The Dale Jr. Download - 299 – Marcus Smith: First Sport with Fans Back

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is joined by Speedway Motorsports CEO Marcus Smith, who opens up about NASCAR’s return to action from a track owner’s perspective. As Charlotte Motor Speedway hosts NASCAR’s second week back to racing, Smith details the screening process the track conducts before events, why he envisions fans returning sooner rather than later and what that will look like. The two long-time friends, along with co-host Mike Davis, reflect on Sunday’s World 600 and Earnhardt Jr. shares his thoughts on the underwhelming race and asks Smith what can be done to improve NASCAR Cup Series competition at Charlotte. Smith offers candid thoughts on what the track and sport can do to put on a more entertaining event, how his company approaches repaving track surfaces, and the difficulty of keeping up with race team’s innovation. Plus, the two reminisce about the cold day spent at North Wilkesboro Speedway last December, discuss what Smith really thinks of Dale Jr.’s ideas, and learn more about NASCAR returning to Nashville. As racing resumes, this conversation sheds light on how tracks are preparing to host events again and what goes into putting on the best races possible. 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 Marcus Smith coming on the show. He's promoting a race over there at Charlotte Motor Speedway all week long. Pretty much racing every single night. He's going to tell us how he does it. We're going to talk a lot more about the industry and how we go forward, get fans back to the racetrack. Let's get Marcus in here and get this show started. All right, everybody, just like we said, man, Marcus Smith.

He's going to come through the show. Here he is. Good to see, Marcus. Hey, buddy. Good to see you, too. It's been a while. Yeah, man. Where are you at right now?

I'm at my house What house? You got a lot of houses Just one on the backyard And I'm just hanging out here Before I head out to the track a little bit later For the truck race Yep so this is an incredibly unique Busy week for Charlotte Merge Speedway

You've got basically racing Every single night What does that mean for you is the as the owner of the business, the owner of the facility. Yeah. Why are you still at home? Why can't believe you got time to be on this show? It's a great question, but it's so different.

You know, not having fans on site just changes how we operate a ton. There are people at the Speedway now, you know, doing things like checking the track and making sure all the electrical systems work and just sort of minding all the infrastructure, security and whatnot. I know I just got a notice on my phone that security just opened up to screen everybody coming in the garage. So things like that. But I'm home and I was going to go out of the track,

but, man, last night somebody ransacked my neighbor's car and came over and tried it. I left my door open and they went in my car. There's nothing in it to get. And man, it makes me so mad. In your neighbor, in your own neighborhood there? Yeah, the neighborhood. Yeah.

So I was, I was irritated about that. That made me mad. This is happening a lot. Did you know, you know, our late model trailers got broke into either yesterday or a couple days ago. I mean, there seemed to be a crime spree going on.

Man. Well, these guys, they got credit card, not in mind, but my neighbors. And they went and bought stuff at Walmart up in Salisbury. So, you know, from Charlotte to Salisbury, last night, 245. Got them on video, so that'll help. And police were here doing fingerprints and all that kind of good stuff. Well, of all weeks.

Of all weeks. I mean, if you're going to break into your neighbor's house, come on. Could you do it? Couldn't they have done it next week? Anytime, man. And it just really makes you mad. Somebody does that. Yeah.

I've had a few people come on the property and we had to install quite an extensive security system with cameras on all corners of the property. And nothing more frustrating when you got somebody trying to come on to something that's yours, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So it's hard to hear about that. But again, like going back to my question about how many races you got going on this week.

It's a lot. It is. So you take the fan out of the equation, take the responsibilities that that entails for you and your staff and your team. And what's left? What? For us, we are focused on making sure the race is as good as it can be. All of the protocols, you know, are followed. The security is smooth. We handle cleaning the facility before and after. And, you know, so for me as a fan, I'm looking forward to all this racing. I love being able to tune in, you know, on TV. I love Washington and Darlington. And I think for all the race fans at home being able to watch racing Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, it's pretty fun. So that's kind of what I'm looking forward to for everybody. Are you operating with a reduced staff?

I mean, I would imagine you are. Oh, man. we usually have 3,000 people putting on the race, handling everybody in all the details that go along with having 100,000 people at a track, camping and everything that goes along with the race. It's a huge undertaking. And now on site we have, on Sunday for the Coke 600, we had less than 1,000 people on site in total.

Teams, the Speedway, the network, NASCAR, all that was really reduced down. And, you know, so the TV show, we tried to look at,

you know, a few weeks ago when we were first talking about how do we get this schedule going. We started off with, you know, nothing. And we thought, how do we get started?

How do we get some racing on the track? and we developed a protocol, a plan with all the safety in mind. Worked with NASCAR, worked with Atrium Health here in Charlotte, worked with Governor's Office in the North Carolina Department of Health and the counties. And we had to communicate a ton. We had to go back and rework our plans and just to kind of build some trust so that we could get a yes to just hold the race and put it on television. So that was a big win, and now we're able to see the races on television.

And I think pretty soon, I really think sooner than later, we're going to have fans at the track. I look around the country and you see people are able to go shopping at the malls. Restaurants are opening up with, you know, various protocols in place. And so one step after another, we'll all be getting back to the track, which I think is going to be a really welcome thing. what's your responsibility when you go to the racetrack what's your you know you can't you can't do you can't do you can't shake hands and right yeah yeah you can't you know you can't be the typical track owner yeah what so when you're sitting there watching the 600 this past weekend what is what are you trying to accomplish what do you look at so i like i love being around people

I love that we host a party with friends and family. And I have my office overlooks the track, beautiful vantage point to see the race from there. My dad came up. He watched the 600. We had some food in my office. And we watched the race. At the end of the race, I went down to Victory Lane. We had a virtual deal set up, actually a zoo.

Zoom call for Coca-Cola, and they were sort of viewing Victory Lane from the computer with Zoom. And I stood there with Brad and the trophy and said, Woo! Took a picture, and that was about, that was about it. Is that awkward? Is that as awkward as it looks? I mean, just give me the, yeah, that feels like it's awkward.

I mean, even I see the Victory Lane photos. I think it feels great when you're the winner, man. That's all you want to do. Ask your buddy right there. I think he knows it feels good to say that. Now, I'm sure after the thousandth time, it becomes a little repetitious. No, we all agree it feels good to say woo when you win. I'm saying when you say woo and you're the only one within vicinity and earshot,

you're saying woo to yourself. He came over to me and wanted to bump cans. he had his Miller, I had my Coke, and I was like, you know, backing up a little bit. Whoa, whoa. I got my personal six feet of his face here. Oh, I didn't want the cameras, you know, to say, look at these bad guys. Right. Exactly.

And so, but I don't know. I'm a hugger, man. I was ready to hug him, but we didn't hug. We just, we bumped this and congratulated him. And he's real excited because at Charlotte, we have this really nice. motor coach lot for 600 winners. And it's, we just redid it. And after he said, you know, man, thank you. I won. He said, I get to parking the 600 coach lot now. And pretty funny. That is pretty funny. I didn't know that that was the thing they did. I didn't know that. That's,

that's interesting. All these little traditions. Yeah. Boy, I'm telling you, even the retired drivers still hang on to those spots, Mike. Oh, I guess so. I've heard that. Yeah, as long as they, as long as they can. As long as they'll let you. Yeah. Oh, no. As long as they keep bringing their bus.

I know a few of the tire drivers that send their buses over there just to make sure they still can use that spot. Even if they don't go to the race? They're probably not going to be using the bus at all. Yeah. Well, Marcus, there's been a, you know, there's been a lot going on with the racetrack over the last couple years. The roval has came about, which has been a great thing. And I think that the roval, and this is my perception now, this might not be your reality, but my perception is that the roval was brought up as an idea to create some new interest in this facility.

Racing there for whatever reason, and everybody's got their opinions and I've got mine, has on the oval has not been stellar. We saw another sort of example of that this past Sunday, whereas the Xfinity race, to me, had all the bells and whistles, man, really dramatic. Obviously, I'm not there to see crashes, but how they happen, who's involved, why it happened. That race really reminded me of what's made that Xfinity series great way back into the 90s and the 80s.

You know, just a lot of guys trying really hard to make a name for themselves. Great race. I'm probably going to see the same exact thing tonight in a truck series. And with those cars, the Xfinity cars seem to use that traction compound just a little bit more than the cup guys. It seems like to me that the downforce package on the cup cars sort of take away that advantage of using that higher line because there's just so much down force and grip. The bottom is the more preferred place to run. But anyhow, you know, I know you're aware of the product that you see on your racetrack. I know that you check boxes, right, when you watch these races.

Did I like this? Did I not like this? What is it that you can do as an owner of the racetrack? I pose this question in the social media post that I put out today about having you on the show. You know, we talk about NASCAR. Fans go at NASCAR anytime that they don't like something about our sport or they don't approve of what they saw. But what can a track owner do to change what he's seeing in his race track? That's, you know, without, you know, not everybody's got a roval.

Not everybody can create a roval. So what are some of the things? I know you don't want to just race on the roval every time we come to your track. You want to make that oval work. So what are the things you can do? Well, it's a great question. And, you know, if you look at over the years, the things that we've done, you go back to, gosh, I think it was 07 maybe when Humpty levigated the track.

Yep. that was totally in response to the racing. And that was the reason that he got frustrated and said, well, if NASCAR's not going to do something and he was frustrated with the tires and just the competition. And there's so many things that go into the competition and the entertainment value of the race.

And you saw last night with the expenditure, race, it was great. Why is that? And we asked those questions ourselves. And at that time, the levigation race, that was a response to, man, I want to do something to make the racing better. And over the years, we've done things like in Kentucky, where we did the variable banking in Kentucky.

We did the same thing in Texas to try and do things that would add some more excitement to the competition. Charlotte, the last, it's a great sort of observation experiment. When you look at Sunday night, the Cup cars, and then Monday night, the Xfinity cars, it's a great time to just look at it and ask ourselves, what's different here? And what is it?

Is it something with the rules of the car? Is it something with track? Is it something with tires? I don't really know all the answers, but here's one thing that I do know that's so different about NASCAR than any other sport. In NASCAR, the teams have sort of a mandate to go and outsmart the rules, right? No other sport has that. You know, in basketball, you can't, if one team, if the Carolina Tar Heels could invent a mechanism

that made their ball go in the net every time they throw it up. and Duke, you know, didn't have that. Duke would have to spend the money to get that thing, that technology. Well, obviously, that doesn't exist because the NCAA wouldn't allow it. But in NASCAR, it is allowed. You know, that kind of rule figuring out and a way to get around and whatnot. We'll call it innovation. Innovation.

Innovation. That's right. So that, I think, is, that's why it's a never-ending chase for NASCAR to always have to catch up with the teams, bring them back, you know, on the different innovating that they're doing. And it's a big challenge. And I don't know why it's different in the Cup series versus the Xfinity series, but I imagine part of it has to do. with the the amount of money that goes into innovating. And it's an interesting thing that is, like I said, it's a never-ending challenge. We just, we won't stop having to chase down these innovations because once you do,

somebody else, you know, will continue to try to outsmart. Hey, let's take a quick break from our conversation with Marcus and have Dale Jr. tell us about an important partner. One of the things that I noticed about Charlotte Merse Speedway that's unique to that particular track is when you last repaved it, you used a particular new innovation that has, it's a surface with rubber polymers in it. So it's kind of like rubber when you put a tire on that racetrack

in the color of the racetrack itself. When you look at other racetracks, I only know what year it was that Charlotte was repaved, but when you look at other racetracks that have been repaved that long ago, and you'll see the surface of the track itself, the shade of the track itself change, lighten up a little bit as it's bleached by the sun and so forth. Charlottlenburg Speedway is as dark as the day it was repaved, in my opinion.

Now it's getting bumpier. The drivers do talk about the bumps. That was one thing that your dad always was proud of, the character and the challenge of getting through some of the bumps in the racetrack because they got more severe over the years. But did you do too good a job when you repave Charlotte Murray's Feeway last time? You know, it's a good question. So actually, let me tell you what we did in Kentucky and Texas.

We asked this question to ourselves. Why do we, when we pave, why do we do it the way we do it? And why is it, you know, three or four years down the road before the track? comes in and develops what we usually consider better racing. And so what we did in Texas and Kentucky on those repaves over the last few years is we left the top surface of the track rougher and we didn't put a finish coat on it. So if you go to a parking lot, an asphalt parking lot and it's paved, you know, that finished coat is really smooth.

And, you know, like if you like skateboarding, you can. go and you skateboard on that asphalt and it's super smooth. But if you go to an old parking lot, it's very rough. And that's kind of the way we like a track as well. So we changed the way we finished off the paving at Kentucky and Texas to try to bring it in more quickly. We use some other chemicals and processes to what we call season the track there to just run some experiments because, nobody in the paving business paves like we did. You know, I mean, when you think about it, you pave roads, you pave parking lots.

You want them perfect. Yeah, the goal is to pave them so you don't have to pave them, you know, for a long time. That's not the goal in racing. The goal is to make it a good racing track, make it competitive. So we've just started thinking about this over the last, I would say, seven or eight years. and we've paved two tracks in that time, and we have adjusted how we do it. And the next one we pave,

we've got a couple of notes on things that we'll do differently. But, you know, I think, again, comparing last night's race, the Xfinity series, to the 600 on Sunday, I think you've got to ask, is it the track? Yeah. Because Monday was a great race last night. That was fantastic, side by side, you know, four or five cars under a blanket through the turns.

That was fun. Is it the track? Yeah. I think it's worth asking. Well, how would it be the track? Explain that to me. Well, I mean, I think a lot of times you wonder, you know, does the, like Dale said, is it paved too perfect? I think typically a new pavement on a track, it's so sticky that the, you know, the only place

to be is the bottom. And that is what you might call too good. It's got too much grip. Too much grip and you just have to be at the bottom because you can stick down there and it's the fastest way around and no other way around is going to get you to the front. Right. But, you know, Charlotte last night was proved that you can be in the bottom, the middle, the top, and you can carry speed through the turns down the straightaways and it was all good so that that I think has to you know give us the the question of what what are we chasing in in the competition what's different about it um I don't know yeah it's interesting because at at a mile at a mile at a half um you know the new rules package with the high down force low horsepower net net

some pretty decent results. I agree. For whatever reason when we take this package to Charlotte, they don't, they don't, they don't gel. And I wonder if there's any possibility. What if there's any chance that NASCAR or that you would be in conversations or try to encourage NASCAR to look at trying a different package more similar to what the Xfinity guys are running?

Well, that's, I want to give credit NASCAR for, for, thinking like that because like this last year last year's all-star race we had elements of this year's cup package in the all-star race and it really did produce some good racing last year um then we saw at places like like Vegas where the racing was really good i think we had our best race in Vegas we've had a long time earlier this year and um that i thought was going to you know, show dividends at places like Charlotte. We'll see how, you know, when we get to Atlanta, when we get to Texas, is it different? Have the teams caught up?

Did they figure some things out with the new package already in the time off? And, you know, I'm sure there was some smart guys working at the shop trying to figure out ways to, you know, beat the system, beat the rules. That's what they're supposed to do. For that point alone, and I am super ignorant to this whole process, and I'm learning a lot just from what you guys are saying here. I don't know how it could be the track. If one, it works for one series better than it works for another series. And two, the rules packages are continuously changing and teams are continuously innovating.

What is the track really supposed to do to keep an entertaining race through all of when the goalpost keeps moving? Right. So I guess that's where I'm ignorant to this thing. But maybe that's why I, but going back to something, you said, did I hear you say this correctly? Did I understand it correctly? So you were literally, when you repaved these tracks, the high groove is paved completely different.

You didn't even put a finishing coat on the high groove to make it more rough and therefore try to create more grip? All the pavement at Kentucky and Texas is paved basically without a finishing top coat. So if you went on it, just walked the track after we finished paving it, you would not think that it is, you would realize it's not a typical asphalt paving. Got it. It looks different.

The size of rocks, you know, and when you pave with asphalt, you use rocks in the, they call it aggregate. It's in the asphalt. And we use bigger rocks to help make bigger pores in the pavement. And therefore create more tire wear. Is that correct?

Yeah. Yeah, a rougher surface. was the goal and a different surface. I think, you know, when you have those pores, every little edge takes away some of the contact from the tire to the pavement. So that's what we're trying to do something different. Yeah, I think it's a great idea.

I really got to applaud you guys for even being willing to do that. I mean, if I'm a track owner, I'm going to want to pay my racetrack and I want it to last 100 years. I'm not really sure I'm interested in paving it to last less than that. So it's a bit of a, because it's an expensive thing to have to pave your racetrack. It is. It's an interesting dilemma because you could ask yourself, is it whose job is it to create the best race?

Is it the tracks or is it the sports or is the teams? Is it the drivers? Whose job is it? And there's a fiscal obligation in every one of those decisions. And that would be very different. That would be difficult. I see what you're saying. It comes down to, I think it comes down to NASCAR and the promoters to look at the competition.

And, you know, we're all in the sports entertainment business. And I know a lot of people out there who don't like entertainment. You know, they don't like, they might say, man, that's, that's not pure to the sport. but if it's not entertaining, we don't have a business. And so it's up to every league, NFL, NBA, baseball. They look at the quality of entertainment that's being produced, and they might adjust the rules from time to time. That's why we have things like the three-point line.

That's why we have things like the shot clock and basketball. Right. And a whole bunch of other rules. and you know NASCAR the team's job is to win that is their job and and you know we can't fault somebody for wanting to win that's that's what they should be doing and then it's it's incumbent on the rule makers to to adjust and to pull back in some areas that need to be pulled back on for the sake of the entertainment value and the competition great competition produces great drama and entertainment.

Yeah, I think it's a responsibility. I think of everybody, the organization, the track builders, owners, the tire company that connects the race car to the road to be in that conversation to do what's best to create the best racing. Yeah. And I like that you guys are learning about how to pay these racetracks and the best way to probably produce the best style of racing that we want to see.

but I'm with you as well. The car itself is probably the most critical piece to all of that and how that car reacts. So we're racing without fans, and it's extremely awkward, upsetting to some people, but it's necessary. We've got to get our sport going again, so this is how we have to do it.

But I know that probably nobody is more eager to get fans back at the racetrack than you as the track owner. where are we in that process? I mean, everything has moved so quickly. I don't even have, I don't even hesitate to ask you that question because the game changes every day. So where are we right now with getting fans back to the racetrack and how much progress is left? So we, every day we get closer.

When you turn on the news and you see that in some places, restaurants are opened, public areas are opened up, even if it's at 50%, things like that are just loosening the log jam that's preventing us all from getting back to, in this case, getting back to speedways for NASCAR races. And so in every state, we're working with the governor's offices and working on those protocols and the laws and what they'll allow us to do. And I think, you know, this current bunch of events that NASCAR has announced don't have any fans at them. But I think as we keep going here, you know, this week is more promising than last week.

And I think next week will be even more promising. Do you have racetracks that are preparing for fans? Yes, absolutely. We have plans who are working on protocols. to be ready for fans, thinking about the various steps that need to be taken to allow fans back of the track. And we're looking forward to that. What's the most likelyest fan that comes to the racetrack first? The guy that's going to bring his camper and park in the infield, you know, kind of huddle in that little space of his, or is it the fan that's buying the race day ticket

that's going to show up to the gate and sit in the ground? grandstands. Which fan, I guess, is the easier one to accommodate in this situation? Well, it's a great question. I think that the infield is going to be maybe the last one to come back because we're spreading out a lot more now with the garage area, where all the haulers are parked and the motor coaches and the emergency management vehicles are parked, and that sort of thing, just to provide for the best environment in that situation, it's going to, I think, cause us at most speedways to limit the infield to just, you know, event credential people. So to your question, it would be the grandstands that we would be able to open up more quickly.

But you've got campgrounds on the outside of the track too. So you'll be able to camp. In fact, our campgrounds that we have in Charlotte are open now. We have campers. there. Really? Yeah, like people that might live in their motorhome. They've been there for, you know, for a long time. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I mean, they have some retirees, typically, that just sort of roam the country

and see things. And so they've, some people have been staying with us. They might stay a week or two or a month at a time. Oh, so they're not, it's not really a connector associated to the race itself. you just had people coming and going through the campground. Yeah. Have you had any unrulys? Because, I mean, Dale Jr. brought up this point a few weeks.

When we would announce that we were going to be going back, the sport was coming back, he thought there would be at least one that's trying to get in. For the one. Okay. So you're confirming that. I'd be disappointed if we didn't. I mean, why not? Heck, if I was in charge of security, I might let you in.

But it's, you know, no harm, no foul. We had people try to get in the track on Sunday for the 600. We had, I don't know, gosh, a few dozen cars parked outside turns one and two because it's kind of elevated and you can see a little bit. You can see the big Speedway TV. You can hear it. So I think they were parked out there drinking a few beverages and just kind of enjoy it. Did anybody in the suites throw a big party?

The suite wasn't open, but the condos. Condos, it's what I meant. Yeah, those overlooked turn one. And, you know, so those are people's residents. And they're allowed to go to their home. And they're allowed to have people in their home. And so they had fun. They had fun.

I thought it was great. Yeah. So when you're allowing, I guess the first door to get unlocked was the door to the suites and the door to the, you know, the condos overlooking the track, which you have those at Atlanta. You have those at Texas. Right. Are you learning from those, you know,

that experience of having those fans there and being able to get them into the area safely and back out of the area safely and be able to screen them properly or, you know, run them through the protocols. Are you guys learning quite a bit from that experience to be able to help you open up further? We're learning from that. We're learning from the whole thing. But, you know, the protocol that we're doing now was developed weeks ago, I think, six or eight weeks ago. And it is very stringent. I mean, for this, for today, for Sunday, tomorrow,

there's only one way in the track. And there's only one way on the entire property. You enter through ZMAX Dragway, which is across the street. And you get stopped once with a bomb sniffing dogs. You get stopped again with the medical professionals that look in the eye, they check your temperature, they make sure you're on the list, they ask you five or six questions, and if you pass all that, then you can go. And they give you a sticker that, you know, every single day, there's a new sticker that you have to get on your badge. And that's the only way you get in. And you drive around the track and there's a, there's a back tunnel that takes you on the rest of the property. But all the other entrances are blocked off by big, those big jersey barriers. And

And so you can't get in any other way. That, I think, is an example of how things are changing. And six, eight weeks ago, that was what we needed to do. Today, if we're developing a protocol for six weeks from now, I think it would be less stringent to allow fans in. We're not going to make everybody go through that kind of check. just be, it's not what you see if you go to the grocery store or the mall. So we'll have a similar protocol, I think, of what we see across the rest of society.

Is it too far down the road to assume, because, you know, we know that some pro sports franchises like football teams have announced 50% sales, right? That seems to be kind of what people are trying to do to make room for space. So I'm going to assume that's the first step in getting fans back. a fair assumption one and two is is it even possible to start planning for filling all those seats to full capacity or is that just so far in the distance it's not it's not worth considering right now i think that the first step is to get to fans at the events um even if it's 50 percent and and i think that naskar will be

the first major sport to have spectators back at the live events um you know for Football starts up in August. I think before then, you'll see NASCAR races and stands. Okay. All right. You know, we've got a lot of racetracks that have gained races. It's pretty interesting how NASCAR and I'm sure you and a lot of people in the industry have sort of figured out how to tie all these knots up together and make this work. But we also have some racetracks that aren't going to see any racing this year.

We got diehard fans that watch our show and listen to our podcast that are big, big, big supporters of these racetracks like Sonoma and so forth. These tracks will be coming back stronger than ever next year? Will he not? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they will. I think this, what we're seeing now, like the race tomorrow night in Charlotte, it's a shift. This isn't, you know, closing down Sonoma. It's just a shift. It's, we have to. We have to, we have. to play the cards that were dealt and when we look at the the landscape and the various regulations that are out there that we also had to catch up you know on the nine weeks that we missed and how do we do that we've got to run some races during the week and so this is this is just shifting to meet the challenges that we've all been given and you know that that

that's really, actually, it should really be applauded, and I hate it for the fans that are missing out on their local track this year. But, you know, the bright side of it is, and I'm an optimist, I always like to look at the bright side. The bright side is you wouldn't have been able to go to the event at your favorite track anyway. So we want to get back on the track. We want to show fans some racing.

and I think that's a huge plus for us. We're the first major sport back on television. And, you know, that's a huge deal, I think, for all of us as NASCAR fans. What has all that done to the planning for the new schedule next year? I know you guys are heavily involved in that. Let's put it on hold. Do you think that it delays it like it did, the race, the new car? Well, I would say it's possible that the coronavirus, the pandemic,

could delay it for various reasons. But, you know, we started talking about next year's schedule again. But, you know, gosh, for a couple of months, we just sort of put that aside and had to focus on the now. I didn't know if that might force you guys to sort of, you know, continue with the current schedule that we have another season. Well, it might. But I would say one big thing to keep in mind is we haven't even. seen the changes. I mean, we've seen a lot of changes right now. We're going to see a big change tomorrow night in Charlotte, running a cup race on Wednesday. But as we get into the season,

there are a lot of things that are different this year that we haven't even started with yet. And I think that's, every time somebody asked me about next year's schedule, I always say, well, you remember this year we've got a lot of changes. We haven't seen yet. We've got a double header in Pocono. We've got Bristol in the playoffs. That's going to be a new twist and a whole bunch of other things. So I feel like as a fan, I'm looking forward to seeing the changes in force of what we have this year. And next year, you know, we'll see what happens. We've got some cool ideas and great opportunities, but we've got a lot to enjoy yet this year. Hey, Dale, Jr., we've got a returning partner on today's download. One of your

favorites. Let's hear about them. Marcus, I'm curious about something. You know, we expect so much of you and track presidents and NASCAR and you have such a sense of obligation. I mean, we've spent this entire time talking about, hey, you know, what's coming up next and what are you going to do about this track pavement? So I want to remove that. How are you doing personally? How is your family? How are, how have you on a human level been navigating this thing. And how have you been able to detach the things that are sitting there looming over you

as far as TV people and executives and NASCAR and rules and teams and tracks? And you've got eight tracks. We're talking about Charlotte, but you got, you know, Sonoma lost her race. Where have you been able to find some personal time to honestly be able to navigate this? Yeah. Well, man, that's good. But I have, I've been enjoying time with my family. I've been home a lot, a lot more than usual.

And I bet like you guys, you know, you have been, you've had an opportunity to enjoy your family more. I'm in a different life stage. I've got two big kids, one just graduated college and one that's in college. And they both been home since spring break. We went on spring break in early March. and we haven't been off spring break yet, you know. And I just feel, there's a couple of things for me. I've felt incredibly grateful that I've been able to spend time in my family.

I also feel really bad for all the people that have been impacted by losing their jobs, the people that have been impacted in their health. and, you know, I feel, I feel terrible for them and been, you know, praying a lot for those folks. My, our pastor has been, we go to church on TV now. So we just tune in TV and we can sit on the couch, watch church on Sundays. And he's had great messages, you know, things like, you know, don't hope to get back to normal, hope to get back to better. and you know how god has a plan with all these things and i think um yeah i've just been grateful to be able to hang out with my with my family this whole time and we we still love each other

which is good you never know right get us out of the house uh you know after a long weekend so this is a minor miracle that's right yeah on another light note we um we did a little project together so several months ago back in the winter when we went over to North Willsboro Speedway and did a little weed eating to clean the track up to give them to stand it. That was cold day too. We think the coldest day the year. I knew that we were, I knew that weather was going to be chance. You know, it was, it was as bad as I imagine it could have been.

So much so we wondered, look, I ain't going to lie. It was wet and cold so much that there was a question on whether our two key stars of the show, we're going to show up. I wasn't going to miss it. Gosh, man. I was, I thought for sure Dale would have said, let's do this on a prettier day. We're already there. I don't know. I got the text. No, he's coming. I was like, dang it. Oh, no. You were pulling for him to pull out. You just didn't want to be the first person. It's cold and raining. It was awful. The video didn't look that bad. No.

It really, yeah. What did you think about the video? It was great. I loved it. I loved it. It was really cool. And man,

you know, having it in our racing, and I love your vision for, you know, for everybody who doesn't know this, I'm sure most everybody does, but Dale and I were in an airplane headed to a race,

and you leaned over and said, hey, I got an idea. What if we could, clean up North Wilkesboro and put it in eye racing. And sort of the purpose is to capture it digitally so that we can have it, you know, digitally for people to race on. And I thought it was a great idea. And, um,

yeah, I was wondering if you're ever going to let me fly out with you again. No way. No way. Anytime. Oh, no, you have no idea what you're saying. No,

I, it's okay if you say no. It's okay if you give it. some time. You're going to end up with more track repavings. You're going to end up with, oh yeah, you're going to have camping spot. You're going to have motorhome spots. Every, I can promise you every time that I see Marcus, I'm pretty sure at some point in the conversation, I had tell him some idea of how to fix something. Right. I love ideas. I love it. Oh, stop, Marcus. Okay, Marcus, it's okay if you say, listen, has there ever been an idea, and you don't even have to say

what it is. Have you ever been like, outwardly you're saying, sure, that's a great idea. Inwardly, you're saying ain't a chance it ever going to happen. Dale lost his mind. Keep telling him to Asphalt Bristol. That's probably what he does. That one is a tough one. It would be super expensive. But I tell him that he needs to reconfigure Atlanta back the way it was in a 1990. That's another one. That's another one. Between Asphalt Bristol, reconfiguring Atlanta, and I'm sure Nashville comes up every time.

So, now we have some opportunities. So, you know, we'll work on that. And, you know, it'll be good. So to be clear, I know a lot of people were probably excited to hear if we were going to ask you about that. So Nashville's not dead in the water. No, no, not at all. Yeah.

That's good to hear. Excited to get back to Nashville. You know, they had the terrible tornado that went through Nashville earlier this year. and then the pandemic hit. So it's been tough on Tennessee. And but of course we have Bristol Motor Speedway there. We've been doing a lot to help with tornado recovery. And then now with the pandemic.

But we're still in good, you know, constant communication with folks in Nashville. Man, that's awesome to hear. I know you're happy to hear that, Dale. I love it. I love Nashville. I can't wait. Marcus, do you need any other help that you need us to kind of help you with? Man, we need to keep working on it.

I don't know. The soccer team didn't work out, so we'll think of something. Yeah, it was a chance the soccer team was coming to Charlotte. Marcus was trying to help that happen. Yeah. You've made a great general manager of the soccer team. Oh, general manager, and I don't know about that. You know, I played soccer when I was a freshman in high school.

I remember you telling me that. But, yeah, I rarely saw the field. Well, I don't know. I played soccer. I was goalie because I was the fattest kid on the team. Come on now. I've got more square footage. What time will you go to the track today?

I'll go right for this. Actually, I'm going to go pick up our dog, June Carter, who's at the vet. Your dog's name is June Carter? That's a great name for a dog. Yeah, she's a sweet dog, too. I'm going to go pick her up, bring her home, and then I'm going to head out of the track. And will you go through all that checkpoint, too? No, I've got to follow the rules.

I asked them yesterday. I texted and said, do I have to go through the checkpoint again? And I said, yes, you do. And I said, all right, that's fine. You got to get a sticker. I had to get a sticker. They checked me with the temperature thing. And I was only 97 degrees.

And they said I was cold-hearted. after the race is this week, what's the next thing for Charlotte Emergency Speedway? Do you guys start turning that thing for the Roble right away? Or do you got a couple other events that are possible throughout the summer that might be happening in there? Yeah, we're going to do the summer shootout, Legends Cars, where you had some success in the Legends Cars in the Quarter Mile.

We'll be doing that. Direct the guy, but yeah. I won. He wrecked a win. I bumped him out of the way, Mike. He finished second. You wrecked your owner. He survived.

He survived it, Mike. The only way to pass was to bump. That's right. He had to do it. But it was his car owner. It would have been as exciting of a win. All right. Fair point.

I did it for the promoters. See there? That's a driver mentality that we need. It ain't just about winning. It's about put on a show. That's it. All right. So you got summer shootout.

every driver's meeting at every short track around the country includes a speech from the track owner that says, let's put on a good show tonight. It sure does. There you go. But, you know, we're going to do a summer shootout. We've got a new driving school at Charlotte Motor Speedway

that is all the four performance cars out there. And they use the roval. And, man, it is, I can't wait to try that out. So I think I'm going to get out on that. next week. And we actually have a new, we just finished repaving our carting track. I don't if you ever gotten into the GoPro carting track or anything. A little bit. It's a brand new carting track. I've got Jimmy and a few other guys are going to come out and give it a whirl, give me some pointers before we paint lines on it and put in the rumble strips.

And where exactly is that as far as proximity go? Where is that located? And turns three and four. That whole area. In the infield. Okay. Got it. Are you expecting, I mean, if you're going to put some money into putting a new payment down there,

are you going to, you're going to create any type of business model similar to the one that we have here? Here are GoPro. The GoPro Motiplex here in Moresville is amazing. Yeah, it is amazing. I know it's really popular. So we've had a carding track at Charlotte for long time. And guys like Michael Schumacher have driven on it. I was over in England a few years ago,

and one of the motorsports writers over there saw my shirt, said Charlotte Motor Speedway. And he hadn't asked me about NASCAR or the Coke 600. He asked me about our karting course because it's so well known in the carding world. So at Speedway, we have a bunch of, we've had a number of sinkholes because we have a very old plumbing system under the track. And we had to repair a number of sinkholes. And part of that process was we needed to repave the track. So once we repaved it, we made some tweaks.

We got some good input from guys like Max Pappas. and Tiffin up at GoPro and others. So it's paved. It's all ready to go except for the striping and the curbing. Nice. Yeah, it should be fun. Yeah, man. All right, Marcus, we'll let you get to the vet and pick up the dogs so you can get on your way

and get back to your racetrack. And we just appreciate you, buddy, for giving us a minute of your time this week. It's a busy, busy week for you. So thanks, pal, for coming on and being so transparent, you know, being willing to talk about everything. I know we ask a lot of questions. So good to see you guys. Always good to see you, buddy. Yeah, I look forward to catching up in person.

The most thing I've learned through all this is that we were watching the movie the other night and I said, you know what? I think one of my things I've learned from this is that actuality is better than virtuality. Yeah. We've got to, the actual is better than the virtual. And I'm looking forward to everybody getting back in person and hanging out. I agree with that. 100% buddy. All right, take it easy.

Talk to you later. Bye-bye. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. I'm here for the Dale Jr. Download. This is our live segment on Ask Junior for our YouTube handle at Dergmy Media, presented by Xfinity. They've been a great partner ours for a long time and obviously supported our sport in many, many ways.

So we appreciate them supporting our podcast. Thanks for everybody to tuning in. Leah is going to get the questions going. Let's go. Yeah, first question coming from Jason Knackers. What is your opinion of NASCAR possibly using the cone, choose, or lane on restarts that short tracks around the country use? Yeah, I'd be good with it. I think it's worth a shot. I think there's no better time to really try some of these things.

Now, I'll be the first to tell you now. I hate gimmicks. I don't like gimmicks. But something that's been used and used successfully in motorsport in other areas, whether it's short tracks, NF1. I don't care wherever it comes from. If it's successful there, I'm definitely open to the idea of it. And I think that this is a great time to try some of those things. We're kind of shooting from the hip as we get back to racing here in every form of our sport, like from, you know, trying

to get fans back into the stands to trying to get the schedule back up the speed and get a lot of races in so we can crown our champion at the end of the year and all of our series. Not really making it up as we go along, but I think that this is an opportunity, if there ever was one, to try a couple of those ideas, choose cone or something like that might be pretty neat at some of these racetracks. John Murphy wants to know of the different generational cars that you drove. Which one was your favorite? My favorite was probably the, probably anywhere from, I mean, the Xfinity car I drove in 1998 and 99 was very comfortable, a lot of fun, very fast. But for whatever reason, whether it was inexperience or the way those cars drove and the tire and so forth, we didn't really search

around a lot and run different grooves. And that really kind of started when I got into the cup car. And I had a lot of fun from like my rookie year all the way up to around 2005, 2006, you know, driving that car that we had in the Cup series. We had in Monte Carlo, a couple different versions of that, the Impal and so forth. But I really enjoyed it because even though the car had quite a lot of down force. We really had those bodies all twisted up to create a ton of downforce and there was a lot of power. The racing was really good. That's a bit surprising because, you know, sometimes downforce can be the, you know, can be the enemy of good racing. But I really enjoyed, you know, being able to, those cars, you could kind of move around a lot and there weren't a lot of guys that would venture into

the high lane or run up against the fence. So I felt like that. I was kind of one of a few that would go up there and make speed up there. And it was nice because not a lot of guys up there doing it. So the worst by far without question is the COT. When that car came in brand new, all the way up until it was eventually kind of phased out, that car just drove awful. There was nothing good about anything that car did. And it was the most frustrating thing I can say I'd ever did behind the wheel of a race car.

was drive that. But a splitter right on the ground. If you drove the car, just another car link deeper in the corner, you got on the splitter or you'd blow through the front tires. And you just couldn't drive the car, but one exact way. It had to be driven at one speed. It couldn't go that speed. It couldn't go any faster than that because it just wouldn't handle or wouldn't handle, you know, just didn't have the grip and the car sitting there right on the splitter. So it was very frustrating. And it was frustrating to watch Tony Jr. and those guys try to figure it out, trying to figure out how to get it to work. It was just a maddening experience. I know that wasn't, I know that wasn't the question, but it's hard to talk about what car you liked without talking

about maybe which car you didn't like. Pete Lawson, what was it like driving a V8 supercar here in Australia? I drove a V8 supercar back around 2004, 2006, sometime around then. Me and some buddies went on a two-week trip to Australia and Paul Morris, a great friend of mine who is going to be listening to this podcast, let me come over to a test track that they were actually performing a test for a new car. So I got to drive their older car. And I had a blast. I never raced. I never drove a car when I was sitting on the right side. So I'm sitting on the right side and I'm shifting with my left hand. I put a video up on YouTube of me driving from the end car and you can see quite a few the mistakes I made. But because I definitely, I don't know how I didn't blow the motor up in that car,

because there's a couple times I went in the wrong gear and did some things bad with the transmission. But the motor survived it and we got to test all day and have a lot of fun. So I never thought when I was going over there to Australia that I was going to get to do that. I'm a huge fan of V8 supercar. To me, I just love their aggressive style. The Australian sort of approach to things is a lot of fun and you can't really understand what that means until you go there and you spend a lot of time around people in Australia. But their outlook and approach to life to me is very fun.

unique and they're quite aggressive when it comes to race car drivers, but they're also very, very sharp and technically sound. You can't go around a track like Bathurst without really being technical and sharp in particular. But man, they will put the bumper to you or if you know, they feel like that they need to get rough. They don't really have a problem beating and banging a little bit. So I always enjoyed that about the V8 Supercar series and was thrilled to be able to drive a, you know, to kind of get behind the wheel of one of those cars to understand what they feel like. Leah, not to hijack this Ask Junior, but Dale, did you say Paul Morse would be listening

to our podcast? Yeah, Paul's a big fan of our podcast. He does a little, some media podcasting, stuff like that itself over in Australia. If you follow him on Instagram, you'll kind of see what he's doing. So let's just go ahead and say, Paul, we would love to have you as a guest on the Dale Jr. download. Oh, heck yeah. Please, let's do this.

Next week, next to it, come on. If we're still doing Zooms, you know, let's get Paul Morris on this dang thing tomorrow. Paul, this is our pitch. Blake M is watching on YouTube. He wants to know if you think that racing has been hurt by not practicing. I don't think that the racing has been hurt by not practicing. To me, it draws a little more interest because you really know that a lot of guys are

going into the corner for the first time, not knowing anything about what their cars are capable of doing. That was so intriguing last night for the Xfinity race. You could see a lot of those guys were willing to take whatever risks and send the car into the corner, not knowing what was going to happen. And some guys weren't. Some guys were very cautious and maybe smart, however you want to categorize it. But to me, that is extremely intriguing when I'm watching those first few laps of the race, knowing the drivers don't know. That, to me, isn't interesting. It's dramatic.

Also, you know, the teams have simulation, not only the manufacturer simulators, but they have computer simulation. They got engineers. Everybody has so much information to be able to kind of get that car in a ballpark. Now, if that wasn't available, maybe I wouldn't really be in big favor of no practice if nobody could really, I mean, if guys are going to get on the track and just be, completely out to lunch, like just almost needing to come to pit road immediately to make adjustments

to get the car around the track, then that's a problem. We can't have that. But with the technology we have today and the information and know how, these guys are able to kind of get them cars reasonable. And, and we saw this in some of the racing already this week and at Darlington, guys that start good can fix their car. As the race goes on, you'll see some guys that maybe weren't running well at the start of the race, all of a sudden they've got their car tuned up. They've had a few opportunities on pit road. The crew chief has made the right choices to make that car faster. That's an opportunity to shine a light on him and his team and his ability, the driver's

ability to communicate what he needs. So I kind of like less practice, and I would be fine going forward in the years beyond this pandemic if we kind of routed ourselves toward tightening up the race weekend a little it. Bev Shannon wants to know. She says she knows you're a fan of 70s and 80s racing, but her question is, do you listed any music from those times? If so, who? Absolutely. I started collecting some vinyl over the last several years, and most of my vinyl records are from the 70s. I was a big Bog Skaggs fan. But when I was in military school, I was a huge Boston fan. For like one year I listened to Boston, and that was pretty much all I listened to. I grew up on a lot of old

country, John Conley, huge fan of John Connolly, rose-colored glasses, probably my favorite country song of all time. So yeah, I grew up in a house, you know, that played a lot of music. Dad was a big fan of, you know, music and listen to Dale McClinton and different people like that journey and all the popular bands from back then, 38 special. So my mom also listened to a lot of music, Stevie Nix. And so I had a huge, when I was six years old, I had a huge crush on Stevie Nix and love listening to her music, Fleawood Mac and so forth. My mom was a huge Mick Fleetwood fan.

So yeah, I listened to a lot of that music, love listening to it today. I was thinking about that the other day. And I told Amy, I said, you know, the music that I listen to the most is probably kind of 90s alternative and pop punk and stuff like that from the last several decades. and I'm probably going to be listening to that stuff when I'm 70 or 80, and I wonder what Isla's reaction will be to the music that I like. That'll be pretty fun to see how that works out. Mike could probably tell me already what that's going to be, but...

They're not going to be the biggest fans. They probably are. Which will make you want to play it louder. I don't know that I love a lot of current music, and there's different genres and styles that sort of come out of the woodwork, and just like Grunge came out of, you know, just popped up in the 90s. I'm sure it didn't just pop up, but for me, that's what it was like. And there's music genres that come out of nowhere all the time.

And I kind of have to sift through some of the newer stuff to find what I like. But yeah, most of the music I listen to is from the 90s, the alternative sort of. You know who my girls do love, though? This is, I wouldn't have ever saw this. You know, they love Whitney Houston. Well, that does surprise me. They love Whitney Houston. I mean, because she's got some pipes that just, you don't hear.

anybody could even come close to it, right? I think that, yeah, there's going to be those iconic stars that I think that no matter what generation you are or how old you are, you're going to appreciate good music and good talent. And I think that's why that I like Boston. Like, I never would have saw myself as a Boston fan when I was, you know, 13 years old, but for whatever reason, I got a hold of that record and couldn't stop listening to it. So good music's good music.

David Parker asked, how would you rate that? the Barney the Flagman tribute at Charlotte. Perfect. A 10 out of 10. It was awesome. And I don't, Mike, you might have a little more intel on this than I do, but I feel like that something's changed for the better when it comes to NASCAR's social media handle. I've noticed that. I don't know what it is.

Maybe I don't want to know. But I really have enjoyed the content coming out of that social media handle last couple days and I don't I don't think that it's just dumb look one would assume one would one would make an argument that they've loosened up the the social media guidelines of their employees like they're not taking their cells as seriously anymore right and it's a real good look I'll be honest with you yeah and the fact that it went all the way up the pipe to the flat the actual flagman by an end to this idea to do this tribute to a fictional character who by the way you know, the I racing community, they, they are very, that's near and dear, right?

So, you know, but he is, he's, you know, Barney is a fictional character in, in Sim Racing lore. And for NASCAR, you know, they take themselves so seriously all the time to loosen up a little bit and do something like that. I thought it's a new trend that I'm really enjoying. I'm going to make, I got a theory. This is not factual. It's a theory. I base it off. I base it nothing. I would say that this is a product of a change at the top that we've had at the last year. The Brian France era would have permitted no such Barney tributes, but Steve Phelps and everything. I think Tim Clark, who we're friends with, and I think he's outstanding and creative. And I think Tim Clark has probably wanted to be doing things like this on those digital platforms for a long time.

but I just theorize that it has to do with, you know, a different leadership. And, you know, in all the ways that that trickles down, that's probably one such way. That's my theory. Well, I hope either way it sticks around. Like, it's not just that particular pose. It's been a few other things that I've seen coming out of there that I've liked. I like the temperament and attitude going forward. It was very clever.

Just during the rain delays, for the 600, they did that, you know, 2020. you know, like how they perceived, you know, the year going, and then how 2020's reality is, and it had just the, you know, the five wide of the jet blowers. You know, even that, you would have never seen anything. There was no sense of humor in any of those things. And I told Tim a long time ago, I'm like, man, y'all got to just show a little bit of, you know,

personality in these things. I mean, because there's some funny people, you know, it would really do a lot, you know, as far as the perception of the sport. I just don't think that was ever anything that they could do, but I think they're able to now. man, whoever's doing that, that's kudos to them. Enjoyable.

Absolutely. Good job. All right, guys. That's it for today. Man, I hate to have to end it. Man, it's a lot of fun. I always enjoy coming on here and doing this live. I know that we've got people tuning in right now.

So that's always makes it a lot more fun. We record the podcast and then we put them out. Nobody's really listening to us recorded until it comes out. So this is always the best part of the show for me. Thanks for Xfinity for supporting us. and support NASS Junior segment. And appreciate everybody for supporting and following along, subscribing to Dirtymo Media, social handles

in our YouTube channel here. All right, everybody, last call. Got a couple house cleaning items here. I was telling you guys a couple weeks ago about a relief fund for the COVID-19 relief at pledge it.org slash Dale Jr. dash relief. We are just over $7,000. for that fund, and if it reaches 10,000, I will match it. That's our goal. So 3,000 to go for me to

match. Six days left to do it, guys. Go check it out at pledge it.org slash Dale Jr. dash relief. Hey, I want to add one more thing to last call, and that is just a quick update. I mean, you might notice the second week in a row, Matthew's not here. We're wrapping up, lost speedways. And I just want, we get more excited as we get close. to this, you know, to this launch of Lost Speedways on Peacock. I want to just say one thing, though, to all of you great fans, and 99% of the responses has been fantastic, but there's always that one person's like, you know, oh, another streaming service.

Oh, God. You know, listen, first of all, don't have that approach in life. That's no way to go about your life. You're going to be miserable every time something new comes out. Moreover, you're eliminating the fact and the great possibility that this will be the best streaming service there is. I mean because you've learned all the mistakes from all the other streaming services, and now this one has mastered that, and it's got better content, it's got better everything.

And I'm going to tell you right now, I might be biased, but everything I've seen on Peacock looks pretty awesome. And that isn't just Law Speedways. That being said, Law Speedways will be fantastic. Dale Jr. called me. So Dale Jr., you've done something that I did even. We kind of privately sent a link out to a friend or two just saying, hey, you're not supposed to see this, but give me some feedback. And Junior calls me, and he's like,

we won't divulge who it is you send it out to, because I don't think we should do that. But the reception when we got back, they're blown away, right? Absolutely. You know, this, I'm so excited about this show because it's really our passion. It really is something that we wanted to do

that I didn't know that we would ever get the chance to do. And that's kind of bring this sort of hobby of mine to the screen to show, to let other people enjoy, you know, over the years, I've probably over more than a decade, I've been cataloging and researching and exploring these raceways that are lost, that are abandoned, that have shut down for whatever reason, right? The curiosity for me is that they're physically still there, some 20, 30, 40, 50 years since anybody's ever run a race there. And it's just this eerie, weird thing to go see it with your own eyes and to know that it's still

the bankings there, the guardrail, whatever may be left. It's like finding, it's kind of like, you know, the Titanic or a boat resting on the bottom of the ocean floor and nobody can put their eyes on it. And so I want to bring that to the screen so we can all take a look. And some of these tracks have such interesting, crazy stories. And we, okay, so we take you to the racetrack and we show you the track itself and what condition it's in today and there's a lot of different varying conditions and then we also bring in some of the players some of the drivers some of the owners people that were involved that were fans historians of these trace tracks to help help tell their story what are the some of the most amazing things that happened there good and bad tragic and sad right yes

we cover it all and to me we uncovered opened up much much more than i would have ever dreamed of and as we're developing these episodes they are coming to life man they are really really a fun watch yeah and so i'm excited for people to see it and i know that you know once we can get you to see this you know the first episode that it's going to be easy to get everybody to tune in and word of mouth and all that good stuff's going to happen so i know that once we hit once we're able to put it out there and let people see it it's going to be great and can't wait to see the response because i know it's going to be positive yeah peacock is available to Xfinity customers right now already,

but then July 15th is when our show goes on to Peacock, and I think it all goes there at once. Like, you can binge it. And you're going to, if that's the case, you're going to binge it because you're not going to be able to just stop with one. And that's just, that's been the nice response that we've seen. We've been beta testing some of these with feedback.

And that's what we've been doing. So anyways, I just wanted to say that, get that off my chest. July 15th, Peacock, it's going to be worth it. All right, guys. that's the show. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Thanks, Marcus, again, for coming on. It's good to see everybody. Good to get a show done back in to do some work. Gosh, sitting around this house and Memorial Day weekend now, that was nice. But I'm ready to get to work. So it's always fun doing the podcast. We can't wait to see y'all next week. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube, Twitter,

Facebook, and Instagram. Dirty Mo.