The Dale Jr. Download - 361 - Alex Palou: From Spain with Speed

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

He came with speed, and he came with gifts. IndyCar Series Champion Alex Palou, the young champion, sits at the table with Dale Earnhardt Jr. to talk about his sudden rise to the pinnacles of motorsport. The colorful Spaniard didn't come from a racing family. It was a local go-kart track near his home village of Sant Antoni de Vilamajor Spain, that sparked his interest in becoming a racecar driver. From there, a path of persistence, raw speed, and opportunity led him to eventually become the 2021 NTT Indycar Series Champion.Palou connects with Dale Jr. and co-host Mike Davis about life in Spain and what it was like to grow up overseas. A racing path that took him far from home at a young age to Japan, Palou had to get used to different cultures as he tried to find himself as a racer and a man. That path didn't come without disappointment and setback. From homemade mountain dynos to racing for big teams in GP3 and F3, it's a true racing story.Alex Palou came on the scene with success in his rookie IndyCar season with Dale Coyne Racing. But it was his sophomore season that set the stage for his meteoric rise. An opportunity came with Chip Ganassi Racing and he took full advantage of it. Leaning on veteran leadership of teammates Scott Dixon and Jimmie Johnson, the youngster made a name for himself with three victories and the series title. To boot, he nearly won the Indianapolis 500. The near-miss in the world's biggest race didn't set him back though. Palou shares how the 7-time NASCAR Champion, Johnson, helped him mentally break through setbacks.Palou also came into the Bojangles studio with gifts, for Dale's Birthday and also some keepsakes for the crew. The 24-year old shares his personality as he and Dale Jr. talk about the dynamic personalities of the international scene that IndyCar presents. Dale Jr. first experienced it in iRacing, and it is why he and Mike on fire for the open-wheel brand of racing.Before Palou's arrival, Dale Jr. took control of the room. We're joking. Actually, an energy drink and a spunky mood had the whole gang wondering where Dale Jr. would go next. From Frankenstein to Cash-only soda machines... Dale Jr. held court in ways only Dale Jr. can. He and Mike also touched on the hottest topic in NASCAR today, the ongoing rivalry between Chase Elliott and Kevin Harvick.In Ask Jr. it's all about the triangle... of the tasty kind! Dave Portnoy's latest Dale Jr. invoked Pizza review brings up some questions about how it went down and the Key West drunken pizza hotspot. We also learn about Dale Jr's latest Chevy Silverado and how he decided the wild graphics he put on it.That and much more in this entertaining version of The Dale Jr. Download. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. The Dale Jr. Download. Hey, everybody's Dale Jr. Welcome back to another episode of the Dale Jr. download. Episode 361, Mike Davis, my co-hosts with me in the Bojangles studio. We got guests Alex Pillow, IndyCar Champion. Coming on later. We've got to Ask Jr.

Great show today. Matthew's here. Leah's here. We're going to get started. I cannot wait for this. All right. Is that good? Peach mango.

Really? I haven't had the peach one. I like the orange one. Where is it? The orange one's good. Yeah, where are you? I don't be willing to where is it. Well, then we'll order some.

There's a drink machine out there, but you got to put money in. What's that all about? Wait, you own the building. I'd like to, that's what we should be asking you do that. I have to pay for sundry. Who fucking walks around with money in their pockets. I know, exactly. Make it free.

They need a credit card slot, not a dollar bill. Who carries a $1? So to be clear, you don't have a problem with charging the employees for the drinks. You just have a problem with the lack of paying. I would gladly. buy a drink at that machine. I walked over there. Looked in there.

I want that. Well, it takes dollars. I ain't got that. Can't get it. Ain't got it on me. Do you even carry a wallet? That's what you say. Oh, do you carry a wallet?

Yeah. I ain't got it. I ain't got it. You got to do that. I ain't got it today. He's not lying. I remember we'd go through a drive-thru and he'd be like, Hey, no, this is it.

I ain't got any money. Hey, Mike, let's get this. Hell yeah, that's a great idea. We go? Oh, shit. I ain't got no money. Cash only. We're screwed.

You got any money? Yeah. Oh, he saves the day. Why is he complaining? What is the hero? What are we talking about? I'm not complaining, but I'm confirming your... One zip of Routy.

Pete's Mango, man, sent me to the mood. No shit. What's in that thing? It's like nitrous in that there. Five calories. Did you pay for that? No, it was sitting in the floor in LW's office. Well, that seems nice.

Well, it's... Totally credible. Drink it up. I am sacrificing the cold temperature. It's a rude temperature, but it's still right. You know, that probably's been sitting in a trailer at Millbridge for like the last month. Probably. Ready to rock.

All right. Pretty awesome weekend at the racetrack. Good Lord. Man. So the Roval, I had this great idea. All right, it's Halloween season. And they're like, hey, man, you know, I'm reading on social media, describe the roval in one word. All right.

everybody's giving their opinions. And I thought, man, it's, you know, listening to Jeff Burton and all these guys talking about how they took a mile and a half oval and squeezed this long road course in it. I don't know how long this damn track is, two and a half miles, four miles, whatever. All right. So they squeeze it into this little racetrack, right? And it's got a little bit of everything. It's got some chicanes.

It's got some bankings. It's got some oval. It's got some road course. It's got some technical spots on the interior of the track. So I thought it's Frankenstein. That was the word. That's my word. Frankenstein.

And then I got a gift. You remember the movie, the old movie? It's alive. Yeah, yeah. All right. And I'm thinking, man, that's Marcus Smith. When he saw the green flag drop on the first race at the roval that he created. He's in his sweet.

It's alive. That's Marcus. Like a mad scientist. Lightning. So I, you know, I'm going to use that. in the pre-race we're going to do a little bit of work me and jeff burton down on the grid during countdown to green which is an hour-long show right before the race starts great show they got dale jared on there kai petty they're on the peacock pit box we're having a lot of fun marty smart

i always almost oh you did it i do marty snider we have a great time marty is a great host you're hosting a little bit here lately awesome job i hope that he stays in that role but anyways they put me and jeff burton on the grid sometimes they put le tart down there Either way, we're having it's fun. I'm thinking they're coming to us and they want us to describe this racetrack. Well, Jeff Burton's going to talk details, how tough it is, this and that, and other. And I thought I'd have a little bit fun with it and go, you know, it's Halloween. You got Heartburn Turn, which Tom's used to sponsor.

That's right. And that's how Heartburn Turn came about. Well, we're going to keep calling it that. Once you get a nickname like that, you can't change it. DeWalt has now bought the corner and the banners down there. We ain't changed. It's still heartburn. DeWalt,

Heartburn turn. That's what we're going to call it. If you buy in that corner and you're putting your damn billboards down there, just no going forward. You ain't changing the nickname of that turn. Heartburn turn. Turn one.

All right, so I was going to make that evident. And then I was going to do my Frankenstein bit. I'm like, you know, I describe, is that not the, I think it's perfect description. I can't come on with one better. I really think no one will be able to top my description. I'm going to try. I'm going to try.

It's in October. It's Halloween season. Everybody's gearing up. Right? Yeah. Pumpkins everywhere. Hey, bells. Thanksgiving's around the corner.

Yeah. That was, I was pretty happy with that. Well, right before we go on air, Marcus Smith walks up. I was like, hey, man, I got a perfect name for your track. He's like, what? He's all excited. I said, Frankenstein. Frown.

Smile disappeared. I don't know if he thought it was an insult. Yeah. It wasn't too hot on that nickname. Ah. Yeah. I like it. Yeah.

Then he cruised on to the driver's engine. intros and I was like, huh. What was that about? Yeah. Did you lose your confidence with it? I lost a little confidence. Seconds later, I had it back, of course, you know. And then went on air, kicked ass.

We had an awesome show. Countdown to Green. Best Countdown to Green we've ever had. I thought. All right. We covered a lot of drivers. We had Michael Jordan on talking about his win as an owner. Incredible.

Right. Win. That was so cool, right? Think about this. Like, Michael Jordan is an owner in our series, now a winner, now we get to hear how he feels about being a winner. I got a chance at Homestead about two years ago, right, to go interview him at his bus. I'm scared to death.

This guy is the greatest of all time. He's there to support Denny because Denny's got a chance to run out of the title. And they're going to let us interview him. He agreed to do this, right? He could have said, nah, I don't want to do it. I'm not here for that. He's like, yeah, no problem. They send me down there.

I'm scared of death, right? We have a great interview. Highlight of my year as a broadcaster. It was awesome. One of the highlights, at least, I'm feeling great. Never in a million years, well, I think this guy is going to be involved in our sport, so entrenched in it so much so that he's an owner, invested, and cares about his car going out there and winning.

And then his car goes and wins, and now we get to hear his feelings about being an owner in a sport. To me, that's phenomenal. We watched, did you not watch? I didn't watch pre-race. Like, Frankenstein thing is great, but it's totally when you said, when you said, oh, let's talk about the race, I totally didn't think you were going there. What? Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

I'm trying to follow. I'm trying to follow. We're following. Everybody in America is talking about something else right now. All right. I am talking about Countdown to Green, the pre-race show. It was a great show. These are the things that were in it.

All right. All right. We talked about the track, Frankenstein, Marcus walks up, drivers are walking by, going to, going to and from driver's intros. Very busy scene. Okay. All right.

And on top of that, I think the best part for me in that one hour before the show was hearing about Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time, talk about what it's like to be a winner as an owner in the NASCAR Cup series. The worlds were colliding. I never in my life thought I would

be experiencing what I was experiencing in that moment. To me, for whatever reason, or for me at least, it was surreal. I would imagine it would be, yeah. Yeah. The only thing I guess I'm saying is I guess you had to be there. No, no, no. It's not that. You had to wrap your... I've wrapped my head around the fact that he's a winning car owner for a week, considering it

happened a week ago, not this past Sunday. We ain't heard from him, Mike. Oh, no, I got it. So you heard from it, but I'm saying, I guess that's why I'm not, like, falling over in the, I'm sorry. You're upset, you're getting upset because we're not reacting. Let's move on. Nothing happened at Charlotte.

I definitely see it as a great moment. I do, I do. I just, it wasn't like a new moment. It was. Okay. I could see a point. When have we ever heard Michael Jordan talk about his winning car? in NASCAR.

I don't know, man. All right. I think Mike is not giving a purpose. I'm not. I'm doing my best. I feel like Dale's setting up the day before he talks about

what you know. I didn't know this was the time to start reacting. Honestly, I thought that he was telling a story, but then he stopped in the middle of it, goes, oh, y'all, y'all think this sucks, huh? It's just me.

And I'm like, no, we're just listening. Take another drink. Holy crap. Now here comes the next 10 minutes is going to be good after this. Here's what everybody at home needs to know. Dale Jr.'s drinking rowdy energy. All bets are off.

We don't even know where the hell this show's going to go. Two swallows. That's all it took, apparently. Again. You were hyped up. This is why I came in here and warned him not to faint, faint, excitement and enthusiasm. Yeah, that's a little insulting. It's all he's done since we sit down to this table.

I faked. I have, what have I done? He's not a faker. I am not. I've had two swallows of this. I don't think, you're saying Mike's a faker? He's over exaggerating the effects of this drink. No, he isn't.

No, I think the people at home. I've got you down. Oh, my audio levels, really. That's a great way. Dude, you're up on the wheel right now. You're qualifying trim. Okay. What other...

This is good. What else can you tell me? You're taped up. I'm telling me right now, yeah, you've got tape on the nose. Can I get a full physical here with these audio levels? Oh, you don't have your watch on. I was going to get your heart rate. Maybe the audio levels would give you a good of five-range guest.

I know your audio level. levels, brother. Okay. Listen, I will ask you this. Did the race live up to the unbelievable pre-race show that you had experience? Why are you always jumping ahead? I'm sorry. It's like we can't crank the Studebaker for like 10 hours.

Let's spend some more time on pre-rish. Alex is coming in here. Yeah, and we're not going to get anything done by the time he gets in here. We're going to jump right to the championship. We're not going to ask them about Spain. Yeah, we are. Growing up in Spain going to travel the world, being in Japan. You are confusing today.

Is he confusing? I can't, I don't think we can because he's got that rowdy. I turned 47. Maybe I lost my mind. That's what it is. Did we not wish you a happy birthday? That's what it is. Maybe I lost my mind.

We wish him a happy birthday. Yeah, Matthew did. That's what's going on. Leah did. Yeah, not Mike, nothing for Mike. Really? Well, he didn't call me back either yesterday. I'm sorry.

Yeah, too late. I can't say happy birthday. Not accepted. Not accepted. Take a bow back. What if I just say happy birthday? Take the boat back. That's a song.

Take the boat back. It could be. Boats got a little problem right now. Oh, what's right? What's up with that? The motor won't tilt up. Oh. Yeah.

Maybe that's the site. The boat's telling you. It's not getting out there enough. The boat's saying, you should have said happy birthday. You didn't say happy birthday. To get back on to what I was trying to say is, I guess, I hate to say this. or I don't want to sound critical of my work. We have good shows, and we have shows that aren't as good,

and I think our own opinion, right? We're critical of ourselves. That was a hell of the countdown to green. I'm telling you. And so we had a great countdown to green. A lot of people don't watch it. A lot of people tune in right before the green flag. They know when the race is going to start.

That's when they turn their TV on. So the people that actually come in a little early, they got a great show leading in to the roval. The roval didn't disappoint. Frankenstein lived up to its description. Mike, Chase Elliott, not getting black flagged. You know, there was, there's a lot of things that NASCAR does and is going to do, has done, that you're going to question. All right.

And when I say you, I mean, everybody. Everyone. There was a car spun out on the front straightway. Not a big deal. Car spins out, gets going again. right in the middle of a pretty cryptic sort of cycle of pit strategies. Everybody had set themselves up and they're doing their own thing. Everybody's got their agenda.

They know how they're going to run the rest of this race. Cars spin out all the time and miss the chicane. They write themselves and get going again. Even later in the race, a car spun out somewhere and pulled away, right? Front straightaway, right in plain view of all of us, it's it's odd we can see it's just you know it's right there car spins gets going caution why what the hell is it yellow for what in the hell so i mean i'm using that as comparison i don't know i don't have a problem with them not black flagging chase with the bumper right some people might uh i think in other i think any

other race fifth race of the season 10th race of season hell yeah black flags coming out oh yeah but with everything on the line, they chose not to black flagging. It ain't cut and dried. They don't do cut and dried things. That's why I use the example of the car spinning on the front straightaway that draws a yellow. The same damn car spins out 10 laps later on another part of the track and no yellow. All right? Don't even try to make sense of it.

I quit a long time ago. They make the rules. They make the decisions. They're made. It's in stone. Nothing you can do to change it. So when I'm watching a flagman and he's not. reaching for the black flag. It's obvious to me that at this point, they're probably not going to

black flagging. The thing comes off on the back straight away. Immediately, the caution comes out, right? And that's all that, you know, that's set up the rest of the race. And you saved him? Yeah, saved him. It is what it is. I mean, right or wrong, good or bad, agree, disagree. You're right about that. I have a hard time getting up in arms and frustrated about it because I used to do that, and I've done that multiple times with things that have happened in our sport. you get nowhere. You get nowhere, but wasting a little bit of time being frustrated. Because it's done.

You know what I mean? You can't go back and change it. Nothing going forward about that's going to change. NASCAR is going to use discretion, use judgment, use their own opinion, to do whatever they want to do in that situation. Good or bad, right or wrong, whatever. I think that, again, it's a call it what you want, but it's a playoff contender in a critical point of the season.

If that happens at race three, race five, maybe they do things differently. I'm sure they would have done things differently. Okay, a couple things. One, I don't see anybody up in arms about it. I certainly am not. I don't get up in arms over this stuff. All right. I thought you worked because you brought it up.

You had me. I can bring it up and not be up in arms about it. Here's my point. My point is the reason I bring it up is because I like to be a NASCAR advocate. I like to, I mean, I want to. to be the one out there defending NASCAR. Every time people sit there and give them hard time over stuff, like you just said, their judgment calls, right?

This one, though, everybody saw it coming. Everybody saw it coming, and you're supposed to not want to create cautions. And what's more is that NASCAR Digital even tweeted out, it was just a matter of time, and they did a gif of the car with the bumper, and then that tweet was deleted five minutes later, because everybody saw the hypocrisy in that, Or not the hypocrisy because I don't think that NASCAR competition is really working in cahoots with NASCAR Digital at that moment, right? Can I say that NASCAR Digital's been doing one hell of the job.

Oh, I love it. I love it. I wish they wouldn't have deleted that. They should have just. They don't get to choose. They were told to delete it. I know you know that. I know that.

To be clear to the people listening, that's a hell of a team. I love it. I've got to say, I love it. Yeah, the whole thing's changed and for the better. I like that. So they tweet that. I thought it was hilarious. to be honest with you, but they had to take it down.

I'm just saying it seemed pretty clear. And I was listening to the radio broadcast of this race at this point of the race. And they're talking about this bumper. And I have not even seen what it looks like yet, but I can imagine that this thing is flapping in the wind. Like I am hearing Doug Rice call this thing. And he's like, this thing's out there waving like a flag and all the stuff. And so when I finally saw it, I'm like, oh, yeah, he was right.

This thing is just out there. And they even said on that broadcast, I don't know what you guys would have said. but NASCAR has black flagged for a lot less than that. I mean, I'm just a little, it's like screwdriver under the fingernails that he was listening to the radio. I did too. I had to. I was driving to South Carolina. I was driving.

Guys. But, but, hey. You can use your phone. Not while you're driving, watching the broadcast. You don't have to watch it. You can listen. You can listen. Yeah, you're right.

Don't. But it was better coming in the radio. I'm going through South Carolina. a internet signal. But what I'm saying, what I'm, what I hate about NASCAR, I'm just going to say this right here as a whole. And this comes from the fans, all of us, is we have this great moment to happen of contention between two superstars of our sport.

And again, we're sitting here whining about rules or calls or non-calls. It's almost like we bury the lead constantly. Nobody's burying the lead. No, I don't, I disagree with that too. I'm by the time that, I mean, Harvick-Elli- got into it. They, they,

they, they, they, they, nobody cares about it. Why are we talking about it? I were out to talk about Elliot and Harvick.

That was, that came after. That comes after. Yeah. Well, before and after. That comes later in the show, like just a few seconds later.

We could talk, do you, does, when you watch a movie, does the, does the, finality of the, of the plot

started, happened at the beginning? Everything that everybody wants us to talk about happens at the end. But what I'm saying is, we're 10 minutes, into a discussion. I can't believe we haven't really talked about Harvick and Elliot.

We even cut out a lot of this. Harvick versus Chase. Harvick versus Chase. We should talk about that too. Here's what I would like to say about Harvick and Chase. Why you let whatever happened at Bristol come into this race and affect your driving. And I'm not even talking about the part where he actually wrecked himself in like a video game crash, like hit a banana pill or whatever. I'm talking about when he took out Chase earlier, why Bristol even comes up in your head with the stakes that they're riding baffles me. I have no idea.

He admitted that he wrecked Chase afterwards. He admitted it and it was a retaliation for Bristol. He's the veteran driver here and he did not drive like a veteran driver. He sat there and let something from weeks ago affect him. And essentially that's why he's not in the playoffs. I think it's a big deal. It is a massive deal. You're absolutely right.

But I'm here for it, man. You know, honestly, if I could get some of that in every single race, whether they're making the great decision for themselves or not, God, I'm out of money. I love it. I love it. For sure. Every weekend, and it felt like, maybe it's not true,

but every weekend in the 80s, for example, every race there was a two drivers ticked off at each other like somebody got cut off or somebody run over somebody and then they spent the rest of the race going at it running in each other and now we only get it once a year maybe maybe a couple times a year

a little feud here a little few there and it goes away they talk about it they called you on the phone NASCAR brings them into the trailer and tells them to quit I think NASCAR's already had them in the trailer and told them to cut it out once I think they had a meeting already so you know Harvick said now it ain't over good for him do whatever you want to do harvick and you know good for chase they they were gonna hey we're gonna wreck him back if it comes down to it oh yeah we get back to him we're take him out they already

said it on the radio yeah you got the green flag you got the green light to do it they said if you wreck him you'll be back into the playoffs he's like oh don't worry about that all of that I want it Yes. Injected into my blood. Yes, please. And, you know, I think it's more than likely over because Harvick wouldn't come back to try to get him again just because he didn't get him good enough. I think, you know, you get one shot and Harvard kind of knows the code. He took his shot.

That's the result, right? Right. The ball was in Chase's court, but Harvick eliminated that for him by wrecking himself. So now Chase could get him back. Chase knows. He doesn't have to, doesn't need to, doesn't really want. He doesn't need to keep poking that bear. Right. He got, that's not, if he does, he's probably not going to win the championship. Right. He wants to, as long as his championship hopes are alive, he's moving on. All that's pretty obvious. But while it lasted, damn right, that was awesome. And we only probably get that because

of the structure of the playoffs, even though we hate the playoffs, I say we, even though we're not big fans of the playoffs in general. We like to go old school, ponies. point system and all that stuff. You do? I kind of do. I like the playoffs. You do? Well, it does give us these amazing elimination races.

It gives us these amazing moments. I love that. There's parts I love about it, the parts I don't love about it. But to be clear, yeah, I hope more of this happens, even if it's between someone else, right? Maybe we go to Martinsville and, you know, we get another, he might have won a battle, but he ain't going to win the war. Maybe we get another one of them.

and, you know, it carries over to the final race at Phoenix. Who said that? Martin Tresi Jr. in Martinsville. That was, uh, his, uh, that's right. That sounded like Ward Burton. It was funny. I know. I did do a little Ward Burton there.

That's not how Martin sounds. But anyways, you, you, you hope. I like the Merry Christmas, by the way. Oh, yeah. That was, that was, happy Christmas. Happy Christmas. That was probably one of the funniest. Yeah.

I mean, you know, he's, he's, you know, one thing about check. he's not afraid to he will you know back it up on the racetrack and he'll run his mouth i like it say give us some quotes man give us some give us some some substance when you get out of the car i know there for a moment he's like i just want to make it clear i'm moving on i'm going to the next round i'm focused on winning his championship saying all the right things uh but we hung around long enough with that microphone he actually you know gave us the goods yeah and that's awesome too, you know, because, you know, the thing with Harvick saying it's like talking to his kid when he's talking to Chase, you know, that kind of stuff, those little sound bites, they travel. And, you know, the medias and the broadcast and all that's going to use it and use it and use it.

I used to hate that when I was a driver because once you said something and it was out there, you're like, ah, now I've got to hear that over and over my stupid quote. Oh, man, not only that, but they used to do those mandatory top ten points behind the haulers. So they would run from one driver like Kyle Busch, run to you. Here's what he said. Then you'd get your reply, and they'd run back to Kyle and tell him what you said. I mean, we'd watch this thing go out just like it was. That's right. So anyways, does everyone here, let's just do a show of hands here.

We've got seven people in here. Who thinks Harvick did it on purpose? Raise your hand. Did what? The first wreck? You guys too now. Oh, everyone. We're only taking his word for it.

Well, he didn't say it. He did on the radio. That's where he contradicted himself. See, I didn't heard that. On the TV thing, that's why it was good that Mike and I listened to the radio. On the TV thing, he kind of didn't allude to the fact that he did. On the radio one, he said, his answer to about the intentional thing was, y'all saw Bristol. That's right. He goes, life lessons, you saw Bristol.

I mean, like, they said, is this in retaliation of Bristol? And he's like, you saw Bristol. Yeah, I mean, he said it. Okay. Well, he, you know, I felt like drive. driving the car riding in there with him when he goes right into the back of him it was pretty obvious no that was there was that too yeah yeah yeah oh man why it was that was wild so um you know there's a lot more going on in the race two that was really cool there was other things happening

with the five car larsen doing the fan belt and driving back to the wind but uh yeah pretty spectacular that I'm not a I love I like the roble oh I do too I don't love it yet oh you just like it no I love it I hate I I still want to figure out how to get that mile and a half oval at Charlotte to work because it's not working right now doesn't put on a great race but the roble man it's it's it's Frankenstein all right guys let's bring Alex Palo in the house oh man He's bringing in birthday balloons into the studio right now, which Mike did not do. Alex, they were giving me a hard time because I didn't wish Dale a happy birthday.

And then you come in with a cake and balloons. You didn't? I didn't wish him happy birthday. So how's your relationship now? It went south today. Oh, yeah. I can imagine. He's upset.

Yeah, that's how you do it. This is how you do it. Can't be it. That's unbelievable. That's a good entry. I know, but man, this place is amazing. And you can see that's a workshop. Yeah.

Wow. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm glad you're here. So excited. You're in town, just kind of hanging out, checking out. You got to go to the Roval. What else have you experienced besides just the Roeval? I went to my first concert Friday night.

No, Saturday night. Who? Pitbull. Really? How was that? It was really cool, yeah. My first concert in the U.S. Ever.

Your first concert, not a Pitbull concert. No, no. Ever. My entire life. That's surprising. Yeah, I know. Yeah. That's me.

That's me. Because of your traveling, you just never really. No, I don't know. I don't know. I guess I was waiting for a good time to go to a good concert or something. I never had the opportunity. I didn't say no, never. But I wanted to go to a big concert.

When you walk out of there, are you thinking the other concerts you want to go to? No, yeah. Well, it depends on if the opportunity comes. What's your favorite music? I listen to everything. I listen to everything. I'm not the big, big music guy. I listen to a lot of music when I work out.

But depending on how I feel also, I change, yeah. Yeah. All right, so Alex, you are from Spain. I have never been to Spain. I have been to, I went to Monaco for 24 hours, long story. I went to Germany thinking about taking my wife to France, but I'm absolutely curious about Spain.

You should take her to Spain before France. Really? Yeah, 100%. Okay, tell me about Spain and why I should take her there. Spain is a small country. really small country compared to the U.S., obviously. The life there is really relaxed, like really, really relaxed. We get up quite late.

We go to bed quite late. We enjoy food. We work not too much, not like here in the U.S. where everything is work. We just, it's more about a good life. Yeah, it's a relaxed life. Yeah. Sold.

Yeah, that's it. Food is really good, I have to say, as friends as well. But I don't know. We are nicer. What is a good dish? What is a good dish in Spain? You should go, depends on where you are. But if you are in Valencia, for example, you should get paella.

I think paella is one of the most iconic Spanish dishes. And it's rice with, yeah, normally has some seafood. And it's a big, big dish. It's really nice. If Dale goes to Spain, takes his wife, would you be his travel agent? Would you be able to show him all the places to go? 100%. Do you know any good dive bars, like, you know where he could just go and drink beer?

Do you know any good dive bars? Yeah, of course. Because that's definitely on my list. I'll be your tour guy, no problem. As long as he doesn't want to go to a concert, though, right? Because then you're kind of going to have to ask you. Well, then, yeah, I'm not the guy then. I'm not the guy for that.

Do you miss Spain? When did you move away from, when did you move from there? From Spain. So I started racing in Europe. I was still living in Spain. When do you say Europe, where? All around. It depends.

Do I go back to carting? Go back to car. Do I go everywhere? Everything we have time? Go back to the hospital. Okay. So I was born. No.

I started racing when I was five. Why did you start racing? What was the catalyst for that? So there was, I'm from a small town. I'm not from Barcelona City. I'm from a small town. And on that town, there's a small go-karting track where people just do rental labs. It's not an international track.

It's just rental and for fun. So I guess just by passing around there every day two times, going to school, back to school, I saw these people doing labs. So I got interested and I told my parents that I wanted to try. I was four at that time. We went there. We asked the guys, can we try a go-kart? And they said, yeah, just try and see if the kid can reach the pedals.

I didn't reach the pedals. I was sad. But then my family decided to buy me a really small and used go-kart. for my fifth birthday and we started there. My dad was really young at that time. My mom too. I think they were like 23. Wow. Yeah. They got me really young. What was your dad and mom's profession? My mom was just, I know she owns a family business, but at that time I think she was working on a normal shop in town, selling shoes and stuff. And my dad was working like in a phone company. Okay. But just a normal worker, yeah. They had no idea about racing. They didn't have much money. I think it was more my grandfathers, that they were supporting that. Yeah, because my, well, at that time, I think we were living at my grandfather's house, like we didn't even have a house or anything. And so nobody in your family had any race in history. Your grandparents or no one. And this all came right from your own interests. And so you started racing go-carts in Europe. How's that going? You ran for a race.

quite a while. Yeah, I did. I did go-karting since I think my first race was when I was six or seven. I couldn't race before. We were just doing laps during the weekends and that was just for fun. It was not like, oh, I want to be a race car driver. I want it to be, but it was not the goal. Like that was something it was there, but yeah, it was impossible to get. So we were having fun. We started doing some races around Spain, just moving around Spain, which was already great. I went international racing, I think when I was 10, 11, went to Italy, which that was huge for me. How did you get these opportunities? So when I started, it was people from that go-kart track when I first started that they had a small team and they could support me.

Yeah. So you're doing so well locally. Yeah. The people that are involved in carding are seeing you and seeing potential and wanting to give you more opportunities. So that sent you to Europe. Exactly. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, so they had like just a small, but at that time, we can afford anything. Normally, go cards, you can either go fully with a team. When you get the mechanic, you get the engine, you get the chassis, you get everything full support, or you can do it yourself, or you can do it half half when they say, okay, we'll put you a chassis, but you have to take the engine somewhere on the mechanic. So my dad was the mechanic until I think I was 12 or 13.

like we won Spanish championships together, which that's pretty huge. I mean, I know it's a small country, but it's my dad. He didn't know anything. He was doing it sometimes my engines and everything at home. Like that's, yeah, he built this engine. A dino? Yeah, a dino at home. At home.

Yeah, my mom was not really happy about that. How about the neighbors? They're probably not happy either. Yeah, we live in a small town in the mountains. Okay. Yeah, we don't have neighbors. It sounds amazing. Sounds beautiful.

And then, yeah, we just got opportunities from different people, to be honest. Like, there's not one guy that started everything. It was always somebody, some small company or some small team that would give me the opportunity to go one more step. And any of the names that you raced against in go-carts, do you recognize any of those names today? Yeah, sure. Percippin, Leclerc, they're almost all of them in F1. Science was my teammate. Really?

Yeah, lots, I think, like, seven and eight drivers are now in F1. Wow. That you raced with you when you were in carts. Holy moly. And so how did you do? I mean, how did you do against not only that competition, but everyone else you're racing? Really good. So I think when I was 13 or 12, 13 or 12, I got a factory deal with CRG, which that was, like, oh, my God, I made it.

Like, I'm a professional now. like, okay, Dad, we made it, right? So I was super happy there. We did two years with them. We won some championships, good championships, races, and I was still not on the highest level of the highest category because I was not the age. So then that year, when I was 14 or 15, I started doing go-carts, and then suddenly I got a call from Madrian Campos.

Used to be a former F1 driver a long time ago. and he wanted me to test an F3 car that he had. And I was like, what? An F3 car? How do you know this guy? What do you mean? How do you know him? How did he call me?

I didn't. Well, he texted me on WhatsApp. Yeah, he texted me. I was in maths at school and he said, hey, do you want to try my F3? And I was just you. Yeah. He just texted me like that. That year I won the Spanish Championship.

And I got like 30,000 euros. bonus to try and make it to single-seater. So I guess he said, okay, let's... And how old are you at this point? 15. Okay, so back up for a second. Do you have brothers or sisters? One sister.

She's 12. She's 12 at the time, so she's younger than you. No, she's 12 now, so I'm 24 now. Yeah. Okay. I'm wrapping my head around all this. I know. So you had a way younger sister.

How old are you? 24 now. Okay. Yeah. All right. So did your parents, like, you, Obviously, you're winning everything, right? I mean, like, you're...

Well, not everything. Well, but yeah, but you're a Spanish champion now of a sudden, and you're getting texts from the F1 guy. I mean, you can't suck, right? So I guess my question, here's what I was wondering. Did your parents continue to do their jobs? Yeah. Your dad is your mechanic.

Like, life had to start changing, right? Well, there's one point where my dad cannot go to all the races because suddenly, CRG, when they get me the deal, it's like, hey, you got to do this amount of races. and I'm like, well, my dad cannot. He can't do that. He can't do that. So then it's my uncle starting doing that.

That was maybe one year before CRG. And then once you are in CRG, the factory team, let's say, they gave you everything. And that's it. You don't have to worry about anything. Was that hard on him? I mean, because I would imagine he was cool. Oh, yeah. He was cool.

Obviously, yeah. He could still come to races, but he didn't have to work for it. I got to ask you. So your 12-year-old sister, how often do you get to see her? No much now, unfortunately, now. So what's that relationship? like, I mean, because not only the massive age difference, right, but, you know, just being away from home and how is she understanding, you know, what her brother does? I guess it's hard. I know she,

I mean, she grew up like that, right? So she doesn't know anything different. So for me, it's hard just because it's my little sister, right, and we had an amazing relationship always. but I don't see her too much and it's not only now that I'm here in America when I was in Japan where we will go then but yeah it's not easy but yeah I try my best

how often do you get back to see them didn't go back to Spain since January so yeah okay so she was here for the Indy 500 this year that was the only week I saw which was a good week that had to been pretty amazing yeah to have them yeah and

when I won the championship this year Indycard told me hey we we want to give you a wish. What do you want? And I said, I need a video from an actor that they got at Laguna Seca from Outer Banks, which is a series that my sister loves. And I said, I need a video from this guy saying hello to my sister, please. Oh, wow. So I got it this week and I was like the happiest person ever, me for my sister. That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. Outer Banks. Yeah. It's pretty awesome. And so you have one, they say you got one. They say you got one.

one wish, almost like they're a genie in the bottle. Exactly. And you get, and you get them to do the video for your sister. Of course. That's amazing. That was like the best thing ever, man. You are a good brother. That's right. Yeah, I try.

When are you, when do you think you'll go back to visit? I think maybe November, yeah. So it's coming up. Yeah. How long will you stay? Two or three weeks. How do you think that you'll be received to, by your countryman? I think it's going to be amazing.

Yeah. It's going to be really good, yeah. I don't understand. and we will never experience this, but when you or anyone from a different country has success and they go back, we don't really have this in the U.S. where there's like this, you know, the country is proud of you because, you know, the majority of the drivers in the NASCAR circuit are from here. But there's a lot of pride in country and a lot of people over there in Spain that are proud of you. And so when you have success and you go back, they, you know, what does that feel like?

I guess so I don't know yet. But yeah, to be honest, they did the media there. They were not doing a good job on following IndyCar at the beginning of the season, but once we won, to be honest, they did a really good job. So there's a lot of following now there, and I guess it's going to be amazing to go back. There's got to be a parade. You know what they ought to do? They ought to do a running of the bulls in your honor.

I would do it. Yeah, why not? Let's do it. Oh, my God. Because they celebrate way over the top, I'm assuming. I mean, they got to be. You run with the Bulls. You got to be crazy.

right so and I'm not I don't know do you even is this is this a cliche are we think about Spain and running the Bulls or is this something that y'all don't even think about or talk about it's now it's forbidden in lots of cities in Spain so I it's still going thanks so we're not going to be so wait so when you say it's forbidden in lots of cities did that happen in multiple places at once throughout a year I think so yeah I think so like Barcelona it's forbidden like you cannot do it anymore I guess my mind had it my mind had it my mine was thinking that it happened only in one part of the country at one day. Like this was, just running the bulls? Well, there's two things. There's the running in front of the bulls in a street,

and that's only one day. And there's just lots of people that starts running. And like, yes. Yes. Where is that at? That's in, I don't know. Pamplona. Yeah, Pamplona. You got it. Yeah. Sorry about that. Look at Mike. Look at it. Yeah. He's on it. My cousin did running at the bulls. Did he? My cousin did. From Alabama. Oh, wow. What are we going to do?

Wait. What are we going to do? They're from Birmingham. So I have one second. Can I cut? Sure. Yeah. So I got you a present, right?

But I couldn't forget about him. Because I watched a show. Yeah. Well, don't wait. Don't get too excited yet. So I know that you. This is great. I don't really know a lot about America.

Like I'm getting into America. I'm loving it. It's like one thing I wanted to do. It was one dream for me to live here, but I understand that you're a big Alabama fan. It was not a great day. No. Okay.

They lost. They lost. And that's not good. It's, yeah, it happens. It happens. Okay. So, for you to be okay, I bought some tissues. That's for when you're here.

I needed this. Yeah. And then there's some, if you're on the way, there's some clinics too. Man, perfect. You know what? I accept this gift. It would have been handy Saturday night when they lost, but you know what?

I appreciate it. Listen, you don't get gifts anymore. So Alex has brought Mike a box of Kleenex. That's right. So when he's at the studio and then some portable Kleenex for when he's moving around. You never know when he's going to... You never know when Alabama might lose.

You never know when you have to just break down into a cry. Exactly. So that's why. Now I'm prepared. Yeah. You're prepared when Alabama wins. You're ready. Right.

Right. I never was before. God, this is awesome. All right. Well, thank you for the gift. Yeah. My pleasure. How in the world did we go from Running of the Bulls to Kleenex? I have no idea. Because you said Alabama and then I was like, hey, I have a present.

Wait a second. I mean, you won there this year, didn't you? Didn't you win at Alabama? Like, you might as well be in Alabama now. I mean, we take you in. I know. Yeah, I know. And I'm in, but I mean, you're more. No, what I'm saying is I need to get you in Alabama crimson tied t-shirt, hat. You'd wear, probably a tank top? You do tank tops?

You don't have it? here? I thought it was ready for me. I wasn't for free. Come on, man. Let me work on it. Okay. Let me work on it. The next time you come here, because there'll be a next time, right? I'm waiting for it. There will be. Right.

Dude, but listen, you love fried chicken. Yeah. You might as well been born in Birmingham is what I'm trying to tell you. Maybe. I don't know. I'll ask my mom. Maybe she was doing some trips there. I love it. Well, thank you for the gift. My pleasure. All right. So yeah, the Bulls. There's that thing about running in front of the bulls,

and then there's one, it was like a sport, or I didn't really know. Oh, okay. The bull fighting. Where you would kill the bull, and that's gone. That's gone. It still happens somewhere, I think, maybe just really limited, which I don't like. And the thing about running in front of the bulls,

that's just for crazy people, you like your brother. My cousin. Oh, your cousin. Yeah, my cousin. They made it. You will never find, you will never go run in front of the bulls. If I went, you go. That could be something that you and your wife go through.

Do a gold cart in front of it. You know, make it all about Alex. Yeah. Okay, Alex, if I go to Spain and you're there, we're going to run. You're running. That was what my cousin said was the funniest part. They were like the dumb Americans over there doing their stretches before the actual race, whereas nobody, they're drinking.

And people who are drinking. They're drinking. They're not doing stretches. We're going to have to drink. Yeah. You end up in Japan. Yeah. Well, go back to the phone call about the F3 car.

Yeah. So help me understand. There's a lot of people listening. Don't know what an F3 car is. Okay. Tell us what an F3 car is. I'll say the story. So I win the go-karting Spanish championship,

where the bonus is 30,000 euros, okay? Which that's huge. But that's only to test in formula cars in single-seater. Okay. So yeah, with my family, we have no money. We are good with the factory team in Go-Karts. We're good there. And it's like, we're not going to use this. Like, I mean, we've done with 30,000 euros or dollars, you can do, I don't know, five tests in a car or a single-seater in Europe. So it's nothing. All right. So I get this call from campus and he says, hey, you want to try this car? And I was like, yeah, let's try. Right. I have $30,000. Why not? So, so. I go there. An F3 car, it's just like, let's say, it's a small Formula One, like really small. I don't know how to say it. If Formula One has 900 horsepower, that has like 250, which is already high down force car, and it's a fast car.

So I went there, I tested two or three days for him, and then suddenly he gave me a contract. Wow. So what's a contract? To do one year in F3 for him. How many races? I think that's like 10 weekends, 20 races. What did it pay? Nothing.

Yeah. But that's cute. That's fine. You don't have to pay. I think nowadays in Europe, there's... Are you living in Europe? Yes. In an apartment?

At my house. You had a home. Oh, they lived in Europe. Spain is in Europe. I guess I'm thinking he moved to like France or somewhere. No. So you're traveling. I'm traveling.

All these races. Of course. What's a lot? long way. It's longer if you're in the U.S. and you have to travel to different states. So Europe, Europe, it's small compared to it. So, I mean, for you, you say, oh, let's travel to Texas. Up to this point, when you get the F3 contract, you're still at home. Yeah. Okay. And so when you get that contract, you go and travel to all these races, the 10 races. In between all that, are you still racing your go-kart? I'm still, no. Maybe for training from time to 10, but no. The F-3 was it. Yeah.

I'm studying a bit, trying. Studying still? Yeah. Still in school. But it didn't work. No. At the end of that year, it was like over. That's what most people say, when these racers that we interviewed, the schooling never

really ended up panning out, did it? No, but you need to keep trying. Like, I was trying, and I thought I was giving my best, but yeah, my best I was giving to racing, and then I was still studying, yeah. How did the F3 deal go? It was good. We finished third in the championship. We won a couple of races, which that was,

Really big. I won my first race. What race tracks? The first one was Nurembergreens. Yeah, I don't know. The long one? No. No. This is a short one.

Yeah. I mean, the long one. Yeah. Have you ever raced there? I did two or three laps with my dad on a rental car. Yeah. Was it terrifying? It's terrifying.

Yeah, because you're driving there in a rental car. You don't really know the track exactly, and there's these cars flying by. But people that are there every day, so they are with the Porsche T3 cars. but race cars. It's open to the public every day, and there's guys racing around there and full-blown race cars. But you can go with your motor home if you want. They allow you.

That's insane. You can drive anything. Yeah, I sit on YouTube and just watch the crashes. The crashes, yeah. They're insane. It's insane. How big is the short course? I don't like to know.

The short course, I don't know. It's maybe 5K, which is just a normal course. Let's say a bit smaller than Rhode America. Are these commandments? companion races with F1 or what else is happening on the weekends that F3 is there? When it's F3, there's also a championship with GT3 cars. And I think that's it. Yeah.

Just a small series. So what happens next? Next I get two-year contract with Campos as well for GP3, which GP3 goes together with Formula 1 every weekend. That's like a bigger car. It's like 400 horsepower. So it's like double the car. And that's like a bigger series. So after GP3, there's GP2 at that time, which now is F2, and then F1.

That's it. So you're heading that direction. Just at this point in your mind, how old are you? After F3? 16. 16. You're 16 or 17. Are you in your mind like aiming at F1?

No. No. Everybody around me is like. Why not? Because I know that's not the place. I can achieve with myself, like with my hands. Like, I knew I had, I needed a bigger, a big, big team, a bigger company around me to try and get to F1. To try and get to F1, you need to have the best cars in F2, in F3, in GP2, GP3.

You need to win everything and you need to have a big company around you to pay for it. So you didn't have the ingredients in your mind to travel that path. No. So where is your brain? What are you thinking? So I tried to contact with some Indy Lights team. So you're a thing in IndyCar. Yes.

You're in Europe? Because I know IndyCar, there's opportunities. I know the first of all, the championship is huge, but then I know that there's opportunities. So are there other people in Europe racing an open wheel also absolutely thinking IndyCar over F1? I don't think so. Like all my teammates. I had, you can ask my old teammates. And I was saying, no, I want to go to IndyCar.

Like, and they know. Okay, so specifically, what opportunities? Is there more teams? Is there more seats? Is it less expensive? I mean, when you say there's more opportunities, what do you mean? Less expensive, more teams. And then if you do a good job on a normal car, the biggest car, the biggest team,

they give you an opportunity. They see you and they say, okay, Alex, here's a car to win. and that doesn't happen in Europe. Even if you win, it's like you can be with this car and fight for P15. I like to win. I think everybody likes to win, but in Europe it's, if you look at the results on F2, F3, you're going to see the same team, the same team, P2, P4, P5. So it's like you don't see a different...

The car seems to dictate. Exactly. Yeah. And it's every year. That seems to be like that would be absolutely frustrating as a driver. It is. To know that your car can only run fifth. You know, unless there's some attrition, you're not going to run better than this.

Yeah. Right? We're an IndyCar, and as I saw this this year, I mean, you look at the running order of any race, and everybody's all over the place. It's all over the place. Anyone could win. Yeah, we had like nine winners. Yeah. That's crazy.

The parody was insane. It is. And why is that? And the car's that equal across the field? It's the same car. Everyone has the same car. So they all buy the same parts. And we only can develop nowadays, I think,

some parts like pedals and stuff that doesn't, nothing speed. Dampers, that's the only thing that we can develop 100% of it. And that's it. That's interesting. And stickers. Yeah. Stickers.

That's it. You end up in Japan. End up in Japan because I had no more opportunities in Europe. So I did two years in GP3 with F1, really bad years. I yeah really bad why to be honest I was not comfortable with the car I didn't have enough practice

there's just like 40 minutes of practice and go qualifying boom for a junior series it was at that time my second year in cars like I was coming from go cards it's like I need driving and then yeah I didn't have good results I think I won two races

did three podiums in two years but I finished it I think P10 and P15 so yeah Very frustrating. Yeah. So you're calling around. I'm calling around. Nobody's answering.

It's February, I think. I have no seat. And I'm like, man, that racing is over. Let's go back to go-karting. Like, that's still good for me. Like, at that time, I was not the guy thinking, F-1, I'm going to be F-1 World Championship and F-1 World Champion, and I'm going to eat the world.

I'm like, well, I have an opportunity to drive racing cars, which is amazing. But my thing, it's go-carts. but then suddenly I get a call from Japan to go back to F3 it's a smaller car to what I was used to with a new team one car team and I said yeah let's go

so it's F3 but in Japan yes is the owner of the car and the mechanics on the car the people working on this car Japanese yeah so only one only two people from the team speaking a bit of English right fortunately for me I had a chance to

go over to Japan in the late 90s, incredible experience, hoped to one day go back. You know, how was the change in the culture? Do you go to Japan? Do you move to Japan? Not on the, I did two years. So on the first year, I did move, just because it was eight or nine weekends. So I did. Yeah, I could. Yeah, and it was too much for me. Like, I needed to get it. The traveling was too much. No, no, I mean living there was too much. Oh, so you did live there. No, he just assumed it. Yeah. Yeah. You're assuming like that. I'm not ready to make that jump. Exactly. I'm not ready to live there. I prefer to be dead with the jet lag and stuff and still live at home. But yeah. So yeah, I started racing F3 for them. They didn't really

speak English, but that was fine. I was still doing what I wanted to do, drive cars. And we're doing great. We finished it third in the championship, which was great. And that's it. Are the other drivers majority of them Japanese drivers? All of them except there was one American driver. He was half Asian half American but he had an American flag and I think that's it yeah that's it. I mean Spanish. So how was how was it getting along with the culture there? It was hard but at the same time it was it they are so welcoming even if you don't speak or you don't understand or you're not the same way they try to make you feel comfortable and they do everything for you like even people at the

street, not people from racing. Like, they tried to help you. Like, I remember someday I was in Japan, in a station. There was no, come on, Dale, I'm talking. I'm sorry. Knock it over. Where's mine? I don't, I don't, I, you really don't want to drink this.

It's room temperature. I know. Oh, yeah, not from temperature. So I was at the station. It was fully busy of like 9 a.m. or 8 a.m. Japanese going to work. And I was with like two or three bags and there was no electric stairs or automatic

I don't know how you call it. The escalator. People were helping me to bring. Oh, wow. Yeah. Which I wouldn't in Spain and I think I wouldn't here in the US. No, no. We're not helping anybody at the stairs.

But they were. And I was just in a, yeah. Well, that's kind of cool. How about the cuisine? What do you think about it? Depends. There's really, really good stuff. And then when you go really deep into Japan, man, one time they told me, oh, you like sushi.

I was like, yeah, I love sushi. That's my favorite food. sushi is my thing, I'm sushi. So they bring me to a traditional Japanese restaurant. They give me some sushi I like, and then they said, this is the special Japanese sushi. So they take a shrimp that is alive from the water. They cut it in front of me. The shrimp is moving.

They peel it. They take a piece of rice. They put the shrimp, which is still moving. And they said, that's for you. It's still moving. It's still moving. Oh, no. It's still moving.

And I ate it. You did eat it. Yeah, of course. Probably good. I just like swallow it. Yeah, I didn't really. You didn't dare chew it. I didn't, yeah.

It sort of reminds me that time we were at that restaurant in South Korea. And with Torrico, they had the soup came out with the fish head in it. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah, they have some stuff. Yeah. Oh, man. We're like, okay. There's not chicken noodle.

We're in South Korea. for the Olympics and we're going to go eat and it's really traditional and they're sitting down on the floor and one of our friends was pregnant and I said

she hadn't come into the restaurant yet and I said to my buddy I said we might want to move to a table she probably won't be comfortable sitting down on the floor and we're getting ready to move and there's a family of eating

next to us and they're having a blast somebody said something funny and this guy had a mouth full of rice and he exploded laughing and the rice goes all over me no way

no and I turned and looked and they're just sitting there going I mean the guy felt bad but they're just all then they all start laughing and I'm like yeah pretty funny I laugh too it was so bad his night was over I could tell his face he was it was over there was nothing that was going to happen that night to get it turned around either

I checked out he was done that was before the soup came with the fish heads in it and everything. But yeah, all that to say, they do it. They go all the way. Wow. Yeah. All right.

So the sushi, it's live, it's, but you do it. You're like a champ. You go in there, you do it. Yeah. The people are nice. What is the racing culture like? It's amazing. Fans are insane.

When I mean insane is that even with small championships, it's full of people. Wow. Like full of people. And they, I guess, because I was from overseas, obviously and they are not used to. They were following me everywhere. Like it was crazy. Like I had to take somebody with me when I wanted to go to the restroom before the race

because otherwise I would get there and I couldn't exit, you know? Like people would start taking pictures and asking for autographs and I, yeah, I needed somebody. So it was crazy. It was insane. When we went in the late 90s, I was really taken aback on just how interested they were. And our, I mean, our racing was, they couldn't have known who all the drivers were, but they were just as eager to take a picture with, with my dad as anyone else, right? And they

were, their interest and curiosity was pretty impressive. It is. Yeah. So you're enjoying that, I imagine, you know, because they think this is amazing. You're doing great. You're having fun. So how do you get, how do you leave there? So then I did another year where I had a house there. I was living in Japan. How was that? It was interesting. Yeah, I had some really good times, some times where I was just alone. You had the house by yourself? Yeah. No roommate. No. So what's in the house? You got a sim rig? You got racing online? No, I didn't have a sim rig. So it had like two floors and I had my living room with my PlayStation because I had lots of free time. My table to try and prepare my reports and my races and then I had just two bedrooms upstairs so it was a big house for being in

in Japan yeah yeah did you develop friendships have friends over no none never so you really were alone yeah not even with the racers the people you raced against no because they were Japanese it's like really Japanese you just couldn't really connect with any of no where where what city so I was living in gotamba where is where all the teams are at it's like in for Indianapolis like living in around the shop and people were living in Tokyo, some people that I knew from from Europe. There was two or three racers from another category from Europe living there, but they were in Tokyo and that was like 40, 50 minutes from where I was. And I didn't want to live in Tokyo just because...

The busy in it? How busy it was? No, just because I was there to race, right? And I wanted to learn from the team and stuff like that. I knew there was going to be one year where I could go to Tokyo and just. just, yeah, enjoy. Did your family come visit you? Yeah.

Stay with you. They did. Stay, no, but visit. Yeah. Spent a night. Two or three races. Use the spare bedroom. They did.

Good. So what were those trips like? When you're kind of showing them around Japan? That was the best thing. They'd never been, right? No, they never been. And that was the best thing. I could bring them to, like, traditional Japanese places where it looks super bad on the

outside, on the inside as well. You sit on the floor. And they were like, oh, my God, where did you bring us? Alex? And I was like, just wait, relax. and enjoy. And it's amazing. The food and the quality, it's really good. So yeah, my dad love, he loves the Japanese beer because it's always cold and nice. There's ice. It's amazing. How they treat the, everywhere you go, the beer, it's ice cold everywhere. That's the way I like it.

He would enjoy that. Yeah. Yeah. Man. All right. So how do you, what gets you out of Japan? So I was driving for Team Go in in Super GT, in a GT car as well. What is that? What's that car look like? that's like a GT3. It was a McLaren and GT3 car. So I was doing, when I was there, I was doing... It's got fenders on it?

Yeah. Yeah. So how was that? Was that the first time you raced a... With a... Yeah, with a roof. Yeah. That was nice.

Yeah. Just the same thing, but... Okay. Let's... It was just... I was doing Super Formula at that time and GT. So I was doing two championships and that was just fun. So that team go had a previous relationship with...

with Dell Coin here in IndyCar, I think, like 20 years ago, 15 years ago. And I was a Honda driver there. So I was like telling everybody. Everybody I met, I was telling. I'm super happy in Japan. Thank you for everything you do for me. But I want to go to Indycar in the U.S. So they made it happen.

How? I guess they called Dale and said, hey, we got a driver. Do you want to test it? And he said, yeah, let's test it. So I tested in 2019 to meet Ohio one day. and it was amazing. Is that your first time in the States? No.

I was, I did one race before. Where? When? Coda, 2018. Your first time to the United States was Cota. Yeah, Austin. Yeah, what was that like? I mean, Texas accents and all that.

So I was there only for three days, but I think it was my best three days of my life until that point. I was there with my girlfriend, which is here and we said one day we live here even if we're racing we're not racing

we don't care like we're gonna live here yeah in Austin I loved it it's amazing it's amazing yeah

so last year I was living in Austin yeah yeah all right I was driving for Dale but I was living in Austin not anymore but where is his team

located Chicago but he was like you don't need to be here live where you want yeah so I said okay let's do it

so you moved to Austin yeah I did One year. Where did you meet your girlfriend? She's in here right now. Yeah, she's in here right now. Tell us about her because she matters in this too. Yeah, of course.

I mean, where did you meet her? I met her in campus and that team when I was driving for that team on my second year. And she was working for that team on media. Yeah, we met there and then we got on trouble. Right on. Been six years, six years together. Yeah. That's awesome.

Six years. She's moved around with you since? Not to Japan. She said. Japan is not, no, she was working. So your relationship made it through a long distance year of you being in Japan. Yeah. All right.

That's pretty impressive. Yeah. You get the opportunity to come test for Dale at Mid-Ohio. Middle Ohio. Yeah. How's that go? Really good. It was only two cars.

So it was like a private test the day after the race. Just you? Just me and I think there was another car. NASA was testing there with... After the race. Yes. Monday after the race. And it was really good.

Yeah, we were fast and... That's kind of cool because then they have the... You know, they've got the race and the race weekend times. The tracks pretty much run in, got race grubber down. You're getting a really good baseline off of what they did this past weekend. And so they... They can compare a bit, yeah. They can get an idea.

You impressed them? I don't know, but yeah, it was good. We were fast. Yeah, we were really fast. So do you get a... deal right away or no um because at that time they had still two drivers under contract um but it was until i think january the next year which was last year so after that test where do you go i went to japan and i was like super happy smiling i fought it for that championship we finished third again

which is like come on again third um but uh but yeah and i was waiting and waiting to to go to uh japan again like that was my thing right you were going to stay in japan if the yeah it's a deal didn't work out. The idea with that test was to let the people know that I was interested and that I was fast or not fast. And to know if I would like Tindy car or not, maybe I was there and I didn't like how this car was handling or I was slow. You never know. Okay. So there wasn't any of these high expectations with this test. Like you weren't anticipating a phone call with a ride. No, no. You just wanted to say, do you like it? Hey, this is somebody that's interest. It may be interested in it. And so just almost like a get to know you. Exactly. I have one question.

question about that. So you've driven, everything that you've drove up to this point has either been an F3, a European-style race car, go-card and all that. So when you got in the Indy car, was there any difference, any noticeable difference? So in Japan, I was doing Super Formula, which is a smaller IndyCar. It's really close. But it has power steering. So IndyCar doesn't have power steering. And I was like, oh, my God, it's hard. It's hard. Like, when I remember, remember when I did like 10 laps, I was like, man, I don't know if I'm going to make it, you know. You have a full day of testing and I was like, man, this is hard. But I think the IndyCar, the way the car is built allows the driver to drive it however you want.

You can drive it bad if you want. Like you can say, hey, I want you to turn here and you can fight with a car. There are some cars where you need to treat them like super smooth, but the Indy car is the opposite. So that was super nice. I would say that when we raced in NASCAR, so we had a car called the COT and the car tomorrow that everybody pretty much disliked, and that's the way that car drove. The cars that we had before, you could drive them many ways through the corner, and you could overdrive it, you could manhandle it and get it around the corner multiple ways. The COT was going through the corner one way. There was no other way to drive it.

If you drove a car length too deep, it wasn't going to be good. That was very frustrating. So that's how the European cars are built. So there's only one line. You drive it this way and be careful because as soon as you move the steering, the other way, you're done. Right. But then I came here and I could fight with it.

I could just go sideways and I was fast and I was like, oh man, this is amazing. So I enjoyed it a lot, the way you drive the Indy car. I think everybody does. Help me understand what makes a car so forgiving like that. You're saying about the way it's built. I think it's the weight of the car. Okay. weight of the car, it makes the car moved a lot, so it moves a lot by itself. Even if you want to

make the corner, like, without moving the steering, it's going to move and you're going to have to fight with it. So if everybody's already fighting with the steering and with the car during the corner, if you fight a bit too much, it's fine. Like, it doesn't, I guess it's because of that. How do you get the call that you got a deal in the U.S.? I think it was, yeah, January or something like that. Late. Yeah, it was late again. Yeah, I was ready to sign the Japanese contract,

but, yeah, it was like wait because we might have a seat, and I was like, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God. So, yeah, I was just waiting. So you get a call and you got a deal? I got a deal. You're going to move to Austin. I'm going to move to Austin, yeah. I wish I could have, I wish that, you know, I've had a hell of a life.

I've loved it. But I'd never had that free. them, right, to just move wherever, you know, wherever life takes me. You know, I'm very jealous and envious. I'm jealous of you. Yeah. Like, you know, to experience Spain, to live in Japan, to have the... Yeah, I'm really lucky to be able to move around and also learn a lot.

Like, not only professionally and race cars side, but... Where do you live now? Now we live in Indy. Yeah. And you move just to be closer to the team. be a little more. Because they work every day there. The shop is open.

I want to be there. I like to be there. I like to see cars. Okay. Back up a second here. This is a dumb question, but I want to ask because I don't know. Do you have an agent back when you're in Japan?

All right, so you do work with an agent. Your agent comes to you, says, hey, this seat with Dell. Dale coin is opening up. I mean, this is the dream you said you had set yourself up for here. Yeah. Are you emotional about this? I don't even know.

Are you an emotional guy? Like, is this something that you get? caught up in the moment? I had so many hits from like getting, getting ready or getting excited for something and then nothing happening. So I was like, let down. Yeah. So I was like until I don't see the thing, don't even tell me that there's something happening. So I'm that way. When you get a call to that you got a deal, when you go physically sign this paper, is this stuff sent electronically? It's electronically. So when you did that, did that make you emotional? I signed it, but Dale didn't sign it so I was like, okay, it's not done yet.

It's not done. I need to... Well, they send it to you first, and I sign it, and I was like, I'm not going to think that I'm an IndyCar driver yet. But then I saw the email. I was like, you know, when you're checking the email every time, I got the contract, and I was like, yes. So, yeah, I remember a celebrated with my family, obviously.

But then I had to work a bit because I was going to Oval Racing, which that was something I've never done or never saw. I had no idea how to do that. stuff. How did you figure it out? How did you learn? Man, so I, the thing is that COVID hit. We had less practice. We had no testing. I had only one day of testing with the car before the first race. And you know where was the first race? Texas. Only one practice, 45 minutes. Holy smokes. First race in my Indy car career. There. Now, I went out on qualifying and I was, yeah, I was panicking. I was shaking, man. Sure. Of course.

fast. It's fast and it's not it's not a it's not an easy course I think if you go to Iowa it's more of yeah you can it's more forgiving but and I remember Sato was like two cars in front of me and he just crashed in turn one and I was I saw the car crashing I heard it and I was like oh no man I thought qualifying was easy um so yeah it was not the nice how did it go I yeah there was one guy that crashed in front of me and just collected me yeah oh in the race Into race. Boy, I forget about this. I mean, like, you've accomplished so much so quickly that I forget you were just a rookie last year in COVID.

Yeah, we're literally, we're almost called up. I know, right. It's amazing, to be honest with you. So how did this rookie season then go? Because, like, all right, you get the first race. When did things start to make a little sense to you? None in the first year? Yeah, because I had, I didn't know any track, only in mid Ohio.

That's it. You know, I wrote down on my notes here, simulator. So, I mean, imagine you got a chance to get in a manufacturer simulator of some kind or do some work during the week. So where did, I know you probably tried a lot of things, but what was the most valuable? What helped you the most to be able to get used to these racetracks or figure them out? Yeah, I mean, simulator. We use a lot the HPD simulator, which is in indie. But you cannot be there every day and try every track like you can't because there's not enough days.

So at home, I do everything I can at home. I watch on boards. I think, yeah, to learn a track, a new track, eye racing, it's amazing. In my opinion, yeah. Yeah, me too. Cool, we should do it. What's your setup, like, do you go all out like these guys do with their whole rig and the... Yeah, of course.

I mean, so you go all out. I don't know how. I'm sure. How many screens do you have? I have one, but it's a white one. The 49. Yeah, 49. Oh, he's like...

Oh, dude. Are you kidding? I'm an executive. I'm an executive. executive director at i racing i've got a job there man i worked there no way yeah yeah oh yeah Alex listen their offices are up in Boston we used to on the way to new hampshire we'd stop into the i racing offices before it was cool no right oh yeah oh and spend the whole afternoon very exciting for me as you can imagine and so you know and there you know everybody's cubicle

has a steering wheel and a chalkboard and marker and there's you know algorithms and math all over the place and this is and he's in heaven but yeah this is Oh, yeah. He goes back to the beginning with our race. Oh, yeah. No way. I was part of the beta team back in 07, 05, 06-07. Wow. That was crazy.

They only had the Skip Barber car in VIR, Virginia. Yeah. That was the only thing. They had. We ran that every night trying to get the... So you had them develop the... Yeah. You did a tremendous show.

We'd show up every night. We'd get on there every night and run VIR in the Skip Barber car trying to get the race control to work. like green flag. No way. What brought out of yellow and try to break it, you know, try to make it mess up.

Oh yeah. It's fun. I bet. What's your eye rating? Well, I got two accounts. So I started, my original account,

I got up to like a 78, 100, and then I quit. On all vote. On, yeah, on a road racing. Sorry, yes.

My road racing is not very good. Okay. And then my second account that I started just about a year and a half ago, I'm up to like $4,000 or so. Not bad. I'm not good on the road courses.

Unless I'm in a way underpowered car, like a Skippy or the Formula V or something like that. Those are fun. Formula V is fun. It is fun. It is fun. Super fun. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm glad to hear that you think that that's a good tool. I've tried to preach that for years. When I was going to go race at Road Atlanta, I was going to test Road Atlanta. I'd never been there. So Jimmy is testing his cup car. And he's there for two days, but he's not going to be able to make the second day. He's got something serious happening that's important. important he needs to be at and they called me and they said hey can you come run the second day and I'm

like I've never run the track I don't know and I'm so nervous he's the champ right and uh matter of fact like they literally had just won the championship the year before so I'm thinking damn I got a good drive the champ's car for a day and I ran on eye racing all day the day before and man when I got there it was like I knew exactly where all the shifts were I was right up to speed like really right at the speed and they were like man you've never been here it's bull crap you've been here I've like never been here ran on I've got to racing for two days and that's what you get. Because if I hadn't to use eye racing, I'd have spent the whole first half of the day up

till lunch figuring the track out. I'm sure. I'm sure. So you used eye racing a lot. A lot. I think for the last race, Long Beach, a street course for this year. Yeah. Never been there.

To win the championship. Yeah. And it's like the most important race of my life. Right. And I just had one day at the HPDSA. I need like as many labs as possible. I think I did driving like 17, 18 hours driving. Which is like on track, yeah.

Just lapsed. Well, I did some races. Yeah, with different cars as well. It's not like only any car. I just want to know the track. Did you run in the series last year during COVID? Of course. So we were in the race together at Michigan?

Yeah, we were. Yeah. Hey, I raced against him. Yeah, you don't remember you wrecking. I did? No, but you finished third, right? You finished third? Luckily, yeah.

I didn't even, listen. Yeah, I remember. You were there just, watching us play hard and then suddenly he just passed us in the last couple of last two happened. Yeah. We're out there. He knew how to race. We're testing.

I didn't. So we're testing and I'm like, I'm okay. You know, there's some things that you do either with the steering bias or the brakes. And I wasn't sure what was the best thing to have because in the oval you want to change your steer ratio and things like that to be a little quicker on long runs and stuff. But I was kind of keeping up in the testing we were having. But when the race started, there was a big bad crazier. on the very first start, and I bumped somebody, but I didn't know if I hurt my car.

And so we start racing, and I got no speed, and everybody's driving away. And I'm like, man, I am slow. This is embarrassing. I'm embarrassed. And then I come down on pit road and got my tires. The race keeps going and going, and I don't know what happened. But I ended up finishing third just on fuel mileage. Oh, yeah, it was a fuel mileage race.

I remember. Everybody had to pit. Yeah. And it saved me. And I looked like I knew what I was doing. I'm like, oh, yeah, planned that out. That was my plan, yeah. Because I was so slow.

I couldn't figure it out. I was like, wow, I'm so slow. But, yeah, I got lucky. Did you ever get that answered, by the way? I think I hurt my car because we had a big crash at the start, but I didn't want to use my reset. As soon as you have a small hit. I didn't want to use my reset, so I was saving it.

And there was no big, there was no other caution. Big cautions, yeah, I remember. But that was so cool, man. You know what was funny is listening to all, like, wheelpower and all the drivers, It's the best thing. It's the best thing. Call each other wankers and all it? Yeah, it was amazing.

It was insane. Will power doesn't hold back. Oh, yeah, he was a guy. Like, I was turning it off. I turning a dawn all the time just to hear him. It's amazing. There was even a time, I think after the race, and you guys had just crossed the finish line

that you had said something that I don't know that you intended to be for the entire. I said something like, I can't believe these guys of raising hell at each other like they were or something. Or maybe I think you actually said, I can't believe they didn't pit or something about the fuel mileage. And then we'll, because now it's public, we'll kind of chirp back at you about something.

And we're like, no way. I mean, is that surprise me? We all felt like that the race control gifted the win. That's right. There should have been a yellow that wasn't a yellow. That's what it was. I don't remember what it was. But I was, so I wanted to ask you about that.

One of the things that we don't have in the Cup series is international personalities. So even though a guy might be from California or upstate in the northeast, the culture is not quite drastically different. Everybody, we all kind of know how to race each other, and there's not a big difference in what a block is or racing etiquette, giving each other, give and take, things like that, right, that you kind of learn racing through the years. When you race in the IndyCar series, all of you guys are from different parts of the globe, right? You raced in Japan, go-karts in Europe,

all these other guys have such different upbringings in motorsports, right? And they learn different racing etiquette. And sometimes... Yeah, the rules for us are like all different. All over the place. Yeah, we argue all the time. You'll have a disagreement on the track and get out and go, no, that's not okay what you did.

Another guy's like, yeah, I've been doing that all my life. That's how you race. That to me is really the most interesting thing about IndyCar is just the variety of personalities and how all these worlds come together. And you really don't understand that until you kind of plug into the series. How do you navigate that? You got a guy like willpower, strong personality, Australian, doesn't take no, no, you know, don't take no crap. There's a couple of guys like that in the series, you know, and there's just different types of personalities all throughout the series.

How do you navigate that, right? I don't know. I'm a really chill person. Like, I don't get in trouble with when they start arguing like, oh, no, this is good, this is not good. Even if I have an opinion, I just give it to myself. I don't know why I've always been that way. But yeah, I don't know. Like I remember Laguna Seca this year, Grogon and Jimmy, like, bumping Jimmy out. I don't think, I don't know if you saw it or not. But Jimmy was... Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Entering the corkscrew. Exactly. So always P2. Jimmy was a lap down, but was like behind me, and he had to protect me a little bit. Just not much, but a little bit. So he was not making it easy for Grojan, who was catching me for third. And then Grosjean just like smash him.

And obviously I think it was a bit on the edge. But yeah, there's always some argues during the races. I think that that's the most interesting thing for me about that. That's one thing that IndyCar can provide a fan that NASCAR really can't is the different personalities and the global personalities, you know, from all over the world coming together to compete. I just find that kind of fascinating how they exist in one space. because we see while we're racing that little, you know, insignificant, you know, online race one time, how they clash.

Oh, man. It changed our whole perspective of an indie car race. Yeah, it made me really like it a lot. You know, we always thought that they were all, all we, all we hear is how accepting the indie car guys are and how NASCAR is not as, you know, as open as the indie car guys are. Like, that's what we hear. And we just assumed that everybody's nice, and we get them that race. and they're like yelling at each other and just snapping back. And we were like, wow, these guys are kind of like,

they're more animalistic than we are. This is kind of cool. I did find that pretty interesting because we, you know, we can, we'll push each other, you know, physically and verbally. But I don't know that I would. Yeah, you get more into fights than us. Well, I think I wouldn't have that same confidence to do that in a series of so many different cultures, right?

because you don't know just how far your guy is willing to take something. You might know kung fu. Yeah, you never know who you're fighting with. Yeah, I know. But I don't know. I think NASCAR is more like somebody can punch you on the face in NASCAR, not in Indica. I know nobody's going to punch me because otherwise they're not going to do the next race or something.

I'm sure something bad is going to happen. But in NASCAR, I don't know. Like yesterday, Elliot and. Yeah. Harvick. What did you think about that? You know, you don't have to pick a side. but, you know, what do you...

I think it was great for the fans, right? Sure was. But you were a fan, so you were loving it. I was loving it, but at the same time, I wanted the nine to make it to a playoff, because I thought it was not fair for him not to miss it. But how it ended, I think it was great for everybody. Yeah.

So let's go back five, ten years ago. What was your opinion of stock car racing? It's very different to what I'm used to, and I think now you're incorporating more road courses, which makes me feel more like what I know, but not before. Not before. It's like it's a completely different thing. And still now in IndyCar, I think this year we did all in all road courses.

We did all podiums and one fourth. But on the ovals, we didn't do that great. So I'm still getting into. So I don't know. I think having seen it yesterday, having been there and watched it. I know it was at a road course. Yeah, that's a road course, so it's a bit different, but I loved it yesterday. Yeah, it's great. The show is great. That was a wild show. It was amazing. I was actually going to ask you that. I wanted to know, since you've been at all of the major road courses and just, I mean, you're talking about your first win at Newburgh Ring. I mean, what do you guys think of that roval? Does it seem a little gimmicky?

Well, I think it's a hybrid between all the street course, road course, so it's a mix of everything. But, I think it can give you good racing, right? Like we saw that. I think the chicanes are great for how the cars look there. I call it Frankenstein. Yeah, it is. It's like a mix of everything. But I think it's great.

I'd never race there, so I don't know if racing is great or not. Is it great to race? Well, I never raced on it myself either. It was later than it. Yeah. Driving around it, though, it flows. It's wider than it looks, and it flows better. It looks like it'd be cumbersome, quirky, like 90-degree corners.

Like how you enter, when you come off with the front straightaway on the oval and dart into the infield, it looks weird, right? It doesn't look very good, but it actually flows pretty nice. Okay. Yeah, it did on a racing some, so it's good. Yeah. Okay, so since we're asking you about a lot about tracks, I want to ask you about Indianapolis, okay, especially considering the race you had this year at Indy. All right. Last year would have been your first time running an Indy 500, all right? How difficult was that getting adjusted to that track? And how did you start? How did you approach Indy?

I think Indy is the easiest oval race we have just because we have one week of practice before. Lots of time. You can get used to the car alone with traffic. You can just get comfortable. I remember this year the first two days I couldn't get close to the cars. But then by the last day, I was like just confidence. I don't know where's the limit yet in the ovals. As far as like as you get closer losing down.

force. Yeah, and how much you can, yeah, how to prepare a pass. Okay. That's the thing. Because if you get it bad, you get too close, you lose your front, then the car who's following you is going to pass you. Okay. So that's...

How is the best way to set up a pass? I'm going, say if I'm going to run the Indy 500 next year, like what would you tell me? So I don't know. It's all about timing. It's all about timing. You got to create the run and... Yeah, so it... It all starts in turn one if you want to pass in turn three,

and it all starts in turn three if you want to start, if you want to overtake in turn one. So it's all about timing, and it depends on the year and on the conditions. Because if the weather is really cold, you can be much closer because of the downforce. If it's too hot, you have to time it even more. So, yeah, you would just have to time it and take your reference how much you can get into the cars.

Are you able to make the passes on the draft alone, are you using tools inside the car as well? With the draft alone, yeah, but then you set the tools to make the car turn a lot more when you're following somebody. Like you would put the rear bar really stiff and the weight jacker. But then when you are in front and you don't have anybody in front, you have to reset everything otherwise. So you're always working on. Yeah. It's really cool. Yeah. I'm just trying to wrap my head around all that. I mean, like, you have the weight jacker and you have, it depends on which, on the car, but you have, I don't know, five positions to plus and minus, and then you have six positions or five positions on the bars. And yeah, every position

on the oval, you feel it. Yeah. Every click. You're controlling all that from the wheel? The bars, no, you have two bars. The levers. The levers. The levers. And then the weight checker you can control from the wheel, yeah. And you, do you control the fuel? What you mean? As far as what? Maps. We have maps, yeah, but it's normally the team that tell us the maps. But they're telling it to you, but you still the one have to do it. Oh, yeah, yeah, obviously.

Yeah. So you've got your hands full. Yeah. You've got a lot going on in there. Yeah. This is an interesting vantage point then to ask this question. I wasn't planning on this. But okay, so with all of that in my mind, set up the last 10 laps of the ND 500 this year

because you are out front. Here it is you're contending, right? and you got Helio coming. Well, this year, it was my first time leading an oval race. So I was there for like 10. This is the first time you're leading an oval race. Yeah, 10 laps to go in If I haunted. And I said, man, how do I keep Elio behind me?

Like, I don't know. What do I do? So I did what I saw on TV. I just started weaving, going left to right. And I said, maybe it works, maybe doesn't. And it was working. So it was good. I was just, I knew I had a faster card on him that day.

those final 10 laps. He had a better car at the beginning of the race, but my car at the end was the best. So I knew I was like I could control it, but he knew how to set it up and how to make me lose, I don't know, two or three corners when he was passing me. So I started to learn,

but then suddenly three laps to go, I was P1. I couldn't defend because he was just close and you cannot do anything if he's side by side, like he's going to overtake you. And I said, okay, I'm going to overtake him. in turn three because I knew my car was good there. And suddenly we got traffic, he got a draft. That's it. Game over. That was it. Yeah. Goodness. What a lesson, though. I mean, like, it did not

occur to me when I'm watching that. How little you know about ovals and how new you are to this. And now you're trying to hold off a guy that's won a billion of these things. Yes, suddenly I was P1 there. I was like, oh my God, what do I do now? Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Wow. And I was, do I have to say feel or not? So I was asking the team, what do you want me to do and they were like, no, do what you know what to do. And I was like, man, I don't know what to do. What are you telling me? I don't know. That's the issue. So I wanted them to tell me just stay 2 or BP1 or do it. Give you something. Give me indications. But they were, no, just do what you know and what to do. I was like, no. So, yeah, it was interesting. In general, though,

as you went through this season, your second year running ovals, how are you adapting to them? And What do you appreciate about them? I love it. I love it. I think it's great. It gives a lot of opportunities to all the drivers. I think for the driver to time the passes because, yeah, Indy is the one you time it most, but also at Gateway when we go there, Iowa, you have to time it.

But, yeah, the timing, I think your brain is thinking all the time with your tools, saving fuel, not saving fuel. I think it's awesome. Yeah. I don't know. I think I would struggle with trying to figure out how to get the, car to handle. I mean, do you guys struggle with balance as far as the car being tight and loose? Yeah, always. You know, at the ovals, what has that been like for you? You know, when you're as a

road course guy, getting the car to change directions quickly is probably the most important thing, having lateral grip left and right and all that. But you work on things symmetrically, right? Yeah. You know, it's, in an oval, it's not quite the same. On an oval, my issue is that I cannot help that much. Like I cannot say, hey, I need this. And on the road course, I know, hey, I need a stiffer rear spring for sure. Like, that's exactly what I need. On an oval, I don't know what I need at the moment, which I think it's also good because I don't have to think too much. I just tell the engineers, hey, I have an issue around here. So around this, I don't know which phase of the corner in ovals, it changes. So I don't know what I'm doing here, but the car

it's a bit tight or is a bit loose, which we use under-sere and oversere, but yeah. Do you look forward to a win on the Oval? Yeah, 100%. That's goal number one. Yeah, for me, it would be amazing. Yeah. Yeah, to get it. Just because I'm not an oval racer.

I know. I felt the same way about road courses. Like, I didn't grow up aspiring to race on road courses, and then when they're part of the series to win at one is like... That's what you wanted, right? It's like magical. Same thing for me. Yeah.

So you win the championship. You had some time to think about this as, I mean... Probably an unfair question, but do you understand what you've done? Kind of, yeah. Well, it's getting into. But, yeah, I think everything starts with Chip, giving us the opportunity to drive the championship car because they won last year with the number nine with Scott Dixon.

So he just gave me the number 10 to fight with him and for the championship. So, yeah, I think it was a hard year because we had some, issues and I had to still learn some tracks but yeah I wanted this so bad and we made it happen there's been a lot said about Jimmy's involvement in the team and his help as far as you know when you would face adversity seems like you know you might go to him to get some you know some support or advice on how to rebound get your head back in the game was is that is that the reality yeah so I had the opportunity for people that doesn't know this year to share teams with Scott Dixon six-time Indycard

champion, which is amazing for me, with Dario, which was the coach for me this year, Tony Canaan as well, Marcus Erickson, and then Jimmy Johnson. It has nothing to do with single-seaters, but he's a seven-time Cup champion, which for me,

well, you know, somebody that is a champion is wired differently, and the way he works or the way he thinks, it's a champion. Where does he help you? Where is him being a champion, a seven-time champion in NASCAR, actually benefited you? Work ethic, I think. He doesn't stop.

So if he was not stopping and he already won seven and I didn't win anything, why should I work less than him? And the way how to approach the end of the championship when it was like getting real to fight for it, he just told me some stuff. He called me and he gave me some advice that he got from his father when he was fighting for the, yeah. So for me, it's amazing. So that's like the first time I've ever heard that. You know, Jimmy's racing the Cup Series with me forever, won all these things.

We have seen all the layers. We've dug into him and tried to learn everything we could about Jimmy, but I've never heard anything about his dad giving him advice and him being able to pass that advice on to any other driver, you be in this case, and it being a help. you know, and I read some articles where you said he gave you some tips and you wouldn't even tell what those tips were. It's probably something that he's extremely proud of, knowing Jimmy, that he was able to take some things that he's learned and you apply them, right? Yeah, I did. I did. Obviously, because he told me to myself on the phone, I'm not going to say, but it was not something like, hey, Alex, you need to do this. No, it was more like how to approach it mentally. that it was easy, but it was like exactly what I needed to hear, and it worked. It worked.

Like, it's the way. You would have needed to be mentally tough into that last race, because, I mean, if I'm thinking back to how it unfolded, first of all, you were kind of in a dustup in that hairpin tour. I'm talking about Long Beach, right? Yep. Yeah. Paddle was in it.

Yeah. I mean, all of the contenders are like right here in this hairpin turn, and you could have sustained. And in fact, I don't know, did you sustain damage in that? And that would have been early on. It was no damage. It was the first lap, yeah. There was no damage.

But, yeah, we were on the air. Yeah, somebody goes there, boy. Yeah. So that had to be, like, I can't even imagine if I'm you trying to go for a championship. And that happens that early in the race. The mind games, that must play. No, it's fine because, you know, the Indy cars are tough. And I knew it was not a hard hit.

And, yeah, I mean, we had a good question of points as well. So I needed to finish. top 12, I think, to win the championship, not knowing what the others finished. So I was quite calm, to be honest, on that race. Yeah, that moment was a bit of nerve-wracking. Like, I was like, oh, no, my God, don't break my car. But when I saw it was fine on that straight, the next straight, I was calm. When he falls out of the race, I don't remember what issue he had, something mechanical,

but he fell out. Do you like to be told? No, because New Garden, who was fighting as well, was P1 at that moment. That's right. Yeah, so I had to still, I still had one contender. Yeah, but as a driver, I'm just kind of knowing your driver. Like, I know how he was. Do you want to know what everybody, or do you just want to focus on your race and hear the same thing you're able?

It's just a normal race with a bigger outcome, and you need to take it the same way you take others. Otherwise, something can go really bad. Yeah. If I took it, let's say, championship thinking way and something goes wrong, I would. always all my life be thinking, why did I take it that way instead of a normal race? So, yeah, I just wanted to do the best we could on that race, and that's what we did. I started P10 because we had some issues on qualifying, but we made ourselves into P4 at the end on a street course, which is not easy. Normally, it's super hard to overtake.

Well, what's next? Your champion in the Indycar suits, that was your dream to make it to IndyCar, and you are already a champion. You're 24 years old. So obviously, I'm sure you still have the Indy 500 circled. That's unchecked box. That would be a good first race to win on an oval, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think that'd probably be pretty good.

That would be a pretty good one. It's not going to be easy to get, but. Do you look at, you know, MSSA as far as like 24-hour races, things like that? You know, Jimmy's done a couple of those things as he got later in his career. I think a lot of me, even my dad wanted to try to do some of those things. outside of his little NASCAR bubble. Do you start thinking about those things now that you're in a position? Two, three years ago, you're still clawing to get this opportunity in IndyCar.

Well, you're a champion now with one of the best teams in the series. Are you allowing yourself to think about, man, if this opportunity comes, I'd love to try this, you know? Yeah, at the moment, yeah. I like to do some endurance races just because it's the thing I'm used to and the thing I would love. and I think it would help me to prepare for IndyCar. But I think I have still lots of business to finish here in IndyCar and try and finish it. So everything that I can do together with Indycar, I would do. I like to drive.

I don't think we have enough races. Yeah. Are you an Indycar lifer? Are you like, is that where you want to spend your career? Yeah, who knows? If I can keep winning like Scott did, yeah. Yeah, why not? I just assumed you were at the NASCAR races past weekend.

to seeing what the prospects. Well, I was asking for contracts, of course. You think I'm here for a podcast? I know you have some cars there. That's hilarious. You wanted to see if there's any openings here. Well, yeah, there's some good cars there. There's some good cars.

You have lots of road courses next year. Maybe you need... Even going to run Portland. Oh, do you? Yes, we are. Infinity Series. There? Yes.

You're not going to fit. Is it that bad? Is it that bad? Super tight. Yeah. Portland? Really? We're going to Portland.

Yes. front of Portland. Wow. That's tight. It's a good course, but I think it's a bit too tight, but it's going to be a big show for sure. Yeah. Well, they'll find ways around it one way or another where it's on the asphalt or through the grass. Yeah, I'm sure it's going to be fine. Yeah. There's some good overtaking spots for sure. What are you doing the rest of your trip in town here? So I'm living today. Yeah, I'm living today. Back home in Indie because we have a tire test on Wednesday, Thursday, Thursday at Meet Ohio. So, yeah, we'll test that with IndyCar. We have still some meetings to do with HPD and with the team, and then I'll go back home in Spain.

All right. Where do you want to live? Like, you know, where do y'all talk about, like, spending? At the moment, we're good in Indy. You've certainly not lived everywhere you've wanted to live. You've only, you've only probably I don't know. We didn't really talk too much about it. Well, maybe she wants something sunny. If y'all need a place in Alabama,

I know. I know, yeah, I mean, it's, you know. Where does all your teammates live? I know Jimmy's kind of at. Jimmy's all around. Scott is in Indy. TK. is in Indy. Markis is in Indy.

So, yeah, I mean, if you're, I guess same as NASCAR, almost everybody lives here, right? Yeah. I got you. All right, man. Well, Alex, we're so happy that you gave us. I have one last present. Oh, one last present.

Yeah, of course. I couldn't. I couldn't forget, Matt. Oh, boy. Couldn't. Matt. Tell me it's a chicken limo. No, unfortunately, it's not a chicken limo.

You wanted the chicken limo? Yeah, I mean, it was amazing. It was like probably one of the best moments of my life. You took a laugh in the chicken limo. Is that what you were talking about? Yes. Yeah. I did.

But, yeah, I couldn't forget about you. And I know that you were yesterday at the Rolls signing some autographs. I got some sharpies. Wait a second, Matthew. Got some sharpies for you. Were you signing out? Were you doing a session? No, not a session this time.

But he was trying to sign a T-shirt, right? It was a T-shirt. It's quite hard to... Was it his own T-shirt? No, no. But yeah, thank you so much, guys, for having me. My pleasure. You got a hell of a sense of humor, I'll tell you that.

I try. I'm not American. I don't know how to express myself too much, but I try. I try my best. We're so lucky to have you here. Thrilled for your success in the IndyCar series. What a pleasure for us to have the champion here and being able to talk to you. Love learning about your life and where you've been and where you're headed, buddy.

And you've got some new fans here. Going to be pulling for you next year to get that Indy 500 win. So thank you, Alex. Thank you so much, guys. Thank you. Alex Palo on the Dale Jr. Download. All right. Time for order to ask Jr.

You live? No. No. I'm just waiting on you. I'm waiting on you. Oh, I thought. You looked busy. We're ready whenever you are if you want to kick it off.

All right, everybody. Hey, how y'all doing? You're live? Hey, how y'all doing? Are we live? Yeah, we're live. But you still have to do the intro and all of that. Yeah, you're still, you're still, okay, Dale, you're fake live.

We're live. You're live on YouTube. Oh, thanks. At birthday. C. Thanks. Thank you, Adam. Adam.

Man, Adam moved up the phone dial list over Mike Davis. I'm going to do. Right in the middle of it. You'll try some cake? I've never turned down cake yet. Yeah, I haven't either. Good. That was nice of him.

Hey, we're all the die cast. We had so many. What do you mean? I switch them up all the time. Why not? Where are they kept? Oh, all over the place. Okay.

Why, what do you need? Which one do you want? You tell me which one. Just wonder where they are, man. You got one behind you? number three Monty Carla I'm gonna take that one home

Happy birthday Happy birthday of yourself Nobody loves this paint scheme But I like it Why? Everybody loves that paint scheme No nobody loves that one It's just not to

It only lasts it Three races Yeah It's still cool Yeah it lasted three races Then they changed it Hey we're fake life I'm waiting

I'm ready for you They're saying You have this I don't have any viewers yet You have us cheese all right hey everybody it's dale junior welcome to another ask

junior presented to you by exfinity racing you guys been sending in some great questions to exfinity racing at twitter and every weekend we have been filtering through them leah picks out the one that she's like so if yours doesn't make the show it's Leah's fault exfinity

they have that exfifi I'm a customer I use it I love it it's never dropped I've never lost signal. I've got it at a vacation home that I have, and it hasn't failed once. Wait, I'm getting an alert. That was my phone giving me. No, that was my phone. I'm sorry. Good job. We're never taping it this time. He's new at this. All phones on silent. It was, but the alarms still go off. Okay. Well, seriously, I love Xfinity. I'm not just bull-s-h-fitting you. Xfinity is a proud

premier partner of NASCAR, just so you know. That's kind of secondary. I mean, it sounds like a big deal to me. It ain't. It's not a big deal. What's a big deal is I'm a customer. That's the big deal. NASCAR's got all kinds of partners.

Yeah. This is the official birthday cake of NASCAR. Is it proud? Yeah. Or is it premier? Proud and both. Do you remember when we asked questions for the segment? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. What? Yeah. Should we do that? I'm just trying to make things difficult for this edit. You're doing it. You're doing it. I love you too.

Whole damn day. It's going to be a big one. It's going to make gold medal edit. This is going to go out late. It's going to be an Olympic adventure. Oh, damn sure it is. There goes not only dinner with you family. There goes putting the kids to bed.

Oh, hey. All right. So Leah's got a, Leah's got some great questions that she's organized for this Ask Jr. And I can't wait to hear him. So, Leah, go ahead. First question from Josh Barnes. What did you think of Dave Portnoy's pizza review that you requested?

Yeah, so Dave was, I've been waiting on him to get back down to QS so I could remind him. I told him a long time ago that I was hoping he'd do a Mr. Z's review. He blew it off. Not a big deal. Whatever. I get asked, he probably gets asked to do reviews of every pizza place in the country. Well, he was in Key West and I thought, hey man, try it. He's like, it's my last night.

If I can get there, I'll get there. How late are they open? I said, pretty late. I mean, four in the morning. But I didn't think he would go. He didn't tell me he went. He posts the review. And I'm pumped that he did the review.

He did not text me and say, hey, do you mind if I put our direct message on the review? Luckily, you know, it was a good, nice, clean, direct message. He doesn't come off as a guy that does approvals. No, he's not into approvals. So anyways. You know, and he gave him a good score, which I love Mr. Z's. We, I can't tell you how many times I've carried pizza out of that place at two, three, four o'clock in the morning. And, you know, he was there, I think, around midnight.

You get a whole other point, I think, if you're eating it around four in the morning. Obviously, it's way better. the drunker you get. So a 7.1 at midnight, shoot, that's an 8 around 4 o'clock. So pretty good. Pretty good job. I hope that Mr. Z's appreciates it.

They have certainly, you know, fed me and my friends some amazing pizza over the years. It's a blast going in there. They're loud. They're rude. And it's a good time. And, yeah, so hopefully the more people people go check it out. Mr. G's pizza in Key West. I spent a lot of time in that town and

certainly one of my favorite places to go. Let me just say real quick. They were loud in his pizza review. Like you saw guys just going right behind the camera, doing stuff. I mean, like, well, I'm talking about the people work there. Oh, no, you heard them inside there too. That's right. That's right. Oh, yeah. That's cool. They're, uh, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're loud, man. They, they, they, they're, they, they're, they're, they, they're Yeah. Well, hey, I don't take offense. I go in there. I know what I'm getting. And, you know, it's a good time, man. Tiny little spot. But anyways, yeah, I liked it. I was so happy that he did it. Check the box. Next question from Jim Davis. Saw Carson Quaple in the J.R.M. Late Model recently. Any insight on the plans for your late model team? Zero insight on the late model team's plans. We want to always continue to have a late model program that runs and

races and competes in the southeast. I'm not necessarily tied to the cars tour or wherever we've been running in the past. We just like to go race. And we were thrilled to be able to have Carson in the car at Florence Motor Speedway. He did an amazing job. And we'd love to run with him or anyone else who's interested in being a part of our program. But Carson's a young talent. His dad, Travis, works his tail off with those boys to be able to get to the racetrack.

So it was awesome. They were a great fit for our program. Going forward, we'll just have to, you know, kind of see what opportunities are out there for us, and I'm sure we'll have something to announce soon. Next question from Amy Harrington. Are you ready for Nicole's first birthday? Time flies. The celebration for that birthday, the party for that birthday, is right after this.

I'm leaving here to go to that party, and I'm thrilled. I can't believe she's one year old. I'm excited not only for her, but I remember Ila's first birthday. She's three and a half now, and she seems like she's about six or seven. I can't wait for her to experience her sister having a birthday, right? Us celebrating someone else. We've done so much celebrating of Ila, and it's going to be fun and good for her to see us celebrate other moments, you know, in our family. And so that'll be a good experience for her, but,

you're going to get some friends over. We're having this little party outside in front of the house. Going to be a little cake and just good time. So we were setting up tables this morning, getting some haybells and things of that nature. So it's been fun. I can't wait to get up. I'm sure Amy is expecting me to get home any minute to continue helping her set all this up. Well, I've got a couple more questions.

All right. Next question from Higgie. What's the deal with that awesome looking new Silverado with the cool orange and black graphics you posted on your IG stories. All right. Yeah. Thanks, man. So I sold my red Silverado.

I think it was a 17 or 18. I bought a new white silverado only to play around with the graphics. So while I was looking for a square body, I looked at hundreds of different trucks on the internet, right? For sale, not for sale. But I just looked at, I saw when you're searching for something, you're going to see a ton of it. I was really enjoying seeing a lot of the graphics that they had on the 70s trucks,

not only Chevroletes, but what Dodge did, and even what some of Ford's graphics looked like back in the old days. And I really wish, you know, where did that go? Man, that's cool, that retro graphic and scheme. Now everybody just buys a white truck or a red truck or a gray truck, and they just drive it around, and that's all it is. I think we're missing the point, man. You know, you can have a little self-expression.

I got with my buddy, Ryan Williams, who's helped me create a lot of awesome masterpieces over the last 12 months. And I said, Ryan, I said, here's this truck. Let's have some fun with this thing. Get crazy. We didn't have to do it. You know, whatever he comes up with. If it was over the top, we wouldn't do it.

It looked good on paper. I said, all right, we're going to put a decal on this truck, not paint. So what you see is all decal, and if we don't like it, we'll peel it off. If I get tired of it in two years, I'll do something else. It's a great thing about it. So we had the guys here that decal. These race cars throw the decal on there. And I love it.

And maybe it ain't for you. Maybe it's a little loud. Maybe it's a little aggressive. That's okay. But I would love to see Chevrolet or somebody, anybody, come up with maybe a series of trucks with any kind of graphic on them. Something that is a little bit of a nod to the 70s. has a little vintage vibe to it, like this truck that we did.

So I've already gotten an email from one of the head guys at Chevrolet who saw the truck. He said, man, I love it. So we'll see. I've gotten people down in Tallahassee at my dealership calling me wanting pictures of this thing. I'm like, we should do something with this, right? Come up with different color variations and, you know, sell a handful of these trucks. So I love me. I like having that freedom.

Get you, go, go put some stickers on your car. Yeah, thanks everybody for some great questions for Ask Junior today. Good job, Leah, picking through all the great questions. I know it's tough sifting through there. You always do a great job. It's the last several, last couple of months. You've really stepped up your game in the sorting of questions. It's all the fans.

Well, you seem to have found your groove. You've seemed to have found some sort of system that works. You seem to have improved somehow, somehow. Okay, thank you. change the way you do it. Yeah. Is there a secret? It's all the hashtag Ash Jr.

It's on the rest. He wants us to believe that he hadn't had a single drink. I'm calling it. I think he's damn drunk right now. I am calling it right now. Hadn't had one sip of alcohol. Wait, what was in that rowdy energy drink? I haven't had one sip of alcohol all weekend.

Now, I might have one today after we're done. Hell yeah. I think I need one. Expendity. Keep sending in your questions to. Xfinity racing on Twitter using the hashtag Ask Junior. Leah just told you that makes a big difference.

Keep the questions coming. Xfinity, a proud premier partner of NASCAR. Last call. All right, last call, everybody. I'm wearing a hat. I know you can't see it if you're listening to the podcast, but just take my word for it. I've got a hat with Dirty Mo Media.

It's in the store right now. I like it. I'm digging it. Looks good. It's kind of red. Alabama Red. Yeah, it's not Alabama Red. It's not even close.

Is that Gamecox Red? No, I don't know. Alabama Red is PMS 251. PMS 251 is Alabama's red. Some call it Crimson, actually. Listen, Dirty Mo Media swag is available in the DirtyMow Media. Dot com retail store. It's also here in the actual retail store here at Junior Motorsports, hats, t-shirts,

hoodies, all kinds of stuff. A lot of throwback stuff. By the way, you guys know that Dale Jr. And has already sent me designs for a new retro t-shirt for the Dirty Moe original line. Do you all know that? Yeah. We're already working on the next batch. So that's coming.

So anyways, these are designs that Del Jr. himself commissioned and gave his thumbs up on. But in this case, he's giving us his order, his instruction on do this. That's what he does a lot of time. So anyways, that's dirtymowmedia.com. Christmas is coming up. Perfect Christmas gift. Perfect Christmas gifts, plural. Door Bumper Clear, by the way,

speaking of Christmas gifts, boy, they're the gift that keeps on giving, aren't they? By the way, I want to say something about Door Bumper Clear. Whoever it was, Leah, who is it that wrapped? Who called it? Do we know who wrapped that song last week? Yeah. I don't want to hire that person.

Yes. I'm telling you right now. Identify yourself. I want to hire you, and I'm not even kidding. Shultz knows. Shultz has been in contact. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

I even played it for my family. Gracie goes, but he said Freddie's fat. And I said, yeah, but Freddie says Freddie's fat. It's okay, I guess. But door bumper clear. Let's hear what's going on this week. Hey, Dale Jr. Download fans, this is Brett Griffin, and here's what to expect on our podcast, door bumper clear this week. How many people did spin us?

And Bowman just, I guess, decided he didn't want us in front of him anymore and drove through Brad. There is a pattern of Kevin Harvick being a selfish ratio. He's obviously shown that he's going to do what it takes to get into the playoffs. So I'm going to give karma zero. I'm going to give paranoia one. NASCAR does not black flag Chase Elliott for a loose bumper cover. It's interesting to see what happened if that wasn't the nine. This first time cup starts should not ever, ever be allowed in the playoffs.

Yeah. I mean, I had my own running. with this guy. Freddie, how is testing going so far? Well, according to these times. Absolutely riveting. Time for a reaction theater. We wish you a merry off season.

We wish you a merry off season. But I'm telling you right now, seeing that race car going around North Wilkesboro was freaking awesome. You can listen to Doormember Clear this week and every week on dirtymo Media.com and all major podcast platforms. Glorious racing stories. Got a new podcast coming out this week.

this one is a story about redemption. Love that. Cliff Champion has been at the top of the NASCAR world as a crew chief before. Over the years, he has worked with the likes of Richard Childress, Kell Yarborough, Buddy Baker. But Cliff story goes well beyond the racetrack. After going through a divorce and losing his job, Cliff attempted suicide on three separate occasions in 1990. He opens up about his journey to recovery and shares a story that everyone needs to hear a story about redemption. Speaking of stories about redemption. I'm telling you, we've gotten a lot of feedback about the Lindenamek podcast that we did last week. And I'm telling you what, man, I'll say it again. I cannot appreciate that guy enough for his honesty, man, and his transparency and owning your faults and trying to be a better person.

I think that that resonated with a lot of people. And I don't know if he even understands that or knows that, but I hope he does. I hope he saw some of the feedback that we were getting. I screen grab some. I don't think he's very active on Twitter. I think he gets on there occasionally, but I screen grab some of them and texted it to him. Dude, you got to see what people are saying, man. It was incredible.

Yeah, you're impacting a lot of people, just so you know. I have people at the racetrack this week come up and pull me aside and say, dude, I was crying. Yeah. Listening to that. Yeah. So, yeah. Anyways, check out the download on TV.

I believe that actual episode with Lyndon Amick is going to air this week. And I was told last week that it's going to run back to back with this week's episode. So Alex Pillow will be obviously the show that's on Thursday, 6 p.m. Eastern Time NBC Sports Network. I do believe that the Linden Amic episode will run also this week and probably either right before or right afterwards. So be looking for that. And that's it. Dale, say goodbye. Just say goodbye. Goodbye.

Goodbye. Bye. Everybody say bye. Bye. This is a production of Dirty Mo Media. Check out Dirty Mo Media. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Dirty Mo.