The Dale Jr. Download - 333 - Marcus Smith: Out of the Box

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

Following the first NASCAR Cup Series dirt race in over 50 years, Speedway Motorsports Inc. CEO Marcus Smith joins Dale Earnhardt Jr. after hosting the dirt race weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway.Smith delves into many exciting projects surrounding his portfolio of race tracks including the latest on Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, Atlanta Motor Speedway, plus promoting NASCAR’s inaugural trip to Circuit of the Americas.Dale Jr. along with co-host Mike Davis have a lot of questions about what went down in Bristol and what could be coming down the pipeline for Smith and SMI.Smith details the next-level weather challenges Bristol faced over the weekend. He explains how his team adapted and overcame the curveball Mother Nature threw at them in their first attempt to host the Cup Series on dirt.He then explains the origins of the idea of covering Bristol with dirt, why he initially turned it down, and how it eventually all came together. Plus, what lessons were learned from Bristol’s original dirt attempt in the early 2000s? He shares those and why some dirt from that track was used again.Crafting a brand-new dirt track was no easy task and Smith details the process of preparing the surface and the intricate details that made it work. Then, Dale Jr. shares his hopes for when the dirt is removed from the surface later this spring.The dirt race weekend will return in 2022 and Smith explains how that decision came together over the weekend and the unique way it was announced during Monday’s Cup race.Now a year into the pandemic, Smith reflects on the circumstances his company has faced trying to host large-scale entertainment events. He shares what he believed the pandemic taught the sport and how things will look once a sense of normalcy returns.After Dale Jr. and Smith took a trip to Nashville for a visit with the mayor, Smith explains the progress his team is making in their effort to get the contract to renovate Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway. He lays out what his plans are, how noise concerns will be addressed, and why this project will be beneficial for Music City.Marcus addresses what the future looks like for Atlanta Motor Speedway and what he hopes to see happen in the state of Georgia that hopefully could transform the speedway property. This leads to a discussion about shifting the schedule around for his speedways, why changes were made for 2021, and what could possibly change in future years.How did SMI take interest in hosting a race at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, TX? Smith explains and shares how Texas Motor Speedway reacted.Smith leaves us with some major news drops including a proposed innovation for Bristol Motor Speedway and why a favorite track of Dale Jr.’s can’t be written off quite yet.In Ask Jr. Presented by Xfinity, Dale talks about his reactions to the Bristol dirt action, testing with a radio in his race car, and his thoughts on iRacing’s Chicago Street Course.  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. Man, this is going to be a great one. Mike Davis, my co-host is here. Hey, Mike. What's up, bud? Man, it's just another date.

Just another. Well, not really. We got Marcus Smith coming in here, and, you know, he's not a superstar race car driver. He's not one of the old guys from the history of the sport coming in. He's an owner of these racetracks. Just come off of an interesting weekend at Bristol where they covered the racetrack in dirt. He's going to tell us all about that weekend why they went ahead with the announcement to race again there next year with dirt. I think he's got a few other things to talk to us about when it comes to Nashville, Atlanta Motor Speedway,

and there's a few other bombs in here. So I'm excited about it. Shelts is here. We're going to have a great show, Asch Jr., presented by Xfinity. will be the tail end of the show, one of my favorite parts of the podcast. Let's get started. Watch some dirt. Oh, my gosh.

Oh, wow. Yes. I saw that promotion, the dirt in a jar. So, I mean, you know, what the corner we're talking about here? What type is that? That was probably in turn four. Okay. Oh, yeah.

In a Sugar Land's jar. Yes. Look at that. I was like, man, I'd rather have some of that cream sickle, that orange, electric. Not the dirt. The electric orange with a sun kiss. Give me some of that. Look at that.

I know you might want to mix that in with your sipping cream. It's got some moisture in there. It does. It does. It does. It does. No shortage of that. We saved that up.

A special jar. We're selling those for Speedway Children's Charities. And yeah, there's a few jars left. How many did you scoop up? How many jars do you think? I think it was 2,500. My gosh. Yeah.

Yeah. You've got a partnership with Sugarlands through the racetrack at Bristol. Sugarlands is a distillery, and they are in Gatlinburg. Tennessee. I visited there and they got a great little business and some great people, Ned, and the whole company, they're good people to be associated with. Yeah, they are. They did a great job. They have this bar at the, at the Speedway, that's all decked out. They've got a... I heard it was busy. It was very busy. Yeah. Yeah. Every delay is a good opportunity to go over there. Well, how much moonshide did you drink just to get room for the dirt?

Nah. I was working. I was working. No drinking, not this weekend. Was there a point of this weekend? You thought about drinking? No, you know, we had a great weekend. It was awesome. It was awesome. At what point in the weekend, is there a moment, I guess, where you're, you know, you're losing patience or there's frustration or you got to go, you got to tell yourself to like pull it together and, and because you're a positive guy, you're, you tend to like, this is going to work out. Everything's going to work out. Everything's going to end the right way.

We're going to do this. And it's going to, everything's going to. You don't never, you never shut the door. on things ending the way that you envision. And I wonder if there's, you know, in racing, when we're, you know, so for example, like a race car driver race team, there's moments when we, we lose it, right? We lose hope. We lose, we get frustrated.

There's bad communication and back and forth. And I wonder, I think that is this weekend probably the hardest y'all ever been pushed? I mean, it was tough. And I will say that I, I got. got to give all the credit to Jerry Caldwell, who's the general manager of Bristol Motor Speedway, and Steve Swift, who just worked tirelessly from the beginning. So they may have reached that point, but I have full confidence in them, and our whole team just did such a great job, and all the people that work with Jerry and Steve just did an awesome job to pull everything together. And I'll tell you

what the difference is between this weekend and the frustrations of weather and maybe what we had last year in Texas is that we had two big sunshine icons on Monday and Tuesday. You knew it. Right. I mean, so that was kind of our stop gap. And even though we wanted to run as scheduled, at least we had this sort of assurance that Monday and Tuesday, we're all sunshine and, you know, like 1% chance of rain. And, you know, like 1% chance of rain. So that kind of makes it a little bit encouraging and tolerable. Is there a point, though, y'all have, you know, the creek crests of the banks, and you have major flooding in the parking lots and, you know, cars and campers underwater. And there was other things going on aside from just your concern of the surface of the racetrack.

Is there, I mean, I don't know that we've ever really, I can't remember. I mean, the snow weekend was pretty wild at Bristol, but that came and went. Right. I don't really remember. The Texas weekend was a disaster, tough. I remember one year in Michigan, we were there till Tuesday or Wednesday with just rain pouring all through Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Oh, yeah.

I remember some rain delays that were difficult, but this seemed to be on the next level. It was a lot of rain in a short period of time, lots of flooding, and just a lot to deal with. And you just have to deal with it. You know, it's just another challenge. and we have such a great team, and we've got great relationship with all the community, first responders. You know, the fire department came out and helped us to clean up the parking lots

and the grandstands. Just so much great teamwork from everybody. But how does that happen? I mean, like, get into the weeds a little bit because, so when it's monsooning like it did, you've got a creek overflow. And I know you've got the weather situation, the sunny forecast coming up. So you've got that, like you said, a bump stop.

But what is the procedures and how involved do you get with Jerry Caldwell and Steve Swift? Do you get the team together? Do y'all sit there? Where do you go? What do you say? I ask a lot of questions. I can't overstate what great confidence I have in my team. And that's really what got us into doing a dirt race at Bristol.

You know, a few years ago, Jerry brought up the idea to me to have a dirt race at Bristol in the spring, and I said, man, I don't think so. I think that might be a little bit too crazy. Wow. So it was too crazy for you? At the time, it was. That's crazy. And then, you know, it was a different time a few years ago. But then, a year before last, talked to Steve about it, talked to Jerry about it, when Steve Swift said, yeah, we can do it.

it, you know, I've got full confidence in him and his whole team to be able to pull it off, Jerry and his whole team. And all I have to do is say, yes, let's do it. And, you know, there's some discussions and a lot of lobbying. We talk to NASCAR a good bit and huge, you know, props to NASCAR and all the partners and all the teams involved to be able to pull that off. But, you know, when it's raining, the biggest thing you have to remember is we can't control the rain. We do feel responsible. I tell you, I mean, it's weird. We're not responsible for the rain, but we do feel responsible.

Feel bad, yeah. Yeah, we feel terrible. But we just know that we've got to dig in and do the very best we can with whatever we have to deal with. So, y'all ran a dirt race at Bristol with the late models and so forth back 15 years ago, 18 years ago, whenever that was 2001 or whatever. Why did it take so long for this to happen again? It was, so it was World About Laws. It was about 20 years ago. And it took so long because it was a big mess.

I mean, it really was one of those things. We did it one time. We ended up, you know, Jeff Bird was president of the track of the time. And he said, I don't know how many swimming pools we had to clean out, you know, around the community. Just, you know, pressure washing homes. Okay, okay. So that, I didn't even think about that. So this cloud of dust and dirt.

It was a lot worse for the outlaws. You didn't have to worry about just your properties. property like you got you know you got neighbors complaining or local's complaining oh yeah you got to worry about that this time around i don't think so okay it looked it looked bad uh at times of course on tv but back then we didn't have sort of the grandstands quite as high maybe a little bit of that and it was just worse it was just worse we learned a lot um on how to take care of the dirt and you know yesterday we ran two races on a dirt track and in the daytime that's that's not normal that's a great scenario Yeah, it's a huge challenge.

So I think for all those things considered, the conditions were really fantastic. And if you watch a lot of dirt racing, you know that we were up against a big challenge. So if I got a swimming pool, I'm a couple miles down the road. Call us. I call the track, and they're like, we got you. We're responsible. We feel responsibility. I don't know.

That's hilarious. That's crazy. My El Camino covered in dirt. You boys better get down here right now. Is that Amy's up? Camino or yours. My wife's, yeah. He was fine with it.

I just watched mine. That's a good point, though. The dust, I did see the pictures, and it does create quite a cloud, doesn't it? It does, but I got to the track on Wednesday, and I was amazed at how clean everything was. Our team did such an awesome job, cleaning everything up. I actually called ahead to Jerry and said, hey, I'm coming up. How dirty is it?

Do I need to wear boots or anything? Because they had just finished up with late models. and he said, no, it's pretty good. I got up there, I could not believe how clean everything was. It was just amazing. I was watching from the racing. I could see as the race got going, like, the first several rows of the grandstands were getting dirtier and dirtier and dirtier. Like that dust is sort of getting blanking it down on the racetrack and outside of the, you know, you could tell.

I was like, man, they're going to have a lot of work to do to get it cleaned up. But y'all got more races to go. We do. Like, you know, after the race on Monday, that's not the end of dirt racing at Bristol this year. Right. So in a couple of weeks, we've got the outlaws coming, and that's going to be a good show.

It should be a lot of fun. We're still selling tickets for it, and then that will be the end of the dirt. And it'll take us about six weeks to clean everything up. Six weeks? Yeah. That's it. I would have thought longer.

Well, it might be, but I mean, we think it's going to be six weeks. We started with the first loads of dirt back the first week of January. So that took. some, a lot of time, a lot of effort to, to put that whole track together. You were talking to that there was a whole process, Dale was telling me about that the whole process of even picking the dirt. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, give us a little insight into that. So we had about 32 different sites that we sampled. And, you know, when you sample it, you take some dirt,

people were sending us dirt to analyze and you're looking at the various chemical properties of it. And, you know, you want just the right mix. And so that's, that's what we did. Did you get, did you learn too much about that? I mean, because I mean, I would be, if that was going on, I'd ask my guys, I'd be like, why is the dirt matter, right? I mean, certainly there's difference between sand and mud. Right. But what, dirt is dirt.

Like red clay, you know, they're dirt tracks all over this country. And what is the preference? Oh, man. There is a lot of preference and a lot of opinion. Right. So everybody in dirt, you know, the closer you are to it, I think the more expertise you have and the more opinions you have about it. Oh, yeah.

Dirt is very finicky and it's different across the country. And, you know, it's one of the certain people have certain opinions of the type of dirt. Some people want the black dirt track. Some people want the red, the collate clay dirt track. Some, you know, it's a really interesting thing and it's an art. I'm not sure how much. I mean, there's a lot of science, but there's also a lot of art in it. Was the problem with the world outlaws?

Was it the wrong kind of dirt? I mean that seriously. Was that one of the things that made that dirt gets so far out? Maybe. Maybe. I mean, we, this, it's one of those things you learned. So one of the things that we learned from that is that we needed to have this layer of sawdust to start the track. So the first layer, it's like a multi-layer cake.

We started with sawdust. What made you decide to do that versus not doing it? Well, these aren't things that I knew about in advance. So things that I found out about from Steve Swift and from his team. So the big reason, there's two reasons. One is it's a better cleanup. So that sawdust layer helps to just kind of create a barrier between the track surface and the dirt. And then it also helps to retain some moisture. So if you put the sawdust down, I think we had about five or six inches of sawdust on the track, which is a lot when you sky, dirt over a half mile track. And then, and then the different layers of dirt, the first layer was, uh, was dirt from that original outlaws race that we had stockpiled on the track property. What? Yeah. You had this dirt sitting around for 20 years? Vintage dirt. It was vintage dirt. Never, it's been around a long time. That's why you keep everything, Mike. Even dirt. On the track property, y'all had the old dirt. Yeah. You just kept?

Absolutely. Did you, because you didn't have anywhere to put it or you thought there would be a day when you'd want it again? We might need it. We might need it again. And we'll take all the dirt from this race and we'll put it on the property and, you know, we'll seat it covered over the grass and save it. Cared for it. Yeah. Care for it. Yeah.

And we'll use it again next year. You announced that. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. There was another reason why y'all put the sawdust down. You talked about the cleanup, but it takes care of the track surface as well, the one that, the concrete. Yeah. Yeah.

So if you if you don't have that service. kind of a barrier, it just kind of seeps in to the surface. So, and it's really, it's a lot harder to clean up. Yeah. Yeah. I was hoping, though, that somehow this concrete surface would not survive. I know you're going there. When will we know?

We'll see it a few weeks. I can't wait to find out whether the concrete has failed to survive this or not. All of those experts that you're getting, gleaning on this information for dirt, do you need him to talk about the concrete at all? I need Dale to tell us some more concrete engineering. Man. Well, I can start calling the pavement companies now and get some quotes.

That's right. Just in case. Just a check. We've got to be ready. Absolutely. You never know? If we need to get pavement in there fast. That's right.

So middle of the race, you guys announced to everyone. So this was kind of, I wasn't there, but I can imagine this was really kind of a cool moment. I sat in your seat, by the way. Did you? Yes. I was supposed to go. Yeah, I was supposed to go.

And the weather, well, we were going to go Sunday and the weather was bad. So we ended up not going. And then I had something yesterday, so I couldn't go. But I hope it was a good view. I'm sure it was one of the best. It was. It was great. The race, they didn't have live stops, right?

So they would pull the cars down after each stage and shut the motors off. So there was sort of this intermission, kind of a neat. I bet it was kind of a, cool atmosphere like a half time it was nice yeah it's time to talk and yeah go to the concession stay right and i believe that was a time when y'all decided to announce that y'all were going to run this dirt race again next year everybody was sitting there on social media as i was following the race saying it's a one-time deal nobody said anything about this happening again it was a lot of work i don't see them going through this process again this is you know with the rain and the da-da yeah

and then there y'all go in the middle of the race and dropped that bomb yeah y'all hadn't heard anything from a driver after, you know, post race. You hadn't heard really, you hadn't had a, you know, a fan vote or any kind of, you haven't checked the temperature of the fans. Maybe we're on, maybe we're on to the reason why you did it before. They had a chance to do all that, right? So I'm just, I was really surprised. Yeah.

What a time to announce something like that. What's the decision behind that? Well, at the track, when we announced it, fans cheered. Sure. Yeah. I'm certain that it's positive. Yeah. But I just was.

surprised by the choice to do it then? Well, yeah, that's a good point. I mean, it's one of those things that going into this, I didn't know if we would do it again or not. Going into... To the race yesterday? No, going to... When did you all decide,

man, we're going to announce for doing this again? We talked about it on, like, Saturday and Sunday when it was raining. What a minute? In the worst of times, like, in the moment when you think they would be going, we're never doing this again. No way. You made the decision to do it again that late? I mean, like, this past weekend,

that's when y'all made the decision to do it again next year? We were thinking, I was thinking, if this works, we're going to do it again. If it doesn't work, now we know. You based it, though, you hadn't had a race. You're in the middle of a torrential downpour. You got flooding outside the racetrack. You based this one off of what you saw in practice and so forth?

I was 99% sure and had everything ready to go on some, day. And once we got the first 20 or 30 laps in, you knew it could be raced by the cup cars, then ready to go. That's awesome. Yeah. Isn't there a conversation with NASCAR that at least has to be had? Yeah, we talked with them, and they were very supportive. And I can't say enough thanks to Steve O'Donnell and Steve Phelps and Jim France and just the whole team at NASCAR, how they have supported this. You know, they, and again, that goes back to my team. I mean, I've got confidence in them, and it gives other people confidence in us to do some of these crazy things. I'm still fascinated by this.

Okay, so wait a second. Did anybody on their side go, wait a second. Marcus, we're in the middle of a downpull right now. I mean, did anybody ask questions on the logic behind it? Because, I mean, listen, we're all glad that happened, but I mean, maybe some people did, but not to you. No. Wow. And so y'all just said, heck with it.

Let's announce it during the race. Yeah. That's pretty interesting. And I love the cheers. I was talking to somebody else, and it flashes up on the big TV in the middle, and you hear this crowd erupt. That's cool. I think the best, I mean, there's so many positives to make them the decision to make that announcement right there in the middle of the race. You got a captive TV audience listening to that very announcement.

You got everybody that's bought a ticket at the track. there to hear it as well. You couldn't have had better attention span to try to reach as many people as possible. And we already got about 5,000 tickets renewed just in the last 24 hours. Let me tell you what the most impressive part about this is. I mean, the announcing is great, but I'm telling you, if he's making the decision, I'm sorry, you and your team, are making the decision over the weekend when all this stuff was happening, there is an insane ability to tune out the static, which is absolutely going on. Wow, armchair quarterbacks.

Our own podcast, Doorbump, Clear may have been one of them talking about how, though, this is what happens when you've got non-dirt track people running dirt races and whatever. I mean, like that conversation was going on. You guys have an ability to tune that out and make this decision like this during this weekend before the races even run and complete. Who are the non-dirt track people? That's a great point because you've got dirt tracks. You've got dirt tracks.

Right, for sure. So, but this is interesting. You, how do you tune out the naysayers, the devil's advocates, whatever you want to call it, to be able to reach a decision like that? I learned something huge when we put in the big TV at Charlotte, big Speedway TV. That was one of the, you know, it was absolutely the biggest fan amenity in NASCAR. I mean, to have the biggest TV in the world put in. where we were watching these little postage stamp TVs in comparison in the infield for the fans.

We thought that was good when you could have a 30-foot TV. We put in a 200-foot TV, and we had people complain about it. And at that point, I realized, can't make everybody happy. And that's when I just kind of turned it off and realized, you know, I want to know what fans think, but I also need to remember that you just can't make everybody happy. And that's just part of life. Yeah. And you got to swing.

You got a swing for it. If you're going to hit it, you got a swing, right? Yeah, I think so. The dirt race felt like a swing. I mean, like even when you guys announced that you were doing it, you know, pretty sure that we even go, what's going on here? Bristol, running putting dirt, you know, well, mess up a good thing because y'all got. What is crazy? Yeah.

This was like my idea. This was your idea. Oh, yeah. Jason, you pulled something. Is it? Hold on. Are we taking credit for this? It might be. We found a clip from when Marcus was on the show in 2019 talking about Bristol dirt dirt, so I'm going to play that for you all.

Okay. Let's hear it. The Dale's idea was to rip up the concrete at Bristol and run a dirt race in Cup and then... The first Bristol race of the year run the dirt race. Yeah. And then pave it asphalt. Wait, when did he come to you with that idea? It had to be after driving.

No, that was on the plane to Vegas. Oh. Before we got there. Yeah, before we got there. Now that he didn't have to drive it, he's got all kinds of ideas. They do a boat race in the infield next time, right? That's true. I was down.

I was for it. There you go. Good job, Dale. Dale, did you tell him to do it again next year or something? Wow, okay. I think people are talking about, you know, how much work this was. You got to put the track together, then you got to tear it apart. you guys were pretty clever in this particular instance

where 20 years ago you had a world outlaws race and that was it right right this year you've you've got the dirt late models the cup race the truck race then you have the winged world outlaw cars so you've got like a month of racing absolutely yeah multiple opportunities for revenue and ticket sales and you can get a lot more bang for your buck out of the big effort to put that track together right that's true yeah and it was so cool to see what happened with the late models the week two weeks before i mean everybody coming to run all over the country and so to come and race bristol if you are you know in those classes that

were invited it's a pretty special opportunity so i think that's why people kind of dropped what they were doing and they came to bristol and we had 1400 cars the last two weeks uh you know before nascar yeah so um and i think coming up with the outlaws in a couple of weeks we'll have a big turnout and it'll be really fun and all those people will be able to say I race Bristol. Right. So that's cool. Where, how far ahead, I know y'all has announced that you're racing at Bristol in the dirt next spring, how far ahead beyond that, or what is your gut feeling about the future

of this racetrack? So I can't, I just, I didn't see y'all announcing to run it again next year because of the work, but I certainly have a hard time imagining you're going to alternate this year after you know, this track from dirt to concrete every year going forward. I think at some points you have to make a business decision to make a choice on what the future of the track looks like. So where's your gut? You know, I think so next year the race will be on dirt,

and the question is, what about the cars? So, and I don't know. The new car. Is it going to be the new car? I think it's going to be the new car. You know, what changes will be made? It'll be interesting. That'll be, I think, the next part of this decision for NASCAR and the teams to think about everybody's got thoughts on windshield, no windshield, forced air versus, you know, the under the car and that kind of thing.

So it'll be interesting to see what happens there. All of those things steer the future of the track. I think it does. And the future of Bristol running dirt. I think it does. Yeah, it's a part of it. And, you know, we'll kind of see how it goes. Do you watch the trucks at Knoxville coming up with curiosity from a business standpoint?

I've watched the race. I've been there several times. It was a big fan of that, and I really enjoyed it. You talked about owning three dirt tracks. I mean, do you think it's out of the realm of possibility to imagine taking a date to a true purpose-built dirt track one day? We're open to that. We're open to that if it's something that NASCAR wants to do. and it works out.

We'd be open to it. I think Tony and Roger have done a great job with it in Aldora and kind of paved the way to put the trucks on dirt and cup on dirt. And so we'll see. One of the things I think that I was most happy to see was the support from the industry about the work y'all did. That's not uncommon, but I think I haven't ever seen it at the levels that I agree. that I saw this weekend.

100%. On Friday, I was blown away with the positivity from the whole NASCAR world. That was really, really encouraging. It's helpful. It was so helpful and just encouraging. To me and our whole team, everybody was just really on cloud nine, that so many drivers, so many people in the sport were saying all these positive things. It made us feel really good.

And, you know, in spite of the rain, we felt like, you know, this is, we've got support here. And that was in recognizing the risks and the expense and the effort that went into it, that felt really good. With the new track agreements and so forth, you have mentioned a couple times in this conversation how important NASCAR is in the discussion and agreement. What is the conversation with NASCAR like when you as a track owner want to do anything different outside of, you know, what the schedule is?

I mean, you have to, I'm certainly have to go in and line up these. dates and schedules. But I mean, you got a date at Bristol. Do you have to go to NASCAR and say, hey, we want to run dirt? Certainly you have to talk about that because of RTA and they have to be in agreement to want to run dirt. Everybody has to be at the table, right? Right. But how much influence, I mean, how much of the decision is yours, how much of the decision is NASCAR's, and then how much influence does the RTA have on that type of choice? Well, we're in it together. I think that's the thing that has been really great about the last year. As we've gone through the COVID year, the sport is in a better place than ever, I think, with just working together, being open to new ideas or different things and changes.

And it's just been fantastic. So I don't feel like when I call NASCAR or. meet with with them it's not a us versus them thing it's it's a we thing and that's what's making NASCAR as a sport a really really you know powerful group and that's what's making our our sport just climb higher and higher how are you doing you know it's funny you're our you're our returning champion when it comes to the show i don't know that we've had anybody on this show more than we've had you do you know that kidding like this has to be the fourth time And Mike, we're talking about that last night.

We were talking about this. So you're our returning champion. And I don't think there's a close second. Okay. The reason I bring that up is because we had you on our show, albeit it was a Zoom show, when the COVID situation was about a year ago, wasn't it? It was about a year ago. We were trying to figure out all this.

Give us an update. Where are you guys as the track owners and the people that run the sport today in navigating? We're still in this situation a year later. Certainly it's changed. Now we've got fans of the track. But you're still making these big decisions. I mean, you're making decisions to do this, all right? So just give us a kind of a status update on how you guys are doing with the pandemic and all that.

You know, it's, gosh, there's so many changes. And we have been just sort of rolling with the punches. You know, you've got different rules and regs in different states and counties and cities. And that's been a big thing to deal with for the whole sport. I mean, from the beginning of the COVID shutdown, we had, we talked about, I think, last time, we had to figure out how to get the shops back open in Mecklenburg, Cabarris County, and Iredale, and that was a big challenge. So, you know, we couldn't race if the teams can't go back to work.

So we worked on that, then being able to get back to the track, working with all of our healthcare partners and all the different groups to be able to get back racing was our primary goal. And I think because we worked together, NASCAR was able to get back on track sooner than anybody. And that was a big thing. So as we go forward, you know, we've had to make changes, different tweaks to our standard event policies. And a lot of people aren't quite ready to get back to a major event yet. And that's understandable.

Like fans or like government? A little bit of both. Okay. Fans, sponsors, government entities, some are in, some are not in yet. That's fair. And there's been just kind of a slow migration back to normal. And we're not back there yet, but we're getting closer. And that's helping us.

We had 36,000 tickets sold for Bristol. And, you know, that's the biggest crowd, you know, really since a year. ago. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And you foresee that progressing and growing that? I do. You know, with different regulations, you know, the three feet versus six feet, different states allowing for different capacity levels, it'll continue to grow. And as more people get vaccinated, and it's not just about policies. It's also about how people feel and that they feel safe. And we're doing a lot to make sure that people feel safe. We're doing a lot of cleaning. We're doing a lot of of just things to help people feel good about coming to an event.

I guess this next big idea has to be fairgrounds, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah, so we want to talk about Nashville Fairgrounds. Me and you went together, you were nice enough to take me along the latest trip up there to see the mayor. The mayor signed a letter of intent, and we had a great conversation with him. We got to visit the racetrack itself, and we just spent a great day just discussing one of my favorite places, so it was a really good time.

you seem really happy with the results of that trip. Yeah. But we haven't spoke a lot about it since then personally. What I understood when we left Nashville was the mayor basically saying, all right, now go back and put together a plan that you can show me and that I can get everyone here in Nashville to get on board with. So I'm just curious as to where you guys are and what progress has been made. Sure. So since we met, and thanks again for going up there with me, that was great.

And we met with the governor and the mayor, and Dale took some pictures with a bunch of people. And it was a lot of fun. But the mayor was kind enough to give us a letter of intent. And since then, we've had multiple meetings with people on the project, fine-tuning different plans that go along with the whole project. And so and then simultaneously working on, you know, a final agreement that would have us manage the, the construction and renovations and then operate the facilities. So it's, it's in progress. And it's a good thing. We're moving closer. Yeah. Why did you take Dale? Well, because. I wouldn't stop begging.

It was great. So I, he and I talked about Nashville many times. as you know. And so when he tweeted, I think you're right. I can tell. When he tweeted that he was involved in the IndyCar thing, I texted him. I said, I can't believe you're promoting without me. And then we talked and he said, I told you I would, I want to help. I'll come up anytime. And he said, you let me know. And whenever you want to go to Nashville, I'll drop whatever I'm doing and I'll go. and and I said okay and like the next week I called you and said next week Thursday lunch with the mayor and Dale said I'm in within five minutes was that meeting on the books already when Dale had said that or did you arrange that meeting after Dale said that soon as we hung up and he said

I'll go that's when I started working on the meeting and you know the mayor was able to clear his schedule pretty quick and um So that worked out great. And Dale responded really quick. And on the airplane there, he said, when I hung up, I told Amy, Mark's going to call me, and I'm going to have to drop what I'm doing and go. And so I really appreciate that. Well, I don't think you understand the history that y'all made by that right there.

I mean, Dale Jr. are not going to tell Amy that, look, I don't care. I'm going. That's an impressive feat. Now, what was his role? I know what he says his role was. He was the closer. Come on. I mean, it's okay if his role was to smile and be Dale Jr.

But what was his role? I mean, I'm sure you talked about it on the plane, right? I don't know. We just, I mean. I was a feel good. That's what I'm saying. If you were just to. He was great.

I was there to keep things nice and warm. It was a perfect, you know what? You did. And it was a perfect compliment to the whole situation. Governor and all the governor staff was happy to see Dale. And they were like, who are you? Hi, Dale, how you doing? Wow.

So there you go. He brought a little bit of a, if nothing else, an icebreaker and people to feel comfortable. No, honestly, just Dale's feedback and insight in the meeting, kind of lending the credibility that, you know, this is important for NASCAR, I think really helped a lot. So it was great. He said you guys were high-fiving each other. Is that right? Like he told me that y'all were really excited. Now, I don't know if that kind of emotion is what you want out there in the public.

But for real. I'm super excited about it. You were that excited about it after your meeting. I've been working on for three years. So, yeah, I'm excited. I'm really excited about it. I'm optimistic. I'm, you know, I just think it is a great fit for NASCAR.

You know, the fairground speedway is in Nashville. And that's just really unusual. I mean, to take a NASCAR venue, a NASCAR event into a venue that's two miles from City Hall. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. So talking to you about, we talked about this on the way there. There's a lot of community concerns and people around, people who live near the track and all that.

When they hear about what we did in the meeting we had with the mayor, I think a lot of the community thinks, More racing. Right. More. Right. More noise. Great point. Right.

And so when I had, and we, me and you discussed those concerns before we ever got to Nashville. Mm-hmm. So I know that it's top of mind for you. I know that it's one of the priorities in the whole process of fixing the track up is to make sure the community is happy with everything. Right. But we talked about that. One of the things that I understood by the end of the day was that short-tracked. Short track racing, as we know at Nashville,

wouldn't go anywhere. All the things that are happening there that people enjoy about Nashville, as far as a short track, late model, super late model sort of venue, would all remain. But you guys would clean the schedule up as far as the week-to-week practice, open practice. Like right now, anyone can call the track and go drive laps and be there all day from eight to five just humming around that racetrack, right?

Right, right. You guys would have a little bit more uniformity. So there would actually be, even with a NASCAR component, less days. There would be a much cleaner schedule that even the community would be aware of and understand. Right. Is that not true? Yeah. So the Fairground Speedway is right next to this new Major League Soccer Stadium that's under construction currently.

It is, it's a really unique and special part of town, and it's in the community. So the venue, this is a big deal. The venue is already, it already belongs to the people. And it's been the Nashville fairgrounds for a long, long time, for decades. And so our vision is to restore it to the kind of venue that the community can enjoy, everything from a NASCAR weekend to a music festival, Christmas shows in the holidays, the State Fair, of course, and all sorts of events. So, you know, Nashville is an event town,

and that facility needs to be brought up to, you know, the standards that it needs to be today to host a lot of events. And it's not just racing. We do this at our Speedway in Las Vegas, where, you know, twice a year now we host NASCAR events, but 50 other weeks out of the year, we're hosting everything from a construction expo to a music concert, car shows, driverless car exhibitions, all sorts of special events there.

And we think that the Nashville Fairground Speedway can be this events venue that complements everything that goes on in Nashville. But a lot of the modernization of the racetrack, if you were to get the contract, a lot of that would go toward sound mitigation. doing things to improve the experience for the community on the race. Sound and a lot of the things you don't see like plumbing and electrical and just a lot of good safety things as well. So, yeah.

One of the other things I learned about going on this trip that was interesting to me is when I, up until, I mean, you've been working on it for three years. During those three years, the only thing that I had in my mind was soccer stadium racetrack. But when I saw the property, there's, like you say, there's way, way more involved. it's a much more complex property than just the racetrack and just a soccer stadium. There's a community park component. Right now, there's currently even a dog park on the property. But, I mean, there'll be shopping and small, you know, retail and things like that.

Some housing is going to be there. Right. You know, high-rise housing. Yeah. I was really impressed because I'd always – I'd had it in my mind that it – and I think a lot of people may as well that just that have heard this, you know, listened in on this conversation for the last several years that it was soccer stadium racetrack

and, you know, no one knew how much more complex this entire property is. Yeah. Well, it just, Nashville's growing so much and so fast as the city grows that way. You know, we have a lot of neighbors and we want the, the whole facility to be a place that all the neighbors can enjoy.

And, you know, NASCAR is part of it, but it's certainly not, you know, just a NASCAR facility. It is, it's an events facility that will serve the, the whole community in Nashville. One of the interesting things about the relationship would be that you wouldn't own the facility. You would basically just be the promoter. And that brings me to, is that similar to basically how you're operating at Circuit of Americas? It's close. It's close. Circuit of the Americas, we have a lease on the facility for a certain time, and it's a short window to host the NASCAR race. Compared to the Nashville Fairgrounds, we'll be operating facility for the Fair Board and the city, you know, for 10 years.

For a longer period of time. Yeah. But it's a similar thing where you're not, you don't actually own the dirt, but you're, you know, it's a major business opportunity for you. When my dad first ran his first race, back then the way that promoters ran races is you would lease the track. And you would get a date and you would lease the track and then you would promote that date at that location. So what we're doing in Circuit of the Americas is kind of like it used to be done back in the 50s. Wow. That's interesting to me. Let me ask you something about Nashville.

So you just answered a couple of my questions. And one was, is the state fair still there? And if it is, I would assume you're having to deal with fair boards. And you just said you are. Fairboard owns that property, right? Right. That's a whole different set of, I won't call it complications, just say circumstances dealing with fair boards, right? I mean, there's so many fair ground speedways over America since the 20s and 30s.

And they're not a lot of them out there anymore. That's true. Is it, why is that? What happened? And is it because of the whole situation with fair boards? And how are you going to navigate that? Well, I think we're bringing events to that venue that will help pay the bills to renovate it. So absent, you know, our big events like NASCAR weekend, you really don't have the revenues to afford to upgrade it.

And so we're going to be, you know, providing a lot of revenue to the, you know, the to the fairgrounds that will help finance all those, all those upgrades. And so maybe this is something that will happen elsewhere. But I think to answer your question, why is that there haven't been a lot of these things where you really create revenue at fairgrounds that's significant enough. Today, it's just a lot of money to keep up these facilities. It's real expensive. You've answered the question. You're helping pay for the upgrades or you're paying for the upgrades, which is in their best interest, and you're making a bet that this is this is a bet you're going to make. You're going to help, you know, create this outdoor events venue, not just the

racetrack, but the outdoor events venue with the anticipation, you're going to, you know, get a return on that, right? Is that fair? We think it's going to be good for us and good for the people in Nashville because we're bringing revenues that haven't been there in a long, long time. And I think that will be good for all of us. One more last thing on Nashville. There's a deadline. Yes. What's the deadline? Do you like to do you? Yeah, sometime this summer. Okay. What does that mean?

What is the deadline? It just means we got to get a contract, an actual contract done. An LOI is a letter of intent to do a contract. So we're in the process of finalizing the contract, and we'll finalize that, and we'll keep moving forward. Just getting the contract finalized, that's beating the deadline? Yes, yeah. We're in the process right now. I feel good about it and feel like we're on the same page.

Cota, Atlanta. How does he – who keeps your schedule? I don't know. I have good help. You got to have good help, but that's a token answer. I mean, really, I don't know how you keep all these irons in the fires. You know, I just have such confidence in my team, and I've got great people. around me that I know that if if I have an idea out I'll talk with them about it and

if they say we can do it I have full confidence in that and I think it's I was thinking about that yesterday just about how is the the monumental effort of the dirt in Bristol and that you know why why people think that it's maybe crazy of me to to do that but it's not just me I I just have this confidence in my team to be able to make it happen. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about or give you a chance to explain was when people heard Bristol Motor Speedway was going to Nashville to try to acquire an opportunity to race at that fairgrounds.

A lot of people just assumed, oh, no, Bristol is going to lose, Bristol will have to give up something to get something. Right, right. And I think that's a misconception. You're basically, and I'll let you get into this, but it's my understanding that you're just tasking Bristol Motor Speedway as an entity to be responsible for this project. Right, right. Yeah, Jerry and his crew done a really good job of just staying on it.

They're closest to Nashville. I get over there quite often with Jerry, but he is over there a lot more than I am. And so that's how we're handling it. But Bristol wouldn't give up a date. If Nashville, if everything goes great with the fair board, you've got a renovated racetrack, How are you going to find a date for Nashville? We've got some ideas. I don't have that ready to talk about yet, but we've definitely got some ideas on how we can bring a date there.

All right. You tried. We were going to crack the shell, see if we'd get it open. What more hard shale I think we're going to have today is Atlanta Motor Speedway. So, you know, I got this little picture that came off of the Internet of Atlanta Motor Speedway and a giant casino and all kinds of other stuff. Look at that. Water park. It's cool.

Is that what we're building, Marcus, right there? Is that what we got going on? Absolutely. Okay. Five roller coasters and this and another big concert venue. You know, I got excited when I first saw this. I think it was about a year and a half ago because the racetracks an oval. There's no, there's no tri-oval.

You noticed. I quickly learned that that was just a very loose rendering of a possible future expansion for Atlanta-Marcheway. He did ask about that. I do. I guarantee you he asked about that. Marcus will not hire me because he knows that I just go bonkers. No, man. I'm going to have to hire you to help promote races.

I'd be digging up all his racetracks. Golly. You sure you don't need somebody to just dig up all the work y'all's done all over the years? I'm sure there are a lot of people out there. Marcus, don't come to Texas for a couple months. I got it. Let's let me have. So anyhow, I mean, what can you tell us about Atlanta?

There's been conversations and rumblings and rumors. And I know that even the Atlanta Road Speedway Race Track Handel has commented on this. It kind of, you know, kind of ties you guys to, you know, to being able to come on here and talk to it a little, talk about it a little bit. Oh, yeah. Speaking of that, you said you were going to send me notes about today, right? I didn't. I mean, he went to Twitter. He even put it out probably.

He didn't ever see that one. I was going to get around to it. Scott Cooper sent me a note and said, Dale said y'all are going to talk about. these things tomorrow and I was like oh yeah I guess he's gonna maybe this is his notes so what can you tell us about Atlanta like what's is when I see this rendering I think can's a speedway and and a lot of the you know there's been a few tracks that have just basically developed a town right there on that property where there was nothing right and Atlanta is sort of out in the middle of nowhere it has been for years that hasn't been a problem but I think to you know to for this track to survive going

forward for the track to be as great as you guys want it to be. You're looking at components to add to the facility. Yep. So tell us about it. So Atlanta is coming south to the Speedway, you know, just the growth of that. The growth of the city. Oh, it's huge. And the state of Georgia is considering the possibility of gaming and in allowing for a destination resort to happen in the state, it would take some work in the legislature, it would take a constitutional amendment, and those things are being discussed, and we think that if it's going to happen, that Atlanta Motor Speedway would be a great place for a destination resort like this. And Kansas Speedway has done a phenomenal job with it, like you mentioned. They've got so many things around the Speedway, and they've really created a neat hub

of hospitality and tourism there. We think we can do something really similar in Atlanta, and that's the goal. I think we've got a lot of work to do until then. Ed Clark, former, he just retired, but he's been president of Landmower Speedway for 30 years. I've got him still working, and he's doing a great job on that

to help us try to steer that ship and get us to be able to do something like that. Atlanta Motor Speedway is one of my favorite racetracks on the schedule. It went from two dates traditionally for years, decades, to one date. Back to two dates this year. Yeah. How does that happen? So, you know, a lot of it was just decision-making around COVID.

We had we shifted the All-Star race from Charlotte to Texas. We shifted a date to Cota, which was a new venue for us. and we had to figure out how to navigate the various laws and rules and regs. And at the time, Kentucky was a challenge for us with the restrictions. And so when we were making decisions about the schedule, we had to have as sure of a schedule as we could. And at the time, Kentucky wasn't as sure as we needed to be. so we knew Georgia would allow us to host events and to host with people. So we decided to put two dates there at Atlanta.

So you're the one that can influence that happening. You can't race here. I'm going to go race here and everybody falls in line. Everybody being the industry, right? Yeah, I mean, we talked about with NASCAR. It was a great conversation and thought about how does TV factor in here. That's just the whole thing. And just to have that assurance.

But when NASCAR decided we're not going to go to California at the beginning of the season, we're going to stay two weeks in Daytona, that was part of the thinking that we may not be able to go to California in the early part of the season. So I thought those were just kind of game time decisions that we had to make. We couldn't make it a month out or two months out. We had to really plan the schedule back last summer when we did. The All-Star race has been at Charlotte for a long time. There's been conversations about they'd be cool if it were here. It'd be cool if it were here, right?

That's been going on for a decade or so, but you guys have been steadfast. It stayed at Charlotte, but now it's moving. Like how hard was that decision for you and how, what was the conversation like? Was there any other alternatives discussed about where this All-Star race would go or could go? Sure. And how did you guys land on Texas? We talked about a lot of opportunities, a lot of different ideas.

Cota was kind of the catalyst to see that move happen when we went to CODA and we got that lease deal done. We decided, you know, how do we handle Texas Motor Speedway if we got a date at Cota? And it just worked out that, you know, the right move was to take All-Star. of Texas and it wasn't my first you know thought on it we just had to really get out the the whiteboard so to speak and think about ideas and start to move the puzzles around and that's what we landed on and I think it's going to be a lot of fun you know I think our camping is sold out if not almost sold out in CODA and people are excited about All-Star in Texas and you know not making everybody happy, but that's, again, you know, not going to happen.

So, but I think it's going to be really good. Yeah. I remember a couple years ago when Cota first kind of came on to the map, Eddie Gossage being pretty hard, hardcore about there's only one cup race in Texas. Oh, yeah. So how does that transition happen to where, you know, because Eddie's very, you know, territorial or, you know, very protective of what he's got there at Texas Motor Speedway? you guys own the racetrack.

How does all that transition from never? Never. To what we have today, you guys. Well, so Marshall Carlson with Hendrick called me up one day. We're friends and we go back to high school football together. So we got great friendship together. And he called me one day and said, hey, would you be interested in going to Cota? And what do you think about this idea?

and I said, yeah, that'd be cool. Let's go check it out. So Marshall gets the credit for making that intro happen. Interesting. And we went down, visited with Bobby Epstein and Rad Weaver and talked about the idea. It took a while to get it together. You know, I felt like you think about the way that road course racing has gone from, why are we on road courses to our like road courses and Austin the market that it is the facility

is a first class facility all those things kind of combined that felt like I think I think this is a good idea when I'm going all over the place here but when when so they're in Fontana you know they're talking about taking this racetrack and reconfiguring it right you don't own the racetrack but How does, do you have any influence or involvement or assistance? You talk about how everybody's in this together. Just, I guess, what are your thoughts about making the such a, you've made major changes to your own racetracks in the past? Sure.

I mean, this will be a pretty big undertaking. Oh, yeah. What influence or support or help do you put forth towards something like that? Any support that we can give. I've said to Steve Phelps, Jim, Lisa, if we can help, just let us know. They know that I'm a phone call away on anything like that. Somebody may have already called Steve Swift to talk about it. I don't know.

I think it's a really cool idea. And to have a short track on the West Coast is pretty cool. It's something we've needed for years. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. In fact, when my dad bought Sonoma, Back in, what, 96, 97, his plan was to build a West Coast Bristol, not too far away from it. But he felt like this road course is so beautiful. It's a great location.

Let's just leave it here. Brings up another question. I know. There was a great conversation on social media throughout the weekend about how beautiful Sonoma is, particularly this time of year. Yeah. When everything's green. Right. You got all this rain happening in Bristol.

Does it, do you, are you at all, even just a tiny bit influenced by those type of conversations going on out in the world about, man, this would be great to race in Sonoma this time of year and Bristol in that time of year and it's that another. Well, this time of year in Sonoma is called the rainy season. Oh, it's just as bad out there. So we, you know. Because what? It rains once or twice a month? No, it rains quite a bit. It's a lot.

Really? Really? Yeah. Yeah. It rains quite a bit. I didn't know that. Yeah. How often are we in California?

Well, I know, but you just don't assume that it rains too often. Yeah. Well, it does in Seattle. I mean, so like the West. Maybe it's there. I think it's just kind of the weather pattern in that area. I think that's part of what makes it good for growing grapes. I would love to go out to Sonoma and race with all that green.

Well, I would too, and it's not something that I'm opposed to. Maybe one day we will. It's stark and almost, you know, it's interesting seeing comparisons of what the track looks. Yeah, so dry. when we go out in the summer. And it's lush and gorgeous right now. Yeah. So, you know, since you can run a road course with rain tires, maybe we'll will one day.

I don't know. That was part of the conversation. It's like it does rain. They can just run into rain. Yeah. You brought up your dad. You've rolled out quite ambitious ideas, dirt racing, you know, has he had an opinion on any of these?

Do you ever ask him what he thinks? Does he ever speak up and say, hey, what do you think? thinking this isn't going to work? Well, yes. He does? Yes. I mean, I want to make my dad proud. You know, he's got an amazing reputation and look at his amazing career and the Hall of Fame and everything.

So, and I tell you, he, for the kind of person he is, when he put me in charge, he really kind of just said, go, you know. And it was, that's been really, really neat to see his confidence in me over the years. And so I can tell you that he wasn't really crazy about the roval until it was successful. Until it was successful. Yeah. That sounds like everybody. And I heard what the king said about dirt racing.

Yeah. What do you say? Well, the funny thing about that conversation, not to interrupt your thought, Marcus, but Richard Petty said he wasn't, didn't think it was a great idea. And that conversation in that quote came from last year. Oh, it did. Yeah, it was an old quote. I'm glad you told me that.

I didn't know that. Yeah, it was not like he popped up on the scene this weekend and said, what are we doing here? This is terrible. That's a good point. I didn't realize that. It was good, so looking at the date on the article, I believe it was from October of 2020 when this was all being discussed.

Hey, what about a dirt race at Bristol? Gotcha. And he, like a lot of people at the time, were very skeptical. Yeah. And, but I was curious if you were to ask him if he'd give you, I doubt he'd give you the same answer. I bet you're right. I bet you're right. Thursday or Wednesday.

He was, I know he was, he was up in Bristol this weekend and, you know, they, they, they, I think he had fun. Yeah, I'm sure he did. Yeah. But my dad kind of had a similar opinion, you know, that. About the dirt? Yeah. Okay. Because we moved, you moved on from dirt.

And dirt's a lot of work. And, you know, I would not recommend it. you know, every weekend, I wouldn't recommend it for more than one weekend, to be honest with you. It's a big challenge. Expand on that. You wouldn't recommend dirt to happen more than once in the cup schedule? I mean, that's my thought. And not just because it's ours, but because we started on this in January.

You know, and it took all of January, February, and March to get it done. and then we'll be working on cleaning it up for the next six weeks. So it's not a small undertaking. And also the unpredictability of dirt, it's just really finicky. And, you know, that's why tracks are paved, right? Pavement is kind of a predictable. It's an advancement over dirt. And I think that's like all parts of racing, you advance.

But it's really fun to take a step back in history. and to just go at it again. I like the idea of there being a dirt race on the schedule, and it matter. It be for points, not an exhibition. For now, I agree with you that it should be this one select event. No, in NASCAR, if it's a good thing, they're going to give us a lot of it. One of the questions that I saw from some of the fans when I told them

that you were going to be on the show that I liked and wanted to ask you, and you just kind of gave me an opportunity is why not, instead of do the work that it takes to get Bristol ready and then clean Bristol up for the next event to be concrete, why not go either build a purpose built racetrack for that Cup series or take an old track and, you know, renovate it to be that one dirt race track, you know. Would it not make more financial sense, I suppose,

if we're going to have our dirt race to have a dedicated facility that has all the bells and whistles that we need is a cup series that you wouldn't have to dig up and replant everywhere. So in short, it would actually not work financially. You know, we, to build a facility, when you're talking about over $100 million, to build a facility that is not as good as Bristol. So, and if you went to an existing dirt track,

that's, you know, a half mile, that's a possibility. But, you know, for us, our track is Bristol. And if we're going to have a dirt track and run cup on dirt, it's going to be Bristol. Hands down. Hands down. What can you tell us about the financial responsibility to transfer in Bristol? I mean, how is it challenging financially to do that? Because it seems like to me that it's impossible. I don't know how y'all do it. I physically know because y'all have explained it and it's hard work. But financially it must be a massive risk. I mean, it's millions of dollars to be able to convert the track and run it.

But to me, doing the same thing that we've always done is also a risk. So, you know, to do something different is, it's a risk, it's a big investment, it might work, it might not work. We kind of knew that going into it, but, you know, to, if you don't risk it, you just never know. What determines if it works? What, what is it? The return on? Part of it's the financial success. Part of it is the event success. Was it fun? Did people enjoy it? You know, did enough people enjoy it, maybe? And And I think we had a great financial success because we sold out all of our tickets. We had great sponsorship success.

Our sponsors were happy. The television partners were happy. We had a few teams that were happy. And we had a lot of fans that were happy with it. So all those things kind of add up to a successful event. But you could have, you would have had fans if it was not dirt. I mean, you would have had fans, right? So like, where do you make the money back?

If the fan, you certainly weren't able to fill up your track with fans because of everything, the restrictions. But like, what had to happen for it to be a success? I think we, by putting dirt on Bristol, we created a buzz that would not have been there had we not. it would have just been another Bristol race. And that publicity and notoriety is beneficial to the whole sport. And so, you know, for NASCAR was one of the most talked about subjects over the last week in the whole country. It was on the Today Show this morning. Yeah.

And that's a big plus for the whole sport, not just us. And if it's good for the whole sport, it's good for us. All right. I bet you that will be sitting at this table five years from now and you will have two dirt races at Bristol. The concrete will be dug up. And it'll be a full-time facility running dirt races. Is this your next attempt to get that concrete dug up?

I just will be surprised. No, I'll just be surprised if you keep switching it back and forth. And I don't think you'll quit on the dirt. All right. I think you're going to get near back. Keep that tape. I believe that you're going to get back to becoming one of the most difficult tickets to get. I think that you're going to enjoy having that month of racing where you have all of the different series coming through there.

It's going to be a great way to tie the two disciplines together because there's a bit of a, you know, the dirt and the pavement crowd are not always kind of on the same page. No, no. And I think it's a great way to bring them together. Yeah, that's right. It is. It really is. And so look at all the cup guys that ran in the world, the late models and all that could, all that's great, right?

Yeah, I agree. And I think your guys will, like you say, if you can find a way to be the one dirt race, I think you'll, you'll go ahead and go all in and just convert to track completely. That's a, that's a fun game. What will Marcus be doing in five years? I mean, you, I think you got to go more than that. Like, he, this guy's going to be racing on the moon by then. I mean, it's honestly, there's too many, he's got irons in the fire.

And every, this is why you're on the show so much. I mean, it really is. It's why we have to get him back. But in five years, my goodness. All right. Five years, we need a roof on Bristol. All right. That was another thing.

I was watching the race. There you go. Looking at some aerial shots. You talked about the roof with me on the trip to Nashville. What? And I said, why? You know, why would you? Well, he's like rain.

And, you know, I'm thinking, well, the, the, the noise, the fumes, this and that and other, and he's like, we got it. Yeah. No problem. We got it covered. So think about, look at like the pictures I saw aerial wise of the race this weekend and the dirt cloud. If you do a roof, can you still do dirt?

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, well, so the sun baking the dirt is what creates the dust. Yeah, that takes the moisture out. You think it'll hold moisture better and be a better dirt track. Absolutely. So how do you put a roof over something like that? Well, here's where I would start is we hung the biggest center-hung television over the top of Bristol.

I mean, that thing is massive. To hang that, call it the Colossus TV. It is huge. The cables are as big as my leg. I mean, they are huge. And the engineering feat was fantastic. And that, when I saw it, all done for the football game a while back. and I thought, man, if we can hang this TV,

I bet we could put a roof on this place. And so a roof has been talked about before, but now that we've done the TV, it just kind of gives me confidence that maybe we could do a cover. A cover. See, that's a better word for it. A cover.

When I think roof, people think, joists and all kinds of singles. Yeah. We need an umbrella. We just need to prevent the rain from ruining the day. And the technology is there. I think so. Yeah, those.

big cables and the tensile material that they use. You know, they've covered big structures before. Yeah, they have, haven't they? Yeah. Like that Montreal, that old stadium they had, it was kind of a... Look at his wheels turning. This is blowing my mind. Have you gone around and talked about roofing Bristol anywhere else?

Because this is news. I mean, this is like, hey. That was one thing we've had a conversation about, I didn't tell you. There you go. We broke the news. What else y'all talk about on these airplanes? That's probably takeoff. What did y'all do when you get in the air?

I mean, you guys, yeah, this is the next big show, is flying with Marcus. Podcasts on the plane? Yeah, flying with Marcus. That's the next show. I got two things. One, on the last podcast, you were talking about Noah, being reckless and careless. Yes. I thought he was just very precise.

I mean, he backed up, he didn't hit anybody. he got in his box and, you know, it created a little dust up, but that was good driving. You liked it. I thought it was good. Okay.

Yeah. You know, talking about it, and it's interesting to hear that from you. So when I saw it, I went, I cringed, right? Yeah.

Because I'm like, I know what's coming. You know, everybody's going to go, well, he did it on purpose. Right. He's in a...

Whatever. Excuse me my French, but... And I cringed and thought, man, I wish you what, wish you didn't do that. I wish he wasn't as, you know, more careful,

whatever. But it's it. I've been interested to hear the people that have said just what you said, like Brad Casalowski on Fox Race Hub, a couple other people that went your way that I didn't think would go that way. Well, my mind got changed when Noah posted the video from his camera. That's what I heard as well from NASCAR on their decision not to find him was they were influenced a lot by that. I showed it to Mike Hilton. I showed it to Mike.

Did you? I saw him, I don't know, the next day. and I said, did you see this video that Noah posted? And showed him, he's like, oh, I guess it's not what I thought it was. So I don't know if that weighed into it, but I just thought there he was. And I love Daniel Hemrick. I mean, he's a great guy, but he did get in the Noah's box, like halfway. So. . . . . . . . . . . not to put this, you know, not to blame Daniel for what happened, what Noah did,

but when Daniel backed up, he didn't back up all the way. Oh, that's true. He was kind of, he was kind of, when he backed up, he got into his stall good enough for his crew to pit the car, but he was still a little bit forward and his stall. They're very tiny stalls as I began with. Yeah. Things are just intense, and I thought. So maybe, yeah, when y'all go do some bigger stalls. Bigger pit stalls.

Yeah, bigger pit stalls. You got some. Yeah. Do you know what we forgot to ask him? You said two things. You got nothing. You good. What was your other thing?

North Wilkesboro. Oh, what? I just want to let you know that we haven't forgotten about. North Wilkesboro. We haven't given up on it. What does that even mean? It just means that we're... Wheels are turning all these?

I'm thinking, we're working on it. No promises. But we have not forgotten about it. That's the big message. Man, I don't know that that ain't the biggest thing that you said in this conversation at the table. And I know you don't want, there's no promises, there's no guarantees that anything will ever happen at that racetrack.

And I think everyone can totally understand that. But the fact that you guys even have it in the back of your mind, I think will make a lot of people happy. Well, I know a lot of people just think that I don't care, and that's not true. I really do care. And if we can think of a way to do something there, we're going to. Oh, boy. That's amazing to hear. So next week, what are you doing on Tuesday mornings?

Because, I mean, now we've got to just talk about Wiltsboro. I mean, God, I don't have anything else to talk about, Wiltsboro. That's what I wanted to say that. And on your conscience. Yeah, I just thought, you know, I don't want people to think, don't care. We do care, and I am thinking about and work on ideas regularly to figure out how we do something there. Well, I will say, let's just say this for the record then, because we were all there last year when we were, you know, wheat eating and landscaping around there for the eye racing deal. Gosh, it was cold.

Yes, it was. It was a little rainy. Yeah. It was miserable. being inside that track, that's when I was convinced. I'm like, oh, this thing, yeah, you're not going to come back and race here. It's really falling apart. The infrastructure would require so much money.

It's in bad shape. Yeah, it's in disrepair. But that's when I sort of checked that box and said, okay, this, you know, and anybody that said, hey, we need to be racing back there, not just on I race. And I'm like, yeah, but listen, this place is gone. I mean, like, it's gone. I'm just surprised to hear that there's still a, uh, a little kindling.

I just, you know. Never say never. Yeah, I mean, I think there might be hope to do something there. And it's, you never know. I think that that's great to hear. A lot of people are going to love to hear that. I think it goes back to this, like the pandemic has opened up a world of opportunity and possibilities.

And we're doing the things in this sport that we never would have ever considered doing. You know, but we are now because of the pandemic. Well, and to be sure, I'm not saying a NASCAR race there. I just think that there's something that could be done there. I think that what that has taught us is to never close the book on a potential idea or something be impossible. Never say never. And I'm not putting words in anybody's mouth here. But I never, I always felt like as long as that place is sitting,

there and unless it gets cleaned flat off the map and disappears, there's always going to be a possibility that it gets used for something, for something. And until it's completely gone, that possibility is always there. You know what I think it is? I think you let him drive that noble one time. Oh man, that was so cool. He's sitting there. He didn't talk about that. He's like, I'm at Wilkesboro. Oh my gosh. I can see myself driving at Wilkesboro. Sitting in that seat so low And I leaned over to the left. And, oh, my gosh, that was the coolest, coolest thing. Oh, man.

That was so cool. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Didn't you love it? I did. I loved watching it go by just on, you know, because I'd watch it race there so many times as a kid. So seeing it again go down that straightaway and just, it looked like we were just standing back in time. It was so cool. It was as much fun to watch it go by as it was to drive it.

It really was. Who can you call it? up and go, hey man, I need to take my car to your track, you know, and run a couple laps. I'm so glad you brought in Charlotte. I'm like, I really just need to go 60. I just need to go 60 miles an hour as fast as I need to go. And boy, you get out there and you're like, I'm going to go a little faster than that thing. Yeah, dude, you should let him do it again, take it back over there.

He'll be like, you know what's a good idea? Let's get the Daytona Beach course back in the circuit. I mean, who knows? Dude's got ideas. Put him in a car, man. That car is so special. You did a heck of a job on that thing. Runs good, don't it?

Oh, my goodness. All the guys here at Junior Super Sports put their hands on it, they made it work. But yeah, thanks for letting me take it over there. We got a great little hit on social media. I was watching y'all's accounts and everything. It's fun to see everybody talking about, getting excited about it, all the fan reaction to it.

Social media folks, they said, hey, any chance we can come down and take pictures of that? And Dale said, yeah, I don't mind. and I thought y'all would have sent some people. I said he's probably got people coming over to take pictures of it and whatnot. But our folks were so happy to help do that. I showed up with LW and Josh Berry. And I didn't even add it together.

We're standing out on Pitt Road. And LW goes, man, LW said some wise crack because Josh blew the note, blew up the front end of his car going in the grass Atlanta. And I went, that's right. Yes, you on the track. And I said, what would, and I looked at their social media team, I said, why don't y'all go over to the turf and get them two sitting down kneeling by the turf? Yes.

It'd be a funny picture. It was. So they did. Hey, Marcus, by the way, this is Josh Barry. And I was like, oh, man. I feel terrible. Why? You're not supposed to drive race cars through the grass.

I said, that hurt, didn't it? It was funny. It was funny. So they kneel down talking about turf and talking to each other, and it's a great little bit. Oh, man. So not only does he help book media. meetings and guests, but he also does social media content. Oh, yeah.

So if you ever need anybody. And, you know, I mean, brokered that relationship, the meeting for me and Josh. Golly. Yeah, man. I will say, though, I mean, just if he knows, like, in hindsight, he should have just gone on pit road. Yeah. Right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What are you going to do? We were standing out there loading the car up and Josh goes, an LW walks up and goes, can Josh go, he really wants to go. And I was like, oh, nice. Of course he can go. So it wasn't like I brought Josh to go, hey, check in a man, Josh, Marcus gets he here. Yeah, yeah.

I'm glad it worked out. Everybody's awkward. Everybody's awkward. Appreciate you coming on, bud. It's always fun to talk to you, just so curious about everything you got going on and how you do it. You know, it's just a really impressive thing to watch. All the praise. that everybody heaped on you guys during the weekend and post race, well deserved.

Thank you. Way to stay the course. I know that you as a person, but you got to have a great team, and you praise your team. They deserve it. And somehow you put the right people in the right place to pull it off and look forward. We're thrilled that you're going to do it again next year. I want to be there. I can't wait.

It's, you know, love what you're doing. Mike said it. Thank you. You're swinging for the fence and hitting a lot of home runs, driving in a lot of runs. driving in a lot of runs. It's fun. I appreciate your support. Yeah, buddy.

All right. And again, you had one of the most stressful weekends that I think maybe you had in a long, long time. You had a race on Monday instead of Sunday and you still came in here today. So I appreciate that commitment. I was happy to do it. And I appreciate you dropping everything when we went to Nashville. This was easy.

Anytime. Just a little drive up the road. All right. All right. Marcus Smith on the Dale Jr. download. All right. It's finally time for. my favorite part of the show. It's Ask Jr. brought to you by Xfinity. They've been a great partner for us,

obviously supporting NASCAR in the Xfinity series. They're a premier partner for NASCAR. So we appreciate everything Xfinity does for our sport. I'm a customer actually as well. So I have Xfinity internet location and use it and I'm happy with it. So you guys have been putting in your questions all week long. At Xfinity Racing on Twitter. I read along. I see it. I see it popping up in my timeline. It gets me excited. There you go. So let's get to those questions.

We got, we did not do an open segment for the show today. That gives us a little more time, I hope, to do a little longer Asked Jr. So let's get those questions coming. Leah. The questions are rolling in. Everybody just wants to know what you thought of the dirt race. I loved it. You know, there's some, I'm sure, some things to be learned and some adjustments to be made to make the experience better.

but I think it was a win. It was a plus. It was a success, something I want to see again. I wanted to be there in person. The weather wasn't allowing us to get and travel into Bristol on Sunday morning. So we didn't go. Monday I was busy. Couldn't leave the house.

So I didn't get to see it in person. I really want to see what that's like and what the energy is like at the racetrack itself. I'm sure there's going to be so many people with the same opinion and buying tickets for that race next year. So I'm looking forward to seeing it. I hope that it's here to stay. And I hope that it's just at Bristol. I think that there's potential for us to have success at dirt tracks outside of Bristol.

But let's just do it at Bristol for a little while and figure it out. Get it right. Get our cars right. We got a new car coming into the sport in a year or two. Let's get all the bugs worked out of this before we go taking it everywhere. When something good happens in NASCAR, everybody should, tries to want to recreate it. We're seeing that with the,

we saw that with the mile and a half track boom. We saw it a little bit with the road course track boom into the, you know, those tracks coming into the schedule, multiplying. And yeah, so let's just keep it at Bristol, go a couple years and see how things work and see what develops from there. And then we'll,

I think I'm going to be definitely tuning into the truck race at Knoxville. I'm super excited. and hopeful that that is a great success. That's a, you know, just like El Dorah, that's a purpose-built dirt track facility, and it'd be interesting to see if we can go to those places and continue to have success there like we've had at Eldora. So that's exciting as well,

and certainly factors into what dirt racing looks like for NASCAR in the Cup Series long term. Patty Stevin wants to know if you were surprised by Martin Trucks Jr. winning the truck race. You know, I'm not, and I love to see Martin do well because he's one of the drivers that I got to work with early on in his career. And when Rick was in between drivers, I tried my hardest to get him to hire Martin. And he didn't. There were a couple of other people in the works there, and Martin kind of got lost in the shuffle. and he hadn't, you know, won as many races at that particular point in his career.

But he goes on to, you know, surpass my win total and going further beyond winning more races in the future. I'm sure he's a champion. So I love to text Rick as soon as he was won that first stage. I text Rick Hendrick. I said, hey, you're watching this truck race, Truex? Just dusted him, man. Don't you wish you kind of would have hired him when I told you to? I like to rub that in a little bit.

Anyways, so I like to see him do good. He's a great guy, hunting buddy. And I think he surprised himself. We were texting, me and Martin were texting after the truck race and he was laughing because he was surprised as everybody else, I think. One more dirt racing question before. We move on.

Richard Payne. He says he understands the move to the single file restarts, but wouldn't you have liked to see NASCAR go back to the double file restart in overtime? That would have probably been my preference. but I think once you make the decision, it's hard to go back. If you make a choice to make that change mid-race, that's a commitment, that's a big change, that's a big deal.

Everybody was on social media, either saying, what a great decision or clowning it, I think you can't go back. You know, you just open yourself up to more criticism and less legitimate of an event by continuing to kind of pull these strings as the race goes on. they made the choice and I like the fact that they stuck with it we still had a pretty interesting you know finish to the race

if we don't have a yellow at the end it doesn't even have that yellow flag or overtime so we don't have the caution but I didn't have a problem with it I was surprised though that they did that I was surprised that they went single file in the middle of the race that was that was a big that was a big gamble that could have went you know I guess I don't know that it could have went wrong but typically I wouldn't have guessed they would have made that decision. But it was funny because we race online and these online races and our racing and there's admins in these leagues.

And they make changes like that in the middle of the race. And it just made me chuckle a little bit that the league admins were ticked off. Said, oh, boys can't stop wrecking. We're going single file. It was funny. All right, Matthew T. You want to know, if you knew it wouldn't affect performance, What's a feature from a normal vehicle that you would like to add to a race car?

No performance. It wouldn't affect performance at all. What's a feature? Oh, man. I don't know. Yeah, I'm not going to be any help on this one. There's nothing. I don't think there's anything.

You know, I hope, you know, I miss the days where race cars had stock panels and the bodies looked identical to what you see driving up down the street. So that's kind of where my mind goes with the question is, you know, what can we do to make the cars look more recognizable to what we have riding up down the road to bring to bring more brand identity to the sport and make the manufacturer involvement in the sport a lot more impactful both ways. Like the manufacturers, you know, went on Sunday, sell on Monday kind of thing. and so that's where my head goes I guess more factory style parts and pieces on the exterior of the cars everyone's saying air conditioning but you guys have like the cooling hoses right so they're not that great they're not I mean they don't they only give you enough power just to get a little bit cooler air it's about 10 or 20 degrees maybe cooler than the interior of the cockpit

so it's still like 95 degree air but when you are in 120 degrees and you hear you feel you feel 95 degree air, it's oddly cooler, right? It's not like, oh, that's hot. It's 95 degree air. It's kind of like, wow, that feels better than what else is in here, right? It's kind of weird. Everyone's also saying radio, which I don't think that'll work because you need to hear a spotter. Yes. But they got the technology to where the radio could be playing, and when the spotter keys up, it could cancel it out, because I had that when we would go test. So when we would go to Daytona and test, I had a radio harness that I could plug into my, This was back when MP3 players were a thing. I could have my MP3 player playing,

but if Tony Jr. keyed the mic, I'd hear him. It was nice. All right. Next question coming from Brent, Scott. What are your thoughts on the lack of qualifying? It seems to be hurting the growth of the sport. I don't think it's hurting the growth of the sport, but I do miss it.

So when we saw practice this weekend, it really woke me up to being, And I didn't know if I missed it, right? I didn't tell. I was like, I don't know if I missed practice or qualifying. I kind of don't know, right? And then we saw some practice this weekend and I was like, absolutely, this is fun. Obviously, I was curious to watch practice because it was dirt, Bristol, it was new, got to see it.

But it made me, you know, it made me remember what watching practice kind of felt like in how that adds to the race weekend. It sets the tone of who's fast, who's slow, you know, it sets some storylines. People have good things happen to them in practice, bad things happen to them in practice, engine issues or crashes or problem, whatever, right? You even see some of the disagreements between drivers even play out in practice.

So as a broadcaster, practice is a great tool to sort of help you understand what to expect on race day. And it bends the storylines and continues to share. shape the storylines going into the race. Whereas without practice or qualifying, everybody, me, you, the drivers, everybody goes in there, cold and just flips on switching. There we go. And it's a bit awkward and weird to try to shape an event as a broadcaster from scratch.

So I really miss practicing qualifying. And I hope that there's some version of that for us in the future. I don't know that we need to go all the way back to six hours of practice. every weekend or whatever. But I hope there's some new version of that going forward once we get opened all the way up and everybody's back of the track.

Jared Lyons asked, what are your thoughts on iRacing adding to Chicago street course? That was something we probably didn't ask Marcus about. We might, should have. I think that, so iRacing is quickly,

over the last couple of years, becoming an incredible asset, to NASCAR. That relationship is getting stronger and stronger as NASCAR starting to see what a great benefit eye racing is to them. Not only are we marketing toward younger crowd and getting younger people introduced to racing and NASCAR as a series, because when you go on eye racing, you might go on there for the European content or a certain particular car that's nothing to do with NASCAR or stock

cars, right? But you learn about all sports, all forms of motor sports, I'm sorry, on eye racing. And your curiosity sort of lets you run all over the place and drive different cars and different tracks. So anyways, those online simulators, video games, and all those other things are a great way to market to that audience or a new audience. But we're also seeing how I racing and technology that they use to scan tracks, create tracks, the technology they had to develop all of that software, how NASCAR can use it to increase. experiment, right, to build a new racetrack, to reconfigure a old racetrack, to design a street course.

I think that everybody's curious to see what a street course style race would look like for our cup cars and our drivers. And we want to see them in that challenging environment and going through something they've never done before, right? Just like this past weekend at Bristol on Dirt, it was fun to see them sort of adapt to what was happening. And I think that's what I look forward to if they were ever to go to a street course. I think that Chicago is a town that we certainly would love to be competing in. I don't know what the future is for the racetrack out there. It doesn't look good. So if we can have a street

course, something that is only unique to Chicago, that would be incredible for the sport. And I think they're using this as a way to test those waters and see how that might work out and what it might look like. And I think NASCAR is really starting to realize and open their eyes to using eye racing as that tool to sort of see into the future and seeing the possibilities on these venues. It's really awesome. As a big fan of eye racing, I'm loving the fact that the organizations such as NASCAR and other organizations as well, other sports governing bodies, are seeing how they can use eye racing to benefit their futures. All right, guys, that's it for today.

Well, man, there it is. My favorite part of the show is over. Yeah, darn. It goes by fast. It does. It goes by almost Xfinity X-Fi fast. Well, speed isn't everything, Mike. X-Fi is also reliable, powerful, and secure.

It is, Dale. That it is. With X-Fi, you can do more of what you love with faster internet. You and your crew can stay connected with Wi-Fi coverage that delivers a speed your devices need. Boy, I know yours needs them. I mean, all the stuff you're doing. Oh, yeah, the racing, the online stuff. Oh, my God, yeah.

Remember everyone, send your Asked Junior questions to add Xfinity Racing on Twitter. Well, before we hit the road, we got to thank Xfinity. They're proud, premier partner of NASCAR. All right, everybody's last call. The Dale Jr. download. It's on TV. I hope you know that by now. It's on NBCSN, Thursday night, 6.30 p.m. Eastern Time.

Thursdays are going to be the normal day for Dale Jr. Download TV show moving forward. Yeah, so if you're listening Thursdays, that's when you're going to see us on TV more often throughout the rest of the year. 6.30 p.m. Eastern Time this week. A new episode of Door Bupor Clear after the Bristol Dirt Race. It'll be out tomorrow. You'll hear from TJ about Joe Lugano's win. how TJ was so instrumental in helping Joey steer through the potholes and the tribulations and trials of construction. So hearing from the other spotters, I don't know if they, you know, their car did any good.

Just get their perspective on dirt racing in general and where we go from here. Door bumper clear out tomorrow. Thanks for Marcus Smith coming by. The guy is a busy man. I'm sure he aged rapidly over the weekend with the troubles they had at that racetrack but they did an amazing job. And I think the whole industry really is recognizing the work they did and everybody's really so proud of that effort.

And they pulled it off. So even with that going on, the delay, the race happening on a Monday, Marcus still came through, answered some questions for us, gave us a great conversation. So we appreciate it, Marcus. Y'all have a great week. This bit of bad assery was bad assery. It was made by Dirtymoe Media.

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