The Dale Jr. Download - 283 - Kyle Busch: The Champ & the Best of the DJD

Episode Date: November 18, 2019

In the season finale, Dale Earnhardt Jr gets an exclusive sit down with NASCAR Cup Champion Kyle Busch. Dale and co-host Mike Davis reflect on an amazing season, reliving the best guests and most impactful stories that came from our table. The DJD gang have some good belly laughs over the hilarity that came from some unexpected conversations on the show. Dale Jr. also learns he has a new job for the 2020 Daytona 500. One more Odd History reveals an NFL quarterback behind the wheel and creates a fun conversation on a year full of oddities. Dale Jr gets deep on the impact of the podcast for himself and the sport. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is a production of Dirty Mo Media. Dirty Mo Media. Yeah, drivers will be fight for a win because it's taking a win to win the championship. It's Dale Jr. for the Dale Jr. download. This is a special final edition for the 2019 season. The season is over. What better way to start this show and to talk to our champion, Kyle Bush. Kyle, thank you.

Absolutely, man. I appreciate you. I appreciate you. Where's Davis? I don't know where Davis is. It's just me. Lazy. I know.

You're better anyway. It's all right. You're in a great mood, man, and obviously... I was before the race. For good reason. Were you? Yeah. Really? I was surprised because, you know, I think the one thing that I always...

I never race for a championship in the Cup series, but if I had to compare it to like the Daytona 500, there's so much going on at pre-race, and for me, I just cannot wait. As soon as I got up in the morning, it was like, I don't care about none of this. I want to get in the car, put the wind of net up. I want to get away from everybody. But you guys, I talk to Martin, I talk to you, and I listen to this. the other guys in pre-race and all you guys were in really a great mood. Yeah, it wasn't bad.

I thought it was a good day to be alive, good day to go race for a championship, you know? I mean, obviously you try to push out some of the outside noise and some of those things. And, you know, I have my pre-race meeting with Adam and things and kind of go through some of the plan and the idea and whatnot. But from there, you know, we come up and sat with you guys for a few minutes, cut up with you a little bit about being dressed too nice. and then, you know, just was able to then go back and go through intros and get back in the car, like you said. And, dude, pit road is insane. There's just so many people everywhere. It's all over the place.

I couldn't believe that. It was a car. It was like no room for anybody to walk even around the cars. I know. Yeah. That's why we don't even do photos out there anymore. You just can't. You know, it's just so much stuff going on.

There's a, it's almost difficult to move and get to where you want to go. But at the same time, you're like, this is great for you. the sport, right? Because the more people they're excited to be down here, the better. So that was pretty cool. I heard that you won a boat for winning the... Do you know what kind of boat it is? It's a contender. 25-foot contender. That's pretty

nice, yeah. It's a nice boat. You like boats, right? Well, I live on the lake and I'm building a house down in the Bahamas. Really? Yeah, I might need a boat. Yeah. I got one. I know. So I always, when I grew up, you know, when guys

would win races, they get boats, guns maybe, a blonde more or whatever. And it kind of stopped doing that. So it's kind of unique and fun when you get a fun. We talk about the trophy at Martinsville, but when you win a car or a boat, does that even make it cooler? It's got to make it cooler. It does. It makes it pretty cool. Yeah. It's, it's within you win the race here. So like if somebody else would have won the race, but we would have won the championship, they would have got the boat. Oh, that's not good. So it's all about winning the race. That's kind of messed up. The champion ought to get a boat. The champion don't get the boat. The race winner gets the boat. So I'm both. That's good.

I know you love statistics and breaking records with this win now you have put yourself solely in ninth place. You were tied with Rusty Wallace. You know, how does that make you feel was your right? Do you even look at that as you're rising up the ranks? I mean, you got to do, you got, I would probably catch myself looking at that statistic and looking at all the statistics as I'm rising up the ranks because you are really setting some amazing goals that a lot of guys. We got a lot of guys in the sport today that are Hall of Famers are going to be Hall of Famers. but you set yourself apart from them with the rate with the wins you have in the cup series, truck series, Xfinity series.

Do you look at those? Do you like yourself to sort of look at that and go, man, that's pretty awesome? I don't sit there and look at it, no, because I get the opportunity of everybody else telling me about it, you know, so I don't pull it up. I guess I did years ago, so I did years ago because I was like, man, I'm behind. Oh, yeah. Like I'm behind. I'm not winning enough.

And I look at it and I'm like, I'm really behind, you know. But now it's gone so well and I've won 50-something races now. and so the opportunity that that I get to enjoy with people bringing it up to me is all I need. Do you think about a number in the Cup Series that would make you happy? Nothing makes me happy. You know that. You're never satisfied.

Right? I would say that. I would say 100 would be pretty damn cool. Man, that'll be... You're 34. You know, that was really surprised by that. Now, I don't look at the ages of the drivers that often, but when set next to, when you're you're put next to Denny and those guys,

I mean, Harvick at 43. Right. You're 34, you're literally not even, I mean, hardly. I'm not mid-30s yet. No, it's possibly to even say you're not even in your prime. Like, you know, these, the statistics say that 38, 39 years old is a prime for a cup driver, man. There's so much more that you can accomplish.

A hundred is not out of the question. I hope not. Man, I'd give everything to be able to achieve that. and also to achieve more championships. You know, people ask me, okay, well, what's the championship number that you want to look at? And to me, I don't know, like when I first started, you know, the goals, hell, I'm going to get eight, you know,

but now that you've been here for 12 years, or 13, 14, however many it's been, and I've won two, it's like, I better back off that a little bit, you know, and five would be respectable, but I'd like to think that I can achieve more than that too. Yeah, you've won an Xfinity Series championship and some cup championships, and I know retirement is a long ways off, especially from the Cup Series.

Do you think about going back to the truck series and trying to win that championship there? I would still do it today if they'd let me. Sure they would. You might have to wait, though, unless they change the rules. They might change the rules. So I told NASCAR this one time, I says, look, if the truck series is ever going to go anywhere, which I hope it doesn't, right, but if it's ever going to, like, go away. They'd let you run the last year.

To let me run the last year. Like, give me, like, or give anybody the opportunity to go out and run the last year that it's in existence. Well, let's talk about the race a little bit. Didn't see a lot of wrecks, no cautions, only one little caution for a half spin down there and turn one and two. Aside from the stage breaks, it was a relatively clean race. Even, like, if you saw the wall Saturday night

after the Xfinity race, it looked like they painted it black. Tonight, we only had a couple guys get into it, and really that was only two cars. But were you thinking at the end of that race, oh, man, I don't want a yell to come out. Obviously, you were thinking that, but were you, like any race that I was ever leading

coming down to the end, I'm freaking out. something's going to happen. Were you doing the same thing? I was. I was. I was thinking to myself. I'm like, all right, boys. Like, if Xfinity can do it, we can do it. We don't need any more yellows. Yeah. Isn't that frustrating too when that yellow comes out? And you're like, who did that? It is. Yeah, I think about it all the time. You know, I thought about it last week with Denny when he had an eight-second lead. I'm like, well, at least it wasn't me this time. Right. Man. So the yellow doesn't come out. When you get to the white flag, are you kind of, is that when you take a deep breath? I know you still got to complete that lap, but that's kind of, the white flag was the one

thing I always look for. I'm like, if I get to the white it's over, I know that it's final. So when you get up that white flag, is that when the emotions came in? That's when the emotions came in, yeah, for sure. Like, when I heard 10 to go, and I heard that I still had like a seven second leader, whatever it was, like, I kind of started to feel a little bit, and I'm like, no, no, no, no.

You got to, like, shake it off, you know? And you got to keep focus and keep working on what you got going on and hitting your marks and hitting your lines and not feeling anything crazy with the car going on. And once you took the white flag, for me, it was emotional. had tears coming out of my eyes and running down my cheek.

And the first time I won it in 15, it only happened in three and four, because Harvick was only like two seconds back on that one, you know, so I was like, don't screw it up, don't screw it up, you know. But this time I had a little bit more to kind of give up and started thinking about it a little earlier. So the immediate emotion was tears. Yeah. Right? I thought I saw that.

You know, when you were, so you're giving Brexton a ride around the racetrack. Was that something that was spur of the moment? he actually asked. Like right there in the moment. Yeah, right there on the racetrack. How did you get it clear right there? As soon as he asked me, I stood up and the NASCAR official was standing right there like, hey, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. You know, and I was like, hey, well, they let Brexton get in the car.

And so then he called it up and I was getting in and then they said yes, that he was allowed to do that. So I was really, really thankful for that because that was a special moment, man. Like I saw, I think he got the idea from Keelan, obviously, with Kevin. and, you know, I think they kind of frowned upon that, but I think it's cool. I mean, they're not hurting anything in there. Hell, he only weighs 45 pounds. I would promise you from the booth and from people watching on TV, it's an amazing thing to see. Yeah.

Especially anyone who's a parent knows exactly what you're going through in that moment and how Brexton is going to always remember that. So going back. I loved that for him. For sure. For me being a dad, I mean, he asked. And so to be able to give anything that you can possibly give for your kids. Yeah, how do you tell your kid know in that moment?

Exactly, right? And I wasn't going to say no because I was like, hell yeah, boy, let's go, you know. So it was cool. So go back to the emotions. You know, we hardly ever see those type of emotions out of you. And, you know, where does that come from? And, you know, a lot of people said you were subdued, even measured, but it was more, there was some, some, some, not sadness, but the tears. I mean, how does that happen to Kyle Bush?

Yeah, I don't know. You got that sort of soft side in there. Come on, man. Like, yeah. All anybody ever wants to see or know of me is Friday, Saturday, Sunday, right? And when I come into a racetrack for Friday, Saturday, Sunday each and every weekend, like, I have one thing that I focus on that I got to worry about. And that's me and my race team and going out there and being able to perform and being able to win the race.

Like, yeah, the fans are great. I appreciate them and what they do for our sport and how they kind of come out and they pull for us. And Rowdy Nation, Junior Nation, whatever. We know what they mean to us. But to me, like, this is my work. Like, this is what I focus on. And look, even at home when I'm at home and I got a sacrifice time with my son or my wife or whatever,

like because of the work ethic that I have to put into what I do, whether it's the truck team, whether it's my cup team or whatnot, like, this is all I have. This is what I do. So I think the emotion comes from, A, we did it. B, everything that we've just done and gone through and all that has been so worth it. And you just know that you've succeeded in that moment

and you've been able to pay back all your team guys and all the people at Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota and M&Ms and interstate batteries, everybody that works so hard and gives you everything that you have. And that to me is where the emotion sets in. Like when we win races, yeah, that's cool. You know, we win races, we can go on in the next week. We lose races, we can go on in the next week.

But when you win a championship, man, that's pretty awesome. Was there, was some of that emotion because of how you won this championship? and I think back to the first championship you won, the injury, the pain from that injury, being in the hospital thinking about your season and what's next for you, going through the rehab, people think about how you came back and won, but everything that happened even before that was hard, hard, hard work just to get healthy. Come back, win the race, get into the playoffs, win the championship. To win it normally, like the easier way, the normal way, the way everybody else wins championships,

was there some satisfaction there? No question there's satisfaction there, for sure. But to me, I always was gonna, even if I never won another one, I was always gonna live in my own that I was a champion. Like I won that championship under all the rules and circumstances that were given to me, we won. And nobody was ever gonna take that away from me.

But to be able to come out here this time and to win a championship again here at Homestead Miami Speedway and to give it everything that we had for the whole season long and for people to kind of ride us off into the last third of the season because we weren't great. Boo-ya. They got wambusled. Right.

So you talk about you weren't great. You were an underdog. A little bit, because all you guys were always kind of saying, there's no favorite. Well, we knew you weren't the underdog. People wanted to think you were because of the lack of wins late in the season and no wins in the playoffs. But everybody knows that any moment Kyle Busch can show up. right and win any given race and so yeah we had the statistics and the numbers and things that maybe the fans at home don't have but did you did you feel that underdog role did you like kind of

coming in under the radar and not not being not being the Denny that's trying for his first or or true X trying to win his second after last year's second place finished till Joey where did you did you feel like maybe you were you got a you got an easier week out of that or was there any positives to kind coming in as maybe the fourth or the third guy? Not in here. No? No. Couldn't let it happen.

No, there was still the, there's always a self-pressure, right? But you gotta know how to harness that and you gotta know how to either work with it and not let it affect you and do the things that you're supposed to do and how you do it right on the racetrack. You know, when I think back to the beginning of the weekend, we unloaded off the truck and we were sideways loose on entry, just like we were last year. And I'm like, oh, hell, like, this don't look good. you know, and then we get into the second run and we fixed 80% of it and then we got into

the next set of tires, the third run, and it was gone and I could rip it right off the wall down to the bottom and everything felt great and I'm like, oh, we got something now boys because we couldn't fix the loose in the whole time we were here last year, but then this year we did and I'm like, okay, we've been on the loose side, we've been on the tight side, so we're going to find the happy medium. How do you harness that focus? You mentioned the self-pressure and all those things. there's only a few people in this world that can manage that and get to Victory Lane,

not make a mistake, not stumble, not put themselves in a bad situation, even before the race begins, get psyched out, right? You're one of the few that can do it in this sport, and in any sport, really, there's only a couple guys that have that mentality. Most people are going to falter. How do you do it? I don't know, really. Years ago, I had some of those moments where you're coming up

for a finish and you've led coming down to the end and you start getting nervous or you start feeling things and the guy behind you's catching you so you like you overslow or you overdo things overthink things and I think just over time and experience and going through some of those A races B moments and C 2015 I think 2015 taught me a lot about who I was and who I could be and that helped a ton. One of the things that I thought was interesting is about how against the rule package you were at the start of the season. Boo-ya.

Right? And we thought, we thought, I'm talking about the guys in the booth. Everybody always thinks. I know. We thought that that was psychologically an issue, but you've overcome it. You won the championship in this season. So how did you come to terms or come to peace or embrace what was happening around you? How do you embrace the package that you weren't such a fan of at to start?

I could say so many things right now. Man, I'm going to harness that. You're going to harness that? Yeah. To me, it was just knowing how frustrating it was in times and in moments, even here tonight, you know, when a guy would come down in front of you into the corner and you'd blow up two, three lanes, you know? I mean, that's just what it lends and you just have to know what to expect. But we came to a cool racetrack tonight where you could race out of that guy's wake and you can move around.

And when you have a car that can move around, that helps everything. And, you know, so I thought that just, you know, looking forward to Homestead Miami, Miami, speedway and knowing what it presented for a championship runner that, A, you had to be there. You had to be eligible to race for a championship. And so I knew that that was obviously always the goal. But once we got here, I was like, we can still do it. We can still win this thing. Somebody's going to get paid to win.

My dad always said that when we went to the racetrack. He goes, somebody's going to get paid to win. It might as well be us. All right. Well, how do you celebrate? How do you celebrate this? Some people would go and party in Miami when they win championships. I figured you're probably past that.

Are you going to go home and take it easy, enjoy Thanksgiving? What's the plans? Man, I don't know. Tonight, we're going to finish up a few more things that we've got to finish up here. And then I'm going to head home and take the family home and everything like that. And then I've got to go to New York. You have New York stuff to do, obviously, and whatnot. When's that start?

Tomorrow night, you've got to fly out and go to New York. How many days is that? Two days. Two days. Yeah. So I'm going to try to talk Samantha into going with me and take her up there, have some fun, just kind of hang out. And then when we get back to town and we've got a week off this year between Thanksgiving. Right.

So that kind of helps. Maybe that next weekend we'll get the team together. How do the bushes celebrate Thanksgiving? And we'll go do something. Typically it's at our house. Yeah. So we invite everybody over, mom and dad come over. And we actually have some close family friends of ours that come over that they don't have kids or they're newly married or whatever it might be.

And Kurt comes over. And so it's good. Sounds good. Yeah. The banquet, it's moving from Vegas. I know you're a hometown. Vegas guy is a bummer for you, I'm sure. But you've celebrated in Vegas.

Are you excited to celebrate it in Nashville? I am, yeah, it's going to be cool. I got a chance to celebrate a championship in my hometown, Vegas, and 15. I would have loved to have been able to do that again. Obviously, Vegas is a huge party town and have a good time. But so is Nashville. Yeah. Nashville's...

It's like the East Coast Vegas. It is, yeah, a little bit. Casinos, man, the casinos. So, Nash Vegas, we're going. and I've come up with a couple friends this year of country music stars, and so maybe I can talk one of them into coming and performing for us for a night and having a good time. That'd be awesome.

I'll be there. I won't miss it. I won't miss it. I might send you an invite. I appreciate it. I will. I'll find a way into that party. I know you got a long night, and you're going to go over here and take pictures with that

amazing trophy that you won. Congratulations on your championship. I'm proud of you and happy for you. Enjoy it, man. Just let it soak in. You're not having any trouble doing that. So enjoy your night. I appreciate it.

We'll see you soon. Thank you, man. Yes, sir. Thank you. All right. Cool. Awesome shoes. I saw them this morning.

I appreciate that. Yeah. Thanks. Hell yeah. Dale, can I have you give me a level, please? One, two, three, four, five. Hey, hey, hey. Hi.

Woo, woo, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Hey, hey, hey. That's, that's his fucking mic check. You know, the promos is what a lot of people remember. Okay. Hello there. Oh, damn, there he is.

I'm back. Ah, yeah. Oh, pretty cool. I set my clothes on fire one time with the torch. I set the torch on fire. Ain't you got that friend that's got that toothbrush that wore the hell out? Yeah. Let me shoot it a few times.

Pown, pown, pown, pown. Okay, shoot, pah, pown, pown. Gotta love the bike, Dave, some. The internet is a marketplace of morons. Which makes this ironically. Crazy bones. Crazy bone? Them bone boys, man.

They're crazy. I'm such a rapper. You know, I was really excited about getting this order of underwear. Oh, it's so small. Talking underwear with another man just seems weird. Look deep into Mike Davis's eyes and tell him about your underwear. They're freaking awesome, man. It was a rocket ship.

Oh, that's cute. Mike has a really big feat. That's stating the obvious. Oh, it's so cute. Remarkable feet. And I had gerbils. Jirbles. We took her on Winnie the Pooh.

His story. It's so dark and scary. This pooh-h-h-h-scared her. Oh, fuck, quack, quack. He was kind of canned papers, right? Yeah. Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack. Whoa.

Boom. I was in a fight. Bring lollipop. Dude. It's like a pillow fight. Throw a slice of cheese on a baby's face. This is American cheese. Good job, Liam.

I'm not going to be the pizza police here. I'm flipped like a pancake. Grow a pair. And lock that in She had Joe's hot. Run it. Bloody Mary. But you do that really well.

Again. No. Take it for a second lap. Do better. Everything's good. We're ready to go. That's just the gift that keeps on giving you. Motorboat and son of them.

Man, I'm excited about this. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. for the Dale Jr. download. This is the last show of the season. And those are some pretty awesome highlights. Pretty awesome things that brings back a lot of memories. This has been a really special year, and we wanted to have one last show to sort of recap some of those favorite moments, I guess. It's going to be a lot of fun kind of looking back.

We started, obviously, with me as Mike Davis co-host. Hey, Mike. What's up? Matthew Dillner, Leah, and the whole crew in here putting this together for everybody. We, you know, put a lot of work into this show. If you know anything about, you know, seeing the studio on the YouTube clips or watching the TV show on, NBCSN, you know that we've remodeled the studio for this year, and a lot of effort went into that.

That I think really was a catalyst for us to, you know, sort of improve the show. The show, for me, you know, when we started the Dell Jr. Download a long time ago, it was just a way to really kind of give some new content or a little bit of a behind the scenes look into what was going on with our racing. I was driving. what happened that weekend and Mike you and many different co-hosts and so forth did a good job of sort of giving the fans something something interesting and new but now it's a little you know it's

kind of evolved over and over and over and it's revamped itself over and over and this year we you know we've I think hit it out of the park we had a lot of great guests and that's been interesting so let's talk about that me and you and Matthew started a note on our phone that we all share and we just kept adding names to it and literally adding names because we don't take we don't delete the old names we just add to it and now it's one big colossal note yeah so if you can imagine in your head being a part of this note we have you know if you think of a great idea you add it the name goes on if we have that person on the guest we put a thumbs up next to it so that we know they've been on the show because there's been you know we can't keep track all that but um and we want them to

come on again, but, you know, that's the idea is that we're going to have these people back for other visits. But we've got, there's a lot of people on this list that we haven't been able to get to that we would love to have. I mean, and I see some of these names in the timeline and suggestions for people that we need to bring on. The list is pretty complex. Some of our best ones that we'll talk about were booked maybe the day before we taped, or maybe two days before we taped. And I've remembered that as I was going back through our season, and how these things came together. And I also think back to January

when the four of us sat in the conference room and we said, listen, without knowing where people live or what they're doing, if we just had a wish list of people we wanted to bring in, who would they be? And we came up with this list and drew them up. And I'm like, is this even realistic? I mean, eventually you have to go, is this realistic?

And we did that. But you know what? A lot of the ones I thought were not realistic, like Stone Cold Steve Austin. That was somebody that Dale Jr. identified back in January. And it was so random. And I'm like, how would we ever get Stone Cold Steve Austin out here?

Yeah. And sure enough, we actually did a TV show with him, and we got it. That was part of the deal. Do a little trade. So I was really, how our show evolved was we started off with a wish list. And then something happened during the year. People started to want to come on our show. And I don't know why, really.

I don't know. I'm flattered. I know you are. Mike, if you really want to think about that, that started a, middle of last year. Yeah. You're right. For whatever reason, our show was kind of a place for some people to come and clean up a mess.

Right. You know what I mean? If there was a misunderstanding, maybe a driver did something wrong or wanted to write a wrong or wanted to clear up a misunderstanding. You know, they came on our show and that was an opportunity to speak to a lot of fans and share their side. And a lot of that information, too, would get picked up by other outlets and shared as well. And it was a lot of fun. That was like a big, I don't know, that was like a big compliment when guys were seeking us out. And that started at the end of last year.

There's a lot of names, though, that are on this list that I wish we could have gotten to this year. We just never could line up the schedules. Mark Martin is near, if not at the top of my list to have on the show. But he doesn't live on the East Coast. and he doesn't fly over here and hardly spends any time in this area, so it's difficult to get there. And it's not something we want to take out of this room. You know, we've talked about doing live shows and having audiences

and doing things at racetracks and so forth or somewhere else. But it's hard to imagine to be able to capture what we can in this environment, in this room, this room special, this table special, as much hell as we got for it as far as a year. This table's got some magic in it. Yeah. You know, and, but it's been a, it's been a lot of fun and we've reached out to some of the fans about sending you know

sending in some of their favorite ideas and clips and people that would guess what we had on the show and and we had a lot of great response from that we got a lot of we got some clips to play oh yeah you know should be a lot of fun to sort of look back over the season and and look back over the year and i got a i got a question for you is we're talking about these guys what is it that you look for what you know when you back in January identified people there's so it isn't just random people because there's been people that most would want on their show that we have not taken because uh you know for whatever reason what is your criteria when you bring somebody to sit in this chair what is it you're looking for well the people that have been on the show uh for example like gary blew

his whole story for me was a big mystery and then we read them we both read the book and it filled in And like I only knew about 5% of his history and, and that book was, I guess what I'm trying to say about that is he's a, he was such a mystery and going to jail and smuggling and racing, smuggling racing, smuggling racing. Like how do you do? Racing is a freaking full-time job. I don't care if it's regional or in the cup series. It takes everything you got. And he's dry, you know, he's smuggling weed and running in a crazy dry. drug operation while he's trying to race, and then it gets caught doing that, goes to jail,

gets back into racing, wins big races, championships, and gets back into smuggling. What in the hell? I was dying to talk to that man about that, and luckily he was comfortable enough to talk about it to us. Because I'm going to tell you, the only thing I've done in my life that was as exciting as racing, the smuggling. You know, it comes, a lot of times it comes down to, so sometimes you think about, we're going to have Tony Stewart on the show.

I know a lot of people are going to listen. I don't know what Tony's going to say. Tony's always great, and he's a fan favorite. So a lot of people are going to tune into that, right? Having a memo on here was a lot of fun for me, but I knew a lot of people would enjoy listening to that, right? So with those guests, I'm thinking more about the audience and how popular the show would be. But then there's those ones where I'm more selfish,

where it's about, you know, like Gary Ballou and you helped. We got, you know, Tony Jr. and Pops on here. I know people would be excited to listen to them, but that was more for me. That's right. Amy. Mike Helton. That was more for me. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, there's Marcus Smith. That was more for me because, you know, I thought if you threw out all these names on this list, I bet a lot of fans might not have put. Marcus near the top or even on the target, you know, on the radar. But I knew that his story was true and real and authentic and he, and there's stars in our sport that aren't on the racetrack, right? There's people in our sport that are critical and important that aren't out there

driving cars. And it's fun to highlight those people, right? So that some of, some of those stories are maybe, I guess, fun to tell that people don't know about Dave Marcus was great. Oh, so good. Trying to get some of the older guys on here. You know, Bricky Red was amazing. Amazing. So, yeah, Harry Gant, it was great to have Harry on here. I'd heard that he was just, when he walks in the room, it's like, man, he looks like he just retired. Yeah. And Ron Horner, I mean, all our guests, I was really happy with that. And we have on this, when I look on this list, I mean, all I can, the people that we didn't

get on this show. We'll be awesome. We got some plans for 2020. So would you say Gary Ballou was your favorite episode then? If we're going around talking about what our best guest. Yeah. Is he at the top of your list or is there others? I felt like that his story was probably one of the most compelling stories.

During your first prison term, you were sent to the Federal Correctional Institute in all places, Talladega, Alabama. The cars were running. You were there that were weekend. I was locked in a hole. You were in solitary. Solitary.

Solitary. While the race was going on. I could hear them. You could hear. That killed me. I could think of the guards there. Had been in the races and knew who I was. Right.

That's got to be some kind of torture. I mean, if I think about torture, that, for you to read the first half of this book and know where you are, who your heart is, to hear the cars in a race that you had been in. previously in your who knew Taleda even had a federal correction facility I thought the Tadaleague infield jail the holding cell was the

only jail they had. You don't want to be that's a penitentiary that's you don't want to go there you don't want to go to Atlanta you don't want to go to Lama. I don't want to go to all of them you don't want to go to none of them yeah I don't want to go to those are the real deal yeah but take us take us inside that cell that

day because what intrigues me Gary is the the beginning of book, something that really resonated with me is how you're a child and you're on top of your roof listening to race cars. Yeah. And you get this passion. You develop this passion. You want to be inside.

You want to be there. So you get there. And seven years after you raced at that Talladega race, you're on a floor of a cell here in those race cars wanting to be inside there. Again, can you walk me through what was going through your mind that day? It's a mindset. I mean, it just, you have to put it aside to survive because you've got to survive. You can't just lay down and die because you have that fire on you.

No quit. You're done. You know, they're dragging it out, dragging you around. And then he dragged me to Lewisburg Penitentiary when I remember getting there and I looked at it and the guard tires and the walls. I said, what have I really done to deserve this? And I thought about it. I said, no, I'm done. I'm paying for my crime.

When we got done with that interview, I was, you know, I had time to think about it since then. There was a lot of stuff that I missed. There was a lot of, so when there was a particular point in his story where he knows he's caught. And he knows that, I think he got caught the first time, right? And he goes, they take him to jail. He pays his bell. He gets out. He sits there.

He knows the magnitude of the situation. and he's thinking he's facing who knows how long, right, in jail. And he goes to his house in Florida after he pays his bell, gets in his corvette. He has this corvette in his driveway. And he pulls out of his driveway and he's driving down his driveway, which dead ends in a harbor. And he's running that corvette 150 mile an hour down this road. It's about a two mile straight road into this harbor. and he is going to drive that vet right off into the water.

Like, he's going to take his own life. And I didn't learn about that until after the fact, but I wish, you know, it's just a, there's a lot of things that you, I wish I could have asked him about that, a particular point in his life and what made him not, you know, change his mind, slam on the brakes,

bring the car to stop and decide to try to put his life back together or whatever, you know. The fact, you know, the fact that he went to jail a second time, It's like, okay, I can understand it, but I could see that happening had, okay, he gets out, he's out of jail and he's floundering and can't figure out how to make any money or get a job and decided to go back into smuggling. That made more sense than putting his life entirely back together, getting back in a race car, winning all pro series championship and big, big short track races, and going back to smuggling, why? And I remember you asking him that, like, okay, you made the mistake first. Why? Why?

Do it again? Why did you do it again? And that was a question. I wasn't sure if either you or me would be so bold to ask him, but you, by God, did. And I think being a father, just trying to understand why he made the decisions he made in his life being a father, right? Yeah. As a father, he made these choices. you know, very selfish choices.

That's just, I just had questions. I don't know how, I don't know what the right, I don't know how else to describe it, but that was, I was glad we were able to do that. I felt like that when we were talking about that initially as having him a guest, you were, you were a little bit unsure about it. Oh, completely unsure. Well, I'd never heard of him.

I mean, Matthew is well ingrained into that, that whole scene, and you were familiar with it, but you had said, let's read the book. Matthew had acquired the book for us. three of them, right? And then you said, look, let's read the book and then we'll make a decision. And I'm, you know, getting into the book, I tell you what, the book is so much of a racing book. I learned more about racers and how they approach, you know, their cars than I did anything.

But it was pretty clear when you start the book that, okay, he's worth the interview. He's worth bringing in if he's willing to come in a talk. But we said, and you remember this, Matthew, we're not bringing him here and not talking about smuggling. Like, if he thinks he's going to come here and talk about. you know where he finished at High Leia Speedway you know back in 1972 great but that no no we got to talk about the smuggling and him going to prison and what came out of that well it's funny because as our shows evolved the confidence in this in our interviews I think's improved and we wouldn't even have debated that if

we're have if we were gonna have him on this week we wouldn't even debate it we'd just be like he's coming in here we're gonna ask him whether you know we're gonna ask him if we're not even gonna sit here and build ourselves up and build our confidence up. We've got the confidence. But I think at the start of the year, we weren't quite sure of ourselves. Right. Right. It's funny, funny. Okay, so Gary Ballou, I think that. I want to know yours. My favorite? Yeah. Well, my favorite interviews this year was Richard Childress. Yeah. Why? Richard Childress, first of all, I never had the opportunity to actually sit at a table with Richard Childress and have these conversations. But also, I felt like that was one of the

first one, well, it wasn't the first one, but it did not feel like an interview. That was the one that felt like an absolute conversation amongst people. And it also was a theme that I detected pretty early on, and it certainly with Richard, and that was that, and it became true with Steve Park and with Michael Waltrip and others, and that there were still people processing the loss of Dale Earnhardt. Right. And it occurred to me, this, may be just my opinion, but it occurred to me that the reason they're still trying to process and not having more success, you know, some, what, 18 years later, is it seemed like there were conversations that should have been had that had not been had, and now they were happening

at this table. That's what I felt. I think about Michael Waltrip. I think about Steve Park. I mean, the moment with you and Steve Park, where you said to Steve, you know, we're not blood brothers, but as soon as that happened, you were as close to me as family as anybody could be. I will say this. If Steve doesn't win that race, I don't know how DEI would have done going forward. I don't know that we can quantify how much that one win, that one single win, if you look at all the companies in the sport and the history of NASCAR and you think about, well, with this company, what's the biggest win for that company?

What's the one win that mattered the most? I think you would have to put that one near, if not at the top of the list for DEI, because had that not happened, I don't think that we would have had any of the success that we had going forward. Because we were, as Steve said, I mean, we were really unsure on how to proceed. Yeah. And if we go to that race, I crash on the first. last lap. I don't know where Michael ran. And if Steve doesn't win, what's the morale? That all carries over. And so for him to go out there and win that race gave everybody a bit of some relief. And the

thing about it when you lose somebody like that, the world keeps going. Rockingham was coming Sunday, whether we were going to be there or not. And so we had to make that decision to go. He goes up there and wins. Win's a race. and it just kind of kept pushing that boat along, you know, kept pushing the barge down the stream. And we really, really needed that. And so that's what I remember from that day. I remember us wearing the three hats sitting on, I remember, you know, I had a bad day, but the one thing that I enjoyed the most is that me and you and Michael sat on the wall right before the start of the race on pit road.

and the we're not blood brothers but in that moment I felt I felt like we were all as family as family could be and we were there and we were together and we were gonna we didn't we had nothing but each other and y'all were laughing there's a picture I remember seeing it and it's you guys are smiling and laughing it looks like Michael's sort of cutting up I don't know what y'all are talking about probably something Michael said yeah but it looked like that you guys were in that very moment. And that picture really encapsulates that. I think, like Junior said it the best,

I mean, you know, when you're in that situation, you got to realize, you know, we're a DEI, we're a high-profile team. At that point, we weren't letting any outsiders in. So all we had was really ourselves. To grieve, to mourn, to think of how we're going to make ourselves and our team and our people better. We had a lot of employees.

And the greatest thing I ever heard was that somebody said this is the beginning of the healing, not only for the race team, but for the race fans. You know, we might have had 100 employees, but there's 100,000 race fans. And that one moment was the beginning of the healing of DEI, because at first when we, you know, we sat at that table, the high level, you know, people and brass and drivers. And we just didn't know what we were going to do. We didn't know how to react. We didn't know what, you know, what we need to do.

So when in that race was definitely the beginning of the healing where we learned as a team that we can still move forward and we can still continue to grow and win races, even in the absence of our leader. I mean, that moment right there was profound. Obviously, Michael Waltrop, you know, his stuff. But I just did Mike Hilton, even. You know, you talked about what you wanted Mike Hilton. Why did you want Mike Hilton? It was to ask him about his relationship with his dad, was it not? Or your dad, was it not?

I mean, you wanted to know things. Yeah, you know, when we do this show, I think we have a responsibility to NASCAR and to the sport, to create health and boost our stars and boost the sport and create interest, right? And I think we do that. There were a lot of guests on the show this year that, you know, they were strictly here to tell Dale stories, right? That's right. And that's our prerogative, right?

That's right. And it's a bit selfish, but there was an opportunity this year to do some closure and some healing or whatever you want to call it. And, you know, we had several guests that were strict, that was what they provided. And they provided some great insight into those relationships and those experiences. But for me, you know, we would have a guest on like that. It would be amazing.

It would be great. I would enjoy the conversation, whether we were going to make it a podcast or not. Right. And then we'd be done. And I would think in my mind, all right, you know, that was nice. It was great for me. Now, let's bring in a current driver. Let's bring in, you know, somebody maybe not so connected, you know, to that Earnhardt legacy.

And so it was that you tried, I mean, because I could sit here and have just, I honestly, I mean, if, if I wasn't a broadcaster and I wasn't, I didn't feel any sort of responsibility to NASCAR in general, like the global NASCAR of sport, if I didn't have any responsibility to that, I wasn't. just have, we just sitting here and tell Dale and Harstories every week. Right. You know, and we'd have somebody come in here and say, you know, old hunting buddy, I don't know, whatever. You know, we just keep picking the,

picking through the file and, you know, bring people in like Hank Parker Sr. He's probably got a million Dellenhart stories. Not because of how many downloads it would generate. Not because of that, but because it's... I'm going to think. It's stories that you yourself are looking for for your own information, for your own peace of mind, for your own joy.

And that was the criteria of the season. Now, one of the things, if I go back to... But I think, well, I want to finish one thing, though, but I felt like that, you know, as selfish I was about that, like, man, I want to hear some, you know, I want to talk to Richard and see what we can learn something new about dad. You know, as soon as that would happen, I would think, man, we've got to, let's get, let's get, let's get, you know, but. Bubba Wallace in here.

Yeah, that won't be a deep interview. Let's just get Bubba Wallace in here. Well, let's get back. Let's veer back toward, you know, present day. Yeah. It's a, I don't know what that is. There's, that, that's always kind of bothered me, I guess, is. Look, this is, this is Dale Earnhardt, Jr. to a T.

He's always worried about what other people are thinking. And they don't, you don't want to be accused of coming off as doing things for you. You want to be able to provide stuff for other people. and so you definitely were aware all season of the balance that we're offering people. There's a balance. And so if we went too old school, too much during a month of whatever, then we would try to come back around with some other ones. And I thought that the new guys also gave us a lot of good moments this year.

I say the new guys. I agree. Yeah, that was another tough thing. So there's not a lot of – so there's a ton of history out there, right? when you look at the crop of current drivers versus the entire history of the sport and all the content that you could create from that, right? It's so easy just to keep going back to the history bucket because it's full, right? And that was a tough balance for me. I felt like throughout the year is like, man, we've had a lot of history.

We've had a lot of, you know, we've had a lot of guests that have a historic story. and we got, you know, we got to get a current guy in here, get a current guy in here, get a current guy in here. And it was tough. It wasn't easy. And those guys are not easy to nail down. They're actually harder. Harder.

Today, yeah, like, are harder to get in this room. Right. They're just so down busy. And when they get home from a race, the first thing, the last thing they want to do is go somewhere on Monday morning and do an interview, right? We had a lot of good guests, though, Jimmy Johnson, Clint Boyer was incredible. And he will have, in my mind, we're, Our goal was to have Clint here every year, right?

Yeah. If not a couple, you know, not a couple times a year. Just so much animation and he's all over the place. And we have this weird friendship that I can't quite, I have a hard time describing it. But we don't hang out. Right. We have. Yeah. We've had time.

We drank. We used, you know, we drank in the past. He's come over to the house and we've had some all-nighters. And, you know, we've been out and about on, you know, when our, when our, paths have crossed in the banquets or whatever, and he's a great guy to hang out with and drink with, but we haven't, I don't go to his house. He don't call me up on a Wednesday and go, what's up, man, let's have some beers. I wish we did, but we don't. But whenever we're hanging out, you know, we just sitting in this room talking, you know, it's a good, it's a good

relationship and a good friendship, and he's so wide open. Yeah, that's too, wide open. Do you guys, what were some other moments you guys had back in the booth that you want to talk about and give us some memories on? She's always wanted me to go first. Well, go first now. Ballou is my number one. That's the most predictable thing on earth. But you covered exactly why for me. Because he's like such a deep story.

But for me, it's surprising. I look through that list. And to me, it was Bubba Wallace. Bubba's openness about depression was just something that struck me very deep, and I thought it was brave, I thought it was transparent. There's a lot of people that struggle with battles, whether it's anxiety, depression, you know, mental illness, whatever. And the fact that he is a person on a platform, and he chose to talk about it,

to me shows me maturity that a lot of people don't give them credit for. And I went into that podcast not thinking, I thought it was going to be a question. Hey, man, you came out about depression. And he talked about it. But I didn't think it was going to go as deep as it did. And I just remember editing the episode and listening to it. I probably listened to that episode, no joke about two, three times. And knowing Bubba's since he was a little kid, I was proud of him.

and I think that's an episode that just 100% stands out to me. Yeah, that's a good one, I tell you. Yeah, I mean, Bubba had a lot of the things in just that depression, though, that he brought. Oh, yeah. I mean, my goodness. It's battle with the 88. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I feel like reading all the social media comments,

a lot of people really appreciate the history that we bring in and the stories that we tell. But for me, Mama was my favorite. Yeah, that's something that you're going to have. forever and like her stories like that just doesn't happen anymore her you know afraid to drive the car over the bridge showing the race car you know how am i going to get over this bridge like that that doesn't that personality like that's hard to find anymore and driving rouse race car and wrecking it like those are just stories that were incredible and something special that you're going to have yeah i was um i was um i was so we got to tell this story about teresa and

and my mom, Brenda, having some sort of confrontation, right, at Mamaw's house. Do you remember the first time that, it might not have been the first time, but I guess mom and you were at your house. Y'all were on the front porch, and dad drove up with Teresa. They had a little battle, Royale. They had a little wrestling match on the front porch. Oh, wait a second. I've got to hear that.

I'm really not remember that. Kathy says somebody got smacked. Who got smack? at you. Teresa got smacked. I'd heard that story, but I'd heard rumors in little bits and pieces. Wait, wait. Who's doing the smacking?

In the kitchen. All right, so they got inside the house. Oh, my Lord. Who? Mama just, mama snapped. Martha, dig deep. You got to remember something about this. Come on.

We're begging. I'm hanging on this one. I really don't remember all that. Or maybe I'm just trying to Get it on. I don't blame you on that. But still, we got questions. Kathy's version of events is that mom brought the kids to the house to do a switch with dad.

Right. And dad brought Teresa thinking, hey, man, that's no big deal. And there was a physical application. Wow. This is so good. Hope Brenda won, didn't she? Who won, Kathy? Brenda won.

I don't doubt that. That's what I figured. Wow. Yeah, I'd heard about that a long time ago, but I wasn't sure if it was, I didn't know. I guess I had it wrong, you know. I thought they went, gotten wrestling and pulling hair on the front porch. Well, that was the second time they switched the kids off.

All right. Well, that'll make a headline this week. You know, there's everybody, there's variations of it, and everybody's got their interpretation of what went down. But it's fun to, you know, it's fun to hear some of those, I cannot get enough of what it was like when Ralph was around, when he was alive, and what the household was like,

and what being around him might have been like. And, you know, I've tried to push to get my Uncle Danny on the show or put an interview together with Uncle Danny to hear maybe what he might have to say about his childhood. and, you know, it's just, yeah, Mamma was great. So there was a lot of, you know, a lot of great interviews. You know, one of the things that was something I didn't expect throughout the year, after each interview, a lot of these people I go to the racetrack and see them, or I'm in contact with them all the time, right?

Texting and so forth. One thing that was a constant every week, and it would sort of carry on over the next couple of weeks after each show would be our guest would tell me how awesome the response was to being on the show. Yeah. All right. And this isn't to pat our own back. This is really actually to pat our listeners back.

But I can get no better compliment on our show than to hear my boss, my old boss, Rick Hendrick, or, you know, Jeffrey Earnhardt, Tony Jr., all Clint, all the people that we had on the show would say, hey, I'm surprised by the good response. I got a lot of people telling me how much they enjoyed it. And I think that was probably the best rating review we could get, right? Is when the guest comes back and goes, hey, man, I not only had fun on the show, but I'm also really digging how much people enjoyed seeing it and hearing it, right? The other side of that, too, is I think that's why our guests become more and more interested in being on the show is because as they, you know, as a potential guest watching, they go, hmm, I want to do that. That's fun.

And it's getting positive reviews. And I want to be, you know, I want to, I'm trying to grow my brand or put myself in great situations like that. So, so we're doing it right, I think. Richard Childress came up to me at that North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame induction that you in this year and came up and it was a couple weeks after we had had him on the show and he said the exact same thing he said i have got more compliments about being on the show and man i have just i don't know i have so much respect for richard childerist that to hear that i couldn't wait for you

to get off the stage it was two hours later but i couldn't wait to tell you that i know that's the best thing that can happen with this show is to get that kind of compliment from the guest yeah that they're they're not only enjoyed being on the show when they walk out of this room they're like, because we've heard it, you know, we'll get up from the table as soon as the interview's over and the guest will say it immediately. Hey, that's a pretty good time. That was pretty fun. Like, they're almost surprised that it was, it exceeded their expectations, right?

Yeah. And then they'll leave and then over the next two or three weeks that you'll get a text from them, man, I'm getting some great response from this show. Like, there's, again, a little surprised. And I'm sure you hear it too, Matthew. You have contacts and consistent communication with a lot of our guests. And I'm sure you're getting a lot of compliments to about that. That's cool. I mean, just think about it.

You know, the five-year-old boy and me, you know, would think it's really darn cool that two weeks afterwards, Dave Marcus is calling or Harry Gat, you know, or Ballou is calling and to tell you, hey, you guys did a great job and I enjoy being on the show and, hey, how are you doing? You know, and that's pretty darn cool. Yeah. I'm going to tell you guys something. It occurred to me last night. If you detect a theme from this year, and you've been talking about Bubba Wallace, you've been talking about. You've been talking about Dale, Gary Ballou, you know, you talk about Mamma Alia. And there's a theme this year and it's relationships.

And a lot of conversations that have happened this year, you think about Bubba Wallace and his dad. You know, you think about Joe Gibbs talking about his son at this table, right? And wanted to say it to talk about what the legacy of his son is. Talk about Ricky Rudd, who is saying that he went, what, 15, 16. years with this animosity to Dale Earnhardt. The relationship. And what did he say? He said it affected how he was, how he related to all the other drivers, right? Yeah. Remember that? Yep. Michael Waltrip said, you know, one of the things that blew my mind is that after 2001, February 2001, I figured Dale and Michael Waltrip had talked, you know, because they're teammates. But Michael Walter said he shut down and shut out everybody, right?

And went so far as to say that it probably has affected, you know, the relationships, you know, and the things that he's down. My point on this is that a lot of people have sat here and talked about the relationships. And I think that even in our relationships with them and that kind of thing, it all sort of surfaced and was the theme this year. And you don't have to dig too far in any of the interviews to kind of see it. You know what I'm saying? All right. There is nobody out there that wants to lose their hair. That's right.

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Funniest moments, 2019. Let's go around the horns. kick up the tempo here and have some fricking fun. I've got a list. Beautiful. Hey, all right. So, Mike, you know, we had a lot of great funny moments. You heard it in the intro. We have a lot of fun on here.

Funny moments, man. What are some of the ones that made us laugh the most? Mike, you got a list over there. Well, I had just, you know, kind of meandered through some of the video moments that we put together this year. And they jarred my memory. forgotten about all of them, okay? Here's one. Dale Jr., just out of the blue, no warning, has anyone among the four of us at one time in their lives shit their pants? And that

right, and you did a similar, and that ended up being a 20-minute conversation, I guess. Dale Jr., you also, you know, one of the funny moments of this year was you had already told us the story about peeing in Ricky Hendricks closet. Yeah. But when Jimmy Johnson sat here and you brought it up and Jimmy said, I didn't know if you were going to bring this up or not, but it was clearly in his mind, and that was a hilarious moment. Guy sewed me up and he's like, hey, don't go to sleep right away. And I was like, not a problem. I was like, we're going to go back and start back drinking beer. So he went back to the house and I was like, he told me not to go to sleep. So I guess we got to sit up and drink

some more beer. So we got right back to it. That would have been some good advice on top of the no sleep is probably don't go get drunk again, right? But he left that part out. He left that out. I did end up peeing in the closet that night. Oh, I didn't know if you're going to go there. I didn't know if you're going to go there. Oh, you remember this? I do. How do you remember this?

I was passed out on the floor, and I heard a commotion, and I looked up, and Dale was sleepwalking and had the closet door open and thought it was the bathroom. You told this story recently, and you did say you slept walk. Yeah. I just thought that's something people say right before they pee in a closet. I never. is a reason to justify. Well, that's my only experience.

Is if that did it. Oh, no. But I was like, he's not going to. Like, whoa, wait. Dale, he's waking up. I know. So I woke up standing up peeing. This is how it happened.

I've never slept while in my life as far as I know. And when I woke up, it was because somebody was saying, hey, Dale, hey. And I woke up and I'm like, oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. upstairs in this loft over the garage and it was empty, just carpet room, wasn't finished. But this is Ricky's house.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. It wasn't his closet. It wasn't like a spare, it wasn't like a guest bedroom closet. Right. Of all the closets. It doesn't make it okay.

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

story was. Yeah, I remember that part. Yeah, that was all good. All right. Thank you, Jimmy. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that Joe Gibbs recalling the contract negotiation. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And because, you know, you don't know if these guys, Joe Gibbs got a lot on his plate. But what was funny about that one? And I said, do you remember? He goes, oh, yeah, I remember it. You know, and then the fact that Dale Jr. basically wouldn't even look at the numbers and didn't even want to.

But then he went into them, pomeo cheese. Talked about pomeo cheese. Right. It was hysterical. Boy, you're talking about the pig on jack stands. Oh, my gosh. That's on my list. Are you, do you have any animals?

Oh, yeah. When you have a kid, you'll see. Wait, to your animal. Your wife and your daughters, they're soon going to gang up on you. You have this farm that you talk about. You think you have animals. You wait until they start rescuing is what happens. They'll start rescuing everything.

You'll have cats. Was your wife always into rescuing animals? No, not until we have a farm. Got a barn. Yeah. You got stalls in the barn. You got to fill it. You got to put these animals in there.

She got into pigs. Really? Oh, yeah. Let me give you a little bit of a barn. advice do not allow your wife to convince you that we ought to have pigs how come if you want one pig have one pig why i was gone her and my old man thought it was a good idea that he needed a girlfriend oh let me tell you lady pigs are tough oh up to i think a litter of nine or 13 nine or 13 or something three times a year jack wow really you enter the pig business very fast very fast well i got out

of the pig business very fast. I put a stop to that. The girlfriend was gone and he was out on Jack Stance. Which is a smoker's pit. Yes. It's hysterical, right? Smoker.

You know, I loved Dave Marcus for so many reasons, but when Loretta Lynn interrupted our show Oh, yeah. Yeah, see, we forget about this. And we said, Dave, Loretta Lynn, the country singer, do you know who she is? Yeah. Well, she's apparently in the lobby. I love her. Let's get her in here. And then, you know, so I just thought those were some fun moments. That was a little starter list for you because times that we had that

I thought were pretty fun. I always enjoyed some of our ad reads. You know, the ad reads for us, believe it or not, you know, like, you know, typically our fans probably think, you know, oh, ad read, you know, it's not part of the show. I want to hear the show. I want to hear what you guys are going to talk about. But the ad reads are personal. We make them, we kind of personalize them, which I think is, I don't dread reading them. I look forward to reading them, and I look forward to sort of seeing how we're going to spin whatever it is that we're trying to sell. And, you know, we've learned a lot about these companies that have been supporting our podcast.

And we've actually, you know, the, I didn't think we were, I didn't know that we were going to be able to try a lot of the products. I mean, pretty much everything that we, this came through here, we've had our hands in and been able to get our hands on. And that makes the ad reads even more enjoyable. But for me, the ad reads are always a lot of fun. Trying to mess with Mike is fun. Oh, come on, you never did that, did you? Yeah. Our Matthews' audio files at the start of the show.

the Kickstarter show are always usually really hilarious, probably every time that he puts one of them together, we get a good snicker. And all of the John Force interview. Yes. I mean, it was just... How have we gone this far? I know, that's what I have written down here.

So John Force came in here and it was like... A tornado. Yeah. It's right. Unreal. But in the middle of it, Where are we in the middle of? Jay's.

Okay, more coffee. I'm losing it. Have you always had this much energy? Your whole life. Did you say virginity? No. No. I lost my virginity a long time ago.

I can't hear either. I'm going deaf. Right. He's talking about porn hub. Seeing Elvis. Yeah. You know, what was the Elvis? The Elvis story?

He got that clip. And so I became an Elvis fan, and I've always had a room in my house that's dedicated to Elvis. And so I wanted to know more about your fandom for Elvis and leaving tickets. Had he been, had he passed away, or were you leaving the tickets after he passed away, thinking that he was still alive? I saw Elvis at a thousand foot at Memphis when I was on fire. And let me tell you something. I crawled out on my hands and knees. I thought I was dead.

And I remember I was praying to God, like, let me stand. Let me get up out of this thing. I'll go back to church. I'll quit. I'll finish the Bible. That was 40 years ago. And I crawled out of there. And I stood up.

My TV guy said, what did you see? But my brain snapped right out of that fear mode, just like you guys do. And I saw Elvis at a thousand foot. And they made a book out of it. And I never got a fennie from that. Somebody wrote a book. I saw Elvis at a thousand feet. But you just grow up with people that you love.

I was never a Beatles fan, even though, you know, I love some of their songs, you know, Giddigan's Bible, everything religious I read. I go to my hotel room and I fall out. Yeah. Did you ever see Elvis play? No, never did. Of all the, two people, well, three people I want to meet one day. Seriously.

Okay. I want to meet your daddy again. I want to meet Elvis and Jesus. Yeah. Okay. Three good ones right there. That's my plan. That might try to beat that list.

So you joined Twitter. About what, a year ago? I don't know. Yeah, but people do it. Sarah does it for me. Yeah. And she tried to clean it up. My kids do it for me all the time because I'm not good at that.

Yeah. You know? People always ask. Part of the worst thing ever happened to me is I discovered porn hub. And I talk about an addiction. I got to get rid of it. I got to get rid of it. Okay, sorry.

I'm sorry. You can cut that. No. Oh, my God. Oh, my goodness. At my age. People always ask me all the time. Like, what was your dad think about Twitter and Instagram or computer?

I think I just learned my answer. I'm standing behind my race car trailer, and I see these five boxes, and one's got a woodpecker in it, another one's got something. And I said, what the hell is that on the back of my trailer? And they said, well, that's all the, whatever they're called. Social media. Social media that's on your phone. I just like, well, how do you And then, do you remember this?

Then interview finally ended. We start doing the rest of our show, and then he comes barging back in and throws a $100 bill on the table. What was that for? He wanted to go buy stuff in the gift store. And they wouldn't take his money. And so he came and put that $100 in here.

Where'd that $100 go? Anybody know? How many times? How many times were we in there? How many times were we in there? interview and you'd ask him about something he'd be like bra bra bra and he'd go off like some tangent then he'd be like what was the question oh yeah yeah yeah

that's classic john force i loved him when i uh i piped in with something he's like hey this is me and dale junior show here this is and i'm like yeah you're right uh but he was he was a trip man oh god that guy that was force on next level like i obviously was around him for a very long time and it was like that was 10 times what i've ever seen I enjoyed when we brought Latard in here for the film review of Days of Thunder. That was a nice little change of pace to bring in someone just for a few moments to do something, just a little bullet. Plus, we did a great service to his life.

Yes, we did. Tony Stewart was hilarious. That was one of my favorite moments, actually. He's always honest. You know, playing those Tony Stewart sound bites with Tony Stewart at the table was fun. and getting his reaction to them was hysterical because he still feels very much the way he felt when he was given these, you know, audio gold. We put a poll on our social media handle in honor of Tony Stewart being on the download. We want to know what your favorite smoke sound bite is, and they voted below.

Racing, passing definition. Got 9% votes. Talladega figure 8, got 27. This one's for the fans, got 10%. The Legato rent got 54%. Oh, the Ligano rant with Steve Burns. It's got to be the classic, right? I mean, that's just the gift that keeps on giving on YouTube.

Do you have some samples of those to the fans? Oh, yeah. I mean, of course. The racing definition one, we'll roll that one first. Is there anything that NASCAR or the IMS can do to create a little bit more passing in these races? Because since 04, there just hasn't really been a lot of passing. Look up racing in the dictionary and tell me what racing says in the dictionary. And then look up passing in the dictionary and tell me what passing in the dictionary.

and tell me what passing is. We're racing here. So that's all I'm going to say. This is racing. If you want to see passing, we can go out on 465 and we can pass all you want. Good one. Of course, Mike Massaro, I think you wrecked at Daytona and this happened.

How much does this affect your chances of winning the 500? I don't know, rocket scientist. I mean, I'm sitting here with a backup car. What do you think? If we wrecked, what's your... Chances do you think we have now, dumb I mean, come on. And then this one was after the second

Brickyard win. I remember standing next year for this one. I thought this was cool. All right, you win again at the Brickyard. Tony, can you put this one in comparison to the last one? This one's for every one of those fans in the stands that pull for me every week and take all the bulls from everybody else. Hey, we can play these all day long, but that Talladega one, this is, Tony always gave us crap.

Mike Arning is going to have a heart attack right now. Listen to this, because this, like, literally. puts him back in therapy. He has to go to therapy for three or four weeks. He was in the background, and he was like keeping that straight face. Sorry, we couldn't crash more cars today. We didn't fill a quota for today for Talladega and NASCAR. If we haven't crashed at least 50% of the field by the end of the race, we need to extend the race until we at least crash 50% of the cars because it's, it's not fair to these fans for them to not see any more wrecks than that and more tour of cars. I mean, we still had over half the cars running at the end, and it's, it shouldn't be that way.

I don't think any of the wrecks were an overheating issue. That's why I say, I don't, I mean, I think we ought to just tape them off solid and run them until they blow up anyway. I think it'd make it a lot more exciting for the fans. If we don't crash half of the field by the end of the race, they really need to extend it because, I mean, that's what the fans want. They want to see that excitement. It would have been a lot more fun if I could have got caught up in one more wreck. If I could have done that, it would have been perfect. I mean, I think if we could make it a figure eight, it would be perfect.

It would absolutely be perfect here. It'd be better than what we got. That's going to be my vote. next week is that we get it, make it a figure eight, and or we can go stop at the halfway, make a break and turn around, go backwards the rest of the way. And then with 10 to go, we'll split the field and half and half of them can go the regular direction, half of them can go backwards. Oh, my God.

See, NASCAR's made the adjustments. We crashed all but three cars yesterday. The formula's word. The best one so far in the whole thing. I know we're all crying here. Well, Tony, what angered you at the end of the race? What did you think I was mad about? Dumb little shtuns us clear down to the infield.

He wants to b-a-b-b-about everybody else. And he's the one that drives like a little b-k. I'm going to bust his ass. Thanks, Tony. Thank you. Oh, my God. You know what that just reminded me of? It reminded me of A.J. Foyt at Nazareth talking about Jeff Andretti.

It sounds almost, it almost sounds to a T identical to A.J. Ford. I was so mad at Joey. I was more mad at my own crew guys that were from. I'm trying to remember which team it was. Danica's team or Ryan's team. But I had Joey hemmed up, and I knew where my guys were. So I was like, I'm way far away. They can't get to me.

I didn't even think about my other teams, and one of them were about three spots away from where I had Joey hemmed up. I'm like, I got his ass now. I'm going to dot his eye across his T. We got this. And about that time, big fuel guy grabs him by the collar and pulls me back like I'm a ragdoll. His or yours? Mine.

Your guy. I got you. And I couldn't whip my own guy. not out of principle I mean sure you could try on a principle but this guy was I couldn't whip him

there's no way he had me covered eight ways from Sunday on that Is that your Jack Hewitt moment you think? I mean Jack's got the you know when you look back now Yeah run that sound bite

No Run that sound bite here Yeah that probably is my That's the closest thing To my Jack Hewitt moment was there I was just so mad about it Because it's like Daggone it just

I don't think we can top those sound bites, man. Oh, I, I, I, there are way more. They're way more. I mean, there's an encyclopedia. Oh, geez. And we, and we thank you. I know that.

Right. Yeah. Yes, you're a national hero for this. Treasure. I'm telling you. Don't confuse bravery with stupidity, all right? David Hobbs, when he was talking about, so in the 1983, Daytona 500, uh, I remember watching that race on TV, and they had an in-car camera in

Kale's car, and Kale wins the race. on and drives the you know runs a great race wins the race and during the entire race you could hear him you could hear like a guy and they're going uh and you could hear it and i remember that i mean we could pull it up on youtube right freaking now and you'd be able to hear it uh when they go to the encar of kale and david hobbs came in here and told the story of them thinking that they were getting some bad feedback or something. There was some sort of short or something in their audio in that in car camera, but it ended up being Kale mimicking the sound of the motor as he's driving around the racetrack.

When we really got serious about it, a couple of years later, we had one in Kail's car. And these guys all through practice, I said, we got this funny kind of feedback. We don't know what it is, you know, we looked at all the wiring and we looked at the this and we looked at that and go out again and God it's still there you know what the hell is it it's some sort of feedback it turned out

that kale when he's driving mimics the engine so he's going he's sitting there going and these guys are looking all over the place for some sort of wiring malfunction

and he's all the time it's all the time it's Cal there. So this, this I believe is like the 1983 or 84 Daytona 500. And he won the race, right? And if you listen to the broadcast, you can hear it. You can hear Kale in there going

there. Well, there's all there you go. For the first year, they just didn't know what the hell it was. I don't think that anybody to this day, I mean, I don't know that I've ever heard that story told publicly. Like, Villner, you're a historian and you've never heard that

Carol Yarborough... Carol Yarborough mimicked the engine entirely. Causing the producers all kinds of chaos. Imagine his whole career. I wonder what he did on the short tracks. That's hysterical. What did he do for the brakes? Right, right.

What do you do for the crashes? Pow! Owie! Yeah, owie, yeah. So the way this show sort of uncovers those secrets. Yeah. And so now think about it. Now, Kell Yarbril was racing into Daytona 500.

He's in 1983, right? He's raced through the 60s and 70s, into the 80s. And he won the Daytona 500. And who knows for how long was sitting in the car every race, every weekend, mimicking the sound of the motor. Like a kid. Our television producer, Brian, goes back and he gets that footage, and he comes back and tells us he's doing it the whole race. Absolutely. Even when he makes passes, he's like, you know, passing people.

I mean, he's sitting there doing the sounds as he's making passes and everything. Now, we had amazing guests and amazing conversations, but maybe one nugget like that would pop up every show where everybody would go, what? and that, I mean, freaking that is a crazy thing when that happens in the show. And that was the moment for me in that particular episode with Hobbs. I mean, he was funny. I was hoping we were going to get some of his impressions.

He does a Jackie Stewart. It's pretty freaking amazing. That's right. But the fact that Kill Yarborough, I mean, he was one of my heroes was a... Mow! Inside the car. It's crazy to think about that. That was great.

All right. Funny moments, you guys. What else you all have? And what is social media told us as well? But you first. Leah, go ahead. Well, social media, obviously John Forrest's Pornhub, that was number one across everything. Dell Jr.

Pooping on the side of the road, which you talked about. Oh, yeah. Boyer getting locked in Jr.' Oh, that's right. And my favorite, the hot dog condiment debate. Oh, yeah. I forgot about that one. Catch up still.

Because of his shirt. Yeah. So, yeah, if I remember correctly, he was wearing his hot dog with ketchup shirt on. And I just was like, what is like, what are you wearing? And then it turned into this huge debate about ketchup or mustard on a hot dog. And that was after the show. The shirt, to be honest, is a hot dog and mustard. Yeah.

High-fiving. High-fiving. Yeah. Because they're pals, like you said. They're friends. Yeah. They go together. I disagree.

They hang. Yeah. You disagreeing is what led to this entire conversation. They go on vacations annually. Heart-shade hot tubs. What is that? There's a hot dog high-fiving of a bottle of mustard. Of yellow mustard.

Yeah, they're pals. Any other questions about that? I know, because maybe why? Yeah. I didn't know they're high-fiving. You do? Because they're friends. Hot dog and mustard are very close pals.

What? Is this news? I'm going to break your heart again. I hate mustard. Oh. So you put ketchup on your hot dog? Yeah. But not mustard.

No, I don't put mustard on anything. That's crazy. It's no calories, you know. Ketchup does, though. Zero calories. Ketchup has calories. Mustard and hot dogs are like best friends. Absolutely.

Yeah. Ketchup? Uh-uh. I mean, I'll put ketchup on there, but not without mustard. Ketchup alone on a hot dog is freaking weird. That's for five-year-olds. It's weird anyways. This has been a condiment-heavy show today, by the way, between the mayonnaise and the shots

and this mustard ketchup conversation. I think it needs, hot dog needs mustard down one side ketchup down the other chili and then dill relish you ever do the slaw do you like slaw with the chili too

I do? I'm there for the dill I do not I'll all agree with you in the dill relish you're there for the deal yeah I like that but with ketchup celery salt a little pinch of celery salt god dang man where are you getting your hot dogs from that's like chicago style or what I mean this is a freaking hot dog out of the damn backyard

that's how we do it at the grill outs man Intimidators. I need a pinch of celery salt. Give you a little pinch a little pinch there, and a little pinch there and a little squirt of chili here but that means. It's perfect.

Bam! Salt bay. It's beautiful. All right. I'd say clearly it's the guy sitting across from you. It's Mike Davis because you're, rants, I wish, like at the beginning of the year, we thought about having a whole rant thing for you,

like a whole rant segment, but I know we do things naturally. We don't set up things and fake things. That's right. We don't even have a pre-pro meeting. Yeah. It'd be cool, though, if you did throw together like a short YouTube six minutes or something. Of my grating. The internet is a marketplace of morons. But your rant about the internet as a marketplace of morons was incredible, but your stories too like the fact that you came on and talked about your California trip and you told the story of the man in the park with a erection right how was your trip oh amazing so you said it's the best trip ever yeah I think it was it was up there and it was the best trip ever because I had low

expectations on it this is a this is something my wife wanted to do hold on hold on a second like you go to national parks but the best part of the trip happened to be the fact that he had a hell of a time with blowing out a tire and you being stuck on the road. I did have logistics problems. So it was like a, you know, Clark Griswold vacation. I just say Griswold family vacation. I haven't even told you guys the craziest part of this trip. It wasn't the tire blowing him?

No, no, no. And I'm trying to decide how I can even say this. But listen, we were in San Francisco and we had a friend that took us around that day. And I got pictures, all right? So look, so we take my kids, my daughters. 10 and a 7-year-old. Take a door park. Now, in San Francisco, they don't give a damn, all right?

And there was this guy who was sun tanning in the park with just like a thong on and a toboggan. Wait, a thong? A toboggan on his head and a white thong. And my daughter sees it. She's like, that man's in his underwear. And I'm like, hey, it's all good, whatever. All right. So how do I do this?

He developed an erection. Oh. My goodness. First time erection's been so. So I'm, listen, so he developed an erection. And everybody.

He developed it. How close were y'all to this man? Do you want to see? No. Wait. I got, Listen, I'm,

photo bomb y'all's pictures? I'm video on my daughter, because she was doing these little things where she's like, okay, right now we're in San Francisco, we're at the park and stuff. And then, and she goes, and she's talking about this dog that's in the park,

and she thinks the dog's cute. And then I catch this scene. this scene here with the guy and I'm like and I start laughing and then Gracie says she goes that man has something sticking out of his underwear I got it on video I would have put it on social but I don't even know what's appropriate at that point yeah that's probably not yeah I mean like you know

especially if you think like he ain't talking to me and all this stuff and now he's going to post these inappropriate things on social media so my wife and her friend are laughing they're like go get in the car get the girls in the car get the girls in the car It was funny. It was hysterical. So that was like, that was a moment of our vacation that, you know, our girls, you know, it was an experience. $50 that never makes the NBC show. I don't, I was, Brian, do you need that picture? I was going to ask about the rest of the trip, but I won't. The rest of the trip. Listen. Can I just tell y'all that just two weeks ago, somebody sent me on.

Twitter a picture of that same man in the same park and he without an erection. Oh, so he's not a serial rector. But he is still in that park. I mean, he's a regular there. They sent me a picture of him. They're like, weird, dude. Your buddy, still here. Old knit hat.

Still getting it done. Same white thong. Same thong. Same thong. And Beanie cat. Yep. If anybody was wondering how he's doing, we got, we got updates. There you go.

He's still healthy. He's still alive. Well, you know, One of the funny moments not at the time, since you mentioned that, it wasn't funny for me at the time, but as I look back at it, it's pretty hysterical, was our fights and debates. And in particular, when y'all got me so wound up on purpose. Y'all was... Remember when he called us Renan Stimpy? Yeah.

Yeah, that was awesome. Leah doesn't have an original idea. Yes, that was what was popping into my mind. None of y'all's... I thought it was none of y'all's opinions matter, but it was... that. I think it was all in the same conversation, wasn't it? It was the one about Menard and

Harrison Burton. It Loudon, they got into a little whatever it was. And I thought it ended somewhat friendly. And then you guys just decided to pile on. But it was funny. You pile on you a lot between the miles per hour and the seconds.

We basically bully you. You bully. That's a good word. We coerce. There's not a perfect more thing. We coerce. The internet and Twitter in particular. That's where y'all bully me.

It's not on here. You then take it to social media and then you get all your minions to pile on me. And that's, uh, that's where, no, I could rant about that. I can't wait to see how many, uh, tweets we get would just give some minions. Well, but that, but it is, I mentioned that as in fun. That was fun. So, friend. So.

Stimpy. And we even look like them. Remember we had Googled them? Who's the fat one? Look, I'm, you're not getting me in this one. I'm How many times do you roll your eyes at me per show? When you say, when you talk about your weight.

Right, it makes it awkward. It's very awkward. Ren's the Chihuahua, so I'm Wren. Hey, when it comes to meat, quality matters, but there's more to it than texture and taste. High quality meat is important to me. I don't want to feed my family junk. I don't want that meat with all those hormones and fillers.

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and sugar nitrate-free bacon. Oh, yeah. And don't forget that wild-caught Alaskan salmon. Oh, you did salmon. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, my favorite is, Because I eat chicken and salmon on the road. All right.

I eat chicken for lunch, salmon for dinner. Is that right? Yes. Wow. I am diligent. You are, yeah, discipline. Uniform and discipline. Yes, you are.

Chicken for lunch, salmon for dinner. There's no red meat on the weekends. Now, when I'm at home, I eat what Amy cooks. Yeah. That might be ground beef, which I love. Yeah, I love everything she cooks, but she's all over the board. But on the weekends, chicken for lunch, salmon for dinner. Don't be messing with it.

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After all, it is the great American race. All right, 2020 is coming up, guys. And you all know how much I love the Daytona 500. I need a reason to be there, though. So I'm going to not driving in the race anymore. That's right. And I want to experience the Daytona 500 from any new vantage point that I can. That's right.

Last year we drove the Pace Truck. That's right. We gave the command. You've done that. So I just need another job. You need another job. Yeah. So I'm going to call Chip Wow.

You'd be the one to call. Chip Run. the place. That's right. So I'm going to call Chip and see if there's a job. Let's calling. Hello. Hey, Chip. It's Dale Jr. Hey, Dale Jr. What are you doing, buddy? Well, you called from a 256 number, so I wasn't sure what was going on. What are you doing? I am calling you from my burner phone. Sorry, I'm just kidding. I got to have one of us. Hey, so the Daytona 500, right? I want to come and come see the race, and, you know, I just don't like to stand around.

Last year, you let me drive a pace truck, which is fun. And the year before that, you let me do the command. And that was a lot of fun, too. And so I was kind of thinking, is there any jobs available for me, so I could have something to do while I'm there? You got anything left? Well, you got anything that's not been given away yet? Have you gave away the command?

We haven't done the command yet, but we got a couple good folks in the running. But I got a job for you, but it's going to. It's going to require you to practice a little bit. Oh. Like what? Sing? Well, we're not there yet. That could be 2021.

Me and Mike Davis talked. What would I need to practice? Yeah, I'm not singing. No, don't bring Mike Davis into this. So when we're talking about jobs, I'm not talking about doing anything like the anthem. I'm not a singer. When you said practice, that was my first thought. So what else would I need to practice for?

All right. So you've done the command and you've driven a pace truck. One thing you haven't done is drop the green flag on the field as they take the green for the 60-second running of the day 20-500. What do you think? What do you call that person? That is the honorary starter. Yes. I'm the honorary starter.

All right. All right. Well, I'm going to send you a flag because the biggest thing you've got to focus on is you can't drop the flag. Can I just tie it to my wrist? You know, kind of like you get on a jet ski. That's a thing, man. Like every time people go out, they're like, oh, I'm fine.

And they get there and they're like, oh, God, I'm going to drop it. You cannot drop the flag. I'm just going to tape it to my hand. No. Come on. That's not. Nobody does that. Whatever.

You got to do it. I'm going to do whatever I want to do. Oh, man. You know what? He can do whatever. He doesn't pay me to his hand. That's fine. I'm going to, yeah, I won't drop it.

You know what? I was that. little kid that would, you know, there's always one at every race track in the grandstands that standing below the flag stand. It has all the flags and he waves the same, you know, he waves the flag. He flags the race right there from the grandstands because he wants to grow up and be a, be a flagman. Flagman, yeah. Yeah, I've waived plenty of flags. I got some flags around here. I'm going to get practice. This is a big deal, man. This is a big deal. Like, you got to be prepared. This isn't like, I mean, well, I knew you were going to, you were going to crush the command and you did.

Yeah. Driving the pace truck, that was awesome, but you'd made a lot of laps around this place. You never thrown in the green flag. I can wave a flag, all right? You're going to be surprised. All right. You hadn't let me down yet, and we're excited that you're going to be here and be a part of the Daytona 500. It's going to be an awesome way to kick off the 2020 season.

All right, man. I can't wait. All right, but thank you. Thank you. We'll see you. All right, see you. Nice. You're going to wave the green flag, dude.

Odd history. Ready for this one? Yeah. Fast football. That's the name of this odd history. Let's see why we name it fast football. That's yours, Matthew? It's stupid and punny, so it's mine.

So it must be funny. It's so funny. Well, racing is wrapping up in the years here. It makes me think of football, actually, about halfway through the NFL season or a little bit more than halfway through it. For me, it's all about the redskins. Definitely not about the dolphins.

But this odd history, unfortunately, has a connection to the Miami team. All right. In 1998, NFL Hall of Famer Dan Marino co-owned a team in the Cup series with Bill Elliott. You remember that, Mike? I do remember it. And it was Miami Dolphins colored. That's right.

First Plus was the sponsor. That's right. And the number 13, which was Dan Marino's number in his career. It was driven by Jerry Nadu, who was very promising young fella coming on his schedule. Marino accomplished a lot in his football career, including nine Pro Bowl appearances. He did so in a traditional pocket passer role, mostly, not known for his speed. But that was this one time that he was very fast. He strapped into a cup car during a test in late January at Talladega.

This is back in 1998. I did not know this. Yes. All right. They wanted to give the Dolphins quarterback the real feel for NASCAR. put him behind the wheel of one of the team's cars and two of them headed on the track together. What in the hell? It's ridiculous.

I'll be damn if I'd do that. Just say, hey, good luck. Right. Stay on the bank. With Elliot leading, they drafted around at about 145 miles an hour before returning to the pits. And then he went back on the track by himself, which is probably a smart thing. And he had a top speed of 165. Man, slow.

Pretty slow. But for a quarterback, he's probably death. gripping that thing. Well, it's obvious then if that's true. He was not full throttle, which I'm a little disappointed, Dan. He probably felt like he was doing a land speed record. I mean, running around, they told him what my dad told me when I went to Talladegh. If you lift, the car is going to explode into a ball of fire.

That was another great moment. Yeah. If you lift off the gas, the car is just going to fall apart. Motor can't take it. That's right. Tires are going to blow a piss. Tires are going to come off. Pistons are going to burn up.

If you lift off the gas, the windshield's coming out and seen. But not telling him that it doesn't apply to the garage. Remember that? So he's going through the garage. He's trying to get, wham! I can't believe you fell for it. What absurd things could you tell somebody? About your car?

Did he get him to go fast? But if you lift it off the gas. I don't know that the car is going to blow up. That's probably top of the... That's what they should have told Dan. Dan, don't lift. He was an ass car owner for just one year. Apparently sponsor problems forced a team to close down.

That's unfortunate. I remember Jerry qualified really well Sonoma in that car and then missing the first turn. Remember that? No, I don't know. Yeah, he missed like the... Well, up through turn one. Yeah, I think he ended up in the grass.

Oh, man. But, oh, Jerry Nadeo. Yeah, that was an opportunity that just didn't work out. But, dang. I wonder if NADU would be a good guess, because, you know, he had a pretty abrupt end to his career. Yeah, absolutely. He had a very bad crash at Richmond, wasn't it? Richmond.

Just almost took his life. Yeah. All right. Good, good down note to end. Good job. Good job of that, Mike. Way to serve that up. Sorry.

What to serve that up. Well, I mean, listen, let's go to the big. upbeat note of Dan Reno closing down his team after one year. But odd history has been a fun thing thanks to NASCAR man. He's kind of teed us up to those things. And for me, I can't find those things. I don't know how this guy does it half the time. And I love following him on Twitter.

I know you do too. And when he sends over some options and this and that, I'm like a kid in a candy store you know, on the weekend, like trying to find some details and source an articles. and it's cool, man, having that guy being a big fan of us. Oh, we're fans of him. NASCAR Man, if you aren't following NASCAR Man on Twitter, you need to go follow him right now, all right? Trust me, the information that he is putting out there,

it's odd history, it's good history, not all of it's odd. It's great history. He puts a lot of clips, video clips. Every single day, there's always some great stuff on there. He puts a lot of effort into what he does. on Twitter, NASCAR, man. Go follow him now. And Dale, I wanted to know, actually,

out of the odd histories from this year... Kim, let's regroup, Mike. Is you mourning anyone any deaths? Just to end on a bad note? Let's bring this back up. Anybody dead to you and your family? No, no. So, yeah, we had a lot of great odd histories

on our show this year. I thought it was a fun segment. We love the history as it is, and it's just a great way to, it's sort of a cheap, cheaty way to get more history into the show. But my favorite one, my favorite one, again, I go back to the mystery, just like with Gary Ballou and the mystery to his story, I go back to our odd history and think about what, unsolved, right? And it's L.W. Wright.

Refresh my memory on that. Right. So, Conman, L.W. Wright. basically this guy under the guys of LW. Wright, you know, conned his way into driving a car at Talladega. Oh. And they crashed in the race or something and he disappeared. And owing everybody thousands of dollars, right?

He gets out of the car and drives out of the track and disappeared. And there's like no... What's that? Who's the guy that flew the plane and jumped out with the money and they never found him. I have no idea. Yeah, Cooper. DB Cooper.

DB Cooper? This is the NASCAR version of DB Cooper. It's fucking true, man. So, D.B. Cooper jumps on his plane and demands that, you know, he gets $200,000 or something or another, and he gets the money and then goes and jumps south of the plane, right, and parachutes down. They don't know whether he survived that or not. not, right? Now, they've found some money on the banks of this river. I don't know all the

details, but anyhow. I'm intrigued because I don't even know the story. Deby Cooper, you don't know the story? I don't know either. Are you kidding me? I'm going to be looking it up. Are you kidding me? So, Deby Cooper, oh, this happened into 70s, right? So he gets on this plane and demands them to get some money. I think they actually, I don't know how they got the money. They landed it and got it. I don't remember exactly how they ended up getting, how he has the money and how they're airborne. I don't know. But he's got $200,000 cash with, I guess that's all he wanted. He jumps out of the back. It's one of those airplanes that the back lowered down and the steps where you walked into the back of the plane. So they lower that damn thing down while they're flying through the air. And he jumps

out. Did he die? They don't know. There's no sign of parachute or him or his clothes or anything, but they have found some money in the bank of this creek in the area that they think he could have landed near. Somebody discovered some folded or some bundled bills that they believe may have came from that money that he had. And there's no sign of him. And this damn mystery has been unsolved for decades. $200,000 snake stored it. That's nuts. And that is what the L.W. Wright story to me almost mimics it whereas LW Wright this guy coming in claiming he actually put out press releases that he was going to have this awesome team and he was teamed up with T.G.

Shepard or somebody and had sponsors that is all bullshit and they went and tried to ask T.G. Shepard or whoever and they're like, I don't know what it's talking about. So, but he ends up getting 20 grand or something and pays Sterling Marlin to drive a car that Sterling owned and so Sterling's like sure man no problem so Sterling got some money and they showed up the track he blowed up the motor and practice

he's asking Sterling questions about that random weird questions like so do I drive on the banking or the flat part you know just like drivers should know Sterling's like dude have you ever race for yes I'm a track champion where's the keyhole to get in the door yeah

right how do I start the motor. Yeah, and he's telling everybody he's this champion from Nashville and won all these short track races that never happened. So, now think about it. We don't have the, you know, even back then,

I guess in the 70s or early 80s, whenever this happened, late 70s or early 80s. You know, we didn't people probably didn't do the background checks on this guy. They're just like, oh, you got 20 grand, I'll take that. Chop in the car, no problem. He goes out there and

wrecks the car in the race and then jumps in a rental car and leaves. Bye-bye. And apparently L.W. Wright's not a real person. That's right. So nobody knows who this guy was, what his name was, and what he even, I guess, look like. Right? That's a crazy spot. We don't have any.

I've seen pictures of his car. Pitch of the car or no picture of him. Yeah. So. That's unreal. They never got a head shot of him or anything while he was there. Just weird. It's all coming back to me.

He's gone. And you look at all those odd stories. We mentioned one the other week with Pop Ergel. You know, there was that riot with the fans. And the drivers were trapped in Asheville, Asheville-Weaverville Speedway. And he was swinging around a two-by-four to get everybody out of the pit area. J.D. Stacey. Well, hold on.

And then it was verified by Richard Petty. Who was in here talking about it. And then, you know, J.D. Stacey, when somebody attempted to kill him with a bomb, blow him up. and then one that you didn't know about, which I love when we could stump Dale kind of because he's a history guy. But when Curtis Turner was held up with some woman partying, and the guy, the lady's husband came home and was shooting at him.

Yeah. And he had to allude that and get a ride to the racetrack. That sort of stuff is just color times 80. Yeah, I mean, all the odd histories are pretty amazing stories that NASCAR man sends us his, yeah, I don't know how he finds all this stuff. Makes it up. Cool guy too. Keep talking about white flag, bud.

White flag right there, white flag. Last white flag of the year. All right, guys, the race season in NASCAR may be over, but Dale, there is a big race coming up in the short track world that we always talk about. It always piques your interest. That's right. If there's a short track race in America that should be on your bucket list, to attend, it is the Snowball Derby at Five Flag Speedway in Pensacola, Florida.

I've never been. I've always wanted to go. I know. Dad raced in it many, many years ago. Darrow Waltrip, David Pearson. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. We've had several guests on the show this week, or this year, I'm sorry, that have been in that race.

Gary Ballou. Oh, yeah. Mark Martin. There's just so many people that have raced. It's huge. It is huge. And, you know, obviously the stories over its 52 years are incredible. Our friends at Speed 51 have some pretty cool stories.

from their years of covering it, like Kyle Bush. He's a two-time Snowball Derby champion. And here's how he bested the top late model drivers in the country that year to win the 50th annual. I came back for the 50th annual Snowball Derby, but I was here in 2012. I was here in 2009, won the race in 2009, and was here in 2002 as well, too, for my first start. That one was a little bit rougher than the rest of them have been. And we're going to go down there and have some fun. So that's why we're here.

You know, it feels like a cup victory, if you will, because these guys, they know these cars, they know these tracks, they know the adjustments you got to make, they know all that stuff, and we just come in, one-off, and come out here and try to do it and keep up with them. Yeah, our car was good in practice, you know, even firing off and running those runs and mock qualifying runs. They were on stickers. We showed good speed relative to the field, but then when qualifying came around, the racetrack was just entirely different. Absolutely, no question. and Bubba Pollard was the guy to beat. You know, I kind of put him up on the pedestal

that he's the guy to beat. And then I thought that there was like, you know, five or six of us that were literally gonna fight for second through seventh. And that's kind of how I saw the race playing out. When Bubba was out there leading in the nine and myself and the 12 of Harrison Burton, we were all kind of top four running pretty close

to one another. You know, I thought, oh, well, I didn't know if Bubba was saving or what he was doing, but it seemed like we were actually kind of keeping up with them at that point in the race. And so, you know, I thought maybe we had a shot, but I wasn't counting it yet. I didn't think we had enough to beat them.

Like if we just had to straight out, like, go and race them right there at that point in the race, I didn't think we had enough to beat them. And I got this sense. I'm like, man, this thing feels green. It feels like it's going to go green the rest of the way. And I really just kind of zoned in, focused in, and just tried to hit my marks and try to do everything right and everything perfect in order to catch back up to those guys.

And I didn't think if I got there, if I was going to have enough to overcome and pass them. But fortunately, man, when I got there, I could just slip right through. This one feels really, really special. Kyle Bush, off a turn number four, will win the Snowball Derby for the second time in his career. The first one was certainly really, really cool, and this is the golden anniversary, and this is the 50th Snowball Derby. And there will not be another 50th winner out there, so this one's obviously maybe a tick above the rest. Yeah, Kyle Busch, he loves that race. I think a lot of the drivers realize how important it.

and historic it is. Some of the best drivers in America are filing their entries. Snowball Derby Week begins Wednesday, December 4th, and culminates with the big 300-lap race on Sunday, December the 8th. So get a ticket, go camp out for the week. If you can't make it down to Florida, though, speed51.com will have all the coverage on their site and live pay-per-view broadcasts.

All right, so you can sit in your living room or man cave or whatever, enjoy the 52nd annual Snowball Derby. That's right. You use that Speed51.com a lot. You dang right. And they do a great job. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to watch it.

Pay up on Speed51.com and watch it. Since we're going to go a couple months, without you hearing from us, we're going to encourage you to do a couple things. One is follow us on social media because we'll be dropping some content during the holiday season. It's always good to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. That's at Dirty Mo Media.

Also encourage you to, You're looking for some holiday shopping ideas. You can pre-order the Dale Jr. download fantasy diecast car at shopjurination.com. You can buy the paperback edition of Racing to the Finish, which has that additional chapter. It is at Dale Jr.com slash book. Also, if you want to make a difference in some kids' lives, you can always make a donation as a gift. It's a great gift idea, actually, to the Dale Jr. Foundation. That's at the Dale Jr.foundation.org or Nationwide Children's Hospital at nationwide

children's dot org. I want to actually end this show for us giving some shoutouts and some credit because we don't have a credit reel at the end of our show each week. So it gives us a chance to mention some names and some people behind the scenes. First of all, the Dirty Mo Media team, I think you guys are outstanding. Dustin Lee, James Brousan, Michael Caldwell, Matthew Dillner, Jason Schultz. I even want to remember him because he's the producer on DBC, but he's also really helped us out on the Dell Jr. download this year.

So thank you to all the Dirty Mo Media team. The Dale Jr. Brand team lean on them a lot. Leah, you're part of that. Also, Kelly Earnhardt and Tony Mayhoff. And the NBC team. I've got a list of names here. I want to definitely give a shout out to Sam Flood and Jeff Binky, obviously, are at the top of that chain. Our TV producer, Brian Goodwin, has been fantastic. And I just tell you what, that is such a nice. Our show on NBC Sports Network is such a nice compliment to the podcast because of the archival footage and the stuff.

But you don't understand how much Brian goes to work as soon as we're doing. done on taping on Monday. So Brian, thank you. Mark Trana has also helped you out when Brian goes on his like month-long vacations. I'm kidding with him, of course. Kevin Dennis and Justin Opman, awesome camera guys. Also, there's a lot of TV staff on the NBC show that we want to include Robin Palmer, Raymond Hondo, Blake Carpinello, Sandy Shepard, Rachel D. Bartolo, and Aaron Feldstein. Thank you to all you guys behind the scenes helping us. get that TV show done. Also a big thanks to our team at Cadence 13, all the great partners that they secured for us in 2019.

As Dale Jr. mentioned earlier, these aren't just ad reads. We have a lot of fun with them and we've developed relationships with them. So Cadence 13 has been a big help. And Dale, that's it for me. You got anything else to add? Fans, man. We've got to thank the fans that listen to this show. 100%.

Yeah, absolutely. I want that to be for Dell. Yeah. That's why I didn't mention it. Yeah. I, you know, we've, when, you know, when we used to do this show, we used to, you know, we get the information about downloads and, and, and, get an idea about how many people are really paying attention to what we're doing. And I remember what our number was last year. And I remember the numbers that got us excited. That's right. Right. And this year, those numbers would be extremely disappointing numbers. Yeah. and we are way, way higher.

Speaking of numbers, we are way higher in numbers. So I am, you know, I don't know what we thought we were achieving or trying to achieve or what we set for as goals at the start of the year. We might have talked about that a little bit, but we had far exceeded anything that I ever thought we'd accomplished this year as far as viewership, people listening. I think, you know, I know you thanked everybody, Mike, But there's the work that went into the studio, the work that went into creating the space.

This is a very fun space. It's great for our, you know, it's great for our guests. When they come in here, they feel like the space is comfortable. That's important. Our production quality is amazing. That has went through the roof. The production quality on the podcast itself, the stuff that Mike, the stuff that Matthew puts together to bring the show together is awesome.

The production quality on our, TV show. I get comments all the time, not only about how great the show is and the guest is, but also how great the viewing of all the archive footage. A lot of effort goes into finding all these old pictures and, you know, our NBCSN guys are sitting in the studio while we're doing the podcast sort of tagging as these stories are being told by our guests going, oh, I need to find that car. Right. Or I need to find that clip. And there's a lot of effort that goes into tracking all that stuff down. And it's not a lot of fun, right, to try to have to hustle to get that all together

within literally just 24 hours to be able to put the show on television. Not a lot of fun, not a lot of sleep. No. And, you know, it just, we've been, you know, we've gotten a great response. We've got some great people that are really dedicated to our show. And I'm talking about, you know, the listeners as well. We have people that just the compliments on our show are through the roof, and we appreciate it. And I'm, you know, I'm thankful for the response that we got this year, what it's become.

Love the fact that NBC's been so supportive to have us on NBCSN. And I'm loving the fact that they've even had the ideas to run the shows multiple times throughout the week at certain points in the season. they've moved us around to see where we can be more effective and utilized us in ways I never thought we would be used. So it's been awesome. So just a great experience this year. Hope we can find a way to, you know, we're going to keep a lot of things the same that

are working really well for us. But I hope that we can continue to grow. I hope that we can continue to be interesting and fun. And I hope that our audience is excited about what we have coming down the pipe. and enjoying the shows. So it's been a great time for me, man. It's been great to spend time with you, Mike. You know, do something productive and good for both of us.

It's been great working with Matthew and getting to know Leah and just been a fun year. You know, we do this. You know, there's no, the main reason why we get in the studio and get together, it's extremely awkward and uncomfortable for me. But the reason why we get in the studio and get to and do this really is because we enjoy it, you know, when it comes down to it. That's right. You know, this is not a, and you don't have to use this if you want to, but this is not like some lucrative deal for anybody in this room. This is work, and it takes

a lot of effort. Now, it's not, I'm probably got the lightest load of anybody in the room, but we still got to come in here and show up and be ready and kick some ass, and we have, we've done that all year long. So it's, we're here because we like it and we want to do it and we enjoy it. It's become bigger and better than I ever thought it would be, more important to me than I thought it would be. And glad that it's also become something of value to NBC. 100%. I'm very happy about that. All right. That's the end of the show. That's the end of the season, unfortunately. Now, you know me, I'm going to continue to try to push for some sort of content throughout the off season that maybe some teasers and some small stuff for our YouTube channel

or something just to let you guys know that we're still here. Hope everybody has a wonderful December and a great Christmas and New Year. January should be a lot of fun. The racing season will be here before we know it. And I'm sure we're already going to be counting down to Daytona. So have fun. We'll see you soon. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Dirty Mo! Thank you.