Daddy's this one. Oh, yeah, I do know that.

You're right. And then Grandma is this one. I love, I think that's a place. And then they do this. It's like being at a Buffett concert. Finn says. You're training them for Buffet. That's what they're doing.

What other, there's so, there's like a different child's sort of, a song that hooks like that, that hooks everybody over every five years or so? What are some of the ones that I could do from the, that I could bring up from the past that she may enjoy? Oh, damn, that's a good question. I was trying to think of it this morning, like, man, I really would like to get her into a couple of the songs

besides this one every day. It's not wheels of the bus. I hate that. Yeah. There was, you're going way back on that one. There was one right before Baby Shark I felt like, and I can't remember what it was. Oh, yeah.

What does the Fox say? Oh, really? All right. Whatever. I need a little short list to introduce her to some things of the... Let's do it on social media. Yep. That's right.

It's a good idea. Oh, somebody says Barney. Oh, it's not bad. I love Barney was one. You love me? Tinky Winky and all those idiots. You know, what was that? The Teletubbies?

Oh, I hated those guys. I tried to get her... All my nieces. My nieces, man. I tried to get her to watch the chef on Sesame Street. He's my favorite. What is he the... Is he Dutch or, you know?

Is Sesame Street or is that the Muppets? Is he British? Swedish. Swedish. Oh, and he just bangs around and drops and destroys the kitchen. I wish she loved him because I certainly love watching him. God, he's great. We're getting some suggestions.

The monkeys jumping on the bed song. That's a good one. That's a good one. My kids love that. We do that. We do that. She knows that one. Monkeys jumping on the bed and then the roll over, roll over.

I'm a little teapot. A little teapot's not bad She does the spider up the drain Oh yeah It's a bit spider she does that one Some of them are weird like the um Humpty Dumpty and some of the older ones when you listen to them Now are kind of

I really just All I'm looking for is all I'm looking for really is the pop culture ones of Of the last five or ten years that have really you know kind of Like baby shark come out of nowhere And it's about a baby shark I mean it's really simple What are some of the other ones Old Town Road Oh God

I'm so sick I'm going to taste of them kids Love that song. Not a chance. Yeah, they do. All right. All right. Yeah.

Yeah. All right, y'all. Thanks for tuning in. This is the Ask Junior portion of the Dale Jr. download presented by nationwide. All right. White flag. White flag that thing, man. Keep talking about it.

White flag right. White flag right. All right, white flag. Let's first talk about a thing called Time Machine, you guys. Dale Jr. We had Matthew Dillner, James Brousand following you around at Darlington a few weeks ago. I guess it was just last week, wasn't it?

And we're making a short film for the Dirty Mo Media YouTube channels. You should subscribe to it. What is that, Leah? YouTube.com slash Dirty Mo Media. That's what it is. And the Time Machine full video will debut and live on that exclusively. So we put out a trailer last week. Did very well.

Got people excited about it. and I'm excited about it, so this is going to be a really cool project. You'll want to check it out. Some new Apple podcast reviews from this week. Got a little bit of criticisms. Uh-oh. Not bad. Nothing major, but let's just get into it.

I don't know who this person's name is, but somebody said the title of it was, come on, David Dillner. Here it is. I'm a long-time listener, first-time reviewer. Love the show, and the content is always great. But I'm giving the Brad Kay episode a 4 rating. It would have been a 5, but the intro. music sucked.

Oh my gosh. I disagree with this reviewer, by the way. I thought the intro music was fantastic, Matthew. The actual artist that was in it tweeted us. Oh, really? And I loved it. Derek Minor, he's an awesome DJ. Hey, listen, don't listen.

I only wanted to include this review only to refute it, and we are now refuting it in saying that, no, we disagree, respectfully disagree. Thank you. But I thought the music, we're always, listen, we always hear it for the first time when Matthew plays it on the show, Dale and I, so I always love hearing what you got dialed up. All right, O7, Scotty wrote, I love to download and I listen in my

patrol car while working the midnight shift. We've been getting a lot of those guys. I mean, we're big time with the police force now. So listens in the patrol car at midnight shift, but I really wish you guys would have asked Brad about issues he had with Carl Edwards. And getting to the point where his dad was ready to put the fire suit back on.

Also, I would have wanted to hear how the Kyle and Brad hate for each other, is going. Thanks and keep up the great work. My response to that was, listen, if we were going to go deep dive into every dispute that Brad Kislowski has ever had, we just don't have enough time in the day. If we had gone into any of the disputes, I wouldn't have even picked those two. I would have have gone with Denny Hamlin back when he was driving for junior motorsports, because we remember that went all too well. We didn't even have a pit crew fight on pit road. That was fun. And it's a good reason to have him back, man. And it's a good reason to have him back. That's right. That's

right. And he'll have some new disputes and fights to talk about too. So thank you though. O7 Scotty. Bible web guy wrote last week at Darlington I purchased my first ever Earnhardt shirt. Growing up a diehard Gordon fan, the thought of me wearing Earnhardt gear would have been about as crazy as a Carolina fan wearing a Duke shirt. This podcast is responsible for making me a junior fan. So there you go. Some nice reviews. We appreciate everybody that did that on Apple podcast. Speaking of shirts, by the way, the number eight Darlington throwback t-shirts and hats sold out last week. A lot of people expressed that. Also expressed, you know, how do they get them?

I'm here to tell you. Shop junior nation.com has all the hats of the throwback number eight Darlington gear and shirt so you can find it there. Shop junior nation.com. Dale, on Thursday, you'll be at the NBC's event Burnout Boulevard, driven by Goodyear on the Las Vegas strip. You won't be doing burnouts, of course, but you'll be participating in an event. In other ways, that event starts at 3 p.m. Vegas time.

Is that Vegas is on Pacific, right? Is that Vegas is on Pacific time? I always get it confused. Yeah. Yeah. So that's 3 p.m. out there. And then a reminder that if you want to join the fight against childhood cancer, you can go to Socket to CC.com right now and purchase socks.

Dale has them. I have them. They're great. All proceeds go to the Dell and Amy Earnhardt Fund for Nationwide Children's Hospital. I wore mine Sunday during the race. Did you really? Yeah. Awesome.

Awesome. They're cool looking socks. Again, that website's Socket to ccc.com. Lastly, I just want to hit this. The TV show this week's going to get some re-airs. This is a big deal. So our TV schedule on NBC Sports Network is on Tuesday 5 p.m., 9 p.m. And again on midnight, that's three airings in one day.

And then, oh, we're not done. Thursday, going to re-air it at 5 p.m. That's a lot. So Jimmy Johnson, man, is bringing it for the TV people because they're loving it. So thank you for producer, Brian, for all the work you do. And those TV shows just look fantastic, man, with all the B-roll and such. So, yeah, well, let's hear some odd history. We have a two for you this week on our history.

All right. Yeah, I really like this. Number one, the first cup race at Las Vegas was held in 1998. That's not that long ago. Right. We should all kind of remember that. The event had many celebrities on hand. Baywatch star Yasmin Bleak.

Remember that? Yeah. Was an honorary crew member for Dad's pit crew. Wow. The RCR crew didn't just have her as an honorary crew member. No. They put her to work. She cleaned off the grill of the number three good-rich Chevrolet

on pit stops. This is the first time Bleeth and Earnhardt worked together the same year they were in a blockbuster hit movie Basketball. That's right. One of those big brand buildings that he did. Odd History Number 2 today, this one is equally as awesome. Mike,

did you know there's a connection between Jeff Gordon and Elvis Presley? I didn't know. I did not know that. When Elvis Presley performed nightly in Las Vegas in the 1970s, Jeff's uncle, Pat Houston was the lead trumpet

player in the king's band. Houston was the older brother of Jeff's mother. Wow. Right? Yeah, very cool. You think you would talk about that more? I know. We found out some more information thanks to NASCAR man who dug up some of this

in Carol Bickford's pit stop in a Southern Kitchen book. So Carol Bickford wrote a book. Pitstop in a Southern Kitchen and the information in that book Apparently, Pat had just come off the road with Presley in 1977 and was on his way home from Elvis's house when he fell asleep at the wheel and died in a car crash. Wow, this is interesting. Yeah, I said this just took a turn for the worst.

Six months later, Elvis II would pass away. I was a huge Elvis fan, obviously had been for years, got a room in my house dedicated to the man with all kinds of stuff that fans have sent me. Had no idea that Jeff had this connection. Pretty interesting. I got to, next time I see Jeff, I got to bring this up. Kudos to the NASCAR man for going into the old cookbooks. Cookbooks to do his research. It's really important.

I think that we thank NASCAR Man for his help with this. And basically, he finds all this information. Not only does he share it with us, but he shares all of it on social media, on Twitter. Go to NASCAR Man, follow. He's one of the best follows on Twitter. If you love history, especially odd history. That's a great show. We really want to thank Jimmy for coming by.

Don't hit the skip button there yet just now. Don't go to the next episode or the next podcast. Go wrong clear on that. Don't do that. Anytime we talk about pristine auction, it's worth sticking around. You see, pristine is an online sports memorabilia website where you can bid and win some authentic items. There are plenty of items to choose from.

The auction styles are plentiful. There's auctions that last for days. There's ones that are really quick, one-hour auction. And then there's the 10-3. minute auction. I've signed for these guys, everything that you bid on. You can trust that it's the true and real autograph. Its authenticity is guaranteed. So that's what I like about it. No fakes, no phonies. Those other phonies and fakes are out on the other sites. So don't go there. This week is spot an item that you won't have to break the bank for because it's a bank. Ralph Earnhardt die cast.

It's a 1964 Chevelle. Doc Cycle Center out of Canapolis, North Carolina is on the side of it. It's actually a Dale Earnhardt die cast, if you want to know the truth. Ralph Earnhardt did not drive this car. Oh, really? Because you can look right there on the door and seat. Dale Earnhardt as the driver. Oh. So we need NASCAR man in here to help.

Get Dillner out of here. Put NASCAR man in the seat. We need his help helping you sort through this challenging history of NASCAR. It's a lot of pitfalls out there. In fairness, his name is Ralph. Yeah, true. True, but no. That's not where we messed up.

It's me. I'll raise my hand. I was trying. Oh, well, go to 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 P-R-I-S-T-I-N-E auction.com. We say this every week, but we can't stress enough that when you register,

please select the Dale Jr. Download podcast from the drop-down menu and the how did you hear about a section? That tells them that we sent you. All right, guys. Hope you enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun. Don't forget to watch the TV show this week. Also, if you want a little more entertainment, Door bump was clear is a good option.

There you go. We'll see you. This bit of bad assery was made by Dirtymo Media. Dirtymo!