The Dale Jr. Download - 290 - Denny Hamlin: Momentary Normalcy

Episode Date: March 24, 2020

From the comfort and safety of home, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the DJD gang got together, but not too close, to record a show. A day after the iRacing event broadcast on national television, Dale welcomed winner Denny Hamlin on the Download. They discuss the dramatic finish and how the race provided a few hours of normalcy in tough times, Denny shares what he is doing during the Corona virus crisis and how he is struggling with home schooling his daughter. Dale Jr, co-host Mike Davis, Producer Matthew Dillner and Leah Vaughn get real about social distancing. AskJr is back with a new sponsor. Dale Jr. opens up about the recent announcement that he and Amy are expecting their second child and how the current state of lock-down has effected the experience. Dale Jr. remembers the car that started the racecar graveyard and tells the story of NASCAR's most unusual pit stop. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is a production of Dirty Mo Media. Dirty Moe. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download. Today's show is going to be different, obviously. Everybody's stuck at the house. So I'm in my house. Mike Davis is at his house. Lea Vaughn's at her house.

Matthew Dillan's at his house. I'm assuming you guys are all at your houses, right? Y'all aren't somewhere else. Not at Chuckie Cheese. Not at Chuckie Cheese. Okay. I went with the blurred background for my Skype. did too.

Yeah, we're blurring our backgrounds. Hating. We and Matthew are not blurring. So it'll look a little different for each one of us. But what do you get to hide? Well, this is fun because everybody is in their own space, doing their own self-expressions. Matthew, you see you've placed a few items in the background.

And Mike, you've blurred a few out. That's right. Leah's clock on the wall is correct, to be honestly. That's pretty interesting. Anyways, we're going to be doing this show via Skype and obviously under unique circumstances. So, yeah, how's everybody doing? Doing great, Mike. You look a little blurry there.

I'm doing well. I feel better that my background's blurred. I'm only doing that, just so we're all clear, and for the record, we're only doing that because it annoys you. And I think that's also why Dale's blurring it. So Dale and I are doing it for no other reason than to annoy you. If at any point you start to like it, we'll just unbler. That being said, I'm doing great. We have been in seclusion or doing what you guys have been doing this whole week.

And frankly, we've been able to work through our communications with the team and that kind of thing. So I feel good about that. My refrigerator went out, which was untimely, being that we stocked a couple weeks worth of food. to our refrigerator and freezer went out. So that was fun yesterday. But we managed. But other than that, man, I just, I mean, I guess I'm like you guys. I mean, it's concerning with the spread of this virus, you know, trying to be smart while also keeping business going and keeping our content for Dirty Moe Media going, which I know you guys have been helping out with.

And, I mean, watching Dale race yesterday was absolutely fun. We'll talk about that. but that's kind of what that's my update from uh camp davis here leah oh all good here um a bit strange not being able to go out and do things but um we're fortunate because we're here in north carolina and the weather's been really nice so at least when i get when i get tired of sitting at my kitchen table i go out to my patio and sit out there and listen to the birds and get to enjoy that a little bit so not too bad i think somebody started a dryer in the background who's doing Are you doing laundry, Leah?

So, nope, that's my neighbors. What? They mowing? So I'm on a second floor apartment and I have garages beneath me. They open their door. And they open their garage door. So this is apartment life. It wasn't bad, but we had some new neighbors move in and there's like four younger kids living there.

I'm surprised. They don't believe in their front door. They just go in a new farm. Well, I thought about it, but I wasn't sure how Wi-Fi would be out there. We have a hot spot, but I wasn't sure if it would be strong enough for this. I understand. Matthew, how are you doing? I'm doing good, man. This whole thing has been eye-opening, and it's been nice because there's so much divisiveness in the world.

And I think people are starting to come together a little bit. I look at my neighbors and stuff. I haven't spent this much time outside with my kids in the backyard, doing yard work, pushing them on swings, the neighbors come over, hang out, drink some beer. You let your neighbors over? Yeah, my neighbor's just in the backyard. Nobody in the house, man.

Here we go. Nobody has. If all the rule breakers, we knew six feet apart. If we had to pick who was going to be the rule breaker of the group. That ain't a rule breaker? It is. No. You're supposed to, yes, it's called.

Social distancing is not inviting your neighbors over. That is the opposite. We're outside. Hey, everybody. Party at Dillner's house. That doesn't matter. Oh my gosh. I ain't going to isolate that much.

Come on. The kids are got to play. I went to a state park on Saturday and we went hiking for four miles. And we maybe saw like a dozen people the whole time. But we never like came in contact with anything. Yeah, exactly. I'm not going inside with people. Dale, I don't think they get how this works.

I don't think they do either. And that banana bread looks. Good. Are you eating that intentionally during this recording? I know. It's making me hungry. For sure. Sorry. Social distancing can't eat what he's eating. He didn't bring any for us, so can't. Well, social distancing. It's not rude. So that's interesting. As I understand, so this is, when all this stuff started kind of happening, I don't know, it seems like a long time ago, but it's not been that long. I was following it. I think pretty much like everybody else was following it. But I went to the store.

and bought a few things. I got some milk for Ila and just a couple frozen vegetables and stuff that would, because they were locking down Italy at the time, at least the upper half of the northern party, Italy was getting locked down. A few other places were getting pretty serious, but the states were still, they'd only had a few dozen cases at the most. And, but I was assuming that this was going to be where we are today.

And so I went to the store and got a, got some food that would last a while in case we were told to stay at the house. Because the one thing that, you know, a lot of people are getting a lot of criticism for hoarding and buying too much toilet paper and all kinds of things like that. And, but I kind of, I kind of see both sides of it. because the thing is, is I take the social distancing very seriously, that aspect of it. And the reason why is because Amy's pregnant, if she gets the flu in this part of her pregnancy, there's risks. There's some minimal risk, but they're real risks. And I can't trust, I certainly don't know everything about this virus,

and I don't know that I can get enough information, even if it's correct or false information out there, you can't. It's hard to find real good information about this because nobody really, really knows much about the virus. Nobody knows about the long-term effects that it's going to have on the people who had the virus and even recover from it. So this is all so new, right? So I don't want to, you know, as a father and a potential, we're going to have another child, you know, I don't want to take any chances. So I'm just going to err on the side of safety. That's been my approach since the very beginning. That means

in case that we are all told, hey, don't leave your house unless it's an emergency. That's happening now in the United States. I have enough, you know, food is not what I want to eat, but it's enough food to last this a while. And I have all the things, you know, the diapers, the wipes and all the things to be able to. So in case I can't leave.

the house. And so with the social distancing part, you know, I haven't really, we haven't really had any visitors. We, you know, and Carson wanted to come over here to pick up some pork loin that I'd cooked. I was like, stopped her at the door. And I was like, all right, you got a series, I got a series of questions you've got to answer before you can come in. and you know so I take this stuff pretty seriously but it's um it's definitely scary times and

I think uh you know we all just need to be doing what we can to keep um keep ourselves healthy and that in turn keeps anybody else that we make in an unintended contact with healthy and um because it is really crazy and I think that doing the general. genealogy has sort of helped me understand just how easily a contagious virus could spread because if you do your genealogy, you really get an idea of, I got, there are the size of your family tree, distant cousins, you know, I mean people are involved in your family tree just to connect you to your second or third cousin. It's crazy how many families that connects together.

The one particular part of my genealogy where you can send in your DNA and it sort of really gives you sort of a grand, kind of a broad idea of who you're related to, it just tells you how, you know, if you kind of can compare that to, you come in contact with one person, they've been in contact with 20 people,

those 20 people been in contact with 20 other people individually. I mean, in one day, you've exposed yourself to a typical cold or a flu virus to, you know, by the hundreds and maybe thousands of people. And just one afternoon, unsuspectedly, you've came in contact with that many people, even though physically you were only around maybe a dozen, right? Right.

It's pretty crazy. So the self-distance thing is something that I take pretty seriously. Because the one thing, not only do I not want people to get sick. And, you know, we all have grandparents and folks that we know that are at-risk people. They don't have to be old. You know, they could be recovering from severe illnesses like cancer. and things like that. I think about Stacy, Sunny's wife.

Her immune system is not in great shape after recovering from some physical things in her past. She's an at-risk person that lives literally 100 yards away from me. So not only do I want to protect the health of the people around me, but we also got to get back to work. And we got to get back to the racetrack, and we got to get the country back. on its feet

economically and so people can make a living. There's lots of people out there losing their jobs. And we need to stop that and get that turned around as fast as possible. And that means everybody taking this as serious as they possibly can. So that's all I really got to say about it. It's been really great to spend a lot of time at home with my family around Amy. I don't know that they're enjoying it much, but I was a hermit. Anyways, right?

Before I met Amy, I wouldn't even leave the bus at the racetrack weekends. I would just sit in there and play video games, not have to talk to anybody and be perfectly happy. So I'm kind of liking this isolation. It's gave me a lot of time and excuse to race online, which we did yesterday. That was a really unique how all that came together. I got a call from Jeff Gordon on the phone about a week ago, and he said, the Sim race and I race and stuff, you think we could put that on TV?

I was like, yeah, we've done it at NBC. And he said, well, we would like to do it with real drivers. And I'm like, well, that's going to be a tough part because there's a small handful of those guys that have used a service before that could do it and do it well and make it. And it would appear realistic. There's a lot of guys who've never used it before. And so at first I thought it was going to,

be like a just a pickup race, something fun that would stream on the internet that would have a mix of cup guys, truck guys, Xfinity guys, late model guys, anyone who ever turned a wheel on a race car that races on eye racing could be a part of it. But it ended up, they wanted a little more focus on more cup guys. I don't know how it happened, but they drew, I think, 30 cup guys together. Some who had never played ir racing or used the sim before were encouraged to get on there. I was really surprised. We know how hard it is to get Chase Elliott to do anything, and he was on there.

Keselowski-Legano, Jimmy Johnson, showed up at the last minute. He had about 24 hours of time on the service. Kyle Bush, you know dang good and well. Kyle Bush didn't want to do it. But he did. Really? I mean, I'm just assuming that they would have preferred

a lot more practice to prepare. Yeah, as competitive as he is, yeah. Yeah, they knew they were going to get on. on there and look bad and none of them want to look bad. So I was really surprised that they got all these guys to participate, so many that they had to actually, in the last few days before the event, remove a lot of the guys that had committed to it and place them into a last chance race. So a lot of the truck guys and Xfinity guys that you saw in the last chance race had committed

to doing it earlier in the week, only to find out later. days later that they would be in a last chance race and have to race their way into the event, which was a little disappointing, but that's what happened. I think going into, they've got another race already playing for Texas this Sunday. I think that you're going to have even more people compete. Martin Trex Jr., I believe, is going to be available. I think that a lot of guys are going to get better, and if they continue these events each week, they'll look and appear better and more entertaining, obviously, less cautions.

they'll also change the format to where there'll be only one reset. So if you crash your car, you get a free car, but after that, that's it. In the race Sunday, there were two resets, and that was the reason why we continued to crash. There has to be a point at some point to where, even if you're innocent bystander in a crash, if you crash too many times, you're out. Eventually, it thins the herd, and you get some green flag racing, which we had there at the end of the race. but it was a surprising success. Denny Hamlin wins the race last lap pass.

Denny did a really, really good job of putting in a lot of work to get fast. He ran thousands of laps all week long. He also instigated a lot of practice races for the rest of the competitors to improve their ability to be able to understand how things work. The cars are really, really hard. hard to drive on brand new tires are really cold and slick. So Denny did a really good job of sorting through that and helping people out and making sure the show was going to be as good as possible. He did also numerous media outlets before and even after winning the race.

So I got to give him a lot of credit. I wanted to win the race. I didn't want him to win. But he's been really putting in the work and taking it pretty seriously. If someone else, for example, that maybe isn't. such a proponent for the sim had won the race i don't think that they would have went out of their way the way denny did to uh get i racing as much exposure as he possibly could and that's really all all this has been has been great exposure for i racing so it was a lot of fun um denny won because he's good

he also had 10 lap fresher tires which are a pretty big deal my tires were better than timmy heels and you could tell that that was an advantage to me to get around him pretty easily Timmy's as fast as me. We are pretty much even on speed. And so if we had had the same tires, I don't know if I'd have been able to get around him. But you could tell I got around him relatively easy. So then he came up there out of nowhere with his better tires than anybody

and got the job done. Well, I got a question about that. Yeah. Okay. We got to understand a little bit. For sure. Ask all the questions. When you guys.

pitted. Yep. Are you deciding that on your own? Yeah. Or do you have somebody helping you decide on when to pit, how many tires to take? I had friends in my chat. We have a program called Discord where we could talk just like this in Skype without video. And so I had Stephen Stephen and Kevin King, two friends of mine, and they just volunteered to sort of chaperone me around this, through this race.

And so Stephen was in control of the pit. pit stop as far as what we wanted to do. If I said, Stephen, I'm coming down pit road. We're taking tires and I want four. He would make sure that I got four tires. You can change one, two, three, four, whatever you want to change. You can add as much fuel or no fuel. You can control pretty much every aspect of it.

And so I let him do that or I wouldn't have to worry about that. So Stephen is actually plugging that into the system to give you what you're asking for. Yep. Got it. Okay. And so I would just, at one point with 30 laps to go, we came down pit road and got tires, and then they had another caution with 20 to go, and that's when he didney pitted. Denny took it and got his tires.

Yeah. I told Stefan, I said, we're up front. We're relatively safe around the people that we're around. If I pit with 20 to go, I think this is going to be a wreck fest going forward. I didn't expect it to go green. I said, you know, if we pit now and we get back there around 15th, I think we get crashed. We're going to be a sitting duck on old tires up here, but I just feel like to get the best finish we can get, we will just ride this out. I had no expectations that my car was going to be good enough to drive to the front.

I was just trying to get the top five. Go green. We're running laps. And I'm like, crap, I'm really faster than these guys. like catching them quick. We were three-tenths a lap quicker than Smithley and Timmy Hill. And so then we passed them. I'm like, oh, my gosh, might win.

I really allowed myself to get suckered into thinking I was about to win this thing. And then Denny came around outside. And I wanted, so I was a little bit conflicted there because if there was nobody watching that race on TV and there wasn't anything on the line, and there was. I would have probably just drove Denny straight up the track and risk crashing myself or whatever to try to win it. But I knew we were on TV. I knew that it was going to be a huge deal to, we crashed and looked like a circus for 70 laps. There were a lot of crashes.

It was a circus. It was miserable for me sitting there because we would have a caution and then we'd get the one to go. And then they would add another lap to the caution because TV was under. commercial. And that was annoying as hell. That happened to every caution. So we'd run an extra caution lap during every caution. At one point, we were 50 laps into the race and had only run less than 20 green flag laps. It was awful. But so all that going through my mind, I just wanted it to look good. And I thought as we're, as I was throttling up in the middle of three and four and then he was up high, I thought we're going to come to the finish line and it'll be nose to nose and that'll be

good enough and whoever wins wins and then as i was opening up the wheel coming off turn four i thought he was going to be out toward the wall and he wasn't and we hit we didn't hit on his screen but we came close enough on mine that it shot me to the inside and almost crash but i still was able to run second huh but um and i really didn't want to go on to the today the today show this morning like denny had to do so did you guys actually hit though yeah we hit on my well it's funny because on my screen we hit. It shot me to the left and almost spun me out, but on his screen we didn't hit. We'll talk about it. We'll talk about it because we got Denny coming on the show here in a bit. Sweet. Oh yeah, we do, don't we? Yeah, didn't you. All right, so we didn't hit on his screen.

But when you said you didn't expect him to take the line that he did, what exactly does that mean? I thought coming off of Turn 4 that he would come off wider out against the fence, but he chose to come off the corner and not use up all the racetrack. And that's, you know, that's, you know, that's okay. He didn't really, that's why I asked in the video that y'all put out on Dirty Mo Media if he came down on me, because I really expected him to be quite a bit further up the racetrack. I never thought we would ever get close to hitting. I was actually trying not to hit him because I knew that would stall. I might have to lift and that would kill my momentum. Yeah. And I was expecting to have the momentum coming off the corner because I'd throttled up and run the bottom a little bit better. I thought his

high line was going to hurt him on the exit. But we hit and I had to lift and he had to lift and He didn't. I'm trying to picture. Yeah, go ahead and Lou. Sorry. Speaking of that video, a lot of the comments were about how you were driving with one hand. Is that typically what you do? On ovals, I do race with one hand.

So I run just as many road course races on there, too. One of my favorite cars on the service is the Skip Barber car, and it's a lot of fun. And I don't really remember how I drive that car because I never noticed that I race with one hand or two hands until Amy filmed me. And she's had a couple pictures or something of me on there. But yeah, I think going around the ovals, driving with just one hand, I'm able to control the car and make corrections with the steering wheel faster. And I just feel, it just feels more natural for some reason. But I totally, you know, when I raced in a cup car in real life,

I basically drove with my left hand because I would move my right hand all over the steering wheel. down the straightaways, it would be at what is 3 o'clock. And then when we'd go into the corner, I'd move it to 12 o'clock. And I'd kept moving it back and forth as I'd go into the corner or come out on the straightaway. So I never really had that hand using much force. I never really steered the car with my right hand at all. It was just sitting on the steering wheel doing nothing. Wow.

I want to know. I saw Denny's video, you know, where they had a crowd. of people watching them and stuff. I know you had Stephen helping you out. Like, did you have like people around you, you know, watching behind? Like paint that picture because I'd love to know what it looked like. He better not have. No, it was me by myself.

So when Amy filmed, yeah. When Amy filmed that video of me, I didn't even know she was back there. Oh, really? Yeah. And so I didn't, she comes around and film me on the right side while I was talking. I was actually talking to Stephen in my headset when I said, hey, did he come down on me? I had no idea

Amy was even there. I did not know that she was there and filmed that video until I got back to the couch and sat down and saw it on social media. Yeah, thanks Mike.

Well, with about 10 to go, I mean... Did you watch it, Mike? Yeah, well, Mike could have edited it out the end where I was like, dude, did he come down on me? I sound like such a damn sore loser.

I didn't do anything egregious by that. I thought it was fine. That was a fair question. And you weren't like, you know, throwing a tantrum or anything. But like, with about 10 to go, we just come. I'm glad I didn't because that would have probably made Dirty Mo Media's social media handles. It would have. If we look at it, if we look at it that way, I wish you would have.

Mike would have threw me right under the bus. No, listen, I looked at that and I thought it was actually, first of all, all, let me tell you how this happened. With about 10 to go, you're coming. You got your tires. And I can tell you're faster. and I'm like, man, I'm going to text Amy right now and say, Amy, listen, just record him and just so I can see. And she goes, you're going to be completely underwhelmed.

He's not going to give you any kind of reaction. I'm like, no, no, I know he. That's funny. I said, I know he won't. I know how he is. I said, I just want to see Dale drive these last few laps, regardless of how it ends up. And so at that time, you're running like fifth. And so here you come, and she started recording.

And then at the end, I had no idea what she got. I had no idea what you did. She just sends me the video. And she said, told you, he didn't do anything. And I watched it. And I'm like, I couldn't get away from the fact he was driving with one dang hand. I'm like, if he says nothing at all, I couldn't get away from the fact that he's driving like he's going to town to pick up an ice cream or something. Like just school.

And on the roll bar. Just whatever. Everyone watching was way more intense than Dale was. Oh, listen. I was, so I was videoing my own crew because honestly, I said, girls, come here. Dale may win this thing. And they come in and they're jumping up and down.

And it felt like a regular Sunday, guys. It was so cool that we are reacting in the same way. Now, listen, I'm not going to get into the argument about, you know, real racing versus eye racing. Because on this particular. day when we had nothing else to rely on, it felt cool, man. And it felt cool to watch you up there. It just was good.

It was fun. And the reactions, listen, Dale Jr. had us convinced, and Matthew and Leah, you know it. You were there. A few weeks ago, when we were in studio, Dale Jr. is like, I'm going to suck. This is terrible. I'm not going to be good. I'm just going to crash. He said it even on Twitter the other day.

And then there he is. There he is. Come in with a head of steam, taking the lead. The racing's incredible. And I'm like, dang it, I'm going to get hooked on this now. And look, I got my own reputation to take care of. Listen, I put my stakes in the ground. I'm not going to be bought by this trend.

I'm playing poker with him. We're watching it. And so when I saw the way, listen, I'm as objective as it gets now. I don't iris. Listen, I just know what you guys tell me. So when I saw the video of you driving that with one hand, I was intrigued just on what the heck, man? I mean, like, how cool can you be to not just want to be saw it on that thing, right?

And all that stuff. And I've also been intrigued by how much or how elaborate the setups and the rigs and the cockpits of, you know, there's some people that are just doing it with a screen. And then there's Denny that looks like he's driving a spaceship. And it's like, wow, this, though, is indicative of the way people spend money in our sport. You got your low-income teams, and they have just as much a chance, you know, to get in there and race. And then you got your, you know, your teams that are going to overspend like Denny. And I was intrigued by the whole thing, Dale, and the way you drove that last few laps and the way you reacted afterwards,

I didn't think there was anything egregious at all by that. And I didn't see anybody say otherwise. but I thought it was a thing, you know, wow, what an incredible race that was at the end. I would say to, Mike, that I forgot for,

I forgot for at least three or four hours what was going on in the rest of the world. And so, and, you know, we've got it really good. Yeah. You know,

where we are and where I'm at and what we're dealing with. But, you know, and I know some people aren't in a great, aren't in great shape, but just for, a moment, I think everybody from watching

social media and everything kind of got to feel like there was some normalcy again. I'm looking forward to seeing how this progresses and it all eventually wash away when the real racing comes back. But it's a great opportunity

for eye racing to showcase what it is and it's a lot of fun. They're getting a lot of subscriptions right now. They're breaking records on their subscriptions. And, you know, it's going to be a lot of new people in the service and having a lot of fun. And, you know, there's a lot of young kids out there enjoying it, too. So a lot of kids are happy as their parents are ordering rigs or computers, steering wheels, whatever it may be.

I remember when I got my first steering wheel back in the early, or the mid-90s when I got hooked on PC sim racing. So the papyr stuff? Yeah, I just remember buying the wheel, and I think it was in a Best Buy. How excited I could not wait to get home and plug it in and figure out how to get it to work. And I mean, I was on like a tiny, maybe a 19-inch or 17-inch tube monitor. Just so, it was the most advanced thing ever, you know. It was the coolest thing ever. So looking back at it now, it's crazy.

I got one more question, actually. Not to interrupt you. No, go ahead. This is hard on Skype. Did you do your own paint scheme? So the paint scheme that I ran was a bit of a spin-off of a car Michael Conti raced in Michael's one of our online racers in I racing for Junior Motorsports, and he races in the Coke series that runs every other week.

And he's one of the pros, you know. there's some guys on there that do this for a living, or they do it, you know, to try to make money and succeed and get recognition. And Michael's our guy along with Brad Davies. So this was a bit of a spinoff of a car that Michael ran last year, and I'm going to run it every chance I get. Because not only has this been great for eye racing, this has been great for filter time. imagine that okay i don't even know how to articulate this and i tried to do a couple tweets and keep deleting them because i can't figure out how to say this the right way but in a time where to sponsor we just wouldn't have a chance uh to sponsor motorsports uh race team we've had our

we've had filter time on the infinity cars before but the Those are some unique circumstances. But to be able to be on a virtual car and on a big network for an hour and a half or whatever and really do well in the race so well that we were going to be in all the highlights and talked about and you're going to see us and all the pictures on social media, it's huge for our little company. So that was a big nice surprise, I guess, at the end of the whole thing is what it's done for filter time. Blake said it's done so much for filter time and we've got some great

response from it. So that's been a good opportunity. I'm lucky in the sense that I'm not a full-time driver right now because I probably have to run whatever that paint scheme was. And since I'm retired and can basically start with a blank canvas, you know, we can put filter time on there and what a great opportunity. You think that that's the case, that those guys got to run those paint schemes like David Denny had to run the FedEx? I feel like that some drivers

were forced to run that race because yeah, because other drivers and other companies were competing as well and they didn't want to be left out and they wanted their partners

to get, you know, as a team owner, I would want my partners to get whatever exposure they could get such as Brandt for Justin Algar or something like that.

So, you know, I don't know for that for sure, but I would, I would assume that some of those drivers were asked by the organizations or their sponsors to compete. So Denny's available if you guys want to try to get him on here. Oh, dude, let's do it. Hey, before we bring Denny in, Dale, how about you tell us about a partner?

All right. Calling Denny Hamelin. Oh, yeah. It's perfect. There he is. Hey, we got the same thing going on. What's happening, man? I put her down.

She's done figuring her way out the crib on her own. She just comes walking and living. When did that happen? I think mine's about to figure out how to get out of the crib. Jersey just started doing that. You're here? Yeah. You there?

Yeah, I got you. Mine hasn't started getting out of the crib yet. You just started figuring that out? Yeah, the youngest one did. What's that like? You need to tell me. I don't know how she does it. I'm looking around and I'm thinking I just can't.

Gravity and physics just don't make sense right now. Yeah. I can't. Both of you guys can afford cameras. Y'all could probably figure this out. But if I keep it a little bit of an eye on them. I'm just waiting on mine to start climbing out. She should be getting out here.

and she should be figuring that out the next couple, I think, a month or so. I think I just got to lower the floor. I can't, you know, adjust the floor of it. I got to lower it. Yeah. I hear you, man. All right, so we just want to ask you real quick about the, a little bit about the race yesterday,

but you've been doing so much media for this. You did a ton of media before the race. You've done a ton of media since the race is over. you know what's what's the drive for that what's the what's the what's the end goal i guess is the question there well i think just trying to keep everyone still excited about our sport i mean i think that uh yeah i got to thinking about it a little bit more and people and the questions get raised and i think about you know how can i explain to someone that you know it's as real as it gets right And so I think about, you know, NBA players, if they were get on NBA 2K, that will not make that.

It requires a different skill set to be good in the video game than it does. You're not going to get better in real basketball by playing NBA 2K. You're not going to get better of playing football by playing Madden. However, you can get better at driving in real life if you get on eye racing. Yeah. So I think it requires. the same skill set. I like it, man.

I agree. It's like I was telling somebody in an interview this week that when you're playing Madden, which I love, you don't mimic the throw-in motion of a quarterback. You just mash a button.

And eye racing, I'm telling you, the steering input is so similar to the real thing. And actually what you're trying to accomplish and do and what you're trying to work against is all very similar.

You get a lot of feedback in the steering wheel and the pedals and so forth as well to help you. Well, man, I know that, NASCAR fans loved it yesterday. I think that what you're doing as far as the extra media, that's on you. That's your decision to do that. I think that is amazing as well to keep the conversation going.

You've been a sim racer for a really long time. I've been trying to tell everybody all week long that it was between you and William Byron, unfortunately for William. He didn't have the success in the race to be there at the end. Timmy Hill, though, man. He was right in the middle of it. Great guy. Great Sim racer.

Smithley was quick. a couple of them other guys were up there and a lot of fun. You had a lot of practice races that you put on this week. That also, that was another thing. So, Denny, you got online. You worked really hard to get fast, to get up the speed really quick. I know you haven't been putting a ton of time in the sim, but this week you did.

But you also hosted a lot of races for all the competitors to be a part of in the nights or evenings before the main event. And so what drove that? I mean, typically, you know, I think you reached out and tried to give everybody a helping hand there. Yeah, and I'll be honest with it, I went back and looked at the race. I looked at the guys that participated in the races the night before. They actually did a lot better than the guys that didn't. Yeah. And I think you understand that, like, there is a difference between going out there

and just trying to hit a hot lap versus going out there and racing. It is two totally different styles of driving. And, you know, I worked quite a bit with. my drivers, Kegan Leahy and Casey Kerwin, we ran, you know, offline quite a bit. We looked at data. I mean, just like you would in real life. And, you know, I had him give me data from my lap 5, my lap 10, 15, and 20. We all did a 20 lap run. He collected all of our data. And literally, it came out like Motek data. And he says, okay, I'm doing this versus you. And that's why in the long run, I'm a little bit faster. So I just started working on.

on it and getting better. But I think that the competitors, I was trying to get them to go out there, especially the ones that hadn't done it ever before, because you've got to understand, like, the little bit of lag between the cars and, like, how much space you really have and how much space you don't have, run an extended amount of time because a lot of these guys, you know, when we, we had that open session, we're just going out there and trying to hit the best qualifying lot they could. well, you know, the way you drive on lap 10 or 15 or in a race is nothing like you want to go out there and qualify for a fast lap. So I think it was just trying to get everyone with more experience because I think the more experience our competitors can get,

not only the better they're going to be, but the better our show that we're going to put on from now until whenever, you know, the seal stops. You talked about the show going on. There's already some conversation on social media about Texas being the next track next Sunday. Do you plan on competing every single event? Have you made any kind of personal commitment there? You know, I can do it for the foreseeable future. I did make some plans to go on a vacation in late April. But, I mean, who knows?

I mean, if I can, you know, if everything's still shut down, then no, I'm going to be sitting at home. I'm going to be doing some of my racing every Sunday. So, you know, I want to keep it going. I want to keep everyone energized about the sport. we do get back going. You know, it's, I think it's a, it's amazing I've seen from the social media people. I look at like the verified on Twitter, right?

The people that are verified that have talked about you. And I'm looking at all these different media outlets saying like, hey, this is, this is great. This is interesting. And I've just got, I know today I've received at least five private messages asking, where can I get a SIM rig? Like, you know, just where can. can I get all this stuff set up, you know? And so those are people now that have never been interested in racing or driving, that were casual fans that are now interested in doing it themselves. And when you do that, you're building the grassroots. It's the pipeline up to the top. So

not everyone can afford to go out there and build a street stock and put it at Myrtle Beach or whatever, but it becomes a little more affordable when you can just buy a wheel and have a computer and when you crash you can hit reset instead of having to figure out how you're going to buy a new clip for your race car yeah absolutely well man i'm excited about that i'm i'm excited to continue to either be a part of those races or or or at least be a observer um going forward but uh are you not going to race are well i want to i don't have any plans either i just i have a two-year-old and wife and uh oh a lot of other things there's a lot of other things Above that in the party list.

Oh, you're going to try to stay married? Okay, I understood. Hey, we got to talk about this. Yeah. What about the last lap, man? Exactly. I'm sitting here and I'm dying to know your angle on the last lap. We finally have the two of you together here.

I got Keegan in my ear, right? And like, there was, I went back and looked and I was. 13, or I've restarted 14th of 18 to go. And I was looking and it was like 13th. I'm 13 to go because I got in a few little incidents there on restarts. And I'm getting to the bottom of guys. I think if there ever was a radioactive, you're going to hear me saying, you know, go, Bubber.

Somebody pinching me, get the hell out of the way. I'm trying to tell everybody I got them on new tires. In other words, just give me some space, let me go. And trying to politic all I can to get all the way. space I can because I know I need every lap to get up there. But I've noticed that, so he's in my ear and he's kind of letting me know what's going on up front. And he keeps telling me, hey, you're two to three tenths faster than later every lap.

So if you just don't make a big mistake, you'll get there. And so I knew going in the last lap, I came off four, and he told me, get low. And I saw right when he said that, you went low. And I'm like, and at that time, I said, well, the bottom. is going to be two-tenths faster. And I felt like at the time I was three-tenths faster, and I could overcome it by running the top. So, you know, I like your move.

I think on equal tires, there's no question you made the right move, but just you couldn't overcome the tire deficit that, I mean, we were coming so quick there. I was afraid that if I gave you the top, I was certainly going to be finished. The other thing, too, yeah, the other thing, too, is I wanted to finish. You know, I wanted to finish into top five, right? Like a, because I don't get that.

That was my goal the whole damn week. Who cares though? I said, I bet you Dale Jr. would have taken second before that race started. You damn right. You know what? I wanted two. I wanted to be honest with you. Yeah.

But hold on, Danny. If you're saying that it's as real as it gets, that's your thing. Then did you intend to bump Dale all the way to the apron? I mean, that's what you're saying, right? I asked him, I said, did we hit because I didn't feel a thing. Yeah. I was watching his, well, it's funny because it's funny because he, in his video, he hardly has any steering input from contact.

It doesn't fit. I'm telling you, like, I was looking over because I didn't see anything because I just saw you going down the racetrack. Yeah. That's when I yelled up my explicit spookeratives. Yeah. What did your little girl say? She was just, you know, taken aback, first of all, about my language. Yeah.

But I was just excited, man. I'll be honest with that. I was just as excited as I would be for a normal race. they were all excited and we just watched it back you know probably 10 minutes later and then I went and did all my interviews but like there was just there was a crowd here watching and cheering on and stuff so

I mean I can't tell you you know and I'm sure you have about all the messages you've got about people saying how hey that was exciting it was fun you know regardless of whether it's fun and it was entertaining to watch yeah I was telling Mike I felt like I forgot what was going on

in the rest of the lives and the rest of the world for three hours. When I got up from that computer, it was like, oh, man, we're still in quarantine, you know, and it was crazy. That's the thing, by the way, that I have objectively been able to conclude is that that's what this was all about. And the people that are sitting there kind of getting caught up on, well, I don't watch video games, so I'm not going to enjoy this and whatever. You're missing the point, jerks.

I mean, that's not the point. The point was there was no purse. There was nothing but, I mean, like, everything that was absolutely pure is held within this race for a couple hours. And that's what it's about. And we could actually just watch it. Yeah. And those, every driver that did that, they donated their time. Like, you know, they have families.

They have all that stuff going on. They did it for nothing. And they did it because they wanted to entertain the people out there that's been, you know, aching for some. racing right now. Yeah, I was telling Mike that I thought a few of those guys were out there probably against their will in a sense. Right. I mean, you know, like Jimmy, right? I mean, he knows he's going to go out there and run dead last, right? And not, it's going to be bad. But still, I love the fact that he's willing to be vulnerable enough to say, you know what, who cares? I was just going to go out there and I'm going to have fun and, you know, just, you know,

It helps our sport, guys like Jimmy, regardless of whether good or bad, he's out there and he's at least giving it a try. Yeah. Well, before I let you go, just a quick update on how you guys are doing. I'm sure everybody wants to know how you're handling, you know, self-quarantine and everybody good at the house. Yeah, everyone's good here. You know, the kids, we're trying to keep them entertained. I tell you what, we're doing this whole e-learning. stuff. Oh my goodness. I would never, it's amazing. Like, they're, you've got all these shapes.

I'm trying to figure out how many vertices, how many edges. I don't know. I'm on Google, right? I'm on my computer Googling the answers to the, my first graders questions. Like, I don't know the answers. That's crazy. So, I mean, it's three hours of that every single day. So, and I like to do it, you know, because I have some help here, but I like, you know, this, this. This, you know, this. If there's any time to spend extra time with your family and kids, it's like right now. So I'm enjoying those two or three hours that I'm pulling my hair out, trying to figure out how many vertices are on a sphere. By the way, I did enjoy at the end of that race, Dale. I always hear from you how realistic eye racing is, and I've never really done it.

And I noticed at the end of the race when Denny won, and he went to slow down and all, he reached like he was reaching. Dude, you reached like you're reaching for your belts. It was hilarious. I saw that too. I saw that too because that is my normal, you know, you start, you get into a term line, you start pulling stuff off. You've been cinched down for so many hours.

There's no way. See, I thought that rig had belts. There's no way I'd get that thing if it didn't have belts. I'd tell you what, I stepped off that thing one time. And it, I mean, it just was like, whoa! It nearly tipped over. Yeah.

Well, man, I know. you've been enjoying the time of your family. I appreciate you taking a little bit of that to spend with us. And congratulations on a great day yesterday. Awesome win. Great day for our sport. Great fun for NASCAR. You've been such a great supporter for all of that.

And I know you'll be a big part of it going forward in the next couple of weeks. And it should be a lot of fun. Hopefully we'll get another opportunity at another duel on the last lap. I know. I thought it was perfect. So other than you finished in second, of course. Well, maybe next time, buddy. Yeah, all right.

I appreciate it. Thank you. See you guys. Thanks, Denny. See you. Y'all ready to start? Ask Jr.? All right, everybody.

It's time for the Asr Jr. portion of the show. And we've talked about it over the last couple of weeks, Mike. We got a new sponsor for this part of the show. We do. We're excited to announce it. We'll do that at the end. And frankly, we're always excited to do this thing live.

Unfortunately, can't do that right now. But we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. Lucky for us. have Leah and she's been gathering awesome questions from everybody on social media so Leah you got a few on hand I do we haven't done one of these in a while so we have a few questions from yesterday and then a few from a couple weeks back so let's start out with iRacing it was a hot topic and asked junior

questions this week so Dustin Sneath wants to know is the seat in your eye racing rig fitted to you like you would do in a real car or did you just use something off the shelf I use something off the shelf and typically there's a lot of gamer seats out there and a lot of rigs that come with seats. And they're, you know, it's pretty standard, straightforward stuff. So to be honest, though, you don't have to have a rig. And I think everybody knows that. But all the stuff that you're seeing online with all the drivers, those are all thousands of dollars, high dollar rigs.

If that's what you want, by all means. go out there. There's a couple great companies that make awesome rigs. Chad Wheeler makes a rig called the WR1. That is probably the most commonly sold rig, the one that I've been seeing sold the most to a lot of the drivers here recently that have been trying to get rigs.

And Chad's manufacturing and ready to deliver within a week, so you can have your rig really quick. I raced at a desk with a typical chair. I'm actually sitting at my desk that I raced at for the last 10 years. I've used this chair that I'm sitting in longer than that

to Sim Race. So you can take a typical chair. I just bought a standard office chair that doesn't have any wheels on it. It just has straight legs. I actually cut the back legs to recline the chair just a little bit to make it a little more like a race car seat.

Of course you did. You don't want to be leaning up straight up. You don't want to be sitting with perfect posture like you would at school or at a desk job. You want to be in a race car, so you want to recline just slightly. So I've trimmed the back legs of this very standard, basic, $100 chair. And I put the pedals right on the floor in front of me, steering wheel mounted to the desktop, monitor right in front of me, and a basic computer, and I was off and running. And I did that for, I raced that way online up until about six months ago when I finally bit

the bullet and bought a rig but you don't have to have a rig uh you can have a you can even race on a laptop if you have a gaming laptop that will work just fine you can get a wheel for around two hundred dollars and uh you can be racing so and you can win you know the computer the rig none of that creates speed none of it makes you faster none of it makes you better so that's my uh that's my to that. All right. Next question is from Higgie. Will any of the new I racing cup drivers develop bad habits from all the simulator time before hopping back into a real race car once things go back to normal? You know, I don't think that they probably will pick up bad habits. It's possible to probably, you know, get some muscle memory and things like that that might

transition over to the real car. But the benefits from it, I think, it far outweigh any of that. that. So I would say that if you're racing on a simulator or software that's unrealistic, absolutely. You would definitely not want to pick up any bad habits or any intuition or any apprehension that you might carry over into the real world. So, But I feel so confident in the realistic approach of iraicing software and the feedback that I get from it and how much it mimics the real world that I would not be worried about taking bad habits over to the race car and competing on the real racetrack and that hurting my experience or hurting my performance. But with other programs that are less realistic, absolutely, that could be an issue.

Because as the realism drops and it becomes more arcade, which is fine because that is the demographic that some of those brands are going for, you know, is the arcade racers. You know, anybody can hop on this and enjoy it and have fun and do it well or succeed at it. As it becomes more realistic, it becomes tougher to be good at. But, you know, I would, I would just, you know, there's that say that saying, risk for drivers that are racing in the manufacturer sims and that probably is probably where I'm most concerned as a driver is when I go use the manufacturer sim because that's the one that my team is my team's using that information my engineers are using that information my crew chiefs using information from that the entire team has bought in and is plugged in to that simulator

trying to help them on race day. And if that thing's not right, then we've got a problem. But if I'm racing at home from my computer in a SIM rig on eye racing, I don't worry too much about carrying over to the real world any bad habits. Next question is from Jared. He wants to know why does it seem like more drivers are fighting for their rides in 2020 than they did 10, 15, or even 20 years ago? I don't know, guys.

What would be a great example of that? Yeah, I don't know. Is that, is that true that they're fighting more for the rides that they were 20? I mean, we have these guys come into our studio that makes me think that they were fighting just as much back then as they were now. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you hear about how Ricky Rudd, you know, and your dad and stuff and with the, you know, between Bud Moore and the children's rides. Yeah, exactly. I think that's the big difference. What do you guys think? I feel that's a great point that it probably was so similar back then. it wasn't everybody's business the way things are today. And I feel like that, to be honest with you, a lot of guys have a little more security,

and it's due to their own efforts that they have those. This isn't some, you know, this isn't job security that they didn't earn or didn't create for themselves. But when I look at some of the guys in the field, I feel really good about their position and their security and the efforts that they put forward to be marketable, to be great on social media, to create value for themselves. I think today drivers have more at their fingertips

in creating value for themselves and value to their team than they did years ago with marketing, social media, and all those types of things. So years ago, I mean, if you weren't, aren't good on the track. If you didn't perform for that particular team in those particular circumstances, that was enough reason to move on to the next guy. And nowadays, you know, you can, you can be marketable, you can be great on social media, you can create great relationships with your partners, and in time, buy yourself a little more time in the car to find out how to make

them pieces fit to where the performance on the track improves and gets to where it wants to go. For example, like Joey Lugano, you know, he was moved out of the Gar, he was moved out of the Gibbs car. Do you think, Joe Ligano gets another quality ride and turns into the Joe Ligano we know today back in the 70s or even the 80s? I feel like that he probably would have been moved on from not really ever got that second opportunity and not gotten the chance to really prove himself. And so I think that people are starting to realize, and he's the key example for that,

that some of these drivers just need a little time to get into the Cup series. It's hard to really hop into that series and perform right out of the gate. Yep. And I think that some of these guys are, you know, being given a little more time to, to prove themselves and they deserve it. All right. Next question comes from Brittany Engel. First she said,

great job on Sunday. It was nice to scream at my TV again. Anyway, congratulations on baby number two. How do you think Ila will be as a big sister and how did Gus take the news? Well, you know, we're still so early in this experience and it's great to be expecting and we're very excited about that. but due to the restrictions on all non-essential visits,

we can't really go and do the checkups like we typically would. It's making us a little bit nervous. But other than that, I mean, I just tell Amy, I'm like, well, it's kind of like the old days. I mean, you know, we're just, this is just going to be a different process, and we can just hope that everything's going the way it needs to be going. At this point, we would be finding out the, sex of the baby and all the other things that you learn throughout the process,

but we're going to have to be patient weight on that. So it's been a little bit different than the first experience when Ila was, when Ila was still inside Amy's belly. But, you know, I'm just, I don't know that it's sunk in either, because we're going through this thing with the virus and the whole world, and we're sort of caught up in that and trying to, trying to entertain Ila and make this as normal as we possibly can for her. This is a point, and I noticed it earlier this morning,

like where a lot of bad habits can creep into your life in a situation like this, where I don't mind allowing Ila to operate an iPad at this stage. I mean, she's not even two years old. It's her birthday's in April. I know a lot of parents are going to have a lot of problem with that. But there's some apps on there that. that in my mind accelerate her growth and her knowledge and ability to problem solve. And we don't let her, we don't just throw the iPad down the floor and let her just go where she wants to go.

We have just a couple strict barriers for her to keep her in a space on that device that I'm comfortable with and that I feel like accelerates her learning. And so she calls them games, but there's puzzles and all kinds of information on there where she's learning the alphabet and letters and counting. And for me, it's really improved her speech and a lot of other things as well. But that can become something that she wants to do all day long, right? And we're in a situation where we really are limited on what we can do. and if we wanted to, if we let it happen, Aila could literally sit on that iPad all day long.

And so, you know, this is a situation where we're just trying to not let those bad habits create because once everything does go back to normal, we don't want A-Lub to be stuck on her iPad all day, and that's all she wants to do. So with all that going on, it's almost been impossible to really even think about the fact that Amy's, I'm sure Amy's not having a problem thinking about it, but for me and everybody else around here, honestly, like, we haven't been able to think about expecting, you know, and having another child. So it's been weird. Almost have to remind myself that we're months away from being able to be parents again

because there's so much going on that you forget everything that's going on. You know, and I'm, I don't want that to sound cold or like I'm not plugged in, but I'm just trying to make sure we got all the we need here and make sure that, you know, when we get up in the morning and everything's where it needs to be and, and trying to stay on top of what's going on in the world and what to believe and not to believe and just making sure that we're prepared for whatever might be coming our way, good and bad. And so we hadn't really had time to, you know, do the things. I mean, all those checkups and doctor visits sort of keep you on a calendar, right?

For the dads, it kind of keeps you on your toes and keeps you included and involved, and you can watch the process happen. But it's tough without all that. Can we just talk about for a second the moment he found out that the video? Oh, yeah. Go ahead. I really, I was awesome. It was every dad right there, I think.

That's it. Exactly. I can appreciate it. I remember when you and I were talking on the phone later that night, he's like, did I look like an idiot? I'm like, well, yeah, but see, this is the thing. We're all idiots in that moment, right? I can relate to that.

It's like you can plan and plan. and assume how you would react in moments like that. And you have no control over what comes out of your mouth, what goes into your head, the things, the way you process information. It completely off guard. I remember when my wife told me, yeah, it's time to go to the hospital to deliver the baby. I mean, we'd only been planning for three, four, five months, right? I mean, like it's to say, you know, I had my protocol down. And I immediately started screwing on a jar lid into something that was not intended for the jar lid.

and I immediately started doing stuff and I'm like, I'm not even control of my own body right now, which is what I could appreciate about that video in that moment when you were like, how do you know what the sex is already? Right. It was, you know, we had,

we sort of had been planning with Ila and working to get pregnant. And so when it happened, it was, I was waiting for it to happen. And with this situation, we had decided when we were going to start planning for that and trying to get pregnant. And we had decided when that was going to happen and we hadn't started yet. And so this was a surprise, you know. It wasn't something that we had meant to happen just yet, but we were not very far away from starting that process.

It was very close. And so it was really neat because I just didn't know that we would, you know, I just didn't know that we would get pregnant unless we really put in the work. And so that was interesting. I was just surprised, I guess, because of how it went the first time. And I'm 45 and we're not young pups. But that was fun. And listen, kudos for Amy.

Kudos to Amy for video and that. Further props for posting it. She's extremely sharp when it comes to that kind of stuff. I'm looking forward to going through that whole process again and to have another human in our house. And the first two years of Iowa have been incredible. And I can't wait for that experience all over again and to see them two together interact with each other.

It just be so much fun. All right. That's all we have for today, guys. Well, I asked June, we talked about at the top of Ask Junior. We got a new partner that we're really excited about. Xfinity has joined. They have joined the Dale Jr.

Download to sponsor the Asch Jr. part of our show. We're going to be having Asch Jr. involved in the show weekly. Or weekly with Xfinity on board. We cannot wait to get started with them. They're going to be a great partner. They are super involved in our sport from top to bottom. They do an amazing job for the Xfinity series and beyond.

and now they're a big part of the Dale Junior Download family, their Dirty Mo Media family. That's true, yeah, both podcasts. That's right. Door bumper clear. They're going to be supporting that as well. So thank you, Xfinity. I hope fans out there that are supporting us on this podcast will support Xfinity as well

because they are just an incredible company for our sport as a whole. So we'll be talking about them a lot going forward. Thank you. Valvillin has made its mark in America on the road. and in motorsports. They are the original motor oil guys and have been a part of many first. We like to be the original here on the Dale Jeter download. We've had fun bringing you the DIY segment.

Now we're going to have some different topics for this segment. With that said, Dale, you have a race car graveyard on your property. People know it. People love it. What was the first race car that started it all on the graveyard? Well, the, um, I don't know. I don't know either.

I'm just sitting here trying to think of it. And I have a, I know they weren't the first. I know some early ones. Yep. That California crashed with Kozlowski's in early. That wasn't the first. No, I didn't think it was first. It was an early one.

Okay. What's earlier than that one then? So I have a picture somewhere, but this is how this started. The graveyard started. I, we own, back when around 2004, when I moved onto this point, property. I was racing at DEI. We had Chance 2. I would run a couple plate races for Chance 2. And when we would get done, I think that they were moving to new bodies and they said, hey, we're going to cut these bodies off. Do you want one? So I had, I acquired maybe four bodies in 2004

from Chance 2. One of them actually was from 2001. One of them was the DMP card that we won the July Xfinity race with in 2001 or 2 or 3 I can't remember what it was but it was old DMP car but anyways I got four shells

from around that time and they set in my yard like in my yard yard yard in the that's right yeah right in the backyard and I eventually moved them into the woods and they began they began

that's right race car graveyard so it's not like something you thought of and like set out to do. Okay, I didn't know that. He used to have them as yard ornaments. They were hard. Yeah, we called them yard ornaments.

Like somebody might put a gnome in their bushes. Yeah, I got you. We had grave. You had race cars. Yeah, that's cool. I eventually got tired of them out in the middle of the yard, and so we moved them into the woods because we had some trails and so forth, and we thought it would be cool just to see them out there in the woods on the trails.

You know where you can see those things? I remember where it was well documented. It was when we did a piece for Funkmaster Flex. Yeah. You remember when we did that? This would have been 2004. Such a weird time. Yeah, Funkmaster Flex was out there.

And they, I remember in that piece, I don't remember the name of that show. But he spent a minute or so talking about those four, I think it was four. There was a couple Budweiser shells, that DMP shell. And I don't remember what the other one was. But, yeah, man. As soon as you said that, I'm like, oh, that's exactly what it was. Yeah. So that's that.

For 150 years, people have trusted Valvaline in their cars, and we've trusted them in our race cars, too. Valvaline, the original motor oil. Yes, standing by for odd history in three, two, one. So we got some odd history today. This is from NASCAR, man? Yeah, he teed us out. NASCAR man, follow him on Twitter. He's one of the best follows out there for some good NASCAR history.

The odd history today is about Morgan Shepard. And some of you guys might remember this. But here's a little context on that particular day. In a truck series race at Kentucky Speedway in 2001, Morgan Shepard wanted to draw attention to his unsponsored and underfunded team. So he came up with a cool plan. The idea was for Morgan to do his own pit stops. Yeah, no crew.

Just Morgan. That's the way it ought to be. He thought that it might be a great way to get his truck on TV. So Morgan pulled his truck into the pits during a green flag run. All right. Green flag, not caution. He climbed out. He grabbed a jack and an air wrench, and he got to work, changing the right side tires.

After that, he sat on the pit wall. He drank a Pepsi and ate a bag of potato chips. and then got back in the car or the truck, sorry. It says that despite doing the stop himself and drinking the Pepsi and eating the potato chips, he only lost four laps. I have a hard time believing that. I have a hard time believing that, too.

I think Morgan caught a fish that was this big and then now it's this big. Unfortunately, the TV broadcast declined to show his stop. It seems like I remember that otherwise. Like they actually showed what was going on. I thought they had it on MRN. Like they called it on MRN if I remember. But they...

I would have been watching it on TV, but I thought they did show this because I remember seeing something about this. We got to find video if it. Morgan ended up dropping out of the race after 54 laps with a fuel pump problem and finished 31st, and he later told MRN radio. I didn't have a pit crew at the track, so I thought it was a good opportunity for me to do it. I've built the motors, I've built the cars, and I've driven them, but I've never done a pit stop.

There you have it. Odd History. Thank you, NASCAR, man. Thank you, Morgan Shepherd. All right, everybody's last call. This is the end of the show. We're going to hit you with a few important tidbits and information going out, though. The Dale Jr. Foundation is offering you the chance to ride laps with me. It's important to note that this ride-along will be taking place at Bristol Motor Speedway. I don't know that that happens very often at Bristol. So we've had a ride-alongs at Charlotte for many, many years. Last year we did it at Darlington, which was unique and fun.

Bristol will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for anybody that does this. The raffle is still ongoing. This event will happen in mid-September. Hopefully everything is back to normal by then. Go to Ride with Dell Jr.com. Ride withdel Jr.com. Between now and June 30th to enter this raffle. It's only $8.88.

It's over at June 30th, all right? I'd love to give you a once-on-lifetime opportunity of taking some laps around Bristol with me. We're getting lots of questions about the Dale Jr. Download TV show on NBC Sports Network. You might have noticed our Kyle Petty episode last week did not air. The simple reason is the studio's closed, like the rest of the world, pretty much.

Right now, we're not sure when the new episodes will start airing on its normal Wednesday time slots. So there's something we do, know on Wednesday, April 8th, NBC Sports Network will designate that whole day as Wednesday. That's April 8th. They'll be showing content all day long that involves some of the Dell Jr. download shows, some races that I'm a big fan of or either involved in. I will be interacting on social media, mostly mainly Twitter and my Instagram stories,

along with a lot of this programming on Wednesday, April to 8th. So be tuned in. I'm going to park my ass. right on the couch and we're going to have some fun that day reliving some great memories. It'll be part of a motorsports themed week. That Wednesday will be dedicated to some important races in my career such as the 2004, Daytona 500. They will also be rebroadcasting races that I just enjoyed watching.

Maybe I weren't even in the races. So I'll tell you all about that when it happens. So keep an eye out for that. And as for the podcast, we plan on keeping pushing. keeping these new episodes coming out every week. We'll try to improve on our shows as we're trying to work in a new environment over Skype. And, you know, it was great to have Denny on as a guest today. But we'll continue to get creative with our shows and try to keep everybody up to date on what we've got going on.

But we hope to get back into normal very soon. We really miss the big table. We miss our studio, but this is going to have to do for now. don't forget to visit Dirtymodemedia.com for additional information. We're going to be pushing content out as far as our podcast, but also

through our YouTube channel. This is a great time for us to get creative and have some fun. So keep an eye out for anything there and learn all about it at dirtimomedia.com. That's it. Close us out, Dale. All right, guys. Thanks for joining the Skype with me,

you three. And, yeah, I really appreciate all y'all's efforts during such a unique time trying to scramble and get everything together and edit this program together in unusual circumstances. But I know everybody's doing the best they can, so appreciate everybody's hard work as a crew. You guys are amazing. Appreciate everybody who's tuned in to listen to the show. And we'll have you another one for next week, and I hope everybody's doing well.

Stay safe, stay healthy. This bit of bad assery was bad assery. It was made by Dirtymo Media. Dirty Mo!