The Dale Jr. Download - 365 - Austin Dillon & Eric Warren: Chevy Next Gen 101

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mike Davis sit down with NASCAR driver Austin Dillon and Dr. Eric Warren, Director of NASCAR Programs for Chevrolet, for a candid discussion about the NASCAR Next Gen car that is set to launch in 2022.This new racecar marks the beginning of a new era in NASCAR. With the new chassis comes a pile of questions, uncertainty, fear, and doubt. Earnhardt and Davis waste no time addressing the big topics of concern about the newly designed chassis. Warren, who spearheaded much of Chevrolet's involvement in the development of the Next Gen car, brings us inside the decisions and the intricate details from development to production of this state-of-the-art machine. Dillon, well, he's been behind the wheel of the Next Gen in test sessions. He brings a unique perspective from the driver's seat of the new-age stock car.Speaking of stock... this thing sure looks stock! Chevrolet and Richard Childress Racing brought one of the sleek Next Gen cars to the Studio so the gang could see it first hand. Warren and Earnhardt discuss the importance of the design and the street look of this Camaro racer.The testing of the Next Gen car hasn't been 100-percent smooth. A crash by William Byron early in testing helped the design team learn about the behavior of the new design. What happened during the wreck and how did the car react to the heavy impact? Is the racecar too rigid? Warren addresses the rumor mill surrounding the Talladega crash test and talks about the changes in development that are designed to lessen the impact on the driver.Dale Jr. tested the NASCAR Next Gen car at North Carolina's Bowman Gray Stadium. He shares his experience with Dillon and the two bring their thoughts from the cockpit to the table. Is the steering lock an issue? What is it like to drive with a sequential shifter? What about the limited split differential? And are their legitimate concerns of extreme cockpit temperatures, that at one test session reached a sweltering 170 degrees, an issue that is being resolved? Dillon also gives Dale Jr. first-hand accounts of how the Next Gen car will perform in the draft at the Superspeedways.No questions were left off the table, including a curious inquiry by Dale Jr about a possible Hybrid future in NASCAR competition.Before our guests arrived, the DJD gang breaks down the finale at Phoenix. Was Daniel Hemric's walk-off title-winning first career win possibly his last? How powerful was the emotion of Kyle Larson's victory lap? We also learn that Dale Jr has an affinity for things from the '80s. Well Duh? He details his stay in a popular Phoenix-area hotel and the rockin' sunset that made him feel so warm and fuzzy.In AskJr presented by Xfinity, Dale Jr. discusses Speedway Motorsports Incorporated's purchase of Dover Motorsports Inc and what it could mean for Dover and Nashville. We also talk about Carolina Panthers' player Jeremy Chinn's Dale Jr. tribute, Dale's role in the movie Cars, and what he really thinks about the NASCAR playoff format. 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 podcast is a production of Dirty Mo Media. Here on the past sands of Daytona Beach, speed capital of the world, longstanding records for automatic performance are smashed into a million before the ice is... I refuse to lose. New standards are established for speed, maneuverability, and all-round performance, speed.

And here are official NASCAR results written into the record book. Every foot a challenge. A challenge met and won by Chevrolet in a one, two, three, winning finish. Results that substantiate Chevrolet's claim to leadership on the racing strip. And record-breaking performance, speed, is team performance. Is team performance?

The challenge is one by Chevrolet. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. back again. Another episode of the Dale Jr. download. This is 365. Yeah. How many days there are in you? Hey. There's a download for every day.

Yeah, what a coincidence. We got a great one today. we're going to talk about the next gen car, and we're going to do that with a couple of guests that are going to come into the Bojangles studio today. Eric Warren, he's been head of development, particularly for the Chevrolet, and we're going to learn about who he is and then what he can tell us about the car. And also, we're going to bring in somebody who's tested the car, Austin, Dillon. I think Austin's a great driver to have today because not only has he drove the car, but, A lot of the development for the Chevrolet has happened up and welcome at RCR where Austin is. So Austin's in and around the conversation.

So a lot of these drivers who have tested the car, you know, really aren't involved in the conversation week to week. Austin can't avoid it. So it'll be great to have some insight on what he thinks about the car. We got a lot of questions. We got fans that have sent in a lot of questions about this car as well. and hopefully we get some answers today. That's right. You know, we wanted to have a next-gen education course, like a next-gen-101,

and we went to Chevrolet and said, Chevrolet, could you help us out with this? Could you, you know, give us some people, and they made this possible. So we are going to school today. We're going to school, and we're going to learn. And I'm excited about it. I'm excited about the future and what this car might do for us. It's going to be different, but it's going to be cool.

It's pretty interesting. Let's dive right into the show. We had a great weekend at Phoenix Championship weekend. Three exciting races between the Truck Series, the Xfinity Series, and the Cup Race. I thought the Cup race was really well done. On the racetrack and in the broadcast booth, the production quality, everything around the things that I was involved in felt great. The energy at the track, the attendance, the buzz or the feel.

the vibe on pit road was incredible before the race. I was lucky enough to be placed on the grid to do some work there for NBC right before the race. And it gave me a great opportunity to really get the temperature of the room, so to speak. So it was pretty awesome. It felt bigger than what I felt in the past. It felt more important. I had nerves and anxiety for what was about to happen, what the drivers were about to do, who might win, who might not win, that I hadn't felt in the past.

I guess I think that if I was more engaged, even unwillingly, like I was sucked in, I have to feel like that everyone else there felt the same thing. Kyle Larson even said right before the race riding around on the back of the truck for intros, that he was getting emotional about the weight of the moment and his journey. And here he was with a chance to race for a title. The fans were giving him that emotion, right? The reaction from the crowd and just looking around and going, holy, this is really huge.

None of those, you could tell leading up to the weekend that none of those guys hadn't registered, I guess, how big the moment was until right before the race, right at intros, they all sort of, it all hit them at the same time, I have to imagine. So that was pretty cool. And we had, yeah, there were some great fireworks. You know, the Xfinity race with, you know, Austin Cendrick and Hemrick coming down to the last corner.

What a race. Yeah, it's good, good stuff. So, you know, Hemrick wins his first race ever. ever. And the championship at the same moment? You know, I think he'll have, I say this because I think he's moving to a team that the car is not going to have the same type of performance or speed on the racetrack that the one he's been driving. So maybe this man won his last race and the championship in the same day. We'll never know.

I mean, I guess time will tell. Matthew don't like that. I think Matthews thinks Daniel's going to go out there and win some races next year because he's a huge Daniel Hammert fan. But I'm a realistic, I got a realistic point of view. Look at that 11 car. It's not out there competing. That's the car is going to drive, the one that's been on the track all year long,

has not really been up there trying to win races. It had been a fast race car. Except from the speedways. Yeah, I was just getting ready to say it might win at Daytona and Talladega, I guess that's where you think Daniel's going to pull it off next year. It could. I just think Daniel Hemrick has a lot of talent, and he just hasn't been able to get over the proverbial hump.

I don't know why. It's not cars. It's him. It's him. He's been in good equipment, and he hasn't put up. But I'm still a big fan of him as an individual and a person, and I do believe he's got a lot of talent, and it's up to him to show it. I think that he is an amazing person.

And there is a lot that backs up that belief when you see the response from his peers on his victory and his championship. So, you know, not Bubba Wallace, a great friend of his, but also other drivers, Christopher Bell, Chase Elliott. I mean, a lot of people, Denny Hamill, everybody was very happy to see him win because he is a great person and well respected in the garage. but I'll be interested to see what kind of performance he can get out of the 11 car. I don't know that, you said it hasn't been the cars. I don't think it's been the cars. I think that that's going to be a new problem next year. And I feel, you know, that with the colleague team going to the Cup Series,

when they can focus 100% on the Xfinity Series, they get performance with A.J. and everything else they've done this year. But now they're going to take a lot of their focus. as a business and a company and go toward the focus that toward the they're going to have to primarily focus on the cup side even if the performance is better in the Xfinity series they're still going to put more energy and more more you know more focus and time and money into their cup operation so I think it's going to suffer on the Xfinity side I really do I think it's a I think it's a I think it's going to be a frustrating year for Daniel next year I'm just going to

predict that right out of the gate in the cup series Series. Larson wins. I thought Chase was going to do it. We had went to, you know, we've been to Phoenix and Richmond and New Hampshire and all these tracks that you might compare. And Trix was the fastest and won at Phoenix earlier this year. He won Richmond's. I thought Trix would be great, but Chase would get it done because of the pit road pace that their pit crews have. And I knew that the pit crews were going to play a major role in it. And I thought Chase that was going to put Chase over the top. I didn't think that Larson had the pace at those type of racetracks this year. Right. But he went out there and proved me wrong and anyone else that might have doubted him. Not many people were going to. I think he was low-hanging fruit to pick him for the championship going into that race. But he goes out there and makes it happen.

And I'm kind of glad that he did because he was the dominant car all year long. Right. And so the best man, the best team throughout the year ended up becoming the championship team. No other real surprises from my end on. the weekend. Well, I would tell you, I would double down on what you just said. There was a point in that race where I was mentally preparing my mind for saying, okay, Denny Hamlin's going to be the champion. Okay, now Martin Truix is going to be the champion. There was a point of that race where every one of the four contenders had moments where they were up front leading and looking like

they were going to be the champion. So then you start rectifying in your head, hey, this guy's going to win the championship. I think there's people that deserve Christmas presents from Rick Kendrick this year. The pit crew is the obvious one. David Star is the other. David Star. David Star is the one that caused the last caution. Like, Kyle Larson doesn't win that race if that last caution doesn't happen. He had to find a way to go from fourth to first. Is that what he did? He was in fourth place, right? He picked up three spots on that last pick call. Now, obviously, that's inadvertently, you know, it's not my saying David Star caused all this stuff. I'm just saying it's amazing. You're right. The person most deserving of the championship won the championship.

But wow, a lot of things had to happen in the last 20 laps for that to happen. And it was exciting. It was exhilarating. And I would say, I am still, maybe it's just me. My eyes are going bad. I thought Denny Hamlin beat him off pit road. Where? What line?

Must be looking at the wrong line. But there's one vivid line. If I look at the replay. The yellow one? Yellow or white, whatever it is. It looked to me like. There's three lines at the end of pit road. This is where I must have got wrong.

The only one I could see in that camera shot. All right. Which camera shot is? Do you want to pull it up? Yeah. I mean, you're going to talk about it. You know, when I first saw it, it looked like it too. So I'll agree.

But I was like pleasantly surprised. I was like, oh, wow. I even rewatched it yesterday. And I was like, I still think Denny was. Yeah, that pit road position was. Nobody's arguing this point. Key. Yeah.

So this is, you see them two little white lines? Yeah. So the one that all he had to do is roll. That's the end of pit road speed. Ah, gotcha. Well, I figured I had that wrong. I wasn't contested. I'm just saying, man, so all Larson had to do is off the jack, just roll forward and he's

across the line, which makes that pit stall. Yes. That's your pit stall, right? But it usually is at racetracks. You want that pit stall. But, man, that's how he was able to beat him. Okay. Yeah, that's why I think LaTart mentioned that time.

time again throughout the broadcast to how critical that pit stall was because all he had to do is literally exit his stall and now he's crossed the line. Yeah, that's right. And so, and it came, you know, the pit crew did a great job. They took advantage of the stall. That's why qualifying was so important. We don't have qualifying every single week and I wish we did. And this is a reason why, right? Because the teams can take advantage of a good qualifying effort and get that first pit stall where it could be an advantage throughout the race or later in the race. Yeah, I like it. And I didn't even think about that stuff when we were going through the season about, you know, pit stalled selection.

But wow, did that play a part? It was nice to have some practice. Did you like it? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, personally, you know, some of the crew chiefs or maybe even some of the drivers don't really enjoy it. But, you know, they kind of, my God. I've come up with our life hack question from last week.

I use the phone case to hold my mic. That's a good one. So what were we talking about? Practice. Practice. Okay. What are we talking about? We're talking about practice.

So, I, um, all right, let's not move on. Let's just go to the next thing. Not the race. Not the race that I love it. As well as you are, Matthew. We talk about practice. I just answered the question. Yeah, she has.

She did. All right. Who's your director? Marv, okay, sorry. He deserves a shout out. Go ahead. I'm watching that post-victory celebration. And as a TV guy, you know, you're watching, they cut to that in-car camera.

And usually a director is trying to take all these great beauty shots of this incredible moment. And the fact that Marv stuck on that in-car shot for like a minute and let it develop and let it play out. And as a fan, myself, my mom, my wife, were worried. watching his cycle of emotions up and down. And it was so, that's the thing that I'll take with me for the rest of this championship, was watching that in-car and watching him humanized. A guy that's sort of kind of level and kind of stale sometimes, watching the range of emotions of Kyle Larson is,

that's something I'll never forget. And as a TV guy, like I was like, wow, afterwards, that director, like, that's a gutsy call to just stay on that one shot. and it worked you know it was it was incredible yeah it was awesome so we we've uh we had a we had a good broadcast we had a good production and the quality was awesome and all the pre-race stuff was fun we spent we had like a two-hour count down the green it was uh it was good man big weekend for you yeah where'd you stay at the wigwam oh yeah y'all go y'all fancy so we've been staying at the regency and it's okay but it's uh it ain't a wigwam the wigwam your team is up because you

you're really interested in this or you're not interested in this? Yeah, I'm definitely interested. I told you I was interested in this. I want to know. Well, you dogged it. I didn't dog it. I didn't dog it. I didn't dog it.

I did. I took it as he did. I guess, you know. Yeah, the wigwam, their decor is very dated. And I'm a nostalgic kind of person and I appreciated it. Yeah. Well, listen, the wigwams is the best place to stay in Phoenix. Is it not?

Yes. Is it? I think so. You can't find a better one. So like I'm not in the know because a lot of people said a lot of people have the same energy that you guys have in this moment right now about the wigwam. Yeah. No, no, it's right. Now it just actually makes sense.

I'm sorry. I'm going to apologize because usually you're in a motorhome, aren't you? And then in this case, you're not. And so when you said, hey, stay at the wigwam. And we're like, thumbs up, man. But like now I understand that would be a big deal because the wigwam. Doesn't suck, man. It's good.

It's nice stuff. You said something. What did you want to describe it as? You don't even remember. Yes, I do. When I lived with my mom in the early 80s, she watched Charles Bronson movies, and it was like being in a Charles Bronson thriller.

I love that. You know why? I don't really know anything about Charles Bronson. So I had to Google. I know Charles Bronson, but the only thing I knew about it, Charles Bronson is that the girl that sat beside me in third grade said she was related to Charles Bronson. That's all I know about him, right? I think this is the first, in 365 episodes, the first Charles Bronson reference. It's got to be, right?

Why you think that that's a Charles, why is Charles Bronson the thing that comes to your mind? The core was early 80s. Early 80s. I mean, it has, it is original from the early 80s. Okay. The carpet and there's been some, like the faucets and some of the fixtures and stuff are new, but, uh, It's just, it's got this old, old vibe to it. And I think five years ago or even two years ago, I would have not liked staying there. But I, for some reason, in the last couple, in the last year or a year and a half, I've gotten super nostalgic for anything 80s, anything 70s.

I don't know why. You think that just happened in the last few years? No, no, no. I've gotten even more. I got you. Okay. Now, if you thought I was then, I have ratcheted up much more. I hear you. Not just about racing stuff, right? More about just life, music, styles and furniture and houses and all that stuff.

All of that mid-century modern kind of vibe, I'm into it. And this is absolutely that when you go stay at the wigwam, at least the rooms that I've been in. And yeah, I mean, when you walk, when you're walking up the stairs to go to the door and opening up, man, And you are literally transported back in time. That's awesome, actually. And when you walk in the room and there's no one else there, I mean, it's as if you have, you get a little nervous after a couple days that you may not return from the 80s. Is it shag? Well, shag was it?

Not shag. It isn't shag. But, I mean, there might have been a shag. There could be a room with a little shag. I'm saying that I think some rooms are more modern than others. I'm just going to guess. and the ones that I've been in are original and the ones that I've seen otherwise

that I've going to visit Lattard or someone else or some of the stat guys or something in the rooms they stay in. All of them are the same. Not complaining. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. No, I think you're complimenting it. Yeah. I will also say that anything not room-related, the swimming pool.

The swimming pool has big old tube slides. Yeah, I know. Giants. Right. It's crazy. Right. I saw that, and I'm like, oh, it's amazing. Did you go down?

Did you go to the pool? Girls will love it, walk by it. The food, we had a dinner outside in this little courtyard. Amazing. The service, amazing. The breakfast amenities, the, I just want to say the rest of the hotel is modern standards. It's today. Right, yeah.

You go to the rooms, and those are the only things that sort of give you this throwback feel. I got you. But it's, it's, you remember when you, you used to check into a room or a hotel room like when you check into a hotel room today uh it's it's this very you know official by the book stale experience very plain yeah yeah really corporate no personality none at all the wigwam all the personality you can stomach yeah it's a resort it's like you know like when you walk into a i don't know if you've done this but if you go into a room at disney or something man it's everything's themed yeah and uh and so you do

get put into that place. Yeah. So did you go to the pool? I walked by it. You just walked by it. Mike, I walked by the pool. Y'all didn't go for a dip.

No. The NBC group didn't go for like a group swim. Nope. You and the tart? That's funny to you. Doing washer dryers and Marco Polo. I guess. Banana hammocks.

I'm just let him enjoy himself. Go ahead, Mike. No, I'm not. Keep going. Keep going, keep going, man. I want a rant. I want a rant. It's been a while.

It's been a while. I don't know. I had a, Also, I'm not even into sunsets. I mean, I'm not. We're got against sunsets. They're cool. I'm not like looking forward to every sunset and going, you know, I took a.

Oh, the picture. I took a picture. All right, and I put it on my social media. So we're driving out of the racetrack. And I'm riding with one of the stat guys, Russell, super cool guy. And Russell, um, Russell, goes, dang, look at the sunset. And I was like, I'll be honest.

I don't believe I've ever seen one that pretty, and I don't think I'll ever will see another one as good as that. And so only in Phoenix. Would you see a sunset, even a non-sunset guy, right? I've seen a few good sunsets, but I'm not looking for them, right? Yeah, that's right. This thing was amazing. I thought you were going to say,

even the sunset seemed like a sunset from the 80s. I mean, like, even the sunset was straight nostalgic. No. The sunset, to me, looked like what might be on the screen when the credits were old in an old Clint Eastwood Western. Oh, so we've got a little Charles Bronson. We got a little Clint Eastwood Western, right? I got you.

Starting to like Phoenix here. Dude, I'm telling you. So it's a long-ass flight. It's a long way to go. but obviously if you live out there it's not that far but for for me to come from the east coast all the way west coast it's a long ways to go and a long ways to get home but the hotel experience was fun the sunset was amazing the racetrack vibe energy was top-notch best i've ever seen the the championship moment uh that you want or expect or you hope that our our our sport has

As they had it, Phoenix checked all the boxes, man. That's the way to end the season then. You ended on top. You ended on top. When it wasn't the playoff race, and I used to go out there and run, you were, you know, you won a great finish. You go race and compete from green flag to checker flag. You were in the zone, but everything outside of that, I wasn't into it.

I was. You loved Phoenix. Yeah. I still say Phoenix, on the schedule, if you take everything, the total package, Phoenix was my favorite. Did you just say food? Really? Why was it your favorite? Did you just say food?

Yeah, why? Shocker. Well, dude, they have great restaurants there. There's that restaurant you can pull your horse up to? What? Let me tell you. That's the hell you talking about. Yeah, dude.

Keybones up on the mountain. I'm going to tell you this. I could mention, I could go down the list and mention every stop on the circuit. And the first thoughts that you're going to have is food. It's true. It's true. Maybe first or second. Right.

So I'm just saying. Nerbergring. Food. Bras. The brots. Schnitzel. Food there. My off my schnitzel, dude.

Church Hill Downs. Food. Food there. That's full hot chicken. You can take your horse right up and eat it. Be dirt truck when a slide, oh, Ferrito. Be dirt trail when a slide oh.

Ferrito. It's awesome to have Chevy on board with us today on the Dell Jr. download. Mike, let's talk about trucks, not just any old trucks. Talking about the best trucks, Chevy trucks. 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.

Got your new one. They look relatively similar, and I assumed that they would operate. the same. Man, I was wrong. Oh, really? Yes. So the new one drives way better. Wow. Yeah. I mean, the bad, you know, the 2017, I didn't have a problem with the way it drove. I didn't drive good. Yeah. It was pretty good. But so the new one doesn't have as much body roll, a little softer ride. It just steers quicker. It feels better, feels more modern, handles much better. I don't know how else to explain it. But if you drove a 17, like I have, for a couple years and then you hop in the new one you would notice the difference immediately it's

pretty different so that was one thing that i was absolutely uh shocked by because it looks like and should in all purposes be the same sort of feel and ride uh because the trucks appear to be similar but they have improved them at least over the last four or five years uh quite a bit so i'm really thrilled with that, 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. The first ever Silverado ZR2 will take strength and capability to new heights. Be sure to visit Chevy.com to learn more.

Okay, we got Eric Warren and Austin Dillon. Eric is a key member in leading the development and the introduction of the next-gen car for Chevrolet and Austin Dillon. Obviously has tested the car. So they're going to come on in here. So tell us all about it. We've got a lot of questions. Fans have written questions in that we're going to ask. So let's get them here.

Can't wait. Let's do it. Speed. What's up, man? What's up, pal? Man, I'm already short, but I feel real short. You don't look short. Do we need to bring in the booster?

I might need the yellow book. You look normal. You do. You're looking good. You know, we haven't really seen you since the DMVL days. At least I haven't. You know, back when we were playing basketball every week. So you used to wear a saddle on the basketball court.

But here you are. Man, I didn't get the invite back. Well, it's because he shut the league down. You came in and then you went in, took the trophies, and then left. I thought it was Stephen and got me kicked out. Jesus. All right. So we got Eric Warren here and Austin Dillon.

Eric, thanks for coming. Yeah, great. We got a lot of great things to talk about. We're really excited. Obviously, all of us, I think, are pretty excited about this next-gen car. We got one sitting right here to look at through this glass, and I'm pleased to see the number of placement on that thing.

It looks really good. Some guys got it slid a little bit too far forward for my taste. But if they're going to move it forward, I think that's about as far as I'd go. but it's a good-looking race car. Austin, you've been able to drive the car I don't know how many times. Two times now, yeah. And in various stages of development, right?

So you've seen some of the progress as this thing's going on. The other thing, too, is a lot of the development for this car has happened at Welcome North Carolina at RCR. And I know that you're, you know, if you're like any other driver, you're not at the shop every single day, but I know that that probably means you've been a little bit closer to the development and the conversation at least around this car over the last year and a half, than any other driver, would that be right?

I think in the early stages for sure. When it was in the chassis shop, I remember walking down there the first time the chassis shop and seeing it, it was like red paint at the first time chassis. So it was weird seeing a red painted chassis and then watching them kind of put it all together and trying to figure out how things were going to work, how you got in it. I mean, every little part, you know, took a lot of thought process and it still is going on kind of. That first part, you know, in 2019 in summer when, you know, NASCAR, Jim and Mike Elton and Richard kind of got together. And it's like, okay, the only way we're going to prove that this thing could actually be done was to build one and go to the track.

So from the point in time that decision was made, I think we had about three weeks. And I think we put about 2,800 man hours in that in three weeks. And so I know a lot of it was filmed and they were at different points, 25 people crawling all over the car, nonsense. stop. And so getting that first test together when Austin we drove at Richmond was nothing short for a miracle. And you know, you went to test and, you know, so many times you go to a test, something breaks, a sensor doesn't work or whatever.

And the test went flawless. And that it was a, probably the second most nervous time of my life. Daytona 500 first year qualifying, bringing the three back. And then the amount of vendors that were there for NASCAR at Richmond, like backing out to make sure I didn't run into anything with the next gen car. Yeah, this was back in October 8th and 9th of 2019. This was the first test. This is back when the car was sort of camouflaged

and everybody's trying to hide the character lines. Is that right? Yeah. And the big boss showed up, Jim France. He was there. That was cool. Yeah. And he handed us all cigars after a successful day.

It was literally like had cigars made like it like it was a baby. And it was an amazing test. That's insane. Yeah. You know, and you were like prepared for the worst. You know, you never know this car was so different. But, you know, it's really a testament to how much NASCAR really worked with the teams early on, how we kind of got there and working with the Laura and all the integration that it, you know,

was a successful first test. Not to say, you know, things didn't develop and things after that, but surprisingly, that first test. I think we're all shocked and tired, but shocked. Yeah. So you said something briefly about the chassis painted red. We're going to ask some important questions and some insignificant questions as well that you may or may not be able to answer. answer, but a lot of people are going to go, wait a minute. So there's like a rule in NASCAR that you have to have dove gray painted chassis. Is NASCAR going to open up the rulebook a little bit and allow

people to paint the chassis any color they want? You know, uh, have y'all even talked about that. Has it been discussed? We have not, but I do myself, you know, back working in the late 90s, I had plenty of cars that were painted red chassises, not just, uh, the RCR cars, but at Penske, Penske, Penns, Krampas, Kranfus, we were red chases. And so definitely have some affinity for that. So, you know, it has not been. talked about, I'd be surprised because now they're coming from one place. They're all the same color. Right.

Been able to hide all the, making sure there's no extra welding and cutting going on. I'd be surprised it changed. That's why they go to the dove gray is because it's easier to see everything going on. When you want to hide something, you paint it flat black. Right. I remember some chassis that were flat black. Whoa. You just assumed, without question, that guy's cheating.

It looks cheated. All of Bloomquist's dirt late malls are flat black. Is that right? Oh, yeah. You just knew that something was getting hid. But the other thing about the chassis is they come in three pieces, right? You got the center section and you bolt on the rear clip and you bolt on the front clip. And that's not entirely new.

I mean, we see that a lot of thinking sports cars. There's been some manufacturers in like late models, super late models over the last several decades that have done a bolt on front clip. And so after we've done some crash testing with the car, how does the center section survive in these crashes? Are we bending flanges and where the mounts are, where the clips are mounting. Is all those parts surviving for guys to literally be able to just remove the clip,

bolt a new one on it? Well, I think, you know, we had an inadvertent crash test at the California test with, you know, William there. And it was a unique test. It was like a 60-mile-hour wind going on there. And a lot of different things happening. And then when that car crashed... How did it crash?

You know, come off a turn two, you know, we kept trying to, you know, as you're, you know, looking at speeds and trying to compare against, you know, as racers, everybody says. trying to, you know, all right, let's start going faster. Let's start trimming out a little bit. And it got, you know, got probably a little bit free, the wind. And, you know, William trying to just, you know, run a little faster.

You know, typical thing, you know, it's fun coming off of two. Went really pretty far down the stretch there and hit the inside wall. And, you know, you would look at that crash and in a current car, that was over. It was totaled, you know, and it was a good experience for us because we were like, okay, how do we get this car off the track? Yeah, it was the first thing. Like, you know, with the underbody and the diffuser, and the things and the, you know, it was right after the race, the tow trucks.

And so that was a good experience to figure out, okay, how are we going to be prepared for that? But really, you know, we were in a push. I think we had a test at Atlanta scheduled like one week later. It was certainly within two weeks. And so there's the only car that existed. And a testament to kind of, I think what is going to be the advantage of the car is we brought that car back. The only thing on the center section, the upper right mounting flame, had a little bit of turn in it.

That really was it. And so we basically just split that section. It was good learning because that area needed to be supported so that bracket didn't rotate or whatever. We had the car back together, ready to go to the Atlanta test. We fixed that car, alluded in Chasholm in 30 minutes. And the entire car was put back together, ready to go to Atlanta, and that's when COVID stopped.

And so from a total lost car to the car being put back together with replacement components in a week and date and everything, that's where I think we proved and kind of showed to ourselves. Like when we first got the car, the first thing we did was take the whole clip off, put it back on, you know, how quick could you do it, to do with the engine in, a lot of those kinds of things that, you know, it doesn't really get talked about now, but I think it's going to be the advantage to the teams to be able to repair them and not to have to have so many cars.

But we got a couple track tests of that, you know, by surprise. Yeah. Hey Eric, maybe we should have done this at the beginning, but can you explain what your role is in all this? We tried to, but I bet you do a way better job of it. What is your role at Chevrolet and then with, as it pertains to this particular project? So, you know, right now at Chevrolet, I'm the director of NASCAR programs, and so I joined General Motors, Richard Childers, Rick Kendrick, Mark Royce, President, GM, basically asked me to come, wanted to really change how the program inside of GM, how NASCAR and the race team,

are really done. It kind of got moved up under engineering in the sense of the competition. So obviously all the competition side of NASCAR, the NASCAR programs. I have a counterpart that does any car in the other series. And so, you know, for managing team, team contracts, you know, really looking at Cup, McSfinity, whatever,

I kind of have that responsibility. So background-wise, I've been a technical director of run Cup teams since 1997. Yeah, we miss them at RCR. He was a lot of R-SPEC, man. I bet. So, you know, this project specifically at RCR, I was very involved, the team kind of of competition directors across the main teams, worked with NASCAR over the years.

And there's a lot of reasons how we got here. You know, we kind of all realized that we were engineering the car in a very, very expensive way. And there's just a couple key points where we all kind of said, all right, we're doing things that we shouldn't be doing. And so we kind of talked about how to get here. So from that side, the kind of concept of it, where it came from, I was a part of. And then, of course, as we went through it with the RCR and NASCAR, hands-on was involved in that a lot.

And so now today I'm more managing the program and a competition part of the program, but I'm still driving the engineering side and kind of a new technical center that were building. So I want to ask, Austin, when you got in a car and since you've been driving the car as it's developed, what is the first thing that jumped out at you? I drove the car at Bowman Gray and I had a couple things that stood out to me. So let's cover those. And what's the one thing I think jumped out on the car for you? I think for me it's like, you know, stabbing and steering.

So like steering and the throttle pedal. So it instantly turns on the throttle a lot differently than the cars. How so? Just the reaction. I remember going to Richmond and first time I hit the gas, I mean, they felt pretty close on the setup. But it was driving it like wanted to go into the infield. as soon as they hit the gas. I'm like, we've got to tighten this thing up.

It's got to drive like a little bit more towards the wall when I pick up the throttle. So there's a lot that we could mess with in the back with the independent rear suspension stuff I didn't know a whole lot about, but Eric kept wanting to talk about was the rear end and how we had it pointed and you can do a lot of different things that we've never been able to do. I can't really remember. Is the first car, do we have a spool in the back or was it? Yeah, the first transaxo that didn't have the ramps and the way the limited slip works. It was a spool to start with.

Yeah, so it turns more like. like, and I didn't drive many asphalt super late miles, so a spool, I mean, it just, it turns on throttle compared to the old truck arms that were used to, the old suspension. One of the things that stood out to me, I think, was the braking performance. Oh, yeah, that too. That was a big, big deal. How long did it take you to get used to the braking performance? It's so much better. So, yeah, I mean, at Richmond, you know, you're driving to turn one, and I kind of turn in kind of late and straight and just always have used that, but you have a ton of stopping power.

You can use it and he kind of have to work with the brake pads to figure out with the big rotor size in the front what's the best combination to be able to use it and get off of it. But you feel like Superman for a little while. But then I started to notice pretty quick that you were kind of relying on the rear tires a lot because of that small back in. You don't have the side force really. So as the front tires got hot, the rear would start coming around a little bit more quicker than I thought that the old car because you had a little little little, less to hold on to you in the rear. So how come we, when you look at the brake rotors themselves, they're like twice the size of the current brake rotor.

What was the thought process behind that to need so much more braking power? I think a lot of it was just driven by the wheel, you know, going to the 18-inch wheels and trying to match up. That's one of the things about the car to really comparing to this kind of street commander's street coops these days is the wheel size. And so, I mean, part of that is, you know, looking, filling that hole, just not having a small 15-inch rotor and kind of taking advantage of it. And then, you know, I think the cars now, the braking is not enough performance.

It's really hard now that used to be. That was a limit long time ago in Martin'sville. But now it's got to be where you can't lock the tires up and different things. So now adding more capability gives maybe more driver side of where you can attack the corner different and kind of getting to where, you know, and Alex, I remember when we did the WFT test, you know, he locked like four tires up instantly. He's like, oh, man, you know, this is a lot. Was that a lot.

It's at Martinsville. Yeah, a lot more performance. And so it's about 40% more, you know, breaking power. It's a lot. Wow. It's a lot. 40%. You know, and so, you know, I think ultimately we'll see when really people go at it in earnest, we call it.

You know, you've got to make some choices, I think. And that's part of trying to get the combination as you talk through what you can do with the car and what the teams are going to be able to do is, you know, you're going to get to a point now where you might be heating up fronts or sliding fronts or locking tires up that we hadn't seen in a while, I think. going to be a good part. The other thing that I noticed, and this is at Bowman Gray, granted, and only a handful of laps, but the drive off was way better. So I thought, you know, if you took a current, spend the tires, right? Yeah. If you take the current car to Bowman Gray, it's going to be awful trying to get out of the corner, especially with the straight, you know, the rear and housing the way it is. With the independent rear suspension, the car set on the right rear, but also continued to drive the left rear. Better than I've ever had a car do at a short

track like that. And I was wondering if you had the same sensation when you tested the car at the other racetracks you went to as far as just getting into throttle and the car just drove straight forward. Well, you know, with it being sequential, we did like some restart stuff at Richmond and like trying to get it to spin the tires like first second gear going through because it just it launches. I mean, it throws your head back in the seat. It's pretty cool. But yeah, tons of grip taken off. As we ran like long runs at Richmond, you did have that same wheel spin down the straightaway. after a long, long run that the tire did start to wear. But like on restarts, I mean, it's there.

Like it's, you got a lot of forward drive. What would you tie that to? Is it just the contact patch being that much bigger? I think you got that. And you actually have the now that has a limited slip dip, so it's different than a locker. How so? Because, you know, the way the current, say the current Gen 6 car,

the locker really like, you know, most of the time is it's locked up, but it's a little more a function of the ratio. of the speed of each side. So it's really important on the stagger and the corner radius. But there's not much control over it. And then, you know, so it reacts on speed, which is just a geometric thing,

whether it's stagger or the corner radius. Now the limited slip is a, has a kind of ramps on each side and these kind of friction plates that based on the drive force, now it's more a force thing. So, you know, it can break away and let one side drive based on more of a torque split

than a kind of geometrical thing. it gets predetermined. So you actually can distribute those forces differently. You know, going into it, NASCAR has like, okay, this transaction has this ramp. You're not going to be able to play with it. There's like one thing, like a pressure pre-lil. This is what Eric wanted to mess with when we first start.

Right. We got to mess with this. It sounds like, you know, it sounds like you would be able to, you know, find or create some great advantages there for your driver being able to adjust that. There's a lot of tunability in that. Well, how is NASCAR going to keep you out of that, keep you out of planning that.

Well, right now, right now the transactions are sealed. And so all the team. Extracts them. Yeah, extracts. You know, and honestly, this came to the teams,

the team owners, this was a lot of debate about, they don't want to spend it, but the owners don't want to spend any money, but the engineer, he wants to dig in there. Development of the diff. There's going to be,

you know, we'll see as time goes on, you know, caught from a cost standpoint, to trying to make sure, you know, does the model work. And then as you go,

I think some of those, there's a debate on sealing the whole thing where you couldn't change the ramps and then there was a point like okay maybe you just have these specific parts and they can't be modified but everybody was like all right as soon as i let let's take them apart we're going to be coating them we're going to be doing this we're going doing that but i think you know you look at the other series even even late miles have ability to change the dip a little bit and certainly you know you don't want to get to the f1 where you're doing pneumatic you know preloading things but i think there's a lot of opportunity to really change the handling and I think you know now guys are differentiating cars by re-engineering the parts you know this

car has a capability to give more variables to play with as the time goes on and I think as the car gets kind of understood and where it can open up maybe that gives more options and more combinations to be able to differentiate the teams and the drivers so I think there's an opportunity there when we were testing at Bowman gray Stewart spun the car out a couple times I just feel about that and he had some comments about not understanding where the limit of grip was or just having so much grip more than he had been used to, and then, you know, when the car wouldn't give him really a warning that it was going to go. It really reminded me of the exact same comments that drivers were giving us or saying back in 89, 90 when the radio came. So the, you know, the buy-spli tire that we ran on for decades had a big window of forgiveness

and guys were dirt tracking and smoking tires and running sideways. And then we went to the radio and all that went away. Cars ran straight. Cars didn't run sideways. And when they did get sideways, they wrecked. And they would all say that there's less warning. There's smaller window to save the tire. We drove that tire for two decades and now we've widened that window, right?

as drivers and mechanics and engineers, we've created the bigger box to play in with the radio. And now we do have that forgiveness that we might have had similarly with the bias by tire. This shorter sidewall, in a sense, would you'd imagine make a stiffer feel and take away some deflection and forgiveness. And then adding the bigger contact patch and grip would give you a false sense of security that maybe isn't really there all the time. So you also, as you mentioned, Austin, don't have the right side billboard quarter panel anymore. The rear bumper is symmetrical, and now the bumper, the quarter panels are even like you see on a production car. And so a lot of side force is gone from the right side of the car. I guess the question is, you've drove the car.

Does it have a smaller box of forgiveness? Is there that, you know, are you, did you get to where you understood? where the edge was and how and did you get comfortable, be able to put the car there lap after lap? What does it feel like on this new tire with a smaller sidewall and the bigger contact patch? So for me, you know, we went to Richmond and Daytona, two wildly different places.

And for Richmond, I just felt like, you know, what you said is pretty accurate, but because you're going a lot slower at Richmond than you would at a mile and a half. You get in the middle of the corner, though. When it starts to come around, a real slow kind of spin for me, but I was able to catch it and kind of run it a little free, but you definitely feel like there's an edge there that when you get somebody on the right side,

it could be really quick. You're not going to be able to catch it. I was going slow enough at Richmond that you could back steer and get yourself out of trouble. We got the Daytona, and the first couple hours we were all kind of learning what it was like and definitely felt there was more, you know, edgier moments and then just keeping up with everybody that's tested this car, I think Bell and Reddick both spun out Bristol and Darlington. And so, I mean, I definitely think your moments are going to be bigger and faster. Now, I think we'll also, you know, like anything, we'll make it better. And I think it's steering is some of that, being able to back steer. The steering was really quick when we got to Richmond the first time. And we did everything we could to kind of slow the

staring down in that first inaugural test. And we've continued to work on that. And then that's the part that we're working on now is to get our steering a little better. But was, was it quick for you at Bowman Gray? So I was scared to drive the car to the limit that Tony was driving it because I didn't want to crash it. But the steering to me didn't feel quick, but it was the rate, the degree of turn felt

like it was half of what we have today, like going to a lock on left or right. is way, way less. That was another question I had. Is there a concern that there needs to be more steering lock and more freedom in how far you can turn the wheel as far as being able to get in and out of a pit box, getting blocked in on pit road? Also, like you say, when you're spinning a car out,

a driver wants to turn a wheel as far as he possibly can, and I think that you're going to get to lock in a situation where you spend it Darlington or Bristol, you're absolutely going to get to lock and wish you had more. And what's the conversation been, like right here in that comment from a driver, you're trying to deliver him what he wants, but also you're limited by what the car has and can provide you. I think one of the things with the rack particularly was with the upright and the geometry,

like what available travel did you have, you know, as far as going to the lock and what was the ratio? Early on, we, you know, I think looking at it now, we've learned at the stagger that was chosen at some of these early tracks and with good year and what, what, what they were trying to do, maybe influenced the steering a little bit too much. Like maybe there was too much staggered and so a lot of the light filling in the steering was around that, but a lot of effort on getting the ratio and the effort right for those situations. I think, you know, the one thing with these tires is

the kind of where the slit peak is, is earlier. And so in some sense, what does that mean? Meaning like, you know, for the amount of steer that the tire actually has, where its peak grip is, you know, occurs at a little bit less steering angle than say the current tire and so what you know the fall off past that you put too much steer angle in it it's going to get way worse a lot quicker and so I think there's going to be some adapting to that like learning the feel of those tires and trying trying to get that right you know I think in a in a in a crash situation certainly the ratio and how much control the driver has or fine tonability still probably there's some choices there I think it's been special

sped up, sped up, sped up, and I think now it's going to be slower. You know, it's kind of an interesting thing over the course of my career. You know, everybody was running 16, 18 to 1 steering back in the day. My grandpa still thinks we should run 18 to 1 at Daytona. Now you're going to, you know, these intermediates with 8 to 1 steering boxes. So I think some of that will adapt, I think, as whatever the tires require and all that. What's your feeling about that? I mean, do you feel like that you're eventually going to get comfortable with all of the limitations

that you're feeling into steering now? I mean, I think it's a race car. I think we will get there, and I think there's so much that we learned so fast at these tests. Like, you know, there's so many different things. He talked about stagger. I think that William was the one that flipped the four tires at Daytona, and he felt like, oh, man, it drives like a car that we drive now.

What do you mean? I think he ran four left side. Yeah, we were looking again from some of the tests with Goodyear and looking at the kind of around the drive force in the rear. Like, you know, the past couple tests, the right rear was like doing all the drive. and we're like, all right, we got too much stagger. So at Daytona, right for it rained,

we'd all lobbied NASCAR in good years. So let's just run four right side tires. Let's see. And so went out and did that, and it was like, oh, wow. You know, now I've got a ton of force I've got to put in the wheel. Daytona. Daytona. And it was like an eye-opening kind of experience that we're like,

all right, you know, now here's this one variable. We've been over here working all this that we need to bring into it. And it's changed the conversation a lot. So I think as time goes, some of these upcoming tests, there's definitely some more work on that that will kind of probably put the steering in a more comfortable spot as far as managing all that. I mean, when we were coming on to pit road at Daytona, you know, trying to get real hard on the pit road, different guys are having different movements when they would lift. Like you're running wide open off the bank and you'd lift, the car would go left or right.

And some people were having to go left and we kind of figured out what was going on. and then, you know, changed around. I think the stagger helped a bunch. And it was just fun talking to the other drivers, seeing what their car was doing compared to each other. One of my favorite things of the Daytona test, which I was messing with my spotter about this, was the live camera, the rear-view camera.

Yeah, so when you're looking in the camera itself is a video, like in a street car. So I didn't really much care for it at the Richmond WFT test. I was like, man, I don't think it's fast enough. Like it isn't keeping up. Really? Yeah, I didn't. think it was like live. Oh, right. You know what I mean? Was it or was it now? I don't know. It was

close, but I just didn't trust it, right? So we get the Daytona and Andy Petrie actually had the idea of mountain mine like right here on the dash. Like I had it right in front of me on a left side dash. And we start drafting and I'm in line and I'm watching this thing. I'm like, man, this is nice. I'm getting comfortable with it. And I told my spotter, he kind of played out something that was going on behind me. Denny was getting a run with somebody who's like, all right, Denny's three back, getting pushed by so-and-so. I'm like, hey, you're pretty good, man. That's all happening right now. And I could hear it all. And I was like, man, I don't know if these spotters are really going to like these live rear-view cameras. I heard the same conversation.

Dad of a job. And it was pretty cool, you know. I mean, I enjoyed having that. I think you're always going to need a spotter. But it was cool to see that. And then William even had a wider view of it. And he said it was awesome because when I got behind his bumper, he could tell when I would pull out just ever so slightly he knew how much room he had until I got to his bumper. Hey, how much are the cars changing between tests? I mean, am I right to assume, Eric, that, you know, Austin says a very good point. You know, they're trying to learn the car.

But isn't the car in development still? I mean, like, how close are we to having the final product and how often does it change after a test? I would say, you know, certainly NASCAR on the safety side. The only thing it's really changed is, you know, with cars, you know, a couple of the crash tests have really done a tremendous amount of work on that. I think there was a few things just controlling what being. it, you know, what bent certain places and certain events. So that's the only thing that's really changed. The steering is still getting a little bit of work, you know,

and it's just, it's the last piece, really. And some of the temperature things, I think, you know, we saw from Daytona that there's been some really innovative solutions that I think of, I hesitate to say solved it. But I do know at the Roval test, I had a couple drivers actually get upset because now they felt like it was too cool and it wasn't going to be as hard on the drivers. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, Reddick. That's my teammate. Don't go down that route. Wait, wait, wait. No, man. No, man. Well, no, no. He got out of the car, really upset.

It's like, it's ridiculous. He said, warm it up. He said, it's ridiculous. It's like, you know, it went way too far, and he was over there. What was, let's talk about that. So what were the changes to getting the temperature down in the car that you think were the most effective? You know, I think there's two major things cause, a lot of things causing temperature issue.

But if you think about this car's full underbody, whereas in the past, you know, air was going past the bottom of the chassis, which was metal, and so just a lot of natural cooling was happening. And now this, you know, sealed up for reasons to keep everybody from working on chassis from an aerodynamic point of view. But now there's a kind of an installation between the chassis and that. And so, you know, talking through that, there's a little duck there that's in the bottom that has a, you know, wouldn't end up being a minor effect. But as we really got into it, looking at just the aerodynamics of the car and how the air in the cockpit, was getting evacuated versus the current car was a big difference.

The pressure inside of it was totally different. And so, you know, I think the holes in the rear window, and then you see that scoop on the window right there. That's new. Just getting more air into it. Yep. So basically, there's a lot of hot. There's an inlet or an exit hole in the hood where air is coming into the radiator

and exiting out of the radiator over the top of the hood, and it's hot air right coming because the radiator's hot. and that air would go around the car into the NACAs if you were trying to open a knacka for a driver or whatever, right? All the hot air is trying to come in that way. So anytime we traditionally try to cool the driver, we're just pumping more hot air into the car. So you put a window inlet right at the center, and that's sort of the new direction, right? The new salt process. That and there's some, depending upon where it settles out.

There's a couple other things. There's actually some slots and holes in the rear window. Right. So there's a place for air to get in on the front and then air to exit in the back. Well, actually, it's coming in the back too. Really? Yeah. Coming in the rear wind?

Because it's a, you know, where does the air exit? Well, I think once you get enough air in there, it's still going to come out. The A post and the driver's side. It's barely the only place it can come out if you've got the right pressures going in there. But that's what's happening.

You're actually getting more cool air in there to pressurize it more, and it's coming out to driver window. So the inlet on the windshield is that, how much more development will be going on with that? You know, I think what was done before was two NACA ducts just kind of put up in there just to put some holes there and let's see if that works at the robo and i think now it's more you know match that effectiveness

but leave the room for the styling and let's let's go through make sure it's uh still effective in the kind of configuration it's at so i think it's probably at this point time knowing it's going to be there it's probably done uh i think how we do it to to get the rest of graphics and stuff to look right where it's interesting it's going to be interesting what happens to a range that hadn't heard that there had been uh some pot i hadn't heard that this has actually been on the racetrack or the drivers actually got to really experience this in a good environment. So I guess that's a good step. Yeah, at Daytona, the first day, all the drivers met with NASCAR and it was a good meeting. And we complained our two biggest complaints with the steering and the heat. We couldn't run 20 laps without all of us

felt like we're burning up. Wow. So. Yeah, I think temperature inside the car, I've been hearing like 150, right? Yeah. Well, that left side exhaust that runs right under your tail, like you shoot it with a gun at Daytona. And it was like, Stenhouse was 170 at one point right there. I mean, it was ridiculously hot. So we started, a lot of us, we just started asking ask, hey, can we go to town on this second half of the day and try and get some temp out? And everybody just started opening up things, cutting holes,

trying to figure out how to get air out. And there were some great ideas at that test, and some things worked. And we had temperature sensors. And, you know, we started dropping temp out. And then they went to the roval with like a list, a whole plan of things to do. And then everybody started doing one at a time

and taking a lot of temperature out. That's good. It's been a great collaboration, you know, the whole project, really, with NASCAR and the OEMs and the teams. You know, they jumped on that and really all worked really close together. And I think, you know, it's been every issue that we've seen, you know, it's been a collaborative group put together, you know, across all the different stakeholders. And I think we made a big den on that. And I think, you know, the current car, I think a lot of people, current car runs pretty hot.

It does. If you look at the, if you look at the floor, it's just, you know, everybody's developed ways to seal off or move the seat up and have different floor things and we'll we'll get to that but it was a little excessive I think and I think the reaction was was good by NASCAR and NASCAR has improved a lot technically right they used to not they used to totally around the teams and now with the different personnel they have and the ability to react they did they did a bunch of CFD and error work to figure out how to affect the cooling whereas before they would just wait for an OEM or a team to do it so they've they've responded really well and I think you know the we're going to keep

developing it. There's going to things show up as in competition, but I think the collaboration between all the stakeholders is really what separates this car. I've been being worked on for a long time. I'm going to, when they crashed the car, there was some concern with the drivers about the car not having enough crushed zones or not absorbing enough of the impact and the impacts being too, too hard on the physical, you know, the driver themselves. And so is it right to say that NASCAR went through their testing and found ways to create the crush zones and create the, you know, the deflection in the, in the clips to accept some more of the impact? I think a lot of, there's a lot of things in the sport, you know, the rumors end up being different

than the reality, right? Are you saying drivers are whiny? Well, I think, you know, rumors cycle through the garage. I kept having people would call me and say, oh, I heard the crash dummy didn't make it at the crash test. They ain't even tested yet, right? I mean... Was that true?

Because that was a rumor that was going on everywhere. Yeah, what was the reality? So there was no crash test dummy? No, it was. But at the time the rumors were going around the garage, they hadn't even done the test yet. So that's how I knew it was false. Yeah.

Gotcha. But, and so I think, honestly, NASCAR to their credit with the panel experts they have, they've set with the stakeholders, the drivers and everybody really went through the real data to show current car, comparison. And honestly, the changes that they're making, you know, the thought,

was okay they had to make those it actually is not true it actually is hey we saw something we think we even improve it even more right but i think compared to the to the current vehicle there's so many parts of the vehicle that that are they've improved safety wise and and uh things learned over the years um and i think this last step was hey we can do some small things with forcing a clip to bend right at this point and all these different things and uh been successful in a few of those or changes that I think will be helpful. I know we haven't been able to put the car in a situation to really understand this for sure, but when we watch races this year, at least,

I was really frustrated with the inability for the drivers, the Cupside, to make contact. You know, they have to literally stay away from each other because of the potential of a flat tire. And as the cars have gotten lower and things have changed, it's gotten even worse. This year was probably the worst we've seen in a while. Where are the affinity cars,

now they're going to have a flat tire if they're too egregious, but they can hit the wall, they can do all kinds of things with their cars and continue on. The idea or the hope is that this car will be similar to what we see in the Xfinity series. You think we can count on that? I mean, I think, one, the engineering of the body panels and the quality of the body panels,

but from a cost perspective, you know, the cup car, after doing the Xfinity car and that kind of flange-fit composite body and learning what we've learned as an industry, really going into this car with that mindset, I think you're going to see a lot of things even better with this car. I think the one thing we'll have to learn a little bit is the, it's a transaxon, how does the rear impact, you know, what kind of durability is there.

It's a pretty solid piece back there. So, I mean, I feel like it's actually going to be better than what we've seen with the rear housing and issues with that. But I think it's going to be much closer than Xfinity. I don't want to say better, but I feel like compared today, just like you said, I mean, you know, it's not just even the cutting the tires, but just the cars are so dependent upon all these like arrow like down to the last 10,000s, and that's what's causing having to.

You can't touch anybody. Repair the car and all of a sudden, even one little barely touch it and it don't handle anymore. So I think that's going to be a lot better. Yeah. So from a driver standpoint, do you have that same feeling? Because you've raced in the Xfinity Series and you kind of understand that those guys can get away with beating on each other and leaning on each other. As a viewer and a broadcaster, you love that. You love seeing those guys lean on each other and push each other up the racetrack and run each other out of the groove and so forth.

But in the cup series, you couldn't even take the risk. Do you feel like you'll have a little more freedom there? I mean, even at like Phoenix, when you go across the flat and you kill your side skirts, I mean, you're starting to think about down force loss. So, I mean, I was down there crushing right off the bat. I'm like, man, am I slow my car down doing this? But, I mean, it's a place to go, you know, so you use it. But, yeah, I think it's cool. I mean, those Xfinity guys get a lot of good race and because they can be aggressive.

And, hell, you see a guy knocked the fence down three or four times and keep on trucking sometimes almost look like to get faster. I mean, Redick did it a lot for us. We were like, hey, man, when you get in these steel body cars a little different. And he's done a good job of kind of doing that. But that's a guy, like, you know, you see different things from the Xfinity series that we really can't approach the race that way. We've got to keep it clean. And that's how you win the race is having a clean car by the end of it and getting that chance to, to be up front.

So the new car next gen has a diffuser on the back. How much does the diffuser, how much is that affecting the down force? Or what is that, how much of a percentage, if you could give me like a percentage, is the driver getting from that? You know,

I think the underbody car is a large percentage of the downforce. If you look at this, I'm going to air and ampsis, I try to not get too geeky here. He's also from Mount Airy. So if you take the top surface of the car, the top surface always lifts. You know,

it actually doesn't create downpriced. So it all comes from the bottom. It's the delta between the top and the bottom. But if you look at the diffuser in the back, I mean, I would say more than half of the downforce on the bottom is coming from the diffuser because it actually drives this low pressure even forward. So it's not as much a diffuser itself. The air is kind of expanding out of the diffuser.

But what that does is it kind of creates low pressure on the floor ahead of it. And that's really where it's coming from. And it's going to be interesting because it's definitely going to be different, you know. And I think the wake of the car. and kind of going back to how we got here, I think, you know, as everyone knows, we've done so many air packages and gone to the test so many times and how do you mess with this bubble

or how do you change this speed? And you just got to a point where it's like, with the solid axi, you just can't do anything with the bottom of the car. You can't really clean up the wake. And so this car is definitely approached by that, that approach. How it actually works, you know, has not been a lot of traffic running.

I think it's going to be different And, you know, what I would have wished for was that, you know, you can make it where the diffuser stalls at some point where you had to make this tradeoff. Like, how close do you want to get to the edge? We didn't quite get to that to where it's still gaining as you travel. But as you get in traffic, I think people are going to have to make choices of what pits they run. Okay. So the diffuser has got some adjustment. Yeah.

Well, I think the attitude of the car is really sensitive, right? And the diffuser does have adjustments. If they give it to us or not, we'll see. So they can change the platform of the car and that affects that big difference. Let me ask you this. I'm going to put you in an uncomfortable situation. If you can run into the back of a guy's car and damage his diffuser, are you going to do it? I guess if he pisses me off, right?

Well, no. It depends on who it is, right? If you know that you're knocking about 40. No, no. Just in general. Middle of the race, hey, I'm going to take 40% of your downforce away. Watch this. Yeah, I mean, if it's an option, you know, we're going to take advantage of it.

What you got to be careful about and does it just a lot? Does it punch a hole? I think about that, you know, I'm like... I think about that. You know, how are they not going to destroy each other's diseases? You could actually hit it and raise it up in the back and help him. Right, you know what I mean? Yeah.

And so we'll have to learn that. I'm sure, I'm sure there's going to be things like that. But, you know, with the underwing and everything. The rub blocks at Daytona were a thing. The what? The rub blocks, you know, underneath the car. That stops the travel, right? Yeah. So, like, someone has a flat and is able to get back to pit road,

and you rub, you go through your road block, right? you can run the car lower. Yeah, that's one of the things that I was curious about. I wasn't even going to ask about that. Me and LaTard just had a little discussion about that. But they've kind of, they've made a, made a rule. It's a hot topic of debate right now. I have personal opinion on myself.

So for over a couple decades, they've used pucks under the cars out of different materials to limit travel or stop you from grinding through your splitter whenever you didn't want to, you know, do that. But now this new next-gen car has rub blocks. basically made out of what material? Well, actually, they're aluminum now. They're aluminum. We went through some different materials early on.

The very first test, NASCAR spent a lot of time trying to look at all these materials, and we actually found the material, I think it's called Vespard, that was like you couldn't wear it off. It was like the most frictionless surface, but the actual cost of one puck was like three times the weight of gold. And so eventually you're like, all right.

You get much pay for it. Right. So, you know, we cycled through a little bit of that. and I think. Now, let me tee it up by saying to the people listening that your car will run faster if it gets lower, if you can run your car lower. But these are blocks put on the car by NASCAR to limit the travel, the car, and stop you from going by, stop you from getting to a certain point so that everybody has to kind of play

in the same box. Now, if they're made of aluminum, I can send, or you can send Austin out on the racetrack and say, hey, man, this thing's going to drag the racetrack terribly for about 50 laps. but the last 100 lapses this race, we're going to be a half a second faster than everybody else. And so go drag this thing off and then we'll be good. You see the sparks flying at Daytona at the end of the race? That's the same thing to the track bar.

How is NASCAR going to handle that? So basically, two things. So that's true. So you could go at a couple approaches, and there's different lobbying efforts going on from the teams of which way to go. But you could enforce a minimum block height after the race, right? Like other series, you know, you take F1, you hit the plank. it's got to be if it's less than a certain thickness, you're out.

So instead of having to really go through that, because the spring and the way the suspension works, they're discussing and will likely be some setting where the damper can't be compressed anymore. So basically, depending upon how that's set, you couldn't hit the rub blocks unless you had a flat tire or something that. So it'll be some combination of that to where they're not just going to let you go out there and do exactly.

And we have a rule now, right? Tairs the racetrack up, first of all. Sure. But there will be a combination of where you really can't hit the rub block unless you have a flat. And it creates, you know, there's a lot of debate on how that affects suspension. Suspension settings, a lot of things that are still kind of, it's one of those things now where to get to tech procedure and all these things that's still a lot of dialogue on what's efficient or what does it hurt. But I think that part of it, you won't be just rubbing the rub block off.

Well, you're saying there's debate with the effect. or the cause? I mean, like, there's debates, because it seems like that there's, this is something that you guys have been mulling over a lot, right? Well, what happens in these meetings between the teams and, you know, I'm putting my team hat on, my OEM hat on now? Okay. You know, you're lobbying NASCAR to do it for a role, one, to try to save yourself, but you're also, you think you got some idea, you're trying to manipulate the rule to help you, and you never quite know in the room with a NASCAR or the team, you know, why are they arguing for this? But in this particular case, I just think, you know, setting that shock link or damper link to keep it off the

rub blocks, everybody kind of understands that. And I think it's what are the knock-on effects of that. And guys really hadn't spent a ton of time until they've got their cars and go testing, you know, kind of to the point earlier about not finding the edge. And we've done all these tests. It's like, just like a tire test. You run these pressures and these settings. And so people hadn't really got on the edge of performance trying to run the lower pressures and the settings of the tires. And so I think understanding, all right, what suspension do I want to run and what effect does that rule have, I think is where the discussion point is. So with the new sequential box, you won't have an H pattern anymore. You'll be forward and, you know, forward and back on your

shifting. What was that like, I guess, in your first experience? I know you've probably driven several cars that have done that, like the road cars, and so forth. How comfortable were you with that through your testing? I felt pretty good about it. You know, Legends cars, I think similar. This pull back and go forward, same thing. And I thought that the

mechanical side of it, like the part was really nice. I mean, it shows up on the dash, what gear you're in. Some of the things technically, I think, are really nice about it. I remind me of a dirt bike going through the gears. Like when you go through it's like, bang, bang, bang. I mean, it's fast. You can be quick. Yeah. Do you use a clutch at all?

I wasn't, no, I wasn't touching the clutch. Now, I think one thing we're trying to figure out best now is like pit road. So, you know, my procedure on pit road, I'll either run first or second gear for my RPM. And I throw it in neutral when I'm two, three boxes away, try and get the wheels locked up, hit my sign. Yeah, now how do you get to neutral? Right. So. So for me, I'm trying to lobby for, you know, first gear, pit road speeds.

So I can just bump it in neutral still like I used to. Tyler's been messing with just pushing the clutch in and keeping it in gear and he feel and you can do it either way I just feel like I like having I don't know for something about neutral just feels right to me yeah and so we'll be messing with our gear ratios trying to find out you know the first gear is our pit road speed that's fine you just you'll be in second everywhere else when you're out there how come they didn't go to paddles on the steering wheel and when they're probably going to end up doing that in the next five inside the next five years why they just start there I think it's like what level of electronic to you put on the diff, right? I mean, that's really where it, and the engine controls as well.

You need a different ECU for that. It exists, you know, but it's trying to keep the cost. There was a push from the owners that's, okay, this car has to cost less than this, or it doesn't make sense. And I think trying to make those decisions of where do you put it, that was one that was a lot of discussion early and how do you, how do you do that and make sense? It'll be something easy to implement in the future,

but from a cost point of view, it didn't really add value to it versus getting through the transition. Actually, there was a fan question that actually pertained to this. I was going to ask it right here. With the five, this may be for you, Austin. With the five-speed transmission, do you think we will see more shifting on the oval tracks, particularly the 1.5 mile tracks? That is something we've been talking about testing. So are we going to be using fifth?

I mean, even at Daytona, we messed with trying to run fourth one time all around the track, and it didn't really pick it up. fifth was the desired place. And I think it's not going to be like now where you have a couple little choices with your gear ratios that you can select. Supposedly it's going to be way more locked in. So I don't know where NASCAR personally wants to have you at gear-wise or where they want for track.

But I mean, I'm sure it'll come down to your engine manufacturers, what RPMs they want to see. And then I don't know. You could be shifting. I mean, it's definitely a possibility. It's a lot easier. So could you see a scenario? That's a great question.

Could you see a scenario where, you know, year when we went to Bowman Gray we ran second year was that only because we just didn't want to put a different gear in the car yeah i mean i'm sure at that point time it you know your your but my question i guess it was like that was really easy right could you see a scenario where they you know you you tell a driver hey man at bristol this weekend we're going to be in third gear next weekend at richmond we're going to be in fourth gear and we go to darlington i want you're your own fifth year you know you're going to you're going to see that happen or are you going is NASCAR, is the development team going to try to have the drivers close to running

fourth gear pretty much everywhere and having fifth is that option? I think it depends on the way the transaxle and that there's three transaxels that come box A, box B, box C for the type of classes of tracks, let's call it speedways and then the short tracks and trying to get all of the ratios that we run today and with the RPM that we're looking for. But there are drop gears that can go in the back that can move around a little bit. And I think it just comes down to where does it end up with the gaps and what the gears are and can you run it?

Like now the rules set up where like 138 is third gear and you can't shift and cut most of the places because it just overruns the RPM. We don't know quite yet whether that's going to be true. More than anything trying to figure out, do we need three boxes or two? Like if the speedway is based on the power level and the speed, you know, that's the one it almost makes you have to have a third box. If you can get that down to two, so there's probably bigger things going on right now,

but that'll obviously become a huge question. If the durability's there, maybe it's a good thing, right? You don't do it now because you get the development of the transmissions and all the things, but it's a fixed box, it's sealed, all the rules are in place. They may let that, they may open it up. How does the driver save fuel with this car the same way? I mean, is it like, hey, man, I want you to run 80% throttle?

You know, all the things that they developed over the last decade with pickups and switches and all the things, you know, go to two on your box, you know, all that stuff's gone away? No, I think a lot of that still be there. I think the ECU and the system of fuel pumps and all those things, all the same. Now, you know, the fuel cell itself, you know, maybe not quite as much freedom as far as having those little reserve boxes and things. It may become more standardized from that standpoint.

But I think in general the techniques and the different things of cutting the hybrid homes are still going to be there. That was another thing that I noticed about the car when I drove it the other day was the throw and the gas pedal was really short. It felt like, so we, when I went out there to, to, on the track, I'm going around and I'm like, you know, this is just bone gray, he's tiny little straightways. Yeah. And I'm running and I'm not full throttle.

And I'm not sure how, you know, if this thing's going to try to, you know, dragster down the straightaway or what it's going to do. And I felt like in my mind, I was like, man, I'm probably. only 25% throttle here. I've got a lot of throttle left to go. I got to really, I'm going to try to mat it. And I went to matt it, and it was only like another eighth of an inch before it got to the stop. And so all of these things, I know drivers will adapt to, right?

You know, you'll get used to everything that's different about the car. So I'm, I... And it's floor-mounted pedals. That's different. I've never drove a car that I know of with floor-mounted pedals. How much adjustability is there in things like that? Can you... if I said, man, I need another half an inch in the throttle,

throw itself. Could you give that to me? I still think you can because it's not drive-by-wire throttle. So it still has the same mechanical linkage to the throttle body. I didn't want to say carburetor if you're on Jackson. Yeah, apologies, yeah. And, you know, so I still think the adjustment's going to be there. Maybe it's not quite as much range because, you know, your pedal ratio.

Yeah. But I don't think there's any reason why you can't have something. Yeah, that was weird. NASCAR pretty much said the, the inside there you can make slight adjustments and stuff to your, like I don't really care for the gas pedal, like the beveled holes in it and stuff, so I'm going to make a little bit different.

It might make me a footprint gas pedal. Right. So you'll be able to do that. Yeah, you know, you'll be able to mess with some of that stuff. Some of the parts, you know, some of these parts, they're going to be like, nope, that's a, that's something you bought and you've got to run that, right? How is the freedom right now with being able to, you know,

customize even just the driver stuff? You know, there's a list of kind of, okay, these are parts that are hands off. Hands off, right? And then, you know, there's quite a things around the. It's a tighter box, I'll say that. Things around the driver or switch packages, a lot of those things. Shifter. Internal parts of the car.

There's still a team provided you call them. A lot of teams where they're getting really nice and fun and creative with dashes and switch panels and things like that. You're still going to have the ability to sort of cut, you know, I don't know, give your, give your, car and identity as far as, you know, the organizations, because Gibbs would have their dashes different. They were, they, you know, you'd see everybody and go, damn, that's cool how they did that. Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think there's still going to be differences there. They're not really, you know, putting a set specification out on that. The dash can be a little bit different based on the extra bar in there and where, where the dash is, but I still think there's

different switch configurations and things. There's going to be some deviation between them. There's been a lot of discussion about, they built this car with the intent of having a hybrid, component or phasing in, you know, electric components into the car. And I know that's probably not in development. I don't know. Maybe it is, but it's a future part of this whole puzzle. Explain to me. Like, I have no idea.

Like, I know when a street car, I pull up and it shuts off. And then, you know, I'm coasting and it's building, it's running on a battery. I don't know what the hell is doing, right? I don't know nothing about that stuff. And so explain to me a traditional. traditionalist that loves carburetors and fuel injection and and you know T10 transmissions and all the cool old stuff like a nine inch four rear in explain to me how that hybrid component can exist while I still get to have you know my my traditional race car right sell this to me

so we we talk through the the thing you talked about there when when you're at a street car and you stop the light and it it kicks it back on. What's happening is the alternator there is actually can run in reverse, right? You think about the alternator and how the engine runs it and it charges the battery. Well, what happens when the thing, you know, shuts off is takes a battery and the alternator turns around, turns the engine over and cranks it back up. That may or may not have been tested in. I was getting ready to ask about that if you was going to bring that up. So you, that might have been something that's been tested.

That might have been some hybrids. Why would you want to be trying to make some. extra power one time, we'll be real honest. Oh, and the current car. Yeah. Old car. Yeah.

Might have been some hybrids already been tested. But, you know, I think that, so that's what it is, right? It's like a generator or something. You know, the engine still runs the same way. And, you know,

the hybrid system that would be in the car would just hook onto the transaxil and just be an additional motor that kind of drives the gears and the things the same way. So it's basically just, you know, put another belt on it. But when would I want the hybrid to be working for me?

Well, I think that the beauty of electric vehicles and the performance is instant on torque. You know, the power is there. You don't have to rev the engine up. You know, you don't have to get in a certain range. It can be this torque all the time right now. And so I think, you know, as you look at shorter tracks for different places, you'll be able to use that to your advantage, you know, and augment the power.

And, you know, if you think about saving fuel, or whatever, you know, you lose a lot of fuel at high RPM. You might use your power early, cut it off down straight later on. So there's a lot of combinations where you could potentially... I'd rather have all that than like push-to-pass buttons and silly things like that. E-30 too, go that route. A lot of racing using that, clean, burning fuel. Yeah, for sure.

Let's ask a couple more of these. Yeah, let's get some fan questions. There's a few here. We didn't really talk about the pit stops. since the changing of the tires will be sped up due to having one lug nut, will there be any changes to the gas can fuel and inlet to flow more fuel to match the time of tire replacement? Go ahead. I'll sorry. I can take it. I mean, I've only seen for us, I don't know if we're a little behind or what on pit stops.

We just had our first pit practice, and I got to drive the car at it. You know, pit stops are going to be faster. I mean, stuff's happening really quick. So I think at some point for sure the fuel flow will be, be a topic. You know what I mean? You're going to have to have to have a really good gas man or we're going to have to get some faster flow. Right. So the problem, yeah. So the problem you will potentially run into is that you'll be done changing your tires before you can get all the fuel in. And we've been there before. You know, they tried to slow down the fuel or they changed

something where the valves in the can's in the can. Everybody was messing with those. So we've kind of been in this position before when we have some rules and we've had some history to lean on. So where where does all that net out? I think look, if you watch, you know, again, when the discussion was five lugs or one lug, if you look at a video or watch people do the stops, there's not a lot of visual difference. The difference between a one lug nut is there's a lot more torque it takes to,

you know, to get that on there. So whereas guys could hit the five lugs in a real short period of time, they have to stay on the center lug a little bit more. So it depends on the gun. I think there's two guns that were being, just talked about like how you know whether it was a 13 second pick stop or 11 second pit stop you know and how much torque the gun had and and i think think it'll be very similar i mean uh maybe a little faster uh but it's not going to be five seconds faster yeah you know it's right okay so that is is it

am i is it right to uh to say that so this one single lug has a locking mechanism where the lug the lug the lug itself can't come off the wheel right um that's one of my favorite things about it i know there was a bunch of debate over the last two years about going from five to one and a lot of traditionalists very frustrated with it but me myself I mean I'm as old school as it gets and and love a lot of the history of the sport but I've had wheels fly off my car and it's a very terrible experience it hurts and usually sometimes you take a few people with you when it happens but uh well is it safe to say that that's probably going to be a complete non-issue with with you know even with loose wheels a driver will know that this is never going to exit the vehicle

Yeah, I think you look at the system. It's certainly, you know, from the outset, should be safer. But you look at other series, you know, those lack of mechanisms fail. You know, things happen. I'm sure there'll be things happen. You know, again, looking at why, you know, OEMs are excited about the next-gen car and we'd like to talk about that, maybe touch. But once you went to the Ford's aluminum wheel, you know,

we were all talking about five lug one, all these surveys, And I remember one of the tests, the wheel manufacturer, when he started looking at the five lugs and what you'd have to do the wheel, he was like, oh, that can't be done. You can't do that. Because with aluminum wheel and this and the taper, and it became not even close to discussion, the one, the center lock and the torque required to hold the wheel. The fact that it's aluminum really became more of a, what does the sport want, was OM want to, hey, this is by far a big safety. difference between the two and that kind of settled that question is actually in the end so i think the positivity of that and and again the the locking mechanism kind of made it where you know this should be a safer one but i'm sure locking mechanism something won't work and won't

yeah i'm sure we have the problems there every now and then but uh and there's a lot of frustration at least from the broadcast booth over the five lugs at the racetrack you still got teams intentionally doing four lugs at certain certain times of the race if not all the race uh and And we can move on from that. The game's being played there, which would be kind of nice. But you just mentioned why the OEMs are excited about this car. I'll go ahead and just let you dive into that. Now, I know that the sell-on, it went on Sunday,

sell-on-monday thing was a big proponent of our sport for years. We moved away from that when we went to the car tomorrow. We were racing cars that looked nothing like anything you see on the highway. and one of the things that I have noticed about this car when I get up close to it is how much it does resemble a street car. I've had people tell me the same thing that, man, that thing looks exactly like what I see on the highway. They're recognizable, not similar from OEM. So talk about that. Because the manufacturer support that we get from Chevrolet or Toyota or anybody, that is so critical to this sport.

The fact, we need them to want to play, right? We need them to want to invest. We need them to want their cars to win. And how does this car do that? I think one of the exciting things from Chevrolet's point of view is from Mark Royce to President, every, every, Mary, all the way down is this car is so much closer to the street Camaro. You know, looking at development in the past, I know you can probably remember this. I remember going through the next model, you know, you ran this, what was before,

in six, this long deck lid. And when he first came with the shorter deck, you're like, oh, wow, that looks ugly. And then after you run it for a while, you look back at the old car and it was like, that ain't even close with a thing all twisted up. And so the first time we saw this and started looking at the geometry of it, you know, it really was important to match up to the kind of coop style and the lower roof, the look of the car. You know, really when you set this car, this Camero Z-O-1 right beside the street car, they are very close.

I mean, you look at those in pictures. And so really getting that relevance, you know, the rear wheel drive, the independent rear, the flow through the hood evens, just like the street car, the look of it, the brakes. I mean, there's so many parts of that that match up to the car. The symmetry of the car is the arrow of people, and people in support, we didn't want it. But from a look standpoint, you look at the car, you know, people really see this as a Camero they can go by. And, you know, and it's uncanny until you really see them in person how close they look. I think they haven't been this similar since the late 80s.

You know, right around, you know, the early 90s things sort of took off in an arrow direction that steered the cars away from visually looking like the production model. Hey, Eric, now that we've had the final race, the season's over, is there a sense of urgency that you guys start to feel? I mean, like, what's, I'm really curious on what is left to do with this car and what this off season is going to be spent focusing on. You know, I think for a lot of people, you know, maybe not as much myself. I've been to work on this for quite a few years. A lot of these teams, they're so focused on this season, and you look at what it take to accomplish what we did at Chevrolet this year with the championship, manufacturing championship.

A lot of these teams have just really starting to get into it, right? So it's been relying on the engineering groups and all those kinds of groups. And so really, you know, all your notes are out the window. So now you're working on simulation and trying to figure out, you know, what do I got to do with these? There's two basic tests, right? There's Charlotte coming up, the Oval Left, Phoenix is coming up. Now there's test at Vegas.

It's been added at the end of January and Daytona again. But really, these two tests here are, okay, what am I going to show up at the start of season with? And so a lot of people, the tools are just now coming into play to how to simulate it and getting experience, like I said before, very few times to deal with tires like you would when you go to the track. So, I mean, it's a panic. If anybody's not panicked right now, then they're in trouble.

I know both of you guys are Key West fans. Like, instead of going to Vegas, why don't you guys lobby for NASCAR to go to Homestead? It's warm down there. I mean, Jr., you could come watch the test if you wanted to. I don't know why y'all going to Phoenix. I'd just go back to Richmond. It's a long way. That'd be great.

More homestead test would be awesome. So, yeah, let's look toward the future. at the last test, which was at the Roval at Charlotte, Corey LaDoy had a rack fail, and there's been some talk about the rack and how it feels in the hands of the drivers in the corners of the banking, and this has been everywhere,

not just at the Roval or a road course where that specific setup might create those issues. We've had this at Oval Test as well. What is that? Explain that issue to me so I might know exactly what's going on and why did his box fail? What's the concern going forward?

Is that going to be an issue? I think from all the information that was gleamed after that, and of course I got really dived into directly, it was a temperature issue, mostly. The fitting that was on the, what happens, the line came off, and the fitting and the line kind of from a heat standpoint, you know, one side of the fitting just came off, and that course caused a big issue,

which, you know, there's a lot of, failures in the current steering system that would be similar. So I think that was a little bit of a isolated thing. But it's again, it's a learning experience of, you know, it was a kind of a press on fitting, not a permanent fitting. I'm talking about hard lines and kind of, you know, making the system more rugged for those things. And that's part of getting, so they have a one test car. Now you've got, you know, every organization out there, somebody's going to not have the steering cooler hooked up or don't think they needed it or whatever. So that was centered around that. Does the, not having messed with racks at all really in my life, why does the rack temperature go up?

No, that's a good question. I'm not sure. Just the mechanism of how the pinion in the rack and the actual amount of movement in it and could be an issue. It's a new valve, new system. And so trying to learn where that friction is there or not. I think it does seem like it operates at a higher temp. And it's more sensitive to the tent maybe. I think, go back addressing the other question. You know, I think other, look at Corvette racing or other racing, you know, when they hit curves and different things, you know, they get the direct impact back to the steering. And some of the things we're all learning off of the other series of how to deal with those. And, you know, this next test, there's some more test coming up here. There's a lot of, just like the temperature deal, there's a lot of new ideas.

It's how to get to the bottom of a couple things. and I think you'll hopefully see that be a non-issue by the time we enroll in Daytona. So we're going to the Coliseum in L.A. When that got announced, you drove the car, you know what kind of race car we're going to take there. What did you think? Well, I think, you know, I've been to Bowman Gray a lot, and I feel like it's going to be similar to that. I've watched tons of races there. Got to race a Legends car around that place.

And the ability to turn, I think this car is going to be better than what we would have taken. And with the old car. Now, as an owner side of things, I'd say the owners are probably like, man, we're going to build these brand new cars, go out to L.A., and you know what's going to happen. We're going to beat and bang right off the bat. Do you going to get in there and do it out? I mean, if it's going to be like Bowman Grace, it's short track, right? I mean, you've got to be able to do a little something, something, and it's heat races. And I mean, Martinsville, you see it all the time.

And this is smaller in Martinsville. We've got less room. So it'll be interesting, I think from the owner's standpoint, they're probably not real. We're going to find out how durable the next gen. know the bottoms of the cars are the diffuser. The diffuser's going to take a beating. It's going to be interesting.

I think the format of that, it's exciting from, you know, exposure to, for the fans and different things. It's going to be, I'm sure the event, from an event standpoint, which we need,

these marquee type of things. I think it's great. You know, it'd be really awesome the next year when everybody's got cars. But, you know, but I think overall, once we get there,

it's going to be fun. I hope, and it'll be exciting. You seem nervous. That brings up a great point. You talk about inventory. Where is that? Where are we standing with inventory?

I think prior to the little change that was made for some of the folding of the clip and the different things. What happens to all the old clips? Dale Jr.'s backyard. The woods. Everybody really only had one or two. So they could go back to technique and get, you know, put in that spec, right? And whether they just put them out in the back or make new ones, who knows. But you get one, you get a new one.

So do you turn it in? and refund? I'm not sure. That was my other question, being an owner, like, damn, y'all saw me something and I can't even use it. I'm sure you get, my money back. I'm sure you get some kind of credit, but hopefully. I'm not sure.

So how is the flow? I mean, how many, geez, like there's, I got a list of the providers for all this stuff, right? All the vendors. Yeah, the vendors. It's just, there's a bunch. Yeah. Is everybody doing a good. job making parts.

I mean... Hey, we got the lug nut. Yeah. We're manufacturing. Y'all is. Yeah. That's our part. I think it depends on who you talk to.

You know, I haven't heard of like, okay, critical, we're in trouble. He's got a problem. Type of comments. Now, again, my position now I'm not in those meetings like I was in a team. So I think a lot of it, the model of how many cars each team has. That was my next question. Is, you know, they're probably trying to approach it. And I know some are, certainly in the Chevlay camp, that get a,

all the full allocation. I'm going to need all these cars. And, you know, if, you know, I'm kind of in the camp of learning from the other series that, you're not going to need as many cars. Right. Somewhere depending upon how durable they are and how it works, we'll find a kind of center point. You know, personally, I think the cars, you're going to get one put together. You're going to take whatever taunts that you're able to take putting it together. And if you got a really good car and you come back and there's no damage, I'm going to be trying to wonder why I'm taking it part to clean it and put it all back together like you do today you have to today to stay competitive which is the problem you got to cut the whole body off you know to get it back to your 5thal that you're

trying to go to the track with and and I truly believe that the model's going to change and not this think until everybody works with it and gains that confidence they're trying to get more parts than they than they really probably need right to be comfortable I'll hear you man you know there's a there you keep talking about the expense on this car and the cost on this car and you've got a pretty I'm sure you got a pretty good understanding of what that you know what what a team could do to be able to get a couple cars together has that number stayed pretty consistent I mean as you know when you buy when you design a house and you hire a guy and contract someone to build it there's a budget and it no one's ever built a house under in budget never not me it

it always exceeds right there's all and you you there's going to be things that happen and as the development process has happened with this car. How have you guys stayed inside that sort of box or that target that you tried to aim for? You know, I think really between the team owners and NASCAR, they kind of went through and said, okay, here's the target price for these parts. And picking vendors, that price was laid out, right? So now that really hadn't changed because that was the price that the vendor agreed to. And I think some of the, how many parts can each team have, you know, maybe some of the, not the chassis, I think, the thing they're still trying to figure that out,

you know, maybe they're not quite as limited at the beginning to give some of these vendors a chance to, you know, recur some of their upfront kind of tooling and things like that. But that supply chain and that side of it and how quick you replace a car, there's a lot of learning going to happen. Cost-wise, though, I think it depends on how many cars you don't have to have. But if you look at the amount you were spending on cars during the season, it's how much does it take to recover?

cover that and get to where it's going to be significantly cheaper. And, you know, it's going to be one year to two years. That makes me nervous depending on all these vendors and separate businesses to succeed. And not only to be able to provide the parts in time, but also that they run a business model that doesn't go bankrupt, right? That's a lot of people that you're relying on to be able to deliver all the ingredients to make the case. Yeah.

I think the volume of the parts made makes it a lot better business case than as a team you're building 10 of something. But once you got all your cars, you're not, you know. How many are you going to buy? How many are you going to buy that? You're not going to need this part anymore as often. And so the surplus, I guess, or there's this, you know, this rush to get everything. And then when that nose is over and the season begins and the guys are grinding through how these people survive, be an interesting.

Yeah. It's definitely going to be a whole ecosystem how that works. But I think as it works and the model gets cheaper, there's a lot of avenues for, you know, where does it go as far as the lower series? Where does it go with the other series as far as this that might kind of expand the customer base, ARCA, whatever, all those things? That's a great question. So, you know, seasons are, you got a lot of inventory that is obsolete now.

Now, I know some teams, and I know RCR is one of them, can take some of these cup chassisies and turn them into Xfinity cars for your team or for other teams. Is that the majority of what happens to these cars? Where does some of these race cars end up? You know, I think it varies team by team. Certainly some of run Xfinity or trying to use as much as they can, certainly the components and things that can be handed down. And you really started several years ago.

The series really worked on trying to make the parts come across. So I think it would be a mix. You know, teams that aren't running much Xfinity will be trying to sell them to, to other teams or find unique things to do with these You need to hit up Mr. 8th say, hey, I need that five car from last weekend.

Yeah, no kidding. Gentleman. I think that's spoken for. Yeah, that's probably going in. It's playing. Yeah, so I think how that works out is certainly going to be a steep learning thing this first year and where we said a year from now

and what we've learned and how that looks is going to be different. So outside of a brand new race car, what else for a race team changes? I mean, do you guys, does anything with like the hauler, anything outside that we're not, you know, that somebody might not think about or was there unintended things that you never foresaw being affected by this? I think, you know, from our teams, you know, trying to understand how many backup cars you're going to take, you know, even NASCAR and teams, what's the rule, you know, do I need a whole car or do I just need

a front half I can bolt on or, you know, and as, you know, now you kind of know what the format's going to be for practice qualifying, there's still not going to be much time to do that. So that affects a lot. But, you know, I think that people go at it just like normal to start with. And then I think they're going to carry different sets of parts, different things based on how they know can they replace a whole front clip if they crash it and qualifying for Sunday. You'll see that happen. Certainly, like, set up things, you know, how you line the car because the car is different.

You know, there's a few jigs and fixtures and things, but I think for the most part it's pretty similar. You drove the car at Daytona in the test. How much drafting did y'all do? We did, I think, two or three different runs, 40-lap run one time. How does the car respond to, like, the beach ball in between the cars we have now and side drafting? And what was the car feeling like? We were changing that package around every run. So there was definitely runs that were better than others with the blade on the back.

We changed the spoiler height. We even dropped horsepower out one time, didn't we? Yeah, so I mean there was better runs like the first one it was kind of like there's not much going on here It's kind of blah we got to make it better and then like I felt like the last one was with a big pack it would have been pretty close So they're going back to Daytona and they'll have two or three packages again that we'll we'll mess with to see what looks the best and and is good for the drivers what we like Are all the same though? Are all the general techniques still there? Well, it was interesting because

you had some guys that were little faster than others, and you could see some tandem going on there for a second, and I know we don't really want that. Does the side draft still work? Yes, side draft works, and it moves you around quite a bit. I mean, Ross and Stenhouse were getting pretty aggressive with the old side draft, and it definitely moves you around a little bit. Wow.

All right, man. Well, that's good. I've eaten it up here. I really just want to thank you guys. for just emptying the chamber here and letting us here. It's been great. And by the way, big things to Chevrolet, because I can't imagine, you know,

there has to be some discomfort in just letting, you know, your engineer and your driver come on a show and just kind of tell us all your deepest, darkest feelings about the car and all that stuff, especially in this, now we enter this off-season. So I really appreciate Chevrolet for letting us have access to you guys and ask all these questions because, man, what an education this was. That's fun.

Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Appreciate y'all, man. It's been a lot of people going to listen to this, really enjoy it, and we're trying, you know, I want them to get excited about this because I think it's worth getting excited about. It's going to be a fun car, and it's going to be amazing to watch it sort of evolve and watch the teams learn.

You know, the ingenuity and creativity is still going to be there, I think, for this car. You're just going to have to dig there to find it. It's going to be interesting to save the fans or as nervous those first few races as we are. Y'all are going to shake out. Y'all are going to be nervous. It's going to be a process, right? You're going to go, you're going to put on a show at the LA Coliseum. You're going to go win your second Daytona 500.

Come back here, tell us all about everything. I'd love to. I'd love to. I hope that is the case. I'll be here on Monday more. Well, not Monday more. Not Monday. You won't be ready for Monday.

That's why. All right. Appreciate you guys. Eric and Austin on the Dale Jr. Download. That I'm not willing to discuss life. I'm not in the button yet. You're smart.

I'm waiting for everybody to. Okay, I'm clicking the button. Check it. No. Can we not be talking when we're going live? Yes. We're talking. And we're alive.

And we're alive. All right. All right. Leah doesn't want us having a conversation when we become live. There comes to Leah. She's not the culprit. She wants it to be absolute silence. I'll take the bullet for this.

I love it when we're walking into a situation about what topic could we possibly be talking about right before I asked you. That could be a thing. I can get a sponsor for that, actually. Oh, there you go. There goes Mike. Random topic. So we are live on our YouTube channel here at DirtyMo Media. I want to thank you guys for supporting us all year long.

We got one more show after this, and then we're going to call it a season. We might be able to put some content together during the winter break, but this is the second to last. Dale Jr. download and the second to last ass junior, presented by Xfinity. And I'm a customer with Xfinity before we ever got the partnership here at Junior Motors at Dale Jr. at the Dell Junior Download and with Dirty Mo Media. I bought their service because it was available to me at this vacation home I have.

And it's been great, I'll be honest with you. I've got a couple security cameras and stuff like that that I need to always have access to, our baby cams when we got Nicole and Ila there. And it's never went down. I have other brands that I've worked or used in the past. at other locations that are in and out and they're frustrating. Wi-Fi used to just kind of be a luxury, and now it's such a necessity with all the things we have connected

that we really, you know, everything we have in our house now, security, baby cameras and TVs and tablets and all the things are now connected through the Wi-Fi. So anyways, just want to tell you, it's a genuine appreciation for Xfinity and what they do for us here. what they do at this studio, but what they do for our sport. You know, you've got a title sponsor for the Xfinity series. Anytime you have a title sponsor, those are some of the most important people in our sport.

They're putting a ton into it. They believe in the series. We are, you know, we had Junior Motorsports that competes there, so we really appreciate them for everything they do. And you guys have sent in questions every week to Xfinity Racing on Twitter. Leah has compiled them and chosen only. her favorites of those questions. And we got some more today.

We do. Our first one coming from Davy Terry. If current drivers were responsible for doing their own setups without engineers or crew chiefs, who do you think would succeed the most? Davey Terry, I was just sitting there thinking this guy has two first names. What was the question? What was the question you? If current drivers were responsible for doing their own setups without engineers or crew chiefs,

Who do you think would succeed the most? That is a really good question, David, Davy? Davey Terry. That was a really, really good question, all right? Because some of the drivers in the sport don't know anything about the current car as far as components. And I mean, I think that when it comes to next year's car, none of us are going to know anything, right, about how to set this thing up or how to make it go fast. I think a lot of the drivers are mechanically inclined. They can take something apart.

They can put it back together. They can certainly learn how things work. But as we've went through the last couple of decades, the drivers know less about the cars. They have less input about what they prefer the setup to be like. You know, when Rusty or my dad was driving, they were setting the cars up with the crew chiefs. They were very vocal about what rear springs were in the car, where the track bar might be mounted, or what front sway bar the car had.

Oh, man, they were changed. You know, Rusty was driving his car during the race and telling them what changes to make. I want you to change this right rear tire pressure. I want you to change the track bar this way. You know, he was calling for his own, he was calling on his own shots throughout the race. And got, you know, that's the changes he got.

And so he don't have that as much anymore, if at all, right? You know, the drivers really, the drivers show up and leave it to the crew and the crew chief. And probably rightfully so, you know, I think that was probably a problem for me as I got older. And especially when I started working with, you know, Greg Ives, I was too vocal. I was too, I was too fixated on past success, things that worked for me in the past, things that I thought, well, if the sway bar preload is this and I have a great run, I want that preload every week. And when it's not there, well, that's why I'm off by a tenth or two. That's where the time is that we need to gain is in this adjustment that I'm fixated on.

So I think that the more with the technical race car and the car is getting so complicated, the more the driver sort of lays out and just drives, the better. And it probably gives the crew chief and the engineers more freedom, less distraction. You know, when the driver's chirping in their ear about, well, I need this. I think that's better. Or this is what I used to run. Or this is what we ran last year. This was fast.

Or this is what my buddy said he's running. Nobody wants to hear that. And so, but to answer your question, sorry. You know, there are some drivers that are pretty mechanically inclined and do understand generally, you know, generally what spring. and shocks and all those things do. And it's probably definitely going to be the older drivers that have got a lot of history and experience behind the wheel. So anybody like Truex, Harvick, those type of guys, I think, even Brad has Lowsky,

Brad's worked on his own race cars all his life. So, I mean, those type of drivers that are up in their late 30s and 40s are probably going to be the guys going to have the most success if they were the one setting up the race car. Next question from Cody Grafzu. Do you think there needs to be a siffer penalty for multiple failed pre-race inspections being sent to the rear has proven not to be a disadvantage? It is a disadvantage. I disagree with that. It absolutely is a disadvantage to be sent to the rear.

And, you know, at a lot of races, if not all the races, it's going to probably take away the opportunity to get as many stage points in the first stage as you need or could get. If you qualify in the top 10 and you're a fast race car, you know, you're going to work your way up into the top 5 probably and get some good stage points. Well, if you're starting in the back, you're going to have to get fortunate on some pit strategy and some other things to be able to get up into deep into the top 10. Those guys were sent to the back. You know, Chase Elliott or a few of those guys were sent to the back at, you know, a place like Texas. They might just barely reach the top 10, you know, get one or two stage points in that first stage. that's important, especially later in the season when we're getting down to these elimination rounds.

Now, obviously, you're basing, I think, this opinion off of Phoenix alone, right? Chase went to the rear last year because of the failed inspections, drove to the front, won the race. He didn't have to worry about stage points, didn't have to worry about trying to finish well in the stages, however he wanted to strategize, however he wanted to find his way toward the front.

He did. The five car had an issue on, on pit road had to come down or, you know, changed tires early in the race, went to the rear, and goes up and wins the race and the championship. So I think based off of Phoenix, it's not as bad of a penalty as it might be at another racetrack like, you know, Texas or, you know, Indianapolis, right? Somewhere like that, you know, at the road courses, it's probably a pretty big deterrent. So I think, I don't know that it needs to be any stiffer than.

it is for the teams. The one thing that I do like is maybe making them start from pit road or doing a pass-through. We have that penalty. I think they got to be more egregious or have some more failures or something like that to get that type of penalty. But that might be a way to go. If you don't like it, starting in the rear, maybe make them start from pit road. Once the green flag drops and the field, as soon as the green flag drops, they can pull out of their pit stall, he's on down pit road and away they go next question from mark rennie what are your thoughts on the purchase of dover motorsports oh yeah so uh marcus smith smi has bought basically charlotte motor speedway all those tracks that they own that organization has bought dover motorsports and dover motorsports

owns obviously dover the racetrack and nashville super speedway and you know that i i think that it's a big, big deal. And what that means, I don't know. I don't have a secret information on what Marcus plans to do with Dover and plans to do with Nashville Super Speedway, but they have acquired it, I think, for a very good price. And that gives them not only a little bit of leverage at Dover, what they can now freely do whatever they want to do with the Dover track, upgrades, what they can. change the date they can not race there they can go race somewhere else they can do

whatever they want to do right with those dates same thing for nashville super speedway they can continue to improve and upgrade that race track i think we had a great experience there this year and should return and should continue to try to give that track a benefit of of succeeding and and there's a great footprint there to do that obviously you have the entertainment industry in nashville that can support it as well um bringing having concerts and stuff throughout the weekend I think Marcus is really excited about that. There's no secret that the fact that he wants to also get races to the Nashville Fairgrounds.

And, you know, how does all that unravel and what does this really mean for those racetracks and for those dates that those racetracks hold? I don't really know. I wish I knew. But it'll be fun or interesting, maybe not fun for everybody, but interesting to see exactly what does happen, you know, with Dover and with. with Nashville Super Speedway now that they are under Marcus's control. So he's a smart guy.

He absolutely has a lot of history in his sport and believes in the integrity of the sport. But he's a businessman. He's going to do whatever's best for their business. And it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. So hopefully everybody gets to, hopefully all the tracks get to play, right? Hopefully all the tracks are part of the sport going forward for a long time. Next question from Matthew Person. Does Ila know that you're in the movie Cars and how did you come about getting that part?

Well, they basically, you know, when the movie Cars was coming out, it was the first one, and they were just kind of looking for some of the personalities in the sport to have a little moment here and there. And I've always kind of thought about that. Darryl Watrop had a predominant role as an announcer analyst in the Cars movies throughout. That must have been a ton of fun for him. and it really elevated his profile. And so I wish that I would have been able to have a bigger role in the movie, especially now as a dad.

You know, that would be really cool because I was a big fan of Lightning McQueen. She dressed up as Lightning McQueen this Halloween. And so if I had had a bigger role in the movie, that might have been pretty impressionable on her. But when we, the first few times or first several times that she watched the movie, she didn't connect the dots and she she wouldn't tee up on that voice right but now that she's starting to kind of at least she's she'll see race cars we'll drive around we wrote around the race car graveyard in the woods yesterday and she'll see uh the 88 or the eight and go there's your car you know

um whether she really understands that i raced it and drove it and what that means i don't know but she does see these cars without prompting and say that that's yours and uh when she watches the movie now, she hears me talking, she goes, there's dad. You know, and I've gotten her the little cars, you know, Dale, I've gotten her the cars die cast that is the character that I play. And, you know, she's into die cast cars or little matchbox cars, has a big case full of them. She's having fun with that, and I think it's neat. But I think that since my car, my bud car was red and my character car was red, I couldn't have too big a role in the movie because lightning was red, right? And they wouldn't want that, you know, the lines to get blurred, right? Could there be another red car that had a predominant

role in the movie if Lightning McQueen himself was red, right? It'd be an interesting dilemma. It wouldn't be good, I don't think. If I'm the Pixar... From an identity standpoint, yeah, if I'm Pixar, I'm like, no, we can't have another red car in there playing any kind of significant role. So, but I don't know if that really mattered or that was why I didn't have more of a more of a, you know, more of a footprint in the movie. Next question from Tony Norris. It was pretty cool to see Jeremy Chin sporting Adele Jr. Fire suit had to do the Panthers game the other day.

What did you think of that? It was awesome. And he was wearing one of the crew uniforms. Obviously, he's too big and muscular to fit into my actual driver's uniform. So he had to use one of the over-the-wall guys. But just the idea of him celebrating or honoring me. in any way meant a lot to me personally. And I don't know whether he knew much about my career,

but the fact, you know, he obviously has probably, through this experience, learned a little bit about what I was about. And I think it's awesome. You know, anytime anybody with a high profile, like an athlete or an actor or anybody in showbiz or in sports, learns about you or mentions you or acknowledges you, it's a good feeling. It really is.

And so I really appreciate that. I think he's celebrating a lot of people that have left their mark or been predominant in the state of North Carolina. Am I right? I didn't know if it was just Charlotte-based, but in the state of North Carolina, He's sort of honoring, celebrating, acknowledging a lot of people with this season of his. And I was honored and flattered to be included in the people that he wanted to do that for.

So it was a cool thing to see. And I'm now, every time I see that name, I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to remember him for that for a very long time. All right. One more question from Jared Scott. What's your favorite version of the point system? I like the original point system. I don't hate the new one. I'm not, I didn't, this is kind of where I'm at.

So I really appreciate the old system. I remember racing throughout the year and kind of understanding who the favorites were and watching it develop throughout the year. All the races were more important. The regular season races that we have now, the 26 regular season races, those would matter much more if it was the old system because, you know, those races would impact you all the way to the very end where, you know, you get into the playoffs and you kind of get to reset. And maybe some of the struggles in the regular season

don't matter as much anymore because it's a clean slate. But when the playoffs started, it was a big deal in our sport, obviously. And I think that I was a, um, a lot of, you know, open-minded to it, but we kept changing it. We would add drivers every other year or every year. There was drivers getting added to it. The field of playoff drivers would increase. Then we got elimination races, and then the races themselves were. There was just a lot of change year after year after year, you know.

And I think, you know, something that I learned when I started driving for Budweiser, Budweiser would never let me run too many unique paint schemes. right and um they wanted brand continuity you remember might a hundred percent they're like nope we don't want that car to look different now every once in a while you know we run the baseball car or something like that that was pretty significant but and it made those special paint schemes or those won off much more fun because it was rare that we're going to do them but but wiser wanted the fan to look out on that racetrack and and easily be able to find that car and they didn't want that car changing and they wanted brand identity they wanted brand continuity they wanted brand continuity

and I believe in that because Bud in my mind Bud was right they were right to to want that we have you know it's it's more it's out of con it's it's not in control it's not really anyone's fault but now the cars change every week right you have to you have to tune in a little bit ahead of time to really figure out okay what color is my driver's car today right he's going to be in a different car because they got different primary sponsors throughout the year instead of just one So it's not as much in their hands as it used to be. And so when we start a new thing with this playoffs, we didn't have any brand continuity, no identity.

The playoffs kept changing. And how it happened kept changing. And the amount of people to get in kept changing. And it was very, very frustrating. And I lost a lot of pride in it. I lost the importance of it. I lost a lot of belief in it, right? My passion for this whole sport and love for it waned a little bit in those moments when the playoffs kept bouncing around from this and that and the other.

Well, we found a little continuity here lately, right? It's kind of sustained as far as the field size and the elimination and how it happens, how it plays out, has had a little bit of continuity. And I like that, and I want that. And I think we're building some identity that could be, we're building equity in the system now, right? Now that it's sustained and found some stability, right? Am I right? I think you're 100% right. It's making me want to ask you another question.

Go. What do you think about changing the final race venue? I'm okay with that. So like the identity, because see, I was sort of, I never liked Homestead. And then all of a sudden when we did it over and over again, Homestead became like the final place. And they moved it to Phoenix and I'm like, oh, I don't think I like this. But now I'm digging it, but I bet as soon as I really go all in, it'll change something else. And then that's the kind of stuff that you're talking about.

Like it's like, I don't have enough time to really find the appreciation in something before it's gone. Yeah. And, you know. Well, the – I hear what you're saying, Mike, and I miss Homestead being in the mix, right? And next year with the schedule, we go there later in the playoffs. And I think that's going to be a great fit for Homestead. I think that track needs to matter. It was sort of an afterthought being placed at the beginning of the year like it was when we moved away from there.

It's kind of thrown into the first half of the year and we just kind of went through the motions. When we went out there and when we went out there in the spring to race there, obviously with the pandemic, it was a weird vibe. Nobody was there. But it didn't feel as important. It felt like we had turned our back on it, right? I know that's not what NASCAR did, but that's how it felt like it had been cast aside. But now it's going to be placed laid in the season. I think Homestead's going to be a great, great stop on the schedule next year.

I can't wait for it to have some being impacted and an important moment in the season, and it will. But right now, I love where we are with Phoenix. I know that last year or last couple years, the way the race went at Phoenix has caused some conversation about us changing that date or moving. into another place because the vibe wasn't there but this year it was they earned it man i heard i wasn't out there but i heard that everywhere you went in town like you knew that the nascar championship was there that weekend you knew they were in town so yeah anyways i answered the question you know but i like what we're doing and i hope that we can stay this way for a little while i don't i'm not saying we don't need we need i think as far as the points how we add them up the elimination all the

factors, the size of the field, let's just stay this way for a little bit. Build some equity, build some brand identity in it, some continuity. So fans are now understanding what to expect and what drivers need to do. And we can carry this on for a while and learn to, I'm really liking where we are, right? I think it's too late to go back. So let's just stay where we are for a while and work on this and create some value here. All right. That's it for today. All right, y'all. I mean, that's some really, really good questions, and I had a lot of fun thinking about all those things, and I hope everybody has a great week. Thank you to Xfinity.

Thank you guys for supporting us and sending in all these great questions all year long. All right, Mike. Last call, everybody, just so you know, PRI show, Thursday, December 9th. You know, the last time when I talked about this, I wasn't quite sure if it's December 9th or 10th. Maybe you edited my uncertainty out, Matthew, so I appreciate that. But Thursday, December 9th at the PRI show, Indianapolis, Indiana. We at the Dale Jr. Download will be doing a live show. It is tentatively set for 11 a.m. to show you guys know.

11 a.m. is the tentative. We reserve the right to change the time. Also known as, we might be late, but you never know. Never. Tentatively set for 11 a.m. PRI show. I'm looking forward to that. Never been there. I heard it's a big deal. Big deal.

Listen, last week we announced. on this podcast. We dropped a trailer, you know, of a new podcast that we're doing. It's called the Burton Continuum. And I want to tell you it's not a talk show. It's an episodic experience. What's more? They don't give a damn, these guys. They don't give a damn. They let it all out. It's good stuff. It's good stuff. You'll love it. And you will become fans of the Burton's, I am certain of it. So the Burton Continuum, it's going to be coming out soon. I'm looking forward to it. And yeah, just get ready. Christmas, everybody.

Have y'all done your shopping? No. Actually, I already have things wrapped. Of course you do. Leah, I am not surprised. But most people are not like Leah. They have not done their shopping. But because so, that's why we actually have dirtymomedia.com, the store.

It's for you and you people who don't do your Christmas shopping like Leah, which means everybody but Leah. There's new merch for Dirty Mo Media. There's new shirts, new hats. I've got to be honest. Every time I get on there, there's a new hat. They're doing stuff without my approval. Oh.

Oh, okay. And you know what? So far, I've been happy. I haven't come up on something that I'm like, oh, hell no. I haven't had that moment yet. But it could happen. I guess my point is that there's stuff even I don't know about it. And I get on there and I see like a new hat or a new something.

And it's like, oh, they're pushing it out. Did you see the special they're running for Christmas? No, I didn't even see that. Mike personally wrapped gifts from Mike Davis. Is that what it is? Yeah. I'll wrap a gift if you don't mind it being in a grocery bag. Hey,

checks the box. What else do we got here? Yeah, some housekeeping. Door bumper clears finale is this week. Usually it's on Monday. They're doing Wednesday this time. That's all right. You won't want to miss it.

Glorious racing stories last week, Ronnie Thomas. This is a great podcast, by the way. So good. He told a secret. He was paid to do something a little unethical. Imagine that. Not in our sport. Never.

He was paid to bring out a caution. Can we still do this? Maybe they are. Maybe they are. There's been a few. I have a question. I don't know. It's one you want to listen to in order to get the whole story, though.

Glorious Racing Stories. It's on Dirty Mo Media. Last week, I hope you enjoyed the NBC Sports Network show with the Tommy Russell episode. You know, a lot of good feedback on Tommy Russell. A lot of Earnhardt stories. You know what? This goes against everything you've said, Matthew, and everything I've been trying to get you to understand.

I'm not hard stories work, man. It's funny because you don't expect it to do that well because it's like just some regular dude. I don't know. The numbers. I never had to doubt. I never had it out. Never. No.

This week's Chevy Next Gen 101 special will air on Thursday at 6 p.m. on NBC Sports Network. By the way, I've got to tell you all something. This was supposed to be our last show on NBCSN, like this year. Well, actually NBCSN's going away. So this was supposed to be our last show on. on NBC Sports Network. However, we have a show next week that is actually the season finale

of the Dale Jr. download, but the TV people said, yeah, we see who you're bringing in. I think we're going to make an exception. We're going to add a show. We're going to add a show. So, yeah, I think that's it. Anything else, guys?

But Matthew, I hope you enjoy your biscuit. Leah, congratulations on getting your Christmas shopping done. everybody that's it for last call Dale Jr. is going to close us out. Goodbye. Well done. That's the best close you've ever done. Okay.

All right everybody, we learned so much about this next-gen car and we answered a lot of questions and there'll be more questions and hopefully more answers. And one thing I do know for sure is there's only one more Dale Jr. download this year. That's right. And it's a doozy.

Can't wait. Anyway, enjoy your week. and we'll see you next week. This is a production of Dirty Mo Media. Check out Dirty Mo Media. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Dirty Mo.