The Dale Jr. Download - 308 - Robby Gordon: Don't Get Even, Get Ahead!

Episode Date: July 28, 2020

The man only knows one speed in racing and in life; Robby Gordon joins Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the Download. Dale Jr.& Robby discuss the duo's run-in at Bristol, and what made the driver that Dale Jr. once referred to as "a moving chicane" one of the most fierce and polarizing figures in Motorsports. Gordon reveals that it was the Intimidator who brought him to Stock Car racing. From the dangerous days of Indy cars to racing in NASCAR with Richard Childress and beyond, Robby has some interesting tales. They even also share a story of an off-road excursion that had had Dale Earnhardt Jr scared to death. After his NASCAR life, Gordon hasn't slowed down one bit. The versatile driver discusses his many ventures, from Energy drinks to starting a new car company. Gordon goes wide open about his Stadium Super Truck Series and even divulges the truth behind why it was banned for a time in Australia. He also shares the craziness that is the Dakar Rally, his take on the recently announced SRX Series and much more.The DJD gang brings history to the table with a discussion about some interesting facts they've learned about America's first race. They also get some laughs over some wild questions in a special "getting to know you" edition of AskJr presented by Xfinity. 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. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dell Jr. Download. We've got a great show for you today. Mike Davis is here. Matthew's here. Leah is here.

And also, Robbie Gordon, he's going to be our guest today. I'm excited about this. I haven't talked to Robbie in a long time. And this man, he's the juggler. He's the juggler. That's what Paul Marr said. The juggler. The juggler.

The juggler. Is he the juggler? or the jugular? Boy, you're going to have to find out. Let's get to the show. Do you want it? Do you need me? Do you want it?

Do you need me? Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. here for the Dale Jr. Download. This is the Ask Junior part of the show. Presented to you by Xfinity, Xfinity, the premier partner of NASCAR and of this podcast.

I'm a customer and I love it. Leah, are you ready? I am. Are you? I am. Let's get it going. This week, our theme is, like, get to know Dale more.

So going to be a little less on the racing questions and a little more all about you. So we're going to start with the hardest question, I think. Philip Smiths, give me one Washington Redskins game you'd like to relive and watch again without any knowledge of the outcome. Well, anytime your favorite team's in the Super Bowl going for the championship, that's a big deal just to be able to get there because you cheer on your team all year long, right? And only a couple get to go to that final game. And only the fans of those two teams really get to enjoy that emotion of having your team make the big dance. So reliving any game that

they were in the Super Bowl would mean the world to me. I didn't really get, I was too young to totally understand what was happening in the 1982 Super Bowl against Miami. I would be kind of reliving that for the first time. I was so young. and that's when I was really becoming a fan, but I didn't quite, I've watched the game since on a DVD and did not remember it the way that it was. Like, it's funny because you're eight or whatever, right? And so I watched it recently over the last like three years,

and I was like, oh man, that was way different than I remember it. The other games blowouts against the Broncos, the big comeback with Doug Williams, those are great moments. You know, anytime your team wins that day, wins the big game, You never forget it. It's been decades, and there's still big moments for me personally. And when you're invested in a team, you don't forget, you know, the proudest days. So any of the Super Bowls, any of them, pick one.

All right. Our next question coming from our friends at Xfinity Racing, where do you actually keep the 15 most popular driver trophies? Are they all lined up in one shelf or various places? Do you put one in each room of the house? Yeah. All of them are huge. at junior motor sports all of them except for maybe one i think one might be at the hall of fame they created a sort of this they created this little exhibit uh when we retired uh there's a bunch of uniforms

trophies and and i think one of them's over there but the rest of them are all here i i know i've literally had the same thought in my head maybe several months ago and i walked through the whole building going are they all here like let me see because i'll be honest with you. I have, I'm pretty sure. So, y'all remember a couple months ago, I don't know how long ago it was, but Casey Kane took a picture in front of his trophy case and he had built this giant trophy case. And I think Kyle Busch has one very similar and it's just full of trophies. And I was like, man, I want to do that. And you know why? It's because I don't know where they are. I don't know where all my stuff's at. Really? And honestly, like, I'm, I bet that there's some missing pieces.

I got trophies just laying in my basement that I need a shelf that holds them all. All 26 cup trophies, all the most popular drivers, all the Xfinity trophies. And I would love to do that to be able to understand what I'm missing and find out where it is. It's sort of spreadsheet. Yeah, like, man, where is everything? It's all over the place. I got trophies here. I got trophies all over my property.

Some over at the Hall of Fame. I don't know if I don't know if I have all of them. goodness imagine if you were like Harvick or any of those guys or Denny with 40-50 wins I couldn't imagine one

What are you doing all I don't and I would I think the anxiety and concern of where they all might be or maybe one's missing I don't know

next question coming from Tyler Malenkov I think sorry Tyler good job good effort good effort What is his go-to cocktail so I can make everyone juniors at our camp?

So my go-to cocktail, so this is how you do it. You get a, what is the styrofoam cup? 12 ounce? Yeah. Or 16? Yeah, probably 16. What's a sun drop can? 12.

Okay, so take a 16 or 14 out. It's got to be more. Take like a 16-ounce styrofoam cup. Yep. All right. A solo cup's not going to be big enough. I know where you're going with this. Pour the whole sundrop in there.

And then you take a little airplane bottle jim bean and pour that in there. Go get the airplane bottle size bin, that way you don't have to do any measuring. Yep, perfect. One airplane bottle, jim beam, one can of sundrop. That's my jimmy drop. Brad taught me that one. Yeah, so good. I mean, I drink beer exclusively, but if I'm going to have liquor, that's pretty much yet.

I don't drink anything else. I don't drink other, I don't have another. well I do like a margarita with salt I do like that but I can't drink many of those buddy I get one maybe two and that's it

gotta go back to the beer it's a long slippery slope okay would you John wants to know if you would rather have an average steak or an unbelievable cheeseburger unbelievable cheeseburger yeah

yeah I I um unplug What steak and cheeseburger and plug anything in? You're going with the unbelievable, right? Yeah, I agree. You're never going to take the average, would you?

Average ice cream or unbelievable asparagus. You might take the ice cream. Yeah. Or any bacon. You kind of got to make the average really a good thing, something that's good even when it's average, and take the unbelievable and make it like some bad Brussels sprouts or something like that. Average bacon versus a filet mignon.

or rib eye. What? Where are you going? Average bacon. Now you're tripping this all up. Average bacon. Unbelievable Brussels sprouts. Which one?

So now you got a little thought into it. I'm taking Brussels sprouts. I might too. I might too. I love it. I love it. If they're kind of candied a little bit. Yep.

You know. Bacon and whiskey and your Brussels sprouts. What? Yeah. Bacon and whiskey? Yep. A little bit, yeah. Well, wait a minute.

If Russell Spouse is going up against average bacon, you can't have bacon in the unbelievable Brussels Spouse. Oh! But that's the recipe. I know, but you can't, not in this battle. No. It can't happen. All right.

Maybe some Parmesan cheese or something. That would probably be good, too. All right. All right. Anyway, back to Ash Jr. Yeah, oh yeah. Jimbo Slice, if you can play another sport, what would it be in what position?

Oh, football. I mean, now, if I could play another sport, is not probably the right question. I guess are we saying that now all of a sudden I have the talent to play that sport? Now, if you give me the talent, that's the question, right? It's not what would you do if you could do something. You could have the talent to do anything else. If you could. Yeah.

If you could be great, what would you be? I would be a football player in the NFL, and I imagine, out of ignorance, I would probably choose like free safety something, I don't know, you know, which would be wrong. If I had the talent, I should choose quarterback, running back, wide receiver, right? Playmaker. I know there's playmakers on defense, but, you know, I want to score some touchdowns, right?

I want to be on the regular end of receiving, getting, them touchdowns dancing. So probably running back. Right? Trombettis. I like what you said, free safety because you got that judgment.

Well, I'm ignorant to the positions, really what their roles are, right? I mean, I know some, right? But I'm a fan. Let's stop right. Let's stop right there. I don't know nothing about understanding defenses and offenses.

So I always say, yeah, I want to be a safety because it's sounds like, you know, you kind of get the freelance a little bit, right? And the free safety, they call it free safety, right? Does that mean he really doesn't have an exact responsibility? So he can kind of maneuver around and kind of make judgment on the fly as he's out there? Somewhat. Probably not.

I'm probably completely wrong. So maybe I should choose running back. If I had the talent, right, Matt, if you had the talent to be anything in any sport, what would you do? Just football? No. I said any sport. Oh, damn. Listen to me.

If other than racing, I would be a hockey player. What position? I'd probably play left wing, and I'd probably have a lot of penalty minutes. Okay. You will be aggressive. I'm a dirty a bit. You know what? It'd be dirty.

Sports. All right. So I think it'd be cool to be running back in the NFL, very talented. You know, if you could just make yourself, you know, when you go into Madden and you make your own player. Oh, yeah, and you're like, yeah. Yeah, I'm a 6-3 running back to 255 pounds and I run a 420. That's what we're talking about here. All right, do you all one more question?

Sure. All right. Last question coming from Sean Cunningham. If you could have the chance to raise that a track from the Lost Speedway season one, which track would you choose? Well, race it? Metroline. Metrolina because of the connection to my family

It's location close to where I grew up here in Charlotte And You know, they just, people had such great things I know this is the same for every track in this in this in the show People had such great things to say about Metrolina Like oh man the the clay was perfect smooth as glass Oh no no right Yeah I think it'd be cool to

To resurrect bring it back Never gonna happen, it's gone It's gone gone So we did the show and the track was still there just last year, this year, and now it's going. Yeah, wiped off, flattened, not a trace. Funny thing. Matthew Dillner went over to the track while they were dismantling it

and got some guardrail for me and him. I have guardrail. Last piece remaining too before. I got this little strip of guardrail about as long as this table, and oh, man. Glad. That's awesome. Thank you, Matt. That was such a nice thing that Matt did for me.

getting his home he's like I'm getting some guardrail you want some guardrail of course all right guys that's it that's a great ass junior a lot of great questions I thought it'd be weird because I hate talking about myself but you guys did a good job with those questions thank you exfinity we talk a lot about champions on the track but man let's talk about community champions yeah we're talking about folks who win at helping each other helping others all year long and our partner Xfinity is saluting them with the Comcast Community Champion of the year program. I've heard about this. If there's someone you know in the NASCAR industry, giving back to their community, all right,

swing by Comcastcommunitychampion.com. All right. Go to Comcastcom community champion.com to nominate that person and learn more about the program. Get on over now and nominate today. Three finalists will be selected for donations from Conquest for their charities. and don't forget to let Dale hear from you too. Send your questions in to at Xfinity Racing on Twitter. Use that hashtag Ask Junior for a chance to have your questions answered by our future

Hall of Famer. Xfinity has donated $600,000 over the years to highlight giving back to our great sports. So this is an opportunity to help someone get acknowledged, go nominate them now at Comcast Community Champion dot com. Thank you, Xfinity. Gentlemen, Gets. ...theon of the last side.

And Robbie Gordon is totally frustrated. You can hear the car missing. That's because he's got the floorboard. He's got the gas pedal down to the floorboard and the button keeping him from over revving. Gordon said perhaps you should be embarrassed if you won this race in this fashion. I remember Jeff Gordon reckoned someone to win a race before, so I'm not embarrassed. I'm very proud to be driving the lowest car. Take it easy, baby.

We're doing good. Take it easy. And Dale Earnhardt Jr. bumped Robbie Gordon. And then after the race, Robbie Gordon retaliated. Take it easy, baby. Meantime, the usual suspects. The cream has risen to the top here in Boost Mobile Super Trucks, Morris, Brabham, and Gordon.

All right, everybody. Man, I'm excited about this opportunity to speak to an old friend. And a lot of people have actually been asking for Robbie to come on the show. So, Robbie Gordon is on the Dale Jr. download. today. We're talking to Robbie. Where are you at, Robbie? I'm currently in Charlotte at the facility where we used to run the NASCAR, so I'm just down on the 77-45. What is in that building? What is in that building? Wow. There's trophy trucks, 15 stadium super trucks as the other 12 are over in Australia currently. There's probably 10 to 15 UTEs in some.

form of construction. You're looking out the back there. He moved the camera, we're seeing look in there. We do all of our engineering here. We do a lot of the prototype machine stuff, and then we've got a new manufacturing facility that we're associated with that is just massive. It's about 7 million square feet where we're building in DECD. So is that all that you are doing these days? I mean, is that encompassed pretty much everything you're involved in? Is there more going on in your life than that. Well, there's a lot of good stuff going on. Obviously, it's, you know, COVID has been very interesting.

You know, with the racing program, it basically puts that stadium super truck in park. You know, we haven't raced a stadium super truck in eight months except for the first race that we kicked off in Adelaide, Australia, with the trucks that Paul Morris has over there. Yeah, so we had Paul on the show just a couple weeks ago, and I was really interested in how you guys, how that stadium super truck deal worked because I knew that he had to have some of your trucks, but I didn't know if they stayed over there. And I know that your season kind of, you're not, you don't have an Australian series or an American series. It's all one series. Like where you start in Australia and you come to America and you're kind of racing all over

the country. Is that, is that right? That's correct, didn't it? Yeah, 2020, we had a really killer program put together. We had eight races with stadium, I'm sorry, V8 supercars. So we were going to run eight rounds of V8 supercar with those trucks. Five of those rounds would be the World Championship. Three would be an additional

championship over in Australia. And then here in America we had Long Beach, we had what, five Indy car and two NASCAR. So we had a really strong schedule to fire off the season and unfortunately after round one, it all just popped into neutral. So what happens when

when if things, you know, sort of get back going again and we're, you know, do you guys just pick right back up where you left off? Well, obviously, it changed everything, you know, everything from television to sponsor commitments with drivers. You know, basically what Stadium Super Truck is, if you look back, I originally started it was based off of the IROC series, except for the teams were franchise teams. So a driver sponsor would come in,

they would lease a truck for a year, and then obviously we'd provide the whole platform for them. You know, throughout my NASCAR career, I learned of things that we needed to do to be able to make decisions fast, to be able to make good decisions where we could market and promote, and then in the merchandise and the license side of things, if we had all the trucks and all the stuff, it really opened up an easy game for us. You know how hard it is to get 30 or 43 drivers or owners to, to work. work together and people to figure out marking programs. Everybody's trying to position themselves just a little ahead of the next.

And it's really hard to do that. So when I started the same super truck, I just kind of reinvented the whole package, you know, all the way down to the cars. You know, NASCAR is talking about coming out with a modular car. Well, that's nothing new. In 2013, these stadium trucks are completely modular.

So that's, you know, the guys that built the cars for us is the same group technique. We designed them and they did all the CNC bending and notching for us. What is, I'm going to jump off the page here for a second. What is speed energy? Yeah, perfect. Let me give me the whole platform.

And I think you know most of this stuff. I know a lot of people probably do. But in America, I was Red Bulls first athlete. I got connected up with Monster and Mark Hall and helped build that brand, which we rolled into the rehab brand. And unfortunately, when we got to the rehab thing with Hard Rock, it all just kind of exploded. You know, I had six years invested into the Monster program at that time. And, you know, it's interesting because I look back and I did everything I could to get Monster to come into

NASCAR. They said, oh, no, no, no, NASCAR is not our market. We'll never do NASCAR. And it's really funny when you look at it. And then they come back and be the title series sponsor. So, Steve was a brand I needed to fire up to, to be able to connect to all types of age groups, markets, venues. So really speed it's just a lifestyle brand. Well, man, this is so fascinating. I mean, like, if we didn't ask another question off our sheet, we could just go an hour off of everything he just said. What is driving this, Robbie? You have just laid in front of us what would take us three years to do. And it feels like it's probably a couple of weeks, just stuff that goes into your mind. What is your end goal?

and then what are you doing to, like the logistics of everything you just said blows my mind. Just trying to contemplate how you orchestrate all that. So start off with what is driving this? What is your end goal? All right. So in goal, obviously, you know, if you look at the brands that we've been associated with over the years, I think that's probably the first place to start. I was connected with Mark and Brian Simo back in the beginning of a spy and no fear.

You know, those are two of my buddies that we grew up there in California together. and if you look at where that brand went, you know, I was always fortunate enough to be a marketing guy fabricator that could happen to drive a race car too. And the race car was just one piece of the whole puzzle and it allowed us to get obviously a name, a brand association, and all forms of motorsport. You know, if you look at where we've been over the years from NASCAR, IndyCar, Dakar, Rally, Baja, 24,000. Dayton. We won the 24-4 times. I had really, really good opportunities throughout my whole career and been able to build a pretty good brand. When I first saw you come around, I'd watch you into IndyCar and so forth and everybody knew who you were. And I remember when you came into the Cup Series, I had no idea that you

sort of had this drive behind, you know, behind the race car driver. I didn't know that you had this entrepreneur sort of go get it, make it happen mentality. and like Mike says, I think you juggle a lot of different things at once. Is that always been the case? Is that sort of something that spiraled from your driving career? As you were creating relationships with new sponsors and so forth throughout your driving career, was this entrepreneur there when you were 15, 20 years old? Well, you know, I started, you know, my dad was, we came from a middle class family.

You know, my dad worked and worked every day of his. his life all the way to the end. Your father was the one that actually convinced me to come NASCAR racing just so you know between Felix Sabatis and your father after finishing second I rock two years in a row to Mark Martin and having some great battles with your dad is that you need to come NASCAR racing. And so where did that conversation? I blame your dad for some of this. Where did that conversation take place? Well, multiple times obviously over the phone, but after it really started after the IROC race at Daytona when I pushed your dad to the wind. You know, we had a great battle there.

I mean, I don't think anybody expect an Indy car driver to come in and be competitive with the NASCAR guys. But over all the years of it, I think there was just two of us that were able to come and really run at the front of the field and contend for wins. You know, I finished second the championship both years, unfortunately. to Mark Martin, he won them those years. But, you know, we had fun. It was good. And I learned the draft right away. And, you know, we caught on and had some great battles.

You know, the I rock thing is really what's brought me back to stadium super trucks. When all the trucks are the same and everybody compete, it really comes into a driver game instead of an engineering car game. And, you know, the good drivers normally pop up. And when you see situations like this, and if you look, look at my little buddy Sheldon Creed, who's been my protojave for the last, you know, let's go back seven, eight years when he was 16 years old. You know, he started with our stadium supertrucks and went through the whole program.

And now he's, you know, winning truck races, which is really cool. So when did the idea to become a businessman? When did that happen for you, though? Because, you know, I always, when you came in as a race car driver in a Cup series, even in an IndyCar, I didn't know about, I don't know what you might have had as far as business opportunities. You know, we're all looking to create profitable business opportunities for ourselves, and you seem to be extremely proactive in that, more so than most people that I know

that are in this type of situation. A lot of drivers aren't quite as eager to really do the work, you know, and... Or know how to do it. Yeah. And so when did that kind of happen for you? Is that what... Did you start to see the writing on the wall as far as your driving career and get geared up for that?

Or had this always, you said you were a marketing guy that just happened to be a race car driver, was, did you always have that happening in your mind, that trying to create business opportunities as well as success in racing? Well, you know, I think there's a lot of things that have to happen to be able to get those business opportunities. And one, you know, I started my career as a race car driver, you know, I remember first getting picked up by Cal Wells and Toyota. I was racing motocross at the time, and they saw me, and they put me in one of their little stadium trucks, which used to be called Mickey Thompson off-road, and they teamed me up with Ivan Stewart, and heck, we had a dominant year. We won almost every race that year, won the championship, and from there went to Roush.

And, you know, I had opportunities to drive for Roush, Childress, A.J. Foy, Gannasi, you know, Derek Walker, Calwell's, PPI, I've probably been at some of the best race teams over the whole time. And everybody always wondered, why didn't you stay there? Why didn't you just become a race car driver? Well, to be honest right now, I'd be a 50-year-old retired race car driver wondering what I'm going to do. And I remember the day telling Richard Childress that I was going to go back and run my own NASCAR team.

And he looked at me like I had three eyes. You know, at the time we had Jim Beam. We brought singular wireless over to Richard Childress. If you look at just the partnership relationships that we'd been involved in through the whole NASCAR program. It's pretty scary. You know, Red Bull, Monster, Menards, gosh, Heras, Jim Beam, you know, had some great partners

and brought a lot of Fortune 500 companies to the sport. So that was based off relationships. And then on the other side, I wanted to have my own cars. I wanted to build our own stuff. You know, when I almost won the IndyCar program in 99, you know, we led all the way to the last lap. That was our own IndyCar team at the same time, racing against Penske and Gannasi. So we've always been able to engineer cars and make cars to be very competitive and very fast.

Hey, Rob, if Dale Earnhardt had never had that conversation with you after the IROC race, was the business opportunities, and I know we don't want to make this all about business, but I'm saying is the opportunity. We'll forget the business. The opportunities in NASCAR, would you have ended up in NASCAR anyway just on that premise? Well, you know, at that time, there was a couple things going on in the, IndyCar series, you know, that's when the cart and the IRL split. Right.

And at that time, I had a Toyota IndyCar program, and I was teamed up with John Menard on the IRA side. So we ran both of those. We ran 8500. We did Phoenix and a few IRL races getting prepped for the 8500 that year, as well as an IndyCar program with Toyota. So I'll give you my 99 story, and it's quite interesting when you think about it. But everything happened around the same time, you know.

The I Rock stuff was going on. I went and drove for Felix in 97, caught on fire at Indianapolis and got third degree burns down my leg. And that was the end of that season because I don't know if any, you know, I think Dale's been burned once before, but that's probably the most painful thing I've ever been through in my life. Yeah. You know, I still remember those days sitting in the bathtub,

just scrubbing it with a burlap on trying to get it to heal. And it was pretty gnarly. So, you know, back to 99, you know, I looked at it and I was racing Indy cars. and there was 21 of us that were racing Indy cars, and I think three people that year got killed out of the 21. But that's when we had, you know, 1,300 horsepower, 1,300-pound cars. They were ridiculously fast, I think, our speed at my last race at Fontana, we qualified third or fourth in the Toyota,

and our average speed was 253 miles an hour. Jesus. You know, so the cars were wicked at that time, And then REL came in, the power went down to around 600. The whole program changed. But that time I said, let's just go stock car racing. You know, I've got Durosol, Menards, we had multiple Ahara's that came in. We had Sony records at that time that came in and we were able to bring a good group of sponsors

over and start the 13 car back in the day. And then from there, you know, just we learned a lot. Things happened. We weren't in a position to have the right funding for the following year. Richard called me about driving the 31 car. And, you know, we jumped in that when Mike got hurt, and we should have won Watkins, Glenn. We ended up winning Loudoun.

And we just fired off. Good. It was fun. It was a good deal. And obviously driving for Richard Childress, probably one of the most down-to-earth guys, anybody would ever meet and just a lot of fun. And that was a tough decision to leave him. I think it was for the 2005 season when I fired my own team back up.

but I had Jim Beam sitting on the side. We had Menards. We had good partners. And at that time, Minardts had the engine shop out of Indianapolis. And it's like, let's just go do the stock car program. It's the biggest thing.

You know, let's fire it up now and let's do it. And we built it. You know, obviously I had some good guys around, had Greg Erwin around, had Chris Andrews, heck, John Story was working over here at that time.

You know, I thought that he had everything going on because we had so many sponsorship and so many partners. is going on. And then he went to DEI and, you know, you know, where I all ended up. You had a lot of, you had a lot of incidents with different drivers over the years, Tony Stewart, Michael Walter, and even me at Bristol.

Yeah. We had a little run into each other. What, you know, so I guess what is it in your personality or what is it in your driving style that you think found you in that position from time to time? And you, you know, you definitely have a driving style and you make decisions on the racetrack to me that you kind of just like, hey, man, how do I say this? For example, I can say it for you.

I'll make it really easy. Go ahead. Very competitive. I'm very passionate. I hate to lose. And if you do me wrong, my dad always taught me don't get even, get ahead. Yeah. So, yeah, I would say that that would be pretty good.

Did that explain it? What happened with you and him at Bristol? Do you remember this, Robbie? Yeah, I mean, Bristol, I think we were, I remember it clearly. It actually popped up on an interview not too long ago. We were, we were running at Bristol. That's when, you know, the program was different. Man, I got to be honest, back in the day, those cars were such a handful to drive.

And you'd go to Bristol and you'd have your hands full all day along. I mean, you barely had time to breathe down the straightaways. And I believe that we were in a little bit different pick strategy. I think at that time, Dale was leading, and he was coming to a lap me, but we weren't far off the pace. So a lap back then, you were still running inside the top 10 or 12. It wasn't like you were a lap down and running a 35th position because the tire fall off and the horsepower was so different. and we were trying to protect our position. Obviously, Dale rubbed me up the track, which, you know, hey, he's the leader,

and he's doing what he can do, and I'm trying to stay on lead lap to get the lucky dog, so we're all playing the game, and that's where I remember that one going bad at. But at the end of the day, you know, we're all racers, and we all have our own agendas, and when you're under pressure all the time to perform, it's hard. It's not that easy, and it's way different being a race car driver owner than it. it is being just a race car driver. You don't have anything invested.

Is that what happened? Well, I don't know if I was leading or not. I mean, it was a little bit kind of fuzzy, but I remember he was on, he's right about being a lap down, but he was fast, and he felt like he was running fast enough to be able to hang in there. And I was running out of, we were running out of time. There was like 10 laps to go,

and I felt like I had a, I had been up front, but at this particular point, I think I was running around the 8th or 10th. and I was like man if I can get around Robbie maybe I can get another I can get another position or two before the end of the race and I couldn't get around him and I was raising hell over the radio like

I need to get out of way and so I had to hit him he gave me one of the Earnhardt Crow of Horns huh? Is this the one where you used moving chican? You called Robbie a moving chican I believe in the

I'm sure he did where it's um where does moving chicane rank as top 10 insults of your lifetime? Is it even in there? Well, I mean, you know, if I'm going to be a moving chicane, I'm going to be a big one. There you go. Well, I think you were. I think you were. Yeah. The racing stuff was always really, really good. And like I said before, you know, I've always been extremely competitive as we've seen with the D.L. Junior's style or the Michael Walter

or Tony Stewart or any of those programs, you know, I take this stuff passionate. And it's actually the same way for business as well. And during this whole COVID thing, if we didn't have a bunch of neat programs lined up with speed RC cars, speed UTV, I still have the Articat Textron accessory business that we run for those cars, the wheels and tires and the trophy trucks

and all the other things are going, with SST not running, we'd have been in big trouble. But it honestly has opened up opportunities for us to probably have. have some of the best engineers in this country and other countries work for us because they haven't been working on their normal projects. So we were able to go in and consult with guys and be able to build a program that was really neat.

We launched a speed UTV thing in September, which is an actual car company. And it's a real car company. This won't just be a UTV company when it's all said and done. It'll turn into other cars as well, especially in the off-road industry. And as we've seen, the off-road industry has boomed during COVID. People have been doing more outside stuff, more camping, more riding, more off-road adventure stuff. I know you've got friends over there at Bass Pro, and, you know, a bunch of our cars have been selling over there as well. So with all that going on, I mean, do you do any, do you do you do any driving yourself anymore?

Or what's your drive? Where's your driving career at right now? Well, driving career is the driving career. I mean, it's still, you know, I love to play. You know, we've been some of our backyard bashes with some of the young hot guns that are in the truck series and the Exfinity series right now from Noah Graxton to Riley Herbs to Zane Smith to Sheldon Creed. Even Ty Gibbs was over here a few weeks ago. Brett Moffitt's been over here. And we run around in our UTVs.

We lowered them down, their four-wheel drive. And they are literally like shifter carts. They're so much fun. We got a track here at the stadium supertrucks shop where we do all over our testing before we go to the racetrack with our trucks. And we've been doing a little bit of that stuff. And then we fire back up here at Rhode America here in a few weeks. Okay. So the stadium trucks is going back on tour.

Yeah, we go back on tour. We fire up at Rhode America with Exfinity, August. I think it's August 8th weekend. That's pretty awesome. You should come out and drive one, Dale. That's what we wanted you here. We wanted to see if you were interested in having Dale drive these things. I think it would be awesome to have Dale drive it.

I saw Tony's going to start his series. Maybe Tony comes, drives mine. I go drive his. What did you think about that? You know, we could have a little bit of fun. Yeah, what did you think about Tony's announcement in that series? I think it's cool. It's going to be interesting to see what it is.

You know, I'm sure with what they're doing will be interesting. You know, I'm sure they're going to take the aerodynamics away from it. They're going to get the cars back off the ground. You know, there's things that we can do to make the netherlands. NASCAR program really exciting, really quick. It wouldn't be hard to get that series very racing and very competitive. Yeah. What would be those things?

I mean, what would be some of the ideas that you threw into? I can't give you all my secrets. Oh, come on. You can. It's can. Yeah, I mean, but I think we're all intrigued. In fact, we've been bringing up IROC a bunch in the show. We were talking about when we were trying to draw similarities with the Tony's announcement.

Now, you're talking about a lot of inspiration that you go. You drew from Iraq. I mean, is there common denominators there and what Tony's doing with what you're doing? I think there's definitely common zonometers. You know, like I said, in 2013, when I fired the series, you know, we're doing a lot of things that a lot of motorsports are doing today. You know, modular chassis, you know, just competitive racing, you know, bringing the cost down and putting really the control in the driver's hands. And that's something that we've been focusing on for a long time, as well as competitive racing. And, you know, I look at this market and everybody kind of will scratch their head at this one.

But when I race NASCAR and that series can grow to what it's grown down, obviously the racing's big, but the car market is smaller than the truck market. And for sure, the accessory business of the car market is way smaller than the truck market. Right. Because we look around at every truck driving down the road, even here in Charlotte on I-77, they've got tires. they've got wheels, they got some kind of, you know, modification. They got a bed ladder. They got a box.

They got something. And the truck market is for sure the biggest automotive market in this country. You know, you're talking about stadium super trucks. You took me for a ride in the Baja. I guess that was the monster truck that you raced over in Baja, 1000? Yeah, actually, you went in one of the Dakar rally Hummers back in the day, I believe. That was a, that, I still tell people about that experience. It's probably the most frightening.

thing that I've ever done. You have to understand. So we were at Phoenix, and I don't know, this might have been near your last season, and you came over to the, you came, we ran into each other somewhere or whatever, but I can't remember we were in the bus lot or whatever. You said, hey, man, I got this truck. You mean, you want to go for a ride. I'm going for a ride tomorrow.

We had a good break between when we got up in the morning and the race was later that afternoon or that evening. And I was like, yeah, sure, I'll go for a ride. So he, this thing's not street legal, but we jumped in it and went down the highway. Well, it actually is street illegal. Well, it don't have lights. Yeah, it has headlights, turn signals, brake lights, all the stuff. It was for the Dakar rally, we had to be street legal.

Oh, I didn't know that. So anyhow, yeah, we're going down the highway, reasonable speed. And he just turns off the road. And we just started going places. I don't even know whose property were on or whatever, but we were, and we ended up out in sort of this desert sort of wasteland. And he is, I don't know how fast you were going, man.

It felt like it was 120 to 140 miles an hour across this flat desert. And I don't know, it's so flat and you're so kind of low in this thing that I don't know whether there's a ditch or a cliff or anything. And he's just flying across this with this commitment. that we're just, we're going to be fine, everything's okay. And I'm scared the shit out of me. I had never been so terrified in my life. Because I'm like, I'm going to die with Robbie Gordon in this car truck.

We're going to go, we're going to hit a ditch and we're going flipping for about 200 feet. It scared the hell out of me. I could not, I mean, I was so freaking glad when we got back on the highway, but I never told Robbie that. we got back to the track and I'm like man that's great really appreciate that yeah yeah appreciate it holy what have I got myself into did you know where you were going buddy we've we've all seen it before that that passenger side where you don't have the driver steering wheel and the brake and the gas it's honestly it's twice as fast in that side you know I ride around with my kid max all the time trying to get him to the level where he can you know win races we won the minute 400 with him you know right before

COVID and I ride with him and I'm telling you that passenger side is twice as fast as that driver's side. It's frightening. Oh, wow. Yeah, I bet. What makes you want to go run the car in those races, those are some, that's not a simple, hey man, I'm going to go drive a cup car at any, at a racetrack on the circuit or that's not like an easy decision to make. There's so many logistics to that.

And then plus that race itself is, I don't even know how to explain it. It's probably one of the most challenging things you'll ever do as a race car driver, wouldn't you say? Yeah, you know, that's probably you hit it right there of why I want to do it. You know, I'm not afraid of a challenge out here in the world. And if you look at, you know, events that rate at top forms of motorsport, you know, the Dakar rally has got to be right up there, Ibaha 1,000, Daytona 500. 80,500, 24 hours of Daytona, you know, 12 hours of Sebring. If you look at the events that are nostalgic in motorsports, those hit it.

And I have been very fortunate to one either run a race team and drive there or drive in all of those events. I think I've run a race team in all of those events as well. Is there anything that was something that you wanted to do in your career that you didn't get the chance to do? Haven't done? Well, you know, when I, when I grew up, my whole deal, you know, I grew up on different. You know, I grew up in California. And I'm sure you guys know, but Jimmy Johnson used to actually ride with my dad back in the day. You know, we've known the Johnson family because they were in the off-road industry as well. His father worked for B.F. Goodrich back in the day, which was one of our partners. And, you know, it's, it's been really cool to watch this kid's career,

or Jimmy's career expand to what it's what it's expanded to. And, you know, my career, I always, I always wanted to go indie car because I followed Rick Mears. And, and then at the same time, I wanted to, I wanted eventually go to Formula One, but I was obviously always too heavy for Formula One. You know, on a good day, I could probably get down to 185 pounds. You know, Paul Tracy and myself, we both struggled with that, with that same problem because we were bigger guys racing in IndyCar series as far as, you know, wider, more scout bodies. And it was it was a bit of a disadvantage for us because at that time, obviously,

driver and weight was not the same. It was, there was a car that weighed a minimum weight, and whatever the driver weighed, it was an advantage to be lighter at that time and day. So you talked about your son and sort of grooming him and racing with him. What's the approach there as a dad? your career was anything and everything, whatever opportunity was available, and if you wanted to do it, you did it. How do you approach as a father trying to groom, you know, a son who's interested in the same thing? Yeah, I know we've had a lot of fun with Max. You know, he's been driving since, you know,

before he could ride a bicycle. You know, the kid has been doing this his whole life, and he's, he's extremely fast and he's um if you ask nor sheldon any of those guys he's he's just as passionate as as as i was about about performing and um you know the the other night you know um he felt sheldon did him dirty and and he eliminated noah riley tie um pretty much all the kids in in the races we had a ladder system and he qualified second to sheldon he said shelton cheated in the in the final man that he didn't talk to sheldon for like five days. Oh, wow. And we can never see it back in the back, but I guess Sheldon did a really bitching slide job grassline on him.

And he was not happy about it. So what's his interest? What's his racing interest? Does he talk about NASCAR? Does he talk about any cars? Is it trucks, stadium trucks? Well, you know, I think his interests will first be a lot based on where our business interest goes here in the near future. Right now, it's UTV.

and you know I know a lot of you guys are going to say UTV what's that and and and why UTV well give you an example of why UTV Polaris industries has sold two billion dollars worth of UTVs in 2019 it is our biggest opportunity with a with a vehicle that fits right into my wheelhouse and over the last 10 years years, you know, I've been applying for a bunch of patents. I have the best suspension in this industry patent. I have the best chassis in the industry patent. We've got axles and CVs. We've actually built our own engine, gearbox, shocks, tires, ECUs that would run a cut car. We have pretty much built our own program to run a vehicle from ground up. That's where his, I'm going to say, his next three to five years of his career will be. It'll be based on the UTVs. But out west at the

Met 400 in the class that he entered. There was 52 cars that entered. In the Pro UTV turbo class, which we're now building with our own car, they had about 90 of these cars. Wow. The average price of these vehicles to the general consumers about $35,000, but by the time people turn them into race cars, they're $90,000 to $100,000 cars. Unbelievable.

So the aftermarket business is massive in the UTV industry. And so Speed UTV will launch cars here. at Thanksgiving of this year. And since September to now, we have landed the biggest dealer networks in the country, from, you know, coin power sports to

Temecula, vase. We know we've got contracts over at other high-end ride now, other places that, we've got 34 dealers already signed up, and we have sold over 4,300 cars. on pre-order. Wow. How big is the team that is helping you with all this? I'm really curious about how you're able to juggle in the words of Paul Morris that he was, what would Paul call him the juggler? And now I'm understanding why you would acquire that

nickname because I don't know how you have enough time in the day to do all what you're doing. Well, I think there's certain things. When it comes to the team, you know, our factory, they've got 1,600 employees. Okay. Yeah. It's 7 million square feet. 7 million square feet. That's insane.

Yeah. And we can manufacture anything we want to make. We've got factories. I got a group we're working with, but it is my company. I have a partner. I have two partners in the company. And basically, you know, we went down and got a bank loan and fired it off. and this thing is going.

And it's set up as a Delaware corporation. It'll be another little rock star business. And the U.T., and the RC car thing has been off the hook as well. I know if you've seen my RC cars, but... Tell us about that, yeah. So Speed RC is a car, and I'm going to have someone grab one for you. But it's something that we launched. We started working on it in 2018, and we launched them at Christmas of 2019,

it was something that we couldn't keep them in stock. We way underestimated what our RC car brand would be. And it's all because of the other businesses that were involved in. You know, the kids know what stadium super truck is. You know, when I tell you a stat right now, you're going to come back and say, oh, come on, he's bull-shouldering. There's no way. But last year, outside of television, we were the most watched form of motorsport

in the world. This is Monday morning, after the race is over, who goes back and looks at the Daytona 500? Who goes and looks at our Adelaide, you know, SST races, who watches, rewinds, who goes for highlight videos, stuff like that? We had 41 million minutes viewed last year in 2000 and 19. Where? Where is the views coming? It comes from, okay, so Stadium Super Truck, Facebook, page, which we have not spent $1 on buying partners, building relationships, and a lot of people

go out there and do that stuff. We have more followers now than IndyCar, which has been around for more than 100 years. Stadium Super Trucks, Facebook has more. A million followers. And then with our YouTube and Hulu and all these other channels that we operate on, it's, you know, if you just went and looked at, you know, Daytona 500 and compared Daytona 500 to Stadium Supertruck Adelaide, I'm going to say we've got three times the views if you add up the first five videos. And so what do you attribute that to? What is it that's driving the interest? Well, first, it's something out of control. And Stadium Supertruck puts on an incredible show. The racing is crazy. It's a driver's series.

If you look at, you know, Sheldon Creed came out of the series. Very fortunate we have a kid by the name of Matt Brabham, which his father, his grandfather was Jack Brabham. His father was Jeff Brabham. This guy is a very, very, very talented driver. He's sponsored by the Carlisle Corporation, which we do a lot of business with throughout our UTV program. And now that we've got the UTV,

and we're buying so many bearings and so many parts and so many accessories, it's going to allow us to bring. in those partners to be part of Stadium Super Truck as well. So Stadium Super Truck is just a marketing arm for the Speed UTV program and the Speed RC cars. But from the RC car, if you look at it, it looks like a Stadium Super Truck. They're very reasonably priced. This is not a commercial here, so I'm not going to get into the price, but they're

very quality built. And a lot of the components and pieces are the same manufacturing facilities that we're use him for our speed UTV as well. All aluminum chassis, you know, aluminum shocks, oil filled, four-wheel drive, and they're just, you know, they're just a little robust machine. That's what you did in the desert of Phoenix right there. You know, have a great time with. And it's COVID's been really friendly to the RC car because there's been numerous families

that have, that come in and buy boxes of them. Okay, we're going to build a track in our backyard. And as we're seeing with the home improvement industry, and I talked to John Marr probably once a week. And, you know, his business is booming because people are invested in their properties, their houses, their lawn equipment, stuff like that. It's been really, really good. Yeah.

The, how important is the Australia part or the Australia leg to the stadium supertruck business? Well, I think the Australia, I'll tell you why the Australia thing is, is so good for us, is the V8 supercar television guys. Yeah. are probably some of the best in the business I've ever seen. And from all my forms of motorsport, their camera angle, their content,

the things, their in-car cameras, they do a wonderful job. And the races over there are epic. You know, we went to Adelaide this year. And when we talk about, and I'll flick you guys some photos, and I think Scott sent you some stuff

so you have some background information. But at Adelaide this year, we had 230,000 people at the event. Yeah, that's good. I think that's, Double the Daytona 500, maybe three times Daytona 500. And they're passionate about their motorsport because they're not oversaturated. Yeah.

You know, here in this country, motorsport gets oversaturated really easy. What is your response then? We asked Paul a few weeks ago, what was it? What do we take for granted over here? You know, something like that. What do we in NASCAR take for granted? And he said, you know, the coverage, the coverage that you get, you take for granted, right? Do you agree with that?

And what would your answer? to that be for us NASCAR people that because you've been in all of it. Well, you know, like I said, I think, I think their television is really good. And this is not a knock on anybody. This is just where they get their camera angles, their creativity on, on doing the events. You know, obviously the NASCAR guys and IndyCar guys are both really good. But the action is different over there. So their competition, the cars can actually run right on top of each other and make passes.

Yeah. We're here, we're oval track. We get it on top of each other and we get aero push and it just blows the front tires off. After five locks, you can't make the thing. You know, it's hard to be in that second position where I think there, maybe it's the rear wing that they have on their car. Whatever they have, they can slipstream. And they've got a little bit better slip spring program than what we have over here for racing.

I'm talking about a V8 supercar, but the camera stuff is really, really good. And then, you know, what's the difference? What do we take for granted? I think the thing that we have in America is we have so much of everything. And the fan is still the same amount of fan, but he has a choice. Does he want to go to a house car race? Does he want to go to an off-road race that weekend? Does he want to go to a drag race that weekend?

Does he want to go to a super bike or Formula One when they're in town? There's only 52 weekends. there's an excess and now and in excess and and Tony and Ray Evanham have added another series that will add to the excess and so we'll see we have more decisions to make then I guess on how we spend our weekends is what you're saying the the Australia thing I can't help but wonder because when we were talking to Paul again a fantastic or just a thing that blew our mind was the politics that you guys ended up in at Australia with

the series getting what do we call it? I don't think a ban is the word because you're back in it right? I mean like what happened in Australia that Paul's telling us about a bar story. Yeah, no it's let me tell you what happened to Australia.

There's more of this. There's more of this story. Okay, let's hear it. All right. And this is my opinion of what happened in Australia. But the bar story is yes, 100%. And it wasn't I want to say the right thing.

It wasn't, I don't want to take the bar story into, and to turn into a complete wild shenanigans at a bar. It was a small group of us. There was probably 30 there. The owner invited us from the track, hey, you know, come on over. I'll buy you guys dinner. I'm like, all right, cool. And he's like, you know, just will you throw a tag out and tell people, you know,

that your guys are going to be there? So I did more than that through a normal Instagram post out as well as said, hey, I'll load up an SST and I'll bring it there. So they brought it on a rollback. And obviously the more people showed up, which was a good thing. That's the whole idea. And at the end, everybody wanted to hear the truck. We had security guards that were there. And when we went to go load it onto the trailer, obviously I jumped in the thing.

It was a Matt Brabham truck, and I jump in it. And, you know, security guards, one goes on one side of the street, one goes on the other, blocks traffic. We whip a couple doys, which is just not a big deal. I mean, I still remember launching the Speed Energy brand and driving around Charlotte trying to get a speeding ticket. I drove us NASCAR through Charlotte the whole time downtown, downtown, 77 everywhere. 80, 90, 100 miles an hour.

No kidding. Never got pulled over. No kidding. I knew at Bona in Australia that by the next morning has 1.5 million views and the police show up 30 hours after the incident to

obviously detain me and have a business this conversation. And so how did that end up? Yeah. How was that tied into the series? All right.

So Australia has a honing law like we do in America, but as you've seen all these lower cars and drift cars around, it's gotten to an excess in Australia because they are massive motorheads over there. They love to work on their cars. They love to do things. And so they have a hooning lot. And basically, at the end of the day, obviously, I had to do, pay my fine, had to do my community stuff. But then the series, which was CAMs of time, they said, all, you know, you've exposed us.

And it all came down to the same thing that we always talked about, followers and views. And if we didn't get a million views, we never would have, we never would have gotten this position. But, you know, it was connected with Matt McGay. I think it went on his Instagram, and like I said, it had a million the next morning or something. Obviously, people found out about it. Gotcha. But isn't that a good thing?

People, I think it's a great thing. The problem was it really was difficult for the series. But there was more than just the donuts that happened. At the race weekend before that one, we had a massive crash on the front straightaway. Oh, I got it. And one of our wheels came off. Oh, I got you. Okay.

So the wheel came off. We got very fortunate. It hit a bridge and stopped there. We had to go through a whole process of manufacturing, and we ended up making forged wheels. They were cast wheels at the time, and we had to do a testing process. So the donut and the wheels were the two things that got it kicked out. But everybody always focuses on the donuts. Yeah.

Which is typical. You know, we find one little piece and we're going to say, okay, that's what we're going to run with. And the other side was Stadium Super Truck was in the position. We were literally still on the fans. I mean, at the same time. And so when Stadium Super Truck went away for our wheels, their attendants went down.

And their fans were rebelling, bring Stadium Super Truck, bring Stadium Super Truck back. So between the fans, we're rooting for us and cheering for us, and us remanufacturing wheels, we fired back up at Adelaide. this year and they had one of their biggest crowds in 2020. So it was a good deal. Fantastic. Do you think that you'll increase your activity over there in Australia?

Well, that's if your series, as your series grows, will you include more races in that? Well, you know, we don't do just Australia. You know, we've done South America. We do Asia. I had a program with Chevrolet last year where we did four events in all throughout of Asia. And it's, you know, it was part of their truck promotion over in. in Asia. Yeah. And so Stadium Super Truck was the lead. And, you know, what we would do at those events was more Ken Block-style stuff.

You know, I don't know if you've seen, but these trucks are amazing. I mean, they three-wheel like crazy. We can two-wheel them like a bicycle and they will jump a football field like it's no big deal. That's insane. Awesome. You know, Paul had told us, you know, Dale Jr., we were really just inquiring about Stadium Super Trucks. It was fascinating to learn about him.

And Dale, Dale was like, how much of this stuff is, not scripted? I don't remember what the word it was, but. Chlorographed scripted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Paul said, that's, that one, you poke the bear deal on that one. Yeah. Is that right? I got to be honest, you, you kind of caught me off guard there.

And that just shows you how people really don't even understand what we're doing. But we wanted to know. And we need to explain it more so that people understand. And so stadium super truck, imagine it when I started it in 2013, I started it as franchises. There's a whole business side of this whole thing that was put together as well, where a race team or a sponsor doesn't have to worry about a race shop because at the end of the day, nobody cares about anything but what happens on that racetrack. It's true.

I mean, the most exciting thing happens on the racetrack. And unfortunately, all of motorsports seems to be focusing on something different. And that hardcore fan wants to watch what's happening on that racetrack. Okay. So let me answer some, let me sort of spell this out as I'm understanding it. The stadium super truck is a series where you as the owner of the series really are in charge of the cars, of the equipment, the trucks. You are going to supply that truck to the franchise. A franchise is the driver and the sponsor.

They're going to come to you and say, hey, man, we're going to pay for this truck. of the year. My guy's going to, you know, my driver's going to drive it. And all they need to worry about is just being at the racetrack. And they don't have to take the truck home. They don't work on the truck at home or none of that. That's all supplied for them. How do you, so which is a great model, how do you handle the competitiveness of the drivers and their desire to have an at least equal truck or how do you handle that? Because people want to make their trucks better or people say their truck might not be good as the next truck. How do you handle that disagreement. I love that. So you hit it spot on. And, you know, we have done this. And if you ever get a

chance to talk to Sheldon one of these times, we have pulled the body off of his truck numerous times. And when I mean pulled the body off, the body can come on and off these trucks in about two minutes. Literally, switch them. If you think your truck's bad, no problem. We'll switch trucks. Wow. This is a driver's game. It is not a truck game. It's not an engineer. game. It is a performance of who is the best talented athlete out there. And the reason why I was wondering if any of it was scripted or choreographed was because of the startup costs for something like that must be pretty tremendous. And I was just wondering if there was any sort of, maybe it's not scripted as far as who wins, who runs second, third,

and fourth. But there may be a mention beforehand of, hey, let's not destroy anything today because we're trying to get this thing off the ground. But that's obviously not the case. Well, I'm glad you said that. You know, that is part of the thing that we've been going back and forth for a long time. And since I started the series, there is no crash damage charges. What? So the cost is the cost. No crash damage.

All right. So what do you do with the guy that tears up a couple trucks? What's your conversation with him? We have conversations, but normally, you know, I, now on the other side, I don't manage the competition side of the race itself. Yeah. So I hire USAC to do that for me. Oh. And that way it takes me out of it.

I supply the vehicles, the trucks, the in-car cameras, the technicians, all the stuff, including the decals, the bodywork, everything else. And I literally hand that off to Jason Smith over at USAC, and he worries about the competition side of it, which removes us from that. Wow. And then in Australia, we hand it over to CAMs. So Jason Smith from America, USAC goes over and. works with CAMs, but the CAMs, tech, rules makers, you know, the guy's up in the booth

that call the race, they make the decisions of what is a go-no-go, stuff like that. I'll get you. Give you a perfect example is, I don't know if you watch the IndyCar race at Road America this weekend. You know, it was a really decent race at the end was good, but what one of the rules we have and I know Paul talked about it is we have a no passing until turn one. Right. And the reason for that is I watched Rallycross Fire Up.

I've watched TORC. I've watched, I've watched, you know, very professional guys like this weekend with, with World Power and Ryan or under Ray. I mean, you got to get through turn one. Once you get through turn one, you know, Dale, you know how it is. We all sort it out and it kind of just gets going. but getting these things started with with adrenaline passion from drivers, egos, everything else. Everybody's trying to capitalize. And so really there's no advantage until you get through turn one.

After turn one, it's gloves off. And the draft, like at Road America and we had to Road America, that second-place truck will be 10 miles an hour, or actually the third-place truck will be 10 miles an hour faster than the lead truck down the straightaway. The draft is incredible. So how many trucks do you start? What's the most you'll start? Well, X-Games was the most that we ever started before, and we fired off 24 trucks at X-Games. So we had an agreement with X-Games when they ran events here in the USA. So, you know, I'm sure, you know, Rusty Wallace, Boris, Travis, Pastrana, you know, pretty much all the hot rides showed up to our X-game events when we ran those.

And unfortunately, there's just not a U.S. Summer X now anymore where they bring auto. into it anymore. Okay. I was wondering what happened to that. So what's the most you would start? Is your series growing? I own 36 of these trucks. So we have 36 running trucks. Currently, there is 12 them at Norwell. I don't know if you've been to Norwell before. Yes, sir. Hall has an awesome facility over there with a track and it works very similar to my place in Charlotte. You know, he's got machine shock fabrication. He can do everything we can do, but we can also just take them right out the back door and go drive them on our own property. We don't have to put them in a semi and go to the racetrack.

We don't have any of that setup stuff. The same thing when we go to an event. You know, we roll up to an event and it sounds crazy, but that car could come out of the trailer and you could take it to the start line. There's no, there's no tech because tech happened at the shop before you got there. We eliminate a lot of the stuff that really doesn't matter. But what about after a race? How much are you having to do to a truck after a race before you go race it again?

Well, like I said, when I designed the stadium super trucks, I made a modular, and that was based off my experience with NASCAR. It's something that I wanted to make it where it was easy. So literally at the back of the cab, it unbolts and at the front, at the bottom of the APOS, the front end unbolts. And the cars are modular, so you can just change pieces around. So we didn't have time, you know, learning the NASCAR program. I didn't have three weeks to lose a car if you back the thing in the fence. I need to be able to turn this thing around next weekend or actually forget next weekend. I'm going to fire up another modo right after Expendity like at Road America.

We'll run at 10 o'clock in the morning before him and we'll run at 2.30 right after him. So we'll fire off two motors a day. And I'm pretty confident that I can about right off the truck and we'll have it together in about five more hours. This is amazing. Yeah. This is so, it's genius. The more I learn about this series, the more I like it. I know.

I mean, I've watched it and seen it on, on the internet and on TV and so forth. But learning these type of details about it. makes it pretty interesting. I know, and I know that we're asking very, maybe even dumb questions, but this is fascinating to us, and I mean, just congratulations.

I'm sure there's a lot of people like us out there. I know, but I'm like, I'm just blown away by that. And, uh, because I, you know, you know,

if you go on YouTube, man, they have some gnarly wrecks. Yeah. Right? I mean, like, you know,

they're rolling. There's some gnarly wrecks and I'm just, the, how that's paid for and how that's turned around so quick is fascinating to me. And you just explained it. What does the franchise cost for a season? You're going to fall out of your seat when I tell you what one costs. A franchise for a season is $250,000.

Oh, man, that's not bad at all. Are you serious? For 10 races. Yeah. Wow. It's pretty reason. It is. It is honestly, it will teach a driver the best form of car control he could

ever have. It teaches him drafting. It teaches him throttle control because there is no traction control. The things make 650 horsepower on a DOT tire. Pretty awesome stuff. It is. Hey, before we go, I don't know what, do you have anything else? There's one thing I want to ask Robbie that is unrelated. Do you who's going to come drive one? Is that? Well, I don't know. I mean, like, you, you, you pitch it very well. You're a marketer.

He does. You do that. I think you'd have to talk to Amy. I think you're talking to the wrong person here at the table. I don't think it's Dell. I think it would be Amy. You'd have to. I have to talk to Amy. Well, you know, the nice thing is that the trucks are very, very safe. And we don't, we don't go very fast. We don't. We don't. only go about 160. That's not fast. So what I wanted to ask you, Robbie, is just what is your memory of 2006? A lot of people don't remember the fact that Robbie Gordon almost gave junior motorsports our first victory at Michigan. You ran two races for JRM that year.

I'm curious on how that deal even happened because I believe it was the U.S. Navy car. So this would have predated Kozlowski. I don't remember what led to Robbie Gordon being in the race, but all I know is that at Michigan, there he is at the end, duking it out with you, who's driving a DEI car, I believe, and Carl Edwards, and the one memory I have of that, obvious the situation you and Carl had in post-race,

but I remember when we walked into the media center because you won the race, deprived JRM of our first victory, and I remember Robbie Gordon was rapid, up his post-race press conference in the media center, and you walked in and he goes, here comes the troublemaker. And so what do you remember about that day? I got to be honest. I don't remember much of it.

I mean, I did have some great runs driving for junior motorsports. And like I said, I've been very fortunate. If you look at my career, it's really weird. But I have been fortunate enough to drive for some of the best teams in the world, you know, like I said, from junior motorsports to Richard Chalderas to Morgan McClure, Sabco, you know, and then you go to the IndyCar side and, you know, Cal Wells, Derek Walker, which we won races in IndyCar with Derek Walker, which, you know, he was the general manager. He was the Tim Sendrick of Penske before Tim.

Yeah. So Robbie Gordon was running his own Xfinity program with Fruit of Looms. Oh, that's right. I remember this. And he was really, that program was very good. And I was sitting on a boat with Robbie on the lake. I think it was an off weekend or something, but we were sitting on the lake drinking beer.

And me and Kelly were talking about starting our own Xfinity steam. So I asked Robbie, I said, hey, I said, how do you run that program? And he told me some of the financials and a couple other things about how he runs that program so well. And it gave me the confidence to go back to start our own program. And not that that was a direct reason why we got Robbie to drive the car a few races, but we needed somebody to get in there at that point in the program that I knew that could get

in and there and do the job well. And, you know, Robbie did. He got in there and nearly won that race at Michigan. Late caution changed things up a little bit. And honest to God, I really wanted Robbie to win that race. but when I saw an opportunity to turn Carl around, I had to take that. I don't know.

He was loose, man. He just needed a little help, right? He didn't need a whole lot, boy. That thing took off. But, you know, it was fun to do things like that with Robbie because Robbie's the kind of guy that, like I said earlier in the interview, is up for anything. If it's a fun opportunity to go and drive.

something competitive. It doesn't matter what type of racing it is. And, you know, he's a guy that can get in anything and be fast, like, like A.J. Floyd or Mario Andretti or Tony Stewart or any of those guys that sort of can drive just about anything. And his personality was always fun to be around. We've hung out and had a few beers together over the years and just always kind of had a good respect for each other.

But that meant a lot to me, actually, to be honest with you, to have you drive drive our cars and we were in a situation that we needed some help and and you gave us that. So man, it's been fun. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. It's been fun catching up with you. Really interesting to hear about all the things you got going on. I knew that you had a lot of balls in there and you were juggling a lot of different things

in your life. And great to learn more about Stadium Super Truck, a series obviously that's growing at extremely fast rate and it's good to hear you guys going to be back on the racetrack here shortly. You're going to have a lot more people, including me and Mike and Matthew tuning in to watch. So good luck with the series as you move on. Good luck with everything else you got going on in your life. And I hope I'll see you soon, buddy. Hey, thank you.

You know, the feelings mutual. Had a great time hanging out with you back on the day. Learned a lot from you as well. And I look forward to catching up with you soon. All right, buddy. We'll see you. Robbie Gordon for the Dale Jr. Download. Pretty awesome.

You know how much I love history? We have a segment most weeks called Odd History. We have a TV show about history. Lost Speedways. Valvilline, man. They are a huge part of racing history. Let's learn a little bit about that. Let's get deeper.

We've told many times the story of Valvling and Vinning Motorhole. They invented racing oil. It's a fact. They were in the first ever race in America. How significant is that? Significant enough to learn more about. about that race. It's the first race.

It's the first race. It's called the Chicago Times Herald race, and it was in 1895. It was an event to promote new automobile industry sponsored by a newspaper. A purse of $5,000 was up for grabs. I imagine pretty big sum at that time.

A few weeks back, we told you about the race, but today we're going to sprinkle in some more stuff so we can learn together and bring us back to that time. It has said that 83 cars had filed an entry, but only six showed up to the November events. Just six out of 83. Four were early cars and two were motorcycles.

Hey, no rules. Those early cars were often referred to as horseless carriages during that era. Three of those cars were German-made vehicles by Carl Benz. An early test of a Ben's wagon operated by Oscar Mueller and his sons at the Washington Park racetrack had them pinned as the early favorites. Each vehicle had a handler, which is the driver, and an umpire. The umpire would ensure fairness and that the course was covered with no shortcuts. Like a referee riding along in the car.

You got a NASCAR official driving with you, Dale. Frank Durrier took the win. You believe that? Yeah, Frank Duria. What more can you tell me, Matthew? you? Well, Frank was 36 years old, and he entered that race and operated his four-wheeled machine. So that first car was a number five. So the first win in any race in America was a number five. And the car was a – he was from Massachusetts, and it was a Massachusetts company, the Massachusetts Dourier Motor Wagon Company.

And it was actually the first American firm to build a gasoline-powered automobile. And the cool thing about this race that I dug up is the fact that it had pneumatic tires, you know, tires with air in them. And at that time, most of the cars had solid tires and wheels. But, yeah, exactly. So that car had air in its wheels. And with the temperatures of that race, because it was so cold that day, they actually think that that helped him grip level-wise within the snow and the treachery of the slush have an advantage. in that race. I was curious as to what may have propelled him to win because we learned that

Jurye took the lead somewhere in the final stretch. After 10 hours and 23 minutes, he crossed the finish line at 7.18 p.m. to win the Chicago Times Herald race. And guess what motor oil was in that winning machine? Guess. Vivalene, baby. What's crazy is how so many people don't know much about this race. We are learning more and more ourselves.

It's a significant part of the history of our sport for sure. The more we find, maybe we'll share with you. Until then, trust an original Valvillin has been there since day one because they are the original motor old. Last call. Let's do it. Are the podcast, Door Bumper Clear. It's a pretty good podcast.

Second best in the country. All right. Door bumper clear is, you know, these guys just aren't afraid to be honest. And it's interesting because, well, TJ, he's probably a little afraid. Lee is even laughing at that. These guys are the spotters. The spotters have this funny reputation as sort of being the guys that are in the first to know. The first guys to hear the rumors.

And it is amazing. I've learned strictly through door bumper clear that it's true. Like they get all the information first. I don't know how. It goes way up there on top of that tower. where they're at? Like, why is it all that, you know, why is it the garage where all the information lands? But, yeah, the spotters are the ones that are gossiping the most, really prying this secret

information of future rule changes or driver changes or firings, hiring, whatever it is you want to know. These guys know it. They're going to tell us first before anyone else. They're also not afraid to debate what's going on in the sport and not afraid to, you know, Get things uncomfortable, yeah, except for T.J. T.J. is entirely neutral. Never really one to go daringly into the conversation or be aggressive.

Podcast reviews, Apple podcast reviews, to be most precise, they're good, and some of them really make us laugh. We got one. I don't even want to say this. Freddie Craft is the co-host of Door Bucklear. And the name, the username is, You say it. Freddie Craft is fat.

I mean, come on. Freddy's a great guy. Don't make your username that. That is rude. Well, he says, great podcast, but fantastic podcast. Is that really what he said? Yeah. Great podcast, but fantastic podcast.

That was the title. His title was great podcast. His subject. Oh, his title was great podcast, but. Yeah. Okay. So the title of his post is unnecessary to me. But this is his post.

fantastic podcast, extremely interesting, and better than just hearing the same old NASCAR news over and over. I think he's talking about the Dale Jr. Download. And he's referring to door bumper clear. The only issue I have is the editing. Matthew seems to use music that doesn't really fit. Dale or the show at all. What?

I kind of like it. I know he's trying, but it's just a little hard. He's trying too hard. Mike has gotten a lot better recently, too, about letting Dale do his thing a little bit more and shutting up. This is the perfect podcast for both the old school fans of NASCAR and new fans. I kind of agree with half. He closed it up nice.

Yeah, very nice. I kind of agree with some of it, not all of it. Also, Art, he says he loves the intro of music, but I don't have a rapper voice. I don't. You know, Matthews set me up. I come in here and sit down and he goes, hey man, just say whole team winning about five times.

I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, just say it five times into the mic. I'm like, why? He's like, just do it. I'm like, whole team winning. Keep going. Whole team winning. I'm like, what am I doing?

Why am I even doing this? And here, you know, then we all find out what that's all about. Lost Speedways. That's our TV show about abandoned racetracks. It's on Peacock TV. Go download the Peacock TV app, whether you have Apple TV, smart TV, an iPhone, iPad, tablet, whatever. Peacock TV. And you can watch all eight episodes at once of Lost Speedways, a TV show that we've created here at Dale Jr., I mean at Dirtymo Media.

And Matthew's my co-host. It's an amazing show, and it's free. You don't have to pay a red cent. Also, catch us on TV every week, Wednesdays on NBCSN. The show is a great compliment to the podcast. you'll see kind of the highlights of the interviews, but you miss a lot of other stuff. So don't forget, you're listening to the podcast,

so I don't got to remind you to do that. All right, great show. We appreciate Robbie Gordon coming on and telling us everything that's going on in his life. The jug, the jugular. The jugular. The jugular. The jugular.

The juggerna. Is he the juggernaut? The jugular. The juggler. The juggler went for the jugular. That's tough to say. Say that five times fast. No, Robbie Gordon was great.

So much we didn't get to. Hopefully we can get him in this... Hopefully we can get him at this table. Yeah. Unlock the magic. Put the pressure on him. Yeah. He left some stuff unsaid.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We'll get him back. You guys enjoy your week. Thanks for tuning in. This bit of bad assery was... Badassery was made by... Badassery.

Dirtymoe media. Dirtymoe!