The Dale Jr. Download - 301 - It's Time to Take a Stand

Episode Date: June 9, 2020

Dale Earnhardt Jr. has a lot on his mind after a busy week of news in the country and in racing. He and co-host Mike Davis cover NASCAR’s Nashville Superspeedway announcement, and why he feels that the Cup Series is heading to the wrong Nashville track in 2021. JR Motorsports Late Model driver Josh Berry found himself mired in controversy at Ace Speedway over the weekend, which ultimately led to his one-race suspension. Dale Jr. explains what happened, the growing tension between Berry and fellow racer Bobby McCarty and how it will cost Berry a shot at this year’s championship. NASCAR and the drivers made a powerful statement about the ongoing racial tensions in the U.S. at Atlanta Motor Speedway over the weekend. This included drivers stepping up to create their very own viral video message. The DJD gang reflects on the message the sport sent to the world. In Ask Jr. presented by Xfinity, Dale Jr. discusses climbing back behind the wheel this weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway, his playboy collection and why he now refuses to save fuel while racing. Odd history tells the tale of how a beer can helped Richard Petty win a race at Martinsville Speedway.  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.

All right, here we go. This is a production of Dirty Mo Media. He's going to learn a lesson. Maybe he needs to take him to the little asshole over there and fix his race cars if he wants to keep wrecking. Ah, the kid's an idiot. Unfortunately, you race with idiots, and I guess he'll have that sometimes. I'm not going to say why I beat him, because then he'll fix it, but it has to do it behind the wheel. I need to wreck more people so they'll stop throwing bad blocks.

You know, everybody that's watching all them drivers out there throw another bad block coming. I'm just going to drive through you and wreck you so look out until they. He's the most unprofessional little scaredy cat I've ever seen in my life. You wouldn't even fight me like a man after. NASCAR wants to let the guys have at it. It shouldn't be any different hockey. Let us have at it. And then when one guy goes to the ground and it's over.

Your talent. That's about it. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download. We got a great show for you today. No guests. You know why?

We're going to have some great conversations with Mike. Davis, Matthew Dillner, Leahvon, the whole team's here. We're going to talk about Nashville Speedway. That's back on the schedule next season. I've been stood over that for a couple of days and just trying to bite my tongue a little bit. So I can't, hey, hold back anymore. Not on your own podcast.

That's right. So we're also going to talk about our driver, Josh Barry. He was in a dust-up and a cars tour races past weekend at Ace Speedway, which is also in the news. We're going to tell you why. Coming up on the show, let's get started. The Dale Jr. download. So I guess whatever Madison is taking makes him hallucinate because he needs three lanes to get around somebody on the racetrack. Dirty mode. Pure talent. That's about it. We are alive. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. for the Dale Jr. download. We are live on our Ask Junior portion of the show. This is brought to you by Xfinity. They are a premier partner for NASCAR and our podcast, and you're a partner for Fast

internet. We're really appreciative of their support. They support our sport in a lot of ways and are a great company. I'm actually on Xfinity Internet as we speak. So looking forward to some great questions here that you guys are sending in. Leah's going to be handling all this stuff. Mike Davis is here as well if he wants to chime in. Matthew Dillner is going to take a break. So Leah, you ready? Yeah. The most asked question this week, Dale, you got something going on this weekend. How are you preparing? How are you feeling going into homestead? Well, I just got an email from Tony Mayoff, who is part of our brand team, telling me what to expect this weekend. This is, you know, I'm experiencing this for the first time. All the drivers in the series and

the Xfinity series, truck series, cup series have been, you know, going through this process and this type of protocol for many, many weekends, but it's really unique because I'm doing it for the first time. I'm going to fly into homestead the day of the race. I'm probably going to wait until the last possible minute to get there. Maybe if I can push it to about an hour before the race starts, I'll probably do that. And because once I get there, I have to go through a screening process to get into the racetrack,

a health screen. Once I'm in the racetrack, I have to sit in the car, the rental car. You can't go anywhere they won't. They won't allow, but only two people at a time inside the haulers. There's really nowhere to go. I didn't send my bus down there because I was going to come in the day of the race and leave at the end of the race. So I didn't want to send my driver all the way to Homestead, Florida, just for that. So I could sit in my bus for a little while and be comfortable.

So I'm going to try to minimize as much time as I can at being at the racetrack. And I'll, yeah, I'll put my suit on in the car. and grab my helmet and my stuff and walk out to the race car and get in it. And I guess that's how it's going to work. The curious thing for me is, is, you know, I haven't had a lot of opportunities to really sit in the car,

drive the car, understand if it's comfortable, if there's anything wrong, if the mirror is in the right place or all those little things that you like to take care of during the first few practices. And so there'll be a couple of, things that might not be exactly right or exactly comfortable as we're racing, but I'm, I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to getting in the car and, you know, just kind of

enjoying the experience of driving a race car and competition. And that's really the only reason why I would, I'd even run these races at this particular point in my life is to just sort of remember the sights and the sounds and the smells. And there's a lot. going on though they have the martinsville race tomorrow uh so there's weather in the forecast for martinsville there's also weather in the forecast for homestead and so everything is fluid if something were to happen at martinville it might delay that event it could change the schedule for a cup series and the exfinities uh series at homestead as well so we're all just kind of keeping our ear to the ground and staying on the ready next question

coming from Alan Stewart. What is your favorite piece of non-racing-related memorabilia? That's probably, man, that's tough. I got a lot of football helmets from a lot of different teams. I started, I don't know, I just kind of casually started collecting helmets over the years. And as people learned that I had a bit of. of a collection. I started getting more helmets given to me by friends and folks in the in the racing circles. So I'm probably up to about 90 helmets of different college and NFL teams.

So that's that's pretty cool, interesting. If I ever got tired of that, I don't know what I'd do with all those those helmets, but I don't suspect I will. I've got a little. this the ones that I still haven't attained to sort of, because when I collect something, I have to complete the, you know, I like to complete the collection. Like I've got the entire catalog of stock car racing magazine.

I got the entire catalog of Circle Track Racing magazine. And those were, those started back in the 60s and it's fine in some of those older issues. There's a bit of a challenge. I'm also, I have almost the 90, percent or 95 percent an entire collection of Playboy magazine. And interesting enough, my wife was the one that attained the majority of that collection

for me. Yeah, I think I'm a collector. I like to collect things that there's a couple items right there that I've spent time collecting. And, you know, I don't know what I'll, I don't know what I'll do with all this stuff. It's just kind of sitting. And I got a library where I kind of keep books and magazines. and all kinds of racing stuff.

So I have a big old, I have a bunch of magazines and newspapers and just old, old stuff from racing history in this library. And it's fun to read. I thumb through it, keep a couple stashes of different eras and different bathrooms in the house and get some reading in there. This next question coming in from at NASCAR, it is on Twitter. With all the improvements in safety, is there room for improvement in cooling the drivers? And is it even something you feel should be addressed or is it just part of the sport?

Well, we can always make things better, right? We can always make the sport safer. It's smart to try to, you know, do everything you can to save drivers from injury or anything catastrophic for sure. So, and we're always doing that. We're always working hard. You know, the, the, the cooling side of it is for the longest time, you know, the culture was that you had to be tough and you had to put up with, you know, you just, you had to put up with it. It was just, this is the way it was, man. And even as recent as the last couple of years, the race teams and the crew chiefs, there's a, there's a certain amount of amps that the ordinator will put out. And the crew chief wants some of those amps to be able to run certain things on the car.

Now, the driver is only given X amount of amps to run anything that's going to make him more comfortable. And the crew chief is not going to give you more than he wants to give you. You're not going to be able to upgrade your cooling box or add additional cooling to the car without drawn amps from somewhere else that's really critical. to performance. So that's kind of been the battle between the drivers and the crew chiefs. And it's hard for a driver to say to a crew chief, hey, I'm uncomfortable. The last couple of races have been hot. Is there anything you can do for me? Because he knows he's basically

asking the crew chief to give up some performance. And even the driver doesn't want to do that to a point. So you're really walking a fine line there and you see it at the end of the race. in Atlanta. All of those guys, they were pushed to the very edge of what they could do physically. And so, and we do everything in racing that way. We push everything to the very edge for performance.

And nothing, you can't leave anything on the table that might help you run faster. And so while, you know, if they open up a national and duck in the window you know that's going to create arrow issues for the car and change the way the air works on it's not as easy as just like hey man just funnel air into the car through Nacaducks and so forth it that's that that could slow you down that could affect how the air works around the rest of the race car and how the crew chief wants that air to move away or off the car so it's a it's a tough thing

they the more they work to try to get the car to be streamlined and have the air work around the car the way they want it to. It really makes the air inside the car stagnant. There's not a ton of clean air coming in and there's not a lot of air moving in the car. And that just all that air and what's inside the car, the cockpit of the car, just continues to cook and to warm. And I mean, even in the past five or ten years, we wouldn't even, we might not even run the heat shields on the car

in between the pipes and the, and the chassis, which that transfers a tremendous amount of heat into the roll cage and into the interior of the car. And you'd have to maybe request to the team, hey, this is, it's going to be a 95 degree day. You'd think we could put the heat shields on, and they will. But they don't go into preparation with those pieces because it's weighed or it's going to affect a performance it some way somehow. So they try to keep those race cars stripped down as much as possible. So I certainly think that the technology will continue to improve.

The heat boxes have gotten smaller, lighter. That's all critical to performance. And that path will improve. And soon enough, one day I'm sure driver comfort won't be an issue. We won't have, you know, race. is where guys are passing out and having a tough time with the conditions. You mentioned Atlanta, and we got a question from Mike Boss. What was your opinion with everything going on at the end of Pit Road that happened in Atlanta

this past weekend? With Bubba? No, with all the games they were playing for coming off a pit road to line up on the preferred Yep. You know, that's kind of something's been going on for a long time. the until the drivers are given a cone, you know, a cone rule or until teams are allowed to have lane choice beyond the front row and the starter of the, you know, the controller of the restart, guys are going to have to decide, do I want to be on the inside, do I want to be on the outside?

And then they're going to have to count and look around at the cars around them on pit road and decide, do I need to be in front of this guy to be on that, to restart on, in the proper lane. to me as a driver, it's a pain in the bud. It's not a lot of fun having to play those games. They don't want to play those games. Drivers really, be honestly, they only want to race, run around the track, run the fastest lap, take the lead, win the race. That's all we really care about.

We don't want to do fuel mileage. Thankfully, we don't have to. Thankfully, there's an engineer to do that. We don't want to have to really try to set the car up ourselves. Luckily, we've got crew chiefs and engineers. We like to participate in that. But I mean, we don't want to do things outside of that sort of central focus of just being quick and being fast and having raw speed and great ability. So, you know, playing games or doing anything that's sort of gimmicky.

I remember when fuel mileage was becoming even more and more critical, so much so that when we would start the car, gentlemen, start your engines, crank the car. Okay, turn it off because we need to save fuel. Wait till the pace car moves off the pit road to fire it back up. Okay, now the pace laps are happening and we're going to have a green flag, but cycle the fuel cycle the car so we can save fuel. It's not, the race hasn't even started yet. And I'm saving fuel. We got another 400 miles to go.

What in the world? That to me was one of the most frustrating things that I did inside a race car. and playing games off the end of pit road to try to put myself in that right position to do restart in the right lane is it goes in that same box for me. I'm not a fan of it, but you have to do it. I mean, if you want to be competitive, have the best opportunity to have the best restart, make the most positions on that restart, you have to do it. You hated that cycling and everything, but it was the best time to be on your radio channel. Golly. It was fantastic.

I tell them now when they're like, hey, can you save some fuel? I'm like, nope. Radio's breaking up here. Can't follow you there, Creechee. I ain't doing that anymore. That's not in the strategy this weekend, huh? Yeah, hopefully not. All right.

A lot of people are asking, we're all kind of in different scenes in what we've been. You know, mics, obviously, in the studio. and people want to know, what's the new piece of sheet metal behind you, Mike? Oh, yeah. You know what? I just learned about this as I sat down. I think Matthew said is a Hutt Strickland. Bobby Hillen.

Bobby Hillen. Oh, yeah. Bobby Hillen She met out. I don't know where it came from. You know, every time you come into this studio, there's something new here. And that is a fact. I mean, like, there's just new things that pile up that people send stuff to Dell. They end up in the studio now.

So I don't know where did this come from? Anybody know? Matthew. I think Dale might. Dale didn't know. He clearly doesn't know. He doesn't know. Isn't it great when she went on the show? We don't know. Hey, if you sent it to us though and you're on this, thank you.

Appreciate it. It looks great. It means a lot. It is good to be back in the studio, though. I can't wait for Dale to be back in here. Super jealous. Where's Dale? I'm not in town. He's in a white, in the white room. Everything. Well, I've got Dale's race car out of my window. That's the first thing I saw when I came in this morning. I was like, oh, hey, that has Dale's name on the above the window. That's cool. I saw it as well a couple days ago. I'm pretty excited. Yeah. All right, guys. That's it for today.

Hey, everybody. I appreciate y'all tuning in to the Ask Junior portion of the show. Brought you by Exfinity. They are the premier partner of NASCAR and this podcast, and they're your partner with Fast Internet. So thanks for tuning in. Thanks for the questions. Great questions. Appreciate you guys supporting our show. I hope you'll listen to the rest of the podcast. You've got to be fast in our sport, and Exfinity knows a thing or two about that. With Xfinity, get blazing fast Wi-Fi without any pit stops. X-Fi delivers the speed, coverage security, and control you need to stay connected to NASCAR and Dirtymo Media all season long. This is beyond Wi-Fi. This is X-Fi.

Keep your questions rolling in to at Xfinity Racing and at DirtyMo Media on Twitter using hashtag Ask Junior. for a chance to have your questions answered by Dale Jr. himself. We're proud to partner with Xfinity, keeping us connected to the sport all season long. Shout out to Xfinity, premier partner of NASCAR. All right, guys. So open segment, man. There's a lot of things I kind of wanted to talk about and everybody join in. Let's start right at the top, Ace Speedway. It's a racetrack in North Carolina.

and it's in the news because it has been defying the orders of Governor Cooper to limit their spectators to 25, I believe it's 25 spectators per event. They've had a couple of races now, three or maybe even more, where they've had around a guesstimation of 4,000 spectators at each event. they have tried to pose as a peaceful protest to circumvent the rules. They've had quite a back and forth between Governor Cooper and the sheriff. There's other local officials that are either in support of aid, It's been a really interesting and polarizing sort of event over the last several weeks that's happened here in North Carolina. And that has put a big spotlight on the actual races that are happening at A. Speedway. While it'll be fun and interesting, I think, to see how the back and forth and the bit of tug of war goes between A Speedway and the governor.

and the sheriff sort of caught in the middle. It did shine a spotlight on the recent Cars Tour event. And our driver, Josh Berry, has been racing in the Cars Tour for a long time. A lot of wins, champion, I think, in 2007. Another fellow that had been racing in that series, who's also won the championship in the last two years, Bobby McCarty. body's an aggressive driver and a very good driver he's with a great team got a lot of speed and uh always a guy that you know Josh and you know has to compete with or is going to have

to compete with at some point in the evening uh for the race win so they got into a bit of a dust up and in the first uh so Josh started a midpack somewhere around 16 13th something like that didn't qualify will i think mccarty set on the front uh set on the pole front row somewhere like that and he led the majority of the race had had pretty much the race in control the whole time josh had drove up to second place and a caution came out and they're going to have a restart with about 45 laps to go so the restart happens with josh on the outside and bobby on the inside and they go down into turn three so it seems like that from very various points of perspective, whether it's fan videos or just the cars tour broadcast itself, that Bobby didn't

go, Bobby didn't get into turn three the same way that he had or the, or the way that you would expect him to go into the turn. He missed the corner. And Josh is on his outside. You know, Josh, you know, Bobby and Josh are almost door to door. And contact was made. It sent Josh into the outside wall. Hard enough to really, really hurt the car. But Josh was able to continue on in the race. So Josh, you know, Josh has had a run in with Bobby in the past. And other drivers have as well. And at Motor Mile Speedway in 2019, Josh had a similar situation happened where he had control of the race, led pretty much the majority of the laps. Driving away to a win, late race yellow comes out to set up a green-white checkered.

Bobby gets the opportunity to get underneath Josh and drove down in the corner and dumped Josh. Josh gave him plenty of room. Bobby'd missed the corner, drove into the door of Josh's car and spun him out. And I can put that blame on Bobby because this is a consistent sort of habit that Bobby has. And I'll, you know, I'm going to read from some comments from the race winner at Ace Speedway. Ryan Millington. Ryan Millington. So Ryan Millington, he wins the race and he's asked in Victory Lane about the incident

with Josh Barry and Bobby. And he goes, look, Bobby McCarty is a great race car driver and he wins a lot of races. but it seems like every three or four races, guys are racing him for the win, and they wreck off of him. He needs to do something different because he has a lot of people pissed off. And so, and Josh even said after this race at ACE,

this past weekend, that a majority of the garage either came up to him personally or reached out to him via text to support what he had done. So this is a building. Explain what he did really. I'm going to. Yeah, I'm going to. I'm going to get there. I figured we'd leave that part out, Matthew. I, um, so, so this is how, this is all sort of been boiling over and building up, right? It's not just Josh getting, getting dumped at Motor Mile last year. It's other events and other things going on that sort of put this cloud or this, this perception of Bobby being a bit dirty, too aggressive.

Then, you know, they had the accident in the middle part of the race where it looks like Bobby didn't do a good job of trying to get down in the corner the right way, ended up driving in there and driving up and running Josh in the fence. So Josh is five laps down. Bobby is winning the race coming up on about five laps to go. Bobby's going to win. Millington is fading and even said in his post race that he had settled for second. Bobby, Josh is making it real hard for Bobby to get around him, almost daring him to dump him again,

daring him to run over Josh's car again. So Bobby finally goes to the outside, or goes to the inside of Josh in a turn three. Josh maneuvers around behind Bobby's car, stands in the gas, spins Bobby down the front straightaway into the inside wall. Millington goes on to, to win the race. Bobby

gets out of his car, declines interview. I think he did give some post-race comments to a few people afterwards, but initially to the broadcast, he declined interview. And Josh was parked by the officials. So Josh intentionally went out there

and wrecked Bobby at the end of that race. And, you know, I was, My initial reaction, I was texting back and forth with LW, who is me and LW, this is our baby, this late model program. LW. Miller. L.W. Miller is my sister's husband, and we're sort of, you know, we're sort of brothers and arms when it comes to this late model stock program.

We're partners, and he's been a big part of it for many, many years. And so I'm texting him, and I said, I think I just started seeing the glint. of Josh's car out in front of the leaders and I said Josh is the next car to get lapped and then LW said Josh won't do anything and I was like man you don't think because I really felt like enough was enough at that point I had had I had had enough and I was hoping that Josh would send a message and what is that message what did I hope Josh would do I didn't even know that in my own mind but you want you want Josh to stand up to anything like that, you know, and you have to.

On the racetrack, if you let guys push you around over and over and over, and if it's particularly the same person, they're going to continue that every time they get around you. And they're going to take advantage of that kindness or whatever you want, however you want. They're going to take advantage of that part of your personality. And it's one thing if Josh is just going out there and dumping people for no reason at all. Now, that's not okay. But what Josh is doing in this situation in my mind was putting his foot down. And Josh even admitted it.

And I told Josh after the race, I said, you hate that it has to come to that. You don't want to be that guy. You don't want to have to do that to anybody. but sometimes you don't have a choice. Sometimes you're put in the position of, I'm just going to keep allowing Bobby McCarty to run over me, to force me offline into the fence, to take advantage of me every time we're around each other.

It's already, in my opinion, cost Josh the last two championships, the spin and the wreck at motor mile. That right there, Josh would have won the championship easily, had Bobby not been so aggressive at certain points in the same? season because I feel like that Bobby knew that was probably the only way he was going to beat Josh. He didn't have the speed that the 88 car had.

And at this point, I don't know he still has it. You're saying it cost Josh championships. Did Bobby win them? Yes. Bobby won the champion. Okay. Now I'm getting a better understanding of kind of the feud here, the bowling up. Got it.

Absolutely. So, you know, I'm, I didn't want to bring Josh on here on the show. You know, it's going to be one-sided enough with just me talking about it as the owner of Josh's car. I didn't want to bring Josh on the show and continue to gang up on Bobby. But I have an opinion and I have a podcast and I'm going to share that opinion. If anything, it would be fair to have them both on the show to be able to give Bobby the opportunity to speak his opinion. I think Matthew, you've read a lot of the comments that Bobby has had since the post-race, and you can probably share maybe where he's coming from after all this has happened.

Yeah, I was actually very surprised. Yesterday, Speed51.com had both Bobby and then later on, Josh on their program, morning bowling. And, you know, I expected Bobby to have a little vigor and have a little salt to his quotes, especially after hearing Josh, you know, admit to that it was on purpose. And he didn't. He handled it pretty classy. I have to give Bobby that and, you know, saying that he feels it's over.

What he said? That he thinks it's over and that Josh did what he had to do and that he's not going to further anything. So, you know, McCarty's guys, he's a little rough on the racetrack. We've all seen it in the past few years. But off the racetrack, he is a very admirable, you know, human being, it seems. and carries himself well, as does Josh. This is, like you said, this is so out of Josh Barry's character. Yeah.

And that's why I was so surprised that he got suspended for it. Because, you know, this is so out of character for both guys. I don't see either of those guys continuing this in a fashion of we see at Bowman Gray or we see other stuff where people are junking each other's stuff. You know, there was words. Everybody gets emotional. But you're talking about Bobby McCarty, who's a rough race car driver, but very, very respectful, who I don't see him doing anything out of character more than he's done, which is race

people, maybe arguably a little too rough, but he's not a guy that goes out there and just usually dumps people. And Josh Barry, let's just be honest. I'm going to be honest, and I'm sorry, Josh, but I think Josh Barry's been a push over most of his career. I think he's a great race car driver that gets pushed around too much and doesn't do anything about it. And when I saw that at Ace in that cars race, that he kind of pushed back. Yeah. I was proud. of them as a as a friend and somebody who's close here with junior motorsports and i didn't think you know and i want your take on this obviously as a car owner you know i know it hurts to have your car suspended but you know from me it's like what are they doing man they could have sold tickets and you're

not talking about two high heads why the hell suspend the guy and talk about that well that's such a great point matthew um the suspension so josh is suspended for a race he has to uh You know, he has to miss this weekend's event at Hickory, a track that he runs really, really well at. Unreal. I didn't even think about it. So I assumed the suspension was coming. Really?

Oh, yeah, me and LW are already talking about drivers to put in a car. I wanted to call up Setzer and see if he'd drive it. What, an old man, Setser? No. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. He's a little firecracker man. Yes, he's good. And he's great at Hickory.

So I wanted to do that, but it was through Josh and the sponsor and a few other people involved. I think that at this point, I believe we've decided not to run the car at all, which is disappointed because I'm a racer. I like to race. I want to go win. Why? Why are we running it? I don't know. We'll have to figure that out.

That's a great question. I mean, it's still a bit of a discussion. Okay. in my mind, I would put the car on the racetrack just to compete because we can. But I feel like, well, there's also, if Josh is prideful, you know, that car is not a tool, not a hammer you loan to your friend. That car is a family member. That car is a part of you. And it's not something that you, one of the tough.

things to do is to see someone else driving that car in competition. Not an easy thing for Josh to do, you know, even though I'm the owner and I want to go out there and I want to win and I want to race and I want to keep digging. Josh emotionally, that would be difficult for him to see someone else racing the car. So, and maybe the sponsor, you know, we have allowed all things automotive to have some input as well. And I racing is in the conversation. And we'll see where it goes.

It might, I don't know if that's the final decision on us not racing at all, but we have already, I mean, I'm just trying to say my point is, is that before the suspension, we were already considering about what drivers we might put in the car should we go race.

So I knew the suspension was coming. But Matthew, you're totally correct. Why would you suspend Josh when that, you would sell, 2,000 maybe more tickets to this race, blowing up that rivalry. Yes. And pissing off Roy Cooper.

Well, that's a good point. That's the other thing that makes A-So interesting, man. You know, Dale, you were talking about that. You know, and you get that lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, you know, excuse me, the Republican that's trying to be lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, adamantly and vehemently going against Cooper, the governor, and taking a stand and you have that sheriff, it's like something out of a

movie. The sheriff is not enforcing the law and has his own opinions on it. And then the track is holding these events. You're only supposed to have 25 people at them. And they're having thousands in the track now said it's a peaceful protest for inequality and injustice everywhere. That's their little sign they had out front. And I talked to a lot of people in my racing circle that actually attended just to prove a point of freedom to be able to assemble. You know, and it's just such an interesting time in our history. You know, Mike, I'd love to know Mike and Dale your takes on that. But, you know, obviously it gets so political, you know, but it's an interesting thing.

Well, before that, I got questions. All right. So first of, Dale, Matthew said that Josh has been a pushover. Do you agree with that? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And you did not think that he would retaliate when it happened.

And is it because he has been pushed around for the bulk of his career? I knew, well, Josh's past history was not to take, you know, not to take aggressive action against his drivers that have done this to him in the past. And at this point in the race, he had had, I don't know, 30, 45 minutes to do think about it, you know, to think about whether he wanted to forfeit, basically forfeit his season, because as soon as you do that, not only have you lost the points because of the crash, because he's five laps down, it's off a points race at ACE, but he's also potentially putting himself in a situation to be suspended, which he has.

So that's basically, that's the end of the year for him. He's not got a shot of winning in championship. That was my next questioners. What were the consequences of the suspension in the grand scheme of things when it comes to the championship? You're saying it's over. Oh, it's over. So that's the other thing, too. Josh Barry gets interviewed after the race, and they said,

they said, is this over? Do you feel like things are good between you and Bobby beyond this point? And he said, no, he said, that spin on the front straightaway was for tonight. I still owe him for last year. Ooh. And so, in Josh's mind, it's not over. And I don't really know if I believe Bobby. if Bobby truly was conveying Matthew that he thinks it's over and that he doesn't plan on retaliating,

I'm not sure that I believe that because I just know, I've watched these cars towards races for long enough and watched Bobby race and know that he can't help himself when he gets into those situations on those critical restarts. And I just don't, I don't, I'll believe it when I see it. And I want him to prove me wrong. I really do. And I don't list, I do not dislike Bobby's style, all right? Because, I mean, you got to have guys that are aggressive.

It ain't going to be any fun to watch if you don't have guys out there willing to lean on each other. But it keeps happening to my car. So that's the only problem I have with it. Anyways. Dale, if you would, it seemed to me in the interview that Josh gave after the race that he already knew that he already knew that he was going to be suspended. I don't know if he was told that. I don't know if he assumed it.

My question, though, with the consequences being the championship, you wanted him to retaliate and stand up for himself. If you would have known that he was going to be suspended and risked the championship, do you still feel that way? Would you have still felt that way? Yeah. You know, I feel like that last year we got wrecked. at Motor Mile.

We, I mean, I know that it is a fair point to argue that we didn't get wrecked or that you could, you could watch that wreck at Motor Mile, you could watch that clip, and you could defend either side. I got my opinion, and it is that we got dumped at Motor Mile. We got used up. We had control of the race, and he took that race away from Josh, and didn't even give us the opportunity to run second or third. We ended up, you know, turned around. So we had to spend the rest of the year swallowing our pride because we still had a shot at the championship.

We had to spend the rest of the year trying to, you know, trying to win, keep our nose clean. We couldn't handle Bobby. We couldn't deal with Bobby. We couldn't go dump Bobby. We had to keep focusing on the title. And that's not fun. That's not fun when you, have to, you got done wrong and you got to ignore it and because there's another, there's a prize that you have to focus on or something else that's bigger, right? Okay, fast, that's okay. You know, we didn't win a championship. Bobby won a championship and we'll try again this year.

Well, here we are. Early in the season, dumped, spun around by Bobby, lost a lot of points. We're going to do what we did last year again? we're going to swallow our pride and march on down the road to try to win a championship without taking care of this problem. And so you get pushed into a situation where you have to, you know, you have to say, okay, championship is just not important to me right now. Trying not to get wrecked by Bobby every five races or every 10 races.

It's kind of like a bully, you know, like in school. Like I got bullied as a kid, Mike. Well, it is becoming that if you continue to allow it. You know, I don't think proud is the right word because what Josh did to he intentionally crashed that guy and took that win, you know, took him out of the opportunity to win that race. And that's nothing for me to be proud of. And I hate that Josh had to do it, but it had to be done.

It's hard to articulate why that needed to happen, but it did. That's interesting. That's interesting. What would you say, what would either of you guys say to someone who would make the argument that you can take care of that situation without jeopardizing? your championship. In other words, off the track, a lot of drivers are left in the position of having to stick up for themselves, but they don't do it with the car and they don't do it during a race. They do it in the garage or whatever. What's your response to that? Could that have been an option?

Yeah, I mean, that's one thing that I don't know. I don't know the culture between the two teams, whether Bobby is the kind of guy that you could sit down with and have that kind of a conversation and really get some serious, you know, have a serious effect on how he drives. So I don't know. I mean, you would try that. And that's typically what guys are trying to do at the cup level. And at the infinity level is have conversations to sort of, you know, you can't, you're tearing cars up on the national television

and ruining your shot at a reasonable finish is a big deal at that level. But at the short track ranks, it typically does. you know, those conversations typically don't happen. They've had a few in the past, though. Yeah. After Martinsville, you know, Josh called Bobby and spoke about how, you know, the few times he got into him, he just bounced off the curb. And they've had some talk before.

Yeah. Oh, is that right. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And, you know, Josh has said that and Bobby has said that, you know, because they've both been cordial about it through some, you know, incidents between them. Yeah.

And it just seemed like it hit the breaking point. Well, yeah, that would explain it then. If Josh has gone down and tried that option and, you know, multiple times and it's not getting him anywhere, then you have to raise the stakes a little bit. How old is Bobby? Is Bobby an old man? Is he a kid? I mean, like, he's young? Is he, he's young?

Yeah, he's probably around Josh's age. If I had to guess, what do you think they'll? I don't know his actual age, but yeah. He might be a little older than Josh, but they're not. Yeah, they're not old men like us. Okay. Well, Josh has to sit out a week. And I can't wait to see what happens the next time they get on the racetrack together.

I don't think it's over with. And what are you going to tell Josh? You don't think it's over with. Are you going to give him advice on this from the owner's standpoint? Are you staying out of it? I only give him advice in the post race. Once he's messed up. Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't want to be the one that influence him into doing something he doesn't want to do.

Sure. I'm not going to give him any direct. And that ain't, Josh is a grown man and make his own decisions and he needs to make them. And he needs to know that I support him. And every time that he's done anything on the racetrack or in a post-race interview, whether it's good or bad, I'll get on the phone. I've always gotten on the phone with him and shared my opinion. And sometimes we agree sometimes.

Maybe we don't agree. But I'm always going to be in his corner. He's a good racer. you know he's a good clean racer he doesn't use people up too bad i could see that pretty clearly if he was doing that but he's not and uh you know i feel pretty confident and if he's got amazing speed and in such a driven attitude and i love to see him go to the racetrack and compete because i know we're always going to have a shot at winning and we're always going to be in the mix and it makes it so much fun as an owner but i'm looking forward to him getting back on the track

and just seeing how this all plays out with mccarty the rest of the season because Josh, Josh doesn't have a championship to run for now. He has nothing to lose. He doesn't have to worry about points or, you know, wiping himself out and losing a lot of points and causing himself any harm in the championship because he's out of the championship battle. So he can go race hard, win races, be aggressive,

change the game for him a little bit. And I think that's in his favor. Yeah, well, what does Josh Barry like when he has nothing to lose? That'll be something to pay attention to. And it's interesting, by the way, Dale. Like, I've never really seen you take this position. But you know what I'm what I'm gathering is that drivers know and only drivers can know where that balance or with that line of being stupid and then having no other option is. I can't

I can't tell. It wouldn't be me. And it's not even you for Josh. But what you're able to do is say, I understand that a driver reaches that point where he has no other options. And so you're letting Josh make that decision for himself and you aren't going to interfere with that because of what he has established the credit. is a good clean racer. If he hadn't, you know, you've jumped in a lot of times like this year with Noah Gragson when he turned Mayotte and things like that. You know, Noah hadn't necessarily earned all that cred as that driver yet.

He's too young and everything. But Josh has done it. So this is interesting. It's a dynamic between a driver and his competition on when it's time to kiss the championship goodbye and handle your business. Sometimes you just need to handle your business. All right, man. Let's move on to Nashville Super Speedway, Nashville Speedway, whatever it's called.

You're about to handle some business now. Well, there's a difference. Well, all right. Nashville has two racetracks, and one is the Nashville Fairgrounds, which is a half-mile speedway, which has been around for decades, an incredible fun racetrack, similar to Bristol. Warout asphalt has had a lot of historical events there. still continuing to race there and super late models and so forth.

Maybe most famous for being a track where Darrell Walter learned his craft, Marty Robbins. Just a lot of names came out of there. I drove there myself. My dad raced there. I have been a big fan of that track and us racing at that track for a long time. And as our sport was growing nationally and new tracks were being built. we moved away from the short tracks.

We had a lot of short tracks on the schedule at one point in the 80s and 90s and more of those dropped away. And the mile and a half were getting built. And more of those were showing up on the schedule. And now we're sort of starting to see maybe we need to move back in the other direction. Maybe we need to get a better ratio of variable, you know, various types of racetracks in our schedule. And we have maybe a bit of an overload of.

the mile and a half cookie cutter track. So that's kind of where we're at. So I've been a big fan of us looking at Nashville Fairgrounds as a track to add to our schedule. There's a lot of problems with trying to make that happen, particularly with the facility itself, the fairgrounds, which is owned by the city, and the residents in the area wanting to put up with that noise,

the local government wanting to see the right person involved in bringing racing, bringing NASCAR back to Nashville Fairgrounds, how that money is going to be spent, where that money is coming from. There's just, there are some almost impossible hurdles to get us back to the fairgrounds. I understand that. I know it's not just as easy as us signing a deal and showing up. A lot of upgrades have to happen to that racetrack. Like I said, the property is going through this huge renovation. They're trying to bring in a soccer team, and that whole complex is going to change.

And the Speedway itself is trying to stay, is trying to coexist in that plan. It's trying not to be dismantled or wiped off the property. And there's been a lot of pushback from fans of racing in that area. and the local government and so forth. There's just been a lot of tug of war that's been going on. So I say that so you understand that, us physically going to the fairgrounds is going to be a hard thing to put together.

With that said, Marcus Smith has been doing a lot of hard work, trying to position himself as somebody who could come in and renovate the racetrack and get it ready, do what needs to be done, to bring NASCAR back to the fairgrounds. He's made a lot of hard effort. And we ended up going to Nashville over the last year with our banquet. We moved the banquet, the NASCAR banquet, from Vegas to Nashville.

And it was a great fit. It's a fun town. You know, we have some great history in that town. And so it was a good fit. When we would go to, you know, Vegas, obviously we race in Vegas, but when we would go out to Vegas, the banquet was a lot of fun. We had the casinos, and we had a great run out there. But things, you have to move things around.

You have to change things around every once in a while, and it was time to maybe do this in a different part of the country and add a little new energy to the banquet. We're trying to celebrate our champion. So we went to Nashville, and it worked. That, to me, was going to really be a possible. positive and a plus toward us getting racing back in Nashville. If we're there with our banquet to celebrate our champion, I knew in my heart of hearts that this meant racing in Nashville was the next step, that it was going to happen.

And I began to get nervous because I knew the hurdles that were going to be a big challenge for getting us to the fairgrounds. And I knew that Nashville Speedway, which is about an hour out of town, owned by Dover Speedway Corporation is sitting there. And it hadn't been used since 2011. Now they've been some testing and so forth on that track. I've drove on it in the last several years to test and so forth. So, I mean, the track is sitting there.

And I thought to myself, oh, Lord, please, don't do this. Don't go to Speedway as a sort of makeshift. attempt to bring NASCAR to Nashville. I'm not a huge fan of that racetrack for a lot of reasons. Number one, it's not the fairgrounds. But it's concrete. It wasn't an exciting race for the most part when they had races there. Attendance wasn't all that great.

It's not close to Nashville. It's an hour away. I've got people that live in Nashville telling me that they're not driving out there. How big is it? length last. It's a mile and it's 1.3 miles or something like that. I thought it was a tick under a mile. Yeah.

I'm wrong. No, I think it's bigger than a mile. It's bigger. It dries bigger than a mile. I'll tell you that. Yeah. So it feels like a speedway. It's a speedway for sure.

It's a big D-shaped dog leg. I mean, it's no different than any other mile and a half that we put on it. And the fact that it's concrete. God Lord. They're going to PJ won that thing to death. I'm just so frustrated because. You know, I want to be wrong. I want to be wrong here.

I want this to work. I want it to be successful. I don't want bad things for NASCAR. I don't want this to fail. I just wanted something completely different. One in one third mile. You're right, Dale. One and one third mile.

So I wanted something completely different than this. And I was afraid that this is what we were going to get. And so it's kind of like, you know what? It's kind of like you've got that one toy that you really want. for Christmas. You know your friends are going to get it, your buddy next door. And you open a package and it's an off brand. Yeah.

It's not the toy that you wanted and your buddy's got it and all your other friends got it. But you've got this other, you've got this off brand that's not the thing, man. Right. I'm telling you, man, I know this is going to upset some of my friends in NASCAR that are working really hard to make this happen. and I know this isn't, I appreciate that effort. I appreciate the work. I just have to be honest with my feelings about it. And that's how I feel. I just, I don't know.

Let's just say, so it was an announcement this week of the whole schedule for next year. That's what you're reacting to is that they announced they're going back to Nashville, but it's Nashville Speedway. Yeah. I think that's obvious, but. And it's a four-year plan, I believe. Oh, is it?

I didn't hear that. Yeah. So we're going back. back to the concrete, you know, monstrosity that you have been loathing. And you had had a suspicion. Is that accurate, Dale, that you were worried about it. What made you worried that this was going to happen? I just knew how hard it was going to be for us to go to the fairground and knew how much work needed to be done to create that relationship with the local government and the project of the fairgrounds itself, the renovation project. I just knew that in Marcus being involved, so you got,

So Marcus owns a lot, I won't say half, but owns a lot of the racetracks in the series. And NASCAR owns other racetracks in the series, right? And so I guess I should have known this was what was going to happen because Marcus was going to need more time. We weren't going to be able to get to Nashville Fairgrounds next year. Maybe not even in 2002. So Marcus was going to need more time, you know. but this puts us at the concrete track for four years. So I don't know if that means now if Nashville Fairgrounds ever happens,

it's going to be four years from now. I mean, I just don't even know. It really puts Nashville Fairgrounds to me, the opportunity of that really becoming reality. It puts it at an even lesser percent. And I'm frustrated with that because there's people out there, like Jim Utter and a couple of other people that will say point blank, Fairgrounds is never happening, never baloney.

All right, and that's fine, okay? I'm, I'm, you know, that's fine to have that opinion. But I don't want to, I didn't want to give up on the fairgrounds happening. I really wanted to believe that something could come together. And this just really puts that on the back burner. What is it about the fairground speedway that's made this your mission? and you know, we've talked a bunch about it on this show, frankly, and I've never even asked that question.

And I wonder myself, why? I've never seen a race there. What is it about Fairground Speedway that makes this such a priority for you? It's a short track. We need to add at least one. I would argue more than one short track to our schedule. And when you're going to make such a major change, like adding a track or taking a track away from the schedule you need to make sure that you're

adding something better that you're doing you're you don't go you're not going there just because of the location just because of the geographical location that you want to be in that city you want to add a race track that's better that's going to add a pro you know a good product a good a good experience for the fans i feel like the short track uh would offer exciting racing And we have a history there at that racetrack. And, you know, Cup Series used to run there in the 70s and the 80s. Also, it is in Nashville where we... Xfinity Series until 2000 something.

I mean, it's in Nashville where we celebrate our champion. If we got an agreement with them for a couple years and I think we should continue that, it was a great fit for us. You know, we should be racing there, right? And that's why they went, you know, if they couldn't go to the fairgrounds, That's why they went to the concrete track. They want to be in Nashville because they're celebrating a champion there. But to me, this just would have, you know, and it can't happen next year.

That's fine. It can't happen next year. You know, maybe NASCAR's intentions are to go to the fairgrounds one day. They'd love to be at the fairgrounds one day. But I feel like I would have rather had no Nashville at all and waited for the fairgrounds to eventually happen than to go to this concrete track. That's just my opinion. I saw Matt Weaver. He tweeted that he had been told that the National Super Speedway decision is meant to judge

and encourage Tennessee and Nashville officials to invest in the fairgrounds in hopes of having a race there. But then he went on to say it doesn't change the fact that literally no one wanted to de-shaped concrete intermediate. Perfect. That is perfect. And I agree with that 100%. I read that same comment. And my feeling is that if this fails, which it has... Oh, yeah.

It has a potential to not work. It could work against. It could work against our, if that's their strategy, you know, is to encourage the local government and so forth, that we need to be at the fairgrounds. This could work against them because it could add ammo to the argument that Nashville, you know, people aren't going to come. People aren't going to show up.

People aren't going to get interested in, in us being there. And hurt the cause, I guess. That's what Chase Elliott said, too. Do you see his tweet about it? He quote tweeted, Matt's tweet said one snooze fest at that joint will put the nail in the coffin of the fairgrounds, bummer. Oh, listen, that's a huge point then.

That's in a huge point. If you think it's going to, you know, retract. And is that how you feel, by the way, Dale? Is it all the work that Marcus has been doing to try to get us back? Do you feel like it's sort of going around his back and circumventing all of the effort that he's put forth in the last year or two? Unintentionally, probably, yeah. I think NASCAR has the best intentions,

but I feel like that could, it's definitely not, I don't feel, I can't feel in my heart that this is working in favor for the fairgrounds. Nothing about this gives me that feeling. And I swear I want to be wrong. I don't know. I think the more you can have something,

the more you want it, that's part of this, but I still feel like that if we, if cup racing was planted at the fairgrounds, it would succeed and it would become, you know, it would become a successful stop on the tour. And our relationship with the town and our relationship and our ability to be able to celebrate in that town, you know, celebrate our champion and our sport, would it mean even more? Knowing the context now behind how passionate you are behind this and why you've done a good job explaining that makes me now realize that the way that it was announced this past week, there would have probably been this disingenuous, disingenuous,

whatever I'm trying to say, almost like they're trumpeting the return to Nashville, with the trumpets, and I could see how that would have rubbed you wrong. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like. No one asked for this. Right, right. And I'm trying to think of a good analogy on how, what that would be like when, well, I guess you gave it. It's when you have been told, you know, you're getting GI Joe's for Christmas,

and you end up with GI Johns, the off-market brand of military toys. and you're like, wait a second, wait a second. Right, not the same. You're driving this Corvette. Drive this Corvette. You're going to drive this Corvette. Oh, wait, hold on. It's a Ford Pinto.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a, this isn't Cobra Commander. It's Cobra Captain. And now we're like, wait, whoa, not the same. Not the same. Oh, man. Oh, hey, Elizabeth is looking for suggestions on where to get a tomato pie,

if anybody on next door. I didn't even know what, I didn't even, I didn't even, I don't even know what a tomato pie is. It's a pie with tomatoes, I guess. It's like a very southern thing. It's like a pizza. Wait, isn't that a pizza? Right, it could be, right? That's so funny, though.

And you would have to, listeners, you would have to listen to the last couple episodes to understand why this is funny. Was it urgent or just? Not urgent. Not urgent. Not urgent. Get back to Elizabeth. She's not hungry yet, but at noon it'll be an urgent.

message. Yeah, next door is an app, one of the supporters of our show, and I joined the neighborhood. You get these insane, like, they're actually just quite innocent, but they're just when you pop up on your phone, you read them, you're like, man, okay, what's going on in the neighborhood? Somebody's looking for a tomato pie. I'd be remissed if I didn't ask this weekend and NASCAR, in my opinion, you know, between the podcast last week. I wasn't a part of it. I was a fan. I listened. It was educational to hear Bubba's perspective. And for me, I'm an outsider in that show because I wasn't producing it. Shultz was filling in. And I was, I loved it. And then to sit down in my living room and see what our

sport did in reaction to current events made me very proud. It would to me coming back on the show, it would be a tragedy if I didn't ask the two of you who were in that conversation with Bubba, what your perspectives were when you watched that race and watched Steve Phelps' message and our sport's message to the world. Well, one thing that I was really happy about is the driver message was created by the drivers. You know, five or even five or two, three years ago, if anything like that would have happened, it likely would have been from encouragement of the organization, the industry NASCAR itself.

So it wasn't? You guys came up with that. Jimmy Johnson and Bubba, they organized the video. They got together with the drivers and created a text chain to offer the opportunity for the drivers to be involved. And then we all would read the message in our own words, and we would send that to Jimmy. and Jimmy used,

Jimmy had some production help to be able to edit that together. And so, and then we went to NASCAR, or Jimmy went to NASCAR and had them, you know, leverage putting it on to the broadcast. So they also had their own and their own things that they wanted to do, which Phelps did. So there was a lot of, you know,

there was a lot of things good about that pre-race. but they were coming from genuine spaces, you know, and I was so proud to see Jimmy and the drivers all want to do that, want to get involved and want to create their own message. And that I'm so, you know, I was glad that it didn't come from, it wasn't an idea passed down to them by the industry, which is something that probably would have been,

that would have been the norm in the process. passed now. So that was that was what I found most inspirational about the whole thing. I kind of like the fact that if you if you go back to our Bubba Wallace conversation, I think we sort of were privy to the root system because Bubba said right off the jump that he and Jimmy had been on a phone conversation and we asked him a little bit about what were they talking about. And he said Jimmy had questions. And so he gave us a little bit of insight into that. And then seeing sort of how that manifest in a week was pretty interesting. me because I did because you know I know that it was Jimmy and Bubba that did it but

Jimmy really was the one that felt the conviction to go do this this was his response and he was sort of trying to figure out how to respond at the point when Bubba was talking to us I thought that was interesting and I have you know to answer your question Matthew I have been I got to be I'd be lying if I said I've been like seeking out the responses to the to that episode because frankly, for the same reasons that we said on the episode that, you know, I'm not going out, seeking out that stuff. Bubba goes out and seeks out affirmation from people on this topic. But frankly, I just find myself being let down when I go to social media these days.

Dale and I've had conversations about this offline. And I, you know, I did catch a couple of industry comments. I know that, you know, we had some colleagues that came back and said, wow, you know, that conversation was really, enlightening and it helped us. And so that's great. That's wonderful. But if you, if you were able to take off blinders and see anything, you could see that that was just us trying to come to terms with it ourselves. And Dale led that whole thing. I, you know, I came in and basically sat in on the Zoom, but Dale, you were the one that put all that together. So for that, you know, the industry comments, that's been nice. We'll see how transpires. I mean, you know, I don't know. even if our country is any better off this week than it was last week, frankly.

But at least you see some activity from our industry. And if anybody has a problem with it, the good news for me is I'm not out looking for it. And I try to close myself all from it. Yeah. I won't be surprised if we see that message continue, that particular specific message continue to live on and how our sport promotes itself going forward. So I'm glad the drivers did it.

glad I had the opportunity to be a part of it. The drivers weren't always as open to speak, you know, in the past. And I'm so thankful that everybody jumped on board. And that's so good to see that progress and our guys understanding that they need to be a voice here. But you know what's interesting about that is Bubba calls them out about that. I mean, he – and I wouldn't even say he – he beat around the bush a little bit. He literally said he called out people by name on our show.

And I know he also did other media interviews. I didn't actually watch them. So maybe he did it in those as well. But I know on our show, he called people out by names. Hey, you're a big name in this sport. You carry a lot of influence. You should be doing more about this topic and not even apologizing for it. Yeah, of the many reasons why I'm thankful for Bob Wallace is because he

put that pressure on them and said, hey, you guys are my buddies, you got to have my back on this. You know, it's one thing to have that in your heart, but I need you to speak up, you know. And so I don't know that we'll ever be able to repay Bubba for what he's been for us in the past several, several days. I don't think we'll ever be able to measure the value in that. And so, you know, we just got to keep our, you know, we just got to, we just got to look after him because he's got a lot on his, he's got a lot on his mind and that was evident when he got out of the car. He felt like that that was all from a mental, the mental pressure of past several days, which is incredible to imagine.

He said he felt pretty good physically when he got out of the car. That was scary. Very scary. I was watching that live and I was very, very concerned. for his health, you know, his health in that moment. That was frightening to see. We hear about those things, uh,

from drivers from time to time, but to see it in real time like that. And he was physically in a bad place. That was terrifying. You know what it reminded me of? It reminded me of when, when you were at the worst of the concussion thing and you would get out of a car and you just weren't yourself.

Now, you didn't actually, you know, sometimes you wouldn't exhibit the same, you know, symptoms or the same reaction. as Bubba was having, but like there were times when we were like, man, something's wrong with him. I don't remember that. But, well, hence another problem with the concussions. Listen, I'm not so, I know Bubba said that, but there was, that the mental anguish of the

week had probably kind of got to him. I would probably assume I'm no doctor, but like, I think that the, the heat and the exhaustion of the race probably had something to do with it as well. But I'm telling you what, I hope somebody's making him go to a doctor, not just taking his word for it that, you know, after the race that, oh, yeah, this was just a week. It's just been a rough week. And I think he needs to get checked out because I'm worried about him. Well, we've got a race coming up here in the middle of the week, Martinsville, and then they've got to go to homestead, which will be another blazing hot race.

So hopefully those guys are not only taking care of themselves and their bodies and packing in the water and hydration and nutrition, but they're also working on their cars and trying to improve their cars as well to be a little more comfortable. for the drivers so that they don't have to. I was in a race one time at, I was racing at Myrtle Beach Speedway. I was running a late model race 100 laps. It was 95 degrees. And I had to get out of the, I raced the late model car for 100 laps and had to get out of that car

and get into the Xfinity car and race that car. This was in 1996 running my first Xfinity race. And I had to run 300 laps in that car. And with about, 40 laps to go or 20 laps to go, I was completely coherent, but I'm driving and I just realized that I was very dry. And my body had sweated out the very last bit of sweat. And it was a weird feeling like I had become, like when you get out of the pool and you're wet and you dry off, you know, that transition of going. from being, you know, soaking wet to dry. We're in the car and I'm completely sweaty and I just

noticed like I'm, I am dry. Like my hands are dry. Faces dry. It was, it was beat red, but dry. And, you know, then I started to sort of have like hallucinations or just fainting and weird things going on. And that's a very scary, that's as close as I've ever come to anything like that. I've seen Denny Hamlin have some issues with that, especially as well after races at Pocono one year. We saw Denny have some, he was really flush and eyes rolling back in his head and couldn't put together any words and wobbling around. And it's just a scary scene.

But I hope those guys are taking care of themselves because I think Homestead is going to be even harder on them than Atlanta was. I'm nervous about Homestead. I'm thinking about that. now and it's Tuesday and we're going to race on Saturday and I'm already drinking more water than I typically do and trying to think about what I'm putting in my body to make sure that I'm I'm good to go. RVing is one of the best methods of travel to see the country. It's easy, safe, fun, and affordable. At camping world and gander RV in outdoors, you can see America for less.

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Visit Campingworld.com and Ganderoutdoors.com today. All right, guys, we've got some good odd history for you. It says here, Odd History 301 with a little help from a beer can. I'm anxious to see what that's all about. Yeah. Feels like it might be a Dillner joke, and we know how those go. Richard Petty won 200 NASCAR Grand National Races. But did you know that he credited a can of beer for one of those wins?

That's right. All right, here's a story. Martinsville Speedway, September 1969. Late in the race, Richard Petty was a lap down. He passed the leader David Pearson with 39 lapsed. to go to get back on the lead lap. As he passed the start finish line, a fan

threw a beer can at Petty's car. It was a direct hit on the front windshield of the 43. Luckily, the car wasn't damaged, but the unruly fans' actions did cause officials to throw a caution flag to get the can off

the racing surface. Pearson he pitted under the yellow and Petty stayed out, handing him the lead, and eventually his eighth Martinsville win. In victory lane, Petty said, I didn't have the fastest car by any means, but I got some help from a Pearson fan who threw the can, even though it's not very pleasant to have something like that hit your windshield. The race was Richard's 101st win, and also of note, it was the last victory for Richard driving a Ford. So there's a lesson to be

learned here. If you're a passionate ticked-off race fan, maybe you should think before throwing that beer. Let's raise a beer to NASCAR man for teeing this one up. Speaking of beer, it's time for last call. All right, everybody. That was a lot of fun. Good show, good conversation. I hope we didn't upset too many NASCAR folks talking about the Speedway in Nashville. I hope they prove us wrong. I really do. I want that to be successful. And yeah, hit us up on Dirty Mo Media and tell us what you feel about where you side on a couple of these conversations we had today. It'll be here to be fun to hear everybody's opinion. Enjoy the week. Have a lot of fun. Can't wait to see you guys at the racetrack this weekend at Homestead. I won't be seeing anybody at the racetrack.

I almost didn't wait to not see you at Homestead. Can't wait to not see you at Homestead. This bit of badassery was bad assery. It was made by Badassery. Dirty Mo Media. Dirty Mo!