The Dale Jr. Download - 367 - Red Farmer: Pry This Wheel Out Of My Hands

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

Separated by generations, but forged in honor, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the legendary Red Farmer now share a bond that will last a lifetime, as two of the most recent inductees into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.A racer for over 75 years, Red has competed at tracks from makeshift tracks on abandoned runways in Miami, a cardboard bordered track in Key West, the beaches of Daytona to the famed Superspeedways of America. The storyteller unlocks the secrets of a career that started In 1948 and is still going strong today. Yes, at nearly 90-years old, the old master still steers a racecar around the red clay high banks of the Talladega Short Track in Alabama. From Short Track to 2-mile speedways, asphalt to dirt, Red has raced about everything. Even speedboats! I bet you didn’t know Red Farmer once raced at a Yacht club, did ya?Red is the leader of a legendary group known as the Alabama Gang, which terrorized local short tracks across America stealing trophies and collecting riches to feed their families. And a family it was. The bond shared by three short-track racers, Red, fellow NASCAR Hall of Famer Bobby Allison, and Donnie Allison is something truly special.The “table of truth” brings out stories of heroism and heartbreak. Red details his time serving in the Army, which interrupted his points leading NASCAR season. Many race wins and championships later, both Farmer and the Allison family experienced moments of grief and unthinkable tragedy. Red recounts his perspective of Davey Allison’s tragic helicopter crash, and doesn’t hold back his emotion revisiting Clifford Allison’s deadly accident at Michigan. Choked up, he shares his inner thoughts about the band of brothers that helped define each other's lives and careers.There are stories about wrecks… a lot of them. Dale Jr. and Farmer take to the monitor to recap a few of Red’s famous crashes in real-time. Some he escaped, and others left him hospitalized for months. Regardless of the severity, Red always returned to racing.  There are also stories of pranks and fights, including a never-before-told tale of Allison brother's fisticuffs at a Miami bullring.Red shares some of his most valuable life lessons that led to his remarkable life as a champion on and off the track. It’s a peek behind the curtain into the life of a 752-time race winner that few have ever heard.Before Red’s interview, the DJD opens up about the Clash at the Coliseum. Earnhardt and Davis share their thoughts on the polarizing Exhibition race at the L.A. Coliseum in California. They also talk about Dale and wife Amy’s latest business venture, High Rock Vodka. A drink Mike successfully taste-tested at the Hall of Fame party. Speaking of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, Dale Jr. shares some of his thoughts on one of the greatest honors of his career.Ask Jr. provides his in-depth analysis on the new NASCAR Next Gen car and its debut at the Clash, and colored side skirts!  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. The following is a production of Dirtymoe Media. North Carolina, Ralph Earnhardt. He was always a great race driver to me. Ralph Earnhardt, car number 50 in the lead. He was always a race driver, and he's always the best to me. When I started driving, I always tried to pattern myself after him, how he driving and watched him.

That's how I realized I reckon I learned how a driver can adapt to driving so well when I started because I've watched my dad so much in all kind of situations. And Erdhart loses it, goes on the grass, comes back and and Erdhart still got the lead, incredible. Up and over number three. And for the 19th time. While a grit, Erdhart is in the car, he's barking instructions to the crew. There's a trying 20 years, a frustration.

Dale Earnhardt will come to the Ocean flag to win the Dayton Five. The turns three and four, he has got to believe he'll see the way. The next generation of basketball superstar. It's going to be Dale Earnhardt Jr. Using lessons learned from his father to go from sixth to first and score the victory in the Pepsi 400. Some of the moves he made on the track today looked like his father. I'm very proud of what's going on and what's taking place and seeing him in the car and seeing him in Winston Cup racing now. The fans are going absolutely crazy.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. comes to the checkered flag and wins the 2000. And Dale Earnhardt Jr., the Pied Piper of Daytona, trying to hold them all in bay. Third generation star, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Because of watch my dad's selection. It's in all kind of situations. The legacy continues. Dale Earnhardt Jr. wins the 46th, Daytona 500. It is now my honor to present the NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee ring,

and officially induct my husband Dale Earnhardt Jr. into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Nothing that racing has given me will ever top this night. The people enshrined in this building, they're my role models, and they're my heroes, and one of them happens to be my father. So to join Dad in the Hall of Fame is probably as good as it's ever going to get. Well, I'd rather I'd rather I'd run him, but... It's a great sport. I love it in death, you know. It's all I'm thought about.

race cars. That's, you know, it's all I've ever known, racing. Very sad, somber kickstart. I didn't think it was sad. I mean, you know, it's kind of emotional. Well, the music was like, boom. Right, right. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't back in black or it wasn't, you know,

thunderstruck or nothing. It wasn't very high energy for our first episode back. Season 10. Matthew brought in the heartstring piano. Yeah, it's season 10. It's 10. 10. Yeah.

You got it. I like it. That's a 10. Ms. Davis, you go to the prime of me. Well, all right, guys. We're here at the Bojangles studio. Dillenhard Jr. Mike Davis.

Matthew's here. Leah's here. Everybody is back again for a new season of the Dale Jr. Download. We're super excited. Today's guest, Red Farmer. So, you know, you heard some of that Hall of Fame speech. He gave a great speech himself at the Hall of Fame.

A lot of great details and stories. And I thought, man, while we're here, why don't we go ahead and see if we can book our first guest. You did it right on the stage. That's right. That's probably the best way to book your guests. I mean, you just go ahead, work a couple seconds into the Hall of Fame speech. Go ahead and knock out a few guests targets. Go ahead and, you know, plant some seeds.

You got them all in the same room. You got them all there. Right, right. It's a shame we didn't try to get more book. Well, you know, you'll go back to next year's Hall of Fame. They'll think you're there because you're part of the hall. You know, you are. But you're there to go book some guests.

I can bring Matthews, my plus one. And we get maybe about 20 guests. Dude, I love this idea. So, anyhow, you know, we have a break in the wintertime that we, you know, we begrudgingly take. Some of us are happy to have a break, and then some of us would rather continue to podcast. We get so much great momentum going, you know, by the end of the year, we're hitting on all cylinders. It's just the same way that happens in the broadcast booth. We start out when we take over at NBC, much like here at this desk, we'd only, it was like

like we've never done it before. We don't remember, you know, we don't remember, you know, being in sync and everything's kind of clunky. And then by the end of the season, you're really running pretty good and things are working well, and then you have to stop and pause. But we're back. It's exciting to be back. We've got some new mics, which I'm happy about, some new arms. What do you call these things? I forget what you, boom. That's it. No, they're Mike arms. Yeah. Well, we had some crappy ones. God. People, I don't think we let people understand how problematic those things were every week. I mean, every week we're bitched about them.

They were frustrating. But now we've got some really nice ones. And a couple other cool things are happening this year in terms of how we're going to use this studio. And I think it's really going to benefit us. But looking forward to it. We got already, you know, this is the first year that we've had guest booked so far out. Am I right?

I mean, not to say that the way we were doing it was wrong. I'm just saying we've really proactively got a bunch of guests in the can and already starting to go after some more. So that's going to make things a lot easier. And we've got some exciting ones coming up. So anyways, Red Farmer is going to be in here later. And we got, I mean, he's his career. How many years, 70 something?

Since 1948. Yeah. So he's been racing a long time. I ain't going to do the math. No, me neither. But I think we got plenty of time here, and he's been in town for a couple days. He got here yesterday. Okay.

Be prepared, Mike. Be prepared. If it's anything like his speech. Yeah. I mean, the dude came with some things to say. I love the fact that in his speech, we were there for rehearsal because you were doing it, and they told him he had a time limit, and he said, yeah, that ain't happening. Well, all right, so they had the Clashed Coliseum in L.A. this past weekend.

I got the chance to go in Friday. I got the chance to get into Alex Bowman's car and run a few laps around the racetrack. We were filming a little skit that you'll see if you tune into the pre-game Super Bowl show. you may see me in Rutledge bouncing around L.A. to some of the different places. I've yet to really learn

where we're going to go, but one of the things that you'll see is us running this little mock race around the racetrack there's, there'd been no cars, race cars on the track up at this point. So the surface was slick as hell, right? And we had on set up tires so we didn't have good tires on or anything

but cars were an absolute handful. But anyways, Two drivers, there were three, there were four of us, me, Chase, Bubba, and Blaney. And we were basically racing to see who would win the Super Bowl, all right? So it was a predictor. Two of us were racing for the Rams and two racing for the Bengals, and, you know, you'll see how it all works out. But it was just kind of a, you know, they weren't supposed to go real fast because they really weren't supposed to get lap time before anyone else. So it was a little bit unfavorable.

luckily none of those guys won so nobody can complain that they had an unfair advantage. But it was neat to drive the racetrack. It's really, really tight, really narrow, and you saw a lot of bumping and banging, and kind of that's really the only way, almost the only way, to get around somebody. You can pass somebody clean, but it would take a lot faster race car. I think that what I watched it on TV, I went back home and watched it from the house. I imagine that in person, the energy and everything was everything that hoped it would be. And you can only, you know, obviously feel that when you're there.

You know, the broadcast does the best job it can to try to make you feel like, you know, you're there. But you'll never feel what the people that are present are feeling. You'll never, you know, everybody in the, everybody at the racetrack sort of vibes off of the energy from the crowd, the reaction that the crowd has to the racing and all that's happening. You do not really get a sense of what's going on with that when you're sitting on your couch at home. So I enjoyed it. It was entertaining. The last chance races.

The second one got super rough. Todd Dillon was bowling for dollars. He went through a few guys. But everybody did. You know, at the end of that race, everybody was sort of guilty to some extent of going forward. But they had to. That's why it's called the last chance race. Unfortunately, we didn't get that type of end at the end of the clash.

You know, they ran, I think, the last 25 laps or so under Green. Cobbush couldn't catch Joey, and Joey wins the race. I was hoping for, you know, some fireworks at the end. We didn't really get those, but that's okay. You know, some races are just going to be straight up races. Anyway, I thought it was a good thing, you know. I thought it was a good thing. I'm still sort of sifting through where I really land on how I feel about that.

As an exhibition, it's perfect, right? Do you want that sprinkled throughout your regular season? Do you want that playing a role in the playoffs? Those are the things that you need to start asking yourself because, you know, when NASCAR sees something succeed, they typically get you a lot of it. You're good. If it means short tracks, let's do it.

No, I'm saying, you know, if it doesn't mean we're going to South Boston. I don't think it means that. It may mean go. It may mean you might be racing at tiny little quarter mile homemade tracks, you know. Okay. Right? I wouldn't have a problem with that.

I just wonder where this takes us, right? I don't think any of us really know. I said it on Twitter with a tweet. Does it create a short track revival in a sense to where we, you know, we have some more short tracks added to the schedule or we go back to some old short tracks that we used to go to? Or is there a new track that gets built, right? Do they go forward with the reconfigure or find?

There's a lot of issues with that. It's a very difficult thing to do to be able to reconfigure that track. So they're trying to turn Fontana into a short track, right? The way that they need to do that is basically try to fit that track in between the suites behind pit wall and using part of the front stretch that you currently have. So that's a very confined space. The idea before the Coliseum was that this was maybe not doable without moving the suites or knocking. the suites down. Well, now that they've seen the clash, that might sort of, you know, make them feel like that they can accomplish a goal and fit it into a difficult space.

That was a quarter mile track. That space in Fontana can't be smaller than that. Yes. They raced well on a quarter mile track. Yeah. And so imagine what you had at the Coliseum with some banking, right, with quite a bit of banking. So I think, you know, it's going to be interesting to see where we are five or ten years from now. I understand. And what's changed into sport B calls, what you can link back to what happened at the clash. I think it could affect a lot of things going forward. Hopefully we do see some more short tracks. I mean, we know we love short track racing. We know we love beating and banging. We know these cars can take it. They can rub and they can lean on each other without getting flat tires and all the things. So yeah, hopefully

we see some more short tracks added to the schedule. But if you add one, thing you got to take something away and I don't really know how you I don't know what they would start with as far as eliminating races you can't make the season longer but so there's it's a great position I guess a difficult position but a good position to be in as a sport so I assume that they're absolutely going to go back there next year to do this all again I would hope so but I wanted to stay special like it seemed like it was a special event we had the attention from the mainstream and man you'd love to keep it that way there was two things speaking of short track. There's two things about this that I really took away that I liked. And the short track

quarter mile layout contributed to this. And that was there was credibility in the final feature. The people that made that race were the ones that belonged there. You didn't get in on sponsor. You didn't get in on name. You didn't get in on any points. You got in because you earned a spot in the final thing. And that is a new thing because typically NASCAR wants it stars. especially when you're doing a primetime network, you want your stars in the show. I agree. But this one had Ryan Priest and not Brad Kislowski. This one did not have, you know, Kurt Bush.

It did not have Alex Bowman. And that's a big deal. Now, the other thing I like about it is, man, I felt like I got to watch an entire entertaining event and it was under two hours and I didn't have to ignore my family and I didn't have to carve out half a day to go through this marathon. If I wanted the marathon, I had the option to watch the qualifying races, the heat races. So I could have had as much racing as I wanted. But the event plus the pre-race and the halftime thing with Ice Cube, which I loved,

everything was in a nice, tight, clean, two-hour window. I could move on with my life. I love those two things about that race. You know, to go back to one of your points about the heat races and guys, you know, there being this elimination factor. desperation and build up throughout the heats and then into the last chance races. I love that too, and we haven't had that in a long time. So NASCAR, you know, years ago, had a pretty straightforward year in this race because you did

this, right? Let's just take the clash, for example, but this is sort of a global way of operation that NASCAR has taken, the stance that NASCAR is taken. Years ago, you had to get a poll to get into the clash. If you didn't get a poll, that was pretty much the criteria. That's right. And then the, you know, the Bush sponsorship went away. Actually, other sponsors came in and they wanted to, you know, create a new identity.

And also a lot more collaboration started happening with owners, sponsors, and everybody else. And so NASCAR started becoming really malleable to the requests and the needs of owners and sponsors. And I need my car in this race. Right. Sponsors particularly. We got to be in this race. If we're paying money, I need to be in the race. I need to be on TV.

Right. And so the criteria to be able to get into the clash, for example, really became wide open. I mean, if you had a valid driver's license, you were eligible. Right. That was kind of the going joke, which was super frustrating. Yeah. Right? And because the race lost its identity.

Yep. It became unimportant. Yep. That's why it's not in Daytona anymore. Right. And that's why really what we have at the Coliseum this past weekend is a completely new thing. But somehow they were able to gain back some of that identity by going through these heat races and last chance races. And guys really being put in the position to miss the race or not make it, right?

That is why I tuned in. Yes, I did too. I mean, like. I'm going to be honest with you. I didn't really even, I enjoyed the heat races and the last chance races more. Yeah. than the race itself, then the feature, because of the fact that, man, this guy might not make, oh, look, Denny's cars almost wrecked in the last chance race. And both his guys almost got eliminated right there in one corner.

Like you make a, you know, Brad not making it. Right. Things like that. That was why I tuned in. There was purpose in every lap. Every lap meant something because you knew that there were going to be big names not making the feature. Yes. And it made it awesome.

I mean, like, that's okay. In the short track, the quarter mile layout forced that. It forced it because you can't put them all out there at once. It's forced them to have to have the heat races. It forced them to be able to limit the field to what was it, 23? So somebody has to go home. And man, then you've got these young guys like Rick Ware racing all of a sudden to have speed. And you got some guys that have been Justin Haley is doing stuff out there.

And it's like, you know what, I'm okay with this. I'm okay with this. You've got to earn your way into this thing. There's no gimmies. There's no gimmicks. Yeah, I think that that was my favorite part. I almost made a comment on social media about that being my favorite part of it. But I probably typed about four or five tweets that I never sent that day.

Give us some. No, I mean, that's every day with me on social media. But hopefully somebody understands that the fact that people could miss or could not make this feature. and hopefully they understand how valuable that is to the audience, right, to a person that's watching tuning in. Because if that wasn't there, I might have considered doing something else with my day, the entire day. I might not have, I might have probably checked in a day later to get the highlights, right?

Easy enough. Yep. But the fact that there was some true, there was something, substantial on the line and the pride I know the pride and the egos of the drivers the owners the teams and you do not want to get knocked out you don't want to miss the playoffs you don't want to be eliminated you know from from being able to race in a race like this you want to be in the all-star race you don't want to be in the open you know trying to work your way in it hurts your pride right and when there was some pride at stake that's what got me

tuned in. Yeah. Because I probably would have tuned out. You know, unintentionally, but hopefully they hang on to that because that was what was missing in this race for over a decade. Anyways, bravo to everybody in NASCAR for having the guts to do that. They spent a lot of money. They took a gamble.

They brought in all the heavy hitters, not just the race, you know, you mentioned Ice Cube. They really went all out trying to really make this a, a unique event and they succeeded. And so they ought to be celebrated. All of the teams were going out there. You know, we got this part. There was so much that a lot of people had to do. We got, you know, we got cars that teams with just a few cars and they had to take one out there,

risk tearing them up and they tore up some cars. Yeah. All of the NASCAR industry insider, social media people, think about the logistics of an event like that from every single person from the bottom to the top in the industry that had to do the legwork to get that done to make sure that everybody had their passes, that everybody had their hotel rooms, rental cars, garage was laid out the way it needed to be, cars could move in and around. I mean, what a mess, right? And it came off really, really well in an unfamiliar space.

This isn't a racetrack that we go to every single year. Nobody knows where the flow of anything is, right? And it went off and worked out well. there were some issues during the broadcast to be expected with audio and so forth. I thought the broadcast was great. I thought Tony Stewart was great. Well, wasn't he good? Yeah.

I didn't think he wouldn't be good. I mean, he was what I expected Tony Stewart to be. And I think one of the things about him is, and I know this for myself, he was great and he will only get better as he gets more and more comfortable and understands the lingo and the words that the producer is saying in his ear. I mean, they have a whole different language they speak in the broadcasting world. And so all these things that you're hearing are like, what the hell does that mean? Once he starts to understand exactly where the broadcast is going every minute and what they're trying to accomplish, and when he's got some great room to expand on his thoughts, man, and the confidence that he'll build, I mean, just in a short period of time, I expect him to be miles better when he goes to Daytona, right?

And does that. And I think that the positivity. that he receives from all this will encourage him to do more and become a fixture in the booth going forward. So pretty cool deal there. You know how I feel about the broadcast and how important that is to be able to grow

and elevate our sport. It carries a major role. So they did a good job there. But anyhow, what else we're missing? Oh, high rock vodka, man. So I wanted to make sure everybody knew if you haven't been following me on social media. I'm an equity partner in a new brand called High Rock,

and it's a vodka that is made through Sugarlands in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Me and Amy are owners in this business. Much like I'm an owner in Filter Time, this is one of our babies, right? This is something we're trying to grow for not only myself and Amy, but generations beyond our daughters and their families and everything going forward. So I hope that, you know, in the spring, it's supposed to be available in stores. This is all new to me. This is all new to Amy.

We're trying to understand the market and what's doable out of the gate, you know. It's really difficult. We've been here before trying to, you know, trying to get shelf spaces is a challenge and it's a competition out there. But we're with a great company in Sugarlands and they already have a lot of great products out there. So they already have a great reputation. So that should help us going forward. All that stuff starting to roll out in the spring. And you can get it from Sugarlands in Gatlinburg in a week or two.

You can get it from there right away. But getting it into shelves is going to take most of the spring and some of the summers. So keep an eye out. We'll be sharing our information about where it's at and how to, how to, you know, what stores it's in and so forth on our social media. I'll be posting a lot about that. So High Rock Vodka. Here's what I'll say about High Rock.

I never consider myself a vodka drinker. You know, I got my favorite stuff and, you know, vodka was never really it. My gosh, man, did we put high rock through its paces for that All the Fame party? God, I drank a lot of it. It's smooth, man. It's really good. It's just good. Yeah.

And so, and I'm not just saying that. I'm telling you, I drank enough of it. I'm an expert on this now. And I drank enough of it on that Dwight Yocham concert to know that it's legit, man. I used to drink vodka a lot when I was younger. and, you know, then when we got the bud deal, I kind of moved into beer and became a big fan of all the bud products.

But it was easy for me to, you know, to get into this because I drank, you know, vodka a lot when I was younger with energy drinks or with AMP or with orange juice or whatever. So my dad was a big, he liked vodka in five alive, the orange juice. Is that right? Yes. I didn't know that. Oh, yeah.

That's cool. He drank a lot of vodka. A little intimidator factoid. Nobody knew. Well, I've said that before, but every day at the farm at 5 o'clock, all the guys would get together around a picnic table and they drink beer or whatever. And he had a jar of vodka and some 5 alive always in the fridge and that was something he might do. Anyway, high rock is, it is smooth.

I'm pretty confident in it. I'm pretty confident that if, you know, even, you know, vodka drinkers are going to appreciate it and think it's a quality product. So I'm not even apprehensive about that. I'm pretty confident we're going to have a lot of success, and especially with Sugarlands. I mean, they win awards with everything they do. So we partnered with a great company to help us get this out there.

High Rock Vodka. Anyways, yeah, I mentioned filter time. If you need some air filters are sent to your house, subscribe, filtertime.com. Speaking of new things, there's a new podcast in the Dirtymo Media family. You might have seen follow any of our social media. handles some of the promotions around at the Burton continuum. So what is the Burton continuum? Let me tell you. We've got Jeff Burton, Ward Burton, and their sons, Jebb, and Harrison Burton,

all talking about their shared experiences. I'm really surprised by how transparent and honest these conversations are. I know Jeff, and I know he is measured and strategic in his conversations, right? And now Ward, he has nothing to lose, right? He's going to throw it all out there. The boys, obviously, are in the midst of their careers. I think they're in two different spectrums right now, as far as their careers go, between Jeb and Harrison.

So maybe they have different opinions about it, but they do have some risks by being completely honest about anything, right? But they really shed all of those, you know, those guards and tear down those walls and get brutal about the history of this family. The problems that racing, egos, pride, jealousy, all those things have sort of created an ebb and flow of the relationships from going from good to bad, right? And back to good. So I was pretty surprised to hear the brothers Ward and Jeff dig up some of the past,

you know, especially with Jeff being, I think he, him and Ward, right, being an apprehend. about accepting some responsibility or really calling out the other. But they went there, man, and it was pretty amazing. And obviously hearing the boys, you know, the sons, Jeb and Harrison, be completely frank about their own experiences and how emotional some of this has been for them. It's a hell of a listen. The boldest, most transparent podcast series ever produced by Dirty Mo Media. The Burton continuum is unlike anything you have ever heard before.

We take a candid look into the lives of second generation racing cousins, Jeb and Harrison Burton, as they try to excel in NASCAR the way their father's Jeff and Ward did. Learn about the emotional toll families competing against each other experience. And hear the gripping stories this family openly shares about hardship, tension, and triumph. Here's a preview from the latest episode drove us apart. You have to understand, like, the way I raced, and I'm not always proud of this, but everything came second. I have few regrets in my career, but I have some disappointments. Bright front tire.

Jeff Burton. This is not good. No. Came in as the championship leader. Yeah, I mean, this pretty much does it for us, unfortunately. And I cried that night. I did. I cried because it was...

You know, I really believed we were going to win that championship. Most of my life was the tail end of his career. Those were kind of the years where he was struggling the most. And he always wanted to win and he wanted to go out on top. And it just didn't happen. And that was why it was so sad. The Burton Continuum. The first four episodes are out now on all major podcast platforms.

So episode five drops this week, and it's an episodic podcast. So what does that mean, Mike? It's how many episodes? There's a starting end. We're going to do a 10-episode run or maybe even a little bit more, depending on how the story develops. Right now we're in the point of kind of telling the backstory of Ward and Jeff so we could better understand Harrison and Jeb and the struggles and the things that they have to deal with right now,

hurdles as they compete and also have to get along and their family. So I think it's important that you understand where all this stuff sourced from. And that's Jeff and Ward as they were coming up through racing, polar opposites these guys. But yet both of them have absolutely brought the noise in their honesty and transparency, flaws in all. And that's the thing that we said that I needed them to do. It's like, hey, just be honest, you know. And they had to take a bit of a leap of faith with us on how we tell the story. But Alex Tim has done a remarkable job.

I want to say this, Ward Burton calls me last night. He heard, we let him hear the episode, which will drop tomorrow Wednesday, February 9th. And this episode is really Ward focused, right? His backstory. And Ward told me last night, he goes, I don't think that anything's ever been done on my career or my family quite like this. He goes, this has been the best thing that has ever been done on our family and accurate. And man, that meant a lot to me. And Jeff said the same thing after episode.

episode four, Jeff called me. He's like, man, I can't believe all the reaction people are giving. I mean, we're getting tons of a gauge, but this is really cool. And y'all did a great job. And I said, Jeff, listen, your wife, Kim, she brings it. I mean, Kim sits there and talks about how pissed off she was at Jeff after he retired. I mean, come on. This is couples therapy going on right here on a podcast. And so I appreciate them for trusting us with the story, but also bringing it. And yeah, man, this is episode five. We're going to have. have a lot more. Ward's going to, I'm going to tell you something, Dale, wait till you hear the Ward episode tomorrow. I mean, dude, as you would expect, he brings the high heat. Yeah, I think it's the best thing going in racing podcasts. And I like that you can, you know, if you want to, you know, listen to it once we have it all released, you know, you can basically live this thing and listen to it in a chunk. It's a story, almost a mini-series in a way. I really appreciate it being presented that way. And I think, other people will too as well so you can you know you can sit down and consume this whole thing

it's pretty amazing so looking forward to i'm looking forward to people's reactions as we continue to go through this i applaud you mike and and dirty mo media for coming up with the idea and the vision and um it's just a it just could open up a lot of doors a lot of people in the industry drivers included you're mainly drivers should really look at this this podcast listen to it see what you know see how the engagement is created with their fans and people that follow Jeff and Ward and the boys, Harrison and Jeb, and, you know, consider how creating content like this could really elevate their own careers and share with people some true, you know, the true person that they are. It's pretty incredible.

So I agree. I don't think I've ever heard Jeff be this way. I've been around him in the booth for a couple years now. And I think I've gotten to know him about as good as I can. could consider it but uh it was i was pretty surprised that they were willing to do this willing to willing to sit down and and have the have these honest conversations so uh it's it's it's interesting you know you got jeff watching his son break into the cup series this is like a crazy crazy year for him as a father and uh and so for him to sit down and be willing to really open up in a very

vulnerable time of Harrison's career, plus Harrison putting himself out there in his rookie year. You know, this is a, you know, he could have, you know, in his situation, decided to just let to, you know, let his drive and do the talking for him this year and really shut out a lot of, you know, extra activity and so forth and narrow his focus. But I think, you know, doing this podcast is going to benefit them, but we're lucky for him to do it. So we mentioned Red Farmers.

Our guest today is going to be coming here in a moment. Me and Red both got inducted into the Hall of Fame. That was an incredible experience. Also, Mike Stefaniq was inducted into the Hall of Fame. His wife gave her awesome speech. That was an incredible weekend. I had just an amazing time. And it's hard to, you know, it was a long time coming because we kind of got pushed off because of the pandemic and we had to wait.

And I'm glad they did. I'm glad the Hall of Fame didn't decide to do something virtual. That would have not been fun. It wouldn't have been as fun. And so thankfully they waited. That meant that future Hall of Fame classes had to also wait. People that are anxious or excited about themselves or their family members getting into the Hall of Fame had to be patient. But now they got the ball rolling again and looking forward to being a part of those experiences going forward.

So when I was going through this weekend, right, getting inducted into the Hall of Fame, I go to the dinners and the things, the jacket ceremony and all this, other Hall of Famers are there that have been inducted. I surely should have expected that, right? But it dawned on me and it was like, man, I can be them going forward. I get to do what they're doing. I get to be at these events and just come and hang out, right? And that to me is going to be a lot of fun because,

I love seeing Hall of Famers, right? I never see Bobby Allison. I never see any of these, you know, Red Farmer and all these, you know, I never see any of these people because they're never in the same place I'm at. And so every year we're all going to kind of be brought back together. There's a dinner that was a lot of fun where we sit around and just tell a lot of great stories. I told Amy, I said, listen, look around. We're going to be doing this.

This is going to be a living thing on our calendar. single year. We're coming to these events. We're going to continue to come to them to help, you know, bring in new inductees and celebrate them. And she's like, I'm all for it. I said, all right, just be ready. It's going to be on the calendar year after year when a Hall of Fame rolls around. That's going to be part of our lives, part of our, you know, part of what we do. And so I'm thrilled about that. It's kind of a gift that keeps on giving type of thing. You know what I'm saying? Did the overall three-day experience, did it exceed meet expectations? It exceeded.

How so? So it was spread out over multiple days. And to me, you just kind of wonder, well, what could we be doing, right? For three days that we couldn't, you know, why is all of this spread out over three days? So, and it makes total sense while you're going through it. You know, they have the jacket ceremony, and they have this dinner where, you know, a lot of industry people and some Hall of Famers are all around it and involved in it. And all of this happens in the Hall of Fame around your exhibits. When something of that magnitude really is happening to you, if it happens in a blink of an eye, if it happens in a very short period of time, it's hard for the sponge to soak up all the water.

And it's over and done and you really don't even know what happened to you. The way they have it spread out and the way it's sort of, it allows it to sink in. It allows you to absorb what's happening to you. It allows you to enjoy it. There's moments of downtime to reflect. There's moments where they'll take you into a room full of fans and do a Q&A where you get to really engage and talk about memories and what the fans are sparking some memories and reflection. know, you'll, you'll be around very important people in the industry that you probably

look up to that are going to be sharing their excitement for what's happening to you. And so for it to be spread out the way it is, is really a great thing. And by the end, I felt fulfilled. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Instead of feeling like, oh, man, you know, instead of coming out of there going, damn, I should have had, I should enjoy that more, right? I won a race in Texas, my first race,

and my dad said, make sure you enjoy this. Like it was one of the first things he said to me when he got to the car. And it kind of struck me as like, well, that's the hell. It just struck me like, okay, so your first thought is to give me some advice. But I know what he meant.

He's looking at me going, this is going to be a blur, right? And you're going to wake up tomorrow and go, what the hell happened? So he was trying to give me some advice in the moment. and I understand it today, and that's kind of the same thing. It's a great experience. And hell yes to the Hall of Fame. You know, their staff, it matters to them so much. All the people that work at the Hall of Fame, they're not there for a job.

They're not there just getting a paycheck. They are passionate about you, about the inductee, about the building, about everything that's in it, about the story that's telling. they live it. It's freaking amazing. And so you're feeling that while you're going through this process. You're like, damn, this matters to these people. They are making this up to be a big thing, right? They are building this up.

And everything, every part of the process, every 15 minute conversation with fans, every dinner, every jacket ceremony, all of it is very thought out. It's well done. They do a hell of a job. So I've been to this. these events, right? But I haven't lived as an inductee. And so I never really saw this sort of, you know,

living passion that they have that's there every minute. And so I know I'm building it up, but it's honestly, you know, you have to go through it to see what I saw, you know. It's pretty cool. I'm glad it happened to me. I feel, I feel so, I feel lucky to have been able to witness what I saw that weekend, what I felt. It was great. I'm glad to hear you say. And a lot of that's well said. You saw the heart behind the Hall of Fame, and I think that matters. A couple of snapshots that I'll always remember from that three-day span. One is the pure elation of everyone's face and everyone just in feeling like they were a part of the induction of not just you, but Mike Stefaniq and Red Farmer. Everyone was just generally happy for others.

You could feel that. It was palpable. The other thing is, man, the Junior Nation show up. And I mean, some of them came from long distances. And I didn't expect that. I didn't know that people were going to be coming from out of town to be there. And they were loud and rowdy and supportive. And they were very much, their presence was felt.

And I love the dynamic while you're giving your speech. You come off of the script and the speech because they're people that you reacting to in the moment. It was a beautiful moment. The third thing is, and you and I have not talked about this. We purposely try not to have a conversation so we can save it for the podcast but what was your thought to the Dwight Yolkham party? Oh, um, you know, it was, it was a, like that wasn't a public event, of course, but like I always was, you know, that was something we tried to keep hidden from you.

We tried to keep it as a surprise. And then Dwight Yonkham shows up and, you know, what were your thoughts behind that? I love a good party. I don't, I don't need a big reason to party. Right. So, uh, you know, I'm always down. But I, uh, the great thing about that, uh, you know, A great thing about the party that we had the day after the ceremony was that there were so many people that came from so far to be there. When me and Amy got married, that was probably the, that was the very first time where the two families had been in the same place at one time. And you never, you know, you're always, I enjoy the shit out of watching those two families who had never met that are from two different places in the country interact, right? And meet and talk. And see, it's fun to see who strikes up a friendship and who gets along and who ends up talking.

and who ends up talking a lot and spending some time around each other throughout the weekend. And that to me is kind of the same thing. When we had this party, there was a lot of Texas there. There was a lot of people from my NASCAR family, a lot of people from my actual family, right? And it's fun to see them in the same place at once because you don't see that very often. And it was fun to see them talk and I've seen you in a long time, man. How you been? You know, there's friendships that happen in that room, in that room.

and friendships that rekindle and people that hadn't seen each other a long time. And your induction to the Hall Fame is what's creating this opportunity, right? It's a great feeling. Yeah. And so that's kind of what the party felt like to me. But then, you know, you also, I'm a big Dwight Yolkham fan, have been for a very long time. He's a great singer, actor. He came up to me and we got to meet in Fontana years ago.

It might have been my last year in NASCAR. So I got some, you know, I got that moment of meeting him. That was really cool to meet him in the bus lot that day before the race. But I'd never seen him live. So he comes and plays. It was awesome. So he plays. It was great.

He sounded great. The songs were great. We stood right up front and center and rocked as hard as we could. And then we got to go talk to him afterwards. And he was happy to have us there. You know, he seemed thrilled to be with us that night, which, You know, you're happy that you're glad that that person who came all that way to do that job is happy to be there. Right.

Right. Right. Yeah. You know, I mean, they're a performer, but he was also enjoying his experience. And that meant a lot to me as well. They say not to meet your, you know, your heroes or people that you admire, celebrities that you follow because you might, you end up being disappointed. But I certainly wasn't disappointed. That's awesome.

Yeah. It was a great. And I knew that. that I wouldn't be but it was just cool man he was he was super happy to have been there that night and it was a special night and and I couldn't imagine my wife and my sister Kelly and so many people you know probably you and and Tony and who knows everybody I'm sure had a role in pulling all of that together and it was great to have read there and and Mike's the fanx wife yeah we invited all of their groups to come and and join and

and enjoy the red jumps out there and is dancing on the dance floor and i think mike's wife come out there for a bit and uh so it was cool you know just to to that was a great way to to put a book in on the on the weekend but uh should should we go ahead and is red here should we yeah let's get red we could we could talk about the dancing we could we can actually talk with the dancer so let's let's bring red farmer in he's come a long way uh to join us today he was just up here a couple weeks ago getting inducted into the Hall of Fame and he's turned around and came back for an opportunity to be a guest here on the show and we're thankful for that Red Farmer. There he is.

Come on in here, buddy. Have a seat. How you doing today? All right. I think I'm going to take his jacket off. Take it off. Yeah, it's a little warmer here. Make yourself comfortable.

Hell, have you been wearing that Hall of Fame jacket every day? It was the warmer thing I had. Yeah. It's cold, ain't it? All right, buddy. Have a seat. Put your headphones on. Well, how are you doing, Red?

Well, doing fine right now. You know, the weather's pretty up here. I thought it may be snowing, but it's okay. It's cold out there. I know that. So you came into town, spent the night to come be on our podcast. Just a couple weeks ago, you were up here in Charlotte getting inducted into the Hall of Fame, and then you went back home for a little bit.

How have you been enjoying your few weeks? weeks now as a Hall of Famer. Well, I've had a lot of attention, a lot of people asking about questions about it. And I told them, I said, well, it's a once in a lifetime thing. So I truly enjoyed it. Had a great time. Yeah. I was really honored to be able to go in with you in this thing since I know

and Ralph and Dale, both of them. And a couple years ago, I went into the other Hall of Fame with Jeff Gordon. So I've had two of the up here that really have been a lot to me. Yeah. You know, we're going to jump back quite a ways. Born in 1932. You started racing. What was your first race?

My first race is in the Opelock of Florida in 1948, the same year that Bill France started NASCAR. Right. And so you're all the way down in Florida. I don't think of Florida is a motorsport. area back in 48 but there was a lot of tracks in in Florida well in 48 really there was that we had highly a speedway medley speedway Hollywood Speedway and West Palm Beach that's the tracks that I raced on back in the 40s and early 50s yeah so it was kind of a combination Hollywood was a quarter mile track and highly it was almost a third

mile track medley was a third mile both of them was flat but then West Palm Beach was a half mile dirt track back then that's the reason i learned to drive both of them i'd race highly or hollywood on saturday and i'd go to west palm beach and run dirt sunday so they were paved and dirt tracks back then and you drove modified cars is that what you raced on well there wasn't no class when we raced if it was just race cars you just showed up with a car you bought you built run what you brung what was your first race car uh 34 ford with a flathead engine in it and how did you get that car buddy of mine Keith Davis that I ran in room with

come to me one day and said Redd my daddy had a, he's got a race car going to run an open locker next week. He had a little run out with his driver wanting to know if I'd drive it. I said, well, what a race car? I didn't know what a race car was. You didn't?

But I had a little 37-4 that he said, you know, I ran around me in and he said I was kind of wild on the road with it then. So he thought maybe I could make a race car driver so I got in the car we went to opalaca florida there wasn't there didn't no racetrack then it was an abandoned uh airfield and we went down one straightaway turns through the dirt got on the other straightaway it was coming back the other direction and run back and then run across the dirt get back

so we had two straightaways of the asphalt and both turns with dirt was it still a function in airport no no it was an abandoned airport and uh i drove the car and and uh come down the straightaway too fast and got in the corner too hard and I flipped the car. It rolled over once or twice and landed on four wheels and the motor kept running. And I kept on racing and finished a race and left the run. I told her that's the most fun I ever had and I haven't ever stopped yet. My gosh. So what was the car was literally just like you'd come off the street, right?

Yeah, we had no rolled cages and nothing. They just basically just street cars. Yeah. And I've looked at a lot of pictures of my grandfather, Ralph and driving them old coops and like that car sitting right there on the table. And trying to imagine like what a car like that would drive like. You've drove more modern cars. You still race today.

So, I mean, help me understand. Tell me how driving a car like that felt. Well, these cars were weird. You know, we didn't have no power steering anything like that. And really don't know about setting the castor and camber on the cars where they would turn or how to change springs around or where they would do it. They had a straight front axle in them. leaf spring at leaf springs in the rear and uh you just more or less had the manhandle my tires

wasn't probably five inches wide you know those stock tires on stuff like that and we didn't know about setting air pressure and all that stuff you know in fact i learned more from a fellow that come down in the late 40s maybe 1950 51 when we the the opa lock speedway they made a actually a little dirt track instead of running the air force base so we We went to a little round dirt track up there, and Ralph Moody come down with a red car with a white X on it, if I remember correctly, of course, this was 75 years ago.

But anyway, he had a red car with an X on it, and he kicked our butt bad. Yeah. And because Ralph knew about chassis and handling, and we didn't really, you know, he just really embarrassed us the way he ran. I think he won about eight peters in a row, but coming down to Opelaka racing.

But I got pretty friendly with Ralph, and learned a lot from him. I asked questions, and he taught me a lot, Ralph Moody's soul. And I think in 53 is when I ran into it. He really helped me when I got Daytona to run my first race on the beach courts in 1953.

Yeah. So you also ran speedboats. Is that true? Yes, I ran hydro, 266 hydros at Pelican Harbor Yacht Club. What is, when did you do? that? That was in the early 50s, too. My father, when I got married, my father-in-law had two boats that he erased in Pelican Harbor Yacht Club. What do these boats look like? They were hydrozed like they run now. Basically, they were hydrosed with Chevrolet motors in them.

Motor in the back? Like right behind the driver? No, the motor was in front. Really? Yeah. Yeah, the motor was in front then. Oh, man. All that stuff was like rear-engine cars. They didn't come along to later on. I got you. How fast did this boat go? Somewhere between 80 and 100 miles an hour. Did you, I mean, so tell me about your, how long did you race boats? Well, I just run them on the weekend for the fun of it because, you know, they go over and

race these things and come in there, give you a little ashtray for first or second place and stuff. That's all you got. There wasn't no money in it. Okay. So I'd do that on the weekend just for the fun of it. After I race the dirt cars on Saturday night, I'd go at Pelican Harbor Yacht Club and run the boats from my father.

club. Whose idea was that? You went from going down to Florida to race and you didn't know anything about it. They're saying you're kind of a wild driver. You might be good at racing. Now you've been bitten by the racing bug. But where did boat racing even come in? Who gave you that idea? Well, like I said, I got buried in 1950 and this was my father-in-law. He's one that had the boats. So he had him. And he's like, you should try this. Yeah. Well, the same way, he also had some jaguids and I ran one of his, a jaguids. XK-120 in Albany, Georgia, and road racing back in then. In Albany, Georgia, wow.

Okay. What was that race track? It was actually an Air Force base, too. Oh, yeah. And it was an endurance race. Yeah. How many hours? You remember?

No, I don't really remember about it. Did you have a couple drivers? No, no. You ran the whole thing. Just actually me and my father-in-law, me and my father-in-law took turns driving the car. Okay, that's what I was wondering. Yeah. Yeah.

So you and your father-in-law are swapping in and out of this jacking, Jaguar. Have you ever ran an endurance race since? No, I ran some race that felt like endurance race. Oh, my God. All right, so, you know, you're known as part of the Alabama gang, and a lot of people touch on this, and I didn't know this until I was quite a bit older, you know, when I was a teenager and hearing about the Alabama gang, I thought every one of y'all were born in Alabama, but you weren't from Alabama.

You were, you transplanted. Oh, yeah, I was born in Nashville, Tennessee. So how do you get from Nashville down to Florida? When I was, I think, around 14 years old, my mom and dad split up. And my mom's parents ran an apartment building in Miami, Florida. So my mom and me and my sister packed up and went to Miami to live with her mom and dad. Okay. That's how I got to Florida.

Florida down there. So your dad stayed in Nashville? Yeah. Did you continue a relationship with him? Not really. No. When we split up, it was kind of a sorry deal, really was. And you're that young and your parents split up, it was quite a thing. But we moved to Florida to get away from him. Really? Yeah. So I didn't carry on with him. too much. Okay. But years later, a couple years later, he'd come down to Florida to try with us. But I was probably the only one had anything to do with him when he did come down there. What was his intention?

What did he go down to Florida for? Try to rekindle a relationship? I guess that's what it was. But I think really he just, I guess he came down there to try to do, I guess, try to do it, but it didn't work out. You haven't none of it. None of it. Got it. The biggest problem, he had a drinking problem.

I got you. Yeah, that was difficult for you. Very difficult. Yeah. So my mom and my sister had nothing to do with him. And, you know, I tried to visit him once in a while and do it, but it was still just a sorry affair, really. And so he passed away when you were 19? Yeah. Is that right? Yeah.

And how did that affect you? I mean, because when I looked, you know, I didn't know anything about this. I didn't know anything about your, you know, your personal life and your family life until we were going to have you as guests on the show. And when I look at you and, you know, in your life and how successful it's been, I'd have never known that you had this, you know, that you had some difficulties and some challenges as a young guy, right? Yeah. But so when he passed away when you were 19, was that a setback at all? Or, you know, how did that affect you in that moment? Well, at the time, I just say that when he passed away, he was a wino.

He was really in the gutter from drinking. And I was the only one actually went to his funeral. Oh. And actually, I guess kind of mixed emotions. And I was glad to see it goes because, you know, I knew it was going to mention nothing. So when he did pass away, I guess it was some kind of a relief to get out of that burden. And my mom and my sister and if, you know, could close it out too. Yeah.

And what was your mom end up doing in Florida? How was her life? Mom, she was trying to support me and my sister. And she actually had never had a job or anything. And she went to work for a grocery store. She was working in the meat department a lot. And actually she ended up a couple of years later, married one of the butchers down there that was doing the meat, which was really a great man. Yeah.

And he died of cancer, too. So later on. But my mom was, you know, struggling trying to support both of us. And then, of course, I worked and tried to do most things. I delivered papers in the morning before I had to went to school. I went to school and practiced basketball before the school started. And then after school, I'd go bag groceries and stuff. So trying to help mom.

So how long did you deliver papers? I don't know. Several years, I guess. But then, you know, you delivered papers. You had a sack over your shoulder with all of them. You had to go walk up on steps and put it behind the screen door on the front porch. You didn't just throw it up in the front yard like they do nowadays. So I just carried them, you know, on my shoulder, whether it was rain or snow, you know,

and delivered those papers trying to make some extra money. And then, like I said, I bag groceries in the afternoon after school to make some money. Even tried to caddy and once in a while, carried some bags on a golf course for 18 holes for $2. So, you know, just, actually, we're poor, I guess you'd call it. But we still had a good home life of my mom. and my sister. When you started racing and driving, what jobs did you maintain?

What job did you keep? When I started racing, I did, what I did, I started going to, when I got around 19, or actually after I'd been racing for a while, I went to electrical school. Oh.

And after work. So I was working, and like I said, still bagging to groceries and doing stuff like that, odd jobs. My wife's uncle was electrician, and he got me wanting to be electrician, so I was trying to better myself, so I went to electrical school at Lindy Hopkins Vocational School three nights a week after work and become an electrician, and I become a journeyman, and I got my ticket in the 349 local in Miami. So actually, when I started doing the embargo with

Cuba. They had that trouble down there. The electrical work pretty well just stopped. Wow. And I was trying to, I had a wife and three kids but then and had a grandmother that lived with us. So I had a lot of mouths to feed. I was making maybe $35 a week unemployment, you know, at that time because the electrical work just quit. So that's when Bobby, Bobby Allison come down to me and said, told me, Red said, said, said, said, said, red They let them track up in Alabama. They said they pay good money and a good track.

You really love them. So I got to think, and I said, well, I got nothing else to do. So I loaded up my old 36 Chevrolet behind the station wagon and open wheel one axle trailer and headed for Birmingham. But then there was no interstate. And I had to go up Highway 20. It took me 27 hours to get in. Towing that car up there, them two lanes all the way to Birmingham.

and I got up to Birmingham and went to Dixie Speedway out in midfield, a little quarter mile on high bank track. And at that time, they was running the 34 Fords with a Chevlet V8 Chevy. There was Hilton fuel injectors on alcohol, straight drive, had to push them off all the cars up there. So I pulled into the track deck there and got up in the car on the trailer and cracked it up. but they liked to die laughing. Then I put it in gear and backed off the trailer, you know, and they looked at it, and then I had a four-barreled carburetor on the car,

and they were just dying laughing at me coming in there like that, you know. Well, anyway, I had no points, so I had to start in the rear the features first night. So, but we learned down in medley and highly, and all these tracks were flat asphalt tracks. This track had some bank to it. So they dropped the green flags. They all dove. I was starting about 20th spot, 24 spot somewhere in there.

They all headed to the bottom, one lane. So I said, man, that's crazy. So I just went up on the outside. I got up in the third lane next to the wall. And I passed the whole field and won the feature from dead last. They'd stop laughing. They ain't laughing now. Yeah.

But like I said, they all was running in the bottom. To me, running in the bottom, I said, can't pass nobody a single file. Right. I just went to the outside and started passing them. and running on that bank track to me would like driving down the interstate. You know, it just is simple. So I passed the whole field.

It went up after the race, and it got $300. I like that, $300. I've been having $35 weekly checks from unemployment. Here I get $300. And Bob Harvard comes down, he says,

Red said, we're going to run Montgomery tomorrow and I. This was Friday night. He said, we were running to run Montgomery tomorrow night. said I promoted it down there too. How about coming down and stopping there? I said, well, I was going back to Miami. I said, okay, so I went down to Montgomery, half miles track, had the same thing.

All of them died laughing, dropped the green flags, ended the race. I won it too. I got another $300. So I got $600 in my pocket from two races and been living on 35 unemployment checks. I said, man, this is great. Anyway, I drove all the way back to Miami.

So I had no idea, you know, leaving the car out of every even come back again. But that's actually the way I started racing in Alabama. When you come home with that $600 and you talk at what's your wife think? She couldn't believe it, you know, that $600. So we paid off all our bills, you know, and got a bunch of groceries and everything. So that's the lure to go back to Alabama and start racing up there. Are you making that, do you start making that long trip? Yeah, I started making that trip.

In fact, I went back and forth several times. And like I said, I remember that first trip up there. I really didn't have any money, any extra money for gas and everything. And I stopped in a truck stop. And at that time, there was a lot of semis and trucks there hauling watermelons and peaches. So to make a long story, I borrowed some watermelons and peaches off of some of them trucks in the middle of the night to eat on and made the trip, even though that watermelon and peaches as I got.

So it's kind of ironic. I know Bobby and Donnie, Bobby and Donnie did that one time, too. They had the, they were short money, and they bought a bushel of peaches and lived on them about two days. Yeah. Just eating those peaches for breakfast, lunch, and supper. Good Lord. So.

Red, help us ignorant. Like, there's car people. listen to this and then there's the ignorant folks like me what exactly were the people at dixie and montgomery laughing at why were they laughing at you because that i had a carburetor on gasoline and i had a clutch and a transmission and i could crank up my car and move it and there was like those sprint cars they didn't have batteries and they had no they were straight drive they pushed them all got them crank like a sprinting they were straight drive they had alcohol burning the injectors but they all had power for straightaway but none of them knew how to get through the corners

I didn't spend my wheels and cross it up coming off the corner like they did. They had so much horsepower. They did. They were crossed up going through the corners. And I just got up on the outside and passed the whole bunch while they were sitting there trying to get through the corners. I was still running almost flat out. You were wide open. They're throttling, their feathering it and trying to get through the corners because they got so much horse power.

Yeah, and you're just passing them just wide open. That's right. I didn't have to slow down for the corners like they did because my car handled because it came off of a flat track. they had a little bank to it, you know, and my car just went around, like I said, it's like me driving down the interstate. Right. So when you go back, do you notice that they're changing their way they race you, or do they're not laughing anymore?

They know you've come in there and won the money. I know when somebody comes in and wins the money, takes the money, it changes things. So what happened? You couldn't have continued to doing that without them changing the way they did stuff, right? Well, they tried to learn. I guess they figured out they got to learn how to get through the car. corner better. Right.

But same way when I came back up a year so later, to B.R., which was a dirt track at that time, and it was a 5-8th-mile racetrack. And there's a driver named Wild Bill Lathen that was winning and everything, sponsored by a big lumber company, and he had, I think, six carburetors on his motor and all this stuff and horsepower. And I got up there, and they said, well, Bill Lathen wins everything up here. I said, well, okay. Anyway, he did.

He won the first feature that night, and I ran second. I come back and I won the next seven races in a row for passing because when I outrun him, he goes back and gets more horsepower and gets healing worse off the corner because he's spinning more. And I didn't have no horse power, and I almost run flat out all around the racetrack. And they started to figure out they got to learn how to handle mostly. But you know, and Bobby Donnie and myself would come up when he got together and started racing in the 60-61-263. three like that, you know, we just started pretty well dominating the race in up in there,

winning everything. That's what started the Alabama gang. In like 61, it was real ironic. We went to Bristol. They had about 60, 70 cars there, and all of them was 34 Ford Coups mostly. And we come in there with three sedans. We had three sedans. You know, we've got sedans, and they got coups qualified.

We qualified one, two, three with them three sedans, and they were cooped behind us. And it was the 200 Lapper, Brussels, same track you got today, except it had dirt, had asphalt on it instead of cement. And the race started, and anyway, made a long story short, I won the race, and Bobby ran second. And Donnie was running third, but he had, I think, dropped the valve or a rock arm or something. So we ran one, two there.

And, you know, we ran pretty well 1, 2, 3 at, I don't know how many racetracks. And most of it because we had them. We worked on handling the more we did speed, you know, try to get through the corners. So it was kind of ironic. That pretty well started the deal with the Alabama game because we ran 1, 2, 3. I think it was 64. We ran, we finished first, second, and third in the point standards at Birmingham. We finished first, second, and third at Huntsville.

We first, second, at Montgomery. We just pretty well dominated. Then, before we went, we actually qualified, and I knew if I was going to win a race, Bobby and Donnie was one of the outrun if I'd go to win. We was friends, and we helped each other as much as you can. It's like brothers almost would we try to work on the cars. But when we got on the racetrack, it was every manned for himself.

It was no whole bar between us, because we all had expenses and families to feed, so we was all out to win races. But it was kind of ironic. It was somewhere in North Carolina, I don't know where it was. We was coming up. We'd already won bunch of races,

and then Jack Ingram, I think, was standing down in the pits by pit passes, and we came over the hill. And we always traveled like a bunch of gypsies, I guess, bumper-and-bumper. three of us followed each other down the road with open wheel trailers and Jack Higgum looked up there and saw us coming over the hill.

He said, here comes that damn Alabama gang again. And a reporter, I think, heard it and put it in the paper the next day that something about the Alabama gang and it's tucked that's been that way ever since. That's where it started. Yeah. You know, so you guys are, you and Bobby and Donnie are racing. Did you stay?

I mean, did you move to Alabama? Alabama eventually? I mean, you're making that trip up there, like you said, 20-some hours to get to these racetracks on the weekends. When do you move to Alabama? Yeah. In Mount 61, it was I moved my family up to Alabama to Birmingham. And Bobby and them, they brought their families up there, too. Where were, how far was Bobby and Donning them from you in Florida?

Or how far did y'all live apart? Y'all would meet at Montgomery or meet at Dixie Wright or whatever. You'd meet these racetracks on the weekend in Alabama when you were living in Florida. Did you go over to their place? I mean, try to help me geographically understand. No, no, not really. We was actually pretty well independent and we was down there running there at Highley and Medley and Hollywood Speedway. We nearly didn't become close and real close friends until we got to Alabama.

Yeah. And then y'all finally decided that, you know, why don't we just move here? Well, the racing was so good. And, you know, we was making pretty good money at the time. Yeah. Where in Alabama did you decide to move to? Birmingham. Well, I think I lived up in Peripield Highlands for a while in a little small place,

the one-bedroom house and stuff, you know, because they didn't have any money. And then eventually we ended up in High Leia. Bobby had a house on a 140 church street, and I lived at 143, Fouse, but actually the streets were parallel with each other, and Bobby's, my fence in my backyard, on the other side of the fence was Bobby's. We was on the next street, but we were actually neighbors. Yeah. So the place I had, I had about three acres in the back fence I had back there, and then the other

side was Bobby. He was on the next street, but we was actually next door neighbors stood. Really? So was that intentional? Was that intentional that y'all lived close together? No, it just worked out. It didn't realize that I guess when I got moved into the house. Bobby was going to be my next door neighbor.

Then Donnie lived down in Bassem at the time before he moved to Highland. Got to keep distance with Donnie. You know, you don't want him as the neighbor. He'll wear you out. A firecracker there, right? Yeah. You and Donnie and Bobby become best friends. Yes.

Actually, it was really ironic at one time when we was running Bia, We all lived in one apartment. What? We had an apartment over there about a mile from the racetrack upon the second floor. It only had one bedroom. And all three of us was living in this one apartment. We took turn who got the bedroom, who got the couch,

and who got the floor. So we rotated around for a while. And had a lady who lived on the other side of the hall, she would do our washing and closed for us. We paid her little money. So that's how the pretty close. we got, you know, living together. And then we didn't have no garage, and there was a guy named Joe Moore had a shell gas

station at the corner of BIR, and he let us park our cars up next to the fence outside of the gas station. And if we'd go there Monday morning and back our cars off the trailer and out there work there next to his gas station next to the wash rack and work on our cars, you know, out there the sun and just like that. And the weather got bad, and he had nobody in the track, he let one car pull it in and do the work. So whichever one had to have the most work done to him

or some motor work, they got the garage and the other two still stayed outside the garage of work. That sounds so cool. Imagine driving by that place. Listen, I don't have to imagine it. I mean, I'm from Birmingham, and everything you're saying right now, and I'm not making this about me, I'm just sitting here soaking it in because BIR is the first place I ever went to a race.

In fact, you raced against my cousin, Henry Brooke. Oh, yeah. You know, Henry? Yeah. He still got a lumber company. That's right. And we connected with him just a year ago just while we were doing our Lost Speedway show. And so, like, I just, I know where the fairgrounds is.

I know what the neighborhood is. And I can just see you and Bobby and Donnie. I mean, that was just a heck of a, you say, imagine in that atmosphere, man. This was a racing town back then, man. BIR was it. It's fascinating to me to hear you talk about how the money was so much better. I don't know why that is. Why was the money so much better in Alabama to begin with than Florida?

You wouldn't guess that if you didn't know any better. But it kind of makes me think that BIR back then had it going on, Dixie, Montgomery, all that. That was such a hotbed for racing. And it also makes me sad to know that it all went away. Well, me too. I would just if I think our

Mayor Langford if they got him in prison one year earlier we'd still have BIR Yeah yeah They wouldn't have taken a reckon ball to it No No no So yeah

BIR that was It was dirt when I first got up here Yeah The first 10 races And then Tom Glor got it And put some kind of gravel on it tried to make it an asphalt track, you know, so it went through the things, but it ended up being a unique racetrack because it was a flat 5 eighth mile,

and it was real fast. And if you could learn to get around BIR, that flat 5 eighth mile racetrack, when we went to other places like Greenville Pickings or Nashville or Bristol, they all had bank tracks. And after learning to get around a flat racetrack, it was simple for us to get around a flat racetrack, It was simple for us to get around these bank racetracks. Maybe that's one reason we won so many races. And like we always said, if you could race BIR, you could go anywhere and win races.

Because they would go to Montgomery or Jacksonville, Pensacola, anywhere like that, you know, we was good. Brad, you joined the military during the Korean War. Why did you join the military? No, actually, this is the way the government worked. when I got there, went in the Army in 53, of course, you filled out of form what you were doing. Did you get drafted? Uh-huh. Were you drafted?

Yeah, I was drafted. What was that like? You got a letter in the mail? Yeah, I got a letter in the mail. In fact, when I went in, I was leading the point standings in NASCAR, and I didn't really realize it at the time, but I was leading the point standards when I got drafted and went in the Army. When you got that letter, what did you think? It didn't really know. It really kind of floored me.

there was no way I could get out of it I guess I was going to have to do it so I mean it was the war I said well I guess go to do my part so it's real ironic I went in there and filled out the papers you know whatever you'd like to do this that and the other anyway I went in it I was a mechanic

I wanted to do that kind of stuff work or what do they do they send me to Blacksburg Virginia to to learn how to be a medic a corps man I went through four months of medical training to be a corpsman and going to send me over and C's the cross on my shoulder, you know, and be a medic man.

So my orders come down, and what did they do? They send me over to Germany, the bombhole to Germany, in an artillery division as a mechanic. Here I went through four months of training to be a medic, and they sent me somewhere else and doing something else. I wasn't even trained for. So I sent over there in the artillery division, it was in the atomic cannon deal.

That was when they had this monstrous cannon that must have been 40 yards long that would shoot a shell as big as you are, 32 miles. Holy sht. Yeah, they had the A and the B unit. They real pick it up, they had these units that four people set side by side in the seat. And they had a B unit and the B unit.

It'd come in and pick up this atomic canter. And the two units would go down the road. And they'd go out there and they had bulldozers and not place it down real level. And they had set that atomic cannon down. They had them aimed at all the different bridges and main highways along the Russian front. So when something broke out, they could start destroying all this passages going in there. So it was kind of ironic.

So I was a mechanic there and I had to go. I was in a truck that I had to follow the convoys and stuff when something broke down. We had to fix it. So what was your, so you weren't on, so what part of Europe did you spend most of your time in? Germany, mostly. Yeah. And so that way, you know, I played football for the Third Army. Over in Germany.

Yeah, in Germany. They was football going on. Oh, yeah. Yeah, all your different ones had it at the time. But the Third Army, there were thousands of people went out for it. I think there was 30-something people went out for my position. But I ended up made first string end. I played in for the Third Army.

and we won the Ryan Main Conference. We won like the 12 straight games, undefeated. They flew us to Paris to play the Air Force Championship team, and we kicked their butt bad. So we would beat that thing too. That's crazy all that going. You'd almost think there wasn't a war going on, right? I mean, we're firing cannons.

It sounds a lot funner than what I've all heard other war stories. Well, you know, over there, of course, it was real cold in Germany, and sometimes we'd go to practice. That field had been chopped up running in cleats and it'd freeze, and we had to go out there to practice the next day in it. And they like playing in a rock quarry. I mean, it was real rough to do that. But it was real important because if you can make the football team,

what they call T-D-Y, you'd be transferring duty. So we stayed in the special play. they call it the jockstrap hotel and we played something like that we was a live from guard duty we didn't have to go walk guard duty plus we had better food so uh everybody they'd kill you to get on the b t d y to get on one of the teams so that you and have to walk guard duty at midnight in the snow so uh yeah that sounds miserable it was it was miserable so i tried to get on anything that they had i got on the bowling team I do anything they do because I didn't want to walk guard duty in the snow all night long either. When you were doing your mechanic stuff, what was the typical job that you needed to do, just fixing trucks and stuff?

Maintained a pack of wheelbairns and stuff like that and just try to maintain it so they wouldn't break down on the roads when they were traveling and stuff. So we had all kinds of duties to do there. And when did you get, I mean, you were only in, how long were you in the military? Two years? Two years. And so you get to the end of your tour and you're done? You're going to go home? Yeah, when I come back, that's when...

Did you want to leave? I mean, at that point, you're there two years. You got friendships, buddies. Oh, yeah, I had some great buddies in there, you know, especially the guys I played football with. We were real close and stuff like that. But still, I want to get back home because I had a family and I actually want to get back at a race car again.

What's happening to your race cars and stuff while you're in there? why you're over there. Well, John Fitzgibbent had on the car when I went into service with, he had another driver who was driving my car. But when I come home with 55, he wanted me to drive for him again. Who was the driver?

Durhow. Okay. Durr Howe was driving his car for him then. I said, we went up to Miller Speed Shop in West Palm Beach and bought a Golden White number C-97 car from Miller Speed Shop. And that was C-Wood for Jack Chocette.

He had won the champion. that year. So I started campaigning in that car in 56 and later in the season. At the end of the season, we wrecked it a little bit and fixed it up some and we changed, got ready to put the numbers back on and we changed the C to an F because it's not Shackgo, Mitt Fitzgibbons and Farmer. So we put an F-97 on it instead of a C-97. And I've had that same number for 60-something years now, 97th and it's always been the golden white. Yeah, that's pretty cool. That is cool.

You came back from the war in... 55. 55. And then in 56, like literally the next year, you win the national title and the modified. Yeah, that's right. We campaigned that card that's the 97th. So you came... In fact, the last race of the year to determine the championship, the top three of us was

running there, and we was in Concord, North Carolina, running at that... half mile dirt track there in Concord. And that's when, actually, I got the race to get your grandpa. Ralph Earnhardt was running there too. That may be the first time I ran with him that I know of because we hadn't been running that far up there. But that race, I think it was like 150 lap race or something like that. And then when I wasn't finished good enough to win the championship that year,

he actually won it. So I got to go to Daytona Beach. Big Bill, France, I think it was a prince of the casino hotel. They had the banquet that year. He got to sit up there to get my trophy with Big Bill and Ralph, your grandpa, sat right next to me and Buck Baker was on one side and your dad was on the other. Yeah. So.

Pretty awesome. Especially here at Concord, too, you know, what I mean in the last race. So he won the Sportsman Championship and I won the modified championship. Is that about the only time you remember being around, Ralph? No, I raced with him The last race The last race that they ran on the beach course in 1958 They ran a 200 down there

And I remember that Ned Jarrett No, Glenn Wood was on the pole But Banjo Matthews won that race A 200 Lapper And I think He took

Glidwood finished third Fireball Robert was fourth And I think Ralph finished about seventh or eighth in that race. Ned Jarrett was 10th and I was 14th. So I raced with him in that last race on the beach before the Super Speedway got in. Gotcha. Man.

So what was racing at the, we did a, you know, we did a little work on the beach course as far as our TV show lost speedways. We went down and learned about the beach course, right? None of it's there. It's all gone. except for this little tiny strip asphalt. But what was that like? So, I mean, it couldn't have been too damn crazy because you ran on an airplane,

you ran on an airport. Y'all make a racetrack out of anything. So this must have, was it a wild idea when you heard they were going to build a racetrack there? Or was it like, okay, that sounds cool. Let's go check it out? No, Eric, I didn't know anything about Daytona as far as the beach course or how big it was or anything else.

And in 53, a gentleman named Shorty Sykes had a car lot in Miami. And he was coming out to Highley and Medley and watching us race, and he come up to be. And he said, Red said, I got a Hudson on my car lot down there. He said, I'll give it to you or let you have it if you'll take it to Daytona and run it with my name on the quarterback. So I got thinking, I said, Daytona. He said, yeah, they run on the beach course. Well, I didn't know it was half dirt and half asphalt or nothing about the racecourse. I got thinking about it.

Here's a free car. I said, okay, we'll get it. So we got this Hudson, and I didn't know that there was a Hudson Hornet that had two carburetors on it, six-sler that was really a race car. And they had four-speed transmissions in them and all that stuff. This car was a straight-eight, and automatic transmission in it. A straight. I didn't know the difference because I'd never run anything like that. that before. A straight eight. Yeah, a straight eight. I don't know if I ever seen one. Yeah,

straight eight. I had aluminum head on it, I think. But it was a straight eight. So, anyway, we put a temporary road cage in it, and that's about all we had. Everything had to stay stock. I didn't even have a trailer or a tow truck. So me and a mechanic, Wayne Cackley, we put a suitcases in the back seat and a little toolbox in the trunk, and we headed up, and we drove that car all the way up to the beach to Daytona, I think, 350 miles. We drove the race car up there. So that's how I got to Daytona when I got there to find out that it had A1A down one straight away in the beach, the other, and turns, of course, it was kind of mind-boggling us, you know. And that's when I tried to get some help. And this is something that actually more or less, I guess, shaped my

career in racing or my thoughts anyway. I needed some help because I didn't know nothing about this track. So I went to four or five of what I call the hot dogs pit area, and they had ropes around it with a guy sitting in a chair that wouldn't let you go and I come up. I said, I'd like to get a little bit of a little bit of a help

and I talk to someone's like this. And pretty well put me down the road. Well, after I went to about four or five of those people and I couldn't get any kind of help at all. And then I ran into Ralph Moody and I remember Ralph Moody. And I remember Ralph from Opelaka years ago, four or five years ago when he came down there.

So I went up to Ralph and told him, I said, Ralph, I need some help. And he said, okay, he stopped what he was doing and come over, and he helped me for 10 minutes or 15 minutes and told me how to set the air pressure and what to do about this, that and other, how to get into turn three and not going in overhead, being careful going down the back straight away of that little narrow road because it wasn't wide enough for two cars, hardly. So anyway, I left there, and I said to myself, I said, well, I'm a nobody, and I may always be a nobody. But if I ever become a somebody and some kid or some new guy comes up and needs some information and some help, I said, I want to always be able to do that to help him.

I want to be like Ralph Moody. I said, I don't want that kid to walk away thinking that, you know, what a bud I am before not taking time helping him out sometimes. So, but, you know, I always, it's one of my sins. Big wheels are peed on by little dogs. So that's the way I've tried to do my career. I've always tried to help the youngsters and stuff as much as good as they had the information. Because I think it's the right thing to do. It kind of helps you in many ways.

It's not only it's the right thing to do, but you feel better about helping somebody doing that. And also he stopped thinking makes it a lot safer for you because if he can get around the racetrack better than you. He may have a wreck and you're going to get involved in it. So it's the right thing to do. And I've got I won four more popular driver awards than NASCAR. And they probably mean as much as me as any trophies I got for the simple reason.

When I won the most popular driver awards, you had to have a NASCAR license to vote on it, not fans, clubs, or anything else of the public or something. It was the guys you race with every week. Your peers voted you the most popular. That meant that I remembered Ralph Moody. Yeah.

All right, Red. Somebody's thinking it. You may not want to answer this, and that's fine, but I'm going to ask it anyways. Who were the hot dogs? I mean, if Ralph Moody was so prevalent that you would shape your entire personal, you know, like that...

I just say it was in Christ, they were in Christ of 300, keep after market, those full jewel cars. Keith Kafer, knew it, knew it. Then we know it. I mean, like, don't we know from Lost Speedways that they had? My imagination had him going up to those cars and getting turned away for sure. I'm telling you. We had stories about them and Keith Kafer.

Didn't Bobby run for him? Yeah, Bobby, Bobby tested boats for him for years up in Wisconsin. To where Bobby, actually, mom and pop Allison, they kind of well railroaded Bobby and sent him to Wisconsin to live with one of their kent folks up there to get him away from racing. Mom Allison and wanted him to not be a race car driver. So she sent him to Wisconsin and he got hired by the mercury outboards and he was testing motors. He had to get in a boat and run six hours on the lakes up there and break it in these motor. There were three different guys, and they run these boats for six hours testing motors like that. In fact, that's one reason.

Bobby, he got a boat swamped, and he almost drowned it. He had to swim back to shore with boots on and clothes like that and stuff like that. And that's where he, like, froze to death. And if they had, he got to shore, and a lady got him out and took him in there and put him in a tub of hot. water and pretty well saved his life. And he was blue. He was almost on the verge of death of hypothermy. And that's one reason.

Bobby, he would ride around in the summertime with his windows rolled up with a heater on his car. And that's the reason he got so used to hot water. That's the reason he could run them 500-mile races. And he wouldn't like the other people. They give up because they got too hot. Because he's never, he trained himself. for that heat.

Endurance. Yeah, endurance and the heat. Wow. There's a lot of Bobby Allison stuff right there I'd never heard of. Did you? No. I mean, swamping a boat. Right.

You guys had been all over the country doing something. I mean, right. I don't know how you fit it all in, but I mean, it is, you know, you have been around a while. You talk about the older country that we said the other day. They said, how many races active you run in 75 years, you know? And I got thinking. I said, well, I raced in Key West Florida, as far as house. Stock Island.

I ran in Oxford, Maine, in the other corner. I ran down in California, the other corner, and I ran up in Victoria, British Columbia, and raced up in there. So I raced all four corners as far as you get away, and I don't want to how many in between that. So I raced in all four, because people don't even know they had a track in Key West at one time. They did. There's still just a little, like, portion of the track still there underneath all the growth.

Well, when we first went down to Key West and run that track, It looked like a quarter mile, looked like a quarter mile asphalt track. And the back straightaway, the one straightaway had a cardboard guardrail with two by fours. And we got there, a hot left,

a few left right there, and walked out there and walked over that cardboard guardrail and looked over, and there was the ocean right beside us. What the hell is going on? And I said, I said, ooh, one time but we left,

I never come back. I said, if you went through that cardboard, you would die out in the ocean, level the ground you're swimming now yeah yeah yeah yeah wow I didn't know there was old track in the Key West yeah sitting down there yeah we got to do I don't know they ever run plants at one time far as I know you know you know anybody ever go back running again so you know this begs the question so you and Bobby and Donnie are great friends and Bobby and Donnie go on to to race in the Cup series you're as successful as

they are in the modified's and doing just as well. Why was your cup experience and your cup career so limited? How come that didn't work out for you the way it did for Bobby? There's a lot of reasons, a lot of reasons for that. One reason, at that time, factories was in the race, and if he wasn't a factory ride, he was a nozzle ran. He was an independent. So it was kind of a tough deal. I was offered some rides, but none of them. I thought was winning rides. Was there a ride that maybe you think back on now that maybe I should have took that ride?

Well, no, not really. I don't regret it in any way that I turned down a few of the rides that I had. Because to me, racing, I love racing. There was so much politics and stuff going on in racing at that time. Because I know Bobby and Donnie at one time, and they was on separate kind of teams.

And Eddie was in it, on one team. And that team told him, you can't talk to him, his own brother because he was on the other team. Right. And that kind of stuff. And I remember one time we were going through inspection, I think, at Daytona, and they come over to my car. In my headlights, I had a piece of aluminum out,

pop riveted over with my headlights in the front. And the inspector come over and said, you've got to take that aluminum ball. and move it back in an inch and a half to where the front of the bubs at. And I said, what? He said, yeah, I said, you've got to take it off and move it back in the front end.

I looked over there about two cars for me, and there was a Holman Moody car or something sitting over the same year, same cars I've got, he's got aluminum on the front of his. And I said, what about his? He got to take his off? He said, I'm an inspector in New York or not his. The race started,

and he still had his aluminum on in front of, of his and I had to move mine back an inch and a half. Yeah. Politics, you know, and I said, well, you know, it just took something away from me. I said, I don't want, I'd rather go back to BIR and win my 30-lap feature and be in winning circle than I would finish 15th to 20th to 25th in a cup race and just play. I'm a NASCAR cup driver and be an also ran. I mean, to me, that's like.

kissing your sister. You just don't do nothing for you. You know what I mean? So if you run... I don't actually, but I'll take your word for it. Well, that's what I'm saying. You know what I mean? It just being also ran, wasn't to me,

I would rather win short track races than Ben also ran and run back. I couldn't win races. I wanted to win races. That's what meant more to me in first place. Second place is not worth of nothing. So I said, I've just, going to go back there and run and, you know, and I built a Long Lewis Ford. It would be a 72 Terino, and I drove it back from the dealership to my shop in Hueytown.

And when I got the garage, it had nine miles on it. And we started taking the up poultry and a headliner and every night and make it into a race car. And I campaigned that car some. And in fact, I finished fourth in the 74. I finished fourth in the Talladega 500 with that car. Yep. that we built, it would still stock frames, still everything on it, other than I put jack bolts on the springs and changed the spring and stuff around.

So basically it's the one sitting in the Hall of Fame right now. Yeah. And you can look at the seed on it that had no armrest, no headrest, nothing in it, you know, we ran 500 miles. And in fact, I went to Ontario, California, and I don't know if anybody's ever been in Ontario, but they had a car, they had a track exactly 10 years ahead of its schedule. I mean, it was a beautiful racetrack. But it was like Internapples.

It had two short straightaways and two long straightaways. It was flat. I went there with my 72 Torino. And Bill Gazzaway, Joe Gazzofi, was the inspectors at the time for NASCAR. Anyway, to make a long story short, I qualified third passes in Ontario. It gets 50-something cars. I qualified all the hot dogs. and Bill Gads went in and they called me into the office

and said Red said we've kind of a short time here right now he said whatever you've done to your car that's illegal correct it right now and we won't have no problem and I said Bill I said they ain't nothing wrong with my car he said well there ain't no way you can take that 72 and run qualify on second row in Ontario

against all these things guys. And I said, I can because I can tell you why. The first time I went out for a practice session, we'd going down a straightaway, and I liked to crash the car in front of me because they was already out of the cats,

and I wasn't planning on lifting for another 100 yards. And they was scared to drive on that flat track with a 90-degree corner to get to it, and they would back it off. Like I said, 100, 200 feet before I was even playing on lifting.

And I said, they were scared to run on that flat racetrack, but I learned to drive BIR, which is a flat racetrack. And to me, I felt comfortable running that way. But they didn't. I said, so my car was legal, so. Did they accept that? Yeah, did they accept that? Did they accept your explanation?

Yeah, they did. And in fact, they gave me, after their race, they gave me some kind of a kit that checked for cracks and flaws or some kind of a kit for the best engineered independence. car. Oh, wow. Yeah, so they gave me a award. I kept that case of that stuff, that diced up. You just pray on stuff for checking for crack their flaws. And they gave me that award. That's an, I haven't heard that story where it's like, we don't know what is wrong with your car. We don't know what's cheating. We just think it is. So go fix it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's great.

So I'm sitting here watching you. You got three fingers with tips missing off of them. How'd that happen? They would say, where did you lose them? I said, I didn't lose them. I know where they're at. the Everglades. Oh, Lord. What? Wait, what happened in the Everglades? Well, you know, I was hunting and fishing. I love to hunt and fish.

Well, I had two airboats. I always had airboats in Florida. In fact, a lot of times on Saturday night, when I went to Highley or something like that, I'd have my buddy take my race car back to the shop, and I'd have my airboat on my, behind my truck, sitting in the parking lot. When the race is over, I'd go out and get that thing. I drive out to Tamiami Trail and launch that airboat at midnight

and head out to the hunting club about six miles into Everglades and do some frog gigging, get some frogs on the way out there with the gig and stuff like that. Well, I had one boat that was a little, what I call a hot rod boat. It wouldn't be about 12 foot long.

I had an 85, like on me motor on it. And I had a rolled cage, but I didn't have no wire on the front of the roller cage. And I was actually running the deer, chasing the deer through some of the woods and fixed to get hit my head with a limb. So I reached up and grabbed that limb and pushed it over this way like that. And then my hand went between the bars and the propeller cut them off, cut the fingers off or knocked them off or whatever. Damn, I bet that hurt.

I tell you what, I looked up and saw blood spurting out in them. There's the bone still ticking out there by a half inch and no meat on it. and I said, whew, I'm by myself now. What year was this? 58, I think it was. Oh, damn. Oh, damn. Yeah, you're out in the middle of nowhere.

I'm out in the middle of nowhere. I'm out of the middle of the nowhere. So I reached over there and tried to squeeze that top of the blood from coming out and ran that boat back probably four miles to the trail, hit the trailer because it backed up, you know, an airboat run across dry ground. I ran it wide open up on the trailer. put the latch on it, jumped in the car and had to drive the highly of about 10 miles down the road before I got the found, got a hospital and went in there for the blood, you know, and they wired them all up, fixed them all over.

I'm surprised you. You didn't pass out at least. Well, that's what they said. It's wonders that I didn't pass out from this thing. Blood loss. Yeah. But I knew I had by myself. I had no choice.

I had to do it, you know. So the friendship was. with Bobby and Donnie, you know, lasts for decades. And Davy comes alone. Davy's going to be a race car driver, Bobby's son. You seem to be really, really close with him. Y'all went places together. You drove his race cars sometimes when Davey would need somebody to fill in.

Y'all seemed, you and Davy seemed to be even closer maybe than you and Bobby were. You know, what was that relationship like between you and you and Davey? and, you know, what did you see in him? Well, Davy was just coming out of the street stocks and stuff and just learning to be a race car driver. And, of course, I was there when he was born because I went to Bobby's wedding when him and Judy got married in Miami Springs, Florida. Yeah.

So when all his kids was born, they would. You were there? I was there. Well, anyway, you know, Bobby's shop, like I say, just next door to mine. So when I was over there working, with Bobby or in his shop, you know, and then Clifford and David would be coming in there on tricycles, you know, and then, of course, on bicycles and then go carts and stuff like that.

So I saw him grow up the whole time, and then he'd become a race car driver. At that time, it's when Bobby and Donnie was off cup racing. Right. And I was running BIR in Huntsville and places like that, and, of course, Davey was there. So. Did you all part together to tracks and stuff? us, y'all stayed close. Yeah, we bought there a lot and stayed together.

And, of course, when he, in other words, I tried to take Bobby's place more or less to help Davey as much as I could, you know, and bring him up like that. Because, like I say, Bobby and Donny was gone. So we became real close that way. And, you know, we got to hunting and fishing together and just helping him out, you know. And he was like a second son to me, you know. So that's really how that came about, you know, that I tried to take. make Bobby's place to help Dave as much as I could on the way up.

Yeah. So I didn't know. It was, I guess, I mean, if you think about it, it makes sense that, that y'all would be in the same place all the time and him coming up through the ranks and racing at the local tracks that you were still racing at. Y'all really did have a, y'all really did have a tremendous amount of time to be around each other. Yeah.

Yeah. And he would, he would grow really, you know, comfortable and fond of being around you and leaning on your advice and so forth. And so how did Bobby react to that? Did he, I'm sure he was pretty appreciative to have somebody who trusted. Oh, he was. Bobby knew that I was trying to help Davy as much of us. You know, he wanted him to do that.

He wanted somebody to be able to help Davey. And Clifford, the same way. Yeah. So, Davy become a real good driver. You know, I always tried to bring, you know how Davy was. You know, I always told Davey. I said, look, you become a champion and become a big racer. and you do that.

I said, I want you to always remain Davy just like you now. I said, don't you ever get big-headed and get an ego and start thinking you're better than anybody else if you do? I'm going to kick your butt. And he never did. Davey always remained Davy. He was always the same. He never changed. I can vouch for that.

Me and I didn't know Davey super well. He's a little bit older, but Kelly and Davey had a friendship. My sister Kelly and Davey were friends. and Davy looked, I think Davy looked at me and Kelly in this, and saw something that was similar in himself, being Bobby's son, right? And how he knew coming up in the ranks underneath Bobby's shadow and trying to prove himself. And the doors that would open, but also the challenges that would come with that being Bobby's son. And I think he looked at Kelly and me, and I would watch him and Kelly interact anytime they were around each other.

Kelly, Kelly had a little crush on Davey at one point. But David was super nice and just so easy to talk to. Even for someone as young as me, and even as he was going into the cup car, like you say, I anticipated his personality to change. I anticipated him to be more challenging to talk to or engage with as a young kid. But he always acknowledged you when he would come into the room. Hey, how are you doing? What have you been up to?

you everybody nobody was too unimportant right to davy davy was such a nice guy and always willing to you know kind of create a conversation with anybody well i think there's a lot of that's got to do with bobby's bringing him up to davy didn't he learned everything himself he's

come in the shop he'd come up and be he'd be out there and bobby have him sweeping the floor with a thing bobby and davy want to go over and work on the race car he didn't want to sweep no damn floor sure so he'd come in the come up to me. He says, Mr. Daddy, I said, Davey, just go ahead and sweep the floor. You can work on the car

a little bit later. So just do it. And Bobby had him come up that way. But Davey learned everything. Davy could actually do everything. He could wire a car. He could build the motor. He could build a chassis. He could set the front end. He could do everything

because Bobby had him learn everything from sweeping the floor on up. and Davy was a good all-around mechanic. Yeah. Bobby seemed, my opinion of Bobby Alice, and Dad and Bobby were really close. As far as I remembered when Bobby was injured at Pocono, at that point, Dad and Bobby were pretty close. Dad and Neil were very close, and I think that kind of roped all that together, right? Neil being part of the Alabama gang.

So Dad really listened to Bobby. and followed a lot of Bobby's advice, even up until Bobby was injured. So I wonder how Bobby was as a dad, and I know that he was off racing a lot, but to me, he seems like he would be kind of strict, and it's interesting. He was strict, but he was a good dad.

I mean, he wasn't, in other words, they wasn't given anything. They had to earn it, everything like Bobby, he was pretty strict with them for the behavior and what they did this, that and other. But Bobby was a good dad. He did a great job raising them two boys.

How come Clifford's career trailed Davies? What was the deal there? Let's put it this way. The difference between Donnie and Bobby was a different. Bobby was kind of laid back and calm, and Donnie was wild as hell. And actually the same way.

Davey was calm, more like like Bobby and Clifford was just like Donnie. He was kind of wild. He didn't really want to, he was kind of crazy, in other words, the kid. He didn't know he even wanted to be a race car driver. And I noticed I watched him when they both started driving, you know. And the year, I think the year before Clifford got killed at Michigan, he had finally made up his mind that he was going to calm down and be a race car driver.

Yeah. I don't think until then he really didn't want to be. He didn't know really what he wanted to do. I understand. Where Davey always knew he wanted to be a race car driver. Yes. And Clifford really improved that last year before he had that crash in Michigan. He was really night and day changing from his driving and his attitude and everything else about Clifford.

I was in the park. Me and Davey and Clifford's car was parked by side-by-side at Michigan, down in turn four. when the wreck happened. That was probably one of the hardest things I think of ever done. I still get emotional whenever I think about it. We were side by side. When Clifford had that crash, we looked up there and it was only a couple hundred yards from us

when he had that crash. The car was parked there. And Bobby walked out on the pit road and started walking up towards the crash. crash. And the guard, where the guard tried to stop him, Bobby just pushed him aside. Walked on up there. And he walked up there, just looked in the car and turned around and walked around, walked back, and come down and right between the cars. I was standing right next to him and he sat down on that toolbox.

but it seemed to know his face. That was the hardest thing that Bobby ever had to do, I guess. I can't never forget it. Yeah, that's tough. Bobby and that family would go through a lot of tragedy, a lot of difficulties. You know, the helicopter crash took Davy.

You were in that helicopter. You know, how do you, you know, you talk about, this experience that day in Michigan with Clifford and then the accident with Davey happens I really don't know how Bobby did it

you know I really don't know how you come back from something like that or how you keep moving forward I know it's I think they I think it goes back to their religion their religion had to take over for that you know

You know, me living next to Bobby and knowing him since he's coming, helped me on my first car when he was 15, 16 years old. He lost Pop Allison, he lost Neil, lost David, he lost Clifford. We lost him off of close friends. And I don't know how they put up with, I mean, the trouble they had. then the financial problems that they had when the insurance companies and all that stuff and left him out of broke, you know, trying to pay all those hospital bills for all his injuries that he had, stuff like that. So it took some awful strong religions and faith to be able to put up with all that stuff.

I know it's just, because how I felt what Clifford did, and then, the next morning after the helicopter crash, and they come into my room and told me about Davis. And, you know, I know I felt, so I said, it's got to be rougher on Bobby and Judy than it is on me. But I don't think it could be. Yeah. What injuries did you sustain?

I had broken calls. some ribs and just more or less beat up. Davy was still trying to fly that thing. And when I saw that it was upside down and out of control, I kind of brace myself. And he couldn't. He was flying. He was still trying to fly that thing to the last minute.

When something broke on the collectors that made the propellus mess up or something on it and he couldn't control it. And I got to brace myself when it crashed down. When he hit the ground and the motor was still running wide open on the helicopter. And we had gone down to tell them they going to watch Neil Bonnet and then practice, David, practiced. And Neil was the first one got over it. We was only maybe 100 yards from where they were

parked in the garage. And Neil come running over to me, and the whole front of the, on my side that crashed down, the glass bubble was busted out there away. And I undid the seatbelt, and I was trying to get out. And Neil reached in there and got me by the arms and pulled, jugged me out of the helicopter. Pulled me away about 10 feet, and I told him, I said, Neil go back and get Davey, he's hurt. he's hurt and Neil went back to try to get Davy out of things you know so it was a quite of a deal you know so and then of all things of all things what did they do they put us in two helicopters or flies to the

hospital I told them I said to put me in the back of a pickup truck I don't want to get back in a helicopter I imagine yeah that would have been pretty yeah that was the first time I never been in it I didn't like them I I told David had that helicopter for six months. And, in fact, he was making a helipad right out next to the shop to park it on. And I never would get in. He took all the guys and the crew ride and fly it around Huey Town, come back landing and all this stuff, and I never would get in it. Because I didn't like it.

I said, other things, I said something happened to them. They don't glide or float. They sink like a rock. I said, they're not made to fly. They ain't got no wings on them, you know. I used to own one, and I didn't think anything about it. My dad owned a helicopter, and we would fly to the racetracks, and I bought one.

I bought mine from Tony Stewart, and was riding in that thing whenever we needed to, and woke up one morning. I don't know why. Nothing happened. I just woke up one morning and didn't want to ride it anymore. I don't know why. I had my whole mindset about them changed. Well, that was me.

I just didn't feel comfortable in one of them. I just didn't want to ride it. I never would get into it. And that day that it happened, he would tell me about Neil NAM down there, practices in Talladega. We'd just gone to lunch. And he said, we're going to fly down to Talladega with Nilem. I said, no, I ain't either.

He says, yeah, you are. I said, we got a race. He said, we just finished up the race car this morning. We just got through setting the front end, the car's already loading the trailer. You don't need to be in the shop working. on the cruise. I just didn't want to do it. I said, finally he said, come on, I need somebody to ride with me.

So I got in the helicopter. That was the first time I ever been in. Where did you take off from? Huh? Where did you take off from? Birmingham. So the helipad had not been built yet, or it had been built by the shop? No, it had been graded off, but it was still dirt.

He was just in the process of building that thing. Yeah. And he kept the helicopter down at Birmingham. Got it. Okay. You know, Red, it occurs to me. I mean, like, you know, you know all the stuff that Bobby's dealt with. I mean, if you take away losing sons, which I can't imagine, you know, like, I can't imagine there being anything, anything worse than losing a kid, right?

But Bobby, you know, you also lost a friend in Neil, and Bobby also had the head injuries. And I know that you being the supportive friend. and the person to lean on wasn't what you necessarily signed up for. But here you've sort of been that rock, right? I mean, like, I'm not saying by choice, and I'm not saying it's by something you may, it's not something you relish or enjoy,

but you do have something about you. And it needs to be said. I'm sitting there thinking about it in the Hall of Fame speech, which was remarkable. And I'm looking at a man that's also, I think your legacy is also being there for people through unimaginable grief. And I don't know how you're able to do it.

I mean, I don't know how you're able to do it. And I don't even know if you do. No, I don't really know either. Like I said, Bobby, that's one of the hardest things, like I said, when they lose both sons and Pop Allison and Pop was such a wonderful man to their daddy. He was, he was unbelievable, Pop Allison was. and Neil and all that stuff and I really don't have Bobby and put up

up it's got to be his religion you know it's just you know I'll tell you a little quick story I was Davies crew chief at the time we was down there working on the cars and the cars were getting ready to go and they'd get ready to go to lunch and they said

we're going to run up the iceberg here which is a little favorite racetrots in Hueytown have lunch and I told dog, Davey, I said, I'm sick at my stomach. I feel real bad. I don't feel like I want to eat nothing. I'm just going to lay there on the couch, and y'all come back for lunch. So they went to lunch. And they come back, I was almost laying on the floor, hollered and screaming my stomach was so bad. And David said, we're going to the hospital. So Dave would be led me up there, and another guy to help me in the car, and they took me to the hospital. And went in the hospital

and this guy Dr. Brown, I think he was, anyway, run him over to the emergency room right now. I'll call. So I got over the emergency room, and they put me right in the room. And I had a ruptured appendix, and it was done, busted, and got infected all through my intestines and stuff like, I was a pretty bad shape. So they put me in the hospital.

And I woke up, a couple of gave me up, whole bunch of stuff. I went to sleep and I woke up and there was a napkin and there was a napkin and said, me and dad's on the way to Pocono will stop the hospital on the way back. Davy was on the napkin's side of my bed. Well, this was in 88. I was laying in the hospital bed watching the polka no race when Bobby had his crash. And here I am in the hospital bed. It's bad shape like this and knew Bobby had a bad wreck. And that was the worst eight or ten hours I think I've ever spent because I could not get any information how Bobby was,

whether he was dead or alive or what the problem was. And finally I finally got some information next morning that he was in bad shape, but he was still alive. And people don't realize how fortunate we are to have Bobby. You know, Bobby's not doing good now, but if they had gone, when they brought Bobby back to Birmingham and put him in a lake shore rehab place, he didn't even know Judy or me or nobody. And the doctor wanted, he told Judy to get one of his closest friends and him and y'all and come visit him as much as he can to get him to back. We do it. So me and Judy

to the hospital just about every day and sat in the room with Bobby. And it was, I don't know, a month before he really started recognizing Judy or me, you know. So we got Bobby back 95%

but they don't realize how close we come to losing him all together. Yeah. So I would just tickle the death that we got me back as long as we have. There's just so many things that, I don't know, it's just, I just think of some of the problems and things we've had, you know, I've had so many good friends in my 75 years

that's not with us anymore that got killed in crashes or different stuff like that, you know. And I've lost so many close friends like that, and Bobby has to. So sometimes it's kind of rough deal. You've got to get through it the best you can. How do you get through it? I don't know.

I just keep, I don't know, I just always hoping that everything's going to be better tomorrow. You know what I mean? So, you know, I still got my racing. I still love to do it. I've got three grandsons. I get to race with every Saturday night at the racetrack. I look forward to it every week. I still people can't really realize that

because my next birthday I'll be 90 years old. But I still love to get, I love to work on my race cars and I look forward to it. And, you know, I always figured this, if a person had got some kind of a goal or something they want to do or they're looking forward to doing,

then they've got no reason to exist anymore. You know what I mean? That happens. Yeah, that happens. But I say long as you've got a goal and something that you want to do. and something you're enthused about, then you can keep on managing.

That's the way I am now. I just don't understand how you don't get tired. I mean, like I need a nap now, and I'm 45, and how do you have the stamina and energy to continue racing? Because, I mean, this stuff gets tiring, doesn't it? Oh, yeah, racing is work, nothing but work, a lot of work. On anything class you race in, you've got a lot of work to do. I'm building a new dirt car now.

I've got one ready to roll, and I just put the engine in it the other day. I got the bell-hattel transmission in it, and I've got to go back and put the shift and lever and stuff in it. But I still enjoy doing it. I work as much as I can, but I know that my age is. Some things I can't help. I had to have Chris, which is my step-son-in-law. I keep my race cars in the week-lodd shop with six cars. Both of my grandson sitting over there.

It's got two cars a piece in there. And I had it, Chris, help me put the transmission. in. There's things I can't pick up at transmission anymore and slide it in the shop. Sure. So there's things I can't do, but there's things I can do. And I do as much as I can, but I got help from everybody, you know, when I get to a point where I can't do something, you know.

Yeah, there's two moments I want to ask you about. And there was, there's this clip of a crash at Daytona in the modified race, and it's kind of comical and is used in a. comical way but there was a modified race in 1960 at Daytona and there were 37 cars and a crash off turn four you were in that race yeah there's a great video on YouTube about it Ralph Earnhardt I think was it was in the race as well and in the crash but the wreck starts and the cars just keep on coming and then you think it's over and there's more cars that keep on coming right and I mean the whole field drives into this wreck at full down throttle.

Yeah. You know, obviously there weren't spotters and stuff back to me in. So do you remember that wreck? Oh, yeah. I remember that one because I had started up somewhere towards the front of that. Yeah. That happened, I think, on the first lap. Yeah, like third lap.

We got into turn one and the caution lights was already on. And I said, well, we come down the back straight away slow, and it's a went through three and four. We was up in high lane, you know. Yeah. And I looked out the window down there, and it looked, let's put it this way. Like you was driving down the interstate, you went by some redneck junkyard that was unorganized. Yeah.

There was a car, I noticed it's upon the roof, and the front wheels were still turning around and around. And I looked down there, and they was upside down all different, I mean, just scattered all over the place because there was just grass down there then, you know. Yeah. And no inside guardrail or nothing. And they looked like they covered a half a mile of cars. And it was all wrecked. I don't know how many it was, but to me, it looked like there must have been 20, 25 cars. There's 37 cars in the crash.

Well, I know it was a bus. They started 73. Yeah. That's what I say. They think the big was, something new and they just started early. No kidding. You'd have been going around slow like I was, you know, and looked out that left-down wind up down there because we didn't have no wind in it or anything that day.

Yeah, that wreck. Yeah, that wreck is on YouTube. It's incredible. do that 1960 Daytona modified Google. Modified crash. Look that up on YouTube. It's like one minute.

It's like one minute into the video of the actual crash. Yeah, but I think there's a short clip just to crash itself. That is the most weird crash. Oh, I think we got it. Yeah. There it is. Mike, have you ever seen this? We got a monitor right above your head there.

All right, so we're playing the video. That's the race. There's 73 cars out there. Red's in there somewhere. Yeah, do you know about where you started Red? There he is right there. remember where I started. There he is right here, right?

That's him, right there. There he went. I know it all happened behind me. Yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, here it comes. Yep, and it is, and it keeps coming. They're flying.

I had to feel, look at a wreckoing up there in the back corner. Here it is. Here comes. Oh, boy. Okay, two cars, three cars, ten cars. Boom. I mean, they're just flying in there. Look.

No, it ain't over. Because all of them's got drum brakes. Nobody can slow down. Boom. Wow, that one hit the underside. The undercarriage there. They're running out. That's what we coming by now.

You know, somebody up there. Yeah. Right, right. Cars upside down. There's gas cut pouring from cars. Skint elbows. I tell you, a redneck junkyard sounds about right. I mean, that's as bad a good description of what I'm looking

that right now as there is. If it went down the interstate or somewhere there's so on. Right. That's what it looked like. These cars are demolished. I know. The damage that they sustain is really impressive. It shows you how fast they were going. Even back then, they were going

at a high rate of speed. This destroyed. Nice. Yeah. All right, Red, there's one more wreck. So you had your own pretty nasty crash at Daytona and 75. down the front straightway in a tri-oval, you flipped over multiple times

and destroyed your race car. As a wreck with a guy named Terry Mock. Yeah. What happened here? That was kind of ironic because Terry Mock was a dirt track driver from Jacksonville, Florida that I had raced against before.

And Terry was going to come to Daytona for his first time. And he called me, wanted to know if he could come up to my shop. He'd come up to my house and stayed for a week trying to get some information on how to set his car up what to do that, that and other. So actually he was a friend of mine that I'd race with at Jacksonville before. And going through the tri-oval, he just didn't realize it was a bend, that much of a bend. And he was on the inside of me, and he hit my left rear quarter panel and turned me sideways.

And I slid sideways down there, and through the dirt, then I hit where the road course comes through there. And I hit that asphalt sideways and started flit. Okay. And they said I flipped somewhere around 16 times. Yeah. It was nasty. Bring a picture of that. It's awful.

So I was surprised looking at the damage to this car that you weren't more injured. Like what was your injuries, any? No. I don't remember exactly what it was, but I know I still, when I started to stop flipping, they come over to get me out of the car, I still had a hold of the steering wheel. Wow. Both hand. Yeah.

We didn't have all the head brace and all this sustenance that we did that way. And I told them, I said, well, if he'd kill me, you'd have to cut me off at the risk, because I wouldn't go let go that steering wheel. Yeah. So long as you had to go that, I was flipping over. But if you let me go, it was going to knock me back and forth. And your car is, like, destroyed. I mean, it was destroyed.

Yeah, because a bunch of it was nose to tail up in there. Somebody of mine that was sitting out in the infield, and everything was blocked them with motor homes and stuff. Look at that second picture right there. Pulled that. Look at that. How did you not get hurt? I got hurt, but I don't know how bad it was.

I remember at that time. I know they took me to. At that time, I also had, I think that was a year, I had three cars down there in each division. And I qualified 10th to 11th for the 500. So my Trino was down there. And I got Bob Bircham to drive it for me in the 500. Okay. I come back the next day, I was on crutches.

So I don't remember what all my injuries was. But I come to the track the next day. Did you ever have a real serious injury in your career that sidelined you? Oh, yeah. I had a super modified, what we call skaters back in those days, that was, you know, 13, 1,400 pounds super modified. And at Laurel, Mississippi, I come off going to a broken axle, and there was a, there was where you pull off into the track, there was a, you come out of the driveway to the racetrack, and it was, of course, it was a corner there.

And I slid into that corner sideways when I broke an axle. And it cut the car to, right at the transmission, where my feet was at. And I woke up four, five hours later, laying in the hospital looking, I woke up, I was looking at the lights in the operating room. And I was unconscious for three or four hours. And it kind of busted me up real bad my back, broke some ribs and a shoulder. And they had to lay in the hospital down there for about 10 days before they put me in an ambulance and brought me back to Birmingham. Then I had to rent a hospital bed that's where my trophy room is now. And I had to lay in that hospital bed for three months or so.

In your own house. In my own house in Hueytown. Dang. And that was probably one of the worst records. When I got home, my wife, Joan, come in there with the hub, off the front hub, upside down, and where the wheelbarons goes out, there was a flower growing up out of it. And she said, this is what it's left of your race car. And she had put that hub and had a flower growing out of that hub.

I brought it and said, your race car, and she had the car cut up. Had the guy come out with a torch and cut it all the pieces, and she saved the hub and put a flower in it, brought it into my room, show that to me. She said from now on, when you drive anything, it's going to have some fenders on it. So I've got to delete my old racing. So I never go to super modified anymore. We called them askeeters back in those days. They had wings on them, you know, fuel- ejected chevales in them, and alcohol.

They were bad machines at that time. So you've been through a lot of race cars. Have you ever buried a race car in the ground? Did what? Have you ever buried a race car in the ground? No. So I heard about that. I got some out in the backyard and in the weeds.

Do you? trees growing up. You got you a race car graveyard? Yeah, I got a graveyard out there. I'm about to come borrow a couple of them and put them in my graveyard. I got a graveyard too. I got about 100 race cars in the woods.

Ooh, I ain't that many. I have about three or four back there. I might have to come see if you let me have one. I'd love to have a red farmer race car for my graveyard. So, yeah, I was talking to, I went and race with this guy named Gary Hargett. You might recognize that name. But I was racing for him. He used to be a mechanic and helped my dad.

Eddie and Harry Gant and a few guys in the sportsman class in the 70s. And he had this shop, and it was a big grass yard out in front of it, and there was a tire sticking up half out of the ground. And I was like, why is their tire buried halfway in the dirt? And he's like, well, there's a race car tied to the rest of that thing underneath the ground. And when they would get done with their race cars or crash one or ruin one, they'd dig a hole and put the car in the ground and bury it. And I asked a couple people about that.

Richard Tilder said he buried a few cars. So they either push them in a ravine or something and cover them up. But I'd wonder if, I imagine you've been through several cars in your career and had some come and go. And it hadn't never heard of burying one, have you? No, I know neither. I don't know why I'd but bury one. I know. It didn't make much sense to me.

No, no. So it didn't. Yeah. But, you know, you're talking, you got, you're talking about the wheels ticking up like that there. I've got a tire in my shop hanging up on the wire up and through the rafters. You can see it with got a white chalk mark on it. That tire, back in 1975, they had a race in Jackson, Mississippi, on a half-mile asphalt. It was the first one ever like this.

We was running for $3,400 to win features in short track racing. They come along in Jackson, Mississippi and said they're going to pay $10,000 to win. race there, 100 lap were paying 10,000 a win for 100 lap race in Jackson, Mississippi. Nothing for second, third, or fourth, or fifth. Whoa. Winner take all, $10,000 plus lap money, and that was it. And man, that was crazy. I've never heard of that kind of money in 75.

There were over 100 cars showed up. Dick Trickle and Seneca, Ed Howe, all the bad guys from up north come down and south. Like I said, everybody's $10,000. So everybody came down there for that race. At that time we was running the Macquarie tires, they had a number one, two, three, and four, and five, competing on the hardness. So we get down there in this half-mile track

that's pretty well war out anyway. And everybody's been running three, the number three softness, tires. So they go out there and number three's, and they're flying around the racetrack. Everybody's fast. And I go out to fast, too. But I'll come in there after hot laughing and I looked at the tires.

I said, these tires not going to do it. So I put a five on the right rear and five on the right front. It's the hardest thing they had. So I went out there and I was a dirt track driver. So it was loose and bad, you know, but I felt more comfortable with it. All the other guys from up north that's never been on a dirt track, they put them five on. And they were, they made, come in and take them off. They were terrible.

Put the threes back on. So we got ready to qualify for it. I put fives on. had the race with what you qualified on. I put fives on my car. And I went there and I qualified about 15th out of that bunch. I made the field. And everybody else in the whole field I know was on threes.

So they dropped the green flag and we started the race. And, of course, I moved up a few spots and sat down it. And then all of a sudden, about the 25th lap, they was all in the pits with the right rear tires, blistered or wore out, you know, just tore all the pieces. So I'm still out there running my... My five was a little bit loose, but I was driving it like a dirt car if I had to. It would make a long story short to come up. The 98th left, I done left the field about twice, and that they had a caution come out.

Red flagged for a bad wreck. Well, I was sitting in the car, and my son come over, Mike comes over, and he comes out and said, Daddy, your right rear tire is going flat. I said, what? He said, air is coming out of the cords that it's wore out. I said, well, kind of stop. What can you do? So he put a couple of shop rags over the tire, and he was laying there with his arms,

trying the whole area in the tires were going flat. Anyway, I said, come on, let's get the race started, because I'm losing there. Anyway, about five minutes later, got ready to start the racing the right rear tires down from 28 pounds, down to about 12 or 15. They wore around the caution and dropped the green flag, and I go in to turn one, and, of course, the right rear tire is gone. It's nothing. So I ran the last two laps on the flat right rear tire.

And they come under gave me the checker flag. Of course, I was protesting. One guy at the Ray Putnam said he thinks he won it, but he was still in the lead lap, but I had him of two left. So I won it. So they paid me $10,400 worth of lap money for that race, and they paid me in five, tens, and $20 bills for the person. They didn't pay me with a check enough.

They paid me cash with the money that had taken me through the gate. Yeah. So I'm sitting here with $10,400 worth of $5,10s, and 20s. So I said, what am I going to do? So we're staying in Jackson, Mississippi, at midnight on the Saturday night in a Motel 6 hotel with my car parked out in the front door. And I'm sitting in, we took the money and put it in the shoeboxes, and we took all the cold drinks out of the cooler and put the cash in the cooler.

and we were sitting in the motel all night long, and I took everything that was the most able to park against the door because I knew somebody was going to kick that door and come in and rob us, you know. Absolutely. I stayed up all night looking at that door trying to keep it from doing. Because I had no gun, that was kind of ironic. But I know it was 1975 because that was my 25th anniversary that day, and they gave my wife a cassage at the start-finish line before the race started.

Oh, that's cool. So I have to always remember that. It's on my anniversary, and she got the cassid and start and finish last. Yeah. They got the cash and the corsage. That's nice. So that tire is still hanging up in my garage. It's $10,400 with a short mark on that tire.

Wow. Is that the oldest thing hanging in that garage? No, there's probably some other things in there. I bet so. So, yeah, my shop, I built that shop in 1970 with some of the money that I got for the championship and I built that shop back there in 1970. So that's 50 years old. It's got a lot of memories.

hanging up in there. And you, so that shop you built in 70, you're still working out of there today? I still got a car's in it. But I'm working over now when, you know, my wife passed away seven days after our 65th anniversary. We had 65 years and seven days later she passed away. And a good friend of mine that I race with for years and years, Jerry Goodwin, passed away about 10 or 12 years ago. And I got to go in with Judy, his wife,

so me and Judy got married two years ago Christmas. Yep. And everybody said, why'd you get married on Christmas? I said, well, Christmas is an anniversary on the same day. You only got to buy one present. That's true. You won't forget either. You know, my grandmother, Martha passed away this past Christmas.

Christmas Day. In 2021, right? So her husband Ralph, my grandfather, passed away in 1973. And I was thinking to myself that, damn, man, she had to live, she had to live half of her life without Ralph, right? And, you know, I never really put a lot of thought into it. You don't until you see or know somebody who's experienced it. but you have had, you know, you just recently got remarried.

Yeah. So, you know, not only did you have to go through a lot of hardships in racing with losing friends and, you know, the friends being injured and hurt. But, you know, how does somebody process losing the person you're married to and you love and then continue on not only for several years, but decades? You know, how do you, how do you do that? How do you, how does Martha do that? How, you know, because my mama always admired her for kind of being the matriarch of the family and never seemed to phase her, right? She wasn't, she didn't seem sad. She didn't seem disappointed or frustrated by that process.

And she remained pretty strong all, you know, all those years. Well, you know, if they're, they've got an illness or something, they've got a problem. you've got to look at it the way that maybe they're in a better place and they're out of pain now. They're better off where they are. And you've got to be thankful that they've got no more pain that they're away. So that's the way I felt about it. Joan, of course, being a racer's wife, it's got to be a special person. They've got to be different.

I mean, we were off racing four nights a week and the other three nights, other three days. We're working trying to get the car ready to run four more nights. So we're gone a lot. So racer's wife's got to be a father. and the mom, my both got to do well. So my wife did a great job, racing my three kids. I got three great kids,

and all turned out grace. So you've got to have a race with, and Judy is the same way, because she was a widow. One of my best friends I've raised with for about 35 years and Jerry Goodman, and I've known Judy for that long, and we got together.

So I've got a, she's been a widow for eight years, and I've been a widow for three or four, so it's just, it's, I think everybody needs somebody. Yeah. But I was literally, lucky I got another racer's wife. She knows what it is. She knows what it is. She goes with me.

Travels with me. It goes everywhere with me. So I got another racer's wife. It makes a difference. So you're still racing. You're still running at the short track of Talladega right next to the Super Speedway. You run anywhere else or just at the short track? Just short track is the only place I'm running.

And you run. How many times a year? I run about 18, 20 races a year. I think we run about 22, 24 of the whole circuit. I almost run the whole. Once and while, I take it. off go fishing or go hunting or something so I missed one I don't have to run for points anymore I just didn't race when I you know feel like it how far is the hall from your

house to the racetrack about 60 miles that ain't too bad you know that's the short track this the home trial track we call yeah so you still live in Hueytown right no I still got my shopping to you he still got my home I've had there for 60 something years but my other grandson that I raised with Lee he's renting that house now and I've living over with Judy's house, which is in Pelham, Oak Mountain. I know where that is, yeah. And we got the race car shop on 31 between Alabaster. It's where CRM Motors, and that's where my two grandsons keeps their car.

We've got six race cars. We each got two apiece in that shop. So I get their help on my cars now. He told me, because Judy lives, we only live about three, four miles from there. And actually, it's 30 miles to Hueytown. So I was going back forth 30 miles, and either. working on my cars and Chris says, well, just bring your cars over and put it in with our shop and we'll keep them together and it will help you because you're family now.

So that's what I did. So I brought my race cars now. I'm going to keep it over there and tell them in the shop with my two grandsons. So we all can help each other on the cars. And in fact, this weekend, two of them are going to go up and run Duck River or race this weekend. Nice. And you go with them. Yeah, I'll probably go up here and watch them anyway.

So didn't you have a house fire or something? Tornado. What was that? Tornado. Tornado. That's what it was. It was a tornado that came. He probably had a house fire at some point.

I mean, just on a Tuesday, you know, or something. It wasn't nothing worth really. The tornado really caused a lot of damage. Tornado, it did some real damage. It took us six, eight months to get the house sticks back in. And I had two trees on top of my trailer sitting in the driveway with my race car. And it smashed the race car down in the trailer. and it caved the roll cage in it down in my race car and another tree fell on the front and smashed my generator

it was mounted on the front so it tore up my generator race car and the trailer sitting in the driveway we had seven or eight some trees a hundred feet tall you couldn't even reach around a big old pine trees been there for years and it destroyed a lot of stuff where's that race car at now huh where's that race car at now well i took it to buddy mine and he had to replace the halo loop on the car we put a new body on Actually, I sold that the car. That was my GRT. I sold it, and I sold my rocket car and bought a new black diamond chassis. And I'm running that now.

So that car was good. In fact, I raced it, it was okay again. Time of replaced everything that was bent up on it. But we was watching the TV there, you know, and they said, come over the TV. It said people, they knew the tornadoes was coming. They said people in Indian Springs and stuff, you've got three minutes or five minutes. take cover and I grabbed Judy I said we're going into the bathroom we went into the bathroom and it was one of the little small bathrooms it did to have the sink and a toilet in it and she sat down

on the toilet and I had to get down on the ground and put my hands on her knees to be able to even get in there it was the only room away from windows and everything because the one side of the we got wall-to-wall windows in it you know and we got in that thing we didn't even more like in it close the door we heard it coming and the house shuttered and stuff was hitting this, that and other, and we stayed in there until we knew it was past. They'd come back out and looked out there and saw all those trees and down on everything and smashed everything up. So we was very fortunate anyway.

Yeah, I mean, listen, I don't think people understand that that whole area through Alabama is like a tornado alley. I don't know what it is. I mean, I don't know if it's the topography or something. Tornators rip through there all the time. And, you know, people look at, you know, the Midwest is being where tornadoes are. I'm telling you, Alabama takes a beating in tornadoes all the way from Tuscaloosa, all the way up north Alabama, right? Yeah, yeah.

Sure does. So that's the first one we ever hit. Of course, I lived in Miami for 16 years, and I went through a bunch of hurricanes, but they're not as bad as a tornado. Yeah. Goodness. Man. Man, you have lived a life. There's one, a bullet here from a note about prank and Donnie Allison, and I want to ask you to tell that story.

Prank and Donnie Allison while in a race car in the closing laps of a race. Does that ring a bell? Where you tricked Donnie Allison. Oh, yeah. Tell him that story. Oh, yeah. We was going to B-I-R. And, of course, Donnie, and it was always a tough competitor.

And, in fact, I thought he was going to try to get by me there because he'd been working on my rear bumper for quite a while. We got a Cawkshire flag come out. And we were under several lapses on the Cawkshire, and they come around there, and the flagman, you know, signaling that we were going to get left to go. and then Donnie was right behind me, and I guess he couldn't see the flagman,

and we always put their hands out the window to give a signal. So I stuck my hand out the window like this, to Donnie, and they come around the next lap, and I stomped on the gas, and I was gone. I jumped in about six car lakes before he realized. I was gone, and he got on it, and that's a race course. I won it, and Donnie come over and said, what did you do? He said, you gave me a signal two left to go.

I said, no, Donnie. I said, that's one lap, half. I said that's only one lap to go. Two half fingers. Yeah. For our podcast listeners, he's holding up his fingers, but he's holding up the hand that actually, where the rest of the fingers are out in the Everglades somewhere.

Two halves make the one. That's right. I guess there's another story, too, where you had to help Bobby and Donnie in a fight. They were having a difficult time. with Peeway Griffin, who used to race down in Florida. Yeah, that was back in the early 50s somewhere, and we were running high-lil.

And Bobby and Pee-wee got into something on the racetrack. And Pee-wee was a big old boy. He was about 6'2 or 3 or something like that, probably 250 pounds, you know. He's just a big old boy. And, of course, Bobby was kind of small anyway. And they come into it after the foot, and they got into it, 50-cuffs a little bit, you know,

Of course, it didn't take Peewee, but the second to kind of eliminate Bobby. And we were standing around in a circle in there, and Eddie was there, and we were all in the circle around Peewee where they had to fight. And Peewee says, well, says, any more you, Allison's want some of this. And Donnie, of course, was about a head shorter than he was. And Donnie walked up and said, well, I guess I do. and people kind of laughed because of the daddy

and he said that and Bobby hit Donnie hit him probably six times for he ever got his hands raised up like a buzz saw he jumped on it he hit him in the chin left right left right

right right right like that I mean Donnie whipped him quick yeah you know so that's the way it was but that's the way Donny was

he was always wild and crazy and different from Bobby and he'd jump on a buzzsaw you'd lift the switch off. And Bway made a mistake on picking on a little darnie. Oh, you know he'd have had a short man complex, right? So one of the things about Bobby that I've always wondered is he, being his friend, maybe you can open up a little bit or enlighten us a little bit about this.

But when he was racing, even in the 70s, if you look at the 70s and even the 80s, Now, he got a little, he gained a little stability in the 80s with, with his dieguard racing and then with the Stavola brothers. But he was with, you know, he would have a great ride like Junior Johnson's car or Bud Moore's car was a pretty decent ride. But he would, you know, he had a hard time, I guess, sort of getting alone, right? And then he would get out and drive his own car. He'd rather drive his own race car sometimes than some of the best cars in the garage. I'll tell you what that is about Bobby. Bobby was smart.

He was great. He was good on chassis. He knew how to make a car turn and what to do and build it. And I think when you get with Junior and got with Bud Moore and all those other guys, let's put it this way. You put two bulls in the same pasture. And that don't work. One's only got to be bull.

Some got to be cheap. Everybody else got to be Indians. Yeah. You know, and I think they had a conflict with stuff that the car was not working good or not handling, this, that, and other. Had plenty of motor, but the chassis was no good. And Bobby would want to make some kind of adjustment on the car that maybe the car only felt like, well, it's my damn car. I believe what I want to. You've got to drive it, you know.

And that's the way they've got an ego problem that they don't want to be told that their cars, this, that another. and Bobby would run them for a couple, three races, and they just wouldn't know good. They wouldn't handle stuff. And Bobby would want to make changes, and they never would do it because they didn't want anybody stepping on their toes. So in their words, and Bobby just say, well, adios. And he'd go home and work on his own car and come back here,

because he didn't have the money to do it. But he would take his car and go back at race for a while if somebody else to offer him another ride, and he'd try it. But he'd be the same thing. It's two bulls in the pasture. It just don't work. I mean, with Junior and Bud and the other guys, you always think, well, that's going to be made in heaven.

Right, yeah. But it don't work out that way sometimes. Yeah, I remember he had to ride with Junior Johnson, ended up leaving right in the middle of the year and getting it back in his own car. And then he got in the Matador with Penske, and then he got out of that and got in his own Matador or his own AMC car. Yeah.

And then he got with Bud, running that a while and left. You know, wasn't happy, thrilled. to be there. Yeah, he just didn't have the money to do what he wanted to on the cars, but he would take something that was just cost nothing and go up and outrun them guys because he outhandle them and he out drove him. But he was a good engineer. I mean, Bobby could do everything on the car. And Eddie and Eddie had taught him, Eddie was his oldest brother. He was the chassis expert, and he could, Bobby learned other than him, so did Donnie. And I think that was the main problem was it just had two bulls in the same pasture and he could

he would run them long enough but he couldn't make the changes on the car that he wanted to yeah to make the car better so he would leave a lot of people wouldn't even know that bobby and donnie had a brother oh eddie was the oldest brother he was eddie was the one that actually taught them everything as far as chassis works and motors and stuff eddy was a great mechanic i'm curious uh how how innovative or creative did you and the Allison's get with your race cars. I mean, you guys are able to outrun a lot of people even when they didn't expect it. So, like, there had to be something that you were proud of that the statute of limitations

is well past. Mike wants to know if you ever really had a great idea that cheated your car. That's one thing we like to talk about. We're not the guys of ways, by the way. I'm going to tell you, I try to cheat a lot of times. Some of them work and a lot of them didn't. I'll tell you, I've been protested. protested because I was running a 302 cubic inch forward motor and I was out running 350 Chevys at Birmingham on that 5-8th

5th mile track. I was I was protested probably a dozen times. But in my 75 years of racing, I have never been found illegal for anything, lightness, motors, or anything else. For two reasons, I had to have a paycheck. I had to have a family. And when I went up there, I wanted to go up there and get my money and hand it into my hand. I didn't going to go up there backwards and have my hand out or have them to say, well, I'm sorry you didn't get it. You was too light or you was too, this, that, and the other. And I've always felt this way. If you couldn't pass a man fair and square, and out-drive him, out-handling him, and get by him legal, you've got no business to being in front of him. If you have to knock you by the way or something to get by him or you cheat to win the race, that's like stealing. It's just not, I've never done

I've always tried to be legal in my whole life. And like I say, in 75 years, I've never been found illegal for any fault. I believe it. Yeah. First of all, it occurs to me that, one, I don't know that we've had anybody as honorable as read right now. Two is, it also occurs to me, well, he's still racing. So he's not going to sit here and give us any of us. Forget the illegal versus legal.

Let's call it all legal. I'm saying there's, you know, you guys have to be creative in how you set up your cars. But it also occurs to me like, hey, I don't know he wants to talk about it when he's still racing. Well, like I said, you've got four corners and only two straightaways. So twice as much to get through the corners to get through that way. When you get into a corner is where you're going to come off the corner. If you're handling through the corner and you can run more or less wide open through the corner instead of backing off and getting back into gas, you're going to be faster.

That's what I had to do with my little 302 cubic gets motor. I didn't have to lift the going to the corners. I kept my speed up and had momentum down the straightaway. So handling was something that we always worked on. Bobby Donnie and Eddie and myself, we worked on handling, get the cars to turn, be able to drive through the corners faster than anybody else because we wasn't necessarily faster down the straightaway, but we had corner speed.

That actually reminds me, and you've been talking about Halea this whole time, and we had Gary Ballou sitting in that seat right there, and that was one of the things that blew me away, Is it like just his approach to setting up cars and what he didn't know, he learned? And, I mean, you were to have raced against Gary Ballou a lot, right? And so I'm curious on your impressions of Gary. He was a good driver. And, of course, I don't know how legally was all the time, but I know he was a good driver.

He was a great driver. I know that car he took up rid of that mild dirt track that blew everybody off the racetrack. You know, he did something that nobody else knew how to do that, as far as far as, as coiling, but he had a wing on the roof, or his roof was about six, eight inches wider than anybody else's, and he had more down force from the angle of his roof. But there was no rules that he had a certain width of the rules. I mean, he just, it was like smoky unit, you know what I mean? He would get to the gray edge of every room like that, you know, and that's what I say.

But Gary Blue was very, very smart, very engineering, good driver, and he, he, he, he, he, He's like us. He do how to get one through the corner. Yeah. Red, you have won over 750 features in your career. You probably don't know the exact number, do you? Yeah, well, that's as close as we could figure out where it was.

You know, that's more or less close. It's 752 as close as we could figure on that number like that. Pretty incredible. But, you know, like I told them, it's probably 7,000 that I lost. Yeah. So if all I raced in 75 years, I would focus on the 70s. That would be an impressive number to know how many races he actually drove in. Wow, yeah.

Well, you know, we raced four nights a week for years and years. We'd race Thursday night at Huntsville, Friday night at Birmingham, Saturday night at Montgomery, and then we'd find somewhere else to race on Sunday. So we race four nights a week, you know, and some races, like I said, Donnie kept up with, back in 62, I think it was. They said we ran 106 races, and the four of us, the three of us won 86 of them, I think. Golly. So we kept one more, all the races.

That's when we got the Alabama gang going. But like I said, a percentage of 700 something may not be a good margin of the amount I raised on. But all I told me, I won all I could anyway. Well, you weren't enough to become a Hall of Famer. I was going to ask you about the Hall of Fame. I mean, like, we actually spent some time before you came in, and Dale sort of rehashing kind of like his experience at the Hall of Fame Week. What was it like for you?

Well, it was kind of mind-boggling, really it was. It was once in a lifetime experience. And, you know, back in 53, when I sat there with Ralph Moody, and I said, I'm a nobody, and I may always be a nobody. but if they're becoming somebody, I had no idea of 53 of my first NASCAR race, that I would be in up in the Hall of Fame. Like I tell these guys that run in, they've only won one, two, or three years. I said, you'd never know what's going to happen 10 years down the road or 20 years down the road,

whether you're going to be a champion, you go win a dozen races or championships or stuff like that. So it's kind of mind-boggling to go that far. and in NASCAR and be able to end up in the Hall of Fame you know it's just that was my 10th Hall of Fame I've been in 10 Hall of Fame that was my 10th one

but that this one the NASCAR Hall of Fame is like I told them at the thing this is the star on top of the Christmas tree there's nothing any better than this so I got to tell you I worried for Dell because after you gave your speech I said, I don't know how anybody's going to follow. I'd hate to follow that at.

Your speech was such a highlight. And it was so, it was so, I mean, it was from the heart. I did glance back at the teleprompter, and this is the part I loved, is that you start going, and I look back at the teleprompter, and it just had a bullet, and it's like first race, and that was it. So you didn't even have a speech. You just went from the heart. And it was, it was so nice.

We learned a lot. I thought you made some, I don't think you were trying to be funny, but there was some, absolute hilarity in some of the stuff you said. And yeah, I'm telling you. And I was worried about Dale because I was like, I don't know what are you going to say now. Reg just stole the show. He did what we all hoped. He invited you on this podcast.

And I didn't know if you felt pressure from that. I didn't know if you were like, oh, gosh, I got to go back to North Carolina now. But we certainly appreciate you doing it. But did, you know, did you have any anxiety? Did you have any nerves going into that speech? Because it was such an awesome moment for us. No, they, well, you know, when we went for the practice of that thing, you know. Yeah.

The first day that the night they said, we can get up there to practice. I said, when we got any more practice? Yeah, we got one more than 930. I said, I'll do that when I ain't going to put. I'll pass the day. So I didn't even do the first practice. Then we got down the next morning at 9 o'clock. And I got up there and said,

thought you know I had my little speech like that and I come back down and the engineer say all right that was pretty good said let's go up there and try it again I said we'll try it tonight right I said you got one practice I said I want any more practice I'm just going to say what comes to my heart or what I want to say you know I've never I don't ever take notes and never read off property I try to do it like you say from it was amazing it was well man we are so thankful for you to make this trip to come all this way It's been awesome to sit here and talk to you and enjoy the conversation. And we didn't get to half of the stuff here on our notes,

but we're going to have to have you come back here and share some more great stories with us. Maybe tell us about your year here in the dirt car at the Teledega Short Track. So, Red, thanks for coming out, man. It's been a blast. Well, I'm sure to enjoy it. You know, talking racing is always my highlight anyway. Yeah. Well, I was honored to go in the Hall of Fame with you.

and I'm so thankful that you turned around after being up here just recently to come back here and visit us and been great getting to know your family a little bit through this process and wishing you all the best when you go back home and run some racing. Thank you, dear. Yes, sir. Red Farmer on the Dale Jr. download. All right, buddy. That was good. I was going to tell you another joke, but I want you put it on there.

Good. Yeah, yeah. We got old man. I always tell old man jokes. All right, we are live, Dale. Hey, everybody, it's Dale Jr. And we are live on our YouTube channel. Obviously, you guys are tuning in for the first episode of the Dale Jr.

Download this year, season 10. This is Ask Junior part of the show. Anyhow, I'm kind of decompressing from that conversation that we have. We've been in here for about two hours talking to Red, and it's just incredible the career he's had. Anyhow, Leah's put out on our social media handles at Dirtymo Media to get your guys' questions coming. in for this year. So, Leah, let's go ahead and get started. Yeah, our first question coming from

Ryan Goodrum. Where do you think the gray areas are with the next gen car? The gray areas, oh man, you know, when you look at this car, some of you that are watching this today are going to have a chance to get next to one of these cars throughout the year. And I think when you do that and you kind of are able to look under the hood or really get an idea of the suspension and all the components, you're going to see a completely bare platform or landscape for these engineers to work on. And I think that with all of the components, there's all new places and areas for them to get creative in.

And when I say creative, I mean cheat. And so I think that it's going to be a very, very difficult task for NASCAR to control all the creativity that these teams are going to try to develop. And, you know, there are honorable men in this sport, but there's nobody in the sport that's going to race by the rulebook and strictly stay there. Everybody that's racing in this sport is always looking for an advantage, a loophole in a rule, or, you know, everybody reads a rule and interprets it differently. We've got a whole new rule book about an entirely new.

new car with the independent rear suspension and a lot of other components. All of the rule book is either brand new or had to be rewritten. And so now when you have that new language, all those guys that are on these race teams, the engineers and crew chiefs, are going to interpret that language and that rule differently. They're going to look at a word or a sentence and they're going to try to find a way to manipulate and poke holes in that defense, you know, and try to, well, you know, when I read the rule, this is what I understood. and then they can, you know, they can win appeals and so forth based on that interpretation.

We've done it in the past and we've seen appeals be overturned because, and then a rule have to be rewritten with new language to circumvent what creativity or what cheating was going on. So, man, when you look at this race car, you're going to basically see so many opportunities, so many new places, so many components that could be, you know, messed with or fooled with. the problem is and this is where it gets difficult all of these components are bought from a manufacturer and whereas in the past a lot of the stuff that was on the cars before was handmade fabricated created in the shops by CNC machines that they owned and so they could really build and create things

and do things how they want well now that you're buying these components the rule is that you're not allowed to modify them you're not allowed to shape them or change them in any way, shape, or form. So if a team wants to try to get creative, they're really putting themselves in a very dangerous position because NASCAR can look at these components and know when something's been modified. And when that happens, expect NASCAR to come down heavily, extremely hard, right out of the gate, to set a very strong precedence that the teams are not to be fooling with these race cars. I would liken it to us an example of when the wings came in to the COT. So the COT comes out and we've got wings on these cars.

There's these wing braces that NASCAR mandated that we use. This was a new thing for the sport to have a wing and have a wing brace and all that on the back before we had spoilers and it was either this angle or it wasn't. And so when the wings came in, a lot of

teams saw it as an area where they could try to manipulate. We did that. Tony Jr. did that. We took a car to Darlington with some wing braces that had been changed and NASCAR found it quickly. We didn't get into the race with the illegal part, and NASCAR gave Tony Jr. a six-week vacation.

So I think that if you fool around with any of that stuff, you're playing a very dangerous game. And it's a little bit different than the creativity that we might have seen in the sport in the previous five or six decades. This is an easy ball or strike call for NASCAR. You bought the component. This is what it's supposed to look like. here's your component. You've made a modification. This is an easy

ball and strike call. There's no gray area. So it's a very dangerous game because I think the penalties out of the gate will be excessive because NASCAR wants to send a message to keep the teams from doing any of stuff. But NASCAR in the past has made the mistake of not being strict enough or not being harsh enough, I think. So it'll be important for them to really, you know, drive the nail home when these guys do get creative with these cars. So they'll have to be harsh with the penalties.

It's difficult for me to say that as a car owner because obviously I don't want to get a terrible penalty or harsh fine. But in the name of credibility and keeping things fair, if I was NASCAR ruling the sport, I would be extremely difficult and harsh on the penalties, especially with the next gen car. Next question from Mack watching live on YouTube. Do you think there all the attrition issues this season or was it because of racing in an untested environment that we saw that in the clash with the overheating and the transactual issues. Yeah, I was surprised, I think, like a lot of people to see the failures.

But then when, you know, obviously when we all started thinking about it, we're like, well, yeah, this is a new car, new components, the transactional independent rear suspension, a lot of new stuff in this car that hasn't really been tested in race conditions. You can go practice. And we see the guys out there practicing and carrying on. But they're not, you know, if the, if, you know, if, you know, if, you know, if, you know, if warming up the tires is what broke the transactional in Redick's car, as we've been told. Well, nobody's doing that during practice or testing, right?

So there's race condition. There's things that happen in a race that you probably don't do in a test. And so, yeah, we saw an oddity crop up, and it does worry me. As a driver or a crew chief or a car owner, it raises the concern of the durability of a lot of these parts that are getting built by these manufacturers. as a as a broadcaster as a fan I think some

I think when the car is delicate I think when the parts mileage out before the end of the race I think that's a great thing now we don't need everybody breaking transactions we don't need everybody failing parts and so forth but I think that the potential

that dark cloud sort of hanging over all the time the possibility that the car might fail you is something that you know we've absolutely lost in this sport. Now, you know, in the last several, you know, in the last decade or two, the engines are very dependable. There's rarely any real, you know, mechanical issues.

Parts had been redesigned and improved into iterations that were indestructible, right? Now, we still had things break from time to time. But when I look at, you know, when we go to the 24 hours of Daytona race, you had part failures and mechanical failures all the time 10, 20 years ago, you know, all the DPIs might fall out of the race and a GTD car might win. The overall, you're never going to see that now. Those cars are bulletproof in a 24-hour event.

Just about all the cars, you know, are designed to be able to run and safely get to that end distance without any problems. So I am not concerned as a fan about a part failure or any kind of problem with the car because I think that potential and that anxiety and angst is a good thing. If I can explain that right or articulate that the right way, but as a driver, car owner,

and I don't want parts breaking for sure. I don't want something like that taking me out of the race. The potential of that happening is kind of a good thing to the suspense of the moment. So we'll see. I'm sure that, you know, whatever issues that are going on, if they're, if they become common or reoccurring, they will, you know, the manufacturers will fix this issue. They don't want to have part failures.

So that's a hell of a responsibility to build a part for the series that these guys all have to use and your part is failing. They'll fix that. Next question from Jordan Simony. What's your favorite Cup series paint scheme that you've seen so far heading into the season? That's a great question. I'm still taking it all in. I'm not going to say which one I think is the best. If it's got painted rocker panels, you know I'm going to love it more.

Interesting detail. came out here in the last couple of weeks. We started to see these cars show up at the racetrack and seeing some renders and so forth and not many cars with painted rocker panels. And that was interesting because you would assume that that would, you know, we got to where everyone was painting side skirts and most of the cars would come to the racetrack

with the side skirt included in the design, right? Because it looked better. This new car, not a lot of teams are painting the rocker panels and people want to know why that is. Well, in this whole process of getting ready to present this car and put it out on the racetrack, the manufacturers at some point claimed ownership of that space. The manufacturers always are looking for great ways to have some brand identity. So when you look at the race car, you recognize immediately that that's a Chevrolet or a Ford or a Toyota.

And a lot of us will look at the front of the car, other areas of the car that it's obvious to you what kind of race car you're looking at. They wanted a little bit more opportunity in some more areas to work in to be able to, create some brand identity. And so they are using that rocker panel and some of the tailpiece or maybe some of the nose to decal or wrap or create some kind of a unique design that's unique to that manufacturer. And they own the space, right? Now you'll see some cars out on the racetrack where the rockers are wrapped or painted.

And it's probably going to be the teams that have a lot less financial support. they're not a key partner with a certain manufacturer, and they have a little more freedom to be able to kind of do what they want to do. But the 47 car of Ricky Stenhouse Jr., he wrapped his rocket panels. Does this stuff really matter in the grand scheme? No. If you love paint schemes like I do, and you're pretty particular about what your race car looks like,

and you do look at the field and go, I love that paint scheme or I don't, that sounds ugly. If you're like that, it matters, right? So to each his own, it'll be interesting to see going forward. I think, you know, I think it's a misstep, you know, for the, for the manufacturers to claim that spot. I never liked that. You know, when I had a race car, right, you're going to build a race car, Mike. We're going to go in this shop and you're going to build your race car that you're going to take to the racetrack.

And right when you're getting ready to paint it, you've put a lot of thought into your design, right? Are you going to put your decals? How your sponsor is going to look on the hood? what your number is going to look like. And then I'm going to come in and say, this part, you can't do anything with that. That's mine. And, you know, and so that's a, I never,

that's what I don't like about it, right? No, I decide what my car looks like. No one else has any involvement. No one else interjects no opinion or no decision, but me, because I've been building my cars or taking my cars to racetrack. And I want to, you know, I'm going to have that influence on what they look

like. So I always hated it when, you know, you'd make the playoffs or whatever, and Sprint would turn your spoiler yellow or put a yellow number on the roof of your car. You're like, what in the hell? You know, what are you doing, right? Leave my damn car alone. I don't want yellow numbers on the roof. Especially back with the red bud car.

Like that used to be just hideous. Like McDonald's car or something. And somebody, the best rebuttal to that is, well, you're as, you know, you're lucky to be in the playoffs. But that's true. I mean, monster turned everything. you know, a few things green. And it didn't, you know, not every car looks good with green

spoiler, right? I hated that. I always annoyed the hell out of me. And it didn't matter to them. They could care less. You know, they just wanted that brand identity out there running around the racetrack.

So I don't, that's the way I feel about it. But what was the question? What was your favorite scheme this year? Oh, yeah, favorite scheme. I didn't have one. I think, yeah. I'll be honest.

The number slid forward. I'm over it. Yeah, didn't even. didn't really, didn't disrupt the experience. I'll be first to admit, I fought against this as hard as I was willing to fight. I still would prefer the number in the original spot or slid back. That's my preference. But where it is, it's fine.

And there are some guys that are doing some really great work with how to make that look great, right? There's some cars where the sponsor just, it works in that space with that number slid forward. So I thought it was really going to have an effect on how I enjoyed racing, but I'm not sure it's going to. No, yeah. Hey, man. I was apprehensive about it. It was not invasive. I wouldn't know that until afterwards.

But I realized, oh, wait, I just watched that whole thing and the numbers didn't even occur to me. The fire suits did. The fire suits bug bug, but not the numbers or the cars. I saw some ill-fitting fire suits, and that was surprising to me. And you mentioned it on social media. Yeah, it looked like they were, you know, ad, advertising for NASCAR snuggies or something, like bedsheets. I'm like, what the hell is going on here?

Why didn't any that, why did none of them? I personally had the same opinion, but kept it to myself. I was surprised at you, but you get in a sharing mood on race day. If there's a, it didn't. If there's a race or an Alabama football game going on, this guy is popping off on social media. That's not true. It might be true. It's true.

But during a race, I absolutely have an observation. Listen. Leading up to. It was AJ Almondinger's that. made me go, okay, I got to type something. Okay. I mean, it's like, AJ was a tipping point. Yeah, it looked weird. Just to update you on what you said with the, with the skirts, you know, with that deal.

Protective coatings now vinyl up to 0.03 inches thick can now be applied, securely applied to the rocker box assembly, as illustrated in the picture that I just sent you guys. So I guess it's an update or something in the rules. So we'll see if the teams actually do it now. Oh, that's not good. I just got an update from somebody in NASCAR who's listening to the Ask Jr. saying now that they will have the opportunity to wrap it. Oh, I see.

It's highlighted. Vinyl may be applied to the vertical surface of the rockerbox. So that's good. And I think, you know, if they're going to litter, if they're going to open that up and allow them teams to, you know, put some color there, that would be great. Because, man, when you see the difference between the scheme, the same scheme with or without it, it really looks much better

with the rocker included in the design. So if NASCAR is changing or influencing people to do that, I love it. And thank you, Jim France, for listening to our YouTube. Yeah. And sending that to Matthew. Yeah. All right. All right. One more question. It's actually our most asked question this week. Everybody wants to know, where can we watch the download this year?

So I think, Mike, you have an update? Okay. So the answer to that is Peacock. It's actually going to start in mid-March, so it's not starting this week. The reason it's starting in mid-March is because of this little event called the Olympics. But that's what we know. Like it's going to be Peacock and it's going to be in mid-March. I'm not exactly sure of the date.

You know, we move on with our podcast and we do our deal. So we get the information from NBC and Peacock. So that's the deal. Now, when NBC takes over, I've heard rumors that we will have airings on. the USA Network when the NBC part of the NASCAR season comes in and Del Jr. goes to work and that deal, I think we'll see some stuff on USA Network. But yeah, that's the deal. I hope that answers. There's a lot of questions about that. A lot of questions. And until March, we put so much of our content clips, the highlights, big moments on our YouTube page. You're here if you're watching,

you know this, but, you know, for the people listening to the podcast later this week, Dirtymo Media, their social handle and their Instagram is a great way to be able to, you know, see some of the show, right? You're going to listen to all of it to be able to hear the entire interviews, but to be able to catch some of the highlights and some of the animation in our faces and so forth is always great to watch some of those clips. I know I'll watch them, even though I've done the podcast. It's fun for me to kind of watch the videos.

and you see some things you forgot. That's it. All right. Everybody, you know, I appreciate everybody tuning in. We're going to wrap up our show every week with Asc Jr. Asch Jr. is going to be at the back end. And we shove every year we kind of move things around trying to improve on what we're doing. So, you know, Asch Jr. is going to close the show every week when you listen to the podcast.

So appreciate everybody for tuning in. I can't wait to, you know, get this season going and build. momentum. We've got one of the new things this year to show you guys how excited we are about our podcast coming back and starting this season is where we've got a bunch of guests already booked. Usually we're booking guests literally like the day before the show. This year, we got about four or five already in the hopper. So excited about that. We got some great ideas. We're going to have some return guests as well. It's about time to start cycling back through some of the folks from years ago. So this is going to be a fun year, man, at the Bojangles

I appreciate everybody for tuning in. Red Farm was great. Thank him. That Hall of Famer, he came in here and gave us the best interview. It's always awesome to catch up with those guys. So we'll see y'all next week. Have fun. Enjoy yourself. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Dirty Mo! You're going to do it. You're going to win it. You're going to win it. You're going to win it.