The Dale Jr. Download - 284 - Humpy Wheeler: The Ringmaster

Episode Date: February 11, 2020

Dale Earnhardt Jr. rolls out the red carpet on the 2020 debut by bringing in the ultimate ringmaster, legendary racing promoter H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler. The two discuss Humpy's wild early days in racing, wheeling and dealing to sell tickets, creating chances for drivers including Dale Earnhardt and an astonishingly long boxing career. They share some laughs about the zaniest of pre-race stunts, some of which drew the ire of NASCAR. Dale & Co-host Mike Davis clean up a messy Busch Clash and debate NASCAR Hall of Fame changes. The DJD gang answers fan questions, reveal details of Dale's new tv-show and tell tall tales of Daytona partying. 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. Coming up on a go for all the symptoms start, all systems are go. Everything's good, we're ready to go. 20 seconds and counting. 10 seconds, guidance is internal. It was a rocket. 12. 11.

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2. 2. 2. 1. All engine running. Lift-off. We have a lift-off. Dirty Mo.

All clear. The Dale Jr. Download. The 2,195 feet per second. All right, everybody, 2020 is here, and so is the new season of the Dale Jr. download from Dirty Mo Media. Mike Davis. What's up? Matthew Dillner. Leah, everybody is still here.

Still here. We survive. We survived. We survived. We all. We always have people quit during an office. We weren't fired. We're not changing anything, I guess, because we got to, you know, last year was a lot of

change. New studio. Yeah. New table. Yeah. All kinds of new artifacts and fun things. We didn't change nothing, did we? You know, we added the grandfather clock.

Yeah. It was a simple. It was disassembled. That came in the middle of the last year. But we got to move that over here. Yeah. You wanted it behind you, didn't you? I don't remember.

But anyways, yeah. I'm excited, man. So last year, probably the, one of the, one of the, one of the, top three highlights for me in 2019 was the growth and the success of the Dell Jr. download, man, we'd kick some tail. I got it. I mean, hey, I'm not one to boast or brag on myself. But damn, what a great year we had.

Bragg on you says a little bit, yeah? No, I mean, you got. I mean, I'm bragging on me. I don't want to. It ain't just me here. All right. So we had a great year. We got a lot of new listeners last year.

Mike, you became this incredible interviewer. What? Leah was a huge, huge addition to the show. Social media, yeah, for sure. Matthew kept the creative coming on the production and editing. Kept Dells eyes rolling. It's awesome. Awesome, awesome.

Kept it awkward. We had a string of incredible guests. Oh, man. All right. And we've already, you know, so just to help you understand, we had a lot of people, we had a lot of people all the time chiming in on social media and on Twitter about who to have on the show. right? When are we going to have this guy? When are we going to have that guy? There's a couple that are right at the top of the list and most commonly spoken about and that's like Mark

Martin, Kenny Schrader. We want to have those guys on the show. We have been in conversation with those guys. It just has to work out for their schedule. Mark Martin lives on the West Coast. He didn't come over here that often, right? And so Mike, you've been in communication with those guys. We're going to get them on the show. It's just a matter of when they can be here, right? They're not just going to come on into town just to do the show. It's got to work out for them. So trust me, we hear you. Trust me, we want them on the show as well. We've got this long list of people that everybody, so we're all four of us.

Like Leah Matthew, you're on there. Guest list? I'm not on there. We need to put you on there. Yeah, add me. We need addies. So all four of us are going to be on this sort of a guest list. What is that?

What would you call that? It's one of those Apple notes. All of a sudden, Ron Caps goes to the top of the list. It's our wish list, all right, for who we want on the show. And there's a couple, a hundred names on there, right? Yeah, there's people that, you know, there's the obvious ones that everybody keeps bringing up, but there's people up there that we want, and you may never heard of it. Right.

All right. So we've got a lot of people to get to this year. People were wondering, man, how can we keep it going? How can we keep it going? I'm a little insulted when people say that. What? Come on. Do you not trust?

Trust us. Right? Do you not trust us? I mean, look, what are we here? Just sit here rolling around. Not, well, of course we can keep it going. There are a lot of people that we have questions for. Absolutely.

So we got some excitement within ourselves about what we have coming down the pipe. Our guest today, Humpy Wheeler, is. So Humpy Wheeler, right? Why would we want Humpy Wheeler on show number one after coming off such an amazing year? we're going to kick off show season I guess number two of the new studio show number one's got to be big guest

got to be a big big guest I couldn't think of anybody bigger than Humpy Wheeler the man has such a history as the promoter at Charlotte Merger Speedway but even beyond that his involvement in Firestone tires he was a boxer his relationship with my dad back then in the 70s the promoters

were they're kind of like running the circus They were the, they sort of acted as the president, the PR, the promotion, the marketing, the idea person. Humpy was legendary. Yes. Humpy, there is never going to be another Humpy wheel. There won't. There won't.

And they don't, you know, promoters, I don't think, kind of work that way anymore. Whereas, and I guess what I'm trying to say is, for example, Humpy, so the world, you know, the World 600 is coming around. Say we're in the early 70s and the World 600 is about to happen. You're also competing with the Indy 500. So Humpey has to pull some things out of the hat, right, to create some interest and get people to buy tickets. And he's going to tell you here later in the show that they sold all their tickets right before the race. They didn't have people buying tickets months out in advance.

They sold all their tickets weeks up into the event. And he had to continue to deliver these storylines, right? And he would himself go out, seek sponsorship to be able to tie to a car that would be owned by a guy, some single some team owner out there looking for a driver and he would say

hey I got 7500 bucks all right you got a car I got a driver and he and he's a big name right maybe he's not a cup guy

or a regular maybe it's a maybe it's you know someone one of many 500 yeah somebody in another series yeah so he he'll call them up and say hey I got your car to drive come racing this race

and he would put these deals together himself I know, right. The promoters are not doing that today. They are not putting drivers with race teams, matching them up for one off or two off races and selling the sponsorship behind it. Team owners would probably love that. Yeah, come on, bring me a driver that can win and bring me a sponsor, yeah.

But they don't, you know, that's, that's unheard of. I can't wait to ask him about that stuff. He did that so many times for so many unique names, including my dad. And so we're going to hear about that later. It's going to be a lot of fun. And we have a lot of people that we've, want to get into the studio this year that haven't been on the show. And there's a few people that you enjoyed immensely last year that we want to get back this year to finish some of our

conversations. For example, like Dale Jarrett, we didn't even get into really his championship years as a cup driver. You know, we kind of just started touching on his cup career when we had to shut off the interview. We try to keep him to about an hour, right? And we've got to get a lot of those guys back in here to talk more about their show. I want to ask Dale Jarrett if he remember remembers the time you wrecked him at Watkins Glen. Oh, yes, we need to talk about that. You remember that? Oh, that was bad. And he was so mad at you.

Yeah, he was mad. Yeah, I remember that. Yep. So we, um, one of the, let's talk about the clash, man, the clash. We had the clashes past week and. The crash. The clash, the crash. So the, the crash is inevitable. I mean, with this big, giant ass spoiler on the back of the cars. My gosh, it is what it is.

It is the most obnoxious. I didn't know that they could top the wing from the COT for obnoxious, just in your face, here I am, spoiler. They have topped it. I mean, that thing, I'm just surprised that for nobody in the, I guess in the competition side of NASCAR, nobody looked at that and went, man, is that too big? Right. Right. Have y'all put that on a car yet? It looks big.

It looks like a wall. It does. A big giant wall. You have to be almost. Yes. Huge. Huge wall. Big, wonderful wall. Big one. On the back of those race cars. That's right. That's funny, Mike. So there is, anyhow. So with that, spoiler on the back of the car and the particular rules, the cars, you know, they kind of can't get away from each other.

They're great race car drivers, the best stock car drivers in the world. But in that particular race car with the way the rules are, the damage and the carnage at the end of those type of races are inevitable. And I would expect that to see it again in the Daytona 500 as it gets down to crunch time, as they say. But it brings me to talking about the, I'm always tired of hearing it myself. maybe a lot of other people are as well, but the clash, okay? So what was the clash?

What did the clash come from? So the clash was a 1979 that came up with the clash, right? You're going to win a poll from the season before, and you get into the clash, right? And so that would be 8, 10, 12, 14 guys in this race throughout the years, and it was a 20-lap race. Green flag, run 20 laps, get to check. checker and it was over. That's all it was. And that's all that it should be is a race at the start of the year to celebrate last year's poll winners. It's not a prelude to the 500. It's not anything else. It's a small, it's this, it's this race that belongs where it belongs. Right. Yes. All right. It

doesn't need to be 75 laps, 50 laps, 35 laps. Segments. It doesn't need to be segments, 20 laps to win the race. And I think the most natural reaction to hearing that is, well, why less? I don't want less. I want more. Why would I, I'm not going to carve, you know, 45 minutes out of my day to watch a 20 lap race. That's not fun.

But really, when you watch the race this past weekend, what part was the best part? All right? It was the last 15 laps when the shit started happening, when they really began to race each other. Okay. if it's a 75-lap race, they set there and rode in line, and hey, I'm a driver, I've done this, I know it all too well. For the first 50 laps of that race, they rode in line to protect their selves for the end, right? There's no reason to race.

And so get rid of that. What's the point of that, other than to run a few extra commercials and... Well, I think you just hit it, didn't you? Yeah. Sell a little bit of advertising. I'm sorry, it's not working. isn't working. So you might have been successful in creating more ad revenue, but in the end, the experience for the person that bought that ticket or is watching it on TV was not a good one,

not an excellent one. Okay. So I feel like that it's obvious that the race only needs to be what it is and what it was intended to be. And that is a race to celebrate the poll winners from the year before, all right, and it's a 20-lap race. I've got two questions for you. How long did they run that for 20 laps? Like, when did they change it? Probably sometime in the mid-2000s. Oh, that long.

So they ran, it was a 20-lap race for several decades. Yes. Up until Dad last ran in it. They did cut it in half and make it like two 10-lap segments, and they inverted and did a couple other fun things, which was okay. and you know what was interesting about that is when they did do the invert dad still tried to win the first segment because I think there must have been some money on the line or something but anyways he wins the first segment they put him in the rear

and wins the next segment and wins race so what what I'm trying to say is that the race belongs in that shell that it was originally created for it's a race to celebrate the poll winners it's not a kickoff or a prelude to the Daytona of 500. Right. It's not a segue or some sort of introduction to speed weeks. It's a race. It doesn't matter where it is in the season.

It can be anywhere. They could run it. Obviously, at the start of the year, it's kind of fun because you're celebrating last year's poll sitters, but it's not tethered to the Daytona 500, or it's not tethered to, you already have a race so similar to that in the duels, okay? And I just think that they should say, look, man, if you win a poll, you're eligible, eligible, no other eligibility. This is a race, just four poll winners to celebrate those guys.

You get 20 laps to go out there and try to win it, have fun. It'll be the most entertaining, I don't know, 30 minutes to an hour. It could be the most entertaining 30 minutes to an hour that you'll have all speed weeks. Sure. I thought it is a celebration of poll winners. Why does the number of laps the race, why does the number of laps the race has define if it's a celebration of poll winners or not. I thought that...

Well, they made it longer in an attempt, I guess, in an attempt to make it better and it hasn't worked. Okay. But you weren't entertained? I was entertained for the last and final green white checkered. What were you before that? I mean, I almost fell asleep in the first 30 laps. Okay.

And I had to drink some coffee. so well I'm at my home you know hanging out but anyways the first 30 laps I was it was a snooze fest it was there was nothing happening and nothing going on and then and I'm sitting there thinking man this just needs to be 20 laps we'd be racing if we would if it was a 20 lap race no one would be able to make deals and then it turned into maybe it was going to be a fuel mileage race like the worst thing that could possibly happen in this particular event it's going to become that that was something you would want to avoid in an all-star non-points

you got all the the crew chiefs and engineers and drivers and all are supposed to do what they did they are supposed to find the cleverest way simplest way to the objective in winning the race and so the Chevy guys all get back there and they're doing whatever they're doing

with their fuel I don't know what they were doing but they were all back there kind of not even drafting and running their own line down there on the inside and everybody else is up on the top around an airline and I'm like what are we doing it what the hell is this become this is this is not what this race was intended to be all right and you also have other guys that are eligible for it that I don't think should be in it I don't think the eligible I think the eligibility

rules should be changed to where it's simply just poll winners not last year's top you know chase not last year's playoff drivers and go ahead because they switch to that like if you you said it hit it right on the thing I'm looking at it right now in the 2000s They started switching to allow previous winners, top 12 drivers and points. Then it expanded in 2012, top 25 in series points, and they just ballooned and ballooned and ballooned. But they got it back. They're coming back. But damn, just finish off the renovation here and go back to 20 laps, go back to poll winners.

And that's what that race is, and it's all it's supposed to be. It's not supposed to be more. You can't create and manufacture what that race. is intended to be. You can't make it better. You can't you can't add to it and increase its value or anything by adding laps by adding more competitors. So when you allow more eligibility outside of poll winners, it's not exclusive. Oh no, yeah, we're all on the same page on that. I think we all agree on that part. I mean, yeah, let it be a celebration of poll winners and that's it. And you know what? If you have a race one year where there's

10 people in it. So be it. That's right. The integrity of the race. The most entertaining part of the event. It was when there were six cars in it. Six cars in it. Right, right, right. Damn, that was awesome.

But a lot of people, a lot of people that complained about the clash this year, that was their complaint, which I got a big opinion about that, that we can say for whenever. But I'm saying is that we all agree that that could celebrate the poll winners. Don't start making additional rules. And then leave it at that, right? But my other question for you was, okay, so when Amy posted that, that Instagram video.

And you were giddy. You were laughing and giggling. What were you giggling about? Like, what was it that was so funny? Was it the fact that there were six drivers left? Was it the fact? Yeah. So I literally was on my second beer.

And just to be clear. Strong beer? No. Two bad lights. Look, man, it was, it was hilarious. I was that entertained by it. I think it was the, and I think the,

I think the silliness of it was because of the absurdity of the other green white checkers, how they had wrecked on the front straightaway, spinning their tires, and everybody's smashing in each other. And, you know, just how that race had, I was frustrated, all right, so many emotions watching this race. I was frustrated by the first 50 laps that I had to sit around to watch that parade to see them finally start racing at the end, okay? And again, let me be clear.

If I was in the race, I would have not done anything different. Thank you for admitting that. Than any other driver did in that race. That's right. That's what I would done. But as a viewer and even a broadcaster, I was frustrated that I had to sit through the first 50 laps of that race to get to the good part.

All right. Then they started racing. All right. So now my emotions swung to, all right, man, here we go. Finally get to see something. Who can do what? And then, you know, the green-white checker restarts were, they were absurd.

You know, it was calamity. That one restart right at the frustrated way where the six-spunned as tires and the 24th, everybody's spinning and wrecking, was, I don't remember seeing anything like that before. You know, I'd been a part of some, I've been wrecked on a restart and wrecked myself on restarts. But that was a lot of people, all right? Yeah. And then it just kind of swung into hysterical by the final green-white checkered. So, you know, all these cars are destroyed, and the 42's leading.

And now he's sixth. I thought the 42 was going to win, Larson. And then he fell back to sixth, and everybody's getting pushed by everybody. And just the lead is changing so quickly. And in all that, I had forgotten. Denny was a lap down. Jeff Gordon, even a broadcaster in the booth, who they did a great job with the race,

considering all the obstacles they had to hurdle. He even didn't know Denny was a lap down. And how can you? I mean, they did just talk about it on the previous, you know, before the Green White Checker, they did talk about it. But it's so easy to forget because it's the clash, and you don't assume or think or ever,

you'd never expect anyone to be a lap down in this little short, you know, exhibition. So, for whatever reason, I'm thinking, man, Denny's going to win. He's pushing his teammate, and he's going to pull out and go right around him. And as they're coming around turn three and four, I thought Newman was going to win at one point because he goes to the inside, takes the lead. Then Dylan's trying to get underneath him down the back straightaway.

They go through three and four, and Newman's car just starts smoking for some damn reason, right? I mean, it was just – you were – there was just one thing happened after another on that final green-white checkered, and it was funny. I was amused. It was entertaining. Yeah. It was entertaining. Sure.

Yeah. I'm telling you, it don't need to be but 20 laps, and you would get pretty much that type of entertainment for the duration of the race. Obviously, you wouldn't count caution laps. If a caution comes out, they don't count those laps. And I don't think a segment or a halfway break at 10 laps is necessary, but if that's something that people can't do without, then they'll have that. but the race really doesn't need to be 75 laps.

It doesn't. But anyways, that's... Was there any other complaints about the race? It felt like the number of laps, it felt like that that wasn't really what people had a problem with. And maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe that's good. Go ahead.

No, no, no. What were other things that people had problems with is what I'm asking? Was that it? Was that literally it, the number of laps? I'll be honest with you. I don't think that the average fan or most people that are tuned in ever at the end of the day you thought well the problem is the lapse

right okay I'm with you on that so that's an observation you have and you're passionate about my observation my opinion and I don't believe that anybody else watching the race has that has that concrete or

or is that committed like I'm not willing to die on that heel but I'll fight on it for a while that's good yeah Yeah. You know, like some of the observations I noticed, they just didn't hold water to me because, you know.

Like what? Oh, then it was just, you know, gimmicky and it was just absurd at the end of the race but having only, you know, six cars and that kind of thing. And I'm just like, the same people would probably complain that there's, if there's no wrecks. And now they're complaining that there were too many. And I just look at the All-Star race, I don't take it too serious to begin with. It is what it is. And it's supposed to entertain. And I don't think it is supposed to replicate it.

the Daytona 500 or even the duels. I think it's supposed to just kind of wait your whistle a little bit. Just kind of get you, you know, it's been a long off season. Now we've got cars on the track. Absolutely. And just put them out there. Let's have a race and let's entertain us for a little bit. And I thought it did that.

And the people that want to sit there and complain about it. And it's like, to me, the people that complain about that type of race are the same ones that complain about an appetizer not filling you up. You know, like, appetizer suck because it's not as good as the main thing. course. It's not supposed to be. I thought it did what it was supposed to do and it played out in ways that were comedic and somewhat fun, but we never turned away. We're talking about it. We're talking about it. Not, you know. I pulled up Gluck's poll. You know, he always asked. Yeah, what was his poll? Yeah, so he actually just posted the results. 49.7% of you said yes, it was a,

it was a good race. That's the most out of any clash that he's asked about. And I'm just kind of growing through the comments and like people say like it was it was fun like that's what the clash is supposed to be like it's not it's not for anything other than entertainment and money so and so I agree I agree that it was fun I just wish we could get to the fun quicker sooner but that's the same argument you could make on races in general well right I agree but the thing about it is you're making that argument if we I'm not if we didn't have the duels we didn't have The duel. Okay, I know we're going here. I would probably be okay with the clash being what it has become.

But it is almost too similar to the duel for me now. That's a good point. Yeah, it's almost too similar to the duel for me now that it's almost repetition too much of the same thing. And I have embraced change. I have embraced, you know, whatever direction NASCAR wants to go in, whatever direction our networks want to go in. I am open to trying whatever needs to be tried to help the sport grow and become better. But there are some things that I just ain't willing to let go of that I know that were tried and true. And there was nothing wrong with the clash for two decades.

And then, you know, somebody in a boardroom thought that they had a better plan and a better mousetrap. And I don't believe that that's the case anymore. So I feel like that, you know, there's even been, you know what, I wouldn't, this wouldn't really bug me that much, except for the fact that there's, there's even been some whispers of getting rid of the clash. Like, just, what's the point in having the clash, right? Owners are spending, you know, like Joe Gibbs said, we spend a million bucks pretty much to win this race.

Well, that's a whole other point. But the whispers of getting rid of it are the, see, that's the absurdity of where we've, we've taken this thing and twisted and contorted and tried and tried to make it better and better. And now people don't even think they want it, right? It needs to just be back where it was, what it was intended to be. And it's be a, it has, there's still, it's still salvageable, I guess. And if we continue, I think, on this path of, you know, having a 75-lap race that's a snoozer till the very end and then all hail breaks loose, it will go away one day. You and I came up with an idea in the offseason that would be perfect for the clash. Yeah.

And it just occurred to me. We were doing another project and we heard about an idea that had happened at a racetrack years ago where fans were putting money and betting on it in the stands. and they were for the drivers, not themselves, but they were basically saying, hey, if this driver will race balls out and go just as hard as they can, here's an extra $1,000 for their prize, for the purse. And we were like, looking at each other going, why could we do this now? Like, have the fans take control of how hard the drivers are going to race and incentivize them. And it's like almost have pools going. it changes the purse, it changes the incentive. Now these people, just to be clear,

they were drunk when they were doing it at this racetrack, but we were looking at it going, man, well, that changed the dynamics of racing. So the story goes that back in the 60s, there used to be these boxes down at the front straightaway at the fence, at the bottom of the grandstands with the driver's names on them, and fans could walk down there and drop five, 10, 20 bucks,

into the box for your favorite driver. If you were a huge Lee Petty fan and you wanted to, he knows that if he wins the race, he's getting that box, right? So you want to go down there and put 20 bucks in that box for Lee. He wins the race, he gets the box, right? It's a little extra cash. I think they said that they would make, you know, maybe another thousand bucks on. Another thousand dollars, which was very important.

Yeah, on top of the $1,500, they won for the race. Yeah. Take that and be inspired to try to create something maybe not quite as similar. You can't have fans trying, you know, fans can't be putting thousands of dollars in there, but. Why? Let fans determine what they put in there. We don't have to give the rules to the fans. What happens if David Reagan wins the race and he's only got ten bucks in there, man?

He gets ten bucks. I mean, listen, that's not the point of it. It's not making bets. It's not predicting who wins. Matthew's worried about everybody's feelings. I know. We're not cared about feeling. Like you get,

you get, so like, think about this. It's almost the same as, what do you call it? Oh, when you'd put a bounty on somebody. And so you're like,

you didn't want that driver, a specific driver to win. And so you were incentivizing other people with money. This just happened to be from the owners. Well, at this particular speedway we were at, the fans sort of took it into their own hands.

And they're like, look, we're going to start putting money in boxes. And were they not doing it to try to, prevent somebody like whoever it was that was just dominating every week i mean it's basically putting a bounty on it but it's fan driven this could probably be done through an app not in iwa not a box not a physical box not a physical box down there on the front straightway that you'd have to go put money in because there's going to be the one person that takes the box before the race is over you can have a

last lap pass box so if you're a driver and you pull off a pass on the last lap for the for the win you get that I don't know. It'd be kind of... Maybe that... Do it in an All-Star race, though. Maybe that's what NASCAR needs to do with their payout is get a little more creative on how they pay out and why they pay certain...

Why they would pay certain ways. At least for maybe a race like that. Yeah. Don't do it on a points race. Do it on an All-Star race. Again, it's just supposed to be entertaining. The last lap pass bonus, the slingshot bonus. Yeah.

Yeah. So, all right, we've exhausted that one. Now, I don't ever think that they'll ever go back to 20 laps, unfortunately. Be in the middle. Hey, no, I'm not willing to meet the middle. If you've got to fix it, fix it. All right, there's some changes to the Hall of Fame. Do you hear about that?

No. Really? Well, it depends. Well, the voting, the number of eligible, so they're going to only have three guys go in next year. Okay, good. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah.

All right. So, Matthew, get on top of this, correct anything that I'm wrong about. I'm liable to be incorrect on a few things. So they've let five guys in over the last several years each year. And, you know, they'll have 25 nominees, and then a voting panel will narrow it down to five guys. And it has created a really impressive list of members that are in the... the Hall of Fame. Absolutely. Everyone that is in there deserves to be in there, and it's incredible. And it's been a great celebration of our sport. It's in downtown Charlotte, and we love

it, and we want to encourage people to go visit. All right. But it's also created a lot of great dialogue and conversation about who's going in and who isn't. And one of the, there's a couple names, all right, that a lot of people think should be in there or should have already been in there or start getting passed over. I'll read a little bit of a list. here. Butch Lindley, Ray Hendrick, John Holman, Ralph Moody, Kirk, Shelmerdine, Larry Phillips, Smokey Unique, Mike Staphanic, Red Farmer, Chris Oconomacky, Sam Ard, Herschel McGriff, T. Wayne Robinson, Rousey Braves. Yeah, T. Wade Robertson, yeah. Yeah, Ray Fox, Harry Gant, Barney Hall. I mean, there's a long list of names, I think, that they'll get in there,

right? But they're not getting in there, and there, there's some, you know, and I'm going to I'm going to go against, I guess, the people that would support me to go in there soon. I think there's some names that are getting in there before them that are a little younger, right? But certainly there's no argument about who deserves to be in there. It's just when were these guys going to get in, right? They're trying to fix that. They're making a couple changes to where there's going to be three guys getting in, and two will be from the, quote, modern era.

Yep. And one will be, what do they call on that? Pioneer category. The pioneer category, okay? All right. And so how are you in this pioneer category? I think it's pre-19- More than 60 years ago.

Yes. And that's always going to be changing, right? As we go through the years, the pioneer category. So somebody will possibly not be in the pioneer category, and if they don't make it, they transition to that. Yes. And there's also, so there's a pioneer category and hits one guy each year is going to be in this pioneer category.

Two guys out of the more modern selection of decades, I guess, are going to get in. So that'll be three. I like it. I think it ensures that some of these games that I mentioned will soon be having their day to celebrate an honor like getting in the Hall of Fame. But I don't know. You know, I feel like that it should have been flipped. Thank you. I'm just thinking about it.

It's one modern day guy. And two pioneer guys. And two pioneer guys. Thank you. And the pioneer guys, I think the, I think it should be, the modern day should be from the last 30 years. All right. Yeah, I can make an argument for 23 years. All right.

Yeah. So, all right, give me one guy that deserves to go in there from the last 30 years and then give me two guys from beyond that. And that way I know that, you know, we're putting in these names, Smokey Unich, Chris Omanack. names that I've mentioned. They're going to get in there and we're not going to have, I mean, literally, I'll just name this list of names. We're going to have to wait one year each for each of these guys to get in there. I mean, geez, it's going to be two decades before a couple of these names that need to be

in there now ever get in. If that means that, look, I'm not assuming by any means, I'm not assuming that I'm going in, but if I have to wait, I can wait. I don't need to be in there next year. These names that I just mentioned need to be in there. And so I applaud them for making some adjustments to go in that right direction. But I'm not sure that it's enough. And, you know, you can't put them all in at the same time.

You can't have a night where you got 15 inductees going in. But I feel like that it should be weighted, weighed more toward the pioneers than toward the modern name, right? I got several reasons why I like that idea. Well, first of all, I don't think this is the responsibility of the Hall of Fame necessarily, but ideally, you know, getting them in while they're still alive is always a nice thing. And so two pioneers over one would maybe help with that. The other thing, and I've been dying to ask you guys this. All last year I wanted to ask this and we just never had the opportunity.

I'm doing it now. With the standards that have been applied, and even with this new one, with two more recent guys, and like, how many of the current drivers do you think, will end up in the Hall of Fame. A lot of them. I can go at least eight. Oh, yes. Jimmy Johnson, Kevin Harvick.

I mean, these are no-brainers, am I right? Yeah. You've got, like, I think there's arguments, but if Bobby Labani's going in, Mark Martin's going in, Martin's going to have to go in. But you could say that with every error. You could say that that's my point.

I think that's my point. I think what he's trying to say is, go ahead, Mike. There's a lot of people off the current criteria that we're putting into the Hall of Fame. and I don't know Couldn't the standards be a little bit higher

A little bit more I mean because right now Of the current drivers We can think of at least eight That are shoe ins When they become eligible I mean like you know I don't know

I think the standards for me Are pretty comfortable I feel like that the names Go ahead You got some names right now All right so Jimmy Johnson Kyle Bush Yes

Is TrueX Yes Harvick Denny Hamlin Yes Joey Lagano Yes Brack is Yes.

Kurt Bush? Of course. I mean, that's eight right there. That's eight right there. All of those are easy selections. I just think that's a lot. I mean, like that's a lot of people. I think it just says a lot.

It says, I mean, but those guys had awesome careers. I can't argue that they don't, I can't, I mean, they belong in there. They had amazing careers. I don't think that you make it stricter to try to eliminate an obvious Hall of Famer. Can I interject here? Because I think you have a point. You cannot. Okay.

Stand down. Stand down. Go ahead. Yes. You don't have to ask. I don't think the criteria is the thing that's wrong. I think it's the direction of how people are voting in that room. And that's not a knock on the people that are voting.

But I think the direction of the people in that room is the problem more than the voting. You've been inside there. I haven't been in there. When I do my voting every year on the internet, because I'm just a fan, it seems to not align with what they do. And there's a lot of chatter afterwards of why didn't, why is Ray Fox passed over this many times? Why was Raymond Parks passed over this many times? Why is this person maybe not considered?

But Bobby Labani deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. There were some people that I heard chatter of, well, why before this person? You're always going to get that in every Hall of Fame. But there's worth to that opinion. There's value to that opinion that maybe some of the pioneers should be in before some of these guys Is that just retired six, eight years ago? I like the direction that they're going, or Matthew, to assure that there will be that pioneer selection. But I feel like it should have been weighted more toward two pioneers and one modern guy.

And if that work, if we go a decade or five years and, you know, that needs to be adjusted, then so be it. But I think there's more pioneers. I think the bucket for pioneers is more, is heavier than it is for the modern day. Good point. Selections. Yeah, I think we agree on that. At this particular time. Now, in a few more years, it could change.

It could change. For sure. Because of just the point you made, Mike, where you have literally maybe 10 Hall of Famers currently competing, right, in our sport. So, but anyways, you know, I was, I was really surprised that they even made any change at all. I felt like that this argument, we were just going to have this year after year after year where we inducted five guys and then we had this 12-month conversation

about the two dozen guys that didn't get in that should be in there. I just, you know, hopefully we can, Kirk's Jalmerdine, you know, I mean, all those names. They all belong in there, and I hope that they eventually get in there. Kurt was inducted into the National Metsworths Press Association. Yeah, good for him. He was inducted into that Hall of Fame.

Pretty interesting stuff. What else is going on, man? Humpy. I think that's what's going on. We've got to get him in here. All right. All right. Coming in the studio next, Humpy Wheeler.

There he is. Here he comes. Look at this guy. Come on in. Humpy. What's going on, man? Well, this is quite a dig here. Do you like this table here?

Yeah, I do, yeah. Yeah, where's the boxing ring? Oh, that's right. You gave me that boxing ring back. This used to be a souvenir shop, so the fans could walk in here. Look for Supervener. souvenirs and then look at the race cars.

But we turned it. Once I retired, I don't sell silveries anymore. So we turned us into a studio. Oh, you'll start selling them again. Do something spectacular. Is that right? We need a promoter. You know what?

You need a promoter. I know somebody that might be able to hustle that up. Yeah. Hustle it up. I see old Ralph's car over there, number eight. Yeah, there's a lot of good. You know, I actually raced against him. You raced against Ralph Earnhardt?

I sure did. Sumter, South Carolina. I've heard of that track. back in the 50s. You drove? Yeah, I did. Okay. Tell me about your driving career.

Well, I'll tell you how it ended. We're coming out of the fourth turn, and I was bad about hitting things. I thought I was boxing again, you know. Yeah. And we had a big pile-up, and somebody landed on top of me. And, you know, this is an old sportsman car, and you wonder what in the world is going to happen with all these gas fumes and I can't get out of the car. Yeah.

And I hear this guy over me yelling and I knew his voice, but I was kind of dazed a little bit. And so finally somebody pulled me out when it was kale. Cale Yarbril? On top of me. And he said, Humphie, he said, I got an idea. This is about the fifth time this has happened. He said, why don't you start promoting races and I'll drive?

Did you cause it? Did you cause the pile? Of course I caused it. So you keep mentioning boxing. I know that you are a big fan of boxing, but you did some boxing, right? Yeah, I've boxed for eight years. You were good? Yeah, I was okay.

There was a couple of guys there that were in my weight class. One of them was Joe Frazier, another one was Ali. And I said, I ain't going to go too far here. I want to quit a lot on my head. So when did you box? How old were you when you were boxing? I started boxing when I was 14 and I quit one. I'm going to tell you, I quit three years ago.

I was the oldest man in the history of state of North Carolina to ever box in an official bout. You just had an official bout three years ago? I did. With who? A guy named Jazzy Kirkland, who was a pro. And I was emceeing the deal that night. Oh. and Charlotte, and he called me that morning.

He said he couldn't, that his guy quit. And I said, well, try this guy, try Billy, try Joe. I've tried them all, and they can't. And he says, I've sold a bunch of tickets, and he says, I can't get my money back unless I find an opponent. And I want it to be. You. And I said, well, we'd sparred a lot together, you know, and I said, gee whiz, I don't even have my license. He said, well, you know all those guys, I'm Riley, you can get it.

And so I thought a minute, I said, hey, this might be a good opportunity because I could go last. You know, I could do my MCN. I could go last. And, you know, I've sparred him enough. I thought I could at least not, you know, stay on my feet. And so three bouts for the end, I got somebody to take my place, and I went in. And I had all my boxing stuff on underneath my tuxedo. Oh, my gosh.

I had my boxing shoes, my trunks, and all that. I didn't want my wife to know, Pat, to know about it. She'd have put a real queasus on that. She'd have put an oligium night through my tires, you know. And so I went in the bathroom. I started taking my tuxedo off and this guy that, this boxer, I know, he said, what's you doing, man? I said, I'm going to fight.

He says, who? I said, Jazzy. I said, you fighting Jazzy? I said, yeah. He said, wait a minute. You got all that stuff on underneath that. I thought you were going to go out there in your tuxedo. I said, look, I'm going to do that.

So anyway, we went out there, and I'm going up the ring stairs to get to the ring, and this guy that had worked for me for a while, he was a former Olympian from Trinidad boxer, and he did pretty well, and then he turned pro and everything. And he looked, he was a ref. He looked at me coming up to his ring stairs, and he says, I ought to give you a standing eight count right now. That's hilarious. Oh, my goodness.

Nothing like a confidence booster is you're wanting to hear that from the rest. I said, you know what? I said, every once in a while, somebody goes wild in the ring and hits the ref. That calmed him out a little bit. Okay, so what happened? How did this fight turn out? Well, first round I did okay. Second round, I did not do okay.

He kept, you know, hit me in the mouth. And I was bleeding out my mouth. And I said, third round, it's four-round or three-minute rounds. And the third round, you know, it doesn't sound like much, but it gets tiring. And I said, I know he won't get tired because this man just keeps going. He's like they're ready battery. So I caught him with a good left hook in the gut in the early part of the fourth round, and that slowed him down.

And so the fights over. and he declared it a draw, which really ticked him off. Yeah. How old is he, by the way? He was the senior light heavyweight champion. Okay, got it. So he was 48. You were how old?

79. And you filed a 48-year-old man. I did. To a draw. To a draw. I wish there was a film. There's a video of this somewhere. Well, I know, but I'll tell you the rest of the story.

I'm walking out of the ring, you know, on the big, They just put new steel posts there. And I hit the post, and there was a burr sticking off of it. And my right shoulder just bleeding like the diggers. I got blood all over me now. I thought, oh, God, I can't go home. It's going to be bad enough, as it is. And so I saw Dr. Estuonic over there, and I said, hey, Joe, I said, I need some stitches on this thing.

And he looked at it, and he says, well, I can do that, but I don't have any novocate. in you. And I said, do it. Oh, wow. So we stitched it up. How come I think you're making this whole thing? Yeah, is this for real. No, this is for real.

Oh, unbelievable. So I got home. She who must be obeyed had already heard about it. Boy, was she ticked. And now I got blood all over and everything else, you know, because I just drove home in my, you know. In your trunks and everything? and everything because I didn't want to change.

I just wanted to get home and take the worst beating of the night. Yeah. Where was this fight? This was in Charlotte at the sports center down on Remount Road. My goodness. Our correct statisticians are researching right now to find the validity of this story. They're going to thumb up or thumb down. They're like, nah, he's making it up.

No, but you're saying it's true. Yeah. Yeah. The reason why I know Humpey was a big fan of boxing other than me, the fact that he kept trying to get me to spar with him for years. Because I had a ring, too, and I sparked my buddies. Yeah, I know who stopped you from doing that, too. Yeah.

Well, he would, on the front straightaway, Sharpeer Speedway, for pre-race, they'd set up a ring right in the grandstands right below the flag stand and have matches, right? Yeah, and how long did you do that? About 10 or 12 years. Yeah, so he'd have all these amateurs and pros out there fighting, right for the fans.

Yeah. Great. And they loved it. They loved it. You know, we had that kid from Lincoln, Billy Bridges. He was pretty good, and we had a great fight there that night when he fought a guy named Oscar Pena. That sounds familiar. Well, he did pretty good, and this was for the right to meet Giofranco Rossi for the World Middleweight Championship.

Wow. Tony Ayala, whose son was a great boxer. Tony was managing this kid and so I said Look, I need a tape So he sent me to tape, I didn't think much of it I said, okay, we're going to make the fight I didn't want the guy get beat My boy didn't get beat

Now, promoters are not supposed to manage fighters that are on the card But I was head of the Cabarris Boxing Commission so I ruled In favor of me And so we had to fight When we were going to 12th round I couldn't believe it wasn't the same guy I saw on that

tape. I couldn't believe this. Guy was just crazy. Well, it was dead even going into the 12th round. And he caught Billy with a left hook to the ear and busted his eardron. And I could see he did because Billy's, he didn't know where he is.

I mean, his feet. His head does, but his feet don't know where he is. And he's wobble around. He's going to get hurt bad. So my traditional deal to the ref, if I want to see the fight stopped, is this. and I did this, but it didn't real slow because I was thinking that $250,000 we were going to make with that championship fight, gone.

And so he stopped the fight. Yeah. And Billy never fought again. Really? So then I went over to Tony Allen, I said, that tape you sent me. That ain't the same kid. He looks like him. This is on Wednesday, you know, qualifying.

He said, yeah, what you don't know is. his mother died Monday. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. And we didn't know that. He didn't tell anybody. Yeah, so. He came in there to take care of business.

Get it on, yeah. So did you say that Humpey wanted to spar with you? Yeah. Well, Humpey's always been, you know, had a passion for boxing, always been obviously involved in boxing just box three years ago. And I was boxing to, I had a ring. Me and Josh Schneider would get in there. Me and my other buddies would get in there and box.

And I was a big Arturo Gotti fan, big boxing fan, and we'd get in there and just sparf. We had a bell, we had an automatic bell, and we just turned it on and go, and we'd have ten-round fights. And, I mean, we weren't trying to kill each other. But running around in there, swinging at each other for three minutes,

for ten rounds is all you can do. I mean, you're dragging. It's like driving rustle without power staring, right? It is. It is. By halfway through it, you can hardly hold the gloves feel like they weigh you home.

hundred pounds after the end of the fight. It's pretty fun, though. So much fun. It is a lot of fun. Yeah, I loved it. The worst part about it was it would get dangerous about three o'clock in the morning because we'd try to find, we'd be at the house drinking with all our buddies having a big party, and you'd try to talk to two biggest guys in the room into fighting each other.

And they would, if you badger them along enough. Right. They'd end up getting in the ring at 3 o'clock in the morning. Somebody'd end up bleeding. Somebody'd be mad. Somebody'd be laughing. And we eventually had to get rid of the ring. Well, yeah, you showed up at Kansas with a black eye from the bull rider that you decided you were going to get a boxing ring with.

So, help me, I got a, I read a story. Will Cronkite, I think, is putting together a book and sent me a couple pieces of information of stories he's going to put in that book. And one of them was really interesting. You know, I'd known that dad, the car is right here on the table. It's white number 96, Cardinal Tractor Company car. That's it. That's it. So, you know, this is a car that Dad drove for Will Cronkite in 1978, I believe.

And this is the car, and Will feels the same way, that sort of launched Dad's opportunity to go drive for Rod, Austerlund. It did. Got him an opportunity to run a sportsman car for Rod, and he did really well in that car, which eventually sent him on his cup ride the next year in 1979. But this is the car that Will Cronkite owned. So in Will's story, you and you can explain this in a bigger encompassing your career. Back when you were promoting Charlotte Emergency Speedway, especially in the 70s, it was really common for the promoters to put together deals and bring in guys. Oh, yeah.

Right? And you, I mean, talk about some of those deals that you put together to bring in Indy Star, IndyCar Racers, Sports Car Racers. This one in particular was Willie T. Reyes. was going to drive this car. Right. And something went down with him and the police in Charlotte. A whole lot went down. Okay. Let's hear it.

But first off, tell me about being a promoter, and that don't happen anymore, right? We don't have promoters putting deals together. Well, we need to now. Yeah. We need to get more people in those seats. And that was the problem then. You didn't sell most of the tickets until race weekend back in those days. Yeah.

as a promoter you're you guys would you guys would acquire a car by many different whatever it took like the the first one I did was Janet Guthrie okay and boy that hit the big time because we weren't selling any tickets because she was up in Indy and it was just every time she moved it was headlines and the Charlotte Observer I called the Observer and I said hey you know we got a race here yeah It's not at Indianapolis. We'll do something. Well, so I started working on her and finally got her to run, and it was a huge success.

So you called her? Yeah. How did that work? You just... Well, I got tired of reading about her, so I called her. I said, Janet, I just talked to Clint Bruner, your crew chief, and he said there's a possibility he might not make the race identity. Well, I ticked her off. As it should.

That's not the phone call she most of the game. Right. Yeah, and after she unseathed herself, she said, well, what do you got in mind? I said, I want you to come down here and run. I said, I want you to come down now. Don't wait around. Well, she wouldn't do that. So then finally she called me one night, and she said, okay, I tell you what, there is a chance I might not make it.

If I don't, I want the best car you can get. And I said, well, you know, you've researched. What are you talking about? Well, now you'll kind of laugh about this because, again, she didn't know anything about NASCAR. She said, I want the car. A.J. Ford sat on the pole at Daytona. Well, that's not what you want to run at Charlotte. That's right. Whatever she wants, you know.

It's available. Did she want the night of the bottle that was in it, too? Three of them. So I called Foyt, and, of course, dealing with him is like eating. barbed wire, you know, it hurts like the dickens until it goes in your stomach and then it dissolves from the acid. All right, what do you want, AJ? And I know AJ, I knew AJ pretty good. And so he said, he gave me a figure, which was ridiculous. And I said, well, and I counted with half of that, which ticked them off. And then we finally got to two-thirds, we made a deal. So I called her up and

and I said, I got Foyt's car, one at it sat at Daytona. She said, I, Can you verify that? So I called AJ back up, and I said, just write a letter saying this was the car you sat on Daytona, the poll at Daytona with, okay? Who knows? And so he did, and I faxed it to her and all that junk. Well, she didn't make the feel at Andy. She missed it by a mile and a half.

But I didn't like that. So I called for it back up, and I said, I got a real big favor to ask you. And I overpaid you for this car. You know that. And he grunted a couple times, you know, like he does. And I said, would you let her drive your backup car, which you're not going to use? Because all they had was Carboretion Day. And let her make a couple laps at the Speedway.

And he agreed. And she did. And she ran faster than she needed to to make the feel. So she left, you know, untainted, so to speak. It was the first time I never had to call a press conference. They followed her down to Charlotte. And it was a big deal. And so the day after she qualified, it's funny.

You know, we used to qualify on Wednesday. You're a historian deal. Qualify on Wednesday. And then you qualify again on Thursday for the 21st through 44th. Second round. Yeah. Second round. Well, she had the fastest car on a second round.

Well, the Sacramento OB, you thought she made the post. Cole. Guthrie Fastest Qualifier at Charlotte. Yeah. And that went on around. But what got in the field is I called Junior. And I said, Junior Johnson. I said, look, I need a big favor.

I said, I'm a little off with that Guthrie car. Can you go over there and set it up? And he agreed to do it. So he took Cail over there. He was his driver. And Cail ran at a couple laps, came in and said, as usual, this is the worst car. ever been in my life deal. And Junior got Herb Nab and his five-pound hammer, and they went over there and started

whacking on the car. Next thing you know, she's in it, and all of a sudden she's running. And it's a different race car. You've been down that road many times, I know. Sure. And so she made a feel, and when she made a feel we sold completely out. That's awesome. But a crazy thing happened.

Race day, I'm sitting up there, sell out. And my brother David, God rest him, he used to get me, he'd do anything he could when I made a mistake to let me know it. And whenever I made a big mistake, he called me Buster. And he elbowed me in the ribs, which wasn't good because he weighed 250 pounds. He played football in North Carolina. He came up to a control tower, and, man, I'm sitting there, and halfway marks. Mark's there, but it's hot. And I'm wondering if she can make the whole thing.

I mean, anybody could on that day. And so he comes up and he whacks me in the ribs and he says, Buster, you're in big trouble. I said, what's wrong? He says, you're sucking air. That meant all the wells had gone. Oh. We usually use 500,000 gallons of water 600, okay?

Well, and it would last the whole time. this time it just made it pass halfway. Oh, no. What in the world? How could that happen? And Harvey Walters, which is a friend of your dad's, he was the operations guy to track then. He had an absolutely great backup plan. He had 40 volunteer fire departments that he'd contacted weeks before in case we needed some water.

and the deal was $500 cash if you bring your tanker truck to the speedway and empty it into the tanks. But you got to do it in 45 minutes. Well, you thought there was the Duke Power blown up, you know, the dam. Because they had the sirens on a lot out and run as fast as they could. Who's going to stop them? And so that's what got us through thanks to Harvey. She made it, and she actually finished 15, which was pretty darn good for the day and the time. 600 miles. Yeah, 600 miles. You know what that's like.

You sold that out. We sold it out. Without her in the race, where do you end up just out of curiosity? Without her in the race, we would have had 15,000 to 18,000 unsold tickets. That's not good. All right, so let's fast forward to 1978. You call Will Cronkite. Will Cronkite.

And Willie T. Ribs. Willie T. Ribs. Well, Willie T. Ribs, after a death threat against me, yeah. He would get quite a bit of publicity, you know, and all that. And then he went down to Talladega, and I got Ned Jarrett to take him down to Talladega because I was busy as Dickens. The race was the next week or to whatever it was. And so they go in a driver's meeting.

Now, you know, this is just something you don't do in a driver's meeting. as many as you sat in. And so Mike Hilton says, any questions? And, of course, Willie's got to be Willie, and he puts his hand up. And then, without acknowledging the answer, he said, can you pass in the grass? The drivers didn't like that.

And so Willie comes back to Charlotte. And I said, why don't you do that, man? Was he driving in the race? No, he wasn't driving in the race. He was just a guest in the? He was just a guest. Oh, my. You know, you just don't do that, right?

And so you hardly do it if you're a driver. If you're a driver, you don't, yeah. Shut up! Right. And then I had the death threat against me over Willie. Well, you glossed past that as if you get death threats all the time, and it's just no big deal. Well, I've gotten a few of them. I mean, you know, your dad had won against him out there.

And it's a speedway. Okay, so Willie T. Ribs had a death threat against you. No, no. No, not Willie. A guy called me on the phone, and he says, if he runs into 600, you're a dead man. I got you. Okay. And so what?

I was going to do it anyway. So then he got in trouble with the cops in Charlotte. I had to go down and get him out of the... What happened? He was running about 80 down a one-way street, the wrong way. Oh, my gosh. And that's where the John Boy and Be. Willie, one-way Willie T. Rib's ballad came from.

And everybody was... One-way, Willie Tee. Not heard that. Everybody was into that, you know. And so I finally said this time. So call Willie in there and I said, you know, you're 18 years old. He was only 18. And actually, he ran pretty darn good.

You know, we ran quite a few laps with him and Will Scarpe. but I could see this thing wasn't going anywhere. And so I said, you need to go back to California. Okay. So I got my brother to take him out the airport. Got in a plane. As soon as he got to California at a press conference and accused me of being a racist, which I'm not.

One thing led to another, and we finally made up after a while. As a matter of fact, it got a movie out on him now on Netflix. Yeah. Yeah. So we're friends. And so that, but that stirred up a lot of stuff. So your dad, I thought, well, this is a good chance to get your dad in a race car. Because he and I've been talking a lot about it, you know.

And so I said, well, how about Dale driving your car? And I heard this long silence like he's going to tear my car up. And I said, what are you thinking? Tell me. He said, you reckon he can. can keep it between the fences. I said, well, we only got with one fence at Charlotte. And that's outside.

And I think he can stay off that. And so the rest is history. And it gave him a break, and people understood that, hey, we've got a serious race driver here. How come you wanted to help dad? Yeah. What was the relationship with you and dad at that point? Well, I'd known your grandfather well, Ralph.

And Ralph had been my, when you, I later went on to work for Firestone racing. He had been my chief desk dirt test driver. Yeah. And I'd call him, this is an interesting conversation. I say, this was Monday. I said, how did the tires do at Greenville Pickens? I never asked him about Columbia,

because, you know, that was that old bull towel, and you couldn't tell anything there. And he said, if they were great, he'd say, I'd like to have another set of them. If they were medium, he'd say, well, I don't know. That's all he said. Yeah. Well, I don't know.

I translate that into, no, no, no. And if he said, don't send me no more of them, I knew that was a lousy tire. Yeah. So I could translate, I used to call it Earnhardtisms at the time, you know. Yeah. And, but he was really good at that kind of a thing. and we were developing a Formula One rain tire at the time and it just looked like a good dirt tire.

So I sent him a set of them. Wrong. Shouldn't have done that. He goes down to Greenville Ficking. Of course, you know, the thing about your grandfather is, he never showed his hand. He was so crafty. You know, if he had the fastest car in the field,

he wouldn't pass a guy until two laps to go. and same thing with those tires except he was running so strong Monday everybody that ran a sportsman car is calling me wanting to set of those tires and I'm thinking what I didn't even talk to Ralph yet and so I call Ralph and I said those tires work okay I need three more sets of that's really really good

Really good. Yeah. But you know one thing about your grandfather, I remember down Columbia Speedway, Thursday nights, and that was kind of a showdown. I mean, it was Tiny Lund, Tompestone, there was Leroy, Yarborough, and Kale, and all those guys raised in those.

There was some really stiff competition, but they couldn't outrun your dad, your grandfather. So he'd come down there. He never worked on his car. He took the car off his... railless ride. That's what we towed cars with back in those. That was a thing. He had an old Ford. And he just sit there against the car smoking a cigarette and waiting for things to go. But the best story on old Ralph, Bobby Isaac could not understand why everybody was breaking

axle keys. And those old Ford, three-quarter truck. ton of rear ends. Yeah. That was just a common thing. And Ralph never broke one. We've tried every kind of actual care. Everybody's got speedway motors and everything else and tried them

and they'd still break, particularly Columbia. Not Ralph. Never broke. And we kept waiting for him to pull a rear end one night so we could see it. And people would come up, So, Ralph, I need to borrow an axle key. I ain't got one.

Well, how about the one on your car? I just want to see it, you know. And so, finally, Bobby Isaac called me one night, and he says, I figured it out. How did you do that? I went to the Sears store, and I asked for a certain type of screwdriver. And the guy said, I don't have any. Now, Sirius always got them, right? And this was kind of a common screwdriver with a nice square shank on.

And he said, the guy said at the store, he said, this guy from Canapleus comes down here and buys every one I get. He says, one day he bought two dozen of them, and I couldn't figure out what, and he must have a lot of people working for him up there, you know. and what he was doing, he actually finally told me what he'd done. He was back in the shop there in Canaphafels. And it was right ready to go to Columbia, and he's going through that car tooth and nail. And he pulled a rear in, and he noticed the axle key had a slight crack in it. And he said, I can't go down there with this. I won't, you know, so he's looking right in, now an axle key.

but he seized this crash from a screwdriver. And Ralph being Ralph, and racers being racers, he decided he could do something about it. So he got over there and cut it and made a key out of it. And he said, I had no idea that thing would last. He said, that never did break. He just kept going. And so that was Ralph's axle keys.

It's amazing. And he bought them all so nobody else could get him. Nobody else could get him. So, all right, so because of your relationship with Ralph, did you form the same relationship with Dale? Or is it because of Ralph that you wanted to go do a solid? Well, I'm going to show you my age now when I was up there at coaching Sedan Street at that old shop. And, you know, the guys would get off the mill at 2 o'clock or 3, whatever it was, and they'd come by there and start helping Ralph.

up to that point no one was there in the shop he just did it all himself and I'd see Dale in the shop you know a little I don't know

10 11 years old and he was always into something in there he wanted to learn about that race car he just loved race cars and had no idea whether he could drive or not but I ran the Concord Speedway one season

and I wanted to make sure I got Ralph there and it didn't get him going somewhere a Saturday night because that would get all of people from Canaphas down there and so he'd had good crowds and Ralph called me and he says I'm thinking about putting Dale in a car yeah yeah I said well

okay so he put him in the car another car and it was terrible he was all over the racetrack sideways and everything else he stayed on four wheels didn't go upside down but it wasn't pretty and I said well I'd call Ralph

next Wednesday I said well he's gonna bring him back he said yeah so he did and he kept him proven and I started seeing something in him and also what I was really concerned about at that point was us losing all the North Carolina drivers. And I said, he would be, you know, he'd be great.

So when I took over to Speedway, that was my first objective, was try to get him going. So, you know, Harry Gant was not there yet. And there were a few other guys, but we needed that North Carolina driver. And so, I started talking to him and I could tell that he was

really more gung-ho about driving a race car than anybody ever seen. He won a, as you know, a bunch of dirt races. And then I said, we just talk once a week. I said, well, Dale, what you've got to do is you've got to get on asphalt. You already figured out this dirt thing because you won a lot of races.

But you need to learn to run asphalt because that's going to cup racing or it wasn't cup racing and whatever grand national yeah i said you got to you got to learn to get around that uh that asphalt so he built an asphalt car and he thought it was asphalt um and the first couple times he's all overplace because as you well know jr you can't if a car doesn't work on asphalt it doesn't matter how good a driver you are. He's not going anywhere, right? Yep. And so he wasn't going anywhere.

Two o'clock one morning, I get a phone call. Saturday morning. And I said, well, somebody's dead. And it was your dad. And I never heard a man as low in my life as it was him. He said, I got nothing left. I said, I crashed up here at Asheville's Speedway. and he said my car is in two pieces that's how bad it was i said well you didn't get hurt no i didn't get

hurt but there ain't nothing left in the car the motor blocks even cracked that's how hard he hit the wall and i said well pick the pieces up bring it back and come over to my office uh monday morning so he did well your friend robert g me and my granddad your granddad your granddad your granddad He had a shop over there. And Robert would call me every week. Humpy. I want you to make sure you bury me right there to start finish line. I tell him, Robert, I'm not going to do that.

We're going to have a monument there to start finish line? Well, you don't have to put a monument there, but something. And he's just so affixed about that. I said, when are you planning on dying? I don't know. I said, was it going to be soon? No, but you never can tell today. And he just kept on me on it.

Have you ever heard that? No, meanwhile, your mother's working for me down in the ticket office. Yeah. And she was good, too. And so I'd go over there every Thursday, and Robert G. and I would have a really exotic southern lunch. baloney potted meat saltine crackers and all that stuff

you've eaten many of you know and we'd eat over to his little house across from his shop and so I said what are you doing with that dirt car sitting back there and he had it under you know canvas so the paint wouldn't get on it the canvas look you could

take it in New York and sell it for $10,000 because it was so many different colors and so and I don't know right one will come along and we'll go so I told your dad I said

go over there you're broke right yep go over there and get Robert Jee to give you a job and sooner or later you're going to take the canvas

off that car and start working on him and I said because you're going back to running dirt I said sometime in you can go backwards and make forward progress. So he did.

And I remember going over there one day from my Thursday lunch. Yeah. Which your dad was joining us now because it gave us a chance to talk. And all the windows were fogged up. And they were now orange. And a knock on the door.

And Raymond Fox, Jr. came to the door. and barely cracked it. And out through the air came all this orange, vapors of orange. There's nobody in the place had anything over their mouth. Right. You know, their lungs were all orange. Ancient orange. And they were painting that...

That car. That dirt car. Yeah. And I said, why in the hell are you painting it after? I wouldn't go in, you know. and it takes me a month to get over it because I didn't do it every day you know so we go outside

and we go over to eat and I said your dad and Robert and I said what why you painted orange and Robert said that's all I had left that's some of Rick Hendricks paint that's funny

and whatever it was you know do that oh your dad came back and just scorched the earth in that dirt car do you know what car this is off the top of your head. Yeah, I mean, you see it?

Well, yeah, his dad's, uh, dad drove dirt for Robert G. Um, the same car that, um, Haywood Plyler ended up driving,

Billy Scott drove it a little bit. Yeah. What number was it? Yeah. A 17. Yeah. All, yeah,

all the, they were all Camaro was back in then. But he, uh, what, what happened was, I'm down at Darlington. And your dad,

they had a big race at Metrolana. on that night after Darlington. And Osterlin was there, and I said, when are you going back? He said, I'm going back late tonight. Like how late? Like it's a one o'clock in the morning flight. I said, well, you can ride with me up there.

I know he's taking that rental car. And I said, we might go to Metro Lina Speedway. And we did. And your dad started last for some reason. they probably caught him doing something and he took off and it was a hundred-lap race and he hit everything but the women's room and he kept passing,

and the last lap it was Billy Scott was leading and your dad just went down there and caught him in the quarterpile and goodbye and won the race and Ostrelin was overwhelmed with his driving So I said, look, I need to get that boy in the race at Charlotte.

And he and Marcus were getting ready to have a falling out anyway. Yeah. And I said, that's back when you could run a what's now a cup car in the infinity. So he said, make me a deal and I put him in the car. It's back again, one of those things, you know. So I made a deal with him to get your dad in the car. And he did great. Yeah.

I think he finished third. which was quite a deal for, you know, the competition was back in those days, and Jack Engerman and Harry Gant and all those guys. I mean, that was a tough bunch, sure. So after that, Osirman was pretty heft, and he's getting ready to fire Dave. I know sooner or later this is going to happen, I could just tell. And he said, well, I think I'll put him in a car for Atlanta.

And he did. and so he entered two cars in Atlanta that's back when nobody entered two cars and your dad did fantastic and the rest is history after that yeah Dave went Dave we had Dave on the show and he said that that weekend maybe Friday morning or Thursday morning

whenever they got to the track he went right to the press box and told them that he quit Rod because he didn't like the two car team idea didn't want to be teammates with dad nothing against dad but he just thought it was like I'm not nobody's team teammate. Yeah, it was unheard of, man. It was. And for the record, we're talking about Dave Marcus. Teammate, yeah, sorry. Teammates, the teammate thing really didn't get going or accepted until even after Dad and Skinner, like DW and Neal, that whole deal wasn't very kosher.

No. Budweiser, Jr. Johnson did. Not at all. Wow. Dad and Skinner never clicked. I knew that. You know, dad was totally against having a teammate, didn't want nobody else to be there. Nobody saw. Nobody did. No. They didn't see it as, oh, it's. more information, here's more data, here's somebody that can help us if they're running good, we'll learn from that. I guess there was no transparency between the teams, so there was no asset for a driver to have a teammate. Talking about two-car teams, we go over to you for a minute. You come down there, your dad called me, said, want to get a legend's car.

Oh, you're going to drive, huh? No, I'm going to put my boy in. Okay. So Hank Jones stepped forward, as you know, and you know, I can't say enough about Hank because Hank was the father of today's souvenirs. Right. Hank Jones is one of the pioneers in the souvenir industry. Oh, he was. And so Hank's got his own car because Hank always wanted a race, you know. And then he got one for you. So we have a big race down at a quarter mile. Last laugh, I know you remember well, I certainly do.

And Dale Jr. is running second. Okay. Hank's leading the race. He is going to win a race. I said, my gosh almighty, I'm going to sell in Legends cars as soon as I get through. And would you like to describe the last lap, please? Sure. Well, him and he was running side to side with Benny O'Tell, who is dad's PR guy.

I eventually would become Mark Martin's PR guy. But they are having a great battle for the front. It kept putting it on a show a little bit, battling each other. And I rode behind them for quite a while, and I couldn't figure out a way to get around them. So finally the last lap, I just went in like three and bumped his car owner. My car owner, Hank Jones, up the track. And we ended up winning the race.

You won. Yeah, and it was Wednesday night. I was a poll night, Wednesday night. That's right. And I knew Dad was up in the condo, and he'd never seen me race. Right. You know, so I know he was up there watching. I don't, he never even told me whether he was happy about that or not.

All I remember about it was we had a streetstock race at Concord Motor Speedway on 601, Highway 601 later that night. All right, and I had to get to the Concord. And this was early enough for me to run this little legend's car and then go over to the streetstock race. so we had to go I went up to Hank and I had a check or I had an envelope full of cash for the for the win and I had my trophy

you guys were giving away big trophies yeah you'd give away trophy to the top three so I had this big old trophy first place first race I ever won ever and never had won a race in my life and I walk up to Hank and I didn't think he would be that upset you know I mean it's he's seen he's He knew dad they worked together. Hell, his car was painted like dads.

Oh, yeah. And dad was rough and tough and did what it took and bumped plenty of guys out of the way on the last lap. So I figured Hank could appreciate it. And he was so mad that I had done that to him. And he gave me a piece of his mind right there on the back of his hauler. What he said? Just, you know, can't believe you drove like that.

That was dirty, what you did. And I said, I tell you what, Hank. I said, you're the car owner. and if it's all good with you, I'll just give you this envelope full of cash and I'll keep the trophy. And we'll call it even. And that was the way I left it.

Hank, me and Hank are friends today. Yeah, yeah, but wait. And he said he took the money from you? Yeah. Dude, God. It's Hank, man, that's what he does. It's like $1,500 bucks. But you had to been what, 15 years old?

Yeah, 15, exactly. And you just won your first race ever and he didn't have, man, that's hard. That's hard. Hey, yeah. That's how I remember it. Is that how you remember? Oh, Hank's mad.

Oh, he was livid because he never won a race before. He never won. Did he ever win after that? I don't know. That was his one chance. I don't think he did. We hear this all the time from Dale Jr. here. He never really got a whole lot of feedback or, you know, from his dad on his racing.

And do you know, can you confirm if Dale was watching him in that race? Of course he was. And do you know what he said afterwards? Do you have any idea? No. We didn't talk about it afterwards. But we flash forward to the All-Star race. 2000.

Yeah. The one you predicted. Yeah. You called that one, didn't you? Yeah, but it really ticked your dad off. That you said that he was going to win. Oh, God, yes. So he calls me.

Usually if it's really bad. Because, you know, I'm a promoter. He's the driver, and we had our different. and he'd bring his helicopter down, put it in the parking lot, come up and we'd hash it out. My how things have changed since the Thursday lunches at Robert G. Shop. That's right, yeah. They sure did. Well, he said, I can't believe you did that.

I said, what? Picking Dale won the race. I said, what I did. He said, why did you do that? That's too much pressure on him, because I think he's going to win the race. and he didn't have anything to say after that but he was not happy about that but for everybody to know that was your thing

you always did a press conference before the all-star race right and you would always make a prediction and you got that right a lot well when it it got below 60% I stopped doing it but still 60% was good so so then you come out and you make it the predictions was always something people look forward to but when you go out there and say that the rookie is going to win it. Oh, nobody.

That made... Now, did you really believe that, or are you just trying to... I mean, you're a promoter. No, no, no, no. I was very protective of the record. You know, I didn't want to... I just saw the way... You know, I saw the way he's running. I could see how he's going in the third turn

and all that kind of stuff, and I just thought, man, he's flying. And so... We had... To back up just a minute. Now, we had a night practice. Okay. We were tests.

There was a little test. Yep. A couple days or so before the race. And we had Tony Jr. for whatever reason, now I would have never thought of this. And I don't know if anyone else was doing it or a lot of people were doing it or everyone was doing it. But at one point in the test, Tony Jr. sent me out there with enough fuel in the car to only run the final 10 lap segment with new tires on it. and we were about a third place car up until this point in the test on the timing sheet, right? He can see, Humpe can see the timing sheet.

Yeah. Everyone else can see the timing sheet. And we were about third place car. We're pretty happy. And that's kind of how we ran in the entire race, about third. And so we go out there and didn't put the fuel in it, just had enough gas in it to run 10 laps, which was the final segment, put new tires on it. And that car went like a half a second faster.

It flew, and it kept flying. It didn't fly for just a lap. It flew for 10 laps. Flew. And we would jump way to the front of the chart by several tents. And it surprised us. And so we knew we're like, man, if we can get that final segment. And I think that's what Humpy saw too was like, man.

It was. There was great speed in our car. There was real speed in it. And if anybody else, now if everybody else goes out there and does that same thing, maybe they speed up two, maybe they were already doing it. We don't know. It was while you were going down that third turn. I couldn't believe that.

I said, you've got to let off sometime. If you watched the last lap or the pass on Del Jared at the end, I mean, it's just amazing how fast that car was that final second. You did go by him. Yeah. There wasn't much of my turn there. Yeah. She was good.

And then I'm so happy I can't see straight. And then Harvey Walters walks in to the control tower, and he says the bridge has fallen in. Oh, that's right. And who was Harvey Walters? He was my operations manager at the time. And so after the race, everyone's leaving and the bridge that goes over the highway there. The pedestrian bridge.

Yeah, it went across. Collapsed. Highway 29. Yep. Oh, man. That's deflating. Oh, my God. Well, you know, you don't know what's, you know, when you hear that.

I had to take off then and go over there. But it was a good and bad night from both. one of the interesting things is there was 95 people on the bridge. I got sued by 106. I haven't figured that one out yet. Well, maybe those other ones were underneath it. Well, the funny thing about it is, when I got over there, I saw a fireman from Concord, I knew, and I said, is anybody underneath this bridge? And he said, yes, there's a bunch.

Well, there wasn't. Oh. there was almost a highway patrolman under the bridge because he watched the whole thing. He decided not to go and he stopped. And he was just looking at the bridge. And that thing came down. And if he'd been under it, it'd been all she wrote.

But at any rate, it was a malfunction of the manufacturer and he admitted it. And so, but it was a good. and bad night. Because what I was going to do, I never went to the Winter Circle as a promoter. I thought that was, nobody buys tickets to see a promoter do anything.

Okay. They buy them because a driver's, you know, driven a great race or he's hero of theirs or whatever it was. So I said, I'm going over there this time. Because I want to go over there and do something to Dale Sinclair. that he did to everybody else he liked and that's pinch him you know on their side real hard and I was just going to pinch him to let bit but I didn't get to go over there but he was a happy man that he changed he changed his whole tone after he won he did we were talking earlier about

some of the like the boxing matches and other things you do as a promoter and one of my favorite things of all time that y'all ever had your pre-race shows at Charlotte Murray Speedway are legendary. I don't think that there's anything that rivals them today. There's not been anything since. Thank you. Well, they were just incredibly entertaining almost, and if not, at times for me, as a kid, as big as the race.

Yeah. And, you know, I think that that's key to remember, you know, a six to 12, 15-year-old kid looking forward to the pre-race as much as he is, actual event, was a pretty big deal. you had Jimmy the Flying Greek. Yep. I ain't never seen anything as cool as a guy driving a school bus over a ramp and landing in a pile of cars nose first. And he would stand that school bus up on the end and it almost sit there for about 15 seconds until it finally fell over. And I thought that that was the most incredible thing that I'd ever seen.

Well, kids loved it. Yeah. I mean, I was in the 80s, so I was anywhere from 8 to 12 years old. when all this is going down. And man, if Jimmy was there, I was not going to miss that part. I was going to miss a few laps in the race. I was going to miss a few other things in the pre-race, but no damn way I was going to miss Jimmy Flying Greek when he jumped the bus.

So, like, tell me about Jimmy or some of the experiences you had with some of the pre-race stuff. You blew up a lot of things on the front straightaway. I love to blow stuff up. Y'all blew up so many big explosions. Yeah. You had a lot of reenactments. military reenactants. Well, I think the best one was one that no one knew was coming.

Bill French, Jr. didn't know it. Bruton didn't know it. Wow. Nobody knew it except Harvey Walters and myself and my brother. And that was the first invasion of Granada. Well, the Grenadian war was not exactly epic, but at the same time, I was. down at Fort Jackson, I was talking to a general. And I said, you know, you have to have so many maneuvers a year.

Pentagon demands, right? Yeah. And I said, well, why don't you just have one at shot? And you're doing it in front of a whole bunch of people rather than nobody out in the pines of outside of Fayetteville. Yeah. Well, he thought that was a heck of an idea. So this is an actual like, like, not a reenact, an actual practice for the military. to do this.

It was a maneuver. Just do it in front of an audience. Yeah. You'd be called it a maneuver, Mike. Yeah. It's a maneuver. It's a maneuver. And so he said, well, what you got in mind? I said, well, let's do the grenade.

I studied it, you know. And it was an invasion by a bunch of helicopters. Chinook helicopters with troops on them that rappeled down to the infill. And then Apache helicopters, which is just a flying machine gun, you know, escort them in. So I said, you guys, that particular day, took, because we didn't have an airport at Concord. I said, take off from Salisbury and come around and come in from the back side of the Speedway, the main grandstand. And we're coming from the west. Right.

Nobody knows you're there until you get there. This is amazing. Amazing. And so right before we did it, I did call a highway patrol. I called a capmole there who ended up working for your dad. Captain Malcolm. That's right. Captain Malcolm, I said, Captain, you'll see a bunch of crazy stuff going on, so don't get alarmed if the phone starts running.

We're not being invaded. And so I pulled a couple of houses out of there and put them on the money. straights real quick, which nobody paid any attention to, you know. What now? Pulled a couple of houses we'd build. Yeah. Yeah, some just, I want something to blow up. Yeah, some props, okay.

Yeah. And so, um, Hal need him, you know. Stump man, Hal need him. He's the one that got me in contact with this guy in Hollywood that built that stuff. So I just got enough from him to know how to do it. And we built our own. So anyway, uh, now Patty Wheeler and my daughter, who, you know, a great,

that was an absolutely fantastic TV producer. She did know about it too because she got the whole thing on tape. And here they come. And Bill Gazzaway was running the garage area then, and you know how tough he was. Well, he's over in the control tower, and I'm in the Speedway Control Tower next to it.

But I had gone upstairs. so I could help everybody. Yeah. And here they came. Help everybody. Here they came. Chunga, chung, chung, you know. And then people on the grass in there were sitting there.

And all of a sudden, here comes the first Chinook. And everybody looking and is like, well, okay, they've got a helicopter here. Then 12 more of them show up with those Apache choppers firing blanks out of it. And I got a call real quick and say, oh, we're worried about the VIP sweet glasses busting. I said, don't worry about it. We've already done this at night. So you already had a practice?

Already had a practice. We don't want anybody to know about it, you know. So, you know, they came in there and they dropped it down. And then we had the, we blew up those two houses there, which was great. And, of course, you know, we shot a mortar at them. but they were blank and then the guy the dynamite man had a little button and he

popped it and they went up so it was fantastic well the NASCAR people went absolutely whorefish and man what are you doing you're gonna fight you don't hit a car and I said I won't hit a car and I said if they hit one get a backup up you know

so um Gasway went totally crazy and finally Billy France said the gasway said, why don't you go down a press box and have lunch? Because this is going to go on for a while. Oh, man. And so it was. It worked out great.

But Monday, I get a call. This guy, and I know the guy. He lives over there right down below where Robert Jee's place was. He says, you killed my horse. Oh. I killed your horse? Yeah. And hit was a Paso fino.

I thought, oh, my God. What is that? I don't know what it was. I don't know what it was, but it sounded expensive. Paso fino. And so the guy was out riding his horse, and the bomb went off, and the horse stumbled and broke his leg, and they had to shoot him. Oh, no.

So I knew Dick Hutcherson raised Paso Finos. I did know that. So I called Dick. I said, how much one of those Paso Finos cost? And don't give me the retail price. You look at the wholesale He's, I got one over here I'll say you $1,500.

I said, can you ride it? Of course you can ride it. I said, well, bring it over right now I'll pay your cash for it. So I brought it over, and I took it over to the guy, and he was overwhelmed. Oh, really? And I just don't do it again Sunday morning, you know.

I don't want to do that. But, you know, that led to the school bus. Something about the school bus that was neat is we tried it at Bristol first. Right. It's on YouTube in 1978 or so 77, I think, maybe y'all jumped it down the front straight away at Bristol. Yeah, well. Tored a track up.

Oh, it tore it all the hell, and it was, you know, it was too short, and the right front hit the banked the bank part, knocked a hole in it. Bill Gazzuarez there again. Yeah. And he's screaming. he knows that I did it. And Lanny, I kept telling Lanny Hester to God, it was running Bristol at the time, that it would be fine, no problems, you know, yak, yak, yak.

Well, as soon as we got that big hole in track, I decided I needed to go back to Charlotte. And I did. And I wasn't around for the finale, but we needed to do it somewhere else first. Bristol was the test track. It was the test track. For all of the explosives. If you watch it on YouTube, this just bus comes down to frustrated way. The ramp is at the end of pit wall entering turn one.

When he hits the ramp, things kind of start going bad. And he's going to, I think it, he's going to jump the ramp and maybe land on another ramp. It ends up, he ends up kind of missing or landing a little short, and it sheared the whole front axle off the front of the bus. So the bus goes down the landing ramp up the racetrack on the frame. Right. And just there's the racetrack all the pieces. Sparks everywhere.

Yeah. It was so freaking awesome, though. I mean, they had it. They got it all on video. Gail Yarborough's there sort of helping broadcast and MC the sort of the spectacle in pre-race. They got the race cars on the backstretched pits out of the harm's way. This is all happening before the race went down at Bristol. Yeah.

did it delay it? Oh, I have no idea. Oh, it was bad. I mean, the race did not start on time. Right. And I know one thing. I was in Linville, North Carolina, when the race started. Right. And I was taking off up through there.

And North Carolina Highway Patrol had a driver's license check about 15 miles outside of Linville. and I stopped, I knew the trooper. I said, what are you doing, man? Race night. Oh, we wouldn't do it after the traffic came off. We're just really doing it to check DUIs, you know. And I said, well, I said, let me stay here just a minute.

I need to calm down. What happened? So I had to tell him. He wanted to know the whole story, you know. And so I told him. But it was quite a night. and brought Jimmy back to... Jimmy the Flying Greek.

Jimmy to Flying Greek. Well, his name was Jimmy Kufus. I kind of religious for you, that it. Yeah, yeah, and I said, no, your new name is Jimmy the Flying Greek. Oh, you gave him? You named it? Oh, yeah, I gave it to him. Oh, of course he did.

Jimmy the Flying Creek. Was that his first jump in a school bus at Bristol? It was the first time anyone had done it. No, but anywhere. I know. Wait, wait, wait. But Jimmy, the, Jimmy Kufus had done it before somewhere, right? No, no, he had not done it.

That was his first time. Where did you find him then? He, I got a, I sat in my office one day, and I got a oil painting of the, I mean, it was fantastic, of this bus way up in the air, and sparks were everywhere, and it was jumping, a football field. But it was a painting, to be sure. It was a painting. And he said, he wrote me a little note. He says, I want to do this. I want to come see and talk to you about that.

And actually, what he did for 11, he drove a bus. He drove a bus from Las Vegas to L.A. and then L.A. back to Las Vegas five days a week. That was his. Oh, wow. That's what he did for living. He wasn't even a stuntman of any kind. No, not at all.

God. But he thought he was. Yeah. And I'll tell you how tough it was after he did the last one And he actually got hurt on the last one Oh Because what was happening he was jumping further Because we had to

I got to Bud Moore Ford racing engines and stuck them in the bus And that's how we got it Oh my gosh That's how it got going Faster and faster And I was afraid to put

J-to rockets in there That's what Kufus wanted to do But if you put two of them in there and one goes wrong way, you know, tell him where that bus's going to go, you know. It's good to know that you have even a crazy standard that you will not go to. God, it's so awesome. That thing would, on the front straightway at Charlotte, he'd come off turn four, and they'd have to ramp head toward into the grass,

and they'd have a pile of old junk cars for him to just land in. And they would stack the cars every, which every race, the cars would be stacked differently, kind of like for him just to knock down or knock over, and it seemed like a relatively soft landing for the, you know, for the most part. And he wasn't sitting in the typical driver's seat area of a bus. They would, he would basically be seated or positioned about row three. Okay.

In the center of the bus surrounded in roll bars and thick, thick padding, electrical tape around his roll bars. And he's in the middle of that thing. So when, I mean, you know, he gave his bus a crash threshold that he wasn't going to a part of. Absolutely. Then there was Robosaurus. Oh, man. And that thing's still around today. It is. That thing's been for sale, traded hands. I think it was actually went to Pond Stars. It was on Pond Stars episode one time. Somebody trying to sell that thing. Yeah. Robosaurus. How did that get? Well, we're looking for something to do to bring kids into the Saturday race. Yeah. And this is why people got to pay attention to everybody that works for them.

Harriet Carter, who was the secretary then, she came into my office. I said, anybody got a good idea? I don't care what it is. Come to my office. I want to see it. And so people come in, like, once one guy came and he says, I know what we need to do.

I said, what? He says, we need to raise Kobe beef in the infield. Well, you never want to tell anybody's got a bad idea Because the next one may be great Well, a week went by and he came by And again, he'd come to my office He said, I'm sure glad I don't see any of those Kobe beef cattle down in the infield now

So I take it you're going to wait a while Well, that's true He says, I got a better idea I said, what is it? He says, Let's raise jerk chickens and the end of the field. I said, well, I didn't know what a jerk chicken was. You know, I thought it was a species of chicken.

And he did too. Yeah, of course. And he says, well, I said, but, you know, chickens can fly if they're frightened enough. And what are we going to do if they get out in the track and, you know, Earnhardt's down in the track and he's going down the stretch and his big chicken hits him in the wind. Well, I hadn't thought of that, we could clip their wings. And he says, then he says, what we can do is right two weeks full of race, we'll chop their heads off and have a jerk chicken sandwich.

This guy really... In the concession sale, he's just, you know, totally... Serious a heart attack. So, you know, things like that. But this lady comes in, Harriet, and she says, she's carrying the National Enquirer. And I said, well, what you got there, Harry? She says, well, I didn't bring your favorite newspaper, the globe. Because they'd had a deal in their two 600 before that,

where they said they had a picture of Bat Boy on the cover. Oh, yeah, I remember. He says Bat Boy accused of assaulting a girl in the parking lot of Charlotte Motor Speedway. after the 600. So I called the guy, the publisher. Man, you're crazy. I said,

you're just taking a step too further. I said, this is going to hurt our business. It's terrible. Well, I couldn't, it wasn't getting anywhere for them because there's not much I could do.

You can sue those people. You never get to court. They're ready for that. I really put the heat on him, though. And so about two years later, he called me back. He said, I've got me a solution.

for that bat boy because this bat boy was born in Kentucky in a cave and raised by bats and he said well he says what if the bat boy gets killed I said well that's a start

so the bat boy got killed he went to somebody else's racetrack and somebody shot him as the story goes we got that but anyway we got a robesaurus and she pulls the center section of National Inquirer out, and it's Robesaurus.

And as soon as I see it, I'm just, I got to, I mean, that is it. You got to have it? I got to have it. I said, well, find out where that thing is. And let me know, she says, I already done that. She says, it's in a warehouse in Pomona, California, and the man's willing to do something. It's been in that warehouse for four years. They made it for a show, a pilot on TV.

And it never got anywhere, so he put it away. So I call him. And I said, I'd like to have it, Robosaurus. And he says, well, you can, but it's going to cost you. Well, I knew that was coming. That's what they always say. And so anyway, we finally got down to a deal where I paid him, 25. $5,000 to bring it. Whoa.

Well, it was a lot of money, and it was a gamble, but, you know, he got there. And so I decided, and this is another stupid thing I did, I put it out in front of the start, finish line. Yeah. I mean, in front of the speedway by Highway 29. Oh, okay. Just set it out there. Yeah. Well, Malcolm calls me, and he says, hump, you got to do something about that monster you got out there.

He says, traffic's backed up to Charlotte. Well, I didn't want to offend him, and I knew it was a problem, so I moved it. And everybody's screaming, they wanted to see it. Well, that's what I wanted to hear because it was a – and we had these great commercials, you know. Saturday, you know, every morning – Saturday morning cartoons and all that stuff, we're playing this Roversource deal. Well, okay, we're going to have a press conference. Well, the press hates this stuff.

you know they want to they want to read about racers and stuff like that they don't want to read about humpieisms you know right and so I got robesource down there and he eats cars you see he picks cars up hydraulically and he puts them in those stainless steel teeth

and starts chomping on them and it's great so I go to see your dad and I said I hope you're over here asked me if I want to run that robesores because, you know, someone's got to run it. Yeah. So, yeah.

So get him out there, and the guy shows him how to do it. And it's, you know, if you can run a bulldozer, which your dad certainly could, he can run a rovosaurus. So we have a couple of Japanese cars out there. And he picks one of them, eats it, and it's great because, you know, it dribbles. A fan belt and the wheels come off and, you know, all that kind of stuff. Like it's falling out of its mouth.

Yeah, yeah. And then I tell you, I did ask the guy to do something. And we rigged this up in Charlotte. And that's like to shoot fire out its mouth. Mm-hmm. Had to do that. And he got it where he shoot about 60 feet. Yeah.

You set the cars on fire and chew them up. Yeah, that's right. So we have a press conference. And the press is there. Oh, God. You know. What's he doing now? What's going?

on, you know. So, they eats six cars, and they're taking pictures of it and all like that, and I said, now, ladies and gentlemen, he want to know who's operating this? Would the operator please come out? It's none other than.

They learn art. And they went crazy then. All of a sudden, every news station in the two Carolinas, Tennessee, Virginia, etc., lit off with that thing eating those cars. And it was really neat.

But the night before, we were practicing. And your dad was, you know, learned how to operate. Well, we had about six junk cars, and he had eaten all of them up. And he says, we need some more cars. I said, we don't have any more. He says, the parking lot's full of them. God, everybody. Well, about that.

We sold 14,000 more tickets. With Robosaurus. With Robesaurus and we'd ever sold on Saturday before. Man, that's incredible. Well, man, I, you know, we had a lot of notes here with a lot of stuff that we wanted to talk to you about. Didn't even get to most of it. I want to ask you if you'll come back to business. Oh, be glad to.

Now you know how to get here. Yeah. Well, you know, I used to know how to get here. and then my GPS and my head stopped working. I imagine that happens to all of this at some point. But we appreciate you coming out here, Humphie. There's a lot of fun listening to these stories. Well, Dale's great to be on the show,

and a lot of people are talking about this show, so you've got something going, son. I mean, you really do. We're trying to crank it up and get it going, having fun. It's just been so much fun, just going back into these stories we heard today with you and just getting a little bit of a history lesson,

a little more of the details into what goes on in those stories. Yeah. We know the statistics. We know the pictures and that it happened, but we don't know the men and people that were involved in it. Right. I really appreciate you spending your time to come over here and share some of it. Yes, sir.

Well, I'm delighted to do it. We do got a lot more to get to if you'd come back and we'd love to have you again. Love to come back. Yes, sir. All right. Thank you, Humphie. We appreciate it. Okay.

Thank you. All right, everybody. Time for the Vivalene DIY segment. It's been a whole off-season Dale, and I know that there are a lot of lot of people out there that are wondering some restoration race car updates. Sure. Yeah. Do you have any for us?

Have you been back there, Mike? I haven't. All right. Well, I posted a picture of the Nova. We got a Nova that we're restoring that Dad drove in the mid-80s in the Xfinity series. He won Darlington, Daytona, Rockingham, Charlotte. That car is in primer. Oh.

Yeah. So I post a picture of that on social media. I've got this sort of a thread going about that car. Gotcha. Yeah, I'm waiting on it to get a little. paint and then we can start putting it back together. The Monte Carlo that Dad won the championship with in 1980 is the first car in the Glory Road exhibit at the Hall of Fame in Charlotte.

So go to NASCAR Hall of Fame to see the Glory Road exhibit. I helped curate that with the members and staff at the Hall of Fame. And it's basically not all the champions, but some of the great champions that our sport has had, and it's the cars that they drove to win those championships. So, Monty Carlo is the first one you'll see. It's decaled correctly to the last race that it ran, which happened to be the first race that dad ever had Wrangler on the quarter panel of his race car. All right.

The last race of the year in 1980, Ontario, California. The car doesn't have an engine because it needed to go to Glory Road, and the motor which is getting rebuilt was not here. And the odd thing about that is, so when you look through the wheel well, you'll see that the motor's not in it. The odd thing about that is it's at Glory Road for three years.

The Glory Road exhibits a three-year commitment for the people that donate their cars, all right? And these cars are owned by collectors all over the world. And so we have to, and some people that we reach out to don't want to release their cars for three years. but luckily we found 18 wheeling owners and I was one of them. Yeah.

You could wait. I don't know what was more cool for me was to be a curator for the exhibit or to be an owner that was lending a car to the exhibit. That was pretty cool. So I got the Monte Carlo is there for three years. When it gets back, we'll keep tuning on it.

I got to put the drive train back in it and then see how she drives and runs a little bit. Got to get a new, you know, got a few more things to do to that car before I really trust it. The eventual goal, I think, for both of these cars, the Monte Carlo and the Nova is to be able to take them to Darlington or Daytona or whatever at certain times over the years for people just to see them and look at them. and I'd love to take that Nova and pace the, you know, be out in front of the pace car for the Xfinity race at Darlington won the throwback weekends. That'd be really cool because that car raced and won at that racetrack. So super cool to be able to do that.

So that's the update, ma'am. How much longer for the Nova, do you think? I have no clue. A year? Probably another year. Yeah, good. We'll have some restoration updates then for all of 2020 on this segment. So that's awesome. And yeah, check out the Monte Carlo over to the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte.

It's well worth it. And you curated it. Can you just reel off a couple other cars that you got in that display? Do you remember? There's a 442 from Richard Petty that's really cool. I sat in the car. And Rusty Wallace's championship car, Alan Quickey, you know, Darrow Waltrip, Mountain Dew, Buick. There's a bunch of great race cars.

There's a Cali Yarborough, 442, Oslobill, as well. just a lot of cool cars in there. Man, that's awesome. Well, this segment's brought to you by our friends at Valvaline. Valeline trusted for 150 years. Ready for Ask Junior? Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. for the Dale Jr. download.

We are live on our YouTube channel at Dirty Mode Media for the Ask Junior part of our show. Welcome back first to everybody for the 2020 season. We're excited about this year and excited to be back connected with everybody on the internet. So let's get started. Leah is here. She's going to be asking the questions you guys are sending in. Hello. First question is from Patty. She wants to know how excited you are to get to wave the green flag at H-10500 this weekend. I'm excited. I'm a little nervous, but I feel like I can do pretty good job. I've been practicing. So yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Simple responsibility, to be honest with you. I did the command. That's a little more nerve-wracking because you got to speak in front of thousands of people. Waving the flag, I don't have to say anything. I just get up there and, and, and, you know,

and let her rip. It should be a good time. And then I get to see a race. Right. Get to be in Dayton and watch your race. Should be fun. Ryan wants to know what's your favorite thing you did this off season. My favorite thing that I did this off season.

Goodness. I don't know. It's a good question. Yeah. Is it? What is your favorite thing that you did? It's tough, ain't it? Yeah, that's hard.

You know, nothing is a good answer for an off season for sure. Probably just, I know Matthew has an. Matthew, what is the greatest thing that you accomplished? What's the coolest thing of your office? Well, I should say something, family to be nice, but I would say it actually had something to do with you too, Dale. You and I were together. Oh, but apparently didn't make his list of cool things.

Running through places together, walking through. I will say that, yeah. Well, that's a question. Somebody wants to know about all these old racetrackers. All right. Yeah, talk about that. Yeah. So this will answer both those questions.

One of the funnest things that I've been doing this offseason is putting together a new TV show with Matthew. And yes, we're going out to these old racetracks, these relics, abandoned racetracks and learning more about them. And we're putting a show together to sort of bring those stories to life. And there's a lot of people that are doing that right now. But we're going to put our own little spin on it. And, you know, it's something that me and Matthew have been. passionate about for over a decade and without giving too much away about i don't know 10 years ago i started reading about abandoned racetracks and was really shocked to find out that there are a lot of

racetracks that are still visible either from aerial footage uh google earth whatever uh physically you can go and still go to some of these places and see, okay, I see where the banking of the turn was and whatnot. And I became most interested in any of the tracks from the past that are still there today, even if it's only a section of the track or a little bit of asphalt or banking or whatever, guardrail or a post in the ground, any evidence, physical evidence, if that's still there,

I wanted to document that racetrack on a map. So I created a custom map on Google Maps, and I started doing that. And I basically would set on my computer, look for the locations of some of these racetracks, digging into the message boards and the depth of the web and getting information of where exactly some of these tracks were located, and then going on the map to look for them, just on my computer. And if I found through aerial footage or that Google Earth's view of the track, If I found what I was looking for, I would document it and tag that location. I did this for about 10 years.

Little did I know that Matthew was doing the exact same thing. Me and him knew each other, but we weren't friends. We weren't buddies as far as we didn't hang out and talk, right? But we hired Matthew to help us with Dirty Mo Media and this show, Dale Jr. Download. And I said, hey, man, I got this cool map. You like history. I like history. I got this cool map of all these tracks.

He goes, I got a map too. I mean, the exact same, we were doing the exact same thing in two different, you know, universes. And so we merged our maps together, and we have over 600 tracks, right? Oh, no. How many we got now? My buddy from Canada, we've been working on it big, and we're up to 1,700. What? Yeah.

Wow. I'll send you the update. It's crazy. All right. So, anyhow, I had several. hundred on my map. Matthew had several hundred on his. We obviously had some copies, some duplicates, but we merged our maps together and had over 600 locations in the United States. And so we were creating a TV show that's going to take me and him to some of these racetracks to see

them and talk about them and find out about them. And it's going to be a lot of fun. And, you know, there's a lot of people out there that are as interested in this stuff as we are. There's a lot of great content on YouTube and so forth. And it's going to be fun sort of, you know, trying to tell our side of it or tell our experience and uncover some mysteries about these racetracks. And there's a lot of good, bad, sad, tragic, exciting, thrilling stories about these little places that, you know, haven't been talked about in years or ever told before. So, but to be able to walk into some of these places in the woods,

it'll be in the middle of the woods and all of a sudden you'll see this racetrack that's not, you know, not been a facility, a working facility for decades. And it's really powerful. It's kind of ghostly and mysterious and interesting for sure. So we'll see if we can bring that across the screen to you guys when you're watching the show. And it's been a lot of fun, though. We've been working on it, putting together episodes for the past, weeks. We've got a great team of people that are working hard, dirty-moe Media is putting the whole

production together. So it's been, I can't wait this. When can we? Tell them where they can find it when it comes out. Yeah, you tell. All right. It's on Peacock TV when it's a streaming service that NBC is launching in July and it's going to be part of that program programming lineup, which we're excited about. So that's Peacock TV. And then later in the year, eventually I think it will come to linear TV. But Peacock TV, go ahead and make your plans to subscribe. to that when it comes out in July. All right. Nicholas wants to know, how crazy will it feel going to Homestead in March? Weird, right? I mean, that's just right around the corner.

We're going to run Xfinity Race at Homestead in March, and it's literally just weeks away. So it's strange, because I'm used to, like, waiting a little later in the year before we are going to run, whatever race we're going to run. And they moved Homestead to March, and so I think that's going to be strange for everybody not to be there at the end of the year. We're so used to going there, and that being our final. week or our final, it's like the last day in school. Everybody's excited and it's not going to be like that this time. I don't think it'll be any worse or better or one way or the other. It's just going to be different. Still a fun racetrack. That's why I picked it. I want to go out there and run on the fence and have some fun sliding around. Plus, it's, you know, Florida's a great time,

any time of year. Weather's great. Susie wants to know if you have a pick for rookie of the year. Man, that's tough. You know, the thing, the unknown for me, I think, is Reddick. So I've been talking a little bit to his camp, and they are pretty confident, man, that RCR's making some good changes, and RCR's kind of struggled over the last couple of years. But Tyler and his group feel pretty good about their potential this year. So I think he could

he could surprise some people with some of the runs that he's going to have. It'll be a tale of two different parts of the year for Tyler, I think, and all the rookies, really. The first half of the season and then the second half, you'll see a big improvement in a lot of these guys as they go through the year. But there'll be a lot of bumps in the road and a lot of mistakes and things to learn. And just running the longer races can be, you wouldn't think that that would matter,

that you're in the car for another 200 to 300 miles. But, you know, you get your body and your mind, your mental state and your ability to concentrate and focus, you sort of get trained into those 300-mile windows. And then to be able to push yourself to go further, it takes a little work. And that first year is all about, you know, making that adjustment. The guy that can do that, I think, out of the gate

is the guy that will have the best opportunity. opportunity to win that rookie year. All right, guys. That's all we have time for today. All right, y'all. Appreciate y'all tuning in for Asch, Jr. All right, man, we've got that odd history coming up here with Daytona Speed Weeks. People don't even call it Speed Weeks anymore. I do. I still do, man. Old school. There was Daytona Day for a while, which somehow won some award.

And they tried to, you know, they tried to literally hijack the name of the race week. Right. But you gave it so much publicity. If they say negative publicity is good publicity, he gave it plenty of publicity. Look, man, I got nothing against the people that were the creative on that. But didn't like it. You were not a fan. Speedweeks is what it's called.

Damn it. It's Speed Weeks. Okay. So with Speed Weeks here, Daytona 500 closing in, it always provides some pretty wild racing and while partying too much. Oh, yeah. It's a speed week. Back in the day, teams would be down in Daytona for weeks upon weeks testing. All right?

Just for the two weeks of speed weeks. That's why they called it speed weeks because it's two weeks of racing. But there's a lot of testing that goes on too. That's right. And it's not only Cup, Exfinity, and truck teams, there's archa teams, there's dirt track competitors and multiple divisions of asphalt racers competing at New Smyrna Speedway. So, I mean, the whole town is full of racers.

during the month of February and even a little bit of January. Yep. Two partying legends of Speedwicks. All right. We're NASCAR Hall of Famer. Richie Evans. I did not know Richie Evans was a partier.

I didn't either. Oh, he was? Oh, yeah. And the great Dick Trickle now, that makes more sense. Was Dick Trickle a known partier? Well, you know, a barred around a suitcase. The Reeseie cups.

Cubs. Cigarettes. He had that deal, one hour's sleep for every hundred laps. And a pair underwear. So that's a party right there. These two giants of the short track scene raced all over Florida during speed weeks, including at Daytona.

These great friends were competitive on the track and in the party scene afterwards. One night down at J.B.'s fish camp, all right? A huge fight broke out. And both drivers were involved in this fight. Legendary short track car owner Joe Brady was worried if they'd be getting in trouble

while fists and bottles flew through the air. It was quickly pointed out that the owner of the restaurant was right alongside Evans in the brawl, throwing bottles himself. After the fight, the wildness carried on outside the restaurant as Evans got in trickle's pickup truck and did donuts in the parking lot. I mean, that's always a good way to counter the offense or is to jump in a truck and do some donuts during the fight. It certainly ratchets up the emotions. The guy's got a good left hook. Man. The guy's got a good left hook.

The only defense is donuts and a pickup truck. The two were always trying to outdo each other. One night Evans got trickled good, man. A bunch of them were at a risque watering hole in the Daytona area. Strip club. Is that what you think that means? I think that's probably what that means, don't you? We should just say that.

Shoe. Shoe Show? Shoe. That's all they're wearing. Oh, I got it. You never heard that? I don't get it. I get it now

Why does Matthew got to have these sayings that only he knows I didn't make that up Okay You didn't make that up I can't take credit for that one

I'm not that smart Well man I'd never heard that one He's been in plenty Strip cloths Hey wait Hey Hey Calm down

A shoe show My goodness Evans All right So they're in this Riskey watering hole in Daytona Evans asked Joe Brady to hand him Dick Trickle's keys.

So Richie then disappeared for over 30 minutes. And when he returned, he quickly grabbed everyone and said, let's go get out of here. Let's leave Trickle behind. All right. At the end of the night, Dick Trickle went out to his car only to find it gone, missing. After talking to the owner of the bar, the cops were called in. They took Trickle to the station to file a report for his stolen vehicle.

But just as they pulled up, Dick yelled out from the backseat. Hey, there's my car. It was parked on the hillside on the grass right next to the police department sign. Oh, man. The Wally Evans had planted the vehicle there as the ultimate prank on his racing, partying friend, Dick Trickle. First of all, mess with another man's vehicle. Yeah.

That's not, is that taking it too far? I think it's taking it too far. And we got two times when Richie Evans goes and messes with Dick Trickle's vehicle. One time, Denny Hamlin was, we were hanging out at the Whiskey River, Western Town, down on my property. Oh, yeah. He called Denny to see if he wanted to come out and have some beers with the thing he did. And he had just got a brand new 7 series BMW, all right? And he was proud of that thing.

Company car or whatever from Joe Gibbs. And he comes out there, and I'm, like, pumped up. Denny's going to hang out. We didn't get to hang out that much. more we got to become peers or competitors, the less you party with your buddies, right? Right. But anyways, Denny's hanging out,

and man, in like an hour and a half, he's like, all right, man, I'm taking off. I'm like, what? It's only like 10 o'clock. Like, no, man, where are you going? You know? And so, somebody distracted him, and me and a couple other buddies went out to that Sim series

and disabled it. What? Wait, what a jerk thing to do, right? Yes. Yeah, and so then he goes out there to try to crank it and it won't start And he's now he's not in a party mood anymore No, but kind of a buzzkill He's worried about his car

So we had to put it back together so it would run And so yeah Messing with a man's car is is a risky little deal Just all you got to do is just assume What if we as the Dirty Mo Media crew decided while Dale Jr. was in here taping We had his truck disassembled or just mess with. What if we just put something in there to make it odor, you know? Oddery, odory, smelly, stinky, whatever it is. He would come unglued. No humor in it.

Keep talking, bud. White flag, right there. White flag. All right. White flag. Attention. Subscribers of this podcast, you will have a bonus episode of the Dale Jr. download to look forward to this Friday. Our good friends at Chevrolet are hosting us at the Chevrolet Experience Center to preview the Daytona 500. We've got Jimmy Johnson stopping by, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., the poll setter, will be there. So it's going to be fun. It's not an open event, but you will get the bonus episode of the Dale Jr. Download Friday evening and also highlight videos throughout the weekend, right Leah? Yep.

So follow Dirty Mo Media's social media channels for that. It's at Dirty Mo Media. Also, very important. Pay close attention to this. The Del Jr. download now drops on different days this year, the podcast on Tuesdays, the TV show on Wednesdays. I'll say it again, the podcast on Tuesday. at 7 o'clock, and not a minute later, right? Sure.

That'll be on podcasting platforms, and then the TV show on Wednesday on NBC Sports Network. Dale Jr., we are heading to Fort Lauderdale, Florida this Thursday for the grand opening of Whiskey River at the Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport. So we're very excited to see Whiskey River chain spreading to different areas. So listen to this, everybody. You've got some new reading to do in 2020. It's Kelly Earnhardt Miller's new book, Drive, Nine Lessons to Win and Business. in life. You can pre-order that book right now at Kelly Earnhardtrive.com. That address again is Kelly Earnhardtrive.com. Lastly, you've probably already heard, but right now, the people

that you hear on this podcast, namely Dale Jr. and Matthew Diener, plus a lot of people behind the scenes here. We're working on a television series about abandoned racetracks. It's going to be special, guys, and you will only find it on Peacock TV. That's NBC's new streaming service that will launch in July of this year. So go ahead and make your plans to subscribe to Peacock, lot of good programming, but none better than the one we're doing, guys. And that is it. All right. Well, man, it's just great to be back again doing this show. I sure missed it. We took a little break in all season. I try to talk Mike into doing a little show in December, January, just to, hey, this is what everybody's been up to, but couldn't convince him.

It's a hard, man, cold. But yeah, it's great to be back. We've got a, we got a great year coming. Not only do we have a lot of great guests that we're going to be on this show for the Dale Jr. download, Mike, you talked about it. We're going to have a great TV show for you. as well about some of these old ghost tracks. That's right. And I can't wait to show people what we got. Dirty Mo Media, man.

Always changing, always evolving and being creative. It's going to be a good year this year, 2020. This bit of bad assery was made by Dirtymo Media. Dirty Mo!