The Dale Jr. Download - 298 - Kurt Busch: Career Comeback

Episode Date: May 19, 2020

Kurt Busch joins Dale Earnhardt Jr. for a wide-ranging conversation about the veteran’s racing career. The Chip Ganassi Racing driver dives deep into his successful yet tumultuous time in NASCAR with Earnhardt and co-host Mike Davis. Busch opens up about his rapid rise into the sport, doing it his way, losing a top-tier ride, and having to fight his way back to the top. The former champion shares regrets he has had during his time behind the wheel, how he was once intimidated by the Intimidator, and beating his brother Kyle in a photo finish last year at Kentucky Speedway. Both Busch and Earnhardt reflect on the influence their wives have had on their life and how it has shaped them into better men. Sunday marked the first NASCAR race in over two months and Busch discusses his strong run and what it’s like to be teammates with Matt Kenseth again. Plus, Earnhardt and Davis talk about racing without practice, Jimmie Johnson’s mistake, and the idea of shorter race weekends. That, an #AskJr segment presented by Xfinity and plenty more on this episode.  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.

Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download. We got our guest, Kurt Busch, coming on the show. We're also going to talk Darlington. We're back racing with NASCAR. Everybody's excited about that. We got an Ask Jr. presented by Xfinity as well. Let's get the show started. There he is. Perfect. Hey, Kirk. Appreciate you coming home. Yeah, man. Thanks for having me. Hey, when did you get home last night?

1030. Not too bad. You stopped on the side of the road and did some sort of video on social media at the state line. Why did you do that? I was just driving back and I was just sitting there like road tripping, old school race, you know, like you. And yet you're all alone. My wife wasn't with me. No team members.

I'm sitting there going, there's so many people that are stuck at home. Some don't have jobs. some uh you know the lives are all turned upside down and i'm hopeful that they tuned in for the race you know just uh you know feel uh feel their nascar engines roaring again and i'm like this this reminds me of old school days i just i just want to pull over and then also like to give motivation like people can get out go drive go for a road trip and and go see more of the country in spots that you haven't been to before and so i don't know i was just inspired it i've been driving down that road for 20 years and I'm like, hell, I'll just stop. So you did not get pulled over in

McBee. That's not why you stopped, right? You did, just to clarify. I go 34 in that 35 just for that great experience. McBee is awful. So, man, I know you guys are happy to be back competing and racing. What was, have you ever went to a race and started the race without any practice or qualifying? You ever done anything like that before? The closest thing I've ever done was, me and my little brother were running the KBM Monster Energy car in 2012. And when we sorted out the schedule, he says, hey, you got the short straw already. I'm like, what? He goes, when the Cup Series is in Sonoma, you're going to have to go run Road America in Wisconsin.

And I'm like, okay, sure. I go, how are we going to do practice and all that? And I can't remember who shook down the car for us, but he goes, no, man, you just got to show up qualifying race. He goes, just keep the fenders on it. You'll get a top 10. And I'm like, great. This is my brother, car owner. I got to fly all the way there and then fly all the way back. That was when I was racing for James Finch. But I just showed up at Road America. I'd been on the track years and years and years ago with Jimmy Fenning, my crew chief at Rausch. I said, hey, man, I like this Road America track. I think we can go test some brakes up there. So we were doing it. We're doing

doing a brake test and the one of the sensors got left off the brakes for like the pedal pressure. And so I rolled down into turn five. I hit the brake pedal. No pedal. And I'm like, panic. Like I just janked the wheel. I started bouncing off this jersey rail, bouncing off that jersey rail. And I'm spinning all around.

Just rack it into everything. And at one point I'm like, and everything's in slowdown. I'm like, oh, there's the ambulance. Cool. I don't have to go far. when I stopped wrecking, I get out of the car, right? And I look back in the ambulance, it's the whole left front of it is wiped out.

It's looking like this. So even if somebody was hurt, nobody was going anywhere in the ambulance because it got wiped out. I mean, it was a huge wreck. You hit the ambulance. I hit the ambulance. You only heard that when people say,

like, you've wrecked everything, including the ambulance or the pace car or something. I've never actually heard it literally happened, though. Yeah. I mean, just the brake pedal went flat. I'm doing 170. This is my warm-up lap and wiped out the ambulance. Yeah, that's my Road America, like, initiation.

And then when I went there for the Xfinity race, kind of zoning back in to yesterday's race, I just went like, hey, I should be able to go out here, qualify, just get used to the track a little bit, and then just find a rhythm watching others. and I think I qualified 17th and raced our way up to 7th at the end of the day and then flew back to race Sonoma. And that feeling of just steady, get up to speed, checklist on the first set of tires, checklist the track, and then just go from there. That's kind of what I did yesterday at Darlington and that was the experience that I relied on. Lap 10, were you hanging on? You know, everybody did good on the first restart, other than Stenhouse.

I mean, did we expect that? I don't know. But everybody gave a lot of room, and I don't think I went hard until, like, my third set of tires. But I got maybe lucky because I started 22nd. You know, like Kesslowski and all those boys up front, man, they had to barrel it down in there. They had more responsibility on them, I think. So was there kind of an agreement, though? Like, did you guys have conversations?

Like, I mean, this would have been a little anxious for me if I'm not been on the track at all. And you guys have been off for a couple months. So, like, do you have conversations with other people, especially when you see who you're starting around? Or is it just kind of a, you know, an understanding about like, okay, this guy's going to be sensible when I go into turn one. I know he's not going to be an idiot. Was there anything like that? No real communication. I think we all knew the issues at hand and the responsibility and just,

everybody knows how to try to protect their car so i think it all went as smooth as it could have and then each restart and each portion of the race ramped up afterwards but you know walking out to pit road carrying my driver bag you know it felt like an old school hey i'm showing up to drive somebody's late model and you know then the masks everybody was wearing masks and you couldn't like like have that that feeling of a personal conversation with it you know only can just see eyes. And it was even hard to recognize certain crew members and people at track. So I noticed at the start of the race, you know, you started back in 22nd.

And then it was like a light switch. You're up in the top five. But I'm sure for you there's a little more to it. How did you, how was your car handling? Like you fire off in a, you know, on that first run. Were you pleased with the way your car drove? Were you, you know, where there's some problems that you needed to fix? and then how did you guys, or was it as competitive as it finished the race?

Because you finished the race extremely competitive. So how did that process go from start to finish? I was surprised how tight we were to start, but also we're going in there conservative. You know, there's probably an extra percent of crossweight. The Packers, they wanted to be conservative on the front splitter because the track was so green that the pace could have been so far. fast at the beginning that we would have sought off a lot of the splitter and the shape. And so I was really tight the first two runs.

We were pulling pack around those pit stops, taking a bunch of wedge out. And the car started to react a little better. And then I don't know, man. It was like a unicorn pit stop is what I call it. I went from like 12th to fourth. And it was game on from there. Like our car got the clean air. and now I'm changing lanes, low groove, high groove, trying to find more grip,

and our car just reacted much better up front. And so, again, our cars are a little too aerosensitive, but overall, I feel like we just started conservative, and then we got the balance right. And then I was just like tick loose through turn two and into three for the rest of the day. That's crazy. It's crazy you can be loose with such a big old spool on the back of the car. How do y'all get the car, how do you get the balance to be free with everything? aerodynamically working against that?

I don't know. I don't want it that loose. I feel like we're losing too much time, you know, hanging out with too much yaw. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it's just, I think nose weight, maybe we missed on that a little bit. You know, you still got to run full fuel at places like Darlington

because you don't know how long that that fuel run will go. But maybe we can just tweak the balance a little bit. I mean, dude, the rear spring split's still stupid. Isn't it? Yeah. I mean, it's like a two in the left rear and a 2,000, 2,500 in the right rear. It's still, it's crazy. So you do got to turn around and go back to Darlington and run again.

You know, when I ran Darlington, I mean, as much as I enjoyed racing there, I really wasn't looking forward to going back so quickly. So, you know, what's that like for you? Are you excited to go back there two days from now? Because that place is tough. It's not an easy racetrack to run. It was hot all day long. I mean, you got plenty of Darlington.

and out of Sunday. But now you have turn around. How do you get yourself psyched up to do it all over again? You know, I was in the zone, I guess. A good running car will always motivate you to go back. I mean, I didn't feel like those 400 miles were all that tough. I enjoyed it. And Darlington's one of my favorites.

But here's the hot mess brewing, right? You've been in and all these like Monday debriefs with your team, right? Yeah. And there's always that, that famous quote, all right, if we're going back there tomorrow, what would we do? Now we're in that hot mess of, oh, oh, we got to, like, we're going there Wednesday, and we got to make this tweak and this week and this week. We're going to be way better.

Yeah. Oh, this is a good point. We didn't even think about this. Right? It's like, oh, yeah, you know, because, you know, it's like six months from now, but you're like, oh, man, if we went back there tomorrow, let's dial it in. So we'll see. We'll see.

I know what I have in my mind. that I want to do. I've talked to some of the team personnel this morning with bigger things. You know, it was great to have Matt Kenseth out there as an old friend and a teammate, and he had to get steering box stuff sorted out. He had to get pedal ratio sorted out because he had no practice for any of that. And then home he busts out a top 10. I mean, that's Matt Kenseth.

That's what he does. Well, he credited you for a lot of that. We had him on our show last week, and we were just trying to get his, you know, perspective coming into that because it seems, you know, quite, you know, perilous to have literally not even been with the team to have developed that chemistry. But he said, you know, listen, I talked to Kurt a lot and conversations with you really kind of helped him, you know, get acclimated as best he possibly can in a situation that is so unique to this. We were curious about your, you know, your response to that. Did you find yourself talking to Matt a good bit?

And how did you help him? We went on a couple of runs with Josh White. who is a driver, guru, coach over at Canassi, and Kenseth is like 100% marathon runner. And we started jog, and like, okay, this is cool. I can roll with this pace. And I didn't even know how far we were going. It ends up like a five-mile run, right? And halfway through, I'm like trying to guess halfway, but I can't show fatigue. But I kind of like, I braced up the question to Josh.

I'm like, oh, we're past halfway, right? You know, because I'm starting to feel it. And he goes, oh, yeah, you know, we only got another two miles to go. I don't even know how far we ran. That feels great. Now mentally, I know I only got two miles to go. And I go, hey, Matt, you pass me. So Matt's now pushing, but now he pushes Josh Wise faster with the pace.

And they're starting to yard me a little bit. And I have to, like, pull in some Matt Kenseth humor and sarcasm. And I go, hey, Matt, your calves are looking sexy these days. And everybody just starts laughing. I had to break the ice. Like, man, I wasn't keeping up. And it was great to see Matt's fitness level, as true as it is. And then, like, after we ran, we're just BSing talking about this or talking about that.

And I go, Matt, it's like an old shoe, man. You're going to put it on. You're going to get out there and you're going to go. It's like driving somebody's late model that you just showed up to. to go drive and go to Slinger with, you know? You've been to Darlington hundreds of times, so you'll know that. Just get out there and go, man, quit worrying about it. And so that's kind of the advice I gave them.

Also, when I ran the Indy 500, five years ago, everybody hyped up the three-wide start, going into turn one, all the dirty air, all the traffic. And then, like, I'm all hyped up and amped up about it, drove down to turn. won and like, why is everybody taken off, man? They just took off. Like, I lifted. I was too conservative. There's too much pipe. Let's just go. Let's just drive. So that's what I told Matt to go and do. He, you know, I feel like that that was such a great decision by Ganesi to bring Matt in. Did you have any involvement or conversations before the decision to go after Matt because I know you guys have been teammates in the past. I think it's a perfect fit for what you guys

need to accomplish and a great compliment to the organization and to you. You're a great teammate. Matt's talked about you and how much he enjoyed being your teammate in the past. And I just feel like that it's, you know, considering the circumstances, it really worked out really well. So do you, did you have any involvement or any input on the decision to bring Matt in? you know in all honesty uh i had a list of three guys that i thought were gonna plop right on in and then ganassi calls me late night um i remember what day it was what day of the week it was it was probably around nine o'clock and he's like hey i got this guy he says that uh you were the best teammate he's ever had you you want to race with him and i'm like what hell's going on you know

is this a catch-22? What's he asking me? And when he said Matt Kenseth, I was like, holy, he wants to do it? Hell, yeah. I said, that's exactly what this team needs, the 42 car, with shoring up the sponsors and shoring up the footing that is needed here, especially in this whole pandemic of where is our schedule going, what's going, what's going to happen, sponsors, just everything. You know what I mean, Dale?

And I thought it was a home run. I mean, he's like, if you're playing blackjack, you want a face card to pop up each time you want a new hand, and he's a face card. What were some of the people that went through your mind

and his chip actually presents this that way? I mean, because he's like, you know, you used to race with him. So we can weed out some people, but that's like, does Mark Martin really want to come back and do this? I mean, like, that's my. And like, that's funny.

Like, there's, who goes through your mind if not Matt Kinsett? It could have been anybody, right? I felt like I was running a gossip channel with the media texted me on who potential drivers would be. And yes, Mark Martin's name came up. I'm like, well, hell, why don't we just text Dale Jarrett, you know? There was, there was Tony Stewart was in the mix, Jeff Gordon. And I don't know.

I mean, Chipkin, Assie must have just used, like, the same rocket launcher that some of other people used. Like, he was just shooting for the moon. Yeah. And he got one. He got Matt Kenseth. But there's good kids out there, man. There's great drivers everywhere. You know, Monster asked me, you know, who would you put in the car?

And then there's guys like John Hunter Nemechek texting me, hey, man, I got my arm raised up as high as possible. What can you do for me? You know, Ross Chastain. I guess his deal was he was registered with the Xfinity championship already, and the team wanted him for that. And that's one of those tough moments where you have a fork in the road. And I think Ross could do a great job, but let's let him make that decision. And so I could just sprinkle a little bit on top. I didn't make any of the big heavy moves.

That was all Gannasi and the management. But here it is already paying dividends. So I'm real proud of the way that we started, restarted our season again at Ganesa. Absolutely. I love Dale what you said during the race yesterday. I think Jeff Gluckwood tweeted something that said, can y'all believe Matt Kenseth is in the top 10? I mean, he hasn't raced this long. And Dale's response was Matt happens to be pretty talented driver, Jeff.

You know, and that was it, you know, when it all said and done, that's, you all kind of just go back to the root situation. Like you said, wearing an old shoe. It's not like he forgot how to do it, right? Exactly. I mean, but that, what that does is. is it just eases everything in this transition. It just proves to Matt in his mind. It proves to Chad Johnston, the crew chief,

and our manager's been at Canassi. Like we've got a car and a driver that hasn't raced in that long, and those two matched up to create a top 10 in their first race. So watch out. I mean, Ken's at this sneaky and he's going to be fast here pretty soon. Hey, let's take a quick break from our conversation with Kurt Busch and have Dale Jr. tell us about a great partner, on the download.

Well, man, you know, I appreciate your insight on Sunday and Matt. When we decided or when it was an opportunity to get you on the show, there's one thing that I want to ask you. And there's one topic that I want to discuss with you. And that is, I don't even know how to categorize it as a turnaround or a comeback, but your career has been a roller coaster. And, you know, there was a, there's, you know, you have changed a lot as a person, in my opinion, over the last several years. And, you know, I'm just curious as to what do you think about when you look back on your career and what was the catalyst for all for the change?

What's your feelings about that growth to who you are today, you know, because I would, I would, in my opinion, opinion now. Everybody has different perspective, but your change has been dramatic. You know, your posture and your body language and just conversations with you are completely different than they were 15 years ago. Damn, it was that bad. Well, it wasn't bad. It was, you know, I mean, not every conversation was the same, but you've just really, from my point of view, made a major effort to change who you were and how or how you approach. your life and how you looked at racing and your job and making yourself happy and all those things. So I just really want to know, you know, what's what's been your focus and how did you do it?

How did you do it? Because a lot of people don't turn that around. A lot of people don't, you know, when you were sent down to drive for, you know, the 51 car and, you know, a lot of people don't make it back, you know, and you did. And now, not only did you make it back, you're, you know, successful, but your attitude has been revamped. Your, your sort of approach and view on life has been changed, altered, which is equally as impressive. So what do you have to say to that? I, you know, I'm trying to compliment you, and it's well deserved, but what, how did you do it? I appreciate, Dale. thank you for all those kind words on turning things around. You know, I don't think there was one moment.

There's definitely so many different things that layered up to certain moments. And then there's been so many different layers that I've added on or tripped over and then picked myself back up. And for me, I mean, I'm a blue collar kid. from Las Vegas. You know, my dad would have me go in the pickup truck to the gas station and mount and dismount our race tires because it would save us five bucks a tire when we got to the track that the track didn't charge us five bucks to mountain dismount. We just bought the tire then.

So I saved us. Every wheel I dismounted was a $5. Those beginnings of being a blue collar kid and not having an endless. budget or a way to really pay for the racing other than my dad's self-employed tool business. My dad was a Mac tool salesman. And, you know, a quick story was I didn't race the race car until I was basically 16 years old. Mom thought it was too dangerous. And when I got to race, I finished fifth in my first ever race.

My dad bought me a chassis and he says, hey, if you build it, you can race it. and I finished fifth in my first ever race alongside with my dad. My dad won that day. Second race out, I win. I beat my dad, who was a national champion in the dwarf cars, you know, a legend car that basically you could build your own engine and build your own chassis for it. And then I wrecked my third, fourth, and fifth race back to back to back. Like, my head got big. It got Kyle Bush.

It couldn't fit through the garage. door because I had won that race. And then when I wrecked those races, mom's about ready to pull the plug. And my dad taught me a story. He goes, hey, we're running low on funds. You know, we've been busting our butt every week, Monday through Friday, to rebuild your car and to get back to the track. How about this? How about you go out there and finish seventh tonight? I went, what? Why? Why we got to go out there and run seventh? We're here to win, dad. You win all your races. You taught me these last 16 years that I can comprehend that I've been going to the track. You, dad, you go to the track to win. You don't make friends. You're not there for social hour.

You're there to race. And he goes, just finish seventh for me. It pays $35. I went, what? He goes, yeah, your car is $20 for registration and your pit pass is 15. We need to break even tonight. I went and raced that race with this new mentality, and I finished eighth that night. And I go, Dad, did we lose my? Are we in the hole? Are we five, ten bucks down? He goes, yeah, something like that, but good finish. That mentality is how I was raised to race race cars and to learn to protect them,

to learn to race them and know about them and to work on them. And I brought that with me through my late models. I brought that with me into the truck series when Jack Rausch and his team said, hey, come race our truck. And then when I got to Cup, I did the same thing with Jimmy Fenning. Here's a quick side story to this. When I was running a legend car in 1999, that was my last race in a legend car. We sold it just so that we could afford an IMCA late model or an IMCA modified. Sorry.

So we had to sell one car to buy another. And so now it's that September of 99. And what was I doing in September of 2000? I'm starting 10th at Dover in a NASCAR Cup Series Winston Cup race with Dale Jarrett to my left, Bobby Labani right in front of me, Jeff Gordon right behind me. I'm running legend cars in one September with a modify that we could barely afford. And then I'm running a cup race. That's how fast I came from blue collar kid and nobody with that, I'll admit, a Bush ego.

And I did it my way to get there. Like everybody said, you're not ready. You know, this isn't good for you. You're going to get steamrolled. You're not going to make it. And my rookie class in Cup, I had Kevin Harvick, myself. Then you hear about this guy named Ron Hornet, Jr., who is the master of the truck. series and a Hall of Famer, but couldn't quite make it in a cup. Well, it's just the timing,

age, you know, opportunity and how we drove, right? And then there's these two other guys. Casey Atwood, Ray Evernham dubbed him before Casey Kane, and then Andy Houston was a rookie. We don't hear of his name anymore, but his dad, Mr. Houston, won tons of races in the Bush Grand National Series. And Andy, I think, is a spotter right now at this time. up on a spotter stand. My point to all this is, is I came from nothing really fast, thrown into cup. I then started winning in 2002 with Jimmy Fenning.

And again, my ego started getting big. And then I just started calling out people, you know, like Jimmy Spencer, you know, this or that moment. And so I just went through a lot in a short amount of time without like the proper coaching i don't know i mean my dad when i got the truck series he's like i got nothing for you man i don't know how to set these things up uh i don't know how you're supposed to talk to reporters uh just just do what you're doing and i just rolled with it i guess i mean was it right was it wrong was it was it different all the above and when i won the championship

at such a young age doing it my way that's when it got worse yeah I just had to gun blazing, right? That's a great perspective because I'd never heard your career categorized in such a way that really puts, you know, really brings the focus how quickly you came into the sport, how quickly you became a champion, how quickly all that success was coming at you. And then the worst part, though, was like, I thought it was me. I didn't have the four letters called T-E-A-M, team. I thought it was all me making these differences.

And that's why I was in the underground talking to Roger Penske to switch out of Rouch just due to the way that they were treating my contract. Right. And when I got to Penske, it was a wow. It was just a, it was a process over there. And it finally wore itself thin. And so then that that departure is what your question is. was about. I had to framework your question. And when I was in between Penske and talking to other teams, right, I'm talking to Ty Norris now about Michael Walter Bracing and he goes,

Kurt, we can't touch you, man. You know, I was talking to Andy Merstein and Richard Petty at RPM about going to drive for them. I talked to Furniture Road, but Barney was kind of like, yeah and i said you know what if everybody's saying no i know somebody that won't say no because i'll go race for free and richard childers told me and he's like he's like no but richard chilers said stay in the sport don't not show up you got to be there every weekend no matter what car you're in just be there and that's you know i don't want to get into any sticky stuff but richard petty Motorsports wanted me to come race for them. And I said, no, no, I'm going to go race for James Finch. I want to put myself on a path of a C-level team, back to a B-level team, and go to an A-level team.

And that's what I've done in this decade. The second half of my career was to build it back up, to build teams with my experience, to give back in a way that my dad was giving to me or my Southwest Tour car owner was giving to me. And I just, I humbled myself through that process. And I had a goal. It was crazy. I had a goal that I was going to end up at Stuart Haas. And I was thinking of that in 2011, December of 2011.

And I didn't get to Stuart Haas until, you know, 2014. team. Do you have any regrets? I mean, like, you go back, I mean, you just went through basically 10, 12 years just then from Roush getting into the sport to leaving Pinsky. That's, you know, you spent six or seven seasons at each of those teams Roush. All right. So like, go back because, you know, Dale's point was you seem to change, but that's coming from an outsider's perspective like myself or him. But that's assuming you agree with that, but it sounds to me like you just gave us the groundwork to why that we were right, that our perceptions of you might have been correct, that you were maybe, you know, hit success. I mean, 2002 was your breakout year. You had only

been in the sport a year or two, right? You know, just, you had four wins in 2002. 2003, if I'm, you know, that seems to be the year where you started running into confrontations with people. You talked about your Spencer thing. You talked, you know, you had that just, and then 2004, you're a champion. I mean, boom, boom, boom, things are just happening so fast for you. But then you talk about all the way to Penske. That's 12 years of a learning curve. So what do you regret? Like what would you wish you did over again? What handled differently back then? I mean, when you're young, you're dumb and you're just full of shit. You know, like you, that's, it's just being that youth is just the problem. And for me, not having, I don't know,

just a stronger mentor or the ability to listen. I mean, I think that that's probably my biggest regret was being aware of my surroundings and listening more and not taking criticism so harshly. Because I think the number one thing about me is what got me to where I am at that point, and it is today, but I do it in a different way, is that I'm a perfect. that I had to have it this way. It's got to be clean. It's got to look good. And I just wanted that, that aura. And then when things started to break away from that imagery that I had as perfection, I'd get frustrated. And I didn't like those flaws out there. And then that weakness showed through. The media ran with it. Then I tried to fight it. And then it. It's It just, one layer just compounded to the next. I mean, just.

Was there any time, was there at any point during the sort of, I guess, the rebuild, that you questioned the possibility of getting back to that A class team that you thought, man, is this going to happen or not, or maybe this won't happen, maybe this is my, maybe this is how it goes. You know, was there every time in the whole process where you felt like it wasn't going to work? Remember I was talking about how it was me and that I didn't see the team around me. I didn't see the people. I didn't absorb the team atmosphere.

And when I was with James Finch, you know, we're having fun. We're drinking beer at the shop at 9 o'clock at night. We're loading up the car and we're headed to the next race. That got me back to my roots of the fun and that energy of just doing whatever it took to get to the track. And then my phone rang, and it was Todd Barrier, who was out with Furniture Row Racing in Denver. And he's like, Kurt, you got to come out here, man. You got to drive for us. I won't want you.

There was never a moment where it wavered on if I was ever going to get back up. But it was attaching to the people that I needed at those moments. So whether it was, you know, 2012 and Finch's car, you know, and then with Furniture Row, I, Barney's like, hey, I'll set you up in a condo downtown, you know, close to our race shop. And I'm like, you know what? No. No, I'm just, I'm going to sleep on Todd Barrier's couch. I'm going to go with him to the shop at 5 a.m.

I'm going to go for runs in the afternoon at high altitude. And then I'm going to fly back to Charlotte, you know, back to my house in Charlotte. And it just, I started to morph into the people that knew that I have the ability to drive, but knew that I needed more time to work on myself. And then I met my wife Ashley in 2015 and her approach to life and her beautiful elegance about how she looks at things really started to influence me. I mean, it's led to a lot of cool moments

that were the same in racing that I had from before, but I appreciated it that much more. And that's, again, the age thing. And just being aware and again, just the people that I've that I've been around and surrounded myself with in the latter part has been much better. Go ahead and expand on that a little bit because I've had a similar experience with Amy having affected me personally and even how I'd do everything. Like before I met her, I'd never leave the track. I'd stay in the bus, play video games, didn't want to go nowhere, do nothing. And she's just really gotten me out of my shell.

So has that been similar for you? Has she brought you, has she sort of brought this person out in you that you didn't even know was there or you didn't know was the potential that you had as a person? Yeah, I think it's being aware and more patient and loving around each of the situations, whether it's something at the house as far as how we travel. You know, my first story with Ashley was when we met and we're down in Florida and she has her horses at the barn. She's got her people that help train the horses and take care of them.

There's a dully and a trailer and the equipment. I'm like, man, this horse, this polo world is just like having your own lay model team. You know, you got a couple of volunteers. You're in the muck. You're out there. Muck and muck and stalls and right there in the mix with everything. And then you go out there and perform out on the polo field. and she's this sweet, innocent little angel

and she puts her helmet on and you should see how much her attitude changes and the fierce competitor in her comes out. And I'm like, whoa, that is me. I'm you. You are, like, you are me. Like, this was incredible. And just to feel that energy was so powerful.

And I think that's helped me break away from racing and do yet the same thing. thing with teamwork and people around your hobbies and such. And so it's it's she's an amazing woman. You know, it's very patient. How did y'all meet? How did you all get introduced? Her older sister runs an apparel company doing t-shirts, hats, key chains, all kinds of stuff out of California. And the family's from Virginia. And so her sister invited her come to the Martinsville race. And I'm like, yeah, sure, you know, yeah, I'll get you guys spit past.

It's no problem. And as soon as I saw it was just this like electricity and this, this feeling. And she just felt so at ease around her first NASCAR race. And I'm like, wow, most people are just like blown away and all of just tripping out on all the, the sensory. So we come back, we barbecue up in my house afterwards. And she goes, I can't believe how big this NASCAR thing is. and the cars go so fast and that track is so huge and oh my gosh this is incredible.

And I'm like, oh, wow, she doesn't know anything about NASA. Martinsville was fast and big and everything. But that's that energy that she's just always emitting. And that's really what's been my different grounding these last five years since I'm. Y'all are both similar in this. And Dale just alluded to it is that, you know, Amy really had an effect on him, which is to say, by the way, Kurt, that, I mean, we've all evolved in the last 15 years, and that's the way it ought to be, right?

We're all young and dumb. I mean, like, we all have those things that we, you know, look back on and say, man, what, what are we thinking, right? Dale certainly had an outlook on life that was a 180 to where he is today, right? And so that's her father, he's a smart guy, right? My father-in-law, and he's a well-off businessman. One of the first things he ever asked me, goes, Kurt, how old are you? I'm 36, sir.

He goes, oh, okay, good. You're old enough to date my daughter. Well, I'm like, what? What are you talking about? He goes, oh, you're past 35. You're done with all your students. Yeah. That makes sense to us.

It would have never made sense to us pre 35, right? It would have been like, what jerk? Yeah. You know, like, I think my little brother turned 35 here recently. So, yeah, he should be getting close. So he's still working on it. He's still working his way up. That's funny.

Beautiful. Hey, what did you got, you know, we're talking about our careers and everything here, but what was y'all's, I'm asking for both of you, what was your experience racing the other? Dale Jr. and Kurt, right there. You know, because I don't remember you guys having any real big run-in. We just had one right in the very beginning. Oh, damn. What was there? Kurt got in the back of me off turn two at Darlington or at Rockingham, and I put, I hit the inside fence with, I just got loose and I corrected it down into the inside wall. and then I came back out on the track and tried to annoy the hell out of it. Yeah, you tormented him.

I remember this now. I tried. Oh, hell, yeah. I was, I felt as big as high as a puddle, man. I was so like, oh, no. Because at Rockingham, the closure rate on fresh tires and old tires, like you catch people so quick. Not to defend myself, but I dumped Terry Labani about 25 laps.

I couldn't find my front bumper that. That was the only time that I can remember. Yeah. No, man, that was an idiot move on my part that day. I remember you were running for rookie of the year against Matt Kenseth. And the next week at Miami, your old man, sweated my ass for a hundred lives. I've heard this.

What happened? I'm driving the John Deere car. You know, I qualified like 18th. Senior qualified. You know, he was always 20th or whatever. He didn't care about Fridays, didn't qualify very well. He didn't qualify very well. So he's ripped roaring up, and his car has like top five pace,

and yet he stayed on my bumper, sweating me. And I'm like, what do I do? What do I do? They're like, just pull over and stop. And I literally like, front straightaway, just pull over to get out of seniors way and get back in behind him. And then he stops on the back straight away, literally. Like, and it gets back in behind me and just jacks me.

up all day long. I was so spun out. I've never heard that. Oh, he was so mad that that I got into you at Rockingham. Oh yeah. It was it was bad man. Yeah, when I was when I was great knowledge following you at Rockingham my my cruechie Tony Sr. See Tony Senior's really fiery and I thought that he would be like yeah go out there and give him hell. But as soon as I started running behind you, Tony Senior's like, stop it. Bam it. He was. was getting so mad at me and I was like wait he he wrecked us Tony don't you want me to go out there and give him a hard time he's like quit it damn it mass car's telling me to tell you to quit it quit it stop and then not not only that but you made it worse because you kept acting like you

couldn't hear there was bad radio transmission yeah so I told Tony I said I can't hear you radio Tony and he was getting so mad oh that's great no we always race we always race good with each other I think it's lessons like that early on when you have something, you get it out of the way early. I mean, we drafted well at Super Speedway races. That was always my favorite with you. I thought that you were a really good plate racer, you know.

I just don't know how to finish. Well, you always finish, you know, always. You tend to have a great average of finishing into top five. Like people always, you know, people will say, you know, plate racing is a lot of luck. But if you look at the people that are usually in the top 10 or top five in these races, it's the same guys. You, Denny Hamlin, Mick Murray was the same way.

He would always be running well at the plate races. Blaney is right now. It's like a mentality and an approach to how you play the game. And I always thought you're a really good plate racer. Thank you. Yeah. I finished third my first ever time at Talladega. And I'm just like holding the wheel.

I ain't doing anything, man. I ain't doing anything. I ain't doing anything. Get out of line. And then you learn some of those small. things that just help you stay out of trouble. Well, it all manifest in 2014 because when I think about you at play race, you've done a lot of successful, you had a lot of success at plate races.

But then 2014, you win that Daytona 500. Oh, I just love the Tony Gibson moment. You're right. 2014 is your first win back at Martinsville, which I thought was one of your most, like, really iconic moments when you were so happy in Victory Lane. That's what that was. Then 2017, the Daytona 500. and Tony Gibson, who we love.

I mean, how do you not love the old man, right? And he's up there losing it. And I felt like his celebration was sort of channeling the entire team's emotion in that moment, right? Because finally you did get over the hump. You did get that win, the big one. That one was huge, and it was for Tony Gibson. He had been going there for so many years, grew up in Daytona Beach.

His mom, I think, ran the ticket window for years. And, you know, there was this moment we had after the qualifying race. I remember it. And he's like, man, our car's not that good. I'm like, no, man, it doesn't have that vibe. I go, can you work on it? Can you do some? Throw everything you've got at it.

You know, I've never asked, like, a crew chief to go above and beyond what they normally, because they're always given 100%. Yeah. He poured everything into that car. And on the last run, he's on the radio. He says, hey, you're too laps shy on fuel. Do what you can. And I just rode.

I just rode there. Just trying to save fuel. Just trying to save fuel. And that race turned into a fuel mileage race. And it worked out perfect at the end where I was able to like finally put a plan together to drag the break through three and four. Come and to take the white, had a run on Larson. And I'm doing the days of thunder.

Fake high. Fake low. Go high. And as I'm making those moves, he's like sputtering on fumes. And I'm like, oh man don't be taking my thunder away i had a plan bro but then to win that race for our team man and tony gibson went bonkers i mean it's just it was that whole vibe there was that whole vibe of everything of what we went through those few days leading into that race and he's uh he used

that moment like like i've i've done it all because after that it just was a different feel with Tony Gibson and moved into more of a manager role at Stuart Haas afterwards. I think my favorite Kurt Busch moment in NASCAR is after winning at Kentucky against your brother, y'all had quite an amazing final few laps, but the best part about it was your post-race energy on the front straightaway. I'd never seen you be more genuine in what you were feeling and what was happening inside your heart and your head. You had to have taken a lot of pride in beating your brother. He's considered one of the best on the racetrack.

I know that you feel like you're one of the best as well. But you sort of, you're bringing along this team at Gannasi's, and you're a big reason why the programs improved and found more success and speed. You did the same exact thing at Furniture Row. And so you've groomed this program and you take them out there and you beat one of the best, you know, one-on-one. one pretty much in the final few laps of that race.

Was that a moment where you kind of look back on your career and say, man, all that hard work and all that grind and all that effort to get back on top, it was finally worth it? Was that a big release for you? I know we talked about the Daytona 500. We talked about racing at Stuart Haas and getting back, but that win this past year was pretty incredible and most impressive to me. This one's heavy, Dale.

You're spot on, man. Beat my little brother is special because he is one of the best that our sport has ever seen. And I stuck my neck out, though, a couple years prior to that and told Monster, who has been with me the whole second half of my career, they're the ones that have helped me find more depth and more passion and more drive because I love representing their brand. It's who I am every day with just waking up and not having to think about it. They're a great company. And I feel like family with them.

And I told them, I said, hey, things are getting sticky here at Stuart Haas. You know, I had a vision then of the management. There's this guy, Joe Custer, is going to put his kid in this 41 car. I like what I see over here, Kanasi. And they're like, well, they haven't won in a while. What do you mean? What do you see over? there. I said, just trust me. Roll with me. I stuck my neck out with a corporate sponsorship

and a big move in my career and in the twilight of my career at 40 years old. I said, roll with me, guys, believe in me. And Gannasi and the people there and how the energy just changed. I mean, I walked in the front door and I said, it's not if we win. It's when we win. we're going to have a party. We're going to throw down like we're supposed to, and we're going to build on top of that and try to go win more. That win meant so many, it meant so many things for me. Even just a small moment in that day was my wife Ashley,

say, can I fly up and be there for the race? I'm going to jump on so-and-so's plane. I'm like, yeah, babe, of course. She wasn't even there, race weekend leading into that. So, yes, beating my little brother. And, oh, I'm finally done telling the Darlington Ricky Craven's story of losing that 2,000th of the second. I now have one of the coolest finishes where I win. Oh, my God.

It's so refreshing telling that story this way. That's funny. It's so good, though, Kurt. That was so good, that Ricky Craven story. It was, but it was time. It's time to show that one. And now we got the monster car in one of the most. iconic finishes in our sport. Those are big things for me. Those are things that it's because I just

feel like again, I'm that blue collar kid that's a company man. And I love monster energy. And Chip Ganassi is letting me be me as a 40 year old right now. And that's where all of this is just like a perfect fit. Well, man, we really appreciate your time today. It's been a great conversation. Hope to get you back on the show and we get back in the studio. A lot of fun, a lot of fun. to talk about around the table. But this has been great here on this Zoom call. Appreciate your time. I know you got a busy week. So we're thankful to have you. All good, my friend. Thank you for having me on. Great to tell some stories. And yeah, we'll do it in studio again one time left for a couple of years. All right, man. You're great. Good luck going forward. Thanks, man. Kurt Bush.

Hi, Mike. Let's talk about Darlington. We were lucky to have some racing on the television on Sunday. And I'm sure you watched it. I mean, I don't even know what the number. is, but I imagine it's pretty good number as far as network viewership. Yeah. What did you think about the race? Oh, man. All right. So I had a lot of expectations.

First of all, you watched it, I'm assuming, right? You and I haven't had a conversation about it. So you watched it. Well, you know, I thought the race was interesting, but I had, you know, big expectations for it. And I really, really wished it would not have been a runaway finish. That was the one thing that bummed me out. I was how I was praying for a caution.

I thought the race with. Bowman and Harvick there with about 20 to go off of a restart, I think it was, was exciting. I wanted that, but I didn't want it just for me. I wanted it because in case there were new fans watching, I wanted them to see this exciting finish, and I hope that there might have even been contact and whatnot, but I didn't want to see a two-second victory,

regardless of who the victor was. So that was the one thing that sort of, I don't know, I was just wishing for the grand slam on the finish. Didn't really get it, though. But that was my first thing. I mean, what did you think about that? Well, I mean, that particular part of the race, you know, the race played out, and I didn't find myself having those feelings at the end of the race.

We had seen a couple times before on a few restarts leading up to the end where Bowman was super quick on short run, and then, you know, Harvick would do what he does and drive away, how he did at the finish. So I thought if we had a caution, we were just going to get more of the same. You know, probably not, probably wouldn't have changed the outcome, to be honest with you.

It was really weird seeing an empty grandstands. Yeah. Knew that was going to be weird. It was weird. And it doesn't mean that, you know, I don't mean that in any way positive or negative. It was just weird. Something we'll never forget.

I mean, just like drivers taking pictures in Victory Lane with masks on. That's that's weird and not bad, not good, just where we are. You know, I think that if I was to win the race at Darlington, I would have taken a picture with the mask on. You know, you'll never forget this sort of time that we're in and what you're doing, and especially any kind of remarkable achievements and successes that you have as you start to, you know, kind of crank back up. So I definitely would have took a photo with a mask on next to the trophy had I won the race. It looked like that everybody was playing by the rules in terms of social distancing and taking it seriously.

No one made it out to be a joke or something that they didn't take very seriously. Everybody was there to do it right and try to keep this thing rolling because if we do it right, we can keep going. We can keep racing. We get to go back Wednesday and then the next weekend and keep going for. forward with the plan that we have if we don't do this right if somebody doesn't take this seriously if somebody does make a misstep it could derail the whole effort and change the entire plan slow down our progress to get back to good happy to see the plan be put together and put

forward and it worked and everybody did their part as far as the race um i got a few notes i sat on the couch and was watching that race and we were going to do a little post race deal for mcc America at home. And so I took a little bit of notes as to what I was watching. Ricky Stenhouse on lap 1, turn 2 or whatever. Not, you know, didn't even complete the lap. That was hard to watch, man. Yes, it was.

You know, you've been sitting on the sideline for a long time. Listen, I'm not preaching to Ricky right here. He knows what he did. And I watched his, you know, his social media work after, you know, a lot of drivers been doing a lot of social media themselves. Yeah, doing videos and whatnot. And great to see. I love it.

Reminds me of a driver. He used to do a lot of periscopes. Yeah, it reminds me. I remember one. So, Ricky, you know, it's just frustrating because I like Ricky. As a friend, he's cool as hell. Great got to hang out with. So it's hard to critique him.

It's hard to critique him or Jimmy or anybody when they don't get it right. But dang, man, you've been sitting on the sideline for all this time. You've had a lot of time to think. about how to prepare for how to approach this race you sort of got dealt you know the qualifying in your position is out of your control where you start is out of your control that should you know in my mind that should take a little pressure off you know take take take you don't have to go out there and put it down and make it happen they were giving you your starting position hey that's the way it's going to be. You know, you're going into the first turn of the race without any idea of

how your car drives or how it's going to grip the track and what the other guys around you are going to do, whether they're going to go hard or too easy, very easy. Some of these guys could have been super, super easy. You just don't know. So wouldn't you think you would try to give a lot of room, be prepared for something that you're not prepared for? You know, here he is on the bottom of the racetrack way down on apron, three or four wide. And, uh, you know, turn himself around. That was just so frustrating to see early in the race. And he'll get a shot Wednesday to do it differently.

And I'm sure he is eager as anyone, any driver who makes mistakes like that, they're eager to rebound or go back out on the track and do something right, you know, do something good to sort of redeem themselves. So he'd be lucky to not have to wait a whole week to do that. Yeah, but on that point real quick, Dale, I mean, you know, you bring up a good point. It's hard to critique him for me personally. and for two reasons.

One is because of what you just said. I mean, there was no practice and all that stuff. And I want to ask you a question about that in a second. The other thing is on this show last week, I was basically saying, I want these drivers to bring it. Don't even sit there and hold back. I want you to bring it. We got all these people that will probably be watching us.

And it's going to be this opportunity to not be selfish, but to think about bigger things and about, you know, the broader landscape. I didn't think that, I didn't know that that was Ricky. Not that Ricky was responding to me, but I'm saying is, was Ricky just going balls at the wall? I felt like that, you know, a little bit of patience considering it was lap one and you had not had practice would have been the way to bring it later in the race, right? You know, I think that's what we would have wanted. I felt awful for him. Much in the way I felt awful for Jimmy, which I still don't know what happened to him.

And that was just a same thing. just a brain fart right yeah yeah i mean jimmy's driving the car and he knows what went on but you know he's he's way down on the apron in turn two which which is a line that he'd been using to exit that corner so he had a good amount of track between him and the wall to be able to come up off the corner and be on the inside of the 17 and he i don't think the 17 came down jimmy made a move up off the apron and got, just got into the 17. He hit him.

That's what he did. He ran into the car, 17 tank slapped, which hit Jimmy and sent him down the racetrack. Just trying to do too much, you know. And he's basically just not far to go before he's going to finish that stage. Yeah. You know, it,

huh, I have a hard time with it because, Jimmy's had a lot of mistakes here lately. You know, when you look at the last couple of years, I think that he would even agree that he's made a lot of mental mistakes trying to make up for the speed of the car, the lack of the speed in the car,

more probably in the last two or three years than he's made in his entire career. And now, you know, we've seen when, you know, I know Jimmy, you know, I just tell me, Jimmy's a same time champion. I know that. He's won a lot of races. He's one of the bests ever do it.

I know that. I've said that. I mean, I know the guys at perfect, right? But in the last couple of years, he's made a lot of mistakes, trying to create something out of nothing when the Chevrolet didn't have any speed, when Hendrick Motorsports maybe didn't have the speed that they're accustomed to having. Well, now, here they are with a great race car, apparently a very fast Chevrolet, and the organization has made a lot of gains. They're all three or all four right there in a top five at

one point. Yeah, early on. You know, is Jimmy going to recognize that he might can dial it back a little bit? Because he seems to be on the ledge, right? He seems to be pushing this to the max right up against the chip. Maybe he can start to see, understand the performance is there. He doesn't have to try to save the day. Just, you know, live to fight another lap and be there at the end to put himself in that position to have a shot at a win. he can win a race. They got the speed in the car. They got the speed in the organization.

They can win a race, make the playoffs, be a contender in the playoffs. They got that potential. And I'll probably get grilled because I made a ton of mistakes in my career. But this is my job. You're not saying you were perfect. I mean, listen, there's correlation. Like, I can think back to times when we were going through the funk. Yeah.

And you were trying to go do things. I mean, like, listen, you can only say that because you've experienced it yourself. So anybody wants to take a shot at you about this. Yeah. I mean, this is my job now. So, um, this is what you do. No, this is my job. Yeah, this is my job to be critical and, and give affirmation and all those things, whatever, never necessary. But here's what I, here's my question. This is what I wanted to ask you about. And that is the lack of practice. Okay. Because I will tell you, I've never brought it up on this show because I know that you're a driver. You're going to always,

going to want your practice. I got it. I know this. But I watched the race and I could see some vulnerabilities. Yeah. Hey, there's nothing wrong from a viewer standpoint for me to see vulnerability. I want to know how hard it is to drive these cars. And to be honest with you, when you've had, you know, six hours of practice or whatnot and stuff like that, you get a chance to iron out the kinks.

I've got to be honest. you can make an argument that the lack of practice and the fact they went out there without having taken laps made for a better event for a spectator standpoint. I can make the argument. So my question to you is, where are you on this? You're a driver,

you're for, you know, you drove, you're going to want to practice, but was the event objectively better without it? It's hard to say. because we have been, we're so hungry for something. And, you know, looking at Jeff Gluck's, was it a good race poll? It's highly favorable that it was a good race. All right?

Give me that same race a year ago before pandemic, before we were, before everything was taken away from us, before sports was taken away from us. And does that race get an 85% success rate on Jeff Gluck's poll? I doubt it. Probably 60, maybe 50. so I'm not going to say this was just a great race and it was even better because of no practice. It was just a race.

You know, to be honest with you, in my household, I had two very drastic different opinions on whether they were enjoying the race or not. So maybe not everybody saw it the same way. To your point, though, I don't think we need a lot of practice. And as a driver, as a driver, I did not feel like, I always wanted to be practicing, especially when my car is good. Practice when I'm fast is giving everybody a chance to get closer to me. Right.

Now, when I was not good, I wanted more practice. I needed more practice to be able to fix whatever the problem was on our car to get more speed. But is it necessary? No, especially with simulators, manufacturer simulators. We, you know, I talked to, you can hear it in a lot of the driver's comments, post race, and so forth, but a lot of these guys only have the simulator to lean on in a time like this.

And Tyler Redick talked about it in the post-race comments of how he went to the simulator and used the simulator a lot to prepare for this race at Darlington. Okay, take away practice. That puts more focus on a simulator. That will drive the value in the simulator and improve, make teams or organizations, manufacturers even try to improve their simulators as they are. I know they're trying to make them better and better every day, but when it becomes maybe the most important tool to understanding what kind of car

you're going to put on the racetrack for race day, I guess the perception toward the simulators and their value is really changing, especially in a time like now, when that is the only way they can kind of try out, set up. or see where they are or how the car feels or drives to the driver. That's the only way they can really get any track time is virtually. So I love that because I'm a big tech guy and I love simulators and I love all that good stuff. So I kind of like that part about it. And there's got to be a monetary, you know, savings for teams, organizations.

You know, think about logistics, hotel rooms, rental cars and track time. tires, gas. You can find numerous things that they saved money on by showing up and racing on Sunday without any practice. They could shorten the race weekends up easily. They could do it right now. Every single week you could show up on Saturday and practice for a couple hours and qualify and then race the next day. No one would care. The only people that don't want that, I believe, are the tracks. Thank you. That's what I was about to say. So if you're a fan and you're going to come camp or you're going to come stay for the weekend, the track wants you to be there as long as they can get you there, right?

So if there's on-track activity Friday and you're going to take that away from the track, that's probably a big loss in income or that's a lot of revenue that is disappearing off the table for them and what fans are doing and enjoying on that particular day around the racetrack. Now, you know, race tracks could get creative and bring in other series that would compete on those days or concerts, different type of attractions to the event to where it's more than just a race on Sunday, you know, and I felt like I've said that for years and tracks do a good job. There's the tracks, but there's also then the TV element, the TV people care about practice too, because those are live events.

And when you buy live events. I don't know, yeah, I don't think we should be putting every practice on TV. Okay, but they still do. They do, but maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we shouldn't. You know, maybe there's a more economical way to put those, to allow people to consume practice through streaming online, whatever it is, whereas we're not putting it, I don't know.

In the 90s and even in the 2000s, we didn't have every single minute of track time broadcast on national television. Right. I thought that's necessary at all. And I don't think that the networks would really miss that. I mean, looking at the numbers of people that are tuning in to a Friday morning or 8 o'clock Saturday practice, you know, does it really matter when that is? I don't know.

I don't think that's as big a domino for me. Okay. That being said, I don't want to go down to that. I mean, there's a couple ways you can, you know, slice that apple. The thing about it is, is I was curious on. if it was going to be obvious for us watching this thing to see people, to watch this race, and it'd be clear that they had zero laps on the thing. And it wasn't.

It looked like a race to me. It looked like another race of a bunch of professional race car drivers that know how to, for the most part, most of them, you know, let themselves, you know, tiptoe into the thing and not go, you know, full bore. Not all of them didn't do that, but most of them. And they ended up having a race that looked similar. to when you had six different practices or whatever. And I think that that's a point to be made.

It's a reason to credit the drivers for their ability, credit the teams for being creative and being able to bring a card that is dialed in enough to be able to keep it in one piece until you can make adjustments. And it added a layer of strategy and complexities to the race and vulnerabilities to the race that I enjoyed. I enjoyed it. I liked it.

Good deal. make an argument, hey, reduce the practices all together. Anyways, I thought your opinion that would be interesting. Yeah, Ryan Newman had a great day. Good to see Ryan Newman out on the track, but also very competitive in his race. He struggled with track position late after a little bit of a spin, but still had good speed in his car. Tyler Reddick, what a great day he had.

Yeah. Quick all day for RCR, getting a lot of speed out of that Chevrolet. Tyler Redick, I think, is one guy who's and his teammate Austin Dillon. and Tyler and Austin, but Tyler most specifically, is a guy who's really benefiting from the new Chevrolet. I don't think that they would be having as much success as had his Chevy not brought the new car in. Matt Kenseth you mentioned.

Great day for Matt. He seemed to adapt really quickly to the balance of the car and how to drive this package. Look to see him continue that success going forward. John Hunter Nimichick finished in the top 10 with a team that rarely does. it's been three years since they've had a top 10 on a non-plate racetrack. What an incredible hustle, you know, from a guy who, you know, I don't, it's funny

because it's like Reddick and John Hunter both get in those cars and they really don't, when I look at Redick's car or John Hunter's car, I have a perception or a, I have an idea, I guess, of where I assume that car is going to finish. It's a bias. Yeah, bias. John Hunter and Redick do not share that. They just jump in there and they have no, they see no reason why they can't excel and succeed.

And they don't use that perception as an excuse in poor performance. That to me is incredible. That shows me that those two guys got amazing determination and fire that will propel them deep into, you know, very successful careers in a sport given, you know, given the right opportunities. That is a personality trait, Mike, that you don't acquire. You don't, you don't grow into.

That's like a quality in a race car driver that is, you know, kind of part of your DNA and it's a rare quality that is super, super critical. you know, maybe I'm overstating it, but I feel pretty good about it, what I'm saying. Rodney Childers, I think, you know, great win by Kevin Harbick. He drove the car, but Rodney Childers had to set it up. Rodney Chilterns had to guess on what they needed when they got there, and he didn't get to go out and practice and lean on the driver to help him go in the right direction. Rodney had to put the car underneath Kevin, and I don't know whether it was really there at the beginning of the race,

but they adjusted and improved and made the car more competitive, it seemed, as the race went on. You got to give, in this particular instance, with no practice, no qualifying, no track time, you got to give the crew chief, Ronnie Childers, a big hand for his leadership. It was a huge factor in their result when you could have, you know, when you put a car out on the track with no laps. I wouldn't say there's guess work, but you are kind of, you know, biting the bullet. So it's a tough spot for a crew chief, and he excelled. Hey guys, this is our YouTube Ask Junior portion of the podcast presented to you by Xfinity,

our podcast partner here and also your partner in speed, coverage, and control. Glad you guys are here. Leah's here to help get the questions going. Mike's here as well to pitch in the conversation, so let's get started, Leah. All right. First question, we're going to go with the one that we got asked the most this week. Everyone wants to know what your plan is for an Xfinity race with the, you know, extended, revised schedule coming out.

What are you doing? we're still going to go run Homestead. I'm going to run the Saturday race. There's two races, Xfinity races at Homestead, one on Saturday, one on Sunday. I'm going to run the Saturday one. Why am I not running both? We have agreements in place for drivers to run all the other races. I'm feeling in, I'm going to run one race, and all the other races are spoken for.

So we will probably use the same car as long as I don't tear it up. But we will be ready if we need to back up. I suppose. But it should be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be middle of afternoon at Homestead in July or June or whatever. So it's going to be hot. Not sure I'm looking forward to that part,

but I know that I enjoy a hot slick racetrack and putting that car right on the wall. So that's probably where we're going to be spending most of the day trying to find some speed. So we'll make it work. We'll sweat and lose a lot of pounds and have some fun. All right. Next question from Higgie talking about that, actually.

he said that the drivers didn't look absolutely wiped out after yesterday's race, but will fatigue play a factor on Wednesday or even on Sunday 600 miles with these shorter breaks in between races? You know, I think it might creep into your head a little bit, especially at Charlotte. Probably not so much for Darlington, but, you know, when your car is not fast, you get to thinking about those things and allow your mind to sort of wander off of the focus at hand. you know, that's a long race. Charlotte is, it's not so much tough physically as it is mentally. You know, your concentration level, trying to stay at peak concentration level for four hours, when really you're stressing yourself to do it for three hours, which is the typical length of most of our races,

well, when you run that 600 mile, you've got to go a little bit further, a little bit longer, your body and your mind really not conditioned for that. You've had a lot of time off. Now you're going to try to cram a lot of racing into a very short period of time. I wouldn't be surprised to see some of those guys get out of the car and just be mentally worn down. Maybe not physically, you know, visually, but I think, you know, they're going to go home and just kind of check out. Sloppy Chad wrote in on Twitter and he wants to know with Myrtle Beach announcing it'll be shutting down. Do you plan on taking a late model down there and giving it one final ride around the place?

No, I probably won't. Um, it's, uh, you know, it's a racetrack that I spent a lot of time at in the mid-90s. Uh, we race there for about three or four years. And, uh, there's been a talk, there's been a lot of talk about the, you know, the track and staying open and what it was going to become and all this stuff. And I think, you know, this has kind of all led up to an inevitable future, uh, for the track. And, and, uh, you know, I wish it was going to stay open forever, but I feel that way about

all these racetracks. and some of them are more successful at it than others. And apparently the land value is just too good to pass up as far as being able to turn it into whatever their plans are versus what they would be able to do in revenue for keeping the track open. So I feel like the track's successful. It works. It does what it, you know, it does what they, it operates well.

But the land value, I think in that particular space has always been sort of the driving force behind the rumors and conversations about what would happen to the, track eventually. And this pandemic is probably not helped in keeping the track open beyond this year. Dominic Wilde says there's been speculation that street races could be joining the NASCAR schedule. So which city would you like to see a NASCAR street racing? Oh man, that's a good question. I, you know, I don't know. I mean, I think we'd probably be looking at existing racetracks that have had a lot of success and a place where, you know,

we would be able to draw a nice crowd and showcase, you know, what we can do or what our cars can do. That's a tough one, though, but, you know, there's a lot of options. There's a lot of people going to throw a lot of things on the table, but I don't really have, I haven't put enough thought into it, really, to come down to, you know, what track I'd like to go to. Mike, do you have any kind of feedback on that? I was just thinking San Francisco because they get those heels, it would be a little Dukes a hazard to it, but you know, they got that, that street that does that zigzag. I know, I can't take anything seriously. But no, for real, though, I mean, I would, I would pick a city that we

are completely not in that market. So start with that aspect and try to at least, does you start integrating parts of the country that, uh, that maybe they, they would be more receptive to than others? People on YouTube, um, you know, Long Beach, St. Petersburg, um, Portland. Those are some of the things. See, that would be cool, right? I mean, yeah, that... Yeah, I think Portland would be great. All right, next question.

Eric Smith, of all the cars you have raced, you have a favorite or one that means the most to you. Oh, man. Well, there's a... I won my first late model stock race at Myrtle Beach in 1994, I think. Maybe it was 93. But that car is over at D.E.I. we sort of restored it for the most part and it's sitting over at DEI.

That car means a lot to me. I assume that the 2004 Dayton 500 winners over there too, which that's got to be a great car. Rick's got a, you know, the 2014 Daytona 500 winner, Rick has that over at his place and that car will always be special to me. The last race that I ran at Homestead, we have that car. It's over at the Hall of Fame. The beer cans in the trunk.

You know, I mean, I don't know if one car is high above or, you know, more important than most. But there's a couple right there that I know are around, that I know are still out there. And I hope they'll always be, I guess. I don't have my hands on every single one of them. So I can't take care of them. But I hope that somebody's taking care of them. Our next question coming from Corey watching live on YouTube, what advice would you give for someone new to cars?

setups in i racing man um so uh there's a there's a website called virtual racing school and it's a subscription website but i've used it when it comes to um you know if you're going to run any open setup official races especially on the road courses for me i have no time to be building setups or trying to find speed i have zero times right so i spend a lot of time in the fixed setup part of the service racing on the Oval side, but if I want to go run a race in the RoeCorp side that's open, I subscribe to virtual racing school. And they have setups. They also have video tutoring and so forth about how to drive the track, the line, and the drivers, the people that are tutoring you are successful, quality individuals in the service that are customers as well. So,

and I found the setups to be, for the most part, pretty competitive. I mean, you're going to have to adjust a few things for your style or what you like or don't like, but I've used that service to sort of help me enjoy the SIM a lot more and be able to do a lot more things in the SIM as opposed to. A lot of guys get in the SIM and they pick, they kind of huddle into one space and they only really enjoy about 10% of what's available. And so I would encourage people to try to branch out more. and that's what I've tried to do over the last couple of months is really try everything,

you know, and try to push myself to drive cars maybe that I wouldn't typically think about trying. But that virtual racing school, I think they got a good service. There's a guy on here, Kevin, he says he got to race with you the other day and he was nervous. I was nervous too, Kevin. Kevin, you make you nervous. Everybody said, you know, when I get in those races, everybody's like, no ragdale. I'm like, you watch me, I'm a wreck myself. That's awesome. All right, that's it for today.

All right, y'all. I appreciate you guys tuning in to As Junior today and following along on our Dirtymoom media YouTube channel. We appreciate the support for the podcast. Driver start your engines. That's all you have to say right into your XFinity X1 voice remote to unlock all the latest NASCAR news, highlights, and TV shows. Pretty incredible, Mike.

It is totally incredible. That's not all. If you open up the Xfinity Sports Zone any time for the NASCAR schedule, driver standings for all three national series, you even can do in live in-race scoreboard with driver stats. It's all right there in the palm of your hand with the X-1 voice remote. Xfinity is really bringing the best seat in the house for NASCAR fans. Check out everything at Xfinity.com slash NASCAR. Last call.

All right, everybody. It's last call for the Dale Jr. download. It's been a great show. Kurt was awesome. What a great conversation we had with him, Mike. Yeah, for sure, man. Yeah, he just did, he did a solid job. Opened up on a lot of things. I was a little curious if he'd really get into, but he did this past weekend. I know we all talked about the racing at Darlington, but racing was happening all over the country, and particularly at Hickory Motor Speedway. Our own Josh Barry went to Hickory with our late model

program. We got a new partner on the hood of that car, I Racing. Yeah. And all things automotive has been with us for several years now, but Josh went there for 251 lap races and won them both. I watched it on Speed 51. It was just great to see us competing again. My grandfather's won five championships, track championships at Hickory during the 1950s. It's incredible that we are still winning races with cars out on that racetrack 60 plus years later. We just want to remind all our listeners and fans of the podcast that we really have,

appreciate it when you guys support our partners, our sponsors, the people that support this show through sponsorship, Xfinity. Mike, we've got a lot of great partners, but we appreciate when our listeners support those brands. Yeah, I mean, listen, you go through pandemics and things like this that you don't foresee, and then all of a sudden you don't take for granted the people that stuck with you. And so we've had a lot of partners that come in and out of this podcast, you know, on a weekly basis. And I just, you know, and also with our other podcast, door bumper clear, you know, offer pad steps up and just sticks with us through a pandemic. I mean, that's a, that's a big deal to us. And so, Xfinity you mentioned. You mentioned, you know, we have Chevrolet.

We got a bunch of partners and you hear us and you get entertained by us when we deliver some ad reads and Dale gets into a Scotts yard and everything else. But listen, it doesn't mean anything unless you're supporting them in return, right? And that's just, there's just no other way to cut it. And so continue to support them. If you hear them and this show means something to you or if door bumper clear means something to you or another piece of dirty moe media content means something to you and you see a partner sign with that, support them in return. That's be doing us a big favor. Also, you're going to hear a lot more and more over the next several weeks about Lost Speedways. All right. Lost Speedway premieres on Peacock. July 15th. I cannot wait

for people to see this show. It's created in produced by the same team that does this very own the Dale Jr. download, our Dirtymo media team has been working really hard. We're spread thin, putting together all of our content. I mean, that's why Matthew's not even on right now is because Matthew's working on Lost Speedways. We're in the home stretch right now. So Matthew hasn't been, you know, he hasn't left the company. He is literally needing these two hours that we've been taping this podcast to finish up. We all have been just completely, completely consumed of giving this product because we believe in it. It is a show that has exceeded our expectations.

Leah Vaughn went and binge watched every episode this past week because we gave her the link. She came back and was blown away by it and to blow Leah Vaughn away. I mean, that is no easy to pass. It's not easy to do. It's not easy to do. Yeah, Mike told me to watch two episodes and I literally just watched, went through all of them. It was awesome. I loved it. Can't wait to see the final product.

Well, we are finished with filming lost speedways. Matthew and the team are now sort of hovering and pouring through a lot of vintage material, photos, videos, home videos, some stuff that's never been seen before. Yes. Matthew is literally discovering lost footage during this process that I, I haven't even seen. I just can't wait. It's really going to tie the stories together.

It's going to be incredible opportunity to bring this show to Peacock. And I just can't wait, really excited about it. It's bigger and better and more than I could have ever dreamed when we first started talking about this concept. So Lost Speedways, we're going to be telling you about it. We're not going to let you miss it. July 15. You've got to get to Peacock.

Peacock TV's the NBC's new streaming service. that's where you're going to find it. Yeah, they have a free tier. There is also another, there is a pay tier, but if you have Xfinity, you get Peacock service for free. You get it already. So I'm an Xfinity customer, and so I get the service as is,

which has actually been convenient for pretty much every streaming service that I can think of has been able to connect, you know, I've been able to connect through my Xfinity. So that's, That's one way to enjoy Peacock, but we know you're going to tune in. I can't wait to bring it to you. All right, everybody, that's the show.

Appreciate everybody for tuning in. Mike, Leah. It's been a lot of fun. We are going to do a show next week. It's Memorial Day weekend. We're going to let everybody enjoy themselves even on Monday. So we're going to record on Tuesday next week, Mike. Yep.

Correct? Yep, that's correct. Yeah, so we'll record Tuesday. So the podcast will be just slightly delayed on the release, but it's because we're going to wait a day so everybody can have fun with their families. But thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next week. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Dirty Mo.