The Dale Jr. Download - 359 - Robert Pressley: The Real Racers

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

Two racecar drivers from two hard-nosed racing families converge at the big wooden table as Dale Earnhardt Jr. sits down with "The Bent Creek Bandit" Robert Pressley.Where has the former NASCAR driver been? He's still proudly from Asheville but now he serves the people of the popular North Carolina city in a different way, as a County Commissioner. How the hell does a NASCAR driver turn into a politician? And does he even like it? We find out the truth right away.Robert's father Bob Pressley was a legend of the Carolina Short Track scene and his son followed right in his footsteps. And let's just say, the apple didn't fall far from the tree. They were both cut from the cloth of self-made grizzled short trackers that didn't back down from anyone... including each other. Bob Pressley's rivals turned into Roberts and then with the one bump to the back bumper, father and son became the rivalry. Just how intense did it get? Robert gives us the details inside a family feud that helped define their relationship and ultimately bring them closer together.Where the Earnhardt and Pressley family connection is one of the more interesting conversations. Apparently, there was a generational bullying that started with Dale Jr.'s grandfather, short track great Ralph Earnhardt, and continued on through Dale Sr. and Robert. It's a story you have to hear.Robert's start in racing came at the now-defunct New Asheville Motor Speedway, racing against greats like Bosco Lowe and Jack Ingram. It's a place that was very close to Pressley's heart and the reason why Dale Jr. decided to have him on his Peacock TV television show "Lost Speedways." Pressley gives us the inside scoop on the concerns the city of Asheville had before shooting on location at the track, now called Carrier Park, and the community reaction afterward. How did the show also get the truth out there about its closing while closing the book on its biggest controversy, a famed incident between the Pressley's and "The Iron Man" Jack Ingram?Another North Carolina great, Basketball star turned broadcaster Brad Daugherty, got his fingernails dirty as a crew member on Robert Pressley's race team. They traveled around winning races and getting shot at in the process. They even showed up to the racetrack one night with a truck, a couch, a loveseat, and a racecar, and whooped their butts.From Late Models, the second generation driver launched a NASCAR career and soon found success on a myriad of raceways across America. This led to opportunities that he couldn't turn down, but some that left him with regret. From replacing the great Harry Gant, to getting fired at Alliance, to his up and down tenure at Jasper Racing, Pressley tells all. He also explains how one rivalry spelled the end for his first Cup Series ride.Pressley, Dale Jr., and co-host Mike Davis enjoy some laughs talking about racing, fighting, and cheating. Boy, the stories go deep. But none deeper than a surprise moment at the end of the show when Dale and Robert let the cat out of the bag about an incident between them. The story reveals a truth never known until now.Before Pressley arrived, Dale Jr. talks about his work weekend in Las Vegas with his wife Amy. While the trip was nice, they came home to a more hostile Monday. Two dogs fighting and two children not getting along produced a not-so-perfect day in the Earnhardt household.Recent "Behind the Scenes" social media content sparks conversation in the studio about what it was really like filming Lost Speedways. We learn that Leah Vaughn is grossed out by Dale and Matthew kicking the "poop pipe" and if Dillner really did fart on the backstretch during the explore?In AskJr, fan questions spur some incredible insight from Dale Jr, including a fantastic story about his father hopping on the radio to give him live-time insight into how to get around Bristol Motor Speedway. A rare father-son moment of instruction that Dale Jr shares with us all. 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.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, I've got something for you while you get settled. This is a production of Dirtymoe media. Get ready, get ready, get ready, get ready. Flagman weighs the green. Tj., it's like, get ready, get ready, get ready, get ready. Green, green, green, green, green, green, green. Yeah, back at it again. Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Get ready, get ready. Green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, yeah. Get ready, get ready, get ready, get ready. Holy shit. Like, I got a swollen head. Lower the left. Lower, lower, lower. It takes two minutes.

Yeah. Oh. I like that, Mike. You pull that one out of your butt. Got them cooked like a rain, whoa, wait. My whole team, oh, wait. We don't need no play. Shoot like Z, whoa.

Make out teams with the team head of stand for. Coffee ball hit the shot big old rings on the way Get ready, get ready, get ready, get ready, get ready, get ready, get ready. This lives up to the hype. I hope this lives up to the hype. Smack down, the law giver. Is there a way to put the fifth on this or? All right.

Are you ready? Yum, yum, yum, yum. It's good as sex. Mmm. Yum yum yum yum, yum. Yum. Yum yum, yum. Yeah, they know what we're going to eat.

Uh-huh, uh-huh, whoa, cool that with that heat. Uh-huh, uh-huh, oh, that's that RMG. Hang out my buddy's dream, praise hell. My goodness. It's like a whole song. Who puts that together? I got an idea. No way.

We need to come in here hot with a good mood, brother. What do you do, like when you get, like when you hear a sound bite, just a comment or something like that, something so insignificant in the moment of the show? show. Where do you put, you put these in a big file or something? Oh yeah, I got a folder. You must like flag them immediately. Oh yeah. Oh, I mean, it's, it's amazing. I don't remember where any of those sound bites, I try to place them when I'm hearing them. But I, like, who said something about good as sex? John Forrest was it? Jimmy Spencer. Oh, that's, okay. I was thinking. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah. John Force is different.

He was porn hope. Well, that was unexpected. But anyhow, it's a, it's a, I'm Dalyan Hart Jr. And this is the Dale Jr. download. And that's a hell of an intro by Matthew Dillner. I bet people are going to want to download that somewhere. They're going to want to go on to iTunes and pay a buck 99 for that. Maybe. Maybe not.

Anyhow, we're live from the Bojangles studio. There is some Bojangles sitting over there. What we got here today? Of chicken biscuits. Yeah, so you guys are bringing Bojangles to the studio every, just our show or every show? Yeah. Doorbump. The door door door door McLear gets them.

Yeah. I bet they're not appreciative. They are, actually. As a matter of fact, even before we did the deal with Bojangles, Brett Griffin was bringing Bojangles in for the team. Okay. I mean, like that, yeah. All right.

I don't know them guys would be too appreciative. No. So that's kind of nice. Have moments. Episode 359, I'm Dillon Hart Jr. This is Mike Davis, my co-hosts you here. Matthew Dillner's here. Leah's here.

We got a great show for you today. So our guest today was on our first season of Lost Speedways, and his name is Robert Presley. A lot of you people are going to know who Robert is, some might not. But Robert's got a heck of a story. What he's doing now is really interesting. All right, we'll find out.

Guy raced in the Cup Series. He raced in the Truck Series and the Xfinity series. He was in our show. I'm kind of curious as to what kind of feedback he got from being in the show. Fantastic. I'm also, I'm also cannot wait to ask him what we missed, right? Because, so we had Danny Earnhardt on the show and made a big mistake. Did we?

Yeah, I did. So I should have called my Uncle Danny, knowing that Danny's not a big talker, I should have called him the night before and said, Uncle Danny, trust me on this. While you're sitting at dinner with Sherry or whatever you're doing tonight, write down some notes. Start thinking about stories. Maybe I could have called him even a couple days ahead, right? because he, you know, like we said on the show, if you listen to the Danny Earnhardt episode,

I come through the shop this morning, first person I see, Danny Earnhardt, just like always. And he's the last person I see because I parked my truck right at the back door of his office. And his office is the suspension room, really. He doesn't really have an office. But I walked in there and said, hey, what's been the response? You're happy you did it.

You're getting some good for you back. People always pat you on the back. It makes you feel great. He said, yeah, but I wish I'd have took some notes. I said, you're right. I said, he said, it's probably my fault. I probably should have called you and let you know that because that's something I know ahead of time. And I failed you.

And he said, well, I still heard it was top five. So he thinks, I said, well, you know, we'll have you on again. Maybe a year or two, we'll get you back out there. And I'll call you ahead of time until you put the notes down. We'll have an even better show. So, yeah, I hate that we didn't do that because I know there's a lot that he probably, he said when he walked out of here, he's like, man, I thought about so much stuff that I wish I'd have been able to say. And I just didn't, I should have done some notes.

And so next time, that's just a lesson you learn when you're doing these podcasts and you're interviewing people. And it's not something that I've done all my life. It's a, you know, it's a work in progress. But this guy that we're going to talk to today, Robert, I know quite a bit about his career. Matthew, you put together a lot of great notes. and I highlighted a lot of things that I liked in there. He's a funny guy. He's a fun guy.

So this should be a great show. We're going to have Ask Junior, and we're going to talk about our show Lost Speedway. So anyhow, open segment. We had a Vegas trip. It was great. Amy does not go to the races with me. She's not really into racing as much as you might think.

So she doesn't go. She's not interested in watching me broadcast. I wouldn't really want to do that either. If I was driving in a race, never missed a race. She never did. But once I stopped driving, she's like, look, I ain't going to watch your broadcast. She's right. Yeah.

Well, it's Vegas. So she went along, wanted to go along. She hasn't been away from our second child, Nicole, since Nicole was born. So almost a year. They've been together every day. And so this is her first little opportunity to get out. And so we went in Thursday. Cosmopolitan is where we stay.

And I've stayed there, I think. every time I've been to Vegas in the last five years. Just a great place to, one of my favorite hotels. We stayed in a lot of them over the years, and there's been phases, you know, when, like, the Palms was always a lot of fun back in the day. I remember when I first started going to Vegas with the Xfinity team, the Rio,

was where the A.C. Delco guys stayed. I was like, wow, I'm in Vegas. I can't believe it. Never been here. Anyhow, right now, I mean, the last several years, the cosmopolitan has been kind of like, you know, where most of the race teams have been staying,

at least most people I hang out with, Lattart, all the NBC folks, DJ Del Jarrett, he's close by. Anyways, great experience there. We went to the pool, spent an afternoon in a cabana. Amy enjoyed that. We gambled a little bit. I'm not much into gambling.

So I pulled a little bit of money out of ATM. Yeah, went to Vegas, forgot to take money. So I had to go. So, yeah, we get there, and I'm like, oh, darn, we can't even play a slot machine, right? So I had to go to the ATM and get a little cash. Whatever I pulled out that first day, that's it. We didn't go any deeper than that.

That's kind of set the limit. I'm not much into gamble anyway, so I was like, okay, you know, I'm going to gamble this, and we're going to eat on this cash and tip on this cash. And so that was that. Pretty strict thing. If only everybody just had that kind of discipline when they went to Vegas. I've been, I'm not saying I've been to Vegas more than anybody, but I've been enough for myself to be pretty content.

You're too scared of losing money. I am. Yeah. That's it. That's really the truth. So I will say this. I love playing wheel of fortune slots. Any kind of slot machine,

any kind of slot machine that has like this extra game, like, all right, I spend the things. Boom, Bing, Ming, Bing, we get some coins, right? But if I get some, if I land on something where I get to play another game, it's like two games in one, wait. Oh, and there might be some free. spends. Okay. Now we're talking. You got me hooked. That's what they do. Oh, yeah. And so, I love it. Sitting at the Wheel of Fortune. I put, you know, 100 bucks in a wheel of fortune slot and

sit there. Hopefully that 100 is going to last me a long time. Free drinks while you're playing. So that's pretty fun. I don't like to play the tables. It's intimidating to me. I don't know how to play Blackjack well enough to be at a table to do it. I know nothing about craps. Wouldn't know the first rule about how to, I wouldn't know where to begin. Been at a crap table before, washed it, hung out with Dale Jarrett's real good at it. But don't know nothing about it. The roulette, I like a little bit of that because you don't have to know anything.

That's right. Play kind of favorite numbers. But it's not, you know, it's not a game going to win a ton of money on them. But anyhow, Vegas is a great time. Their food, especially at the cosmopolitan, some of the restaurants there, insane. Really? Yeah.

Just incredible. The food in Vegas is out of hand. Did the Lose-Aap take a back seat for a weekend? I haven't been logging for weeks now. Okay, good, because there's no way you're going to go to Vegas and count calories, right? I haven't been logging calories for a long time, but I've been, I was absolutely, you know, being smart. We drank a lot, I drank a lot of beer on Thursday. So, and they weren't 55s, unfortunately, so, yeah.

Did you have a hangover? Dove in. Not too bad. Not too bad. I don't get bad hangovers anymore because I don't drink late. Well, I don't drink late. Like, I drink during the day and get to bed at a decent. an hour so I still get a lot of sleep.

The hangover for me has always been about waking up tired, you know, trying to go to bed at four in the morning or three in the morning or even two in the morning and trying to get up at seven. So since we're adults and parents, our clock, man, we're getting up at 7.30. Even if you can sleep in, you wake up at 7.30, right? You just do. Your program. Yep, your program.

So I think that, you know, we had some fun time day drinking and went to dinner, but as soon His dinner was over, we pretty much unraveled the night and went to sleep. It was not like we used to do in Vegas. We used to stay up around the clock. Yeah, don't you wish, like, 20-year-old Dale Jr. could listen to this conversation right now and hear like, yeah, I didn't be so. I didn't count my calories this week, but I didn't have a hang-off.

He would be totally uninterested in him. I'm going to give it to him, but none of us. Hey, Amy had a good time. Good. Went to the racetrack. Amy came to the racetrack, actually sitting this week and watched a cup race. This would actually be two weekends in a row. Two weekends in a row.

He's done that. Oh, Josh Barry won. Pretty incredible. Amazing. I mean... I mean, this guy. I know. What the hell. Yeah, it's awesome. I'm going in an ear-to-ear. What I hoped would happen is happening right in front of my eyes. Big time. Like happening big. Yeah. And so, but it's a balance, man, because we got other cars out there, other drivers out there, other guys out there that, you know, you're excited about.

I text Noah and Justin. I said, uh, I said, y'all can understand. how excited I am for Josh, because you got friends in your own lives that you pull for every day, right? Whatever they're doing in their lives, you're pulling for them. When they have a good success, whether it's a racing friend

or not a racing friend, right? And so that's what that's about. I told both them, Noah and Justin, I said, you both are consistent, and you've been with this company for a couple years now to where you've seen the speed come and go in our company, in our cars.

But when the speed's here, they're ready. When the speed shows up at Junior Motorsports and the shop guys start sending cars The racetrack that are winning cars, you don't have to look far for Noah. And you don't have to look far for Justin. They're ready to go. And they work hard. So when our teams aren't fast, when we're struggling to get the results, they don't disappear. They don't lose faith.

They don't go wandering off. They're constant, dependable. So that's such a reassuring thing for an owner to be able to know that a driver is going to be there when the car is ready. Because the cars aren't always there. As an owner, you know that, right? As an owner, you feel that. Because there's days when you're like, man, I didn't give them what they needed. Or we didn't, you know, we didn't bring the best thing to the track that they wanted, right?

They were hoping to get. But anyways, man, I was so proud. One, two, three. We've never done that before. At Vegas, of all places, we hadn't won there since Mark Martin won our very first race for the company in 2007, 2008. God, I forgot about that. Yeah, that was our first win. Mark Martin.

We haven't won there since. So that was pretty incredible. I had fun because I'm enjoying what I'm doing. But I know a lot of people didn't think the race was as exciting as they'd hoped. You know what? All right. So Sunday was, we had a long ride home, and that's when things got interesting. So we get home at 4 o'clock in the morning, and the kids are up at 7.30.

And I'm moving pretty good. Right around lunch, Gus, our Irish Shetter, attacked our Pomeranian. this has happened before usually it's a treat or something they're fighting over but this was a big deal i don't know why uh this hat i don't know what there was nothing there was no treat involved there was nothing involved gus just literally uh attacked him and so we picked june bug up and and we're like hey man you okay you know and amy's holding and he's got an eye displaced yeah so pomeranians dogs of those nature uh that's a it's not a common thing but it's It's a real possibility for them.

And so the eye is just somewhat sort of bulging. It's not out of the socket. It's just a little bit different than the other one. And he can't shut it. So I think the eyelid is trapped behind the eye somewhat. And so I'm Googled real quick about this issue and understand that it's treatable and we've got to act quickly. Amy gets in the car and takes off.

So she goes to a local vet. they send her down to Charlotte to a specialist. And she gets Junebug down to Charlotte, and he gets about a 30-minute, hour-long operation. And they push his little eyeball back in there, and they sew his eyelid somewhat shut, and it needs to sort of allow all the tendons and everything to sort of heal. And so he's not going to be laid up too long.

He's got this cone, 10 days, and then I think things should be better. I imagine he's absolutely uncomfortable and wearing a cone has to be the most miserable thing for a dog that was Junebug Amy's gone all day I got the two little girls and where I called my sister

I said hey you know it might be a good time for you to come over and visit yeah exactly it'd be a great time bonding she's got some she's got a pretty open afternoon and she doesn't see the girls enough so she comes over I put Nicole down for a nap 2.30 to about 4.30. Nicole gets up and I need to feed her so I'm giving her a pouch.

Got her in her little chair at a table. And Ila is really jealous of her of Nicole. Ila the three-year-old is jealous of the one-year-old and this has been a bit of a struggle in our house. Ila has shown some, you know, some frustration over Nicole. We're working on that. And, you know, she's grabbing things out of her hand. If Nicole sees something in Isla's hand and walks over there and goes, what is that? You know, Isla takes off in the direction. She's very not liking Nicole at all. So anyways, I hand Kelly the pouch to start, you know, feeding Nicole a little bit, and I'm going to do something else.

I think I was going to make Isla's dinner. So I'm over there making Isla's dinner. I cooked, I grilled about six hamburgers on the grill. and put some cheese on them. I'm going to chop them up, put a little ketchup on them, and I'm making a little mac and cheese, and I'm going to put that on a plate, and Ila's going to have dinner.

And while I'm doing this, Ila walks over and bites Nicole's finger. Nicole's sitting in her chair at the table, getting a pouch fed to her, and Ila walks up and just chomps down, leaves marks. And Nicole is really upset. Ow, painful.

Painful cry happening. My eyes probably got really big, but I take off. in that direction. Isla sees me coming and takes off in the other direction. Isla goes and hides under this little table that we had that she sometimes eats at. I see her under there and I move the table to one side and she scoots under it. So I just picked the table up. And then she started crying.

She saw me and was scared. And so I picked her up and we, I was like, you know, so we had this conversation. And anyways, it was a little, and Kelly's sitting there going, it's okay? Everything's fine. everything's okay. I'm like, no, this ain't sliding. We're going to talk about this. You're not going to bite and get a pass.

But anyhow, I was like, I took Isla up to her room and had her sit in her room for a little bit and think about it. And then I came up there and me and Nicole tried to get her to come out and engage with us a little bit, maybe play so we could talk a little bit, walk through it. She still doesn't want to talk about it. Still doesn't want to be reprimanded. Still doesn't want to acknowledge anything that happened.

Finally get her in the truck, and we're going to take a couple laps right. the property we got a little one mile loop that we drive back in the woods and so we drove about five laps real slow and had a conversation about biting and doing better and not doing that and all those things you know and trying to apologize to her sister at some point so trying to understand trying to figure out how to teach them to apologize without just forcing an apology yeah make it count like like not just say empty calories yeah this the words right yeah so that's all that's that was our, that was my day.

Welcome back. Did you want to go right back to Vegas then? Oh my God. You know, I missed the, I missed the kids so bad. And every time we go out of town and we come back, that first day back, sort of chaos like that. Wow. Isn't that something? You know, our dogs are biting each other. Our kids are biting each other. And then after that first day of chaos, it sort of all melts back into normal. Hey, listen, the Isla thing will sort itself out. She's going through a phase. I understand it. I've seen it a hundred times.

I don't know what you're going to do about the dogs What are you going to do with the dogs? I don't know because So Amy's like You know Gus just needs to be played with And I said no I was like you know if that was the case Nobody would own dogs right

If our dogs were just going eight Because they weren't getting ran around the yard enough Nobody would really own dogs Because that would be too much trouble And potential You know Calamity There's something else going on

With Gus I can't quite figure it out I'm a bit nervous you know about him biting one of the kids he's an irish setter and he's not that type of dog you don't think about that type of thing happening and he's never really given me an impression he might do that uh but it worries me a little bit he growls at me uh he growls at kelly when he you know he growls at people he shouldn't be growling um this is what junebug does to me yeah junebug's a growler too in fact i almost would have guessed that junebug provoked it

there's a possibility that junebug did snap at gus but i'm not sure what was going on there why Gus went after him. Usually that only happens when Gus is after a treat that Jim Bug has. Me and Jimbug had a bit of a standoff in your bus. Yeah. I mean, it was over food. Yeah. Okay. Well, anyhow, we're

going to get so much advice over this. The feedback on this conversation is going to be, I'm assuming it's going to be some of the most feedback we've ever received on an open discussion. Because there's a lot there. And nobody knows, to be honest with you, everybody thinks they're an expert, and

the reality is nobody's an expert. You live, everybody has, kids have different personalities. There's different dynamics. There's a lot going on there. But I'm not saying Amy's wrong. I just don't know if, I don't know if I can just pin what he did to Junebug on the fact that we didn't run him around the yard today. My thinking on Gus is he's an outdoor dog. He's a bird dog.

He is a dog that needs to stretch his legs and be, and take advantage of the property that we have. But we have made him an inside dog. And he's not an inside dog, but he lives inside. And so he's big. I got the same situation. Maybe there's something there. He's big. He belongs outside.

He should be an outside dog. But that was my intention, all right? But I got overruled on that one a long time ago when we first got him. And, you know, my Irish said her when I was a little boy, he was an outside dog. He never came inside. He didn't have a bed. He didn't have a bowl. He didn't have anything inside.

He was an outside dog. We went outside to feed him. If it was, you know, the weather was bad or whatever, we brought him in the garage or we put him somewhere. But otherwise, you know, he was free to roam. And that's the way he should be. It's too late to do that. That ship sailed. Yeah.

That's my feelings about it. All right. Well. So Josh Barry wins at the Xfinity race, and he is filling in for Michael for the foreseeable future. I don't think we've announced anything beyond Talladega. I guess he's on the entry list for Talladega. man I sure would have liked to have run that one I think it's important though that Josh gets the experience because he is in the car full time next year and will benefit from

that greatly did you just say you wish you were running that one I wish I could drive the one car that would be fun at Talladega yeah that would be fun I mean yeah that would be fun holy crap it would be fun Mike I'm not doing it I'm actually going to be anchoring you are right yeah you're the play-by-play guy yeah that'd be nice too well that'll be hard and as much as I would love to get the car, Josh needs that experience because it's such a different discipline doing the plate racing. And he's going to, you know, it's going to pay off hopefully next year when he gets the Daytona, February. Watch him win it. I can't wait.

My goodness. I'm telling you. Well, if he does, then it would be obvious that I didn't need to be in that. They bring a good plate car. They can bring a good plate car to this company. Yep. And Annette did win a restricted plate race in that car. So there you go.

So last week we asked you about what kind of time machine you might take to. visit an old abandoned track or just any you could go back to any kind of moment in motorsports. What, you know, what would you do? We got a lot of great feedback. We probably got some feedback that was totally non-racing related. Some pretty smart-ass comments, I'm sure, involved in there. Anything on social media is going to have a little seasoning of smart ass. This week's homework. We are going to task ourselves to talk a little bit about behind the scenes. So behind the scenes, this stuff's a fun stuff, man. So you see the show, right? You see, you watch the show on Peacock TV.

There's so much going on between all of us that doesn't really ever make the show. We've had some great behind the scenes videos on dirty moe media social channels if you want to give those a look they're funny. I enjoy them a lot, relive in some of those moments.

Let's discuss Columbia Speedway. So we went to Columbia Speedway. This is a racetrack where Ralph Earnhardt raced a lot. It's literally just a short little trip down South Carolina. It's in pretty good shape when it comes to lost speedways and some of the places we explore. And in that episode, so we arrive at the racetrack and the gates open, there's like no,

it didn't seem weird to me that the gate was open. No. Yeah. So sometimes you show up to these places and they're chained up, hard to get into. Columbia is kind of like welcoming. Like, come check it out. Come look at us. And we drive out on the track and the track's in such great shape.

I'm like, man, let's hit it. Let's get a, so the best thing to do right out of the gate before we explore this racetrack is to maybe drive around it and see what it feels like. Check out the banking, the transitions. That was a lot of fun. We don't get to do that at many of those tracks. Now, that's surprised the hell out of me because I was in the passenger seat. I wasn't expecting it.

They're not in good enough shape to do that. Yeah. Yeah, you made a call on the fly to do that. You were driving in and did not stop. It was fun. Well, I enjoyed it. getting some, I wish I could have, you know, had a proper car or something, a real race car to get some, you know, get strapped in, put a helmet on and really get around there.

One of the things that I always enjoy when we're looking around these racetracks is seeing how nature has taken over, grown up around or even over the top or chewed up some of the stuff that's, that's track-related. And some of the stuff is, like the guardrails, trees. grow around them, trees grow through them, fence posts. So there was one particular tree where the post was

in the tree. That's right. Not like wrapped around it or hugging it. The post was inside the tree. Went right to the middle. Yeah. Yeah. That was and so a lot of times we'll find these things Mike gets a chuckle.

So we go to the loss speed where we're exploring a lost track and we find a light pole or a heel or something and Mike's like what is a big deal what is a big deal how can we

how can we break through to Mike to where he sees what we see I think it's half sarcasm but yeah no no no I'm having fun I know you're having fun I recognize the coolness of being at any of these race tracks

and I like it you guys take your level of dork to another whole level I know. When it comes to like a light pole. It's so funny. All right.

So when we're driving by, if you're driving by this location, and there's a light pole with a light up on top of it, right? It's just a pole. It's just a pole with a light. It's an old pole with a light and it has no story. There's no connection to you, right? But if you go to that piece of land

and you know that there was a track there and you're exploring and looking and seeing that track, the fence pole then becomes connected to the story. and then becomes part of the evidence or part of the imagination. Your imagination is building this track, right? Looking across the, you know, across the property, and your mind's building the track. And, you know, from whatever you've seen in pictures,

and that light pole assists you in imagining what that place to look like. And the fact, you know, a lot of this stuff gets moved or gone or bulldozed over or taken or plates. by newer lights, right? Sure. And when you find something that's original, it's like an old car that has original parts. You know, a lot of this stuff had to been replaced,

but this piece of trim is original. Well, that's what that light pole is. And so it's really, when we walk onto the property, we see everything that's there. But really when we get to diving into what all that stuff is, this isn't original. This was put here after. or this was added way, you know, way down the road.

But this one pole or that light up there was a light that was here when, when, you know, the Hudson Hornet drove by. You know, that's what's cool. That it saw, you know, the thinking that, the thing, think about a pole or a light pole that's, that was, that was, that was around during all of the things that happened at that track. What it saw. What it saw.

Yeah, like if it could, what it saw. and what it is, you know, it was a witness to everything that we're wishing we were there to see. Right. Mike's laughing because he's thinking of me saying it shine down on these great moments. Do you know what I'm thinking? Yeah. Everything you said is true. But then there's, well, let's just say Matthew has a propensity to touch things.

Like everything he sees, he wants to touch and feel it. And that's where you draw the line, I believe. And Matthew will go so far. And I think that this comes out in a couple of the episodes. Like, I don't think that we make a whole episode over you just going up and feeling something that may be actually a health hazard or whatnot. And a light pole would not be a good example. You know, a jar with content in it might, you know. And Matthew's ready to go dig in.

Well, that's important because I'm not. That's right. Well, so the thing about behind the scene stuff is that it finally came back to, it finally came back on Matthew at Texas World where he, went and touch something and then like developed a rash like 10 seconds later. It was this weird hard blister and it stayed for like days. But it was literally right after he went into that like refrigerator. Was that what it was? A refrigerator?

It was when we were crawling underneath this into those sheds and I was touching all that stuff. I don't know what I was touching. He did reach into dirty refrigerators. And Dale Jr. like finally like he glowed after that because Dale Jeter finally like his point that he's been making all this time. you know, finally kind of came to fruition where Matthew started... I'm fine, though.

Having, yeah, it had a blister. Did you not have to take medication or something? No. There was something you had to do. No. Uh-uh. I didn't put any medication on it. It was just hard, like a hard blister for about, like, three days, and I was fine.

That's so gross. No. It's so gross. I can't stop thinking about that poop pipe you guys found that you were kicking around. And then you, like, got in a car, went home. Like, there's poop pipe particles everywhere. Oh, no. Yeah.

There's no poop pipe particles. No. There's definitely poop pipe particles all over. Oh, no. Are you wearing those shoes right now? All over what? He might be. He really might be.

Oh, gross. So, if there are poop pipe. You just have to assume that a good hardy steel pipe like that is doing some, it's carrying poop. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that thing is definitely carrying poop. Either that or it's a crude oil or something. it's got some very

the contents that are going through this pipe are meant to stay in the pipe because it was a very sturdy pipe it was built to last that wasn't some little PVC yeah it wasn't PVC like just just just regular water all right I you know when I

the poop's been been gone for a long time you know we did kick the pipe around but I'm not of the opinion that we carried the poop home with us You think you would? Yeah, I'm a germapop like that. Oh my God. Okay.

Well, this is the part where we tell him that you remember what you put, you remember when you went into the jar and put, you know, a piece of the track into the jar and put a piece of tape on it, that was actually poop. That's the poop. It was not rocks. Jokes on you. It was Matthew's idea. Well, there's a lot of, there's a lot of fun, you know, when you're watching the show,

there's, did the fart make it into the show? Okay. Oh, that was. so funny. That was Columbia. It was a fart. It was a fart. It was a totally fart. The one time that I wasn't farting and I was actually trying to do a Dale Jr. and stand there, you know, a lot of times I see you, you sit there and I'm trying to talk to you and you'll just be like looking and I could tell you're trying to take in what it would be like to be in a corner. The one time I have that moment, Homeboy over here thinks I'm damn farting.

You were. You were kind of positioning yourself away from everyone and you were kind of standing there. It's usually my move. You're not, yeah, you're not making. making a sound and you're like concentrating concentrating. It's concentrating somewhat. It's a very obvious

when you're concentrating so rare. That's a rare thing. It's like, oh, look at him, look at him doing it. Look at him doing the concentrating. I mean, the math adds up. The algorithm adds up.

Matthew's not talking. He's concentrating equals fart. That's clear. I mean, there's no other way that algorithm comes out any other way, right? My wife would agree. Yeah, you know, it's Dale Jr.'s move to go off and leave somebody, right? I don't do that.

But you did it that time. I swear to God, put my hand on the Bible. Like, I probably farted about like seven times that lap, but not that instance. Oh, God. Not that instance. Now we know. Yeah, right. You're trying to explore track.

He's crop dusting you the whole lap. I'm not going to lie. You're one of those guys that on a one-hour playing ride farts about seven or eight times. Dude. And nobody even knows it. Whatever, man. Cleveland County?

What? When we're sitting there in the car waiting to go. Yeah. And it was totally silent. Yeah. And you farted. I know, but I didn't even say anything. No, you didn't say anything.

I kind of alluded to it and you just were like, eh, and you're on your phone. Huh. No. Did I not, didn't make a noise? Well, yeah, I heard it. Okay. Well, I'm not. Thank God I didn't, it was, it wasn't bad smelling.

It was good. Yeah, but. Thank God. Weird. Thank God it didn't smell. If you fart and make a noise, you really don't have to do. I mean, like, there's only two people in the car. So you're the silent farder that goes around and farts all the time and not telling a soul.

You know who else does that? Ryan Newman. He farts a ton. He farts all the time. That's why I'm not a big fan of riding an airplane with him because you don't know how many times you're getting farted on. And he's not going to tell you. No. You're reminding me of him a little bit.

There you go. All right. move on. Cony Newman for now. All right, all this great content, the farts, poop pipe, trees, eating, guardrails, all that can be found in just one single episode, Columbia Speedway. Season 1 and season two are streaming now on Peacock TV. You've got to go to Peacock to watch it, so go check it out and sign up.

And, you know, a lot of great content on Peacock. Not just our show, but obviously we're big fans of everything going on there. but it's well worth signing up logging in season one and two of Lost Speedways. Go check it out. Tell your friends. Let us know if you find any of those Easter eggs in the show. Something we need to talk about. Something we need to discuss on here.

Something we need to get to the bottom of. That's a great point. Actually, you know, I would love to know if people have questions that we didn't necessarily answer or we opened up a question from watching the show. That's right. If they have that, like you call them Easter eggs, that's right. If there's anything that we need to clarify on the shows, know. All right.

Hey, listen up, race fans. Some of you think you are hardcore race fans, but I don't know that you are. Listen, have you heard about the time that an infield was held hostage in a NASCAR race? Or what about the story of Mark Martin's lost championship? Or how about the time Bobby Allison had a victory erased from NASCAR's record books that would have given him 85 just enough to break his tie with Darrell Walter. Well, it's about time you found out. We've got the podcast just for you. It is Dirty Mo Media's newest production, glorious white knuckle godfearing spun out and half turned over racing stories it's hosted by our buddy and long-time journalist rick houston each week it brings to life years of archival interviews impressions

and recollections to tell a unique story about racing's glory years combined with modern sound it creates a nostalgic throwback experience unlike anything you have ever listened to before and certainly on dirty mo media so go follow and listen to glorious racing stories right now it's available on all major podcasting platforms and on dirty-mobedia.com. Let's do an Ask Junior, presented by Xfinity. All right, I am starting the stream. Kick it. We are dead, Dale.

Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. here for Ask Jr. A great segment in the Dale Jr. download podcast presented to you by Xfinity, a proud premier partner of NASCAR. I hope you guys got a lot of great questions. You've been sending them in every week to Add Xfinity Racing on 12. Twitter and Leah has been, you know, sifting through them and pulling out some of the good ones. So we're going to do that again. It's my favorite part of the show, getting to interact with our listeners live.

You cannot beat it. So let's get started and see what you got. Our first question is from Matt Reed. With all the debate between 550 versus 750 packages, road courses and short tracks versus one and half-milers and super speedways, what constitutes a great race to you? Is it action pack, side by side racing through the whole field, photo finishes. How do you know if you've seen a good race? That's a pretty good question, man.

Well, let's be quite honest. If your favorite driver wins, that can be by multiple laps or by a nose. If your guy wins the race, you're going to be happy. So, you know, there's days when I walked away from the racetrack thinking I had a great time, saw a great race, even though maybe the race itself. wasn't full of action. I think that what constitutes a great race is not side by side. It's not tons of passing.

It's not a dominant seven-second win. It's none of those things. What constitutes a great race to me is moments. Does the race a motion? Does the race create emotion? Does a race bring me to feel something? We went to Martinsville a couple years ago, and Danny Hamlin and Chase got into it.

And I really don't feel anything for either one of those drivers. I don't cheer for them. I don't wish they lose. So what I'm trying to say is it wasn't about, you know, I didn't have a driver in the game. I didn't have someone I was pulling for. But what happened between them and how that all played out was exciting. I was like, my goodness, let me watch this.

This is interesting. This is awesome. And you could feel the racetrack and the energy in the grandstands. Everybody felt that way. Everybody was riled up. And I thought this is what we should be producing every single week. How do we get this everywhere we go? It happened at Bristol.

You know, we had moments in that race. you know, Harvick and Chase getting down into turn three. Chase coming out and taking a swipe at Harvick as he passes him to get his lap back. Chase, you know, manipulating the race to allow his teammate to pass Harvick. Harvick, you know, after the race, slamming his helmet, the conversation that they had and them going into the holler, the mystery of what they talked about. all those things, you know, drummed up some sort of emotion in all of us.

And that's what, to me, makes me want to come back to the racetrack. You know, when we go to a short track and you show up at a local short track, you know, you got the hot shot veteran that's been running there forever, and he has a rival. Maybe it's a young kid that's come on to the scene that he's trying to teach a lesson. But whatever it is, all right, whatever the rivalry is, They get into each other. And you know every time that they get near each other, there's going to be something.

And that's why you keep coming back. You'll come back the next weekend to see those same two guys possibly get back into it and duke it out. And a lot of these little short tracks around the country have that very thing going on. That's what is great about racing. It's the rivalries. It's the emotion that it drums up out of us as viewers and fans. It's not about, it's not necessarily about what the past. package is doing or what the cars are doing or how the cars react to each other or

whether there's a lot of lead changes or a lot of side-by-side racing. Those things are going to help because they're going to put the drivers in those positions to create those moments that are going to create that emotion. So that's kind of what I think of when I think of a good race because I'll be honest, it's been hard for me to answer that question using only statistics or only a visual. you know, I can't say to you, man, you know what is, you know, I can't say to you passing or I can't say side by side racing. Because I see a lot of side by side racing that's kind of boring, not exciting at time.

Enough time has passed over the last couple of decades. And we all say, man, it used to be this. It used to be so good. It used to be blah, blah, blah. I feel like that that's the way we are always going to feel, right, about the past. It was always better when truly the racing today is just as good statistically, just as exciting, just as, you know, full of statistics, lead changes and side-by-side racing and all that. I have to say that the good racing really lays on the shoulders and the responsibility of the drivers

and their ability to go out there and give us moments. It's got to matter to them. they've got to want to do anything to win and they've got to be willing to do anything to each other to win. Think about some of the key moments of the history of the sport that you love. I like the 1987 All-Star Race. Think about all the moments in that race, all the contact, all the frustration, everything Dad did to try to win, everything Bill Elliott did to try to win,

the conversations and the interviews afterwards. the anger and the frustration and the tone of the voice in those interviews. Those are the races that I like. Can't have that every week, can't expect it every week. But that's what makes this sport, you know, this is what makes you go back. That's what makes you keep coming back. And so, and that's why I love the short tracks, because they tend to produce those type of moments more often.

You know, that's why, you know, that's why I think, you know, our series would be beneficial to add more short tracks because that seems to be where the drama is found the most. Everybody's going to have a different opinion about this. I don't say, I don't know that mine is correct. I don't know mine is right. And, you know, I'm open to listen to anyone else who thinks that they know what constitutes a good race.

Next question from Darrell Montgomery. Why doesn't NASCAR allow teams to run tire pressure sensors? It seems like it would be a lot safer to know when a tire. is going down. Yeah, I don't know if that's as, I don't think that's quite as important. You know, a lot of times the tire's going to get a puncture and the driver's going to know it, or it's going to happen so fast a sensor wouldn't have done you any good to begin with. So, you know, I think there needs to be or could have been a better way to understand a loose lug nut,

you know, or a wheel about to come off the car. Hopefully the new one lug nut rule is going to alleviate a lot of that problem. You know, I think over the years, man, when those wheels come off, those are some hard hits. And I've experienced that myself and the frustrations that you feel over that is is pretty bad. Yeah, so I think it would have been nice to have had some sort of, you know, technology and development in that to help teams and pick crews and drivers and everyone understand and eliminate some of that, you know, the loose wheels, loose lug nuts and things like that, vibrations and problems that come from that. Next question from Justin Petrie.

What was the best racing advice you ever received and who gave it to you? Man, that's a good question. Technically, you know, this is how you drive this track kind of advice. I mean, probably my best advice both came from my dad. But the most, the only time he really ever told me to drive a racetrack or how to drive a race track was at Bristol. went to Bristol and I'd already race there. I think I'd race there. I don't know if I was running the Cup Series or the Xfinity Series,

but I get there. I am way over my head and I'm trying way too hard. I have no clue how to get around this racetrack, and I'm driving the car way too deep into the corner, and I'm ruining every corner I go into, and my laps are just not good. Dad got on top of the truck and got on the radio and told me where to lift.

And so I'm driving this car and come off the corner. I'm in the gas. I'm going down the straightaway and I get to the flag stand and dad says lift. And I can go quite a ways further in the throttle. And I've been doing that, right? And I'm like, why lift here? That seems so weird to lift this early. I can absolutely go further into the corner.

I'm like 30th or something in practice. Two tents from probably worth the car can do, which is a lot at Bristol. he's like, lift at the flag stand. And I said, all right, I'll do that. I lifted a flag stand. And as soon as I go over the crest, I lift up the flag stand, no brakes, really. Not a lot of brake, because we're lifting so early. And I crested over the hill into the corner and I start to land.

He goes, get back in the gas. And I was like, whoa, this is way early. I was like, man, I was getting into the gas way around the corner because I was driving in so far. I was unable to get in the gas any sooner. But I'm going to get in gas here. there's a whole lot of corner left, but I get in the gas. And man, that car just wrapped right around the corner and popped back up off the exit up on the next straightaway.

And he's like, I mean, as soon as you get up on the straightaway, you go just a few feet and you're already halfway down to straightaway lift. And I'm like, holy moly. So he took my throttle points and backed them around the racetrack. So I was lifting sooner, but getting in the gas a whole lot sooner. and my lap time came right to me. I started applying that thought to Martinsville and other racetracks that we would go to, and that was the most specific advice that Dad ever gave me about driving.

He never ever got that detailed again. But the most broad advice that he gave me, which I would give, that works for everyone, it works everywhere. It's really the first rule. rule of driving a race car. And it's the exact same thing he was trying to tell me at Bristol, and that's slow down to go fast. And when you're up on your toes trying to work, you have a tendency to fall over, you know,

to fall on your face. You got to be calm. You got to have your feet planted. You cannot be rushing what you're doing. And so a driver's tendency when they first, you know, when they're first getting, you know, when they're first getting into racing and first driving a car, once they get brave enough, right, you're timid and you definitely, you don't go out there and just go crazy.

But once you get brave enough, you start to try hard, and you start to try too hard, and you start to drive the car too deep into the corner, and that's always going to be the absolute worst mistake that you can make as a driver. When you can understand that backing off sooner, getting on the gas sooner is going to be the best way to get around every racetrack you go to in terms of oval racing when you understand that and start and that starts to sink in you start to apply that on the racetrack

that's when you start to really start to have success and you're it's better on the tires it's better on the brakes it's better on the car it's better on you it's easier to do and it's the way to produce the best lap time and so you know trying to figure out how to you know trying to tell a driver to slow down to go faster is kind of the first, you know, first real hurdle to get over once you get brave enough to start really driving the car and trying to muscle the car around the track. And so that was one of the things we talked about early in my career. Just overdriving the car. You're overdriving it.

You're driving too deep into the corner. I'm like, well, that's what you're supposed to do. I want to drive in deeper than anyone else. That's how you win. No, it's not. when you drive in too deep you're going to go slower because you got you can you're not going to make the corner your exit's going to be worse your next straightaway is going to be slower then you're going to overdrive the next corner and you're just going to keep compounding this you know making this lap worse and worse

and so you know that was kind of the one thing you learn right out of the gate and then we went to bristol and and the reason why he got more specific with me at bristol is because overdriving the car was so easy to do and what i would have the how i had to underdrive it was so profound, he didn't think I would ever discover it on my own. He had to actually teach me like this is going to feel like you're lifting way too early, but this is the best way. Next question from Levi Widener. What are your thoughts on the potential Portland race?

It's been in the rumor mill. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, kind of been out there before. Well, I don't even know what's shaped the place is in. It's a road course. Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't do anything for me. What do you think, Matthew?

Yeah, that's why I feel. So I'm kind of, it doesn't do anything for me. Now, you know, if you're out in Portland, you're excited about this, I'm happy for you. If you want to go to the racetrack and you're thrilled that they're coming there, that's a good thing. That's the whole point. But for me, you know, it's just adding another road course, and we've added a lot of road courses over the year. All these other ideas, a Coliseum, possibility of a street course somewhere like Chicago, all those things are you know we had you know Phelps sit down here what over 12 months ago

yes about a year and said we're getting back to you know we're going back to what what helped us get to where we are right we're getting back not to our roots but we're going to we're not going to try to reinvent the wheel we're not going to try to I took it as we're not going to try to try to introduce a lot of new we're going to try to bring back some of the old that that you know and that made me think okay we're going to to maybe introduce a couple short tracks. We're going to do less mile and a halfs. We're not going to try any kind of new gimmicky thing, right? But it just seems like that there's a few new gimmicks coming down the pipe. Anyhow, not to say that the Coliseum thing won't be great. It's an exhibition.

It's a test. It's a try. It should be, it's a short track, which it's extremely short, but, you know, it is a short track, so it should be pretty aggressive. It will be really on the driver's shoulders. So if we go to do, when we go to the Coliseum race, that working or not working, I think, will be the responsibility of the drivers, right? They've got to go and they've got to want to duke it out. And I think that's what this is, I think the way the Coliseum idea is to try to force them into a position where they have to fight it out. And so if they do, if they're willing to go push each other around a little bit, that'll be a pretty fun deal. But I'm not interested in road courses all that much.

All right, guys. That's all we have time for today. All right, man, that's some great questions. You know, it really was. We got a lot of hard-hitting questions there for some great listeners, and I enjoyed it. What did you think, Mike? I liked it. I had a lot of other questions that I had out of your answers, to be honest with you.

But we'll save that for another time. We need a longer podcast. We need a longer Asked Junior. I know. I got some good ones. For everybody on the YouTube chat, I do save your question, so we will try to get to them at some point. Yeah, good point.

Well, those were some great questions. I know there's some great concerns, too, of all of our fans out there in the NASCAR world, and the future is interesting. It's going to be interesting to see where we're going over the next couple of years, and there's a lot of new ideas on the horizon. Ask Juniors presented to you by Xfinity. They're a proud of my partner of NASCAR.

They do a lot for our show. They also do a lot for this sport, and we're very thankful for them, and keep sending your questions in to XFinity Racing, on Twitter over the next week. Lee will be putting them together for us so we can answer them. All right, guys.

You all ready to bring in our guests? Let's bring them in. The politician is in the house. We're not going to talk politics. Yeah, we are. Wait, that's what you do for a living. Aren't you the county commissioner? Yes.

So this happens to be a political show. Wait a minute. Wait, wait. Wait. Wait. Are you not, so, do you not? Wait a minute. Let's make sure we want to talk about this.

I want to know, so, all right. You know, we have a lot of the old guard and the veterans and a lot of people that really helped make up this sport throughout the 80s and 90s. Man, you're absolutely one of them. And a lot of people want to know where they are. Certain guys just freaking disappear. Ricky Rudd, no one knows where they have. hell he's at right he comes in here tells us all we want to know and then disappears again we have

no clue where he's at mark martin he put something on social media every once in a while so at least know what part of the country he's in right we know he's in a motorhome but you are a commissioner a county commissioner and you know when you think about i don't know i mean when you're driving a race car did you ever have interest in politics like what how did that happen had no idea this was going to happen i mean quit racing i retired there and then went out and done a little driver coaching and you know he was on the board of the hall of fame for a little while and just bored and mike fryer you remember mike fryer built racing engines okay he was a county commissioner and he dug up so much dirt on politicians and everything i mean is that what a county

commissioner does? No. What does a county commissioner do? Just sets policies, budget. Budget's a big thing, you know. We just, what we can afford to do, tax dollars. Yeah. But Mike could not stop there. He was in it wide open and he, come on, Robert, you can win. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Nothing about government. So he, he was a commissioner and his term was ending? No, he was needing help. What you mean needing help? Can there be more than one commissioner they were seven oh so there's more than one so at that time they was three republicans four democrats okay you know it's like running second you lose four to three all the time sure so so i said mike i know now he said you don't have to just vote what i do that's all

i said no we ain't going to do that because i basically when i got my bush career started he was building some of my late model motors. And so he helped me get my bush ride. And I said, I want Ben Barnes to build my motors instead of you. So I fired him, but we're still friends. Yeah. So I said, I didn't know anything. He said, you don't have to. And he said, your name will get you in because you're from Asheville.

And sure enough, I won by the largest margin, kind of like Richard Petty did back when he was a commissioner. That's right. It ain't what you know. It was who knows you. And so what have you learned since you've... Oh, that I wished that. I never got into it. Oh, really?

If people knew how corrupted government is, it is sick, man. Oh, man. It is not nothing to brag about. If you work for the county or you work for government, a lot of people are like closet drinkers, they will not tell you what they do. And my wife, before we left, she said, please don't get down there. I'm talking politics. All right, all right.

Oh, no. Well, anyway, I do have one last question, but I want to know what a Robert Presley campaign looks like. I mean, how long's your terms? Four years. So there are four years. How many terms have you done as a county commissioner? I'm on my second.

How hard do you campaign? Do you get the signs? The first time, I campaign very easy. Just, I'm Robert. I'm going to run. And won by like 60-something hundred, unheard of. Do you do a commercial? Well, no.

The second time I went all out because I said, we have a chance to overrule this. Spent $60,000, which is a lot of money to spend. Yard signs there were commercials, got my daughter do commercials, and won by 120. Oh, wow. So it ain't good. Yeah.

So how much longer will you do it? A year, two months, and eight days. And you're not going to rerun? I mean, everybody's wanting me to because now it's six to one. I'm the only conservative left. Okay. So. Oh, man.

It ain't no fun. I mean, it is fun because I know what's going on. And you go around the table and vote. But you just don't have a chance. I'm a voice. I'm like a starting park. They announce my name at the start. And then you park.

And the paper the next day reads, the commissioners voted on X, X, X, X, X, X, X, it was a 6 to 1 vote. Yeah. And then they say, guess who was the one. Everybody ought to do it. Man, you'd make a great county commission. Oh, yeah, right. You're telling me you don't want to do it anymore. Oh, I mean, I don't regret it.

You don't. But, boy, it ain't no career for me. Yeah. What are you going to do after this? Enjoy them five little granddaughters and one more on the way. So I'm going to have me a six-pack of basketball teams. What does the two terms, all right, what do you walk away with? A lot of enemies and a lot of friends.

Goodness. I mean, you know, there's nothing really. I wish, I was talking to somebody on the way down here. I wish that everybody, before you got your driver's license, you had to go for one month and work with commissioners or, you know, not really Congress or anything, House represent, to really see how government really works, the back doors of everything. How corrupted it can be, but how easy it could be to fix. You know, when we done lost speedways, look what y'all had to do just to come to Asheville.

And they were scared that y'all was going to discriminate Asheville because they closed the race track. And it was, I mean, I know what I had to do, and I know y'all done a lot more than I did about how to get in there that day. Sure. So, well, let's talk about that. You know, we were going to, you know, get into that at some point in the conversation, but you were on our show, Lost Speedways, Season 1, New Asheville Speedway. What was the reaction from doing the show?

It's kind of like what you said about Ricky Rudd. Where's Robert Presley? If you wasn't in Asheville, you didn't know where he was. And now people are the fan mail. I mean, they used to get 15, 20 pieces a week. Now, hundreds a week, you know. Really? He's still alive.

He's still out here. And you really can attribute that to the law speedways? It has to be because even through the commissioner, I'm probably getting 50 a week through that address. And then some through the restaurant. Yeah. And none through the house or our residence there. So he's like, oh, man.

You know, hey, I love the fans. I love them. You know, that's a lot of time. Sure. What was the reaction from the show? Oh, everybody loved it. I mean, they appreciated a lot of people that was it, Dale Jr. fans said, you know what?

This guy cares about the history of racing. He cares about what's going on. And some of the stories, I said, yeah, but you ought to, you know, I wish he would do an uncut version of what all we talked about, all day. Yeah. It was interesting. Well, this is kind of the reason we wanted you on today because there was a lot of conversation that we did have and that you and Dale Jr. had that we said, you know what,

we need to get Robert at the table and have these conversations. But I got to ask you, though, because the thing about that Lost Speedways episode that was so amazing to me, and I try not to give away too much because I still want people to go watch it. However, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seemed like that there was some redemption or some conversations that had with Jack Ingram that should have happened maybe 20 or 30 years ago that had never happened. And we end up going to Jack Ingram's shop and have a conversation about a story. I think we should probably retell that story about what happened with Jack Ingram at the

track and how your family was involved. But I also am curious about if your takeaway from that experience, like if you felt good about having that conversation with Jack at the end. Yeah. And not to give it away, the part about Ned and Richard Petty. Everybody talks about that that watches it. And I tell her, you got to watch it all because there's stuff I learned. But about the Jack Ingram, everybody says that that 15 seconds of his facial expression made that whole show right there, the whole thing.

And I just wish we could have done it before Jack had his accident because it would have been a different outcome of Jack Ingraham. Roy Lee Jones was there at the table too, and he was part of the story that, I mean, basically, Jack Ingram gets arrested during a race after going at your family, your cousin, thought it was you. You weren't ever sure if you were the target of his ire and his angst, and you finally had to ask him, were you trying to wreck me? And that was not movie scripted or nothing, because anyone knew Jack Inger, you didn't ask him a question, because you was going to get a cussing of a lifetime.

And that day, you know, I just thought, hey, this is great. Because, you know, we didn't script what we, you know, Jack had no idea what was going to go on. Jack thought that Dale was just coming by to chat with it. And I remember when I got there, I walked in and Jack said, they's going to be here at one o'clock. Look, it's three o'clock. I ain't got all day to wait on this. Oh, wow.

I didn't know this. Oh, yeah. Jack Ingram is 8 o'clock breakfast, 12 o'clock lunch, 5 o'clock shut the door. And if you have an appointment, you're on time with Jack Ingram, you know. And we were that late? Yeah, I was a couple hours. A couple hours. You know, I think it's miscommunication, you know.

Oh, heavens. But. Did Jack's, did they appreciate, did you talk to him afterwards? I went next day and I said, Jack, you know, I apologize about that. And he just looked at me and he said, what they want. I said, really the truth about what happened that day? NASCAR screwed me.

And that was in the conversation. Never said again. He said the county was worried a little bit about us coming in there. What was everybody's opinion on that? How did they feel about the show? They thought that it really brought tourism in Nashville, people wanting to come in and see the speedway. And I remember the thing you said that probably meant more to me than anything else.

you ought to appreciate that you've even got a partial of the racetrack still here. Yeah. And it is a bike place. It's a park. Yeah. The racetrack is still there. A lot of histories right there. Yeah.

So what about my, I had my uncle Danny on our show on this podcast last week, and I walked in there this morning to see him, and he goes, man, I thought about so much stuff after we got off the show that I missed and wished out of said. What did we miss? When you went home that day, you went, oh, damn. There is no way to tell the history. You know, there's some racetracks, and y'all know them. We're right here in Asheville.

And Asheville and Hickory Speedway, in the 60s, 70s, and early, early 80s before Bush, if you didn't race at Asheville Speedway, you was never going to make it really nowhere else. and I mean from junior Johnson Paddies but the thing was your dad I remember a couple times

he come up there to race I mean terrible he was he was terrible and only come there two or three times maybe in just couldn't get it but in defense of your dad

in them days you got to remember Harry Gantt Jack Anger Bob Presley Butch Lindley Sonny Hutchins, Rayhan, your dad was just getting started.

And he was running against 15 or 20 of the best race car drivers that they was in America. Yeah. So this would have been about in the 70s then? Yeah. When he went there, he didn't go in the 80s at all? No. Okay. Yeah, he was well on his way.

Yeah, he was well on his way. So a little history about the Asheville is Ralph Earnhardt, your granddad, had a car up in Canton, North Carolina, which is 20 minutes away. from the racetrack. So Ralph would come up and race on Friday night. So we got Ralph and we got my dad. And Ralph was Ralph. And my dad was a young kid and he was kind of bullied. Well, then here come my dad and then here come Dale Senior.

So my dad was paying Dale back for what Ralph done to him. Oh, wow. Yeah. A generational bullying, right? Yeah. So then when I come in, man, me and your dad didn't have a good relationship. Really? We didn't talk, you know, because he knew Bob Presley and Dale Earnhardt was out of the same mold.

They had to fight for what they had. And I remember at Hickory Speedway, 74, 75, Dale and Daddy got together. And Daddy got him over in the third turn. and a lot of people still talk about this. He said, you're never going to make it until you learn to drive. Because Ralph had told my dad that. Wow. So fast forward to 95.

I'm in Richmond, Virginia, so my dad drove my motorhome the first year. And I opened up the door in my motorhome, and there said, Dale. And, you know, we just never really talked. Competitors. I was a competitor, not a friend. And I said, hey, what are doing? And he said, I just come see Bob, you know. One of these days, I'm going to make it racing.

He had not forgot that. But he knew how hard my dad had struggled racing through all the years. And he walked out because, you know, how your dad was. He didn't have many close, close. You know, he didn't want to sit around, but he enjoyed talking my dad on that motorhome that evening. And in the hotel, my dad never said what they talked about or anything. But when he left, there's an envelope playing there. And my dad somewhere through the line and said, yeah, I'm going to do a little racing.

I said, you know, tires are expensive now. And they was like $2,000 in that envelope. Yeah. And I said, we're dead. He said, Dale must have dropped it, appearance money or something. So next day I went by, I said, hey, you left the envelope in there. It ain't mine. You know, like that.

And I knew because we'd kind of done a deal when Ben Barnes was going to fix him some motors, you know. Yeah. I knew how your dad worked of never wanting people to know what he was doing. Your dad raced a long time. Yeah. 40 years. Why did he run so long? I always say the people like James Hilton, Dave Marcus, Bob Presley, Jack, Aaron, are the real racers.

A lot of us race. to make a living, we get our money, and we go on. My dad made his money racing and spent all his money racing, Jack Ingram the same way. Them are our heroes. That's a great point. That, I mean, my dad, up until he got cancer, 65 years old, he drove my motor home that year in 95.

Very next year, went back to racing again. He said, I don't like this. I'm worried. And still winning races. Yeah. Still winning championships. and he was amazing. My brother Charlie was kind of like Danny had been around it a lot.

Charlie said there was three people that knew how to handle a car. Dave Marcus, Del Earnhardt, and Bob Presley said they could drive laying down in the seat with two fingers on the steering wheel on a dirt road running a hundred mile an hour. Said they had car control like nobody else they'd ever seen. Pretty incredible. So Asheville, New Asheville, Speed, way is pretty unique. It's shaped like a, you could say it better than me, but I always thought it was kind of like a square. But there's no straightaways, and it's all turned. And I went there one time

and tire tested for Goodyear, but I never raced there. Really, really hard place to get around. And you never, you talked about it on the show, but you would, to run, you talk about how dad struggled, and a lot of people did. A lot of people that came up there couldn't figure that place out. And the reason why a lot of, the reason why I think you say that if you can't,

you know, you, you know, you, if you don't run a good, if you don't run good at New Asheville, you're not going to make it. It's because it's such a puzzle to figure out. Such a hard track to figure out how to get around. You mentioned running like half throttle,

part throttle, you know, the majority of the lap, never really going wide open. You could, but you'd miss a, next corner talk about that a little bit because we we talk about this in the in I just wanted to in ask junior somebody was asking me earlier in the show so I was asking me what was the best advice I ever got and the broadest advice was to slow down to go faster right and then we

went to Bristol when I was a rookie and dad got on the radio and he's like lift here and I'm at the flag stand I'm like but I can go there he's like lift at the flag stand I'm like well okay and then when I went off and crested over the hill into the corner and landed he said get on the gas. I'm like, this is way too early, you know. So, I mean, talk about how you used to use the throttle at Asheville to be good. It was just a circle. So first thing you had to do is run wide open for one lap to get away from Daddy or the competition.

And then you just worked off of the RPMs. Try to stay around 6,200 because you wasn't going nowhere. They wasn't a straightaway to, you could go. But Daddy and a lot of them. But Jack Ingram taught me, just slow down, just get you a pace and just ride around. And, hey, I'd be sitting there and thinking, well, this ain't right, and be lapping the fields, you know, and then I'd try to go. And Asheville was just one in place. Sam Ard.

You know, Sam Ard, B&R Motors? He was terrible at Asheville, you know, because he wanted to use the guy. But the people that was successful, Harry Gant, Morgan Shepherd, like Darlington, Reyes, like Darlington, Rockingham. You know, you had to pace yourself there. You had to, you couldn't burn up your tires. You didn't use no brakes, you know, really. My dad did, but Jack Ehrm said Bob Presley's only man that could drive that racetrack and wear a set of brake pads out. Yeah. We were running for three years at the racetrack. Well, he had to been accelerating. Where would he accelerate? How did he accelerate on a circle? He would make straight lines out of it. I mean, he would diamond it. Like,

diamond that race track four times and wide open. I mean. Wow. He would pull us off the corner, which it's all corner. But, you know, you just got to watch some of the video and of seeing really what it was like right there of how the racetrack was slow. And what Richard Petty said is why Asheville was good. You hadn't know how to finesse. You hadn't know how to take care of stuff.

But physically, 200 laps at racetrack. Bristol 500 laps was nothing on your neck like Asheville. It was all turned. I mean, it was. was brutal there. Richard Petty said that in the episode. He said his neck afterwards, which is jello. But like what your dad said about there, I went to Dover, you know, in 92,

he did that. Everybody hated Dover, you know. And I'd got food poison night four, so I said, Rick Mask on a relief drive for me. So we start to race, I'm 18th or something. And going across that bump, you remember, oh, your stomach had just, so I started letting off a four. the bump where I wasn't getting sick.

Next thing I know, I'm running second to hurt. And end up winning the race. And don't get out of the car because I said, I hate getting out of it now. I've learned something. And what I do, I go back there in September. I'm going to lap the field because I feel good this time. Qualified 18th or 20th again.

And 20 laps in the race, Pearson said, I wish you'd hurry up and get sick. Ricky Pearson's creature. He said, do what you did. the last time and done it and won the race again is slow down and go faster i mean that wasn't the way we was raised to race you know yeah that's not the way you think you're supposed to do it until you get out there so at new asheville um they did take the track and repurpose it there was an idea or some conversation that when the track was going away they would there would be another one built an area

which never happened do you think they'll ever be another short track built in the County. No. The deal was, 99, we're going to take the racetrack. And Jack Ingram was heading it up. They said, we will build your racetrack anywhere you find land. And it's got to meet the criteria. The criteria was something so crazy. It's got to be five nautical miles away from any house. Yeah. It's got to be three miles from any business and two miles from the airport. so we could put it on Mount Mitchell. So it was a set-up deal from the beginning because if Asheville would have went one more year,

it would have been a historical landmark. Oh, wow. So it was all planned through the years. And look at racing today. Would Asheville still be successful like it is? No. I don't know if it could get the car count. No.

And it was local. It was Daddy, Jack, Bosco, Roy Tratham, and then the Hickory crowd. Morgan, Harry. And that was our Monday morning water fountain talk. Sure. Bob and Jack's going to edit again. Bob and Bosco. But today, there's no racers in Asheville.

You know, it's, hey, no disrespect to the kids today, because they're great drivers. I mean, they're showing it. But nobody's local racing anymore. You know, I know you've talked about it, and that was my goal when I quit racing. I wanted to go back and run my late model. And then one of my owners, Doug Bable from Jasper, well, you screwed me again. And I said, what are you mean? You're going to go race for nothing after I paid you millions to drive for me.

Well, I'm just going to have fun. Didn't you have fun with me? So I kind of took that and said, I'm going to. I'm going to do a little coaching, man. I'm going to get some young kids. Owen Kelly that come here. I worked with him. He stayed with us, you know.

I remember Owen. He raced for our late model there a little bit. So let's talk about your career. You race at Asheville up until what year, 89 or 88? Yeah. Let's see. I raced Asheville, 83 to 88. And I think I won the championship every year but won.

You made it. You were dominant. You made your Xfinity series debut in 1984 at Charlotte. Yeah. Driving Jerry Auto, Jerry's Auto Parts Oldsmobile number 52. Whose car was that? Is that Stuart Huffman, I believe? Morgan Shepherd drove that car.

Oh, really? How did you get that deal? Because they found out I'd won Hickory, Greenville, and Asheville, Worldless Charlotte, or Melly Yelly. They had all the... It was like an imitation. So I had a guarantee start. I'd never been nowhere. Went to Charlotte, got in that car, and qualified 25th or something,

but battery went dead during the race. And now I look back, and I was thinking this last night, battery went dead, so they said, come in, we're going to change battery. So I pull in the pits, they said, get out of the car. I said, battery ain't behind the, no. Morgan Shepherd had the seat where it tilted and the battery was behind it. Today I think about what if I'd hit the wall that day or Morgan? You know, what would have happened?

Oh, my God. But I've done one Charlotte deal a big lesson for me because the race started. We didn't practice because JV or Stewart or whatever he's named. Jerry Huffman, I guess. We don't want to wear out the car. It's a fast car. You've got a bad driver here. And they start that race.

And I remember my open face helmet, my bubble goggles. First lap down the back straight away, them things start sucking out. And they come back and it bloodies my nose. So the first 20 laps, I'm holding my nose trying to drive to get the blood to stop you. I don't understand. What happened again with the air? The air brought your goggles, lifted off your face. You know, I had them instead of around your head, I had them around the helmet and, you know, a lot of airspace in here.

And just all of us going down the back straight away and the turbulence and the air removed, they just started going out and I was saying oh and when they come back going in three in the turn they just hit me right across the nose wow so you had a bloody nose this is your first first time it didn't even get practice and so now you're in the car for the first time that had been quite an experience I mean I got to practice and qualify and oh but not around other cars I didn't know what air was yeah so you didn't run another exfinity race until 1989 and you got to drive whose car? My car. Me and Brad

Dardy. So how did you build a how did you and Brad? So we've got to first tell Brad's story. Brad and you like I'd known he had been around racing but I didn't know how much time he had spent with you going up and down the road. That's a weirdest story. We're at Asheville Speedway one night and I win the race. And it's

It's probably 86. Whatever year he graduated from North Carolina. And was going to Cleveland, or Cleveland, I mean. And here he comes down pit road and I'd won the race. Hey, I didn't have no fans. You know, everybody like Bob Presley or Randy Porter or Jack Ingram and Bob Presley. Robert Presley had one fan of my wife. You know, that's it.

I was booed all the time. So he comes down through there and somebody says, hey, you know who that is? I said, I don't know, but if I was that size, I'd play basketball. Yeah. So he came down and started talking, and I just, you know, nobody else is around me. I said, and he's talking about race, and I said, hey, want you go to race with me one day? Where are you going to race that? And I said, Greenville tomorrow night.

Hey, I, what time? I said, be out here about 10. Next morning, 10 o'clock here, this Yalla Corvette pulls up with that much head sticking out of a convertible. I never thought I'd see the guy again. Yeah. He jumps in the doodly with me and the other two guys, and we go to Greenville. And that was every day, every... Then he lived with me and my wife for a couple months before he went to Cleveland.

And I was getting booed so much at all the racetracks and getting threats and everything. So into 88, Brad said, I got some money. I'll buy you a motor. Junior Johnson told me he'll give me some parts So in my little old garage in Bent Creek We built a bush car And took off racing I mean I had a spare set of wheels

No other parts I remember going to Bristol My second race in 89 Borrowed a gear from LD Audinger Went to the racetrack without a 9-inch gear And borrowed his Well I'm getting ready putting it in and he pulls in, I need that gear.

So we pull that gear out. Can I have the one out of your other car? Put it in. Then he comes back, he won't sit back. I'm not even on the racetrack yet because of trying to find the gear. So that's how we raced. And up till the 11th race of the year,

I'd run good at Indy, fell out, something all work. You know how it is? Yeah. A low budget, we had nothing. Went to Richmond by myself. Left was going to try to find some help and end up in Richmond by myself to race there. And done all right until something happened, rear end, plug or something.

But Jack Ingram come by the garage and he said, Robert, you're never going to make it. You got good race cars because he's a banjo car. He said, find a racetrack you can win at and you'll be on your way. So Orange County was coming up in three weeks. he come by the shop like every evening who jack okay you got this tight you got this tight don't let nothing fall off there we went down there and won the race

i mean nothing happened and monday morning i get like three phone calls hey you come drive our bush car next year who called you uh c wellefer the 34 car wow okay i mean great teams and uh guy out of georgia that had one that was tied in with glamble Me and Glenville kind of hung around together because we didn't finish a lot of races in first level.

So we got to talk. And then Alliance wanted to. So Alliance was a big break. The next year went out and won a lot of Bush race in 991-92. But I wanted to bring Brad because Brad had took me to where I was. Right. Right said, you're on your own now. Why is that?

Just ahead of the priorities, I'm sure, right? We had priorities, but it was like, I don't need no credit. And then he got tied in with Harvick a little bit through a dealership. So it ain't Brad didn't want the publicity. He just enjoyed racing, you know. He wanted to be a part of it, but he don't. Me and Brad are still best friends where he's been partners in land and things and go back and forth. But he is the real deal, you know.

He don't want to spend a lot of money. but he loves his sport. He loves it. So you, the alliance trucking partnership, when you get that, do you team up with Ricky right away? No.

Right. So when you, so you got a call to drive the 34. You went with this alliance partnership, but they basically just start sponsoring your car? No. They had a ARCA team. Oh.

With Johnny McRennels, I think. Okay. And they hadn't run real good. This is, Alliance Truck and owns the car? Yeah. Okay. They owned it. So Mike Fryer.

Where are they out of? Asheville. Alliance Truck it is. So it's our local business. Yeah, they learned to drive a tractor trailer. Yeah. Georgia, Asheville, Tennessee. Schools.

Yeah. So Mike Fryer got me the deal and said, hey, Robert Presley can do it. You put him in your car. So whenever I go talk to him, I sign the contract. And then I said, why are y'all running after I signed the contract? Why are y'all running Arka? Why don't you run Bush Grand National? Because we go to Atlanta, we go to Nashville, we go to Lanier, we go to Hickr.

We go to all these places that you're at. Markets. And we can do a lot better in Bush than we can here. We ain't got no cars. I said, we'll use mine one car. So we built a couple from Banjo, and Banjo said, Robert, if you want to make it, hire Ricky Pearson. He's available. That was the smartest thing we done.

Yeah. So I run the first six or eight races without him, just my regular guys that went to the racetrack. And when Ricky come in, I mean. What was the deal with him that's so good? Because he's had a lot of success. Yeah. He knew how to bend the rulebook. Did he?

Oh, we got a cheating story? Oh, man. I mean, he was one of the best. I mean, we had a relationship that we'd call each other at three o'clock and morning. Hey, Ricky, can we do this? Or, Robert, how about this? But, I mean, I don't think me and him ever cheated. It was him and Larry.

I just saw you winking. Did I see a wink? I saw a wink. I know I saw a wink. I mean, he talked about putting headlight doors with number 11 or 12 Ellis. on them and pull a pen to get a caution, you know. That's pretty cool. Oh, my God.

So, I mean, that's fantastic. Dropping lead, which everybody kind of dropped the lead back then. But honestly, we didn't really. That's pretty funny, man, to take some, like something. He was so innovated. Drop something off your car with somebody else's logo on it. Yeah. That's what the headlights says, the headlight with someone else's number on it.

That's right. Come off my car. Robert Black, Ray Hill would come over there and say, hey, need to see you on the trailer. And what did we do? God. Well, I hope it ain't bad because I'd hate to ever get caught, you know. We went to Bristol with an offset car. Knew it was offset and knew they was going to give us a restrictor plate.

And we was going to be able to run lighter. Yeah. Ah, man, we were so fast. and had a big crash in one because we could run wide open tires was good. Ricky said, see what happens when you try to cheat. You always get caught you. Some way, somehow.

So that's really kind of where you got noticed was with the alliance. I think when I first got really noticed, this guy named John Page had a Daytona dash car, and they was coming to Asheville Speedway. So I'd won all the races. for four or five years. Hey, you want to drive my in 89? You want to drive my dash car? I got

it, didn't have no brakes. It was a pretty bad car. And I led the whole race, his first race, Shauna Robinson won because I wrecked. He was wrecking one and I had no brakes and hit Larry, Ricky Pearson. And they ended up

getting married. I always told Eddie, yeah, you give her her first win, you know. So then John said, hey, I've got another car is it better than this he said yeah so we went to Anderson Hampton Virginia and South Boston and we won all three Daytona dash races so we won three out of four and should have won the other one yeah and people started saying who it you know Coleman my son was born on her way to

Hampton really and I run a or not born on the way he was a young man yeah just a baby just been born and he cried all way to Hampton and you know we had to stop everywhere I got to the race track and our car was sitting on the line to qualify and had never seen Hampton and we sat on the pole and won the race thing I said wow you know this is pretty cool to be able to go to racetrack and not practice or ever see it and win a race like that hey I can't get past something you've said a couple times earlier and that was that you were disliked and that everybody booed you so i want to know why that is but also i wonder if the um if this this carried on over passed asheville into these

you know breakouts in the xfinity series and and everything did did you was you was the people that did not like you exclusive to ashville and greenville i mean greenville was worse in ashville because i won like 30 in a row at greenville okay and finally had to sell that car one night to a guy that kept protesting me. And I said, hey, won't you just buy this car? It was part of the reason why I went Bush to. I said, you protest me every week, and you know it's legal. Why don't you just buy it?

I've won the championship. There's three races left. Just give me $10,000. You can have the whole race car, springs and all. Because coming home one night, we got shot at. Brad, I mean, we left Greenville one night. And we was armed, put off anything we wanted, you know. And then...

Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You got shot out? Oh, yeah. Brad was with you? Yeah. Brad was following us. But he's getting shot? But the next week, we had, we had enough stuff to take care.

Why were they shooting at you? They, you don't go to Greenville Pickens and win race from Asheville, you know. Greenville is their own little place. But is it fans or competitors? Like people that thought, because you went in and took their money. Yeah. We'd go in. I mean, Brad used to laugh.

We went and bought Brad a couch and a love seat and his pickup truck one day. And we're going back and Brad said, let's go to Greenville because I wouldn't run every week. Well, Brad, my truck's gone and we'll take my. We load the race car up at 630 on his truck with a couch and love seat in the back of. No toolbox, nothing. Pull the race car up on, go to Greenville, start in the rear, and we'll. win the race, you know. And then people thought we was doing it as a joke, you know, just humiliating them, you know.

Sort of, I could see how they would think that, though. I mean, you got a love seat in the back of a truck. A pickup truck. A pickup, right. But, I mean, you had Andy on here not long ago. Andy Petrie. And Andy raced down there a lot. And Andy was good.

But I'd start in the rear at Greenville because I'd hardly ever qualify. We just got. And Andy and me, we had a rival going, you know, Leo Jackson helped him. Richard Jackson helped me. And Andy said I wrecked him every time I got to him. Andy wrecked himself. I mean, Andy, I know you're going to hear this,

but where's it, Greenville one night, and I followed him for like 15 laps. And he was driving in America, and down the front straight away, he cut across my nose and hit the wall head on. Okay, so I guess, but look, my point was you became likable as you're climbing through the NASCAR ranks as we're going through your career. You found people, I have to wonder, in fact, my theory is you did do a little provoking along the way. Am I wrong?

Yeah, I mean, yes and no. Yes and yes. Okay, for instance, I'm at the river. Jack Ingram's helping me in 84. because he wants to beat Bob Presley because they're big rivals. So I followed Daddy one night. I probably only won one or two races. And, you know, you couldn't pass Bob Presley.

I mean, he was good. So after the race, he walks back there and grabs me a by the collar. Who? My dad. And he said, listen, little, you're never going to make it if you don't learn how to race. Dad, I'd had to wreck you. It don't matter. you got to learn how to race.

Next week I wrecked him. He come and got me out of the car. Let me tell you something, you know, don't ever touch my race car again. Well, you told me, he said, I don't care who it is. You got to learn. Nobody's on that racetrack but you. So, you know, I had to survive. I had to race, you know.

I had to do what it took to get that money for first, or I wasn't going to be back the next week. So when you wreck your daddy, but your daddy's hated by the Jack Ingram fan, so now all Daddy's fans hate me, all Jack's fans hate me. I'm trying to understand the relationship that you and your dad had. Great. I mean, I love my dad so much. Yeah, but when you mention him, you call him by name, Bob Presley.

Rapid Robert. Right. And y'all raised each other. like he was just another competitor. And, you know, I mean, I race daddy. We ran in each other a couple times or I ran in him or, you know, things didn't go well on the racetrack with us, but he was, you know, he's still daddy, you know.

But y'all's relationship was a lot more mature, I guess. Oh, it was. Daddy, Charlie race, my older brother and struggled, but he was so smart working on a, race car. Then my brother Mike raced. Then my little brother raced and I didn't race. My daughter, my daughter, my sister married Tony Warren that race. So I'm the middle child and I wasn't racing. And all of a sudden I decided I wanted to race. And Daddy's seen that I had potential and he never helped none of the other ones. He told him this is not a way to make a living. So Daddy kind of took me

under his wing of saying if you're going to do it it's a tough tough business you're going to have to fight your way out of places you're going to have to make enough money to go week to week to week you know and he said and if you don't win you can't do none of that so he taught me but he was the hardest one on me when i'd done something wrong and that's why he wanted to drive my bus in 95 so he could stay on your ass exactly and i mean you know He would tell everybody how proud he was of me except me. Sure. Oh, I know all that too.

You know how that is. And I mean, and people say, God, your dad's so proud of you. I wish every once in a while he'd pat him the back or something. Did he ever wreck you? Oh, yeah. So, okay, he's grabbing you by the shirt because you wrecked him, but he's also wrecked you. Yeah. We went through a year of 1988 that me and him was worse.

rivals than him and Jack was. And Coleman, and that's one of the reasons why I quit racing and wanted to go do the bush. To get out of that situation. Because Coleman was born in October of 88, and Daddy didn't see him until Christmas Day. Daddy would come, Daddy had a picture of him. He carried in his wallet. And Christmas Eve, about 2.30, he come up and put some Christmas presents on the porch for Coleman. that's how hard-headed both of us was we wouldn't neither one of us was going to give now we're talking

yeah we was not going to give now i understand the relationship so um y'all weren't talking y'all weren't seeing each other y'all aren't going near each other during the week right you go race on the weekend during the week where are you at there's this little restaurant called the mountain view restaurant and daddy eat there jack amory deep. And I was working for Coca-Cola. What were you doing? Route driver.

Gotcha. So I'd stop the truck because Jack was helping. Jack loved this. I'm sure he did. Bob and his son can he get along together. So Jack, I'd walk in. Hey, come on back here. Robert said with me.

And that just made the hair crawl on Daddy's nephew. Oh, I bet. Jack agreed. So you all went, Marge, y'all went a majority of that season without having a traditional father-in-south relationship. Yeah. Was there ever moments at the racetrack where things seemed to get warmer? The two instances that was the funniest during that year was my cousin,

which was my daddy's nephew. He was a big Bob Presley fan, but he helped me because Daddy didn't want no help. Daddy died all his self. And then I had this other boy named Thomas Holder. and I wrecked Daddy one Friday night on the race Daddy backs his truck up in my garage and looks at us all

don't say a word and holds it wide open and smokes the whole shop up like one o'clock in the morning really just sits there and power brakes cuts a little hole that's still in that floor the Bob Presley hole like a burnout at the race station yeah

and he gets out in the fog of the smoke and he says I'm going to up everyone he all's ass and my cousin said hey bob i'm on your side and the other one leaves and i said daddy you know he said you ever touched my race car again i don't care what your mama says i'll get you what was your mama saying throughout all of that well they had just separated so you know who's saying holy crap this is a springer episode all of a sudden but i mean it it was so fun of what we've done together.

Yeah. You know, it made us, we, we are a very close family. My dad and me was... Now, hold up a second. Now, this, this is a year. I'm trying to connect dots. Now, what was the year that Jack Ingram, is this the same cousin that Jack Ingram wrecked?

Yeah. Under caution? No, no. No, different cousin. Yeah. Okay, okay. All right. Yeah.

And what year was that, though, that incident? It has 86, I guess. Okay, so that had already happened. Wow. you Asheville racers are crazy. No, no. I'm telling you, the family, I mean, like, it is. What was happening at Asheville was crazy, but it was also happening at Greenville Pick,

and it was also happening at Hickory. And a Hickory. I mean, like I was talking in to Ask Jr., I mean, all across the country at these short tracks are these type of things happening at all these little rivalries, or they used to. Yeah. You know, when I was racing at the beach, you know, there was pretty good rivalries going on. I mean, the Bob Presley Jack Ingram rival is probably like the Duke Carolina basketball game. But you can't take away from the Sonny Hutchins and Tommy Ellis rival in Virginia at that time.

Right. I mean, so that's what I loved about short track. And I was proud that me and my dad had a rival, but it was never like that. I know one night this guy kept telling me he was going to wreck me all week. I'm going to wreck you, Robert. I'm going to wreck you, Robert. So he started in front of me because he inverted the field. And we go off into one and I turn him.

See, Jack was my mentor. And you know, Jack, he said, Robert, you know how you solved that problem? And I said, how? Wreck them first. And that way, you're always on top. So we're sitting on the starting line. And I said, I'm going to wreck. I had that in my head.

I'm going to wreck him. We go off in one, I turn him. I'm the only one that makes it through. I come back around in the whole field. The whole, you know how narrow. Oh, yeah. The whole field is piled up over there. So they stopped me on the back straight away

because they're running the ambulance and everybody runs out there. And all of a sudden I see this guy that owns two race cars that are destroyed coming after me. Ooh, this ain't going to be good. You know, I'm going to get my head knocked in. Yeah. And all of a sudden, now me and Daddy ain't talking. My daddy grabs that man and says, you're going to go through me.

My dad was in the wreck, too. So you see the deal there? He can talk about me, but nobody else is going to do that. Makes perfect sense. Nothing like a fight to bring a family together. And the guy looked at me, got in the wind. He said, Bob, I ain't going to do nothing. He said, Robert, did you do that intentionally?

And I said, yeah. I said he said he was going to wreck me, so I figured I'd just get him first. Okay. So next week, he told that guy, he said, if you don't wreck Robert, you're fired. And a couple weeks he got fired after that because... It couldn't get you. He didn't want to. You didn't want, even though Daddy was not on my side, he didn't want to, you know, you didn't mess with Bob Presley and Asheville.

Wow. Okay. So, this is so fascinating. So you have a survivalist mentality as a racer. It's cultivated at Asheville and Greenville and all these places. And now you're back into NASCAR and you're winning in the then Bush now Xfinity series. And do you have the same survivalist mentality? Because I guess I'm wondering how much now was this ever even part of your aspirations to begin with

to be going Bush racing or cup racing and did it require a survivalist mentality? Pearson come on and took my daddy roll over. Robert, you ain't got no friends here, you know. It's me and you against the field. So Pearson plays that role. I mean, if Pearson seen me talking to another driver, come on over here. You don't let them get in your head.

Yeah. You know, and you know what to do. You know how to do this. And we had a great, great three-year relationship. It was most, I never wanted to go cup race. I was ready to stay at Alliance for a lifetime. Yeah. A lifetime.

But started winning races, and Leo Jackson calls me, and he said, I want you to drive the cup car, 33 skull car. What about Harry? He's going to retire. I said, win. We don't know, but we want to sign you now. And that was in 93. I said, well, what I do?

and they said, whatever you want to do until hire. I said, that could be 99. This man's going to keep racing forever. Well, we want you. So then my owner at Alliance found out about it and fired me with five races ago in 93. Said, if you don't want to drive from me, I said, well, I ain't going nowhere.

I'll be here. You know, we said we had another two-year plan. I'm good, you know. He said, nope, you don't want, if you went behind my back, back, you're fired. So, let's go.

Me and Rick Mass was not really getting along good because I turned him at Martin's Hill on the first lap. Well, he's on the front row. Do you detect the trend that we're detecting? It's a trend, you know? I wasn't that bad, you know.

And so what happens? I'm fired on a Thursday. He's going to be at Martinsville on Friday. And Johnny Hayes, calls and says you're driving Rick Mast Bush car. I said, I don't think so because I just, I mean, Rick had trouble in March. I don't think he's forgot yet. Right.

Well, Johnny had more power than Rick. Okay. So I drove his car at Markville and Hickory and a couple other places. And finished the season. Yeah. So we was like ready to win the championship. They was, and with five races to go. the plug.

Pulled the plug. So. And it's like Ricky Pearson, I always told me, Robert, never worry about a championship or you're not a racer. I want to win 100 races and no championships. Really? And that's the way I was. I didn't really care about championships.

I'd go race wherever I could to win races. Come to Concord one night was real funny in my Lake Model car. And I had this Monte Carlo, the ugliest race car you've ever seen in your life. Ugly. But it was one of the, the body was so narrowed, tires stuck out this far. Ernie Irving, Bobby Labani's racing there, and the rule was two-barrel carburetor. Well, I had a two-barrel that was pretty big. And went down there and just killed them Camaros in this old box car, Monte Carlo.

Yeah. They wanted to throw me out. And I said, y'all said a two-barrow. Y'all didn't say what size, you know. Yeah. In 1994, you run a couple races for Leo Jackson, this number 54, Mannheim Auctions Car, Bright Yellow and all that. Steve Barkdall was your crew chief,

and y'all ran the Daytona 500? Yeah. So you'd been to Daytona and the Bush car. It wasn't like you'd never seen the place before, but what was it like going to run the Daytona 500? It was really hard because in 94, knowing now Harry's going to retire in 95. 94 was an awkward year for me because I lost my good year deal because Harry Gant wanted to run Hoosier tires that year. So I was driving a 99 car, which was a good car, but we was on Hoosier Tire.

And got Daytona and that car was so fast. because Leo Jackson, he cared about Dayton and Taldega, that was it. And, I mean, it was so much fun driving them cars because they was so fast. But it was a second team. And the bad thing, what I say, my career right there really kind of changed. Because Leo's dad had passed away. And Leo had kind of lost interest at racing, you know. That's all he thought about because his dad loved.

loved racing. That's when I wished I had not signed that contract that early. Yeah. I had an opportunity, Jimmy Johnson that worked for Hendricks had called me in 94. To go there. Yeah. And I said, well, I'd like to do a one-year contract because I knew where I was going in 95. What, didn't I know that Chevrolet knew what was going on because of Leo? Yeah.

And I got the call back and said, why didn't you tell? I said, y'all didn't ask, you know. I told you one year. Yeah. But staying with Leo was only because I'd done my own deal in Lake Model. Alliance was really my own deal in Asheville. And Leo was in Asheville. And I never had the desire to want to come to Charlotte.

I know. So you're still in Asheville. You know, everything needed a connection to Asheville. What was it about what it, why, why were you not willing to go to Charlotte? That's, I'm a, I'm a farm boy, you know, my life is getting on the tractor, mowing my own grass. I mean, I don't think anybody's ever mowed my grass, but me. Because that's my outdoor to do what I want, bush hog, and playing on the tractor or building something, you know. It's not real nice what I build, but I've done it myself.

I think that I've got some of my dad of, I want to do my way. Yeah. And it wasn't the right way once you get to cut, because now you're a driver and you don't have no input. Yeah. But they got farms and lawns in Charlotte. They got opportunity. I mean, like, you could get all that.

Just being close to the race community wasn't, I mean, do you wish you had? No. Because I feel like I was very successful. with what I've done it my way. You know, I can say it. It's like my two years with Skull, one year with my brother, crew chief, and one with Andy. And man, me and Andy, we had rivals all the way through. So we, when he took over the team, yeah.

When he took over the team, it was like firing gas, you know. We knew it wasn't going to work, but. When he took up, when he became an owner. So, five races left, you know, I've seen the right. and Andy said he could do this, and Gary Bechtel come and handed me a contract to drive the cartoon network car for Earnhardt, Mark Martin,

and Jeff Gordon pay. And I thought, why? They said, we want you to drive this cartoon network car. So then I switched from being a racer to so much money. I mean, you couldn't turn it down. Yeah. And it lasted.

did eight races and that was that was the turning point in my career because we was buying cars from hendricks and i went over there and seen what hendricks had that they'd let me see yeah and i said we're way behind you know we got this little yeah we got this little shop up here in Asheville and got 15 employees and six motors and eight race cars and four of them are crashed Yeah. He's got this. So I changed around and said, I'm going back bush racing. So Tad Gishefter had got the 59 car or 47, and I said, if you'll change number 59,

I'll come drive for you, because I'm going to have fun again. So I'd done that rest of 97 before Jasper called. And people wondered why I went to Jasper. because it was a team that had missed like 11 out of 13 races and I said I want to just see if I can be something and we missed two races the next five years and that was the first year because of rain out and I had so much fun racing for Jasper

because every time it was a new racetrack like Texas we went there and was a fastest car you know Scott Miller was shockman and Dave Fuge was the crew chief and we left Billy Engle back so we had it made out their test and we was the fastest car went back and it rained out you know the qualified yeah first time we go to uh Kansas I think I finished sixth first time we ever go to Chicago in the Jasper car run second so see what I'm saying is we could run good but the team was not good enough to know what to be better when you go back a second time. That's important, yeah.

So my career, I just love the last four and then went on to Bobby Hamilton the first year and I'd lost confidence and go straight out Daytona and win the race. So when you say you lost confidence when you got to the truck deal. In the cup, the end of the year of cup. Right, the final at the end of that. So why did you, I mean, you'd known what you've done, you knew who you were. And we was making progress,

and Ryan Pemberton was my crew chief. And we'd had controversy during the middle of the year because Ryan was the best thing that happened to Jasper. Because we had finally come up in the points. We was running good. Ryan was so organized. But Ryan and me didn't have a good relationship. What was your problem?

I think, I mean, me and Ryan's never talked about it. We can arrange that, by the way. But anyways, keep on. I think he wanted me to come to Charlotte. We're after hours. And, you know, that wasn't me. I'm going to work, and then I'm going to do my family deal. And I think that's it.

And then it got the rumors. Jasper could win a lot of races if we had a driver. Oh, the rumors were that he's saying that? Yeah. I got you. Or the team. you know and the owner said got us in there one day and said Robert will be here when everybody else is gone so then I felt so good that they felt that way that I kind of maybe it is me

and Bobby and Dodge offered me a deal so I went Bobby Hamilton and Dodge and I went to Doug Bobble and said Doug I think y'all can win races so I'm going to will step out at the end of the year. Why? I said, the rumors and everything, I've got a little girl now. She's growing up. I want to kind of watch things. And the truck series, 25 weeks. Yeah, shorter schedule. And we go win Daytona, and Jasper don't do no better the next year. So the owner calls me, and he says, well, you come back and drive for me. Ryan left toward the end of the year. Booty come up. And I said I'm having so much fun that I'll never drive a cup car again. You made the choice.

Made the choice. And you never did. No, but then Bobby seen I was having that much fun in the truck. So he comes back. So Dodge puts me in this 59 Jim Harris truck. Right. And I'm at Texas and I call my wife and I said, I'm coming home. I quit racing.

And nothing about her because I have the utmost respect for everybody. when Jennifer Joe Cobb out qualifies you and you're 32nd out of 32 trucks, it's time to quit. Yeah. Okay, but wait a second. Okay, I got so many questions. I really want to ask you about Bobby Hamilton as a person because he always intrigues me. But real quick, you were at Bobby Hamilton racing for how long? One year.

Just one year. One year. You won two races. Yeah. he decided he was going to come back and drive that truck. Oh, that's right. Bobby was coming. Bobby, me and Bobby was good friends all through racing.

And Bobby said, Robert, do you look? It's like I went and tested the water for him. Yeah. And I said, Bobby, you know what? We've made our money. And this truck deal, you can win every week here. It's fine. You are competitive.

It'd be like if I want to go back late model racing, If I had any fans, it'd be fun to go out and win races. And after I won Michigan, and Bobby said, I think we're going to do a two-truck team, keep you on. Well, that didn't work out. So they put me over at the 59 truck. And we about one Daytona next year, lost it the last lap. But does Bobby own the 59?

No. Okay, so now you're out of Bobby Hamilton Racing. Right. But I'm on the Dodge thing, so Dodge had me there. It's part of a Dodge. All right, keep going because I interrupted you. What this is odd called me and Debbie Hamilton, Bobby's wife, my wife and her are best friends, and they come over, or she comes over.

We're going down the back straight away at Daytona last lap. There's no way I can lose a race. Me and him are. And we get in turn three, and he just drives up the racetrack. And let's the other ones catch. up. And everybody said, why did he do it? And I said, knowing Bobby Hamilton, he's a racer.

And Dodge had offered whoever won the race got a new Dodge Viper. And because I was gone, he did not want to see that Viper go out of Tennessee, you know. He wanted it for himself. So nobody got it. But that was, you know, me and Bobby talked. about that he said no Robert he said I lost the nose you don't lose the nose going in turn three you know describe Bobby Hamilton that's I mean this guy has always intrigued me I I'm not sure if I ever liked him not knowing him I mean I not know him because he always seemed

to be kind of like a crudgy just a kind of a crudgy old he's not like that everything was to his self yeah I mean whenever I was driving for him he wouldn't even tell me what was in the truck. You know, whenever I was racing against him, you know, hey, Bobby, I'm struggling. What do we need here? And we tell you the opposite, you know. But that's the way he was. He did not share nothing with nobody.

He was so independent. But whenever he got back in the truck deal, he came and he said, most fun I've ever had in my life. So you quit at Texas? No, they wouldn't let me. So I had to finish out the year. You finished the year out? I mean, so about the end of the year, you're done?

Yeah, so I leave Homestead. The owner fired the crew chief during the race, but then realized he didn't have nobody to load the truck up. So he hired him back during the race. Holy crap. And then I never heard nothing from him until January 3rd. Hey, Robert, you won't go to Daytona? Nope, I'm done.

Come on, just run Daytona for me. That's it. We can win. truck. Nope. Please go. I said, no, I'm up here in the cabin at Pigeon Forge. And Mick Carey was up there. Well, he

went up there and signed autographs for about 10 straight years. That's our New Year's deal. Carrie Earnhardt. Yeah. So he said, why don't you just stick that cabin up your ass? Oh, yeah. I said, okay, he hung up on me. Two days later, he calls me. Come on, Robert.

Please go to Daytona. And I said, Jim, I can't. He said, why? I said, I'm in the hospital. What's the matter? I said, I'm getting the splinters out of my ass. I had never heard back from him, and that's my last deal with him. So you never drove another race car again?

Well, I drove Tad's Bush cars. When Marcus Ambrose was there, I'd qualify him for him at Memphis in a couple places. But that was it. That's it. You never went and ran your little late model like you said, you might. I wanted to race my son. so bad, but I was not going to let him outrun me. So that was the holdup?

That was the hold up. And he'd always, come on, Dad, race me, please. One time. Yeah. I said, Coleman, I can't beat you. You know, I'm not going to race you. Yeah. Come on, don't you miss you and your dad racing?

I said, that's exactly how it would start over again. Yeah. Because I would win if I can catch you. Good Lord. So you ended up promoting a racetrack for three years. High Bank King Sports Speedway in Tennessee. A lot of fun. I wanted to see what the other side was like.

All right. So what was it like? It was. I wanted to bring racing back the way it was. So I went to a two tire. Yeah. I had the most cars of 20, 22 every week. But no superstars, you know.

Lee Poyum come over a couple times, but he couldn't compete. I put him on a shock. I put them on two tires, and it was a low buck racing deal. You could run any motor, and I just waited it. And we had a pack grandstand, we had good racing, and my official was I took like three or four drivers out of each division and let them make the rules. First, the best driver, the middle pack, and the end.

Where whenever they come to me and said, why are we doing this? Well, y'all voted on it. I'm just running the racetrack. Yeah. And then the owner of the track, seeing that it was very successful, it'd been closed down eight or ten years.

So he decided he wanted it back. So he took it back? Yeah. And were you ready to stop doing that? I wanted to own the racetrack because there's a lot of things I wanted to do to it. What was the roadblocks to owning that? He had sold it two times to Galaxy and J.D. Stacey

back in the day. So he'd already made, he had inherited it back after they filed bankruptcy. So he told me, if I sell this track to you, I'm going to have to pay capital gain. I ain't going to get that. Now, if you want to give me a million dollars cash, and I said, I ain't going to, you know, that ain't going to happen. Yeah. He said, well, your contract's up at the end of the year.

Okay. What happened to track? It's still there. Griding. Five race cars a week. Oh, God. People put on Facebook, you know, the old story, do you wish Robert was back, you know, making fun.

I mean, Nashville. Kingsport is like a little town up there. Bristol's the big brother, Kingsport's a lot, and a lot of Saturday night racers, you know. Mill workers, the Kodak plant, or Easton, whatever it is now. It's your regular old Saturday night racers. They ain't no tractor trailers. They ain't no.

It's good old racing. I started a series up there called the four-cylinder non-winners. If you'd never want a race, you could run in. And I give a trophy. Just a trophy. They got in free. We had 30 of them people. But when you won three races, you had to move up.

The guys would win two races. Then I had a great race because they didn't want to win. They wanted to win the championship. So I had one week three wide because all of them had won two races. And somebody's going to get promoted. And they was running like 40 mile an hour off the corner trying not to win. Jesus. So racing, I guess I'm old school.

I love the old stuff for racing. And I don't know what I'll do next. I know. That's kind of the question. have for you to wrap up this interview is we talked about it at the start of the conversation you know when you're done with your term as a commissioner where are you going to go what's you're going to do but it seems like it's got to be something to do with racing I don't know what else I can do racing I mean I sure don't want to go to race tracks you don't want to go to short track

somewhere you don't want to go you don't want to build a late model and hire some driver I had so much fun with Coleman them four or five years we've raised. You got that out of your system? I told him, I said, I spent half of your inheritance before. I'm sure not going to spend the other half on somebody I don't know. Y'all got a business up there too.

What is that? It's a little hot dog place, celebrity hot dogs. Do you enjoy that? My daughter, yes. I go there two or three days a week, and I'll work in. there's some. So where is it at?

On the Bob Presley Highway, two miles from my house, three miles from the racetrack. It's hot dogs then. Yeah, just a hot dog place. Just an old convenience store. We sell hot dogs. Sounds amazing. It, I mean, you know, I'm not pat myself on the back, okay? Because I'd, but we have won the best hot dog of Buckham County for 14 years, and we got a lot of.

You are a commissioner. You know, so I mean, that's, that could be a little. Yeah, but he gets outvoted. He can't win anymore. I think it's skewed a little bit. Vote might be a little skewed. But we, I mean, it's unique. And I tell my daughter, if you're nice, you got good food, you're going to be good.

Yeah. And then again, I like to win at whatever I do. I mean, that's why going back on cutting grass. I got to cut my grass because I want that path going up and that path coming back. I don't want someone messing up a yard, you know. Yeah. Well, man, it's been great catching up. You know, we were really, really thankful for you to spend some time with us

when we shot that Lost Speedway episode at New Asheville. And that was the moment when I thought that we needed to get you in this studio because you got quite a story. And it's been a lot of fun catching up with you. and I've loved getting to know you better. You know, I've known Coleman a while, and Coleman ran a race for us way back in the day. Yeah.

And so we've had this kind of weird connection, but it's been cool being able to sit down with you and people are going to be thrilled to hear your story, but also what you're up to these days. And I mean, and that's what I happen. A lot of people be in the hot dog place over whenever it airs and everything. But, you know, that was, whenever we've done the Lost Speedway, people started coming and they asked me how long do you know del junior i said i've really never

noted yeah i said the closest we ever was was st louis when the racetrack come apart that day it was 400 degrees oh yeah and i'm sitting there turned around backwards because everybody's spot out and you hit me head on yeah slide into me yeah and i said god i mean i've seen you coming at me oh yeah So you want to know the truth about that. So it was 110 degrees. Somebody died in the... Three people died that day in the grandstands. Yeah.

This is a hell of the story. We'll wrap it up. But so my spotter, Steve Crisp, had some sunburn from earlier in the week at his house, probably mowing his grass. And he goes to spot for me. And it's so hot that he ended up in the infield. care center, them scraping the skin off his legs because the heat had cooked his legs inside his pants and that sunburn blistered. And he ended up going at a hospital. It was miserable. So the race starts and I'm driving. I bought this car from somebody and me and my late model

boys, Wesley and a couple other people, we'd fix this thing up and got it ready to go. But we didn't insulate the oil box or nothing. And it, it just, I was cooking. We all were. And when there, I saw there was a wreck off of two, I could not wait to get in it. Okay. Hey, now I can tell the story. Because, you know, you don't want to say anything.

I remember you getting out and you said, have you ever been this damn hot in a race car? And I said, no, you said, man, if my dad knew I was falling out of the seat. He was kicked. I remember that plane as day. It wasn't like 50 laps in the race. No, it was early. I have never in my life been that hot. I hit.

I thought it was Lyndon Amic I hit, but I guess I hit you. And I thought, I don't know if I've hit him. I don't know if I've done enough damage to this car to end the day. So I drove the car into the inside guardrail. It's like 100 yards across the grass to get there just to make sure that it was f***ing grass. So make sure it was finished. What is going on?

Okay. Okay, let me tell you this part. So we're in the infield carousel. And I go out, and I don't know, y'all have to hunt this down. There's a clip either on TV or radio. And they interview me, you know, because I was running like third or something. I mean, and the racetrack was terrible. I mean, one lane, and it was like driving a gravel road.

And we get in there, and I interview, and I'm getting ready. walk away and they interview Dale. Man, I had a great car. God, I hate I got this right. I said, God. And I just walked off. I said, that's, I was not hurt. My car was not hurt.

Yeah. Are you saying, though? Oh, go ahead. So we get to, I hit Lynd and Amick. I must hit him too. Maybe it was me you hit instead of the guard. I don't know. But we get, I'm sitting.

I go sitting. the lounge at a truck or somewhere, I don't know, and somebody comes in the middle of the race to get me. And they're like, well, you drive Glenn Allen's car? I'm like, yeah, I guess, I guess. I mean, by that time, I'm over, you know, I forgot how miserable hot I was, and I'm sitting around there thinking about how maybe it might be fun to drive his car.

My car wasn't very comfortable and very good. but so Glenn Allen is going to get out and everybody's burnt up everybody's cooked and so Glenn comes in and steps out of his car throws up right next to me I climb in that it's on YouTube I climb in and drove his car and when I got in it it was they were like 28th and all four corners is banged up on it a little bit everybody had wrecked because everybody was spinning out on the racetrack because the racetrack's coming up and you go down in the corner and just hit gravel and you're crashing. And you couldn't, you couldn't see it.

You couldn't, you didn't know where to go to avoid it. I'm out there running around, running around. And they're like, they're like, calm down. Calm down. You're running, run too hard. I'm like, I ain't doing nothing. I'm just riding around. And, but anyways, they ended up finishing 14th.

And so when I got in it, he ended up making about $4,000 or $8,000 more or something like that, right? And he comes up to me the next week. He goes, man, I made like 4, 8, 4, whatever the number was, 4 or 6,000. I made that much more money. I don't know, Glenn. Never talked to him before. I'm going to give you some of that. But he never did.

I was like, God, that's a lot of money. I wasn't getting no money. Daddy wasn't paying me no money. I was making $350 a week, right? Working at DEI. And shit, I just put a $2,000 stereo in my $400. 10 truck. So that money that

Glenn wanted to give me would have been pretty nice. Sounds to me that if he had given you that money, you probably owed it to Robert and Lennoname it who you saw

a ticket to out of the race. But I was... When I got there, there was at least 10 cars already. It was a big old pile up. Yeah.

It was... I just bounced off whichever ones was... But I've seen him looking right at me and, you know, it's probably a good thing because I'd probably die

to the... I wouldn't have got out of the race car. I would have probably probably died of a heat stroke that day because never have I seen it that hot. Never. But you know, that's a great thing. And I swore I was not going to say nothing about that. But that's the deal about this show what I've seen a lot of.

I mean, there's nothing help back, are they? You don't care what it is. Yeah. I mean, when you're out of the game like me and you, you can just say what it is. We wouldn't have told that story. a day or a week later, right? No. We can tell it now.

Are you saying that the next time you had a conversation with Dale Jr., was it lost speedways taping? No. We talked at Richmond, Virginia, when Coleman was going to drive your car? Yeah, we did. Yeah, we did. For what, 30 seconds? Yeah. But, you know, like I told it to start, Ralph bullied Daddy, Daddy bullied Dale,

Dale bullied me. And then I said, okay. He'd been bowling in jail every race. I know who's going to get bullied here. Jesus. Oh, that's wonderful story. Man, that's fun. That's fun.

I'm glad we got to add that last a little bit. So anyhow, man, where are you headed? Going back to Asheville. All right. What do you got to do the rest of the day? County Commissioner deal, a little old deal. We're getting $54 million from the governor for COVID, so we're going to figure out how to spend it. All right.

So I've seen you and the governor about the Wilkesboro deal. Yeah. I don't know where all this money's coming from. Yeah. Well, I don't know either. Wilkesboro looks pretty good. I saw some pictures. They've been cleaning it up.

Yeah. Never know. What are you going to do with it? Well, it's up to Marcus. I told Marcus he ought to dig up the asphalt, turning it into a dirt track. He's spending two million putting dirt on Bristol. I heard that.

And then you've got all the work to put it down and dig it up. What the hell? I just dig up North Wiltsboro. Have you a little dirt race there? And once a year, the cup cars, bush car. Right. All that. bringing the world out long?

Yes. And leave it dirt. And I heard you ask him that, and he said, oh, it ain't that expensive to do Bristol. Come on. Yeah. I think he admitted it was two grand, two million or something. He did, but what he wouldn't tell us is how much he's making.

Right. That's a good point. Yeah. He must be making a good penny. Anyways, we'll see, buddy. Hey, I'll come up here and get us a hot dog one day. Come on up. It's a great town.

We love it up there. Thank you, Dale. All right, buddy. Bye. Robert Presley on Dale Jr. Download. Last call. Hey, do you guys know what the hottest topic on our social media has been lately?

You all know? I mean, I know. Do you know? Yeah. It is our new clothing line, Dirty Moe original. Big hit. Have you seen the three T-shirts that have come out? It is retro, you guys, retro racing.

And I'm not talking retro racing like, you know, what NASCAR probably considers retro. I'm telling you what Dirty Mo and Dale Jr. considers retro. that's what I'm talking about. It's the kind of stuff that Dale Jr. would have bought on eBay, had he seen it there first. As it is, we designed it. We went after it. So it's in our store right now, Dirty Mo Media,

a line of clothing called Dirty Mo Original. Three new shirts. Got more coming. Saw one yesterday. What? Saw one yesterday. Going to blow your mind. Yeah, y'all don't even know about this.

I'm excited. You can go to the store at Dirtymo Media.com to find these shirts. You just go to Dirtymomomomedia.com. Click on store. That's simple. They've got them here in the Junior Nation retail store. Got them at tracks. Going to the races, go to the Dale Jr. trailer.

You'll find our clothes. You'll find Dirty Mo Racing. It's awesome. Right there front and center. Hey, Door Bumper Clear. Let's hear what these guys had to say this week. Yo, what's up, Dale Jr. download fans? This is Freddie Craft.

After you finish listening to the second best podcast on Dirty Mo, you have to start listening to our podcast, Door Bumper Clear. Casey Boat here and after Las Vegas, Cup race winning. spotter Chris Lambert joins us. We'll cover Hendricks Pit Strategy, Kyle Bush cursing at lap cars, Kevin Harvick calling Chase Elliott a nine-year-olds, and much, much more. Hey, everyone, Chris Lambert here, and you can listen to the door bumper clear this week and every week, just like I do, on all major podcast platforms. Hey, listen, I appreciate Chris Lambert for filling in. Should I go ahead and admit right now that I miss T.J. and Brett Griffin, just not, no knock on

Chris Lambert. No knock. I love Chris Lambert. I thought he brought it excellent, you know. You missed TJ? I mean, Brett, I missed TJ and Brett. I missed them. I am saying it. I'm a man. I can admit it.

I missed him. I missed Brett. You didn't miss TJ. No. TJ did back out right at the last minute. And so, you know, I guess there's points deducted from the, you know, missing TJ score. But anyways, good stuff on door bumper clear this week. Go check it out.

Also, the Dale Jr. downloads on TV. Do y'all know that? We're on television every week, NBCSN, Thursday at 6 p.m. Eastern time this week. So Mark Traynor does a fantastic job with that. Look forward to that. And that's what's going on this week. All right, everybody.

It's a great episode. Robert was awesome. It's always great to catch up with those guys. And he's so much fun to talk to you, Mike. Oh, man, a lot of fun. And boy, he came out with a story about you. Oh, he got me. I'm really happy about that.

Oh, boy. That's a lot of fun. I can't wait to hear. everybody thinks about that. Anyways, man, we appreciate him coming all this way. A lot of these guys, they travel in from a good distance, and we appreciate him making that effort. Great questions from Ash Jr.,

from all you guys out there, all you guys and gals that are supporting our show. I hope you guys have a great week. We'll see you next week. This bit of badassery was badassery. It was made by Madassery. Dirty MoMe. Dirty Mo!