The Dale Jr. Download - 368 - Boris Said: A Fork in the Road

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

When Boris Said sat down at the "Table of Truth" with Dale Earnhardt Jr and co-host Mike Davis, he thought it would be a discussion of his racing career. Little did he know that it would be a deep look into a fascinating life story from living on food stamps to racing championships and everything in between.A big pivot point came right away in Boris' childhood when his father, an accomplished racer himself, left him and his mother to fend for themselves. With little supervision and getting mixed up in the wrong crowd, young Boris found adventure in a life of crime. From stealing cars and robbing houses, Boris did a lot of things he isn't proud of. It was an admission nobody at the table expected from the likeable racer and left the room shocked. Doing it the wrong way stopped when he got caught, which led to a fork in the road. The fork he chose? Auto Racing.Boris took a carefree approach to an industry he knew nothing of and joined that with a fearless ferocity behind the wheel. But let's not be fooled, the Connecticut kid with an afro did lean on his past life of crime, and use a few dirty tricks to jumpstart his racing career. Within a year, this no-name driver was competing for wins and then championships in the Sports Car racing world. Said was on a path that would lead him to become a winner on stages worldwide at places like Germany's Nürburgring and the 24-Hours of Daytona. He was a Trans-Am Series Champion in 2004. But, a large part of his popularity in the states, came from his opportunities driving in the NASCAR Series.Big Boris talks about how he got the call to fill in for Jimmy Spencer and how the team had no idea how green the driver was heading into his first time on track at New York's Watkins Glen Speedway. He details an opportunity that followed to test for the Wood Brothers and how that opened doors for him in the Stock Car world. The first big door to open was from one of racing's biggest stars, Dale Earnhardt. The Intimidator wanted Boris to teach his son, Dale Jr., how to get around a road course faster. And that he did. Said and Dale Jr. share details about their first meeting and how their friendship and respect grew.Oh, and y'all know we love a good Dale Earnhardt story! Boris has some of the best, including the day Dale Earnhardt fetched him a peanut butter sandwich. And if that isn't enough, Said will go down in history as one of the few drivers to ever hop behind the wheel of the famed #3 at the personal request of Dale Sr. It's a moment that had him grinning from ear to ear.Said also shares another bond with Dale Jr. They were teammates for Corvette Racing when Dale Jr suffered burns in a fiery crash at Sonoma Speedway in 2004. Said details his recollection of the crash and takes us into the Infield Care Center with Dale Jr as he dealt with the trauma of his burns.Don't worry fans... Dale Jr. heard you and asked Boris about his famous dust-up with Greg Biffle at Watkins Glen. I mean, we had to right? From that to testing a Cup car all day in jeans and a t-shirt, the stories are amazing.Before Boris came into the room Dale Jr and Mike break down Dale's Los Angeles trip doing pre-game coverage with Rutledge Wood for NBC's broadcast of Super Bowl LVI. Jr. got snapped at by a dinosaur while interviewing Jeff Goldblum, hung out at a skate park, and compared business endeavors with G.O.A.T's like Jerry Rice and Troy Aikman. Damn, it was a good day. And when he got home, he worked on a homemade surprise for his family he details at the table.Leah Vaughn gets in a bunch of questions in this week's AskJr including Dale's favorite Olympic event to why he flies the flag for painted side-skirts on racecars but doesn't have them on the cars he owns at Jr. Motorsports. That and much more. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The following is a production of Dirty Moe Media. Are you ready? Davis. Oh, God. What did that say? What did that say? Was that Blaney? I hardly could tell what it said until, like, the last second,

and finally put it together because of the name of the podcast. It very clearly said, well, it was, you know, you said we were sad last last. week so I wanted to. Oh, okay. There you go. Is that you? Is that you? No. Yes. Leah's shaking her head. IT told me they heard you doing that earlier. Oh, they did. I was wondering what Renee out front thought. Oh, were you in here doing that? I was in here screaming. Yeah. Goodness. Hey everybody. We're back again here at the Bojangles studio for another edition of the

He'll do your download. That's got us a lot more excited coming out of the gate. Remember we talked about last week? He seemed a little sad. It was a little sad. Yeah, so this week, not sad, fired up. A little tempo. Yeah, whatever that was.

You know what that was? Tempo. It kind of like a barfy sound and then tempo. Okay, well, we got Borisid coming in as the guest today, pretty excited about that. We get requests all the time to have guests. We really appreciate the ideas. But we hear some of them multiple times. We're very clear on the fact that you want Jeff Bodine on this show.

We are very clear that you want Mark Martin on the show. We do too. We're trying, and it's hard to get some of those folks. A lot of these guys are not very close. They don't live in the area. Boris is one of them. He's a West Coast kind of guy. He's all over the place, to be honest with you.

But he's going to be here today. It's going to be so much fun to talk to him. We've got so much to cover. And obviously, I got, you know, when I put out the information that he was going to be on the show, everybody wants him to talk about the Biffle incident. Yeah. And so we'll certainly ask him about that. But we're going to deep dive into Boris Sed's career in his life and what he's all about. One of the most interesting guys that I know and has such a cool attitude, reminds me a lot of the folks that I met over in Australia, you know, kind of up for anything, willing to do anything, not worried about anything, not scared of anything kind of attitude.

and Boris always kind of tackled whatever was in front of him and was willing to try anything. And one of those guys who's kind of not afraid to fail. You've got to be afraid, you know, you've got to be willing to fail when you try anything new. And you can't be afraid of that idea of getting your butt kicked and something. And I've always admired that about people because it's not a quality that I hold. And so Boris will be a lot of fun to talk to. Also, we're going to talk about that Corvette crash in Sonoma. He was there for a lot of that, and I'm curious that we've never sat down and talked about his experience and all that.

So it'd be pretty funny, I think. There's some humorous moments. Don't get all dark and depressed on me, Mike, and like you're thinking it's going to be a heavy thing. It's not. I mean, yeah, usually, you know, usually corvettes burning up and, you know, the gas lighting and you getting pulled out is usually very funny. I heard you. And we're going to have good left. Oh, yes.

I'm still feeling the effects of that intro, so no, no, I'm not going down. I just saw you go, oh, yes, the crash. I mean, you still have scars on your neck from it, don't you? What happened? I can hear him. Oh, it's throwing you off. Yeah. So, anyhow.

I don't want to get him mad. Now he's off. Stop. All right. Mr. Sensitive. Right here. Yeah, yeah. Okay, good. You talk about yourself.

Yes. All right. So. So, you know, Al. Well, Boris will come in here. We'll get excited about that. We had a new, we got a new member of the studio. I mean, it's big enough.

We might as well, we might as will look at it as having its own personality. But this hood that's right behind me. Yeah, we can't almost, can't miss it now that it's, basically in my peripheral for the rest of the year. But this big giant hood, you came up with this great idea, Mike, to have a throwback design on a hood of a car, and you went with Jimmy Means, Alka-Seltzer design. Interesting enough, when you used to want to play fantasy football

and be in our league, you had that design. That was your avatar was the Jimmy Smut-Means, Alka-Seltzer Pontiac, and your team was what? Smut means business. And so, which I always thought was cool. And you hold over my head ever since I've been out of the league.

I just don't. I wish you'd never left because you're such a, you know, you're a sports guy. You'd be great in anybody's fantasy league. So it's just, we lost a great member when you left. That means a lot.

Now I am going to get a little emotional. And so anyhow, you got this great idea, and we have replaced a number, two roof that a lot of folks have seen in our show with this hood. Now the two roof goes home to my house where it belongs. It's done its work here. And we have this great hood on the wall. And the reason why this should be important to anybody listening is we're going to have all of our guests sign the hood. And then at the end of the year, we're going to auction the hood off, right?

I think that's what we'll do. All right. Yeah, I mean, that sounds like a good idea. I hadn't really decided that was the idea. Like we hadn't really got those things firmed at play. and ready to go. But get people to sign it. We should have been doing this a long time ago, right? I mean, I kind of feel like I've dropped the ball for the last four or five years. We've had some pretty awesome people come through here and didn't even bother to ask them to sign something. Every show like this or, you know, when you think about restaurants or anything, they always have like, you know, eight but tens on the wall of all the famous people who have had steak there or whatever, right?

You know. Exactly. And, you know, podcasts always have a wall you autograph or something you do on the way in. There's a space or something where you get your picture made or whatever. So this is our way of sort of documenting the folks that are going to come through here. And at the end of the year, we'll auction this off. Absolutely all of that money is going to go to a charitable initiative at the Dale Jr. Foundation. Yeah.

So it's for a great cause. And somebody will have a pretty cool hood hang on the wall in their house somewhere, right? If you've got a cool... We've got some guests already booked. And I can tell you, if it was no more than just them, it would still be worth something to somebody. because we've got some awesome guests. I mean, you got Red Farmer on it right there. If there was nobody else, you still got Red Farmer.

By the way, since you bring it up, I also decided that we are going to put photos of our guests in the studio as well. Just like you just mentioned, you know, how restaurants and, you know, if they ate the steak. What size? Can we choose the size right now? Yeah, that's why I bring it up. Because we were having this conversation before, and I told Micah, let's not ask Dale while he's in the studio. And now here I am, not only asking him why he's in the studio,

I'm asking him why we're on the show. This is what I wonder. Where would you like our photo montage of guests to be? Probably behind this in the studio. In the producer's room? Yeah, behind them. Okay. I don't like removing any.

I like all of our stuff. I like all of our garb. All right. Everybody want to vote? All those in favor say aye. All right. All right. There you go.

And so, I just wanted everybody to know to be on the lookout for the Dirty Mo Media hood during our video episodes on YouTube and whenever NBC decides to put us back on the television. And so, yeah, there you'll be able to see the hood and know what you're bidding on, right? Anyhow, that's pretty cool. This past weekend, we went to the Super Bowl. We had a great time. NBC sent me to the Super Bowl.

we did this in the years past to work the pregame and basically me and Rutledge hang out. It's always fun hanging out with him and we go around town to a couple spots. We jump into the pregame

television show once every 45 minutes for about a minute and a half hit where it's not too intrusive to the real hardcore football guys but you're also getting a sense of really where this game's taking place and a little bit about the area.

And hopefully we did a good job of sort of highlighting a little bit about L.A. Obviously, the beach, the skate park was really cool. You know, I've never been there. So if you're trying to tell somebody what this is like, you know, it's difficult to imagine the reality of it. But walking up on that, it's literally right there on the beach, you know, build. down in the sand. It was full every day of people skating. They all kindly, patiently wait their turn to go down and make their run. It was a lot of fun just to see that happening. And then

the shoot there was great. We got a lot of the folks that we saw there every day come up to us and say, man, we're glad you're here. And then we walked over just 100 yards or two through a couple basketball courts where several movies have been filmed. This is all in Venice Beach to Muscle Beach, right? And it's not the original Muscle Beach, but it is the one that's been going for the last several decades. There's a bit of a competition between, I think, Venice Beach and wherever the other one was, the very, very first Muscle Beach.

Gotcha. And so they don't like each other. Just this is what I'm told, right? Competing beaches. Yeah. The Muscle Beach. Yeah. So anyways, this is all what I'm being told.

But literally there's a stage in an amphitheater where they have the Iron Man contests. And a couple of the guys that were helping us during that shoot, they were helping us lift some of the weights, right? They made out like I was lifting 350 pounds and they had these guys spotting on us. Yeah. For the people who didn't watch, I'm bench pressing 315 pounds and we had two muscle men holding each end of the barbell picking it up and helping me. And they were champion bodybuilders. These are top five in the country guys. It was really cool. They were super nice. They were there for rehearsals and for the for the shoot on Saturday and Sunday uh showed up and uh really enjoyed having them being part of that and so then we got in a convertible corvette

and drove across town took us about an hour about 90 degrees outside it was kind of hot yeah pretty warm yeah and uh but we in but we uh we we we shot at the coliseum where the clash was we we went over to uh the chinese theater which was really cool Seeing all those handprints in the ground and looking, some of those were put down in the 20s, literally 100 years ago. Yeah. And Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren, those are two of probably my favorites. George Clooney, all kinds of people that you recognize every name, right?

And they're all there. And over the last 100 years, they've been putting their hands and feet prints in those blocks. So that was cool. We went to Madam Tussau's Wax Museum and filmed a little, you know, little skid of us messing with some people with one of the wax figures they had of me. That thing got shipped from Florida just for that little 30 seconds. Yeah. So I came in.

So it was in a wax museum in Florida. It was in a wax museum in Florida. They shipped it all the way to L.A. So we could film, you know, tricking a few tourists or having some fun with some tourists for about 45 minutes. Yeah. And then that got smashed down into about a 10 second clip that made the show. I wonder how much that shipment cost. $2,500.

There you go. And you remember when you got measured for that? Do you remember that being poked and prodded for an hour up at the Waldorf in New York City? 2000. Had it been five or six something, four, maybe 2004? Yeah, I think it was early. Yeah. So we ended up over at Universal Studios at the Jurassic Park Ride, Jeff Goldblum,

came by to allow us to ask him a couple questions the guy would stand there and talk to you until the sun went down if you let him wow not a he did not mind being there one minute you know they I say this because you know people who know Jeff Goldblum or would like to meet him or think it'd be cool to have a conversation with him you'd be pleasantly surprised with that experience and he was completely comfortable wanted to talk and talk and talk about anything and he was difficult to follow you know as you would imagine he's all over the place um but uh he has a million thoughts happening and he speaks every one of them so uh but it it was really amazing to to meet him seen him in so many movies over the last several decades and uh he was he was awesome so uh and then we

went out. Hold up. The dinosaur came out. Oh yeah. Scared the hell out of me. Did it really? Because at first, see, you're never going to be extra like Rut will be. Rut is always going to be extra. I was just about extra. Well, so, but next to Rut, he was like over the top. You were, you look surprised. But when you said, when you said, that did not happen in rehearsals, then I'm like, oh, wow, that really was a surprise then. It was. Yeah. We had no clue that that was happening. Should have known, like, we're standing in front of. those doors. The last two days we've been there rehearsing. We rehearsed Friday, Saturday, and then shot the real thing on Sunday. And so literally every Friday and Saturday, we drove to all these locations in real time. We got up in the morning. We went to the beach at 8, 9 o'clock. We shot our stuff on the dot, right? We did a whole full dress rehearsal with earpieces and everything, producers, and we were driving, you know, we'd drive into these other locations and we'd get there and

shoot them on time when we were going to be doing it a Sunday, right? And so that was interesting that we did that Friday and Saturday, right? And they never had that thing jump out and scare us. So we didn't even know it was happening. We didn't know it's coming. Jeff knew. That's what I was going to ask.

Did he know? Did he know? And they kept telling me that, so Jeff was a talker. And me and Rutte decided that if Jeff was going to go that long on the first two questions, one being about the super and the second being about the movie, the two critical questions,

we wouldn't ask him the third softball, which was basically what's it like working with dinosaurs? And we had a plan, all right? We're going to ask him the softball question if we had time. We probably weren't. And if he gave us a real short answer, because he might have been annoyed by that stupid question, we were going to say, well, that's great that they're not real

because the riders would be insane, right? Did you imagine the rider for a dinosaur? Right, so, you know, tons and tons of beef. An acre of cabbage. Raw beef. So, anyways, we had this silly plan. And as we're sitting there asking him the question live on TV, he's going and going, and I'm thinking I'm not going to ask it, the third one.

But the producer in my head saying, all right, Juner asked him about that. Ask him, ask him, hurry, hurry, hurry. Because little did I know, that was the cue for the dinosaur to come out of the building and scare the shit out of us. which Jeff knew. Yeah. And so that was all pretty fun to think about how that worked out. But we had a great time.

Our last thing was, as soon as we were done with Jeff, we had to run all the way over to the game. And they were going to film me and running into the game with the fans. And we missed our shot time. So that got scrapped right at the last minute. We literally were standing there in the concourse, full of fans, ready to shoot it, and we missed it by about a minute. This is why we saw that on Rutt's Insta story.

I guess you guys said, well, we missed our shot. We were there on time Friday and Saturday because the lack of traffic and hundreds of thousands of people trying to get in there. But when we tried to go do this on Sunday, we knew it would be difficult, but it was impossible. And so that part we never got to, you know, that never made error. And then as soon as that was over, we were off to do whatever we wanted and we were free. We were done, right? And then the real show starts. You didn't stay for the game, though, right?

I didn't want to be honest and say what I did, but it did not. Yeah, I got you. Well, I thought if I was, you know, away from my family for a couple days. It was Valentine's Day. I had roses to buy. And I decided to get on the plane and leave, get me some, get me something to eat. And then when I got home, it was 1130 midnight. when I drove in and parked, it was midnight.

Amy and the girls were on a little personal vacation for themselves, and they were coming home Monday morning, Valentine's Day, right? I had bought a dozen roses and two single roses for the girls in L.A. That rode on the plane and to the house. When I got home, I went downstairs, I grabbed some stuff, and drank a couple beers and made them cards. and went to bed at two. So you went home and did the deal up right.

Yeah. You made them cards? He made them. Yeah. Drew, did you get out some crayons and some hard cookie cutters and stuff? This is a, this is a, this is a, so my wife and I think a lot of, a lot of wives are probably like this. They appreciate a handmade card, right? Better than the store-bought cards.

No wrong with store-balt, but handmade is better. It is. It is. And so... Effort. Yeah. And so here's how I did it. And it's real simple.

I went over to Ila's Play-Doh set, right? In the Play-Doh set, our hearts to make Plato-sized heart. Plato-shaped. That's right. Yeah. And so heart-shaped Plato. So I grabbed the little heart thing, and it's about an inch tall, an inch wide. And so I grabbed that to use to trace.

and then I found Ila's crayons, grabbed those, grabbed a pencil and a Sharpie. I grabbed three sheets of paper. I folded it all up to card shape. And then I Googled. All right. I Googled Valentine's Day homemade cards

for wife and for kids. And when that's going to show you a bunch of ideas, right? And you don't have to literally copy exactly what you're seeing. and, you know, Amy's card, I just put a heart on it, and I just colored it how I wanted, and then I wrote a nice little, you know, thing inside about how I felt. And then for the kids, though, I did copy it. I found this cool little ladybug, which my mom, Brenda, who's passed,

loved ladybugs, everything ladybugs. And even today, when we see ladybugs, we talk about my mom, and we have ladybug clothes, and all the girls have ladybug things, right, because of mom. and so I drew I found a little ladybug that I could that had heart shapes and stuff in it and so I used I did that and then there was this heart caterpillar out of little hearts right in different colors and so which I thought was cool so I copied that stuff but it's that easy there you go and in 15 minutes I had my cards and I'm and I was done what was their reaction oh they love it yeah that's a win and so I you know I'll be, I do the homemade cards. I've done it before. And it's just easier.

You don't have to go to the store and thumb through trying to find the funny one that's going to kind of cover your ass. And the homemade stuff is easy to make. You got all the stuff right there in the house. Literally just use your brain and common sense and you have the stuff there. You don't have to go get anything. There you go. And so anyways, that was my weekend, man.

It was a lot of fun. Sounds like a good full weekend. You did two straight. consecutive weeks in LA so you deserve to have some time at home we got super we got a Daytona coming up this weekend it's going to be awesome I'm going to Daytona Thursday I've got a couple of events down there for high rock vodka we we got a new vodka out called high rock I'm excited about that because it's an amazing product we're proud of it we believe in it me and my my wife amy are owners in the business and we're hoping that you'll find it and enjoy it as well it should be in stores down in

Daytona if you're in Daytona you'll find it down there. Real quick on that. Daytona Total Wine, I think, has it right now if you want to go get you something. There is, I know you don't probably read Sports Business Journal, but on this week's SBJ on the back, the whole cover is a high rock ad. Did you see this? Yes.

It is awesome. Yeah. We're bringing it hard. I mean, this needs to succeed. This isn't messing around. No. So hopefully everybody's in Daytona and looking forward to a great weekend. We've got a record.

Not a record number, but we got a really, really high number of cars trying to show up to make the Xfinity race. We got six cars going for four spots at open spots for the cup race. So having an excess of cars, like a high car count, is a great sign, I think, of the health of the sport. And I think we're going to see the same. I think we'll see that kind of crossover into the crowd that shows up to watch these races this weekend. I think there'll be a good crowd showing up. a lot of energy for Daytona and a lot of people excited about the season starting with this new next-gen car. I can't wait to see some racing.

I can't wait. I know practice will be great, but I can't wait to see them drop the green flag on those jewels and see Arc racing and Xfinity cars and all that happening down there. During Super Bowl weekend, I got to say, I got a chance to sit down thanks to nationwide and host a Q&A on a stage with Jerry Rice and Troy Aitman. They were good. They were good at what they, you know, they were good players, legends, maybe the best at their position as far as Jerry Rice is concerned.

A lot of people consider him the best wide receiver in history of the game. They were the nicest, easiest guys to talk to. And we went a little bit long on our conversation. on stage, but you'd have never known they even cared about running long. We, you know, usually, you know, when you got a time frame, they want to stay inside that and guys, guys want to, you know, get on out of there. You got other things to do other places to be, especially Super Bowl weekend. They were very gracious.

I just can't say enough about how nice they were. You sometimes worry about meeting legends. Legends are people that you've watched and admire. And I'm going to tell you, they were awesome. And Jerry has an, we were comparing our entrepreneur endeavors and adventures and adventures with talking, I was sharing with them about High Rock and the vodka that we're releasing. Jerry has a energy drink that he's creating, and Troy has a beer. And his beer is exclusive to Texas.

and it's called 8. So if you're around in the state of Texas and you want to try out Troy Aitman's beer, it's called 8. And Jerry Rice's energy drink. Goat fuel. Goat fuel. Oh, yeah.

Such a great name for an energy drink, right? Goat fuel. So there it is. There's a picture I read that. Look at that. Those cans are awesome. I love the bright orange. But I'm going to have to find me some goat fuel,

get some to the house, throw that in some high rock, vodka. I bet it'd be a pretty good drink. What is that logo on the can? A goat? A goat? Come on, Mike. It looks like a dinosaur from where I'm looking at. So I'm trying to get, I'm trying to see the goat.

Don't insult, Jerry. I know, I'm just trying to. You better have some manners. This guy's the greatest of all time. I didn't say he was. I think he's good. I got his logos. I still don't see the goat.

It's kind of a goat. Like, he's almost kind of ram-like. Oh, okay. It's an aggressive goat? I got it. I see. Yeah. I got the goat.

It's like one of those deals where if you stare at the picture long enough, you can see the image in it. Man, I'm sorry, Jerry. I'm sorry. I was trying to promote your products and Mike's just s's all over you. I'm on it. I'm down. I'm down with it.

All right. Well, anyways, two awesome, awesome guys that were so happy and generous and kind with their time, taking pictures with everybody. They got a couple products out there that they're excited about, and I wanted to be able to support them. and anyways, I had an awesome weekend. I'm glad to be here. So the final installment of Dirtymo Media's new original podcast,

The Birk Continuum, is out this week. Yes. All right. Ward's episode was pretty amazing. It's awesome, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. What was it? He's catching pythons with his bare hands?

That's what he does just for fun, right? Yeah. And he admits that this could end him. Like, he recognizes the danger. Okay. And this is just a, I believe you. This is just a fun part for him. I mean, this isn't even getting into the mud yet.

Well, we know haven't had him on the show that he's absolutely the typical prototypical outdoorsman. Yeah. But the amazing thing about the Burton continuum is that the dads and the sons all came in and laid it out and were completely honest. I thought that now Ward has nothing to lose. Let's put it all out there. Jeff, on the other hand, he's a bit protective. of the vision in the future for Harrison and for himself as a broadcaster and his other thing everything he has going on I was very surprised by how open and honest Jeff Burton has been and how he's allowed Harrison to kind of be who he wants to be and say what he wants to say right he doesn't he doesn't sort of choreographed Harrison's involvement in anything much less this podcast so the two sons pretty honest and brutal about what they've been through and the emotions of the highs and lows of their careers.

The dad's had a little conflict throughout the history of their racing and the family. They talk about it. They're open and honest about it. I don't think you're going to find anything like it, honestly. Especially in our industry, you're not going to find the kind of honesty that I'm hearing in this podcast. So the Burton Continuum. You need to check it out. If you don't, you're missing.

Well, here's a clip. Let's listen to a clip. I didn't win that many cup races, and there was 20-plus that we've just dominant car. More times than not, it was the motor to lug nuts. We just would give damn. Now, I made some mistakes, obviously, too. But we just gave away damn races like Poconos, Charlottes. I mean, I could, we just, I mean, I can't even see the second place car.

Oh, there's smoke coming from Wardford. Smoke from Wardford. Winning the 500 obviously makes up for some of it, but I was capable of winning a hell a lot more than a dead. Well, Boris is here, Mike. You ready? Let's do this, man. All right, man.

It should be a lot of fun. Boris said, let's bring him in here. Boris said is a 28-year-old businessman from near New York City, a small curly locks. Boris is giving it the right of his life. You can see he's throwing this car around. He tries hard to matter what he's in. I'm more upset with Greg Biffel. He's the most unprofessional.

little scaredy cat i've ever seen in my life he needs a he needs a freaking whooping i'm gonna get it to pampus over the curves here comes for a said drag racing to the finish line side by side it is i force said i won't settle it out in the track it's not right to red cars but we'll show up at a race with a black eye one of these days i'll see him somewhere hey man what's the hug it has all right man Throw them headphones on and make that microphone comfortable. Put that where do you like. I mean, he's a chump. I was like, he's up at 10 o'clock in the morning.

When you have a choice, you can do whatever. You can sleep in if you won't. If you're an early riser, then you can get up. But once the marriage and the kids happen, you don't get to choose anymore. No, you do not. It's happening. Just for the kid. Your ass better get on the ride, right?

So what's up, man? What are you doing in town? Well, I was coming in to see the old man, Rick. We try to meet every once in a while. Y'all do some business together. Yeah, we have two car dealerships together, so that's pretty cool. I mean, that's something, you know, if someone would have told me 20 years ago, I'd be in partners with Rick Henry.

I'd say, are you crazy? You've been drinking. But, I mean, you know, he's just a great guy. I mean, he's, you know, I grew up without a father, really, and along the course of my life, you know, different people I've raised for have kind of been the father figure. but lately it's been Rick. I mean, I probably call that guy so much. He probably hates to see my, oh, no, he's calling.

What's he going to ask me now? Because I ask him all kinds of crazy stuff. But he's a good source of your life, and it's been a great partner. I see him the same exact way, and I'm glad he's in your life. Man, you're one of my favorite people. We've been friends for a really long time. I got a lot of friends, right, but there's only a few of those friends that actually really invests time in the friendship.

and I take note of certain people in my life that I feel like put a lot of effort into the friendship, and you're one of those people. And I really appreciate you. And we didn't have to be friends, but it was as important to you, I guess, as it was to me that we became friends. And you've always been so, so good to me. I just want to give a couple examples. So we got to, we're going to get into all this and describe how all this stuff happened, but we went to, we went and raced the Corvette together.

it didn't work out the way it should have. Short race. Yeah. Short weekend. But, man, if I saw you at the racetrack, we could be at a test. It could be Saturday. It could be Sunday morning before the race. It didn't matter when it was. If I said, man, well, you got in your car, you would tell me.

And that's a real, real friend. I mean, you've done a lot of the things and looked out and, you know, check in and we stay connected. But I've never, you know, there's not a lot of drivers. crew chiefs or whatever people in the industry that really, really will just say, here's my stuff, here's what I got, right? But you always did. And I know that you can outdrive the hell out of me on a road course, so you probably weren't too worried about telling me what you had in your car.

But for that information, it's delicate information. It doesn't, it's something you like just put out in the universe. But you would always tell me, and I know that it was right because every time that I would go put it in my car, it would make my car go. It would make my car faster. It would make my car make sense. Where I was lost, I would now be somewhere in the ballpark. And I really appreciated that. And I appreciated just the person you are. And we've had so many people for a long, long time, ask us to get you here and to be on the show. And so we're thrilled that you're in the room. I want to start from the beginning.

There's a lot about you that I don't even know. And so we're going to dive into it. Where were you born? I was actually born in New York City, you know. What part of the city? Right down in the Bronx is where I was born. We were living outside the city in New York State, but for some reason they, I don't know why they went in the city to have me.

I don't know, but so I can say I was born in the city. Yeah. And so you lived in New York as a kid? Just outside of New York, I mean, my first memories are growing up in Connecticut, like New Cane in Connecticut. It was a little kid. But my parents split up when I was like six years old. So when they got split up, you know, my mom didn't have any money, so we went to Long Island to live with her parents. Who is your mom?

What's she do? My mom's Valerie. She passed away last year. Oh, sorry here. She actually, it's funny because she raced a little bit when she was a kid when she was younger. I didn't know she passed away. Yeah, yeah. She passed away.

I mean, she's a good long life. and I think she was 86 when she passed away last year. So, I mean, that's tough, but, you know, that's part of life. Right. So you all remain close throughout your whole life? Yeah, we've been close our whole life. You know, my father left, so it was my mom, you know, working two jobs. You know, she wasn't around much because she worked during the day at a department store.

And then at night, she worked at a hotel. So she, I'd see her in the morning before school, and then, you know, she'd get home at two in the morning. So I wouldn't see her, really, one day a week. You said she raced? She actually raced sports cars back in the 50s. Wow. Yeah, which is unusual for a woman. So, yeah.

How did she connect herself to racing? How'd that happen? She was just into it, you know, like she was in the old days, you know, my father was a racer too, which I didn't really know growing up. I didn't know much about my father until I started racing. Why? It was a sore subject with my mom because he left us high and dry and, you know, we were very poor growing up, and she had no money, no cars, no nothing.

And so she was angry? Very, very bitter. Very angry. And you were oblivious to it or had any feelings about it? You know, yeah, you want your dad and, you know, walking to Little League, you're like, man, it feels a little weird, always being alone. But it was just – you never saw him? Never saw him? Until when?

I was probably – I saw him a couple times when I was like 14, maybe twice. And then over the years it was just, you know, I saw him once when I was 20. And then I didn't see him – I remember this clearly of this day. I was about 32 years old or something. And I was watching TV, and there was a show on about the aging of the sphinx, you know, about the pyramids. It was pretty cool. I like stuff like that. And at the end of the show, it said, produced by Boris Said.

Me and my girlfriend just looked at each other like, could there be another one? You know, we're just thinking about it. And then about a week later, the phone rings, hello, this is Boris there? I'm like, I'm like, this is Boris. I'm like, what? Because this is Boris, too, your dad. I go, oh, how the hell are you? Where you been?

You know, it's been third 20, 20 years. And he started kind of explaining. and you know, me and your mother, and he tried to, you know, do that stuff. And I'm like, hey, man, look, I already made the macaroni necklace. It's, you don't need to go into it. And I've dated it, and I understand, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he wanted to meet. You know, we talked for a little while.

And I go, yeah, I was kind of curious. So y'all did meet. Y'all did you meet? We agreed to go meet. And I, because I went. Where was it? Is he bald? Is he fat?

What did he look like? So we agreed to meet up halfway to L.A. At the Irvine Spectrum at a restaurant. And he's telling me how he just got married, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. girl and like okay okay okay so me and my girlfriend and I have no idea what he even looks like but we're sitting out front of this restaurant and I see this guy walking towards me and I go I think that's him because he kind of I could see how he knows he recognized me and he was with this young German he married a German girl and she was younger than me and she's walking up and I'm like so to break

the ice I just hugged her hey mommy give a big hug my god what's going on that's pretty funny so so we met and and you know we kind of got to know each other a little bit went out to dinner lunch a few times and then he came to a race but you know I was kind of it was hard for me because you know I had a lot of resentment and I felt like I was kind of disrespecting my mom if I was friendly to him you know because she was so bitter about it and and she she went through a lot to raise us but the guy I raised for this guy Tom Milner who ran the BMW team he was like that's your father you'd be nice to him you know you respect your father and he he made me do it and I was acting nice and you know everything was kind of going along okay but he turned out to be a con man

And, you know, he tried to con me out of a bunch of money. And honest to God. He goes, I want to make this video about you when you're racing. And it'll be good for you. And, you know, give me a quarter of a million dollars. And I'm like, I really don't need any help. You know, I'm just, and I kind of got like a kind of got guarded. And then I was, I was polite, but very cold.

So he never actually conned you. No. But you were about, he was trying to. Con me. Oh, my God, dude. So. And, you know, it's funny is it never bothered me about my dad. being gone until I had a kid. And once I had a kid, I was thinking like, you know when you had

your kid, you're like, oh my God, like no matter if my wife turned into a monster, I wouldn't leave my kid. Right. I mean, that's my life now. Right. And that made me start to think, and I had a kid late in life. I was 40 years old. And I was like, man, my dad must have been messed up. Like, how could you just walk away from that? Yeah. And that's when it really got to me, you know, later on the years when I was 40. I had the same exact experience. So my dad and mom split up in 78. I was for. And there was a year or two where I don't think I saw him. Now, I remember, you know, I ended up going to live with him in 81 or 82 when our house burnt down. My mom couldn't, she had nothing left when the house burnt down. But there was a 18 month period of time where I'm

like, what the hell were you doing? Right. Right. Why weren't we together? Right. My mom made her, you know, busted her ass to get down from, you know, Norfolk, Virginia drove her own self down here with no money to see us every chance she got. And when we were right in dad's backyard here in North Carolina and for months and months, we hardly knew who he was, right? So I can't even imagine your experience. And then to have him come and try to screw you over. Yeah. And, you know, I would be so freaking mad. I wasn't mad. I was just kind of like, that's the way people are, you know. I mean, at that time, I've gone through a lot. And it didn't, it didn't really bother me that much, but I'm glad that, and I'm glad kind of for my mother, because I really wanted to be on my mother's side on

that, you know, and then shortly after that, he got sick and passed away. And, but I don't feel sorry about it. And I had a great life growing up, and I had a lot of people, a lot of people, you know, when I first started working in a motorcycle shop, you know, these Claude and Claude Sear and a guy named Morris, I mean, they kind of like were my dad. They kept me from going to jail, basically, because I was a, as a kid, I had no parental supervision. I was doing a lot of bad things.

Like what? Stealing cars and robbing houses. What? What? Yeah, when I was like, 12 years old. I mean, I hung around the wrong guys. You know, we, what part of the, where were you living at this point? We were in Connecticut, living with my grandparents and, you know. So you stole cars? Well, a car. A friend of mine, is there a statute of limitations? Yes. Okay, good. So a friend of

mine, I hung around just the wrong guys, right? You know, they were older and they were a wrong guy. It's, as a kid, it seemed like it was just fun. You know, he'd park cars at this fancy restaurant, and he'd drive a car around and back, and I'd get in the car and drive to their house and walk through there and take a few things. Drive the car back and I was 12 years old. Holy shit. It was just fun driving the car. Oh, you were using the car to get to the keys to get to the house.

Had the garage door open. Right. And they were all local people. They were right down the street. Oh, my gosh. So what changed my life, though, that fork in the road, you know, there's always these forks in the road. And I thought this was a show about racing.

I didn't know I was going to be on the couch. This is a show about stealing cars and rob a house. The show's really about this table. Okay. I like the table. And how it brings out the honesty in everybody. Right. I'm a honest guy anyway.

So that year, you know, we actually got caught, strangely enough, robbing a car dealership. Damn. Which, stealing wheels off a blazer. Does Rick know this? I got away. No, he doesn't know this. No, I actually, a long time ago in Rick's Jet, I said, hey, before we go into partners, there's something you got to know about me. And I told him the whole little orphaned bore story.

And the people around him were like, oh, my God. You're going to get in the business with this guy? But I always want to put the cards on the table. So shortly after that, I ended up, I love motorcycles. And I went to this motorcycle store and the guy goes, hey, can you put bikes together? And I'm like, yeah, I can put anything together, even though I'd never put a bike together. And they gave me a job putting bikes together. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

You know, these guys were tough guys and they kept me working. And all through high school, you know, I'd work 40, 50 hours a week, even going to school. And I went from putting bikes together to work in the parts department to be a parts manager to when I was 21, became the youngest Honda franchise motorcycle dealer. So you'd saved up to basically buy your own franchise? Yeah, I actually, start your own business? Yeah, I actually just, I worked so much. I didn't spend any money.

Right. You know, they just kept you working, and it kept me out of trouble. So you had a franchise at 21? 21. And how that got me in the narration, that's even a funny story, is because I had the money to buy the franchise, but I couldn't get the credit line to get the floor planning through Honda Finance and ITT, which was Yamaha.

So I needed a partner. So there was a guy named John McLean who owned a Ford dealership who was like a race dad. You know, he'd come in and always buy parts for his kid who was a motocross racer. And so we, you know, we're just friends. And he goes, so I went to him and say, hey, man, I need a partner. You know, someone with some thing. And I told him the whole thing. And so he kind of went on the paper as a part owner, even though he wasn't.

You know, back then it seemed easy for the con. And after that, I gave him a couple of dirt bikes for doing it, for. his kid. And in 1985, I gave him a Honda 400, a Honda 250 and a Honda 250. And about a year later, he goes, hey, I got this trip. It's a Ford trip to the Detroit Grand Prix, Formula One race. You should go and I'm like, car racing, that's stupid. I don't want to see that, you know. No, no, no, you should go. Everything's paid for. And so I went. And I wasn't expecting anything, other than a free trip, nice hotel, you know, maybe find some girls, you know, just young guy. We were 22.

And that first time I saw those Formula One cars, I was like, I got to get one of those. I mean, it was like I understood addiction at that time. I mean, that's all I thought about, all I wanted to do. And about six months later, I went to driving school. And then after that, I'm like, Skip Barber. I went there in Connecticut. And I never drove a go-car, anything, just dirt bikes as a kid. And I was probably, looking back at how I drove that Formula Ford around there, I mean, I was an idiot.

I was doing donuts and sliding it and just having a good old time. Like it was a carnival ride. And I remember after I go up to the teacher and I go, hey, man, I want to be a professional race car driver. What do I do? And he puts his hand on my shoulder and he goes, OSB. And I'm like, was not like a book or a tape or what? He goes, no, no, other sports beckon.

He goes, you're too old. You ain't got any money and you don't have any talent. And I was like, I was mad, but he was right. You know, but it got me thinking. And I said, I don't care. I'm doing it. I mean, I literally bought a car and sold my business a year later and said, I'm going racing. What car is you buy?

I bought a Mustang, used one in Detroit. Remember, flew there and drove the thing back like it was a car race. I can't believe I didn't get arrested doing that. And I made it in record time, told my roommates, all right, I'm leaving right now. We had a bet on if I could get there in time. That's just pretty fun, wide open. Hey, Boris, hold up a second. I mean, because like all that stuff matters, like how you got into racing and how you started this.

but for me to really appreciate it, I got to go back for a second, because we got, we went fast here. Isn't that about racing? It is. Hold on. But you said you got caught and you said you had a rebound and that you got that job and that's what got you on the right track. How did you get caught and did you serve time? Well, no, I was 13 years old. Okay, so you were juvenile.

I actually got away, but my friends ratted me out. And I was, I thought I was home free. I was back home, hitchhiked home in my bed and about. about two o'clock in the morning, my mother pulled me out of that bunk bed, and she was angry because the police called her, so she was not happy with me. So that's really kind of the moment you sort of turned a corner, right? Like you're like, this is not worth it. I need to get my act together.

You get a job. It wasn't, actually. Okay. To be honest with you, it wasn't. I was still a punk. I didn't care. I didn't think they knew. I went to Rikers Island and the Scared Straight program.

Oh, wow. Didn't scare me. I can't believe you. Because I was a punk, right? But as soon as I got that job, it changed my life. Like I thought, wow, I could make money. I don't need to do this stuff. And these guys were real tough guys.

They weren't your normal average motorcycle owner. They were tough guys. And they were ex-roofers and just hardworking guys. And they made me work. Did they know you were a punk? No. Mm-mm. They didn't know.

They didn't know. But they straightened my ass out. And I don't know why. After that, that's what I was doing. know, and I didn't know at the time when you're doing that stuff, you don't know it's bad, just fun. And it's just the people you're hanging out with, right? Yeah. We were all idiots, right? I mean, like, when you're a kid, you do stuff, it's how you learn.

But you recognized through the job that you could, you didn't have to sit there and be a punk to be able to support yourself, make money, and then you saw motorcycles and you started seeing passions that would actually stick. Right. What the job taught me was if I work hard enough, I didn't get, I didn't want to be poor. I wanted stuff. Like, I wanted, like, I wanted that. bicycle and I wanted that stuff and the job taught me that if I work hard I can get anything.

Yeah. And it was true. Okay. So now, now that you've explained that, you go back to the school and they tell you you're not talented, you're broke, and there was a third thing. And you're too old. Right. That's, those are three. The talent things that hurt me, but I started thinking about how I was and I'm like, yeah, he was kind of right there too. And the guy, I still see the guy around today. You know, I see him around. He's still doing the same thing. Oh, that's nice. I won't say his name, but I think about it. You think about it. You think about it. So you buy this Corvette, or I mean, buy this Mustang. Yeah.

And I do a few races. I do a few amateur race. I mean, I drive the car to the track. I got my lawn chair in the back. And I'm like, I'm not working now because I was a workaholic. I worked seven days a week. And going to the race, it was like, man, this is the most funnest thing I've ever done in my life. So it was like a vacation, you know, doing that.

And so how did it go? Well, I drove to my first race. This is really funny. It was in Pocono, Pennsylvania. It had to go through the driver's school. And then you do this little regional race. And I ended up parking next to this BF Goodrich truck, which if I wouldn't have done that,

I probably wouldn't have continued racing. I met this guy and he's like, hey, you're going to put some tires on there? You need racing tires. I go, tires, I go, tires. The car has got tires on these last $50,000. He's trying to con me. That's how much I didn't know about racing, right?

And so I go out in the first session and I was second fastest guy on street tires. But when I came back, there were ruins, right? You know, from Pocono. Ruined. And I go, oh, man, he wasn't kidding. I wasn't getting caught. And so the guy gave me a set of tires.

I mean, I never bought a set of tires when I started racing. And VF Goodrich became a sponsor for me. And then actually the next year they bought me a car. We won the National Championship. And we won three in a row of the runoffs. The next year. The next year. So right out of the gate, no talent.

You suddenly developed talent. Yep. And how did that happen so quickly? I do not know, to be honest with you. You know, it was just something that I just felt like it was right. Right. I love driving fast. I love that feeling of, you know, the hair standing up on your arms, being a little scared, out of control, and I just, I loved it. Yeah. Do you think having, you know, your two-wheel experience played a role in you being able to understand, like car control and apexes? I think so, sliding around on dirt, stuff like that, yes, for sure.

And then it's shifting. And shifting. I don't know where that came from. I mean, through my career, you know, they have the in-car and they say your footwork, and I don't even think about it, so I don't know. I mean, if you saw me in a bar trying to dance, you'd be like, fuck, I sound coordinating. Right. Right. But somewhere, I could do that. I don't know why. Man. Yeah. 1987's when you started running in sports cars. It says here you did a lot of your own pit stops. Like you didn't have anybody helping you. Well, here's the thing. I got this license late in the year. So I went to a regional. I did this double regional. And then the next week there was a race at Lime Rock. It was a national. I didn't really know the difference.

Regional and national, right? And I go there and they go, oh, you can't race. You've got to have. You've got to have four regionals before you can do a national in your logbook. I'm like, what? Come on. Come on. I came all the way up here. Nope, nope, nope, nope, no. So I'm like, all right.

So then two weeks later, there was another national down in Summit Point, West Virginia. So I had this SCCA magazine now with all the races of the year in there. And it had my logbook, and I just wrote the races in and signed it off, right? So I showed up at the next race. Showed the next race. Oh, no, I did the four races. I want to get my national license now. and it was like a, it was a discussion in a cell,

and I sold myself, and I got the con through, and she let me race. That worked? It worked. It worked. It worked. It worked. It worked. Wait, it gets better.

So the next race now, I go, hey, there's a pro race six hours at Atlanta. We drive down there, I still have the novice logbook. and I had to write in, I had to write in three, he had to have four national races to get in the, so I got this logbook all scribbled out, and I still have this original logbook, all scribbled out. All the false information. And I faked my way in there.

And then, and then when I did is I wrote, you had to have two drivers for six hours, right? So I just took a kid, uh, Jeff Gay, he races here, he's won the, okay, Jeff Gaye, he's, co-driver, right? And the whole weekend, where's your co-driver? He's, I don't know, he's on his way. He'll be here.

He's on his way. And so B.F. Goodrich, they were like, well, what are you going to do for tires? I didn't even have an extra set of wheel. I go, well, I don't know. Won't they go six hours? And they're like, no, no, they'll never go six hours. So after practice, during the race, came in and went back to their trailer and changed all the tires once. I mean, it took 25 minutes. Right. That's right.

At that point, I just wanted to drive the whole six hours and finish. And so I go back there in about an hour left to go in the race. I get black flags. And they go, you can't drive six hours. You need a co-driver. So I run up to the chief steward's name was Charlie Irwood, and I'm begging the guy. Come on, I just want to finish.

I just, in my head, I got to just see the checker flag, you know. It was just something in my head. And we had like a 15-minute discussion. He goes, all right, go ahead, go race. So they left a race. So that was my first pro race. There was one more of those at Sebring later in the year, the last race of the year.

So I'm like, all right, I'm smart now, right? Go down to Seabring with my two dead race. beat friends and I rent from from Hertz a Mustang GT got the spare wheels now we got everything so now we're going to change tires and the pits and everything except we had a weird way of doing it I drive in and when my two friends started fueling I'd get out with I didn't even have an air gun just a T handle and I'd get one side done get the other side up and then I get back in and start buckling up while they do that so they were really slow pit stops yeah but yeah so the funny part of the story is the last stop of the race I'm coming in and for some reason they didn't

needed my car to finish in the top 10 to win the manufacturers for Ford that year. So Steve Saline, he had a big factory team and I come in, I'm already unbuckled ready to get out. I come in the last stop. All his guys come over the wall with air guns and they're changing my tires.

Wow. And they're like, oh man, my guys in the window, I go, what's going on? He goes, they need you to finish, but they don't want to get disqualified. They want to put this George Fomer guy in to finish the race. I'm like, tell them thanks to the tires, but I'm driving. It's my car. It's my rental car. Yeah, I said, I don't care if I get disqualified. Not my problem. That's, that's there, them

problem. And so we ended up finishing and we actually, nobody just, nobody protesting me, which was kind of cool, because Porsche could have. Yeah. And Ford won the Manufacturers Championship. So you are now. So that's my first year racing. Right. It all happened. That's crazy. And it's interesting to me that you're, we're, we're rather competitive. And you're, you didn't, you know, you bought a car and you just kind of going and running and that, you know, you would think that with zero experience and no understanding of exactly what you're getting yourself into and literally only running a, you know, just a handful of races that you were right in the thick of it, right?

The one thing I understood was with factory teams. Yeah, I wasn't competitive in speed with them, but I was out there running. At that point, I still wasn't competitive, but I was getting faster every time. Yeah. But the thing about me is, it's just like the car business, I don't know it, but I'm going to learn it. If you learn by your mistakes, I should be a rocket science just by now, but I'm not. But I still, I'm stubborn, man. I just want to, I just keep at it.

And there's that awesome video on social media of you driving the Mustang around the racetrack leaning out the driver's window because it's blowing up. You can't see. What year was that? I think that was like 1990, maybe. I reached for these guys out of Texas that had no money. I mean, like, have you seen this, Mike? No.

We'd go to the races and you have that? Yeah, we do. Oh, boy. I remember that day. I mean, it's just, I didn't want to quit, man. I couldn't see anything, so I had to unbuckle and stick my head out the window. And it was kind of fun. It's hilarious.

Yeah, I get that. Here it is. It's quintessential board said. I mean, it's not a little bit out the window. You're hanging halfway out the window here. You're out. I figured maybe they can fix it. Yeah.

You were smoky at Sonoma, too, one day. Right in that right. Right there. We'll get in that. It sounds to me, like, while you're picking up driving talent, like you're learning as you go, but you seem to have the talking game down right. Like, you've got that car set up. You could talk some BS and convince people.

Silver tone. Yeah, maybe. So after that first year, I decided, like, I'm going to do one real year. And the series came out called the Corvette Challenge, where they go, 50 cars are all equally prepared, pro series. I go, oh, well, they're all the same. I'm going to have a chance. and I mean I literally bought a car

went to the races alone just me most of the time and and that's when I really learned how to kind of get faster that's where I got competitive you know that was pretty cool yeah and so how take us through the 90s man it was kind of a blur I mean like the I think the biggest thing that happened in my career you know I was pretty fast in a show of them stock car

and the Corvette challenge series in 88 and 89 I showed speed and I finally won a race against some really good guys So in 1992, I think, or 92, let's say, I was racing Daytona in a Corvette for a guy named Kim Baker 24 hours. Oh, right? And he built some. Familiar name. Bad-ass corvettes. I mean, I don't want to say cheating, but the gray area, that guy built some really gray cars, and they were fun to drive, right?

Fast cars. And I remember we're at Daytona, and there were these two funny guys. They were kind of looking across the fence at our car. I told my buddy Pied, I go, who those guys? He goes, I know, I'm going to talk to them. And they were two Germans. One spoke no English, one spoke a little English. And they're telling me how they're building this Callaway Corvette to race in Europe.

And I'm like, man, I'd love to go race in Europe. So I'm on these guys. Like I am brown-nosing these guys and try to sell them on Borset. And they already have a driver. I mean, all weekend long, I mean, I took them to the shark lounge. I mean, we went everywhere, right? And after the race weekend, I'd call and call and call. No, no, no, we got a driver, we got a driver.

I'm like, and I gave up on it after a few months. That was early in the internet, you know, where you'd go online trying to find results of a race, and it looked like you'd be watching for 15 minutes for the picture to download, right? And I just kind of gave up on it. And then one day, a couple months later, it's five in the morning. Phone rings, and it's Reeves Callaway. And he's like, and I'm thinking, does he not know? It's California?

Like, it's five in the morning, right? He's from Connecticut. I'm like, okay, whatever. He goes, hey, those guys are at the track, and they want to know if you can come to Belgium and race. I'm like, really, when? And they're like, well, no, no. The guy just broke his hand in the rental car, like, slammed the door in the rental car,

broke his fingers. And they needed a driver. I'm like, you know how much a ticket would cost? And now I'm kind of awake now. And he goes, well, just see if you can get on a flight. So I'm like, well, yeah, there's a flight leaving at 8 o'clock in the morning. And I can get there the next morning at 7.30 in Frankfurt. And it's this much money.

He goes, do it. I'm like, okay. I kind of wake my girlfriend up. And I'm like, hey, I'm going to Europe. And she's like, okay. And I go over to my buddy Mark Simo that owned no fear. I go, hey, I walked in, and he was in bed with two girls. I remember that.

And they were good-looking girls. And I'm like, hey, buddy, I'm going to Europe. And he's going to Europe. And he was asleep, too, and off I went, right? I never been to Europe. I land. I'm not expecting anything. I didn't even have a cell phone.

I land. And I'm like, man, this seems different. I'm walking out. And I'm like, I wonder where I go? Like, I just know, there going to be a guy there? Yeah. And so when I walked out the door, there was the guy with a sign. spoke no English.

He kept kind of going like that. We get in this car and we start driving. It's a two-hour ride to the track. We're riding. I'm like, I'm hungry, man. I'm really hungry. And he stops, like, food, and we get, like, a Dagwood sandwich.

And we get to the racetrack, and it was like, as soon as we drove in him, and it was like this cluster, like, because qualifying was in, like, 30 minutes, and they had to get me, like, teched and signed in and all this stuff. And they're just pulling me around. I'm not understanding anything. I get in this track, get one proclines.

finds first session and we qualified okay I think like 13th and for them that was like a big deal like you're happy back then they you know in Europe they thought a corvette that's a pimp's drive corvettes they're not race cars yeah they're no good you know they can't run with a Porsche right right but they're on this is a great car then the race weekend kind of started you know I got one more practice before we raced and and that was kind of my that kind of jump started my career because I did pretty good that weekend really yeah that was a moment for you but the coolest part part of the weekend was, you know, I'm sitting in the garage there, you know, they're like Formula One garage on the pit lane.

And I'm just sitting there on a milk crate. No one's speaking English. So I'm just kind of talking to myself the whole time. And I noticed this crowd of people, like, like, if you were at the racetrack, just storming, like, behind us, you know, following somebody. And I'm like, huh. And the one mechanic goes, a Schumacher here. Oh, wow.

Yeah, because Ralph Schumacher was racing, his little brother was racing in the little, in the, like, Formula Car series. So he was there to watch his brother. and I'd be cool to meet him. So they met, they had a special meeting where they said, this Americans here, and so I got to meet Michael Schumacher, like a little private thing. Like, it was a pretty cool thing.

What was it like? He was super nice, right? Like, just polite, spoke good English and great to be here. It was kind of cordial and short. It wasn't, you know, 10 minutes. But I think he's the greatest that ever. Absolutely, right? So the funny part, though, is now the race.

So we race and, and, uh, I'm kind of going up through the field, and there was a guy named Klaus Neitzwitz, who was a famous European guy. I recognize the name. Yeah, and he was running a Ford escort, Cosworth. And he was blocking me pretty good, and finally, like a third or fourth blog,

I cleaned him out. And so racing on and on and on. And the series, to equalize the cars, you had 40 liters of fuel. Like, you'd go to tech. They'd pump the tank, put 40 liters in, and you had a guy with you at the car until the race started. And I ran out of gas,

like coming to the frigging checker flag. Like it was a chicane and a straightaway uphill and it ran out of gas. And I got out and I tried to push it just because I wanted to finish and this guy's yelling at me in some other language. Like he's obviously,

so I ended up getting towed in the park for May where they put all the cars at the end. You know, probably 15 minutes after the race was over. And I get there and the first person to see me is Klaus Neitzwitz, and he is on my ass. Like, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, ah, man, it's just from America. Just don't do it again.

Don't do it again. Hello from America. You know, I was just cool around. And it's funny, it's because we became good friends after that. But the coolest part of the weekend was Michael Schumacher came and found me in Park for Maine. He goes, man, I just want you should be proud. That was a great race. And I thought, wow, man, he was my favorite driver at that point.

That's pretty cool. So, yeah, I remember that. That's insane. When did you run your first stock car race? What was the first NASCAR event you ran? What year was that? Well, in 1998, 1990. Seven.

Okay. Right. Mark Simmo from No Fear wanted to go into NASCAR. Who are the Simo brothers? Simo brothers are my two best friends that started the company called No Fear. I used to wear that hat. Didn't even know who made it, where it came from. And I had a No Fear hat I wore all the time.

So we met at the runoffs one year. Their partner was running, and he was kind of a knucklehead. And when they owned a company called Life's the Beach, the Bad Boy Club. And he goes, yeah, my partners are coming. I'm like, well, these guys, they must be the brains they operate. because surely you're not. You're just, you know, a wing ding. And they showed up, and it was kind of like when we met for the first time,

like we just hit it off. Like I just, there was something about them that we just jelled, and we just became great friends. So when they started the company, No Fear, they're like, you should come on out, you know, come on out and be a part of it. I'm like, no, I want to be a race car driver. Like, I want to put 100% into racing. And they're like, I just come out here and you can race all you want.

When you're not, you have a job. I'm like, okay, so, you know, I loaded up my Chevy pickup and drove to California. Where were you? I was in Connecticut. Still. Still. Still in Connecticut.

What year? This was 92. Okay. So in 92, I drove out to California and moved out there. Moved out there. They're like, you come live with us. And it's funny to live with them. The first few months, when I get there, you know, like in the afternoon,

and we went out and ate and came back to the warehouse and we're all talking BSN. Like 630, I'm like, hey, when are we going to the house? Oh, no, no. No house. Just come on back here. I'll show you where you're staying. And we were actually staying on shelves, you know, warehouse shelves with rolled out flannel. Those were our beds.

And we lived in that warehouse for like three. They had no money for anything else. Well, I don't know. Whose warehouse is it? Is that a thing? It was the no fear warehouse. They lived in it. Oh, it was the no fear warehouse.

They slept in it. And I'm like, hey, look, the next day I went to Costco and bought three air mattresses. I go, we don't need to sleep on that rolled out flannel. We'll sleep on an air mattresses. Up great. Up great. We're going to roll big. I'm going to get my credit card going.

Were you thinking, damn, what I do? No, because that first night, I mean, I never had that much fun. I mean, these guys were wild. I mean, it was Southern California and beautiful girls and people were in everything, nice weather, and I was the smartest thing I ever did. I go, after about two days, my hometown is Carlsbad, California. Forget Connecticut. I just owned it.

Yeah, everybody knows you as California, right? But I can't believe that you didn't go out there until 92. Yeah, I was only 25 or something. Wow. Yeah. Had no idea. Yeah. Okay.

So they also started spy, right? Yes. All right. So no fear is gone. Today. Yeah. Today, gone. No fear is gone.

That was a big brand. Iconic, you know, unless 20 years. You know, and unfortunately in the, unfortunately the kind of things have in life. They made a mistake. You know, they didn't see the online thing coming. They opened up all these retail stores. and they were going great, but in 2008, when the recession happened, it killed them, and they didn't have enough cash to survive.

So they were a statistic. Interesting. So because I still think of No Fear as this kind of a cool brand. Yeah, really. It was really cool and fun. And then they started Spy, which is a great product, great sunglasses. We've done some stuff with them. Yep.

Still do. Still do. We're wearing them right now. You designed your first class. Yeah, I did. I remember the press conference. I remember doing the press conference, those first sunglasses. Did you connect me with you did?

I came down your place and connected you up. Well, is this where you guys, you would have met already? When did we first meet? We first met. This is a funny story because all I knew about NASCAR was like Days of Thunder. Like, you know, Tom Cruise. And I get a call from Ty Norris and he's like, well, what happened first was I get a call once from Eddie Wood. Hey, would you be interested in coming out to Sears Point and teaching Elliott Sadler, you know, how to drive NASCAR?

and I'm like, ah, you know, what? I'm not really a teacher. And all I did was this first race in 1998 at Sears Point, right, for Jimmy Spencer. Yes. That was my big break. And that's a funny story too. But they're telling, I'm not really a teacher. I don't know.

I go, what are you thinking? He goes, well, we're going to bring two cars out and do some lead follow. I go, so I get to drive a car for two days? He's like, yeah, I'll do it. So I went out there and met Elliot, a great guy. I can golf one day and I mean, he's just chill and nothing what I expected.

Like really, really cool guy. And at the end of two days, you know, the Wood brothers are like, you know, Eddie Wood comes up to me and he goes, man, Boris, thanks a lot. It was great, man, it was really good. He goes, what do we owe you? And I go, well, I don't, I'm nothing.

You pay my expenses. That's good. We're good. You do me a favor down the road. No, no, no, I got to pay you. What do you charge? I go, I don't really charge. I don't do this.

So just forget about it. But like, ten days later, I got a check in the mail that was like the biggest check I've gotten in racing to date, and I'm like, holy crap. You know, but that really wasn't what it was. He must have went back and told everyone in the NASCAR garage because I started getting calls from people. And so Ty Norris called me once.

He goes, Dale Senior wants to know if you'll go teach Dale Jr. You know, road course at Sears Point. And I'm like, yeah, sure. And I was thinking, I was almost going to say, why didn't he call me himself, right? I didn't say it. Yeah. So I get there, and I'll never forget this because it felt like Days of Thunder. I walk up and, you know, Tony Erie and Tony Jr. there.

And they're working on cars. And I walked up and said, hey, and Bor said, well, you know, like all. And they're like, like, man, I don't think they want me here. Yeah. They're into their deal. They're, like, into their deal. So I'm sitting around like for 15 minutes. Like, I don't know.

Should I leave? Or like, what should I do? And your engine guy, helicopter, I kind of knew him. And he remembers his real name. But I go, hey, man, are you sure these guys want me here? He goes, I don't know. I go, one's Junior showing up. Oh, he's in the trailer. You should go in to meet him. I'm like, and I was like, you know, you always get like a preconceived notion, right?

I go, Dale Jr., it's got to be a spoiled brat. You know, rich kid, famous dad. Like, he's going to be a d'b-a-k. Right? So I go in there, and man, you were like, it was just crazy because it was the opposite. Like, you were just completely chill and you were just like, and I'm like, man, this dude's cool as hell. What was he doing when you walked in? Sleeping?

Yeah, of course. Sleeping? Sleeping? Yeah. Sleeping? You probably remember this, right? Like going back, not going out to California. I don't remember what we talked about, but it was just like, it was like when I met Mark and Brian, it's just like, I like this guy.

Like, I mean, instantly, I know either way. Like, are you my guy or not my guy? Right. And you were my guy. And then I remember, so then I'm just sitting around, the test is going on. And the funny thing is when they finally throw me in the car, and I think I went pretty quick. Yeah. I told him a few things, and the car went faster.

And then, like, that night, man, you've got to come out to dinner, you know. I went out to dinner with Tony. Senior, junior, when they knew I could give them something, they were like, hey, buddy, buddy, buddy, buddy. That was really cool. Tell us about that race with Jimmy Spencer, that first. How'd that happen? That happened was, I was on my, I remember this story. Like, I can't remember what I did yesterday, but I remember this because I'm on my way to MoSport for BMW race, sports car race.

And I was in the, I was in the Hartford Airport waiting for a connection flight. My phone rings, and this guy, Travis Carter. I mean, he sounded like, I mean, a Southern boy. Jimmy Spencer told me, he goes, he wants you to, you know, he hit his head and India the week before he got a concussion. So he goes, I want to know if you want a relief drive. And like, when he's telling me this, I'm like, I'm walking back out to the U.S. air and I'm looking at all the flights to Charlotte thinking, when could I get to Charlotte?

Right. And so he goes, how soon can you get to Charlotte? I'll be there at 4 o'clock looking at the plate. And so we hang up the phone. and I call my guy Tom Milner from BMW and say, I have an opportunity to do a NASCAR race. Can you get someone to drive for me this week? And I hate doing this, and he was all supportive of you.

I mean, there's 10 guys lined up behind you. They'll drive your car, right? So he goes, no problem, go do it. So I land in Charlotte and drive up to Statesville, and I walk into their shop. I'm looking for Travis Carter. He's in the back, and I'll never forget this because he was just sitting on a workbench

eating a quarter pound of my cheese, just chills as could be, you know, and he's a really southern guy. And he goes, well, let me introduce you to Donnie Wingo. And they were just doing the final setup before they push it in the trailer and head to the glen. And I go over there and Donnie Wingo, we meet. And he goes, then he goes to me, he goes, hey, what do you like? What kind of control arms you like in the top?

You like eight and a half, nine and a half? He liked longer. And I'm like, hey, do you know that I've never driven one of these? I have no idea. Then all of a sudden he started, what about Castor? And I'm like, I got to remind you again. Do you know that I've never driven one of these things? and so we get to Watkins Glen the next day.

I get to fly up in their plane, and that was the first time I ever got to do that. And we're getting ready for practice, and the way you guys do practice is you're always taped up, and you're just doing qualifying runs right away, right? And they got the thing all taped up, and I'm like, hey, since I've never driven one of these, is there any way I could just run?

Right. Like, untap it and just run? He goes, yeah, I've probably a good idea. So I'm out there running, and I think I ran like 25 laps, and I was probably at the bottom of the board. And all of a sudden he comes on there. radio and go, and the boys, there's one thing you're leading in, you ain't, you ain't really

on the board, but you've run more laps than any of them boys, but you're ready for some qualifying tires? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, let's do it. They taped the thing up, and I think I run second or third, like, and they were just like, it changed after that. My life changed after that. What? What? That moment. That moment. I mean, and then the next day, I think I qualified fifth that day, but Jimmy Spencer started, and then, like, there was a caution at lap nine, and I got in, and, you know, his seats like this wide. And, and then we did a, we did a driver change, I'm in the back. You're probably getting thrown around a little bit, right?

Yeah, I didn't care. You didn't care. I was having a blast, you know, like, and I think I went from, like, last to, like, 10th, and I spun out on my own because there was somebody spun in one. Then I went from last to, like, 12th, and then someone spun me out, which is kind of a cheap shot. And I forget where I finished, but the craziest thing to me after the race was, you know, on the cool down lap, they're all saying, yeah, good job, good job, good job, good job.

And I was, I was like E.T. in the river, man. I was tired, like, man, oh, man, you know, just, I was. I was tired. And I go in the holler and I'm like, sweating. And I probably spent 15 minutes just before I could change. And I was like, oh, my God, I think I was to do this every day. And then I come out after and everyone's gone. It was just a truck driver.

Yeah. You know, like in road racing, they sit there for hours and talk about it and take the tent down. Here, I go, did I do something wrong? They're all gone. Yeah. That was crazy. I don't, you know, it's funny. I don't remember that Sonoma test.

So after the Sonoma test, where he helped us, what was our name? next? The thing was we just kind of bounced, we ran in each other from time to time. Yeah, we'd run each other time and time because I'd do a couple of nationwide races here and there and then the cup races and your dad like, it's funny, like out of all the

famous people I've met, your dad had this thing about him where like, I could talk to anybody, but your dad just made me like, oh my God, I think of something to say. I know why he starstruck, right? Oh yeah. And that first race, when I was sitting there at Wauke

Glenn before the race in that morning. I qualified fifth, but I was going to start last, you know, get in. I was sitting on the pit wall waiting for driver intros. And I hear this, how's Boris going to do today? And I kind of look up. And I remember seeing your dad and Rusty Wallace and someone else talking. I looked down again, he goes, how's Boris going to do today? And it was your dad. Talking to you? And I'm like, he knows my name. And I was just like, I hope I stay on the road, you know, like, oh, my God, you know. And I'm like, oh, my God, you know. And my, my No Fear Guy, he was like, man, you're going to come through the field. You're going to put some donuts down, Dale Earnhardt's car, you know, when you go by,

and we're just joking around, right? And I remember in the race coming out of turn one when I was flying, and he was the next car. And going up through the S's, I started thinking about what he said, don't do that. And then as we came at the top of the S's, I kind of got a run on him. And you know, you had that one, all right, am I going to go down the end? Am I going to go or am I going to go? And I was just just about to decide. And your dad's going like this.

And I'm like, he wants me off to do. track. He just waved me right by, and I could not believe it. He just waved me by. Like, that's crazy. And, and, and then after I, you know, I remember these days, like, after, like, where he'd come up to me and I'd just be sitting there in a milk crate or something. He'd grab me by the back of the neck and squeeze, and he said, how you doing, man?

My boy, can't stop talking about it. He did a great job at Sirius Point. I'm like, thanks. Like, I can never talk to him. Yeah. Right? And then I think it was a year later, I was doing, Jimmy Spencer put a car together for me.

There was a bunch of us at Watkins Glen testing. And that was the big thing. And I was pretty fast. And your dad came down. I saw him walking towards me, down the garage, you know, on this test. And he goes, hey, said. He never ever said the name, Boris. He just said, said.

And he kind of goes, man, I'm running like crap, man. You do me a favor and jump in, run a few laps of my car. And we start walking down, and I'm like, holy shit. I'm going to get to drive the three car? Like that's what I was thinking. And we're walking down to the car and I go, let's see if you get in there, right? And so I get in the thing and he sat real funny. Like he was lean back like a lazy boy.

My knees are up in my face. And he's kind of lit. He's in the door sill like this. And he goes, man, said, you don't fit very good in there, do you? Can you drive it? And I was just sitting in there with a big smile like, I know one thing. I feel like a bad mother. I won't say it on air.

I go, but I know I'll drive it on one condition. I go, I know I'm the only race fan that ever get to drive your car. I want to picture me driving this thing. I don't know why I said. He goes, you'll be fine. So I get all my stuff on, and I didn't know it was a big deal that no one ever drove your father's car.

Like, I had no idea. And I went out and did a few laps, and as I'm coming in the garage, it looked like, I'm like, what the hell's going on? All these people and cameras. And I pull in, and your dad takes the window net down, and it just all snapping pictures and stuff.

And I'm like thinking, this is crazy. It felt like an EF hunting commercial because how's the car? And it was like quiet. And I'm like, man, if you drove mine, you went, this thing's bad. This piece of crap. He goes, in the hauler. So, like, we go in the hauler and me, him and, uh, are you, Kevin Hamler?

Yeah, Kevin Hamler. And we're sitting there and I go, first off, I go, pushing your brake pedal is like pushing a rock, man, you need a smaller master. I got, where your, he goes, man, I told him boys I wore my leg out of Sears Point and they don't listen. And I'm thinking, how do they not listen to you? Like, and then so I kind of give them this thing about, you know, the front springs and the rear bar and this and that.

and he goes to Kevin Hamman and he goes change it all man let me know when you're done and so now it's just me and your dad staring at each other in the holler right and I think it like say something cool come up with something cool you know like I was so nervous and and airplane too was on the TV and I go

man that's a good movie huh? Here's something else. And he goes yeah that guy's funny and he kind of put his hand on the thing and he walked out of the lounge I'm like oh damn it that's all you could think of and then your dad goes hey said you wanted to eat and I'm like, yeah, make me a peanut burn jelly

and cut the crust off and hurry it up, like just joking, right? And he didn't say a word. And I'm like, oh, my God. I just pissed him off. If there was a door in the front of the hall, I would have left. I would have left. And it felt like an hour I was sitting there, but it was probably two minutes. And all of a sudden your dad comes in with a peanut butter and jelly on a paper towel.

He goes, I got your water too, said. And I go, hey, you didn't cut the crust off. He goes, no, man, that makes your hair curly. I don't want to ruin your look. Oh, my God. And so we sat there And we're eating peanut burn jelly And I'm thinking, how good is this?

And then I finally kind of got comfortable with your dad Like at that point And then so he get up to walk out And he's like, hey man, you want a signed hat or something? I'm like, no man, I don't wear hats He goes, yeah, if I had hair like that I wouldn't wear a hat either. And that was pretty cool.

I mean, your dad was a cool dude. Yeah. I know it. It's awesome you had that experience. This is a greatest intimidator story I think I've ever heard. I mean, I think people are like, what's your best racing story?

And I said, nothing to do with racing. It's about a peanut butter jelly sandwich. That's it. Nobody drove his car and nobody told him to make me a peanut butter jelly sandwich. And nobody would even thought to tell him to cut the crust off. And then the one thing that really, I'm sorry I never did it, it was it was the night before the Daytona 500. Yeah. And I was at the Daytona 500 with Ervin.

We were just walking around, hanging around. And I don't know where he was, but I was walking through the garage. And I hear, said, they said. And your dad had like the hall or doors open like this far. He goes, come here. And so he says, how's going? I go, I'm pretty good. He goes, you're all set with my boy because we're doing another test at Sears Point.

He goes, you're all set? I go, yeah, we're all set. He goes, hey, man, I'm building a new road race car. You want to come to Atlanta with me? And I'm like, yeah, no problem. He just follow me. I'll come. And then he's like, what are you doing tonight?

I'm like, you know, I didn't know if he liked Ernie Irvin or not. And I was there with Ernie. He goes, why don't you come to have dinner with me on the boat tonight? And I'm like, ah, no, no. It's the night before the race, man. You'd be with your family and nothing. That's okay. He's not come out of dinner with me on the boat.

And I'm like, no, no. He goes, you believe this guy? He won't, he's going to screw guy. He won't come to dinner with me on the boat. I'm like, oh, man. No, another time. Yeah. And off I went.

That's the last time I talked to your dad. It's crazy. Damn. But he was cool. He was cool. You're helping me. You just mentioned it again. We must have done another test together.

Right around 2004, we ran the Corvette together. Right. We'd become good friends at this point. I'd ran the, vet with dad in 01 we had a good experience i've gotten a good big good friends with ron fellows great guy yep super cool ronaldt me dad sent me out to bob bonderons in phoenix i got a lot of help there and the pilgrim was helpful you're absolutely in in the middle of my life i'm trying to get better and better at road racing and all that stuff and we're becoming friends corvette comes to me and

says you want to run this race it's off weekend in the middle of 2004 season i'm like man i do but I'd like to, can I pick who I race with? Who's my driver, my co-driver? And I'm like, yeah, who? And I said, Boris said, you remember all this? Yeah. And they were like, sure. And so do you remember caught me calling you?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that was really cool because I remember for years, I always tried to get them to test me. Yes. And they wouldn't because I think I was a little too wild for them, right? You know, the hair or whatever they thought it was, but never fit. But you got me in that deal. And I remember the funny thing about it was, you know,

the money was okay but i didn't care about the money now i want to do it with you i thought it'd be fun as hell yes right but but they came to me about the merchandise it's funny and they said well you know we don't get uh you know drivers don't i go no no what same deal junior has in the merchandise that's why i'm not doing it i just said it's a joke and they did and i think i made more money on that one ride over that frigging die cash that we didn't even didn't even drive yes i've signed millions of them so to be clear you're talking about the 2004 the race that you guys were to run at Sonoma but you crashed. Yeah, we're going to get.

Yeah, but that's what we're talking about? Yeah, okay. So, Corvette come back to me and asked me if I wanted to run this race during an off weekend and I said, sure. It was really out of character for me because usually I was going to go somewhere my friends and party or I didn't really race outside of that NASCAR bubble. And I just done the 24 hour earlier that year with Tony Stewart and Andy Wallace. Great experience.

And so it was going to be awesome to be able to do it with you. And I think that would probably be the only. only way I would do it is if it was with you. I mean, the whole weekend was a blast until race morning. Right. So we're practicing. Things are going pretty good with that. We had a third car.

They had two cars in the field, and we were in a third car. And I don't know, you may, I want your version of all this. I'm going to tell you my version, and then you tell me what you think. But be completely honest. I don't really remember much about practice and all that. We were in and out of the car. It's hot. Not real comfortable.

We did some driver changes. Felt pretty good about that. There's a short race. You're going to be, you know, you're going to drive it a little bit. I was going to drive it a little bit. I think I was going to start the race, and then you were going to finish. Something, they did a lot of work on the car the night before the race. They pulled the fuel sale out of it.

There's some kind of an issue with the fuel system, and they pulled all that out and put it all back together, race morning. And so they had a real, they had a warm-up at like 9 o'clock. and so we pull out on the racetrack and I'm kind of in and around all these Porsches and all these other guys these GT3 cars and so forth

and we're just putting around the track and we're not green yet we're not up to speed we're just kind of rolling around I just literally pulled off pit road and I got all the way of the backside of the track and whatever and turned five on the cup track and anyways we're turning

we turn that corner and we're coming back through the S's down back toward the garage I mean I'm just quarter throttle in this car and it spun out. When I spun, I matched a brake pedal and it did not slow the car down. It's just sliding forever and it bounced into this tire barrier. Not hard. I mean, it damaged a car pretty good. But the car didn't slow down when it started sliding at all. And I know those tires are pretty greasy because I'd spun out in them in 01 during the 24-hour race and I also spun out in 2004 trying to get off pit road a couple times during that night when it's cool yeah they're

terrible they're they're really hard they're still the same way takes them about two laps to really get going a lot of guys have trouble coming off pit road so i thought okay you know it's just it's just that's the way the tire is but anyways i crashed my immediate thought was i have i've i've this up boris i knew how excited you were about what we were doing this is the race starting in a couple hours, and we're not going to get to do it. It's over. Right after that thought, the thing goes, it was like a compression. Right. It goes, and the whole thing is on fire. And I'm like, no fucking way is this thing on fire? I'm like in a ball of fire. Not like the back's on fire or the right front's on fire. Like the whole damn car is on fire. It blew the back glass out of it. It goes,

I was sitting there for what felt like a minute going, I can't believe this is happening. And then the fire came up in my helmet and was like right in between my visor and my helmet. And I was like, I better get the hell out. And so then I thought, I don't know how to get out. Like in this moment when it's like time to go right now, I'm like, I can't pull my thoughts together to remember like the process of, okay, here's how this win-inette comes

down because it's not like the wind-in-net that I use in my race car. It's a, how do I do that? How to open the door? This door opens like a car door. Where's the latch? I don't know. I can't think all these things fast enough. And it feels like a thousand fiends are stinging me all over my body.

And so luckily, the crash and all the fire and everything has kind of made getting out of the car and exiting a pretty easy process. There was no win-in-net anymore. And when I went to, I kind of started climbing out of the car like you would have stock car hopping up on the door and it was melted and so it just collapsed when i put all my weight i got my hip up on the driver's door it just buckled and i fell onto the ground and and then i don't remember anything from that moment on i don't remember a thing and the next thing i remember is laying on the table in the infill care center now i've seen pictures of me sitting on the tailgate of a truck

being around corner workers and all that stuff after getting out of the car but i don't remember any of that. And so the next thing I remember was like, like I woke up or I came back to or I was my conscious, I kicked back into conscious mode and I was on that table and my freaking legs were on fire. And I was screaming and you and Max Pappas were standing over the top of me at the top at my head and the lady nurse was at my legs. And I was screaming at her like my legs hurt bad.

They're really hurting bad. and she grabbed some morphine like you might use or see on a World War or a Vietnam dock she shoves it into my leg It was a big needle That needle was like that long

Yeah it was about 10 inches as long So she shoves something in my leg and squeezes And I'm grabbing the table And I'm like It still hurts Like it's supposed to work immediately right It's not working And y'all are shouting at her too

You're like help him help him Get him I don't you know I was telling you I said, come on, man, think of something different. Think of like girls or think of something different. You're like, no way, man, I'm burning up. That's what you're telling me. I can't think of that now.

And so she shows another one in there, and then I blacked out. So my version of that story is I remember you were strapped in. I remember they redid the whole car that night. We were just a little bit off, but not too bad. I mean, because it was good. And I remember putting your window in it up. Sorry, man. You were just going to go out and do two laps.

I was going to do two laps and we're just going to wait for the race. And I kind of walked over the pit wall and he left the pits and all of a sudden I see everyone staring at the TV. I'm like, what's that? A car on fire is junior and I looked up the S's and I saw the smoke and I'm like, and I just beeline it for the infield care center. I mean, I just like went straight there and then Steve Crisp and somebody from Chevy was there too. And we're in there and when they pulled you in there, kicking everybody out.

I go, I'm not going anywhere. Not going anywhere. So, like, it was just me standing over you, and I was freaking out. Where was Max Pappas? He wasn't there. Really? He wasn't in the infield care center. It was just me, because it was me and Steve Crisp, and they were like, no, everyone's got to get out of here.

And I'm like, there's no way I'm leaving. When you were saying, I mean, you got to give me something. You got to give me something, man, my legs are burning up. And then I tried to tell you, I go, man, just calm down. Just think of something else. Put your mind. Like, think of girls, think of something fun. No way, man, my legs are burning.

And I've seen all those war movies where they stick the morphine in. and right away they kind of go out like an animal on, you know, Wild Kingdom. And that first shot did nothing. But when she pushed that second shot in, I mean, before she was done, your eyes just rolled back and boom, you were gone. You were just gone. Right? So, like, they cut your suit off and everything, and they're loading you up.

And so they put you in the helicopter. And Steve Chris and the guy from Chevy, I forget his name. He went in a police car. And I'm like, look, I'll – and Deanne, my wife, she wasn't even the third. the track yet, right? And Boris was like six months old, I think. And so I'm like, all right, I'll collect all this stuff. And so they take off, the helicopter takes off. I called Diane. She comes. And I had like a geo-metro rental car. I remember that. It's a tiny little rental car with a kid's seat in the back. And you get your suit and everything, get all your clothes and collect everything

up. I have the suit still. Right. Because of that. Right. And the funny thing about that is, you know, I just threw it in the car. And we start driving up, because it's like an hour away. We're driving up. I'm like, that smells. It smells like a didn't campfire in here. It was your suit. We had to take that, put that in the bag because it smelled so bad. It was like burnt. It was. It felt like a burnt log. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. And so, and then we're up in the hospital, and you had like a code name in there. We went in there, but you were out. It's going to be a few hours. And so I never experienced anything like this. It's like going to the hospital with Elvis. And the hospital's like, we're going to get our marketing team. We're going to have a meeting.

you know, blah, blah, you know, why don't you guys go have lunch and come back? So we decided, well, let's go get a sandwich at the subway. So we all load in, you know, the big guys in the bag and this geometro in between a baby seat, we're like driving in this car. But the funniest thing that happened was, and this is probably two hours after it happened, my phone rings. This is Boris said, and I'm like, yep, this is blah, blah, blah, blah from the National Enquirer. And I'm like, I want to talk to you about Dale Earnhardt Jr.

I'm like, who? Dale Earnhardt Jr., I'm like, who's that? Well, you're, wait, you're the race car driver, right? I'm like, yeah. Weren't you racing today and Dale Earnhardt Jr. caught on fire? I'm like, I don't know who that is. They're just like, it's like, what? I go, and I hang up.

Calls right back. This Boris said the race car driver, right? I'm like, yeah. And you're racing the Corvette today? I'm like, yeah. I want to talk to you about Dale Earnhardt Jr. He was in an accident and got burned. I go, I don't know who that is.

But what I was freaking out, it's like, how do you get my number? Right. Like, it's crazy. Yeah. It was just crazy. whole thing. But man, it was scared. You scared us bad. I was terrified. Yeah. Other than him screaming on the table and saying, my legs were on fire, what was, could you visually see injuries at that point? Yeah. They had they cut his

fire suit off? Oh, so they had. Yeah, I was going to sell the pictures in the internet. What were you thinking? How bad did this look to you? It didn't, it didn't look life-threatening. Like, I was scared. When I saw the fire on the TV and, and, what the smoke looked like, I was scared to death, like. And that's why I'd beeline it there. But when he cut everything off and looking, it was like, okay, he's got some burns. You know, there's one on the back of the lay that looked pretty, you know, but not life-threatening. So I felt good.

And then where you were at that burn center, that was scary, man. And the nurses, I remember they were wearing T-shirts with, like, airbrush flames on. What? And there were some people in there that were pretty bad. Yeah. So, like, I felt good after I left him when he got loaded up, because I'm like, all right, he's, He's going to be okay. He's going to be hurt, but he's not like.

Good, yeah. That was scary. They told me they're like, you know, just like, it's like real bad sunburn. And my legs were really, really red on, I didn't see the back of my legs. So when I, the flames coming up underneath the seed and it's, it's kind of really laying and focusing right in the bend of my knees. When I got out of the car, I must have squatted down or fell over or something and I compressed all of that burnt suit into, you know,

know, like I cooked my leg. Right. When I got out of the car, I cooked my leg by compressing all my suit in the hinge of my knees. Somehow or another, I got burned really, really bad on the top of my left thigh. And so they were like, oh, that's all, it was just red. And so they're like, that's just real bad sunburn. Imagine that's what I'd compare it to. And I was like, man, it's, you know, it's really, really hurt.

I just don't think that's really, I don't think that's what it is. And then, like, several hours later, it's like blistering up and been. big giant freaking blisters, which they had to handle all that. The left thigh ended up being basically like a four by six open wound that literally just had to heal closed on its own. I guess in hindsight, they might have should have skin grafted it and put something down there,

but I literally walked around with a hole in my leg for a month. Yeah. And I mean, that thing would grow and create new skin and grow and grow and close and close and close. But when we won Bristol, when we won both races at Bristol, the Xfinity and the Cup race,

that weekend, right? I had a four by five, four by three open wound on my left leg. And champagne got in that at Victory Lane. You talk about hurting. Yeah. And that's why when you see me in pictures at that Victory Lane at Bristol, I'm sitting on that cooler. Because to stand up, it felt like all of my guys.

guts were trying to come out of that tiny hole. It was the strangest sensation. You know what's strange about that weekend? So years later, I took that suit. You know, I'm a partner in this company called K1 Speed, and we have indoor go-car tracks. So all my old suits, I just frame and they go to the go-car tracks. Like a place to throw them all.

And I, Lou Geelotti, this guy called me, I'm going to, hey, you want to race the Long Beach Grand Prix and a Corvette, blah, blah, blah, and the LMS race. I'm like, yeah, sure. And so the night before practice, I go, hey, you want to take your guys to K-1, we'll go-karting. So we're there, go-karting and, uh, torn. and they're like, hey, what about a suit tomorrow? What suit are you wearing?

You know, we got out of the right patches. And I go, ah, there's that Corvette suit up on the wall. We'll just take that, right? Because we never even used it. Took that thing down and that's the suit, right? And in that race, four laps from the end, I was in a big fire, big fire. Like, if you saw the picture on my phone, I'll show you a picture on my phone. And literally, like, I'm driving down the straightaway, and it just exploded from the back.

And I'm in flames, completely in flames. And like when it first happened, it was 18 and a half seconds, right? Because I timed it on the TV. But when it first happened, it was just burning the back of my neck. I'm like, you know, like panicking, like, just panic. And then I'm like, I got this moment of clarity. And I don't know if it's because of what happened to you or what, but I'm like, man, this is bad.

Shut your mouth. Don't open your mouth no matter what. So I didn't ever take a breath. And then I was like, I got to get to the end of the straightaway because Long Beach, the front straightaway is this long curve. I would have just slammed on the brakes. It would have just been a pile up. And so I drove all the way to the end.

Then the whole time I was just thinking, just be calm, you know, think about what you need to do. You get your air hose off, your radio, and the buckle. And the last thing I did was that little button underneath the steering column to get the wheel up. And when I pulled my hand back, it just opened up like a flower. Like all the seams in my glove burned at the same time. And I was like, that's really weird.

You know, but every split second, I'm like, it's hot. Yeah. It's hot. hot, you know, and I dove out and done. I'm going to show you the picture because it was, it was crazy. And at the end, I'm like, man, that suit must have been, like, that's, that's 18 and a half.

That's right near the end. You know, you can see, I'm just surrounding and fire. And just, I've seen that picture of you from the, same picture. It's the same thing. Yeah. So I don't know if those suits were bad or not. So now I have that suit frame that smelled just like your suit. Yeah, that campfire charcoal.

Wow. They said the sensor burnt out on that Corvette at $700. degrees. Right. They have a cockpit temperature sensor in there. And I was, I would, I would tell, the one thing that I took away from that, I mean, I took away a lot of, but the one thing that I remember thinking was none of us really appreciate just how freaking hot fire is. Hot. It is hotter. It is hotter than you're imagining, there is nothing in your life that you know that you could compare it to. It's not a good way to go. It isn't. And so it's funny that, you know, they I remember when I got out, I unzipped my suit and took my suit down and the smoke was coming off my skin.

I'm like, that's not right. Like it's steaming like my skin. I'm like, that's not right. And they took me to an infill care center they had set up there and they were putting cream on. They're doing all this stuff. They cut everything off. And then they start saying, we're going to transport you to the Long Beach Hospital. I'm like, no, I'm going home.

My car was parked on the beach. I'm leaving. So it was like 20 minutes of arguing and like signing stuff. Like I'm just getting out of here. And it's a good thing I didn't waste time because I get in my car and I'm driving home. And as I was getting close to home, my head started to swell up. My eyes were swelling shut. And like the next day, I mean, I barely made it home where I could still see.

And the next day my head was big like a pumpkin. Both eyes shut, couldn't see anything. And just like all the water went up and just swelled my head up. It was crazy. That is wild. Crazy. Yeah. Fire was not good.

How long did you, when did you start racing after that? And how long did you deal with those injuries? It was just a couple weeks. Because that was the same thing for you. I mean, like, I think if I remember correctly, you missed New Hampshire next. I think that's where Trux might have filled in. I started, he drove the race. You started the race.

I started and got out. And I started and I started Pocault and got out. And then I remember, I think the first time I saw you was Indy for some reason, I think that. And I just remember your mom being there and having to change out the wraps. And it was so painful. Yeah, I had to, I had wraps on that. thigh hole in my leg and then behind my knees but yeah you had to change those twice a day yeah i didn't have any open wounds i had to burn on my back but nothing nothing like yours nothing like yours there's some

pretty incredible there's some really and you probably use this that silver dine yep that is insane yeah i had a hole like a half inch deep hole in my leg just and it was only it's like about about a quarter size hole that just went straight down and it just, I'd cake that stuff in there and it literally grew back. Yeah. All right. I had a half moon burnt out of my nostril over here. Like it was missing.

Like my fucking nose, man. A corner of my nose was gone. And it grew back like it's, you wouldn't even know. Wow. It's crazy. Yeah. I remember looking at you in the infill care center and I saw your nose, your leg, and then the back of your knee, like on the back, right in there.

Yeah, that didn't look good. No, it wasn't. Boris. Yeah. Do you recall the first time, like, after all that, do you recall the first time you and him had a conversation about the weekend? Right here. Yeah, right here.

Are you serious? This is it? I don't think we ever really talked about it. No. And, you know, I just, that weekend for me wasn't really, like, normally it's win, win, win, win. I was just having so much fun. Like, it didn't matter where we finished.

It was just, it was, like, just didn't mean anything. It was just for fun. I know, I can tell. You were, you know, you were at a point, and I'm speaking for you, but the impression, I want you to know how I took it, but you were at a point in your life where it was gravy from that moment on. Yeah. Right. You were just enjoying everything or anything that was coming, and you had, you really had no more vision like, I got to get to this point. Right. You'd already been satisfied. Right. And so, and I was, we, I think we both were like, can you believe they're letting us do this? Right. Right.

drive this amazing car, and it was a blast, right, to drive. And I knew the track well enough to feel like I could do okay. And obviously, you know, Boris, I was like, man, I can't wait, is Boris going to match these laps that Ron and them guys are driving them other cars. Me and Boris had briefly, briefly talked about, you know, what getting a chance to drive that car for that program would be like. It was a cool car. Yes. Sounded good, fun to drive. That was a really cool car. And so I was, I was his biggest fan that weekend, like, you know, this is going to be cool.

guys are going to be impressed, you know. And, uh, and, I still, one of my biggest, uh, regrets is that we didn't really get to see what we could do. Well, I'm just glad it turned out all right, because it was, yeah, it was like, it was, it just seemed scary watching that. Yeah. And it's funny, like I, I never, when you race, you never think about it, you know, and you're going to have this someday, maybe like, my son's racing now. He started last year racing. And I mean, I'm just like watching like, and some of it's like, yeah, something bad could happen, but it's more, like you know the bad luck like the guy spins in front and you crash and you just so like oh no no bad luck you know you're right you really it's nerve-wracking man i've never been so nervous at a race in my life

and you know we're racing this series called speck meada in scea and it is some of the best racing i've ever seen in my life i mean there's 80 cars in a race you know nine last week there was 82 cars at sebring right and these guys are drivers like i don't think i could run at the front and you know he's the best guy in the country this kid Preston Pardos I know him yeah he raised so no exfinity series sometimes yeah that kid is one of the best drivers I've ever seen I mean you need to put him in one of your cars I guarantee you that kid will run in the top three I mean he is switched on like he's he's good and and the meadas nobody can touch him but you know he runs his own nationwide car you know in the freaking tag-along trailer and his dad and I mean it's amazing I

I hope he gets a chance that kid. And the guy that runs his team is this guy, a 50-year-old guy named Jim Drago, you know, big guy gets this little Miata, and you're thinking, nah, this guy can't try. But as good as I've ever seen anybody, road race. I mean, it's really, it's fun doing it with my son. He's totally into it. And so do you have any interest in joining him just for a race?

I've been waiting. Next year when he goes to college, I go, I'm going to take your car racing when you go to college. I don't want him to beat me. I think he might beat me now. He's getting pretty good. He's 10 races into his career, but he's getting good. But I guess right now I hope that maybe we can do Daytona together or a long race together. I think it would be fun.

Like you got to do with your dad. Right. And so that's what I'm thinking now. Like that. I want to keep my, I want to keep driving a little bit just to be able to do that. I think it's fun. So maybe next year we'll do Daytona. So one of the things that, one of the things when I mentioned that you were going to be on the show,

a lot of people gave us some feedback, and they obviously want to talk about some of the incidents that you had out on the racetrack. So one of the most popular ones was Greg Biffle. Post Watkins Glen, you get out of the car and said if you had his address, you'd go over to his house and whoop his ass. What happened? Well, we were friends. I went and you were friends with everybody.

I remember. We were friends. And in the race, I remember we had to replace a battery for some reason. So under a yellow, we replaced the car we'd drive. Frankie stopped. I think that we can. And we're coming out of the pits to catch up to the pack, and Biffle was about 200 yards behind the pack,

and he wasn't letting me by. So I'm freaking out in the car. Like, what the hell's going on? You know, the spotters are yelling. Everybody's yelling. You know, calm down, this and that. Goes green. I go right by him.

And I said after, I go, you tell that son of a bitch after the race. I'm coming to see him. I'm going to come in his trailer, and I'm going to put my hands down, and he can take the first shot. But then I am going to deck him for the. that. Like, I'm pissed, like, piss. And so I go, you message delivered, right? Yeah, message delivered.

You know, the spotter's just trying to calm me down right there point. Like, calm everything down. And so after the race, you know, I drove, my mistake was I drove into the garage and he's standing there. And I just stopped my car, right? Like, right there. I should have gone back and got out. I stopped my car. He comes over. Window net came down. And he starts punching me in the head. What? I got my helmet on. So now I'm just like. Why is he punching you? I'm just like trying to get out. and I'm mad, and I go over there, and I was going to kill him. Sure. He stood behind this big NASCAR official, and I couldn't get through the guy.

I'm okay, I'm okay. I'm trying to run through him. I'm okay. I'm okay. I try to get through him, and I just, you know, the emotions and racing. Why is he hitting you? I do not know. Because we had that argument, right?

Well, maybe for the first time, Spotter actually delivered the message to the other team. He definitely delivered the message. I never think that they do when y'all tell him that, but maybe this time he did. But you didn't do any, you didn't have any contact with him? As far as, like, he wouldn't have been punching you for that reason. He said that I raced him too hard going down and turn one. I mean, I always get that. You're not a regular.

You can't race me that hard. And yeah, maybe I'm a little overaggressive, right? But, I mean, if I'm in anybody's car, I got to go 100%. I don't, you know, I don't care. Like, if it's for the championship, I would definitely race you different. But we're racing for whatever place. I don't care. Yeah, right?

And so the funny part of the interview came because, you know, then I go and I get changed and I'm out of it. I'm getting out of here. I'm still mad. And I had Boris Jr., right? And he was six years old, maybe seven. I had my hand on, but he was not in the camera shot.

So I'm trying to do this interview and not swear in front of myself. So that's why the interview came out. Well, I'm going to wamp him if you give him his address. He needs a whoopin. He's an unprofessional, scaredy cat. Yeah, I didn't know, swear in front of my kids. So I guess because it was clean.

It went everywhere. and it got a little over-exaggerated. And we were definitely mad and not friends, but after, you know, a year we were fine. He's a good guy. But I was angry that day. So y'all did, y'all did, you know, kiss and makeup? Yeah, we actually did this vintage race.

It's actually where we met, like this vintage race where they did, like, you know, old racers, race these old cars. And we had a blast, you know, Tony Porella does it, the SVR series. They haven't done it since COVID, but we got back together there. So I'm not sending them Christmas cards, but I would. You had a run in with Tony Stewart in 2010 coming out of turn one? Yes. What happened there?

Well, I don't remember that. I was mad. I was running the Brian Bickers car, the Red Bull car, and we were running for like fourth place. And we were running really hard. I mean, hard. When I went down the inside of him in turn one, and in the old days, he would have been in the wall. He missed the turn, went way out all the way, but it's all asphalt. But then as I was headed towards turn two, he just came on and just cleaned me out.

I mean, clean me out good. And I mean, I had a few incidents with Tony on the track. I mean, I like him a lot. I mean, he's a racer and he's a legend. And away from the track, he's the greatest guy in the world. And on the track, if he's in a bad mood, he's a prick. Yeah. Right.

The funniest story happened at Sears Point where in the race, I remember letting him by early in the race. He was faster, and I was like, not there. But then later in the race, I came up on him. and he was slower. And I got into him a little bit, and then he freaked out. Like, the dude's freaking out.

Like, he's flipping me off out the window. So I'm, like, freaking out. My spotter's trying to calm me down. Everybody's yelling, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, it kind of dissipated, but I was pissed after. And so after the race, this is the funny part of the story. Boris was a little kid.

And I think this was, like, one of the first times I was taking a helicopter to the airport, like a big shot like you guys. So we go up to the helicopter pad at Sears' point. in a golf cart and you know I stopped there's like 20 guys here and sign their autographs and now we're just waiting me and Boris are just waiting in this in this golf cart Tony Stewart comes up in this golf cart goes by and my wife goes there's Tony you should talk to him I go no I'm not really in a good mood to talk to him I'll wait I'll wait and so he's already

in the helicopter loaded up and his guy points me out and I see him look like this and all of a sudden he gets out of the helicopter and starts walking over the golf cart and he's like And this is when my teeth were all screwed up still. And he's like, man, there ain't no doubt that's your kid with that hair. He goes, you think his teeth will be straight? And I go, I go, he goes, he goes, oh, my God. I go, the one thing I know for sure is he won't be fat like you. Oh.

He just goes, all right, all right, all right. And then we were fine. Yeah, that's what he is. Insane. But, I mean, he was a fun guy to race with. Sure. Yeah. Did you guys ever race against each other?

I mean, I know y'all didn't have any run-ins, but do you ever enjoy racing against each other? Yeah, but usually he'd be just going by me. Going by you. Whatever. Yeah. He hate, I just remember when I put him on road courses, he hated Sonoma. He's a whiner. I'm terrible.

I'm no good, but he's a good road racer. I was okay. Yeah. Only reason I was any decent. The only reason I ever had any reasonable finishes or any speed was because of the help from Boris and Ron and those guys. Ron is really good. Yeah. Really good.

I went to Bond to Ron. And worked with Cooper. Yep, Bill Cooper. Great guy. That was such an incredible experience. Me and Steve Park both went out there. And I came right out of that and ended up beating Ron in the Exfinity car. Ron was having trouble with his car.

His fuel pickup was messing up. But I'd have never even been in the picture if it weren't for Bill Cooper at Bondarant. But that was 98 or 99. And then I connected to you guys. I knew like just being around you and spending time with Ron. And I was like, get me around the. guys because I'm learning something every time I'm with you. Right. And then you subbed, I think, when, uh, who, so, O-1 Army car, you were subbing, you were helping them out. Right. That's where I

got the poll at Sir's Point, when Jerry Nadeu got hurt. Yep. And that got me in the Bud shootout. Yeah. Oh, that's right. After I got the poll, I walked in the trailer, I go, I'm in the Bud Shootout. And Jay Frye was like, no, I know, I don't think so, you know. And so all the guy was like, no, come on, Jay, I got to be in the bud shootout. And he was just thinking, it's not if you're going to wreck. It's just when. He's like, there's no way I'm letting you go in the butt shootout. But he agreed to it. And we did it. And that's when I went back to him. I mean, that's like, and before I even ever was on the track, you know, I'm asking him, and he's, it's like he was talking Greek to me. Like, what? What air doing what? Like, back in

the wind of where I was like, it was so foreign to me, you know, until you go out there and you, oh, wow, I kind of feel it. Like, yeah. But yeah, you helped me a lot there. I mean, a lot. And I think I finished 10th in the bud shootout. So that's kind of cool. Well, I wanted to go back to, we were going to practice at VIR with the bud car, me and and Tony Jr. and Tony Sr. And I think Tony Jr., Tony Jr., I think it was just me and Tony Jr. there, and Tony Senior stayed back to shop.

But we get there, and I don't know what the hell I needed. I needed something. The 01 Army car is like 100 yards over on the other side of the garage, and Boris is going to test that car. We're talking about it. I'm like, oh, okay, so we'll have somebody out there. that's running some lass. We'll be able to compare ourselves to.

Boris will go out there and put something up for us to chase after. And you show up, right? And you're wearing a pair of jeans, white t-shirt. You come over and I was like, hey, man, what's you got in the car? And of course, you're like, I've got a pair of four hundreds in the back, this size of rear bar, this front bar, and it's front springs. And so this wedge, this isn't I? I went over and told Tony Jr.

I said, hey, man, Boris told Tony what he has in his car. This is what he's got in his car, do-d-d-dover-d-dur. And so that was like a, that was a normal conversation for me. you. We get to testing and practicing, and I see, I look over there and you're climbing in the car and you got your helmet on and you got your jeans and your t-shirt on. They lost my luggage. And you tested the whole day in a t-shirt. Unbelievable.

And I was like, damn, man, that's cool as hell. Yeah. And I asked you, I was like, man, you ain't going to put on a suit. And you're like, they got one. Yeah, I just borrowed a helmet at the track. Yeah. I think that's what you borrowed my helmet. I think I did use your helmet.

Yes. That's what it was. You came over and you're like, hey, man, you got a helmet? Because I was wondering, I thought I borrowed something for you, but you're right. You barred my helmet. I'm like, you damn right you can borrow my helmet. A legend like you. Morris is using my helmet, guys.

How about that? It's got to be worth a couple tents. Well, it gave you a setup. So, like, there you go. That's an even trade, right? Yeah, and so, yeah, I think we're, as at Sonoma in like 2010 or something, and I was struggling with the COT there. And I was like, hey, man, what you got?

and he told me, and I went over and told my guys and put it in there, and it's like, perfect. Car was right in the ballpark. Top 15 car just needed to do all the things behind the wheel, right? It was fun because I got to work with so many different teams testing with them, and I was learning, like, I was like a sponge. I mean, I got to learn so much those few years, testing with all those teams and all the different stuff they did.

And it was fun. I will say that's true. I mean, I know you learned a lot of things, but a lot of times, and the few times that I put your setup in my car, I walked away from all of that thinking, we're trying way too hard. We're making this way too complicated. Boris is running just a basic, you know, simple set of springs,

all symmetrical stuff. He's not wedging the car up for the right-handers and springing it for the left-handers because we'd do that. A lot of teams would try all this crazy stuff. Yeah, we'd have the, waged to get it through this corner and then the left first spring would be this to get it through you know and we would just have it all twisted and all screwed up and then it couldn't get around the

track at all and i'd go to him and he'd be like oh just put this basic stuff in there and this is what i got and i'm like man you're just good you're just fast and then but i'd put the setup in and it would be easier to drive every time right yeah you know when you look back on your experience in nascar like what's your feelings about that i feel lucky you know like i feel like i feel like i feel like I mean, I remember NASCAR was like he'd watch Daytona and I'd see your dad, and I'd be like, that's a badass. If I ever race, I want to be that guy. I just loved the way he raced.

And I never thought I would do NASCAR, but I was just always trying to get in the next fastest car, the next fastest car. So when I finally got into NASCAR, I mean, it was by luck and it stayed for a long time. You know, I never really did full seasons or anything, but it was a blast for me. I look back on it like, I feel lucky. I remember one of my crew chees, I went online and got ordained as a minister, and I went and married this guy two weeks ago in Chicago. And it was a blast. I actually had a lot of fun.

Yeah. But I remember thinking, I remember thinking the first time I did the Daytona 500, even the first time I did Watkins Glen thinking, man, only 43 people get to do this every weekend. Everybody in the world, and I always felt lucky. And I always felt like I'd race every race like it was the last race I'd ever get to do, because that's what it felt like. And all the people I met along the way, I mean, all my friends are racers. I mean, everything I have in my life is from racing.

And I just like, I love it. I love it. I feel, I mean, I just, I feel blessed. I got to do it, right? One of the things that I heard the guy from F1s running into Daytona 500. Jacques Phyllis. Yeah, Jacques, yeah. He said something the other day that I thought, man, made a lot of sense.

He said, I'm alive when I'm behind the wheel of a race car. Because he's 50 years old. People are asking, what the hell are you doing? going around in Dayton 500? You know, you just do anything? He's like, that's where I want to be. And I think that, you know, a lot of races are like that. I think you're like that.

I am like, you know, I have this car business I built with Rick, and I'm proud of it, and I love it. But it's not where I feel like I belong. Like, I'm walking around there and everything's great, but I don't feel like I'm a car guy. And when I'm at the, even if it's an SCCA race, amateur race with my son, I feel like this is right.

I love it. I love it, even though I'm there helping him or watching or if I'm racing. But I like being at the racetrack. How do you decide what you're racing at this point in your life? For him or for me? For you. For you. Well, I mean, I still like doing this Trans Am series because that's the best car that you'd ever drive.

Really? If you ever tried one of these TA1 cars, I mean, they're almost 900 horsepower. Like, the one I drive is a little different. It doesn't have a sequential box. It's still a gated four-speed. No ABS. no tracks control, and it's just pure racing. I mean, it is a fun car to drive.

And this year there's talk I might do a cup race in that new car, you know, and maybe Sears Point. How old are you? 59. You know, I'm too old to be doing it, but I still feel like I'm smarter behind the wheel, but I still love, I love driving. And I think it would be cool to try that car just because I've driven so many of the cars now, you know, from 98, the old car, which I thought was the best car.

And I think these cars are, you know, I've driven some V8 supercar races in my career, and I think it's very similar to that. So I'm curious just because you got to drive one. I just want to drive one. I want to see it. Oh, yeah. So you run all of the races in Trans Am or just whenever? No, just I race for this guy, Poncho Weaver.

He's a local guy, car builder. And, you know, very limited. He's California? No, he's right here. He's Mooresville. He's Mooresville. Yeah, Mooresville, right on the lake. And he builds cars, and he'll build a car, and I'll race it, and he'll sell it.

You know, we do three or four races, and, you know, every year, every year I've won a race, which is kind of cool. Where do you run? Where do you like to run? We're going to run a C-brain, and not this week, the week after the 500. That'll be the first race of the year. Yeah. But, man, it doesn't matter what track. I love them all.

Yeah. I mean. How long are the races? They're an hour, an hour and 10 minutes. So they're not too long, not physical, you know. And I still feel like I'm in good shape. I don't feel like, I don't feel like I'm 59. Like, you know, a view from the inside is the same.

But I want to keep sharp and I want to keep doing it a little bit because I want to try to plan on doing Daytona next year with my son if he's ready. You know, I want to try to get him ready. I'm going to try to get him in a TA2 car this year. When you say Daytona, what do you mean? The 24 hour. You and him? Yeah. Me and him and a couple other.

We were talking about, you remember Paul Morris. Yes, I do. You might try to do a deal where Paul Morris and his son and me and my son do a car together would be pretty cool. Wow. Yeah. Unless you want you too, you'd come rice. Tempting. I kind of enjoy being in the broadcast.

Yeah. I're good at it. It's awesome. I enjoy it. It's awesome. The weather sometimes can be pretty ridiculous. It was freezing this past year. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the weather lately, like, we were in Texas at Coda last week, and it was 28 degrees. Crazy. Yeah. Were you racing? My son was racing. Yeah.

And that was his first top six, you know, out of 80 cars, which was. Dagum. Yeah. Really? Yeah, that's pretty good. That's really good. I didn't think he'd get in the top. 10 this year? Because that was his 10th race, right? And so, like, I have this Ford Escort

rally car at home, and, you know, he wants it so bad, you know, and I never let him take it alone. And I go, you get a top 10 this year. You can take it. And then sure enough, this week, he goes, hey, remember that bet? Yeah. I'm like, yeah, okay, you can take it to school. And I was so nervous. How long are his races? They're 35 minutes. They're short. They're short. So that one thing happens, and you're done. Right. One spin-out, one mistake, yeah. There's no chance. to make it back. But he's got a really good teacher with his Preston Pardis.

Kids been so good to him and teaching him everything like Open Book like me and you are and feel pretty lucky. Have you ever raced with Paul Morris? I mean, I can't get this Paul Morris idea. Him and Paul are great friends. Yeah, but have y'all been on the same? Well, listen to this. So this is funny.

Like, you know, I was always a VA supercar guy. Yeah. A fan of it. And one day when we were doing Daytona 500 test day, you know, but I don't even remember what year. way back when. And I knew who he was. And I'm walking down to say hi to you, and you were with Paul Morris.

I'm like, you're the V8 Supercar guy. And he's like, yeah, yeah, Borstead, blah, blah, blah, blah. I go, man, I'd love to do a race. Oh, I'll organize it. You know, he just said it, like in passing. And sure enough, you're like, hey, you want to do two races? I'm like, yeah, just like that. And the guy, I mean, he's like us.

He's just like, I mean, he's the Dale Earnhardt of Australia. Yeah. He's the coolest dude ever. Yeah. That's his nickname. The dude. And like, me and my son, before COVID, we. He's going to love the fact that we're talking about him.

Yeah, that's right. He listens to this show. But he's wild, man. Like two years ago, me and my son went to Australia for a trip of our lifetime, you know, six days, just me and him. And, man, Paul Morris, he hosted us. I went to Australia and hung out with Paul the entire time back in 2006 or seven. And I've been telling my wife, you know, ever since I've met her that we have to go back. I've got to take you to Australia and hang out with Paul and see all the sites and do all.

It's the greatest time. Right. It's an incredible experience. It's funny. When we were on this trip, it was when you had your plane crash. Because I remember we were on Paul's boat and we heard about it. I had to call him. That's when we were talking.

We were on the boat going down the river. Paul was probably like, I've had a couple of those plane crashes before and lived to tell about it. He'll be fine. He's the closest person living to Dillenhardt, Sr. I think in Australia. That big a deal. Maybe not a big a deal as he was, but just the way they lived their lives. Yeah.

Personality and attitude, yeah. Yeah. Did you realize that you're the one, you were the one where he met Paul Morris? I mean, like that, that was. Connecting the dots, yeah. Yeah. And since that time, we're just, the same thing. We just kind of hit it off, you know, like he's a real dude.

Yes. Like he's not, doesn't care about money, doesn't care about showing off. Just, I mean, if you're like a real friend, you know, and, you know, when you said that before, I understand, you know, a lot of people, you know, if stuff goes bad, they're gone. You know, they're not your real friend. friends, right? And I'm very cautious on that too. And when you meet those real people, you know right away. Yeah. It's easy. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. It's been so good to sit down and talk to you. I mean, I don't care about, you know, podcast or no podcast. I just had missed you so much.

Yeah. Yeah. That was good times. I mean, all the times you've had been fun. Yep. Yep. Yep. Well, buddy, do you still got the go card? Yeah. It's funny you say that. So K1 is doing really well but the project we're doing right now I'm really excited about is we're building an outdoor go-car track okay and this will be the nicest track in north america it's going to be the only fia sanction track we're about two weeks away from putting the asphalt down on it and it's uh it's right up by the dealership in menifee california and uh it's you got to come try it i mean it's one point one miles it'll be it'll be like the the ultimate go-kart facility yeah so i'm excited about that's kind of a cool deal.

It's a K1, it's a K1 track? K1, but outdoor, you know, we'll probably get, we're going to get some big races there, like hopefully the world finals in 24 maybe. But just for racing and driving, I mean, there isn't a go-car track like it. You know, we might have to name a corner after you. Hey! That's what we got to do. Yeah.

I got to pick a corner because, like, right now we just did the set-Ses, which is badass. The set-es is. You got any corner with any kind of banking? That's it. That's the corner. That's the corner. I'll take. Well, yeah.

I'm going to call it the Dale Jr. corner. I'm going to give you a corner. All right. Yeah, but it's really cool. I mean, we're getting pretty close, and then we'll start building the building in March. Maybe after the corner everybody likes. Not the one that likes.

Just before the check is like. Not the corner where everybody bust their ass. You want to go through the corner. Damn, Jr. Oh, hurry. She's going to pick up my little girl from school. Oh, gotcha. She's just now.

getting going, gosh. Man, you're not going to believe how fast this goes. Oh, that's what everybody says. Hey, listen. They said it and I said BS. No, no, no. I believe it. And he's talking about kids.

I believe it. And everybody, I want to just say this out at the gate. Then you can finish your thought. But everybody's like, you better do, you better be spending time with them. Like, I'm telling you, I'm with them. Like, I am with them. I'm putting in the time. Like, we're, we're, I'm enjoying it.

It's been a blast. And I see it. I follow Instagram. I don't know that I could work any harder at it. Right. And it's fun. Like, right now, I'm in a horrible time in my life because he's a senior in high school. And next year he's going to go to college.

And I'm like, oh, man, I'm going to lose my best friend. Like, my wingman, like, I'm freaking the fuck out. Because it's like, holy shit. You know, but the racing's cool because we'll always have that. Well, I think that he'll come back for that. He'll come back for that. And, like, you know, it's funny is I was always so worried, man, I got to make money for my kid. I don't want him to be poor like I was.

You know, I keep making this money and saving it. And I don't know where my kid got the greed gene, but, you know, when he was 16, he started this website. It's kind of like a gambling site on the Steam platform. And I won't tell you what he's making, but he's making a lot more than, you know, a lot of people. Like, it's doing unbelievable. Unbelievable.

And he's had these three businesses now online. How about that? It doesn't need to go to school. And everyone says when I tell him how much he's making, they're like, why is he going to call it? college. That's awesome. So, yeah, he's doing, he's doing good. I was the same way. Everybody's like, man, you don't got to work. You don't got to do this.

You don't got to go broadcast. You don't have to be. I'm like, but this isn't for me. Right. This is that, this is for that next group. So they don't have to bust their ass so hard. You got to leave them something, some foundation of something. Right. I was always worried about it. Now I'm like, I don't think I really need to worry about him anymore. Right. But yeah, I mean, when they go to college, that's going to be like a nightmare. I know. I'm not looking forward to that part. No. I'm not looking forward to like the conversation about I want a cell phone starts, that kind of stuff.

Like when you start giving them all this sort of access to the outside, you lose a little bit of control over what they're exposed to, that's what I'm really worried about. The two times it freaked me out was, and this is going to happen to you, is when, well, you have two girls, right? But like the first time Boris went on a sleepover because you have all this chaos your whole life, you know, the stuff, stuff, stuff, everything's revolving around them, you know. and all of a sudden one night I'm going on a sleepover and he's gone and then it's just you and Amy will be looking at each other like what do we do now?

Like it's quiet and you're like oh we'll go to the movies we'll go do something and it's kind of cool and now the second part of it is you know then he gets his license and the first time he drives out of the driveway alone where you're not taking him taking him shuttling taking him you're like

oh man it's freaky freak me out that part of it yeah that's pretty interesting I wonder I wonder how different it is between having a son and a dog those feelings, those emotions. I don't know.

Because your son is, you know, he's my best bud. She's your pal. You know, it's cool about Instagram is you see all your pals and you kind of live, you see what they're doing. Like, I see what you're doing with your kids all the time.

Like, you know, it's kind of cool. So when you're involved like you are and like I am, I mean, I don't think it's different, you know, when you're going to miss them, you're going to miss them, right? Yeah. I don't know.

I dread that, and so I don't know why we got to end on this depressing. I know. I mean, God, dang. y'all are killing me. That's the damn street. We're going to sit here like three grown men, start crying over this because I hate it, too. I don't like thinking about this.

Talk about stealing cars again or something. That was fun. It was just, I never thought. You know, it's funny you talk about that. Like, I remember driving when I was 12 years old down the street, like having a fun thing. How's this going to lead to racing? That's crazy. Well, there, you.

But it was fun. You did create the path. I can't say it. I remember once I stole a dump truck when I was 13, and probably a thing went 30 miles. an hour, but it felt like, man, and that was the first thing I ever learned with a stick, and it was ugly for a while. But I remember that crashing through a few mailboxes and stuff.

The road racing ringer started by stealing a dump truck and learning how to shift. That's things you learn here. That's the story. I hope my son doesn't hear this. It's out there. It's going to be out there in the universe forever. What not to do. Right.

Well, man, how long are you in town? Actually, just today I'm going to go see Rick. We have a little meeting and then head home. That's cool to go see them every once in a while. For sure. Yeah. Well, we're super glad you gave us some time today. Yeah, it was great to catch up.

You're a special dude, and a lot of people are going to be so happy to hear this, and you told us some incredible stories. So thanks a lot, buddy. Cool, man, thanks. All right, Boris said on the Dale Jr. Download. You ready? We're live. We're doing it live.

That never grows old. We're doing it live. Hey, guys. Oh, we are live. We're live. We are live. So we're live? Yeah.

All right. Hey. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. for the Dale Jr. Download. You guys are tuning in through our YouTube channel

here at Dirtymo Media, Mike Davis. Leah is here, and she's compiled a bunch of questions for our Ask Junior segment. Matthew Dillner is here as well. Borset just walked out of the room. And he was incredible, man.

He told us some great stories, talked about his childhood and things that I didn't even. even know. We talked about all his, y'all asked me to ask him about Biffle. We asked him about that. He's a little clash with a couple drivers. We talked about the 2004 fire in Sonoma where me and him were sharing the Corvette. So a lot of great stuff. So let's go ahead and get to these questions you got. So fireway, Leah. First question from Billy Windham. We know you love short track racing. So what are your feelings about cutting the spring Martinsville race from 500 to 400 laps?

it's okay um you know i i do love short track racing and i want us to have more short tracks on the schedule i don't know for a fact and can't i don't have a feeling inside of yeah that's a bad decision or a good decision you know the 400 or 500 mile vint at any of these places is going to be it's going to be good one way or another uh i think it's a non-issue to be honest with i don't don't see a problem one of the things that i do uh think is positive is that the races having an identity. You know, if you're going to have a race at the same track twice in the year, one being different than the other is probably a good thing.

So that they have a, they'll develop a different vibe, the 500-mile versus the 400-mile or lapper. Whereas, like, when you go to Charlotte, the people complain about the 500-mile race versus the world, you know, the world 600? No. It's just, you know, I know we don't run that anymore, but now we run the, the, you road course, but I'm just using those as examples. Do you, you know, do you really, you know, when they go to, when they go to the race twice a year at the same track, I don't think it really

matters if one's longer than the other, one's shorter than the other. They'll have a different feel and a different vibe and it'll produce somewhat of a different urgency. And it'll be interesting to see how that works out. So 500 laps around Martinsville is a long, long time. And there is this sort of a lull in the middle of the race that won't maybe not be there anymore for that shorter event. We have a couple of Olympic related questions. First one from Michael Krause, what is your favorite Winter Olympic event? That short track speed, I did this little promo for the short track speed skating, and I have been watching that in the last few Winter Olympic events, and that's pretty wild stuff. I mean, it's pretty dangerous. I talk about it in the promo,

but the skates have these razor blade thin, like sharp blades on them, and they do get to beating and banging on each other, knocking each other around. And so, but the bigger races are kind of cool too. I mean, I really do compare it to NASCAR or oval racing. The short track is all about being aggressive and hustling. And then you have these bigger, larger racetracks that they'll,

these ovals where there's drafting, and there's sort of a, you've got to decide as far as how you use your endurance, right, to get through the race. So there'll be some guys that will try to break out early and get ahead. And then there'll be some guys that sort of sit back in the back and save their legs. So there's a little bit of strategy involved in that. So anytime there's an oval type of race, you know I'm going to be paying attention, no matter what you're doing, whether you're running or skating. But, so those are probably my favorites. from Bev Shannon what was your favorite part of your time in L.A. covering the Super Bowl?

My favorite part of being in L.A. was probably I got to meet a friend of mine or catch up with a friend of mine. Chris Long, his nickname's muscles, but we went to dinner and had a few drinks and just got to catch up. I hadn't seen him in a long, long time. So I got a lot of friends out on the West Coast and rarely get out that way. And it's cool to be able to catch up with a few. And as far as our work we did, watching skateboarders in the skate park was really, really cool.

And they were all very patiently, like, waiting their turn to go, and they'd get sort of over on, they'd all sort of get around the edge of this skate park and just kind of be waiting on their turn to go. And it was, it seemed super laid back and real chill, and it was fun to see, everything that they were trying to do and accomplish and I could sit there all day I mean the weather was amazing

you're on the beach you got a great breeze shade of the palm trees watching people skate it's pretty fun so it was cool next question from Austin Minor did gas monkey garage really build that nomad in 10 days? No so I get this I get a lot of questions

about that episode and the car people are like hey man how's your nomad I'm like well I never, it wasn't never my car. They built it for a campaign with Mountain Dew for it to be raffled or won. And somebody in Jersey, New Jersey won the car. It stayed at my house for a couple months until the winter was announced. But I didn't drive it a bunch or at all really.

Anyways, it was a really, really cool car. They brought it to my property. We got to spend some time walking around it and looking at it. And it was really neat. nomads are always going to be cool to me kind of always wanted one but they're pretty expensive the guy that won it drove it wrecked it they had to send it back to gas monkey to get it fixed

and I don't know where it's at after that I guess the guy still has it but yeah I think some people were confused that they thought it was built for me and I kept it but I never owned it next question from Martha Donovan so we know your personal preference is for the skirts to match the rest of your car, is that something you prefer on all of your Xfinity cars,

or do you let the drivers decide for themselves? We do not paint our skirts at Junior Mertorsports. Now, that's something I'm sure a lot of people, you know, when you hear about my opinion about the skirts and how they should match the paint scheme or be a part of a paint scheme or be included as part of the car that's part of the design, which is that's the way I feel. Then you look at our cars that we race in Xfinity Series for Junior Murgers sports. None of them have painted sides skirts.

I guess if I really, really, really wanted to beat my fist on the table, I could probably get all those skirts done. But Kelly tells me it's not in the budget and it's expensive and it's an unnecessary expense. We run a very tight budget here at Junior Motors Sports and if that's the case, then that's the case. There's not much I can do to argue against that. But yeah, we don't paint our side skirts. I wish we did here at Junior Murder Sports. but yeah I guess if I raise enough fuss I can get it done and maybe you'll see them painted on my cars from time to time that I race out of junior murder sports but not all of them and you know

it really comes down to you know just pushing back against you know the the accountants and the budget and trying to trying to make it happen is kind of difficult next question from Eric Schoenfield. Who do you watch the races with when you're not broadcasting? It depends on where I'm at. Usually I'm watching it by myself. It'd be kind of cool, I think, for us boothed guys to get together, LaTart and Rick and Jeff Burton and watch a few races together on the weekend. But a lot of times we're off doing whatever, something different. Everybody's in a different place, and I'm probably watching it at home. I'm either in my basement with a friend or two, get a buddy to come over. But I try to watch

I try to watch them live every single Sunday but if not you can definitely catch up on that during the week. Next question from Kennedy's Customs. What's your favorite piece of memorabilia that is currently in the Hall of Fame? Oh man.

Probably the baseball helmet and from the 2001 race we won at Daytona. The car, 2014 winning race car from the Daytona 500 is there. That's probably one of my favorites.

This doesn't belong to me, but it's there nonetheless. Pretty cool to stand next to that car after so many years. All right, guys, that's it for today. All right. Man, I appreciate it. Some great questions for Ask Jr. We, again, had a great show with Boris said.

It's going to be a popular one. Down in Daytona this weekend, if you're in Daytona, check out run around town and see if you can find some of our vodka. High Rock Vodka. at the Daytona total wine, but it should be in some other locations, grocery stores and so forth in the Daytona area. And if, again, HVAC filters, if you need a subscription, if you forgot to change your filters in your house,

which a lot of us do, go to filtertime.com and sign up, join our, join us as we keep our HVACs happy. I'm going to go down to Daytona just to buy, well, I'm going down there. I'm going to go buy a bottle now that I know where it is. Man, I'm getting some great reviews. Everybody that's tried our high rock has said great things about it. It's super smooth. I'm proud of the product, and I think we're going to have a good success with it.

And, you know, it's not a PSA, like a personal service agreement. This is equity business of ours, me and Amy are owners in the business. And so something we're very, very focused on at the moment. I saw Cole Swindale social about it on his own accord the other day. That was cool. Yeah, we sent out some bottles to a few friends. And it's been good to get some feedback on it. And now the general public's going to be able to have access to it,

that's really where that feedback is going to matter the most. Can I just have one more thing? He plugged the Boris said interview quite well. I also want to add one of the greatest intimidator stories that I think I've ever heard came from Boris in this interview. I have never in my life heard something like this. He has one heck of a story about Dale Earnhardt. The Boris stories, like I've known Boris a long time.

I heard, I mean, I'd say 60 to maybe even 70% of stuff that he told us today I didn't know. And that's what's amazing about doing this podcast, even with people that I know really well. And some of the things he told us about his childhood were bonkers. Crazy. Things that he admitted to doing when he was not so good. Right. Not being such a good boy. But if we're going to sit here and say it, I mean, I think the most interesting part is the fact that his perspective of your crash.

in 2004 and the Corvette was also fascinating, especially for me, just sitting, listening to you guys, retell your stories of the burn. I know. And that was something else. All right, well, I hope you guys will tell you friends, and thanks for tuning in to our last junior segment,

and thanks for supporting us here at Dirtymo Media at the Bojangles studio. We'll see you later. Check out Dirty Mo Media, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. Thank you.