The Dale Jr. Download - 364 - Tommy Russell: Living Scrapbook

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

When you have the opportunity to speak with a living scrapbook of the past, you open it and have a conversation. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and co-host Mike Davis welcome in Tommy Russell, an early car owner of the late Dale Earnhardt, to give first-hand accounts inside the early years of the Earnhardt racing legacy.Russell's family was involved in the early stock car scene in the Carolina's with area stars like Dink Widenhouse, George Mantooth and Banks Simpson that took their cars from the dusty dirt ovals of the Carolina's all the way to the sands of Daytona. But it was an intersection with Dale Jr.'s grandfather, the great Ralph Earnhardt, that set in motion a relationship with the two families forged in speed and trust. Tommy gives a curious Dale Jr. insight into what it was like on Sedan Avenue working around the patriarch of the Earnhardt racing dynasty. The King of the Dirt Tracks helped the young Russell. Later on, he was able to repay his hero. The story though doesn't end with Ralph. Russell became one of Dale Earnhardt's first car owners. The two friends combined their efforts and started racing Semi-Mods at places like Concord Speedway and Metrolina Speedway. When the Earnhardt name showed up on the roof of Russell's cars, it was lights out for the other competitors. In a short span, the two combined to unleash their fury on the dirt scene in an effort that brought an estimated 65 wins.Russell gives us all a peek into the early days of his race team and witnessing Dale Earnhardt's first-ever win. It is a moment that made him realize Dale was the driver he wanted behind the wheel of his cars. He talks about the progression of an eventual seven-time NASCAR champion. It was a journey from a homebuilt shop on the side of the Russell garage, to racing multiple times a week. They'd sleep at hotels with the door open and the hauler pulled up to the door, guarding their homemade racecar with a gun on the nightstand. It's a peek into the early days of Dale Earnhardt that nobody has heard before. Dale persevered, despite the tragic loss of Ralph Earnhardt in 1973. Russell gives us a look into the tough time and how they picked up the pieces and carried on.When Dale made it to the big time, he never forgot his friend Tommy. He was with him for his very first NASCAR Cup Series start. The local boy Earnhardt had a lot of pressure on him to make the field that day. He got by with a little help from his friends... and we learn, a special bottle of speed. Fast forward to 1980, and the final race of the season at Ontario Motor Speedway, Dale brought his friend along with him to the track, to the parties, and even to Las Vegas.Before Tommy Russell came to the Bojangles Studio to chat, the DJD was on fire about a lot of topics. Dale Jr. kept his thoughts about his recent test of the NASCAR Next Gen car at North Carolina's Bowman Gray Stadium to himself, wanting to save his thoughts for this podcast. He shares the experience and his concerns for the new Cup machine moving forward. He also spikes on Clint Bowyer's claim of being the fastest driver at the test.Dale and Mike also chat about Noah Gragson's big win at Martinsville and how he has impressively ridden a roller coaster of a season to have a shot at a NASCAR Xfinity Series title. Speaking of JR Motorsports, Dale talks about the decision to bring a new Late Model Stock driver to the team and what he expects from young Carson Kvapil and the program.The biggest NASCAR water cooler topic of the week was the controversy between Denny Hamlin and Martinsville race winner Alex Bowman. The DJD fires in their opinions during AskJr presented by Xfinity. They discuss the post-race drama and a different type of "hack" in the fan-driven segment.That and much more on a packed edition of The Dale Jr. Download. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The following is a presentation of Dirty Mo Media. You know, when I'm not racing, you've got to relax and do what you can to relax. I just enjoy being myself and, you know, pretty much like any other, anybody else in the world. I go fishing, take my kids to do things. We go out and fishing, water skiing together, and play it on the lake and live on the lake here. I enjoy pretty much the simple things in life. There's nothing simple, though, about how Dale Earnhardt earns a living. Pretty awesome.

That's a good intro there. Love it. Yeah. Good stuff. Little Dow. Yeah. So I know what that's from. That's from kind of a mini documentary called One Tough Customer.

They put that together. Wrangler and folks that were kind of behind Dad's brand at the time. Put that together back in 1981. And Dad was driving. the number two, Australon Paniac. He'd eventually in the same season switch over to Richard Childers Racing, but Dad is trying to teach me how to water ski, and he's got me on two skis out in the water off of the shore in the lake,

and they have tied the rope to the back of a truck on the hitch of a truck. And so basically they're just driving that truck up the boat ramp and pulling me out of the water so I can practice getting up all the whole. On the skis over and over and over, right? And so we did it a couple times, and then the last time, or that time, they went a little far and drugged me up onto the boat ramp. So my butt's kind of skidding across the concrete of the boat ramp. And Miller, I guess some guy named Miller is driving the truck. And I'm like, Miller tore my butt up.

Yeah. Well, at first that sounded like an awful idea. And then I said, that's a genius idea. But then it went back to being an awful idea once you tore your butt up. Well, I probably, yeah, I think I sat down on the, you know, as I was coming up out of the water on the skis and then the truck slows down, you kind of squat back down and bottomed out on the ground. I was probably six years old. My goodness. Yeah, it was a long time ago.

Well, it's probably seven, so I was born in 74, so it's 1981. Maybe I was six or seven, but I love watching. I've watched that one tough customer little thing. You can see it on YouTube somewhere, but pretty cool, man. Great, great footage of dad right. after his first championship. He's back, you know, he's running, walking around in the garage and the pits at Sharpmurr Speedway.

They kind of follow him along to the track and driving his car. And he's like two years into being a full-time cup racer. And he's got a cowboy hat and he's got these expensive shades and he's driving a big old car. And the funny part in that little show is when he pulls into the gate to get into Sharpmurge Speedway, the guard doesn't really recognize him. And he goes, you don't know who I am or something like that. It was funny.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. He kind of caught Daddy off guard. And then he immediately is like, yeah, I know that sounded like I was being, you know. Yeah, he's like, oh, I'll bet that sounded like I was being a fucking cold. That's pretty good. Yeah, because he, well, he's been going to Charlotte all his, you know, all his life. But anyhow, pretty cool intro.

Here we are, Mike. We got a great show today. We're in the Bojangles studio and we're getting fired up for a pretty special guest to come in. And his name is Tommy Russell. So Tommy Russell owned race cars and his family was in racing. We're going to learn a lot about that. What is Tommy Russell to me? So Tommy Russell put dad in a dirt car and was with my father when he won his first dirt race.

He was with dad. They became really close friends. This is all in the early 70s. Tommy knew Ralph and we're going to learn about that. Tommy was there during a lot of critical moments of dad's life and career in the 70s. all the way up until he goes into the Cup Series. We're going to talk to Tommy about dad's first trip to Daytona with his own sportsman car back, I believe, in 76. We're going to talk to him about all those things.

And he kind of goes all the way with dad to Ontario in 1980 when dad goes to win the championship. Tommy was around all of that. Dad included him, wanted him to be there. It's going to be a lot of fun learning his experiences because I wasn't around for any of that. and I really haven't talked to anyone who was a part of that experience. You know, we've had Doug Reichard on here and a few other people, but Tommy's close friendship with Dad is really going to give us some insight on to who he was back then, what kind of person Dad was and what was his experiences like.

And this is going to be one of, I think, for Earnhardt fans, and for me personally could be one of the more enlightening episodes of the show. I'm excited about this. Well, I just want to say for you and also for the people that are listening, is that I absolutely love weeks like this, where Dale Jr. has notable names as guest options, and he says to us, nope, there's somebody on this planet named Tommy Russell, and he has stories about my dad and about my grandfather,

and this is who we're bringing on the show. And this is when I realized, this is what the downloads about. Like, if there's people out there that skip this week because they see Tommy Russell in the headline or the title of the show, and they're like, I don't know who that is, So, you know, we'll take a week off. Well, this show's not for you. This download's not for you because this is what the downloads about. It's for people that Dale Jr. knows that has information and stories and insights into his family, his dad, his grandfather.

And, damn, gum it, this is a vehicle in which we get those things out. I love weeks like this. I'm eager to learn a lot about him. Now, to be clear, I don't speak to Tommy all that much. So I say that because I want you, the listener, to understand that me and you are going to hear these stories for the first time. together. I don't know any of what Tommy's going to come in here and tell us. Now, Matthew, you've been to lunch and breakfast and hung out with him a lot. You spoke with him. You know him well. You have a good idea of what we're getting ready to hear and learn. I know this is going to be a lot

of fun for me. So we're going to get to Tommy later in the show. So we got a lot of the things going on that we wanted to talk about. One of the things that happened last week, I went to Bowman Gray Stadium and tested the next gen car. I got out and I said this car does everything better than anything I've ever driven. And I think I was, I didn't want to really get too detailed in my thoughts about the car. I wanted to save that for the table here. Thank you. Yeah, of course, man.

You know, NASCAR invited me to go to Bowman Gray and drive the car. That was a bit of a favor. They had Tony Stewart there to do the tire test. That was the real objective was to get a tire that they felt comfortable with for the clash that's going to be at the Coliseum in L.A. They didn't really need me or Clint to come, but they offered that to me and Clint as broadcasters and ex-drivers to get a little experience and understanding of the car. So we both were there and I was very grateful and thankful for that.

NASCAR didn't pay me to come. NASCAR doesn't pay me a dime for anything. I say that because I don't want people to think that I got to get out of there. I got to talk favorable about the car. I got to, you know, I'm going to tell you what NASCAR want. me to tell you, right? So when I got, when I got in the car and I drove it, I was, I was really impressed by the braking. The brakes are giant. They're going to work better, right? I'm not surprised that they work better, but that was one thing that is completely different

from what I've been driving. As I drove around the track, I kept finding myself really over slowing the race car. I would push the brake pedal to slow the car down, expecting the same type of braking performance that I'm used to, and the car would slow. down much more than I thought it would. And so by time I would get into the middle of corner, I was much slower than I needed to be. So there was a lot of time for me to gain into the corner. And over time, you would adapt as a driver. You would adapt to that breaking performance within a day. I ran 20 laps in the car and that was it. But that was the first thing that stood out to me immediately.

The other thing that jumped out to me was I was unsure about how the bigger, wider tire and low profile, how this tire would perform. It's shaped differently than anything I've ever raced ever. The car has a ton of drive, meaning that when I get into the gas pedal, the tires grip the track and drive the car forward down the straightaway. On a short track, especially something as small as Bowman Gray, which is a very, it's It's a quarter mile. On something that small, which we never ran our cup cars on,

when you would go to the gas in an Xfinity car or a cup car, it would light the rear tires up. You'd have a hard time trying to get the tires to grip the track. You would probably spin the tires all the way down the straightaway. You may never even get to wide open throttle because you could not apply the power to the ground and get the grip you needed. But this car with the wider tire, I would apply the throttle and the car would just launch

forward. It wouldn't spend the tires, and I think that has a lot to do with the tire itself, but also the independent rear suspension, which I had never felt in a race car before either. The car hunkered down on the right rear and sat on the right rear and just gripped the racetrack and drove forward up, you know, up toward the flag stand. That was really pretty impressive. So those are some good things. A few of the things that concern me, and I didn't want to get into it that day, but I'll be honest. All right, we're going to be. be clear about how I feel about this car, right? So here's, here's some things that might, you know, are going to be challenging, right? The cars, these aren't broken things. These aren't,

these aren't things that NASCAR needs to address. This is what's going to be a big hurdle. If I were a driver, the steering in the car. So they've talked at length about having problems with the racks and different things. Well, what I noticed, and again, you, I've mentioned it and you're going to note it, I only had a brief moment in the car at a very unusual racetrack, right? I haven't drove it at it, Charlotte, or a big mile and a half or anything like that. So take this for what it's worth. The steering doesn't turn far enough for me. You literally have about half of the degrees of rotation in the front tires that you might

have in a car today, a current car. So when I try to steer the car to the left or the right, even in the garage, trying to get out of a garage stall, it turns only about half as far as it is a current car does. Wow. So it's hard to get out of spaces like a garage stall. It's hard to turn back, you know, it's hard to get off the racetrack. Driving the track, you don't notice it because you never get to full lock. You never, you never get to that moment where the wheel stops turning. You're not turning the wheel that far. But if I was at a racetrack and got sideways and wanted to correct the car, only going to be able to steer it far to a certain point and maybe in some situations not as far as I'd like to straighten

this car out to save this car from spinning because the steering rotation or where you end up going when you turn the wheel and get to full lock is about you know it feels like it's it's less it's much less than the current car there's a bigger tire a bigger wheel there's all kinds of probably limitations that are that are happening up in the front suspension that are not allowing you to get more more turn, being able to steer the car more, turn the wheel farther. That could be something that we hear drivers comment on as they start driving this car, start racing this car, start crashing this car, start spinning this car out. Be ready to hear drivers say things about the steering lock and it not turning far enough,

okay? All right. And just so interesting. Just be ready for that. driving it under conditions in battle it is not a problem but trying to get in around the garage out of your pit stall in yeah trying to get into a pit stall how if you can't you know you get boxed in or something and really need to steer and turn the car far are you going to have enough to get out of the stall just be ready for that so the other thing was the low profile tires so i talked

about how the car in social media I said the car does everything better now we were only going 55, 60 miles an hour around that racetrack. It breaks better at throttle, it has more drive, more grip and people went, oh it's easier to drive. That's no good.

Well that's not really the truth. So Tony Stewart spun the car out twice, right? I go up to Tony and I said, hey Tony, what's going on with he's like, man, you know it just happens and you don't even know what's happening. The challenge I think or the reason why Tony spun the car out

and why he didn't see it coming, feel it happening, be ready for, you know, why he wasn't able to stop it from happening is because the sidewall of the tire is much shorter. It's a low profile tire. This reminds me, these comments from Tony and talking to him more about spinning the car out and what that felt like,

reminds me of all of the things that we heard when NASCAR went from a biosply tire to a radial tire. So, Mike, the bioply tire flexes more. The sidewall has more flexibility in it, okay? And so when a car starts to slide, the wheel would actually move in the tire, right? And there's a little deflection in the tire as you're starting to slide. And so that's why, you know, when you watch racing from the 70s or 80s,

you see smoke, you see cars sideways, you see them driving the cars sideways, getting loose and coming out of those slides a lot more often than you would today. Well, that's because that tire allowed them to have more forgiveness because of its flexibility. Would malleable be the word? That sounds good. I'm just going to defer to you on that. Okay. So when they went to the radial, the radial tire is a lot stiffer, a lot harder for you to flex physically with your hands.

And it's harder to mount. It's a much tougher tire to hand. and when you put it on the race car and fill it up with air, the sidewall does not flex as much. Drivers lost a lot of that forgiveness. They lost a lot of that sensation of when the car would get sideways, having a bigger box to work in in those moments to save the car, or even drive the car sideways.

You can no longer really do that with the radial because the sidewall had become stiffer. Drivers would all comment, If you go back in time and read those articles, I can't feel the car. It's spinning out before I know it. It snaps. There's no warning, right?

Over time, you know, they adapted. All right? Sure. This was completely foreign. They didn't love it. But over time, they learned, after many miles, how to run this tire. And they learned what to pick up on to get that warning, right? And to understand where the limit was, and to understand how not to step over that line,

we adapted, right, over decades. And the same, if this tire, you know, if this tires around for a while, the same will happen here. So when we get into racing, when we get into battle, you're going to hear drivers say things like, I had no warning. I can't feel it. I can't tell when it's going to spin. I got a ton of grip. and all of a sudden I got none.

I don't know when this thing's going to wreck, right? They're going to say all the things similarly to what we talked about or heard from drivers when they went to the radio. So that is another challenge. That is a good challenge, I think. Sounds like it. It's not a fun thing as a driver. Sure.

It's not going to be a great experience to have to wander into that unknown and learn that and adapt to that. And you don't want to destroy cars trying to do it, right? That's a scary proposition. but it's going to be a minefield for some of those guys when they go out on the racetrack of understanding where the line is of where's the limit of grip and how to run as close to that without destroying your car right and it'll be trial by error but you've got to figure out where the new edge is for sure and if this you know and so that's those are two things that

kind of stand out to me those are significant as big as big challenges yeah you know the car otherwise, you know, I don't, I want to drive it at bigger tracks to learn even more about it and have a little more information and feedback for you guys about that. But I think it's going to be a pretty interesting year next year. And just keep your, just keep your ear to the ground and read, you know, when you're listening to drivers talk about the car or you're hearing analysts or even crew chiefs and owners and so forth, discuss the car, kind of read between the lines. and, you know, drivers are emotional.

Drivers are going to hop, you know, drivers are going to, you know, overreact. Be dramatic. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, right. So kind of. Somebody say whiny. Right. We'll read between the lines a little bit and it's going to be fun to sort of understand

and listen how they handle this car and how they adapt to it. It's going to be, there's going to be some good things that they're going to like, and there's going to be some moments that surprise them and they're not going to have an explanation for it or they're going to have to, it's going to be a learning process. Yeah. So I got a couple things I want to say. One is next week's download is going to be dedicated for us just learning more about this next gen car. We've got some people like the engineer from Chevrolet who has been part of the project.

Eric Warren is going to be here in Austin Dillon, who's been, you know, testing this car a lot for the Chevrolet folks is going to be here. And we're going to just really kind of like unpack this car even to more detail than what Dale's doing now. But that's why this opportunity that you had to go test it was so beneficial for all. of us, one to hear the feedback you're given now and also to really kind of build up a show for next week. I look forward to that. The other thing I wanted to ask you, and these may be quick Nosedale, but any of the concerns that the drivers had brought up in the months past, like the firewall and the heat, were you in the car long enough to even be able to tell if that's an issue still? No. Okay. I didn't drive the car long enough to really create an environment that the drivers

are going to experience in the race. I cannot comment personally about what I think about the heat, but I do know that it is a massive concern for the drivers. It is a real concern and a real issue. I heard about interior temperatures in these cars during testing. I've talked to drivers and they've told me the numbers about how warm the car was inside. Physical data that backs up that these, you know, backs up the concerns that your drivers have. NASCAR absolutely needs to address a way to cool the interior of the car. Mandating cool suits is a great, is a great thing. I think even in today's car,

but that is not a fix. I don't think NASCAR thinks it's a fix. I know NASCAR is going to try to do more to try to get some of this air out of the interior of the car, try to cycle air in the interior of the car, or whatever they need to do to bring those temps down. 150 degrees inside a race car is too hot. That's happened on occasion during the few years that I broadcast,

having the opportunity to look at the temperature gauges inside the cars while the race is going on. 150 degrees is absolutely pushing the limits of these drivers physically, and it is a terrible thing for them to have to go through. It is not a healthy

thing for them to have to experience. And so we need to try to absolutely avoid getting toward that number if we can. And there's going to be moments. You know, you go to Chicago a couple years ago, and

and it's unavoidable. You can't control what's going on with Mother Nature. You're going to have those 150-degree days every once in a while. But we need to get, we need our average, I think, for these drivers to be much, much lower, 120, 125 degrees, if not even less. Yeah. For these guys on an average weekend. So that's something I'm worried about.

I didn't want to really get into it too much because I didn't experience it. Right. I'm trying to give myself opportunities to drive the car more. There's a lot of testing that's going to be happening at different racetracks. I think there's a Phoenix test and maybe a Daytona test or some other tests for sure going on. By time, wherever they're testing from now until I get back in the booth, I'm going to try my hardest to get behind the wheel of a couple Chevroletes and get some more time so I can be better in the booth.

By no means am I trying to help any organization. or am I trying to, you know, get myself geared up to go run a race? I just want to learn about it, the car. I do not want to go into a broadcast booth. I don't want to be a broadcaster if I don't know what kind of race car they're driving. Right, right. Not fun. That's fair.

Yeah. Hey, I got one more question, if you don't mind me asking. Running at Bowman Gray. Yeah. Did it change your opinion or did it influence you in any way, just putting laps at that place knowing that they run every, week there. And also, did it change your opinion or influence you in looking forward to the clash at the LA Coliseo? When they talked about going to the clash, my immediate reaction,

I was not a big fan of it. I was a little skeptical. That's a very tiny track. How would our cars adapt? It's just going to be them rolling around there. I mean, watching them go around there, you know, 55, 60 miles an hour. I didn't know what that would be like. Our, we would our drivers go out there and go for it, right? Will they, will pride be enough to, to, to, to, to, to implore them to go out there and, and, and make a show, right? Or will they go out there and just, you know, log laps, and do the dance and come home? We'll see, you know, we'll see what happens.

You know, the car, I, when I drove, to answer your question, when I drove the car, I went, oh, this is going to be fine. this is fine this car goes around this track it's fun to drive around this track this car will do great at the Coliseum

our current cup car I wouldn't want anything to do with that that car with those trailing arms and that straight rear axle or with that rear housing and trailing arm all of they don't do anything

it's not going to do anything right around there it's not going to do anything good around there it's not going to stop it's not going to go it would be miserable to race around that little track. The independent suspension and things like that really make getting around that track funner, more enjoyable.

Good to know. So I went from skeptical, not sure about this, to this is a good idea. All right. This is going to work. All right. That's good. That's my honest opinion.

That's it. That's all we need. Awesome. And you turned some good laps times. Oh, yeah. Matthew, let's talk about that. So Clint's there. We walk up.

I talked to Clint, and I'm like, man, I called him earlier in the week, and I said, we need to get up to this race car and check the seat out, make sure it's going to fit. He's like, I know. He's really worried. I'm worried. He's like, Stewart's really short. And I'm like, I don't remember Stewart being that short, but he's like, yeah, he's a little short. He's like, man, we need to get up there, but I can't get up there.

And I was like, I can't either. I'm just going to. So I called the RC guy, RCR guy, where the car was at RCR. I said, just bring a sheet of one inch foam, and if I got a stick some foam somewhere, that's what I'll do. I'm only going to run the car five to 20 laps. I just want to, I don't want to drive the car 100 laps. I'm just going to get in there and drive it, and when I feel like I got an understanding of what it's doing, I'm going to get out. Clint's like, yeah, I'm doing the same thing.

So we get up there, and Clint's like, oh, I ain't going to go out there and go fast. I ain't going to go out there and go fast. I'm just going to go out there and drive it and get out and talk about it. buy it and go home. And I said, yeah, I think, you know, Stewart's out there running hard, trying to push his car. He's spinning out, you know, and he's trying to give them the best data they can to understand the tire and whether they're making the right choice for this, for this clash. And it's NASCAR's next-gen car. I've always drove cars for most of my career that I felt like belonged to me or belonged to family, right? Right. And when you drive

somebody else's car, it's a weird feeling, right? You don't want to tear it up. Anyways, you know, I get in there and I ran and they're telling me the lap times and I knew Stuart's fast laps were like 15 twos 15 threes. In lap 20 or so or lap 40 he would drop off to the 15 5s. And so I was out there running and I got down to a 156 and I thought I better stop. You know, I'm getting, I'm over my head. I've only run about 20 laps and I don't know where the right side of this car he is. I don't know where I am in.

I don't know how close to the wall I'm getting on the straightaways. I don't want to hit anything. Tony got surprised by a couple spins. I don't want to spin and hit anything. Then Clint can't drive it. So I thought, all right, I'm in over my head, overdriving this thing, and maybe I should take a break. Hop back in a minute and go again.

But I'm 15-6. I was pretty happy with that. Clint gets out there. Matthew's there. Matthew's timing everybody, right? And I'm watching Clint go around. I watch him run like a corner or two. And then somebody asked me if I'd go upstairs to say hey to somebody's mother.

And so I go upstairs to say hello to this guy, this guy's mom. And a fan was up there and he goes, Clint's done running by now. And his fan goes, hey man, I saw you running better laps than Clint. And I said, did I? And he goes, oh yeah, Clint was pretty slow. And I said, really? Well, that's nice to know. I was afraid to ask.

you know because you were all competitive right yeah and if tony me and clint go to a racetrack and jump in a car you don't want to be the slowest guy right but i was afraid to ask i didn't i was just going to ignore it and get out of there and not even never know it's best than i even right you didn't want to show your hand and let people know that it was in your mind but we know that it's in everyone's mind exactly so i'm like oh all right maybe i was better in clinton i'll just take this guy's word for it right and so i come downstairs i'm on my way home i'm i'm driving home and And Dustin Long puts out an article. And in the article, Clint is quoted as saying, oh, I'm happy.

They were like, Clint, are you happy? Do you enjoy the test? He goes, oh, yeah, I'm happy. I put two tents on Stewart. And I was a half second faster than Dale. Oh, my. And I'm like, well, I know that's not true. Right.

Because it's physically impossible for one to run faster than Tony did. Right. And no damn way he got out there and ran 15 laps and beat Tony's time. after Tony'd been in there for 100 laps, right? And so I text Dillner. And I'm like, Matthew, you were there. What did Clint do? And he goes, I was timing Clint.

He never ran in the 15s. Whoa. No, he got down. He was in the 15s, but. What did he run? He didn't run faster than you. What do you run? I don't know the exact time, but probably like 15, 7.

Okay. I mean, he wasn't even the right gear the first three laps. Yeah. Yeah, I know. He was in the wrong gear and all that. Moron. But I just love. love the fact that typical Clint

he comes out. Oh yeah, it's faster than everybody. That is actually very funny. So the dude, this is Clint Boyer in a nutshell. Right. It's brilliant. Hey man, I'm a go over. I'm a go up here. I'm just going to make my

laps and get out. I'm going to make my laps and go home. You know, I ain't worried about, you know, running fast and all that. Okay, Clint, cool, man. Yeah, me too. Yeah. He gets in there and runs. Oh, man. claims he won the test. I won. You got that Clint Boyer stopwatch. Yeah.

I'm like, what? Totally threw me into the, through the wolves. Yeah. During the broadcast this weekend in Martinsville on NBC. Mm. Yeah. Somebody found a louder trumpet. That's right.

Somebody found a louder mic. They talked about, they were, we were talking about the next gen test during the race and Rick Allen he said, hey man, how did y'all run lap times? And I said, I told him what I thought was true. I said, Tony run 15-5s and a little quicker. I ran a 6 and Clint was in the 16th. But I thought you said he was in the 16th.

You think he ran a 7 or 7 or 8. Like, yeah, I think he ran like a 7 or 8. But, yeah, no, he was, you were faster, man. Tony got down to like a 1-5, like in a 1-8 a few times. but he was quick. Yeah. That's hilarious. That Clint Boyer stopwatch, man.

And so then NBC Sports PR put out a pressure release saying NBC, Greater Than Fox. I'm kidding. They didn't do that. They thought it, I bet. Everybody's thinking it. That's funny, though. Did Clint say anything to you?

No, he's hilarious, man. He didn't know. Better for him not to know. We've got a little quick little news on our junior motorsports late model program. Everybody knows that Josh Barry's been racing in that car. We've had a lot of drivers. come through the late model program over the years. Sam Mayer, who's currently with us next year and this year,

but next year full-time in the Xfinity series, William Byron, we've had a lot of great drivers in that program and Josh as well. Well, Josh moving on into the full-time Xfinity series, he still will run a race or two. He'd love to run around five races next year in our late-mall car, but we have tagged a awesome little driver for our car full-time next year Travis Quappell's son, Carson.

Wow. Is going to drive junior motorsports late model car anywhere from hopefully around 22 events next year. And I'd love the car to run as much as possible. Carson is an up-and-coming little talent racing. He's got a super late model that he's been running with his dad for a while. They've ran and won some big races, won the cars tour Super Late-Mall Championship this year.

And he's won out at Nashville Fairgrounds and other little places around the, around the southeast, and he's started racing at Millbridge at the dirt track years ago. But anyways, cool little kid, hard worker, his dad, Travis works so hard with those kids to give them opportunities. I'm thrilled for Carson, and we've got some great support from our partners at I Racing, all things automotive, Chevrolet, that are helping us be able to put this program together to be able to bring in a guy like Carson and give him an opportunity.

So our partners on our program at Junior Murder Sports, we're so happy to have them because it allows us to do some pretty fun stuff. So looking forward to that next year, you'll be able to follow along on Junior Murder Sports social media handles and see how Carson's doing each week, along with everything else going on in our Infinity Series programs. So I'm excited about that. You know, that late model program is my baby, and it kind of is the roots of the sport. And I love to be able to plug in drivers into that car and see what they can do and try to try to get to. give them opportunities, and it's nice to know that it's going to keep going with Carson next year. That is cool. I saw you guys out front last week, and I was looking at the glass. I said, I don't remember who was standing beside me. I said, hey, that looks like Travis Cropble. Was it you,

Dillner? Yeah. And he goes, it is. Yeah, that's who it is. I'm like, what the world? I said, and wow, what mullets those sons have. Impressive. Two observations I had. But yeah, that's really neat. And look forward to that. You know, you bring up a point. Like Josh Barry, now that he's going full-time extremity racing. Who takes over that car, right? Like that car has made a name for it. It's a brand in itself what Josh has built. And this is who is going to, you know, take the throne.

Well, let me. It's nice. That is. And we're going to give Carson a lot of time to get adapted to our car and our program. No pressure on Carson. Listen, Josh Barry raced that car for 10 years. That's right. And I don't know how many years it was before he became the force that he was.

It wasn't right out. It didn't happen overnight. You know, it took him a while to get to that point to where he was a thread every race track he went to and eventually a national champion. We don't expect Carson to go out there and repeat that same type of performance. We're going to try to give him an opportunity to progress as a young man and a driver and continue his career. And I think we can do that. Man, it's awesome to have Chevy on board with us, and as many of you probably know, I've spent a lot of time with my Chevys. Now and again, and most recently, I've owned a few Silveradoes in my time.

I own two now. That's right. You got your new one. Yeah, I got a 2000-04. And then I have a brand-new Silverado. I just sold my 17. When the trailball trim came out with this new generation Silverado, this is a while back. I think it was 2017.

I was in Texas Motor Speedway. They sent me down there for the unveil of the all-new Silverado. Now, I've owned trucks in the past, like I said, but this new truck really stood out to me. And the one thing I loved about it was the body character and the stance of the truck. The character lines in the fenders, quarter panels, how they all kind of work together, and how that makes the truck look in personality. That matters to me. You know, grill headlights, all those things.

And Chevy certainly changed it up over the years. But the new Silverado, as soon as they brought that thing out, I said, I turned to the Chevy guy and I said, I'm buying one of those. I absolutely want a brand new truck right now. And so that was my emotions, not that, hey, get me a truck, bring it right here, deliver it to me today. It was just, hey, I want you to know I'm going to go get one of these. It will be mine.

Yeah. So, Mike, I recently sold my 2017 and I've got a brand new truck. they look relatively similar and I assumed that they would operate the same. Man, I was wrong. Oh, really? Yes. This all new ZR2.

It really does take it to the next level with a chassis and suspension calibrated specifically for off-road performance. 33-inch off-road tires, still front and rear bumpers for added durability. And there's clearance too, man. So plus much more off-road functionality. The first ever silver roll.

ZR2 will take strength and capability to new heights. Be sure to visit Chevy.com to learn more. So we had an awesome weekend at Martinsville. Martinsville never disappoints. Great truck race, great Xfinity race, great cup race, amazing crowd, great energy. I say it all the time. I say it every year after Martinsville.

That right there is exactly who NASCAR and what NASCAR is to me. that experience that you have when you go to that short track and what you feel, the emotions, the drama, that is my NASCAR. And that's what I want my NASCAR to give me every single weekend. Did you watch him? I did. Boy, not a dull moment all weekend. I had, first of all, I just want to give props to Noah Glaxen.

Call me a homer. Whatever. That kid showed his talent in that race. My gosh, man. went out and won that thing. And let me tell you something. As emotional as we know, no it is. After last week, for him to rebound, compose himself and go win that race after how down he was last week, how angry he was last week.

Man, just another reason why you should keep your eyes on Noah Glaxen because that kid has something special. I really do believe that. That was my first observation. Do you want to react to Xfinity? because then there's cup stuff that I... Sure. I agree with you on Noah. I think Noah is such an interesting guy.

His emotional roller coaster that he lives on is up and down. It's all big hills. The highest of highs and the lowest of lows. And forgive the guy. I mean, he's going through a lot of things. Not only... So, you know, he's got a lot of things going on in his own personal life. he's on the other side of the country

away from what he grew up in. I mean, he's only just in his early 20s and he's removed from his family and all of the comforts and that little safety net back home. He's way out of his comfort zone all the way on the East Coast. On his own. He has no one

out here. Us. Yeah. Josh Wise. You know, a few friends that he can lean on. Otherwise, he's his own man. If I was left, if I was put in that position in my early 20s, no way. I would be going to Martinsville and winning races in an Xfinity car.

No way. No. I wouldn't made it. He makes some mistakes. He's a human being. He's flawed. He, you know, he's up and down. But dang, does he not recover?

Yeah. Those, you know, when he makes us, when he makes a misstep or they have a bad day or a bad weekend. and his emotions are down. I don't know that I could have turned it around. I don't know that me in that same situation at that age could turn it around. Right. We were imbeciles at that age. Oh, God.

And so I got to give him credit, and he's got a long way to go. A lot of maturity left. And that's okay. He's, dang, that's not a knock on him. That's to say there's even more good things coming. Yeah. As he continues on this path and he makes less mistakes. and he takes that maturity and experience forward.

I mean, the guy really, the sky's the limit. Even if he goes beyond racing here and goes into the Cup Series for another team, he's going to have all the experiences to fall back on. He's going to have all the mistakes and all the triumphs and so much stuff that's going to help him in difficult situations going forward in a race car and out of a race car. So if he survives the next couple of years, really the sky's a limit. He's going to have all the tools in the toolbox.

Don't you think? I feel the same way. And it just, I think about this coming weekend. He's absolutely an underdog going into this weekend, right? He's an underdog. There's guys that are, you know, contending to the championship. I think he's a threat. But that's what I was going to say.

He's an underdog because there's people that have won more and there are people that, you know, have certainly had more headlines. But watch out because. the guy is he is absolutely capable of going and taking that thing. I hope he does. The cup race. You know, when I got up to the booth, I sent a tweet out. When I got up to the booth, driving up there, first off, everybody was talking about how bad the traffic was.

Love it. In a positive way, right? Hell yeah. The traffic. Yes. Kyle Bush had to run. It's back. Yeah.

Kyle had to run in from a mile out. I love it. Brewster Baker style? I didn't know that. Yeah. Kyle's in traffic and he's like, man, I got stuff to do. I got to get there. So he parks on the side of the road a mile away and runs down the railroad tracks to get to the race track, Kyle Busch.

That's awesome. That's awesome. It feels good. It feels old school. We need traffic. And it gave me a little bit of flashbacks because you and I used to drive to Martinsville on race day. It was so nerve-wracking, man. And it was just talking about just getting to appearances and stuff, man.

I understand why you would get out and run the rest of the way. If that's your only option, yeah, I get it. But that means that the sports fans are back. Yeah. I love that. Well, they know what they're going to get at that racetrack, and they know they're not going to, you know, they're going to get what they expect. And they did.

Every single race was great. I saw a lot of people commenting on social media that were watching the race, that, oh, well, it was an okay race, or maybe it was not that exciting until the last hunter laps. But the problem with that is, is like, watching on TV, we can only show what we can show on the screen. All right. So we're showing you either the battle for first, the battle for fourth,

whatever that we're showing, right? But there is 15 other things happening on the racetrack at the same time that I can't show you on your couch, right? And now I love our numbers to be good. I want people to tune in and watch us race. But if you were there in person to see all of the things going on every single corner, the beating, the banging, the slipping, the sliding, the frustrations, the dry,

there were things happening in the back half of the field between the Benedetto and all these other guys that, you know, Corey the Joy, that, you know, we're not showing because we're showing something else that was just hilarious, wild, entertaining. And if you're there in your seat at the racetrack, you can experience that. And you will understand that the first 300 laps of that race was not mundane. It was insane. Yeah. And, you know, the other thing, too, I'm standing there on the front straightaway,

it took the entire front straightaway, giant marching band on the racetrack. Now, nothing is going to raise the energy and atmosphere pre-race better than a marching band. By God, marching band. Damn straight. This is why I love college football. Yeah. So all of that's going on. We got a marching band.

band playing. They were, I don't know how many people's in this band. It was huge. All down the front straightaway. That's cool. In formation. There was a giant crowd around the intro stage for intros on the front straightaway.

All of the souvenir haulers, souvenir trailers out on souvenir row off a turn four outside the racetrack where the duck pond used to be lined up before the race. Usually, you know, you go out there after the race and you'll see them lined up trying to get race winter stuff or whatever. But every souvenir hauler had people five deep trying to get in there and get stuff. Everywhere you looked, it was fields full of cars, glistening windshields and paint jobs and all that, you know, sun bouncing off of them.

It was just awesome. When we pulled in Saturday morning, we were seeing campers before we typically see campers as we were getting closer to the track. That's when you kind of know you got to. great race weekend when you're kind of getting about a mile from the track and you're starting to see campers already people already you know that's how far the footprint is for the fan base that showed up for that race weekend so i do think that you guys did a fantastic job covering that you had three battles at the end going on all that had points implications and and with that uh the graphic and the

live points and then the live running orders i mean that's a lot to cover and i think you guys did it well thank you um i was able to follow and man you needed all of that information to keep up with what was going on. I mean, you had all the guys trying to take that last spot or the last two spots, and they were all running there at the front. Even my wife was watching it with me, and she was like, yeah, you know, she, I didn't have to explain anything to her. It was all done.

So I thought the broadcast was fantastic. I did too. We, you know, I walked out of there going, we did a good job, I did a good job. Our truck did a good job, even pre-race. Our countdown the Greens are so fun with Marty, Del Jarrant, and Kyle Petty, the energy, the comments, the honesty, the Dale Jarrett and Kyle Petty duo for just as analysts and honesty, Marty does a great job running that show.

That's gotten so much fun to watch and listen to. I even go up into the booth and put my headphones on even before we need to, to listen to them going back and forth. We had a produced piece by Rutledge about Halloween and the racetrack and all that, and that was done so well. I just felt like for whatever reason you get up in the, you know, you get up and you get up in the booth and you're just like, and today's going to be a good one.

You're feeling good energy, and it's kind of seeping through the entire production. And so, yeah, I felt pretty awesome about the job we did. And I felt like we covered it well. You know, it's funny. We start the season every, I say the season. When we get in the booth in the middle of the year, it's clunky. It's, it's, we come out of the gate sort of, you know,

there's a few missteps, and it feels like you haven't done this in a while. And as we get to the end of the year, you're like, damn, we're hitting on all cylinders and we got to stop. Every year I've been in the broadcast booth, by the time we get to Phoenix, I'm like, damn, we're kicking ass. And then it's a... I want to mention one thing. I know we got a rap.

I know, but this is important to me. I think that, and I don't think Dale Jr., you'll have a strong opinion about this, but I just want to take one more observation and say this. Denny Hamlin's interview afterwards, he dropped an F-bomb. Yeah. Okay. I'm curious if there are listeners to this podcast, many of which I assume are Dale Jr. fans, Junior Nation.

wonder if they have the same reaction that I do, which is a quick trigger that when somebody curses on TV, you don't, you get pissed off not because you're offended by the profanity, but it throws you right back to 2004 when you got docked points. I can't get that out of my mind. And it, and it, it's now happens enough now on TV where people are cursing on TV. And it just, it reminds me that I'm still harboring things from 2004. Because that 25 points was important, dang it. We needed those 25 points.

That was an asked junior question this week. Somebody went to go to Siv. Del had feelings. You're not alone, Mike. I think I see so much of that in my timeline. Do you? Oh, yeah. And it is.

Different timing, yeah. It is. It is. It is. But it absolutely triggers. And it's okay to feel that way. And it's okay to be frustrated about it. I'm glad that we can have that.

I mean, F bombs are probably a little far. I don't know that, I don't know that Denny needs a penalty, maybe a monetary fine or something like that, because we do need to deter drivers from saying the F word. Sure, yeah. I think our network would prefer they not. But if we don't do anything to deter it, they will continue it because they're drivers. And they're here to the moment.

And we appreciate that part of our sport where, you know, You get drivers in the heat of the moment. I think a S-bomb, you know, a dam, a hell. All those words are acceptable. Yeah, especially when you're celebrating like you were. Yeah. He was mad. I think we're in a good place right now.

But I think we should deter the F-bomb, and maybe they'll just have a conversation with Denny and ask him probably to refrain from doing it going forward. Or any driver, really, right? Right, they'll send out some sort of email or something. Good thing. Well, I just, I feel like I need a little bit of therapy right there. I need to get that off my chest.

Well, you know, you're not any. different than a lot of old Earnhardt fans and fans of mine that remember that day, you know, and it still is frustrating. October 3rd was the race 2004. October 5th was the day that NASCAR handed out the penalties. It was $10,000 and 25 points. We went to Atlanta. Something else I can't forget.

Carl Edwards causing that wreck at the end that really kind of put the nail in the coffin of our title hopes. There's a few other things that I still can't get past. I think we broke a rear end at Martinsville. That's right. I heard us so bad. Yep. That hurt us.

So I know people are going to want our opinions on Denny, Alex, and the whole finish and all that. Oh, yeah. We're going to lean into that in the ass junior later in the show. Okay, guys, I'm going to play that Burton trailer. The following contains strong language and is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised. There's been some times I want to say fuck it. I am done with this stupid ass shit.

It was one of worst night. I've been through in my life. I wanted to be the phenom. I wanted to come in and win everything. You take your parents and your family and your loved ones on the journey with you, but it's about you. If I'm competing with somebody, I don't really want to be your buddy. I was living my shit through him.

Didn't bring us any closer together. I was never handed anything, but I always felt secure in my job. The Burton family, has always loved each other. Jeb, when I'm 21, and we can go and share a beer, I think that's going to be a big deal. I wouldn't fight Ward for nothing. Don't tell him I said that.

But they haven't always liked each other. You're going to have some kind of conflict with everybody you race with if you race long enough. It felt like I'm the oldest time for me to reach out to Jeff, to see how in the future maybe some of this family tension can be worked out. Jeb and Harrison Burton are assigned with an impossible task. Race against family for survival?

If it doesn't work for me and Harrison, I don't know who's it going to work for. If we fail, I think it's over. There's a time when everyone was quick to wanting me out of the sport. And race to continue the legacy, started by their dads. Check the flag is up, and Ward Burton is going to win the 44th. They total of 500. Jeff Burton, the first repeat wins. in Texas Motor Speedway.

There'll be a moment that they have an issue, and they're going to have to figure out how to work that out. Harrison Burton turns left. Harrison Burton's going to win in Texas. A Burton's going back to Victory Lane in NASCAR. Jeff Burton, first career win. The roads those two young men are taking are just completely different. The way I raced, and I'm not always proud of this,

but everything came second. Life is not going to end over these down race cars. I'm trying that crack. The Burton Continuum, a 10-part episodic podcast series. Coming soon to Dirty Mo Media. So, Mike, this is going to be some awesome content. This is a little bit different than what I feel like Dirty Mo Media has been producing over the past several years.

This is a great step in a new direction for us as a business. But let's just talk about this. I was shocked, a bit surprised, Mike, that you were able to get these four guys to be this honest, be so genuine about their relationship and their lives, right? We've had Ward and Jeff in the studio, and we know that there were some ups and downs between the two of them, and there were some challenges in each of their lives, and sometimes those roads crossed. we got to imagine that that's also been challenging for Jeb.

Just growing up in their shadows is difficult enough, but being competitive with each other, right? One may be feeling like the other one was getting a better opportunity, right? These guys are going to be open and honest about all of this, and it should be revealing about who they are. We think we know Jeb, we think we know Harrison. What really only part that we really get to see is what they allow us to see. but this is something new, something deeper.

And also the honesty from their dads is pretty incredible. Not only all that, but we get to live out, like the stories being written as we live out day to day right now. I mean, Jeb and Harrison are in their careers right now. They're trying to find their way. They're trying to make it. And so we get to live out this story as it goes, but we get to glean from the past, which is what fascinates me the most. Like, listen, here's what we know. racing takes such a tremendous toll on families right i'm just even mechanics and team members right like

you know it just it's it's so hard on families but now you layer in the fact that you got families that compete against each other well i got to be honest with you the waltrops have talked about that the bow dines were very public about their feuding and it's like wow what happens when you got families that literally have to go against each other and how what does that do in their you know their home lives. What does it do in their personal lives? Well, the Burtons have been very forthcoming about how they held grudges and it caused wounds and these wounds lasted a long time. And all that's been documented. Here's my interest. What does that mean for Jeb and Harrison? I love both these guys. Harrison, first of all, let me talk about him.

Harrison Burton is the most respectful and polite and likable person that I think is in the garage right now. The kid is, for me, I've been around him enough. I sat at a table with him. with him at a dinner and I'm just like I'm blown away of how mature he is and in how likable he is. Now, he's nothing like Jeb, which is to say that Jeb isn't unlikable. Jeb is very much likable, but in a completely different way. And so I'm intrigued. And this story for us is a, it's a nonfiction narrative series that it'll have a beginning. It'll have an end.

But we don't know quite what the end is yet. And I want the listeners to kind of live it with us all, right? and I wanted to live it with Harrison and Jeb. And this is not about Harrison versus Jeb. I want to make sure that's clear. It's not Harrison versus Jeb. It is Harrison and Jeb versus their realities and the fact that racing takes a toll on families.

And how are they going to navigate, especially at such a young age, how are they going to navigate success, which they both have had it, failures, which they both have had it, and we're going to live this out. So this is what the Burton Continuum is. It's a family show. It's a second generation show. And it's something that I'm very excited about. about for dirty mo media all right Tommy Russell is here guys let's bring him on into the studio

i can't wait i can't either cars in action here at metropolitan speedway will be this friday night this friday night what's up Tommy yes sir that's right that's right welcome i watch the show yes sir Halloween night you know what i was watching for he made the hurry didn't come with that baseball bag and get my mailbag oh lord I saw that show it's buddy I don't know if everybody on the podcast heard, but Tommy's already protecting his mailbox after hearing our stories. I no longer play mailbox baseball these days.

Good. Take a seat, buddy. Go ahead. They might not haul me to jail at 16, but they probably would these days. Now, these two were Randy's. Really? And my sister gave them to me, and I said, well, I'm going to give them to Dale Jr. Back in the day, it's hard to believe, but the Concord Tribune covered racing in our area

every weekend. Down the shop, here, there, over Ralph's, you know. And Randy has got about everything

out of them newspapers in these two volumes right here. And I got one too. All right. Mine's got more pictures in it than Randy's, but his is mostly

the newspaper article. So Tommy Russell. That's me. Where were you born? In Concord, North Carolina. What's your family's connection to racing?

Your dad raced? My dad, He owned race cars. He built. He's one of the best energy builders in the state at that time. What time was this? When was this? This was in the 50s and 60s.

Used to everybody run the flathead forward. I don't know if you knew what a flathead forward is, but they run that engine. What daddy developed a distributor, the distributor that come with the engine had one set of points. Well, Daddy figured out how to put two sets of points in there, and he put a bigger coil on there and then he built a

table where he could put distributed it on there and run it and he had the spark plug wires on there and he could pull them off and see how much fire it was shooting out of and make sure he got them all even everything and people were coming in from Georgia and South Carolina and Virginia and North Carolina

they always told me this he said Tommy he said I want you to look these distributors coming in he said this one right here Ralph brought it in and it was like brand new no mud, no dirt on it, nothing. And he showed me some of the other guys bringing there in there covered mud, water

got inside him and all that. And he said, that's why Ralph wins all those races. He takes care of his stuff. His cell, but Ralph was a big part. Of course, Dale's life, he's a big part of my life too. How so? Well, it all started out with, and Dale

told me later on, he said, I hated you, Tommy. I said, what did you hate me for? You didn't even know me? He said, you remember when you went with Ralph to Columbia. I said, yeah. And I said, what had happened, Ralph was down to day's shop. They were over there. They were talking. I'd come home on a couple weeks to leave from the Ring Corps. And Ralph walked over there and he said, I hear you going to Vietnam in about a week. And I said, yes, going to Vietnam. He said, how would you like to go with me to Columbia the

Thursday night to the race? I said, yeah, I'd go anywhere with you, Ralph. And so when I got to go, that knocked Dale out of getting in being able to go down in the tow truck because it was Ralph there was a highway patrol and I don't remember his name and me in the tow trip and Dale didn't get to go so that's why he hated me so oh man so what was that experience like going with him to the race oh I thought a whirl around and what years later not too many years later when I got out of the Marine Corps my objective was to build a race car I got the picture of when I finally got built but daddy said well let's go up to ralph's let's see what he's got to see about it so we went up there and we went in in the house and sit down at martha's table ralph went over everything he told me

what kind of car frame to go get is a 54 for frame he'd like those for dirt he told me how to plate the side of it outside on both sides make it a lot stronger he told me about the castor and camber and all that stuff and the springs they use and what to do with that top A and bottom A arms to make them stronger and covered everything. So when I told Dad I was going to build that car, he said, who's going to drive it? I said, I'm going to drive it. And he said, I can't keep you from driving a race car, but I can keep you from using this shop to build it in.

So I was messed up then with there. There was a little shop above my daddy's there, no heat in it. It did have lights. I go down there, work at Daddy's shop, go home and eat, come back, dragged the welding lines out of Daddy's shop through the back door of that shop and sit there and weld a midnight every night. That brace that Ralph wanted me put on the car. And it finally got too much for me.

I finally had to give in because Daddy, I needed to be in that shop of his because all the equipment was in there and everything. And so I made him a promise I wouldn't do it. You wouldn't drive? I wouldn't drive. So you built the car? I built the car. And tell me I'd never seen Ralph or heard Ralph talk ever.

He died in 73. I born in 74. I never heard his voice, no sound of his voice, never heard the cadence in his speech. Didn't know, you know, how. I didn't know if he sounded like, did he? He sounded different, deeper. A little deeper, I would tell you, a little bit. But there was a race that he ran in Charlotte and Leeroy, Yarborough I won,

and they threw LeRoy out for his wheels. Yeah, his wheels were too wide. Yeah. And so they interviewed, Chris Oconomacky, interviewed Ralph. And that's the only audio of Ralph talking that I know that exists. And so I can hear him in that short little interview talk about them giving him the win. And but help me understand, like, you know, what it might have been like to be in the room with him. Well, I'd say he was a little intimidating guy because of who he was.

Was he really tall? No, he's probably about my height, I'd say. I had a scar on his face. So one day around 1996 or so, I'm at the farm shop, at the deerhead shop, and dad says, come here in office. And there's another guy with someone who was a guy who had to take, brought his tape to Daddy. Daddy had this tiny little TV with the tape machine in the bottom of the TV is all in one. He's like, let's watch his tape.

He sticks that tape in there and the race is playing. And I'm like, oh, that's cool. He's like, yeah, this is Ralph in a modified sportsman race at Charlotte in the 50s. I'm like, dang. And we're watching it, right? And I didn't know the interview's coming, right? I'm just watching this race going, man, it's pretty neat. Dad's watching it.

And so the race is over. They go, I mean, pretty shortly, pretty quickly, they're like, hey, leader's been thrown out. He had a big wheel. So, Leroy put a bigger wheel on his car, and the bigger wheel made the tire contact patch wider, or whatever reason, for whatever reason they threw him out. So they go interview. They're like, Chris McCormack is down there with Ralph Earnhardt. Get into his Ralph Earnhardt. It is Ralph Earnhardt opinion about this, and me and Daddy are like,

parked right up, but Daddy knew the interview was in this. I didn't. And I'm watching, I'm listening to Ralph for the first time in my life. Mike's heard this story a dozen times. And I couldn't believe I was actually able, I mean, I couldn't believe I was hearing his voice. I never heard his voice, ever. I couldn't believe it. And then I looked at Dad, and I'm watching Dad hear his voice for the first time in 20 years. And to look on his face, I'll never forget it. Yeah. That was a hell of That was a hell of a thing. There's a,

the article I give Mike there. One of them is a poem this guy wrote about Ralph. It's pretty good. And then there's a picture in there where Ralph directed car at Darlington. It's in there too, I think. It's in that one there.

This is cool. You want me to read the poem? I'll read it. You got it. It says, He is the king of an outlawed band with the fastest car in the land, a man with a bounty on his head.

There ain't been a race. He ain't led. He's been the winner of the weekly races. Concord, Charlotte, and other places. And if his car is running right, he will chalk up another wind tonight. So here's a promise from the popcorn man. Out won Ralph Earnhardt, if you can.

And if you can, the night you do, I will gladly write a poem for you. That same guy. Penny Brown. Yeah, they'd get him on the speaker. And before the race started, and he'd say, all right, here they come. They all lined up like Grandma's onions.

That's funny. I'll tell you his story, but I'll tell you the next time you do a play-by-player. They're all lined up like Grandma's Onion. Yeah. Next time he does an NBC play-by-play, that right there would be a rating. Do you get a visual? There's a picture in there with Ralph walking away from that wrecked car. I'm trying to find it.

You've got messed up. You gave Dale an old magazine or old program. Now he's going to sit there and read it. He can keep it if he wants to. You know, you're creating this relationship with Ralph. and what's dad doing? Like when you're over there at the Martha's and hanging out with Ralph,

what are you seeing out of dad as a young man? Well, I mean, he was like me. He's in the shop all the time if he could, you know? And he just... When he's in the shop, you're going over there, are you a young teenager? When you first started going over there? Like when you was wanting to build that car?

Well, I had enough guts to come up every one night and me and Kathy went on a date. Oh, now we're talking. It was one date. It was intimidating to go in and pick up a Ralph Earnhardt's daughter. No kidding. We just went ahead.

How old were you? Roughly. Is this how you met him? No. Okay, so you did already know. So I guess what I'm asking you is, is like, so when you're in your teens, right, and you're hanging around there.

What's Dad doing? What's he like as a teenager? Well, I can't say that when we really got to know each other, he was a teenager. I mean, he was probably 17, 18 years old, something like that. Right. Yeah, he was a year's too younger than me. Earnhardt's always been like this.

Ralph was like it, Dale was like it, but like at Dell at D.I, sometimes I go up there and go to see him and he wouldn't even speak to me. next time I go up there, he won't let me go. Yeah. He said, he wants me, he took me a ride on the helicopter. He said, we're going to go to Richard Childers on the helicopter.

And he said, I want you to go with me. I said, are you going to fly it? And he said, no, I got a pilot for that. I'm good. I'm going to. But, you know, and then Ralph was kind of like that. You know, most time he's friendly as he can be. And sometimes, you know, I guess he had something that's on his mind.

Yeah, that's pretty interesting. So, you know, Dad didn't finish. high school. Yeah. Quit. Eighth grade, I think he was 16 when he quit. So do you, was that, did you ever think about that? Like, do you finish school?

Yeah, barely. Barely. Barely. Right, well, we all barely finished. Yeah, barely. So, I mean, that was kind of a, I guess, I wonder how big a deal that was that dad dropped out. And I know Ralph didn't want him to.

Ralph told him that, you know, he wanted him to finish school and wished he had not. and dad said years later how disappointed he, you know, his Ralph was in him. Yeah. And he hated that he wished he could go back and change that. And you come in into their, you know, y'all's lives crossed past right as, you know, maybe a year or two after dad had quit school. And so dad was home all the time. As a guy, I mean, when you think about a 16-year-old quitting school,

sounds like to me he's on the wrong track. on the wrong path as a person, right? Was he on the wrong path? Was he in trouble? Was he frustrating Ralph or was he when he quit school? He was at that shop trying to bug Ralph under his nose, wanting to work on cars, trying to figure out how to get to the racetrack. What was going on in Dad's life?

Well, you know, back in that time period and earlier, it wasn't as big a deal that would be now if somebody quit in school. But him quitting school, he's one of the smartest men I ever known. I mean, you're talking about handling money and doing things on the race car and he could fix anything.

And he learned it like I did. We never did go to either one of us in a formal school for auto mechanics. I learned mine from my daddy. He'd learn his from his daddy. And that's just the way it was back in that day. and you know there's not much difference in quitting with a year to go and barely getting through i mean that's the way i was i just barely got through so you wanted to take so you mentioned

you took kathy out what uh Kathy's my my aunt my dad's sister um you how did you ask her out i think i got the number from somebody and just called a house and ask her and she knew she knew me a little bit and okay and she was dating David Oliver, but they'd gotten a fight or something quit dating a while. So I just asked her out. I didn't think she'd go. David, who she would eventually marry. Yeah, that's right.

So y'all go out. Yeah. And you went to eat, and that was that? Yeah, we went and got a hamburger. Where'd you eat? The water burger? Probably. I think the water burger, yeah.

So how did the date go? It went good. Well, I mean, we had a good time talking. Did you go on a second date? No. All right. She went back with David Alder and dropped me. There you go.

All right. You just scooped in. of that one bad fight took her out and then she went right back huh so you're in your early teens in early 20s and you build midgets and you're racing right or you got guys racing cars and stuff who are some of the drivers that are driving your car before dad ever climbed in your car who are these guys uh Tony thorough y'all did a thing on him we did yeah he was in our lost speedway yeah he drove your car yeah oh but damn that's cool Tony was a great, he was a great driver.

Now, he's not one to tear, I mean, he didn't tear up anything. He's not going to knock somebody out of the way or anything like that. I like those kind of drivers. Yeah, well, he, he was a good if you're the owner. He was a good driver. But Dale and I had gotten so close. I mean, he was down my day to shop a lot, and we helped each other a lot and talked a lot. and the first race, Dale had built a car and it was James Miller's car.

Okay. This is a picture of it right here. Yep. That's what he built. Yep. The Falcon, right? Well, what is that? Yes, a Ford Falcon.

Yep. Dad built this. He bit that himself. My dad built this car by himself. Where at? I think a lot of it was at Ralph's shop. Okay. So when we started talking about we were going to.

to go together. It's a good looking car. Dale said, he said, Tommy, I want to drive for you, but I don't want to leave that car. What do you mean, leave it? Well, it belonged to James Miller. Okay. Dale just built it. Okay.

But the car belonged to James Miller. Well, I said, Dale, I said, let's go talk to Ralph, and we talked to my daddy. And Ralph said, well, I want you boys to go together. He said, I think y'all make a good team. He said, let me talk to James Miller. So Ralph talked to James Miller. They'd come up with a price, and Ralph bought the car. And so I wrote a check to Ralph for that car.

I think you'll see Martha's name on the back of it too. But that's what I paid for that race car is $1,000. Man. She co-signed it? Oh, yeah, I see it's on the back. Yeah, it's on the back. Ralph and North. 1972.

Yep. Wow. So we brought the car. from Ralph's down to my shop and some of our friends of mine we all we got on that thing and sand it down and we painted it my colors white with a black top 87 on it that was my numbers and you know what car that is Mike remember the picture of Ralph and dad on the track at the same time oh yeah that's that car that's right I don't know man looking at the looking look at the last name Earnhardt on both those signatures I think Martha might have

signed for Ralph Yeah, that's actually a good point. They're very similar, aren't they? Yeah, I've got a picture here somewhere of the two cars together, Ralph, and now. I know what picture you're talking about on the back straightaway in Midterliana. Yeah. So the car that Miller owned and Dad built, you bought, you gave Miller, so Miller gets his grand. Now you get the car, you paint it.

Now, you and Daddy are a team. Yep. You're the owner, dad's a driver. Well, first thing I did with the car, now the car I had had a fuel cell. probably won't you had another car yeah I had the car that Tony Thoreau been driving all right what's what happened to it you sell it yeah years later we sold oh you so you hung on to it yeah Adele drove it see we we what I wanted what happened Tony what Tony say well you caught you talked Tony he didn't tell us he got dumped but dropped out of the way by the big E well I mean

I just called him and told him one one reason why Tony had run a shop and up in Canapolis. Still does. Yeah. Yeah. And a great guy. Don't give me wrong. I thought a world of him.

But Dale and I had gotten so close. He knew. Yeah, he knew. I told him. I said, we've gotten so close. We want to be together. And I said, you know, so I'll let him go. Yeah.

And so, and they were having some trouble at the racetrack, you know, beating and banging and everything. And Metrolina? And Contor. We rolled in a Metroline. Carolina that Friday night with that car painted up and Dale's name on it and a lot of the other guys said they wanted to meet with a promoter. Why? Well,

the stop all of wrecking, they see it. Okay. You know, they've been beating on us pretty bad. But when they seen Dale's name on that car and they said, well, Tommy, what do you think? I said, I think hell's coming to you. We're coming for you now. And we did. Yeah.

But that car there, first race of the season, okay, dusty is it concord they run in the afternoon because it's cold and they run it on sunday afternoon tony led the whole race adele was running about fifth or sixth well like normal racing and about three lapses ago they had a caution flag so i go out on track they let you when they bring the cars around on dirt and stop and clean the windshield and stuff like that and i told tony i said pat garrison

was going to be starting right behind him he was he was rough And I said, Tony, you don't have to get through one and two good. And if you get on that backstretched, you'll pull away from them and get away from them. Three laps to go. Well, it didn't happen that way. They come off a two and Garrison got in the back of them, turn them around. Well, he was doing this on the backstretching. They were turning around two or three times.

A dust flying there where everybody was throwing on brakes, and I've seen that yellow car coming. Dad. Wide open. He got out front, and they never threw the caution because Tony, spun around and kept going and the daddy won that first race after running fifth or sixth. Yeah, that was his first win. That was his very first win on dirt.

You were in that yellow car. Yeah, he was in that yellow car. It wasn't mine at the time. Right. I told my daddy, I said, that's who we need in a race car. Nice. And Dale and I had already become good friends. So we kept talking and got that taken care of.

But we took the girls out. My wife, his wife, Brenda. And sometimes we'd take them out to eat the steak. We took them to a concert one night. What concert? Conway Twitty. Oh, boy. Here's a kicker, though, Dale.

In like the early 70s. Have you ever seen the movie Deliverance? Yeah. We took them to see that. Oh, boy. And your mama had a fit. I bet. She was crying.

She said, what was happening, me and Dale had planned on the next morning getting up and go to San T. Cooper, we was going to go fishing a couple days. My uncle had a little trailer down there we was going to stay in. And she'd say, please, Dale, don't you and Tommy go down there? I'm afraid the same thing is going to happen to them. And I said, Brent, it ain't going to be like to have it. But she was upset about that.

But we, you know, we went and we got down there and Del said, what's that float over doing? I said, people's got a thing down there to catch catfish in. like a metal net thing he said pull over i won't pull it up i said dale these people down here shoot you mess with that oh that'd be all right he pulled that thing up and he's full of cat feet he dumped him in the boat and i said man you're going to get both of him well brenda's the thing was going to come true nobody ever seen it that's what i mean a little troublemaker yeah yeah he had a streak in it sounds like uncle robert g my mom's brother and jimmy had both worked here at a time but when we

sit down and talk to Uncle Robert. Uncle Robert says Dale Earnhardt hung the moon. Everywhere of Del Earnhardt went, the sun was shining. Everything Del Earnhardt did was amazing and great. When you hear Uncle Jimmy, who was at the same racetrack,

right with both of them, when you sit down with Uncle Jimmy and say, well, you tell us about Del Earnhardt and he says, well, you know, in the middle of the night, he was sneaking into the junkyard, stealing parts. You know what I mean? I never heard that. He'll tell you a whole different story.

Yeah. Right. A different side of that, right? And some people look at dad and, and, and think, man, the greatest, you know, the best, that did everything he touched, you know. And then some people are more like, you know, he was a human being, flawed, imperfect. Still amazing, right? Still great.

But he was raw, right? He was raw and imperfect. That's pretty interesting imagining him doing ordinary. things, right? Back before he was a celebrity to anyone taking his wife to dinner with his buddy, right? Or

going fishing and doing something silly, right? Those are the stories that I know all the things he did in a race car, you know, in the 80s and 90s. I lived a lot of it, but I don't know who he was in the 70s before I was born or after I was born. So that's some pretty amazing insight.

Well, it hadn't been for the Wydenhouses, Dink Whitenhouse, and his brothers. Probably the only person in the living that built a race car and had no money. None. Who? Me. You?

Me. Because the White Houses welding out there on the highway, they let me, they give me the bars, I put the roll bars in it in the middle of the plate of flame, and they were a big help to me. And see, down my daddy's shop, it's kind of probably like Ralph's shop, a lot of people coming in, race car drivers, Dink Weidenhouse drove the daddy. Bank Simpson drove for Daddy. And Daddy and Bank Simpson, they run the dirt course down at Daytona, down the beach.

I've got a picture of that in here too. But the White House has played a big part in Dale's life and mine. And sometime we need to get with Dink, talk to him, and we need to go over to his shop across the road from Metroline, Dean's got a plane parked there. Dink and Ralph flew to a lot of races together on that plane. And somebody asked Dink one time and said,

how do you plot your way down there? And he said, we just followed the highway down Myrtle Beach or Columbia or somewhere. And one night we were over there at the Metro Lina, Dale, me and was over at the car and Dink come up. And he said, come on, Dale, I'm going to take you ride in the plane. So my heart started beating. I said, don't get my

driver hurt tonight on race like that. They went up in an airplane and come back down and everything. And say the wonderful thing about this time period we were in, there's a little restaurant up in Brown Mill. It's up above my daddy's shop up there. And the guy loved racing. So here's what he said.

Went on Friday night, eat free to the next week at lunchtime. Went on Saturday night, you eat free. So a lot of times we'd win Friday and Saturday night, so that means they'll eat free? I eat free. And I don't know how many free meals we got them up there, we won a lot of races. We won 65 races together.

Years down the road, Dale, I'd walk up and he'd be talking to somebody. He said, Tom, tell me how many races we won together. I said, 65, it was always 65. I got a little quiz for you, okay? Which Earnhardt, by the number of races they started and the number of wins, which earned hard you'd you think that was?

Which one had the most wins? According to the starts. I don't know. Matthew, I asked that question. it right off. I mean, between Dad and Ralph? No.

Earnhardt. I don't know. Oh, you're talking about any Earnhardt. Any Earnhardt. You're talking about winning percentage in terms of

how many starts they had. Kathy. Yeah. Kathy. Yeah, well, they had a powder of price. Yeah. And Dale said,

what do you think about Kathy driving? And I said, well, my car, but it's your ride, you pick it. And she got out there, and I'm watching it on a stopwatch.

She's runs fast that men were. She just was born in a different time period She'd probably been a Grand National driver right now She could put it on But I've got the newspaper clipping And one of those things I'm going to give you rent

It's in there At that time she'd run six times And won six times Dang I got embarrassed up there one time I was running the micro midges And daddy said He had something he wanted to send up her to Ralph

He said how about We were going up to Salisbury up there To run that dirt track the midgets. And I had one in the back of my truck I had, and I built a little trailer to pull another on. My friend had one, so we went together like that. And the tongue was real short, and they're hard to back.

So I pulled in there, you know, up at Martha's house, and pulled down in there and took that stuff into Ralph and everything. He was appreciated that. Cut back the damn thing up. Every time I'd move backwards, it'd go to the side. Right. So I had to go back inside and get Ralph. my hero to come get me out of trouble so he did he got me out of there I don't know

Ralph I always wanted to help Ralph because he did so much for me coming up with telling me what to do and everything like that and Dale was driving for me then so we were at Metrolina racetrack one one Friday night and Ralph come over and he said that he felt we all run quick changes and they had cover for the back and two big barons in there and that's what you took off to change the gears. And he felt it getting tight. And he said he walked all the way down through the pits. He knew a lot of guys had extra rear-in covers.

And they wouldn't let him borrow them. Because they figured they had a better chance to win and if Ralph didn't run. So Ralph come over and ask me if I had one. I said, no. I said, let me think a minute. I said, I got it. Dale and our race was first, 25, 30 laps.

and then Ralph and them run the second race. I said, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to pull the trailer out into the pits there. I'm going to go ahead and hook it to the truck. Dale didn't know this was going on. He was already in the car and out on the racetrack, getting ready to start. And I said, as soon as the race over, I'm going to have Dale drive up on the trailer. Me and Randy's going to get under the car, take that cover off.

We're going to run over there and put it on your car, fill up with grease, and you're ready to go. He said, out of work. Well, we did that. And, of course, Dale, when he come in, he didn't know why I was making him drive up on the trailer. I said, I ain't got time to tell you. But when that race was over, the fans come out of the grandstands. You couldn't breathe around our two cars because they couldn't figure out what in the world. They took off a semi-modified car and put it on a row of sportsman car.

We both won races. And they were thinking they must have some kind of new gadgets or something. They didn't have a one-on. They had a switch on. It was just a simple rear-in cover. but that made me feel better that finally helped Ralph with something. Pretty incredible.

These are going to sound like dumb questions, but what we know of Ralph seems to be, we know he was relatively quiet, he's hardworking. All we really know is the context through racing. Do you have any insights? Like he asked about what he sounded like. I'm curious, did he have a sense of humor?

Did you guys ever have conversations that weren't about racing? And if so, what? Like, what was Ralph like when he wasn't completely zoned in on race cars well ralph you know was doing this for a living he was zoned in all the time i mean he and i was up there one day and he was building an engine for another competitor and he said tommy i'm putting better stuff in this engine that i used myself he said i'm really making something

they're going they could outrun me with but of course you know being him a better driver too and he took some drivers you ever heard a haywood plow oh yeah ralph took him under his wings and Haywood come back later. I can tell you this little story about Haywood. You want me to tell you about here? Yeah, yeah. Well, the Chevally Nova I built, and you did. He had one, two.

We were going to run Charlotte Motor Speedway, the Saturday race. Well, the way before, they kind of had an open house and let you run your car a little bit if you wanted to. Well, the guy had driving, I'm not going to mention his name, but he just didn't go for Super Speedway racing. So I told Del, I said, what am I going to do? who you think I were putting the car. He said, I'll put Haywood in there. I said, Heywood ain't ever been on an asphalt track or nothing. It's surely not a speedway.

He said, oh, he'll adjust to it. And Haywood had won this race at Concord, Dirt, and it went over to that Saturday race. He won that race, so if we were qualified within 15 miles an hour at the pole setter, we'd be in the race. So we went over there, and Haywood got him buckled in everything, and went out of practice. Well, you know, when you go out on the Super Speedway,

you've got to blend in. He just went out and went right up on a racetrack. And the NASCAR blackfaded him. I was on one side of the wind of our list, and they eat him out. He was like this, you know. It didn't bother him a bit. He didn't care.

But we run that race, and he did have some problems that day with his car. He broke a Coal Spring. I've never seen that happen before. But they had to change the Coal Spring, so he lost two or three laps. But old Haywood, he, he come in one time before a pit stop and he said tommy this thing is pushing and

i said yeah i know the right front tire's about flat so we and he finished 13th that's good we want some money and felt good about it yeah i got all that done i kind of laughed they took our fuel cells we had to take it apart and put them back together and they fill up a gas well mine held a half a gallon a gallon too much they give you a board they'd wrap with rags and you put it on top of the fuel cell that reduced amount of gas could be in there. Well, Darrell Walter was parked in the garage area. It took about three weeks to run that race, but it kept raining. And so we were over there. We were in the main garage area then because the cup cars had already raced, their race. And Darrell was right beside us there, and he come down through the piss. I was sitting on the trunk

of the car there in the garage area, and him and two of his mechanics come down there, and they raised the trunk up and started taking the fuel cell apart. And they got in there and they took that board out and thrown the trash can. They were in NASCAR Fish were down the way there a little bit. And I said, well, I wonder what they're going to do because they run a cable through there, their bolts with holes in them, and it had a stamp. They had the cable in the stamps. But nobody said anything about it.

And I didn't say anything, well, what difference would make? You know what a little bit of gas ain't going to make no difference. But we had a good time over there. We lost a race over here. He'd lit it and lit it and lit it. But the problem was, and your daddy was, I know they called him Timberlady and all, but if he believed in you, he ain't going to back out on you. And what had happened when we were running a hickory and asphalt track,

we was all running Firestone Tires. So we got over at a Super Speedway, and this is Dale's Lenova. Dale, most of all the guys were going to Goodyear Tires. Well, nuts of daddy said, no, we're going to run Firestone Tires, is his car, be loyal to them. But the problem was the Firestone tires were flying, but they wouldn't last as long as a good year, so we had to make extra pit stop.

But he led a lot of that race at Charlotte. Yeah. And we messed him up again at Martinville, Virginia, and then when it had the modifies and the sportsman. Well, he did lead and led to sportsmen. We made our pit stop and everything. He were like two laps ago. He had about a half a straightaway lead and run out of gas.

I wasn't educated enough and I don't think nobody on the crew was you know, probably know of all of them guys. We didn't know how to figure of gas mileage. But Dale told me later, once he got back on him, he thinks we had enough gas, but the pickup didn't pick it up in the fuel cell. But he should have won that race too.

That car was the car that one best appearing that day. Yeah, yeah, sure did. Sure did. Yeah. Later on, after, after, after when Ralph died. Yeah. That was a hard time for both of us.

I mean, Ralph had had a heart attack, and he got sticky out to drive the car for him. Hold up. Ralph had had a heart attack before his death. I'd never heard that. Yeah, he had had a heart attack, and he got sticky out of the drive. When did he have his first heart attack?

He died in 73. I know. It was early in 73. So he had a heart attack. attack right before the fatal heart attack. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. But, you know, he got Stick to drive the car.

It's amazing, incredible, really, to learn about him having that heart attack before he eventually passed. So how, what would the physical effects of that first heart attack to Ralph? If he's letting Stick drive the car. Yeah, he, he didn't drive him more after that first heart attack, no. What was the, what was going on was, was Ralph, was, was, was. Was Ralph physically impaired in any way from the first heart attack? I don't think so because he, you know, he still worked on a race car.

He seemed normal. He still working, still out there doing work. Yeah, and I say on Saturday night, we run a race at Concord, and we'd all go to Mothas. I mean, me and. After the race. Our wives. After? After the race is over.

We go to Mothas. Anything you could make a sandwich out of she had on the kitchen table in there. And, of course, we sit down there and we rerun the race. If we did something wrong, Ralph would tell us about it, you know. Until we hours of the morning? Yeah, I don't know. You stay as long as you wanted to. We were running Firestone rain tires on dirt.

They cost a lot more money than a recap tire at Tau City up here. So everybody complained, you know, and they took a boat on it, and we had to go back to the recap tire. We got off. We started messing with the car and trying different things. And Ralph got on us one night. he was talking to bobo he said you boys go back to where that car was set up from beginning and learn how to drive it and we got back to win it again yeah but and see our deal was

I had no money so what the race car won paid for the next thing paid for the stage and your daddy he didn't have no money well he he made his money driving the race car he got 40% yeah but he still was broke um well he was always all he was all broke in that time period. So broke, they didn't know they were broke, I guess. So getting back to Ralph in 1973, what was, what did you notice in Dad when Ralph was going through this issue, these health problems?

And eventually when Ralph passed away, like, what did you? The day was having a hard time with it. Well, tell me about that. Well, I mean, when you're, like Ralph is his idol. and taught him everything he knew. And then all of a sudden that man's gone or sick, hurt him. It's hard on you. I don't care how old you are or whatever.

I'm sure when your dad passed, it hurts you bad too. And that's the way Dale was. You know, it hurt us all because he was such a good guy, friend to us. I don't know. It was a hard time for you. Yeah. For Dale when Ralph passed away. So four days before Ralph passed away, Dad,

won a semi-mod race in your car. Probably. Two days after Ralph passed, Dad raced that falcon in a sportsman, raced a falcon in the sportsman division at Metrolina. Okay, let me tell you about that.

We had made up our minds for the next year we were going to move up. Okay. We had already bought a Camaro body. That's what Ralph was running at the time of Camaro. And we were going to build a sports car, B8 engine and all that.

So I told Dale, I said, what I'd like to do, we're going to build a new car, but we don't have time to build two new cars. I always like to have two cars. But I said, I want to take this semi-modified car and run the six-cylinder engine, but they had a 300. But a lot of people couldn't keep them together. And it was illegal to run them in our division. We had never tried that.

So Daddy built one. 300 and we went to Metro line to run against the late model sportsman see what we could do with them god devil's running up there with them and it blew all the pieces it it blew up and uh and then you know um we never did build a sportsman car together so i guess i'm wondering the i'm wondering like how that what was the conversations like that you know dad ralph passes away and and and you know, dad's probably, dad's whole world's turned upside down, but then did you ever say to dad,

like she would not, you know, she would take a couple weeks off here or? Well, he talked about it, and he said he didn't think his dad didn't want us to do that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we could quit for the rest of the season if he wanted to,

but he didn't. He thought, you know, his dad would want him to continue on, you know, so. What happened to all the stuff that was in Ralph's shot? When Ralph passed away, literally Ralph's not there anymore. He's gone. Everything in a shop out there is just as he left it.

Just the last time he walked out of the door. Yeah. Right. And dad, did dad just go right in there and just start going to work and start, what happened to Ralph's cars? What did dad do with them? Where did they go? Did dad race them?

Well, here's what we had, both of us had talked about. Ralph told us, he said, boy, it's the only way y'all going to do anything and make him money and get a future in this sport, you need to start running asphalt. Really? Yeah. So that's funny you say that because dad, I thought dad mentioned that Ralph wasn't a big fan of dad running asphalt. He thought he wanted dad to run dirt.

But I've heard this a couple times now in the last couple of years since we did in Lost Speedways and talking to all these guys, that Ralph actually steered dad to asphalt or said if you know you're really going to get anywhere you're going to go further that's the only way to do it our goal was Winston Cup racing really even then well George Mantooth see George Mantooth he was a race car driver years ago he drove from a daddy son they won some races together but back in when they were racing Bruton smith was promoting a lot of races around here on dirt yeah and they got to know him there and I know we'd go to Bruton smith out there on South Union Street and pick up a check for the weekend racing.

So George, somehow another, got me an appointment with Bruton Smith over at one of his dealerships in Charlotte. So I went over there. I was a little bit intimidated, you know. I went over there and I told him about what Dale and I'd been doing. He said, yeah, I've seen the papers, you know, y'all doing good. I said, well, we would like to go sports from racing and run for the championship. championship. And he thought about it a little bit. And he said, I'll tell you what, Tommy.

He said, I don't want to deal with the sportsman division. He said, if you and Dale want to run Winston Cup, I could help you. And I said, I just can't do it right now. I don't have the facilities to do it. If you're going to do that, you've got to have a bigger shop, blah, blah, and all this kind of stuff. So we just left it to that. Yeah. But, yeah, Ralph, I'm thinking, he was encouraging us to go to asphalt. And about that time, Ned Jarrett took over Metroline and paid it. That kind of messed us up a little bit. I started when Dale decided that he needed to go and run his daddy's cars.

So when Ralph passed away, Dad just assumed all that property. Yeah. Well, he told me, he said, I want to try to win some money to help my mother out too. So he called me one day. he said, Tommy, get your butt up here. I said, what for? I said, I got something to show you. I said, what it is? I ain't telling you get your butt up here. So I took off

to Canapolis, and I walked in the door, and I thought, my God, it's going to finally happen. There said, Harry Gantz, 64 Shavelle. And what had happened is, Danny Maid's food, I don't know if you've ever, they sponsored us and sponsored Dale. It was Dale's sponsor, so when he left, I didn't have it anymore, but that's That's just the way it's supposed to be.

So, they had that car. They bought that car. And they formed a corporation. It was Randy, Danny, Dale, and Great London. Yep. Okay. Earnhardt Racing. Yep.

That was the deal. So he had his option. He could run the dirt car that Ralph had, or he could run the asphalt car. That's the picture of the car right there. So you can keep that. So dad sold Ralph's. So dad sold Ralph's dirt stuff?

No, he still runs some. So he has Rouseville Camaro, and he's got this little asphalt car. So he's doing a little bit of both. We got a end of one not at Concord. He went to Hickory to run and rained a race out. He come back to the garage, unloaded that car, put the dirt car on her, and come to dirt. Well, we were both running sportsmen, and a guy named David Perry was driving for it. He was out of South Carolina.

And Del got into us and wrecked us. And so I didn't get mad, a little bit of mad. But I told Del after we pulled out there in the infield there, both guards on the trailer. And I said, Dale, we cannot do this. We cannot wreck each other. We cannot come pay you back because we need to finish races. We both need to make money. You know, if you're dead last, you're going to get no money.

because if you're wrecked. I said, it's all right if you come up behind us and bump us and move us over and pass us, but we're not going to start to just wrecking each other. He said, I agree with you. And I said, guess what? Those shit, you can help me fix his car next week. And he did.

Yeah. He did. But I don't know. We remain friends forever. You know, I mean, this is kind of a funny story, too. There's a couple of them I want to tell you. But these guys that come with me there, I call them my bodyguards. But they come in my day to shopper once Saturday morning,

and I'd run the car down in Monroe at that dirt track. I hadn't gone to asphalt yet. I'm working on it. I hadn't gone there yet. And they said, did you hear what happened to Dale last night in Metro Lina? I said, no, did he get hurt? And he said, no, he blew his engine. And he said, there's a national championship race at Hickory night,

and he ain't going to have no engine. I said, he'll be down here a little bit. Don't worry about it. So sure enough, here he'd come pulling down in his truck. And anything him wanting to do, we'd like to do it. Nobody around. And we're going to talk. So he said, Tommy, how about taking a ride with me?

I said, okay. He said, you hear what happened last night? I said, yeah. He said, could I borrow Smokey? I said, yeah, yeah. What's that? I had two engines. The good engine was in the race car, but we had a backup engine, we call it.

You know, it was, Daddy put it together. It's a good engine. but reading McCullough was smoking once in a while when you left the gas it smoked a little bit not bad so I said back in the truck and let's load the thing up so it loaded up he goes to hickory I go up there I want to see my motor run he sits on the pole he leaves the most laps until right there at the very end and Glenn Jerry got by him and won the race and they'll run second well he come down in the pitch you know and I walk up the wind and I said well you had a good night you sat on a pole you come in second you won yourself some money and he said, God damn it, Tommy, if a damn motor had any power, I'd have won a race. You know, a lot of people got mad. I just busted out laughing.

I knew he was going to say it. Yeah. He gave me that look. You've seen that look he had. And so, you know, he just laughed about it and went on. I don't know how long we, I don't know if I ever got the motor back.

I probably did, but we just, even after he left me, I mean, I understood why he lived. We just stayed best friends. I know that because there's a picture of dad at the day, The first time he ever went to Daytona, he took his sportsman car up there. I was tired.

You're in the, yeah, you're in the pits. So I want to know about that weekend. So did you go with dad or all for the entire trip or would you just come in for race day? What was the story there? I think I went down on Thursday, I think. The race is Saturday. Yeah. So you used down there, where were y'all staying?

Do you remember where you just piled into a hotel room? Yeah, we had some hotel rooms. Was you, all right? I think them guys out there with me that went down there with me too. Really? Yeah, I got a story about some crickets. You remind me about that. I will.

Anyway, I ain't saying Dale got his butt chewed out, but Bobby Allison had words with him. When? Well, when they're out there practicing, you know, Bobby's going to run out of the video. At Daytona. At Daytona. He said, you know, Dale would go to the outside, down to the bottom. And he said, Dale, you get in my car loose. And if I spin out, I may take you with me.

So, you know, you've got to be careful when you make those kind of. of moves on this super speedway. Nothing bad, you know, he's just helping him along, you know. But, yeah, he run good down there. He looked like his eyes were this big when he'd come in after practice. I mean, that was just never been on a super speedway before. But he fell right in there with it, you know, I mean. So that car, the race finished, I think you run 13th.

Some water got into the fuel and the car was funky running funny at the end and he lost a lap or something. but running the top 10 the whole race. I think me and Norman agree with the tire changers. I lost a lot of sleep a month before going down there because I would work at my daddy's shop until six. I get off, I go by the Waterburger, get me in Delaware Waterburger, and we'd work at midnight on that particular car,

getting it ready to go to Daytona. He made me, he said, I want you to wire it. He said, I know you'll do a good job. We'd never run an alternator before. We had to put an alternator on there before. for the 250 miles. So we had to wire that up and do a lot of different things.

But your daddy could build a race car. I mean, he could build an engine. He'd be able to engine when he borrowed my money. He just didn't have time. You know, he didn't have a few hours, but he could do anything. Welder.

So he had a job of a Great Dane trucking. And sometimes he didn't go in but he couldn't do anything because he got in the thing and welded inside of it. You know, they cleaned it out, but what if there's a bubble in there could blow the whole thing up

and what? Many people go in there. there but he'd go in there he was scared to go in there crazy man there was a time when y'all went to south carolina i think you were paid to beat some guy or you were going there to beat some guy do you know the story yeah i know a story but how did it go a guy called me one day it's a promoter in south carolina and he said he'd give us a hundred dollars plus what we won if we'd come down he said he had a guy winning all the races and the crowd was getting mad and they wanted to see some competition would you come down there?

I said, me and Del talked about it, and I said, we had the Metro line locked in as far as the points. And I thought, well, Dale, this may get your name out there, my name out there a little bit more to be, you know, go somewhere different with Jane. So we take off down there, and I tell Del, I said, okay, here's the rules. No money, we don't take it off the trailer.

He said, I agree. No money, meaning if the promoter don't give you money, you ain't unloading. Well, and I said, if you had to hit on the guy to pass him, all right, don't wreck him. They ain't nobody there, but me and you from in this South Carolina, they may kill us down here. So anyway, we go down there, nobody can find a promoter. I'm hard-headed. I ain't racing.

That's right. So we come back home. God calls me about money and he apologized. I said, I don't want to apologize. I said, what would it take for you to come back down here? I said, here's what it would take. I'll own my $100 first. and I want two or three or $300,

and I don't want to wait until I get down or you got to drive up here, hand me the money, and I ain't taking no damn check. It's got to be cash money, and he did. So we go down there, and Dale and that other boy, I don't know who the guy was now.

They put on a heck for a race. They'll be leading. I got to bump him a little bit and move him up, and then they'll do the same thing. But that's the last time we were going down there. A guy wouldn't give us no more money, so we can come. But, you know, three or four hundred,

dollars is good plus what we won. Yeah. Did he pay for your hotel? Because there was also a story, and I don't know if it's the same story, I don't know, you guys got to the hotel. No, you're talking about Wilson, North Carolina. Two different, two different times. I'll tell you about Wilson.

Dale comes in the shop one day. I got a 64 Chauvel. We've been running on asphalt. Just painted a body, and it was going to be the backup car, and I was building a new Nova. And Dale said, is that 64 Chavail ready to go? I said, yes, ready to go.

He said, let's go to Wilson, North Carolina. They got a big race going on down there. He said, let's go down and win. I said, let's go win a race. They hadn't drove from me for a while. So he said, all right, we're going to leave at 2 o'clock in the morning, and we're going to get Randy to go with us.

And so me and Randy got down there at 2 o'clock. They'll pull in. We put it on Ralph's old trailer and truck because it had brakes on it. My trailer didn't have no brakes on it. So we take off. I thought, my God, it's in North Carolina, but I mean we had to drive all night.

I didn't know Will's. Wilson is far away. Oh God, Jen, I didn't know it. I had a $100 bill in my pocket where to live. And by the time we got there, filling up the truck with gas, filled a car with gas, I got about $5 live. Right. So we get down there and promoters said, well, we got entry fee.

I said, Dale, get over and talk to this, man. Dale's a good talker. Oh, yeah? He talked you out of anything. And when he got through, I said, Del, we got to have a hotel room, too. So Del got your entry fee paid by the promoter. motor and got a free hotel room for that night. So we got out there and we practiced and we qualified good.

And Dale said, well, let's go to hotel. So, you know, it was one in the all rooms are on the outside. So Dale said, we're going back to trailer and race car right up against the door. And that way if somebody starts mess with it, we'll know about it. And hell, we hadn't eat nothing all day, packed crackers. And I said, what are we going to eat at? He said, well, there's a steakhouse there at the bottom of the hill. let's go down there.

So me and him and Randy went down there and we had a big old steak and beer and everything. I get to wondering, how am I going to get out there? I ain't got no money. I had no money. And I knew Randy,

he never had no money. But Del had money. He bought all the steaks and everything. Well, Del said, we're going to sleep with the door open the night. Race car is right there. So he had a pistol and he laid it between the two beds

on the nightstand there. Holy smokes. Well, Gary, Harry Gantt was telling us. the next morning, him and his butts come by and seen the door open, they come in there that's going to mess with us a little bit. And they happened to see that pistol down and they

said, get the hell out of them boys is crazy. Pistol. Who was packing? Dale had that pistol. Dale had the pistol. We didn't have to shoot nobody. He was sleeping with the pistol with the door open in case somebody mess with the risk car.

Yeah, yeah. Boy, y'all had a reputation then. Well, we run the race. The first couple laps, they had a wreck, and we got into it and tore the whole side of it. And they were coming to Pist. He said, well, you're going to put it on the trailer? I said, hell, no, we've got to finish the race.

We've got to have money to get home on. Because he didn't have no money by then. So when it was all said and done, I don't think they knew Harry Gant was there, Chuck Piazza was there, big names. I don't think they knew who won the race. This is a mess. And the guy gave me $150 and I got out there. So I said, that would get us home.

So we stopped the way home, got us to the hamburger and everything, come on home. But the old side of the car was tore up and everything. but that's funny you say Chuck Piazza because Chuck Piazza was in our Lost Speedway season and he tells a gun story and he one of my favorite parts of Lost Speedways is where he's talking about you know stick Elliott and all this stuff but he I think stick Elliott got shot at during a race or at least that's what Stick Elliott story was but my point on this is that I guess in Carolinas they'd pack some heat boy you don't know if it's the fans or the owners or whatever but didn't what there was a line that the piazza said is that yeah had the whole toolbox there was

guns in the toolbox and they said don't you worry about what's under there you just focus on driving the car we'll handle the rest of it well stick you know run a lot in south carliana it's kind of rough down there but here's what happened with stick when he was driving for a row we got to know him real good idea his girlfriend as soon as the race is over before he got a car would come into the pit area with a towel okay okay but what was in that That tail was a pistol. Sure. And she would give it to him through the car window.

And I want to tell you. Just in case he needed one. You never know. Yeah. I told you daddy one day. Dale I said, come on and take a ride with him. We're going to go over at Dinkwidenhouse's shop. He said, what are we going over there for?

I said, I'm hunting a carburetor. The rule book said two barrel carburetor. Well, I always, even if we're winning races, I want to try to be a little bit better. better, you know, because you can get behind in a hurry. And I told Dale, I said, you know, there's nothing else we can do for the engine, but we could do something with the carburetor. So we went over there to Dink's, and Dink said, yeah, look out there, all you want.

These are trucks, you know. I found a carburetor, so helped me, it was this high. And it had a flat plate on the front there with a bolt holes in it. And I took my measuring stuff. It was a lot bigger than the Ventura than what we've been running. we had tried you know holly two barrel god even the day daddy did one and some of the guys they were cutting a a holly race carburetor apart and running off just the front two barrels on it because they were bigger than another so we got that I measured it quite a bit bigger than what we had and take it back to the shop

they didn't give me two of them and give me the garber kids that take all you need so we got back to the shop and daddy he was looking at and he said I mean I think this is of work. Well, we went over to Speedway a little bit. Shawlermuda Speedway and Daddy kept up the vehicles over there so we just took it out there on the racetrack and I said, Dale, I'm driving it. Well,

we were running down, you know, and then turn around and come back pit road. Dale's over and hanging on to the roadbar and he's scared. You know, I'm whining that thing up here. So I told Dale, I said it feels good here, but we're going to take it to the fairgrounds Friday night. We'll warm

up with it. We'll take it off. and we'll put our other car back on there, and we'll try it back and forward like that. So he went out there and he run the qualifying race, and he said, Tommy, this thing is flying. I'm serious. Let me drive it in the feature. I was all right, we can't do nothing but learn the motor of you,

because we didn't. I didn't want to raise the hood. I don't want anybody to see it. Well, I was looking under the hood and see if we had any leaks or anything. Well, Ralph come over, and he got down, looked down there and he said, what the hell is that? He said, it looks like a fuel injector. I said, no, it's a two-barrow carburetor to get them across the street.

Well, we run it in the feature, won it. And we started running it ever since. Put one on both cars. And then they went to a four-barrow, and we put two of them on an engine. And they finally protested it. Well, I couldn't hardly breathe there's so many people around the car. I had to take the carburetor off.

I didn't read the whole rule book. But the rule book said, two-barrel carburetors still in production. I knew as a two-barrel carburetor, but I ain't sure about that production. Well, they had to put up $70 or something. There's ads in, I mean, papers in here about it. And so the promoter held up to money,

took the carburetor. He called, I think it was a Holly carburetor, truck carburetor. He called them, and they said, how many you want? We still in production. We'll say all you want. So we were clear. We got our money. And plus the money they put up

for tearing it down. That's right. But guys were crowded around me there. That one guy said, God, that's the biggest thing I've ever seen. It looks like a big old blower on top of that engine. They're just going nuts with it. That's the part I loved about raising.

Trying something different, stirrups and stuff, you know. We just had a good time back in the day. Yeah. So you're a round dad in his first cup start at 1975 at Charlotte, the World 600. What do you remember about qualifying that day? I can't tell it all. Why not?

Just won't. I'll tell you later. All right. Yeah. Dale had a way with my daddy. He could talk about him and anything. He called Daddy and said, James, we really need Tommy over here for a couple days

because it wasn't nobody but Norman being a mechanic and, you know, Dale was in the car and everything. So, Dad let me off work. Went over there and help him get the car ready to race and everything. Me and Norman was going to change the tire. and everything. That's a big deal with us. You never ran an electric car.

Massive. I thought I was somebody there for a while. But how'd qualify in go? We made the race. Yeah. Made the race. I'm curious on what he's not saying. Yeah, me too.

I guess there is a cheating. Your buddies are back there talking about it too, and I want to put a mic on them because they're sitting there doing their hand gestures. Statue of limitations. Look at it. There's everybody. I feel like everybody in the room knows what's going on except us, Dale.

Should I get even tell it? Yeah. They're saying, yeah. You should tell them. What happened? We had to have a bottle. A nitrous? Dad had nitrous.

Oh, boy. And I said, Dale, where is the bottle? He said, damn it, Tommy, I'm sitting on the bottle. And he says, you see that pop river behind the air filter? That's where it's coming out at. Damn. As soon as you're qualifying, though, we got it. hell out there.

Yeah. That's a big mistake. I wish I'd have known that. I hope nobody watches his show now. Well, I mean, everybody, I mean, you know, there's a lot of Nightsers back then. In race cars, you know. But that's funny. It is funny. So, well, the funny part is because around 1995 or six, I was working on my late-money car,

and I'm out in this, I'm kind of in this, in this show. I'm working on my car in a warehouse. Dad put all his parts and stuff in from his Xfinity team. I think Jeff Green was a driver at the time. But I'm out there working on my car, and I'm right next to the paint booth. There's a phone, and I don't know how in the hell I figured this out, but I got a hold of somebody that sold nitrous.

And I was on the phone with this guy, asking him about it, and dad walked up on me. I didn't know he was standing there, and I'm on the phone talking to this guy and I got off the phone and I turned and there's Daddy and he's like if you ever put nitrous on or if you ever

put nitrous on your late mall car you won't be going to the racetrack with it he's like I'm he's like that's my race car and you ain't put nitrous on it that was his way of saying that you're not going to do that and he talked so he talked like a guy who had never used nitrous

if I had known well damn did he Changes everything. He's a little nitrous ragging today. Right. I want to tell you this story, too, before we run out of time. Well, you ain't going to run out of time. Dale called me one day, and he said,

got that race in Ontario, California next week. This is 1980. I wanted to ask you about this. So in 1980, Dad's going to Ontario, and he and Calyarbor are like five points apart for the championship, potentially and eventually dad's first championship. He's only been in Cup for a year and a half, two years. This is the second full season.

He called me and he said, Tommy, I'm going to go win that championship. Damn. And he said, you were there from the beginning. I want you there with me. And so he got me, Randy, and Danny. We all got on a commercial plane in Charlotte, and we flew to California. So he got us a couple of rooms there and everything. we rented a car and he said

damn Tommy what this thing will do in race I said race he said yeah let's try we were running about 60 miles there and he put it in race R for reverse that old car that old car was shaking like then then we started flying backwards

so I said put her back in D what it'll do in race here's what he did here's what he did before we left that's so funny he called my wife Throw her and race.

Am I still? See what she can do. Here's what he did. He called my daddy, got me out of work for that week. He called my wife, and he said, Rina, I need to know Tommy's shirt size and his jeans size. And get him a tie and send it with him to California. I'm thinking, I hate a tie. I don't like nothing tie on my neck.

But anyway, she got me a tie. And we got to California. Dale, I think it was five or six pair of jeans. He just got the Wrangler sponsorships. That many shirts, a belt. I still got the big old belk that says Wrangler on it. And so one night he said, all right, boys, get your ties on. We're going to go out to eat a steak.

I said, Dale, where's your tie? He said, oh, hell, I've been here before. I don't need no tie. Y'all got to wear one to get in. So we get to the door, you know, we got my ran new tie on. Here comes this lady up, and she's got a pair of suit. was about that long. She cuts my tie off right here.

It cuts ranies and dany. And she said, look at the ceiling. Now there's hundreds of them. And that was a trick. He got us on there. That's pretty funny. Yeah. We had a good time there.

Here's the only thing that scared of me about that trip. They had a motor in the car. They practiced with it. And right before qualifying, they dumped the water out of it, you know, and filled up with cool water and they qualified. Well, they put the race engine in there, and Dale said,

this engine ain't got as much power as a qualifying engine. I want them switched back. My thinking is, you know, when you cool the engine off, did something crack. And he did get a lap down during the race. I forget what happened. Loose wheel. But he made it back up. And boy, when that thing was over, he took us up in the press box upstairs where they had all that going on.

I mean. For the championship. I thought I was somebody again, you know, because he won that championship. Second year he run. Yeah. And he won a race in the first. year that's hard to do too but and then on it he said we're going to fly back to uh we're going to fly back to uh we're going to fly to uh los vegas spending night there well i've never been there and ain't

none of been here and the room they put del in and danny was with dell and randy was with me it was a room like frank sinatra would be in big room uh big old bed and mirrors you know and all this bar in there and all that and he did give us all a little bit of money i brought my money back I wasn't going to gamble it, but I'd lose anyway. I'm all going to just keep it. But we stayed there about one or two nights and come on home. I heard that he got, like in the middle of the night one night, he got y'all and said, let's get the hell out of here.

Maybe. Because he was, he was like, what am I doing out here? I'm ready to go home and see everybody. Did you go to, where's that sign at? Where's the sign for the damn party? Did you go to the party at Peppers? Sergeant Peppers? No.

You did. All right. Oh, we got a hand in the room. Yep. It was a party in a local party when Dad got back in town. Some people met us at the airport when we come off the airplane. But before we left Vegas, they said, if anybody would get off the airplane, they'll give them $250 and then another ticket to fly back later.

Yeah. So hell, I get up. I'll get me $250. Dale grabbed me, said, get your ass back. You ain't getting off of the plane. For $250, you're going to get on another one. Yeah. Yeah, so Sergeant Pepper's, I guess that's.

the local place around Canapolis. They had a little guest-only invited a party. And that's the sign that was on the outside of the building. I didn't get up her, I don't think. I can't remember if I did. Was that any good? Is that party good? She put that together, I think.

Said Kathy put it together. All right. Man, I just... Let me tell you the cricket story. Larry Easley was the one that did it. Dale believed in crickets was good luck. Really? Huh.

And he didn't want you to kill a cricket. especially around a race car well first time I heard that one he had some bad luck so well Larry in there he goes by the store where he's self-fishing stuff and gets a whole tube of crickets and goes up there to the shop dump some in the race car and put the rest in the shop up there and Dale's happy he liked that I don't want a cricket means that's crazy I never heard that yeah I know peanuts was bad luck and Ralph used to run people out of the shop if they come in there with a bag of peanuts yeah I heard, now, probably not a true story,

but I heard Ralph pulled a gun on a guy one time at the track because he walked around his car with peanuts. Is that right? I never heard that one. Did you ever see Ralph with a gun? No, I didn't. Yeah. No, I didn't seem like a gun carrying kind of guy.

No, I don't think he ever. Now, they would go hunting. But not a pistol guy. Yeah. Not a pistol at the racetrack kind of guy. Danny, Randy, and Dale went hunting. Randy was telling me this, you know, he was my brother-in-law. Well, one of them took a dump over here.

and they were they rotated places and one of them didn't see it and sit down in it oh no that's hilarious who who was the who who took the dump i don't know you have to ask danny maybe he'll remember it was him randy and dale went on that trip yeah good heavens did you ever go hunting with him i no i never did go hunting he come down the shop one time and he said tommy i want you to wire this thing And he had a thing on a trailer where you hunt out of. I mean, it's like the Tosba Hall. You see people with him up into a tree and all. He had his on wheels and he had me wired all up where they have lights inside.

I said, you ain't going hunting. You're just going to have a good time. It's like a glamour stand. That's interesting. That changes things a little bit on the stigma of Dale Earnhardt, too, by the way. Because, you know, we thought he was roughing it. But he also had his penthouse tree stand. What was the last race car you owned?

Chevrolet Nova Chevrolet Nova and you can see it in here it's 87 it's in different colors and there's one picture here I want you to see see if y'all know who this is there's Dinks and Bank

banks I don't know if you ever knew it or not but going into Charlotte down like you're going downtown Charlotte there was a racetrack right there on the left and it was like a fairgrounds race track and it had a crazy pit area you backed up in front of the grandstand. It wasn't a pit road or anything.

You backed up. I don't know. It looked like that'd be dangerous if you lost the car. Is this over by the airport? Yeah. No, it's downtown Charlotte just about, yeah. This is the southern states one at the corner of Sugar Creek in 29. And this picture here is Banks.

This is when they were at Daytona running the beach. And you can see Russell's garage on there. And that B-29 was Dink Whitehouse, and the other car was Banks. That car was in the Lost Speedways episode. So the last car you owned is this, Sadie. It's a Chevrolet Nova. So this Nova, where did you race it at,

just all the short tracks and dirt tracks, Retro Linas and stuff? Well, the Nova, we run it at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Yeah. We run it at, well, we tried to qualify for Martinville, Virginia. And we run at Hickory and Charlotte. Who's driving it? That David Perry drove it for a while.

He's out of South Carolina. Carolina. Why did you decide when when was it finally time for you to to get out of owning cars? Was it expensive? No, it had nothing to do with that. It didn't have anything to do with working on the cars because I love that. But here's the way what happened. When you have had the best driver in the whole wide world drive your race car. You cannot get back to that point. I worked on those cars. I had them running good, and you got to have somebody to wheelman. And I never could find somebody that good again.

And I just finally said, the hell with it. Yeah. But your daddy, asphalt, dirt, racing the commode, whatever, he going to win. What do you remember, when do you remember first seeing me or Kelly? Well, I brought some tapes today. I told you when I was up here before one time, that I had some tapes of you when you were a kid over at Randy in my sister's house is there a birthday party for somebody.

Really? I brought four or five of them. Matthew said that he could take them and convert them and convert them. Are they beta? I don't know if you're on these. Right. Because I didn't label none of them. The ones I got at home, I label.

I hope it's one of those because maybe we can embarrass you with that sometime. Damn, I can't wait. I'm dying to see that. Yeah. Hopefully Matthew will get that done. I'll have to stay on him. Well, I got a friend now for life from Matthew. At Ponce's Diner, we talked about three hours.

I afraid that it's going to run us out there. But we did eat and have some coffee and all. But there's one picture of a driver in there. I want you to tell me who it is. He's holding something in his hands. I didn't see the guy in there. They got that picture. Oh, I see a headline in there.

That's interesting. That picture right there. Okay. He's holding something in his hands. Tell me who that driver. driver is. I'm looking. Well, the guy on the right, I think it's Fireball. It's Fireball Robbers.

You wanting to know that one, or the guy on the left? The guy on the left, you see how he got his hat? Yeah. He run around with Fireball. And after Fireball passed, he would come to a day's shop. He'd come up here. He had some family lived in Staya. He'd be down at shop every day for about a week, and he'd be gone again. Yeah, that's Fireball. That piece come out of somebody's rear end. and went through Fireball's windshield dirt track.

Oh, wow. Fireball looked pretty cool. Hold on. I want to tell you something about Fireball, too, if you don't mind. Charlotte Motor Speedway and Rockingham, Daddy had a crew, and George Mantooth had a crew. And our job was clean the track before. Your Daddy went with us some, too.

They paid about $50, $60 a piece a day. And Yudai went with his work some, too. I always seen Ralph. He parked down there in like three and four that blue truck. You know, he'd always be there in the infield.

And the wreck happened. We'd have to go out on the track and clean up and, you know, blow the speedy drop. That out of a tractor with a blower on it back in the day. Well, the day Fireball got burned up.

The racetrack on the inside down the backstretch had openings in it. Yep. Okay. It should have never done that. When Fireball come down, he slid right by us and the back of that car went in that open and just ripped a tank out of it and i mean a ball of fire right that should have never happened he should have known better than that

yeah you know that truck you're talking about the the rouse truck yeah blue one you still got it no i know the guy who's got it i'm trying to get it it still looks the same still got the same board sides on it on the flatbed that'd be nice to have it would when i was going through all this stuff before saw Matthew, I found this, and then I got to thinking about it. Me and your day was having a few beers one night, you know. When's this? But when he was driving from me back in the 70s. We was having us a few beers and talked, got around the money and everything.

And I don't know, one of us said, well, I got a dollar and the other and said, well, let's tear it in half. And that way we were together, we got a dollar. So there was my half. No kidding. There's my half. Let me see it. So, wait, what did you say? They had a dollar bill and torn it in half,

so if they's ever together, they'd have a whole buck. That's crazy. We were some crazy guys back in the day. Y'all were. If you don't have these two pictures, I want you to have them. This is fun. That's the truck.

That's Rouse, blue truck. So I know the guy that's got it, and I'm trying to get it, because I want to see if I can restore it. If it's still got floorboards and stuff in it, the rockers ain't too rusted out. imagine some pretty bad shape. So.

That old truck has been up the road before. I sure. Do you mean you know of the guy or you know the person? I know of the truck. I got you. They reached out to us and we'll see. Oh, gotcha. That's that Harry Gant car.

Mm-hmm. That's Metrolina, I think. Yeah, it looks like the billboards in the background. Yeah, I think Metroline would have stayed around a lot longer if it'd been stayed dirt. Yeah. They drove a good crowd in there for dirt racing. I don't know what they did for much for asphalt. You know, asphalt wasn't big in this area.

time. I'm reading this Speedy Thompson clip that you have in your scrapbook. Were you friends with Speedy Thompson? Because this is, one, a very vivid article about his death. I cut that out of the newspaper.

Yeah, but did you, what was speedy, did you know him? Daddy knew him. I don't think I've ever met him. Speedy Thompson, another one that we talk about in Lost Speedways. But this is this is an article talking about he had a heart attack during the 21st lap of a 40,

lap feature at Charlotte Speedway. Yeah. Metroline. Yeah. The quotes in this article, I don't even think I want to read them out loud, but they're very good. The guy that drove for Harry Hyde to K&K and K.N. Dodge, what was his name?

Bobby Isaac. Bobby Isaac. So he, something similar like that happened at Hickory. From what I understand, Bobby told Harry Hyde, he said, I ain't going to race Winston Cup anymore. I'm making too much money and they charged me too much taxes. And he said, damn it, Bobby, the more money made, the more money. But you're making the money.

You know, you ain't losing anything. You make the money. But he started running at Hickory with us, racing against us. But he died up there at Hickory, I think. He's buried right there at the racetrack. Is that right? Right up the hill. I think he may have died one night there.

I don't know. I can't remember. Goodness. It seemed like he had a heart attack, too. I don't know. I mean, to be honest with you, a lot of that. I mean, I didn't know that this was Speedy Thompson's in, but, you know, I don't.

I don't know if it was just the lifestyle or what. But yeah, I guess there's a lot of people that, a lot of racers that were dying of heart attacks. Yeah, it could be something maybe about fumes inside a car, you know, I don't know. That and cooking with, uh, cooking with Criscoe and all kinds of other crazy stuff back then. Stuff that we've learned. Yeah. It's probably wasn't the best.

Buckets of Crisco. I still can't eat baked chicken. I'm on my pitching fry like my mama frying. Yeah. Amen to that. We used to get all those buckets of that Chrisco and did, man, that was like, an ingredient for every meal. It's funny because you said not knowing about Ralph's heart attack.

I know in the papers it was listed mostly as an illness that he had. For Ralph. Yeah, for Ralph. And I've got him running three races when he finally came back just at the end of that season right before he had that heart attack. Here's some more to look at. So he might have ran a race or two before the end of the year. That's wild, man. While he looks at that, I want to ask you about the shop because, you know, according to our notes here, you and Dale built that by hand.

And is this the shop, by the way, that you still stands that we've seen today? His dad's shop on the side of it, right? Your dad's shop? You and Dale built that? Yeah, help him out. Well, I asked him one day, I said, Dale. I said, you know how to build a shop? He said, no, I don't know how to build a shop. I said, well, I don't either, but we're going to start tomorrow.

and say naturally my dandy shop was there and there's a brick you know cement block so I thought well that'll be one wall so we're going to build two walls that come out and then we're going at the other end we put two doors well the two doors cost more than a hole all the wood

but we went at it you know we just I built some learned how to build some bunkers in the Marine Corps so I've just used some of that and we drill holes and did and put two by four, bolted them to the wall,

or hold of that end up, and then we worked off of that and made the sides. I really met this, the roof leaked a little bit, though we didn't care. We put a hole in the ground because any shop didn't have a bathroom.

So we put a hole in the ground and pipe, and years later, we did put a bathroom in there. Just in case, you went ahead and had the pipe. It would hold three cars. Okay. But that's why we had the backup car, we'd have one there. Ralph got more mad

of this than anything I've ever seen. We were at Concord Speedway. They bunched up on Dell and wrecked him. Toward a car up pretty good. So we've loaded it on a trailer. Went back to the shop, got the other car, put it on a trailer, and they did the same thing in the other car in the feature.

Ralph was hot. He said, Tommy, you leave one car up here. You take one of your shop and fix it. I'm going to fix this one for you up here. And I guess those guys live and they were talking well,

we won't see them for a month or two. We rolled in the next Friday night ready to race. Nice. And we went after some butt too.

Was there ever any fights? No, I don't think so. Really? How is it you managed how is it Ralph Ordale manages to get out with all the run-ins

that you have in all the different places? How is it used, did you talk his way out of a fight? It just never happened? No. It was kind of a normal thing

on the dirt track, you know, spin a man or something, wreck him or something. And, yeah, I've seen these Winston Cup drivers, well, I'll tell you one thing, I'm going to get back at him off. All right. They don't do nothing. Nothing. On dirt, you do it. Yeah. As soon as you catch them, you do it.

It don't make no difference as the first lap, loud, flat. You do it. But it's entirely different ball game back in the day anyway, so. Going back to the point that you were making about the shop that you and Dale just figured it out, you said something early. early on in the interview where how smart he was. I mean, it was back when Dale Jr. was talking about how he dropped out of school and you said, but he was so smart and he had so much common sense. My question to you is, that's clearly what you noticed of Dale, you know, as you guys spent

so much time together. Was it evident then, though? Like, back when he was a teenager, like even when he dropped out of school, was it clear that he had common sense about him that others don't have and that it's somewhat unusual? Definitely so. He had a lot of common sense and see his education was that shop in Ralph Earnhardt. Yeah. And mine was my daddy's shop and my daddy. Yeah. And we learned a lot from him. Hell Dale could degree a cam. Hey, that's not easy to do. He could degree of cam. He could build the engine. He could set the castor and camberum, tow in. That's, you got to have a lot of math to do that kind of stuff. He could do all that stuff.

He could build anything. And I'm sure he knew how to take care of his money when he started making a lot of money. I've been with him before, and when he was talking to people, you know, about investing, blah, blah, blah, and he knew it. He knew it well. You got people that think that Dale hung the moon,

and you've got the others that think of Dale and, like, oh, no, he had flaws. Which is it for you? When you think back on Dale Earnhardt, do you think hung the moon, Dale? or do you think, you know, raise Heldale, had problems, got through him? He didn't, I don't know, he called it, have any flaws or anything. To me, he was just a great guy.

I mean, they called an intimidator. That man had a big heart. Big heart. And I took, you know, I left Daddy's garage, and I took a job teaching auto mechanics at Northwest High School. and Dale let me bring the kids up to DEI. And but you see what Dale's doing. He's with the kids.

He's showing them around the shop. They had one of the trucks, it was just starting the truck series, had it covered up there in the shop, he was already paying everything. And he told the guy was working there, he said, uncovered a car, let this kid see it.

And that's when they got Napa Auto Parts to sponsor it. Oh, wow. And the kids are the first one to see it. But here's how smart the kids were. Well, a lot of times they weren't too smart. But anyway, they all had a sundrop box there where you put your money and get a drink. Oh, yeah, a machine, yeah.

And I noticed all the kids were going over and they all had it, I guess, what it cost. It was like a quarter or something for a can. The kids were getting those sundrop cans and they were drying them up and getting Dale to sign them for a souvenir. That's pretty cool. right i mean they thought of that but uh and two what del did he said Tommy well first of all he said Tommy i would love Dale Jr. to take your course at school and I said well figure out a way to get him

to northwest and I'll get him in there he believed that you could be a better race car driver the more you knew about the car yeah the fixing the car or building a car or whatever but he every year he would take one of my students he said I'm not going to interview him you pick him bring him up here. Well, I took one kid up here, a nice kid, and he'd come in one day to school, and he said, Mr. Russell, when I was leaving yesterday, they'll run in the back of me. And I said, well, do you hurt your car or anything? No, he didn't hurt the car anything. I said, he's just telling you hello. If he's mad at you, he'll turn you around the street, so don't worry about it. And the kid, they always took a break for lunch, and they played cards there at DEI. Well, the kid sit down and played

with him. He won the money. And this is what Dale couldn't figure. He said, Tommy, give all the money back to him. And I said, that ain't right, you know. But that's just, that kid was that way. And they had him back there, dismounting tires off wheels. And the kid was messing around, and he hit it with a hammer. And, of course, it'd come back and hit him in and he had knocked him out for a little bit. But every year, they'll let me put another kid in there. And one kid, I took up there, and this kid's daddy had something to do with building frames or something. NASCAR, but they were talking to them. They said, now, sometime we may have you drive the truck to go pick up parts or something

like that. And the kids said, I ain't got no license. I said, what you mean you ain't got no license? I see you drive to school every morning. He said, well, I slip out after Mom and Dad go to work and Drive. And he didn't get the job. I kept somebody up there the whole time, you know. What are you thinking?

What do you see anything in there you like? A bunch of news articles. They're all pretty cool. This is awesome. Well, those two are your books now. man I appreciate it I ain't got nothing like it wild

we've lost Dale you put them with a scrapbook man and he's loving it man he's having a great great time right there well I'll probably see Dale before you do wherever

I'm gonna tell him what a good boy you are thanks that's pretty you know these albums are like time capsule stuff I mean this is what's so cool about them is it

you know very rarely do you get at this point of life get to see stuff about your own family this detailed. I mean, you've kept some very valuable things here. It's very cool. It's even better than you brought them.

Yeah. Pretty awesome, man. Well, Tommy. You got my check? Yeah. I've wanted to sit down with you for a while and listen to some of your stories and just envious, you know,

of guys like you that, lived around that lifetime and got to experience all the things you got to experience. And I'm so thankful and grateful that you want to come here and share with us what it was like, you know, and not only, you know, what your life was like, but Ralph and dad and being around them so much and being such a great friend of my fathers and having such a great connection and relationship to them. It's really the only way a lot of people like myself will ever know what those times are like.

And we try our hardest, you know, use our imagination to put ourselves in those moments. So we thank you for bringing yourself over here today and sharing with us and having some leaving some stuff with us. It's pretty cool being able to look at all this stuff. I hope I'll be around a lot long. Maybe we get together again sometime to do something. But Dink's sitting an airplane. We need to see that.

Maybe we need to go, if you want to do it, I'm going to do it. He fell. And when he gets better and gets home, I'm going to go sit down. He wants to talk about old stuff. Dink Whitehouse, yeah. You're saying Dink Whitehouse fell. Is he hurt? Yeah, he broke some ribs up.

Pelvis, pelvis. He was in ICU. Now, his daughter called me last night. He's out of ICU. He's still going to have some recovery time. He's a tough old bird. He is. One of our favorites.

My daddy said he's one of the best he'd ever seen on dirt. Yeah. Well, man, we appreciate you. Thanks for coming all this way. Thank you. Thank you. We enjoyed this conversation and learning about the history of the sport and a couple people that matter to us.

So thank you very much, man. Thank you for having me up here, buddy. I appreciate it. Tommy Russell on the Dale Jr. download. And we are live, Bill. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. And we're live here on the Dirty Mo Media YouTube channel. Appreciate you guys for tuning in.

And thanks for supporting everything we do on DirtyMoh Media and all our handles. Share with your friends, everything we got going on so they can see all the cool clips and maybe listen to some podcasts. This is Ask Junior portion of the show, presented by Xfinity. We appreciate everything Xfinity does. And I've told you guys a hundred times that they do a good job in our sport, supporting everything that, you know, the Xfinity series and everything else they got going on throughout the cup races.

They put a lot of effort. We really appreciate it. Also, I'm a customer, paying customer, bought the service before they ever, you know, wanted to support the podcast, and it's been going great for me. So X-Fi, X-Finity is where it's at, and I hope you guys will go check it out. They're a proud premier partner of NASCAR, and we love them. So anyways, Leah's got some questions that you guys have sent to Xfinity Racing on Twitter. We're going to answer.

I know that we didn't, earlier in the show, we didn't really get into the finish at Martinsville. So I'm hoping that you guys got some questions for us about that. Yeah, our first question coming from Miller. if NASCAR doesn't respond to Hamlin and his actions after the race on the front stretch, will this be the new norm on how drivers respond to each other? Well, let's not assume that NASCAR isn't going to have a conversation with Denny and say, hey man, you know, let's not, let's not do that. Maybe they did, maybe they did, maybe they will, maybe they won't.

I agree with Dale Jair and Kyle Petty right at the post race said that, you know, it's kind of bad form or against the code or whatever to infringe on another driver's celebration or his victory lane. Now, Alex wasn't in his victory lane celebration at the moment. You know, I really didn't have a real big problem with what Denny was doing when it happened. My initial gut reaction is kind of the one I'm going to go with. I'm not going to form, I'm not going to change sort of the way I think or feel. about it as the week goes on. When it happened, I was like, oh, this is interesting, this is fun.

You know, I think that somebody comes on the radio and tells Denny, hey, man, let's not, you know, do anything too egregious here. Let's not get ourselves in trouble and allow NASCAR to have to come in and do anything that they really don't want to do, right? NASCAR doesn't want to have to penalize Denny as we're leading into Phoenix for, you know, one of the most important moments of the season. so Denny gets out of there and gets to the pits. So I think if you remember back when I spun Carl Edwards off a turn two at Michigan

in an exfini race years ago, Carl comes into Victory Lane to the car. That, you know, that I don't like. I think that Victory Lane is off limits. When the race is over and a guy goes, goes to Victory Lane, you don't go in there to start a confrontation or have a conversation. You just don't. You wait till he's done doing that. You find another time.

You just do. I don't think really Denny did that. I think with the way things worked out, I think it was okay. So, you know, I don't think we'll see that going forward because we don't run at Martinsville every single week. Right. You know, I just, you know, I think that we're only going to see that when we go to these type of race tracks, which is a shame.

Right. Wish I had more. Wish somebody would speak up and say we need more short tracks. Maybe we should. Maybe we should speak up and say that, you know, I don't know, short tracks are a good thing. You know. If you like the big crowds, I guess. Yeah, if you like people getting excited.

If you like drama and people talking about racing NASCAR all week, that would be cool. I'm just kidding. Leah's face is great. I'm giving them a hard time. Listen, can I just add to that real quick? If you have a problem with what Denny did, then we don't need to have a cutoff race at Martinsville and certainly don't think NASCAR is going to go do something to counter the drama

or to dilute the drama. I thought he did everything. What his message was is, you're not doing spinouts and burnouts on my watch, pal. And that was that. I thought that was fine. Of course, he went and did a whiny interview, but I liked what I saw there. Cool.

Call them a hack. All right. next question from Mark Brandsetter. What are your thoughts on the way non-playoff drivers have been running against the playoff drivers this year? By no means am I complaining because I think it's been great, but it just seems like there's not much give and take from the non-playoff drivers this year overall. You know, I feel like that it's good that the non-playoff drivers don't give and take. When we go to a race and I remember a couple years ago, we were at Homestead. Kyle Larson had a really, really good car driving for Chip Gannack.

and he even said after the race or commented like, you know, I was not wanting to, there were two guys racing for the title. I think it might have been Truex and Kyle Bush. I'm not sure exactly, but it was a trio of guys, two championship guys in the championship race, the final race, and Kyle Larson. Kyle had the best car, but he couldn't and didn't do all the things that he would typically do and take all the risks with those drivers around. that he would typically take. And that was walking away from that, I was like, man, I wish it wasn't like that. I wish Kyle Arson didn't have to race that way all night long. What do you do?

How do you fix that? I just wish that was just part of, that was an ingredient in the cake that I didn't want in there, right? If you could make the best cake, you wouldn't put that ingredient in there. And I was like, man, we got to, how do we get around that? How do we get, if you're going to have all the playoff guys and the non-stop, playoff guys in a race, you want everybody going for the win, right? You want every driver, every race I've ever lined up to get in. I was, I want everybody was there to win or trying to win or dreaming about winning.

You don't want to ever get in a race and go, well, I'm going to have a good day and try not to ruin these four guys day. It's not racing. So I kind of, I think it's good to see that. etiquette and the I think it's good to see the the culture changing a bit to where these non-playoff guys feel like they can go out there and compete and you know if they get in the middle of some things that happen on the racetrack with a playoff guy they're there to race you know and that's we're in that day in that moment it's a race there's a there's a there's a there's a trophy

given to the winner at the end of that race and everybody's there giving the same effort to get that trophy. I would, it is not fun to go to a race and watch drivers move out of the way for playoff drivers. And it isn't. And so, you know, I think all the playoff drivers end up at the front of the field and everyone

else is back there racing for a fifth, hell of a race for fifth. You know, so I'm liking the culture changing toward the playoff drivers, having to deal with the non-playoff drivers being competitive and racing hard and, And there definitely needs to be some respect. It's the same respect, though, that you would expect in the first race of the year. Or the second, third, you know, it's the same respect that you want all year long.

You definitely don't want, you know, non-playoff drivers completely disrespectful toward what's happening in the championship. It can't be oblivious to that. But at the same time, if they can, if they have a good enough car like Alex Bowman, and they can go up there and try to win a clock, you want them to try. You don't want them to ride behind the playoff drivers feeling like they can't race. So the culture is shifting a little bit, and I think it's a good thing. But, you know, again, as a non-playoff guy, you're going to be Uber aware of what's happening with these guys that are racing for a title.

If you're going to go out there and take the risk to try to win that race, you've got to be willing to take the backlash should you ruin a chance for one of those guys to win a title. You've got to be willing to accept that and be able to explain yourself. Next question at NASCAR from birth. Since hack is the word of the week, what is your favorite life hack? Oh my gosh. I know. It's hard. I was trying to think of what.

Why did you ask me these hard questions? Because these are a good ones. I was like, oh, this is a hard question. Let me ask him a hard one. I was trying to think of one last night. Yeah. Well, let me get one. Let me think of one in 30 seconds.

All right. You're on the clock. You spent all night. So I'm going to pop one into my mind in a few seconds here. hack. Anybody else have any life hacks, Mike? No, actually, I'm still thinking about the last question. The spork.

I'm just, I'm thinking about Danny. Yeah. To answer your question, no, I'm still, I still got so much to say about the last question. Oh, well, let's hear it. Yeah. I think the fact that Denny Hamlin is up front, it does play into it. It's a theory. I don't know for sure.

But Denny Hamlin has been spun out of the lead on the last two laps before this year. who was it that did it at the Roval? Somebody did it. My point on this is that you mentioned respect. Chase Briscoe. Chase Briscoe did it. You mentioned respect. I have a feeling that who is leading may play into the decision on how you handle the situation.

And Denny seems to not have the respect. I don't know. Oh, okay. So drivers are, uh, drivers are okay risk, taking bigger risks around Denny. Possibly. I mean, think about it this way. That's a good point. That's a good point. Denny got wrecked and how much booze did he get from the crowd?

In Virginia. In Virginia. Like he was so booed in that after that thing. They booed him at the intros. He was the victim of that situation. And so I'm just saying you do mention a good point of, you know, these guys respecting the people that are in the playoffs. Well, Denny was locked in at that point, not sure that Alex Bowman would have known that at the

moment, maybe it would have even mattered. If it was a Kevin Harvick up there, does Alex Bowman do the same thing to Kevin? Does he do the same thing to chase? Does he certainly chases a teammate? I don't know. In the moment, like if you got Denny and Alex sitting here, Alex is going to say, man, it was a mistake, guys. I messed up.

Right. I got loose. We see it all the time at that racetrack getting into the corner there. I messed up. Denny's going to sit here and say, I gave you plenty of racetrack. I wanted you just race me. Why can't you race me without messing up, right? That's going to be the two trains of thought right there between two drivers.

But, you know, I don't know whether Sunday was really a respect issue with Denny. Maybe the Roval might have been, you know, with Chase. Like, hey, you know, Chase could have took a little bit better care of Denny in that moment. But I just feel like, you know, if Bowman's willing to race hard, enough to make that mistake, to push his car hard enough to get to that limit where he's going to possibly make a mistake, you got to be able to get out of the car and say, man, I made the mistake, and he did. But I want to win.

I want a clock. And he did. I mean, he said what I think he should have said. He owned it. You know, and he said, you know, I screwed up, but I do want to race and win a clock here. And what else do you want from the guy, right? No, I think they did nothing wrong. So, but I'm glad they're not.

You definitely don't want to go to a race where they're just, oh, playoff guy in my mirror. Pull over. Playoff guy in my mirror. Let me get out of here. Exactly. No, they did everything right. Does that answer your life hack question? I'm reading the chat.

What are they saying? It's going by fast. It looks like a jackpot machine here. This is interesting. Life hat. Coke on battery corrosion. Hashtag hack. Oh, you're talking about a lot of people are talking about life hacks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of people are talking about Denny as well. I got some life hacks, but that's one. It's like, you know, tough to, I'm sure I have some, but it's tough to think of one. I used a spork to comb my hair one time when I didn't have my brush. That's a life hack. Good enough. Bojangles, sport.

Oh, wow. I used sport. No, no gravy on. Next question? Yeah. Okay. This is from jeffro. dot vt was there ever a time in your career you thought your fans went too hard after another driver

for the way they raced to you yeah sure so the question is is there a time when i thought my fans went too hard after another driver at any point right i think you can absolutely say yes every fan base of every driver has those fans that are going to go too hard everyone and certainly you know i had I had a lot of fans when I was racing, and so I certainly had those ones that were super passionate and definitely going to go after anybody that they felt ruined my day or cost me a position, a point or a win, right?

They'd go after NASCAR, they'd go after drivers, whatever. And so that's absolutely a yes. And you're, you know, I would hear it from other drivers. And even today, like with Josh Williams, he's like, oh, man, Junior Nation, boy, you don't want to mess with them. You know, so they're passionate, man, and that's what you want as a driver. You want your fans to be in your corner, you know, for anybody out there that's racing, probably best not to talk about them. I'm never going to go, his fans, you know, are, you know, I'm never going to.

They're being mean to me. They're being mean. His fans are crazy. That'll fix it. I'm sure. I don't know if that's the way you want to go. I don't know if that's a route you want to take. But, you know, I think that that certainly has happened in the past.

And sometimes you're like, oh, man, because you're feeling some type of way about the situation. Let's say somebody costs me a win, right? Yeah. I've gotten a feeling about this. I got an opinion about this. And when you see some of your fans go to the extreme in their passion forward or their emotion about it, You want to reel them back. You want to have a conversation with them and say, hey, man, here's a deal.

This is how I feel about it. Let's all get on the same page. And you don't want them to get ugly with another driver or be ugly. You read social media and see ugly comments that your fans were sending to other people. You don't want that happening. I know two examples. Okay. Jimmy Johnson, Talladega, when you pushed him to the win, Jimmy still catches hell for that.

Or because they didn't retaliate or not retaliate. Because they didn't return the favor. Oh, yeah. Right. They still gets. And the other one, and again, Kevin Harvick, I mean, I'm not the biggest defender of Kevin Harvick, but when you ran out of gas after the Coca-Cola 600 and he took the wind, I think Kevin told me that his property was vandalized.

Oh, my gosh. It was either that or Martinsville. One of those, you almost won Martinsville, I think, in the same year. And then Kevin ended up going in there and taking that one. Now, that's where another driver didn't do anything wrong. He just went and won the race and we were upset. But that's a great example. Vandalizing is taking it way too far, people.

Yeah. I never liked seeing those type of examples, especially on social media, because the driver that's getting this stuff, I see him, right, the next week or whatever. And he looks at me as if I was the one who sent the message, right, or vandalized the property. Right. And he's like, you're responsible for this. Right. Or why are you not speaking up?

Yeah. Why are you not, you know, corral in this? Get your people in line. Yeah. Yeah. All right. One more question from Brian Wickcamp. Your thoughts on Clay Kim's Camero model that he brought you a couple weeks ago.

Yeah, so the model is right back here on this shift. My thoughts on it? Hard to see it. You can't see it there. You should have brought it on the table, Matthew. Yeah, we should have put it on the table. No, you can't see it because of the mic. The mic arm is in the way.

So this car here was owned by my grandfather, Robert G, my mom's dad. My mother's side of the family had a lot of great racers and car builders and fabricators. My dad drove this car. It's short tracks around North Carolina and South Carolina. And in the 70s, Metralina in places like that. Darrell Walsrop drove the cart to snowball derby and all around as well. Haywood Pliler and a bunch of other racers drove this car. my uncle, Robert G. Jr., maintained the car when he was in his younger years,

and he works here today at Junior Mergersports as a fabricator steel. So this car is a one-of-a-kind, just so beautifully done, and something I asked Clay to do, and he was gracious enough to build it and come out here and give it to me. I just got back into collecting die casts and models and stuff like that over the last couple of years. I got a couple display cases at home with a few of my favorites. and that's why we have these diecast on the table here today

is because we're kind of, we're kind of into it. So that's definitely probably my top of the mountain, my peak of the mountain die cast model that I have in my collection. That one is a special, special car to me. So can't thank Clay enough. And he has a YouTube channel and a social media handle and details all his work. It is incredible.

He's working on a Western Auto Darrell Walship number 17 lumina. And I swear when you see pictures of this thing, he shows you as he's building it. It looks like a real car. I mean, the detail is insane under the hood and so forth. So go check him out, man.

It's pretty awesome. Is that it? That's what she said. Man. You want another one? I thought I was going to get one more. I got one. What's on the table right there?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So my sister had a throwback shirt made. Yeah, it's part of our dirty, Mo original line. So there you go. Where can you pick these up, Mike? You can go to Dirtymohmedia.com and go to the store there. You can go to the Junior Motorsports Media store,

Junior Motorsports store. I think that's shopped junior nation.com, and you can also get them here in the store if you're, you know, here at Junior Motorsports. So cool. That's all of other shirts. That's her late mall cart. She ran for a handful of years.

And, uh, yeah, we got some cool t-shirts that we're selling on Dirtymo media. We got, these are throwback t-shirts. Kelly's was designed by another guy, but me and Mike, me personally, I designed with Mike and Ryan Williams helped as well. These, uh, is it three?

Yeah. There's three currently on our website. And so hopefully you like them because, um, because I certainly do. And, uh, but their throwback t-shirts, Dirty Moe Media,

go check them out. We've been talking about them, showing them on social media, but maybe you'll want one. Maybe there's one of them. has this old dirt car on it. Yeah. So, yeah, go tell us what you think.

Go tell us what else you'd like to see. Show us some examples of some old shirts, some old throwbacks that we could use some inspiration from. Absolutely. All right. So that's it, right? Yep, that's it. All right, everybody, thank you for tuning in today.

That was a great ass junior. Some great questions presented to you by Xfinity. In Xfinity X-Fi, it's the fastest stuff out there in. It's reliable. Xfinity is a proud premier partner of NASCAR, and we appreciate everything they do. Not only for us here at Dirty Mo Media and the Dell Jr. Download, but everything they'd do in the sport, you wouldn't believe the footprint and effort they put into it that keeps this sport moving in the right direction. It's time to pour a glass and listen to Mike Davis. Ooh.

That was like jazz. I like that. Smooth jazz. It's time to pour a glass. I don't know. Last call. Last call. All right, guys, big show. So let's do a last call real quick.

I'm telling you, a big week for Dirty Mo Media, and I'm proud to say it, but we talked about it on the show, the Burton Continuum. The trailer dropped this week. It'll be a couple weeks before we actually put out some episodes, but I want to just get everyone excited about that. The Burton Continuum, new podcast for Dirty Mo Media. Sounds so cool. Yeah, also, this was a week. I tell you, I tweeted about it this morning, but if there was ever a week that really embodies what door bumper clear is about and when it's at its best, it's after a Martinsville race like that and coming into a championship week.

This is the week you really want to hear these guys what they have to say. They really let it all hang out too, by the way. There was no filters at all other than the myriad filters that Jason Schultz had to put on them because of all the cussing. But that being said, it was fine. I'm halfway through the episode right now. Yeah, it's good. And it's a, it's a, it's a matter. But boy, we went long on our podcast this week, didn't we?

Check out the download on television. I hope you guys enjoyed the Shana Robinson podcast. last week. The TV show was awesome. This week, the Tommy Russell episode will air Thursday, 6 p.m. Eastern Time on NBC Sports Network. Hey, there's one more thing I want to announce. We're taking the Dale Jr. download on the road for a live show during the offseason, okay? The PRI show

in Indianapolis. We are going to go up there and do a live appearance. This will be fun. We've never kind of done this down in Daytona, but this is, you know, there was a race going on in Daytona. This time we are going on road for real. PRI is big. PRI is a big deal. I think they expense.

Fans probably don't even know what that is. 60, 70,000 people. It's kind of an industry trade show. It's in the big Indianapolis Convention Center. There's a lot of activities. I know Roger Penske's going to be there. A lot of people will be there. Everybody.

Off and on. I believe the dates of the PRI show are December 9th through 11th. I believe I have that right. You may want to check on me, Leah, there. And I believe our show will be on December 9th. We will come back with more definitive concrete information in terms of when the Dell Jr. Download live show will be, but I am excited to tell you, we're going up to Indy for that. So look forward. And you're going to buy a dinner at St. Elmo's, right? Yeah. That's part of the experience. It's part of it. Hey, I will say, I love St. Elmo's. However, I'm very unpopular, controversial opinion, I'm about to say. I admit it. I'm going to throw something at you. But I feel like that. Shrimp cocktail is overrated.

Whoa. I agree with you. Bull crap. Way overrass for me. I just want the steak. I don't care about that. Give me the steak. Everybody that sits there and takes pictures of their shrimp cocktails, you know, I get it. I understand. That's a trend that people do. But nobody would eat that shrimp cocktail if it was in any other restaurant, anywhere else in the world. They would not be so over the top about it. That's just an opinion.

It's controversial. I get it. I would never be so bold as to say something like, you know, in and out burger is overrated because it's not. It's everybody's opinion about that is legit. The shrimp cocktail, come on. Let's stop. Stop the noise. And now it's way overrated.

Yeah. Oh, God. Don't have to go there. That's just how I, clearly Matthew doesn't agree, but that's all right. I bet you most people will agree with Matthew on this one, and that's fine. But yeah, PRI show, Indy, yes. Leah, let's go to dinner that night. Wait, wait, wait, just Leah?

You'll be doing a show. Leah's going to be the producer of that show. Okay, good. Well, you said it was that December. My wife is going to leave me because we have tickets to, what's that movie, the Polar Express with the kids. So I'm going to have to find a fill-in husband. Your wife is going to leave you?

She'll probably leave you. Yeah, she'll probably think about it. Are you pinning that on us? No. Oh, no, but I need a stand-in husband. I don't think she'll leave you. All right, everybody. She probably wants to stand-in husband all the fun.

I appreciate everyone for listening. Thank you so much. Have a great week. Dale, close us down. Hope you guys have a great week. We'll see you next week. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

Keep coming, bud. Dirty mo. You're going to do it. You're going to win it.