The Dale Jr. Download - 310 - James Hinchcliffe & Jeff Dickerson: Risk Everything

Episode Date: August 12, 2020

Dale Earnhardt Jr. brings a double-dose of guest badassery to the show with an Indycar star that cheated death, and an agent turned car owner. Open wheel ace James Hinchliffe talks about his sucky go-kart start and his rise to become an Indycar Series winner. He brings us into his headspace on the horrific crash at Indianapolis that nearly ended his life and the brave comeback to win the 500 pole the next year. The Canadian driver talks about how inspirational his fellow countryman, the late Greg Moore, was to his career. He shares the racing job he was going to aim for if he couldn't make it behind the wheel. Last year Hinch lost his ride with Arrow McLaren; he shares details of the split and his new part-time gig back with Andretti Autosport heading into what could be the biggest race of his career, the 104th running of the Indianapolis 500. Oh, and any visit to Hinchtown comes with some bourbon!Dale Jr. and co-host Mike Davis welcome Spire Motorsports president Jeff Dickerson to the pod to announce the acquisition of the charter from Leavine Family Racing. They answer how and why a sports agency got into the race-team business. Dickerson gives a peek into a business rarely in front of the curtain and shares details of the direction of the now two-car team and how the charter purchase went down.Mike gets Dale Jr. to chat about his very first race, which included a flipping go-kart and Dale Sr. running to his aid. AskJr presented by Xfinity fires up some great questions about the latest goings on in NASCAR and Dale's Bo-preferences. That and more on a jammin' edition of The Dale Jr. Download. 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.

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a Mason Standard Drive. Hey everybody, it's Delenhart Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download. Today, we have two guests on the show. Jeff Dickerson, owner-inspire. He's going to tell us why they bought the 95 Charter.

James Hinchcliff. Big fan favorite in IndyCar World and Motorsports in general is going to come on the show. Tell us about his career and he's got the ND500 coming up. Let's get started. All right. Let's bring in the mayor of Hinchtown. Hello, I don't think we've got to start. And we have a go for all this support start.

So here he is James Hinchkley. From a year ago, nearly losing his life in a savage crash here. T minus 17 seconds. For yet for Hitch. Lap 3 looks like as he takes the white flag. Jackie, now it is time for a familiar cry to build the Indiana air. Two, one, East Commission and lift. It's Hitchcliffe.

All right. Yellow. Yellow. Hinch. Oh, there he is. Oh, look at that. Hey, man. Love it.

This is like a different Zoom layout than I'm used to. Nice. I mean, you got the hair perfectly quaffed, so we're good to go, brother. All you need, man. I just got the indie low drag cut yesterday. Getting ready for qualifying. Hey James, Sidel Jr. What's up, buddy? Not much, man. How you doing?

Man, it's great to have you on the show. With me is my... Great to be here. Thanks, man. With me as my co-host, Mike Davis. How's it going, Mike? These guys have been working, the backdrop game is getting a lot better. Have you noticed that? Yes.

I mean, look at this. Where are you right now, James? This is my home office. Where are you? Indianapolis. Okay. So I live here. I kind of turned... I was only allowed to do anything to one room in the house.

Right, that was the wife said I could do this one. And so all my helmets and trophies are in here. All you can ask for. It's all we ask for. Give me one room. So is Indianapolis sort of where most of guys live? Where do most of the IndyCar guys live? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like our Charlotte, you know, to the NASCAR world.

So most of the shops are based here with the exception of a few. A lot of the drivers are based here. You know, some of the other guys like Ryan Hunter Ray, he can't deal with the winner. So he lives in Florida. You know, he's a bit soft. but, you know, Marco stays in PA kind of with the family ties. I get that. But a lot of the drivers are here now.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. I have, you know, watched IndyCar all my life. And I thought, you know, I thought, you know, racing's racing. Most other forms of motorsport are probably similar to NASCAR, but, man, was I wrong? I got an opportunity to go to Indy 500 last year. but this year we had a online series. NASCAR did their online thing. IndyCar did a really great job with their online portion of the year.

And I got to participate in a race. Oddly enough, I was invited to participate. It was a great honor and experience to be able to sort of, quote, pretend to be an indie guy for a couple days. and one of the things that stood out to me the most and blew me away made this is what's really unique to IndyCar I think well maybe if one but the the variety of individuals and where everybody's from and the and the way they all approach what they do and how they race is so different so much different because most of the guys in NASCAR born in the United States, right? The culture is different from coast to coast and state to state, but not vastly. In IndyCar, obviously you have the accents and, but everybody, like, I don't, you can

help me with this, James, but when you grow up in a different part of the world, you view an approach motorsport in that, in the way that you're sort of trained from that, that geographic location, you know, and for example, like Australians, they're really aggressive, right? When I watched V8 supercars all my life, man, they don't mind getting in there and beating on each other, and that's just part of it, right? And they complain a lot on the radio, as Will Power did during that race. I was just really, I was not up to what a huge sort of variety of personalities and approaches and

styles there are in any car. That blew me away. I mean, I know everybody's from somewhere different, and there's a lot of international drivers in the series, but that really has to be a big challenge, I think, melding all those personalities and people together on the racetrack because of the disagreements and things that you have about how you race, right?

The etiquette in racing. That's just it. I mean, so you've got the kind of cultural difference from a racing standpoint in terms of the guys that grew up racing primarily in North America versus the guys that grew up racing in Europe or Asia or Australia. And all of those areas kind of have their own quirks. And then on top of that, you throw in whatever, you know, like nationalistic differences there are from wherever they're from because you may have grown up racing in Europe,

but you might be Australian, like Willpower, which is the most insane combination, because you have the super aggressive Australian blood and you've got the like crazy, don't really care about anybody else European attitude coming together. That's a tough thing to manage, you know. but I mean, obviously successful. I mean, look at what he's done. But you're right. And it's funny, you brought it up.

And this is the point I wanted to make was it's how people deal with conflicts and how people deal with things going wrong is actually probably the most different. You know, there's some guys that are able to just kind of shake it off and be like, hey, man, that's racing, no big deal. Some guys take everything that happens on track insanely personally. And so, yeah, you have to kind of learn like, so the European mentality, a lot of the guys that come over from Europe, right? The European mentality is very, you can't have.

have friends at the racetrack. You've got to be able to hate everybody and push them within an inch of anything. And the North American attitude was usually a little bit more relaxed than that. And I've always kind of thought of it the other way. I've always thought that like, you know, I'm on the racetrack with these guys. Essentially, my life is in their hands in certain scenarios, right? I want to know who the hell I'm racing. Yeah.

Right. I want to know their personality. I want to know what makes them tick. I want to know how I think they're going to react in a certain situation. and I've always found that your off-track personality translates a lot in a lot of cases to what you're like on track. And so I've had to take the time. I've wanted to and I've made the effort to take the time to try to get to know all

these guys off track. So that way I feel better prepared to race them on track. Yeah, that was one of the things that blew me away is just something simple as what a block is to one guy might not. Everybody has their opinion on like what's a defensive move, what's an aggressive move. and man and you know and you're sitting on the computer racing these guys and you've got all these different styles

and accents of you know coming across you know the headset and you're like man this is like it's like everybody all over the country came together to race at once I'm just so used to in NASCAR it just you know everybody kind of grows up under the same set of rules and regulations and everybody has a pretty good understanding

of what's good and bad on the race racetrack and what the etiquette is. And man, and in IndyCar, it's, it's so different. Everybody's so different. I like that.

But I love that about NASCAR, man, because everybody comes up and there's kind of, there's like this unwritten set of rules, right? There's like the gentleman's rules, which are often very ungentlemanly. But, you know,

like, it's just sort of a known, unspoken thing. And I love that. I mean, some of the times, like, I'll see you guys wail on each other and I'll think the guy that

got hate is just going to come out human throwing helmets and he's like, no, man, I deserve that one or that's what I would have done in the same situation. I'm like, dude, these guys are awesome. The respect out there sometimes is just next level. So what is the gentleman rule in IndyCar then? What could we expect the drivers to have an unspoken

agreement? So the big one that comes up on oval racing, right, is to just not take a guy's air away if you're making a pass, right? So if let's say you're passing a guy on the outside of one, two, a Texas, right? And you clear a mid-corner. You hold your second lane, you hold that line until you get out. If you just drop down in the middle of the corner when you're only six inches in front of the guy and take his wind off, I mean, that's a really, really crappy

thing to do. That can end, that can end the guy's day in a big way. So there's definitely an etiquette on the ovals just because of the risks and the way the cars behave on there. And sometimes, like, you get young guys come in and they've maybe done some indie light stuff, so they get it. Sometimes they think they just got something to prove, so they're super aggressive, and they've got to be pulled in, you know, behind the trailer and giving a few words. You get guys that have come over from Europe, never been on an Oval before. They've got no idea how to behave and how to react. And honestly, man, it goes back to that eye racing thing.

There were guys that are new to the series that we've never raced before, and we know haven't been on ovals. And you kind of get a sense of like, okay, if this is how he's going to be in the real car, we might have to have a conversation before we even get to Texas. Wow. That's so funny. Well, I've got to ask, though. So the Australian drivers are scrappy and aggressive.

The Europeans are just unfriendly. What are Canadian drivers? I mean, we're just, we're just, we're just, we just want to get the race over and have a beer. And, you know, just, you know, all Canadian drivers. Pretty much. Well, I mean, there's the French Canadians, which are a little more fiery, right? Like Tagliani, you guys know tag. He gets fired off from time to time.

But he's good, man. He's good behind the wheel. How did you get exposed to racing? It was my dad's fault. My dad's actually from England. And so I grew up in Canada, but he was, you know, some people have a hockey dad. Some people have a football dad. I had a racing dad.

And he loved F1, he loved IndyCar. And growing up, Sunday mornings were Formula One, Sunday afternoons were IndyCar and NASCAR. And we just loved racing. I've got an older brother and an older sister, and neither one of them cared a lick about racing. So dad really lucked out, third time's a charm. So it was just kind of me and him on Sundays. We just spend the days watching racing. going to the Indy Car Race in Toronto that started in 86,

and I went for the first time when I was like 18 months old. And I've been to every single one since, either on one side of the fence or the other. So it all kind of started pretty young. So what was your first car? I for like my first four-day into racing. Yes, anything, whatever was. So I got a go cart for my ninth birthday.

And that's kind of how it started. And it really, if you go back a year, so my dad, the running joke in the family is my dad had a midlife crisis. 45, right? And he bought himself a little triumph TR4 and went Vintz racing. And so he's a little old British guy buys an old British car and goes racing, which to be fair, there's a series in Canada that is comprised largely of expat Brits who have midlife crises and buy little British cars and go race each other. And so, so I started going with my dad to these races and just loved it, man. It was, you know, I was putting the air in the tires and the gas in the tank.

I was his pit crew. My dad was a race car driver. It was the coolest thing ever. And then we met a guy who did that, whose son raced go-carts. And so he went out and checked one of those races out one day. And I was like, yeah, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not need to try one of these. And so got one for my birthday. And that was it. Besides your dad, who was the inspiration to you? So from like a racing standpoint, my hero was Greg Moore, you know, Canadian driver bad fast behind the wheel. He came into Indy car. So I was a big Jacquesville and a fan. You know, obviously you see a trait here. I was supporting the homeboys. and when he went over to F1, you know, Greg stepped into that car to the player's car.

And that was the same year I started racing gokarts. So he just kind of made it to the big leagues. I was just starting my racing career, which at the time, like I never thought I would ever end up here. But it was just, he was such a nice guy. He was so good behind the wheel of car. It was just a great, great role model for a young kid, for sure. So the story is that you actually carried his gloves with you while racing at Indy. Yeah, yeah.

So in 2012, it was my second year, my first year with Andredi Autosport. And, you know, I've been talking with, I got to know a lot of Greg's friends, guys like Tony Kannon and Dario Frankiti, like Max Pappas. These were all his boys, you know. And I got to race against most of those guys and it sucks. And obviously, Greg, you know, passed away 99 and never got the chance to do that. But I'd spend a lot of time in the bus slot chat with these guys here in the old stories of all the stuff they used to get up to.

and we talked about how quick Greg was on ovals, but it was such a shame that because of the split and open wheel at the time, he never got the chance to run the 500. And I had, one of Greg's old mechanics, who I never met, just came up to me at the track one day randomly,

and he had a pair of Greg's gloves. And so Greg always wore red gloves. This was like a running thing with him, right? His car was always blue and white, but he always wore red gloves. And everyone was like, why the red gloves? And he said, superheroes wear red gloves.

So he always wore that. Awesome. And so I've worn red gloves every race in my life my entire career because of Greg. Yeah. And so, I mean, I got an orange car this year. Dale, it doesn't look great, man, but I got to stick to it. Yeah. So my wife tells me, like, those don't go together.

I'm like, that's not the point. So one of his mechanics came out to me, had an old set of Greg's gloves. He's like, hey, man, I was wondering if you could take these for a lap. And it was such a cool, like touching thing, man. And I took the gloves and I had them all month. And I was trying to figure out when was the best time to do it. and I decided to put him in my suit for qualifying. So the first day of qualifying on the Saturday,

tucked him into my suit, because the four laps of qualifying an indie is like the coolest thing that we get to do all year. I mean, it's the scariest thing that we do. It's the like bravest, toughest, coolest thing that we do all year. And so I was like, this is what Greg needs to have a have a taste of, as qualifying an indie. And so I tucked him into my suit.

I got in the car and we ended up going P1. P1. That was a big deal because the year before that was, the year of your big crash, right? Well, no, so this was, that was a few years later. That was a few years later. Yeah, yeah. So this was before that.

I got you. This is before that. Yeah, we ended up, so that was the first round of qualifying. We ended up qualifying the second day, was my first front row started. It was just cool, though, to have them have them with me. And we, I mean, we hadn't really been P1 up to that, like, really in the fight for first at that point. And then he was like, maybe had a little help that time. You know, one of the things that we love doing here is just kind of listening to how people

ascend to where you're at as a professional race car driver. Now, you already have an interesting start because, you know, your dad's going to a midlife crisis. I don't think we've heard that one yet. Have you? We have not. So how, at some point you had to get good, right? In midlife crises don't make you good. They just get you on a track. They may get you a car. So how did you get good? I mean, you're now, you climbed. What was that like and how did that happen? A lot of hard work, man. I'm not going to lie to you. It was, it was tough. So, you know, growing up in Canada, there are not as many sponsors around.

We don't have, you know, we're just smaller countries, fewer drivers, you know, less of a kind of infrastructure for young drivers. And then on top of that, when I first started, man, I sucked. I was not good. Yeah, I was not one of these, like natural talents. He just chucked him into cart and he's like, oh, this kid's going somewhere. I finished last every single race of my rookie season in carts. You finished last, you said?

But last every single race for a full year. And I remember, like, midseason, my dad being like, you know, if this isn't fun for you anymore, we can stop. And I was like, no, no, no, no. I love it. And I'm getting better. Like, I remember the race where I didn't get lapped for the first time. I finished. I remember that.

And I'm like, this is progress. We're getting there. But, like, again, like, I didn't start this to be a racing driver, right? Like this was a hobby. I liked racing. A lot of kids play hockey knowing they're never going to be in the NHL, right? I started carting because my dad and I liked racing. It's what we did on weekends, you know.

And then every year you get older, you kind of move up classes. The carts get a bit faster. The competition gets a bit harder. And every year I seem to do better and I seem to enjoy it more. And when I was about 14, there was like, you know, the pro carding tour that runs all around North America. And there was a guy that hangs out at kind of my local track that ran a team there. And he's like, hey, man, I think you're going.

enough to try the pro tour. And I'd never really considered it before, but I thought, all right, if he thinks I can do it, let's take a stab at it. And so that's now all the kids that are, you know, since age of five have been, you know, thinking about wanting to be a racing driver or whatever. And so I figured if I could go there and compete with those people, then, you know, maybe I do have a shot. So at 14 is when I really kind of like change my mindset and my mentality to really put in all the effort that I needed to put in to try to take a shot at this. And even still, I'm like, this is a one in a bill. It's not going to happen. But we'll, write it out. My dad and I kind of like, yeah, well, hang on to this as long as we can and

have fun, whatever. And because neither one of us really thought it was going to happen, you know, school was very important to my parents, understandably. So like, I had a deal in high school where I had to maintain an 80 average or the racing stopped. You know, and then I, I went to, 80. For sure. That's a sure. It's a B minus. It kept me, it kept me motivated to do schoolwork. You know, it kept me out of trouble. Hold on. Now we have a debater going on a grade. Hinch.

Hinch. So what was it? Yeah. When you were going to school and you had to have an 80 average, what was an F? A fail was a below 60. Yeah, it was below 70 for me. I'm old as hell. Geez.

Fail was below 70? Yeah. What? Man, most of my friends went to graduate in high school. So an 80 would be in a C, but they changed the scale. since then. Now I know why you went to six different schools. Not because I failed.

Well, because of grades? Yeah. Okay. Did you make good grades? I made, I think I graduated with an 88. So that was enough to keep racing. That's all I needed. That's a dean's list around here.

I'm telling you. So, all right, so you weren't planning on being a race car driver, but you just kind of progressed. Do you know what you were going to, what were you going to be? Did you know at 14? I mean, you're a pretty good student. What did you want? I mean, all right, you probably wanted somewhere in the back of your mind to be a race car driver, but you probably had a plan B.

What was it? Well, so I honestly, my plan B was because I was way before I ever drove a go card, I was just such a fan of the sport. I was just hooked on racing. And so I figured, okay, let's get involved somehow. And contemplated like going the engineer route at one point, but ended up landing on, I wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to be a like a motorsports journalist if I couldn't be a driver.

So that way I knew I could be at the track and watching the racing and reporting on racing. Like that was just my way to still be kind of connected. One of these professions pays more than the other. Yeah. So here's the funny thing, right? So I graduate high school and I'm not quite at a point yet where it's a sure thing. Like we're getting closer, but my parents were like, look, you got to go to school. You got to go to university.

and I was like, all right, fair enough. So we're thinking about it like, what could I do in school that would benefit my driving career the most? And so obviously the natural answer is engineering, right? So my last year of high school, I did all the classes to get into engineering school. I did all the physics and the maths, algebra, and all that stuff, right? And I got the grades and it ended.

And I kind of went to my parents and I was like, okay, here's the deal. You asked me to do this. or like, sorry, we agree that this was the way to go. I did the work. I got the grades. I did not enjoy a single minute of it. Wow. And so I said, I was like, I cannot make myself do this for the next four years

because I will just, I will lose my mind. I just did not enjoy it. And so they said, okay, fair enough. What would you rather do? And I was like, I want to go to journalism school in case, you know, I could, raise his work. I'm like, oh, that route. And they were like, yeah, no, you're definitely not doing that.

What else? So I was like, business school? They're like, yeah, racing's a business. You can do that. I'm like, okay, cool. So I went to business school instead. I was the same way. I wanted to be a sports writer.

I wanted to be a journalist. And then I started to understand that every, I would go to talk to journalists. I'd go talk to sports writers. And they were always trying to talk me out of it. And I'm like, okay, maybe I should draw a conclusion on this. They keep trying to talk me out of it. Why is that? Yeah, I mean, I guess it was a blessing in disguise.

I don't know. But, I mean, the short version is I was only there for a year and a half. And then we got an opportunity that was like, all right, now we got to focus solely on the racing deal. What opportunity was that? So that was to race in the Atlantic series, which, you know, when we had the split with Card and IRL, there was indie lights to IndyCar. Then there was Atlantic to Cart. So kind of one below the top level. and it was driving for Forsyth, which was an IndyCar team that had a history of promoting young Canadian talent.

It was just like a great opportunity where Greg had raced, where a PT race. Okay, so at that you're getting, what do you think led to that opportunity? What was it on the track that they saw? What did you do? What did you win? Where they were like, oh, we're giving this guy a call. So the year before that, I raced in a series call. It was called Pro Mazda at the time.

it's now called Indy Pro 2000, I think. And so it's on the road to Indy. And I had a really, really good year against a really stacked group. So, you know, back then, the road to the latter system, the road to indie didn't exist in the same way it does now. It was a lot more sort of fragmented, right? And so every off season, my dad and I would sit there and we'd say, okay, what series has the best competition for next year?

Because that's the only way you're going to get better. And so this year, the top five in points in Pro Mazda that year, four of them became IndyCar drive. Oh. What was the, whose car did you drive in that Pro Mazzda? So I drove a team called AIMA Autosport, Canadian team. They now run with Vassar Sullivan in IMSA. But we kind of started that, you know, and we were like, we were the dudes with the 24-foot

trailer and a pickup truck compared to the guys with the, you know, the haulers and the 53-foot deals and four-car teams and stuff. So we did a pretty good job that year. I had some really good battles, won a bunch of races. and that was kind of the season that led to Forsyth, who was firing up their Atlantic team again after a couple years off. They came to me and said, hey, we want to test you and give you a shot at this.

So you went to test in that car. I mean, got to be freaking nervous, right? Because this is real. This is like you're getting into the real stuff here. Yeah, that's when it starts getting weird. And you've never had that experience before, right? Like up to that point, You go out, you beg borrow and steal for the money, you go to a team and say,

please take my money and let me drive your car. Now, all of a sudden, you got a team saying like, you got to try out for this. Don't get me wrong. We still had to bring some money. But, you know, they could have taken money from anybody at that point because they were like the biggest name in the series. And we did a test. And so it's hard to know how to prepare for that, right?

Because this is kind of the first time of your career where you're really in that situation. But you know what it's like. You just, you focus on what you got to do. You do all your homework. You got a good night's sleep the night before. Where did you test? You just get in the car and do what you do.

We tested at Sebring, which is where we do a lot of our testing. Okay, so you knew the track really well. Knew the track, yeah. Was there other drivers there? There was one other guy at that test. Who was it? It was a guy named. I don't remember his name now.

I can picture his face. Do you like look back over the time? Do you look back at, you know, for him, for example, or other guys that you raced with in that series and the series before and see where they are? Do you kind of, kind of. Yeah, man, all the time, all the time. I run into guys all over the place that you used to race again. So, like, you know, social media has made it really easy for people to reach out

and kind of keep tabs on people. And it's crazy to see how people's lives end up, you know, and how they all kind of go in different directions. Yeah. So what's the moment? Like, is it a phone call, text message where you get an opportunity to go IndyCar racing? What's, how does that happen? So I, so you fast forward a couple of years, IndyCar and,

cart merge and now we're one series. So I end up in the Indy Light series, have a good year in 2010. What's a good year? And get a phone call. Second in points, one, it was the closest points margin in history at the time. A kid called J.K. Vernet, a French guy. I think he's doing some sports car stuff over in Europe last time I checked. Yeah, he was really talented guy. And we got a call from Newman Haas, who, you know, I mean, seven times series champions. They ran board A to four straight. They ran Michael and Mario back in the day.

And they said, hey, we've got a driver lined up for next year. He's a veteran. And we wanted to run a second car with a rookie. We want to kind of have that, you know, that balance. And we're looking at you as one of the options. Will you come to a test at Sebring? And so this is it. Like that's now the moment, right?

Like, this is the real phone call. And this is the one you're like, okay, everything that I've given up, everything I've sacrificed, all the hard work, all the sleepless nights, all the, you know, everything is literally for this moment. And it was a two-day test, which was awesome. So it gave me a little extra time in the car. And they had the other driver there who was Oriole Serbia. And he was, you know, a very good friend of mine. And we go do the test.

And long story short, end of the second day, last run of the day, strap on new tires. and we ended up like just under a 10th faster than a rail. And so you like, you get out of the car and you're like, okay, so I had this opportunity. This was the chance. They had a veteran there. I went quick. I did everything I was supposed to do. It was like this little, this mini mic drop moment.

You know, you're like, okay, that's it. That's what you had to do. And we got a call. They're like, all right, yeah, James, good job. We'll be in touch. Cool. So two weeks later, I think I got a phone call saying, all right, great job at the test. We love what you did.

we want you to drive for us. We want to send you a deal. The only problem is we don't have a sponsor for your car yet. I said, okay, but you guys are Newman Haas. You'll figure this out. Like, this is your Newman Haas. That's not going to be the, and they said, like, now that we know the driver,

we can go talk to sponsors and it'll be fine. I'm like, cool. It's not like we had other options, right? So you sign the deal and you just sort of pray at that point. And there was a drop dead date by which we had to have money in the bank to get a car prepped and down to St. for the first race. And that day came and that day went and we had no money.

Oh, man. And it was bad, man, because so like sidebar, when I, when I stopped school for that opportunity with Forsyth, you know, my parents said, okay, go talk to your school and see what kind of deal you can work out. And they basically gave me a five year deferral. So I could come back anytime the next five years and just pick up where I left off. And so my parents at the time said to me, okay, cool, you've got five years to make a living as a driver or are you going back to school.

I'm like five years, no problem, right? So I go down to St. Pete for that first race with the team. I don't have a car. I'm standing on pit wall watching everyone else drive around. And I think to myself, like, what is it? You know, I did everything I could do. Everything that was in my control, I did. I executed when I had to.

But for whatever reason, it just wasn't meant to be. And I've had an awesome run. I've got to do some incredibly cool things over this time. I'll live this summer out, traveling around. of the races, you know, and then I guess because that September was the end of my five years. Oh, man. So I guess that's it for me. So times up.

And then I kid you not, it's the Saturday night of St. Pete, we got a call back from one of our sponsors saying, okay, we're in. Can we be on track for the next race? And so two weeks later, I made my Indy car debut at Barber. Wow. That's something. So you had to miss the first race. How, I mean, did it matter?

Were you like, you know, that sucks? but I'm here, I'm going to do this. Yeah, no, I mean, once you get the call saying you're going into car racing, you don't care what's happened any moment up to that point, you know. The only thing that we thought about was like, oh, man, so that's one, you only get one shot of rookie of the year, right? And so you're like, okay, we're a race behind. It was a good crop of rookies that year.

There was like three or four full-time guys, some good young drivers. So we were like, that kind of sucks. But hey, we're going racing, so no complaint. I got to ask this question just because I'm being a driver. you've been driving all these other race cars for your whole life. Was it a huge jump into the Indy car? Had you ever had any opportunity to drive an Indy car before that for any reason? So what was, was it a big challenge to get into that car because of the power and the way it drove?

So I, when I signed with Forsyth and Atlantic, you know, four years prior or whatever, one of the perks was each of the drivers they signed got a half day in the cart car in the champ car and so at that point I'm coming out of a pro-mazda car I don't know we'd only done one test in the Atlanta car even and they threw us for a half day in the in the champ car and that was you know the low of tons of down force 700 horsepower seven years like that thing was narly and I was nowhere near qualified or prepared to drive it so I'm glad it was only a half day I didn't embarrass myself too badly but that that was obviously several years prior and And so when I jumped in the Indy car, what I will say is that the Indy Lights car was such a well-designed stepping stone.

You know, it was, it handled, it was, you know, another Delara chassis used Firestone tires. So there's some similarities. And basically, it just did everything 20% better. So it had 20% more power, 20% more downforce, 20% better brakes. And so it actually wasn't that hard to kind of get around, you know, get up to speed and the driving style was kind of similar because the tires were similar. So it was actually a really nice progression and the ladder system really works, I think, as a result. I'm still sort of terrified for you listening to these stories.

And I always am, by the way, Dale, because you guys, you know, testing, I know that y'all just gloss over testing. You know, when people, especially when you're on your first test, that's so unique in racing because you've got so much responsibility to not wreck. I mean like not wet up the car right? You know most people you know like in other sports you go run a 40 yard dash jump on a block walk around in your underwear a little bit see if you're toned whatever I mean you know that's it but you're you're running a car

and when he's talking about going and getting this test at Sebring even though a track you're familiar with I would be terrified not to wreck not to even go off the course and that's the thing I finding that balance right because obviously you don't want to look like a schmock and write the car off your first time in it but they want to know that you're fast.

And so you do need to push. Right. Where's that it? You need to know that your feedback. It's a really tough balance, man. But that's what's tough about being a driver in general, right? And, you know, Dale, you can understand this. Like, if you're a football player and, you know, you suck at running the 40, fine.

You can work every day at being better. You can practice that every single day. We don't get to practice, right? Testing is gone. Like, that's a thing of days gone by. And so as a young driver, when you make your start in IndyCar or in NASCAR, whatever, you're coming in with all your learning has to be done on race weekends when it matters, when there's points on the line, when there's people watching. So it's a very difficult sport to get a grasp on and to get up to speed in because you can't just on your off days, go to the track and work on, let's say you want to get better at restart. So you need to get better in and out of the box and pit lane.

You can't do that. Can't do it. So the crash at Indianapolis 5, the Indianapolis 500 in 2015, it's a big turning point in your career. But summarize your career up to that point in Indy. So I spent, so after 2011, we won rookie of the year, thought everything was great. They said, yeah, I want to sign you again. And then the team called me like December 1st and said, hey, we're going out of business. We're done.

You don't have a ride anymore. I was like, damn it. It was going so well. And then, you know, obviously the worst thing in the world in the end of 2011 at the last race, we lost Dan Weldon in an accident. And he had been pegged to drive the GoDaddy car with Danica moving over to NASCAR. And never in a million years thought that I would have been thought of as a potential, you know, filling for that seat.

but it kind of came down to me and one other guy and I got a call for Michael Andretti and said like, hey, we want you in the go daddy car. And that was a tough thing for me in a lot of ways. And I called, I knew Dan's sister really well. And I called her and I talked to the family about it a little bit. It was just a weird deal, you know, especially that young in my career.

And got that ride. Had a lot of success at three years stint with Andretti, won a couple races. And then we had a sponsor. We had a, in the middle of a contract, a sponsor kind of went out of business and it was happened late in the year we didn't have a backup sponsor so i had to switch teams and i moved over to schmidt peterson motorsports uh in 2015 so that was my first year with uh with the new team when when we went to indy for the first

time together and that happened so so tell us about that tell me about that crash um what you remember about it uh luckily nothing uh we were we were practicing it was the monday after qualifying we you're practicing, just doing some race running. I was running around behind Montoya and a nice big toe. And we had a suspension component fail in the middle of turn three at about, you know, 225 miles an hour. And it just, it just torpedoed the car straight into the wall.

And that's, that's bad on a good day. But on a bad day, on top of just hitting the wall like that, a piece of the suspension actually fired through the tub of the car rather than just crumpling. It's like, you know, you push an egg end to end,

it won't break. hit that perfect angle where the suspension didn't fold. It just shot through the car. And it went straight through me. I got shish kebab by an a arm. Where exactly? An a arm. Holy.

Well, so it kind of went in, it went in kind of right under my right butt cheek. And then kind of like up and out my left hip. Wow. And it was like, it was like stuck in me. So it stuck into the. other side of the tongue. So it was like that one end was sticking out of the tub on one side and one end was jammed into the tub on the other side. All the way through you. Yeah, yeah. I was hinge cobobbed. Oh, yeah. You, I see what you're impaled. Yeah, I was, I was quite literally shish kebubbed.

And what, and so what, the real issue was that it hit the, um, the femoral artery in my left leg. And so I was, I was, I was bleeding out, uh, very quickly. And the safety team arrived. on the scene and you know there are there are no amount of words or praise i can give that that group of people they they literally saved my life it was a very unique bizarre injury not something they really had a lot of training or protocols for because it just doesn't happen it's just not something that happens but they're all professionals they thought on their feet they got me out of the car they got me straight in an ambulance like we skipped the med center we went straight to the hospital they were just trying to keep blood in me because they had they didn't know where all the holes were

right because it was sort of a weird scenario. Do you know how they got you out? Like what's the, did they, what do they, like, do they pull that piece of suspension out of the car and then they pluck you out there? Yeah. So like, you know, if, if anyone listening knows anything about, you know, being impaled by things, the general rule is you're supposed to leave it in until you get to the hospital. Right.

Because it plugs. The problem is, right, right. The problem is, and you could do more damage taking it out, And then if you're like on the scene, you don't. But they didn't know that I'd been impaled. And I was conscious, but very concussed and not making any sense. And I could, I was just, I guess my body was in such shock. I couldn't verbalize what was wrong or what had happened.

And so they said they went to go pick me up out of the car and they're like, man, he's heavy. This is weird. And they're like, all right, well, let's just try, let's get the spreaders out and try to open. Maybe the seats, you know, the seat and the impact. the tub maybe folded in a bit and he's kind of crunched in his seat. So they get the splatters and over the cockpit opening. They kind of spread it and they said they heard this loud pop, like this huge release of pressure,

which we now know was the other end of the air arm cut out of the tub. But they didn't know at the time. And so they put their hands under me again to pick me up and someone's like, why is it so warm? And they take their hands out and they're covered in blood. And like, we've got to get him out of this car. We have no idea what is happening.

We need to get him out of this car. So they just pulled me out. And as they pulled me out, the suspension stayed in the car. And so they pulled me off it. And they pulled me out and they heard this thud. And the guy's like, oh, my radio must have fallen off my belt. And he looks down and he sees the a arm sitting in my seat in a pool of blood. And they start to piece together what happened.

And they're like, oh, this is bad. And so, yeah, they were just getting me to the hot. They were pumping blood in as fast as they could. I was just dropping it even quicker. So I had 22 units of blood put into me on the way to the hospital. my body only holds 11. So I had two full oil changes, you know, before they got me in the OR. There was no way for them to try to minimize the blood loss.

So you're losing blood and they're just pumping it in there. They were trying. They were like packing holes with stuff, but it just kept coming out. Because they, I mean, they were big holes by that point. When do you, what do you recalls getting your memory back to on things? Were you in the hospital? I'm like, when you first sort of get your memory back? Yeah, so the last thing I remember is kind of crossing start finish line at the start of that lap.

Then it all goes blank. And my next memory is I'm staring up at six bright lights, 10 very concerned people staring down at me. I'm on a backboard and a neck brace. I have a tube down my throat. I can't talk. So they give me a pen. I think to myself like, this isn't good. I've been here before.

This isn't a good thing. And they gave me a pen and a piece of paper. And that's how I had to communicate. and one of the guys there was actually Marco Andretti, a very good friend of mine, and he had come to the hospital. And so I was writing him on a piece of papers and I was, like, hey, like, what happened? And he tried to explain it to me. And I'll be honest, man, it took me about five days before, whether, you know, a combination of being concussed and probably on a lot of painkillers and just the bizarre nature of the accident. It took me about five days to really understand what actually happened.

But it's funny. Marko still has that piece of paper that I was, you know, talking to him on in the hospital that day. No kidding. Yeah. So what were the injuries that you had to rehab from? So obviously, you know, you can get the blood vessel fixed. You can get holes stitched up. But what was rehab like?

So yeah, rehab was. So honestly, as unlucky as that accident was, I was also super, super lucky because the injuries could have been so much worse. once they got the artery buttoned up, it was really just a bunch of tissue damage. I didn't have any broken bones. There was nothing but just these holes that we had to let heal. And so rehab for me, you know, the doctors said they're like, look, athletes make the worst patients, right?

Because you guys just push yourselves. Like that's how you're wired is to do more and push harder, push fast or whatever. And he goes, I cannot stress this enough. You need to do nothing. your body just needs to heal. You need to rest and do nothing. And it's so counterintuitive for a competitive person. Like you just want to do more.

And so what I did was I made doing nothing a competition with myself. So like they would, they gave me a pedometer. And so like, you know, I was, I was in hospital for about two weeks or 10 days, I think. 10 days I was in hospital. And then I finally got to go home. And they're like, okay, you're allowed to walk 600. steps a day to start. That's it. And it's like, okay. So like, we need you to get some blood flowing, but you can't over exert yourself. I'm like, all right. So I put my pedometer on and I would get up and I would

walk laps around my couch until I hit 600 steps and I'd lay back down on my couch. You'd be like, okay. And I would plan my day, my meals, my bathroom breaks over like how I could move as little as possible and do as little as possible. And I could like rate myself every day on that. And as soon as I could like keep that competitive side of me somehow engaged by doing nothing, it was great and it worked well. And we were in a car two months sooner than the doctors thought we were going to be. So do you have anything as a memento from that crash? Did you save anything? So they wouldn't let me keep anything from the car or anything like that.

I would have kept that suspension a arm. I know, right? I wanted it. They burned it all, I think, is a biohazard at that point. But so, so the, the surgeon who was working at the track that day, who is the guy, the guy that flat out saved my life, he's, you know, the one that did the surgery on my leg and was there, the track, whatever, whatever. He tells us a funny story.

He was in the med center in the infield there. It was him and another doctor, and he was having like a post-lunch nap. He was just snoozing in his chair. And my accident happens and the guy sees it on the thing and he could. just tell that it's bad. And so he was eating these little, those little peanut butter pretzel bite things with his lunch. And he said he threw one and it hit my doctor right in the middle of his forehead. He woke up. He woke up. He was like, hey, Dufus, get up. We got work to do. And so my doctor, because I wasn't allowed to keep anything from the car, he went and got me one of those things

framed as the pretzel that kicked his butt into gear so he could save my life. So that sits in the office proudly. That's funny. And Marco has the notes, which I've been our hilarious to look at at this point. It's funny because, so Marco, you know, Dale, you probably follow him on social media and stuff. Kid loves to run, loves to run, loves to tell people he's running. And so it's always this inside joke with us that he's always like busting out 5Ks and tweeting and Instagramming about busting out 5Ks, right? So I'm laying there in hospital, I'm like, you know, what happened? Am I going to be okay? Can I drive again, all these serious things. And then, and then Marco says something like, you know, nice and sweet and uplifting and motivating to me. And I write back, and I was like, don't worry,

I'll be busting out 5Ks in no time. And he reads the note and he looks up with the doctor, and goes, he's fine. I'm going to head out back to the train. That's great. So you, Smith-Peterson Racing, you were driving for them, they become Aero McLaren. Right? Yes. And and then they let you go and that was a big shock for you. You know, that came out of nowhere. Yeah, I mean, in a lot of ways, yes. I mean, we had a contract. So it wasn't like I wasn't in a contract year. Yeah. And there were a lot of changes coming in with McLaren and then switching from Honda to Chevy Motors. And I've been a Honda guy almost my entire career and had really close ties with those guys back up in Canada and whatever. So it was a lot of change for me. And, you know,

when it all first kind of kicked off, I asked them straight up. I was like, hey, I realized this is a lot of change. Are you looking to change the driver lineup? Because I get it. Like I understand how this works. And if that's a path you're going down, just give me heads up. Just let me know. Because at that point I had, as soon as the Chevy thing was announced, I had Honda teams

calling me saying like, hey, man, are you getting out of there? And I said, no, I've got a contract. You know, like I'd love to stick with Honda, but I've got a contract. I got to honor that. And was told that everything was fine until, you know, way late in the year when all rides are gone, they decided to say, oh, yeah, we're actually, we're not going to honor your contract next year. So it was a shock because we've been told that we were good to go.

And I had made a lot of sacrifices and separated relationships to kind of hold on my end of the bargain. But it's business. It is what it is. And everything happens for a reason. I do truly believe that, you know, and I now have, you know, made it, made it back to Andrade Autosport, which is team I had a great run with, you know, 12, 13, 14 and an incredible new partner in Genesis that I think, you know, we're going to be together for a long time. And those opportunities

wouldn't have come around otherwise. So it's, the way it went down, yeah, it wasn't the best. But at the end of the day, man, like I said, everything happens for a reason. And I think I'm in as good a spot as I've ever been. Yeah, you're running. part-time schedule with Andretti this year. How much pressure, I think, do you put on yourself to get the results in each and every opportunity? I guess let me know how much pressure you feel and how close do you feel to being able to announce a full-time ride.

Like, what's the obstacles for you? For sure. So, you know, in terms of, in terms of the pressure, you know, I think as a driver, you know, put so much pressure on ourselves every time we get in a car, regardless of any kind of external factors. And that's not going to change. You know, I, people were like, oh, you, do you really just want to beat those guys? Blah, blah, blah. I'm like, no, I want to beat everybody, you know. And I've, I've never been, every guy's different, right? Every, every driver's mind is different. And some guys are fueled by, like, anger or, you know, you know, those guys that get, like, hit on the first lap of a race and sent to the back

and then just just drive storm through the field because they're just anger, just driving with the red mist and go straight through. That's never been my style. You know, I'm, I like to stay cool and calm in the car as best I can. That's when I do my best. And so I can't change anybody else's deal. I can't focus on anybody else's thing. I focus on me, what I can do, what I can control.

And I know we've got a great team around us for Indy this year. And Dreddy's always got great cars at the speedway. And so the pressure is there, but the pressure is there because I want to do well. And I want to do well for my team and for my partners. And then hopefully, yeah, that sets you up great for next year. And we've certainly already started those conversations. Genesis is such a, it's such a unique story because this was their first, you know, foray into racing.

And 2020 is a hell of a year to try to get a motorsport. No kidding. Right. And so, you know, we had a three race deal. Luckily, all three of my races were races that stayed on the calendar. So the first one was Texas, which Genesis was actually the entitlement sponsor of. Then we did the NDGP and then now the 500. we haven't had fans at any of those races.

So we've got this company that's new to racing. And they've, I mean, they've gone over the time. And it's been awesome. They bought billboards around town. They bought out all the ad space in the airport. Like they are all in. It's just awesome to see. And they haven't seen their car on track in person yet.

And it's like, it's just heartbreaking for me. We want to share that experience with them and show them, you know, what they've done. I think we're going to get some of them, hopefully out at some point during the week here at Indie. But the fact that they're still, you know, excited about talking, you know, 2021 and beyond is a testament to what a great company it is

and what a great program we've put together. So fingers crossed, you know, in the next, I don't know, not too distant future will be announced in something full time. Well, you mentioned the ND500 coming up. How do you approach that race? I mean, you said it's a different year. All this, all this experience through COVID and all the limitations has changed everything for, you know, just for everybody in the country, but motorsports as well. What will the Indy 500 be like this year for the series? It's not even in May, which is so weird. It is.

But it's still the N.E. 500. It's still the biggest spectacle and the biggest most important motorsport event in North America, which it was hard for me to say for many years until I went to it and saw it in person. But it's no denying its importance. You know, what's a good day? What's a good run for you? What are you willing to accept? Obviously, there's the win.

There's a podium, a top five, but what are you willing to walk out of there and go, okay, I'm happy with that. So, you know, when you're running a limited schedule and when you're, you know, the extra car on a team, we nickname it, we call it the bonus Jonas, right? So when you're like that extra, that extra car, extra, oh, yeah, there's another one?

I didn't know. Yeah. There's always going to be, it's always a little bit more of a challenge. You know, I haven't had the opportunity to gel with my engineer as much. I haven't had as much time on track, all that stuff, whatever. So you always come in with some kind of tempered expectation. You always want to win, and especially indie, like you said. I mean, it's definitely a different year. It's going to feel weird, but it's still the 500 and it's still 33 cars going out there doing battle.

And what I leave there thinking, okay, job done is if everyone on my team, you know, my engineers, my mechanics, myself, we kind of look each other in the eye at the end of the day and said, that was the best job we could have done. And there's just, there's so many things outside of your control and a race, as you know. And I always try really hard to not put like a quantitative goal on the table for me and my team because we could do everything. that's in our control that would achieve that, but something totally out of our control could throw it out. I don't want us to feel like we failed because the result wasn't what it should have been or what it could have been, right? So at the end of the day, we can all look at each other and say, look,

I drove my tail off on track, make good decisions, the engineers made good strategy calls and set the car up right. The mechanics did their job, buttoned everything up. We're good in the pit stops. If we did all those things, changes are the results going to be something you're pretty happy with anyway. But even if it's not, that that's something we can be proud of because that's something you can build on for the future. Well, man, we appreciate your time today.

You're one of the most respected guys in the series. You know, the little bit that I've really kind of been able to get behind the closed doors of IndyCar. You're mentioned and respected and appreciated by most all the series. And it's a great opportunity to have you on our show to talk about your N8500 coming up. and to tell your story, we didn't get to everything. So we'll have to get you back on here to talk a little bit more about what's going on in your life. And hopefully we got more to announce and more to talk about next year. For sure, man.

Yeah, so thank you, Hinchtown. And where does Hinchtown come from? Who gave you that? It came from a basement office in Luddington, Michigan, over a case of beer. When we were trying to come up with something clever, after 24 beers, that's that's as good as we can do. Sometimes the best ideas come from a case of beer. Canadians have beer stories.

I don't know if we know that or not. I should have a couple good ideas by the end of this week. You Canadians like to drink, right? We sure do. We sure do. That's what we have to get into. I'm here in my office and it's never far away from it. Oh my God, this guy.

Look at him. Burbin. Yeah, absolutely. Well, man, we appreciate it. Thanks for coming on. No, thanks, man. We have to have you on. I got a podcast with Alexander Rossi that we do.

got to have you on someday. Wow. Yeah, I'd love to, man. Let me know. Awesome. I'll be there. Yeah, yeah. We'll set it up, bud. You got it. Hey, good luck in Indy. We'll be watching. Thanks very much. Yep. Appreciate you guys. We really need to have you at this table and really just just so much better than over Zoom. Right. And pour one of these and get into it.

Yeah. That's what that's welcome inside these doors. Yes, it is. We've done it in the mornings. Yes. Love it, man. All right, man. Yeah, let's do it. We'll see you soon. Take care, man. All right. We'll see in a bit, guys. Thank you. Leafs suck.

See you. Oh. Look at that. Low blow, man. I'm still in mourning. All right. See you guys. Thanks again.

All right, guys. We got Jeff Dickerson on here. Let's bring him in. There he is. Look at this guy. Got his ear buds in. Just like a... Look at this.

It's like welcome. Yeah, it's 2020. There you go. Hi, folks. We got Jeff Dickerson here on the last. Jeff, I've known you for a while. Spire was an agency or is an agency, right, that represents drivers. Is that how it started? So we started, we had this weird concept. We were not just going to represent drivers at Spire, right? Because, you know, when we first started, this is probably

in 2009 or 10, right? It was after that first economic kind of drop. So we kind of had this crazy scheme, where it was, you can represent all the drivers in the world, but if there's no teams, right, for them to drive for, then who are they going to drive for? Yeah. Right. So we started working with, um, with teams and sponsors. And we figured that if we brought those sponsors to teams, well, the first time, if they needed a driver, they would call us, right? So that was our idea. Well, man, we'll, we'll work with the teams, we'll work with the sponsors and we'll work with the drivers and we'll just see if it works and somehow it worked. Right? And so, you know, at Spire, I think, I think it's always, it's always sexy to talk about the drivers and their, you know, contracts and stuff like that. But it was, you know, the drivers were probably only 10 or 15% of the business. It was bringing sponsors and, and working with teams.

And then you, you know, just recently, you bought the 77 charter from Furniture Row in 2018. So what makes you guys go, okay, we're going to have, we got the, we got the sponsors and the driver's deal so we can take that package to teams. Now I want to. own a team. Why would you guys want to buy that charter? So that's a great question too. We didn't at first, right? So we worked, you know, one of the teams we worked with was Furniture Row. We drove a lot of the sponsorships that they had. We drove, you know, to them. And so what we really wanted to do was sell that charter for them, right? And it would have been a lot less. We would have made probably a lot more money. and we would have, you know, just gone about our merry way. But Barney was talking to my partner, TJ, in Vegas,

and he said, well, why don't you guys do it? And we're like, yeah, we don't, you know, how the heck are we going to do that, right? And so, but that's essentially how it, you know, how it started. And so, and it all happened super fast. It all happened about in a week in September or October of 2018. And, you know, we had to pull a lot of things together in a short period of time. but it essentially put us to where we are today. So you didn't want to be a,

you didn't want to own the charter. Now he says, why don't you own the charter? I will sell it to you. At some point, you guys had to go, okay, so this is going to,

you know, this is going to work out for us. What happened? So it was, you know, and Mike, it's, it's hard to say it,

right? So it's like, you know, we, obviously gen 7, or next gen is it's called now, gen 7 was being whispered about then, right?

And being talked about then for 2020. The new car. And so, and the new car. And so what we were like, it's like, okay, well, we could, we could try to bridge this or do this, you know, because again, we were, we had to do something super fast, right? And the, and in some ways, you know, we had to find somebody that was, you know, just as, just as crazy as us, you know, to do it, right? And so that's, that's where we, you know, when we ended up over a premium and, and with Jay. But the bet was always on Gen 7. Jay Robinson, you know.

Jay Robinson, yeah. So the bet was always on Gen 7. That was, you know, I had kind of, you know, coming from the IndyCar stuff myself, you know, and still having clients, like you just said, one of ours on, I think, before me, right, is, you know, we see how that model works. So working really close with Chip. Now, I'm not saying let's make NASCAR IndyCar, but there are components of NASCAR that we could probably learn from over here and we're kind of hoping that Gen 7 was it.

And so, you know, we've been building teams, right? So when we talk about Teams junior and working with teams, you know, there's guys that we helped get for your 88 team, right, because we work with Mr. H, right? So we've been building teams for a long time. And so our thought was, as the industry maybe contracts a little bit and Gen 7 comes on and there's people, well, okay, we've been building teams for others. Maybe this is something we can just do for ourselves, right? So it was more about controlling our own destiny. And just to make one other point, when we talk about the agency business, you know, the agency business can be fickle, right? always one no away from, you know, being hurt, right? There's, you know, drivers have, you know,

family and wives and girlfriends and everybody can do their job better than, or your job better than you. Right. And so, you know, you never know what you're going to wake up to in the morning. And so this was just a matter. And when we talk about the other properties that we have, it's about controlling our own destiny and we believe in, in this ownership model. All right. The rumor out there is that you guys are buying the 95 charter. Is that true? I am here to announce to you. We have bought the 95 charter. What is it, what happens when you go into buying, like

who's, are you, you know, are you bidding on this? Are there other people interested in buying it? Do you have to outbid everyone? Do you have to present some sort of plan for the company going forward? What are the, how does that happen? What, what, what's the process?

All of that. Like, you just nailed it. Like, all of that. So, I think there's a, you know, and, and, and, You know, it's not like I'm riffing through my NASCAR talking points or anything here for a second, right? But I think there's this misnomer that charter values are going down. Okay? And I am, you know, it's funny.

And again, on the agency side, you know, you might find yourself in some dark alleys every once in a while. And, you know, so you go down one of these dark alleys and you're just like, hey, what are you guys doing here? Right? And I mean, so, like, everybody, there was so many people that were on this charter. It's not to my business to talk about other charters that are going on in the sport, but the charter market is robust, right? The charter market values are going up. I don't think I'm talking out of line there, right?

And so, you know, are you outbidding people? Yes. Are you giving a vision? Yes. I mean, when you're talking about somebody like Bob Levine that, you know, was working with his family and pouring, you know, I mean, you guys saw him, you know, I mean, how he connects with fans and so forth. Like, he's just a salt to the earth guy.

To us, anyway, I don't think it was a matter of, hey, man, here's my asking price, like it's real estate. He wanted to know the vision. He wanted to know who was involved. You wanted to know where we were going, right? And so, you know, we had to check all those boxes. So what's the answer to that? Where are you going? Well, his shop, hopefully, right?

His shop, okay. But you have a vision. I mean, your initial vision was, no, you didn't want, you weren't getting into this to own charter. Now you got two. Now you're a two charter owner. You've announced it here. What's the plan? Because I love last week as we're doing our show, Leah drops in and says that the Levine family is selling their charter.

And we were like, oh, wow. And then five minutes later, she reads it. Adam Stern tweet says, it looks like that Spire is going to buy it. And we just looked at each other. We were like, what does this mean? Yeah. What is Spire doing? So what is Spire doing?

Yeah, look, I think there's a level of skepticism that, is natural and healthy, right? I remember when we first did the 78 charter, we had a meeting with Steve Phelps and Steve O'Donnell. And I mean, you guys are insiders, so you guys know what we do, right? And he was making this point where he said, you guys have done all this and nobody's going to know.

You know what you're going to be known as? It doesn't matter if you did this and did that. They're going to be known as whatever you are on Sundays because it's the most public product that NASCAR has. Right? So if you're looking at, and I'm not going to lie, you know, sometimes, you know, over the last couple years, you know, some of that criticism stinks because we're like, man, maybe we're not as much on the inside as we thought, right? But it's, it's, you know, because, you know, you can't say like, you're like, man, you guys are running like 33rd. It's like, yeah, but did you see the deal we just did over here?

Right. Did you see the insurance? I just got this driver. Yeah, it's just like, disability insurance. It's cool. Don't you guys know? So, you know, like nobody in that's, and again, but it's kind of the truth that it, like, it stinks a little bit because I think we've been contributors to the sport, right? I mean, we've driven in, you know, I don't want to say hundreds of millions of dollars of sponsorship, but we've done our share.

There's sponsors on your car right now, Jr., you know, that we work with, right? So it's like, you know, we contribute. And, you know, so when you're saying, like, what's the plan, it's hard to say this in a manner where you don't want to say it. in a way it's like we want to run better and do better things but i don't want to say that in a way like we're knocking where we're at right because those guys work just as hard as the guys at hendrick and those guys travel just as far to the races as hendrick and they leave their families just as as long right but you know but perhaps we're trying to um in emsa terms maybe we're trying to you know instead of gtd we're trying to run it you know gtlm you know and and just kind of take it

step by step and, you know, maybe the best way to say it is, we want to do exactly what Bob was doing, right? The 95 car was on a good path, right? That's what we want to do, right? I mean, when we did furniture row, it seemed like when we bought it, we're just like, hey, no do you guys remember when the 78 used to show up and, like, miss races, you know? So, you know, that's our plan and that's what we're doing. All right. Well, I guess the, And that's totally understandable and acceptable if I'm just a fan, which I am. So I'm sitting here and I'm like, all right, you know, you guys are, you know, you're going to take this 77 car and I'm going to assume that your vision for the 77 car

and the 95 team that you're buying, that both of those charters, we call them charters, but I'm going to say they're race teams, you know, their cars, their people, their motors, their drivers, they go perform. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say, all right, well, you're now on, you're now, you now hope, and we all hope that you're on the same path that Bob started on, that furniture rows started on, that you have a realistic opportunity to ladder up and improve year after year after year. Is there a point, and if that happens, right, if you guys, get more and more competitive. Is there a point where the lines sort of cross as far as, okay, you're representing, you know, you represent sponsors on other cars, other teams,

you represent a lot of different drivers across all different series. Is there a point, I guess, where ownership of these charters, performance on the racetrack and the investment and focus on that project, in-house project, is it cross a line where just tough, to maybe tough decisions have to be made about your business model, you know, where you, you know, is there ever a time where those could conflict or? Yeah. And, and, and I know I just said this like every question you've asked,

Jr. I think that's a super question and a fair, you know, that's a fair question, right? Conflict of interest always comes up, right? And so, and maybe that's when I said, hey, maybe I didn't know that we were on as much on the inside as we thought, right? Because, like, I look at that NASCAR garage and I look at it as a combination. of interests, okay? Yeah.

And because I think, you know, and I'm not saying it just like this, right? We have team owners that are broadcasters intent, right? We have, you know, we have, you know, we have engine suppliers that race there against. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, it's more like a combination of interest. But to your question, the answer is, I can say to your yes. And we are making changes with our agency, right? Our agency is going to have to stand on its own, you know, our agency.

our agency is going to have to do some things. And I'm not saying this any other way. It's like, I think you can certainly say how much money we now have invested in the ownership model. It's like, yeah, man, I mean, that's something we're going to have to work through and are working through. You know, and our partners are important to us. And we don't do anything without consulting them, right?

Like, you know, you know, you know, I haven't done any, you know, I didn't do anything without calling Mr. Hendrick, right? I didn't do anything without calling, you know, Chip and those guys in Toyota. it. I didn't call anybody. Right? Or I didn't, I didn't, we didn't do this without talking to them. But is there a line? Yes. Is it there a line? You know, something just popped in and I hope, again, I might be rambling. It's just like, but you know, Mr. H asked me the other day. I hope he doesn't get mad saying, he's saying this, right? But it's just like, hey, you know, what are you guys doing? You know, like, what do you guys have, you know, working over there? And I was like, well, sir, if I had a $15 million sponsor, it wouldn't be on my car, right? It'd be on your car. But there's obviously going to come a time. where, and it might be when we actually start racing better, you know what I mean, or we start running into people. Yeah. Where that line, we might think it's way out here, you know, shoot, man, it might be next

week if we run into, yeah, it might be next week if we run into something, you know, so. Okay, so what happens, you know, so you guys moving into the 95 shop, is that, is that what I'm hearing? We will be moving into the 95 shop after the season. And then the 70s? Hold on. We'll take control of the place after the season. Yeah, yeah, it's not, you know, I haven't already put my feet up on Bob's desk yet.

Sure. It's just. Do you have, are y'all, do you all plan on having a full-time driver in that car? We do plan on having one or two full-time drivers. Yeah. And, and again, and, Junior, you guys make these decisions all the time, too. I mean, I don't think it's any, I think that Ross Chastain is the best driver available. period at the moment.

And I wish that Mr. H would take a run at him on the 48. I wish Chip would put him in the 42. And as an agency guy, I'm just like, man, I wish that guy would do that. As a team owner, I'm just like, well, if these guys aren't smart enough to put them in this car, I hope we get them. You know what I mean? Whether it's Ross or whether it's Justin Haley, you know, I mean, it's like those are two guys that I, you know, I mean, if nothing else, they stand on the gas, right?

And I think we're going to, you know, need to do that. and there's probably a couple others, but, you know, I don't want to, you know, now I, you know, it's in the club, you know, I don't want to betray any, you know, contracts or anything of that. You know, I want those guys to. But when you're talking about drivers, those are two that are top of our list. Can you speak to how Spire or anyone can afford to buy a charter? Charters are multi-million dollar investments.

Yeah. Is it a, is it a bulk? purchase? Is it something that's pieced together? Is it incentive-based? What is it? How does it work? I will tell you this. On the 78 Charter, when Barney said he would help

us, I think we were, as you know, there's many definitions of help. We were hoping in a sense that he would carry the note, right? Or we were hoping that we were going, you know, there was some reduction in price. Help pay for it. Right? Yeah. Yeah. It was like, hey, can we just have it, you know?

You know, man, we tried selling it. I mean, sorry. You know, but no, you know, you have to pay for them, right? And I think that's part of that is, you know, you obviously as what we do, right? I mean, we make commissions, right? So everybody can see stickers on cars and go around in circles and know that there's our sponsors. And that's how we pay it, right? We also have, you know, somehow a good relationship with our bank that,

trust us, right? And they deserve a plug. I mean, a Questa, right? But, you know, it's just like, you know, but that's how you have to, you have to have the means to do it, whether you're, you know, donating blood to get the money or whether you're borrowing it. You got to, you got to have it. What do you get when you buy a charter, though, like, other than the obvious of the properties and stuff? I mean, is there a certificate of member that comes with it, that you hang on your wall in, like, charter member? What, is it coming in a nice little package in an envelope. I mean, what, what, what, what, what, what are we looking at here? It's a, it's like a phone book, man. You know what I mean? Like, it's a member of those, you know,

but it's just like it's, I think it's, you know, it's just like a bunch of papers, right? You sign your, your charter agreement. And, uh, you know, you go through the car wash, right? I mean, it's, it's, it's just like trying to buy the Yankees, although it's less, right? I mean, you give them your financials. You give them. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, you go through a process. It wasn't it wasn't as easy as as I thought. You know, it's funny on the, on the hockey side, you know, it's the same thing.

They just, you know, they get into your stuff and you're like, man. It's like, okay. I mean, we had never been through it before, right? So, I mean, for us, it was a little jarring, but I mean, I think we obviously passed the test. Hey, real quick, you mentioned about the Gen 7 car being sort of the motivation from the beginning, but now the Gen 7 car, I mean, the goalposts have moved. That's right. That's right. So what is that doing to you? So I think that we did, well, look, it wasn't, NASCAR didn't unilaterally wake up one day and said we're moving the Gen 7.

No, understood. Right. So, so we had a, you know, we had to say, you know, just like every team, we had a, we had a vote in how that was going to go. Or at least we felt like we had a vote. Right. So what is it? So for us anyway, why we did this now. Maybe that's what you're like, why would you do it now if the goalposts are moving? Right. Right. Again, it's kind of it. Yeah, it's kind of, again, it's controlling our own destiny. There's going to be a lot of variables going into gen 7. And for us, right? And I guess this is for us, globally, it was let's, if we can do this now, it's just what, I mean, it sounds so bad to say. It's one less headache that we have going into the 22 season, right? We're not chasing charters.

We're not chasing a building. For us, it's as much the building as it is anything else, right? We can now put all of our companies under one roof and, you know, at least save fuel, right? So that's so, you know, but yeah, it moves. And I think next year, yeah, it's, I mean, it's, it's a bridge year. I mean, we, and look, we got to buy cars, right? Like, we got to, we got to go run a race team next year. I don't, I don't think the fans are going to care that Gen 7s and 22 are not. We have to be on the track. So we have to essentially buy cars twice. You know what I mean? But we want to have our people in place. We want to have, you know, a notebook full of information. And let's face it, we're going to screw up and we're going to screw up a lot. So perhaps next year is just the best

year to just get it out of the way. Could you take us behind the curtain a little? Because I know, you know, there's been some chatter. Are you guys going to be a set, some sort of secret satellite team for a bigger organization? Can you take me, take us behind the curtain of what that was like getting the charter, talking with NASCAR, and that sort of deal. So you guys just heard the tone. I think it was junior that asked essentially like, what the hell were you guys doing, right? I mean, that's essentially the question, right? Like, what was that?

And so imagine us walking into Steve Phelps and Steve O'Donnell and imagine that their tone, you know, because they had just seen us like this, right? As everybody else in the industry had, they just, they're agents, right? And they bring, you know, whether it's drivers or sponsors or whatever. I think everybody had an idea what we did. that are just like, what the hell are these two? You know, what are they up to? What are they up to?

So, so, you know, essentially what in that meeting with Phelps is when he said, you know, the first thing they wanted to know is that because of our relationship with Mr. H, that we were not going to be the fifth Hendrick team, right? And because just like, I think you asked like, how do you guys have the means? I mean, of course they know us, right? But they're just like, where the hell are these guys getting the money? Certainly, Mr. Hates, somebody is. bank rolling this thing, right? And so, um, so that was the first part. They just wanted to make sure that

we weren't the fifth JGR team or the fifth Hendrick team, right? So, and that's again, those, those words. And, um, and, and look, that's where I think we have taken that privacy, you know, like that has been almost like a mantra of ours, right? I don't think our clients want us on the papers. Like, you know, I mean, besides, I think Mike, when, when I spotted Virginia and I did this, it's like, it's not like I'm out doing tons of interviews, you know, we're doing those things anymore, right? So, you know, but you almost get like where you're apologizing. I mean, we're apologizing that we have a charter, right?

I mean, we're apologizing that we, you know, we won Daytona, right? I mean, it's like, you know, I'm sorry. Yeah, it's like we're sorry we won. You know what I mean? Sorry we have this charter. You know, so I think it, it was, it was Phelpson. It was essentially Phelps and Chip, we're very, very instrumental where Phelps was, because we were going to name it, I just see like the

dirty moe sign there. We were going to name it dirty mo racing, right? You know what I mean? Like, we were going to do something cool, right? And he was just like, no, call it spire. Like you guys get out of the shadow, right? And so that's where he was kind of talking about how you run on Sundays is going to matter because that's how you're going to be known. Nobody cares of the deals you guys do. Right. So, and it was Chip, you know, during the rain delay at Daytona, right? It's like we knew what was, I mean, look, it was a hostage situation that took seven hours because there's just like, there's just no way we're going to win this race, right? But in the middle of it, we said, you know, chip calls. And I said, man, I'm sorry, you know, because remember they were they were leading.

Remember that him and him and Landon, they were running one, too, and they pitted. We don't have anything to lose, right? So he's just like, don't apologize. We all had the same opportunities. We all had the same opportunities to pit, you know, or not pit, right? And it's kind of like a metaphor for this, right it's just like you know we get the night we got the 95 it i don't think it was just because we put more money on the table i think it's bob saw what we're trying to do right we bought the 78 because we were we had tried to sell it to everybody so it's just always kind of as i'm saying like there's always going to be skepticism right but i think we have to stop apologizing for like what we're you know kind of doing right and so this that brings up a question for me if you said okay you

you took the 78, you took the 78 charter and tried to sell it to everybody. That's right. And then, and you're telling me that, but you're also telling me that charter values are going up. That's right. So why were you not able to sell that 78? What's the answer to that if the values are going up? Well, I'm saying the values are going, like 95 charter, the charter values are going up. You know what I mean?

Since then, just in a couple years? Just in a couple years, the values changed? Yeah. Oh, yeah. How did that happen? I'm completely clueless. Tell me how it happened. I mean, some of that's the marketing, right?

Some of that is people want to have it, right? I, you know, like, I wish I had an answer for that, right? I would also say that maybe that 78 charter maybe had, how do I say this the right way? There were perhaps some strings attached, right? because I think obviously JGR and Fronten-Turo had an alliance, right? So I don't know how, you know, I think you can. I understand what you're trying to say, right? So people had it, people, but depending upon what you take on,

in addition to the charter itself, that determines its value. And with this 95, it was basically the cleanest slate. The 95 for us was, it was just like, don't go out of business tomorrow, Jr., but it was just like if you went out of business down the street here, right? Yep. And we went in there and we bought a charter, your stuff. You know what I mean? And so we got in a building, right?

So that's, it was, the 95 was clean for us where perhaps others may have been just trying to part it out. Got you know what I mean. So, you know, we are not, we weren't into trying to part it out business. We were just like, hey, let's rock. Is that what? On the seventh. Is that what Bob was so intrigued? It's got to be.

Well, I mean, you don't think. think it's, you don't think it's our good looks? I mean, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, but it's, it's, it's a deal is a deal, right? You go into those things. You don't know exactly what they're looking for. We did a vision. I'm just trying to give you a variable. It's like, hey, things are different. You don't, you don't really know, right? I just, what, you know, what I had said earlier in the call when I was like, you know, maybe we were, you know, a little put off by the criticism. What we just didn't understand on the 78 is we offered to, I mean, we literally went to everybody in the sport and said here.

You know what I'm saying? And then it's just like we did it over here. And then after we bought it and then we went a race, everybody's like, what the hell of those guys doing? Yeah, jerks. You know what I mean? Coming here, stunting our game. And you had an opportunity to buy this thing. We were the ones trying to sell it. And it was and it was beachfront property. Remember, it was, you know, I don't think I'm talking out of school here, right? It was the number two or number three chartering the sport. Right. So we tried. But, but I am telling, it is absolutely. true that from the fall of 18 to the moment I'm talking to you, charter values are increasing,

right? Like there is a real market for these, and there are several groups trying to obtain them, both inside the sport and outside the sport. I'm saying that unequivocally, that's true. Is it Spire's interest to ever sell this charter? What's more interesting to you, I guess, personally, is it building this team up and winning a championship or having victories celebrating and success? Or is it taking this charter five years from now and selling it for twice, twice of what you paid for it? What's the – Yeah.

No, it's the first one, right? Because here's the thing for us, junior, again, you know, it's hard to – I know not everybody knows me or anything I guess. It's just like we don't come from anything, right? It's not like – so we're just – we're building and building and building. So we could sell a charter tomorrow, right? I mean, you can insert whatever value you want. I don't think I'm allowed to talk about, you know, at least on the record, how much we paid for it, right?

But it's like, they're going up. But that's not kick your feet up money and you're at the pool all day. Right. You know what I mean? Like it's like, you know, I'm, I try to think I'm still kind of, and TJ, my partner, or I couldn't do any of this without. I still think we're young guys, right? So it's like, this is our 20 and 30 year plan.

Copy. Okay. I mean, that's, we just don't have. the fast forward button where you guys can see like this is what we want to do right it's just we want to win races we want to win championships we want to do it just out everybody that your role models and our role models that's how we want to do it right we just we just have to show everybody that that's what we're trying to do but we're not um if we wanted to sell our charter we could i mean right now we'd we'd sell our 77 charter and we'd make a pretty good clip on what we you know what i'm saying

but it's just not, that's not what we're, that's not what we're trying to do. Got it. I think, you know. Has he earned your confidence? I did. I think that's a great way. I'm confident. Thank you.

I'm satisfied. You don't have to apologize to us, pal. No. I'll tell you what. That's a great way to end this conversation. And I want to tell you, you didn't have to come on here. You didn't have to come tell us all that information. It was incredible.

And I hope that, yeah, I hope that you being able to spell that out to us. I hope it's a, it's a, received the same way across the board for anyone else who hears it and good luck man i think it's i'll be honest with you it's a brave undertaking and uh it's you got to be you got to you got to be brave you got to be brave and a little bit scared and a little bit crazy yeah yeah look it means a lot for you guys to say that and certainly for you to say that junior i mean like we're like man we've we could have just been doing what we were doing right we're missing They can, you know what I mean?

Like that agency business is, it was, it was great. It is great, right? I mean, it's like you're not, I mean, it's, it's fickle, but man, what a life. But, you know, like, essentially like, you know, you see, I mean, I like to think I got a pretty nice little house and everything. You know what I mean? It's just like, I mean, we risked everything. We've risked everything on this.

And that's when you're, you know, that's where you're just kind of, that's the scary part. Right. So it's like when we say, hey, man, we believe in it. It's not like we believe in it. And then we're just like, oh, yeah. It's like we really do believe in it because we put everything behind it. Everything's on the line for you. Yeah, like no like no shit.

Like that's the truth. Well, man, you turned me from a skeptic to a fan. You know, knowing this, no one sort of this background on the backstory on all this, it's got me hoping that this is going to work out. We're trying. When you texted me and I started asking you, I thought you were, I just knew from what you were telling me, I'm like, I called Dale, honestly, during the race, I felt real bad about that, Dale, while you were broadcasting. I'm like, I think what he's saying, we may want

to really kind of unpack, because it may be interesting. I don't know, you know, how much our fans care about charters and ownership and buying all that, but I knew you would. Oh, yeah. And, Jeff, you've been a friend of ours for a long time. Well, I think the other thing, too, is, is there's, I don't know that this, I don't know anybody's heard the story this way, right? To change sort of the perception of what that 77 car is about and what the 95 becomes. That'll be if more people hear this, that'll be good.

You can help me here where it's just like on that 95, it's like, are we going to run like the 95 that has the 18 cars? No, but if like if we can go to a time machine like two or three years back on the 95 that's our step, you know what I mean? Like we're just trying to, we're trying to do what Archie's doing. You know what I mean? Like we're trying to run

25th to 20th, right? That's where we're trying to jump up and just be in the race. Yep. So, I think that's that's reasonable. Yes, sir. That's what we're trying to do. Thanks again for coming on. Thanks, you guys.

Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you. See you guys. Valvaline is all about originals because they are the original motor oil company. We've talked about the original race, the Chicago Times Herald race in 1895, the slushy streets of Chicago. I thought that was going to be the name of the race. The slushy 100.

It was crazy. Crazy. Valvillin was on board now. Let's talk about a different type of race. But not in the 1800s. I'm talking about this guy. next to me, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Hey! Give us the details

on your first ever race. All right. My first ever race, I was running a go-cart at Sanford, North Carolina, South Carolina. North Carolina. North Carolina. I didn't know nothing.

I think I started... Didn't even know what state it's it. Yeah, I didn't. I think it's from where JD McDuffie might have been from. Was he from that area? Yes, he was from Sanford. I think you're right.

Yes. Yeah. Hey, see he's there? What were you saying, Mike? I don't know where I started. So heat race is happening, right? Go out for a heat race. I don't know where I started.

All I know is that on the, I was, I think I was coming off turn two, maybe in second place, and I came up on the guy on the outside of me and jumped his tire, and I flipped down the back straightaway. It threw me out of the cart. and so that's in turn two the opening for the track for the carts to come on the track is in turn four the carts are coming around turn three and four dad's jumping over the carts running toward me

and I'm laying on the ground I'm getting up you know him spun around uh don't know where what happened how that happened what the world just happened all I know is I'm going and then I'm flipping He yanks me up. We go over to the go-kart, roll it over. Got a dent in the motor.

They drag it back to the pits, and we go to work on it. Well, Dad goes to work on it. Make sure it starts. Wheels are lined to all the things right. And they got it ready and put me back out on the track for the feature. And I finished like second to last in my first feature at Sanford. Wow. And I got a picture of, from that night.

Mike Herman, Sr. and Mike Herman Jr. were the family that we got, we bought the go-kart from. And we were with them in Sanford together racing. And Dad and Mike Sr. were great friends. Me and Mike Jr., I would go stay at his house and so forth. And we were pals back then. and then we both kind of split off in directions to go racing. Mike Herman Jr.'s a spotter now in the Cup Series. But, yeah, that's my first ever race.

Never heard that story. Yeah, number 03. Oh. And your dad was there. Yeah. I don't recall ever hearing you tell a story about one of your early races where your dad was actually there. That's interesting. He went to that one and then I race like maybe 12 more times in the go-cart at Tyro and a couple of the places.

and he never was that those yeah he sent me with like a friend his would take me a handler or somebody rick boss or somebody all right good story wow stanley stanton stanford stanford sanford sanford sanford there you go valvlin is a proud sponsor of the dale junior download yeah mike they've been around from the beginning and they invented motor oil so they've been around automobiles since the beginning since they needed oil i guess yeah uh they invented racing oil, valvling. They're the original motor oil. Nailed it.

This is a good one. Guess what? We're live. Hey guys, we're live and I want to say this right off the top of the show here. This is Dasz Jr. part of the show. Presented by Zimid. I can do this. He's a trained broadcast professional. Presented by Exfinity.

You're a customer. I'm a customer. They're your partner for Fast Energy. they're also a premier partner for NASCAR. What I'm holding in my hand is an autograph photo, 8 by 10, of Cole Custer. Says, Dale, a day I will never forget. Thanks for all the support. First Cup win, Cole Custer. Thank you, Cole.

That's really nice. I came into the podcast studio today, and this is laying right here on desk. I love that. It's an autograph picture from that first win. Former truck series driver here for Junior Motorsport. Maybe the only truck series driver? He could have just said Dale Coker, but he wrote a little note. Thank you, Cole.

Yeah, Asht Jr. presented by Xfinity. Leah is here. She's got questions ready. I am ready. First question is coming from Brenda Yoder. And she says, it seems the drivers were lukewarm to the choose role after Michigan. Is it because it's new?

And will we see more strategy as this plays out? Well, when it comes to drivers, I would say that a lukewarm response is a, good response because they're all miserable miserable people. I used to be one. And, man, being a driver in the Cup series is a, you know, you're just, you're just disgruntled all the time, you know, because you're in this never-ending quest to perform or find speed or get better. You know, unless you're the winner, you're pretty frustrated. So I think when you get a reasonable response or a middle of the road response on something, that's probably a good thing. I think that, you know, the one thing I like about the choose rule is that we talked about it on the

race. Before, if you're a driver, okay, and man, you know, you're third or fourth, I mean, your third or fifth in line, right? And you know coming up to start, finish line to double up, you've got to go into that inside line in third place or in that inside line in fifth place. And you're I don't want to restart there. This is terrible. I'm having a great day. And now I've got to like have this really great restart. I got to get lucky in all of the things to maintain this track position that I've worked so hard to keep and get.

So that was really frustrating. Imagine, you know, being on the, having to restart on the outside at Martinsville or somewhere where that's, you know, it's really not the preferred line. but you've been running great all day, but now late in the race, you're going to get this terrible preferred line and potentially lose two, four spots, and it's not going to reflect how well you really ran throughout the afternoon.

So with the choose rule, and I know this is obvious to a lot of people, but to choose rule, you get to put yourself where you want to. If you don't want to risk that bottom and you want to go in that top line, you might start eighth or sixth or whatever, but you're in the line you want to be.

be in. Now, so what happens is this is really taking that excuse out of the equation. I was in the wrong line. I had to restart in the wrong line. Now the drivers are tasked with the responsibility of choosing the line they want to be in and now you've chose that line. You've put yourself where you think you need to be for the best restart and the pressure is on them to go out there and improve that or a attain whatever it is their goal is on this restart, right? Whether it's gaining positions, maintaining the positions. It's cool.

So you see the restarts are already intense. Now we're seeing them even more intense because all the drivers are trying to prove, you know, to themselves their team that's sitting on the pit box that they made the right call, you know, and they made the right choice to be in the line that they thought they need to be in. you know if a driver says imagine this man you're third and you choose the outside line

and now you're restarting 6 and you're like hey man I promise you this is the right choice and I'm going to show you on this restart that it's the right choice that's the mentality of the driver whereas it was predetermined before he had to line up wherever he was told to line up and

then he could throw up his hands and go man I was in the wrong line that's why that restart wasn't good that's all gone Now the driver is sort of in this position where he says, I'm going to pick this line, and I've got the responsibility of the entire team to prove that this is the right choice on every single restart. So the restarts are a lot more action-packed.

So I like it. They're not going to use it at the road courses. Probably a good thing. They're not going to use it at the plate tracks. Probably a good thing. The thing about it, you know, the thing about it at the plate tracks is and why you might not want it is because the team,

are going to try to work together, and you want to split that up. For me, the fan, you guys watching, we don't want the teams together. We don't want all the Penske cars together. We don't want all the Toyotas together. We don't break them up, right? When they're together, it gets boring because they won't pass each other. They'll ride in line. So we don't want that, and I think that's what you might get more of

if you have this choose rule at the plate racetracks. Next question is from Crusher 287 on YouTube with us. Hey, junior, do you like the new system they have to set the field? So the new qualifying formula. I do. You know, I think I didn't care about it as far as the draw because it wasn't affecting me. I'm not out there racing. And, you know, if I drew 22nd every other week, I wouldn't, you know, I'd get a little annoyed by that.

So I can see where some of the drivers were pretty frustrated with just the chance. of it, right? This is not a, this is not a, you know, racing and sports in general isn't a game of just chance. You want to be able to feel like you always have some control over your destiny. Always, right? So this, this gives the drivers some control over where they're going to start the next race. Now, as a fan and as a viewer, it's going to put the faster guys toward the front, you know, it's going to put the better, you know, better cars toward the front. If, you know, the double headers, what's kind of fun. One of the fun things about the double headers is they invert to top 20 for the second race.

Kind of like that, you know. Slower cars toward the front. Now watching them guys kind of claw their way back through the field is a fun thing in that first stage. And this kind of goes against that. But again, I think that the drivers should have some control and some effort and input into where they start. If we can have qualifying, this is a good solution. Next question coming from DITEC Cup Series. What do you expect of the Daytona Road course this weekend?

Calm, carnage, or a decent blend with a lot of fun racing throughout? Well, that's hard to predict, to be honest with you. The road course, the falloff, I think, on this tire is going to be big. I think they're going to slow down quite a bit over the course of the run. The interior, you know, it's a Daytona, it's kind of a beachy, sandy aggregate in the interior of the racetrack. There's not a lot of road course in the Daytona Roval when you really look at it. There's a couple corners in the infields pretty straightforward, not super technical,

and then you're back out on the oval. You've got the chicanal on the back straightaway. You're going to have this new kink on the front straightaway that I was hoping that they weren't going to use or need, but they feel like they need it. They're worried about them, I guess, going so fast into turn one, like they're not professional race car drivers or something. But I feel like that there'll be some carnage on restarts. You know, we have the heartburn turn at the Roval in term one,

where Chase Elliott goes nose first into the tires and then comes back and wins the race. I think we're going to have some things that happen badly for some guys on that first turn. It's really slick and you can kind of misjudge how much speed you can carry into that corner. It's sort of this turn that tightens as you get deeper into it, right? So you get kind of tricked into going in there a little farther than you should. And all of a sudden, you come up on this tight kind of finish on turn one and you're going to miss that.

So there'll be some tough stuff there happening. I don't know otherwise. I think that, you know, the roval, you know, the length of the oval portion of this road course will allow these guys kind of to get away from each other. So it's going to be a hard race to, it's going to be hard to predict. I don't expect it to have sort of that action-pack, you know, wild stuff that we've seen at the roval. And we didn't see that every time at the roval, but the roval's been well-received at Charlotte. So I think this will be little, this will look a little different. Such a big racetrack.

I think they'll get a little more spread out and get away from each other. I wouldn't be surprised if it looks a lot like what we see there with the, you know, with 24 hours and any other, you know, a series that uses that part of the racetrack. One more question quickly from Charlie H. Now that you are the official, it's bow time voice. I'm curious, what's your favorite thing on the Bojangles menu? I saw that question on Twitter.

The fries. the seasoned fries. I got fries are pretty dang good to begin with and you put this bojangal seasoning on them and they become next level. I got a bunch of they sell, you know, I think they sell that seasoning in little cans and I got a bunch of that at home and it's good on chicken or anything else you want to put it on. So I use that a lot but the fries are are my favorite. All right, that's all for today.

All the boberry biscuits too. I got a bunch of those frozen in my freezer. Yeah, you can buy them, froze, freeze them, and eat them when you want. All right, guys, I appreciate it. Got to be fast in our sport, and Exfinity knows a thing or two about that. With Xfinity, get blazing fast Wi-Fi without any pit stops. X-Fi delivers the speed, coverage security, and control that you need to stay

connected to NASCAR and Dirty Mode Media all season long. This is beyond Wi-Fi. This is X-Fi. like Tj. And keep your questions rolling into at Xfinity Racing and at Dirty Mo Media on Twitter using hashtag

Ask Junior for a chance to have your questions answered by Dale Jr. himself. We're proud to partner with Xfinity, keeping us connected to the sport all season long.

Shout out to Xfinity, premier partner of NASCAR. Last call. All right. I don't have... Yeah, I know you don't. You know why? So I'm pulling a damn

audible on you guys. Last call. All right, last call. We're deciding to do something a little bit different here if you guys look at the screen out there, you should be able to see. Dale, you called for feedback on lost speedways, negative tweets only. So we're going to roll through some here.

All right. Have some fun, buddy. My negative review from Kevin should wear, y'all should wear latex gloves when collecting dirt. Not sure what is in that dirt promoting healthy dirt collection. Thank you, Kevin. Wes, y'all found a bunch of speedways that any, I had could have looked up on Google Maps. Here's one for you.

Matthew Dillner, he has a weak hat game, says Jeffrey, a synonym for Hatmakers is Mildner, which is kind of like Dillner. Dillner needs a milliner. Tim, the continual harping on the past is so annoying. And this fella, y'all kept calling the king, don't look anything like Elvis. I watched all the episodes at least twice

so I could be more critical and sarcastic. Thanks, Tim. That was the best one so far. I like it. Patricia. Oh, my God, you actually posted this? Lost Speedway sucks. It is highly inaccurate and boring.

Matthew and Dale Jr. couldn't be less entertaining. What a waste of time binging this awful show. Hope there isn't a season season. Nicholas, like watching paint dry. Lisa says, oh, and another thing that is, bugging me is how obvious it is that Dale and Jr. love the history of the sport so irritating that they spent

time trying to get us to love it to... How dare you. Caution Light says Lost Speedway sucks so bad. I've watched them all three times. Clayton, Matthews saying, come on! When he wants someone to come look at something. So annoying.

Mark, Law Speedway promotes operating illegal underground moonshine steals at old racetracks. Think of the children. Jay Briggs says I hate that Dale Jr. is wearing the same shirt in the intros every time. That's funny. Team A. Oh, wow.

Lost Speedways. Just a bunch of middle-aged guys walking around. Old dilapidated tracks. Boring idea, but actually great show. And not enough of the Earnhardt guy on there. My best try at negative feedback. NASCAR pondering, I know it's been mentioned,

but I really can't be emphasizing enough how terrible the flagman was at Okanichie. Oh. It's been mentioned. It's been mentioned. mention now Justin negative you ask

love the podcast every week don't love all the promotion for this stupid show this show is cool but a little dialing back of the promote might be best Al says

a few episodes have put me to sleep it's the best sleep I've ever gotten TJ says come on let's go and cool all words to describe my drinking game

I got wasted every episode I haven't even noticed that you say these things. That's interesting. Eddie says, disappointed. I couldn't change speed to 50% to hear drunk Dale like I can for the Dale Jr. download. If you ever done that, it's pretty funny. We should listen to it.

Jay says maybe next season you can bring on some guests, people that I've actually freaking heard of. Who's this Richard Petty guy? Tom. Matt, with whoever the guest is awkward. Their interactions and forced laughter. Just act genuine for Christ. Take an acting class. One or two of them.

For the record, I do like Dillner. Chase, you want negative feedback? Okay, my only gripe is how Dillner is so animated in his conversations with Junior or some of the guests. So to me it's a little bit, it's a little bit too customers. Customer service. That's how Matthew acts. I mean, Matthew is genuine Matthew. David, don't wear those boots again.

I wonder who he's talking to. Episode one. Got to be talking about you. Dale Jr. Yeah, your boots, for sure. I thought we were going into a. mud pit, David. All the complaints about Canada, India wants to see it.

We have a guy that the company can't get it in India. Matt says, never mind, the Canadian thing was addressed, and I believe it's being ignored. No, we had a hint on the show. We're pro-Canadian. Skycraper, y'all should be arrested for trespass. I like that one. Cindy, Middle Georgia pit lizards were as notorious as the moonshine. Don't read the second line.

Those broads. I don't know. Can we say that? I think the whole thing, I don't know. It's a tweet. Are we trying to, are we afraid we're going to offend lizards? That was my favorite one. Okay, do it.

Those broads didn't even get a shout out, it says. Jeez. Nathan, the big, tall Sasquatch-looking guys hard on the eyes, needs to be replaced with a better-looking eye candy. Joe, Matthew Dillner, guessing what ugly hat Dillner will wear. Jack, Lost Speedway needs to be lost. Yeah, all right. Is that the last one?

Thank God. That is the last one. A lot of reading today. I mean, I wanted some feedback, and they gave it to us. I asked for that. I never, but I didn't know he was going to read every single one on the show. No, there was like 400 or something. It was crazy.

Yeah, we got a ton of a marathon. You sweating? Did you enjoy that? I enjoy it. Yeah, I mean, it was a bit long, but that was a... You ran long on that, Matthew. It's okay. Like everything else.

Matthew. The rap sign that I usually give you that you ignored. I ignored it from you. That's right. I look like a damn helicopter of the show. All right. Let's wrap this puppy up. All right, y'all.

Hey, thanks for the negative feedback on Lost Speedways. Thanks for Jeff Dixon coming on the show to tell us all about why they bought another charter. Spire to inspire things. And thanks for James Hinchcliffe. Great story. Interesting. I know a lot of people and me included want to hear about his crash and how he survived that. That was wild.

But great to hear his story. And if you're not pulling for him and then you're, 500. What's wrong with you? Pull for her. James. Let's pull for James. I'm pulling for James. And now we're also pulling for Spire. Yeah. I agree. All right, guys. Have a great week.

Hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to tune in to NBCSN and watch it this week. Saturday after the Exfinity Race. Okay, Saturday after the Xfinity Race. There you go. Thanks for coming in there, Lee, and saving the day. Absolutely. Y'all guys, take it easy. See you later. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Mike, you're not saying bye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Bye. Goodness, gracious. Got it. End with some energy, Mike. Yeah.

Y'all got it. We're good. We're out. Energy. Give one energy punch. Over this. Goodbye. Mike is over it.

Is that good? Yeah, that's great. I thought you always take us out. I just was let... Alone? Yeah, you always take us out. You should all say goodbye. It's a group effort.

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