The Dale Jr. Download - 280 - Ricky Rudd: Stand Your Ground

Episode Date: October 28, 2019

Dale Earnhardt Jr sits down with one of the toughest drivers in NASCAR history, Ricky Rudd. They discuss Ricky's Clash crash, and why he chose to play through the pain by taping his eyes open to race. They go deep into the Dale Earnhardt ride swap, the fallout and the incidents that followed. Find out why Rudd called Rusty Wallace "Rubberhead," and what the 23-time Cup Series winner is doing these days. The DJD Gang gets lippy about Todd Gilliland's radio chatter about his team owner Kyle Busch. Dale Jr. and co-host Mike Davis also wrestle with the post-race altercation between Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin at Martinsville. Ask Jr is back and reveals Street Stock memories and Isla's Halloween costume. Meanwhile, Odd History runs over a jack-rabbit. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is a production of Dirty Mo Media. Hey, everybody, it's Dela Hart Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download. I got my co-host, Mike Davis, producer Matthew Dillner, and social media expert. Not guru this week. Just an expert. Liam Marie. Oh, boy. Yes.

And we got Texas coming up. Ask Jr. is back. We have a special Team Rubicon interview with a veteran who volunteers for Team Rubicon. And our guest, Ricky Rudd, is in the house, The Rooster. We're going to ask him how he got that nickname. Let's get started. All right, so, open segment time. Let's just discuss some things here.

This weekend, we had a great race. Martinsville, Virginia. Well, all right, was it a great race? Everybody enjoyed it? Yes, enjoyed it. Martin Truex Jr. I enjoyed both of them, actually. All right.

Martin Truex Jr. led more laps than anybody at Martinsville, I think. I don't think anybody's led that many laps there. What's the history? What's the statistician say about that? Is that the most ever at Martinsville? I think so. I think he topped what Brad Kozlowski did previously. Okay. Anyhow, man, laid a lot of laps. Let's just give it to it. Even with that said, I mean, it's pretty entertaining race. Even though one guy led so many laps, a lot going on, a lot of great battles for position throughout the day.

And culminated with some, you know, arguments and pushing and shoving in the pits after the the race. And I didn't see that coming. I was, uh, you didn't. No, uh, you know, I mean, what happened on the racetrack wasn't great, uh, especially for Joey. Uh, Denny got, you know, kind of gassed it up and squeezed him into the fence off turn four, but it's not uncommon to see that during a race at Martinsville and it kind of happens. I guess the fact that it, you know, happened to Joey and he's into playoffs and he felt like he got done wrong and he, so much was at stake and so much was to be lost, uh, it got under his skin a little bit more than normal. But if that had happened at Martinsville, maybe earlier in the season, I don't

think Joey would have went down there and talked to Denny. But he goes down there to talk to Denny, and he said that Denny is really arrogant, which at times he comes across as a bit on the arrogant side. He has told us on this very podcast that he's probably one of the most understood drivers out there. Misunderstood. Misunderstood. Yeah. I'm sorry. So, and I agree with that. I mean, I sometimes, you know, don't know how to take Denny, but, you know, one day he's super friendly and the next very, you know, kind of cold and standoffish. But, you know, that's who he is. And you just kind of get used to it, I guess. He said he didn't have a good resting face. So it just looks like he's always mad.

Yes, that's right. So, but I don't buy that. I just feel like, you know, whatever your face is, is what you are, what you really are, right? Right. No, no, we understand you well, Denny. You are what your face says you are. That's what I think. But anyhow, you know, if you're going up to Denny for an apology, you're always going to probably be a little disappointed with what you get. If you're expecting an apology, right? I mean, if your expectations are that high, you will be disappointed. Right. And Denny even said over the radio to somebody, I forget, I think it was his teammate, Brack Izlowski, he said, if he thinks I'm playing game,

he's mistaken. He must not know me real well. He said that on the radio during the race as they were having a little bit of a battle between him and Brad. So, Denny was in a, you know, I think Denny going into Martinsville was in a mood, feeling some way, and, and, you know, I think he thought he was going to go there and win that race. He'd been really pinpointing that event, and things maybe weren't going quite the way he wanted, so he felt like he needed to get a little more aggressive. But anyways, hey, Joey came, Joey went down there. They were talking. I really wish I knew what was being said back and forth because at one point toward the end, right before Joey pushed or shoved or whatever you want to call that,

Pat. Hard pat. Yeah, hard pat. Heavy petting. Right before that, Denny holds his finger up and kind of gives a, whoa, wait a minute. Like, it really makes me wonder what Joey said for Denny to go, hold on. All right. Like, did Joey go too far?

Yeah. In saying something personal or what? don't know, but he tapped him or whatever and turned to walk away, and it kind of registered with Denny, like, oh, I just got tapped. Yeah. Like, I just got physically. There was a split-second delayed reaction. Yeah.

Like, it didn't go trigger, boom. It was like, did he just do that? Right. And then he started to go after him. And I think it might have been the tire guy for Joey's team, grabbed Denny by the back of a jersey or uniform, horse-collared him to the carlared him to the car, and he was. ground bad bad bad scene you know i've read all the comments on social media about it and i don't there's no so it's it's easy to say man the team should stay out of it let the drivers handle it

so easy to say that ain't never it ain't that easy though you got it's just it's never gonna happen you can preach it all you won't it's not ever ever going to happen ever since i've been going to the racetrack, if there was any kind of physical altercation, the teams are going to be part of it. The team guys are going to be involved. If even on the premise that they're helping to diffuse the situation, the guy that pulled down, which was a heck of a takedown, by the way, he could make an argument. He was trying to break him up. Yeah, he just, very aggressive.

He just, you know, basically. He took himself down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the whole, I mean, he committed fully to the moment. and he's like, you know, I'm going to end this. Anyhow, the... I'm going to end this. You know, I thought he needs to be suspended.

The crew member. Yeah, he needs to be fined and suspended. If you're going to get involved, you've got to be able to handle the repercussions. If things were to get too violent or physical with the drivers, they too would be suspended. So I think the crew members have to be held accountable. in the same regard. So I hope that he's suspended and I hope that there was some sort of a deterrent for him and anyone else that wants to step in in a situation like that.

But like I said, if there's another fight next week, I will not be surprised that the crew members are all in the middle of it. Because that's been the way it, I mean, the crews often are fighting before the drive. are willing to fight. I mean, back in the 60s, 70s. I mean, the fights and the pits were happening during the race. So this isn't like new. It isn't something where, you know,

there needs to be new guidelines written or anything like that for how this all goes down and letting the drivers sort of fend it for themselves, sort of like in hockey and having the officials decide when it's gone far enough and to split it up. That's never going to be the case in our sport. the precedent was set decades ago and I guess if you're a driver and you know you really want to get after a guy by yourself you need to take take that to somewhere that that can happen right you know meet the

guy outside or bus lot bus lot or something like that you know i mean like matt kenseth went in between the haulers he had a good little moment there with bradislaski where he could have dotted that i a few times before every crew member ever got in there. Right. But if right there in the middle of Pitt Road and 300, 400 other people, you're not going to get much of an opportunity to really. Well, that's right. I mean, you just hit it.

I mean, the crew members are going to be involved as long as they do their fighting on pit road because naturally they're by the cars. There's 10 crew members by a car. Where are they supposed to go? They're supposed to go back to the motorhome or back to the trailer while the drivers duke it out? No, that's not going to happen. My question to you is, and maybe this.

is a more general statement. How often do you think the drivers that are, you know, running their mouth and trying to fight and trying to be really badass? Do they really want the driver? Don't they want their crews there to really kind of diffuse the situation? Are they really ready to fight or do they think, are they just trying to put on a show and make it look like they're going to take care of business? But everybody knows they're not going to. What do you think? I think that I think that every driver hopes that their team has their back. Has their back? Yeah. As in keep them out of it or jump in? I don't think that they care one way or the other. Okay. But I think that every driver hopes that wherever they go with whatever

intent they had that the crew is on. We've seen those situations and I can't exactly recall off the top of my head where the crew did not go defend the driver. The driver was by themselves. Well, that's kind of like when, you know, that's awkward. Well, that's like a quarterback that, you know, runs his mouth about the offensive line and then gets sacked and the offensive line ain't going to help him up. That's right. That's right. That's right.

You're running your mouth about it. So if you're going to, you know, if you want your crew guys to have your back or support you or know how to help you diffuse a situation or whatever it is, Mike, you've got to be treating them guys right, you know, taking care of them and have them on your, you know, all one big group, big happy family. Another thing that happened this weekend that was kind of, I don't know, funny. Radio chatter from Gillen, who won a truck race, comes across the finish line,

and he has just won his first truck race. Matthew really wants us to talk about this. I can see him in there just grinning so hard. I don't mind what he said. You know, I wish he wouldn't have said it probably. I think he shouldn't have said it. He said it. On it, don't apologize for it.

I was kind of telling you. people what he said he said something along the lines of as he's driving across taking the checker flag winning the race he said something along the lines of Kyle bush which is his team owner Kyle Bush can just stay in his effing motor coach in other words to imply that don't come to victory lane it's a little cringe worthy I didn't like it at all yeah I didn't like it but but but you know I think that you're saying he apologized he apologized on social media okay And, which I don't believe one bit that he's sorry. Okay.

The thing is, is so, and I think, you know, this is for, this is for any driver who wins a race, right? Especially the guy who wins his first race, whether it's in a truck series or, say Todd goes and races in Xfinity Series and wins there or next cup, if he wins a cup race someday, for all those guys that are going to win. So you just crossed the finish line and won your first race. Why bring in something negative into a moment that is so good and so important in your career? Why put any emphasis or spotlight or focus on something that you really aren't even happy about or don't like in that moment? Like, it just, it surprises me, like, you know, you cross the finish line and your first instinct is to go, that guy. Yeah.

You know, I just have a hard time. And it's happened before, like, you know, something good will happen to somebody or somehow win a race and they'll say something in their, Kyle Bush does it all the time. Like, he is so annoyed by something and he has won a race and will get out and go, You know what? I won, but this is annoying the hell out of me right here. And it's like, Kyle, just celebrate the moment. Enjoy what just happened. Right.

Right. He's done that before. Right. So, you know. Which makes this ironical. Yeah, ironical. Okay. Well, it was. But that being said, yeah, keep going.

I mean, like, he said it. You liked it? You didn't mind it. I thought it was kind of, it made me cringe a little bit. Okay. But, I mean, I guess I didn't really carry the way that he said it. I guess when he backtracked to apologize about it, I was like, wait a minute now. You know, the whole day later, if you say something like that, it's kind of like a drunk man's words or sober man's thoughts.

Is that right? So you're saying, well, I mean, you're... What's the... Yeah, right? That's the way you say it. Are you equating him in the moment being as... Emotional. Not thinking properly, and so...

I feel like there was some truth in it. Of course, yeah, I think it was. Listen, I mean... I feel like there was some... That is how he... He did in his press conference say he sort of wishes he didn't say it. So he didn't take a date of apology. I don't know about the apology,

but he did start walking it back shortly after when he kind of calmed down and was not in the moment. It was humorous. I don't think he should have said it. I know he immediately regretted it. But there's something there. Oh, there's something there. Listen. It came out of nowhere.

Okay. I didn't... Oh, you don't think it came out of anywhere? You think... Go ahead, Matthew. What were you going to say? Kyle's been very critical, which deservingly so. Yeah, I mean...

He's been critical and he took exception. I got it. Right or wrong. I'm not... And this is not to say that Kyle Bush was right in the way he handled it, because everybody knows drivers are way more sensitive and emotional than they think they are, including Kyle Bush, I might add. But if anybody ought to know that, it's Kyle.

All right. That being said, I didn't like it because I don't think that's the way you ever talk about your boss. Exactly. Even if you don't like them, even if there's some pent-up stuff, most people have some baggage that they could always say you could have during your career, you know, at DEI. What if every time you took a checker flag, you went out and threw out some old baggage

from years ago when you were a kid, hey, I got your homework, you know, or, you know, yeah. I mean, like, you don't do that. Look, your boss is your boss. And for me, I think you hit it on the head. why take the situation? Yes, he did. And now, I mean, does your potential bosses in the future not have this in their mind when you're thinking, okay, I got Todd Gilliland and I got three other options here?

Does it come up? Who knows? Maybe it doesn't. Maybe his driving talent speaks for itself. But I just, I don't like when you disrespect your boss. And some people could say it's because he was on the radio, so it's fine because he was talking to his team. I don't think you disrespect your boss in front of your team. I don't think you do it even if it's not on the radio.

You don't disrespect the boss. Exactly. I just think that the long game, it's not the way to do it. But anyways. Key word, the long game. So I'm with you, Mike. I just wish that when a driver wins a race, that he can suppress whatever those frustrations are and just celebrate what this credible moment is.

Channel it into the good. Channel it into the positivity of the situation. Right. And particularly because for him it had been such a long season, and here he was being, you know, not vindicated, maybe vindicated, I don't know, but he's having this moment and doesn't know what his plans are for next year, he said. And now everybody's going to remember, hey, remember he won that race of what he said when he crossed the finish line? Not, hey, that was cool, we got a clock.

And then the other thing, too, is Kyle goes to victory lane to congratulate his driver. How freaking awkward. Oh, how awkward, yeah. I mean, because now everybody's won't, is he going to show or is he not? What do you do? I know. Touchy. But you know what's interesting.

You just recently on this show spoke about how you tend to be overly critical of your drivers, not to the point that Kyle Bush has been with his drivers. But I think it's an interesting dynamic for owners who are also driving or owners who are close to the situation and what they can or should publicly say about the performance of their drivers and their teams, knowing that there is fragile feelings all across the board. Think about the team members. My gosh.

You know, Dale, you've said things where Kelly has said, hey, listen, you know, you better watch it a little bit. You got team member. You got families. I do. Even today. You know, I still, there's still times when you just get too comfortable. Yeah.

You know, and I think in, like in Todd's case, you forget who might be listening, right? You forget how many people, even though you just get so used to traveling in the circus, race to race to race and this bubble feels small but it's actually really big and there's a lot of people in it and especially when you do something like that it spreads like wildfire so anyhow interesting if you go back to the fight you gave a gave a grade the last week's fight do you want a grade this week's fight oh man i mean you gave it a d plus it last week it didn't happen this i don't know i think you could give it a grade well it's worse than last week's grade really Yeah, well, last week the two drivers at least had a hold of each other and wrestled for a moment.

There was a little moment of wrestling. These guys never got near. I don't think they got to hold each other. So did not qualify. A second time, didn't they? It was kind of separated by people. There were people in between. I like the fact that they said, Joey said, you want to go?

I think if you say the words you want to go, it felt very hockey-esque. Drop-a-drop. And Denny's like, yeah, let's go. Let's go. Oh, wait, you saw them say that? Yeah. They did say that. The second time they got together.

Yeah. You heard it. Jonathan Merriman had a good video. And you can hear him, is like, you want to go? You want to go? Let's go. Yeah, I want to go. I like it. Nobody let them go. Let's be clear. They didn't go, but they wanted to go. Does everybody here in the room want them to go? I wanted to go.

Yes. 100%, man. They've had it out together at Bristol that one time, and there's a history with that California deal. At that time at Bristol, Nichols was the main man in there, too, old mule. So, you know, the tire guy. Oh, same guy. Yeah. I don't know. They're mule, mule and nickels and all that. All right.

That old mule, he'll go. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. All right. Let's bring in our guest, Ricky Rudd. A miraculous come from behind victory by Ricky Rudd. And in his condition and before the hometown crowd. There he is.

Podcast. Yes, sir. I know. It took off. It has. And we get a lot, all year we have had people asking for this moment right here is to have you on our show. You have been, no, seriously, widely requested. Yeah, a lot of fans on social media give us a lot of opinions about who they should have on our show.

And you're in that conversation more often than anyone else. Well, that's a big honor, you know. Fans, fans still remember you. They do. They do. And a lot of fans remember you by the name, the rooster. right and I remember hearing that but I don't know how you've got that nickname do you even know how you got that nickname well sort of and a roundabout way we had a crew chief Richard Broom years ago

yeah matter of fact he worked at Hendricks for many years and we're lucky fortunate enough when I had my own race team that Richard came on who was crew chief a while and uh and Richard he was just a character he was uh I don't know how he came up on the subject but he said anybody ever told you you're like a rooster a banum rooster I said what what the heck what are you talking He says, man, because I get you, if I can work and get you fired up on that staring well, he says, you'll, you'll attack anything. You know, you're still a little guy, but you'll go after anything. So, and that's kind of how it got started. And I know, that's one of those deals.

I mean, it could be named a lot worse, so I guess it's not too bad. Oh, yeah. You don't mind it. No, it doesn't bother me. No, no, that's kind of neat. Do people still call you that, like at first reference? Yeah, I mean, I'll see people, I haven't seen, or they haven't seen me for years, and the first thing you'll see is, hey, there's the rooster, you know, and I think, oh, okay.

So you were born, Richard Lee, Rudd. How did you get Ricky? I'm not really sure where that came from just early on. It was kind of funny because once I started racing and learning about all the different drivers, and I guess I was named after him, I think I was named after a great-grandfather, but Richard Lee, and it's Richard Lee Petty. So it's kind of odd that ended up with that name, a race-a-name, when I was born, I guess. Yeah.

So you said it, man, you know, you'll run into people and seen you in years. I hadn't seen you in forever. So what have you been doing? Man, I wish I could tell you all these great exciting things, but kind of doing exactly what I want to do now, you know, and not on a schedule. And that's, I know as far as booking things in advance, and I'm probably getting labeled hard to get along with, but it's nothing personal. I just, I don't want to be on a schedule anymore.

You know, I live that schedule forever. I just, I don't want to do a schedule anymore. So if somebody calls up this morning and says, hey, I need you in California, you go do something. And I look around and Linda's sitting around and she didn't have anything to do, and she goes with me, well, we'll hop on an airplane, go out in California. And that's kind of how we live life now. We don't really live on a schedule. We just sort of live day to day and just sort of, you know, all the years that you didn't have

control of your schedule, now we're taking advantage of having control of it. Yeah. And you've been doing that for over 10 years now. Yeah. Yes. It's added up. You know, you look back at it and you say, man, where do those 10 years go? And, but it's, it's neat. I mean, it takes a while to sort of get racing out of your blood. You never get totally out of your blood. And you'll never do anything. your life that compares adrenaline-wise to what you did in a race car. And I guess I figured out finally after I retired, I'm just, I'm an adrenaline junkie. And nothing fulfills that like driving a race car. What is some of your hobbies, though? Well, it changes. It tends to change because I tend to get bored with things. So for a long time I was riding mountain bikes pretty

aggressively. Really? Yeah, I was doing that for a long time. I was riding about four or five days a week. No kidding. And decided I want to be a mountain bike raster maybe at one time and ran my first mountain bike race and I said uh-uh that's not necessarily such a good idea that's more training these guys are very serious about doing that and this was just on a local level it was just more than what you anticipated well it was going to be a lot of work you know i was taking something that i had fun at and i'll do that i mean that's just a character flaw i'll take something that's usually pretty simple that most people have fun at and i'll turn it into something complicated and make it more than it is and i was working out training eating right and stuff and i just said you know

i went mountain biking just to get away and have fun now i'm right back just like driving a race car again. I've taken something that was fun and made it more complex. So now I haven't been mountain biking when I do. It's just, you know, a pleasure ride and I can't ride the miles like I used to. Did you ever ride a road? No, I liked road to ride on the road, but I'm scared of that. It just scares me having my back to traffic. And guys do it all the time. I understand now it's kind of neat because you go to the racetrack now. I understand that most of the crew guys have their bikes and whenever they have days off, or afternoon off from probably 5 o'clock on, they hop on their bikes they could do a ride.

That's right. And they just have a blast way. I think it's great. Yeah, Jimmy got me, Jimmy Johnson got me into it and I rode 2,400 miles in 2017. Yeah, is that right? And I've fallen off quite a bit. I don't ride as much as all, but I miss it, but I feel the same way.

Like I go, I bounce between being nervous about riding because I don't like riding alone. Yeah. Versus, you know, if there's a big group, then you're kind of intimidated by the, by the speed of those guys. Yeah. Not doing it enough. Yeah, you got to do it. I mean, you got to live it, really. You do.

You'll fall off. Like I would, I, when I was riding 2400 miles in 2015, I'd worked my way up from 15 mile an hour

average over 20 miles to 19, which I was real happy with that. And then I quit riding for about three months and I was back down to 16. 5 mile an hour.

So, I mean, you got to keep doing it to stay strong enough. Yeah, you got me beat. I was doing my two years I was riding hard, I did 5,000 miles in the woods.

That's a lot. That's a lot. The woods is harder because you got, you're going a little slower and you're climbing a lot. Yeah. It's more work

on your legs. The only thing I know is when a guy shows up, it's never ridden a mountain bike, but he's a road bike guy, you know good and well that cardio-wise, you can't keep up with a road guy. But then you sort of ride the trails and then you sort of learn how to out-maneuver them, you know? If you were looking for adrenaline or, you know, to something, a hobby, to replace that adrenaline, did that give it to you? And if not, what, have you still been seeking that to try to fix that adrenaline rush? Well, the older I'm getting at, that's finally starting to calm down. I'm 63 years old now, so it's not a big deal. It's like it was. I keep a go-cart. I've got a stall up at GoPro Motorplex. I keep a couple of go-carts. Yeah, and I ran, I raced two seasons up there.

What? See, now we're getting. We knew he had to be doing some racing, right? Yeah, and I got a garage full of the latest, well, I say latest greatest. I haven't opened the garage door in a year and a half, so I think it's still there. And, but, you know, and I'll do that a while, and I got bored with that, and I'm pittling with airplanes. I like to fly airplanes. I'm a pilot's license in the 80s. Yeah. So anyway, my son came along and he's got in there resting and flying. So we went and bought a little small airplane after 10 years of not having an airplane.

We bought just some Linda calls at our put-putt airplane. So it's just nothing fancy. And it's what it's for, put around. Yeah. That's awesome. All right, man. Well, let's get back, dive into your career a little bit. I know you started out as a go-car racer and racing in motocross, right?

Yeah. All right. How did that get going? What was the catalyst? What was the one thing that got you interested in racing? I'd have to say there was five kids in our family, first of all. Really? And, yeah, there was a lot of kids.

And I was next to the youngest. And my dad was a body shop guy. He was a body man. He could build stuff. And he built a replica small car for all the kids in the family. Not me. I was four years old, four or five years old. So it really wasn't built for me.

It was built for my older brothers and sisters. And it wasn't a fast one. just a miniature car, had headlights and all kind of stuff. But they kind of lost interest in it. And then, you know, I came along four or five years old, and I'd wear my dad out. Hey, let's go out and run a go car. Let's go run it.

And I'd just wear them out. And so I was myself and I think my, I'm trying to think my older brother, he liked to run it some. But we would do that almost all the weekends. We just, he had, he'd spend time. We'd go out and ride it. We lived in a residential neighborhood in a cul-de-sac. It wasn't very big.

But we'd go out there and we'd probably run 100 laps around that little cul-de-sac. and that was fun and then it wasn't really fast enough and then that's kind of how it started it went from there that was fun but I want to do something faster and that's kind of how it just kind of snowballed from there yeah and so you got into go-kart racing and motocross and what was the what would connect that to racing stock cars you jumped in a stock car in 1975 at rockingham but what was the bridge well that's a good question I really don't know it just sort of happened you know it's not like I'm not smart enough to make a long-term plan.

It just sort of unfolded. And the go-cart racing was great. It advanced to the point we're going all over the United States, eastern half of the United States running all the national races and found out that I could do pretty good in that. You know, I won a lot of races doing that. But these were not the kind of go-cart tracks that you see around town. It's like Road Atlanta, Watkins Glen, VIR.

I was 9, 10 years old, driving 100-mile-hour at VIR. Laying down. down on your back. Wow. Lay down go cars. Did you go to Daytona? Daytona was just starting when I went car racing. Yeah.

So we did that and, man, I love the speed. I found out of a speed. You went to Daytona? On a go car? No, they did run go carts but the year I sort of retired, moved on out of the go cart racing, that was the first year they went there. I did race at Charlotte, Rockingham. Right.

They ran Charlotte, Rockingham. Yeah. They eventually got to Dago. Yeah. I mean, they're very fast. People don't realize, you know. How was that running around Charlotte-Mode speedway? at a hundred mile hour or 120 mile hour on a go-car laying down flat you know you didn't you didn't

you didn't have anything to compare it to it was fun i mean it's fun as heck you know just being a kid you know and laying on your back i mean literally you you would the cart would bump the ground every now and then that way you had to if you didn't bump the ground you weren't low enough so you'd just kind of scrape the ground a little bit and uh but running a hundred-sum mile hour i mean at that young age it was just unbelievable because the area that i grew up in it wasn't really so much a race town as it was if you went farther north to richmond that was a big stock car country but i I grew up. What town?

What town? I grew up in the Chesapeake, Virginia Beach area, in Norfolk. So I grew up there, but, you know, you asked what happened after I had to get the motorcycles where the go-kart races were about every three weeks. Well, I was getting bored in between and just ended up with a little dirt bike just playing around. And then I found out I could do okay on it because I was riding with guys that were racing, local.

And I got so I could go pretty good. I wouldn't say I could beat up on them, but I could ride with them. And then I went from there to a full-fledged, full-fledged dirt bike motocross. I mean, I wasn't pro level. It was more, I could compete pretty darn good on local stuff, but now and then the big boys would show up into town, the national guys. I could run with them for about 10 minutes, and I give out because our races were very short. There's no long.

But I liked it, but, you know, still was, the car thing just sort of stumbled on to that. So how did you get in touch with Bill Champion that you ended up driving for? Bill Champion was the first stock car that I ever drove. He had it. I was basically racing motorcycles, go-carts, 16. I mean, I raced them up until I was about 16, 17, 17 right in that area. And then my brother was a volunteer helper. My brother's a couple years older than me, and he was a great mechanic.

I'm not. I was opposite. I could take stuff apart. Didn't know how to get it back together. But he was building motors and stuff when he was in high school. So it's him and his best friend that lived in our neighborhood, the guy named Cliff Champion. Yeah. He was a Cliff.

Cliff and my brother were best friends in school. And then Cliff's second cousin was Bill Champion, but they volunteer helped Bill Champion work on his race car. So Bill was getting up in age, and he kept mummling, hey, I'm about ready over this stuff. I'm too old to drive this thing anymore. And then my brother and his best friend Cliff said, hey, well, you ought to get Ricky's brother to try.

He's really good at racing and stuff. He said, how much car experience he's got. He said, we've never driven a race car. but he's good on a motorcycle and he's good on a go-cart. You need to give him a try. And he did. Bill gave us, you know, basically gave us a try.

You ran a cup race like that. Yeah, I literally went. Were you not scared to death? I was petrified because before that, what happened is, it didn't happen exactly like that. What happened is Bill had a cup car that at that time, they would sell the cup cars after two or three years

and they'd end up in the late model, which is the Bush series nationwide series. Today, sort of hammy-down cup cars. So we bought his hand-me-down cup car and took it to Daytona. Now, this is again never, the only racetrack I got on was they took me over to Langley Field. We ran 15 laps in a cup car around a little bullring just to see how to start it, how to work

the switches. And so that's where we went from there. Went to the Daytona race to run in the race before the 500. The sports race. Yeah. And we didn't run quick enough. It was not a hundred car. It was like 75 cars.

And I was first alternate qualifying, which is the best thing that happened because I would have kill myself for sure if I'd have made it. So that was my practice time, so the next week is rocking him. When you went out on the racetrack at Daytona in that car and pulled out there, where you just like, yeah, I had to feel like the most incredible feeling ever. Like going to the moon. Like I'm trying to remember like the when I pulled out when I went to, I had a little bit of stock car experience.

So when I got there, I kind of had, I wasn't so unfamiliar, but the visual of pulling into Daytona for the first time ever is incredible. I can't imagine going there and knowing, like, I got to drive a car around this thing. Yeah, I mean, it was scary. Yeah, I was probably no scared I've ever been in my life. I mean, because I get out there and just getting in and getting buckled up and getting out there and knowing we're going to run, at that time, I think they'd run 180 mile an hour. And, you know, again, I've never, only time I've been in the car, I had 10 laps the week before to shake a car down.

So I'm out there and I'm running and I'm like, this thing is, I can't, it had a 427 motor in it, you know, a big block fast thing. but they had restrictor plates on it but it would get up and go and i remember thinking this thing is fast but it drives like a dump truck i mean it reminds me because i was used to tossing go carts flipping them around and yeah and it was just like i'm driving a school bus yeah and i'm running way way too fast to be going to drive this yeah yeah driving a school bus yeah yeah it's anyway it was scared as i've ever been in my life you know and i stayed scared for a while you know because i didn't have any experience like kids a day well that's a good point how long yeah how long did it take to get over the fear of driving these cars because you never got the learning curve.

You never got the experience. About 32 years. Gotcha. But it did give you adrenaline. You were looking at that. Oh, yeah. No, that was an adrenaline. I overdosed on adrenaline that day for a while.

But, you know, it was some funny story. I could go on. But the next week I did okay. I didn't make that race. But champ says, hey, you did okay? How did you like to go to Rock and Ann, North Carolina, and drive the cup car? Well, sure. Yeah, well, let's just try it.

You know, I didn't tell them. I still scared of that. Daytona experience. Rockingham wasn't as scary. But again, I roll in there for my first cup race, and I'm trying to remember how to unfold it, but I remember getting on the racetrack and running, and I made the race qualified,

qualified like mid-pack, and I finished 10th or 11th. Yep, you finished. And what people don't really, I mean, that looks good on the record, but you probably don't see it. I was 30 laps down over on the far bar. I was 30 to 30 laps down,

and Donnie Allison had lacked me, I don't know how many times he went by, me that day and I was a great shape I thought from motorcross racing and cart racing and I was running it was five hundred laps I was I was running on my tongue hanging out even as slow as I was going I mean I was it was hard and Donnie passes me for about I don't know the 30th time and as he's going by he's I'm thinking I'm like up on that wheel and he's driving by me he's waving because I always gave him he's just waved I said how the world can he be driving that fast and just driving with one hand I've got two hands and everything I can do to keep this thing going straight. So it was, it was, that was, it was, it was interesting for sure.

How hot was the cockpit of those cars back then, you know, compared to, you raced up into 2007. Like, what was the interior experience like for a driver back in the 70s? You know, I was 17 or 18. I mean, it was hot, but I used, I mean, we used to go to a motorcycle races. And back then, we wore leather gear before they had all the stuff they've got now. We wore leather pants. We didn't wear full top, you know, leather on top, but we had a jersey and leather pants. And I remember racing motorcycles where it was just unbelievably hot. So the cars, to me, the heat didn't really, never really bothered me. But they, you know, I guess looking back, they were, they were very hot.

But I think the cars today maybe even are hotter because the cars then were way up off the ground. So a lot of air flowed under the car. And exhaust systems weren't, you know, the exhaust systems, air cooled the exhausts, it didn't radiate through the floorboard. So I don't, I don't remember the heat coming until, you know, to the car started getting slicker and getting on the ground. When they started getting on the ground, then I remember them getting hot. So in 1977, you won Rookie of the Year. Yep. Right?

I mean, you first race, 1975, 19777, you won Rook of the Year. Your crew chief was Will Cronkite. Yeah, which was your dad's one of his first crew chiefs. Yeah, Dad and Will got together in 78. Yeah. And then you got a big break to drive. Well, you run for your dad for a little bit. So what was, I guess, how was that experience for you to drive?

family-owned car? Well, what we did, we actually, we bought a car from your grandfather, Robert G. That was my first real, real car that we had as our own. So my dad bought the car from Robert G. And it was a great car. In fact, the car had finished Atlanta. The last race of the year was Atlanta the previous year. And this was going back 75, 76. But anyway, the car was driven by Bobby Isaac at Atlanta. And we bought it right off the racetrack. Basically, it went back to Harrisburg and they pulled the Ray Fox Jr. pulled the motor out. That was his motor. Yeah. And then we took delivery of the car. It was a good car. So we had something really good to start with. We just didn't know what we were doing on how to work on it. But we learned as we went.

But that's the car we won rookie the year with. Really? Yeah. Yeah. But how did your father become all of a sudden a team? I mean, where did this start? I mean, because I don't know a whole lot about your father. And, you know, if you started go-cart racing at the early age, I mean, did he pass that down to you? and then how did this sort of pivot to being owning a cup car that you just bought from Robert G? Yeah. I don't know. Things moved quickly, you know, it wasn't like there was a whole lot of thought put into. You know, my dad wasn't a super wealthy guy by no means.

He had a, I call it a junkyard, but nowadays they call him salvage arts. In their day, they did okay. They made a little bit of money. And so that money, I mean, he sacrificed a lot. They didn't do any family trips. And it was anything you could take in the junkyard went into that race. So that's what funded your racing all the way up? Yeah, for quite a while.

Yeah, that's what the money came from my dad. dad. I didn't have any money. I was a, man, I was a delivery parts. I could call myself a manager, but there was no other people delivering parts but me, so I was in charge of deliveries. There you got. And that was a real, there was a point there near the end of that deal where y'all were, y'all were running thin. Yeah, it got, what happened is we had a bunch of friends. It was all volunteer help. I worked on a car. My brother built our motors. And then we end up taking everything we could. Will Cronkite came in a picture to get us organized later on. He was a smart, smart guy during that time period.

But, you know, there wasn't a whole lot extra money. I mean, we got at hotels, and I'm talking like it was rough times. I was tickled to death out of the opportunity. Yeah. But the people before us, the generations before us, roughed it even more. We get to a hotel room. We had a bunch of volunteer help that would show up from all over. We're fortunate about that.

But the hotel room, we'd have four or five guys in a hotel room, and we'd flip a coin to see who got to sleep on the box springs and who had to sleep on the mattress. We take the beds apart. And you flip a corn and see who got the masters of the box springs. And it's over. But that's how we went. but we even doing that, you know, ridiculous hours we worked

because there wasn't enough of us to go around. What we were able to do great things, but I don't think people realized, you know, the hardships we had overcome. If we needed a piece of sheet metal, we went out in the backyard, junkyard, and found the biggest Cadillac out there with a good hood on it. It couldn't be good because my dad could sell it.

So we had to find what's crumpled a little bit. Take the torch out, cut a big piece of square steel out, bring it back in, clean it up with a grinder. And that's how we built race cars back then. Wow. So, but anyway, that kind of wore thin. Everybody was physically wore out.

They did that for, they did this for a couple years, and they just couldn't, even though we won rookie year, I mean, everybody almost needed to be in a rest home somewhere or recuperating because it just got killed everybody. Right. And nobody wanted to do it anymore. So that's kind of how that came to an end, yeah. Yeah, and I mean, you almost, your career almost came to an end. Yeah, real close to coming to an end.

You know, technically, it basically, it pretty much was ended with a family operation like in 77. We run the rookie of the year, but we only ran a few races in 78. Right. And in 79, I get a call from Junie Dunliffy, out of Richmond, said, hey, you're interested in coming to work. Just like that. Yeah, bring yourself. You know, you don't need anything.

Just bring yourself. Maybe bring your helmet in a driver suit. And that's kind of how that started. And the hardest thing for me to do was when I went to work with Junie and we go to the racetrack, first time I came in off the racetrack, I got my driver suit on. Well, I get on a creeper and start going on, you know, changing the gear, whatever we needed to do. And Juni said, oh, hold on there, Bubba.

They ain't going to work this way. He said, you just go over there and sit on the back of that truck and relax and enjoy this. And you're not going to touch this race car because they probably knew how bad a mechanic it was, really. So that's why he told me to go over there and sit down. But that's kind of, I learned how to be real lazy after that. I learned how to be a driver then. What was that like driving for Junie Donnelly?

Man, just like, what a neat guy. I mean, just full of life experiences and just, he just had a unique way of talking to everybody and that was an amazing team for the amount of they only had a handful of paid guys but the volunteer guys he had could have gone in any cup shop and gone to work and been one of the top guys in the in a cup shop then but they were volunteer most of them worked like they're a machinist from one industry and and you know shipyard builders they could do everything and they're all most 90% of them were volunteers so but junie was a smooth talker but he was a good person you know when i came work with junie had only run

I'd only run two or three short tracks in my life. So Junie, I had the fortune of working with Junie, and he's the one that really coached me and taught me how to drive a short trap. So, you know, it's supposed to be the other way around. I was supposed to be a hired guy to drive his car, but he was a great coach. And I sort of missed that later on, having a coach.

I never had anybody could tell me, hey, have you thought about dragging that break a little longer in a corner or give it a couple of taps and then let go of it and get the car to rotate? Junie was full of that because he got through working with Ray Hendricks and Sonny Hutchins and all the great legends. short track racers. Did you ever know him?

Junie. Well, I mean, I didn't know him, know him. Yeah, just you love him. But I was around. You know, in these conversations, Junie's name comes up a good bit. And I only know him just of what I've heard. I mean, and I've never had an opportunity to hear people expand on who Junie Don Levy was.

And, you know, what made him so special? What did make him so special? Well, I think, first of all, he was a great mechanic, knew everything about race cars. But the biggest point about Junie, he was just a great person. You know, you put him in a category of a Bud Moore. I mean, just in a different way. Junie was just really smooth, polished, but you didn't have a contract. You shook hands on a deal.

And he just did what he said he was going to do. And he just had a way working with anybody's personalities he could adjust and get the best out of everybody and make everybody feel like part of a team. Sounds like a good leader. And the main of his word. Great leader, yeah. That's the best way to categorize Junie. You ran 1981 with Daggard, a pretty awesome race team in its own right.

Jake Elder was a crew chief for the first few races, then he left like he did. So that really would happen with him, huh? He just take off. Yeah. He just not show up. Suitcase Jake, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that's, when I went to work for Dagar, Gatorade, Darrell Walshap had just left. Right. So it was, you know, a great honor. What led up to that prior to that, prior to that got me the job is we had an old family car, Monte Carlo, that we had built at our shop back in Chesapeake. And basically, nobody wanted to, it was a great car.

It got built. I think we raced it once or twice. Carly ever raced it. Yeah. So that Monty Carly was sitting there, and nobody wanted to go work on race cars. Nobody wanted to race anymore. So, Linda, who I've been married to for 39 years, we all grew up together, same high schools, everything, dated two high schools.

She packed up. We got married in 79, so she packed up everything, and we moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. We lived in Canapolis in an apartment building around the main strip in Canapolis. We went there. She got a job selling tickets in a ticket office. Charlotte Motor Speedway. And I had, my sister was married at the town to D.K. Ulrich, who had a shop at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

So he said, if you want to come down here, I'll let you have a stall and you can get your race car ready to go and come over and run Charlotte. So that's kind of what happened, went down, moved down to Charlotte, temporarily for three, four months, getting ready for that one race, kind of all your eggs in, you know, everything in that one basket. My brother had built an engine for it way back, and it didn't get used. So we took that motor. And went down to Charlotte Motor Speedway, and we tested there, just,

me and I think had a couple of volunteers helped me get the equipment over into the infield to go practice. So went over there and it was kind of the week before the big event and we ran good. We ran maybe, I was about 15th fastest in practice and looking forward to coming back and a guy comes through that garage. I knew who he was. He was a legend. Harry had.

Came up to my car. I hung out a little bit. He kind of looked around a race car and it was just me and some volunteers that had to help me. It wasn't many people at the track. So he looks at the car and says, He said, boy, if you want to, he said, I can help you a little bit on his car. I think I see it's good like it is, but I think I can help you a little bit.

And if you're interested, I said, well, heck yeah, I'm beat to death trying to get this thing ready to go. So we took it across the street where Hendricks's shops are today. And Harry had, I don't know if it's still there or not. It was one long strip garage over there, long building. So we bring it over there. And so I go to work the next day at Harry's shop. And he's got Jimmy Maycar, who was a young guy at the time. We runs Joe Gibbs racing now.

Jimmy May car. Randy Dorton was his engine builder at the time, who went on to be Hendricks's engine builder. So Harry and Randy get our motor out of the car, and they go to work on it. They take it over to the down, and they start working on that. Me and Jimmy are working on the car.

Harry comes by, son, you need to put these lower and blocks you in. That'll help you. And it came by, and just one thing out to the other, we go back to Charlotte Motor Speedway about a week later and qualify on the outside pole. Yeah. That same car. Same car.

Same car. And we raced. We probably could have won that race. I got wrecked on like Black 6. Buddy Baker spins out and I hit him and knocked a fender off our car. And we still ran finished third. Wow. But what a, you know, that's really, that was the miracle and the whole thing to make it, to make it all happen.

And still owe those guys a ton of favor. My brother's motor, funny story later, my brother shows at the racetrack. Harry's in the diner room. They're running that motor. And Harry's on top this motor. It's running full blast, you know, at that time turn about 8,000 RPM. Harry's up there with a flashlight. He's looking down at a carburetor.

while the thing he's on the motor watch running and he's looking in the carburetor watching watching the fuel flow and he says uh and so he comes back a little later on so i can i change some carbureters around my brother shows up says harry i understand you've been hanging over that motor looking down in there and stuff watching the fuel flow when that thing was running on with dynam he said yeah i have we found a little something we changed the manifold made it better my brother said you don't i wish that i'd told you the crank shaft when that motor's got about 4,000 miles on it and back then the cranks would get for about a race right and this crankshed had like 4.000 a thousand miles and Harry said and because Harry used to brag about his bulletproof glass in his

dining room and that got to be a funny deal that Harry don't realize he's sitting on that ticking time bomb looking in that motor class. Oh man. So you had a year with the dieguard and then that deal went away in a season and you ended up going driving for Richard Childers. Yeah yeah what's your emotions at this particular point? Well what happened at dieguard was it was a great team wrong timing. I showed up. It wasn't real hard to figure out because after the Charlotte experience, I get a call, two or three calls, but one of them was from Bill Gardner from Dygard, and wouldn't know if I want to come drive his 88, the Gatorade Car car. I said, well, sure, yeah, I'd like to drive the love to drive that car. Yeah. Heck, that's opportunity. I just can't

believe. You sure this is really Bill Gardner on the phone, you know, I just didn't believe it. So, and that's kind of how that thing started. But when the contract showed up, I got it, first time I ever seen a racing contract and it showed up. And I think I was going to drive for 25% of the purse. And it was a 10 year contract. My God. And I mean, it was definitely was one side. And I said, man, this thing, this is not right. I said, how about we don't do a contract? No, no, you got to sign this contract. And I debated real hard about it because we had another opportunity shaping up to stay with Harry Hyde. Hindsight, that had been the thing. But it was, you know, this thing was going to happen with the dieguard. The thing with Harry had depended on

what kind of money deal came along. So anyway, I took the deal with Daeguard. It was great until suitcase Jake quit after the Daytona 500. And then we're sitting there. We've got the small cars. They were downsized when those big old cars down at those little cars. And nobody in racing knew how to work on them at that time. And it was a lot of changes that happened.

So I'm a young driver. I was depending on those log books that Darrell Walchup had developed with, you know, the big old birth of the Monte Carlo that was famous for him. Right. And that log book went in a trash can. And here it is. I'm a young driver and good equipment. I didn't know what to do.

Be almost like the drivers today. They don't really know much about the cars. I didn't know much about the technical side. And there wasn't a guy that can straighten out these issues. Anyway, so that we floundered around, won a lot of polls, didn't win a race, finished well, but then that thing came to an end at the end of the year. And then Richard Childress gives me a call. First of all, we had to, Gardner wanted to hold me to a 10-year contract.

He was going to farm me out. Sounds kind of like a rous contract. I don't know. I don't know. It wasn't good. It wasn't good for me. It wasn't rocket science to figure out. This is not a good deal for Ricky Rudd.

So anyway, I said, I'm leaving. Sue me. I ain't got anything. Sue me. I'm gone. This isn't for me. This is all about you. So I'm gone.

And Richard Childress calls up, says, Ricky, I'm step back. I'm not driving a race car anymore. Matter of fact, your dad drove for him some six months prior to that. And Richard didn't, his equipment was kind of tired. They didn't have, they tried to freshen up for your dad. they didn't have time to get it all fresh. They had any money.

Richard didn't have any money. That's what he said. So try to get it freshen up. So anyway, Dale, his deal blew up. So he goes to drive for Richard. End of the season, my dieguard deal blows up. So Richard doesn't have anything. He did have Greg.

Sacks was going to come in and pay him a lot of money to drive his race car. And so Greg was going to be the driver for Richard Childress. And Greg goes to Daytona testing in the winter about kills himself. It takes a bad hit. And he's in a hospital. Yeah, big crash. So then I get a call from Richard. And I'm not quite sure how it came to.

together. Matter of fact, it might have been your dad, by the told me, I don't know if you notice, we stay at your house on the lake. Way back. You were like seven years old. Yeah, I remember. I got that in my notes. Oh, yeah, okay. So you and Earnhardt were friends going way back. We used to be friends. We'll get into all that

in a second, but y'all started out of his friends. Yeah, I mean, Dale, senior, he hit it, he hit it big. And, you know, the thing, people don't realize about Dale, I mean, I was, worked in a junkyard. Dale, his job, he was inside a gasoline, tanker trucks. His day job was he'd get down inside those gasoline tanker trucks, weld up the cracks,

get out, do that all day, get out, and then go work at his ex-fall-in-law's house, Robert G., working on race cars at night. And that's about the time we got to know each other. We kind of hit it all pretty good. And when we were in town to save the hotel money, we'd go, we'd stay at Dale's house. We'd stay three weeks at his house while we're racing Wilkesboro, Charlotte, and we'd come hang out. He was nice enough to let us stay with him. Do you remember that? Yeah. Yeah. Did you ever try to talk? I mean, you were always so quiet.

You just kind of stayed in the corner and mind of the trouble. Was he? He was always doing, he was, he was always cutting up. Nothing, Bajor.

I mean, he was always like, but that's what you remember. I was a mild annoyance. No, that is a good, he was, I just remember

he was a neat little kid. We went out water skiing one time. I think you probably learned how to water ski about that day. But anyway, he was a neat little kid. I remember Kelly, but I remember Dale Jr.

And just thinking, you know, what a neat kid. You know, look what he's turned out to be. you know, shame that happened, but I mean, he wasn't a kid. But, no. So anyway, so the Richard Childers deal, we go to work for Richard.

And again, Richard had a chance to beef up his arsenal of cars and motors during the winter. So 82 comes along, and Richard calls, yeah, I'm not doing any, Richard. I love to drive your car. He says, no, Ricky, I've got just enough money. If we go to Dayton and do really good, we might be able to run six more races this year. Oh, my gosh. He said, I've got enough to run six races, but we should be able to run those six race. Reese is really good.

So I show up at Richard. So Rich is better than anything. I don't have anything else going, so I showed up and get the cars all fitted up and adjusted. And we go to Daytona. I think we sat on the pole that year. Kerriarbo won the pole, turned his car upside down on the second lap.

So we were really second fastest we got to start on the pole for the 500. So anyway, and about the time right before the Daytona 500, we get a phone call from Piedmont Airlines. While I was at the shop hanging out, it was, anyway, that was the beginning of the money coming in. So it just unfolded. It was very nice.

It turned out really good. Yeah, you and Richard go and won two races that year. You won Riverside, I believe. We didn't win any of the first year. We won a lot of pole. We won a bunch of poles. Didn't win any race. We blew up, like, at a 30 races, we probably blew up 25 of them.

What? We blew up a lot. But he was still, I'm sure Richard was just putting old pieces together, parts, and he was in debt of different engine guys trying to help them. I mean, cars were fast, they ran good, they blew up. and that was could be expected. How did you manage your expectations and, you know, your attitude and all that? Well, it was that or I could go back and become, I could take over my delivery job,

delivering auto parts around Norfolk, or I can kind of see where this goes, you know. Did your wife have a hand in trying to keep your mind sane, get you straight? She was always grounded, you know, I was sort of a hot head and just, you know, you know, wanting instant results. And she really kept me grounded and focused, really. I couldn't have done it without her. She grew up sort of a normal life. Her dad worked at the railroad, North and Southern Railroad.

It was a breakman on the railroad. And she was really a lot more grounded than I was. So she helped on that. Yeah, I remember when, I don't remember the staying for weeks and weeks. I know that happened. I don't remember it, but I remember being out on the pier, and they'd come riding up. And she was always incredibly nice.

and, you know, him and dad were buddies at that time. And dad was having those lake parties. Yeah, he'd have like a once a year kind of thing where he'd invite his team over, and you'd come by and Tim Richmond come over. I got a picture of me and Tim Richmond in the back of that car that you could drive in the water. Man, that red car and all he'd show up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know who owned it. There's just a lot you just said there. A little car. A picture with Tim Richmond in a car that drove in the water. There's a red little car. Designed of being in the water, I guess. Yeah, you could drive it into water

and it turned into a boat for a little, you know, drive around. God almighty. What kind of G.I. Joe stuff to deal out there. I think Schrader owns one of them now. Of course he does. He ended up with it. I don't have the same car.

It might be. Yeah. But I got a picture. Oh, picture's so damn old. Half of it's drawn in. Okay, Mike. We have spoken a good deal on this show about my ancestry. It's something that I'm very interested in.

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That's Ancestry.com slash Dale Jr., D-A-L-E-J-R. Ancestry Health includes laboratory tests developed and performed by an independent C-L-I-A-certified laboratory partner and with oversight from an independent clinician network of board certified physicians and genetic counselors. Ancestry Health is not currently available in New York, New Jersey, or Rhode Island. You ought to speed that up like by three times. Like the micrmachine guy. Yeah, for the... It's a great.

You know, so you go and you race for Richard, and then there's a swap, all right? You go to Budmore, dad goes to Richard, back to Richard. How did that happen? I'm still trying to figure that one out. Oh, really? Yeah, no, that's kind of when the relationship kind of turns out. That's when the relationship got bad.

You know, see, when we just come through the neighborhood there, like Charlotte, Wilkesport Weekend, you know Dale was you know especially we ran really good with Richard well you know how do you how come the cars running so much better I said well we got Kirk Shelburneen is sort of he's come on board and he's taken a you know he's learned a lot Richard's got this guy he's got that guy and I'm so we're best friend I'm just shooting you know spilling my guts you know and you know they got this other guys coming in the years out he's got such a sense coming as like lead fabricator and then uh so we're

running well this was uh this was at the end of 83 because we had won some races we one on Riverside and Martinsville. So then we're still stayed at your dad's place there. And so we're talking and I'm sort of spilling my guts, you know. And then 83's over and all of a sudden find out that Dale is going to come drive for Richard. And that kind of hurt, you know, that's what kind of bothered me. But, you know, hindsight, looking back, take all the emotions out of it. I mean, I can see why Richard did what he did.

It was just, you know, back then two card teams really didn't exist. But it sort of, you know, it didn't sit well because it was almost like a family saying, hey, we're done with you, kid, you're done. You know, you're out of the door. And that's when it turned bitter. And it wasn't until probably six months where your dad died that we actually kind of buried to Axi or whatever. Unreal. I didn't know that. Yeah.

I knew that y'all had, I didn't know that there was any kind of animosity over the swap. Yeah. Until I did a little research here for the show. Yeah. But I know you were coming around. y'all were friends and then it just ended abruptly quit and then y'all almost became you know you had a couple run-ins on the racetrack over the years but it just was there was no friendship at all no it was opposite of that probably yeah sure both sides why del arnhart not richardt and childeris being the one that

you would be more upset with um well i was that i was disappointed with richard and pissed off that senior was i'm sitting there spilling my guts about what we got planned as if i'm you know part of the team and all of a sudden he ends up with it you know so you think he so he used that information against you well yeah but you know Richard and Dale were best friends they hunted together I mean you know they spent a lot of time in the woods and you know you know things I couldn't control but you know disappointment it was beyond disappointment yeah and you know anyway so I learned I learned a lesson yeah and in our generation or after that I kind of hate it though but never got close to any drivers the whole time kind of isolated myself and it's

stuck with me a long time and I came from a background of go-cart racing where everybody was best buds but when you went out on a racetrack you know you try to beat each other but then race was over your best friends again so I never really developed that you know I mean it kind of that was always in the back of my mind yeah you um so let's talk about that you um there was the uh 1988 north wittsboro um what was it 1980 88 there was a dust up with dad yeah what in north Wiltsboro. Yeah, 89's the one to everybody remembers.

I get them confused. Yeah. What happened in 88? I don't remember that one. I'm trying to remember. There's one came before the other one. Let me see. The 89 is when Jeff Biddyam won the race and you and dad ended up back.

The one before that, the 88 race, I remember that one well. The one before that was, uh, what's his show rated? Can I, can I, can I say? All right. Well, the race was going on. I was at North Worksboro and 88. I'm pretty sure I was in the green car, the Quaker State car. Merrick McReynolds as crew chief

Bob Riley That was a great little team there But so we're racing at Wilkespar And senior was You know he had to deal I sort of accused him If he knew who was going to be really strong That day he'd work if he'd take that guy out early if he could

Really? So he'd have to deal with him Yeah So we're running along and I'm doing pretty good And we had a car's doing great And I come up on Dale I can't remember who Who came up on who

But anyway Dale bait he just basically spun me I mean put his bumper on and spun me Turn me around I didn't hit the fence. I almost did. Went up, got gathered back up. Well, then I'm working like crazy.

The whole rest of the race, this is halfway through the race. So I'm working the whole race to catch back up to him. So about still 100 laps ago, I catch him. We get up beside each other. And so I repaid a favor. And he didn't hit anything, spun him around. And then the race is over. Come on, cars, come on down the garage, pulling into the garage area.

And Bill France Jr. was waiting at my door of my car when I get out of the race car. Really? He's sitting there standing at my door. The president of NASCAR. Yeah, the big daddy. He's standing there. He's right there. Him and I,

like we had daily conversations. I probably had three in my whole life with him. So he's standing at my car when I go to get out. And he looks at me and he says, he says, what was that altercation about out there with the three car? What was that all about? I said, well, you saw it. He just took me out.

He just spun me out. Oh, no, and I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about later in the race. you came out and hit him. He says, he said, what do you say about that? I said,

I'm really disappointed to myself. And he looked at me like, like, like really puzzled. He said, he said, yeah,

I said, I'm really disappointed. He looked at me like, that's what I want to hear. Well, and then I came back and said, well, I'm disappointed.

I didn't run that son through the wall. You said that? I said that to him. And he kind of like looked at me, kind of smirk, walked away.

The next morning, that was before email. That was fax, machines on my fax machine 10,000 dollars fine conduct detrimental to the sport of auto racing unreal that was it so so anyway that's that's just that's funny little story yeah no but that's I laugh at it now I don't think it's funny as hell now but it wasn't funny and in 1989 I was there for this one boy this one hurt um you and dad go down into term one and honestly I'm a I'm gonna call it the way I saw it looked like you you and him went for the same space

That was pretty much way. A lot of people said he came down on me. I went up on it. Basically, I couldn't have gotten any lower. I used to have a little flat. You could actually use that flat to help get the car to rotate. Yeah. So I waited to the reason I waited to that last lap because I knew he was going to come back and try to wreck me.

Yeah. So I didn't want to put myself. I wanted to do it in a way. And I already made my mind up. I wasn't planning on passing him. I was going to run square to his door. And I was going to run square down the backstress. I was going to run square in three and four.

You didn't want him to get behind you at all. I didn't want him behind me. So I was going to get down. And then I had more car than he did at that time. So it wasn't going to be a question as long as he was on my outside. So that's why I took the bottom. And I wasn't planning on doing an honest clear pass. You had to think a step beyond that.

So I hadn't thought it through and figured it all out. What I didn't figure out is that he didn't want to give that space up, you know, and how he got his car to come down as low as he did. And I couldn't go any lower. We got together. We hit the spun. I was more mad that y'all let Jeff win. Yeah.

Yeah. The whole end of that. thing it was one of those deals that yeah he wasn't even a fact you know it was yeah but our two cars so your dad never really saw me all day because i had a flat tire i'd ever come something happened so i was never even in the picture but the whole time you know mcrentals is a crew chief he said you know sit tight just don't do any stupid we got the best car we got the best car so anyway i when when i caught your dad at near the end of the race uh he you know he he didn't expect in it you know he wasn't because he was the dominant car all day and and i can't i think it shocked him that all of a sudden

in the last 10 laps he's going to lose this race. He knew it. Oh, yeah. What point of the year was this race, and what were the ramifications on the line that I think that made this thing ratcheted up? Dad and Rusty were in the middle of the points battle, and Rusty and Dad had had a, I don't know if Rockingham came later, but Rusty and Dad got together Rockingham ended up ripping the back of Dad's car off. And just, Dad was so used to winning championships, and here he was in the thick of a battle with somebody that he felt like that he could beat. And he lost.

You know, he lost the title to rest of that year. And when you lose the title, you look back at days and moments in the year when you think, well, there went 12 points, there went 24 points. And, you know, so the Wilkesboro deer was tough. Part of me wishes, I mean, you know, you went down in the corner. You didn't go straight up into the side of daddy, but daddy came down a little bit. You know, in my mind, I'm like, ah, you know, if we just could have ran second that day, even though second would have sucked, we wouldn't have went to Victor Lane. but damn, that was a lot of points we lost that day and then a couple other events throughout the year.

But so, all right, after that, that was pretty interesting stuff happening in the garage area with conversations and dad. It was nearly a ride. I never come that close to seeing. Were you there? Were you there? I was there.

It was scary. I mean, fans were on the fence. I mean, they were trying to, you know, what little bit of security they had. It was going at you? Well, half of them were yelling against me and half them were yelling for me. I mean, it was like a mixed crowd.

It was a close thing to riot. And I know that day McReynolds, myself, I don't know if your dad did or not, we got out of the infield, it's parked in the infield. We went to leave. I laid in the bottom of Larry McRillowell's van with a blanket over me. Really? And I understand your dad might have done the same thing. Wow.

I mean, it got nasty. Yeah. So after, you know, so you and dad had, that, that was probably the height of y'all's frustrations with each other, or were there others? That's pretty much it. I think it kind of, I think it was, you know, I look at it, cost me a race, which is, which at that time was as important to me as his championship was. And I looked at him, so he could have given a little bit.

I mean, I really, you know, of course, I'm seeing it my way. Sure. But, I mean, I couldn't have gone to the bottom of track anymore. And he had been, it wasn't like we were close. Those cars were on the radial tires at that time. And Goodyear hadn't figured that out exactly on how to get those tires, not to be treacherous getting into corner. It was a tricky time.

And Wexbar turn one was not a, we both went in there. I didn't have to go in there hot. I mean, I got my car turn. And if it had been two car lengths later, I'd have had to turn, my car wouldn't have spun. But anyway, it is what it is, you know? Yeah, you talked, you said a moment ago that you and dad worked things out. Yeah. How'd that happen?

I can't remember exactly. We ended up leaving a racetrack at the same time together. And as far as when we kind of buried everything, it would have been, whenever the last race at Rockingham was, I don't know what year that was. So one of these stat guys could probably tell us, but we're leaving the racetrack and we're in streetcars because we don't have far to drive, so we're leaving the racetrack, and we're kind of back and forth into traffic flow,

and all of a sudden, you know, if somebody's tried to crowd their way in, it was, and then you let them go, and then, you know, still trying to get out of the infield. So we get out of the infield, and then senior pulls, that was junior beside me, so he pulls up, rolls of winter down. Hey, what are you doing? I said, we're going to head home. What you doing? He said, we're going to go get a bike to eat.

You want to join us. We're going to go to P.F. Change's in Charlotte on the way home. You want to stop and go have a dinner with us? Yeah, sure, let's do that. So we did. As a fact, in that conversation, I had a piece of property. I was getting ready to build a shop on. And your dad said, well, at the dinner, we're sitting there just catching up.

He says, if you need any help, you say, I got a bulldoze, I got a guy, bulldozer and operator. I'll send over there if you need somebody to move from trees and stuff for you. So, I mean, that's kind of how thoughtful he was once you got, you know, if you weren't on the bad side, you know. But, I mean, so you were leaving Rockingham. So you're going to go drive an hour or so to Sharkey, and were you thinking what in the world just happened? Because you guys have been harboring this ill will for a decade.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it was time, you know, and it was good. We had a real good dinner. You know, it was just, you know, it's kind of like, I mean, it almost reminds you of family squabbles. You know, you get squabbling with your brother or sisters. And if you're not careful, you let that go on way too long, you know, and then eventually you get older and you start cleaning stuff up a little bit.

So it was kind of more of that type of a situation, I'd say. Yeah. Did you feel good about it? Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, it was, it was. It was, yeah, felt how do we let that, you know, fester for so long, you know. Of course, by that time, you'd had bouts with Rusty and everybody else, right? Yeah, but nothing, you know, it was, they were different bouts.

They were? Yeah, they were different. How so? Well, you didn't have the, the personalized feelings involved, you know? Yeah, but you didn't let, you could, because you, because of what happened with Dale back in the 80s, right? Because you'd say you didn't let anybody get close to anymore. Well, I mean, you know, the deal with Rusty, I mean, I mean, he stole two or three races from it, you know, just out of, you know, just being a jerk, really, no more reason from that. You know, we never really ran each other on the racetrack.

I mean, had no, like, hey, I got a debt to repay, but a couple of times I had some races won, and he's being lapped. He had a wreck or bad equipment that day, and just would go from the bottom up to the top to turn me around. So, I mean, it's just stupid stuff. Yeah. Rubberhead.

Yeah. No disrespect now. We do talk occasionally now. Did you give him that name? No, I think his dad gave him rubber head. Dad gave him rubber neck, and you altered it. I don't know. I don't know for sure. Man.

But time heals everything. Now we're a bunch of old guys and you look back and laugh at it now. At that time it seemed pretty serious. Yeah. Did you work out things with Kevin Harvick? I've not seen him since he was standing on the roof of the roof. No, he wasn't on the roof. No, he was on the roof. Yeah, he was on the roof.

So it was other people. I wasn't concerned about him. It was his big bodybuilding squad of. crew guys and no disrespect i had the wood brothers greatest people in the world wouldn't harm a flea and uh you know not real hard you look at where brothers are they're 50 60 and you look over there at the shielders crew shielders crew and they're all 18 20 and look like they've been eating a ton of steroids are all bulked up you know yeah and uh they like to fight it wasn't real hard to figure out you know pat trison came up he wouldn't let me get out of the car probably

saved my life that day probably rCR crews i was trying to get out they're still feisty they're still ready to go yeah so um How do you characterize that? You were really emotional, you know, as a driver. I don't really, I never saw that side of you. You think it was circumstances that just put you in those situations. But you all, you were never scared, I guess, to get out of the car and say what you wanted to say. And if it came down to having to stand up for yourself physically, you did that as well.

How do you characterize that? A lot of people say it's just a screw loose somewhere along the way. And I maybe have to agree with them a little bit. I remember getting out at Wilkeshire, and I can't remember which one of those episodes, but I remember getting out in the garage area, you know, and people always, they look at me to say, I thought you're a lot bigger than which you are. When you see you in person, I'm 5, 8, 5, 9. Not a real big guy, you know.

But, you know, I don't know. Something just clicks, and I knew I had to go see your daddy and talk to them pretty serious. and the children's guys were all huddled around them. And I remember running and jumping up in the crowd, and as I jumped up, McReynolds had me by the waist. Pulled me by the waist, pulled me back. Probably saved my life another day.

I mean, I was pretty – Were you ever that way in the racing go-carts? No, no, not like that. Go-cart racing was a different – it was, you know. You think that would be pretty aggressive. Well, let me say this. I ran lay-down go-car racing. And you had to draft.

You had to learn how to draft and you're running so fast. But you didn't – You know, the short track guys, now that was a little different story. They run like they had fenders on them. They were pretty aggressive. I just asked this question. We were talking about this because of the Martinsville post-race incident yesterday. And I asked the question to Dale.

I'm asking you, you too, do drivers, when they confront each other after race? Do they really want to fight, or do they expecting their crew members to actually get in there and, you know, keep it from getting, you know, physical? When you went to go talk to Dale Earnhardt, I mean, were you ever looking for a fight? I wouldn't say I was looking for a fight I was looking to get a punch in I wasn't necessarily looking for a major ordeal there's times like if I was going to ever get to his daddy

I got into it with Derek Cote one day and I wasn't going to I mean I was going to go up to talk to Derek I had no intentions of getting in a fight I go up to Derek and he needed somebody to talk to him because he really screwed up that day so I got somebody to talk

and I walked up to talk to him and I got real close to him and he was a I don't know if you ever seen him he was a he was a semi-pro catcher, big guy, stocky guy, built load of the ground, but muscle. So I go to talk to Derek and just say, Derek, you know, what the heck were you doing? And I get about two foot away from him, and I'm still kind of walking towards him. And as I get closer, Austin, he's drawing back his right hand. I mean, he's got this sucker way back here, and he's ready to unload it.

And my instinct, you know, grab him. You know, I got to grab him and not let this thing, not let that right hook kill me. So I grabbed him and tacking him. We hit the ground. Now that day I was looking, I'm glad somebody was coming to help. because I end up on, I end up, we know, nobody had to do a punch. She was a wrestling match. You end up falling on the floor.

Look like a couple of idiots wrestling around in the garage floor. And then, and then he's broke it up, you know. Yeah. But I don't know. I mean, I didn't go looking for any trouble. It just seemed to follow me a lot. I don't know. Maybe, you know, looking back, maybe I was the problem, I guess.

Sure. Well, and that sounds like, I mean, no. I mean, I didn't, yeah. Yeah, I never looked at you that way. I thought you, you would confront. You know, one of the things I was always impressed with you is that you always had a way. I always thought this was clever. You tell me if I was reading this right.

Your play on words, you know, in the post-race interviews and stuff, it was much like you said, what you said to Bill France. Now, I was disappointed in myself and then dot, dot, dot, because I didn't, you know, wreck him harder or something like that. But I always thought, like, with you and Rusty in particular, you would just, you know, be very political about how you address the situation. And you're like, no, it was just, you know, one of those, you know, we were racing hard for the same position.

But I always thought there was something more to it. I don't know. I know, you had to be careful what you said. I know that. But you were aware of that. You were cognizant of that. Yeah. Well, I don't know.

I mean, I just drove with emotion, you know, I did better once I got in a race car and I buckled down. You know, I tried to be a nice guy and I didn't go look for trouble. But, you know, if you had to, you just had to stand your ground. Probably no different it is now. I mean, just got to, you can't let everybody run over top of you, but you don't want to go out looking for trouble either. You try to stay off each other. I mean, that's not the intent is to go out and I want to wreck somebody this day. My intent was, I want to get to the Victor Lane.

And there are obstacles along the way, and you try to minimize those issues that can keep you out of a potential victory lane on a given day. And that's just the incidents with other drivers just has to be something you try to work through. Yeah. I think I always, I mean, I always, I race you a lot, and I never once felt worried that I was going to set you off. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't categorize you as a short fuse. But, hold on, though. What was he like to race against? I don't know.

It was so fast. I didn't see much of them. Shit. I looked back at a race in Richmond. Somebody sent me a video the other day. I was driving the Texaco car at Richmond. Yeah. And I looked back at it, and we were racing like Kek for the win.

It was Harvick, myself. And you were right in the middle of it. I was right behind you two. Yeah. You were sitting there watching all that. Yeah. You're going to think I'm going to win this race because these guys. I was hoping.

I was going to take each other out. We tried. That was 2002. I believe, or 2001, you and Harvick traded. Of course, it didn't end bad that one. No, he was congratulating you even after the race. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was really. It was a few years later.

It was really heartfelt, you know, I'm sure. Oh, you didn't. Gotcha. We skipped over something that I know people are going to be upset if I don't ask you about this. But driving for Budmore, you go to Daytona, 1984, Bush Clash, get turned around off turn for and flip terribly down the front straightaway. The pictures and images of that crash and you flipping violently and in the dry out, you know, out the wind and it comes down and your helmet's bouncing around in the door

in the door jam. And you had to, you know, it's famous for the fact that you had to tape your eyes open to be able to run the Daytona 500. Just tell us about that experience. How hurt were you? and obviously you turn around and go to the Richmond and win the next race but that sort of set a tone or a reputation of you as a tough race car driver one willing to do whatever it took I mean I remember that pretty vividly I guess

after you know getting turned around and that's back when the cars were the short wheel based cars and no one really had a handle that was before the roof flaps on how they how the roof flaps now keep them on the ground pretty much back in that day they were doing those reverse flips. It was 200 mile an hour. I think they were unrestricted then. So anyway, the car got airborne. And I remember thinking it did a slow spin

and it was headed right for that little jut out wall that Darrell Walter hit later on that you didn't want to hit there. And anyway, the car ended up going up in the air. I remember it just getting airborne and it changed directions. And one thing I remember is I'm not going to hit that wall. This is going to work out okay. But it was up in the air. It felt like much higher than what it was.

after looking at the video. And I really don't remember the ride. I just remember when it came down, before it came down, I remember thinking, don't get knocked out because this thing, it could knock the fuel cell out of it, and I, you know, don't go to sleep.

Yeah. Hard as I was trying to not go to sleep. I went to sleep. I remember hitting the first time. And it's almost like watching NFL game tapes, you know, when you hear when they have those big speakers and you can hear the field, you know, you hear the action actually on the field

where they got those satellite dishes listening in. Because I remember hearing myself, when I hit the ground, I heard this big, all the air leave my body. I remember hearing it, ugh, you know, like somebody just hit me in the stomach. And I went to sleep, I'm waking up. And they're, you know, I didn't know what was happening at that time. They were working trying to get me to come back to.

And I guess I woke up and they were all, you know, they're working, they were, you know, looking at my arms and working on my arms. I'm thinking, man, forget my arms. The rest of me is what's hurting. My arms are fine. Looking at the video, I see why they were worried about my arms because they were out of the car. They were out of the car. And every time it would roll, I mean,

Good Lord had to be there because every time it would roll and it would start to roll over on that roof, my arm was, I mean, it was out. It looked like Buddy Baker with his arm all the way out over top of the roof. And it would come down and I guess in Schiffelago Force, it would whip it back inside. And they would whip again and go out again. So it looked like my arm was out.

You know, look like I was going to rip my arm off. But just very lucky, you know, I mean, I guess. As a matter of fact, the seat in that race car is one your dad was running before. And he used to take like a Conaline van seat and dig all the foam out of the center of it. I've seen them how you did it. but I like the seat in the car. But when I hit, the reason I almost came out of the window

because when I hit, the whole bottom of the seat broke off. So the bottom of the seat hit the floorboard, and now you could put two people under the shoulder harnesses. So the only thing was keeping me in the car was a lap belt. Damn. And that's why I moved around so much, and I got banged up was because of that. But anyway, that's where my wife Linda came in as far as giving me some. I wouldn't say words of encouragement.

but we went to the hospital and I was conscious at that time. I had woken up and I was awake the rest of the time. So we go to the hospital. And that night, I'm telling Linda, she's there with me at the bedside. I said, I got to get out of here. I got to go. I got to be at a racetrack tomorrow and morning. And after they'd done x-rays and everything, looked at everything,

said, you don't look like any broke. I got a lot of torn cartilage in the rib cage and stuff. But no serious bones are broke. That's good news. Okay, I'm out of here. And so about that time, I tried to get up out of the bed. And Linda said, you ain't going anywhere. I'm not feeling good, but I've got to get out of his bed.

And a lot of it was I had worked my whole career to get to a place like Budmore, established deal. You know, it wasn't about the money. It was just the trials and tribulations to get to that point where all of a sudden, okay, now you've got a real stable deal. You've got a chance to do something here. First race and you get hurt really bad. Well, I look like I'd probably be out for a season anyway.

So I'm in the hospital room and getting ready to get up in Minnesota. So I'll tell you what, you're going to spend at least the night. I said, no, I'm not. She says, okay, Mr. Tough guy, get up out of bed and walk over there looking at mirror, and you tell me what you see. So I get out of the bed, go over to the mirror. This is like two or three hours, four hours after the wreck. I get to the mirror, and I'm looking at this person.

I don't know who I'm looking at. It don't even look like me. I mean, and I came back and said, well, maybe I'll spend the night anyway, take a look at it. So, and that's kind of. So your eyes swelled up, and you had to tape them open. Whose idea was that? Well, I went out on a racetrack. We didn't get on the racetrack the next day.

I was at the racetrack next day, but I could not have gotten on a racetrack the next day. I would have just physically couldn't do it. But it rained out everything that was going on. So I knew we had to get a backup car and get out there and get going again. So the next day was a Tuesday, so we get up, go to a racetrack, go out on the racetrack. And, I mean, it was a little bit of work to hold it down wide open at that time, 200 mile an hour.

They didn't drive that good anyway. And there was spoiler on the back. So I was able to do it But I remember I get to the corner And I get going down to corner I couldn't see it was like lights out I'd see it's just be it go black And I came back in and I told bud

I said I got a bad problem he says What is I said I can't see when I go in the corner Everything turns out lights go black And he looked at me and said well man He looked at me and said man your face is really swollen So I'm not really sure who idea it was I'd say it's my bud would probably say it's his But it's one of those deals

it wasn't a lot of thinking. Yeah. We've got to get a next practice session. And there's some duct tape laying there. So the next thing we knew, got somebody over to some scissors, cut up some duct tape, and just, you know,

taped the swollen eyes up, you know, not so much the eyelids open. It's everything above your eyelid. Right. Pull it up on my forehead. Stuck it, put the helmet on.

Let's go. So it didn't hurt. It didn't hurt. It didn't hurt, but it fixed it. It did? I could, yeah, I could.

Wow. And I think I might have drove the race. I think I had a little fancier tape, medical tape. Sure. But it was still taped open. So your face was so swollen that it basically was hindering the peripheral vision and everything. So you basically just pulled it up.

Pulled all the, you couldn't get the swelling to go down. It had ice and everything, but we can go down. So you had to do something to be able to see my eyes. It's like a fighter that's just got the crap beat out of them. You know, your eyes are swelled shut. It was no different. And just taped them, you know, taped all that excess skin up, you know. How long did you drive for like that?

Like just that next session? Well, we drove a couple laps, you know, drove the sessions, finished the day out. I think it was just a couple of morning practices, not much. And then it might have been the next time I sat in a race was the Gatoradee 125 races. And I think we, it wasn't great. I mean, I made through it. I think we finished six or seventh in that 125 does whoever it was in front of me.

I just followed her bumper. That's all I did. And then you won the next week? We finished. We had to run the 500 too. So then the following week go to Richmond. And everything's fine. I got a flat jacket.

I think Humpey Wheeler's brother was a trainer at one of the colleges. And he came up with the flat jacket all during the speed weeks, got me over to Mainland High School right next door and used their ice jacuzis and stuff. Got me through the 500. He came up to Richmond, got me through the Richmond race. And we ended up, it was, I mean, everything was pretty normal at Richmond other than it was a lot of physical pain from my ribs. I bet. It had to hurt, right?

Yeah, but the scary thing after that, I think, man, I'm good. I'm all back. You know, whatever I was, I'm back. Go to Rockingham the following week, and all of a sudden the lights are out again. Couldn't see anything. Going to corner couldn't see and figure it out. I ended up going to the medical college of Virginia. Best experts in the country on what's going on.

I think of what it was now is just trauma from the concussion. Yeah. And I couldn't see. And it was G-force related. When I go into corner at Rockingame, he pulled a lot of lateral vertical and lateral G. And they did all kind of test, and basically they come. month with it. It said, you know, it could last a week. It could last three months. It could last your rest of your lifetime. We don't know. And anyway, it ended up going away, ran Rockingham,

not doing so well. And then the next race after that, it was fine. Man. I mean, listen, concussions affected your vision. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Big time. Yeah. I mean, when you look at the pictures of that wreck at Daytona and where his helmet's banging around in there, you know it's tough on his head. Man, we got so we're out of time and I do too we got so much more I mean yeah so I need you to come back we'll do it if you if you get if you get if you don't get a bunch of negative feedback but this guy's rambling on we're gonna have amazing feedback because you had a lot to talk about and we got on we got some amazing

stories from you but we only we didn't even get halfway through we didn't talking about your career obviously we would love to talk to you about you as an owner beyond that, driving for eights and all those years with the Wood brothers. I was honored that you gave us your time. It meant the world to me that you came over here today to talk to us. You know, I raced against you, but you're kind of, you're from my dad's sort of, you know, generation. And I love talking to you guys and asking you all about your careers and how you got started

and learning a lot of new things about you. And I know we had to put you on a schedule today and you don't like that. but I really can't thank you enough for coming out here, Ricky, and all the people that are listening to show want to thank you as well. Well, we appreciate it. Thanks for having us on. And, again, it's, wish you'd invite me. Well, I think you did invite me soon.

I just didn't. I finally showed up, but I'm not normally that bad. Short notice. So if you have somebody canceled, call me. I'll be there. I got you. I got you. Just for the record, when we were trying to track you down,

we came up on what I think is no short of seven different phone numbers for you. And we were, hey, we had a game. which one actually belongs to Ricky. And we finally made, Mark Martin had a number, the Hall of Fame had a number. Everybody has a different number for you, just so you know.

Maybe that's the way you like it. No, actually, it's not by design. Oh, it's not? Well, the house phone, we turn it off. We get all those damn robocalls, so we never listen to that. Yeah, so don't listen to that. And I've got the same cell phone I've had probably.

I had one when NASCAR gave you the free phone. And it finally went off. elite. I just went away, I guess. So I had to go out and buy me a new phone. That's been about 10 years ago. It's got the same number. There you go. All right. The jokes on everyone else. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. Okay, last week we introduced you to my friend Jake Wood with Team Rubicon. This week, I want to get on the line with a volunteer. Drew Mark Antonia. Man, this guy is boots on the ground with Team Rubicon. If you're ready in there, let's style him up.

Hey, Drew, this is Dale Jr. Hey, how are you? Hey, I'm pretty good. How are you doing? I'm doing well, thank you. Yeah, thanks for jumping on the call with me. I'm doing this little series with Mountain Dew on our podcast. We've had a relationship with Team Rubicon,

and you recently were in the Bahamas as part of a Team Rubicon mission helping with Hurricane Dorian. Can you paint a picture, I guess, of the scale of devastation down there? Yeah, sure. So I was leading a medical team, so a couple of docs and nurses and paramedics, all folks who are really highly trained individuals. And it's kind of a new thing that TR has put together, in fact, of the first in North America to be certified for it. So we deployed to the island, went through Nassau,

but spent most of our time in Abaco. But as a function of being the medical team, we literally either flew or drove every inch of both the main island of Abaco and all of the outerline case. And something we noticed is that the devastation was pretty massive in the areas that were hit. pretty much the central area of the Abaco Island. Some neighborhoods like Marsh Harbor that a lot of folks have seen on TV or Treasure K

just absolutely flattened. But a lot of that focused on homes and residences, for good reason, because that's where people live. But it also destroyed the livelihood of a lot of folks on the island, the main industry on the island's tourism. So without having those types of attractions that are going to get people to come to the island, even people whose homes weren't destroyed, their livelihoods have been very directly affected in a massive way.

My goodness. So I guess explain to me your role with Team Rubicon. I was the medical team leader for this mission, which just meant that I'm, you know, I'm not a medical professional. So my job is to kind of both do kind of security assessments, logistical assessments, movement, transport of the medical team to support them to provide the needed services that they can give to local recipients. And then on the side, I work with Team Rubicon as a researcher to try and help Team Rubicon move to the forefront of disaster relief. Gotcha, man. What's your background? Sure. So I was an infantry officer and a foreign military advisor in the Marine Corps for a while. I decided to leave that and took a year to travel just because that's what people do. And then I've spent the last six years working as a researcher down in Indiana at IU,

and then now I work at University of Notre Dame. Really? That's pretty awesome. So I guess through all that, how did you get in contact with Team Rubicon? Yeah, so I got out of the Marine Corps in 2013 and I said it traveled first. year, but I was also trying to find a way to really contribute. I felt still that desire to provide some sort of service to folks. And Team Rubicon's motto is helping people on their worst day. And I saw that, man, I want to be a part of that.

And it's also a veteran community, which is really neat. So I saw their deal online. I signed up. And literally maybe a week later, I got a call to go to Arkansas, an Operation Soaring Eagle to provide services to people who were affected by a tornado. So went out, joined the group. And I got to work for about two weeks there and said, man, this is really neat because they're super flexible and how it operates. You literally just throw your name in a hat.

If you get called, you get to go deploy and provide services while also kind of hanging with a really interesting and enjoyable community. Yeah, I imagine. So being that it's made up of veterans and first responders, there's a camaraderie there, whether you've served together or not. you have this sort of understanding and experiences to share. But how has your involvement with Team Rubicon changed your life? I mean, after your service, and like you said, you needed that outlet. Yeah, significantly. I mean, it allows me to still be able to provide services to folks.

You know, I get a lot of opportunities in life. I work at a university. Very few people get that opportunity. I know the things that have just come my way for different reasons. And this allows me to try and give back to folks. And they said, it's really helping folks on their worst day. And Tim Rubicon comes with a big apparatus that really we get to put to use for those individuals. And they're absolutely the focus.

But there's also the community that builds, like you said, people from either the military or from emergency services, what have you. We all come together and we kind of have somewhat of a shared culture. So you kind of fall in and it feels like you're with your friend that you've known for years, right? Like only after a week of time with somebody, you pretty much know everything about them because no one holds back and everyone's comfortable. Yeah, I went and visited in Florida recently during one of Team Rubicon's humanitarian missions down there, and that was the one thing that I walked away with. I mean, obviously, the mission or the reason to be there is to help aid the community, but while we were back at the barracks or whatever you would want to call that,

wherever the main station is pretty much everybody sleeping on cots and eating off of picnic tables, and there's a real sense of community. But it seemed like that the veterans are getting as much out of it. There's some sort of, I don't know, it's like a two-way street as far as there's the aid that's going to the community, but there's also something happening for these veterans that need that outlet and have that purpose to serve. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, everyone feels it in transition, no matter what service you came out of. Everyone did it, volunteered for a reason to do that, and people leave for all sorts of different reasons.

but I think everyone still has inside been this kind of deep calling to service in some way. And this is an amazingly flexible way to provide that service and do it with people that you like spending time with. A very unique model relative to other disaster relief organizations. All right. What's your – do you think about your commitment to Team Rubicon and how far you want to take that and how much further you want to be involved? I'd love to continue to be involved as much as I can. that's part of why we develop these research projects together so that I can also integrate some of my professional work, like my day-to-day life, to the service of TR, because I believe in the mission and believe in the organization and what they're trying to provide.

They are compared to other organizations. They're not as much interested in trying to claim credit or anything. They're just there to provide a service and are willing to adapt in chaotic spaces. however is necessary to really put the client so that the individual has been impacted by a disaster event at focus more so than anything else. I think that's what matters most. So we're trying to drive our listeners to Team Rubicon USA.org. What is the message that you would give those folks to get them to want to learn more about Team Rubicon? Sure.

So I would say to folks, look at the data, look at the stats that are on there, team Rubicon provides more than any other organization. but what might be most important in all that information is the stories from the people we actually provide services to. So all the data kind of looks at the outputs and what have you. But the outcomes, what change has actually been created in people's lives is what I think is most compelling. And most important is definitely the most central to what TR does in their interests. All right, Drew, well, man, I'm going to let you go. Thanks for speaking with us today.

We love to learn about Team Rubicon. This has been a very informative conversation. We've had an opportunity to talk to Jake Wood. and it's great to be able to talk to you as well. I hope to see you someday. Thank you for being a true hero to both your service to the military and also to your humanitarian work you're doing with Team Rubicon, buddy. Hey, thanks.

It's a real pleasure to speak with you, Dale, and thank you for all that you're doing for TR. It's certainly not lost on anybody. You definitely really, really appreciate it. The honor is mine, friend. We'll see you soon. All right, thank you. Okay, sounds good.

Look forward to it. Mountain Dew is championing the power of doing. In this day and age, There's a lot of talk, but it's the doing that leaves a mark. Mountain Dew knows that no matter who you are, one person or a group of people. You can make an impact through your actions. That is why Mountain Dew and I teamed up with Team Rubicon to champion selfless men and women who truly embody what it means to do the do.

To learn more about Team Rubicon's work, go to Team RubiconUSA.org. Support for the Dale Jr. download comes from wicks.com. With Wix, you can create your very own professional website. Choose a template you love and customize it by adding your own text, images, and videos. With hundreds of intuitive design features, you can tell your story exactly the way you want. Want even more for your website, you can easily start a blog, launch an online store, or create an event. Share everything in a click on social media and drive even more traffic to your site with SEO2. to get found on Google.

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This is the Asch Jr. portion of the segment. you're watching you're obviously watching us on our YouTube channel we appreciate you guys for being a part of it and thank Nationwide for sponsoring this segment

so we've got some questions coming in hopefully I know it's fired it up real quick here we got any good ones popping off there Leah well we have one from our buddy NASCAR man

a few months ago you mentioned restoring a 1980 Bobby Allison Bud Moore car with Ray Evernham has any progress been made on that recently absolutely not

that car was sitting somewhere Georgia, I think, but me and Ray put a little money together and bought it and we're just in possession of it. To restore that car, it's going to cost us about $80,000 to $100,000. So we're trying to figure out how to fund the restoration project. It's not something that neither Ray nor myself want to spend our own money on. And we would like, I've been trying to track down some some leads on people that might be interested in helping us get that restoration kicked off. So, yeah.

Josh wants to know, how's the new SimRig? Josh must be the CEO of Carolina. The SimRig that I bought is pretty awesome. I'm having a lot of fun with it. Actually, Carolina Simworks is the company that I bought it from, and Josh, I think if that's him, he's the CEO or the owner. And there's a lot of great companies out there that put together rigs, but this is a good, sturdy little rig. And back on eye racing, having fun, I got my new account started, Dellenhart Jr. 2, the original one I don't really mess with as much anymore. but having fun starting all over from the bottom.

I mean, back down there with the rookies. And my friend Tim Dugger, country music singer from Nashville, I got him set up with an ira racing account, and he's racing at home, and he's won his first race last night. So excited. We were on the drive home from Martinsville, and he won, and he was facetiming and extremely excited. He was.

That's cool. J.D. Harshfield, he wants to know what other short track would be a great addition to the Cup schedule. I mean, the list is long. Oh, to the Cup schedule. You know, that's tough. For some reason, you know, Nashville Fairgrounds would be great. I've said it a million times bringing the Cup series back to Nashville.

It would be amazing. But, you know, there's not like a criteria of, you know, what a short track needs to be or what's, you know, are we talking about short tracks that only have safer barriers right now? You know, there's a lot of short tracks that would be great that would have to install some of these safety measurements that NASCAR requires for these racetracks. South Boston would be amazing racetrack for us to at least get the Xfinity Series back to Myrtle Beach. South Carolina would be a pretty cool place to see truck racing or maybe even Xfinity

racing at some point. But the short tracks, they're out there. and they're all across the country, and, you know, it would be, I think, Cuyuga. What's the name of that place now up in Canada? I don't even know the name of it. Jukasa. Jeez.

All right. It's fantastic, yeah. It's a beautiful racetrack. There's a brand new racetrack in Virginia. Old Dominion, there's a new Dominion. Matthew? What's the Dominion Speedway? Is that just it?

Is it the Virginia? Yeah. One? It's a, well, it was Old Dominion. Right. Did it become new? Either way. The point is, is there's great short tracks everywhere.

And Matthew has all these amazing tidbits and knowledge, but, man, I go reach for one. There's a lot of great short tracks out there. I don't know. All right. Barry Ray, he says, with the recent sale of Concord Speedway, which appears to be the end of the property being a racetrack, I was wondering what Dale's fondest memory of running street stocks there is. At Concord?

Yeah. Oh, my fondest memories was burning the right front wheelbarrants out of the thing every other week and pounding the fence. Going to the junkyard and climbing underneath old cars in the weeds, trying not to get bit by the snakes to get those ball joints to replace them, lower control arms, upper control arms. Yeah, it was, I think, you know, I remember crashing across the finish line, running second one night.

My first, okay, so this is so annoying. Race car drivers don't forget anything. But me and my brother built a car and we shared a car. And so he ran it one week and I'd run it the next. And then we built a second car. I built the second car and I take it to the racetrack

and this thing's looking great. And a guy walks up and says, one of the other street stock racers that I didn't know. And he goes, man, that thing's too pretty to be out here. And he said it in a real smart assy, way and damn if he didn't run into the left rear quarter panel in the first in the dog leg of the back straight away on the first lap and spun me out and then i got and so i'm sitting there sideways brakes holding brakes everybody goes by and this big giant forward torino lagging back at the back of the field comes lumbering through the dog leg right at me and hits me in the right rear tire and it split i had a stock fuel cell in it split the

stock fuel cell in half. Luckily, it should have, but it did not catch on fire. I cranked a car up, and it drove, even with that big heavy shot from that Ford in the right rear tire. I drove it to the pits, and Tony Sr. is there helping Tony Jr., because Tony Jr. had his late model there. And he's looking down underneath the car, and I'm like, oh, man, must be some bad damage and stuff dragging.

And he's looking at the fuel pouring. out of the fuel cell and it's split in half. And we were so lucky it didn't just blow, you know, burn up. But then, so then I had to, my quarter panel was ruined, you know, I had to beat the quarter panel out. Where are the good memories? I think he's saying he didn't have any.

I don't, I don't, I mean, we raced hard. I remember, you know, we raced hard, we wrecked a lot. And we poured a power to front clip straight. a dozen times on those cars. And you weren't supposed to put any kind of support up in the front end. It was illegal to have any kind of a bumper bar or any kind of structural support around the radiator. And I had to take my radiator every other week to get some hole plugged in it, some tank fixed. And, I mean, literally, this radiator, we tried to get through the whole season.

And it looked like it had been in a damn trash compactor. and half of the flus and the thing were plugged solid from repairs and pretty pretty violent tough little introduction racing the streetstocks at concord for a year for me and carry but we learned a ton and we worked on that car ourselves and had to fix it a lot so it was a good experience but we didn't have great memories i remember being broke Dad, you know, it wasn't like Dad was giving us the money to go race. Me and Kerry had to go find sponsorship, and we put decals all over the car to be able to put money together to go to the racetrack. And about three-quarters away through the season, we was out of money.

And our street stock series would get paid about $100, maybe $200 to win. And we had, you know, tires were, I don't know, $50 a tire at least. and they had a spec tire that everybody had to run, Hoosier. And pit passes, they had these big 10 weekends where the super late models ran a special event, and they charged $20 for the pit passes, no matter what class you ran. So even the streetstock guys had to spend $20 a person for a pass.

And, man, we had this trailer with a box compartment on the front that we had our toolboxes and our jack and everything in, and I would hide in that. We'd pull over on the side of the road about two miles from the track. I'd climb in that box, and we'd drive into the racetrack carried by his pit pass and pull in there,

and when he'd get out of the truck and go over to the box, open the door, and I'd start handing him out of it, like the tools and stuff like, hey, man, just helping you out. You know, like, and then I'd climb out

and I'd try to avoid being anywhere where I might get my, you know, check for a pass the rest of the night. But man, it was ridiculous. All right, Joseph, he's asking if you could have one car from the RCR Museum, what would it be? Oh, well, probably the 98 Daytona 500 winner. That would be a good one.

If not that, maybe one of the blue and yellow Wrangler cars, one of those Monte Carlo's would be pretty cool, 86, 87. I don't know. I'd take anything. You know, I'd love the older stuff, the blue and yellow wrangler stuff probably more than any of the Goodrich cars, aside. from that 98 Dayton 500 car would be cool. The only other question we're getting a lot of what's Ila going to be for Halloween? Right now I think she's going to be Minnie Mouse. Amy has changed her mind multiple times about what she's going to dress up as,

but I think that's where we're at right now is Minnie Mouse. Isla loves Minnie Mouse, Daisy, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Goofy, all of them. Talks about them all day long. that'd be a stellar costume to go to them. For sure. Are you all going to dress up? I'm not dressing up, but we're going to be in Texas. We're flying to the race Thursday.

So we're going to fly into Texas and go visit some friends in Dallas that are family of Amy. And they have some girls. We're going to go trick-or-treating with their kids. It should be pretty fun for Alice. Amy says she's going to be good for about four or five houses. It sounds great. I know my day is coming, though, to be dressing up with her and doing whatever. She can be like, come on, you got to do this.

I'm going to be like, all right. All right, guys, that's it for today. All right, thank y'all. Appreciate y'all tuning in for the last junior part of the show. And thanks nationwide for bringing us this segment. We had to Texas this week, so why not have a Texas theme dot history? That's right. Texas World Speedway, which is not Texas Motor Speedway, as we know it today.

This was a track in College Station, Texas. We fly over it on the way to Texas Motor Speedway. The track that held eight cup races between 1969 and 1981. The track had a problem. All right, the problem was Jack Rabbits. Yes, Jack Rabbits. All right, they seemed to be running onto the track frequently for some odd reason. In June 1972 Cup race, Jack Rabbit got on the backstretch on lap three of the race,

Richard Petty was quoted as saying, It was coming at us on the second and third laps. He was going the wrong way. He was going too daggum fast to be going the wrong way and survive. Leroy Yarbril hit the Jack Rabbit, and it got stuck in his grill. His 1971 Ford had to pit on lap 28 to have it removed. His engine blew a few laps later. In 1980, Kale Yarbril hit a Jack Rabbit during practice.

He was quoted as saying, the closer I got, it looked a lot more like a cat. Hmm, big, big jackrabbit. The junior Johnson team fixed Kel's car, and he went on to win the pole and the race. Unfortunately, we've seen race cars hit all sorts of animals throughout our sports history, apparently. We can add the speedy and elusive jack rabbit to the list, but not elusive enough for our stock cars. That's right. Keep talking about it. White flag, right there, white flag.

All right, everybody. TV show is going to be Tuesday at 5 p.m. Eastern on NBC Sports Network. And then for all of you hail raisers out there, a midnight re-airing. So that's this week, our TV show lineup on NBC Sports Network. Also, the Motorsports on NBC YouTube page has a new feature. It's called the Dale Jr. spy camp. It's behind the scenes look at Dell Jr. And the NBC Booth boys during the race.

The first one drops Tuesday at 5 p.m. You'll see it every week for the rest of the season. So this is Dale Jr. and LaTard and Rick Allen and all those guys. What you don't see on regular TV, this is a feature that they're going to have on the YouTube page. I'm looking forward to that. I'm not sure. Well, that's even more reason why I'm looking forward to it. All right, Dale, you're off to spend a little time in the woods, so not much on your schedule to speak of.

However, next Monday you'll be appearing at a Charlotte area Walmart on behalf of Nicorette. That's the Walmart on Galleria Boulevard, and the time is 2 to 4 p.m. on Monday, November 4th. Also, a reminder of everybody to check out our other Dirty Mo Media podcast door, bumper clear. I'm interested to see how in-depth TJ wants to get this week on that old Joey Lugano dust up. What about y'all? You think he – I don't think he will, actually. I think he's going to totally PC and whip out. Yeah, I think he's going to be too scared.

You can't let him off the hook as the producer won't. Well, Brett won't. Brett will – if TJ chooses not to go there, Brett will make sure that he feels really bad about himself and his life and everything about it. That's good at that. But that's door. Right, he does. He has a way, doesn't you? Door bumper clear is on dirty moe media.

Lastly, we'll finish with a few Apple ratings and reviews from this past week. Andrew writes, my entire life, I've been a Dale Jr. fan. On Saturday night at Talladega, I could not believe my eyes when I saw Dale Jr. hanging out on a golf cart right near me. After much deliberation on what to do, my friend and I approached Dale to say hi. Dale could not have been more friendly and down to earth. I had a quick, genuine conversation with him about my upcoming wave. wedding, his book, this awesome podcast.

He had some great advice. So, wow, what a moment. That's from Andrew. So, you know, nothing like a career and life advice on Talladega Boulevard, right? Is that what's up? So, yeah, that is pretty nice. I don't know the name of this next commenter, but they write. I remember those guys.

Do you remember? Yes. Well, I was hoping you would. That's good. Well, it took a second, damn it. Okay. So there was a couple guys. I mean, the upcoming wedding.

Yeah, it was a bachelor sort of party going on. Oh, okay. It was a guy with his buddies, and the bachelor, he's carrying the Yeti cooler. And I said, hey, I said, this is his damn bachelor party. He's the one getting married. Why in the hell aren't y'all carrying the cooler? This is messed up, because his buddies were all like drinking beer, and they're like, yeah, that's awesome. Hey, I'll take a beer out of there.

Give me one of them beers. And now we know the advice, Dale gave is somebody else carried this. I just said, hey, guys going forward, like, this is to be his time, like, where y'all do things for him and make him comfortable and carry the cooler and grab him some breakfast. Take care of your boy. Yeah. Take care of him. Dang. That's funny.

And our last commenter says, incredible show with the king. How about having him back several times to interview him about specific decades, the 50s at first, then the 60s, having him back again to talk about the 70s. etc. We need to capture his incredible memories before we can't. In theory, I like that idea. I don't know about breaking it down a decade. Although if you were ever going to do it, he would be a good one probably because he's got some really good memories.

I enjoyed the King podcast in that episode. It was fun having him in here. And that's it, fellas. And the guru, social media guru. Thank you. All right, guys. I appreciate everybody listening to the show. A lot of fun.

Great-ass junior questions. Ricky Rudd. Awesome. To be able to talk to him to see what he's been up to. hope you enjoyed it and man we ain't we haven't we have many shows left this year who's a guest next week can we tell them nah let's let's tease them okay we'll see y'all later here comes to hate mail for me yeah this bit of bad assery was made by dirtymo media

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