The Dale Jr. Download - 295 - Doug Richert: Duffel Bag Doug

Episode Date: April 28, 2020

He won a championship, as a crew chief, with Dale Earnhardt at the age of 20. Now Doug Richert sits down with Dale Earnhardt Jr and co-host Mike Davis to talk to us about that incredible feat and more. Just how did a 16-year old go from San Jose, California to North Carolina and make the big time so quick? Richert's road has been a bouncy one that has seen him win titles, come oh-so-close and struggle with underfunded teams. Dale, Mike and Doug discuss a wide range of topics from meeting Dale Earnhardt, their friendship, and how good of a best-man The Intimidator was. Doug gets emotional sharing one of the best moments of his life with Dale Jr. They also talk about the Junior Johnson years, cigar-smokin' JD Stacy, winning with Greg Biffle and Doug's current driver, Timmy Hill. Richert admits his biggest regret of his career and how he yearns for another opportunity. He reveals what Suitcase Jake was really like and tell the origins of his nickname, Duffel Bag Doug. The DJD gang share their anxieties about a possible return to racing after the COVID-19 pandemic. They share their excitement of the news that Matt Kenseth will return to racing in the 42 car. AskJr talks about Dale 'Twitching' and hangin' with Ed Nelms and more. We also learn through Ancestry that Dillner isn't who he thinks he is and Mike's connection to waffles and pirates. 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.

Your room looks great. Now your face looks bad. That's more light on my face. Is that too much? No, it's not too much. You're not too bright. You can actually see a difference from your shirt to your beard now.

Like it was just kind of all like one black. Gray. Okay. It was one gray morgish color. Okay. Yeah. It's like you've been embalmed. Not at my earl.

Because that's our family. does. Right. Yeah, Leah actually has authority in that matter. Oh, my. She's the only one in here that has worked with embalment fluid. Makes great Easter egg die, by the way. What?

What? Hold on. You used Easter egg? You dip Easter eggs in embalming fluid? Yeah. That's the, that's a, if you want a really pretty pink Easter egg, use, I think it's called Colorall. It's my grandpa uses.

He's amazing. He's a great. He's a great embalmer and great Easter egg dire. This is a production of Dirty Mo Media. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of Del Jr. Download podcast with me as usual as Mike Davis, my co-host, Matthew Dillner, and Leavon. Everybody is in the house.

We got a great show for you today. Our guest today is Doug Reichert. Richard. Ricker. Rickard. I don't know how you say this man's last name. I've heard it's pronounced so many different ways. He's going to come in here and tell us.

Doug was my dad's crew chief when he won his first championship. He was a big part of my dad's career starting out. He also had a great career in his own right, winning races later on in the 2000s with Greg Biffel. We're going to hear about all of that. How this guy from California moved to North Carolina became a cup of crew chief at 20 years old. All right?

I've got a lot of questions. It's going to be a great show. Let's get started. He has strong every single racetrack, flat, bang, short, Hey, he probably would be one of them and they would run them under. There he is. Hey, guys.

How's it going? It's good to see you. All right, everybody. It's Dale Jr. with the Dell Jr. download here with our guest, Doug Reichert. I say Reichert, but I've heard your name pronounced multiple different ways. Never heard from you which way it's supposed to be pronounced.

Mike Davis and I were talking about you this week. He pronounced it. How did you pronounce it, Mike? I've pronounced it three different ways. Richard, Reichard, Reichard. I mean, I don't know. I need to hear a ruling. Let's hear it. Well, I like, I usually answer to anything, but the, the how we always say it is rich, like the R-I-C-H is rich, ord. It's a German background. I've been saying it wrong too, all these years. See,

but I always know, I always know you were talking to me, so. Well, I'd heard it as Doug Reichert, like, way back. Like, you know, people were, I guess, people were mispronouncing it. It's been that way from my inception. One thing I do know about you is you from California and San Jose, California. So when you're in high school, college, or you obviously didn't get into college too much, but you went to high school, were you messing around with cars? Were you a car guy? What kind of motorsports experience did you have out there in California? Well, really, the whole time I was in California, California, one of my neighbors, his name was Ken neighbor.

I'm sorry, I know that wasn't a funny part, but that was still funny to me. Do you want me to explain that? But Ken Neighbors was out there, and he ran figure eight races at Merced and Antioch and all that. So he was just around the corner from us. So we went down the street, and we would always go down there and mess with cars. We got one ready, and we go to figure eight race. And so that was my racing background right there, actually, until I, hopped in the truck and came east. All right, so you hopped in the truck came east. Is that literally

how long are you making this decision? How long are you caught, you know, having this conversation with your family? I'm going to, I'm going to east. And was it, was it stock car racing that you were after? Did you know why you were going east? Yes. Let me, let me tell you a little bit led up to that. So my buddies in town, Jeff Prescott, Dave D. Ambrosio, Mark Bufre, John, all these guys, we still hang out. But we all had metal shop, auto shop and all that in school. So we were always messing with cars and stuff like,

yeah. Well, my buddy, Jeff, started dating Lana Australin. Wow. Oh. Okay. Daughter of Rod, Austerle.

So as we were going up, you know, we got to talk and we were running at San Jose Speedway with a car there on the Oval. And so racing kind of came about. Well, then, Rod had Roland Walatica working for him also doing carpet. Roland Walatica ran a modified at San Jose.

Wow. So all of a sudden, we start talking racing and they just made the decision. And man, why don't we go racing? And we said, okay. And so Roland Walatica got hooked up with Jeff. We all met one another. And it was okay, we're going to go racing. So we started building the hauler.

We got a bare box. trailer and Roland and his dad they designed the the ramp system that was in the back and we actually showed up at the racetrack with the first two-car hauler on the circuit wow wow so all right so that's how you're that's how you made the connection to rod australin that's where Roland come into the picture and how he how he was a part of it so all he all together said you know we're going to move east. We're going to go join NASCAR. So that's how you got steered in that direction. And now, what year is this? This was in 77. So in 77, you moved to the east coast, North Carolina. Yep. Yeah, we decided to pack up and leave. I was 16. I turned 17 driving through Texas.

Wow. You know, big state. So it took a long time. I gained a whole year. But, you know, so we headed this way. Well, one of the, the factors in me leaving California was if I came out here, I was 16, 17 years old, I had no legal guardian. So actually, Roland Walatica was my legal guardian out here on the East Coast to make any, you know, life-threatening decisions or whatever. And so my parents, you know, wrote out this letter, giving them all the approval, and boom, away we come. And so what do we do? We land in North Carolina and we come out with a fifth wheel trailer, the truck and everything. And I'm living at the Frog Creek Campground at Carol Wins. Oh, really? Wow. So that was your first house. Your first

residence was my home. Yeah, if I didn't like one spot, we moved to another. And what were, your parents obviously approved it, but what did it take a lot of convincing for for them to let you go out to the East Coast? What was that conversation like? Well, you know, they saw the buildup. I mean, I was always tearing apart the motorcycle or, you know, I was helping my dad change oil in the car and doing all that stuff. And when we started getting involved, it was actually building the team and then the decision to come back, you know, of course we were in one race local, went to Ontario's BUA when it was still Ontario. And it just started. Rowan Wolatica was the driver as we started this whole adventure.

Yeah, so what kind of driver was rolling? Well, rolling was really good at Darlington. Our standard procedure at Darlington, this is just more funny than anything, but Roland was a great guy, and he was learning. He came from modifies.

He wasn't a stock car driver. So about every third lap at Darlington, we would hit the wall. So we just stayed on our knees, sitting in the garage area. We had some ball joints ready. We had the wrenches to reset the toe and some hammers to knock the body out

and tell them, all right, let's go again. Yeah, that's awesome. So, Y'all, so Roland's driving a little bit. Y'all, y'all had Dave Marcus as well behind the wheel, and y'all had two cars, Roland driving one, Dave driving the other. How was that received? We had Dave on the show, and he seemed to not be a big fan

of sharing a ride with another driver, sharing a team with another driver, which eventually he said led to him quitting the team walking up into the press box at Atlanta Motor Speedway near the end of the year in 1978 and telling them in the press media that he's out of the ride he's leaving Rod Austerlin. So you came there with Roland, you're working with Roland, Roland's driving a car, but you also have Dave Marcus in the shop and were you working on Dave's cars where you're in the garage in the pits working with David at any point throughout that process?

Really, you know, back then there wasn't, we didn't have a lot of lot of people. So we all got the cars ready, somewhat of a group effort just like we have nowadays, but a little smaller version there until we got our shop up and running and, you know, as we led into the 79 and the 80 season. But, you know, we just, it was a group effort. It was, it was unusual in the day because there was only single car teams, one driver, all this. And then Rod Oshel and owed it to rolling for getting everything going. That was the deal to start with. But then Dave Marcus came along and, you know, we had the Shoney's big boy or something, I think, on the car. And one thing led to another. It was just, it was his decision to leave.

When did you first meet Dale Earnhardt? In 78. That's a year after you moved. You're meeting Dale Earnhardt a year after you left California? Well, yeah. I had a mission to go meet him. You were out there to find Dale Earnhardt. That's right. In 1978, he was nobody. He wasn't even racing full-time in a Cup series at this point.

That's true. So how did you meet him? How did you and dad cross pass? Well, that is interesting because I don't remember. Obviously, I think it was rolling a rod that made the connection with Dale. Whether Dale came to them, saw us as a new team up and coming, an opportunity. I don't know. I don't know that specific answer, how we met.

But all I know is when he came in 78, we ended up, and they made the deal, oh, yeah, he wants to run with us. Well, we only ran five races just so that we could stay rookie of the year eligible. Yeah. So what was your first impressions then of Dad? So Roland drove this blue and yellow number 98. Dad would end up driving that car as well in a couple cup races in 1970. and he also ran in a couple of sportsmen 300-mile races at Charlotte and so forth in the car.

What was your impression to Dad? Did you notice anything special about him in those first couple of races or first couple of events working with him? Oh, yeah. I mean, obviously he had the talent and it was no secret at that point once he got out there and, you know, he hops in our stuff. and, you know, we always think our stuff is as good as anybody, but when you jump in there and you run like he did and do the finishes, and we're like, oh, oh, we've got something here, you know. And so when 78 finished up, you know, we're all thinking,

wow, this is going to be pretty cool. And then, you know, winning rookie the year in 79. It was just a great year. So you go to Bristol in 1979 early in the year. And you win that race. I've seen a little bit of video of the race. There's not a full video of the entire event, but there's a little bit of footage of the car going around the track and so forth.

And he comes off a turn four at one particular point in racing, literally climbs the fence, hits the wall and drives up on, drives up on the wall and on the two wheels and back down. Just seemed like that he was a bit of a bull in a China shop, even going to victory at Bristol. And then there's pictures of the, you know, you got I got lots of pictures of y'all in victory lane from that event. And I'm trying to get in your heads.

I'm trying to understand what your emotions are in that moment. So help us do that. Help us understand like your 1979. You got a rookie driver. You've been in the sport for a couple years now. You've built this team to what it is. It's your, you know, you feel like it's your baby. You've had your hands in it from the beginning.

What's the emotion as you're standing in Victor Lane at Bristol Motor Speedway with that as a rookie? Well, that was incredible. I mean, obviously it didn't come. come without excitement, like you said, climbing the wall, wrecking. He wasn't scared. He wasn't scared of anyone. And I think it was the other way around when as he was running and he, you had him coming up behind you.

They were looking in the mirror because if he caught you, he was going to go around you. And to actually just everything that we've did to this point and we're going around and we win the race, it's just like, wow, this is phenomenal. What's the first race? Woo. Yeah. How close were y'all to a win before that?

Gosh, you know, I look back, I don't have a lot of statistics from then. It's like, not like you would now, but I think we still ran good on average. I mean, we weren't winner, but I think we were top 10, top five guard, but it just all came together right then at that race. So I guess, yeah, I guess what I'm wondering is, were y'all contenders for wins at that point, or did this Bristol victory surprise even you? Listen, to be clear, everybody's trying to win.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about, were you realistic contenders for wins every week at that point? You know, I think we were. I really, I do. And I can't say that total confident and tell you a story of a close call right before that. I do know that every time we went out, we were qualifying well. I think in that same year we sat on the poll at Riverside, you know, just like, oh, it's a road course, let me try this.

Boom, on the pole, right? One of those kind of deals. So that's another curiosity that I've had, and it follows right in this timeline right around 79. You guys are, you know, you guys are having great success, good speed. You know, the cars are pretty fast every single week. Is Dad a big part of that? He seemed to be the kind of guy to, you know, from my perspective,

I wasn't around, but I imagine when he was racing in dirt, particularly his own cars in the 70s, that he was in total control of what he took his car, what he took to the racetrack and how he set his car up. And as I'm sure he was the same way in the 80s and 90s when I did get to paying more attention, he was very involved in how the car was set up, particularly front geometry and all those things. In 7980, when you guys are working together on that, on that big monroe, of a bit of a team effort and when it came to you know say you're in the middle of a practice session at any given any given race track on any given weekend is it a bit of a community you know a conversation if you will about what y'all are going to do to the car

and how you're going to help it and is that a big part of that oh absolutely he was you know he always was describing what the car did or what it's doing I need it to do this I need to do that. But in 79, Jake Elder was there. And he was actually the crew chief in 79. So Jake brought a huge pass from him, you know,

with all his knowledge and teams that he'd been with. So he had those one of those Jake, Jake Elder set-ups that he went and he put the spring between his legs, you know, and he kind of stand up and do that little squat deal there a little bit. And go, this is the one for the left rear. Right.

And that's like, that's what he would put in, you know. So, I mean, and Jake, he couldn't beat it. You know, we, we ring good. So Jake is known, you know, his suitcase Jake, and he moved from team to team quite often. He didn't stick around at Australon for very long, which is no shock. Dad and Jake got together again in the Xfinity or the Bush series

in the mid-80s, right? And I remember Jake working at Dad's shop over behind me Ma'all's house and they went to race at Charlotte and they ran really well. I think they won the race. But during the entire race, Dad and Jake literally cursed at each other from the green flag to the checker flag. Like completely, you know, just so disrespectful back and forth to each other about what they were going to do, what the plan was, what they were going to change, tires, no tires, get. It was like they could not agree on anything. Was that the same way they were in 79 and 80 when they were working together? Well, there was a little bit of that. You know, Jake was always known as the guy that kind of blew up and it might be a drill come flying by or, you know, or Cassettecha, like you're saying.

And so you never knew what was going to happen with Jake. But the one thing I do remember of one of the conversations on the radio with Jake and Dale was at Charlotte. And the whole time we're out there running and running. And the car kept pushing out of four, you know, kept pushing. and I'm too tight, I'm too tight. And Dale goes, Jake, you've got to do something about this tightness coming far. He said, Dale, let me tell you, I can do a lot of things, but I can't stop the wind from blowing. And it was, we had a headwind coming at you out of four.

And it was always just kind of, I mean, our cars weren't that aerodynamic, right? And it was like, oh, God, what a minute. And that was a cool saying, though. That is hilarious. is. That is good because I was curious, but even before we got into the Jake Yelder conversation, I was curious on what the pecking order of authority is. Like, you know, usually you've got somebody that's in charge. And, you know, like we've had other drivers on our show like Rusty, for instance. Rusty Wallace was going to be involved in the setups, you know, whether you liked it

or not. But Rusty also admits he could never be a driver these days when you got engineers and everybody else, you know, chirping at you. So, like, who was running the team? when it comes to your day-to-day stuff. I mean, was Dale, was what he said he wanted? Is that the end of the conversation? Or was the crew chief? I mean, like, how did that work? And then we'll get into Jake Yelder,

and it seemed like there was just a budding of heads and maybe a contestment of authority, right? Right. Well, when Jake was there, Jake was always in charge of the car itself. But as far as the operations goes, as far as who was in charge, it was rolling with Otica.

Um, okay. He was like your team manager and to say so, he was the, the interaction with Rod Austral and making the decisions of what they're going to do, what they're adding on, how we're doing on salaries, all that stuff. That was all rolling. But, and I, when I worked in there, like, if Jake was there, I worked under Jake and we just, we decided we all talked to, you know, and decided what we wanted to go to Charlotte with, what we wanted to go to Michigan with. And obviously, once you run one, intermediate track, you feed off of that track and you take it to the next one. And it was the same things we do nowadays. You know, we've got similar racetracks, similar speeds. And then that's what we would go do is carry on from there. We didn't have a lot of, I'm not going to see, we had a lot of geometry changes. We didn't build special spindles. It was an 8 and 11 spindle. That was what you ran everywhere. That was the norm. And Dale, you probably still have them on that car. Yeah. Eight and eleven degree spindle.

I mean, it never changed. So what could you see things starting to unravel with Jake and how and what was the reason for his departure from the team? Well, you know, Jake and the way he was, and I think once he got something on his mind, he didn't like something, maybe he didn't like Rowland or how Roland was doing something and he felt maybe he felt like it was holding him back. he never he never he never did come to me and just say hey Doug you know I'm just really fed up I'm leaving Jake style was just like I'm out of here I'm not doing this no more like a light switch

yeah and then it's like okay here we go so it was that quick it wasn't like a buildup I don't feel like it was I mean it we didn't have a big interruption in the year you know I I had worked along hand in hand with them the whole time and I guess was dad surprised like you did Did you call dad and go, hey, Jake, Jake's gone? What are we going to put in the car this weekend? I don't know. I don't think I called him. I'm going to let you roll.

He's the roll winner someone did, though. But y'all, yeah, you know, did dad call you and go, hey, man, we got to figure out what we're going to run this weekend. Or did he, did he jump in and start, like, do you and him start communicating right away? I don't know for sure, but I am sure we did. Yeah. Because that's how we acted from then on. It was, you know, we hung around. Yes, almost.

Well, we did then what most people do now. And driver and crew chief relationships are like a marriage. Yeah. You know, you're not going to like what everybody does all the time and you've got to work together. There's giving tape. You know, was I the best crew chief on the circuit? No way.

But it was what we were working with at the time. So we discussed our decisions and made our choices. And that's how we approached it. Hey, was, was Jake Elder actually married? Yeah. God, he seems like he would be an awful husband. Listen, in all seriousness, though, of all the people that we discuss on this show, Jake Elder absolutely fascinates me because I'm always trying to see if the myth

matches up with the reality. And I don't know about you, Dale, but it seems like a lot of the people that knew Jake Elder that we've talked to and Doug being one, I sort of detect like people. are trying to be protective of the reality of like they'll say yeah you know oh jake he like he had his opinions but it's like i've almost wondered they're like he was a real jerk what is the reality of jake elder like was he was he impossible absolutely not absolutely not all right there you have i mean so he wasn't impossible i mean he was a he was a grown man with a lot of racing experience from a lot of different places. How can you not accept that, right? You might not like it, but you've got to

respect the person with all the knowledge and you've got to at least try it. Are they all going to work? No. So you're 20 years old and now you're a crew chief of a car that's in position or battling or running well enough to run for the championship. I don't know if you're in the points lead at this point, but you're right there in the conversation. 20 years old. What are you? You Did you go home and think, oh boy, you know, I'm in over my head or were you over the moon excited? Did you feel any pressure whatsoever? What was the feelings? Well, I mean, I can't say I was worried about it because I didn't change what I was doing.

I was working on the car. I was working on the setup. I was installing motors. We were doing the preparation to leave and load. At one point, I was driving the truck and trailer. You were a jack of all trades jumping in there, getting anything that you were, you appeared to me, and you can tell me whether this is wrong or right. I wasn't there, but from my studies and observations, you appeared to be this 21-year-old kid that was living his dream that was open and happy to do whatever needed to be done, like you say drive the truck install motors be the crew chief help with help with picking the

setup and putting the car together and setting it up and choosing what you're going to run you had dad's confidence uh as a driver um but all at 20 years old it's just really unusual uh completely unusual it never it never happened today um so but for those particular times 1979 1980 for whatever reason, I guess it wasn't too absurd, but help us understand that. Help us understand how it was so seamless. You know, and a lot of people's asked me that question, and I try to think back like, gosh, what was I thinking, you know? But I just think I did what we did every day up to that point to get us to that point.

And, you know, which discussions, trying to create the best car we could, build the best car we could. You know, it wasn't all about Arrow then, but, you know, we tried to introduce a couple things here and there. But we, it was nothing, nothing extraordinary in my mind. I was just blessed to be in the right place at the right time to be able to move up the ladder. I had the pleasure of working with them prior, so it wasn't a big surprise. We already knew one another. And all we did was like, okay, let's go make this thing the best we can. You talked about being, you know, chief and the driver being a marriage. You and dad had a great friendship. I remember y'all, you know, going out on the lake together, just you and him and skiing, tubing, just you and

him, you know, and during the middle of the week in between races. What was that friendship like? What was the camaraderie like between you and dad? I mean, y'all, he was a little bit older than you at the time, but y'all had, you know, y'all had a good friendship outside of just a working relationship. It was fun. You know, and that those kind of situations or marriages or whatever you could say it's fun. I remember we would run a race and even back then Dale would fly home and he ran a plane with Lauren Edwards as a pilot. Well, Lauren was this three houses down from the lakehouse. Yeah. So it was fun for him to go to the track, let alone go take us back. But what we would do is we'd run, get on the airplane, we hauled butt back to Mooresville, get off the plane and say,

all right, we got time to go skiing. We jump in the boat and pull the tube or go skiing or whatever right off the dock there. And that's what we look forward to. If it wasn't skiing, we bought a pair of 175 Yamahs, and we'd go dirtback riding all during the winter and through the woods, driving over pipe in different trails and just do whatever wanted to do. It was fun. I ended up taking that motorcycle and using it myself. Oh, wait.

I was about 15 or 16. Yeah, it was spoke wheels. White. It was old. Yeah, it's like 1980. Yamaha, great bike. Dale, were you living at the lakehouse at that time? I lived, what I'm referring to is probably around 1980, 1981. I moved there in 81, 82. Okay. And then when I turned 16 around 19.

I don't even know when that was, probably 1990. The bike was still around. And I got the bike out and was taking it riding it until I ended up blowing all the spokes out of the wheels. When you say you remember them going out on the lake and doing all these things, well, I just remember seeing it in video. Okay, that's what I was wondering, because I've seen those videos too. There's a video called One Tough Customer or something like that made around 1981

by Wrangler jeans. And I'm in there a little bit with Doug's in there quite a bit as well. So Doug, you're the crew chief. Y'all go win the championship. The reports and stories that I've heard is that, you know, in that moment, even dad didn't really realize what he had done. And they didn't even, he didn't even really know how to react. Even days following that, they, you know, he went to Vegas or somewhere and hung out with some people and our friends. And then they ended up going home and, like, you know, well,

we'd rather be home. He celebrated with his family. But it had. It happened so fast, you know, Rook of the Year Championship that he didn't really realize what had happened, right, what he had done. And I remember when he'd come to me in Victory Lane when I won my first race at Texas. And maybe this is why he said that. But the first thing he said to me was make sure you enjoy this. And maybe he didn't really realize what he had done and did not celebrate it or enjoy it personally. Is that the same experience that you had?

You're, you know, 20 years old, 21 years old, championship crew chief in NASCAR. You've only been in the series a couple of years. I mean, no way you could have realized what you had accomplished. Well, you know, not really having a great huge background in the sport. To even really know what that meant is something. Right. Right. Yeah. So I'd have to say, I didn't really know how to act any different than getting ready for next year.

You know, we were fortunate and we have a Wrangler come on board for the 19, 81 season and, you know, getting them going. It was cool, but it was just more like business as usual. I don't, we didn't go to a big party. The actual, the actual championship ceremony was in Daytona at a motel down on the beach. Forget what the name of it was now. And I got to, I can't remember if you've ever seen the pictures, but our whole team was dressed up in suit from Wrangler.

We all had Wrangler portcoats and stuff on. And that's what we look like as a team. We were all the same. I remember the belt. If you won a championship belt, and it was this leather belt with this little white sort of leather strips down the side of it or lace through the edges of it. Because when he was going for the belt,

that was the one I was hoping he wasn't going to grab. Who did you guys beat for the championship? ship. Who were you contending with? I just don't know because Dale probably knows this in the back of his head. But if I'm not mistaken, it was between Kale Yarbrough and Benny Parsons at the time? Okay. Yeah, really come down to between Dad and Kail. Beny ended up winning that race at Ontario, the final race of the year. And Dad and Kail came in and I think it was maybe 10. It was a very close points battle, five, 10 points, something like that. Dad had to finish in the top eight or something. And come down to the final pit stop.

Everybody's sitting there. Kale and dad both are running in the top five. The whole top five pack had been running pretty much together most of the afternoon. And dad come down pit road. And on the last pit stop, we had a loose wheel and had to come back or either missed or either lost a lug nut or something. But the official brought y'all back in.

And so he finished. a lap down because of that, but in eighth place and just scored enough points. I think Kale finished top five, third, or fourth or something like that. Kale didn't finish good enough to win the championship. That had to be terrifying, though. It was. You know what I had was I had Rod Oshelan going like on my shoulder. Doug?

What's wrong? What are you going to do? I don't know. I mean, boom, caution comes out. saves us. Yeah. It just saves us. Man,

that's what it was. Me and Dave D. Brogio, we were the closest of the group and we lived in the neighborhood there all the same when we all started together

but Dave was the tire changer. And, you know, when the Jackman and him and I all went over there and we had our issues and it just, it was one of those deals like,

you almost want to forget that part that, you know, loose wheel. I had to come in. And then you come on a podcast sometime later just to remember it all again. Then you go. Oh, yeah, yeah. Even me and the rest of the world, the historians of the sport, don't look at it as negatively as you do. I know you probably feel the terror or the fear of that moment every time you think about it all comes back to you.

But when we remember that race and even remember those circumstances, that is a very small part of it because you end up you know y'all end up coming out in the clear and went into championship going into the offseason or going into 1981 you the sport had a big shift away from the big Monte Carlo's and old's 442s into the smaller cars and that you guys chose the Pontiac all right yeah which was an interesting choice. The Buick Regal ended up being a very competitive car. The Pontiacs did okay, but the Buick was a car that had the most success

over the next couple of years. But anyhow, the performance wasn't quite there. But there had also been some changes in the team. Dale Inman had been brought in to crew chief the car now. And is that correct? I might have some of this upside down. But you're no longer the crew chief going into 1981. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's Dale, and I forget what made Dale Eman leave petties. Right. They had had some kind of a bad year or something going on, and I think Richard might have been going to curb or somewhere, but I don't remember, but something like that. Something like that, but they split up, and Dale Eammon's going to go, and I don't even know how he got over to your-all's deal, but are you disappointed?

Like, are you, you know, you win the championship as the crew chief, and now you kind of, was it like, like, hey guys, what the heck, you know, here? Why am I not the crew chief anymore? How come I'm being put back in the position I was in when Jake was here? I don't, you know, I don't deserve the opportunity to prove myself or prove that that was, you know, proved that I can do this job. Were you disappointed? Well, I'm sure I was probably disappointed, but there again, with only two years of experience

in the sport period to be replaced by someone like Dale Emmon. You know, I really wasn't opposed to that either. Of course, I'm not, I wasn't a big know at all. And I don't feel like I've had that I have to be the guy mentality even now. You know, I'm surviving. I don't have to be cruechee, but, you know, they want to make me do it or, you know, they want me to do it now. So it was just whatever it took to make.

it work. It's kind of how we do. But you just want a championship. Hold on. I'm not going to let it all. I'm mad about it. You just want a championship. That excuse that or that reason of, well, yeah, it's Dale Inman, let him come in here.

Would fly in any other situation if you had not won just, or just won a championship, but you had just one of championship. Did that not get, did that card not get played at all? Well, I guess I don't feel like I played it hard enough because obviously it didn't work. but, you know, but I don't know. That's just the way I've been. Yeah, it doesn't sound like that's your personality. Like, you know, it sounds like you are more just go with the flow.

Is that right? I am. I mean, I'm not, I try not to be controversial or just, I don't know. I just always, I can name you 10 other things that happened along the line of that same thing. I know the last 24 hours you've been working, it's not quite good enough. so so-and-so is going to be crew-cheep now. Okay. Here we go.

Well, you know what happened? I ended up being the crew chief after they didn't like that guy. Yeah. Yeah. So the performance was not as good in 81. Wouldn't you say? Wouldn't you agree with that? Oh, yeah.

What do you think that was the issues with, was it the Pontiac? Was it trying to figure out that car, the new arrow with that car? Was it the communication with that and Dale Eman not quite as good as they'd hoped? Or what was going on there, you think? I mean, I'd say it was probably a little of all of it. Of course, it was a new car. Of course, you know, we were in a position where our company, we were actually building our own chassis at the time.

So we were a lot of in-house fabrication going on from the ground up. And I don't know if we've changed some things in the chassis part. but it wasn't clicking. And I don't even know, maybe possibly it was a, maybe some finances come into play of the funding wasn't there to move forward more because there was some things that led up about halfway in the season there. Right.

Yeah, so you just mentioned it. The team gets sold to J.D. Stacey, and it's my understanding, It's my opinion, I guess, that dad was tipped off probably by Neil Bonnet because Neil had worked with J.D. Stacey in 78, 79 or so, but he had been around J.D. enough. And I think that dad had been sort of tipped off that this might not be a situation he would enjoy. And dad seemed to want out of it immediately. And within a couple of weeks, dad was out of that ride and was over at RCR or with Richard Childers.

So, you know, here you are coming off, you know, it has to feel like the championship's now almost like a lifetime ago. You're, you know, you're six months into the next season and your driver's not happy. Dale Lindman's not working out or the team's not performing well, not sure about, you know, the stability of the team. where's your head out at this, where's your head at at this point? And are you, you know, is dad communicating with you trying to let you know what he's thinking about doing or what is going on behind the scenes? I mean, how are you keeping your close to the ground or what's going on with you at this point? Well, you know, I would say at the time, mostly it was a thing where, you know, we were still

business as usual. I think Dale might have got tipped off, but it wasn't like he said, hey, Doug, you can't I can believe this, you know, right? And he didn't share that because that was going to be a disruption. Right. And I feel like it really only came out when all of a sudden they called a team meeting at the shop. Brings everybody together and here it comes in.

Oh, J.D. Stacey, you know, big old cigar. He's your new car owner. His dad there? Oh, yeah. Wow. Now, I don't know how soon before that, but I know. He was mad because he says like, what are we? A bunch of, is we just a herd of cattle or something?

And they're just going to sell us off? Because that's, that was really what got them. You know, whatever we had built up, just like, eh, you're worth X amount of money. I sold you and moving on. And so what was your impression to J.D. Stacey out of the gate? Phony. I mean, oh, really? I just, you know, the way you come.

and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. He's smoking these big old cigars. And then he ends up with what six, seven race teams. And what did it end up? Nothing. All his checks bouncing. Right. Is that right?

Yeah. Is that how that ain't? Well, you know, we could probably dig into that and get some real facts. But, you know, as far as my understanding of it, he came in and he wanted to be. He wanted to have a six-pack. He wanted to have six cars out on the racetrack or even more with his name on him. And he did. He, you know, there was a, and it was funny, Mike, because it was different teams.

There was no rhyme or reason to it. He would have his name on this guy's car and then this guy's car. They would be completely unrelated to each other. But they were all, they all had this very similar paint team. They'd have a striper. across the hood and down the fenders and it said Stacey on the quarter panels. Dave Marcus had that for a while. Jody Ridley was doing it with the 90 car.

I mean, there was a handful of guys. And it stuck around for at least a year and a half, two years, and then it just disappeared. And he had either ran out of money or the money he had wasn't real. And what's the true answer on that, Doug? I don't have enough facts to say. All I know, all I know is what happened about halfway,

all about the same time was, boom, I was off to another adventure anyhow. Right. I got you. So you went with dad. Yep. So what was that conversation like?

Did dad call you or y'all hang out on the pier and he go, hey man, I want you to come with me to RCR. They got room for you? Yeah. Basically, you know, when he said he was leaving,

he said, come on, let's get out of here. I'm leaving. Like, all right, hey, I'll go with you. So it was myself, Steve Blackwell, Rick Peters, I think of just four of us, I believe it was. That's interesting. And we all just decided to leave and go up there.

So you go work to work at Richard Childress, which is really, you're not really going to, you're not really going to what I would consider a more stable situation. You know, Richard's way underfunded, and he's moving out of the driver's seat. So he's got this system, right? He's driving the car, been driving it for years,

and he knows what he can spend and what he can do. But now he's getting ready to transition out of the seed into the ownership. He's going to put another guy. He's got to pay a driver. He's hiring more guys. Dad's obviously going to be able to bring Wrangler with him. But this has got to be uncertain times, kind of nerve-wracking times for you.

personally with everything that you've been through you could you know you win a championship you you kind of get put underneath dale inman that that doesn't go well the team gets sold the you know you're leaving you're going over to rCR i mean i mean you're still what 22 years old 23 years old this time it's probably not too wild to you as a 23 year old but if you were a 35 or a four year old right you know you'd be probably thinking good lord i need some stability in my life right How was the experience? You know, I got a few pictures of you and dad together that year in the backside of 1981 around the RCR stuff. You know, what's the communication like between you and dad at that particular point?

Obviously, I'm sure the friendship was still there, but, you know, where are you guys at? What are y'all thinking about your future? Are you all plotting and planning to figure out how to get this thing going again? Well, you know, I don't feel like we were even plotting or planning. And we just left like, all right, I'm going with you. We go up there. Kurt Schummerding was still there. He knew the cars.

He'd worked with Richard. I remember getting there and it was no different than some teams nowadays. You know, when you just run and run and run and run, your stuff without freshening and all that. I remember the threads being gone on the end of the stud, you know, for so much. Because they were just used so much, right? well now we went in and you know rang go coming

Dale coming you know we put an effort to it to do the best we can and that was you know Kurt Shelmerdean's involvement and myself and Rick How did you and Kurt get along? I was fine. I didn't have a problem you know I was just enjoying the ride right right?

Right. Wanted me to come along and boom as far as I knew right then right then it was only a six month deal right? It was halfway in a year. I knew we were going there to the end of the year. Okay. So you don't know exactly what 1983 or 82 has for you. 82 was still uncertain.

Still uncertain. Yeah, which basically what had happened. We got down to the end of the year. I don't think he had funding. He didn't work at all out with Dale. Nothing was worked out. And that's when Dale decided to go to Bud Moore's. Well, didn't he talk him, didn't he tell him that he needed to go to Bud Moors? Isn't that the story? He might have. Like I said, I wasn't in on those discussions, of course, all the financial part between Richard and Dale and all that, but I just know there was no more future there for me. And then Dale leaving, and that's actually when I went to

Junior Johnsons to work for almost four years. So how did you make, yeah, how did you make that decision to go to Junior Johnson's? What's the, are you, you know, you're the six, month experiment with RCRs up and over. You've got no idea, you know, where are you going to be for the next year? How do you start that conversation to get over there working on Junior Johnson's car? Well, you know, I'm obviously just being around them at the racetrack. It's the where a lot of the deals were always done, just being around people at the track. But as it got down at the end of the year and when he started thinking about going there, I started searching around. Well, at the time, it just so happened to come up that when I went to juniors was when myself,

Jeff Hammond and Mike Hill were co-cru-chee's. We all just went and did everything. Jeff's a Jackman. Mike Hill's a tire changer. I'm a tire changer. We all work on the car. We all built them. We all went to the track.

And it was just a combined effort. We all went there to win. So I don't know that I've ever heard of a co-crew chief operation in NASCAR I don't know we've seen one since, but it seemed like you guys got along really well with that situation. You know, there's guy. I know that you're not that kind of guy, but when you have a race team, there's going to be guys there that are, that won't to be the guy. You know, when you win the race, they want to be the guy that's responsible for orchestrating the people and the crew and the team in the car. But y'all didn't have that.

There was a, it was a co-crew chief. Everybody seemed to have equal share in the responsibility. and the repercussions and success. How did that work so smoothly? Was it because of the respect everybody had for junior or the confidence you had in the program and the team to win? I think it was all the above. You know, I mean, Junior had a great program.

You know, he had great involvement there with, and I think we had the Buick Regals, you know, actually when we got there and when we, you know, became the due crew and all that part. And tell you, our team was, hot. I mean, the one year we won 11 races and the next year, I think we went 12. Like, man, we went out. Darrell was on his game. Like, I'm going to change the sway bar. And he's a little midway. And that, that's what I need. He knew what he needed. He had a great feel. He had a good

sense of car handling. And he was just on it. The whole thing was on it. We had a good pick crew. It was a package, right? Yeah. Was there any talk of you going to Budmore? before that though. I mean, because you know, you and Dale had established a bit of a friendship here. And so was there any place for you at Buds or was that just never in the equation? You know, it never was part of the conversation. Okay. So you pretty much knew you needed to go find another. I mean, the split, if you even want to call it that, I mean, it's not like you and Dale Earnhardt split. But I mean, you say you guys knew that the future did not have room for both of you.

Right. It wasn't, it wasn't an opportunity for me to go there with him. And so now you're working with DW as a driver. And I'm still fascinated by the fact that your meteoric rise in this thing. You know, you'll move from California. You're living in a campground to start off near Kerrwins. And you're working with Dale Earnhardt, who at the time was not, you know, what we known as the intimidator. But then now you're working with Darrell Waltrip.

I mean, my gosh, as luck would have it, you're hitting some pretty good jackpots there, right? Yeah, I've been really fortunate. I can't say enough about all the opportunities that I've had in the sport. And whether I earned them, I created them, whether he always wondered like, ah, man, how did that happen? I don't know. It just happened in a way we went. I worked with Darrell two different times.

I worked with him at Junior Johnson's. Now when Budweiser came along, I went and worked with Neil Bonnet with a two-car team at Junior Johnson's, Darrell and Neil. And then when that ended, I went off and the next thing I know I'm at, I'm helping Buddy Baker at Baker shift racing. Like, well, I think it's your personality, honestly. I think, you know, a lot of people that ask how do you get into the sport, you know, you got to be willing to do anything.

And the ones that aren't willing to do anything, they come in with preconceived notions on this is what I'm going to do when I get into the sport. Well, there's the ones that really don't make it. it's not the how it works. Our industry will, you know, chew you up and spit you out. If you're going to be that mentality, if you literally were just like not trying to plan your future, which, you know, I think we go a term young and dumb.

Yeah. If you were that guy and didn't know any better, that's how opportunities create themselves. And those are also the kind of people that you want to work with. And so I think your personality probably had a lot to do with it, whether you give yourself credit or not. Well, I've always tried to have what I consider a good personality. I like to have fun. I'm not a big butthead. I'm not a big a hole.

You know, I try to treat people the way I want to be, you know, treated. I don't want to be treated and talk to like a dog, like some of the drivers through my career. I've been. I'm not going to say I haven't been. And, you know, but that sticks with me. That's not, that wasn't a highlight of my career. but I feel like I hope you can talk to someone on the street nowadays, and I hope they tell you the same thing.

That would be my goal. So you were, what year did you and your wife, Rob, get married? 1985. So, all right, so you didn't end up going with dad to Budmore. All right, and people are going to assume, well, maybe the friendship had ran its course. But you get married in 1985 and who's, your best man. Now, I want to know how, who was your, tell us who your best man was and how in the world you convinced him to do that. Well, you know, me and Robin started dating and I don't know,

it was 80, little 83, a little bit more in 84, right, or a lot in 84. But me and Dale always stayed in touch. We weren't like we were just distant. And through the years, you know, we always talked and I say, Dale, I'm thinking about getting married. Would you be my best man? And he said, well, yeah. And that's how it came about. Just like that.

Just like Edl. He used to tell me that he wouldn't ever go to two things and that was weddings and funerals. And he was not only at the wedding, but he was the best man. I mean, he's got responsibilities. What kind of a best man is Dale Earnhardt? Well, yeah.

Very iconic. You know, what does that mean? He's, you know, as we know the best man today, he's responsible for certain things. He's got to get the gifts and the ring. I think I remember him being pretty considering the ring thing very important. But he's also, if he's a good best man, responsible for throwing a bachelor party, making sure everything goes well. All right.

Was dad plugged me in like that? What kind of grade would you give him when it comes to being a best man? I would give him an A. Oh, come on. But come on now. Why? We need to hear why he gets an A. I don't know.

I guess I've always thought a lot of it about him doing that. But, I mean, as far as grading him being a planner and, no, no, probably not much on the planning side. Right. But. I'm giving him such a hard time today. big bachelor party or anything like that. There was no bachelor party at all. I didn't have time to party.

I was racing. That's an excuse. Come on. That's not true. It's supposed to be, dad's supposed to go and make this, you know, do this and you surprise you.

And I knew it. I knew that he didn't. When is your wedding anniversary? We'll tell you if there was time for a party or not. Well, when is it? December, 21st.

No, there was time for a party. There was time for a party. Actually, you know, being that time of the year, right, 21st of December, so here we are, I'm getting ready to go and we're at the church. Me and Dale, Teresa, Robin's sister, mom, all that, or there. And at 2 o'clock, when the wedding's supposed to start, the only two people sitting in the church was Junior and Flossie Johnson,

which they loan me their car so I could drive away with a car at the time. And everything at that time of the season was just late, right? Well, here we are waiting. I'm like, well, hey, so anybody really going to show up, right? And then eventually everybody showed up because of traffic,

you know, everybody getting down, independence. And, you know, at the time, we struggled trying to find a preacher to marry us because we were in racing. You know, that was a big, oh, God, these guys are no good. Oh, wow. Well, wait a wait.

Preachers wouldn't do your weddings because of your reputation? Well, it was just, I think they had a, they had a vision of what racing was. That was entirely not the case, you know? I mean, you know, so I think we proved him wrong. That's crazy. You know, to this day, we have not done this. And he said, well, the biggest thing I want you to do is I want you to come back in 20 years or whatever and talk to me and say you're still married. and we haven't been able to find them.

And it's going on 35. Wow. We have a few more real good stories to get to, but first. So, y'all, you know, you mentioned a couple of the others, ended up at Bakers and in and around and in all kinds of different teams. You were kind of suitcase, Jakeish, without the cantankerous attitude. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. wait a minute yeah not like suitcase jake i was then duffel bag dug duffel bag dug yeah is that your name that's it people nicknaming that well when you start bouncing there there's a there's a

place in my life here where i did some bouncing around you know it was out of necessity i just got to do what you got to do right yeah there's only there's only two people i've ever been known nicknamed after travel accessories now and you and jake are it well at least i wasn't Samson, I said. No Samson here. So Duffelback Doug is on the run then. Is that what we're here? You ended up at Roush in 2005, which eventually ended up in a real successful year with Greg Biffle, 2000. In 2003, you go to Rouse. In 2005, you have a great year with Greg Biffle, which was something that was so good to see. you know, here's a guy who, you know, we've told the story right here in this podcast,

and now you're back with a competitive driver, competitive team, winning races, running well. Are you, in that moment, at least sort of relishing in the opportunity to be a crew chief again, to be successful at it in a whole other sort of decade, in a whole other time of technology and you've got a lot of resources. You're able to manage the people that you need and move the pieces around to make this work. Do you remember that time as being enjoyable? Or were you up to here trying to be competitive,

trying to work hard? Because I know at the same time, yeah, it's awesome to have success and be running good, but you can also run yourself into the ground because it's such a tough job to begin with. But what was that experience like to get back to good. It was good, right?

Because the whole, the whole Rousch journey actually started with Carl Edwards. When I was hired by Roush to run the truck team over there at Lakeside Park, Kyle Bush was to be the driver. And I went to one test with Kyle Bush, and that's when Bumpy decided he's going to go straight to cup with Hendrick. Well, here comes Carl Edwards, the guy that offered you his business card and said, me, I sure like to drive your car. Yeah.

All right. And here comes Carl Edwards, and we started having success ride off with the trucks. And what a great guy. He was. You know, and that was the start of it right there. We ended up winning like three or four races that year in starting with Carl Edwards. And then all of a sudden, I got a phone call from Jack. He's, Jack, uh, Jack says, well, why don't you come up to Michigan with me here and just kind of,

kind of hang out with the 16 and listen to the radios, see what they're, you know, see what they're talking about, see how they're doing things or whatever. And I said, okay, sure, sure, right? And I just went there and I just saw some things that I didn't feel like was cohesiveness or whatever or really trying to work out the problem or discuss what the issues were or anything like that and went back home and all that and we talked about it and the next thing I know he said Doug them I want you to go over and start working with Greg and I went okay and it's like you know man to this day and to this day and to not long ago I told Jack you know we've had some interaction with Jack again you know with Max Tolman as a driver over there we did some

Xfinity races and all with him and said Jack I said I got to tell you I regret the day I left Roush Racing because my career's been downhill since. And I was like, you know, I look back and it's like, man, how do I get that back? How do I get there again? I feel like I can do it. But someone's got to give you that opportunity again, just like I had it in the beginning. But you got to, there's not a mold that proves you for this. position. I feel like I'm more than ready for that position again, but I just can't convince somebody

that I'm the guy. Right. So you want a job right? I mean, you still want to do it now. Of course. I don't want to go out on the bottom. I, you know, I want to win again. I love to win another championship of a modern era championship. Very hard. And I'm a realistic. It's very, very hard because you have to have all the ingredients. And Dale, you know, you've got to got an Xfinity team over there and all the ingredients that you put into that, in a year you don't come away with the championship, there's always something else that you got to do. It's hard.

Yeah. So what did you leave Rouse for? What made you want to do that? Well, I had this idea that I could jump the fence and that grass all of a sudden went from burnt to like nice green grass on the other side, you know, like we all seem to the old expression, right? Grass is always greener on the other side. what Toyota was coming in.

And I'm like, you know, hey, here's, I've heard a lot of bad. Oh, they're coming in. It's going to be strong and all this stuff.

And I got there just a little early. What year was this? I was actually 2006. Seven. Yeah. And so you had been with Biffel for how many years? Right at four with Greg. Okay, with a lot of a success.

Yeah. So not only was there, you know, what you could have perceived as grass on the greener on the other side with Toyota coming in, but like, what, you know, had you and Greg just run your course? Was there other reasons why you would have considered taking another job? Well, let me, let me step back a minute before I talk about grass. There's some things that made me look for the greener grass. Okay, let's say that. Okay. Right.

So going into the end of 2006, I was told I wasn't going to be the crew chief. And that they were going to make changes and it just wasn't working. And a lot of it was, we almost won the championship there in 2005. So they automatically pegged us for, all right, you're going to be the champion 2006. Well, we go out. We still win, I think, three races that year. We were leading a bunch of them. Our strong points was intermediate tracks.

Texas and California, well, I think California, we blow a tire and it blows half the side of the car off and leading. You know, we just did. It wasn't clicking. And I just, it wasn't happening. And it just got down the end of the year where things started festering up. You know, we missed the chase. And man, when that happened, it was a, there was like a little X on your back.

All right. You're done. So I knew going into it. But the sweet thing was, you know, when I went out, I was standing in Victory Lane at Homest for the third year in a row, jobless. Wow. But let me take that back. I wasn't jobless because they didn't say I had to leave.

I just wasn't going to be crew chief for Greg. I will leave that. I'd stake that right. I could have stayed. You could have been a crew chief for somebody else? I think there was some talk about maybe going over to the Xfinity garage or the... Right. But Roush had an awesome Xfinity program.

Right. And, you know, but here it was. I think I just came off of winning 12 races with Biffle and all this. And then, well, here's this other opportunity that was not really known, wasn't proven yet. I took it. You know, me and Brian Bickers was working together on that. And we just couldn't get going. Things were behind that Toyota.

A lot of the horsepower stuff, they had great horsepower, but like at 7,000, there were like 60 horsepower off. So when you put new tires on a car and you really had to get after it to get quality, we kept missing races. That was that year where there was like 19 or 18 or 19. go home or cars. Like, and it was, it was tough and we kept missing races. But we, like, we make the race at Charlotte and we're leaving it when the power steering.

The wheel come off once and the power steering went out another time. And but, but I got the short end of the stick. Yeah. Who was your driver? Brian Bickers. Fickers. Yeah, I got you. Yeah, that was, yeah, when Toyota came, I remember that.

I mean, that was a, it was a big development. But, boy, yeah, I guess there would have been some big learning curves, too. as well. You just don't come in. You know, there was a lot of expectations with Toyota as well, right? Oh, yeah. Well, it was just, you know, it was like a bottomless pit. You could say the Red Bull, you know, theme of things and how they did it. They were over the top. They did it. There was no shortage of nothing other than just that combination of getting in them races. And, you know, when we did, I think we're really good.

It was just those races we missed was a coffin for us. Were you ever happy with toilet? In fact, I'll ask it this way. When was, what was the last year you were happy? With your crew, you with the team, everything was clicking. What was that year? Roush. I mean, that was, that was.

With Biffle. With Biffle. I still, you know, the last time I went over to Biffle's house, I sat there and said, you go, and we both said, man, can you believe what we were doing? You know? and why it fell apart is still always yet to be. Everybody's got their theory on why it fell apart. You know, I'm going to leave it as I'm still friends with Greg.

I hope he feels like I'm a friend to him. We still talk. You know, I wouldn't rule out the situation again down the road if he wanted to come back racing. Like, if I had a chance to put him in a car again, why wouldn't I? You know? Oh, I like this. Greg Biffel, Doug Richard, comeback tour together. I think we're seeing it, right? You're going to be hearing it live on the deal. Right, on the Dell you to download. We basically put a team together on a podcast. That would be at first. Oh, that was easy. Well, this is just like 1980 again.

That's right. We don't even have a plan for next week. We don't do this. That's right. You know, you never know. What does Greg Biffel like to work with? Well, you know, he, was he was hard charger guy you know Dale was a hard charger Greg would go out there and if it if we didn't hit the wall at least once during the weekend he wasn't pushing the limit you know and that's just the way he was and the year when we started running really well and when we started to have a close chance to win the championship and by the way we missed that championship all because of a loose wheel at Texas that year. We could not get that lap back that day.

And we only missed the championship by 35 points or something. At that time, that's when positions were worth five. Yeah. And I just keep thinking about that all the time. And me and they'll still talk about that. It's like we could not recover from that one mistake. Well, right now you're working with Carl Lone. Is that correct?

And we're in the middle of this pandemic, and everybody's been, you know, forced to stay home. Teams are just now starting to really migrate back to the shop and starting to make plans for racing again here in the near future. How's this process been for you? You guys are much, you know, one of the smallest teams with limited resources. But Carl, he's been around this for a, very, very long time as if you have, and have you guys navigated this situation to keep things

intact for yourself? But when we do go back to racing, you guys jump right back in. Well, you know, we had a fairly good start to the season this year that was very fortunate for us. Roof claims coming on board with us. We had them in the cup race. Then we had them in the Xfinity race. And we had a strong run in the cup race. I think I got it up with an accident, but it was a lot of showing. We made good money, finished third in the Xfinity race, you know, with Timmy Hill driving. So that was a good shot in the arm there. But that kept us alive. When all this started coming up to Atlanta, you know, we get down to Atlanta, we were sitting in the parking lot and goes, okay, all right, guys, now you can go home.

Right. And well, since then, we haven't done a whole lot at the shop. You know, he had to closed down like everybody else. He didn't have the funds. You didn't have the means to keep everybody on board. And so we've all been home trying to do what we do best, survive. You know, I'm looking at all the different angles. I have a wood shop here at my house that I try to stay busy in. It seems like I'm up to 12, 1 o'clock in the morning out there and just try to make things.

I built an island for the kitchen. I got to make the top for it yet. I got some tables made for some other people. and yeah, I'm staying busy. But it looks like that we're very close to getting back to the shop. I know he's brought a few people back in, but like I said, he just don't have the funds to start paying everybody again right away.

And that's been the hard part, you know, for me, once again, you know, no pay and all that, wondering where you're going. Yeah. So you're just waiting on racing to get going. and that phone call, you know, from Carl who come or from anybody for that matter to, to, that they need a crew chief. That's right. Carl and them's been great to me.

I enjoy helping them out because it's really something. It's a challenge. And you have to go into that situation. We run within our means. Right. We don't have new tires all the time. So we run with what we get. And when we have a pretty good run and we've had good runs,

I run up inside the top 10 this year when we had Austin Hill in the car at California. And it come down to a little thing here at the end with the tires. And we finished 15th or 12, something like that, whatever it was. But we're still capable of running good. We can run up inside the top 10, even with what we've got and all that. What kind of driver's Timmy Hill? I like him. Been able to get to know him over the last year.

and I think he's just got a great head on his shoulders, a good guy, always smiling. And he's in a, you know, he's like you. He's in a challenging situation with limited resources, but he seems to do it with a smile on his face and a great attitude. Yeah, what's interesting in that was, is I actually started with Timmy Hill when he ran his first Xfinity race for Rick Ware.

Wow. I had went up there and started working with Rick Ware, but we had to have somebody else drive the car because he hadn't turned 18 yet. at Daytona. Well, then Timmy Hill came in for his first race at Phoenix. And then I worked about half the year and all with them up there at Rick Wares. And I think right from that point, I believe, is when I jumped on to that, oh, TRG, the racers group or something there when had the 71 car and ended up working with Amel Valley and all that. That's right.

So that wasn't just another couple of chapters, you know. But every six months, there was another new chapter in my life. But yeah, all good. I like Timmy, though. And eye racing has been great for our team this winter. You know, he's got a lot of exposure. And I'm looking forward to some new, exciting things possibly that could be coming out of all that for us as a team. You know, I think Ruff claims is happy with us and keep that relationship going.

Absolutely. Well, man, we appreciate you giving us a minute to talk to you today. And I had a lot of questions about, you know, a lot of different things, a lot of different things that went on in your life and wanted to know a lot more about you. I've known you for a really long time, but I want to kind of get your side of the story. And it's been a lot of fun to learn some more today. So appreciate you coming on, Doug. Well, I appreciate it, Dale. And I got to take just a second. I missed this earlier. And I think, people need to know it. And that is, we talked a lot about Dale Sr. Being my best man in my wedding. Yeah. Well, not too long ago for my 30th anniversary, we were going to renew our vows at our church that Robin had been working on.

And I was like, okay, that's all well and good. Well, obviously, I couldn't have Dale Sr. At our wedding. So Robin and Kelly, and you, Dale, I'll work up this little plan to surprise me just a little bit. And I got to tell you, you got me. What happened? Walk us through it.

What happened? Well, here, so we're in church. It's on a Wednesday night. So at the end of the service, they said, and Doug, and we're going to bring Doug and Robin up to renew our vows and all that. And I was like, oh, okay, that's why she made me dress up a little special and right. You didn't even know you were renewing your value? No.

Okay. Well, I didn't know a whole lot of nothing. You'll find this out real quick. So here I am. I'm standing up there and Robbins with us there and I'm standing there and the preacher starts talking. And all of a sudden I felt this hand on my shoulder. Turn around as Dale Jr. He was standing in for Pops at our 30th anniversary.

Newell. And I'm like, Kelly was right on the other side. And I'm telling you, Dale, you don't know what that meant. That meant a lot. Yes, sir. And I appreciate that and I'll always remember it. Well, I appreciate you saying that. It meant a lot to me to be there for you. And I know that was a special time and I wouldn't, I wouldn't have missed it. I'm glad I could make it even more impactful for you, buddy. Did you throw them a party? I did not. Oh, here we go with the grades again. Yeah, I guess I could have done a better job. I guess it runs in the family.

I guess we'll have to talk about that. We will. I, you know, it's just, I'm glad to be able to get you on here, you know, because your story is really unique. Your personality is unique and special. And, you know, just how you, you know, you explained it so well throughout this conversation. of how you just took the next thing and embraced it. You know, and whatever was coming your way,

whether it was a challenge or whether it was an opportunity, you embraced it. And it just, it's a, it's a really neat story. It really is. And, you know, it's a part of dad's story, too, which makes it even cooler. But I'm glad you got to come on here, and I know that Mike learned a lot.

I learned some new things. Our listeners are going to learn a lot about your story. and the impact you've made on our sport. So we appreciate it. I know you still think you got it in you, and I'm sure you do, and you're going to keep grinding, but you've already left your mark, buddy.

Yes, sir. And when we're all back to moving around and visiting and so forth, I've got to come over to your place because I know you've got a lot of cool things. He's got an old uniform that dad gave him from 1979 and a bunch of old pictures and stuff, the kind of stuff that I just can't get enough of.

That blew me away when I, when I brought that uniform up, he goes, oh, wow, boom. Blew me away. Dale, so Dale Jr. sends me a picture of him wearing it. And he's standing next to a car when he was driving and all that. Well, I said, well, hold on a second. I sent him a car with me standing next to it with the fire suit on. And I said, Dale, he said, that's actually your dad's car, too.

That's right. Wow. So you got, I bet you got a bunch of cool things. I'm surprised Dale hasn't camped out over your house, to be honest. Well, look to us left. Show him that trophy. Well, the wood one. I like that.

Here, let's, this right here, Dale gave us this trophy. He said, Doug, and he told Robin to, now if something happens to Doug, somewhere along the line, I want this trophy back. And unfortunately, it's the craftsman. Pit crew. This is the Craftsman Pit Crew Championship. Copy. That we won there at the end of that year. And then, but that was just something the way he said.

It's like, some Hems, you know, I won it back. For sure. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to coming out over and visiting, bud, and seeing all the cool stuff. Well, yeah, we got a lot of, you'll be, I think it'll be surprised when you walk away. I'm sure. I'm sure. All right, we'll see you soon.

Hey, guys. It was good talking to you. Appreciate the opportunity. Thanks. I loved it. All right, we got an open segment. Ready, Mike? Sure, let's roll. Big news today, Mike.

Matthew already knows about it. Well, what's up? Do you know about it? Of course. Are you kidding me? I love on Twitter. Of course I know about it. That's my problem.

Matt Kenseth's going to drive the 42 car the rest of year. Oh. Yeah. Wow. That didn't see that one coming, did we? You didn't see that coming? No. You didn't either.

Nope. I didn't tell them. Who did? Nobody did. Really? Oh, come on. I didn't see you. I didn't see. I wonder why Matt.

I like Matt. Why not Matt? Well, I thought that there was somebody else that would be better for that. What? I mean, you know, can exclude the six car experience because he jumped in a car that was running in the back half of the pack. But, I mean, this last season of his career, heck, he won in Phoenix. Like what?

With the couple races to go in the season, he's winning races. I think people were assuming that maybe Chastain would be up for. It was no indictment on Matt. I can't believe you would be, I was just saying, I can't believe you'd be so hard on Matt, be down on Matt Kenseth. I thought Ross Chastine was going to end up being. Chastine. Rouse Chastine. Rouse Chastine.

I don't know him. I don't know who, is Ross Chastine very pristine? I don't know what's going on with Ross. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. we had a no it's that is what it is

Matt Kins going to the 42 car they're going to finish out the season and that should be great to see what Matt can do a really good race team and I bet Matt's pretty excited can't lie man I did dream about the opportunity of driving that car

what well of course if you're not you're not a race car driver and you don't have any competitive blood flowing through your veins if whenever a car open opens up, I don't care who it is or what situation is if you don't think about driving or what it'd be like to drive.

And I certainly did that. Really? Of course. I could even, there's more to the story than you'd even know. There has to be because of what we know, that does seem surprising. And so, yeah, there's no way that we would have just naturally thought you would be dreaming about getting into a car. Yeah, well.

But there was, you dreamed. Yeah, I dreamed about it. I bet Amy didn't have that dream, did she? She did not like that dream at all. And I kind of feel like I got a defender on this, and then we'll move on because it's not about, this ain't about me. It's about Matt going into 42.

But when Amy says, I don't want you to run, I don't want you to race, it's because she doesn't want to go through the injury and the rehab stuff, right? 100%. And she feels, yeah. And I know, well, I get a little worried that people would think that Amy just doesn't like racing or is turned.

That's a good point. her back on it or turned her she's focusing on the rest of our life or whatever and just thinks you know i don't want to go back to that it's not that right that's a good point yeah that's what some fans would probably it's happened before and we didn't you know honestly dale didn't know any better when he said something like you know amy didn't want you driving in the you know the the budwiser shootout or something like that and all of a sudden people started no no no amy's right in this by the way let's all agree that uh amy is a hundred percent right me and her had a conversation about it because i really had to think card about whether, you know, it's something I wanted to try to pursue. And she just said,

I told her, I said, look, if we weren't married and I was single, I'd be in that car in a heartbeat, and I'd probably be racing. I probably would have never stopped, you know what I'm saying? And that that's to say that I would not preserve myself or, you know, take care of myself or have any reason to take care of myself for Ila and our new daughter coming down the road to be a part of their lives 10, 15, 20 years from now when they're going through some key moments where they're going to need their dad and they're going to need their dad, you know, 100%. So that was some cool news for Matt. I'm excited about that.

We're also hearing that racing might be cranking up here soon. A lot of rumors flying around people thinking maybe the middle of the summer or middle of next month. May the 17th at Darlington, that's kind of what I'm hearing. It's a real possibility for us to go back to the racetrack without fans. So a couple questions for me. All right, they're starting, we're hearing that some race teams are starting to send people back to work, small groups, in shifts maybe, even to work 24 hours a day to be able to start getting cars ready to go for the potential of us to start back to racing. All right, no fans.

Say we go to Darlington, middle of the May, no fans. All right. I don't believe that they can choreograph that as well as they hope. And I know that they don't have the answers today. I know that they're still trying to figure out what, and might be the devil's advocate or whoever wants to chime me in and straighten me up because I'm sure I'm not thinking straight. But all right, they're going to go back to racing.

But how are they going to keep people away? People aren't going to not come. People aren't going to show up, and I know they're going to just probably turn them away at the gate, but they're still going, there's, okay, there's that buddy and this guy's got a friend, and, you know, well, you can get on this list and you can get in. And before you know it, it's not just officials and race teams and drivers. It's not just the bare minimum. How are they really genuinely going to be able to strictly control that? I'll be really surprised to see that. question. And the other thing too is there's asymptomatic people, right, that have this disease or have this have had it or still have it that aren't showing signs or symptoms. From what I've heard, and this is just loose conversation, but it's come from Eddie Gossett and other people, and now Eddie's going to call me to straighten out what I'm saying. but they're like, you know, well, we're going to go through, we're going to have a process, you know, we're going to have, I've heard, you know, taking people's temperatures as they're walking into the garage, you know, what is everybody's opinion about all of the rumors, and that's all it really is until we have facts and have information in our hands? But what's y'all's feeling about how this is all coming back and how is it going to be? managed, does it bring questions up in your mind? Does it bring doubt? You know, if you go back to

the racetrack, right? And if we go back in Darlington and May, Mike, and they're like, Mike, you're part of the, you're part of the program. Think about it like that. Like if you, you're going to have to put yourself in that position and be there, what's your feelings about that? Okay. We'll tackle the second one then first. The second one being, you know, how to you know, how to you know, Follow it up into one. Right. Well, the first one I don't think is difficult. The second one is difficult.

The second one is how do you protect people even with no fans? And, you know, they're going to go through all the bells and whistles of wearing masks, I think, having crews that are very limited. I mean, are we even going to have pit stops maybe? I mean, like, who knows? I heard a bunch of rumors. Like, so, you know, basically, you know, PR people, no spouses, no girlfriends and boyfriends and all this other stuff.

Just going to be straight up the necessary people, keep it as limited as possible. Now, the question that you ask, though, is still there. How do you keep them from spreading the virus, especially for asymptomatic? Do you want to know what I think? Yeah. I think you can't. I don't. And what's more, I think if people were, and this isn't really NASCAR, this is just our

politicians, I don't think they're trying to. keep everybody from having it, frankly. I think they have sort of picked their heel in which they are going to fight on, and that is, we got to get the economy back on. They flattened the curve. This whole thing had to do with hospital beds, right? It wasn't to keep people from getting the virus. I got you. It was keeping the health care system from being overwhelmed. And I believe they're banking on the fact that, one, the curve has been flattened. And so now you have have hospital beds that are freed up and nobody's at capacity, I believe. I'm not speaking on complete factual stuff. I mean, I just, I think that's where we're at. And so they're also banking

on the summer months being, you know, less transmissive as a virus in itself and therefore getting the races in and then doing the smart things. But to say, if anybody comes out and says, we're doing things that is going to prevent anyone from getting the virus, that would be a falsehood because that's not, you're doing things to try to lessen the chances of it. And all of us can be smart. I mean, we've been talking about it ourselves, guys. I mean, we've got a production coming up in a couple weeks. And so, like, we know that we've got to get this done.

And we know we want to get back to work. And we know that we can do things that are going to improve our chances of staying safe, right? And we're going to all do that, right? But do any of us think that it's completely impossible of contracting a virus? I don't know where Matthew's been. I don't have me barbecues he's had in the past, you know, a week or two with his neighbors and stuff. I'm kidding about that.

No, but I think it's all up to us, though. Like, you're talking about people. And frankly, there's still a lot that we don't know about the virus. So all that to be said, Dale, I think that it's a fair question. But to say that the virus can't make its rounds, even in a reduced state in which we're doing, no, of course it can.

But I think the hope is, is that the health care system can handle it, if it happens. Yeah. How come, though, I feel this sort of concern and worry about going back to the racetrack and putting myself in a dangerous situation, whereas, you know, that's always been there. That's always been the case with flu season and other scenarios. They've, you know, even more so because of the amount of people that were there in the past at a genuine full race event with fans and all that

and interaction and handshaking and so forth. But now we're going into a more controlled atmosphere, a little way more stripped down acoustic version of a NASCAR weekend, literally if this could happen in one single afternoon without fans, but I still have worry about protecting myself, right, and not bringing something back home to my own family. There's two reasons for that. the one is the unknowns that we still there's more that we don't know about this virus than there is that

we do know we're learning you know as we go but tests i mean like all this you know the antibody test is teaching us stuff about this virus that we didn't know the second thing dale and you and i've talked about this a good bit where we are in our life matters in fact that you know before you had kids your priorities really you could live kind of careless i mean like you know your you and i and matthew i mean when you have kids your priority is to stay alive for them raise your kids. And when that happens, though, then your whole list of worries and anxiety,

it's a whole brand new crop, and frankly, it's a lot more. So when you're not worrying about yourself, I mean, you're trying to be around for your kids. And so now viruses and stuff matters. But when you were racing before you had ILA, even after you were married to Amy, when you have kids, you didn't,

now of a sudden the flu matters to you. And forget the coronavirus. The flu matters to you more now and things like that. And you fortunately didn't have to really deal with that as far as that kind of worry and anxiety when it came to the bulk of your racing career. Yeah. So when I bring up this conversation or talk about, you know, racing getting back to going, a lot of people started asking questions about, you know,

what are you going to do? You know, we were committed to run an extended-arrant-a-race at Homestead. Is that still on the table? I've had a lot of conversations with my sister over the last couple of weeks. She's tried to commence me to consider running at Darlington, but I still want to really focus on, I have my mind wrapped around running at Homestead. Our goal is to go to Homestead and race. I know it's going to be blistering hot if that happens in the middle of the summer,

but Homestead is where I want to make it happen, so that's still a plan. If for any reason, Homestead becomes an impossibility. And why I say that is if we can't go to Homestead, if we can't race in Homestead, I think my plan B is likely going to be in Martinsville later in the year to run that first Exfinity race at Martinsville they have on the schedule. So, yeah, for anyone who's got that question, we're still planning on racing at Homestead, and that race will likely happen sometime it's summer and most likely without a lot of fans involved. So that's an unfortunate part of it is, you know, it's unfortunate that we have to consider not, you know, racing in front of fans, right, holding the race where fans can attend.

But I think that's an entirely necessary step for our sport to be able to get back to going. Do we want to tackle your first point, though, on how do you keep people away? I mean, tell me how this would be different than, like, back when we had testing, if it was a closed test. or something like that. I mean, people knew that you were going to be there. This is not a closed, a closed test. There may be only thousands of people that are aware of the team being at the racetrack. And it's not, it doesn't have a significant draw that an event has where guys are competing and racing for the finish.

This is going to be, look at what the reaction's been when they've opened up the beaches. When they open up any kind of park or activity for the public, they're flocking to it in record numbers. And whether it's restaurants or what have you. So, you know, you're going to have that same sort of interest when we go back to racing. There are going to be people that are going to, in their mind, justify finding a way to get to that, event. I just don't believe or buy that everyone's going to stay away because somebody said so. If you walk into the store, and this might be wrong, but so we all get, you know, we all get the information from however you get your information, right, on what you need to be

doing, wearing masks when you go out or whatever it is, all right? Whatever that, however you get it, right? We all get it. We all have it. All right, go to the store. Is every, everybody practicing the same protocols when you walk around in the store? No. No. No. Not at all. Drives you crazy. Yeah, that's going to be no different when we try to go back to the racetrack. All right. There's going to be some people to hear, hey, it's not a fan event. There won't be fans there. They'll listen. There's going to be other people that go, well, wait, I'm an exception. I'm not a fan per se. I'm John's buddy that works on the 75 car.

and I told my kid we were going to this race six months ago. And, you know, and I won't be shocked if I get to the racetrack and there isn't some gray area of people. I don't know how you go stop it. I don't know how you're going to prevent it. I think they will. All right. Yeah, but no, I mean, your point, not to say your point isn't valid,

you've got a great point, but I think you're prepared for that. that, I think for the same rate, not to keep using the test as an example, but there's a list. If you don't, if you're not on the list, you don't get to the gate. And if you got a problem with it, well, it's still your own fault. I mean, like, it's not like you didn't know that. I don't think that there'll be literally fans sitting in the grandstands. Right. The question is, do you have people go out there and start camping? You know, like, like just tailgating, like on the outside.

You know, and do you, are like five, like three miles down the road. Right. Right. Right. You might have that. Right. That can happen. Off the racetrack grounds. Yeah, that's a real possibility. Might have that. Little watch parties where people are, I guarantee you'll have that. But I think even in the infield,

you may have some people that aren't quite in, you know, aren't quite on the list. Yeah. I just feel good for the, I feel good for the industry, at least, because it looks like hopefully

that they're keeping us all geographically pretty close here in the first few races. You feel good for the industry as far as like, rumor. Yeah. Health and safety. Yeah, so the idea is that... What they're doing is very smart.

The idea is that we may be going to a lot of local events. Yeah. Because we're not quite... We as an industry, they're not quite comfortable putting people on planes just yet. Well, we'll see how that works out. This is TJ Majors, and you should be listening to my podcast, door, bumper clear right now. Yo, what's up? Brett Griffin here.

When you finish listening to the Dale Jr. Download and Dale Jr. Come listen to us, talk about NASCAR's proposed return to the track. crew members wearing masks and clep boy are blowing a motor in the eye race. Hey, what's up, Freddie Kraft here? And you don't want to miss this this week and every week. Listen and subscribe to Doorbuckle Clear on all major podcast platforms. All right, Dale.

What the heck is going on? Hey, everybody, is Dale Jr.? What is, who's vacuuming? No. Leah. Somebody vacuuming in Leah's house? It's a leaf flower. They've been mowing and landscaping outside my apartment.

He is right outside of my apartment. window right now. Perfect. Perfect timing. Hey everybody, it's Dale Jr. from the Dale Jr. download, Mike Davis, Leiavonne. This is the Asked Jr. part of the show here on our YouTube channel provided to us by Xfinity. Thanks for through Xfinity for supporting our podcast. They've been a great supporter of our sport through many different avenues over the years and now part of the family here at DirtyMo Media. So let's get these these questions going to live. First question is coming from Doug Farrell. He is planning his New Year's Eve trip and going to Key West.

So we want to know some of your favorite hangouts. Golly. Well, so there's a great little small, tiny bar called Shots and Giggles. It's a small house. They got about six bar stools. Some wine there if your wife likes that. So Shots and Giggles is a great place to have a few drinks. and, you know, there's the obvious places that sort of stand out that are on the Ball Street,

that, you know, Captain Tonys and all that stuff that's, you've got to, you know, you're going to go to those without a doubt. But shots and giggles is kind of a little tucked away on the corner of this one street off the ball. The raw bar, world famous place to go eat oysters, but you have to get the buffalo shrimp at the raw bar. The Buffalo shrimp is, if I go to Key West, I don't care if it's for a week or a day, I'm going to eat buffalo shrimp from the raw bar. There's so many great spots. Green Parrot is off the ball, about a block, canned beer, great history. All the places there have a bunch of great history.

So, yeah, I mean, there's a place called Hank's. It used to be called grunts. It's this old shack that they've kind of renovated a little bit, but that's a place where I spend a lot of time. They have beer in a frosty mug. It's pretty good. But you can't go, I mean, amigos for tacos. That's pretty good.

There's hundreds of bars and places to go. If you're going to Key West, just be ready to put on some walking shoes because you're going to put some steps in. Schooner's Wharf is great. They get, Scoorff's got this real, got this raw tuna appetizer. It's really freaking good.

All right. Jonathan Krauss is watching on YouTube. He wants to know, what is your favorite track that you have driven in Sim, but not in real life? Probably, five flags.

Pensacola. There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of tracks, short tracks that I've never ran, Stafford and, other places that you can go to and enjoy on the sim, and I'd say five flags is probably because it's where the snowball derby is,

historic racetrack, and I've never run a lap there. So pretty fun to race there in the sim and imagine what it's like to run in a snowball derby around that place. Stephen Kinsella wants to know who's a guest that you really want to interview that's not NASCAR related? Probably Michael Jordan. You know, and I, you know, we've had,

I know the documentary is going on right now. people are listening or watching, I'm watching that documentary, but we, we've got this list on, got it right here in front of me on my, my iPad. You know, there's a few names in there that are non-N NASCAR related. Yeah, I'd say Michael Jordan is Chipper Jones, Ned Yost, Ned Yost and Dad were great friends. Jody Davis, Catcher for the Braves, it was best friends with my dad, a lot of hunting trips. I figured he'd have some great stories. So there.

There's just a few names that I think people would probably enjoy listening to. Kimberly Apollo's on Snow, what was your favorite Budweiser commercial that you filmed? Probably the, it's a good question. The designated driver one with Nard Dog, what's his name? Ed Helms. Ed Helms, that's right. So Ed Helms, right? He becomes his famous actor.

back around 19 or 2001 or so whenever that was that Budweiser wants to shoot a designated driver ad for the super bowl and which is a great freaking thing so i fly all the way over to la and we spent all night filming this designated driver and i'm basically driving it around home from the bar and he literally lives maybe just a block from the bar but he drives me all over his neighborhood so that he can wave to all the neighbors who happened to be up at 2 o'clock in the morning. And he's like, hey, hey, Billy, hey Jamie. Junior's taking me home, man. I'm just out riding around. And so I sat in this car with Ed for hours as we filmed this commercial. And great guy, really nice. He's like, man, I'm a comedian.

I just moved here. I'm just trying to get going. So we talked, you know, he was just really just, starting to get some traction. And that was a big deal for him to have that opportunity in that commercial, regardless of me being a part of it, just it was a big commercial opportunity for him. And so it was fun to spend that evening just chatting,

sitting in that car as they towed us around on this trailer. We didn't have to drive. We were floating around on the trailer as they drove us around the neighborhood. And then he becomes this big star. And, you know, literally stars in one of my favorite sitcoms ever, the office. Our buddy Higgy, you mentioned the Michael Jordan documentary. So our friend Higgy chiming in on YouTube, we said if they did a last dance style documentary

for a NASCAR driver or owner, who would you want it to cover? You know, I was thinking about this the other day. I think it would be awesome to cover if somebody did a documentary on the 1987 season. And, you know, Dad had a great year. It was a championship season in the Wrangler car. A lot of beating and banging. You could even blend in some of the things that happened in in 1985 to sort of lead up to tell that story.

But it was a, dad was sort of in the middle of his intimidator, building that persona, getting penalized and fined and fined and parked for a rough driving and aggressive driving. The Winston All-Star race, just an most incredible race I'd ever witnessed in my wife. They just a lot going on that particular time.

So I think it would be fun to relive that. And those old Monte Carlo is just beautiful. Lawrence Little wants to know while NASCAR is ir racing. Should they do a dirt fantasy race since you can't currently have the real thing? You know what? There is enough content right now on irasing as far as hosted and special events. I've actually got a calendar on my phone so that I can keep up with who's racing and where they're racing as far as ir racing events. So if you have a Twitch account, if you don't create a Twitch account,

follow I-Racing on Twitch. Tonight they have the Woo Sprint Car World Championships at Learnerville, right about the time this podcast probably comes out. On Tuesday this week, they have on P-O-W-R-I.TV, they've got a midget racing league. on e-naskar.com. E-Nascar.com live. They had the Coca-Cola iRacing series

at Dover on Tuesday night. Fox has a 8 p.m. Eastern weekly eye racing show that's an hour long. Then the Cars e-sports tour races at New Sermerno that's on podium sports on a Twitch channel.

So there's racing almost every night of the week now. There's a Subaru All-Star Invitational on irasing.com Friday. They got the IndyCar race this Saturday. They got a, you know, we got Dover coming up on Sunday. There's something on just about every single night.

And if you need to follow I racing on their social media handles to be able to understand how to keep up with some of that stuff, but also you need a Twitch account. Get a Twitch account. I'm on Twitch now streaming some of the races that I run at Dellenhart, Junior 88, and those, you know, that's a great way to keep up with, you know, some of the racing that's going on each night. There's always somebody as well with their own channel streaming.

Connor Daly is a great guy to follow on Twitch. A lot of the real rural drivers, Lannon Castle, Parker Clingerman, Garrett Smithley, all those guys have their own Twitch accounts, and they're usually streaming every single night. So if you want something to do, great commentary, and they interact with the chat, so you can sit there and ask questions and so forth. You can support them by subscribing to their channels.

Twitch has become something I've put a lot of work. into the last month. So it's been fun to learn about that. And it's super fun to watch you. I enjoyed that yesterday. Oh, thanks. You do a great job. Like talking to people while you're racing. That kind of blew me away. I don't know how you do that. Yeah, try to make, you know, I'm just, I'm very new at Twitch and it's been so, so we've been locked down at the house with nothing to do. And I've been trying to figure out, you know, I got to keep my hands busy and keep my mind busy. And so Twitch has been something that's helped me do that. And my wife's been very, very, accepting to the fact that she knows I just needs something to keep my hands busy and keep my

mind busy. Learning how the software and the hardware and all that works and just actually getting yourself up to speed to be able to put a stream on. And then knowing what people want or trying to learn what people want to want to understand while you're twitching. So while you're streaming. Obviously, they want to know why I'm doing what I'm doing in the sim, why I take this line or try to pass this guy here or what I'm experiencing.

But they're also asking a lot of questions in the chat about random stuff, just anything. And you want to interact with it as much as you can. And Jordan Taylor kind of picked up on. He did. Yeah, that was pretty cool to see. Yeah, Jordan Taylor's a great follow on Twitch as well, as well as all his social media platforms and just great content. All right, that's it for today, guys. All right, guys, I appreciate you guys tuning in to Dirtymo Media here at YouTube and the Ask Junior Live portion presented by Xfinity. All right, everybody's last call. It's been a great show. Doug was Awesome. As a guest, we learned a lot, and I had a lot of fun. Ask Junior

segment was a lot of fun too, some good questions. You guys want some Dirtymo Media gear. We'll, we got that available to you. Go to Dirtymodeia.com. Mike's modeling. Mike is modeling. Use the discount code DJD10. DJD10. I'm going to give you 10% off all merchandise at dirtymomomedia.com. It's a lot of great looking gear. Also, we've got a couple of, the Dale Jr. Foundation

charity initiatives popping off this time of the year. Win Dale Jr.'s ride, okay? Over the last several years, we've given away Corvettes, we're changing it up. We're doing something even cooler this year. I think this is something that I won't even try to win. Can I win this? A 2020

Chevrolete Silverado, 2,500 HD, 4-wheel drive, crew cab LTZ, plus a Keystone Outback Camper 300 series. I've been telling Amy for a long time that I've wanted a camper. All right, here's my chance.

Winddale Jr.'sride.com. That's where you go to get your raffle ticket. This has been a great way for us to raise charitable funds over the last several years, and I think it's going to be another exciting one this year because you get this amazing truck, but also the camper. We're throwing in a lot of other odds and ends as well to make sure the camping experience is great turnkey. Also, we have ride with Dale Jr.

This is completely different, not the same thing. Same words, different order. Different order. That's right. No truck, no camper. This is Ride with Dale Jr. Three laps around the racetrack with me, all right? Go to ride with Dale Jr.com.

Not in the truck. All right. So this one is equally as cool and exciting because we change something. All right, we always used to go to Sharpmurge Speedway. Then we go run laps there. It's fun. But man, year after year after year, 14 rides in the same afternoon.

Three laps apiece. I may not have had enough of Charlotte. Take me somewhere else. Please. So last year we went to Darlington. And that was a lot of fun. You know why? Because not only is Darlington cool,

I can get up against the fence. And that passenger in that car with me really gets a sense of what it's like to race at Darlington or Motor Speedway. But I also got to figure out a few things that I needed to know to run the Xfinity race there. Well, this year, I'm not running an Xfinite at Darlington. So take me somewhere else.

Where we're going, Mike? We're going to Bristol. Bristol, man. So I'm not running the Xfinity race there, but I thought if I was a fan and I wanted a ride along, where would I want to go? Bristol. Yeah.

You're going to, this is going to be incredible. You're going to poop your pants. So bring an extra pair of underwear. Bristol, three laps. With me, you ain't going to believe. I can't even describe what you're going to feel. It's going to be so fast. A lap around that place.

You just can't even process. what you're seeing, it's going so quickly. Yeah. So that's going to be the chance of a lifetime to get a ride along at Bristol of all the tracks. I mean, if you go to Dayton and Talladega, you think, man, it's a giant track. It's really fast. We're going to go 175 to 190 mile an hour. By the time you're going down the back straightaway, yeah, it feels like you're going

out of the interstate. It's nothing. This is Bristol. Fastest half mile in the country. So I talked earlier on the Ask Junior segment presented by Xfinity about my Twitch channel. I haven't been promoting that. And I wasn't really, I still don't really have a plan to promote it. I'm not going to start pushing tweets out telling people when I'm going live and so forth.

At least I don't think I am. But I will tell you, I have started a Twitch channel. I do stream from time to time. You can set up notifications to make sure that you see when I go live. It's at Dale Earnhardt Jr. 88 on Twitch. Okay. So basically I'm streaming eye racing. I've got some ideas on some other things that I think would be fun to stream.

And we may do that down the road. But for now, it's basically me playing eye racing. So also while we're streaming in between races and so forth, there's a little bit of downtime. We do have chat enabled. I will communicate with you, talk about anything you want to talk about, answer any questions you got. It's a great way to engage. The other cool thing about this is that you can subscribe to the channel.

You pay a small fee to get that subscription, and it's a monthly subscription. The money that I make on the channel entirely goes to the Dell Junior Foundation. So I wanted to get partnered, and I wanted to be able to produce emotes and do all the things and have all the bells and whistles that all the channels have, but that would, in turn, bring in revenue. And so I'm turning that revenue back into the foundation,

and it's going to be cool to do that. So especially now because, as I know, everybody is not in the best financial shape to be donating to their favorite charities. All right. Some people are having to be a lot more resourceful. And these charities still need that monetary donation. So we're finding creative ways to get on that. And I think it's also a great way to have a lot of fun.

I'm right there in the house. having doing something that I'm really passionate about and getting a chance to interact with with everybody for an hour or so so there it is twitch channels up there I don't know how long I'm going to be doing this twitching streaming um I do have another child is it twitching or streaming I've called it both I'm new to twitching I'm probably getting that wrong and I'm probably going to get berated for it but I've got a new child coming in October so that's going to probably eat into all fun activities. Bear with me.

For more fun activities. What I've learned, what the individual fun activities, what I've learned, though, is I know that I'm going to be fine because I'm going to be in love with this new little child.

So I'll be distracted. But what I've learned is that the streaming community, when I got on there, the one thing I was kind of worried about is that there would be this commitment phobia or this weird thing where I was like, I feel like I need to be doing it and it's like sapping the fun out of it, right?

Because you feel like it's job now. They don't care. They're just like stream when you won't. We enjoy it. We're glad you do it. We understand you got other things you have going on. So I don't feel that pressure, at least now, to be on there all the time, all the time interacting.

But when I do, I enjoy it and I, maybe I'll see you on there. All right. Good show, everybody. I enjoyed it. Yeah, it's a great show. A lot of fun. That was fantastic. Yeah.

All right, man. Well, I hope everybody did enjoy Doug. His story is really unique and special to me. And I love to get him the opportunity to tell it. So hopefully you learned a little bit. And maybe it also will encourage you to do a little research on your own, try to find some of those pictures and place Doug in that moment with dad back in 1979, winning that rookie year, winning that championship in 1980.

It was a long, long time ago. But that's one of the fun things about this podcast is it gives us an opportunity to have these conversations, one that I've always wanted to have with Doug, and I finally got to have it today. Who's going to be on it next week? You'll have to stay tuned to find out. All right, see y'all.

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