The Dale Jr. Download - 304 - Paul Morris: Burnouts at the Bar

Episode Date: June 30, 2020

G'day mate! Dale Earnhardt Jr. brings in his good friend from down under, Australian racecar driver Paul Morris, to turn the show upside down. Morris and Dale jr. recall how they met, the time they got kicked out of a night club, crazy decisions over wine, driving the treacherous Bathurst race course, and landing helicopters on a casino. Paul opens up about a few bad wrecks, a concussion that prevented an opportunity in NASCAR and the time that the V8 Supercar veteran raced three weeks after breaking multiple vertebrae in a crash. Morris shares the tale of how burnouts at a bar once got Robby Gordon's Stadium SUPER Trucks series banned from Australia. Ya think that's wild? How about when Dale Jr. drove one of Paul's racecars barefoot while in board shorts? Yeah, that happened. From a story of a shark bite to the time he crashed a helicopter, the stories are plentiful.Dale Jr and co-host Mike Davis discuss the big Indycar / NASCAR doubleheader weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and what it could mean for future collaborations between the two series. Dale Jr. will be back to work calling races for NBC this weekend and discusses the challenges he expects to face while broadcasting remotely. In Ask Jr. Presented by Xfinity, Dale Jr. shares the story of his firework fail that made Amy and Isla upset and caused horses to run wild. Plus, find out why one driver had a bathroom named after him at Pocono Raceway. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is a production of Dirty Mo Media. Dirty Moe. It's time for the Dale Jr. Download. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. Download. Thanks for tuning in. Mike Davis is on the show.

Matthew Dillner, Leah is here. We got a great show for you. Paul Morris is our guest, Australian race car driver and great friend of mine. I can't wait for you guys to hear some of the stories. Let's get this show started. Before we get into the rest of the show with Paul, got a couple things to talk. about here. Martrix Jr. 40 years old this week.

Hey. Damn. Yeah. Big 40. Also, my co-broadcast pal, booth mate, Jeff Burton. I think it was his 65th birthday this week. All right. Yeah. Really? Got a couple birthday shout-outs. Oh, no. Yeah, speaking of booth mates and all that good stuff, we're going back to work this week. How's that feel? Yeah, so there's a lot going on in Indianapolis Motor Speedway this weekend. and we will be covering the first Xfinity practices, I think practice one and practice two on Friday.

That's going to be the actual first bit of work that we get to do. I believe those will be on the NBC app. And so that's going to be a great opportunity for us to kind of see what working in this, the new booth is. The booth is basically going to be a room at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Okay. So we won't be on location, but much like you've seen the guys at Fox, do from their studio in Charlotte.

We're going to be calling the race from there. So I get to start Friday learning how that works and how we can do that throughout those Xfinity practices. That will be extremely important to be able to do that before we go right into calling races. We will do the Xfinity race on Saturday. And obviously, there'll be the Cup race on Sunday. They'll also be an hour of pre-race. Mike Tricco is going to be a part of that.

Excited to always have Mike on. He brings so much awesome credibility to our show. He's such an icon. So he was part of our shows last year at a couple different events. I think Daytona. Yep. And Indianapolis as well. We got to work with him there in Indianapolis 500.

Just it makes us, it makes our show feel like important, good. He's such a professional. He makes you feel good. Being around him is just, it's a delight, honestly. And so that's awesome that he's going to be a part of it. Now I've got a question, though, for you. Sure. You guys typically do a couple rehearsals here and there.

Are you saying that y'all haven't rehearsed? No rehearsals. So those Xfinity practices are your rehearsals more or less. So tune in to those to see all the screw-ups, mess-ups, all the things that we're going to learn, mistakes we're going to make. And again, they'll be on the NBC Sports app if you really want to check that out. Jimmy Johnson is testing an Indy car. Yeah. Gannasi.

Gannasi, Indycar around the Oval, I suppose. No. No? No, it's actually going to be at the road course. Oh, he's going to drive the road course. So, yeah, I just learned that this morning. Yeah, me too. I'm learning it right this minute.

Oh, really? All right, so he's going to run the road course. You were hoping for the Indy 500. Yeah, the Indy 500 would be cool. So speaking of road course, our Infinity guys are going to race on that. Yes. Now, so, you know, I know that's probably, we take it for granted that everybody knows that because here we are sitting in an Xfinity shop that here, you know,

four teams race out of this shop right here next to the studio. But not everybody. knows that. The Xfinity Series is going to race on the road course this weekend. I am really, really excited about that. I think the road course there has always been a point of conversation. There's been times throughout the racing at Indianapolis for the cup cars where the racing hasn't been that great. With the new rules package, we're kind of still sifting through to see whether this is going to improve the racing at Indy on the Oval. But a lot of people have called for the possibility or the idea for the Cup Series to go to the road course and try to race the

road course at Indy. This will be the first test of whether that's really the move to make. So I think as we're watching this Indy car race Saturday, we need to keep in mind, not only are we watching it to see who wins and we're pulling for our favorite drivers and all that good stuff, but we're also watching it with the idea of could this work in the Cup series? I think everybody should pay attention while they're watching Xfinity race and make that decision for themselves at the end. Would you like to see the cup cars doing just what you saw the

Xfinity cars doing on Saturday? Because, yeah, if the cup racing at the IndyCar Oval doesn't improve or doesn't trend toward more exciting racing, then they might have to make a change or they likely will make a change. I can't imagine what would happen for me to say, no, I wouldn't want the cup cars running the Indy car, the road course. You neither.

But you're right. We should watch the Xfinity race and then make it decision after that, but I'm going to tell you right now, every time the cup cars are gone somewhere and, like, let's say, the roval, you know, the roval was a big test and all this stuff. I mean, we didn't leave disappointed, right? I like the idea because the IndyCar Oval is, that belongs to IndyCar, that belongs to open wheel, that belongs to the legends of Floyd and Dreddy. We are merely just guests.

I've always said that, because that's what it's felt like. We're, you know, we're coming in there. So if that was taken away, it doesn't have the tradition, our cars racing there, doesn't have this long tradition. It doesn't, you know, we just started racing there since, what, the late 90s. So we're not losing this old, this tradition or history of great triumphs and exciting finishes going back into the 50s, 60, 70s, like maybe you have at Daytona, right?

Or even Charlotte. Right? That's the one thing why I don't want, that's the one thing I'm afraid of for Charlotte. If we quit racing the Oval entirely, is losing all that history and tradition of what happened there and the races, the triumphs that have happened there. So I'm okay with this, though, if we moved away from the Oval and when Cup cars

go to Indy, we run the road course. I'd be okay with that. I didn't really think that we were replacing the Brickyard 400, though. I think like, is that what the suggestion? I'm just saying if it did happen. Okay, well, maybe then that would be my reason. It's good litmus. Okay, I understand now.

I just thought, like, you know, at a second race and you run on the road course. All right. I'm sorry. I'm just saying if the racing continues to be boring or not satisfactory at the Oval, there had been talk over the last couple of years, hey, man, we should run the road course. We should run the road course. That'll be better. Well, do you remember our text message about that?

No. You were still driving. It's unbelievable how just life, your perspective changes. My perspectives and ideas and stuff changed too. But you were still racing, and we had a text about that. And you were like, I didn't start, I didn't run CUP to run these road courses and, you know, extra road courses. I would not want to race it, but I would want to watch it. So I'm watching now. So obviously I might have a different opinion when it comes.

I mean, as a broadcaster, a lot of things that I had opinions of as driver changed. Yeah. When I went into broadcasting. But yeah, I think if I was still a driver, I'd probably want to try to make that oval work, even today. I try to want to find something package-wise, rules-wise, that made the oval what we wanted to be doing. But I'm out of that game. Now I'm watching. Now I'm broadcasting.

We've had some amazing road course races over the last. I mean, they have been strong. The Roval, Watkins Glen, Sonoma, anywhere we've been, it puts on a show. And there's a lot of great content there happening in the event to be able to be able to broadcast it. So I think it'd be interesting. Anytime we try something new, it seems to be pretty awesome until the team sort of figure it out. Well, that does change everything for me. I don't think I would be ready to abandon the big oval.

I don't. Although, watching the race at Pocono, I don't know. We used to just compare Pocono and Indy in terms of the racing. Is that something we still do? Because if so, that was quite a gap between the leaders. Xfinity was awesome. The Truck Series was incredible. The truck series race was, I wouldn't label them as awesome because there's a lot of yellows

that were kind of, you know, the truck series race, they couldn't get going, right? They had a lot of trouble kind of. And then you have stage cautions. Yeah. It just seemed to take, it was like the 24 hours of Pocono. But as far as the Cup, we're talking about the rules package and everything else that was strung out. Yeah. And if that sort of mirrors what we could expect at Indy, which I hope not, but that's been the case at Indy.

The Saturday Cup Pocono race didn't get great reviews. The Sunday race was a tick better, but still, yeah. I think that Pocono and Indy have always kind of been quite similar as far as the product that you see on the racetrack. But we'll see what happens this weekend. Indycar is also there. Yeah. All right. Last year, there was a lot of conversation about a doubleheader between Indycar and Cup.

I think everybody wanted it. And anyone in the industry, whether it's IndyCar or Cup, wanted to do it, who would go first? Nobody wants to be the lesser, the supporting series, right? Right, the undercard. Yeah, the undercard. So who goes for, well, maybe we go first and then you go first to the next one. There was a lot of conversation about how do you make both events the headliner, right, in the same weekend. That was sort of the debate a bit.

But I believe that everybody wanted to do it. But there was just, you know, there was just this hesitation. Here we are. The pandemic, Mike, we've talked about it. Yeah. As bad as it's been and as bad as it continues to be, it has had some positives in terms of what we've been able to do with our sport and some of the things we've been able to learn. And some of, you know, no practices, no qualifying and how that's made some of the races a little more intriguing. And here we are with an opportunity to do a double header because kind of we have to in a sense.

We've been put into this situation where it's created a real possibility for this. happen and now it's finally going to happen. I'm pumped. All right. So, why are you pumped? Let me ask you that question. I'm excited because of really one thing. And I bet I'm missing something here.

I think it'll be great because there's so much common interest between the two series or between Open Wheel and Stock Car that they are going to have so much fun being in the same space to be able to interact with each other, go and visit each other's garages and learn and look and put their hands on the cars, understand the culture, the way they do things, how they approach their craft, all those things. But that's really just the industry sort of back and forth. What are fans getting out of the doubleheader? Obviously, your fans.

So tell me, what are you guys so pumped about? about let me tell you what it is for me for me that you know that day when you have monaco in the morning you know and then you've got indy and then you've got the 600 at night and the just the versatility behind that day what we all look forward to that day because it's a day full of racing and it's a day where you can just sit there and take in all these forms and appreciate all the forms all the disciplines of racing right i don't really watch f1 on a regular basis i know a lot of people do. But I do watch Monaco because

it's that day when I know it's just part of it. And so when you, I think that our sports are better when they're working together and when there's not at odds. Not that there have been at odds, but I think that, you know, the indie crowd will always want to sit there and, you know, look

down on the NASCAR crowd or the stock car racing and vice versa. And I never understood that. I don't know why you can't, you know, true racing purists can't just appreciate both forms of racing and enjoy the fact that you got them both to watch. And then when you get them on the same day, I think this is the best of both worlds.

I don't look at the negatives of that. I don't see the negatives. I think it's an awesome thing. I love it when they can collaborate or when they can kind of intermix and like you said. I take it as a learning opportunity. I love to sit there and go, okay, what about this that they do that we can't have

because of maybe the way the cars are? and I can appreciate that. I think we've done the, we've done double headers as far as being there in the same weekend, but we've done them wrong. Oh, really? You know, dating back to IRL at New Hampshire, they'd run one day, NASCAR would run the next day. Kentucky, run one day, run the, there's no, there was no like cohesiveness. So as a fan or somebody that's interested in the industry, you're running them same day.

It's like this festival atmosphere, like you said. You could sit on the couch and be a fan of both. I'm now a huge fan of IndyCar racing. And I think IndyCar racing is a very sexy sport full of really colorful characters. And I would like to see more of this collaboration between the two because I think NASCAR drivers at times don't show their true personalities enough. And the almost European style of some of these racers on the IndyCar side that show their personality more, but they don't have the, platform at times that NASCAR has. I think combining those two could be a win-win for NASCAR drivers, for NASCAR fans,

for NASCAR industry, as much as it could be for IndyCar. And I'd love to see someday a cup indie car doubleheader on the same day because nowadays, with social media, you know, you see one driver go over to the other garage and it creates so much interest, you know, to see Jimmy or see you when you were at Indianapolis going to sit in a car. I think all that could be great for both sides. Anytime there's been a collaboration, it's been very intriguing for me. And I think a lot of speech, I think about when Jeff Gordon, Juan Pablo did that, the trading, whatever they called it, when they got in each other's course.

Tony Stewart did it at walking. Tony Stewart did it when Kurt Bush ran the Indy 500. Yes. I mean, we were glued to that. It was so awesome. And I was just enjoying the heck out of it. Even when you did the iris. Oh, yeah, yeah.

You know, just a few weeks ago. I thought that was so interesting. This will definitely create the possibility, the opportunity for more conversations about drivers actually going over to each series. I'm all about that. That's a sort of a historic approach to it too. Now, it's extremely interesting for me to watch a stock car guy run the Indy 500. All right. Or really any oval in the open wheel.

I like to see what our guys can do in that environment. And I'm imagining if that's the case, then open wheel fans also get interested in stock car racing when their heroes or their drivers come over and try out stock car racing, right? I would hope. Whether it's on road courses and whatnot. So I hope that a lot comes out of the doubleheader and the two series sharing the same venue. That's one of the things that I hope comes out of it is the opportunity or the possibility that we might see. You know, like Kyle Bush, he's talked about running the Indy 500.

What are the hurdles? What are the things that are the roadblocks in the way? Could this be a catalyst to get through those challenges to make that happen? Even if you're not a Kyle Busch fan, you're going to tune in to the Indy 500 if you see Kyle Bush on the starting grid. The same way we did Kurt Busch. For sure, right? And just to clarify it too for the fans that are listening, so Saturday, you have

the Xfinity series at like 3 o'clock, you have IndyCar at 4 or so, and then Sunday is the Cup race, so it's all combined, but the real double-hatter day is that Saturday. Yeah, for sure. And when I hear double-hatter, I think IndyCar

Cup, and for me, that's what it is. You are going to go, the Saturday is the double-hatter because of Xfinity and uh... Yes. Oh, well, I think that same day thing is freaking magic and we haven't done it and we need to do it and it's cool. Well, he's excited, Mike.

Yeah, a little bit. I am too, though. I like that too, though. I appreciate that. He should be coming in in a second. Are you ready, Mike? I'm ready. Ha!

There he is! Good idea. Good idea. Welcome to Australia Nice That's a good Aussie accent, Mike Haven't forgotten You got new teeth, Mike?

You got new teeth, Mike? Same ones as before, buddy. You remember them. What are you drinking? Coffee. All right. Did you get out of the smallest cup that you own? Doesn't take much coffee for this guy

Why are you drinking coffee at 11 o'clock at night? Because I needed to wake up Would you typically be in bed right now? I mean, come on now. It's late. Sleep on the couch. Sleeping on the couch. In Australia, I was born.

Heave away, fall away. All Australia, round Cape Horn. Going to Australia. All right, everybody. I'm real excited about this. Mike, I know you've been talking about this for a couple weeks. We finally got a friend of ours on the show all the way from Australia. Paul Morris, Paul, how's it going?

I don't know. I'm really good. I'm excited to be doing this because this is one of my favorite shows. Oh, really? It's probably hard. So you're, you told me a few times that you're a big fan or have listened to the show, and now you started your own podcast, or at least you're doing a lot of content yourself over at your racetracks.

how you enjoy doing that? I enjoyed a lot so myself and I think you remember Russell Ingle who wrote for me 10 years ago we've started our own show and it's more of a YouTube a lot of video content it was his idea

and it started because he was in broadcasting after he retired and then he got the axe from the network and he was bitter and twisted and he decided to start his own show and he's now getting more views than the network. So he's pretty happy.

So where are you exactly in Australia? Tell everybody. I'm in the Gold Coast, which would people know is where the IndyCar race always was. Yep. The street race on the Gold Coast. In Queensland, it's a state. It's probably similar to Florida,

if you look at our temperature and our lifestyle. What time is it? It's 11, 11 p.m. at night. What are you usually doing at 11 o'clock at night? Probably in bed or just falling asleep on the couch, Dale. Well, there's sometimes now. I follow you on social media. Well, you're one of my favorite follows on social media.

Just because, you know, I know you're always out to have a good time. And sometimes you're not in bed at 11 o'clock. You guys have been cutting up quite a bit here lately. Yes. Yeah, when the COVID thing first hit here, the first things the Australians did was Australians did was tried to chill out and drink more beer and have a good time and enjoy ourselves. So that was our reaction to how that went on and yeah, we've been having a good time. So how did that work for Australians then? Is that, has that been the strategy so far or just drink it away?

That has been the strategy, yes. There's people, people haven't been going out. They're just been sitting at home and in some cases hanging out together more and doing things they haven't. haven't really been doing. It's brought people together, so there has been some good of it. You know what's interesting is that I think that the people that know Paul that are listening to this right now and just heard Paul say that he's usually in bed about 11 o'clock are all calling BS right now collectively. I can hear it through the headphones because they know Paul.

Because Paul, you are that person. Everybody has a Paul Morris story. I mean, you're that person for us, even over here. I mean, when you have a, you know Paul, you know Paul. Remember that time, that Tuesday night? Remember at the bar, the fight, the whole of the thing? You're that guy. Yeah, I'm the guy that once he gets going doesn't normally stop.

If it starts going, I just keep going. So sometimes it's a couple days later. Sometimes it's a couple of hours, but I'm normally the last one to pull out. Well, so let's explain. to people how we met. I was right around the time I was starting to go to work for Rick Hendrick. They were also, Chevrolet was building the new Camaro and the street version. They were doing their secret, super secret testing and manufacturing of the early prototypes over in Australia.

And so I talked to Rick. I wanted to go to Australia. and I was a big fan of the racing circuit over there. The Supercar V8 Supercar back then. Still am a fan of it today, but back then, man, it was so raw. And the Australian race car drivers are the most aggressive race car drivers that I know. And it was just such a fun series to watch. And I wanted to go see it for myself.

And so anyways, I got to. the opportunity through Chevrolet to go over there and test out or drive these these Camaroos and do a little bit of work for Chevrolet and that allowed me to take I don't know how many friends we sent over there was about eight of us Paul probably seven or eight of us but it was a small jet full that's right but we flew to Australia and Marcus Ambrose is the guy that obviously I went to and said hey I'm going to Australia do you have anybody over there that I can connect with? And he introduced me to a guy named Crusher.

And Crusher, explain to everybody who Crusher is. Crusher's a PR guy, motorsport, public relations, media guy who is pretty good at networking. Yeah. And really good at drinking. Yes. Huge guy. and he's been in racing for decades on the Australian side.

He's came over and worked in IndyCar and been a big part of motorsports here and here and over in Australia, obviously where he was born and raised, but really, really great guy. He connected me to Paul. He said, you know, we're going to spend a majority of our trip on the Gold Coast. We went all up and down the east coast of Australia from Hamilton Island, which was incredible. to see the Great Barrier Reef. But we were all over. Anyways, we ended up really connecting with Paul and spending the majority of our trip with Paul.

Just because they thought that he would be a good tour guide or because he would be a good reference for, you know, the work you were doing over there. But what was Crusher's point? I think Crusher just knew. Crusher, I guess, kind of knew what we were into. I told Crusher right away. I said, hey, we're just going to drink beer and we're a bunch of goofballs. He's like, Paul Morris. and he's like, this is where you need to be.

And Paul, not only was Paul going to show us how to have fun and where to have fun, but he's going to keep us out of trouble, right? We got you. And give us a lot of advice on how to navigate over there. And it was great. You know, Paul, so this kind of guy Paul is. So he has a racing school, a V8 supercar driver racing school that he partnered with Marcus Ambrose. on, I believe, and still runs it today.

And they have kind of a little bit of a tamer version of the V8 supercar. They've got a couple of them. And they have, you know, that you can ride four people in them, but they're basically just a race car. And the entire interior is all stripped out, and it's, they're awesome. So these things are not cheap. And he's like, hey, guys, I'm going to park them. He parks them all out on the racetrack, about four of them.

He goes, y'all just have at it. We're standing there and our flip-flops and their. our board shorts and our t-shirts, not thinking we're going to go drive race cars. And so we're out there on the, we're out there driving these cars. I mean, my buddies are driving them that have never raced in their life. And we're just, we're just having a field day at this driver school. And Paul and them, they're doing whatever they need to be doing and, you know, having, you caught on the phone or in the shop working and turned us completely loose, unshaparoned to drive all

these cars around this racetrack. I remember being in one of them with my bare feet and my board shorts and having the best time of life. But we had a blast over there for two weeks. And to be clear, this is all made possible by the person keeping you out of trouble too. And Paul's been here. Paul's came to the U.S. He, one time he says, hey, man, I'm going to send a race car. Oh, I remember this. over here, one of my cars over here to go on a seven post and pull down rig and a bunch of other air wind tunnels and this and that and other. He's going to send one of his V8 supercars over here to get all the information and data he can. So he ships it over here.

I think it arrived at our place. I'm not quite sure how all that work. It was in your shop at your house. That's right. We kept it for him until they came and needed it and took it to the wind tunnel and all that. And he stayed in town for a couple weeks, and he's been back through here. a few times to say hello as he's been racing some stadium super trucks and stuff like that with Robert Gordon.

But we've got a great friendship, and I tell him all the time. I can't wait to, you know, having these kids put a delay on this, but I can't wait to come back to Australia and take my wife Amy over there and introduce to Amy to Paul on his turf. It would be a lot of fun. So, Paul, I had a question. I remember when Paul and Owen Kelly had spent about a month. here and that month will go down in infamy as far as the stories and then the I think the I don't know the industry is still talking about that month that Paul was here and so then I had questions about that week in Australia so Paul he said that Crusher set you guys up what do you remember about

when Crusher came to you and asked you to to help Dale Jr. out how much did you even know of Dale and had you guys you know what was that first meeting like? Yeah we'll we on knew he was coming, obviously. And we know who Dale, Liz. For sure, we do. And then I think we first met at maybe Phillip Island. You guys come to Phillip Island, and Toper and JD probably walked into my garage

and then started talking to those guys first. And then when they're up on the Gold Coast, this is a true story. We get a phone call. They're like, hey, we're up on the Gold Coast. So that's good where you're at. And they go, we're at Hooters. Why they're at?

How hell would these guys come all the way from America and go to who is? Who does? We've got to rescue these guys and show them around. So we've got to get you out of this place. And that's when we thought we had to become proper tour guides and show these guys what Australia was all about. And so where was the first place you took him to show him what Australia is all about? To the track. I think we were sitting there talking and he said, I need to drive something.

And I'm like, I can fix that. Let's go. Let's get that one done. And then we just kept hitting all the things we wanted to do on. the list, which we had a good time. The thing I remember is no one knew who was, you know, he got thrown out of his first night. He had all sorts of good things

happened. Oh, really? What was this? I guess we got thrown out of the nightclub. I don't know how that happened. I just remember, I know that I think Paul might be the reason why we got thrown out of the nightclub. Yeah, it was definitely my fault. Do you remember this?

Oh, I remember it. I mean, I would assume that that wasn't the first or the last nightclub you've been thrown out of. So what was the, what was the situation this kind? I don't know. What happened? But we got him back in. It was fun. He got him back in. He's being tight-lipped. We, you know, being a big fan of the supercars and going all the way over there to be able to go to a race, that was the whole, the objective really was to see the supercars race. And it was our, in the wintertime, it's their summer. They're in the middle of their racing season. We went to Phillip Island, beautiful part of the country.

really amazing racetrack, the hospitality. It was first class. They treated me really well, but they treated all of the people that was with us. All my buddies incredibly well. We basically felt like, you know, the best guests. And Paul and his team, I hardly knew any of those folks, but I knew of Paul because I'd watched the series a lot. They call him the dude.

That sounds like must be a good guy. They got a great nickname. That's right. So we ended up hanging out, watched the Utes race. I didn't know what a Ute was, a Ute Mike. We've talked about this on the show here. Yeah, how they should bring them over here. It was with Will Power, actually.

Well, actually, no, we remember we were doing a show, this is funny, Paul, we were doing a show at Daytona for this February. And I was sitting down with the General Motors of North. It was Jim Campbell. Yeah, Jim Campbell with Chevrolet, and I said, hey, you guys ought to bring the Ute over here. And he's like, yeah, you know, we've kind of talked about that, and it'd be cool. And, you know, kind of brushed it off. And then, like, two days later, we found out that they'd closed Holden down.

Chevrolet is going to end the Holden, which is really unfortunate. Such an incredible, iconic car. I don't know how you guys feel about it over in Australia, but I love the Holden and have a Commodore myself. but that was a funny sort of 24-hour span there. But I got to see the Utes race. We had a great time at Phillip Island, and he's right. We were staying at this era. We were staying at a casino in the Gold Coast.

And right down the street was Hooters, and we were, we just, this is like the first lunch. We're like, man, we're hungry. What y'all want? Let's just go to Hooters. Okay, let's see what Hooters is like in Australia. So we go, and it was empty, nobody in there. My buddies are on the phone with Paul, and he's like, y'all got to get out of there, man.

We're coming to get you, man. Why are you in there? Your first cue is that nobody else is in there. That should have been the sign. So we hung out with Paul for a couple days there, and he's like, hey, guys, he turned us loose one day. And he told us, he said, he said, I'm going to pick y'all up tomorrow in a helicopter and take you to the, we're going to the lottery for lunch. And so we walk into, he's telling me, he's telling us this, and I'm like, oh man, all right, how are we going to get to this, we're going to drive this helicopter.

I don't know where we can, I got to figure out, you know, where we're going to go to get to the landing pad. We walk into the front door of the casino as Paul's kind of dropping us off. And he says, he turns and says to the bailman, he goes, hey, I'm going to land a helicopter on that parking deck out there. The casino had like a two, three level parking deck. And the guy looks at him and he's like, you understand. understand what I'm saying. I'm going to land my helicopter on this parking deck tomorrow morning. And the guy's like, yes, sir.

And I said, Yeah, well, the mission from the person that controls the building, and he gave it to us. Yeah. As far as I'm concerned, we were good to go. And he did. We come out there the next morning,

helicopters on the pad. I mean, the hotel security's out there, like, how are you doing, Mr. Morris? Yes, sir. They're kind of standing,

standing guard, making sure no cars are driving up on this helicopter. right? By the time he comes to land the helicopter, the whole casino was like creating, going to the best efforts to accommodate Paul. Is this your life? Is this the way you live, Paul? Everybody just accommodate you? I told him there was a very important guest staying at the hotel that needed to have a helicopter theater. That's so funny. That's one of the things that I learned about Australians, at least Paul, is their wit. Oh, yeah. They will embellish a little bit and get a joke out of it and also trick the casino.

So. Tric the casino. So Paul flies us, his family owns a winery. Tell me about that, because I'm not a wine drinker, Paul. And still, I'm not today. I'll drink your wine. Okay. And so we go to have lunch at this place and we all got shi on.

on wine. And I'm like, man, this is great stuff. So that's really the only thing I'll drink. He'll send me some every once in a while. But how did your family get into that, getting in the wine business? It was always a passion of my dad's. And after he became successful in life, it was something he wanted to do and build. And I think he's about 20 years that winery's been there now.

So it was relatively new when we were there. Yeah, it was, what, two, three years old? Wow. No, 97. A bit longer, 10 years old, maybe done. So, yeah, it's a place where people can come and have fun. And also we have big events here as well. I have concerts there with up to 15,000 people there coming to have a good time.

It's called Syramay wines, which is my dad's initials spelled backwards. These names Terry Edward Morris, and you spell T. Morris backwards, it's syramay. Is the motto now the only wine that Dale Earnhardt Jr. will drink? It is. He looks at Pino-Ree, the white Pino-A-Roe. Yes, that's the best. It's all, it's really the only wine I will ever drink. And I just, I have tried other Pino-Gree because of his.

You know, I'll try it here in the States of some other brands. But when he, so you're thinking Australia, right? If you go to Australia, you're thinking, kangaroos, right? You're thinking about, you're thinking about? The first thing that comes to my mind is kangaroo. Well, the outback. Coalas. Like, yeah, koalas.

So we're flying in on this helicopter, and we haven't really seen any of that. We've been in the city and in the suburbs for the most part of our trip. And when we flew into that winery, man, it was the most beautiful scene. There's kangaroos hopping all over the place as we're hovering over down on the ground. I mean, they're right there. And just a beautiful place. We had a great lunch. The place was packed full of cheery people.

Everybody was happy. And having a great time. all the tables were kind of intermingling and laughing amongst each other and with each other. I just remember that as probably one of my funnest parts of the trip was that lunch we had at the winery. And your dad is one of the most stand-upest guys. I mean, just the coolest guy. Paul's pretty awesome. He gets a lot of that, I think, from his dad.

And we get to see your dad quite a bit on your social media, so that's always awesome. So we, yeah. He can come and still remember. Yeah. He came and stayed at your place? I guess he did. I don't remember. I mean, lots happened.

He'd come and stayed in the guest house there for a few days. Oh, that's right. And why would that have been? Was that when you were here testing out the car? Yeah, it might have been that time because Dale said, hey, when you come to America, bring your dad. So I did. So that time when you were here testing out that car.

So you talked about how they shipped the car. Yeah. Which I remember we kind of just thought, man, that's kind of crazy. I don't know that we've ever had a car shipped from Australia right over straight to dirty mow acres. No. But it hadn't happened since, I don't believe. But then you, and did Owen Kelly come with him or was Owen already here?

Owen came up. Owen Kelly is a friend of Paul's. Yeah, Owen came with me on that trip. That's when he started and then started driving your late model. Yeah, so Owen comes, Owen's just a friend of Paul's. And Paul's like, this is my friend Owen. He's an aspiring race car driver, and he's really good. You ought to give him a shot.

And we got drunk enough to add one night that I agreed to let Owen race one of our late models for an entire season. And so Owen ends up staying in North Carolina at one of our apartments, one of our rentals, and raced a late model for a year. That's what Paul comes over to hang out for a couple weeks to drink and party and then left one of his... friends here for a year. Yeah. This is the real testimony to that wine is that it landed Owen Kelly a job. Well, he raced here for a year, ended up marrying his wife, meeting his wife here, didn't he, Paul?

And now they have two kids, both live in Melbourne. So, yeah, we hadn't had drunk that wine. Owen probably would be still single. So why did they end? I remember very specifically hanging out with Paul and Owen in Daytona. How did that happen? Do you remember this, Paul? We go to the test, the test, right?

The pre-season test sessions. Dale says to us, we're going to leave at 6 o'clock in the morning. We're going to pick up. We're going to fly down to Daytona for the test. And we're like, okay, we're going to go down to Daytona for the test. 8 o'clock in the morning, we're out the front of the guest house, ready to pick up, and I think you might have grabbed us, Mike. Maybe.

And then he said, oh, we're right to go. I said, where's the aisle? He said, oh, he flew down two hours early and wanted to go early. And we're like, man, these guys are using jets like their pickup truck. This is, I've never seen. I said, he said, oh, this thing will be going up and down all day, bringing stuff back and forth. I've got to go back now and pick up a gig box.

We were like, it was like, it must have looked like the Beverly Hillbillies. It was just, couldn't believe what was happening. Says the guy that lands helicopters on things until, yeah, like this is. Yeah, this is so odd flying a jet to Daytona. Whatever you get used to, isn't it? Yeah. It's cool. What do you remember the Daytona test, like being down there?

What do you remember? I remember on the lollipops. I remember. We had a big night, and the funniest thing I remember, we're in the hooters. That was across the, so we went to get some lunch. Some guys there and we were set down there, have a lunch and got talking to him. And then we went back to the garage area,

and we were in the garage with Dale after there. And the guy goes, wouldn't you just in Hooters having lunch with Hooters? I said, yeah, he goes, what do you do it in his garage? He couldn't believe that we were actually in his garage area in the test. So, and then what else did we do there? We had a pretty good time. And then we met up with Boris said that weekend as well. So I knew of Boris.

Oh, yeah, Boris said. Any before, Dale, introduced me to Boris, and now Boris and I are really close friends. So our two sons is a similar age, and even they're really good friends. To me, the whole thing about motor racing is it's incredible network of people, and you can be racing anywhere in the world,

any type of racing, and you're two steps away, but by having really good connections, incredible people involved in. Yeah, your friendship with Boris, is pretty special, and Boris has actually come over to race at Mount Panorama, which isn't that right? You set all that up?

You did. Wait. I'm talking to Boris and you go, you should put him in your car for Bethas. And I'm like, okay, I think I'll... You know, I've noticed something. There's a common denominator. It doesn't take a whole lot of convincing when it comes to Paul and you guys. Me and Paul together make some awesome plans.

Y'all just make some freaking decisions, man. And it don't take long. Yeah, so, Boris come out and race with us for Bathurst. You come out and did some racing at the Gold Coast 600, the Supercar Race on the Gold Coast. And I ended up doing Daytona 24 hour with Boris a couple of times. So, yeah, pretty amazing. I didn't know that.

Yeah. There was a real. Paul came pretty close one time to drive in our Infinity car. You remember me and you BS and about doing that? that, Paul? Yeah, you wanted me to drive it on an oval, and I'm like, oh, just give me a road course. I thought that was, I thought it was the other way around. I wanted you to run the road course, and you were like, no, I want to run an oval. No, it was definitely the, no, no, you were like. There's a lot of wine. So how close did this get? Just that? I mean,

you wouldn't put him on a road. I mean, we put anybody on a road course. We were in between drivers, and I was like, man, if it's going to happen, this is the time it needs to happen. You can see how easily all the other decisions were made. You can imagine this. Right. I mean, we put, we put Hibul in a car.

Yeah. Kenny Hibul. Yeah. So, I mean, he's, he drove for Kenya a few times. What is Paul Morris and Kenny Hibul like when they're together at a bar?

Well, I've known Kenny before he was a successful business at him when he first started racing. So he, Kenny race, used to race Formula Ford here in Australia before he took up to go to America. And he's from the same home town. He's always been as, he always has now he's just got a lot more money to try and make all those crazy ideas happen so he's pretty good friend here yeah he turned up in australia with zach brown the musician in the same jet that you guys come out in and he borrowed it off mr hendon the exact same jet oh yeah that big uh golf stream yeah that's the only way to that's the only way to go to australia apparently yeah but you got to stop in hawaii and spend the night to break a trip in half is that what you have to know that's got to got that's got to go to i

That's tough. Noted. Keep that in mind. One of the best things that we got to do while we were in Australia for our trip back in 2008 or nine. 2006, I thought, 2007. Anyways. 2007. One of the best things that we got to do, Paul and his team, his V8 supercar team, are testing.

What was the name of the racetrack? Queensland Riceway. Queensland, they're testing, all right? Paul's let us go play with the school cars. over to driving school. And I thought, all right, that was great. And probably all the racing and fooling around were going to get to do, and it was plenty.

And it was great. He goes, hey, you want to drive a real supercar, come to the test. I didn't have a proper suit or a helmet or anything. So I borrowed Owen Kelly's. Me and Owen at that time were about the same size and everything else. And so I show up to Queensland. I'm pretty damn nervous. but because I've never drove a car where you sit on the passenger side.

Oh, that's right, yeah. Steering wheels on the other side of the car. But it had an H-pattern shifter in it, and I'm shifting with my left hand. So everything's sort of backwards as far as how I'm going to use, you know, the muscle memory is all upside down and backwards, whatever. I don't know. So anyways, he has a car that's last year's car. they got a brand new car with a new body and everything they're testing with Russell

and I'm going to drive this car that was last year's car and it's basically what would be the what's that series it's kind of like the Xfinity series is here yeah it would have been super two we yeah we call it now super two exactly right yep okay so and these are the you know it's exactly what the Xfinity series is here so young drivers relatively you know a year or two old race car, maybe some older cars in that series for sure, but these are the guys that are going to be in the big V8 supercar series one day. And he basically set me in that car and I got to drive it all day long. I'd run some laps, come in, and I'm like, all right, he goes, keep running. Okay, jump back in, run some more, get out, drink a water, hop back in, run some more. I mean,

all day long, just running, run and run this car to death. He even let T.J. take it out. DJ majors. Nice. Right. He's like... You told me it was a race car driver, but I'm not quite sure about that. He did a terrible job. So TJ's race start... He didn't...

He took up out of pit lane, the quickest I've ever seen anyone go, and he never made it past two and one. True story. Did he spin it? No, he missed the corner. He just missed it. Yeah. Just drove home.

So TJ races our late model. Super good. You know, he's really good at racing an oval. and I've raced online with him for years, so I thought, you know, hey, he can figure this out. This can't be that hard. T.J. gets in it. Like Paul said, balls the wall,

as soon as he drops the clutch on pit road, straight, wide open out of the pits. I mean, he's not working his way up to this thing at all. He's just going as hard as he can. Goes to the first corner, heavy braking zone, and misses the braking mark by like 1,000 feet, and locks up to the front. front tires and goes straight off the racetrack into the dirt and comes right back in.

He's like, it's not, it doesn't stop. Yeah, it's the car. I'm like, TJ, you got to break, TJ. Yeah, you got to slow that thing down, TJ. Yeah. Because he'd just come out of the trailer wearing Owen's helmet and his thing. And there was some media there that day as well. And absolutely no one had any idea that was driving that car.

It was pretty good. Yeah. That is fun. It was. Yeah, we got, I got to really see what the. those cars feel like. I mean, again, I'm trying to, you know, frame this up for you. I'm going to Australia. This is going to be an incredible trip. I'm going to go to Phillip Island and watch a V8 supercar race for a motorsports fan that lives in America. This is a really once-on-lifetime

opportunity. Well, then I found myself driving school cars than driving an actual V8 supercar a couple days later. A holding? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I never imagined any of that would have happened. And it wouldn't have happened without Paul. And Paul was, Paul never had a second thought about any of it. He's like, here, do it. Here it is. Here's the keys. Here's this. Here's that. I mean, it made the trip for me. And my buddies really enjoyed it as well. It made the trip multiple times better than it would ever been. So that's how, and we've become such great friends because of that, you know, that trust and just easy to be around. And we're going to give you TJ to help with your school. Do you want to say,

to send him back, you know, is a kind of a favor? Yeah, well, I'd love to have TJ back. He needs to go to the school. That's one guy that needs to come and spend probably a few months at the school. Could you make a driver out of him? Yeah, I reckon I could. I think he just needed to relax. I think he thought he was going to get signed up or something.

He was definitely there to put on the show. I love it. So I got to ask you about the super trucks, the stadium trucks at your race. racing. It's, because I mean, obviously you had an awesome career

winning Bathurst. I mean, how many times have you won Bathurst? The 1,000, I've won twice and the first time I got disqualified

but there's three other endurance endurance races at Bathurst and I've won all of those races. The 500, the 12 hour, and the three hours.

You're the only person to have won all three major events at that track, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so for fans

that have never heard of Bathurst, Mount Panorama. To me, if you haven't ever heard of this racetrack, absolutely Google it, YouTube, whatever you can. In my mind, by far, this is the most treacherous, technical, dangerous, racetrack that you'll ever see.

One part of our trip was that we all hopped in a van, me, T.J, and the guys, and drove there to see it with our own eyes. And it's a, public street people live on this racetrack right and you can drive around it and we took a lap around it in the minivan we went into the museum we bought some die casts we we watched this video that they show you about the history of the track do you guys and paul so we appreciate like for me there's

daytona there's bristol there's there's these tracks that just mean more than uh than than than anything to us or to me. Is that the way you guys feel about Bathurst? Is Bathurst the Daytona for you guys? Yeah, I think it's probably, can even be bigger than that. Dale, it's something in Australia that everyone watches. So the Bathurst 1000 is an event where no matter what you do, where you grow up, you'll turn on the television at 6 o'clock in the morning

and you'll watch that race till 6 o'clock at night. There's 12 hours worth of television coverage on race day, and everyone knows who wins that race, whether you're into racing or not. But what makes it so special is the racetrack, and 80% of it you've got to drive off memory. The corners are blind,

so you have to drive the track off memory. So that's why it's such an awesome race track. And there's parts of it that still reward old fashioned putting your balls on the dash bravery you know you've got a you got a man up and wheel the thing and it rewards lap time so it does have a lot of blind corners a lot of elevation changes and then it's got these it's got the backstretch uh which is incredibly long downhill just blinding speeds into a really really hard braking zone this track really has everything that all the wildest and most respected racetracks across the world have.

Yeah. I'm coming rice. I am never going to race on that race. Now, I would love to come, you know, see a race. I would love to come witness a race there. But, yeah, I'm never going to do that. One other thing, and I guess just novice fans here, and you learn, go to YouTube and watch, you know,

some clips of that Bathurst 12, when they're running at night and those headlights, they got the headlights on the cars. I mean, it's like literally driving down a country road in the middle of the night, as dark as you would imagine that is, that's what it looks like, only you're with other cars and you're going, you know, off memory. It makes me nervous just watching a YouTube video of it.

It's amazing. I can't believe how dangerous it looks. Now, you race there. Do you remember the first time you went there, Paul? Yeah, I remember the first time I raced there would have been, 1989 in a Formula 4, a little open wheel car. How fast did that car go down the hill? It would have done 140 mile an hour, probably.

No thanks. Little car. Yeah. And this would have been before you would have been able to establish memories of it. So how nerve-wracking would it have been to run that for the first time? I was young, mate. I was excited. I was many nerves back then.

So, yeah, I think that that was the first time. And then the first time I went there at a touring car was 1991. It's an amazing place. Like if you go back, the first time I went there was 91. And then 1992 I was there in factory BMW driving with a guy called Denny Holm, who was a 1967 Formula One World Champion. I was teamed up with him. And he actually died in that race just before I was about to get in the car.

car. Wow. But they didn't stop the race. They just carped him off the hospital and kept the race going. It's just one of those places. What did you do? I just didn't, I was more worried about not getting in a car to tell you the truth. I'm like, oh, I'm not going to get a drive.

Denny's died. You're just young and all you want to do is race. So, yeah, I just thought I better come back next year. There's been a lot of, yeah, there's been a lot of tragedy at that racetrack. And it just, you know, confirms the, how treacherous it can be. Yep. You know, your racing career, you mentioned how you started in the late 80s.

You ran in the Australian Super Touring car series in the mid-90s and won a championship in 95, 97, 99, 2000 driving a BMW. Yep. You just seemed to be dominating. I watched a lot of those races. We would get those races on TV sometimes. And when I went to Australia, I bought a bunch of videos and stuff as well of the history of motorsports in Australia. And you're on those videos in that car.

You just dominated that series. You owned the car, too. That was your team's car, right? No, no, that was a factory BMW car. Yeah. And in 1999, the factory BMW team disbanded. And then a guy who I'm still friends with now, he owned the car for one. year it was a private, private entry car.

Okay. Just having that factory support from BMW, was that the answer? Is that the reason for the domination? Yeah, there's a fair bit of it. So you used to get updates all the time. And what you had with that BMW was you had teams all around the world. So it'd be a team in Italy, Germany, England, France,

and they'd send a kit and all these teams operating around the world, all the information would get pooled every weekend. So you just kept getting constant. concert updates and that was eventually what killed that formula because it was meant to be a pretty simple formula by the time it finished that super touring with the cars just become that expensive and the manufacturers all got into a into a war where it just imploded so yeah wow that were cool cars to drive very cool you stepped away from that series uh after 97 uh well you you came overseas to america and raced into indie lights i had no idea that you even did that

until I started researching for this interview. I've known you forever and did not know that you ran a whole year over here and didn't he lights? I did. What was that like? I had a good time. It was good. I enjoyed it.

I didn't quite know what to make of me. What I bought was a Dodge Ram pickup truck, and then I bought a what I call a caravan, but you call it a camper trailer or a 30-foot van. And I basically just lived in that for a year and drove around and went to all the races. but then I ended with a, I had a really bad accident at Michigan

and got a head injury and then I didn't finish the year out. I needed to come home and, you know, get myself well again. But at the moment, actually reading through your story, Dale,

helped me identify what happened to me back then all those years ago. I'm like, oh, that's what happened to me? No kidding. Yeah, yeah, true. I was like, okay, that's what happened. I'd come back home and was like, I don't feel too good.

It probably took me four or five months to get going properly, but no one knew what. Yeah, you hear that a lot about people that didn't know what concussions were, and you're saying that you would have had a concussion, and that makes sense on what happened. Yeah, I just thought I was having a bad day for about three months. You had another, speaking of crashing and injuries, one of the most well-known crashes that you were in, was a, on a starting grid, one year in the V8 supercars.

2000. Yeah. Yeah. Big fire. Yeah. So something happened to your car on a starting grid, stalled it or broke or wouldn't go, whatever. Yep.

Y'all do a standing start. So you're up toward the front and cars are going around you. I mean, these things launch and take off. And so. So not a rolling start in Australia. It's a starting start from, you know, drop. the clutching goes. Yeah, but they launch, and in just a very short period of time, they're going really fast,

and the guys in the back of the field by time they got to Paul, I don't know how fast the guy was going when he hit you, but they're all going around Paul, and all of a sudden the one guy, when the seas parted, there's Paul Morris, and the guy just hits him full speed, broke a bunch of vertebrae in your back, car catches on fire? Yeah, full tank of gas, so that thing went up. Paul with his back, broken in multiple places, comes crawling out of the car. Yeah. And you still have that chassis at your school.

Yeah, yeah, still got that car. And there's a guy trying to buy that car at the moment because everyone's worked out that that car actually the year before was won an Australian touring car championship in the hands of Prague Lounge. So there's people now that want to buy that car and restore it because it's worth so much money because it's still intact. Yeah. I only hope that they can fix the back of it.

But the funniest thing that was, I ended up being airlifted to the local hospital. And by the time I got to the local hospital, they just thought I'd been in a road accident. And we had no proper medical care for drivers or anything in Australia. And I've been in hospital for about four or five days before the organization or the governing body had even realized that no one was looking after me properly. So that made me want to make things a lot better for a driver's safety and all. in Australia as well, having that bad experience. And you did that. You got involved in, you became like a member of the V8 supercar.

What was that? It's basically the board. So V8 supercars, it was back then was controlled 75% by the team owners. And 25% of it was owned by a sports and marketing company. And the team owners elected for team owners to be on the board. So when I got involved, become a board member, got involved in basically the running and the sport. It would be like four team owners in NASCAR having a majority of say of how the sports operated. And so when you said you started making or addressing issues, were you talking about like in the way that you guys are cared for after the crash?

Or are you talking about the safety in the car and both? Mainly from a driver's point of view, there was nothing. You just put in the local ambulance and off you went to the hospital and hopefully you got well. But now we have an amazing system in supercars. They have proper records on all the drivers. There's a doctor there that knows the driver's history. Similar things that you guys would have had in place for a long time. I would imagine four or five days in the hospital and it's Paul, he probably would have a thing or two to say.

I don't know if he, what kind of patient are you? What kind of hospital patient are you? No, I wasn't very good patient. But it was a bad situation that I think, I think, you know, our medical care in Australia is free. You don't have to have insurance. You don't have to have anything like that. We're very fortunate.

If something goes wrong with you, you just turn up to the hospital and they'll fix what your problem is. But sometimes it takes a long time to fix your problem. You didn't miss a race, though, right? Is that true? Yeah, that was his first year in the supercars, I believe, right? Paul, and you didn't miss a race? No, I didn't.

I think I drove three weeks later with broken vertebrae. That's how stupid I was. Wow, three weeks later. My goodness. That's only two weeks out of the hospital. That's amazing. So if you go back and compare, like, was that Michigan crash that you, if you had not suffered a concussion, do you think you would have?

stayed here and done Indy lights even longer than just 98? Yeah, I think I would. I reckon I would have stayed there and probably found my way down to NASCAR or something like that somewhere. I think there was a just before that happened, I think that a guy named Jerry Nadeu had a big, big crash. Yep. You're right?

And someone, one of the engineers that was working at that team had tracked me down in an American and said, can you come down here and run this car on a road course for us? Because he was an Australian guy. And that could have happened if I had not had that crash. I reckon I would have found my way down there. Wow, that would have been interesting. That would have. Wow.

So were you, other than you and Dale having drunk conversations and then other than you and that Jerry Nade do, like how serious have you ever had opportunities when it comes to running NASCAR? And would you ever consider it even now? Oh, yeah, of course you would. It'd be an amazing thing to go and do. And it's one of the sports that I love to watch.

I love the way they race. I love the way that the drivers get to sort their own problems out themselves. Our sport in Australia can be over-officiated, so the officials can stick their nose into the driver's problems too much. I love that part of racing in America, especially NASCAR, let the drivers handle it, and that would something I'd really love to be involved in. Now, that is an interesting point right there. I think there's a lot of people that would listen to us,

and we're spoiled rotten over here, right? We watch NASCAR, we complain about it. I would almost bet that fans would think that we are over-affirited. I thought that. That NASCAR, right, right, and that the drivers don't sort themselves out. But Paul is saying, no, no, you do sort it out. Is that right? I'm hearing you right.

Yeah, like, if you look at the European or the Australian way of going motor racing, there's someone in the control tower, there's someone, like in supercars now, every car has an onboard camera with data, and they'll basically pull the vision out of your car and look at every accident and try and determine who's at fault. And most of the times they do a really, really bad job of doing that because they're not race car drivers. And we've had a retired racing car driver called Craig Baird

come into that position in Australia and clean it up and make it a lot better. But if there's rules written down, he still has to go by him. So the best thing I like about NASCAR racing is they don't get involved unless it gets to the crisis. Yeah. Okay? If drivers unsorted at themselves and there's a crisis,

you're probably going to go for a walk and have a talk to someone, but that's the best thing I like about it. Because you don't know what's going to happen. Is the guy going to pay him back? Is you going to wait to next week? There's so many cool things about racing in America that you guys don't appreciate. I would almost want to ask, what else do we not appreciate? I think this is a good lesson for us.

What else do we get the drivers that can sort things out? What else about NASCAR do you think we take for granted? I think you take for granted how good, how mainstream your sport is in the media. You have major newspapers, television, all different times of media, trying to get to the drivers and to the teams and get stories out of them. We're in Australia, it's the opposite way. The teams are trying to get mainstream media to go, hello, we're here.

Can you please report on us? It's amazing how mainstream the sport is. Yeah, I'd agree with that. I'd agree with that 100%. That's interesting. Good to hear. Paul, I want to step back to your driving career, 52 years old right now. You've been driving a long time.

But most recently, 2014, you won Bathurst 100, 2017. You won the 6-hour. You were a stadium truck champion in 2017. These are all recent events. At 52 years old, what is left? Is there anything left that you want to do that would, that would, you know, entice you to put the suit back on and get back in there and compete? Nothing particular, but I still like to race.

The stadium truck thing is something I love to do because when I stopped racing full-time, I was left with this big void in my life. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? And then the stadium truck thing turned up and it was like, oh, this is fun. I can go and race. It's not too serious. And then when I got into it, I realized it was just a serious.

there's anything else going out there's anything i want to do no i think i'm pretty content of of where i'm at but like i'll race anything anytime anywhere there's an opportunity to get in something and have a drive and have some fun yeah i'll go and do it so i see every once in a while you work on the little ozzy car um explain to people what that is first a little ozy car so my the easiest way to explain that is take a legend car which everyone we should know what we're talking about Yep, a ledger car and put a modern body on it. Okay. That's what it is.

And so I see you race that every once in a while. What makes you look at that car in the garage and go, let's take it and race this weekend? Well, how come I see you pop that car out of the garage every once in a while? Probably the tracks you get to go to. So there was a race for the Aussie cars at Bathurst as a support race when the 12-hour was on. I could race at the Gold Coast last year, which is my heart. towns. So just the cool events that you can go and go and race at and compete at and be part of.

Because I'm not a good spectator. Yeah. I'd rather be involved somewhere. So you have the drive in school. And what racing is happening out of that complex? I know your son races. You got a couple other guys in the school that are instructors that drive as well. But what racing are you doing is your family doing?

Who's racing out of the complex there? This year, just my own stuff. So last year we had Super 2, a Super 3 car, and three kids in Toyota 86s. Yeah. But this year I've just gone, I need to chill out a bit, just try and turn things back a bit,

and try and make things a bit more normal. So basically only my own car and whatever Nash is trying to work out what he's going to be racing. What did he go? So Nash is your son, and I've known Nash for a long, long time, and he just recently has dove head first into the driving. And how old is he about? He's 17, so he wasn't interested in all in racing one bit.

Till what, a year and a half ago? It's probably a year ago yesterday, I think, that he come and take your picture and said, hey, look, dad, it's been a year since I had my first race. I'm like, oh, that's good. You've done a fair bit in that year, mate. Good on your. well done. But to me it was important if he was going to go racing,

he had to understand what it was all about. So, you know, I'll take him to any race he wants too long as he can buy his own car together. And so that's what he's been doing. What's he racing now? What do you call that? It's basically, we call it a, it's a Hyundai XL, so that what they've done, they've taken a small little front-wheel drive production car and turned into a very inexpensive, easy-to-run race car. Like most things, when you start racing them, it can get a bit expensive when you start doing things right. But there's probably four or five hundred of those cars racing throughout Australia.

Father and son can build a car relatively cheap and go and be competitive. So we'll pick that up and go and race anywhere in Australia. Most weekends, we'll find a race somewhere and go on. That's amazing. That sounds fun. And if you follow Paul on Instagram, he posts his trips and his stories. They'll load the truck up, put the car in. You get to follow along as Paul's riding down the street and driving through the countryside,

and they'll go to the race and race and compete. And Paul doesn't really focus on the performance of the results. It's really more about the experience and maybe what they learned, which is always pretty fun. I think Paul kind of approaches, you know, racing as a father. There's a lot of avenues you can take when you're trying to race with your son and trying to help him understand what he's doing. And I think Paul does a really good job of doing that.

We see dads all around us with their sons, their daughters, racing, introducing them into racing, and how they go about that. It's really critical. And so how would you grade Nash's first year? What would you say about Nash as a race car driver? He's done pretty good because most people he's racing against being racing for 10, 12 years and go-karts or whatever.

So, yeah, I'm pretty happy. but the main thing is that he's learning and having a good time. And I reckon motor racing is the best school of life you'll ever go to because you need to know how to talk to people. You need to know how to be respectful. You need to know how to be competitive. You need to know how to read because you've got to read the regulations. You need to be aware if you fall foul of the regulations.

And you've got to represent yourself in all those different avenues. You just can't call someone in. So, I mean, well, you can't in Australia. If you get in trouble with the authorities at the racetrack, I can't go in and defend for him. He's got to go and deal with that himself. So it's the best school of life around. The best thing you can do as a parent is not be a BMX dad.

You know, you've got to sit back and let them make their own mistakes. Yeah, exactly. That's funny. I've never heard that, a BMX. That's kind of what I was trying to say. Yeah, it's perfect. I just like his style. And, you know, he's kind of letting Nash go at his own pace

and not putting too much, you know, this is just from an outsider. looking all the way on the side of globe. Is Nash's racing career, is that fulfilling you from, because you said that when you went and retired from the V8 supercars, or you announced that, I think, in 2015, I was curious on how quickly you went right into the stadium trucks, because it seemed like it was pretty instant. But I'm curious, are you still doing the stadium trucks?

And if not, I mean, is Nash's racing career, what has supplanted that for you. You're not a psychiatrist or a psychologist or anything anymore. Yeah, that's exactly what's going on. Perfect. Yeah, I'll send you the bill for this. Yeah, 100%. It's, it has.

I'd much rather go on. And not only Nash, there's a lot of other young guys that are help as well, like that I get a lot of enjoyment out of because, you know, they can do it better than I can now where I'm getting older. and if you can just sit back and relax and watch them do things that you've taught them, it definitely fulfills a big void for sure. So are you doing stadium trucks at all? Yeah, I raced at Adelaide here in Australia was the first round,

so we had the first round, and then the COVID-19 thing hit, so everything's been put on hold. So let me ask you this. The stadium super truck, when I heard about that, Robbie Gordon is the creator of the stadium supertruck series. And trying to imagine you and Robbie Gordon in the same room together is interesting. But I've always thought that that was a sort of a traveling circus. Robbie owned all the trucks and would just take all the trucks to the tracks.

He would holler at you or Casey Mears or maybe Greg Biffle, get somebody to come out and race, fill up all. all the trucks with drivers, go out there, put on a show, load them up, go to the next event. But you say that it's much more serious than you anticipated. So, you know, and they do, is it the same trucks that I see racing in America that are racing in Australia? Is it a different set of trucks? Yeah, I think he's got like 30, 30-od trucks, and they're moving around the world the whole time. There'll be 10 here, 10 in America. He'll get hurt.

He'll send it back. You know, Robbie, he's got everything going at once. He's a world's best juggler. Yeah. Yeah. So I've always, maybe imagined it less like a, you know, a motorsports organization and more like kind of what the monster truck guys do, where they get all of them together and they go into a town and put on a show.

You know, you have the jumps and the theatrics of the stadium super trucks is insane. Yeah. But is any other choreographed? Like is it, is it? No. None of it. So when you're out there watching them race, you know, you're going for the, you're going for the win and. You're going hard.

Going hard. The only rule Robbie has is don't pass anyone before turn one because we don't want to stink up the show without getting past turn one. And once you get past turn one, the glove are off. Wow. Okay. That's basically what it is. Paul, is it true? I was reading something about it where the sport had been temporarily banned or something like that in 2018 because of safety reasons.

Did I read that right? Yeah, that's another funny story. Yeah. So what happened? We're in Northern Territory Darwin where there aren't many rules up there. It's the last frontier. But one rule they don't like is people doing burnouts and stadium trucks at the front of nightclubs in the main. straight in the middle of the night.

And so... I'm just processing everything he just said right there. Who was doing a burnout in the stadium truck in the middle night out in front of the nightclub? Robbie. Robbie Gordon. Of course. And so they...

That was what brought down the stadium super truck series. Anything wrong with that. What happened was we're sitting there in a bar and there was a stadium truck on display at the front of the bar. We'd done some deal where the guy'd given a couple of grand across the bar and put a sticker on the truck for the weekend. We're like, oh, that's good. We can all go to the bar and eat and drink and have a good time?

And the guy, can you put a stadium truck on display, Robby? He goes, yeah, yeah, I'll bring one down. So the flatbed dropped the truck off. And at about 10 o'clock that night, the flatbed come to pick up the truck. So Robbie's rolled out of the bar, started the truck up, threw a couple of burnouts and put it on the flatbed, and off it went. and then the police didn't like that. So that was how the series was banned or closed down for a year?

Okay, so, yeah, because it says the SST was banned by the Confederation of Australian Motorsport later that month for safety reasons. It was about burnouts at the bar by Robbie Gordon. Well, yeah, it was about that and probably the, what you have is the Confederation of Australia Motor Sport, a motorsport Australia that controls all that. they're a pretty old organization that I think they're a bit more important than they are and the crux of the matter is they didn't like Robbie because he's probably a bit too flamboyant so they issued him a fine at one of the races and he put in a pizza box and lit it on fire

and took a picture of it they're not they're not going to oh my gosh what did I just hear sounds a lot like you. I mean, Robbie sounds a lot like Paul. You sure you didn't do? Right, right. And they think that Robbie was just too flamboyant for them. That was new to them. Robbie sounds like he fits right in. Anyway, they've sorted out their differences now and they'll get on famously. So. I don't know who broke it that deal, but it must be someone with a lot of connections in Australia. Is his name Paul? The kind of guy that'll fly a helicopter on top of a casino, maybe? There's a lot of people that are involved in sorting that out,

but the stadium trucks are a good thing. And, yeah, they're good entertainment. The kids love them. And what works well in Australia and it works really well at those big events. Like if you're going to the Long Beach Grand Prix or the Freak Grand Prix and you've got people that normally wouldn't come to a race, It keeps kids and keeps the casual person engaged. And hopefully they look at the stadium trucks and they look at the other classes

and gets people involved in racing. I started watching his suit. When I heard that Paul Morris was going to be running something called a stadium super truck, I said, I got to check this out. And when I saw it for the first time, Paul, I was like, I can't imagine there being anything more Paul Morris-like than a stadium super truck. And I saw you guys ripping around those turns and over those hills. And I'm like, my God, it looks like so much.

I mean, knowing you, that looks like right up your alley. I mean, I can just imagine you just grinning while you're driving that thing. Yeah, that's what happens. And then you get in some, you get in, if you look at the stadium track, and you look at the problems that you have now in NASCAR and especially now in Australia, the cars create down force and then you can't follow anyone. Well, the stadium track, the fat cracks, creates up force. The guy in front is the guy that's going to lose because he's,

punching such a big hole in the air that the three guys behind him are going to pass him. You just you just cannot not pass. So if you're at Watkins Glen and you're coming up through those back corners down to the bus stop there, if you're on third by the time you get to the bus stop, you're definitely going to be in first. It just creates good racing. Yeah. Hey, me and Matthew Dillner, my producer here for the podcast, are we got a show coming out in July called Lost Speedways. It's about abandoned racetracks.

One of the most famous abandoned racetracks in Australia, the Thunderdome. Yeah. Big Oval, it was built back in the 80s. They used to have stock car races there. Neil Bonnet, Bobby Allison, guys would go over there, Dave Marcus, Kyle Petty, Michael Walter all went over there to race stock cars around the Oval. Big, beautiful, D-shaped asphalt oval. I mean, it's just what you would expect if somebody's going to be.

build a stock car track in America today. But it's now closed down. It's now a ghost track. Is the whole complex closed down or just the oval? Just the oval. And the problem they had with the over when it was built, the fill that they used to build the banking and everything wasn't compacted properly. And it's basically got structural problems.

So that's the problem with the oval. But they've got a drag strip there and another circuit. and I think just recently they spent a lot of money on the drag strip there, getting that up and running again. Yeah. I don't ever see that Oval come back to life. No, I don't think you will, but maybe we could do a show. Maybe we could do an episode on it if our show gets picked up.

If we get season two of Lost Speedways, we'll see how season one works out. That would be a reason to get to Australia and see Paul. Yeah, we'd take us. Had you ever went around that Oval? Yep. In what? In Turin car, they'd run races there. have to run the oval backwards and down onto the like a roval type thing yeah yeah had you ever

ran around the oval in anything else like only the indie lights car how was that i loved it yeah i thought it was the most easiest thing i'd ever done so what to worry about it was like this is this is okay but then you should as you better have a good car on an oval if the car's no good you're not going to carry it ah yeah that's for sure you can't make a slow car go fast go ahead Matthew Matthew's got a question here I've never met you well except for last night

when we had the little test of the Zoom I've never met you but all I've heard is through Dale about how much fun you are and last night I go on the other day I go on

Wikipedia and you got to edit the Wikipedia page because it doesn't say the dude it says the dud I fixed it last night I edited that myself thank you because I mean

you ain't you ain't a dud at all yeah that's the first time I've ever edited a Wikipedia. You did Paul Morris. It said, Paul, somebody misspelled dude. It said Paul the dud. And I was like, oh, no, we got to fix that.

How do I fix this? How do I fix this? So I'm navigating around Wikipedia and I'm like, I know that this is like public edited, public controlled content. So I figured out the buttons and all that and went in there and added the E, fixed it. Well, my first correspondence with Paul, he texted me back. when I said, hey, would you be on the show and stuff? And he said, Ripper, mate.

What the hell is Ripper? What's Ripper mate? I don't know. That's like, that's good, buddy. Oh. Okay. Ripper mate. And I'm like, sweet.

That's awesome. I don't know what Ripper Mate is. Yeah, yeah. Ripper mate is the kind of thing you'd say to somebody who just edited your Wikipedia page and fixed the dud to the dude. Ripper, mate. Thank you. You're a very nice person.

I can't let you be. misrepresented out there. You can't let the man be the dud. What lingo did you learned? You spent time down there. You know, I've heard you say the vibe down there, Dale, is so different. Like, what was so different about,

you know, the interactions and stuff like that, too? I really liked the way Australians sort of view their approach to life is they just don't take things that seriously. You know, we kind of, I say we, um, I, you know, things get under our skin.

Things bother us. Things, things, things sort of, uh, you know, something, you might read something and it might bother you all day long, Mike. Um, we've talked about that. Uh, we're sensitive. Mm-hmm. Uh, too sensitive. Wound up.

Wound up. Strong out. Um, Australians are, take it as it comes, pretty loose. They get, you know, they, they, they, they, they, They don't like something. They say they don't like it, but that's the end of it. I don't know. You know, just watch, if you watch Paul on his social media,

and maybe not all lost trains are like this, I don't know. But the ones I met when we went over there to visit, they all kind of had that attitude of what's the big deal. It's all right. It's going to be fine. Let's have some fun. Why worry about that right now? I want to have a good time, you know.

So I've always, yeah, I'll tell you, It's the funnest place that I've ever visited. I've been all over the world to different cultures and so forth. And it's a long ways. It's a long trip. But it is worth it, man. It is the best place that I've ever went to visit on vacation or beautiful. It's amazing to, you know, as far as the oceans and the countryside and everything,

it's just incredible. But the personality and the, you know, the attitude of the people that we, we interpret. interacted with was really, really great. They just want to have a good time. They're glad you're there. Does he have y'all pegged right, Paul? Yeah, he's pretty well got it on the money. I think because you just, the lifestyle here is pretty laid back, you know.

You can go down the beach and, you know, a shark could grab you bit. Like, oh, well, you know, people, you can go for a swim. Like, I can go out the front of my place right now. There's a river there, and I know there's sharks in the river, but I'll still go in the river. people just accept that things can happen to you and don't want to blame everyone for it. So that's just what happens here. I bet Paul Moore, I bet you have a shark story, don't you? Do you have a shark story?

I've got a few shark stories. Yeah, nothing worth nothing that. No one's ever been hurt. But you probably... I do have a good shark story. Go ahead. We were racing trans Am cars in New Zealand back in 1996. and I met these two English girls that were backpacking around New Zealand.

They're long story short, they ended up coming to Australia and ended up staying at my house for about three or four months. And they'd swim in the river every day. And I said, yeah, you've better be careful swimming in that river, you know, middle of summer, middle of the day, there's sharks in there, you know. They're like, yeah, okay, okay, okay. And they were just, the day they'd left to leave,

they bought themselves a car, and they're going to drive up to the Great Barrier Reef, up where you and the plane there, up to the reef, backed all their car up. One of them went for a swim, jumped off the dock, halfway across the river, she got nailed by a shark. Nailed. Nailed.

Fitten, on the leg, screaming, we haul her out of the river, take her into the hospital. She's in hospital for about three weeks. The newspapers become involved, everyone's become involved. I sold, got them, to sell their story to like what we call the People magazine Australia.

It's probably a bit like the National Enquirer. They ended up with about $6,000 and that made their trip. And we reenacted it. We had my friend diving off a boat and he took photos and pulling around the water. We enacted the story and photo pictorial it and the whole thing. I have to see if I can find it. And then about 20 years later, I've watched it in the TV and I see this thing come on. you know, when sharks attack.

And I see the girl come up, you know. She's like, oh, yes, when I was in Australia, I got bitten by this shark. No story. Did we have any doubt that there was a shark story of Paul? I remember, like, who were we talking to, Dale, when it's like, yeah, so I was with Paul Morris and we crashed a helicopter and we got out and we were like, whoa, what? Crashed a helicopter? Who was it? I mean, lead.

Diffy. Yes, it was Lee Diffy. That's what. Lee Diffy. He's like, you know, and we were like, he just kind of glossed over the crash to helicopter part like it was just a regular Tuesday in the life of Paul Morris. Oh, that was a bad day. That wasn't it. But it was a, yeah, we survived a helicopter crash.

Jesus. Paul, I know it's getting late over there, buddy. I appreciate you coming on the show, man. It's been a lot of fun talking to you, a lot of fun catching up. Selfishly for me is just a great opportunity just to see you and talk to you again. And I hope you're doing well. Fans are going to love listening to this and getting to learn a little bit more about you. And hopefully they'll start following you on social media if you get some new followers.

Oh, that's a blame me. Yeah, blame me for it. And keep sharing that great content, man, because I swear I miss Australia. I miss being over there and hanging out with you. But being able to see what's going on in your life does make. it a lot better until we can get back over there again, buddy. Yeah, cool, mate. It's good speaking to you guys, and it's cool watching what you're doing,

I really like your interviewing style and how you find all different stories and different people you're interviewing. It's listening to your show is one of the highlights in my way. So pretty cool to be on it. Thank you, man. Thank you. Yes, sir. Hey, it's our pleasure.

Tell Nash when he gets up in the morning that we're big fans of his. I'm following his career and I only get my updates through you so keep up the good work promoting Nash and everything he's got going on. Paul the dude Morris on Instagram. That's where you go follow it. That's where you need to go everybody. Paul the dude Morris.

Not the dud. Not the dude. Thank you, Paul. We'll see you. See you, Mike. All right, buddy. Take care. This is TJ Majors here,

and when you're ready to listen to the best podcast in racing, come check us out on Door, bumper, clear. Freddie Kraft here, and today we'll talk about Ryan Blaney running over Kyle Bush, Bubba Wallace shifting his pants, and Clint Boyer absolutely door slamming Alex Bowman across the line. Make sure you listen to BBC this week and every week on all major podcasting platforms. Hey, guess what, guys? We are live on YouTube, and Leah is running up the stairs to join us. There she is. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. This is the Ask Junior portion of the podcast.

live on Dirtymo Media's YouTube page. We're going to answer a lot of your questions that you sent to Xfinity Racing, social media channel. It's all brought to you by Xfinity. They are the premier partner of NASCAR and of this podcast, and they're your partner for Fast Internet.

I am a customer of Xfinity, all right? I pay for my service before anybody's out there thinking I get that for free. Ain't no freebies here. But yeah, I have their service, And I'm a happy customer and I'm learning a lot about it. I've not been a customer for about a few months now. But they have a lot.

There's a lot to it. But their internet's great. Anyways, let's get to the questions, Leah. All right. First question. A lot of people excited to have you back. We mentioned earlier in the open segment that you're not technically going to be at the race track. So Dave Phillips wants to know what will be the biggest difference from a broadcaster's perspective

in calling a race from the studio versus being at the track. All right. So the one thing I'm sure I'm going to. have a lot more parts to this question or this answer once I actually go through the process. But the one thing that sort of stands out right now that I probably think will be tough, having not experienced this yet. So when you're, you guys always talk about the energy, right? And I come in with as much energy as I can.

And, you know, without being too over the top, I love the race that I'm watching. And I try to convey that and calling the race. whatever's happening on the racetrack, I try to react to it naturally and not hold back or not filter my reaction. And that's been working really good for me. But I need to be there in person. I need to be watching it. I need to look out the window and see the car is racing.

Even though we use the program and we have the program that you're watching on a screen in front of us, and we've got replays and in-car cameras and buttons to mash to see every camera and every in car. I can mash a button and I can look at every camera that we have on the facility and I can go to every single in car camera, bumper camera, nose camera, whatever camera we've got, I can see it immediately. We've got the rundown of the cars, the lap times, when they pitted, how many tires they took.

I mean, we've got more information than we really need in that booth. But nothing is the assist that being there in person. is nothing is as important or is helpful toward to getting that energy and that real passion for what you're seeing is being in person. You know how people talk about going to say somebody says, man, I'm a big, I'm a huge fan of the Carolina Panthers. Love watching them on TV. Well, you ever been in a game?

No. Oh, you got to go. The game. It's so much better in person. Well, broadcasting is the same way. It's so much better in person. and I'm going to have a hard time sort of finding, capturing that energy

that you get from seeing the cars in person and that you get from the fans and their reaction to what they're seeing and all the things that are happening. So there's only one savior in that. And fans used to say when we first started broadcasting in 2018, the comments that we initially got right out of the gate were, wow, that's great.

It sounded like guys, just friends. on a couch watching the race themselves. That's what it sounds like. I love it. It sounds like guys just hanging out, buddies hanging out at a bar watching it on TV. Well, that's exactly what we're going to be doing. We're going to be hanging out in a room,

watching it on TV, just like you're doing it at home, and we're just going to talk about it. And so that's what I'm worried most about, is how that's going to come across to you guys that are watching it at home. Will we be able to really compliment the race with the energy that it deserves, right?

If it's a fantastic event, hopefully we can compliment it the way that we should. But it'll be tough not being there in person. So we'll see how that works. I've, you know, watching the Fox guys, Mike Joy, Jeff Gordon, I've really come to appreciate the challenge that they've been put into, the challenging situation of having to cover the race from a studio.

And I think that they learned a lot and improved and did a relatively great job considering the circumstances and hopefully we can fall in there. And we're going to do one race at Indy or one weekend, and then we're going to hand it back over to Fox, and then we're going to take it back and finish the season. So that's going to be interesting back and forth. But it should be a lot of fun.

And I think this is a great time to let people know about an idea that we had. It is not going to happen this year since we're not racing at Sonoma. But one of the things that we talked about doing this year was put me in the Fox booth at Sonoma. We did talk about this. Yeah, as a way to sort of pass the baton, because Sonoma is the last race that Fox does before they handed off the NBC for the rest of the season.

Well, I was more than likely going to be in the booth at Sonoma with Jeff Gordon and Mike Joy. That was something I was extremely excited about. Unfortunately, considering the circumstances, none of that's going to happen this year. I'm hoping that we can do that next season. I think it would be a fun way to transition from Fox to NBC and a way to sort of interweave the boost together for one event.

But unfortunately, not going to get that, do that this year. This is going to be completely, it's really unexpected the way we're going to have to do it. But hopefully we do a great job. And between me, Burton, Rick Allen, LaTart, there's going to be enough people in there willing to talk. And we've been able to watch Fox go through this process. and we really, we all are on a text chain sort of communicating about what we're seeing and how Fox is doing what they're doing and what we might, what we like, what we might change, what we can add because it's so easy being, you know,

armchair quarterback in that instance and think about what you might do differently. And so hopefully we've learned a lot from Fox over the past couple weeks and can come in and do a good job. Next question coming from Teresa Robinette. Historically, when NASCAR began in the early years, how much practice time did drivers have with their cars prior to race day? Personally, I believe the racing recently has been great. That's great. That's such a great question. I do know that in the 80s and the 70s,

for a race at pretty much any racetrack, they would come in on a Tuesday or a Wednesday and open the racetrack up at 8 o'clock in the morning and close it at five. So if you were Richard Petty or Dale Earnhardt or Bobby Allison, you could pull into the racetrack at Charlotte for the race weekend. The race is going to happen on Sunday. You could get there Wednesday and practice all day.

You could practice all day Thursday if you wanted to. They might have first round qualifying on Thursday, lock in the top 20, then Friday, practice all day. tracks open from 8 to 5. They might have second round qualifying on Friday. Then Saturday, practice all day. They're going to have an Xfinity race. You know, there was just so much practice.

A lot of guys would, you know, obviously only run a couple hours. If the track was open on Thursday from 8 to 5, they're only going to run a couple hours. They're not going to spend the entire day on the racetrack. But, you know, you got to pick and choose what time of day you wanted to go out in what conditions you wanted to go out on the racetrack. Maybe Xfinity, you know, got an hour here and there in the middle of all that stuff. But it was a ton of track time.

There was a live racetrack for half of the week, you know, at a lot of these races back in the 70s and the 80s. Now, they trimmed that way down to one of my favorites was Happy Hour, where the guys would go out and run after the Xfinity race. to me that was such a critical time to be able to get on the racetrack if you're a cup driver because you're really getting on the racetrack right at the end of the Xfinity race. It's full of rubber and debris and it's slick and uncomfortable

exactly the way it's going to be in the race. We've never been able to practice on a racetrack in a situation that was so comparable ever since they've taken that opportunity away. Now all the practices when they do happen in the mornings before the Xfinity race. but who knows how it's going to be you know that's one thing we haven't heard the governing body talk about

as we come out of the pandemic and things are basically wide open and you can create any canvas you want what will NASCAR do we haven't really heard them come forward and say hey this is sort of what we're planning on doing for next year or the years beyond when it comes to practice and how much time the cars the teams will truly get I'm sure that they're going to get at least a sliver of an opportunity to go out there and make sure their cars are okay and there's no loose parts or anything leaking or anything like that.

But honestly, man, I don't know that they need more than that. I really enjoyed what we've seen this year with the limited practice and no qualifying and so forth. I don't even necessarily know that I need cars to qualify. Honestly, I'm just enjoying the races. We talked about Xfinity Series racing on MS Road course this weekend. Jimbo and Snow, if you think it'd be feasible for Cup or Xfinity Series race at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham. Yeah, I don't know. You know, I think it'd be fun for us to go to a lot of road courses across the country.

That's tough because if you add a race, you've got to take away a race, and where do you take a race from? It starts an interesting conversation. But I would love for our series to have like a rotating event. maybe it's just it's a it's a summertime road course event that is a different road course each year you know Road America road Atlanta there's a lot of great tracks across the country Laguna Seca where the cup cars might could go and sort of just you know be at a different venue year after year and just see what that's like and see how that works and then incorporate more of that if that's a

successful process, but everything in moderation, right? Fun question from Brian Wiltshire, with the 4th of July being this weekend. Do you have any crazy fireworks stories? Well, yeah, we used to buy way too many fireworks, and we used to set way too many fireworks off. And that encouraged one of my neighbors when Brad Kozlowski was renting a house. house beside my property, you know, he would buy just boxes and cases of fireworks and spend the entire night lighting those things off in the middle of the summer and anything could go wrong. Not only could somebody get injured by a firework, but it could end up landing in a field somewhere

or catching the woods on fire or you just have no idea what's going to happen in a middle of a night like that with everybody around. I mean, you know, 30, 40 people hanging out drinking beer. It's just not a good combination. But luckily, Brad was smart. Nothing ever happened over his place. Luckily for us, you know, we never had any troubles or any injuries or anything like that or anything go bad. Just recently, I was snooping around in a storage closet and found some old fireworks. And this box, it's probably about six by six inches. And you set it on the ground and light it and it shoots a bunch of stuff up in there for about, I don't know, Three minutes, four minutes.

So I set it out there on the ground, and Amy's like, what are you doing? I'm like, light this thing off, see what happens. And so it's gone, and Isla is terrified. She's never seen anything like this before. So she's crying. Now I feel awful because Isla's upset. And the horses, we've got three rescues that we've accumulated over the last couple decades, one's this tiny miniature horse that we've had forever.

we got a giant donkey, huge donkey, and then an older female horse that we just recently got. They're running all over this pasture. I feel terrible, even worse now. I was crying. Horses are running everywhere. You've got a stampede going. And this thing's going, and I'm like, Amy, it's going to stop eventually. And it keeps going.

It's keep, too, do, do. I'm like, damn, when's that thing going to stop? Everybody's all pissed off at me. Amy's mad. So, yeah, that's what fireworks are like now over at my place. We used to be 40, 30 people hanging around, drinking a lot of beer and having a lot of fun. And now it's crying babies and horses scattering for their lives. To Tonka.

Yeah, not like he used to be. Going to the fields. All right. The goose wants to know. He says, you're a big football guy. What's your opinion on Cam Newton going to the Patriots? I'm intrigued. You know, anytime you have a quarterback that's played for the same team for so long,

you kind of get an idea of what you think that the talent and the performance of that quarterback is, but there's also the system that he's in for all those years and the culture of that team and how that team's managed from the top down. And so anytime you see a quarterback spend so many years with the same team, get put in another situation, there's a lot of intrigue and curiosity about, it gives you an opportunity, I guess, to see really what that individual player can do. Because now he's out of that environment, that system that he's been playing in. And what can he do?

It's the same thing when you see drivers change teams. A race car driver driving for the same team for so long, then goes to another program and sometimes can become a winning driver or maybe not. I remember when Joe Montana left the 49ers and went to the Kansas City Chiefs. I was a big Joe Montana fan. I wasn't a 49ers fan or a Chiefs fan, but Joe Montana to me was someone who I respected as a young person,

and I was like, oh, man, Chiefs, I hope he can do well, you know. And I'm sure there's a lot of Cam fans out there that are, extremely excited. He's going to a place where there's been a ton of success, and this could be a real opportunity just to see how good he can be. The only concerns are obviously the past

injuries, the injury history that has plagued him over the last couple of years has limited his play, but when he's healthy, he's pretty dynamic, and I think in that situation, it could be a win for KM and for the Patriots. So it's always cool to have

storylines like that in sports. And, you know, those are the fun parts, the fun things about sports. Is that kind of redemption, the comeback, whatever you want to call it? Maybe you're a fan of the underdog or the Cinderella story. Or maybe you like cheering on an icon like Tom Brady, whatever it is. That's what's great about sports. And so I'm sure Cam is pretty excited to get that opportunity. All right, guys, that's it for today.

All right, y'all. I appreciate you guys tuning in. A lot of great questions. Hope everybody's doing well out there. All right, you've got to be fast in our sport, and Exfinity knows a thing or two about that. With Exfinity, get blazing fast Wi-Fi without any pit stocks. X-Fi delivers the speed, coverage, security, and control you need to stay connected to NASCAR all season long. This is beyond Wi-Fi.

This is X-Fi. Keep your questions rolling into at Xfinity Racing on Twitter using the hashtag Ask Junior for a chance to have your questions answered by Dale Jr. We are so proud to partner with Xfinity. They are the premier partner of NASCAR. All right, we got an odd history for you today. I love these. This is a quick one.

Some racetrack named parts of the track to honor drivers for their accomplishments. All right, some racetracks named parts of the racetrack to honor drivers for what they've done. And a handful of drivers have grandstands that are named after them. And Jimmy Johnson even has a tunnel at home. There's the Earnhardt Towers at Darlington. And every other track. Former NASCAR driver and a guest on this show, Dave Marcus, he has them all beat. At Pocono, Marcus was honored with a bathroom named after him.

We found out about this thanks to a Tom Higgins article that NASCAR man dug up. He's great at digging up all that stuff. You see, in the 1970s, Pocono had notoriously bad. bathrooms in the garage area. And it was Marcus who complained the loudest about the lack of the facilities. Finally, after years of commode criticism, the track unveiled a new

state-of-the-art garage bathroom and they named it the Dave Marcus Lounge. Right. As the story goes, Marcus wasn't too pleased with the honor at first but later found humor in his namesake toilets. I can see him, being totally pissed off about that.

And then, yeah, years later going, I brought these bathrooms. You better on it. You better embrace it. I made this happen. The Dave Marcus bathroom. Is that still the case, by the way? Is that right? I don't know, man.

I've never seen it be the Dave Marcus bathroom. But now, yeah, lounge, excuse me. Now every time I go to, you know, 10100 to 10,200 to 10,200 at Pocon, I'll never not think of Dave. 10, 100. I don't know. I don't know. I missed it.

He's in there. It makes sense in Dillner's head. Yeah. All right, last call. Last call. All right, guys, last call, last call, last call. I had to do three right there. For good measure.

The trailer for Lost Speedways came out last week. What did you think? I liked it. Of course I liked it. So the trailer for Lost Speedways, go on to my social media handles or dirty-moe media. And there's a trailer on there for our TV show that's coming out July 15th on Peacock, which is NBC's news streaming platform.

If you have Xfinity, you get it for free. That's right. You get their premium service for free if you already have an account with Xfinity, which I have. So there you go. Anyhow, Lost Speedways is an incredible show about, yeah, just that, lost speedways, ghost tracks, tracks that are abandoned, lost, resting. somewhere in the woods. We go discover them, talk about them, learn of their stories.

And July 15th is going to be a very special day because we put a ton of effort into this show. We've been dreaming about doing it for years, and we're finally going to be able to see what people think, whether it wins or loses. We're going to learn that July 15th. Hopefully you guys will check it out. Mike, what's been the reaction on your end?

Pretty good. I think a lot of people are excited. And I love getting the feedback. from people already saying, hey, if you guys get a second season of this, go to this track and go to that track. I mean, like, just by default, a lot of people have a connection with a speedway, usually from their youth, you know, maybe their dad took them there. Maybe they just have good memories. And that's something that really kind of uncovered, in my opinion, when we did these, you know, these eight tracks on this first season is that we've met a lot of people that you could tell this wasn't just a dang race track for them, man. This was this was their life.

this was their identity. It wasn't just drivers either. It's a lot of fans. A lot of people that just remembered it. And it brings up emotions. And that's what I think this show does. I don't think you have to be a racing fan to enjoy it. I think you got to, you know, if you appreciate history, if you appreciate people,

like if you're the kind of person that goes to an airport and likes to people watch, wait do you see the people in these shows? Wait do you see the characters that come out in here? And so a lot of things that happened on the shows, I don't think we predicted. You know, I don't think we had Richard Petty pegged as someone that would come to one of our episodes. And so I'm excited about it. I can't wait to see what the reception is. And honestly, I can't wait for us just to sit back and watch an episode of it without it feeling like work.

You know, so we can kind of enjoy it. I know there's a lot of people in this room right now. Yes. Dustin Lee over there, still short on sleep. Michael Caldwell, a lot of work. James Brossan, the Barbarian, is here, and he's done a lot of work. So I'm telling you, it's been a passion project, Dale, for not just you, but for a lot of people, Matthew, obviously it's your life. I'm excited about it.

I think what have you guys seen so far as far as the reaction goes? Yeah, I was blown away by the social reaction, so I'm hoping that that's a litmus test for success for the show. Because, you know, I mean, to think about it, that's what brought Dale and I together closer as friends because we knew each other for 19 years or so, 18 years without really having too much of a connection. and but you know we both share that passion and I think this show is going to be very unexpected it's not just going to be some racing show it's a history show and I think that's that's the thing that's going to attract a lot of people to it other than just being some other other racing show that's in the atmosphere well I know the show's not out yet I know that you know we probably put I'm probably putting the cart before the horse here but what does

What does have to happen? Like, what is it that has to happen for us to get picked up for season two? Great question. I don't know. That'll be interesting to find out, actually. Well, it's got to be this. I'm going to take a stab at it. If subscribers, it's all on numbers.

It's all on the analytics. And if people subscribe to Peacock, that's why they put us on this network, is to give Peacock, which is a huge undertaking, by the way. It's an arms race. Think about this, guys. everybody's got the streaming network now, right? You know, Disney Plus, you know, everybody's got their streaming network. And so it's an arms race.

And NBC is in this arms race. And they, and Peacock is their answer. And they're bringing some content. And they're bringing some. Oh, they've got a bunch of originals. They've got a bunch of repurpose stuff. I mean, like the office. Think about all these things that just, you know, some of your favorites to go way back.

Yeah. So the new shows, too, that they're coming out with her. We share a platform with some of these just iconic shows and programs. And the thing that we're one of like, I think because of the pandemic, there were probably a lot more scheduled original shows, but because of the pandemic, there's only four right now. And we're one of them. And so I think Ryan Locty's another, Kevin Hart's another.

And so here we are. I mean, this is outside of our, you know, outside of our bubble. Here we are. We're about to go to market on a platform that's brand new with A-list people and other athletes. And it's doing a topic that is meaningful to you, Matthew, and meaningful for Dale. And hey, listen, it fulfilled us before we even edited the first episode.

I hope that everybody else shares in that fulfillment and appreciates what we put into these episodes. I'm really proud of it. All right, everybody. I hope you enjoyed the show. It's a lot of fun for me to, bring Paul on here. He's a friend of mine. I hope you guys enjoy this conversation. And I hope you have a great week and enjoy the races this weekend on NBC.

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