The Dale Jr. Download - 327 - Randy & Corey LaJoie: Like Father, Like Son

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

It’s double trouble on The Dale Jr. Download as Randy and Corey LaJoie join Dale Earnhardt Jr. for a deep dive into the LaJoie racing lineage that’s filled with colorful moments.Coming off a ninth-place run at the Daytona 500, Corey talks about his new opportunity with Spire Motorsports in 2021, how the newly revamped team prepared for the season, and what went into the top-10 run in The Great American Race.Then, the stories start flowing as this duo holds nothing back. Find out what led to Randy being locked out of his own house one night after one of Corey’s races. Hear what Corey did, how Randy reacted, and why he spent the night at the race shop.Dale Jr. asks Randy to trace his racing roots back to his father’s career that started in the family’s home state of Connecticut. The New England native discusses racing go-karts, learning to race, and working on cars growing up. Plus, the story of what happened when his dad told him to hold it wide open.Once Randy established himself as a championship race car driver in the Northeast, he moved south in search of more opportunities to race. Find out what happened after one of his first races in the south that may or may not have made him feel welcomed.Randy tells-all about his rivalry with Buckshot Jones. Hear how it started at Talladega and what went down inside the NASCAR hauler after the race. Then, why an incident at Bristol led to the fans throwing beer cans at Randy as he left the track and ultimately boosted Jones’ merchandise sales.Hear how a six-year-old talked Randy out of a couple million dollars, why he made the decision, and what it has since taught Corey about his opportunities to race on Sundays.Corey details his early late model and East Series racing days. Including a story of when the father/son duo pushed all their chips onto the table and left Corey thinking his driving career was over, before getting a surprise opportunity.What lesson did the two-time Xfinity Series champion learn when Dale Earnhardt stuck his fingers out the window? You won’t forget what happened next.Corey shares a story that will make you wonder how he still has 10 fingers and what ultimately saved him from a greater injury that day at Bristol.As Corey continues to establish himself in the NASCAR Cup Series, he explains his decision-making behind signing with Spire Motorsports. He discusses why the team is different this year and how they are trying to do things the right way. Plus, why you shouldn’t be surprised to see the No. 7 group run better than expected.Dale Jr. picks the brain of a current driver who competed in the Daytona 500 about the state of superspeedway racing. Corey answers Dale’s questions and Dale shares what he would like to see with that type of racing.Lastly, hear what role Randy and Corey played in Dale Jr.’s furniture ending up on top of his house after his first Cup Series win at Texas in 2000. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is a production of Dirty Mo Media. The Dale Jr. Download. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again. For another episode of the Dale Jr. download on this episode, we have Corey and Randy LaJoy. Corey's dad's going to come in here and keep things honest and tell the truth. I'm looking forward to it, man. A couple pretty colorful guys with a lot of great race and history and should have some great stories. Mike Davis, my co-host is here.

What's up, man? Yeah, good to see you, Mike. Good to see you, too. I'm looking forward to this. I don't know Randy LaJoy. I only heard about him through stories that you guys have told us, though. I'm looking forward to this. All right.

Shultz and Leah, they're in the house. Should be a great show. Let's get going. Before we get Corey and Randy in here, let's talk a little bit about Dayton 500. We had Expenity race this weekend. Obviously, a big crash on Big Crash. Fierry, Keselowski's car into the posts and ripping the back off of it, all that wildness. Michael McDowell wins the race.

I was a little surprised that it ended up that way. I didn't think that Brad and Joey were going to produce this insane crash. I thought, I know Joey's, I should have, I guess I should have known better. Joey is a very aggressive blocker. Yep. And Brad was in, Brad was flying. You know, had a big run. And Brad's getting pushed.

by McDowell, right? And so Brad has to go one way or the other around this car in front of him. He cannot just stop or he's going to get turned around a wrecked. He's been in that position before. And when you turn the wheels

pretty aggressively and a car is pushing you, we've seen what's happened. But anyhow, they came together, they hit, they spun, they fire, cars slamming, smashing into the whole pile up. just wild looking kind of scary and then McDowell coming off turn four I guess the caution comes out before they cross the finish line right yeah it came out it came out but we didn't know when I'm sitting there watching sorry to interrupt you my no no I'm sitting there watching and

chase lifts and he's not side drafting McDowell or anything and I'm like what oh man you know Chase you know they're not saying you know the caution's out the feel the froze or anything like that. I'm just like, damn, Chase lifted. He didn't aggressively side draft McGowan try to slow him down or all the things, right? All the things you think you'd try to do coming to the checker.

But I guess the caution was out and the race was over. Yeah. Well, that's right, because McDowell did get passed by Chase but it was under caution. So are you saying that you didn't, like you expected a wreck probably

on the last lap, didn't you? I mean, like, you didn't. Well, I mean, I knew that some guys were going to get turned around somebody, but I didn't think it'd be the front of them. The first two guys. Yeah, right. I just had that feeling that there was going to be a crash,

and I did not think that both Penske cars were going to make it back. I figured Lugano was going to block, and it was going to end up in, you know, a catastrophe for somebody. Maybe not him. But I didn't see that coming. So, like, I thought Austin Dillon was like, I was like, Dylan's going to win this race. I just feel like they're going to, even if they don't wreck,

they're going to block enough and get each other out of shape. enough to where Dylan's going to go by them. I thought that's what would happen. I was wrong. Well, McDowell pulls off an underdog victory. We'd seen that before and that's not uncommon at Daytona or Talladega.

But he has been competitive at these races. It wasn't a fluke. It was just, it still is an underdog team winning the big one. We had a big rain delay. We talk about that later in the show during our S-Jr. We'll discuss start times a little bit.

Bubba Wallace and the debut of 2311, that team did pretty good. Bubba was pretty aggressive. I found myself pulling for him, and it wasn't because of Bubba. It was because after I watched the pre-race feature on Fox with Michael Jordan in it, I was like, man, I want this for the sport. I wanted a nice sunny day and Michael Jordan Victory Lane because it would hijack the whole psyche of America. You know, like there's like the 79 Daytona 500,

or like when you won Daytona in 2001. I mean, like, everybody had to stop what they're doing and just pay attention. And I thought, what would happen? I want our sport to have a moment. It needs a moment. And I thought, man, I really wanted. And they were fast. They were fast.

I just couldn't believe that the Toyotas were so disjointed on that last green flag pit stop where, you know, Ford's came in. Well, they came down pit road together. They just had different pit stops. Yeah. And that effectively lost them to race, don't you think? I think they. I know Bubba had his own problem on its speed. He had to come back in.

I think in hindsight they might have thought maybe we should have gotten together. When we came off pit road separated, maybe we should have found each other within, you know, and gotten, because by time the pack would have called them as a trio, maybe they would have produced more speed. Oh, they were, yeah, they were, Denny was like a half straightaway out in front of everybody. But it's hindsight.

I mean, you can't never tell what would have happened. They probably still would have got passed. But, um, Clint Boyer in the booth. I thought he's got a lot of great energy, very funny, fresh out of the car, understands exactly what the drivers are dealing with, just a great addition, in my opinion, to the Fox booth. Made that so much more watchable.

I've got to be honest. And if it was anybody else, I'd worry that they're not going to be able to keep this, you know, energy up throughout the season. But we know that is Clint, and you don't worry about that. I love the fact that he got experienced his first rain delay. in his first broadcast of the year. I know he's broadcast before, but... Speak to how difficult that is.

Maybe he's dealt with some rain delays before. I don't even know, but... They call it Rainfield. Basically, you know, you just got to... They just... You don't know where the show's going to go. Are they going to send us to, you know, Dale Jr. download, or they're going to put up some...

I think they ran the Days of Thunder piece at some point, maybe an older race at some point. point. But then you've got to sit in that booth because they're going to come back and they're going to say, hey, give us an update. All right. We're going to put you on camera. Tell us what's happening.

You know, they fired up to dryers or whatever, right? Yeah. And so you're kind of hanging around, you know, and not the most glorious part of the job, but it is part of it. I don't mind the rain delays too much except for like when they're days, when the delay is like multiple days long. A couple hour rain delays. Right.

deal as long as we're getting the race in. At the Xfinity race, junior motorsports guys, we crashed four cars. Not the first time we've wrecked all four cars. We've been down there before and crashed them all. Were you proud of Josh Barry, though? You know, he's doing a good job.

You know, he was doing a good job. I told him to be real conservative until the end. That's what he was doing. He was staying in the fight, staying in position, you know, for whatever it would develop. And, you know, a couple guys just didn't a couple guys just ran into each other right yeah so yeah that part was frustrating but those crashes i've i've started some wrecks those races so i'm not gonna i'm not going

to uh you know act like i'm i'm better than that but uh i was just uh disappointed because i wanted to see what josh would do when given to this you know when it was time for him to start making moves or start trying to create something for himself we hadn't seen that yet i want to i'm trying to see whether he's got it, right? And so I think that I would have liked to have seen what he would have done with himself and his opportunities late in the race and we just didn't ever get the chance. But anyhow, he's got a few more races this year, so it should be fun. Miguel Pluto is going to drive the hit car at the road course this weekend,

and hopefully he's very fast. I'm sure he will be. Kyle Bush. Did you see his tweet? Which one? So after we crashed all our cars, Kyle Bush tweeted, a gift of us burning basically it was like a reference to junior motor sports

crashing all their cars and we're burning money. Not a reference and he calls out Junior Motorsports at Junior Motorsports, at Dale Jr., at Earnhardt Kelly. I mean he's referencing. Yeah, he's totally. So I'm trying to interpret what is, what's his point? I mean, like he's an owner. Is he trying to be funny?

Is he trying to be like sympathetic? Maybe that is it that? He's like, man, I know the feeling, man, burning money. Or why was the time? Did he do this right after the race? Right when it happened. Right when it happened.

Before the race is over. You know, maybe not the time to do that. Too soon. Too soon. Yeah. I don't know, man. That's interesting. I know.

Well, he'll have his, we'll be able to return a gift his way. He'll have a moment. We'll have one ready. Gift warfare. Yeah, we'll go to gift war with him. We'll remember that. Hey, let me ask you a quick question. I don't remember you being a big blocker.

Like, I don't remember you swerving like stuff. What is your opinion about people that are blocking in these races? It's not about, I don't know, I don't look at the person and go, this guy every single time is a bad blocker. Okay. Right? Because that's not true. There's people that have thrown awful blocks, but they don't, every block they throw is not a bad one.

So it ain't really about the drivers as much as what. What is a bad block, right? What blocking is acceptable and what blocking is not acceptable? That's really what the question should be. Or what is the success rate of blocking at a restricted plate? Well, it depends on the block. It all comes down to what type of block it is. Every block ain't the same block.

Really? No. They all tend to end up in a wreck to me. Certain ones do. Yeah. Because there's a lot of blocks that don't cause wrecks, and you don't. You just don't know it. You just don't know it.

Well, it'd be hard to know it. Yeah, I hear you. So typically, if you're pretty smart about plate racing and you understand, when you're looking in the mirror and watching cars race, you can see the line that's forming that create energy. And, you know, you've got to see this stuff happening before it happens, right? And if you got a great spotter, kind of helping you understand, okay, the outside line's really forming together.

And that should ring a bell in your head that goes, okay, then that line's going to have a run. So I'm going to move up there now. I'm going to move up there before it's too late. I'm going to, like, it's not a block at that point. You just change lines and then the run comes. Like Trevor Bain, when he won the Daytona 500, how he moved in front of Carl Edwards. We never really look at it as a block.

He just got on the track that was where the train was coming. I suppose. No? Well, I would just say that, you know, if you're looking in the mirror and that car is 10, 15, mile and I are faster than you. If it's a lot, just let it happen. They've got it.

They've got you. You're toast. Now, if you're five car links, three car links in front of that car that's got that momentum and you're like, you know what? He's going to pass me,

but I would prefer he passed me low and I want the top. Then you can move up there. Right? But they got you. You're done. Like, okay, good example. Back straight away.

Talladega, I'm leading the race. Jimmy Johnson, Brian Vickers. They had me. Oh, man. I made one move to the middle of the track. Otherwise, I was letting them go. I was letting them have the inside line without any me impeding them or making that difficult whatsoever. Now, Brian Vickers lost all control of himself.

But, you know, you just got to know, like, that's a big run. I'm not going to be able to stop it. if I try, we're going to get all wrecked here. And go to the part of the track that you want to be on while they're passing you. All right. So if the top has been working all night at Daytona for the 500 and you know you're going to lose some positions, but you don't want to go to the very end, go to the top of the racetrack and maybe you're going to lose four or five spots and get back in line.

So the bad blocks, Mike, are the ones where a guy's pulling down in front of the road. of somebody who's 10 mile an hour faster at the last minute. Or too late. So wasn't Joey's sort of late? I need to see Ariel. Okay. Really. Yeah.

But Joey's aggressive. He's an aggressive blocker. He is. I imagine that TJ was probably giving him plenty of information. Oh, yeah. And I don't know that his block was too late, but I don't, I'd have to look at it aerial-wise to see really. Did he come from the top all the way down across the track and was just like, look, I'm going wherever Brad's going and giving Brad no choice but to hit me in the back, that's absolutely going to cause a crash because Brad's getting pushed and they're going five, ten mile hour faster than Joey.

Yeah. I don't ask that because I think Joey did anything wrong. I just thought Joey was sort of out to lunch. Kind of like when you're like, I didn't think he was in a good position either way. Joey was going to get past, you know. And anything that he does to try to stop. stop that from happening is going to be a crash. No question.

And so I'm not saying, I don't, I'd have to look at it. I have to look at it a little bit more. But in those moments, you know, if you pull down, if you're, if you pull down at the very last minute, that's a bad lot. You don't give anybody around you or coming with that head of steam any chance. But to run in the back of you or have to have to aggressively turn the steam and get themselves spun out, right? So, because if Brad has to turn it. to wheel too crazy. He's getting pushed.

He's going to get spun right around, just like, you know, we've seen that before. Well, the 20 cars, spun the tent to the right, into the fence, right? Just by bumping him a little bit wrong. So you don't have a lot of leeway to be moving the car around while being pushed before you get spun out.

So that guy's, Brad's just hanging on. He's being shoved, and he's like driving a forklift. And then the guy in front of him is moving around all over the racetrack trying to block that run and Brad's driving a forklift at 180 to 90 mile hour. I mean, you... Hence why I thought that they were not going to make it back.

By the way, everybody, I don't, I purposely, I have these questions when I'm watching the race and I know I can text Dale Jr. and ask him, but I just choose to wait. Send in your thank you letters. No, no, it's not that. It's just I don't want anybody to think I'm sitting here trying to... Could you address them directly to him so that make sure they get to him?

Well, if you're going to send a thank you letter, send money. Yeah, money to food. Don't send a card. Man. Beer or something. It's like that aunt that always sends you a card, but no money for Christmas. All right, well, let's get to our guests. We've got a lot to talk about those guys.

Let's bring them on here. Yes, right. Norwalk, Connecticut's Randy LaJoy. Here comes Randy LaJoy. Randy LaJoy, two-time serious champion. Randy LaJoy slips sliding to the win. Randy LaJoy comes across. He will be the Grand National Champion.

And the inside is open for Lerjord. Randy LaJoy. has won to the flag randy lejoy carrie lejoy third generation racer from concord north carolina there comes cori lojoie lejoy is going to see the checker flag he gets his first win of the arc of racing series making his way through the final turn core lejoy and has really developed well as a driver lejoy wins and polino ha ha ha look at these guys oh my god what's up How's it going? Beautiful.

Yeah. I brought a picture. Oh, did you? That I had your dad sign. Let's see this. That's, that's, it was a cool, cool little story. We, uh, right before the Daytona race. Oh, yeah.

Standing on Pit Road, your dad says, Randy, come here. So, first he grabbed my ear and pulled my earlobe. That's why my earlobes are so darn big. He's like, hey, look at that plane up there. The plane was carrying a banner. Yep. He goes, it's not moving. I say, damn, it has to be.

he says hope we don't run out of gas I said yeah this is true because it was had such a headwind the thing was just and it wasn't going nowhere and was sitting above the grandstand and he says I don't know

he goes it looks like it's going to fall I said it looks like we're going to have a heck of a tail wind going into three he says this is true now I would look at this picture and think man they're really just zoned in on qualifying and they're thinking about their you know where the apex is

is where they're how they're going to arc it in. No, this is about an airplane and a sign and whether it's moving or not. Correct. Yeah, yeah. This is the intelligence that's being spewed right here in this picture. So we happen to get that and I had a fan club. I think I had 200 people. So I'll ask them.

So I call him. He goes, yeah, come up. Bring a 12 pack. So hey, you got a beer sponsor. What the heck I got to bring beer for? Yeah. I bring a 12 pack up there. We'd take a ride on the farm in the first time.

I mean, that's like 94. And this is before I did Eddie. I won a Bush champion. ship up north but nothing down here and uh so i was just in awe driving around with your dad in his truck and around the farm and the old barn he had full of cars i said wow this is cool so that was you're driving moroso's yes that was morozo car yeah um we'll get into that but it's great to have both you guys at the table come off a great yeah come off a great run at Daytona top 10 i'll take it yeah how was how was your race on uh not i mean somewhat uneventful we got a little we got a little dust up there

when the 20 cutter right rear, Mick Murray and I spun out, luckily to hit the inside fence. That's usually what happens. You way lay that thing and your day's over. But it was kind of weird how the end of that race played out there with that green flag stopped going into that single file racing. And it didn't get that too wide where you can start playing some lanes at the end that guys knew they wanted to get to one to go before they made that move. And we just didn't get time to get up there and make anything happen.

But for Spire Motorsports, have two cars in the top 10. It was a good day. They did. This is your new team. When you change rides, anytime. you change rides, you're a little skeptical. Skeptical. Yeah. Well, you just don't know how the front's going to, you know, everything feels different.

I always was most concerned probably with geo comfort, steering box, turn in, all those things. But, you know, Daytona, you don't really worry about that kind of stuff. So your first real opportunity to see this new team and this new sort of package for you in competition, how is that? Yeah, so Spire Motorsports has a alliance with Gannasi. That was really and truly the first race car I've ever driven in the Cup series to date. So I was over at Ganesci, putting my seat in and getting the pedal set. And I was like, can we put some dense in this thing and scrape the paint up a little bit so I feel a little more at home? Because this thing's way too nice.

It wasn't a used piece. It was, I mean, it was nice, man. And the speed showed, you know, we didn't have great single car speed. But Jamie and I had the two fastest laps of the race when we got a big suck trying to catch that lead draft there at the end. And we were conservative, right? So you have to be somewhat aggressive. Like obviously we saw Michael McDowell be in the position. That wasn't quite our strategy.

We wanted to be a little more conservative and missed the wrecks. We wanted to be there at the end and cashed the check when the pay wouldn't open. But it's just different. It missed a handful. Missed a couple of the duels. That's what you got to do. You got to be there at the last lap. You know, everybody over there is working hard.

The cars are super nice. I'm excited to get to like Homestead and get a couple of races and see where we stack up. What kind of relationship do you all have? Well, it's good. I mean, it's different. It's changed since. What do you mean? Wow.

What do you mean is different? It's changed since he's a grandpa. Oh. Yes. Yeah. So that's only been a, what? 11 months ago. Yeah.

Yeah. How's this new life of yours then, I guess. How's he changed? I used to be a hard ass. Used to be. I still get text messages. See, this, I messed up when I set them up. I got them like Bluetooth speakers because they'll sit there with the NASCAR app and listen to the radio.

And I'll know if I had a good race or not because I won't get any text messages. He texts like a, like if you gave Ali your phone to text your wife. Like that's how he texts with something. You know, you get the hyphins and you get like the emoji like this or thumbs up, thumbs down. He's a big emoji user. Big emoji guy. He doesn't know. He doesn't know the context of how to use emojis, but he uses them.

So I usually get a text message after race to let me know what I did wrong a lot of the times. But on the flip side of that, and we could talk about it here during the show. It's like he is a hard ass on me. And that's why I'm doing what I'm doing today if he wasn't a hard ass on me. And I'm probably taking a little easy on him because there was some times that mom locked him out of the house for being a little bit too much. of a hard ass on me, just a little kid. But all of that put together, you know, allows me to keep pushing myself to be a professional driver.

Locked out of the house. Bando racing. Oh, yeah. No, let's talk about it. What happened? What happened? He run over a guy going into one. I was there.

I had the right front in the hole for the lead. No, it wasn't. Obviously, if I spun the guy out, I was in there. Yeah. Well, he wrecked the guy. Jordan Penninger. Yeah. Which ended up, the guy ended up setting his car up because Jordan was a champion.

He liked that kid was fast. I said, I tried everything. I mean, Larry Mack and me, I mean, Larry Mack, Joe Crew Chief, he's got Brandon's car. I mean, he's got tape measuring. I was like, okay, I'm just ready. Put air in the tires. Go ahead, kid. Have fun.

Well, we were at Concord one day, and this kid is fast. So, okay, so I'm watching, I'm listening to Corey. So I call him up after he gets out. He said, come here, watch this kid. I said, what's he doing that you're not doing? He's holding the wide open. It's flooring it. I said, how are you going to beat him?

He ran to the car. It ain't lifted yet. Yeah. So, I mean, once he figured it out, you know, there's no different. I went to Dover one here. No, no, no, don't skip the story. So that, well, okay, so we're at the standard. You haven't been locked out of the house yet.

Okay, so we're in the infield and he wrecks Jordan on the heat race first lap. And I'm mad. No, this was the feature. Was it? Okay. Well, I pulled him out of the car by his helmet. I help him. He was trying to stop.

And he was like, you go down there, apologize. I was probably 12. I ain't apologizing. I ain't apologizing. And he grabbed me like the lapels because I didn't know what the fire suit had little hooks in for. I knew after that day what they were for. For dads. And he, like, kind of, like, gave me that my feet were off the ground, and he's like,

you go apologize. And I think my mom was probably 20 feet away. And she, like, caught me in the matter, like, we're out of here. And we drove back to the house. I still was in my fire suit. And mom was fire mad. At who? At him.

For what? For roughing a 12-year-old up, right? For whatever. In front of everybody. For me. It's one thing doing it at the shop, right? If you do something, dumb, another thing doing it in the whole pit area. I don't know how she changed the locks so quick or what, but maybe you forgot your key and you called her.

And the moral of the story was you stayed at the shop that night. She really changed the locks? I don't know if she did. Oh, you just forgot that. He did not stay at the house. He just didn't stay at the house. He knew better. Might as well change the box.

Yeah, that's right. Quiet time. Sometimes you got to go in a penalty box. Yeah. And I can't look back on that story and be like, oh yeah, I learned a lesson from that one. But there's been plenty of other ones along the way. I can, like, look back in the time.

And, like, I know what you were trying to, like get me to understand, but your delivery still is not very good. Yeah, my wife says your presentation's terrible. Yeah. And which I've gotten better because, you know, when you try to get customers, you know, with the seat company, I would go and look at somebody's car. And if it's junk, I say, man, what are you dumb? I mean, come on.

This is stupid what you got, what you're climbing into. And I would probably call them a name and then they wouldn't buy a seat. That's how that works. Yeah, yeah. So I was like, okay, if I changed my presentation, now I, what I do is I give him a card. and I say, you could be safer. That's it. Let's take it from there. That works.

Dale, you ask, like, how is him and I's relationship? And I'm not sure how you and your own man were. But the older I get, the more I appreciate just the lessons learn, right? Like, when you're growing up and you're like, man, why is my dad such a hard ass on me? And then you get to like, oh, yeah, like you can remember these things along the way. Like, oh, now I don't do that because he chewed my ass for that. And then, you know, when you have your own kid, it's like, oh, now I see like the angle. of which he was trying to go about it.

So the older I get, the more I'm helping out the seats and just, you know, we still don't see eye on a lot of things, but we know how to work through it and talk through. So you're still selling seats? Trying, right? Yeah. How involved were you in the seat business? When did you start? Well, as soon as I needed one.

No, no, no, no. When I was probably about 12, he was like, hey, go learn how to weld. And then I ended up being a pretty good water with 1213. And then he'd realize that I can do it better than the guy. He was paying, so I just did it for free for like. the next six years through high school. And I was working after high school, I'd be welding seats or whatever. So that was cheap labor for a little while, welding seats.

But now I go in there probably four days a week. I've morphed into special projects slash quality control a little bit. But you're still there. Still there. I'm working on a 1970 barracuda. So that's there putting a Hellcat motor in that and having some fun. When you say welding, you're talking about welding aluminum. Yeah, TIG welding.

It's like 10 times harder than welding steel. Yeah, well, that's relative. It's hard to make steel look good welding. But I think we could probably say now we're doing the latest special project is we're building all the seats for Ray Evertham's and Smoke's SRX series. So all of them. Everybody's going to be sitting in our. We've got a couple different sized seats. But we did some different things that's going to make the seat look a little cooler.

And all the belts are attached to it, kind of like a cup seat. So that's a pretty cool project for us. Very cool. Speaking of special project, did he do one for you? Yeah, he built a seat for this Nova. Yeah. Right in that thing. That thing turned out meant to do.

It's cool. Every time I come here, I just got to go ahead and just gawk at it. Because it is unbelievable. I got a picture of that, me racing that car at Darlington. Let's be honest. You weren't racing. No, no, he was laughing. He was laughing.

But I think I run 10th. You know, and that was... Six laps down from that, Howard. I was correct. He brought the number 50... One of the first times I met your dad was Cayuga, Cayuga Canada, up there in Toronto where he had a NASCAR North race. And he came up with his Wrangler car.

And I think Bobby Allison, a couple of other guys all come up to run against the NASCAR North guy. Cayuga's a beautiful race train. Yep. He'd come up there, and he lapped the field. I run second. Now, tell me this, and you probably know, too, when those guys, when Tip Richman would go, when your old man would go to like these one-off Bush North races, there was a different good-year tire truck for those guys. Yeah, we had McClure's, and they had Good Year. They bring their own. Yeah.

And we had American, we have McCleary tires, and they had Good Year's. I was like, can we have his tires? Can't have enough. That's interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah, it might be, it might be, I thought it might have been a folk tale, but I I think there's probably some truth that right. Yeah, that's pretty. I got a lot of pictures of that car. He was Ed Whitaker's car.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. It was fast. Yeah. I mean, I run second, and I think he lapped up to fourth, and I lapped up to tenth, and my tongue was hanging out, and he gets out, what's going out? You know? I wonder how into his career were you as a kid.

Like, you know, we hear Dale Jr. talk about, you know, his dad was, you know, he just wanted to be like his dad, and he really became a fan of his dad, and when people wrecked him or whatever. Whatever was preventing him from being successful, then Dale Jr. took it personal. Were you the same way? So I was a little bit younger, right, and kind of dad's peak, you know, mid-90s, late 90s. So I was 8, 9, 10. So you don't really appreciate or even realize how big of a deal racing is to a lot of people

when you're that young. And I'm into it more now just because I appreciate all aspects of racing more. So for Dale to be able to race against his dad is a different story. I never got that opportunity, you know, but when you go to the seat shop and you see all those trophies and you see all my grandpa's trophies, it's like, yeah, these guys, you know, weren't slouches. And it means a lot for me to continue to fly the Lejoy flag, if you will, on Sundays because there was some opportunities I texted you.

I wanted to bring it up on things that he passed up on Sunday afternoon so he could spend time with me and my brother on Sundays and ultimately just spend time with us because being a cup driver, as you know, is a hell of a lot of time spent away from the family. What is some of those opportunities? Well, Jim Smith, Michael was getting out to come one of your dads. He said, hey, I'll give you two million bucks. come drive for me, the seven car. And I was like, two million bucks.

That's 20 times when I'm making. I was like, wow. So we're sitting there watching a race on a Sunday, and we already did go carts. We went to church, come back, did go carts. Yeah, Sundays was our go-car, field filler fairgrounds days. We'd go-around on four-wheelerers and go-carts. And, like, Hornaday would come over, and, like, we would have just Sunday afternoon.

Our day. Yeah, just come. A lot of hangout time. Feeder. Yeah. Sunday was a day. So we're watching a race. And Michael's on pit road.

And I said, hey, guys, I was like, I could drive that car next year. And Corey's like, really? He goes, well, I know Bobby and I know Souter and I know this guy and I know the team. You know, those are good guys. That'd be okay. He says, well, we'll be able to do our motorhome trip a year and nah, probably not. We able to raise golf carts on Sunday? No, that's out. I'll think about it. Okay. So the youngest one, Casey was probably three years younger than him, six maybe. And why do you want to do it? I said, man, I can make a lot of money. He says, don't you need, make a lot of money now? Yeah. Why do you need more? And I looked at my wife.

I was like, okay, I'll call him and tell him I'm not going to do it. Why did you let a six-year-old talk you out of making a couple million bucks. I wonder why now I beat my head against why. I hit my head too many damn times. I tell you what, those kids, those six-year-olds have a lot of influence. I know that now.

Those kids, all they're going to do is look at you that certain way, man, and it's like, all right. I'm not going to be able to get past this one. And I give you crap for not taking it. But that's why I appreciate racing on Sundays even more so

because the sacrifices he made allowed me to do that, you know, still does. So you give him a percentage of the purse, right? No. Oh, no. I give him a lot of percentage of my time.

Time on, you know, make it. Special projects. Yeah, that's a special project. The Budweiser car, I had a great shop when Craven got hurt. I jumped in that thing. It was cool. Being a champion and then all of a sudden running that car nine races. That's all.

He run a thing nine times. It was great. One of those, you wrecked his old man. Yeah, yeah. Yes, he did. What year was this? Is this when Craving got, 99 got hurt? In Talladega?

Was that that crash or not a different crash? Texas, maybe? Texas? I think he had a couple of. right away and he's okay my head's not right I'm out gotcha so I had a great relationship at Anheiserbush I think I was the first guy ever to get a personal service contract from him yeah so okay so I had a great relationship that hey put LaJoy in the car it's okay and it was a great time I got more recognized I mean we go to dinner me my wife couldn't go to dinner without

being bothered I mean it never happened last week you know before I was a Sunday guy and I just couldn't believe the difference I'm not sure I wanted to be that up front I mean I wouldn't do well in today's social media world Yeah. You know, they tell me I'll go to social media jail, just stay off. And I would. I'm staying off. I don't care about it.

I don't like it. But they have to do it. You know, this generation has to do that. You know, there were certain things I was good at and certain things I'm not, and I'm sure I wouldn't have been good at social media. Something I found funny, he was talking about. So he won 96 and 7 championships back to back. You won 98, 99, right?

Back to back. So I remember the car that Chevy let us use was a maroon luminous. They gave the champion. It was like Cordoroy. interior. You can imagine how sweet this piece was. And then at the end of 98 or 97, we had to give a bat. And Junior ended up getting two corvettes and gets to keep them or whatever, one corvette. Wow. Wow. Well, I ended up calling John Middlebrook because John Middlebrook was, when I met him, it was Pontiac. He was Pontiac guy. And then he turned into the Chevrolet guy. Well, okay, so now the kids

are older. I needed a new car. I said, well, let me call up. So I called John Meadowbrook. I talked to Delano Harvick, get his number. Dee was my PR girl for a couple, three years. That's right. Call her up, get the job middleboard. Randy. Hey, Randy, how you doing? Good.

I said, hey, I said, I need to get, I want to like to get my wife a new Cadillac. An escalate. The kids are bigger. We need a bigger vehicle. He says, well, I said, here. I said, this is why I'm calling you. I was like, explain something to him. He goes, okay.

I said, I won two championships and y'all were nice enough to let me use a car or let my wife use a car for the year. I was like, now, what did Dale Jr. do different than I did? because you all gave him a Corvette. He goes, I wondered that myself. He says, what are you looking for? So I told him, and he found me a hell of a deal on an escalate.

So that was good. I still have that car. You do? Yeah. That's that red car and mama drove forever. Oh, wow. I got you. Wow, that's...

Hey, your grandma, right? You're talking about? She saved us a lot of money on a car we built with him. Your Uncle Randy was in charge you to use parts. So we're building him a new car. New use. Which one you're talking about? Catfish.

Oh, okay. So I got to say, I'm going to. I'm going to go to DEI and see Randy and get all my parts. I had my parts list. And I had a budget. Okay. All the money I got. Of nothing.

Like 12 bucks. So it was like, it's a budget. $20,000 worth of stuff I needed. It's okay. I go up and see Uncle Randy and we're going through the shop and I got carts and I'm freaking loading up. What was your, it was your grandma's birthday? She was there with Kelly. They said, hey, let's go upstairs.

Because I knew her when he was 94, 95, me, your dad, my wife, Corey. Taylor. We were a wine train in Sonoma, and just had a wonderful time. Your aunt was there, your grandma was there, and it was just the two of us. You were supposed to be five guys on the train. It was just me and your dad. And we talked about how they used to go from Metroliner to Myrtle Beach. I mean, it's just a fabulous dinner.

Your grandma recognized me, so we grew up. We had lunch with her was her birthday, and she got up and we were leaving, and she told Randy, whatever to his price is, cut here in half. So we go downstairs, you go, okay, mama told me to cut her in half. And what half was was exactly what I thought was budget, and what I had. And I was like, wow, that worked out pretty good. And then that car, catfish, was the one we went all the way down to the wire

to Rockingham with Larson. Larson ended up another sort of a third day. They gave him the championship. Yeah, they gifted him one. But that was when we run second to K&D and we won five races. And that was kind of the jump start when stuff really got rolling for me. Yeah. That's the first time I ever heard, saw your driving.

Yeah, so it wasn't long before that. And I texted you this morning, I wanted to bring this story up. It was another story of Rockingham. I've told this story a lot because one of the questions you get a lot is like, what was that one watershed moment of your career? Like it could have went one way or the other. And it was, we built a late model. Stevie Levitt built it.

My buddy, Steve O and I spent all winter long building this thing. Dilled the bolt. Beautiful car. Spent, you know, spent three and a half months building this thing. Open test. Open test. We're there. Barker cars are there.

Zipping around. And second run out there, it's like, all right, let me pull them tight here and let's see what this baby's got, right? No leaks, no hitting. Whistle that thing in a one, and Europe wide open in a late model. are damn close. And that thing compressed in a turn one, and the left rear hub is a wide five. All the ears broke right off the hub, driver's side, shmelaid it. We'd have borrowed a record from the racetrack and to get the car home.

And that was like, all right, I guess my driving career is over. Let me try to figure out how to play baseball again. Because that was all the chips pushed on the table at that point in time, all his chips, essentially. Right. Eddie Sharp, here, you can tell the rest of the story. So Eddie was there running arc of cars. And he's like, man, that car was fast. There's not no more.

And I was just glad he was okay. I mean, luckily, we had energy impact foam on the left side door. If it wasn't for that, he probably would have got hurt. It'd be right. You know, I mean, it bent the car in half. It was like the left front knocked the air cleaner off of one of those types. Right. So he said, I got a car.

He goes, I got a car ready to go. He just sent your kid up. And so I said, Corey, after school, go up and see Eddie Sharp and see what he has. That's exactly how he said it, too. So he gets home. What are you got? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't get there.

So I was a senior in high school, so I had enough credits I could leave half days and drive to Denver. So it was Concord, Denver, North Carolina. It was about a 45-minute ride. All right. So after school one day, after that conversation, I ride up to Denver. And it's a bear chassis, bear, not one bolt hanging on this thing. And it's like three weeks away. Three weeks before the race, right? And I'm like, I just spent three months building this thing. So I know, like, it's next to impossible to get this thing ready. I'm like, all right, Eddie, you know, I appreciate the offer.

Let me go, you know, talk to dad or something. But, you know, it's going to be tough. I drive back and dad's sitting on the couch. I walk in the side door and he don't even look at me. He's like flipping through. He's like, what you got there? I was like, there's no way we can get that thing done. I spent three months building this car.

Like, we're three weeks away. And he didn't even look at me. He was like, you want a race or not? And I'm like, yeah, all right. So I went upstairs. And I slept on and still convinced that there's no way we can get this thing done, right? And it was for the next three weeks, weekends, right? I was school, drive to Denver, worked until midnight, drive back, school.

Now, what did you do with Bubba? You picked them up in the morning. dropped him off in night? No. He used to take Bubba to school. I used to pick Bubba up for school because he lived like two miles on the other side of the house. Bobba Wallace? Yeah, him and I at the same high school. All right. So I ended up for three weeks just all in on this car. And get home and get home at midnight. Yeah, maybe sometimes a little later in that. I even slept there one night at the shop. Patrick Donnie, you helped me. There was like at one point there was all hands on deck trying to get this late model down. We pull it down and it ended up being a pretty

nice car as well. We got it going. Qualified third ended up winning the race. And that was like my first late model rate first he always said that i couldn't handle eight cylinders so that was like my first time of eight cylinders i was able to get the job done it's amazing and it was the first late model stock race back at rockingham so that was pretty special and that was kind of like what got the ball started rolling like okay maybe i'd be able to do this and then eddie sold the sold the car at the racetrack after it was over so we were left carless after that's his plan yeah worked out good it worked out good for me it worked out good for him. And then we ended up another funny story. We stole

a car from Mike Hillman. No, not really. He said he didn't have one. And I walked in Mike Hillman when he was at Germain and they had bought Robert Yates's Bush team at the time. All the fords. Well, they switched to Toyotis. Well, like, okay, they had like three or four of these things left

over and he said, I got no fords here. I said, I know you do. Guys that work for you tell me there's three of them over there. Because I ain't got none here. So I go over there and sure enough, there it is. I said, like, you know, there's three hours. What are you going to do with this? And the guy's like, I'm thinking about running K&N with it.

He said, we might get it. The guy's like, that's what I'm going to do with it. So I come home and got my truck and trailer. Loaded it up. Loaded it up. So that was how we got our first K&N car. That's interesting. So there's a couple of guys are like, what are you doing us?

I'm taking this car. Okay. So they helped me load it up. A couple days later, I went back with a list. I said, Mike, I says, you need a car you don't have? He goes, yeah. Do you have any of these parts for it? Because I took the car the other day.

He said, you did what? I said, I took it. I need these parts. I need a seat rack. I need old. You got any brakes? So he's like, let's go look. So I think that's the one that finally was out back underneath the tree.

I made an irisced simulator out of that one. Oh, yeah. Oh, that was a good source. The last car, that last race that would never ran. Anybody who's listening. Yeah, anybody who's listening to my podcast. Now it's stacking pennies on NASCAR.com for anybody that wants to listen. Sunday money, I brought.

brought this one up a couple times because this one was the ass tune of all ass chunes. This was 2012. Brett Moffitt and I were like bitter rivals, right? It was like him and I were always, you know, the people you race around all the time and he's always, you know, you're always tight on his door, he's always tight on your door and you just don't give that guy room. Well, Brett Moffitt was that guy for me growing up. We go to this dirt, it was a dirt track, Clearfield, Pennsylvania.

They like brush the dirt off of it and let us, they put our K&N cars out there and it was like one groove. It was like slicker than open and practice of Bristol, PJ1 down type of thing. Right. So I qualified outside poll, Brett qualified on the pole. And it was like, who's going to give? Because you're going to have your rights in the grip, and I'm going to have my lefts in the grip and let the best man win on the first lap. And I did not win. I come off turn two and cloud into the wall. Rearinghausen was moved over, and I was trying to hot dog that thing around. We ended up blowing the right front and killing it. Needless to say, his face was red as that shirt he's wearing right now because that nine and a half hours back from Clearfield, Pennsylvania, he did not take a breath. just reaming me.

And ultimately that probably cost us some points that cost of the championship, but he was none too happy about that one. And that was the end of the end of that car. But the trajectory of my career at that point was still steadily going upward. I think he learned something. Okay, maybe you probably shouldn't race the guy to first lap. Just to see, okay, I led the first lap. You did it.

Nah, nah, nah, nah. And we've all done it. I mean, we can make it hard on somebody if they want to pass you, right? At the end of the day, you're like, okay, I'm going to make a little harder on this. guy then. Now I call Corey a wake-up call. You know, the last couple of years in that 32 car, you know, he goes as fast as he can with his ears pinned back running as fast as he can. Well, it's only going to go so fast. Well, at the end of a run and a cup car, he's in the top

five in speed because they don't slow down. It's the same speed. Well, he would get up to guys, and I'll be watching on all the apps and iPads and while I'm watching the speeds. Well, I said, okay, he's got the fifth fastest lap that lap. Okay, and I look where he's at. okay, he's catching this guy. Well, he catches a guy. And all of a sudden, the guy picks up a half a second and drives away from. And I was like, what are that's so aggravating? People look in the mirror like, well, I can't, I'll get yelled at if I get passed by that car.

Yeah. I was like, well, I said, so he's a wake-up car. And then I'll sit back and say, okay, that guy can't drive because if the speed is there, you should be there every lap, not just one, you know. So I's, okay, that guy can't drive. And there's a handful out there that can't. I kind of wish I was in the backseat of some of these conversations. But.

No, you don't. You just had a really good race at Daytona. We were talking about at the beginning. What was your dad's first comment to you about the race that you just completed this weekend? I don't know. Let me look at my text message. I'm curious. I just want to see what it.

Let me look. I don't want to. I've learned before I foot your send, I have to clean it up sometimes. Let me think about this. Nothing with editing. It came last night because I drove home. He was going. Great job.

Hyphen. Junior's at nine. bonus for top 10s question mark missing wrecks he wants to know if you get bonuses for top 10 he just bought a house i'm trying to help make payments yeah yeah we can make a couple of must payments off Daytona bonus so randy i wanted to talk about your career a little bit and basically when we get the old timers in here i know you're racing career as far as when i was racing around you and a little bit of your bush north stuff and uh but like what connected you to racing was it My dad, yeah, my dad grew up as a racer.

He's a Hall of Fame in New England. What was his career? Modified. Danbury, Connecticut was a closed club. Now, this place, I've never seen another place like it in the United States. You got voted in, you got voted out if you wanted to be a driver. So they kept it closed, and they wouldn't let outsiders in. Well, they could have to be main every night.

You know, they had conciergees every night. High point men started in the back. So I watched, you know, high point guys, whether my dad or whoever. What do you mean high point, yeah? It's like the top point guys? If you're up in the points, I don't think you can start hiring on 12th. Damn. So, okay, in a 20-lap race, there was some rooting and gouging going.

So you learned a lot by watching. So Danbury, but the best part was the people. They had six to 10,000 people every weekend. And different sections, you know, I mean, my mom would dress us up and whatever uniforms the crew had, me and my brother had, and you go down and go to the bathroom. Sometimes you had to run. I mean, because those guys didn't like you.

You're not a Detroit kid. Get them. Oh, geez. Okay, but you also learn, I wasn't much of a runner, so I could probably roll pretty good. Oh, you know, it was Humpty, go get them. Were you much of a fighter? No. Okay, not a runner or a fighter.

That's right. I'm good. I might push a guy every now and again, but that's, you know, because sometimes this day and age, I probably wouldn't take a pretty good shot. But, you know, back in the junkyard days and growing up, I mean, I wasn't bad. I could probably be a little toughy, you know, probably not. I, next. Everybody has a plan until they'll get punched in the face.

Yeah, this is true. That's right. So, okay, so my dad was a racer. I took up go-karting. You know, I had an older brother. How did you get your go-kart? Just an old junkyard piece. Where'd you get it?

Who knows? Some just laying around. Maybe a leftover from my brother or something. You know, we had a little go-kart room on top, and we had to pull him up and rope them up to the top and pull them in. And so after school, I would go down and work on my go-kart. So my brother got killed. I was 14. He was 17.

I killed in a car wreck. Well, watching him, you know, for, he was so meticulous. I mean, he built gold cards. He built cards. I mean, he was a finished fab guy. Built really nice stuff. Well, that's not me. I ain't even close to a finish fat guy.

Yeah, I'm going to rub off on him. I'm roughed in. I mean, I get it close. That's good enough. Well, his close is a hammer and a zizzwheel or a sawz off. That's like, all right, it's close enough. Yeah, it's close. Wolded together.

I mean, it's good. It'll work. So watching him, and then what's weird is watching him. I mean, here I'm growing up. You know, I watched my brother do all this cool stuff. So, okay, once I started racing, I was like, yeah, this is, I can do this. Well, I never really put the effort into building the cars. I mean, we had to.

I had to because my dad's like, there it is. You want to do it, go ahead. Okay, you know, so we ever did everything probably half-ass. But we did okay. So then once you grow older and you see, okay, this is how you got to do it. You know, you got to have Bob Johnson doing a Bush North car and babysitting it. And okay, this is how you do it. So, okay, went Bush North.

Well, I went modified racing. They shut down our speedway, Danbury, shut it down, 81. to a shopping mall. Was it still a club? Oh, yeah, it's a club. So the club went to... It sounds kind of like what they got in the cup series now.

Yeah, the gentleman's club. Yeah, you're cool enough. But don't have to fight. These guys in the club would fight. I mean, after the races, they were all going to parking lot, drink beer and fight. And then come back next week and do it again.

Because you had Danbury, where the track was, against Norwalk, against Richfield, against New York. I mean, there was six or eight guys from each location, you know? But then most of the time,

they got along. You know, I mean, some guys didn't like each other, which was okay. You'll always have that. But you ran Modifieds. Yeah, started to modify. Who owned these cars that you drove? It's a junkyard, my dad. So how good were you?

Okay, okay. I had a couple good years. I mean, my second year, they went from, first year was the division. Danbury started a smaller division, all leftover cars, put a two barrel on it and let it go. Okay, so that's what we did. They used tires and two barrels. My first year, I won one race, run the third. top five a bunch and had a lot of fun.

Well, second year, over the winter, I took, and the same thing he did that I lay a mile. I mean, I stripped the car, drilled out all the bolts. I mean, I shaved rotating weight immensely. I was in a machine shop at school. So I took everything that turned, and I made it lighter, balanced it. Go back to second year. Hell, we won 14 out of 20.

I mean, it was amazing. I mean, okay. The first time you got back in the car, if you put it back together after doing all that work and went through the corner to the first time, were you like? blown away by how it was better. But it wasn't just that cornering speed. It was to get up to, you know, from acceleration.

Yeah, from here to start, finish line, I beat all the guys. You know, from turn, when I got on the gas and they got on the gas. Same car, but just. Yes. And that got my wheel spinning. Oh, I bet. I mean, here, my dad jumps in at one time. He said, I'm going to drive your car.

Okay, go ahead. He practices it. So he comes in, he gets out, hold on. Give me a pet. Well, he makes me a list that long. You got to do this, you got to do this. But you probably could hold it wide open. That's all I heard.

It's my turn. My turn, my practice. I go out, first lap, second lap, one and two wide open. Coming out of four, the thing gets sideways, and I park it head right front into the fence. Oh, my goodness. Okay. That's correct.

So the modifies are next to go out. So they pull them on the racetrack. They had to fix the fence. So they pull them in. My dad says, holy heck, somebody destroyed the fence. He's going to go check your kid's car out. He said, what happened? I said, I didn't hold it while.

I held it wide open until then. Almost made it. Yeah. Almost made it. Yeah. So you ran some modifieds. You got, you once started winning races. What, how do you get to Bush North?

They shut down. The Modified shut down. At Danbury. Did you sell your car? Nope. Yeah. So I kept it and we went to Stafford on Fridays and New London on Saturdays. My dad had that old Richie Evans car.

He gave me. So I took that Richie Evans car. That was my Saturday car. And then my first race car, my dad bought at a body shop repossessed. Your first ever. Modified. Or modified. Modified.

He bought it at a body shop. The thing was repossessed. Turnkey. So that's what I thought. He did. Take that car and go ahead. So that was my first car. And then we go to New London and they had a touring series coming in the following week.

And the promoter, Dickie Williams said, hey, Randy, I got these is halfway through the year. Because I got these late model guys coming in next week. You want to drive one of these cars? I never driven a big car. I said, yeah, why not? Perfect opportunity. An old CA Crouch, Robbie Crouch's dad, had like a traveling car. car number 36 okay so CA was a good old man so okay so I take that car we qualified and man I

remember going to the front got the lead early on next you know 10 laps later I'm getting laughed it was a 150 lap race I never went through more than 25 yeah so at the end of the race I'm war out he said Randy you just drove the car too fast through the corners and it took me a long time to realize you know until the days of thunder your way my way yeah and now he said okay these bigger cars are a whole lot different, but I had a really good time. I said, okay, and my dad and Bob Johnson had built the Speedway Modified, they built the Firebird. Well, whoa, whoa, so Speedway Modified is basically Daytona. Yes. And was this car, what was the number on that car? Do you remember? 47. Was it basically, was it like a full-body Camaro? Yeah, yeah, Firebird. We cut the body off in the junkyard. We put it on,

we took a body off a junkyard and put it on that car. Did you run through the Hawkeye? Do you remember what year? Like mid-70s, early 70s? Late 70s? Well, no. 82, 81. Oh, okay. Yeah, 81, 82. Wow.

Yeah. Okay. So. Danbury closed 81. Yeah. My granddaddy had a couple of those cars that D.W. drove. And I remember Harry Gantt raced in that race. And Neil Bonnet drove Peewee's car in that race.

Cool looking car. Great. Wild looking cars. Yeah. So you went, your dad built one of those. Yep. Him and Bob Johnson. Who drove it?

He did. Your dad. Yep. How did he do? Good. He did okay. I mean, he was going for, because they ran like four races with those cars. They ran Charlotte, and he was going for third at Charlotte, got hit by Joe Henry Thurman.

Yep. And got crashed. He was a lap car. Well, Bob Johnson, Hall of Fame crew chief, I remember being down there because I wanted to go. And they said, well, you can't. So I come home from school and I packed the bag. I grabbed clothes because Bob was coming by the house to get some stuff from my dad. And then they were leaving.

Well, I jumped in his truck. drove to Martinsville. Did he try to tell you to get out or? No, Bob didn't care. Come on. He says, you check? I told my grandma I'm going. I said, so we go down there, go to Charlotte and big wreck.

My dad crashed. Damn, he was running good. Bob Johnson picked up the air tank, nozzle and everything. And he threw that thing onto the cart. I was like, he was mad. I was like, oh, boy, this guy's mad. With Bob, I had always had a temper because he was Ronnie Bouchard's crew chief. Ronnie Bouchard drove his 17 modifies.

And I remember at Stafford watching a race that Bouchard was leading run out of gas. And all of a sudden, you see this thing flying across the pit area. It's one of those old four-way lug wrenches just going across. I was like, boy, I hope it ain't a boomerang because you're going to hurt somebody. Well, Bob Johnson had a little hot temper, you know, which I think bled off a little bit on him because he was always in my ear. You know, a lot of times I just shut, I'll just unplug the radio and yellow come out. I'll plug it back in and say, okay, what am I going to hauled out now for, you know? And he always said, Randy, you do the difficult things easy.

When the easy stuff, you screw it up. I sell that to him a lot times, you know, because it's hard to do this stuff. And it's hard to pass cars. It's hard to do this. Well, that's the easy part where, you know, okay, we passed them all. And now you're just doing something and you do something dumb and you crash. So your dad built that Camero. Let me rule you back in.

Your daddy built that Camero. But connect me to you getting in a, I know you run that stock car for, Crouch, right? Yep, yeah, C.A. Crouch. So how do you get into Bush North? We took that car. That car you drove? My father was Firebird.

And Bob's Firebird. It was out in storage somewhere. Well, we said, okay. We looked at the NASCAR North rulebook. It's okay, we could put a Ventura body on it, you know? So we went out back to the junkyard, cut a body off, put it on this car, and we went to Stafford, and we went to Dover with it. I think we run second at Dover with it, which was amazing.

I mean, here the young kid going to... Well, you got your pants when you went around Dover the first time. Well, Bob said, you said, said, hey, go talk to Harry again, and he'll tell you how to get around here. So I went down to Harry, and he brought me out to the start, finish line, and he damn near walked me around the racetrack. Well, in the middle of three and four, back in the day, you get to the middle of three and four, there was a telephone pole out of four.

He says, Randy, aim for that telephone pole to the right front. He said, you get here, look at that telephone pole. That's the spot you need to be. He says, gas it up and go to that spot. Okay. So ever since then, that was my middle of three or four, that's why I'm aiming for. Well, then when they concreted the track, they took the pole down. I drove straight into the fence.

Talk about stuck in your ways a little bit. Where'd my pole go? No, have no pole. We took it when we ticks the walls. Great. So, okay, so we did that, and then we went to Bush North Racing. We had two guys, the Snellman brothers, Yote and Kai Snellman, that were successful in building. I had a truck.

You know, Bob had that firebird, and he goes, okay, well, let's pool all this stuff. together we'll go to Freddie Rosner. I sold my modified stuff. And when I sold my modified stuff, who did I sell it to? Teddy Christopher. Really? First modified Teddy ever run was he bought for me. Oh, are you serious. Yeah, so I got Teddy into this. A lot of guys are mad at me for getting Teddy. He was a great friend. Nerf bar. Nerf bar manufacturers loved it. Yeah, front bumper manufacturers like that. I guarantee. For sure. I kind of had a little remembrance of that. I went to Smyrna the other night, and there was a couple of cars with bunches of bumpers just tore up. I said, what's that?

The Teddy Christopher heat races bumper, bumper pile. So we get going and we said sell all the modifies, build a Bush North car. Bob was hooked up with Moroso. My dad and Dick Moroso were good friends. So we go, they built the motor there at Dick's place. Bob would go up there, use all his machinery. And we went Bush North racing. And you did.

Good. Yeah, we did. That was fun. You know, I mean, race through Canada, Maine. Hampshire. I mean, it was fun. I still have a lot of people in my phone, you know, from doing that, but that was a lot of fun. He did you go from Oxford, drive across New Hampshire, stop the queen? Are you racing for a living? Oh, well, no, working at the junkyard. I still had a day job, you know. How big is a junkyard? Six acres, four acres, six acres, somewhere around there.

It was plenty big. You know, I tore up a lot of cars. Yeah, and drove a lot of equipment and just literally tear stuff up and you know it's nice to be in a little small town because you get away with a lot of stuff yeah how did you get the call to come down south jimmy spencer jimmy said hey uh i seen him and he said hey i'm i'm going cup racing i'm gonna get out of the bush car he was driving frank cc's 34 yep and he says call frank he says here's his number call him up and see if he'll put you in it's okay so i call frank up and he says well he said yeah i got a full shop and motors and cars and i'll give you 300 a week to come work for me. So you called him and...

About mid-sea right before it was on Pocono time. Okay, so middle of year for next year? Yeah, I think no, because the season was going and Jimmy was leaving. In the middle of year? Yeah. That's right, yeah. So Jimmy gets his cup ride, his opportunity starts to materialize mid-season, right? And he's going to get out of the 34 and go into the...

That's 34. So were you like... You weren't the only guy calling to get in that car. Yeah, I don't know. Probably not. I mean, because you know, racers, everybody wants to drive. Everybody wants your job. Yeah.

And it's not a bad car. No. And so. I think I might have been the cheapest guy. Because I had a helper. But you had a, you were coming off a championship, right? No, just a bunch of years later. Okay.

So this is a bunch of years later. Yeah. Oh, this is 88, 89. Okay. So you worked a deal. How much do you pay? 300 a week. Nothing else?

No, that percentage is. You know, that percentage is the only guy that was good to me with percentages. He would take a photostat copy of whatever check came in and give you 50%. And everybody else is like, no, that's not yours. Oh, that's deal money. That's plan C. This is contingent. Everybody nickel and dime you.

Not Finch. You know, so, okay. So you drove the 34? Yep. How was that? It was good. It was fun. Because now I'm going big time racing.

And you moved. Hell yeah. And so now you're down here. I just got married. I got married and it wasn't a month. I said, honey, I'm moving. And her parents moved in with us. I said, okay, she'll be okay.

Wait, y'all all moved? No, no, she stayed. She stayed up there. I said, let me go try it. You moved down by yourself. Wife stays up north. Parents move in with her, so she's good. Yep.

How long were y'all like that? Six, eight months. Because it was a half a season deal. Yeah. You know, so okay. So my first race was Hickory, finish second. You know, I never won in the 34. That bothers me because.

Who won the Hickory race? Tommy else, I want to say? I should have waxed their. Butts at Rougemont and Rick Mast, Rick Mast wrecked me. There's a story there. Yeah, yeah. So I'm mad.

I'm just like third or fourth racing. Hey, I'm big wig. I mean, sucker wrecked me. So I'm mad. He runs the one at Robert Presley one. Robert Presley and the 99, Google Cluster's car. Tommy else. They tangled ass coming to the checkered up in the air.

The day I met, that was the day I met Brad Doctrie. Drinking. Jesus, that sucker could drink. We go and I go to the scale Because Rick, I run second or third And I'm mad, I go rolling into the scale house And he looks at me and he says, hey Yankee, welcome to the south I was like, oh, and then he's like,

there was a whole lot more Southerners than it was Yankees. So Rick Mass not only wrecks you, he sort of spikes a football on your head Then just tells you this is what you got to look forward to Oh, yeah, so, oh well Was you right? they welcomed me hey some liked you and some didn't you know i mean i've got along great with a lot of different teams

you know and i think that's one of the reasons is is i did so many things i mean and then after that season i think cliff and alison come in here with some money and so i didn't have a ride so i called the wife up i said honey i said i'm not sure what i'm going to do but i kind of like it down here i said this is pretty cool and she goes well it's okay she came down we found a place to live and i opened a little vacation shop just to then I started to be a truck driver I still have my CDL from the junkyard hey LaJoy come drive my truck okay who's truck anybody I drove Raymox truck we run fifth at

Daytona with Dick Trickle you know I was a truck driver you're driving the truck yeah yeah so he want wanted to stay here because you liked it down here but you didn't necessarily you weren't banking on the racing career to it to really man you're hoping but probably yes if I get a chance I can do this you know and then Maroso had issues and he goes hey Randy I need you to drive a car for me. This is 93. He says, I ain't got a driver. You want, I got Bobby Hamilton in a cup car.

We need to run two cars. Fina, we got a sponsor. They want to run both. So, okay, so our first race is Talladega. This is an Xfinity car. Yeah, Xfinity car, yeah. So, okay, so it was me and Dick Myers were the only ones working on the car. And Dick was a smart, smart man.

Jesus, he was one of the most talented fabricators I've ever seen. Well, I didn't really know. He's got this deck lid that he's got cut apart. And he's been working on this thing for a week. So it's time to go. We need the template guy. Chip Warren was the template guy. So I go get Chip and he comes over and I didn't really know what the guy was doing to the deck lid.

Oh, he had that thing cheated up so darn bad. He had to the cut, scallop. He was Randy, at least tell me that Chip is coming in. I thought, okay, you know, I will next time. And we end up running second to your dad, you know, at my first time there. And where at? Taledega. You ran second at Talladega.

He hurt me too. He hurt my shoulder. He hurt my hand. Doing what? I was following them, and it was me, him, and Schrader. We had gone. We had left the pack. And I'm running there watching us.

Okay, this is good. You know, I'm easing the thrall. I'm learning as I go, you know. So about halfway through the race, we're going down to backstretch, and I see your dad's fingers out the window. What the heck's he doing? Next lap, I look, and he's still doing it. I said, that sucker's cheating.

You know, something's right. Something ain't right. You know, what the heck? So the next lap I see Schraders out the window. What the heck? And about two laps later, after the sweats all, rolling in your eyes, no air conditioners, none of that stuff. Ah, I said, ah, they're getting some air.

So I come out of two and I put my hand out the window and I could have changed the gas cap. That thing got a round and window net was slapping me in the head. I was like, freaking pull my arm back in at the end of the race. My watch is all blow it up. My arm's bleeding. I was like, okay, I'm not going to do that again. That's funny.

Oh, man. So did that opportunity end up driving you to the 74? Well, then during that year, they needed, 74 needed a driver at Rougemont. Something happened. I don't know, I think Sprague was in it, and before Benson got in. And I went to Rojmont and we had a hell of a race. We lost two laps, made them up. And at the end of that race, Bumgarner, the owner said, hey, you ever need a job?

Call me. Okay. So three years later, two years later, 94, State of Maroso a couple years and had a great time, you know. And anytime you work with somebody, I think loses a child. is different because you don't never know right and dick was on one day was great and next day probably not so great yeah so okay so that's that's what it was well we go and i get go to moroso we finished moroso bill davis calls hey you want to go for rookie to year cup car new sponsors coming in Pontiac why not yeah i'll go cup racing so i called bobby up i said bobby i said hey

got an opportunity he says you got a job i said no you need one he's Pretty much. He goes, okay, it's a job. And that was it. He didn't say it was good. He didn't say it was bad, not to look forward to it. So, okay, so we go to Bill Davis and they have Pontiac and a new sponsor. And it wasn't what it was all cracked up to be.

I mean, when you're not as good as the other guys, it's not fun. And we weren't as good as the other guys, you know, and for some reason or another. I mean, so halfway through the year, I got canned from Bill Davis's. So my first call was to build bomb garden. I said, hey, I said, I need a job. Because the end of the year, you got one. Nice. Because they were going for the championship with Benson.

So I said, okay, cool. So then I drove for another funny story. Oh, Dennis Shoemaker, the 64 car, Duraloop car. Yes. Brian Schaefer works for you. It was a team manager, crew chief, everything. Good guy. Well, I got a story from Bristol about that.

Keep going. I would call Dennis for two years. Dennis, let me drive your car. Because it was a good car. Let me drive. Not, not. He always had cup guys. I mean, bag of donuts cup guys, not even good cup guys.

But they were cup guys. But once I did 14 races, he let me drive his car because I was a cup guy. And we had a lot of fun. I mean, wrecked a lot of stuff. Trick will always thank me. He says, thanks, Randy. He says, you always gave me new equipment. So that was, what, 94?

So I'd have been three or four, probably four. I'm in the infield of Bristol during practice. And they're making laps, right? And I'm sitting on the wall because, you know, there's no. no limits to where you can go. I could have been changing tires on the thing for all the care. Well, they changed some tires during the middle of practice. It's going to make a mock run or something. They're sweeping all the lug nuts up to the wall. And I'm like, ooh, right? Lugnut. I'm four years old. And I pick it up quick enough to not realize how hot it was and stuck it on my thumb.

Oh! Little that I know, it was about a thousand degrees. My thumb swelled up. And I was like, waving it would not come off. The lug nut stuck on my thumb. The guy gets the impact gun. Ving! Whoa! Sings that thing right off my thumb. What? Oh yeah, it was not. It was an infill character.

You still have a thumb then. I don't pick my... It's a five-eight stuck. Yeah, that's what it was. Yeah, that one hurts. Wrapped up Band-Age. That's awful. That's a bad idea.

Don't pick up hot lones. It's a Bristol. Don't let him take the gun to it if you do. Wait, you get it off. Yeah, I guess. And quickly. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

Speaking of Bristol. Yeah. Oh, we had a great night there one night. I remember you and Buckshot Jones in Bristol. Now, this might have been a couple years later, right? Probably. Yeah, yeah. And if I'm jumping around your time.

No, that's fine. 98, I think. When I was there. Tell us the story. I remember seeing it, but take us back through what happened. Through the course of the year, you know, Bucshot Ricky Pearson, that team being R. Motors, I mean, God, they didn't lack for nothing. I mean, the guy was a dart without feathers.

all over the place. So, okay, we're running in the pylon. What caution comes out? And that was probably fifth or sixth. And what happened? And you see a bunch of crew guys standing out of pit road flipping somebody off. And they're like, I had Bucshot wrecked the guy. It's okay, go another 10 laps.

Caution come out. Pit crew guys on the backstretcher flipping someone. Who they? Oh, Buckshot wrecked somebody. You know, then he wrecked McLaughlin, and big guy was standing out there. You know, I was like, okay. And he's coming up.

Double O's coming up to board. And I always told him, Listen, you don't mess with me and I ain't going to mess with you. Well, he gets to me, jacks my left rear up. Okay, he gets to me, Jack. Well, he gets by me. Well, when he did, I picked him up at the start, finish line, and I ain't lifted yet. I'm going in one and carried him a little deep, and he wrecked.

I mean, it looked like a gremlin. So, okay, the place went halfway quiet. It was little loud when he wrecked. Well, okay, so I come around and the spotter says, hey, he's looking for you. So come around, and I come out of two, and I see him down the backstress. car jopping and I tried to pull alongside of Robert Presley to hide he was in the 59 a lion's car he wouldn't let me up so I said okay so I backed it up a little bit and we get into turn three and I hear Buckshot gasses it up he turns so I gas mine up and tried to get out and he takes a hard

right and he misses me and drive straight into the fence the car shook when the crowd went the crowd noise it was like you taking a lead to Taledega I mean it went nuts and I was like oh that's pretty You know, so we run third. Okay, come down, pit road, there's people everywhere, frigging wanting to fight. So the state cops put us on the golf cart. On the bag of a golf cart. Corey's there. I remember that.

My wife's there. Yeah, we come up out of the tunnel and people throw on beers. Oh, yeah. They're throwing beers? Oh, every. Hey, you? I guess. Yeah.

They're throwing somewhere right. Well, I mean, when Bucks shot sold out of souvenirs that weekend. The PR people thanked me to next week. Yeah, you helped him out. Yeah. You and him had a bunch of run-ins. Yeah, Bristol, New Hampshire. Why didn't y'all get on?

I don't like them. Did you ever? That usually doesn't. Did you all ever talk about it? Did y'all ever figure it out? We're okay, I guess now. As long as I don't see him, we're good. I never really got to know buck shot.

I mean, I don't think you missed anything. I mean, he had a hell of a gimmick, you know, with the rifles. And, yeah, it was a great gimmick. And he was fast. You know, but he was just a dart without feathers, you know. Have a damn. Did you have any other people that you felt as lovingly towards in your career? No.

No, he was the only one that. Buckshot was your guy. Well, I mean, at Talladega, we were at Talladega, and I had a big push. I had backed the lineup, and he was in front of me, and I backed the lineup. I said, I'm going to go around him coming out of going into one. He jumped up to block me. I mean, somebody was going to wreck, because I had eight guys pushing me. And it wasn't going to be me.

I ain't lifted yet. I get, boom. He goes down through the infield, Rex. Okay. End of the race, we run out of gas twice. And I'm mad because it was the same year we won Daytona, come back to Taldaegas, said, we're going to be good here. We go run out of gas twice.

I said, how do you miss it twice? So I wasn't happy, you know? So, okay, checkered comes out. I unhooked, take my helmet off, hang it up, going down the backstretch. He comes out of the infield, tee bones me. Buckshot does. But no helmet on?

No, I had nothing. I was like, you, son of him. So down in the infield, well, there he is. No farther than that car from me. And I first gear. I said, oh, I better get out of the mud first before I hit him. So I finally got the thing out of the mud, and he's gone. We come in, I pull in there, like, NASCAR wants to see you in the truck.

Okay, not a problem. So we go in the truck, Ray Hill. I go up, Ricky Pearson's in there. Birdie's behind me. We go walking in. Buckshot's in there. And as I went up the stairs, I tripped. then I kind of might have hit him.

Might have kind of hit him. I was like, what the hell was that all about, you know? And old Ray Hill, he loved the guy. And then he was just so calm. He just, Randy, just sit over there and just calm down. Yes, sir, Ray. So he said, okay, what the heck happened? He wrecked me.

Talladega, man. You can't pull in front of somebody going 30 mile an hour and thinking you're not going to get wrecked. Now, that started it, you know. That's how it started. And then New Hampshire, we got into it. I wasn't there that day, but. When he got back, he was laying in bed.

Was that the left side? Left side. And he's, you know, I don't know no different. Dad just wrecked, right? And it was maybe on a Sunday or Sunday. You know, I get up, dad's back. And I'd run, hey, dad, jump in the bed with him. Just smother him, right?

I'm probably seven. Like, nothing of it. Well, he's one arm throws me off the bed, right? And he takes the dang comforter off. And from his neck to his ankle is black and blue from, I'm assuming you hit the door bar to. something. Big Rex.

So, yeah, I didn't know. Don't jump on that after. Two or three times I've turned my body black and blue from hitting stuff. Yeah. You know, it's okay. We didn't know any better back then. Yeah. I flipped down the back straightaway with Dick Trickle in my first race at Daytona in 1998,

and that was Buckshot. Was it really? He started that, a common denominator. You said you never had a relationship with him, or you never got to know him. I mean, just never had a conversation really more than just hey and what's up? Nothing. Man, there's a buckshot these days. I think I don't want to leave.

He's still after. I was in Nebraska. Two years ago. I was out in Nebraska at the sprint car nationals. So I leave the racetrack, and I'm going back to where I'm staying, to Kaczynski family. I'm listening to NASCAR radio. And I said, Claire B is like, I'm going to talk to Buckshot.

I was like, huh? I was like, I was like, sure. Yeah. So I listened to the interview. PTSD. Yeah. And I was like, oh, man, get a headache listening to him. So no sooner does.

he get off the thing, because Claire B had no clue that we had a rivalry, because somebody said, hey, you got a rivalry? You got a rivalry? Oh, me and LaJoy, we got in it all the time. No soon he gets off, my phone's ringing, Atlanta, Georgia. Oh, there ain't nobody out. Hello, it's Clay. Hey, Randy, Buckshaw. Oh, it's Buckshaw. What the heck you want, you know? I remember seeing him a couple years later. He was racing at Concord, and they were doing autographs before the race, and I walked up behind him, and I bent him over his rear spoiler, and I just kept pushing him, pushing him down. And he's like, what's going on? I said, I'm going to cut you in half. This spoiler is going to cut you.

you have. He was, we're all good, ain't we? I said, oh, yeah, we're great. Yeah, okay. I would imagine you two raised each other. I mean, me and Randy? Yeah, right? I mean, like in, I couldn't catch him. The last couple of years, I couldn't catch him. Well, I followed him at Watkins Glen. I laughed. I bet. What do you mean? Well, me at Watkins Glen? Oh, you weren't that bad, you know, you were there during the butt days. You didn't see the Acedo go. Okay. So I come in. After happy hour, because we all go out together. He was leading. I was third in point, so we'd all go out together.

And I come in after about five laps, and I'm just laughing. And I see Tony, senior, and junior, I said, guys, you guys ain't going to have to pit for tires. They're like, why not? I said, because they're never on the ground. It was the most fun I had following them. I was like, wow, where's he going? I had no idea. And then Boris had to straighten you out.

Yeah, he did. Boris was, I mean, I grew up in the same town as Boris. Oh, Boris said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but he, everybody will always make fun of them because he was always a road racer, you know, and he never, never did the circle track stuff. So Boris, I was always, I was always been a friend with Boris, and he helped me a lot too. And we went up there and did all our computer stuff and, hey, this is how you do it, you know. And it definitely, it's so much different today.

I mean, like dartfish. I mean, we didn't have none of that. We had an old stopwatch. Okay, where's he being? I don't know. You know. But now you could, you definitely can't lie. Yeah.

Boris would be really fast. I'll tell this all the time, but this is kind of how good he is. good person-wise. But he would be really fast. Obviously everybody would say, well, you know, he's a road racer, he's a ringer. That's what they called him back then. And I'd go, hey, Boris, I'm not fast. Obviously, I'm not a ringer.

I'm not good at road racing. But what do you got for setup? And he'd go, this front bar, these two front springs, these two rear springs, this is where the track bar is at. Just put this, but this much, this and this, and that. He'd give you the whole setup and here, put it in. Yeah, there's still a lot run here. Yeah. But I'd go put his

set up in and I'd pick up a second, you know? I mean, he didn't care to give you everything. And he knew a little bit about setups enough to make his car better. You know what I mean? He'd hop in those cars. He'd get to, he's the ringer, but he's driving like a mid-pack car. Yeah. And he'd turn that mid-pack car into a top car with the setup changes he'd make.

But, yeah, he was a big help. Corey, we got a little bit time left, and I wanted to make sure we talked about, we had talked about it a little bit at the start, but your new opportunity was Spire. We had one of the owners in here. Dickerson. Yeah. This year. Last year.

Right after he bought that 95. End of last year. That's right. That's right. Yeah, because Dale Jr. was like, what is he up to? I know. There's something fishy going on. And that's it.

Like, so, you know, in conversations with you, the Spire seems to be in the sort of this transition, right? And talking to you, you say something like they want to do it the right way. Yeah. And I think he even said that when he was here. Dickerson, we want to do it the right way. We're trying to do it the right way. What is the right way? Like, what does that even mean?

you, like, they've had to race a certain way up to this point. Yeah. Right? And you said to me in text message, you're like, man, they had to run it. They had to do things a certain way to get to where we are this year to be able to go do it the way we want to do it. Right. And so, like, help me understand, like, what's so different about their method and what's putting them in that box and how are they succeeding? So the last two years of Spire of what they've had to do isn't what we're doing from last week at the 500 for the rest of

of Spire Motorsports, right? When they bought that 78 charter without getting too much into the weeds to it, there was so much historical money in the back end, they knew if they ran it at the leanest price possible, it would pay for itself in three years, and they would essentially have a charter for free, and then they can start a competitive program. And then along the way, they got, they got another charter, they end up getting, they buy the 95 charter, the shop, the Allen Kowicki shop, all the assets, some of which 23XI bought, but they were starting to position themselves to own all the stuff and be a race team, right? But, they gave at the charter essentially to Jay Robinson to operate as one of his cars for the first two

years, right, with essentially no employees. Like, here's the charter, run it. And we'll kind of manage it and do our stuff. And the Jeff, the joke between Jeff and I was always like, hey, whenever you guys go, whenever you guys want to go race, call me. Yeah. Because anything Jeff Dickerson's been a part of and anything T.J. Pusher's been a part of, has been successful, right? When T.J. was part of Braun racing, they were, they were a damn good Bush team. When T. When T. When T.J. was part of Turner Motorsport like that you wanted to go drive for tournament sports. TJ's been around a long time. I mean, TJ's dad, I'm not sure if you remember back in the Northeast was his auto

palace parts. And they had a NASCAR well and modified. They had a dirt car. They had a super late model. And Ted Pusher run that program. So he grew up. I mean, Brett Hearn told me, because I remember TJ when he had a little NASCAR bed. He said, I've known him that long.

Yeah, so he's a racer in every sense. And he's kind of in the, he's behind the scenes. He's doing the day-to-day operations. Jeff's kind of the guy at front putting the big pieces together. So when the news comes out when Jeff was on the podcast that he bought the 90, they bought the 95, all the LFR stuff, I shot him text like, hey, when you made to bring my seats over? That was in, I don't know, June or July.

And he was like, he actually didn't respond to the text, right? I'm sure he was busy or whatever, but a couple months go by and I announced that I was leaving the 32 car with essentially no other ride. Just knowing, yeah, there's a couple options out there that I had on the table, but nothing felt good, right? like it's different for me taking the keys to something that's already established that's easier short term probably to validate okay I'm going to go do this and we're going to run here but when we sat the conference table with with everybody it was our first meeting they had every single

number of car owner that I spoke to on this whiteboard right because they're I mean they're all intermingled I mean they had you know that we were in conversations to drive the eight car here a couple times it just didn't pan out like all of the conversations I had was on this whiteboard and they're like man we we want the best for you so like let's if you want to talk about these options here you know let's let's talk through it let's talk to pros and cons and I've already talked to the wife about it a couple times and a couple of numbers up there like the 43 and some others and I'm like man there's something to me that's that draws me to want to be like in in it at the found it in it at the studs right where we didn't know they didn't know at the time where they were

getting cars motors people crew chief they were like this is the vision we have and this is the culture we're going to try to build after the first meeting I was like all right that that went good and Jeff asked me like when you told me when you're going to ask where to bring your seats, were you being serious? I was like probably like 60-40 joking at the time. I said, but now, you know, now I'm probably 80, 20 serious if we can make a deal work. And every meeting and every talk just kind of materialized getting better and better. And, you know, they started having some good talks with Ganesi and having some good talks with Rick on the motor side. And that stuff actually was after I even signed up.

But I guess I aspire motorsports employee zero-zero-one because, you know, they sign me up. and they're like, okay, who do you want to be your crew chief? Who do you want to be an engineer? I think that the potential ceiling that we're trying to build Aspire Motorsports is going to be higher than all the other options that were on the whiteboard for me at that time. What's your expectations as far as performance? It's hard to say right now.

How do you even quantify it without any laps? Yeah, so, you know, I think that we just execute and do what we can do right, do the things we can control right and let everything else fall into place. You know, you can go say, oh, we're going to try to make the chase, or we're going to try to win two races, or we're going to do all this stuff. And if we just control, we control, sometimes that might be 24th.

So this is just for me, selfishly. But when you drove the 32 car, you had guys that you should beat, you had guys that if you did beat, it was a good day. Yeah. Who are those guys? I mean, I think that today, JTG, I think we can compete with the RCR cars. I mean, we're as close up an alliance to Gnassie as you can have without being in their shop. You know, Ryan Sparks and Matt McCall are on the same simulation.

They can look at setups. And we got a good motor package from Hendrick and the drive train from there. So, you know, I think a good week for us. If we go to Martinsville, we should run eighth to tenth, honestly. I think I get around there pretty well. And I know Ryan Sparks is my crew chief. He was my crew chief last year at the 32. And he was working with a broken screwdriver and a hammer, right, essentially to set that thing up.

And there was a lot of times where we had really good driving cars and just didn't have the motor package and had some older cars. but I knew giving him some rope and giving him some tools to work with, I really do think we're going to have a really good year and surprise a lot of people. Help me with the time frame, because I'm going to go back to when you made that announcement to leave 32. Publicly, I believe you said you did not have anything lined up. I will speak for myself and say, there's no way anybody leaves a team without anything

lined up, right? But you're saying, for a fact, you didn't have anything, and you did still make that decision. So from that time, when did you feel good that you were going to land? in a ride. Well, I did have this. I've had some loyal supporters over the past couple of years, Schluter Systems, B.N.1, Built Bar, Drydine. Like, a lot of these companies have formed relationships with that are going with me because they like how I represent their brand. So you had some money. I had a little bit of money. Right. And that's leverage in any sense of the way. So I wasn't completely like, all right, I'm going to take my helmet and cross my fingers and hitchhike.

So, you know, there was some, there was two or three cars. I knew I could get in, but I wasn't necessarily excited about it, right? There was nothing there. I was like, yeah, that's like, that's going to be the one. And talking to TJ and Jeff and like what they were trying to do, they don't quite, they didn't know at the point at the time how they were going to get from point A to point B, but they have hired the people to help him do that with Steve Latarge, kind of behind the scenes guy putting the pieces from Ganesi there. And Steve, as you work with co-worker, he's, man, he's awesome. So it's just been a lot of fun so far. I mean, everybody thinks they're going to make the playoffs here first week after the Daytona 500. But, you know, I think if we just continue to

incrementally improve. We got the next gen car coming in next year, which is really why they're hedging their bet. Right. Right. But we've actually got a lot better cars for this season than one was previously, you know, told to me. So it's worked out pretty good. The Spire Story is interesting. I was interesting. You know, we, uh, we did that one race deal with them at Darlington. And I went up there and got to experience, you know, a race through the lens of them and, and how they approach each race. Well, you're saying, though, is that was last year's approach. Things have, uh, have improved. Like last year they were week to week looking for tires. I don't know how else I can say,

but you have to separate the Spire Motorsports from its previous two years to now. Which is great. Yeah, and I think the fans, too, will eventually realize that. I mean, you don't put two cars in the top 10 to 500 by being slackers, right? And they are making a conscious effort.

I mean, they're spending the money in the right areas. You know, we're not going to have the biggest shop necessarily, but they're spending the money in the right places with people and equipment, and I think it's going to show. And I think that there will be some growing pains, if you will, because it is essentially the first year of Spire Motorsports being their own organization. But I think with the alliance and the people that we have, those are going to be pretty far and few between.

I think we're going to, I think we should execute every week. And, you know, like I said, I got a little work to do on road courses. I need some seat time on that to get a little better and strengthen that weakness. But, you know, there's things you can do with irate. and then the Chevy simulator to tighten that up a little bit. Dale Jr. was always real good at Watkins Glen. Yeah. You're saving tires.

They'll teach you how to save tires. Man, it's... Road courses are tough, man. And now everybody's so good at it. It's just, you know, I grew up... The year we started racing K&N is when they stopped going to Watkins Glen in some other places. And the year I stopped was when they started going back. So I just never got that experience.

And my first road course race was Watkins Glen in a cup car, right? Like, that's... Everything the fans... You made you get to the top of the hill before you smut out. Yeah, actually, I made it at one half-speed lap, and then it spun out top of the S's. It was great. Yeah, so, I mean, any mistake I've made in my racing career,

most of them have been on live television for everybody to watch. It's been a lot of fun. That's how hard. You missed a bunch this weekend. You did good. Yeah, it was good. I tell you, yeah, y'all were super resilient, man. Like, gosh.

It eats at the warrior a little bit, if you will, like riding, essentially, right? Because you're not going for stage points, because the goal is the big picture. That pay window doesn't open up with two to go. It doesn't open with 10 to go. It doesn't open up at the first stage. It opens up at the checkered flag. And it kind of stinks, running 20th all day long,

just like I could go, but is it worth it? Yeah. You know, and... When you got a good car? Well, let me tell you. I mean, the other thing, too, that you haven't alluded to is the payout at Daytona. It's five times more than every other race. Yeah.

A top 10 in that is a... is a bit is is is pay for like a win somewhere else yeah it does it's five times more than everywhere you cannot and for the team for a team like yours the position you're in you cannot miss out on those opportunities you know and and you're not going to you hope you try no different than anywhere else to try to win the race but with the ride and missed a rec strategy you're you'll probably never be in a position to win because you won't get that push when you need to because you're never up there track position wise but you know i i've kind of made made some hey the last couple years with the 32 doing that plan of finishing between 6th to 8th, right?

And for us, you know, that's good enough for the time being for the program that we're trying to build. Sure. I got a question for all you guys. I mean, I'm sitting here at a table full of drivers. The wreck at lap 15, okay? Yeah. The early wreck. It's easy for us and everybody to say, idiots, you know, why are you going to go force the issue that early?

Why are you doing that? You know, we haven't even got going yet or whatever, right? And that's what people say, right? But given that restrictor plate racing is what it is, which means maybe you don't have to bump, but you do have to stay in the draft, you do have to run nose to tail, you do have to run side by side, is there any way to be, I mean, that you can run a risk at having that same thing happen regardless of aggressive driving. And I don't, so I guess I'm wondering like, you know, again, the Monday morning

quarterbacks like to sit there and critique you guys when y'all mess up or bump. And I'm like, but I'm like, this was just a product of what we're at, right? I'm the least qualified at this table, besides you, Mike, to ask this question. I am definitely the least qualified at this table. But I want to take, and I'll let Dale talk on it because he's out a lot more trophies than I do. But that's where the fans don't know what they want, right? They want us side-by-side racing. And then they get mad to the way they wreck half the field on lap 15.

But then when all the drivers are like, hey, what, guys, there's 185 laps to go. Let's just ride around the top, single file. Right? And then you get some pit strategy with Toyota's pitting and Ford's pitting. But the fans hate us right around the top. So, like, where's the happy medium? Because if we run side by side, it's inevitable that somebody's going to bump a little bit to or on the backstretch, and you're going to collect cars.

Somebody's going to go up the middle, and you're like, oh. And then it's all it takes, right? One guy pushing a little bit too hard, like the 18 was pushing the 20 there to pile up a bunch of cars. And then when you try to get some laps on your belt and right around the top, they don't like that either. So you got to get to, you know, a happy medium. But even your drivers get chippy and say stuff. You know, like, I mean, there was just as much kind of bad-mouthed

in the interviews outside of the care center afterwards. It's just like, you know, I don't know why we were doing this. But I guess I'm saying I don't know why you're so hard on yourself sometimes because I don't know how you avoid it, frankly. Like, you're going to go to restrictor plate race. You're going to have somebody. Yeah, you ain't going to have a push. You're going to have a, you're in a draft.

You're in a vacuum, aren't you? How do you avoid it? I'm interested to hear Dale's take on it because now he sees it from the top. He sees it from, you know, the bird's eye view on TV. So, like, I think it has to do with patience a little bit. But what do you think? You can change the car, you can change the rear spoiler, you can change parts and pieces. You're never going to be able to change a human error.

Yeah. You're never going to be able to affect that side of it. It's always going to be a part of the ingredients, right, of that race. You're never going to be able to move human error and impatience. Agreed. Yeah, greed. Everybody has a different attitude, personality. You're laid back.

He's high strung. Whatever, right? Everybody's going to drive differently. Yeah. And that's always going to be part of that. the equation, but you can, what can you control? You can control parts and pieces and cars. And I feel like that the big ass spoiler on the back is a big, big, big ass problem. Yeah, because you can't gap yourself. You got to get pushed if you're the front car.

Yeah. I feel like that until, you know, I really, really love Daytona when you had to handle, you know, everybody looked good for five laps and then you had to handle. And that meant you had to work with your team and you had to practice a lot. You had to run laps and get on old tires and work on your car. Then you had comers and goers, guys that couldn't handle guys get real tight. Guys that get real loose, you know, and they'd have to get the hell out of there because they couldn't drive their cars. Yeah, even when their stuff's hand on bad anymore, you can still stay in there and just

sucked right back in to the pack because the drafts so big. So I don't know. I got my own opinions about that. What, one of the air, you said your dad could see air? 98, 99, I was in the IROC series. So I said, okay, I've never done this before. I'm going to go to Daytona early. They say, hey, you want to come down a couple days early?

We got practice from 8 in the morning until 9, you know. So, okay, so I go down there. After I win the championship, I'm all excited to go be an I rock guy. And Marcus and Trickle and Jimmy Sauter with their drivers. And your dad's there. It was the first thing in the morning. I was looking around. He's the only one there.

There's 12 drivers in this thing, and me and him are the only ones. And what are you doing, Dale? I'm just messing around. So we go out and we jump in all the cars and we're switching cars because the cars, they had four practice cars. And no matter which one your dad got in, that's all that could lead the pack. What does he do that?

And I'll try to keep up and next day go back, same thing. He's there. It's like, why are you here? I mean, you win all these races. Why are you here? Yeah, I learned stuff. I was like, okay, help me out. He goes, well, he says, you see the vapor trails?

I say, yeah, I didn't notice that. That's pretty cool. I mean, I'm just going there, and those I rock cars had to wing and the friggin mirrors. And at the end of them, there were vapor trails. And I just thought it was cool. He goes, put your windshield next to the vapor trail at the left front of that car when you see it.

Okay, let me try that. So I'm going, I said, okay, here's that vapor trail. And I went to it, and this son of a fuck took off like 30-mile hour. I was like, what the heck? What is that? What is that? That's just air, man. That's where you find the air.

So, I mean, he was the one of the first ones to learn out of side draft. You know, from the vapor trails, I think, first thing in the morning in the I rock car. He could see the air. Yes, literally. Literally seeing the air. Yeah. And once you know where it's at, and he hunted it to catch it because it's crazy. I mean, you could be going down to Baxter and you think your motor blows up.

What the heck's going on here? You're like, I'm wide open. Also, they get going again. So it's crazy what the air does. It's wild. I wish I knew what that felt like. I realize as you watch these races, I hear you talk about this and you talk about this in the draft and stuff, but none of us know what that feels like when you step out and it just looks

like, why would you do that? You know, and we sit there and, you know, quarterback it, but it's like, I bet it feels way more, you know. That brings up a great point, too, and this is, I was thinking about this too, and I want to ask Corey, because he's driving these cars today. I've never drove the cup cars with the big spoilers like we have today. When everybody's running at the top, and we did that with other packages as well, but even more so today, do you think, you know, when you take that car out of that line and all sudden

you just got giant amount of drag and downforce increase because you're carrying that big spoiler around there. Don't you think that that's a detriment? Let me ask you. Is that rear spoiler and the drag that the current package have? Is that a detriment to pulling out a line? Because you know the penalty, when as soon as you get that car in clean air,

it's going to drop. It's like pulling a parachute. It feels like pulling a parachute. Right. And so when that increases the likelihood, I guess, of everybody getting sort of trapped in that outside line. It's not, maybe a, if you guys aren't up there by preference, but there's no, if they, you know, they don't want to pull the parachute.

Yeah. I mean, you saw a guy like Denny, right, had one of the fastest cars, won both stages, couldn't make anything happen because the strength is in the numbers. The strength's not necessarily any faster car that can pull a line or lead a line because you can't, that the side draft of the lead card doesn't overcome the energy that three or four more cars in a line can make. So, you know, it's way above my pay grade to tell NASCAR, you know, what to change on the Speedway cars. It was kind of always that way because, I mean, we, when I would go, you had to have three cars.

Yeah. If you didn't have three cars, no, don't even go. Yeah. You know, get yourself, you did a lot of practicing, so you practiced with different guys. Okay, this three cars, we're pretty damn quick. Okay, let's find each other. And then if you don't have three cars, I'm good. I'm just going to ride right here.

You weren't making a pass. Yeah, but now, now it's. It's like if there's 12 cars in the top lane, even six. Yeah, even six can't make the bottom go. It just can't. Did losing so many cars early changed the... Yeah, that too. Yeah, how so?

Well, when you... There's less guys willing to sit in line, right? When you take half the field out, say you crash 20 cars, well, there's five of those guys, they're probably not going to ride in that top line and just try to keep trying to make the bottom work. Well, now they're gone. And now there's... That have been five more that could form.

simulate the bottom lane and then which would lure 10 more guys to make the bottom lane go with four to go maybe not 30 to go but the bottom lane would have been there with more cars sure because of the sheer energy in the energy it creates is that right well it would it would pull numbers away from the top lane right so you right right so it dissipates a little bit and then it will get the kind of the middle working so you can get some three wide going and it would it would have diced it up i think so it is that is that's when i see the big crash earlier that's what i think damn it's We're going to have A single file down.

For the rest. But I would have thought the same thing, too, but not for the same reason. I would have thought because they're going to just obviously play it safe because that was kind of a, you know, quote-unquote, bone-headed thing to do so early. But you're saying it sounds like, you sort of don't even have a choice at that. It changes the whole way they cut through the air. There's still some people on the track that want to be boneheads. They just can't. Yeah.

They just can't. Because when everybody goes the top, you're just like, you got to be one-wide here if I had. Yeah, your bonehead opportunities are limited. Yeah. Yeah, you can't be a bonehead. Yeah, you don't get the opportunity to be a bonehead as much. Like, if you know, like, I mean, Bubba was trying to work to get the bottom lane going, and he was five or six cars up and pulls out, and he might could maintain for a corner,

and then as soon as you get flattened back out on the straightaway, it was like, foo. Yeah. Because it's something, the next, just fill the hole. Racing. On the road course, man. On the road course. On the road course.

Nobody said nobody ever. No. You know. Right. Have you been in Daytona long enough? Well, I mean, we were down there. Or does it not feel that way? What do you mean?

It's a whole lot less now. You got to go back and race there again. Just left. Well, I guess the time split would have been about the same from previous years because you'd get down there on Saturday, but Saturday prior, right? And you'd be down there Saturday all the way through Sunday, sometimes Monday. So I guess being down there for 10 days. Doesn't bother you.

Doesn't bother me. I came back, though. You can't fathom being somewhere anywhere that long. You get tired of it quick, don't you? Well, I don't know. I wouldn't like, just for pure entertainment and enjoyment of racing, I wouldn't want to race the Oval and then the road course the next weekend at the same track. I don't disagree with that tape.

Oh, because of the entertainment value or because of the road course. Yeah. No, that's my point. I don't see you ever. Or even if you ran back-to-back ovals at Daytona. Yeah. Why? I got you.

Yeah. Wow. But it's easy. Yeah. It's convenient. That's right. All right. Well, we got a lot of stuff we didn't get to.

I wish we could have. I know. There's some things in here where you got dirt. You got dirt in your mouth. I'm looking at these notes. I'm like, wow, we didn't even get their notes. There's lawsuits. We got another three hours of questions here.

I wanted to talk to you about your flip, so we're going to have you have you come back. Okay. Not a problem. I'm just, I don't know why. I've seen that highlight a lot. And for some reason, I just want to talk to you about it. You remember that ride I gave you and Hank Parker in the Bush van? Your first time you said ever around Daytona Speedway?

I think so, yeah. Him and Ray Hill says, hey, these rookies want to ride around in the van. Can you give him a ride? I said, yeah, who do you got? Him and Little Hank. There was rookie meetings every Friday morning, and the champion from the year before had to host the meetings, which was cool because it was him.

So I throw them in the van, and it's raining. And we go out on the racetrack, and I went up to the top of the racetrack. Years ago, I was watching the guys on those pedal bikes and those oval tracks. Well, they go up top, and then they come off the banking. And I was like, I seen an interview, and they said, why do you that?

He said, well, coming off the bank, and it builds momentum. I was like, okay, why can't we do that at Daytona? So I did that. I always went up to the top, and about halfway through, you just kind of pick a straight line and come off the banking. So I did that in the van, and I'm like, what you do that for? I said, well, I seen a thing on the bikes.

Oh, okay, cool. So him and Hank there were sitting. Hank was right here in the middle going around, probably running a 90-mile in the rain, and a freaking truck crossed the racetrack and come out of four. Thank God it didn't have a trailer because we would have hit that soccer. Oh, my goodness. Oh, I was like, and I look over and they're like,

oh, little Hank, his eyes were speaking. Wow. I was like, oh, that wouldn't have been good. Yeah, would have winded up the old Bush van. I thought those meetings were pretty helpful. They'd tell you what not to do. No, well, like, we got to, if we didn't have rookie meetings, right, we're just a couple of knuckleheads with no guidance, right?

But when we would go, and not just because you're sitting here, but when we would go have a rookie meeting, there's a veteran driver that you had to listen to for a half hour. And you got to know Randy, right? One of the regulars, one of the respected guys. I don't know. I think it was kind of put us on a good path to respecting the people or, you know, like trying to make sure we did the right thing on the racetrack.

Yeah. I think they should have it. Do they still do rookie meetings? No. Hey, they might be on Zoom. You know when they quit? You know when they quit having them? I won the championship the next year and they were like.

They didn't want to wake you up. No, they were like, ain't no damn way you're doing a rookie meeting. you're still a rookie. Like, what are you going to teach him? Yeah, we're not going to do rookie meets. Wait, this ain't going to work. Dale Jr. He hadn't showed up on time yet to practice.

Yeah, he's not going to sit there. I'm already. I won the championship. I'm like, hell yeah, man. I'm going to teach these rookies a lesson. And they're like, no, we're not having a mean more. There's nothing they can learn for me. We also put the furniture on his house, the first race he won.

The Texas, the cup race. Owned the house. What do you mean? mean? Well, I don't know if Dad got the invitation to a party that was it the wrong location or something because they weren't home yet. Oh, they weren't home? No, yeah, yeah. They were flying home. So his first race, he won Texas. You're talking about the Bush series. Oh, cup race. The first cup race in 2000. Yeah. And so we're at the Mooreswell Dragstrip. And a guy calls, hey, he was dating your sister at the time. He was, hey, Jr. was having a party at his house. They're on the way home from Texas. I said, oh, cool, good times.

after the Moorser Jackson we loaded up the van the guy gave me the code punch the code in we go in and say okay there's nobody here Corey's walking around through the house oh yeah yeah yeah so yeah so I'm talking back in the van I'm paul I said I can't leave without doing something and one of my first wins people put my furniture up on my house all the backyard furniture so we went Cory little Jimmy I said hey let's go so put little Jimmy up on the roof We were handing up all the lawn chair furniture and putting them up on his roof. Umbrella's, all the stuff.

Anything that was out there, we were throwing it up on his roof. When did you find out it was him? I don't know. Just now? Probably like the next weekend or something. Well, you might not even noticed it at the first night. No, no, the time they got back there,

probably tuned up. They were tuned up. Right. Right. I guarantee you. Hell yeah. All right. Well, thank y'all for coming.

It's great conversation. Thanks for having us. A lot of fun. Continue to what you. You're great for the sport. I appreciate it. So are y'all. So are y'all.

We just appreciate it. Everything you've done for safety. Corey, you're making your mark as a driver. And, you know, you're also a great personality with your podcasts. And not a lot. You know, that's a good thing you're doing. It's fun. It is.

It is fun. But it helps people get to know you. And we appreciate it. I appreciate it as a broadcaster. Appreciate that. Yeah. Thanks for coming, man. Enjoy it.

What to get you back. Enjoy those kids. They grow up quickly. I'm trying. Yes, sir. She makes it hard. some days. Yeah.

Thanks, see y'all. Great conversation with the L'Joy's Mike. Fun. Lots of fun. All right. It's time for Asch Jr. Hey, everybody.

It's Dale Jr. Thanks for tuning in. This is the Asch Jr. portion of the podcast, the Dale Jr. Download. We appreciate your support. We had Randy LaJoy and Corey LaJoy come in and sit down and talk to us. And we got a lot of great stuff from both those guys. Corey coming off a great run at Daytona.

Pretty good conversation, wouldn't you say, Mike? A lot of fun. A lot of fun. characters together are amazing. Anyhow, yeah, so this is Asked Junior Park. Let's get started. Leah. Our first question coming from David Solomon. What are your thoughts on McDowell and his team's ability to be competitive at other tracks this year? Will we see the underdog throw a wrench into the chase? Well, he already has. You know, he's gobbled up a very critical and important position in the playoffs. They'll more than likely easily be able to maintain their position

inside the top 30 in points. So he'll get to enjoy all the things that come along with making the playoffs personally as a driver. And the team will be able to enjoy that as well. They go to the racetrack. They got that wind sticker on that car every single week. Those things are hard to come by, and they're a very big source of pride. That could put a little pep in the step of that team, carry them quite a ways into the season.

I'm not sure how it affects their performance going forward. they have improved, you know, and I think that we've seen, especially when we went to this package with the high-down force, low power, that team started qualifying better and racing better. And so, you know, I don't know what their ceiling is, I guess. So it's hard to, it's hard to say what the end game is for front row. But I like what Denny said on social media. It's not a fluke. Michael's been you know

Michael was in a lot of people's fantasy five lineup we had this league that we play with NBC and a bunch of fans and there's several thousand people in it and Rick Allen had the out of like

5,000, 8,000 people that are in this fantasy league you can pick any five drivers you want in your lineup and Rick Allen was 13th overall he had McDowell in his lineup and I bet McDowell was in several people's lineups because he does really well at Daytona and Talladega and putting himself in

position to finish well at those races. So pretty impressive. Couldn't happen to a better guy. Seems to be really, really real liked across the garage and really respected. Next question coming from Sean Berg. Do you think NASCAR needs to make a greater effort to start the races earlier in the day at some tracks to reduce chances of weather delays? It's a hot topic on social history.

It should be. You know, I love the I love the nostalgia. as a, you know, thinking back of when I was a, you know, kid watching races, you would go to church and then you would hustle home. You had to hurry out of church to get home to be able to see the start of the race. That, for me, they just went hand in hand, going to church, watch the race. That was your Sunday. You know, people have routines and things that they remember from in their life and things that just go together. And that was, you know, that was the way much, that's what I remember for my childhood and being such a huge, you know, racing being such a huge part of my life,

I remember that, you know, that happened right after church. And so I miss, I miss that, you know, and the networks feel like that they can get a better number putting these races at different times. And they intend to try to give the West Coast audience as much as an opportunity to see the race as the East Coast audience. And, uh, and the numbers that they, have and the information that they have and the data that they have tells them that this is the best time to start these races. So I understand what that argument's all about. But also like the continuity of a start time that's consistent across the board for every single

race. You know, like, and I don't know everything about this. Like, I'm not trying to, I'm not an expert. But I do know one thing as a fan of Washington football team. since 1982, I do know over the last several years, there's a 1 o'clock and there's a 4 o'clock. There's a 1 o'clock and there's a 4 o'clock every Sunday, every Sunday, 1 o'clock, 4 o'clock.

And it makes it so easy to tune in. And so I don't, I wish we had that continuity of, you know, when NASCAR is? Yes, starts at noon. That's every week. or one o'clock, whatever it is, you know. But we have 2 o'clock starts, 3 o'clock starts, 4 o'clock starts, 7 p.m. starts, 8 p.m. start. We're just all over the place.

And it's hard for me. I don't know when the race starts next weekend. Oh, yeah. No. Got a clue. No idea. No clue. I couldn't tell you to start time for any race on the schedule.

I just got to wait till that day. Look for a tuning graphic. Or it's either on my itinerary if I'm broadcasting the race. You know, it would be nice if it was just obvious in our brain that just like you have as an example using the NFL, the 1 o'clock 4 o'clock, I mean, if we just knew that NASCAR races start at 1. Who doesn't know that? Right. That's a no brain. All right.

Next question coming from Jordan Buster. What new ideas would you like to see out of the Darlington throwback race? Mine would have been, mine would have to be the broadcast network to use a classic graphic display. package from the years past. You know, I wish we did that every week. Not just the throwback race. I've tried to figure out a way for us if you watch. And Fox did this for the starting lineup for the Clash, I know.

I'm not quite sure if they use the same style for the Daytona 500. I think they might have. But for the Clash, they had the drivers name. across the bottom of the screen for each row, the inside and outside of row one, the inside and outside of row two. And they had a little music in the background. And they just talked about,

from this hometown, this driver. And it really, I think, I try to work the hometowns in there whenever I can when we're doing lineups or cameras, in-car cameras and stuff, because it puts that driver in a location, right? And maybe you're from that area, you know, and you're going, oh, I didn't know that guy was,

that's my guy, right? and so it really humanizes the drivers when you're like hey he's from this town this small town in this state it makes them real people right so um anyhow uh i think for the clash fox did that where they had the each row pop up on the screen and had little music in the background and they kind of gave gave it time gave the announcers a little time to say something about each driver. And, you know, we kind of, we do maybe the top 10, and then we start talking about something else while you're left to read the lineup on the screen, if you want.

We might pick out a handful of guys, a half dozen or a dozen guys out of the lineup that we might say, you know, I like this guy, or I think this guy's going to have a good day. But I wish we did it in a more traditional sense of row one. This is, you got, you got this guy and this guy. Row two, you got this guy and this guy. with a little bit of, you know, a little bit of some hype music in the background. Who saw the video over the week of Chris Economacky doing the, doing the field of the bush clash on pit road talking to each one as they were climbing?

Did you see this video? Oh, well, you probably saw it when it really happened to. But like, but I was like, wow, first of all, how talented is he? Second of all, hilarious. Third, how awesome is that to introduce our lineup that way? Hey, we've got Jeff Bodine here. Ready, Jeff? Yes, sir.

All right. And he's moving. If your answer was longer, boy, you get left. Kahnemaki was moving. It was like whatever that grid walk thing is. But without the... It's not like that. I was going to say, without the circus act.

You know what I'm saying? I'm with you, Mike. You know, that opportunity to do the lineup I miss it. That's so cool. Next question. We could talk about throwback weekend all day. Next question coming from Lee Loggins. I know you're a collector of vintage NASCAR T-shirts.

What would be your Holy Grail of T-shirt? Oh, man, I don't know. That is tough question. Yeah. I think, you know, dad had these shirts made in the 70s that had his late model or his little sportsman Nova. I remade a batch of those, maybe about 100, 150 of them to give to some friends. But I don't have an original. I think I got the one that I used to make my fake ones

was one I borrowed from my Uncle Randy. He had a child's size still in his possession, an original. And I took it and used that imagery to sort of make these shirts, but I've never seen. It's just Dad's White Noven. It has Dad's name and kind of this old 70 bubbly font. It's really, really cool. So anything of dads that's going to be pre-1984.

Like anything after 84, there's a lot of that out there. It's pretty easy to get a hold of. But anything like Bud Moore, 1981, 1980, 79, there's only a few of those out there, if any. All right, guys. Man, those are great questions. I thought that was way better than last week. I didn't think Asked Juner was good last week. I don't remember that being.

I didn't remember that being so awful. I'm critical, man. I guess it's hard on us. I'm glad you're happy this week. Great job. Great job, Leah. Great job to everybody. Great job for everybody.

That's exactly right. Thanks for the great, thanks for all the great questions. I just got a text from Corey Lejoy. Appreciate being on the show. You guys are going to enjoy the conversation. Corey's just such a great guy. And he's got some more insight. We had Eddie Dickerson.

Jeff Dickerson. and I'm sorry, on the podcast last year, who's one of the owners in Spire. A lot of people are curious about Spire and their business model, you know, and where they're headed. And Corey opens up a little bit about that. So just a great show.

Again, we really can't thank you guys enough for the support y'all give us. And it really makes it fun to come in here and put this content together for y'all. And so have a great week. Time for last call. This is the end of the show. The Dell Jr. Download is on NBCSN.

Wednesday, 5 p.m. Eastern. Make sure you tune in. We appreciate it. You'll see a edited version of the full podcast on NBCSN, not the entire podcast. No, no. Door bumper clear. Post-Dat 20500 episode is out now. T.J. talks us through the last lap crash from his perspective, spotting for Joe Lugano. Freddie Kraft talks about Bubba Wiles' first race with 2311 racing. Should be a lot of fun.

Yeah, it's good. Can T.J. be honest? I don't know. Can he own their role in all of that? Can he take responsibility for any of the incident? Did he bring data? Did he deflect? Or did he deflect? Did he deflect?

Was it someone else's fault? I guarantee you he has the ability to deflect. Will he unnecessarily blame someone? Right, right. You got to tune in the door bumper clear to find out. That's where it's at. A lot of fun. And reaction theater.

A real reaction theater is back on Doorbubber Clare. Right. Was that any good? So will anybody blame T.J. I wanted reaction theater for our show. You give it to door bumper clear. Yeah. Was it any good? I thought it was good. I thought it could also be better. Is it reaction theater how we remember it? Are we going to be able to get the regular, as you know, the call in?

No. No. Our reaction theater was better, especially in the early days of it when people were really tuned up. I mean, like, tuned up. You think you might get there mid-season? I don't know. We'll see. I think it's all about the producer on how well he does. I like it when you get a couple regulars. Right. That become, you know, look forward to those calling in. Yeah. But, you know, there's a responsibility for reaction theater callers and that's to bring it. Bring it. Don't be boring. You don't make the show if you're boring. Enjoy some beverages, then calling.

By the way, speaking to that producer. Yes. Happy birthday, Jason Shaw. Thank you. Happy birthday. Today's his birthday. That's a great way to wrap it up. Celebrating this man's birthday. That's right. All right. So you're going to get. drunk later on. Do it after the podcast. Oh, you said I could do it before the podcast?

Nope, no. Get it out first. All right, everybody. It's been a great show. I gotta go get Alla from school. Go get her. We'll see y'all later. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Dirty Mo.